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Chapter 25

September 16, 2001

Unable to fly via Singapore, thanks to impossible flight delays in that hub of international travel, Liz decided to travel eastward from Fiji to Los Angeles. Entailing daylong waits in Fiji’s airport and then again in Los Angeles, the journey was a fruitful one for Banner articles on passenger frustration and airport security.

Liz finally arrived in Boston’s Logan Airport late in the afternoon of September 17. Taking a cab directly to Banner Square, she filed her stories and collected her messages before she returned to Gravesend Street. Pausing only to greet and feed a jubilant Prudence, she fell into bed and slept for twelve hours straight.

Only when Tom arrived at daybreak to feed Prudence did Liz awake. She began to apologize for her failure to phone and save him the trouble of feeding the cat, but then she broke off in the middle of the effort and said, “Oh Tom! I’m not sorry you’ve come. I’m so glad to see you!” And she threw herself into his outstretched arms. Exhausted from her trip and weary of holding herself together for days without emotional release, she simply sobbed.

After awhile, Tom left to pick up some groceries for Liz while she showered and made herself some coffee. Only then did she look over the telephone messages she had noted in the newsroom the day before. There was one from Doug Mayhew, the would-be rock star of Cape Cod, announcing he had written a “cool new ballad” in response to the terrorist attacks. There were two more from book publicists pushing authors of books about the Middle East as experts to be quoted in the Banner. And there was a call from a man with a Middle Eastern–accented voice, too

“Hello, M-Ms. Higgins. This is Al Hazard. Mr. V-V-V-Vee said I should c-c-c-call.” He left a phone number Liz recognized as that of the Van Wormer workshop. “Mr. Vee” must be Jan Van Wormer.

When Liz dialed, the man picked up. Thanks to the stuttering and another more general hesitancy that was evident even over the phone, Liz realized it would be best to talk with Al in person. She arranged to meet him at the workshop within the hour. After cursorily drying her hair and leaving a note for Tom, she set out immediately for South Boston.

Along the way, she was startled to find American flags had materialized everywhere, especially as stickers in car windows, on bumpers, and even on car bodies. Flags waved from car antennae, too, and she saw Old Glory plastered on fences, porch railings, and automobile overpasses. At Van Wormer’s South Boston address, the flag was in evidence, too, hanging stripes downward, like a curtain, from the little archway leading to the workshop entrance.

“I put it there for Al’s sake,” the elderly piano builder said as he opened the door for Liz. “Personally, I don’t see how hanging the flag will achieve much, but it might make Al look like a patriot—and in a time like this, that’s not a bad thing.”

“When did he return, Mr. Van Wormer?”

“September the thirteenth. He said he was kicked out of his rented room because he is an Arab. Sadly, that may be true. In any case, I’m sure he feels safer here. He’s ready to talk with you, too.”

“That surprises me somewhat, grateful as I am for it. Why—if he’s nervous about having the spotlight on him—is he ready to talk with the press now?”

“He’s still not very comfortable about this, but he knows another man of Middle Eastern background is implicated in Mrs. Johansson’s disappearance. Al says he fled from my house when he heard on the news that a Middle Easterner might have had something to do with her troubles. Now that that man has been identified, he’s willing to tell you what he knows.”

As Jan Van Wormer finished speaking, a timid figure slunk into the room. Lingering in the shadows near a grand piano, he spoke up.

“That’s r-right,” he said. “Mr. V-V-Vee? Would you p-p-please stay with me?”

“Sure, Al,” the piano man said, motioning for Al to be seated on a worn settee while he and Liz took chairs facing him. Saving Al the struggle of spitting out his entire story, Jan Van Wormer told Liz, “Al here has told me he was falsely accused of some lewd behavior regarding Ellen Johansson, back when he was a student at the Wharton School out in Wellesley. Of course, Mrs. Johansson was just a girl then.” Looking at Al, he said, gently, “That right, Al?”

“Y-yes, Mr. Vee,” Al managed to say, while he brought his knees up to his chest and visibly struggled not to hug them to himself.

“It’s all right, Al,” Liz said encouragingly. “I’m here to tell the truth, not to get you in trouble for something you didn’t do. I already know Dr. Mayhew doubted you had done anything wrong.”

Al unfolded his knees and set his feet on the floor again. “He d-d-did? Hamdu-lillah!”

“Yes, Al. Mr. Buxton, your music teacher, told me he thought you were scared because Mr. Swenson was so angry. Dr. Mayhew said the board members at the Wharton School wouldn’t give you a chance to tell the whole story. Now you can tell us everything, Al.”

“I d-d-d-didn’t do it,” Al said.

“But you saw something that shocked you, is that right? Something that made you say ‘Rah, rah. Shock-rah, shock-rah.’”

“How do you know that?” Al managed to spit out.

“Dr. Mayhew remembered you said that.”

“I was d-disgusted.”

“Not shocked? Then why did you keep saying ‘Shock rah’?”

“Shaqra,” he said. “It means ‘yellow hair’.”

“Blonde? The word ‘shaqra’ means ‘blonde’?”

Al nodded. “I was d-d-disgusted, and sad, too. I was sorry for the shaqra. I was sorry for what Ellen maybe saw.”

“What did Ellen see, Al?”

“It is d-d-difficult for me to tell this to a lady,” he said, drawing his knees up and wrapping his arms around them this time.

“You saw a man behaving badly, didn’t you, Al?” Jan Van Wormer said in a low tone. “The man was masturbating, wasn’t he, Al? It’s all right to tell the truth,” he said, reaching across and placing his gnarled hand on Al’s wrist.

“Allah help me, it is the truth. M-M-Mister Swenson. He was d-d-doing this thing.”

“Did Ellen see what he was doing, Al?”

Al nodded and then shook his head in a contradictory motion. He seemed unable to speak.

“Al told me he was not sure how much Ellen saw,” Jan Van Wormer said. “She ran to her father and then fled towards the house where she lived. Then Mr. Swenson began to shout at Al.”

“F-F-F . . . ,” Al began.

“Al told me Mr. Swenson was mumbling the word ‘flicka.’ I think it’s a Swedish endearment. But that was earlier, while the man was masturbating.”

Tongue-tied, Al nodded exaggeratedly, then he moved his hand in a rolling motion as if performing a charade to indicate moving ahead.

“When he became angry, Ali,” Liz pressed, using his boyhood name, “did he say ‘fuck’ then?”

Al shook his head violently. ‘F-F-F-FORGET ME NOT!’” he bellowed, and then fled from the room.

Liz had every intention of confronting Olga Swenson with her knowledge as she drove out to Wellesley from South Boston. Fatigue, hunger, and finally traffic gave her pause, however. Unwilling to face Olga on an empty stomach, she stopped at a lunch place in Newton Lower Falls and purchased a take-out container of clam chowder, a tuna sandwich, and potato chips. The September skies, whose beauty was so remarkable on the day of the terrorist attacks, remained as blue as any on a picture postcard. And, as Liz took her sandwich outdoors to a picnic table overlooking a fast-flowing stream that she knew was the Charles River, nearby trees with leaves just beginning to change color looked like harbingers of autumn.

It was nine months since Ellen had gone missing. Observing water splashing over a dam as brightly as if Ellen’s disappearance or the pain of terrorists’ victims had never occurred, Liz felt keenly alone with her thoughts. What did this new piece of the puzzle augur? Could one assume Ellen had called to mind her father’s words at last—perhaps reminded by the name of the broken teacup’s china pattern? If so, would that have given her relief from her flashbacks, or only endowed her with more pain?

If the shakily written words “FORGET ME NOT” on the blackboard were any indication, she was certainly agitated. But surely, Liz hoped, Ellen must have realized she now had the upper hand over the flashbacks. Even if it was painful to know her father had behaved appallingly, a woman like Ellen, a woman who knew how to turn to books for information about her worries, must have known she could get help overcoming this painful knowledge. She must have experienced some sense of relief as she wrote those words on her blackboard.

Why then, did she go missing? Tilting her head to look up at the gloriously blue sky, Liz thought again about Nadia’s account of Ellen’s strange cab ride and the events at the World Trade Center. The night before the attacks, Nadia, who was herself an intelligence operative, had not seen anything significant in the cabdriver’s radio talk. The terrorist attacks put everything in a different light. What would Nadia think now? Had Ellen overheard something she shouldn’t in the two-way radio conversation?

Finishing her sandwich, Liz returned to her car and phoned Faisal al-Turkait. He sounded far more reserved than he had been during their earlier encounter. But he consented to meet her later that day in his shop. Unsure what she wanted to say to Olga at this stage, Ellen nearly turned her car eastward towards Boston. What point was there in dredging up the ugly fact of her husband’s behavior, except to see if Olga was aware of it? But, even so, on impulse she turned west and drove to the Swenson house.

If Olga was perplexed to see Liz, she hardly showed it. Instead, she seemed relieved to have company and to share her thoughts about the terrorist attacks.

“It personalizes things, doesn’t it, when you have a loved one who has been on the scene where a tragedy later occurs? Only months earlier, Ellen was having such a memorable meeting with her pen pal on the top floor of one of those towers,” Olga said as she poured hot water into a china teapot.

“Yes,” Liz said. “It makes the unimaginable all too imaginable, unfortunately.”

“Shall we take the tea outside and enjoy the weather?”

“Good idea. Let me help.”

Liz welcomed the chance to be occupied with the tea things, since she remained uncertain about sharing Ali’s revelation. The walk through the house, down the stairs, and through the mudroom bought her a few minutes to think. In the mudroom, Liz noticed Olga’s aluminum vases were filled with fresh-cut flowers, and an incomplete flower arrangement stood on the potting table.

“Did I interrupt you in your arranging?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter. Just as I felt strange taking up old hobbies although my daughter remains missing, I now find myself feeling odd about arranging flowers while the world is in such a state. It feels rather like fiddling while Rome burns.” Olga seemed to shake herself as she stood poised to exit the mudroom.

Meanwhile, Liz took a scarf from her purse. “I seem to have picked this up accidentally during an earlier visit. Shall I hang it here?” she asked.

Olga nodded. As Liz tried to drape the scarf on an overloaded coat hook, she knocked a coat to the floor. Picking it up, she tucked the scarf into its pocket and hung the coat on the hook again by the little chain sewn to its collar.

Burdened with the tea tray, Olga signaled Liz to make haste into the fresh air. “That is one of Ellen’s favorite old scarves,” she said, her eyes brightening with tears. Thrusting the door open with her shoulder, she added, “It’s stuffy in here, don’t you think?”

“I’d call it ‘close,’ thanks to the mixed fragrances of the flowers.”

Liz contented herself with making small talk, until she realized it was time to head for her appointment with Faisal al-Turkait in Cambridge.

“Was there a particular reason for your visit, Liz?” Olga asked.

“I thought I’d let you know, ‘shaqra’ means ‘blonde’ in Arabic.”

“‘Shock-rah!’ Then that Al Leigh was not so tongue-tied!” Olga said, her eyes widening. “It’s dreadful, don’t you think, the assumptions we make about foreigners? No wonder they hate us! What will become of us, Liz?”

Faisal al-Turkait greeted Liz with polite formality at the door of Turkoman Books. Moving a stack of volumes off his sofa, he invited her to take a seat and join him in drinking coffee.

“This time I was expecting you, you see,” he said as he poured. “I hope you will understand if I am reticent in other regards, though,” he said. “At this time, I would not like to have my name in the paper or even to discuss much of anything over the phone.”

Liz was shocked. “Do you think you are under some kind of surveillance?”

“Certainly. This country is under attack by enemies of Middle Eastern extraction. As an American citizen, I applaud this vigilance.”

“As a person of Middle Eastern extraction, surely you feel uncomfortable about it as well?”

“I understand it.”

“I can only express my admiration! I’m not so sure I would feel similarly understanding if the nation were under attack by women with auburn hair and I was hounded as a result.”

“When I walk down a city street at night and a woman is the only other pedestrian, should I blame her if she crosses the street to ensure her safety from a male stranger? I am no assailant, yet I am not offended to see a woman exercise such caution. The same is true now. In the interests of our nation’s security, I am not offended to see our government scrutinize me. But let us talk of other matters. You have some more words for me to translate, I assume?”

“Actually, it is the same list of words that concerns me,” Liz said, taking out the grocery list. “Do any of these words have double meanings? I mean, could they refer to some sort of terrorist activity, meeting, delivery, or anything of that sort?”

“No, I think not. These are the most ordinary of words. Truly, they look like a simple grocery list of fruits.”

“I guess I’m searching for significance in Ellen’s interaction with the cabdriver, even trying to connect it to the terrorist attacks. That’s a pretty big leap, though, isn’t it?”

“That’s understandable, particularly after the events of September eleventh. Didn’t you show me, last time you were here, a photo of a book she had that was written for intelligence experts?”

“Yes, and I still don’t know where she acquired that. I plan to see if they have any record of selling it to her at the Brattle Book Shop in Boston, where, I understand, she purchased something in order to prepare to meet her pen pal.”

“I know the owner there and I know he now records his book sales on the computer. Most book dealers do, these days, because so many of us also sell on-line. We need to keep track of individual volumes. He might be reluctant to tell you who bought the book, but if I ask him for the book, as though I wish to acquire it, he might tell me if and when it was sold.”

Putting through a call to the store, the book dealer discovered the book in question had been sold there on October 13, 2000. There was no credit card or check information, since the purchase had been made in cash. But the Brattle’s owner did let on he’d thought the customer was surprising. Most of the time, he told his colleague, he sold odd books like that to professors or students. This customer looked like a suburban housewife.

The likelihood of Ellen serving as an intelligence operative seemed unlikely now. Surely, if Ellen were a spy, she would be supplied with such books, not reduced to finding one in a used-book shop. Liz returned to the question of the cabbie’s grocery list.

“Are any of these words also used euphemistically, as sexual slang, I mean?”

“This is not easy for me to discuss with a lady,” the book dealer said, echoing a similar statement by Ali. “But the answer is yes. Teena, the word for fig, can also be used—man-to-man only, of course—to refer to a woman.” He blushed.

“What about the other fruits? Here in America a man might say of a woman, ‘Look at them apples,’ for instance,” Liz said.

Faisal’s complexion reddened further. “No, I wouldn’t say the other words on this grocery list would be used in that way. More coffee?” he said, ducking into the kitchen.

“I ask because we know that the cabdriver who drove Ellen Johansson in New York, and who also visited her house on the day she disappeared, made her uncomfortable by using that word in a sleazy tone in a two-way radio conversation with another male. She wondered if the cabbie was talking graphically about her, and then, when she heard him continue to use the word, she relaxed a little, thinking he was talking in sexual terms about a woman called Tina.”

Returning to the room, Faisal underlined Nadia’s view. “I think she was correct in feeling uncomfortable. I think perhaps the driver was talking in a most improper manner about his passenger.”