A Vision of Fire

CHAPTER 1

It was an unseasonably warm October morning, better suited for a stroll than a stride, but Ganak Pawar and his daughter maintained their usual quick pace up the east side of Manhattan. The permanent representative of India to the United Nations, veteran of thirty years as a foreign-service officer, wore a practiced expression of tolerance. Sixteen-year-old Maanik seemed especially energized by the blanket of sunlight that spilled across York Avenue.

“Papa, your presentation last night was amazing!” Maanik said. “I couldn’t get to sleep for hours, my brain was alive with so many ideas.”

“That is gratifying,” her father replied.

“It’s time for people to think differently about Kashmir and you made that point with the General Assembly,” she said. “I’m glad CNN covered it, it was totally inspiring.”

“I am glad you feel so. I am not being universally thanked for it.”

“Papa, you got in their faces. That took courage!”

Ganak smiled. “I ‘got in their faces,’ did I?”

“You know what I mean,” his daughter said, grinning. “Anyway, don’t be so modest, especially now. Now is the time for a determined follow-up.”

Ganak wasn’t sure if it was courage or desperation that had compelled him to show the video of a Kashmiri mother immolating herself over her dead son. Tensions occurred in Kashmir every few years but this time it felt different. Thirty-two people had died in two days, and Pakistan and India were once again rattling their nuclear sabers. Perhaps that familiar, tired bragging had driven Ganak to suggest they make Kashmir a UN protectorate. If the UN temporarily governed the region, as it had in Kosovo for nine years, that could buy time for the populace to choose whether to join one country or the other, or to opt for independence…

“Papa?”

“Yes?”

“I want to be part of that follow-up,” Maanik said, bouncing in her stride with excitement. “You should hear my ideas.”

He smiled as he regarded her. She looked so mature in her brown faux leather jacket over a dark blue dress. Her leggings were orange and gold, one leg striped horizontally, the other swirling in a feather pattern. She had sewn the disparate halves together herself and matched them with an orange and gold scarf. He noticed with surprise that she had begun to pluck her eyebrows, and though her black hair had always been strong and thick, the way she arranged it over her shoulder was a recent development.

She is so unlike her mother, he thought. When the Pawar family had moved from New Delhi to Manhattan two years ago and Maanik started at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, the girl immediately began to change. Where her mother, Hansa, was reflective, Maanik did her thinking aloud. Where Hansa planned, Maanik improvised. Hansa embraced tradition but Maanik liked to Rollerblade on the sly with the son of the Canadian ambassador. The Pawars’ American bodyguard, Daniel—who was walking a few paces behind them—was charged with clandestinely keeping an eye on the young lady when she was not at home.

Ganak couldn’t decide whether he was concerned at her shrugging off the old ways or if he was proud that she lived her own life. Hansa did not like it but Ganak was not sure, and his diplomatic skills were sometimes tested at home in ways that could rival the current crisis in Kashmir.

Thinking of India and Pakistan pulled down the edges of his smile. These days, walking Maanik to school was one of his only refuges.

“Maanik, I want to hear your ideas but I must caution you, sometimes it is wise to pause after a push.”

“How can that be wise?” she asked. “If something is moving, why not keep it in motion?”

“I read the reports from home before we left this morning. India and Pakistan are both infuriated even while the rest of the world applauds the idea of a protectorate.”

“That’s my point,” Maanik said, undaunted. “Now you need to convince India and Pakistan.”

“Ah. It is that simple?”

“Maybe not so simple, but my ideas can help with that. I’ve been thinking up op-eds for you, press releases, but especially”—she turned and walked backward, facing him and glowing—“what if you let me interview you on video, talking about the situation? Networks would eat that up, parents would watch it with their children, it would be casual and nonthreatening but with our hearts in it, you know? We could get people used to your proposal through conversation instead of arguments. If we get it just right, maybe it could go viral.”

Ganak was impressed. Maanik had prepared a presentation of her own. This revelation about his daughter was one of the reasons that, even in the middle of a crisis, he insisted on maintaining their half-hour, no-cell-phones walk to school.

“Those are very creative ideas, Maanik.”

“Okay! So the next step is, I take a break from school and get an internship with you at United Nations headquarters. Actually, school will probably count that as a class—”

Ganak interrupted. “Interns at the headquarters must be in graduate school. High school students are out of the question.”

“But, Bapu”—she softened him with the Hindi word for “Daddy”—“I have the intelligence and the desire and right now my help is crucial.”

“I appreciate your interest, but every member of the staff is well-credentialed, not just well-intentioned.”

“An exception can be made—”

“Exceptions are the exceptions,” he said.

Maanik frowned. “I don’t even understand that.”

“It means no. I’m sorry, Maanik.”

She turned and walked forward again, visibly frustrated. “So I am supposed to just waste my days thinking up ideas and never making any of them happen?”

“You are a very exceptional young lady—”

“And I am telling you, I am wasting time at school.”

“You are learning about other lives, other times.”

“While I ignore the fact that our homeland could erupt into war? I am trapped in irrelevance, Bapu. I want to help.”

“Your books are not irrelevant.”

“Really? And what if one crazy officer in one of the armies actually prepares to launch a warhead this time? What would you do, talk to him about a novel you read? Or a poem?”

“Maanik, my life, you are about to lose this argument.” He smiled.

“Oh?” She stopped on the corner of Seventy-Sixth Street, shifted her weight onto one hip, and raised her eyebrows at him. “How?”

He grinned. “You are young and impatient. I have been where you have been, but you have not been where I have been.”

Maanik turned suddenly to the six-foot-two blond man with the crooked nose who stood behind them. “Daniel, do you think that’s a good argument?”

“I am neutral in this, ma’am,” said the bodyguard with a smile. Behind the reflective sunglasses his eyes were on the pedestrians who moved around them, peripherally watching the cars drive too quickly on the avenue. He looked along the street as they got a walk sign, and they crossed York into a narrow block full of red brick and green leaves just starting to turn.

“Maanik,” Ganak admonished, “allow him to do his job.” His voice softened quickly. It always did with his daughter. “As for you, your job is to learn patience and to get an education and experience, from which grow wisdom.”

“Patience,” she said impatiently.

“Do you know that is my primary job? To guide patiently, compassionately. To nudge people along, not to wrench them to my goal, my will. I work toward a Kashmir protectorate, but slowly. Do you see this as less courageous than shaking your fist or raising your voice? I tell you, it is more!”

The young woman suddenly looked like the little girl who was still so green in her father’s memory. They walked in silence. He impulsively took her hand in his. She squeezed it tightly.

They reached the stretch of sidewalk before the school doors. It was full of students and a few teachers sending texts or hurrying through conversations before the activities of the first period began at seven forty-five. Today was Human Rights Club, which alternated with Model UN. But Maanik was not rushing to find her friends. Her father saw that she was thinking hard and he almost regretted the conversation.

As he looked around, it appeared as if everyone outside the school was subdued. After he had shown the video of the mother’s suicide to the General Assembly, it had gone viral. He regretted that, especially considering that some of these teenagers had probably watched it, and many more of them must have heard about it. But the world needed a push so that the endless tensions in Kashmir could finally be laid to rest. The Security Council had to pressure India and Pakistan or they would only pressure each other until yes, one day, perhaps a mad general would put an end to the tensions in a much worse way. The ambassador was aware that he had made the situation even more serious. So, after pushing his daughter from a place where she felt she might have some influence, Ganak could not blame her for falling into solemnity.

“Do not dwell on this,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Trust your father.”

“I do,” she said. “It’s the others I do not trust.”

He smiled. “And that is the problem, is it not? Someone must be the first to lay down his saber and believe that the other wants the same thing.”

He waved and turned toward First Avenue. He and Daniel would walk the half hour downtown to the United Nations building, Ganak using the time to mentally rehearse his strategies and make phone calls. Without Maanik by his side he tuned into the city, heard the airplanes and helicopters overhead, the trucks making deliveries, the cars whipping across bumpy streets. He heard the sound of a loud motorcycle but dismissed it without thought.

Daniel did not dismiss the sound at all. The exhaust was so loud that the bike had to have straight pipes, uncommon on the sedate, aging Upper East Side of Manhattan. Daniel stared as the motorcycle turned onto Seventy-Sixth Street—black with red trim, slim rider also in black. It passed a street crew at the corner and roared past a man who was holding a SLOW sign on a pole. That was wrong too: the worker was walking away from the intersection where he should have been managing traffic flow. His strides were long and his gaze leveled on Ambassador Pawar. Shielded by the sign, his free hand disappeared under his yellow-and-red vest—

Outside the high school, no one reacted to the first gunshot. It was just a loud noise under the louder motorcycle. But Ganak turned and froze. That was what the assassins were counting on: paralysis to make him an easy target. That reaction was exactly what Daniel had been trained to overcome.

An instant before the worker had fired, Daniel was already in motion. The bodyguard bear-hugged the ambassador and dropped him hard to the concrete, at the same time turning with his own nine-millimeter drawn. He leaned on his stiff left arm, half-shielding the ambassador, while he aimed toward the street with his right.

With the second and third shots, pedestrians ran shouting for doorways or ducked behind cars. The parked vehicles and trees made it difficult for the gunman to find his target. To the east, the students, the teachers, everyone outside the school started screaming. Half the crowd dropped to the sidewalk, others huddled against the wall; the few still standing were grabbed and pulled to their knees, to their chests, their faces to the sidewalk. Maanik stood still, shaking in fear. The AP English teacher, Ms. Allen, grabbed the girl by the collar and forced her head down.

Maanik struggled against the woman’s protective arms and tried to lift her head. She could not scream. She could not even open her mouth. There had not been a fourth gunshot. Did that mean the first three had succeeded? She thought of Daniel, wondered if he was all right, if any of those shots had been his. She felt the cold concrete against her right cheek, a dry leaf crumpled beneath it as she craned to see down the block.

There were sirens in the distance. Ms. Allen hesitated, then pushed herself off her knees. Someone had to check on Maanik’s father and it couldn’t be Maanik.

“Stay here,” she ordered the student.

Mary Allen motioned for another student to stay with Maanik and ran in a crouch toward First Avenue and the bodies on the sidewalk. She did not see any blood, though she glimpsed a figure in a worker’s yellow-and-red vest jump onto the back of a motorcycle. She felt her ears blasted by the roar of the bike as it tore east. She picked out the lumped figures of Maanik’s father and the bodyguard. One body stirred, sat up, blond hair catching the sunlight. He turned to the body he was half-covering. The man’s head lifted. He placed a hand on the sidewalk, struggled to push himself up, collapsed. Ms. Allen ran to his side, added her hands as support, and shouted over her shoulder, “Maanik, he’s okay! They’re both all right!”

Though that wasn’t entirely true: now she noticed the blood on the pavement. She looked all over the ambassador’s body before she saw blood gushing from the bodyguard’s sleeve and knew that it was he who had been struck. She called for someone to get the school nurse.

Fifteen minutes later, having just gotten off the phone with his wife, Ganak Pawar gently lifted his daughter’s head from his shoulder and helped her sit upright on the couch in the principal’s office. He pulled a fleck of dry, broken leaf from her cheek. They were alone, both unharmed. Daniel had been rushed to the hospital, losing blood fast, his right arm useless, but the EMTs had assured them he would be okay.

Maanik had not cried, even as the adrenaline drained out of her. Her deep, ragged breaths calmed into something approaching normal. She was still shaking, but her father could not ignore the knock on the door. The principal looked in.

“Mr. Ambassador, your car is here.”

“Yes, thank you,” he said. “I will be right there.”

Maanik grabbed his hand, held it tight.

“Maanik, I must.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“I know. But I will be all right, I swear to you. Two in one day, it does not happen.”

She nodded, unconvinced.

“As soon as you feel up to it, have the principal call Mama and she will pick you up and take you home. You will have a very quiet day.”

Maanik looked away from him and was silent. Her grip tightened; she dug her nails into his hand.

“Maanik—”

“It is hopeless. Everything is hopeless. The UN, your speech, everything.”

“It is not. You must not lose faith.”

“I could have lost you. Who can have faith?”

“But you didn’t lose me; I am here. And when I appear at the United Nations after an assassination attempt, that makes my voice stronger—”

“I’m not going home.” She let go of his hand.

“It’s all right—”

“You have to do your job, so I will do mine.”

He took a deep breath, gazed at his daughter. This argument was hers. He kissed her forehead, lingering longer than before, and pressed her hands in his as he stood.

“Then I will see you for dinner, and I will call you during the day. I will make sure the principal allows you to keep your phone on. Maanik Pawar, you make me very proud.”

“You too, Papa Ambassador.” Her smile was weak but it was there.

He gave her one more peck on the top of her head, then left with a strong, purposeful stride. Maanik rose and immediately sat down again, her legs still wobbly. But she attended her second-period class, AP United States History.

The nurse asked the principal to text Maanik’s teachers, telling them to keep an eye on her.

Amid the subtle stares from kids she did not know well and thumbs up from those she did, Maanik sat in her seat, opened her notebook, and copied words from the board. Her pen ran dry and she scribbled in circles until the blue ink flowed, then she kept scribbling circles until she caught herself with a jerk. It was as if she had fallen asleep and suddenly there were circles on the page. She forced herself to pay attention.

Maanik listened, moved on with several classmates to Geometry, and midway through the lesson began drawing circles until the paper was full of them. Then she put down her pen and scratched under the sleeve of her dress. She didn’t feel itchy. She just needed to scratch.

“Papa… ,” she whispered, the utterance more breath than word.

No one around her heard.

“Papa?” she said, louder this time.

The girl to her right looked over. “Maanik?”

The teacher glanced at her.

Maanik looked at the student beside her and saw a suddenly unfamiliar face. The girl’s flesh was pale, almost translucent, like ice on a pavement. Her eyes had a reddish cast, like a ruby in her mother’s jewel box. Her lips were a pale blue and very pronounced.

Maanik spoke, her voice wheezing from her chest. “Papa… help me!”

The teacher quickly made her way down the aisle. Maanik began breathing rapidly, digging her pen over and over into the desk with one hand and raking the back of her wrist with the other until rivulets of blood rose up.

The teacher gently restrained her hands and sent another student for the nurse.

“Maanik, don’t—”

Maanik suddenly threw her arms up, sending the teacher back against a desk, and thrashed in her seat before relaxing for the briefest moment. Then she screamed so loudly that the teacher pulled her close in a desperate, helpless effort to quiet her.

Maanik went limp just as the nurse arrived.

CHAPTER 2

Caitlin O’Hara, MD, PhD, two weeks shy of her forties and three sips into a cup of coffee, toggled keys on her tablet.

“We can’t give them the moon, Dr. O’Hara.”

“I didn’t ask for the moon,” she said to the voice coming from her tablet. “I asked for money, Ms. Tanaka, for twenty-five test shelters. You can do that.”

On-screen, a 3-D blueprint of a small house revolved and a wall disappeared so that Caitlin could zoom inside and view the interior. The house would accommodate twenty souls who had been sweltering or freezing in decaying tents for months. This new snap-together unit was created by a modular furniture manufacturer under contract to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It was an update to a previous model that, among other concerns, had lacked a lock inside the front door. It had that now. All it needed was funding.

Tanaka’s boss, Director Qanooni, weighed in. “We simply do not have the hundred thousand dollars this project requires.”

“Which circles back to where we started this discussion,” O’Hara said. “Crowdfunding. I know it won’t deliver the windfalls you get from donor nations and it requires valuable person-hours to oversee. But lives are worth the effort.”

The conference call with the development officers of the World Health Organization was about to run over its scheduled half hour. But the need for the refugee shelters was absolute. That, and the clock ticking before Caitlin’s next client arrived, made her bold.

There was a short silence, after which Tanaka murmured to Qanooni and the director said, “I will take it to the board.”

“Please don’t,” Caitlin urged. “You know what ‘board’ stands for?” She answered her own question: “Bunch of Argumentative—”

“Thank you, doctor,” Qanooni interrupted hastily. “We are on the board, need I remind you?”

“You needn’t, and I’m sorry if you were offended.” Caitlin grinned. “But I cannot abide red tape. It never strangles bad ideas, only good ones. So please, just go to the nearest high school in Geneva, put some students to work for extra credit, and they’ll throw a funding website together in a couple of hours.”

“If only it were that simple.” Tanaka sighed. “There are liability issues.”

“I sympathize,” Caitlin replied. “I do. I pay more for insurance than I do for rent and office space combined, and that’s saying something in Manhattan. But health issues trump insurance. They must. Otherwise, why are we in this business?”

“Fair point,” Qanooni said as Tanaka made a thoughtful “hmm” sound.

“I’m not wrong about this,” Caitlin prodded.

“But of course,” Qanooni chided. “When was the last time you were wrong?”

“Cameroon, 2010,” she answered. “It was twilight and I mistook a spotted hyena for a dog. I invented the backward broad jump and set a record for it, all in one.”

Caitlin’s phone buzzed, buzzed again. It was a call from Benjamin Moss.

“Director Qanooni, Ms. Tanaka, I do have to go now but I’ll follow up by e-mail. Thank you for your time…”

The director thanked her—and reprised the issue of liability instead of saying good-bye. Caitlin’s phone stopped buzzing, then started again. Ben was calling a second time instead of leaving a voice mail.

Caitlin ended the online meeting, sat back in her chair, and let her eyes rest momentarily on her office walls, full of landscape photos from Thailand, Cuba, the Philippines, her framed degrees and awards—certificates that made her career in adolescent psychiatry easier but didn’t matter, not fundamentally.

She called Ben back—he picked up on the first ring.

“Ben, I have a session in one minute, so this has to be—”

“Can you cancel it?”

“What? No—”

“Cai, I’m serious,” he said. “I need you at the United Nations as soon as you can get here.”

“I’m serious too, Ben, I’ve got—” There was a knock on her door. “One minute!” she called, knowing it was her assistant, probably announcing her client. “Ben, my eleven o’clock is here.”

“Please cancel the appointment,” Ben implored. “You know I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”

Caitlin frowned. “This is important too. At least tell me what it’s about.”

“I can’t tell you over the phone. This area gets electronically swept by every government on the planet. Please, Cai.”

“It’s that serious?”

“That serious.”

Caitlin rose and started toward the door. “Give me five minutes here and I’ll come over.”

“Thanks. I’ll text you where to meet.”

Caitlin ended the call, opened the door, and explained the situation. After rescheduling with her client, she caught a cab and headed for the United Nations.

Ben’s text read 48th and 2nd. As Caitlin’s cab pulled along the curb, she spotted him pacing in front of an apartment tower. He was wearing a tailored suit and a grim expression. She watched her old friend as the cabbie processed her card. A long, dim portico with square arches stretching behind him made his taut stride seem even more restless, as if the arches were boxing him in. He was carefully eyeing every cab that passed. When he eventually registered hers he brightened slightly and hurried over.

She had only noticed fear in Benjamin Moss twice since she met him as an undergrad at New York University: on September 11, 2001, watching the Twin Towers burn from the foot of Washington Square Park, and in Thailand after the tsunami of 2004 as bodies began to wash up onto the shore. But he seemed fearful now.

They hugged. The air felt unusually chilly, even though the sun was shining directly on them.

“I owe you big-time,” he said.

“Time and a half,” she said. “Why am I here?”

With a gentle hand Ben steered Caitlin back to the portico. He stopped there and glanced surreptitiously at the doorman. Caitlin suddenly felt trapped with Ben in his imaginary cage.

“Ben, what’s going on?”

“How’s Jacob?” he asked quietly. “Still ten?”

“He’s fine. Taking cooking classes. He wants to take Tai Chi now like the people in the park.”

“I know a good teacher,” he said. “From China.”

“Ben? Where’s the graveyard and why are you whistling?”

He took a breath. Ben was a translator at the United Nations. She had seen him at work: there was always the briefest delay between what he heard and what he said as he processed exactly how to say it. He was doing that now.

“Early this morning the Indian ambassador to the UN was walking his daughter to school,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “You may have heard about it—”

“Attempted assassination,” she said.

“Right. The police commissioner put the Counterterrorism Bureau on it and all they’ve turned up is a nameless guy and a fuzzy surveillance video showing two men on their motorcycle racing down York Avenue.”

“No one’s claimed responsibility?”

Ben shook his head. “The NYPD thinks the men were lone wolves but both India and Pakistan are pointing fingers.”

“So no one even knows why this happened?”

Ben shook his head. “Lots of people have reasons for wanting him dead, or at least sidelined. He’s a pacifist who’s too high-profile to simply recall. More importantly, peace talks started a week ago and most of the United Nations delegates and the Security Council requested that he attend them, over the misgivings of India and Pakistan.”

“And you’re his interpreter,” Caitlin said.

“With Hindi, Urdu, Uighur, Shina, and occasionally a tribal language.” He grinned for the first time. “My brain’s kind of spinning.”

“How’s his brain?” Caitlin asked.

“Pretty good,” he replied. “It takes a lot to rattle that man.”

Clearly if he was fine, the ambassador wasn’t the reason she was here. Caitlin waited for Ben to resume.

Ben’s voice got even softer and he leaned forward conspiratorially. “Everything has been proceeding slowly and cautiously—until today. Ambassador Pawar got a phone call about his daughter and left, canceling the rest of the session. It took about a second for the Pakistani delegates to get annoyed, and we don’t know how long they’re going to stay accommodating. A half hour later the deputy ambassador of India—who was also pretty concerned—pulled me aside and asked me to come to the ambassador’s condo and get him. Which is right here.” He nodded up at the skyscraper above their heads.

“The man was shot at,” Caitlin said. “Can’t they give him a couple hours off?”

“It’s not about him, Cai. It’s about using events as platforms. The ambassador was already late and his absence gives everyone time, and an excuse, to get back on a partisan soapbox.”

“I understand,” Caitlin said. “But the ambassador isn’t why I’m here.”

“No,” Ben said solemnly.

What would pull a diplomat out of a crisis session but a crisis at home? Caitlin felt a twinge as she remembered her own father’s careful, loving attention. “The daughter?” She had heard about the shooting on the news.

Ben nodded, stared down the street, then back at the doorman.

“What’s happening with her?” Caitlin asked.

“It’s…” Ben’s mouth tightened, then he exhaled. “It’s disturbing. Cai, you’ll have to see for yourself.”

Taking her by the elbow, he walked her into the building. The concierge at the desk did not bother calling up, obviously familiar with Ben.

“They brought her in through the service elevator,” Ben said.

There were security cameras in the lobby and one in the corner of the elevator. Loose lips sink ships, Caitlin thought as they rode up to the penthouse. Ben had not spoken another word. She could not imagine what was so dire that it could not be spoken about… and had unsettled him so much that he still had not released her elbow.

The elevator door opened on a corridor that was eerily silent. There was a vacuum cleaner running in an apartment but the hallway’s thick carpet muted the sound.

But it’s more than the silence, she realized as they headed toward an apartment at the far end. There was the kind of stillness one felt at sunset in the wild, when all decent things went into their huts, tents, or burrows, and predators woke to feed. It was a strange and surprising sensation here.

On their first knock an anxious-looking woman in a red-orange sari opened the door.

“Thank you, Benjamin,” she said, but was looking at Caitlin, studying her with experienced eyes.

“Dr. O’Hara, this is Hansa Pawar, wife of the ambassador.”

“Hello,” Caitlin said as a young beagle tried to slip through the door into the hall.

“Jack London!” Mrs. Pawar snapped, and the beagle slunk back inside. The dog was low to the ground and subdued as he turned to sniffing Caitlin’s ankles. His attentions were brief, perfunctory.

Caitlin ran her hand down the dog’s back as she reached down to take her shoes off; she had spent enough time in Mumbai to know that removing shoes was the cultural norm.

Mrs. Pawar stopped her. “Don’t worry about that. Please just come with me.”

Caitlin felt another chill as the woman hurried them through a spacious room. It was filled with light from a wall of windows facing the UN building and the East River. There was a pleasant hint of jasmine tea in the air. The apartment was overflowing with artifacts—Caitlin recognized not just Hindi sculptures and Muslim painted texts, but a Sikh helmet, a Christian cross, a Georgia O’Keeffe landscape.

Ben noticed Caitlin’s wandering eyes. “Ganak calls interculturalism ‘the peace of many choices,’” he murmured to her. “He’s trying to embody it and teach it.”

Caitlin didn’t have much more time to look around before they were ushered into a bedroom, the second off a long corridor.

Though the drapes were drawn, enough sunlight filtered through for Caitlin to see that each wall was painted a different jewel color, amethyst, sapphire, emerald, and cherry opal. On a desk in the corner, an electronic photo frame flashed groups of friends laughing, smiling, hugging—in sad contrast to the girl who was unconscious in her father’s arms across the room. Urged by Mrs. Pawar’s outstretched hand, Caitlin moved slowly past her to the girl’s four-poster bed. The beagle followed and sat on the floor beside her. Ben stayed by the door.

The man looked up. “I am Ganak Pawar.”

“I’m Caitlin O’Hara,” she said gently.

“Thank you for coming,” he said, his voice cracking. “This—this is our daughter, Maanik.”

Caitlin smiled reassuringly but her attention was on the girl’s forearms, which were wrapped in gauze that was heavily spotted with blood. She sat on the bed and gently moved the girl’s arms to look under the bandages. The teenager showed no response, the limbs dead weight. The bloodstains were smeared and unusual. Cut marks were typically linear; these were S-shaped and they were fresh. Even in the subdued light, Caitlin could see blood on the girl’s fingernails.

“Maanik insisted on going to class,” the ambassador said. “She was only there an hour when she began shrieking, doing this to herself.”

“Nothing before that? No hyperventilating, faintness?”

“Her second-period teacher said she was staring, but otherwise normal,” Ganak said. “This happened in her third class. When she came home she fell asleep but awoke screaming. For a while now she has been falling asleep, waking up screaming, speaking in gibberish, then sleeping again. Our doctor said it is post-traumatic stress from the shooting.”

“Symptoms in cycles don’t fit with PTSD,” Caitlin mused, more to herself. “Did your doctor leave a prescription?”

“Yes. Kamala, our housekeeper, just picked these up.” He nodded toward pills on the night table.

There was a paper pharmacy bag, still stapled at the top. Caitlin noted the physician’s name, Deshpande, and the recipient’s name, fabricated most likely, which did not include “Maanik” or “Pawar.”

Caitlin opened the bag and retrieved a pair of amber containers. “Vasoflex. This is for insomnia and recurrent nightmares.” She looked at the other, surprised. “Risperdal. This is a potent antipsychotic.”

“That is a correct medication, yes?” Hansa asked.

“If you’re bipolar and haven’t slept for a few days,” Caitlin replied. “We don’t use it as a prophylactic, ‘just in case’ medicine. Mrs. Pawar, your doctor did come by and see her, yes?”

There was silence. He hadn’t. That was illegal in New York State. Caitlin glanced over at Ben, who gave her a cautioning look. Rules were obviously being bent here.

“That’s a potent mix to put in her body without an examination and after just a few hours,” Caitlin said.

“I am sorry,” Mrs. Pawar said, more to her daughter than to Caitlin. “We did not know what else to do.”

“It’s not your fault,” Caitlin lied, not wanting to make a bad situation worse. “But until we know the trigger, we’re not going to give her these.”

“Dr. O’Hara, we are watched,” the ambassador said unapologetically. “Our doctor is also with the United Nations. He keeps a log. Confidentiality means nothing in diplomacy; word would spread. I’m afraid the delegations will see my distraction as a potential weakness and press for advantage, or worse. There is still a stigma against mental illness in both India and Pakistan. If anyone were to find out she was receiving psychiatric treatments—”

“Sir, there is no illness if a situation is treated.”

“That is a technical distinction,” the ambassador said. “I know it is difficult for Americans to understand the concept of family shame, and though Hansa and I do not subscribe to the idea, many still do.”

“I do understand and there is no need to explain or apologize—”

“But there is,” he interrupted. “I am in a delicate position. Accusations of evil spirits are still a quite common response to mental illness in both countries. If her condition is known—in fact, when her condition is known, as I am sure we have only a week, two at most, before discovery—I could be removed from the negotiations, Dr. O’Hara, or either side could use it as an excuse to leave the negotiating table and turn this matter over to their military forces. A doctor’s visit to my home could be used to prove not just that I am incapable of mediating, but that the entire negotiation process is forfeit.”

“We needed a caregiver no one knows,” Ben said. “That’s why I called you.”

Caitlin didn’t like it but she understood. The good of the many outweighed the needs of a few.

Ganak went on. “I know this is a terrible imposition, but Ben gives you a glowing report. Will you help?”

“Of course.”

Ganak and his wife shared a relieved look, then smiled gratefully at Caitlin.

“If you will excuse me, doctor, I must get back,” the ambassador said. He gently moved the girl out of his arms so that she was lying against her pillows. She still did not stir.

Caitlin moved closer to the young woman. “Ben, will you call my office and tell them I’m tied up in an emergency? This is going to take longer than I thought.”

“Naturally.”

“Mrs. Pawar, we’re going to have to impose on your housekeeper again,” Caitlin said. “Please ask her to pick up several boxes of cotton pads, six-ply bandage rolls as wide as they make them, and oregano oil. That won’t sting your daughter awake; we want her to sleep.”

Mrs. Pawar nodded. The ambassador rose and cupped his wife’s face briefly as he passed her. She followed him out of the room. Ben nodded to Caitlin and smiled briefly in gratitude, then left the room, closing the door behind him.

Alone with the girl, Caitlin experienced another chill. The isolation and dread she had felt in the hallway seemed magnified here. There were no street sounds, no hovering air traffic anywhere near the United Nations, no sense of the time of day, no fresh air. She realized, though, that she might be responding to more than the environment and the girl’s condition. Politically, what happened here would radiate in all directions, affect countless lives. There was no room for mistakes.

Good thing you never make any, she needled herself, thinking back to her conversation with Director Qanooni.

Maanik continued to sleep, her breathing shallow, her pulse at the low end of normal but not a cause for alarm. Her skin was cool but not cold. Caitlin asked for a thermometer; her temperature was normal. She checked for bruises on her neck, felt her scalp for abrasions or any sign of concussion.

When the housekeeper returned, Caitlin removed Maanik’s bandages, then soaked several cotton pads with the oregano oil and gave them to Mrs. Pawar to hold ready. She picked up the girl’s right arm with a gentle hand, held a soaked pad over one of the wounds, then wiped down gently but firmly to the wrist.

There was no reaction from Maanik. Her forearm twitched, but the girl’s eyes did not even move behind her eyelids.

“My poor girl,” Mrs. Pawar said.

Caitlin was concerned, not by the cuts, which were fairly superficial, but by the near-complete lack of response. This was not a normal slumber or the common numbness and disconnection that arose from an unexpected emotional event. She dropped the cotton pad and, taking Maanik’s hand, applied sharp pressure to the nail bed of Maanik’s pinky, trying to gauge her level of consciousness. The girl did not react. Caitlin pulled up the girl’s left eyelid and the pupil immediately began to dilate.

That’s strange, Caitlin thought. There’s no light here—

“Help!” The girl screamed and bolted upright.

CHAPTER 3

Cries of terror seemed to explode from deep in Maanik’s chest. Caitlin jolted back, giving the girl room to move but holding firmly to her wrists. Maanik was trying to scrape at her forearms while flinging her body back and forth on the bed.

“Maanik!” Caitlin called.

“Maanik!” Mrs. Pawar repeated from a corner of the room. “Ise banda!”

But the girl did not stop. She shook her head back and forth, not in resistance but in what seemed like rage. Caitlin wasn’t sure she was even hearing them.

Releasing Maanik’s wrists, she pressed her palms on the girl’s shoulders and shifted them, not holding her down or shaking her but simply moving one shoulder up and the other down with strong purpose. It was an adaptation of a Chinese Qigong method Caitlin had used before to calm panic attacks.

Within moments, Maanik’s screams became slightly more subdued—but only slightly.

“Mrs. Pawar, turn on the light,” Caitlin said.

The woman hurried to the switch. An overhead fixture glowed. Caitlin angled Maanik’s body slightly so she was looking up.

“Maanik, listen to me,” Caitlin said. “You are looking at a large TV screen. Whatever you are seeing is on the screen. Do you understand? Look at the screen. Everything is on the screen.”

Caitlin watched the girl’s pupils focus on a point over her shoulder. The pauses lengthened between the screams, and they sounded like urgent announcements now instead of bursts of pure terror.

“Maanik, move your right foot.”

The girl did not move.

“Maanik, keep looking at the screen and move your right foot.”

The girl slid her right foot down the bed. Her breath had turned ragged and panting but she was not summoning breath for another scream. She was starting to recover.

“Maanik, I am going to count now. When you hear me say a number, you will see that number on the screen. When you hear ‘eight,’ you will want to go to sleep. When you hear ‘five,’ you will let yourself go to sleep. Okay?”

Her breathing was growing calmer. But there was no indication that she’d heard or understood.

Caitlin glanced around the room, the movement of her head easing the tension in her shoulders. She noticed that Jack London, instead of staying near his human like most worried dogs would have, was behind the curtains. He was sniffing hard and appeared to be moving along the edges of the windows.

Caitlin took one more deep breath, then said, “Okay, I’m going to begin counting.” She maintained a light pressure on Maanik’s shoulders. “Ten. Look at the ten on your screen. Keep looking. Nine. Eight.”

Nothing changed.

“Maanik, when I say the word ‘eight’ you will feel how tired you are, how nice it would be to go to sleep. Look at the screen. Eight.”

The girl’s shoulders sagged under her hands.

Caitlin felt Jack London sitting down on her foot. Now he was watching Maanik.

“Very good. Seven. Six. You can feel your eyelids closing. Five.”

Maanik’s eyes closed as the countdown finished.

Jack London shook his head, sensing the crisis had passed, then yawned and trotted from the room.

Caitlin relaxed as well. She stood, pulled a light cover over Maanik’s resting form, and backed toward the corner of the room where Mrs. Pawar had found safety. She could see that amid the mother’s concern for her daughter, this protective and dignified woman was also scared of Caitlin.

“Hypnosis is a very common tool for psychiatrists, please don’t worry.”

“But how did you… she was unreachable!”

“Only to normal forms of communication. Maanik was actually very responsive to hypnosis, almost as if she has experienced it before. Has she ever been hypnotized?”

“No, never.”

Caitlin was used to skepticism, but under Mrs. Pawar’s gaze she felt like a wizard.

“This is just a temporary fix,” Caitlin said. “At this point I would strongly suggest that you admit Maanik to a psychiatric hospital—”

“Absolutely not,” Mrs. Pawar interrupted.

“But she’s already a danger to herself, and at any minute—”

Mrs. Pawar was shaking her head. “It would be noticed and it would be publicized, doctor. It is not possible at this time.”

She folded her arms and rested the back of a hand against her lips, and Caitlin saw how hard she was working to keep it together in the face of the day’s events. Pushing the matter would worsen the situation for the mother and do nothing for the daughter.

“All right,” Caitlin said, pulling her prescription pad and a pen from her purse. “I’m going to give you a different prescription—clonazepam. It’s a sedative and a muscle relaxant, less radical than the others, and Maanik can be named the recipient without raising suspicions, in case anyone finds out. Give her the pill on a full stomach and when it takes effect, clean her forearms with the oil, all right?”

Mrs. Pawar nodded.

Caitlin indicated that they should leave the room. Mrs. Pawar followed her into the hall. As Caitlin left the door ajar she asked, “If you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Pawar, I must ask: has Maanik ever suffered any kind of trauma? An attack, abuse at any age? Sexual abuse? Physical or emotional?”

Caitlin watched the woman grow weary under these most difficult of questions. She shook her head no. Caitlin pushed a little further.

“I know that you lived in New Delhi not long ago, and I know that New Delhi is experiencing an epidemic of sexual assault. Is there any chance at all that Maanik could have been assaulted and not told you?”

Mrs. Pawar did not look Caitlin in the eye but Caitlin knew that was cultural, not deceptive. “There is no chance,” Mrs. Pawar said. “We raised a miracle. We raised a safe child. She was unscarred until she saw the attack on my husband.”

Caitlin reached out and held Mrs. Pawar’s hands for a moment. “I believe you,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Caitlin replied. “I know this isn’t easy but it’s necessary. We will find the cause of this. We will make her world safe again.”

“How long will that take? Do you have any idea?”

“I don’t,” Caitlin admitted.

“What if—if it happens again?”

“It may very well. I’ll leave you my number. If there is another episode, even a very mild one, call me. I’ll come right over.”

The relief in Mrs. Pawar’s eyes was profound.

The housekeeper stepped forward—a small woman with the first touches of gray in her hair—and showed Caitlin to the door. But Caitlin turned suddenly. She felt goose bumps along her arms, as though cold air was blowing up her sleeves.

“Doctor?” Mrs. Pawar asked. “What is it?”

Caitlin looked down at her arms. Her sleeves weren’t moving. There was no vent on the floor or the wall.

“Sorry,” Caitlin said. “I thought I left something back there.”

Smiling and wishing the women a good day, Caitlin walked into the hallway. The odd feeling passed as the elevator descended and the course of her day resumed and the lives of the patients she had to see crowded Caitlin’s mind.

The rest of the day passed swiftly and without incident. Caitlin attributed her earlier restlessness to Ben’s anxiety, the Pawars’ fear, and the uneasy zeitgeist of a city that seemed to be waiting for bad news. Something about the Kashmir crisis was gripping people who usually forgot about major news events within a day or two. She overheard several conversations about the assassination attempt and whether nuclear war was likely. It was the top trending topic on Twitter, and her colleagues were sharing news articles over e-mail. An Associated Press update mentioned the ambassador’s return to the negotiations and his cold reception. The talks had not recovered from the damage of Ganak’s sudden departure—his “unexplained abandonment,” one Indian delegate had called it.

Ben was right, she thought. They’re just looking for reasons to be petulant. Little girls and boys with very dangerous toys.

Late in the afternoon, Caitlin headed to a café on Twenty-Seventh Street. Jacob’s cooking class, held in a test kitchen one floor up, would be finishing in twenty minutes. She sat in a private corner with a cup of jasmine tea, hunched over her phone for an overdue conversation.

The man on the other end was unhappy and more than a little condescending.

“Dr. Deshpande, I assure you, it is not post-traumatic stress disorder,” she said to Maanik’s physician. “I have never heard of a rapid, cyclical repetition of PTSD symptoms.”

“Perhaps a review of the current medical literature might convince you to revisit that opinion?” the doctor suggested.

Caitlin bristled but decided that methodology was not the battle she should be fighting.

“Yes, of course, I will be doing that,” she said. “But in my experience with crisis survivors locally and globally, this is wholly atypical. Now,” she continued before he could interject another cover-his-ass approach, “are you sure there is nothing in Maanik’s history that could be a precursor to this?”

“Nothing. I am certain you checked for head trauma while you were there, Dr. O’Hara? She was thrown to the sidewalk when the shooting occurred—”

“There were no bruises, no reason to infer nausea, no reaction that would suggest headaches—”

“ ‘Infer,’ ‘suggest,’” he said. “That is why I prescribed what I did. Because you frankly do not know.”

“And you didn’t request an MRI,” Caitlin shot back. “I understand why, I do. But that doesn’t justify nuking her body with that cocktail you prescribed.”

“The ambassador was needed. Another incident had to be averted. And your method did not work, I understand? Not quite?”

This discussion was pointless. Caitlin got back on topic. “What about when she was a child?” she pressed. “I know the Pawars have only been here two years, but you have her records from India?”

“I came to New York with the Pawars,” he said. “The ambassador arranged for my post at the United Nations. As for Maanik, the most serious ailment I have ever treated was a sprained ankle last winter from ice-skating. And before you interrupt me again, no, her head did not touch the ice. She is supremely healthy in every way. Which is why I felt—and still feel—she could handle that ‘cocktail.’”

“What about psychologically?” Caitlin asked. “Has she ever exhibited an extended period of despondency, withdrawal?”

Dr. Deshpande laughed. “Those are words that could never apply to Maanik. She is a precocious, vital, outgoing girl, Dr. O’Hara, and has always been so.”

“The drugs you prescribed. Had Maanik ever taken those or anything like them?”

“No, and I will spare you the discomfort of asking: Mrs. Pawar is concealing nothing about domestic abuse or assault. Her family is strong and loving and Maanik is one of the happiest teenagers I have encountered. I have no doubt that the mental trauma of witnessing her father’s attack altered her body’s chemistry and it is manifesting mentally. We can safely use medications temporarily to remind the body of what normal is, and she will adjust and return to herself.”

“Or we can look for an approach that addresses the cause and not just the symptoms,” Caitlin replied. She saw no reason to press this further. She thanked the doctor and ended the call. At least he had agreed to stick with just the clonazepam for now, since the immediate crisis had passed.

But Dr. Deshpande was right about one thing: had it passed for good? She flashed to the bloody S-curves on Maanik’s forearms. Every day Caitlin provided therapy to high school students for Roosevelt Hospital. She counseled college students from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, consulted for international agencies, oversaw the development of a mental health program for refugees, and closely monitored world news for potential hot spots of trauma where she might be needed. This work was her life and her passion. And yet, with all her specialized experience behind her, she was stumped by Maanik. Something about the terror, the scratching, the look in her eyes. To say it unsettled her would be an understatement.

Caitlin lifted her shoulders high and dropped them—a literal effort to shrug off the residue of the afternoon. Ten more minutes before Jacob would be down. She discreetly massaged just above her eyebrows, the tips of her ears, behind her ears, down her skull to her neck. It helped.

Her phone vibrated once—a text from her younger sister, Abby, a surgeon in Santa Monica, California: How was it??

Caitlin sighed. She knew what this was about: last night’s date, which now seemed a hundred years ago. She’d text back later. She signaled the server for the bill, closed her eyes, and listened to the low murmur of conversation around her, cars outside, the flutter of a paper pinned to the wall near a heating vent.

Maanik came back to her thoughts—would she remember what happened when she woke? Caitlin thought of Ben, how scared he had seemed. Did he know something he wasn’t sharing? She thought of all her clients whose appointments she’d had to cancel that afternoon, and the UN negotiations.

“Will that be cash or charge?”

Startled back to the room, Caitlin gave the server seven dollars and gathered her things. She exited the café into the lobby, peered through its windows onto Twenty-Seventh Street, saw nothing unusual. She checked her messages. Nothing new. She walked around the lobby twice, sat down on a bench made of recycled plastic, thought of Jack London back at the Pawars’ apartment. She smiled, then called her own therapist and left a message, asking for a call back. “Nothing urgent,” she said. Caitlin just needed to talk.

Then Jacob was hurrying across the lobby, still young enough to be excited to see her, saying and signing, “Hi, Mom!” at the same time. At school he leaned toward sign language as a means of communicating; after school he usually used his hearing aids. Caitlin marveled at how he straddled both worlds, even when faced with occasional pressure from other kids to “pick one.”

He shoved a food container into her hands and made her try some of the salad he’d just prepared. She smiled as she accepted a plastic fork from her son and jabbed it into the julienned carrots and jicama doused in what appeared to be a light vinaigrette. It was delicious and she said so.

As they left the lobby for the cab ride home, Jacob enthused over the chemistry of cooking with eggs. Fire engines loudly raced by and she winced but quickly forgot them, completely and gratefully absorbed in the moment, in their shared signing, laughing, and camaraderie.

CHAPTER 4

Caitlin and Jacob were wrapped in a blanket on the couch in their Upper West Side brownstone apartment. The curtains were closed, the dishwasher was humming quietly, and Jacob was rapidly flipping through channels on TV. At this speed she wondered what could possibly be registering in his brain.

Caitlin wondered whether this was a sign of his transition into a preteen: where once he had shown tiredness by curling into a corner of the couch with his head on the armrest, now he channel-surfed like a zombie. She would wait to see if the behavior repeated on other nights.

But besides his restlessness, their time together was blessedly normal, and Caitlin cherished that. Each day was a challenge, today more than others, and she embraced these moments as if each were a little bit of Christmas morning.

“Okay, you,” Caitlin said and signed, though his hearing aids were on. “My eyeballs are getting whiplash. Time for bed.”

She was expecting an argument but didn’t get one. He just headed for the bathroom, tapping the glass of the aquarium on his way out but not waiting to see if his bandit cory would peek out of her plastic castle.

“Teeth and face,” she called. She heard the faucet start.

She turned off the TV, booted her tablet, and picked up their high-strung cat, who was prowling on the couch. Five minutes later, Jacob and their tabby Arfa were both asleep.

Even Jacob’s slightly off mood had felt like a relief from Caitlin’s day. He anchored her hectic life, tuned the world for both of them to a mellow pitch. But the mood never seemed to stick when she was on her own again. Even now she was losing the magic as she focused on e-mails, got back into her work head. As if on cue her phone buzzed. It was her therapist, who had become a dear friend long ago.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Barbara said.

“Just finished TV time with Jake.”

“Excellent. I’m glad you weren’t working after six o’clock for a change.”

“Says the shrink who’s doing just that,” Caitlin replied.

“Touché,” Barbara said. “I blame the inventor of cell phones.”

“Remember when the world turned without us for hours at a time?”

Barbara laughed. “And then there were vacations. Remember those?”

“I’ll keep it short,” Caitlin promised. “I’ve been restless today in a way that’s different for me.”

“Who or what was different in your routine?”

“There’s a case that’s much more personal and emotional, but I treated the condition, not the patient.” Caitlin’s answer had anticipated Barbara’s next question. “What I’m actually wondering is, could my unease be perimenopause?”

“When did you get back from the relief camp?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“Well good lord, Caitlin—”

“Okay, point taken. I’m still readjusting. But maybe I should be tested?”

“I think the result would be turningfortyosis,” Barbara said. “You forget that it’s the new thirty. Don’t let the social programming kick in.”

“I know, I’m not a hypochondriac. It’s just, something is off.”

“Sure, but I’d vote for exhaustion. And the peri tests are inconclusive anyway. I’d prescribe a couple weeks of dedicated health—real exercise, not just running for a cab. Take your vitamins, especially B and D, eat more vegetables—”

“I’ve been good about that. Well, Jacob’s been good about it and I’ve benefited.”

Barbara laughed. “And sleep. Actual sleep, not the occasional Ambien. Also, take some time off.”

“You don’t want much, just miracles,” Caitlin said as her phone beeped with another call. It was from a private caller. Her gut burned a little; she had a feeling who it might be.

“You asked, I answered,” Barbara replied.

“All right, will do. Hey, I need to take this other call—”

“Okay, but keep it short. Maintain your boundaries.”

“You’re a mind reader. Talk soon.” Caitlin switched to the other call. “Hello?”

“Dr. O’Hara?” said a man’s voice.

“Mr. Pawar.”

“Please, it’s Ganak. I am sorry not to be visiting you in person, to thank you. But eyes are upon me.”

“Not a problem. How is Maanik?”

“She is a little better.”

Caitlin heard strain in his raw, raspy voice. “Did she have another episode?”

“Yes, but not like before.”

“Tell me about it.”

“We’re not sure. It was—forgive me, I am not used to describing these things. It was as if she was there with us at dinner, eating her soup, but she was listening for something else.”

“Did she talk at all? Respond to you?”

“No. It was as though she was on the alert for something. But not in an urgent way. It’s very difficult to explain.”

“How long did that go on?”

“Perhaps five or six minutes. She said nothing the entire time and we did not want to question her until we spoke with you.”

“I understand.” Caitlin paused to consider the situation. “Mr. Pawar—Ganak. Maanik may have been suffering from a mild, self-induced trance.”

“I’m sorry. Do you mean she hypnotized herself?”

“Not exactly,” Caitlin said. “Did Mrs. Pawar tell you I used hypnosis to stabilize her?”

“Yes. And I must be candid, Dr. Deshpande expressed some concern—”

“Dr. Deshpande may be a fine doctor but he was prepared to overmedicate your daughter,” Caitlin interrupted. “That’s like washing your eyeglasses with a hose. It’s not my way.”

“Please, I did not mean to question your judgment. This is all so unfamiliar to us.”

“Completely understandable,” Caitlin said. “My point is, occasionally, individuals who have been given hypnotherapy will return to that state if they feel threatened in the same way as before.”

“You mean her mind self-hypnotized to fend off a relapse?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Caitlin said.

“I see.” The ambassador was silent.

“Sir, may I make a suggestion?”

“Please.”

“There is an obstruction in her mind, something that is redirecting her natural response to ordinary thoughts and stimuli. My guess is it has something to do with a traumatic event—in this case, the shooting. Maanik was very responsive to the superficial hypnosis I used earlier. I’d like to put her into a deeper trance.”

“Deeper? What does that mean?”

“I only helped her to sleep before; I didn’t fully engage with her. It’s clear that something is blocking her normal self and we must uncover what that is. This process is a proven tool for enhancing memories.” She added, “Leaving her untreated could make the situation worse.”

There was another silence. Caitlin had the impression the ambassador was not considering her suggestion but thinking about how to refuse it respectfully. She was right.

“Hypnotism is a practice honored across time and across many cultures,” Ganak said. “The Hindu Vedas call it a ‘healing pass.’ Yet I believe a mind moves between different strata of consciousness for its own good reasons. Interfering with that self-organization may be premature, if not dangerous.”

“I respect what you are saying but you’re forgetting an important point—the self-mutilation,” she said carefully. “The sounds she was making while scratching at her arms alerted those around her. But it’s possible that she could harm herself in silence in the future, without anyone knowing in time to prevent it.”

“Then someone will stay with her constantly,” Ganak said.

“Which could bear a psychological cost, drive her farther into hiding,” Caitlin pointed out. She let that sink in for a moment, then said, “One thing I can do for Maanik under hypnosis is guide her into symptom transformation.”

It took the ambassador a moment to rediscover his voice. “I am not familiar with the term.”

“We would choose a physical movement such as twitching her finger and associate it with her scratching at her arms. When fully conscious, any self-attack would be preceded by her finger twitching. As she exercised control over her finger she would also shut down the scratching.”

“An off switch,” he said.

“Exactly. It’s one of many useful tools. And please understand, while she is in a trance she retains her power of choice. In hypnosis I am not operating her. We work together.”

“I will certainly keep that in my mind.”

“I appreciate your willingness to hear me out,” Caitlin said. “You may call at any time if the situation changes.”

“Dr. O’Hara, I may not have been sufficiently clear earlier about my reasons for caution.”

“Not at all. I can see that you’re in a difficult situation.”

“Many political experts already feel that I am not the best chance for a peaceful and long-term resolution in these negotiations—I am the only chance. That is why radicals on both sides want me out of the way, by any means possible.”

“Does your daughter know this?”

“She has made a point of studying the situation,” Ganak said with a hint of pride. “You see, I am descended from the Pawar Rajputs, princes of Kashmir, so we are respected in India. But my family owns land in Gurdaspur near Jammu and Kashmir. It remains highly contested territory for the strategic importance of its road and railway. Because my family has never denied anyone access, the Pakistanis do not entirely mistrust me. So I have become the agent of all voices. There must be no blemishes on my perceived ability to engage fully. Please do not think I would risk my daughter’s well-being—”

“I don’t,” Caitlin replied. “Maanik’s symptoms may not recur and this could just be a posthypnotic echo, but we have to be prepared either way.”

Ganak sighed. It was not relief exactly but cautious optimism. Tendering further apologies for interrupting her evening, the ambassador said good night.

Caitlin hung up and tapped a pen on the desk as she stared at her tablet. The fate of the region was on the shoulders of a sixteen-year-old. Perhaps Maanik knew that too.

After answering work-related e-mails—over two dozen in all—Caitlin was surprised to see that it was nearly midnight. It was past her bedtime but she was halfway through a weekly newsletter summarizing reports of adolescent schizophrenia episodes from around the world and she wanted to finish. There seemed to be an uptick in the number of references to an “apocalypse” by teenage patients, but Caitlin was wary of seeing trends where there were none. She decided she was just tired and overwrought.

“Enough!” she said, and closed her tablet. She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and got into bed.

As she lingered between wakefulness and sleep, she had dreamlike visions of smoky waves of red and blue rolling in from the distance, a nightmarish surf, creeping toward her on shapeless fingers, finally oozing and sputtering, throwing off ugly clouds of suffocating dust.

“Dad…”

She was looking for him—for someone—but the waves were everywhere, undulating and crashing, rising and engulfing her—

Caitlin gasped herself awake, surprised to find that two hours had passed. She blinked away the nightmare, looked around at the dark familiarity of her bedroom. She let her head sink back, breathing regularly, easily.

“Night terrors,” she told herself. Everything was normal and right again, the room inside and the sounds outside. Everything—except one thing.

She was still afraid.

CHAPTER 5

^{The University of Tehran}

^{Central Library and Documentation Center}

Atash Gulshan sat alone at a long wooden table looking over the first draft of his paper on the tariff protests that shook Tehran in 1905. He had been staring at the printout for some time without reading the words.

He blinked twice, three times, and refocused. Eyes were upon him, furtively, accusingly—he had an acute sense of them, forced himself to ignore them. The population did not want to repay the Russian czar for lending money to the Persian king for his personal use.

A wave of nausea engulfed him, pushing from his mouth to his belly. Looking up, his gaze was misty.

Rashid, he thought miserably. Brother…

The nausea came a second time and he leaned forward on his forearms, shut his eyes. Atash saw the crane from which they hanged him, his brother’s frightened but unrepentant expression as the stool was knocked away and the rope tugged his mouth and face horribly, unnaturally to one side.

Unnatural. That was what they had called Rashid for being a homosexual. Atash had been questioned mercilessly after his brother was found with another man. Queried, pushed, slapped. He wanted to tell them he must be a homosexual too, for after all, he loved his brother…

When he opened his eyes, a featureless wave rolled at him from a pinpoint in the distance. It was not an object so much as a billowing movement. It reminded him of his mother shaking out one of the quilts she made—a bulky mass moving thickly and in slow motion. The wave was a low, glowing red growing brighter with each moment. As it moved it shook off charcoal-colored clouds that seemed almost like black cats leaping as a rug was pulled from under them. Atash stared, transfixed, as the wave writhed toward him, filling more and more of his view. His head suddenly began to throb above both eyes. He winced but remained very still. A part of the young man’s mind remembered that there were strict rules in the library. Quiet. Respect. No electronics. If he moved now he was afraid he might stumble…

“Ulzii,” he whispered.

The library rules became a haze of meaningless sounds in his head.

“Ulzii?” he repeated.

He pushed the chair back, scraping it along the floor. There was someplace he had to be, but ulzii was not a place. It was…

He reached into his backpack under the table. Feeling his way through the lentils and onions, he found the sunflower oil. He grasped the small plastic bottle and held it tight to his chest with his left hand.

Ulzii. He somehow knew he needed oil. Now he had to go as fast as he could.

The young man rose unsteadily, the legs of the wooden chair dragging again on the floor. He drew annoyed glances from half a dozen students at different tables. Atash was oblivious to their presence. He was walking now, bumping into the edge of the next table, pressing past it, bumping into another, slipping through a door.

“You cannot go there!” a student hissed as the door eased shut behind him.

Atash heard his words but they did not make sense. He saw glimpses of dark stone through a haze of red and black. He saw sheer fabric, white and yellow, spinning hypnotically as if caught up in a cyclone. This was where he had to be.

Ignoring pinpricks of pain on his cheeks and hands, the young man reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out cigarettes. He dropped the package to the floor and fished again blindly, pulling out a lighter. He flicked it open, uncapped the bottle of oil, released it spewing at his feet. He ignited the lighter and let it fall from his fingers. The flames crawled and then leaped up his pant legs.

He bellowed from deep in his throat.

Niusha Behnam, the librarian, jerked open the door and ran toward an orange shadow that could be seen among the stacks. Several students ran in after her as the smell of smoke reached the main room. They crowded the narrow alleys of books, pushing and shouting but also just staring. The students in the rear were forced back as Niusha called for the fire extinguisher. Someone yanked it from the wall and the crowd passed it toward her like an old-fashioned bucket brigade, and she turned the spray toward the fiery column. The flames had reached the paper-filled shelves and it took some strength and great sweeping movements to soak the rapidly expanding inferno. But at the heart of it, at the center of its blazing anonymity, was Atash, a boy, on fire and screaming.

CHAPTER 6

Caitlin woke to the sound of Jacob drumming on the wall that separated their bedrooms.

It had started a year earlier and it happened on average once a week. She’d naturally considered a number of psychological explanations, from recurring dreams to unexpressed emotions, but he was usually asleep when she went to him, tapping hard with his fingertips, like he was hitting a bongo. It ceased when she woke him, and he had no memory of having done it. After several weeks Caitlin tried a different tack: she rapped back, hard enough for him to feel the vibrations. He immediately stopped and fell back to sleep. She realized then that this was his way of connecting with her when he felt alone. It was a common feeling among children, who, after all, were vulnerable on every conceivable level, hence the very crux of her practice. The world had little patience or concern for innocence.

Though Jacob slumbered on, Caitlin did not. Her restlessness poisoned her sleep. She couldn’t recall the nightmares but was left with the familiar feeling of hot, ashy, gritty mud. She reached for her cell phone and saw a text: So either the date was so amazing u disappeared with him for 2 days or it was a dud and ur avoiding talking about it.

Caitlin had forgotten to text Abby back. She quickly typed: Dud. And life is crazy right now, promise I’ll call soon.

OK love u

Love u 2

Gradually Caitlin calmed and drifted off.

The alarm on her cell phone snapped her awake.

“Crap.”

That was the Beep of Death, the last warning. She had slept through sunrise, through Jacob using the bathroom, and through the first “ocean wave” alarm on her clock.

Dressing while hurrying into the living room, Caitlin caught Jacob waggling his arms at his fish like a giant squid instead of putting on his shoes. He didn’t acknowledge her arrival.

Well, a squid wouldn’t, she thought. Jacob’s imagination was nothing if not immersive and absolute.

When they eventually left their building he ran ahead of her to the subway and forgot to hug her good-bye when they reached his school on East Twenty-Third. Maybe that’s impending tweenitude too, Caitlin thought. Left alone, she realized that she had felt sad all morning. But it would pass, she told herself in the same tone she might a patient.

And as a matter of immediate fact she had a breakfast appointment with Ben. She speed-walked the eleven blocks to the rendezvous. Since this was taking up her gym time, that would have to pass as her exercise for the day.

She was first to arrive at the French bistro in Murray Hill, a ten-minute walk from the United Nations. The warmth of the restaurant steamed the corners of the street-side windows and made Caitlin feel like she was walking into a protective bubble. She hung her coat on the booth-side rack, sat with a thump on the well-worn seat, and ordered coffee for two.

Then she could not resist checking her e-mail again. She found that an addendum to the adolescent schizophrenia newsletter had been e-mailed to the list—an item odd enough, and tragic enough, not to wait for the next scheduled newsletter. A college student in Iran, Atash Gulshan, had set himself on fire in a library and was now hospitalized. The act did not appear to be politically or religiously motivated, although two days before, his older brother had been hanged by the government for an unspecified crime. Little other information was available, but one sentence jumped out at her: “Witnesses reported that Gulshan exhibited logorrhea shortly before attempting suicide.”

“Logorrhea”—saying nonsense words. Maanik’s father mentioned that Maanik had spoken gibberish at one point. Caitlin made a mental note of it.

Then Ben arrived, with a huge smile, and Caitlin’s tense concentration happily dissolved.

“Thanks for that smile,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, lifting her small coffeepot. “Coffee in your lap?”

“Please.” She laughed at their old joke. Though they had become firm friends nine years ago when Ben taught Caitlin how to sign, their first meeting had occurred years before, when they were both English majors at NYU. Ben had accidentally spilled a cup of coffee on her in a crowded diner and, after purchasing a replacement, spilled that on her too.

“How was your night?” he asked as he poured himself a cup.

“I live with a ten-year-old,” she said. “When I’m with him, I’m fine. We live in a wonderful little biosphere.”

Ben turned suddenly somber. “How do you do it, Caitlin?”

“What?”

“Maanik,” he whispered to protect her anonymity. “She isn’t my kid and yet I’ve been so worried about her I couldn’t sleep. How do you have a child without being terrified all the time?”

“Well, that’s the big secret to parenting, Ben.” Caitlin whispered. “You are terrified all the time. You get used to it. It becomes part of the background. Except for the times when it stabs you through the heart.”

He gazed at her a moment, then looked down at his menu.

“That was probably the worst sales pitch ever for having kids,” he said.

Caitlin laughed. “You were never really tempted anyway.”

“I’m tempted all the time,” Ben said to his menu.

“Oh?”

Ben allowed the silence to stretch until the server appeared. Caitlin let it rest. Ben would talk if and when he was ready. Thinking of Barbara’s culinary suggestions, she ordered roasted vegetables and an omelet. Ben stuck with coffee.

He sat back. “I’m tempted by the same desire for stability that I guess everyone wants. Home, family. But I’m chin-deep in the world’s worst crises, every day, so there’s not much point in letting my mind go there.”

“Your current boss does it.”

“The ambassador has a staff, he has a bunch of years on me, he has experience, and he’s still stressed.”

“Maybe if you looked at it as adding to the world at large, rather than taking away from yours…”

“Adding what? Besides worry,” Ben said.

“I didn’t say it was free,” Caitlin told him. “You can’t understand until you actually experience the parts that are transcendent.”

“Is it worth what our friend is going through with his child?”

“You tell me. You’ve seen them when she was her normal, happy self.”

Ben was silent. Eventually he nodded.

“All parents have challenges,” Caitlin said quietly.

The server arrived with Caitlin’s meal. Ben leaned in after the woman walked away. “What kind of a challenge is he looking at? Is she schizophrenic or something similar?”

“I can’t make that diagnosis yet, and I shouldn’t tell you anyway.”

“But you will, right?”

“I will say she’s missing some key symptoms,” Caitlin confided. “There are usually warning signs for a psychotic break. But in this case, by all accounts she hasn’t shown a progressive disconnect from her life. This girl was very suddenly ripped from her reality.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I’m not sure what to make of that yet.”

“There is such a thing as sudden onset, though.”

“I won’t say there’s no such thing, but not this sudden, not usually. And there’s something else.” Caitlin took a bite of omelet as she collected her thoughts. “This is harder to describe. Typically, schizophrenics attempt to apply order to the disorganized information they’re receiving. That’s when you get diagrams, notebooks full of things that don’t make sense. In this case, there seems to be something very organized about what she’s experiencing.”

“Organized,” he said. “You mean this is making sense to her?”

“Perhaps on some level. The cycles of stimuli she’s reacting to are producing clear, repetitive effects.”

“The effects being fear.”

“I’m not convinced that’s what we’re seeing. It may be part of the mix, but it’s not the external part.”

“You lost me.”

“We don’t know what’s going on with her, other than her expression seems disorganized. We’re reading that confusion as panic, fear.”

Ben brightened. “I think I get what you mean. I’ve seen it in linguistics. She’s like a small child who doesn’t have enough language to communicate what she needs to say so there’s a huge amount of frustration, almost anger. But inside, things make sense.”

“Mm-hmm.” Caitlin had a mouthful of egg. She swallowed and nodded.

“What can you do to treat that?” Ben asked.

“Ideally, as I tried to explain to her father last night, we do another round of hypnosis and try to find and quarantine the problem, keep it from expressing itself as we saw yesterday.”

“ ‘Tried to,’” Ben said. “I take it he was not enthusiastic about that?”

“He was diplomatic, but no.”

“I’ll see if I can help the idea take root.”

“He’s sensitive to the pressure put on him,” Caitlin said as she bit into her toast.

“Yes,” said Ben, concerned for his friend.

“So, how’s Marina?” Caitlin grabbed a different subject. “Has she changed your man cave unrecognizably?”

“She started to,” Ben replied as he sipped his coffee. “I’ve changed it back.”

Caitlin paused her chewing. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “It was a good seven months. She went home to Ukraine. I was specifically disinvited to come along.”

Caitlin continued eating. “You shouldn’t have kept pouring coffee on her.”

There was a glimmer of laughter in Ben’s eyes. “With her, it was tea. She had a tea press.”

“Oooh, heavy-duty.”

Ben smiled, gazing at her. “I’ve never actually asked you out, have I?”

Caitlin fired him a look and immediately waved a Stop! Cease! Desist! hand at her old friend.

“Ben, you”—she motioned you over there—“and me”—she motioned me over here—“are perfect as we are. Let’s keep it perfect.”

“Okay,” he agreed readily. “It was just a question, it wasn’t a proposal.”

She laughed. “Oh, it wasn’t, huh?”

“No! I couldn’t remember. I was asking.”

“Uh-huh. Do you really want me to analyze that ‘question’?”

“No. Okay, fine. Maybe I was talking about possibly asking you out. Dinner, movies, a concert? I get a lot of invites from consulates and now I have no one to go with.”

“Events, yes. Dates, no. ‘Friends’”—she tapped the table for emphasis—“means we don’t let things get deep and messy.”

“Messy?” He grinned. “Who says the past has to inform the future?” He picked up a fork and dug into her cold omelet. “Anyway, the Friend Zone doesn’t exist after forty.”

“Put a sock in it, Moss.” She smiled.

Before he could answer, her phone rang in her bag. Someone was calling from the Pawars’ number. Her expression changed and she held up a finger to Ben as she answered.

“Hello?”

“Dr. O’Hara”—Mrs. Pawar’s voice was taut—“can you please come to us immediately?”

“What’s happened?”

“Please,” the woman said.

“I’m on the way,” Caitlin said.

CHAPTER 7

They shared a cab to Forty-Eighth Street, then Ben went on to join the ambassador at the UN. Today marked the beginning of the second week of talks; Ben said they were expecting the Indian and Pakistani delegates to shed what little politeness they had managed to maintain thus far. It was not likely to be a pleasant week at the negotiating table.

When the housekeeper ushered Caitlin into Maanik’s bedroom, Caitlin resisted the urge to recoil. Maanik was standing upright in her pajamas, fighting against her mother’s restraining arms. The young woman was absolutely silent, even though the muscles in her neck were straining and her mouth was stretched so wide that her lower lip had split. Her abdomen was pushing in a controlled rhythm, timed with the straining of her neck. Maanik was clearly screaming as hard as she could—but without a sound. Kamala backed from the room, fighting sobs.

Caitlin started into the room just as Maanik wrenched herself forward so hard that Hansa lost her grip and fell to her knees. The girl remained where she stood, trembling from head to toe, leaning forward—not toward Caitlin but toward the windows. Caitlin could just make out the small shape of Jack London behind the curtains. Then she looked back at the girl.

For one second Maanik’s eyes rolled to meet hers and Caitlin felt raw horror wash down her spine. She had seen young people trapped in terrible circumstances—held hostage by a parent, pinned by a landslide—but here she felt as if she were looking at someone who had wakened in a coffin and found herself buried alive. The girl took an uncertain step and her eyes rolled to the ceiling. She was still trying to scream.

Caitlin grasped the girl’s shoulders. “Maanik, I’m here. You hear my voice, feel the weight of my hands…”

The girl stopped moving and stood shaking. Suddenly her hands whipped into the air, throwing Caitlin off balance, forcing her to break her fall against the four-poster bed. Maanik’s hands remained in front of her, her left hand clutching at the air and her right hand curled, the forefinger and thumb pinched tightly together. Her arms were jerking and spasming but the hands stayed front and center. Caitlin grasped Maanik’s shoulders and gently moved her from side to side to break her rigid stance. The spasms decreased slightly but she was still screaming in silence.

“That’s good, Maanik,” Caitlin said. “Mrs. Pawar, what is your daughter’s dominant hand?”

“Her left,” she said, tears streaming from her eyes.

“She writes with her left hand?” Caitlin said, not sure the woman had understood.

“Yes, yes!”

That’s not what I would have guessed, Caitlin thought. So why was Maanik pinching her right hand? Was she trying to pull at something?

No… that isn’t it.

Caitlin decided to try something. If a split personality were forming here, new or once-latent personalities sometimes switched the hand they wrote with.

“Mrs. Pawar, can you please get me paper and a pen?”

The woman was frozen as though she were in a trance of her own, staring at Caitlin but seemingly uncomprehending.

“Hansa!” Caitlin overenunciated for effect without volume. “Pen and paper please!”

Mrs. Pawar stood clumsily, wiping her face, and moved to Maanik’s desk to search through the mess there. Soon she held out a pad of turquoise paper and a black marker. Caitlin took the marker and instructed the woman to stand in front of her daughter with the paper. Caitlin then moved behind Maanik so that she could support the girl’s torso with her side. She reached around her and inserted the marker into Maanik’s right hand, uncurling the forefinger and thumb and pinching them together on the marker. She beckoned for Mrs. Pawar to hold the pad of paper under the nib. Jack London began to whine from behind the curtains.

Maanik touched the marker to the paper, had a moment of physical recognition, then scrawled across its surface, long swooping lines, then short jerks, more long lines. She then released the marker and her full weight dropped in Caitlin’s arms. Caitlin struggled to brace herself as she helped the girl’s body gently to the floor.

With one arm under Maanik’s shoulders, she reached up for the pad of paper and inspected it. The drawing looked like a steep cliff with wavy lines around its base like water. Caitlin turned the pad around and now the lines meant nothing, just chaos. She kept turning it but nothing stood out. When she returned it to its original position, Caitlin was no longer sure there was a cliff and water.

She handed the pad back to Mrs. Pawar and after helping Maanik to the rug, she stood. Maanik was finally, thankfully still but Caitlin realized she herself was trembling. She placed her hands on her knees and took a long, deep breath before straightening.

“Is it over?” Mrs. Pawar asked in a ragged voice.

“I don’t know,” Caitlin said quietly, her head still spinning. “May I have a glass of water?”

Jack London slunk out from behind the curtains. Dragging his belly on the ground, he slithered toward his young mistress. Suddenly the beagle lurched forward, seizing Maanik’s right sleeve and pulling with all of his strength. Maanik’s body jerked, her jaw opened, and with her eyes closed, she began to scream. This time there was sound.

Caitlin grabbed Jack London, tried to wedge a finger in his jaw to get him to release Maanik’s sleeve.

“What is happening now?” Mrs. Pawar cried. “Maanik!”

“Mrs. Pawar, I need your permission to put Maanik under deep hypnosis.”

The girl’s mother seemed entranced. Caitlin didn’t know if she’d even heard her.

“Mrs. Pawar!”

The woman blinked, looked at Caitlin. “Yes?”

“Your daughter is in crisis. She must be stabilized.”

“I understand. What… what about Dr. Deshpande’s medications?”

“I said stabilize her, not bludgeon her. I want to employ depth hypnosis, Mrs. Pawar.”

“I see. I—I will ask my husband.”

“No time!” Caitlin insisted.

The woman nodded. “I will just send him a text now.” With unsteady hands she pulled her cell phone from a pocket in her sari and typed.

Caitlin finally managed to separate the beagle’s jaws from Maanik’s sleeve. He didn’t bite her but he did bark. “Is there somewhere you can put him?”

“His crate,” Mrs. Pawar said as she stopped texting and took the dog. He struggled to get out of her hands as they left the room.

Caitlin crouched on the floor next to Maanik. The girl’s screams were relentless, each one weighted with deep sobs. Her hands were motioning in a peculiar way—not scratching, not writing, more as if she were pulling things off shelves frantically. Somehow in the breaths between cries, she was murmuring something, and Caitlin leaned close to catch it. It sounded like “null zee.”

Mrs. Pawar shuffled back into the room with the requested glass of water.

“Thank you,” Caitlin said, then drained the glass. She was perspiring and didn’t want to dehydrate.

“I have not heard back from my husband,” Mrs. Pawar said.

“We can’t wait for the ambassador. I have to do something before she hurts herself. Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes.”

Caitlin leaped up and dug in her purse for her phone. She set it to video and placed it on a pile of books, framing Maanik’s head and torso. She double-checked the positioning, then tapped record.

“What—what are you doing?” Mrs. Pawar asked.

Caitlin gently hushed the woman and motioned for her to sit back as she knelt beside the girl. “Maanik, remember the large television screen I told you about? It’s there right in front of you.”

Caitlin guided the girl through the same steps of hypnosis as before and she was just as responsive. At eight she became heavy and tired and her eyes shut, but at five Caitlin did not tell her to sleep. Instead she asked Maanik to raise her right arm in the air and wiggle the smallest finger. The girl calmly complied.

“That’s very good, Maanik. You’re doing great. You’re taking care of yourself by letting me help you. Now I’m going to make some suggestions and ask some questions and you do what feels right for you, okay? If anything I’m saying doesn’t feel right, you just let it go, don’t bother with it.” Caitlin waited for her to process the instructions, then said, “Tell me how you’re feeling.”

Immediately Maanik said, “I’m fine, I guess.”

Mrs. Pawar gasped from across the room.

Caitlin was equally startled. She had not yet heard Maanik talk as a normal teenager. It was disconcerting but profoundly hopeful.

“I’m glad you’re feeling fine. I’m going to ask you to picture a place that makes you happy. Imagine that you’re there—”

“I don’t have to imagine it,” Maanik interrupted. “I’m there.”

She had the classic teenager tone of, Why are adults such idiots? In this case, she might have been right. Caitlin was surprised by the response, but she went with it.

“That’s great, Maanik. Where are you?”

“I’m home,” she said, as if it were obvious. Then she said, “Oh, hi.” By the change in her tone it was clear she wasn’t speaking to Caitlin. “Hi, baby,” she cooed.

“Are you saying hello to Jack London now?” Caitlin asked.

“Who’s Jack London?”

Mrs. Pawar sat heavily in a chair, as if her legs had given out.

“Maanik, you can stay at home, you don’t have to imagine anything else or go anywhere. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“All right. I’m just going to ask you for a favor, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Maanik, do you know that you’ve been having trouble lately? You’ve been very disturbed sometimes?”

“Yes, I know I’ve been screaming. I can feel it in my throat and my sides hurt. My arms hurt, too. Not hurt, actually—ache.”

“Well, I’m going to ask you to respond to a cue in the future, a signal. The cue will be when someone says the word ‘blackberries’ and touches your ear.”

“Which ear?” Maanik asked.

At least her cognitive functions were clear and focused—sharper than Caitlin’s. “Either ear. Does that cue sound all right to you?”

“Yes.”

“So when anyone says ‘blackberries’ and touches your ear, you will respond by calming down, just like when I’m talking to you about the television screen and counting backward. Any other time you hear the word ‘blackberries’ it just means ‘blackberries.’ Is that clear?”

“Okay, fine,” Maanik agreed. Then she cooed to whatever was not Jack London.

Caitlin knew that a posthypnotic suggestion of this caliber was a much bigger step than the one she had discussed with the ambassador, but she felt sure she could convince him of the necessity. They needed a kill switch for all of the behavior, not just the scratching.

“Thank you, Maanik. Now tell me a little about your home.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What are you seeing? Who is your baby?”

“That’s my little guy,” she cooed, smiling. “He’s licking my hands. And”—her eyes moved under her closed eyelids—“there are the trees next to the door, I’m coming back from the hot pool, it’s nighttime, there’s some thokang down by us but high up the stars are out—”

“There’s some what down by you?”

“Wow, the stars are so beautiful tonight. There are so many of them!” The smile became almost blissful. “Khasaa.”

Caitlin decided that keeping the flow going was more important than backtracking for every detail. “Your little guy, he met you outside of your house?”

“Yes, he slithered up from the water as he always does.”

“What does your little guy look like?”

“Like thyodularasi,” Maanik burbled in a duh tone. She was speaking so quickly now that Caitlin couldn’t follow. It took a moment for her to realize that speed wasn’t the problem.

“Maanik, can you use English words for me?”

But the girl kept pattering in gibberish. She had begun to move her arms again, not frantically this time but in wide motions that didn’t seem to resemble anything. Caitlin thought of Jacob waggling his arms like a squid. Was Maanik just being playful?

Suddenly the girl sat up and her eyes snapped open as she craned to look up at the ceiling. Her speech sped up, as did her arm movements, except that her right hand was drifting toward the left, as if she wanted to scratch.

Caitlin put her hands on her shoulders. “Maanik, tell me what you see in the sky.”

The patter came faster now. Caitlin glanced questioningly at Mrs. Pawar, who looked like the sins of the world were written on her daughter’s face. Mrs. Pawar understood Caitlin’s glance but shook her head—the words weren’t Hindi. But there’s something Asiatic about them, Caitlin thought, yet not. If only Ben were here… And then Maanik was shouting at the sky, pushing up at it, and slapping her arms, trying to scratch through the gauze.

“Maanik, English, please! Tell me what’s happening!” she yelled as she tried unsuccessfully to prevent the girl’s hands from making contact.

Maanik started to scream again. Her whole body slammed down onto the floor as she bucked and thrashed, and suddenly from nowhere Caitlin felt like she was grabbed and thrown across the room.

CHAPTER 8

Caitlin was thrown back into a wall, and the breath was knocked from her. Her arms felt weak as water as she tried to prop herself up.

If this is a personality split, she thought, please let increased strength not be part of it!

Caitlin jerked herself onto her knees and reached out through Maanik’s flailing arms to touch her left ear. “Blackberries,” she said.

The girl’s hands dropped. She took a violent, deep breath, as if she might scream to the heavens, and then exhaled slowly, until the in-breath came and a natural quiet rhythm took hold. Within seconds, Caitlin heard the soft deep breaths of sleep.

After lifting Maanik onto her bed, Caitlin and Mrs. Pawar left the girl to rest and retired to the living room, where Kamala had made tea.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to wait a few more minutes, make sure everything is all right,” Caitlin said.

“Of course,” said Mrs. Pawar as she sat in an armchair. “I am sorry to take you from your work.”

“This is my work,” Caitlin said.

Mrs. Pawar smiled, but only briefly. “What’s wrong with my daughter?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Caitlin admitted. “But we’re going to find out.”

“We did the right thing? Just now?”

“Absolutely.”

The older woman sipped her tea. “Nothing like this has ever happened in our family.”

“I was about to ask, Mrs. Pawar—were there ever rumors or whispers, about an aunt, a grandparent, a cousin?”

“Whispers?”

“Their mind, their behavior, habits—anything. I understand there would have been a reticence to discuss it.”

The woman shook her head and looked down. “We do not speak of such things, but one knows. There was nothing.”

Caitlin believed her.

“Mrs. Pawar, I understand that you must keep this matter quiet. But if your daughter continues to have episodes you’re going to have to get her to a clinic for tests. She might have hit her head during the assassination attempt—”

“The school nurse checked her, said there was nothing.”

“There are conditions an MRI or CT scan can explore that a doctor cannot. I already mentioned this to Dr. Deshpande, and you may need to be a little more aggressive…”

“I see,” the woman said helplessly.

“Surely your husband won’t object if it’s necessary.”

Mrs. Pawar regarded her. It was a look that told Caitlin: Yes. At this moment, given the Kashmir situation, he might resist.

Jack London, released from his crate by the housekeeper, made the rounds, sniffing at their feet.

“She seems so vulnerable, so fragile,” said Mrs. Pawar, “so unlike herself.”

“She’s stronger than you think, and she’s not alone in this,” Caitlin said. “Whatever’s going on, if she shows any unusual signs of unrest, remember what to do: you touch her ear…”

The woman nodded, more to reassure herself than anything, but Caitlin left the Pawars’ apartment with a knot in her stomach.

During the cab ride back, she called her office to tell her receptionist that she would keep her eleven thirty. Then she texted Ben: Some progress today, I’ll call u tonight. Send me ur most secure email address.

There was no immediate response, but she wasn’t expecting one. He would be at the talks. She watched the news crawl on the TV monitor in the backseat of the cab. The tensions between India and Pakistan were being described as “volatile,” with more troops being moved to the borders. The United States ambassador’s proposal for a demilitarized zone between the nations had been met with derision in India, whose pundits pointed out that Pakistan could not even establish a de-terrorized zone within its own borders. Meanwhile the local news reported that in Queens, fistfights were erupting among Indian and Pakistani neighbors. Police presence in the subways had tripled, and the emergency management department had been quietly checking on the state of the city’s old fallout shelters as potential neighborhood command centers. Nor was New York alone in its anxiety; across the nation survivalist and prepper groups had replenished their stocks of ammunition, causing a shortage, and disappeared off the grid. An Internet questionnaire called “If This Is the End, I Will…” had gone viral.

Caitlin turned the screen off and spent the rest of the cab ride in uncomfortable silence. It seemed that war fears rode the air with their own wireless source: people. Maanik and her mother had given them a personal face for Caitlin.

It was with a great sense of relief that Caitlin walked into her top-floor office on West Fifty-Eighth Street. She experienced such a sudden feeling of comfort that there was almost an audible click. After going through her routine—coffee on the thumbprint coaster Jacob made when he was five, purse in the lowest desk drawer, phone in the top drawer and muted, coat on the hanger behind the door—Caitlin reviewed her schedule, but her mind kept shifting back to Maanik.

A diagnosis of schizophrenia was premature and sketchy, since schizophrenics understood that there was a “them” and a “me.” Maanik had no “me” during her episodes, at least not the “me” she’d been for sixteen years. But a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder—a split personality—wasn’t accurate either because multiple personalities rarely had delusions. They lived in the real world. Maanik was obviously reacting to something that wasn’t there. A form of petit mal or grand mal was a possibility, yet sufferers would not respond to hypnosis the way Maanik had.

One size did not fit all here. What was Caitlin missing?

She wanted to see the girl when she wasn’t experiencing the cycle of behaviors. Even watching her quietly eat dinner would help Caitlin establish a baseline and get a firsthand sense of who she was.

Give it a rest, Caitlin told herself. She had never healed anybody on day one, and besides, lingering over one case was a poor way to greet another. Her eleven thirty appointment would be arriving in about ten minutes and she felt the relief of… not normality, there was no such thing, but of having an established therapeutic history and many more months to devote to the work. Neither of these essentials was available with Maanik.

Why was she so different from any kid Caitlin had ever seen?

She had a sudden inspiration to search for her online, to see if there were any videos of her before the assassination. She kicked herself for not thinking of it before. She expected the Pawars to keep something of a lock on her public persona; the daughter of a diplomat had to have a strong concept of privacy. But there were several videos on her school website of Maanik engaging in debates as part of their Model UN. Caitlin clicked on one and noticed immediately how sure the girl was of herself. She certainly was not faking extroversion, which made these repeated inward collapses even stranger. In another video, Maanik was starring as the fiancée of an eccentric British aristocrat in a school play; at one point she gestured excessively and intoned, “I’m not diseased. I’m mismanaged.” Maanik rolled her eyes and the line got a huge laugh from the audience.

She seemed utterly normal, entirely comfortable in her own skin, impressively so. There were none of the tics or hints of darkness that shrouded most of the kids Caitlin saw. Could the assassination attempt have done so much damage? If her father had died or been wounded, yes. If her mother had suffered some kind of collapse, perhaps. But those severe triggers did not exist here. The reaction simply was not proportionate. Caitlin needed to think this through further but her eleven thirty was knocking on the door.

Hours later, after five more appointments and two conference calls, it was time to pick up Jacob. She could tell as she approached the front door of her building that the temperature outside had dropped considerably. She snuggled into her coat collar and caught herself humming “Let It Snow.” As she stepped outside her humming stopped and she suddenly felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. It ran up her backbone and tickled out along her shoulder blades like a small animal. Instinctively, she moved closer to the wall, stood still, and looked around.

What the hell?

Her heart was thumping harder; her breaths grew shorter. There seemed to be a cold wind against her arms but there was no motion in her sleeves. She had goose bumps.

Get a grip, she told herself.

She saw people picking up their cars from the garage across the street, a smoker by a tree in the tiny park on top of the garage, a group of college students hurrying by her, but nothing to explain the chill that remained. She felt exposed, pinned there as though these other people existed on another plane and she was alone. Or nearly so.

There was also an unsettling sense of being watched. It was not a flash of exposure, like walking in front of a tourist taking videos.

Barbara was right, she thought. She was so deep in other peoples’ issues she had lost her own protective skin.

A burst of greetings startled her as students from the Roosevelt Hospital day program hustled out of the building and enfolded her in their group. Caitlin walked to the subway with them, pushing the noise and shapes of the city away, but not the creeping chill that danced along her spine.

CHAPTER 9

Dodging and maneuvering with Jacob through the crowded subway, Caitlin tried hard to shake the odd paranoia that had seized her outside her office, but it was like swallowing an oversized bite of a sandwich. She usually tried to make a game of their dash through rush hour—Crazy Football or Running with the Gazelles—but not today. Jacob was deep in his own thoughts and she just wanted to get home.

The third-floor hallway seemed unusually quiet, the clang of the keys uncommonly hollow. It reminded her, unpleasantly, of the feeling she’d had at the Pawars’ apartment. A sense that she was somehow in danger. Not Jacob, just her.

Unlocking the door, she made a mental note to talk to Barbara about this, then happily turned her attention to roasting broccoli and defrosting and heating a container of congee for dinner. Jacob went straight to his room. They had arrived home just in time for his weekly online chat with his father. Caitlin was surprisingly glad for Andy’s call right now; even abnormal normalcy was welcome.

Andrew Thwaite, divorced with three kids, was a sociologist from Sydney whom Caitlin had met in Thailand three weeks after the 2004 tsunami. He had joined one of her relief efforts, which Ben helped to coordinate through the under-secretary-general of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. When they met, Caitlin felt that he was “right for right now,” as she’d expressed it to Ben.

“The people I’ve talked to say he’s kind of a d-bag, Cai,” Ben had said.

“Oh, you checked?”

“Captain of your team,” he said evasively.

“Well, he’s smart, he’s entertaining, he isn’t making any promises to be something he’s not, and he’s six-three and ripped.”

“Uh-huh. I know the type, a swaggering narcissist.”

“Strong words, Ben.”

“I’ve been living in the shadow of miserable hotshots like him my whole life. He’ll use you and leave you in the dust.”

“Only after I leave him in mine. Hey, is this about me or you, Ben?”

“Fair enough,” he conceded, “but I think you’ve entirely misunderstood the meaning of ‘relief efforts.’”

The disagreement ended in laughter. But after passion trumped caution and she found out she was pregnant, she decided to keep the child. Andy was notified and had stayed far away, making everything blessedly simple.

Until recently.

Around the time Andy’s youngest kid went to college, in 2011, he’d suddenly asked for weekly video calls with Jacob. She had no objection to that. She and Jacob had discussed it repeatedly and Jacob seemed happy to accept him on the same level as an upstairs neighbor. But six months ago Andy had asked Caitlin why she hadn’t chosen a cochlear implant operation for Jacob when he was younger.

“Because it’s Jacob’s choice,” she said.

“Jacob is ten,” Andy pointed out. “The earlier the operation is performed, the easier the learning curve—”

“Having to work a little harder is a fair price for his freedom of choice.”

“I don’t think that’s a choice a fifth grader should be allowed to make.”

At that point Caitlin had descended with Thor’s hammer. Under no circumstances was Andy to have that conversation with her child. She delivered the message in a mode that had cowed recalcitrant bureaucrats around the world, and it seemed to work on Andy.

Still, Caitlin always checked Jacob when he came back from their video chats for signs that he’d had an uncomfortable conversation with his father. There were none today; he moved right along from a question about whether kids rode kangaroos in the outback to the topic of his homework, an opinion essay on the ethics of zoos.

As they discussed the different sides of the zoo issue, the back of Caitlin’s mind was chewing over her own ethical dilemma: sending the video of Maanik’s hypnosis session to Ben. She had already received his secure e-mail address, and she already knew she was going to send the file to him, despite it being against the rules of doctor-patient confidentiality. She concluded that because Ben was a friend of the family there was a chance the Pawars would agree if she asked—but she needed more certainty than just a chance. Sharing it with anyone other than Ben would be indefensible, yet she needed an outsider’s perspective, confirmation of something she had begun wondering about, something she couldn’t be sure was true. A full understanding of Maanik’s very elusive inner world depended on this.

After dinner, when she and Jacob had finished washing the dishes, Caitlin sent Ben the file, then called him online. When his image appeared he was looking at something else on the screen and typing, and she could tell he was beat.

“Hey,” he said.

“For horses,” she replied.

He smirked. It wasn’t funny, but Caitlin was. They were. That had always been their way: when one was down the other always took the high, droll road to help out.

“It’s taking this long to download?” she asked.

“It’s getting here ‘bit by bit,’” he joked back.

“Yikes. Is the UN giving employees hand-me-down computers from 1995?”

“Clay and styluses.” He smiled. “I’m using the landline to download the file, plus I’m jumping it through a few other hoops. Extra protections.” He finally glanced at her. “I’m surprised you sent it, Cai.”

“It wasn’t an easy decision but desperate minds call for desperate measures.”

“Are you feeling desperate?”

“I meant Maanik’s mind.” She thought for a moment. “No, I’m not desperate. Yet.”

Ben glanced away, somber. Then he fixed on her again. “How are you feeling?”

“About what?” she said, hedging.

“Managing this in the epicenter of a world crisis.”

“I think we’re all in that epicenter,” she said. “Any progress there?”

He shook his head. “You avoided the question.”

Now it was Caitlin who looked away. What she wanted to say was, Honestly, I’m not myself and I don’t know why. But this call was not about her.

“I’m very, very concentrated,” she said. “Sharp as a knife.”

“Don’t lose yourself in this, Cai.”

“I won’t. I know how to work my switchboard pretty well.” She smiled.

“ ‘Switchboard,’” he muttered. “You realize we may be the last generation who knows what that means? I had to translate ‘VCR’ for a young observer from Bhutan today. They had no idea what I was talking about.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she teased.

“Nice.” He grinned. “You got any new ‘someone walks into a bar’ jokes?”

Caitlin laughed and shook her head. “Those were the worst jokes ever,” she said apologetically.

“That’s what made them so good. My all-time favorite? Ahem—‘A skeleton walks into a bar and orders a gin and tonic. And a mop.’”

“I worry about you, Ben.” She rolled her eyes. “And no. I kind of outsourced the bulk of my sense of humor to Jacob a long time ago. He’s got natural silliness and it’s more than enough for one household.”

Ben shook his head. There was an imperceptibly longer, perceptibly more awkward silence. “What about the other parts of your life? Are you seeing anybody?”

“No. And why do we always have to have this conversation?”

“Not always—”

“You’re like my mother,” she went on. “Or more accurately, my sister, who’s due to gently kick me in the ass about that any day now, so I don’t need it from you too.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I wasn’t gonna kick you.”

They looked at each other. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to go off on you. Just a little stressed. Won’t happen again.”

“Great. Anyhow, the video’s downloaded. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Caitlin didn’t miss the quick change of topic but filed the observation away for later.

Ben opened the video and tucked it in the corner of the chat window so they could both watch.

“Jeez,” he said when Maanik started speaking in gibberish.

“I know.”

“Wow,” he said again at the moment in the hypnosis when Caitlin felt she had been thrown into a wall. “What happened there?”

Caitlin didn’t answer so that he could focus on the use of the “blackberries” cue. She wanted him to know the cue in case the ambassador asked about it, but that wasn’t the only reason she’d shared the video.

At the end of the video Ben ran it back again to the segment with Maanik’s gibberish. Then they watched it a third time.

“You think that could be a language?” she asked.

Ben made a noncommittal sound and paused the video. He sat back, thinking. “There’s a clipped similarity to Japanese in it,” he mused.

“I thought that too.”

“Right there,” he said, and rewound the segment again. “You hear that?”

Maanik was saying, “Thyodularasi.”

“Yes…?” Caitlin said.

“That’s a distinctly Asiatic ‘r,’” Ben told her.

“It’s prevalent throughout,” Caitlin said. “That’s what makes the whole thing sound like Japanese, right?”

“That’s part of it, along with the alveolar stops on the ‘d’s and ‘t’s. But at the beginning of that word, that’s a very hard ‘th.’ Those sounds don’t coexist in any language.”

“Not anywhere?”

“Well, we don’t have every tribal language on the planet down, but as a rule that ‘r’ and that ‘th’ don’t evolve in the same tongue.”

The video flicked off and the screen reverted to just Ben, who was rubbing his eyes.

“Pretty amazing, right?” she said.

“What the hell is going on with that girl?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out, if the Pawars will let me.”

“Hold on, Caitlin. All you have to worry about is getting them through this period of the negotiations.”

“What?” She felt as though she’d been head-butted.

“That’s why I brought you in,” he reminded her. “There are teams of people who can help once the ambassador doesn’t have to worry about the media.”

“I understand that, but I’m not—I mean, I don’t just want to be some stopgap.”

“Cai, I didn’t mean that—I meant that this isn’t in my control. I suspect they’ll take her back to India as soon as we’re clear of all the political barbed wire.”

“And what about Maanik? Ben, something is happening to that girl. I’m not just going to spackle her.”

“I wasn’t implying that,” he said defensively. “Look, we’re both tired and I shouldn’t have said what I said. I’ll back your play, whatever it is. I just know how you get when you’re invested in a case, so keep a distance, okay?”

“I don’t know if I can.”

He smiled. “A small distance. For your own mental well-being.”

“A small distance,” she agreed, and forced herself to smile back.

“And now I’m going to put myself to bed,” he said. “We’ll see what my subconscious has to say about all this.”

“Is that all you’ve got?” she teased.

“I’m not a university go-getter anymore,” he said. “Those days ain’t comin’ back.”

Caitlin hid her disappointment. She’d shared the video with him so they could discuss that last part of the hypnosis, the wall moment. But the man needed rest before going back to the peace table.

“Good night,” she said.

“Good night, Cai,” he said, and raised a hand with effort as he signed off.

She raised a hand at the dark screen.

After answering a few e-mails and reading a few headlines in the professional newsletters, she went to say good night to Jacob. He was buzzing with energy and Caitlin had to sign “good night” to him so many times, curving her right hand over her left hand to say, “Night, night, night!” that she felt like a robot—so she walked stiff-legged, arms outstretched like the Frankenstein monster, toward the door. Many giggles later, Jacob finally drifted into silence.

Amazingly, Caitlin too managed to fall asleep at a decent time. But just a few hours later, she woke in a panic, feeling like she was clawing upward through blankets. The sign for “night” was stuck on a loop in her head like a song refrain, along with an old memory of Jacob trying to coach her signing.

“Mommy, it’s in your elbows, fix your elbows!”

Damn it, Caitlin thought as three o’clock became four o’clock. Why were elbows stuck in her brain? It had to be Maanik.

She got out of bed and turned on her tablet, booted the video of Maanik. She watched it from the moment the girl began speaking gibberish. Caitlin’s spine straightened and her brain woke up. There was a definite change to how the girl’s elbows were moving. After several viewings she was certain that they were inscribing specific arcs at specific times. Maanik was repeating some of the gestures, which suggested they had meaning—and might indicate that the gibberish had meaning too.

Caitlin took a deep breath, trying not to get overly excited. But she felt that she had just made a major breakthrough in this case. And if that were true, it might be possible to guide Maanik out of the morass sooner than she’d thought.

CHAPTER 10

^{Montevideo, Uruguay}

Heading from Port Stanley toward its first refueling stop in Montevideo, Uruguay, the Learjet Bombardier cut gracefully through the dawn sky like a white arrow.

Mikel Jasso—born in Pamplona, educated at Harvard, elite member of the Group—was the aircraft’s sole passenger. He had begun the two-thousand-mile journey alone with his thoughts, his camera case, and a celebratory glass of Royal Salute scotch—a tradition after every successful mission. The Group routinely monitored that large southern swath of the hemisphere, and in ten years Mikel had successfully retrieved all eight of the relics they had instructed him to acquire. The relics came from museums, scientific research ships, military vessels, and tourists. This time the quest had begun four days earlier, when they intercepted a cell phone message from a Dr. Story to a colleague at Oxford. Jasso had been dispatched to the Falklands immediately by private jet. He had booked a room at the Malvina House Hotel, waited for the Captain Fallow to arrive, talked to the crew, studied plans the Group had obtained from contacts at the admiralty, and made his move the next night.

As heists go, this one had been relatively effortless. Jasso knew that daytime on the vessel was used for repairs and provisioning, after which most of the crew went ashore. The watch at night was lax: no one, neither thief nor stowaway, had reason to board a geological survey ship that was about to head back into the cold, unwelcoming Southern Atlantic.

There had been no problem finding Dr. Story’s cabin. Jasso had taken care to stay on the port side, where there was no moonlight and the shadows were long and deep. If he had been caught, that too would have been easily taken care of. Jasso was publicly, aggressively opposed to drilling in these waters in general and on the Patagonian Shelf in particular. It was a useful cover story for a man who spent so much time on Group business in that region, from the Humboldt Plain in South America to the Agulhas Plateau in Africa. If he had been detained by seamen or law enforcement, he would have claimed that Falkland Advanced Petroleum was not only harming the environment, they were recklessly destroying submerged historical treasures. The company would have wanted nothing more than to be rid of him. At worst, he would have had to turn over the relic. It would have ended up in a local museum from which, one day, it would disappear.

But he had not been caught. The artifact was his.

As soon as the jet was airborne, Jasso set his tablet on the table beside his scotch and established a Skype connection to New York. In less than fifteen seconds the thin face of Chairwoman Flora Davies filled the screen. Her eyes were alert, expectant. She smiled when she saw Jasso’s grin.

“You did it.”

He raised the glass to himself.

“Show me,” she said. “Please.”

Jasso hefted the camera case to his lap and opened it. He removed a pair of rubber gloves, slipped them on, and withdrew the swaddled artifact. He placed the face of it in front of the red eye of the camera. Though it was probably just the glow of the computer screen, the object seemed luminescent.

“It’s a symbol,” she said.

“It appears so,” Jasso agreed. “Something I’ve never seen.”

“Nor I. It’s beautiful,” the woman remarked, leaning forward. “Turn it around.”

Carefully rotating the object, he showed her the reverse side. Seeing the markings facing him, in the dark, they really did have an inner radiance of their own.

“The finger of God,” he said.

“What?” she asked.

“Jehovah on Sinai, writing the tablets,” he said. “I was just thinking—the markings are still visible even away from the light.”

“That’s the metal content reflecting ambient light, I would suppose.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But I’ll bet this is what the tablets of law may have looked like to Moses after they were cut from the rock.”

She smiled. “A theological side, Mr. Jasso? You?”

“I’d describe it as more poetic,” he said.

“Either applies,” she said.

Jasso did not disagree. He was not a religious man. He believed in the aspirational power of human beings, not in the interference of gods and demigods. Still, the impact of religion and mythology on what every civilization dreamed of and strived for could not be ignored.

“Excellent job,” she said, sitting back. “Thank you.”

“An honor, as always,” Jasso said.

He closed the tablet and nestled into the seat. His eyes yearned for sleep but he wanted to savor the moment a little longer. The artifact’s presence weighed heavily in his left hand. It was probably just his imagination, but it seemed to have the faintest vibration, like a tuning fork. He switched on the overhead light and brought it closer to his face.

“What kind of metal are you, I wonder.”

If it was of meteoric origin, it would be iron, but it seemed lighter than that. Silver? Aluminum? Magnesium? It had the look of those metals, but in a form unlike any he’d ever seen.

As he stared at it, the artifact had an almost mesmeric quality. It was something like watching a gyroscope: you couldn’t see it moving, but you felt somehow that it was.

Or else it’s the scotch, he thought, snapping the spell.

Quickly wrapping the object, he put it back in the case and pulled off the gloves. Shutting his eyes and drifting swiftly into sleep, he dreamed of high ocean waves rushing over him in forceful, endless succession. He saw lights through the breakers: orange and flickering specks that formed strange, unfathomable shapes. But they were lost in the waves before he could make them out and they were different each time they appeared. Were they taunting him? So visible yet so remote…

He woke with a jolt as the aircraft jerked violently.

“Seat belts!” the pilot announced over the intercom.

Half-asleep, Jasso fumbled for the strap as the sole attendant weaved her way over.

Just as she reached him the plane tilted and she was swept backward against one of the seats on the other side of the aisle. Jasso reached to help her but was restrained by his own belt and grabbed the sliding camera case instead. The attendant slid into the seat and fastened her belt.

Hugging the case to his chest, he was again aware of the low buzzing he had felt when holding the artifact. He looked out the window and noticed that the aircraft was flying very low, just about five hundred feet from the ground. It was dawn and the flaming sunrise obscured his vision, yet what he saw was unmistakable. Well over a dozen albatrosses were flying dead-on toward the underside of the jet, their eight-foot wingspans batting hard as they struggled to achieve the jet’s height. He had never known the birds to seek this height or speed and was about to remark on the abnormality to the flight attendant when the birds began to drop, either exhausted or asphyxiated.

And then the world itself suddenly vanished.

The interior of the jet, the sky, and the low clouds seemed to depart, and in their place an explosive flash of red blinded him. His nostrils were filled with a smell like burning plastic, or was it sulfur? And his breath felt thick, tasted noxious on his tongue. His mind turned like a spinning top, his body seemed to liquefy, and his eardrums rumbled. The last rational thought he had was that one of the birds had been caught in the engine and they were plunging to earth. But there were no whining turbines, no rush of air, no impact—

“No!” he screamed in his mind.

“Mr. Jasso!”

The flight attendant’s voice was at the far end of a tunnel.

“Mr. Jasso!” she repeated.

His shoulders were being shaken and his head bobbed in circles as he fought through the sensory chaos. Like poured molasses the plane began to come back into focus just as it thumped to a hard landing on the tarmac. He was aware of the rear-mounted jets roaring to help brake the aircraft, felt himself being pressed against the seat, saw the calm white of the cabin spread out in front of him…

The flight attendant was hastily undoing her belt.

“Wait, who had my shoulders?”

“Are you all right, Mr. Jasso?”

“What? Yes, yes. I’m fine,” he said.

But he wasn’t. He felt nauseous, panicked. The vinyl of the camera case felt hot, no doubt from how tightly he had been clutching it.

“I’ll get you some water,” the woman said.

“No, I’m all right. Weren’t you affected?” he said, starting to get paranoid.

“By what?” she asked. “The turbulence?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “You didn’t hear anything? See anything? Birds?”

“At this altitude?”

“That’s what I thought,” he said, more to himself.

“No,” she said as the jet slowed and steadied. “I wasn’t looking outside. Perhaps a cloud formation, a trick of the sunlight?”

“Maybe.”

“Mr. Jasso, you look pale. Would you like to have a doctor meet us at the terminal?”

“No, I’ll be fine,” he said. “It was just… overwork, I guess. It will pass.”

She accepted his explanation with reluctance and went to the cockpit. The engines had slowed to a dull hum. Jasso thought he heard the woman ask about damage. The pilot said he was going out to check the aircraft when they refueled but didn’t think he was going to find anything. The engines and flaps seemed fine.

Jasso drained what was left in his glass and sat very still as the jet taxied toward the refueling area. It seemed impossible, but…

But the birds… they weren’t an illusion. They seemed to be throwing themselves at the jet.

Was there something in the artifact that had… something in the stone, the metal? Perhaps it had interacted with particles in the air, with the electronics of the jet.

He looked at the case, which sat blank and unrevealing on the table. It was somehow menacing in its faceless simplicity. With sudden urgency he reached for the flap and threw it back, taking out the cloth-bound artifact.

The only thing trembling was his hand. The stone was very still. It was also cool. Whatever had begun in Port Stanley was apparently over.

Replacing the relic in the case and closing it, he gestured for a second glass of scotch and stared at the sleek new terminal in the distance. It looked like a flying saucer, a low, inverted white bowl gleaming red in the new day.

CHAPTER 11

The morning broke slowly across Caitlin’s consciousness: a bright thread of illumination along the horizon, then flashes of yellow-orange light on the crests of waves, and finally the dawn itself. She had dreamed, she knew that, but remembered her dreams vaguely. Dark skies, gray water. And red. Somewhere there was red.

She swung herself out of bed and padded in to wake Jacob, who was instantly revved, talking nonstop about his zoo essay. He was still bubbling as she dropped him off at a birthday party. Caitlin asked a favor from one of the attending parents to shuttle Jacob to a second party later that day—the usual Saturday birthday deluge—then let herself into her office to catch up on work. She left a message for the Pawars to call her and let her know how Maanik was doing. By noon she still hadn’t received a return call and she was beginning to worry. She considered calling Dr. Deshpande to see if he’d heard anything but she didn’t want to push his boundaries on confidentiality. She called Ben instead. She’d sent him some stills from Maanik’s video after she’d noticed the arm movements the night before, but his only reply was to ask her to meet him on his lunch break from the peace negotiations, which were continuing over the weekend. Ben specified that she should meet him at the UN and not at the Pawars’ apartment building.

Did the Pawars not want to communicate with her? Now she was really worrying.

She was given a day pass to Ben’s office, a glorified closet-space on the fifth floor. He barely resembled himself. His face was dark and he kept rubbing the bone beneath his left ear, an old stress tell from their undergrad days. He said hi to her and that was all as he scooped up his tablet and hurried her out of his office, down a couple floors, and into a slightly larger workspace with a desk and a couple of chairs.

Shutting the door, he said, “This is one of the rooms they keep electronically secure. I was lucky to get it.”

“What’s going on, Ben?” She was starting to feel uneasy.

“Nothing about Maanik. Well, not exactly.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“At nine fifteen this morning the ambassador suddenly announced a thirty-minute break and disappeared into his office alone. He was visibly distracted, uneasy, very off.”

“Had he received a call from home?”

Ben shook his head. “Honestly, I think everything just piled up on him at that instant. Maanik, post-traumatic stress from nearly having been killed, and ratcheted-up expectations from both sides. Full disclosure—he’s had anxiety attacks in private now and then. It’s a freakin’ pressure cooker in there. And it got worse when he left. The Pakistani delegation basically lost it, started trumpeting that this was a ‘diplomatic illness’ for nefarious purposes.”

“Maybe that was just posturing,” she offered, attempting to calm Ben from his own anxiety.

He shook his head. “One radical openly theorized that the ambassador was buying time for India to move its civilians out of major metropolitan areas in preparation for a strike. Meanwhile, most of the Indian delegation also flipped out. They think the ambassador’s toying with them in some way, and they weren’t really sure he was on their side to begin with.”

“Which he isn’t. He’s on a third side.”

“Huh?”

“He’s on the side of compromise,” Caitlin said.

“Oh, right. Anyway, he was calmer after his break. I know he prays at times of stress, and maybe that’s what he needed. But when the talks started again it was like we’d been set back three days’ worth of negotiating.” Ben shook his head and drummed his fingers nervously on the table. “Caitlin, I’m afraid they might really do it this time. I think their atomic trigger fingers are finally overwhelming the instinct for self-preservation.”

Caitlin put a hand on his shoulder and breathed deeply. For a moment they sat in silence. Then Ben gathered himself and flipped open his tablet.

“So, I’m thinking we need some good news about Maanik for the ambassador just as fast as we can find some.”

“Okay… ,” Caitlin said, trying to catch up with his still-manic thought process, “you have something in mind?”

Ben opened the screenshots Caitlin had sent him. “I think you’re right about the arm movements. If this is a coherent language, they’re part of it. They may serve the same function as the diacritical marks in written Hebrew. Some of those marks change the letters, words; some serve as punctuation; some represent abstract concepts like numbers.”

“Wait, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Yep.”

“When did you study the video?” she asked.

“Let’s just say it wouldn’t let me sleep.”

“No wonder you look like crap.”

“You look good too.”

They smiled at each other.

“Okay, I’m with you,” she said. “But Hebrew diacritical marks are simple. Lines, really.”

“Right. I’m not sure what purpose these gestures serve, yet. They might be emphasis but I kind of doubt it; they’re elaborate.”

“Could they be parts of words, like prefixes and suffixes?”

“Maybe, maybe, but look here.” Ben jumped to a screen grab Caitlin hadn’t made. He had caught a moment when Maanik was lying on the floor, her mouth open to speak, her hands resting calmly beside her. “This was when she first dropped those unfamiliar sounds into English. Her arms were still. The gestures only started as she sped up.” He switched to one of Caitlin’s screen grabs, where Maanik was still lying on the floor but her hands were in the air. Her left hand was angled away from her body; her right arm was starting to arc diagonally across her torso. “See? They could signify something we would ordinarily express through the subtleties of body language.”

“We?” Caitlin said. “That would suggest there’s a ‘them’ in this equation.”

“I know, that’s crazy.” He rubbed below his ear. “But these expressions of hers have patterns and they’re not like any I’ve ever seen. Maanik’s not just riffing, Cai. What’s more, it’s going to be tough even separating discrete words from her stream of speech, since she barely stopped to take breaths. It’s like when we hear a foreign language that seems to be a wild, racing babble to us but not to the speakers.”

“And you just suggested that those speakers are… what?”

“Cai, I really have no clue. Not from what little I’ve seen and heard here. Maybe it’s some kind of schizophasia or glossolalia—”

“But people with schizophasia tend to use recognizable words, and Mrs. Pawar would have picked up on any kind of religious chant.”

“I’m not saying it has to be those, exactly, but something like them. I just don’t know. This could be terra incognita. I’ve got a program that should help with transcription. I’ll get to it tonight, let you know what I find out.”

He shut his tablet, stood, and before she could say anything, he leaned in and hugged her, briefly but close. She had wondered why he had brought her over here when he could have said everything on a phone call from this same secure room. This was why. The hug. She tried to imagine going home to an empty apartment every day after hours of frustrating peace talks. The sudden sense of loneliness overwhelmed her.

“You know, they’re lucky to have you,” she said. “You may think being a translator makes you invisible, but you’re fighting to stay cool and grounded and I know everyone in the room is benefiting from that, whether they’re conscious of it or not. You’re doing a great job.”

He let go before either of them felt awkward and guided her from the room without further conversation.

Before leaving, Caitlin detoured across the newly renovated lobby to an exhibit: Photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945–1946. They were, in the oldest sense of the word, god-awful. She felt tears rise, looking at the dead or screaming people, the swaths of burn blisters, whole torsos stripped of skin, ears burned away, blinded eyes. And then there were the famous photos of human shadows on walls, caught in the atomic flash.

How, how, how, Caitlin wondered, how can anyone see these and want to repeat history? These images weren’t just about nuclear bombs. They were about the unthinkable, lingering pain and horror caused by every war in every era. In them was an implicit warning that the next big conflagration would be exponentially worse. Yet here we are, rocketing toward it.

Her blurred vision was caught by one particular image, a young girl curled over her dead baby brother. Caitlin was surprised by how much the girl looked like Maanik. Caitlin wiped her eyes. A sign warned that this was a place for solemn meditation, nothing else. She checked that the security guard was facing away, then snapped a picture of the photograph with her phone.

As she left the lobby, more than anything in the world she wanted to put her arms around her son. But he was at the second birthday party and when she sent him a text—I love you, kiddo—there was no reply. Caitlin forced herself to return to her office and attack her backlog of paperwork instead of joining him at the party.

Four hours later, there he was, on a massive sugar high, bright-eyed and huggable.

Caitlin took him to a Ping-Pong club as a special treat for no particular reason—but after only half an hour, she received a phone call from the Pawars. They were in her neighborhood and were hoping to visit her, would that be all right?

Even as she was assenting, Jacob’s hands were already rising to his hips in defiance. No doubt he recognized her apologetic shoulders and the sidelong glance that always signaled a change in plans.

“One more game,” he signed when she ended the call.

She shook her head and smiled. “So you’ll play as slowly as you can?”

He couldn’t help snickering; she’d read him right.

“Fifteen minutes,” she said. “And I’m sorry. I wouldn’t cut us off if I didn’t think it was important.”

He just shrugged and served an extremely fast ball, which she missed.

“I don’t want to go,” he signed. “You have to sweeten the pot.”

She chuckled. “Where on earth did you pick up that phrase?” she signed.

“I read it. Don’t change the subject.”

“All right, what are you thinking?”

“Extra hour of TV.”

“No way.”

“Okay, we order dinner.”

His reply was so fast she laughed. Her kid was learning to set her up.

“Okay,” she signed, feigning resignation, “but you pick the restaurant.”

“No, I pick the restaurant!” Then he giggled as he saw how she’d gotten him.

On their way home, they turned the corner onto their block and walked into the light of the setting sun. Suddenly Caitlin felt a strange pressure against her chest again, a profound sense of being watched, and that whatever was watching her was smarter and faster and fiercer. She grabbed Jacob’s hand, walked briskly, looking around for someone, something.

It’s just me, she told herself unconvincingly. It’s just the exhibit and Maanik.

She was suddenly distracted by the sight of a black sedan parked outside her brownstone apartment building. A tall, blond man with an earpiece and an arm cast nodded when he saw her, though she didn’t know him. He opened one of the back doors and Ambassador Pawar stepped out, followed by Mrs. Pawar. They stood together, composed and elegant, icons of stability despite everything they were going through.

“Hello,” Caitlin said, offering her hand to the ambassador and his wife in turn. She introduced Jacob, who signed his welcome. The Pawars caught on and dipped their heads toward him, smiling.

“Thank you for seeing us,” the ambassador said pleasantly.

“Is everything all right?” Caitlin asked, not willing to wait until they got upstairs.

He responded with a half smile. “There is a saying, ‘Durlabham hi sadaa sukham.’ It means that one cannot have happiness alone.”

Caitlin smiled back.

Upstairs, with Jacob ensconced in his room poring over menus, Caitlin seated the Pawars in the living room. She offered them tea, which they declined, stating that they only intended to stay a few minutes.

“How was your day?” she asked generally, but meant the ambassador.

“Taxing,” he replied.

Caitlin turned to Mrs. Pawar. “Maanik?”

“There have been no further incidents,” the woman said. “I’ve instructed Kamala in what to do. She will call if there is a recurrence.”

“I see,” Caitlin said.

“The blackberries,” the ambassador said. “It is somewhat disturbing that one can have that much power over a child. Over any human being, though I confess I could benefit from a cue like that in my professional life.”

Caitlin smiled.

“Maanik did agree to the cue,” Mrs. Pawar reminded him.

“Yes, I would not have done it without her consent,” Caitlin said, trying to reassure them. “And believe me, if she ever feels an urgency to communicate that is more important than calming down, she can and will ignore the cue.”

The Pawars seemed surprised by that.

“So she is not helpless,” the ambassador said.

“Not in that sense, no.”

“Then our real daughter is merely locked away somewhere?” he asked.

“In a manner of speaking, that’s the case with many of the kids I see. But we frankly don’t know yet what Maanik is experiencing.”

Mrs. Pawar pressed her palms together and the ambassador suddenly seemed to be searching for words—or courage, she couldn’t be sure which.

“Dr. O’Hara,” he said slowly, “I know that our daughter needs help—help we must continue to provide as quietly as possible. This is not an easy thing for a father to do, to weigh his responsibilities against the well-being of his daughter. Yet it must be done.”

The ambassador hesitated. Caitlin sensed that he was about to take a considerable leap of faith—or rather, a leap of science over faith.

“Dr. O’Hara, I would like to ask that you continue to work with Maanik, at our home, by whatever means you deem best. I do not pretend that simply because I can turn my daughter off”—his voice caught and he cleared it—“that somehow she is healed. That is clearly not the case. I would like you to find the cause if you can—within the parameters of our home.”

“Do you believe the problem is psychological?” Mrs. Pawar asked.

“As opposed to a head trauma?” Caitlin said. “I believe so. There are no swollen areas or cuts, no sensitivity to sound and light, no irritability or confusion, clearly no issues with balance—in short, nothing to suggest even a mild head injury.”

Both of the Pawars seemed to exhale as one.

“Then please continue,” Mrs. Pawar said. “Please.”

Caitlin was moved. She took a breath and said, “I’m very grateful that you feel this way and I will be honored to continue treating Maanik.” She reached forward and each of them grasped one of her hands. “Thank you for your trust.”

Mrs. Pawar clasped her hand more firmly before she could withdraw it. “I am afraid,” she said. “I do not wish to put that burden on you—”

“It’s no burden at all,” Caitlin assured her, squeezing the woman’s hand gently. “As I said, this is what I do. First there is some research I’d like to complete. I will call tomorrow.”

The ambassador put a comforting arm around his wife as they rose. He left Caitlin with a grateful smile as she saw them out the door.

After they left, she ordered Indian food as per Jacob’s instructions and they watched TV. She checked her e-mail every two minutes, hoping to hear from Ben. There was nothing. She decided not to call him.

Late that night, lying in bed, Caitlin found herself thinking of the photo exhibit. She thought of Maanik, of the child in the photograph at the UN. She reached to the wall and drummed on it with her fingers. For the first time, she was initiating it instead of Jacob.

After a pause, she felt and heard him drumming back. It made her smile. And then, as if a witch’s spell had been broken, she plunged into sleep.

CHAPTER 12

^{Croix-des-Bossales Market}

^{Port-au-Prince, Haiti}

Dr. Aaron Basher hurried after the seven-year-old girl, one arm wrapped protectively around the emergency medical kit slung from his shoulder. The ground was slippery with thin mud, discarded plastic wrappers, and the overflowing sewage that covered most of the city. He kept one eye on the little girl, her steps purposeful though her feet flapped in the tattered shoes of a man, shoes that sloshed muck onto her toes with every step. She turned, flashing her “Lollipop Guild” T-shirt, which, like most apparel for the residents of Port-au-Prince, had been rejected by American thrift shops, sorted in Miami, and shipped to Haiti semi-legally.

If irony were clean water, this would be a paradise, Aaron thought, not for the first time.

“She was waving her arms around,” the girl pattered, “and she was saying something, nothing we know, and most of the women say she got a spirit but other women say no, she got the devil. She was talking so fast, it’s very important to her, she even drop one of the phones she shown us!”

A fresh wave of stench pushed away the exhaust fumes that saturated the city. As he covered his nose with his sleeve, Aaron heard a woman screaming nearby. The ragged, shrill terror of the cry sent a chill over him. This was not a daytime sound, nor was it the kind of desperate shout that accompanied the attacks and assaults that regularly befell the populace after sundown.

“Then she start to scream,” continued the little girl, gliding over the thickening trash and looking proudly around at the collection of small children who were now trailing them, curious what the white man in his scrubs was going to do.

They turned a corner into an open patch of ground between several of the market’s long, open-sided, orange-roofed sheds. This gap in the sheds, like others, was nearly filled with garbage, full of plastic bags with food skins and peelings, the occasional animal carcass, and human waste from when someone couldn’t wait for one of the few portable toilets. It was all rotting in the tropical noon sun. Yet the screams, more hideous than the smell, dominated his attention.

The screamer was a young Haitian woman, definitely under twenty, wearing a yellow T-shirt that said “Twerkin’ for the Weekend.” She was not desperately thin, as many Haitian women were, so he guessed she was getting regular meals from somewhere and probably was not a member of the poorest poor. She was standing barefoot in the mud, her hands raised slightly as if in supplication or protection, or both, and her whole body was rigid. She was staring up past the sheds at the sky, mouth agape.

No one was touching her but all the ladies who sold the food in the market were watching. Aaron heard the word “fou” many times over and knew they were saying the young woman was psychotic.

He placed his hands on her arms. She didn’t move them. He pressed a little. She resisted. He released them and placed his hands on her face. She didn’t register his presence, even when he pulled gently at the corners of her eyes to see if she would look at him. Nor did she stop screaming.

Aaron had been trained to respond to post-traumatic stress disorder but this was different. He’d been in Port-au-Prince for five years, having arrived three weeks after the devastating earthquake, and he’d seen things that had kept him up vomiting at night. But he had never seen anything like this young woman. This was fresh trauma happening now. There had been no storm or earth tremor. There were no traces of blood on her body.

He balanced his medical kit on a stack of calabash gourds and rifled through it, wondering what the hell he had that he could use. He wasn’t equipped with the effective sedatives of wealthy countries.

Well, he thought, when in doubt, eliminate pain, even if a source of pain isn’t evident. He loaded a syringe with codeine and slipped the needle into the young woman’s bicep. She showed no reaction to the pinch.

He stood back for a moment and, out of habit, looked at his kit to make sure no one was edging near it to steal something they could use… or sell. He realized that most of the children gathered in the square were watching a couple who were both aiming horizontal smartphones at the girl, shooting video. Half of Haiti now owned ordinary handsets but smartphones were still prohibitively expensive. Aaron did not have time to be disgusted by the couple. He suddenly noticed that he could hear motors and horns from the road again, and a cheerful music station from a hand-crank radio nearby. The young woman had stopped screaming.

“C’est la fils avec vous?” Aaron asked the couple, remembering that the little girl had referred to the young woman as having a phone.

“Mais non, non,” the man said with an American accent, reinforcing the denial with a wave of his hand.

The woman put away her phone, tugged at his arm. They held trinkets from peddlers, had probably been walking through the market and sought to capture the drama of a native in distress. Aaron wondered what had been lifted from their pockets while they indulged themselves. He didn’t feel sorry for them. They could have offered something, a donation for medicine.

He turned his attention back to the young woman. She was still staring at the sky, but now her physical behavior had changed. He could not say it was a more comforting sight. With her head tilted back and her mouth dropped open, she appeared to be holding her breath. Her arms were waving back and forth slowly with her hands curled in clawlike shapes. She seemed to want to move her legs as well but her feet were rooted to the filthy slop on the ground.

What now? Aaron thought anxiously. He pawed through his kit again—bandages, dressings, ibuprofen, nothing that was going to help.

The crowd of whispering women parted. Some moved aside willingly, others grudgingly. Aaron watched a few of them make the sign of the cross, and some sucked their teeth, a severe insult in Haiti. Others nodded respectfully toward an approaching figure. Aaron suddenly smelled a cigar, somehow able to penetrate through the stink of the garbage.

“Mambo,” some of the onlookers said, explaining and introducing the woman who stepped out of the crowd. The Vodou priestess looked dismissively at the American doctor.

About fifty years old, she was not wearing a hand-me-down American T-shirt but a threadbare, short-sleeved ivory blouse; a skirt that had once been a pale pink; and a thin white kerchief tied around her hair. Her elbows and hips were sharp with undernourishment, and her strong cheekbones would have been envied in another world. Her eyes, tough and fierce, regarded the young girl.

Be respectful, Aaron thought as he stepped aside to admit the woman.

“That girl is drowning,” the mambo said in clear English.

Aaron was speechless. After a moment he said, “I don’t understand.”

“You better hurry,” the mambo said. “She got ice-cold salt water in her chest.”

The woman raised a cigar to her lips and stared at him.

Aaron wrenched his eyes away and looked at the girl. He glanced from her arms to her neck to her open mouth, and, yes, if this girl had been in water, those hands might have been trying to claw to the surface. His mind shoved the thought away hard but… He looked at her face and, by god, her lips were turning blue. Her ears too. She was trembling all over and her arms were slowing down.

This girl has hypothermia. In Haiti.

Aaron waved at several women to move cabbages and stalks of sugarcane off a sheet that was spread beneath them on the ground. He turned to his kit and pulled out two packages and ripped them both open. As soon as the sheet was clear he put his hands under the girl’s armpits and dragged her to it as gently as possible. Supporting her body, he laid her down. He pulled a crackling silver Mylar emergency blanket from the larger ripped package and spread it over the girl to keep her warm under the scorching-hot sun. Then he checked for anything in her throat that might be obstructing her breathing—there was nothing. With one desperate glance at the mambo smoking her cigar, he interlocked his hands and leaned on the young woman’s chest to perform CPR. He ignored his brain, which demanded to know what the hell he was doing.

After five pumps he pulled a piece of plastic from the smaller ripped package and placed it over the girl’s mouth so that he wouldn’t infect her with anything he might be carrying. He placed his mouth over hers to breathe into her lungs and was shocked to feel that her lips were warm. He pulled away, second-guessing everything, but the blue of her lips was unmistakable. Exhaling deeply into her, he then moved back to her chest and pressed on her heart, two, three, four, five, inhale… exhale into her, back to the chest…

Suddenly the girl spasmed and hacked, hard. If they had been on a beach, by a swimming pool, in the flat bottom of a boat, a spout of water would have arced out of her mouth. Here, there was nothing. And yet, when she lay back down, she was coughing and breathing hoarsely exactly like someone who had been drowning only seconds ago.

“Good God,” Aaron murmured. He turned to the mambo, a look of awe and confusion on his face. “Thank you,” he said.

She tapped the ash off her cigar onto the foul ground. “Se bon ki ra,” she replied. “Good is rare.” Then she turned and walked into the crowd as it closed behind her.