A Vision of Fire

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.”