your most humble & most
obedient Servant,
Settimio
3/1
LEEPLESS, BUT NOT DREAMLESS.
Sleepless in the Good Knight’s Inn in South Hackensack.
The digital alarm blinked out the minutes of the early hours with a spastic colon. Malory reckoned he had been awake for every one of those indigestible blinks. But sometime in the darkness a vision came to him — perhaps in the way the Arabian Tales revealed themselves to restless storytellers over a thousand and one insomniac nights. Water — an ocean, or maybe just the pond at TiborTina, water lapping the grassy shingle like a lukewarm summer’s bath — pole pines, shadows, evening fog muting all sense of space. Sitting at the edge, shoes off, trousers rolled below the knees, toes deep in loamy mud, a bamboo pole and shop-bought string for a fishing rod.
“So …” Malory knew Tibor was behind him, could smell the tobacco and the vodka merging with the fog. “Do you promise to tie my legs?”
Malory tried to answer, tried to ask, but in his half-sleep couldn’t move his lips.
“Tie my legs,” Tibor continued, “tight at the ankles. Tie my wrists behind me. Tight. Toss me into the pond and count to thirty. If my hands come up first, waving, fish me out and dry me off. If my feet come up, bound and lifeless …”
Malory knew the story, knew how it would end. He knew the Tale of Judar, the tale that Haroun al Rashid had told Aldana in the stable below the shochet’s house in Narbonne. He knew the story of the three brothers from some distant Arab land — Morocco was it? Tunisia? — the three brothers who approached a young fisherman named Judar on the shore of Lake Karoon. They had made the same request as Tibor — bind my wrists behind me, bind them tight. Toss me into the water and count to thirty. Two of the brothers drowned. The third rose to the surface hands first and led Judar to unimaginable treasure.
Malory didn’t want to tie up Tibor, couldn’t imagine unimaginable treasure — certainly didn’t need it. But in his sleep, he felt bound — yes, he remembered thinking that word — to bind his poor, sick, drunken, sweat-soaked friend. He reached into his Kit Bag and pulled out a meter’s length of laundry cord. He began to wind the cord around Tibor’s arms, but Tibor’s elbows kept slipping the knots.
“Sorry,” Malory said. He reached again into the Kit Bag and pulled out a coil of grapevine, the leaves and grapes still hanging ripe and heavy. But tying knots in the mess only made the job more difficult. Malory reached into the Kit Bag a third time and found a cello string, the low C-string, a length of steel-wrapped gut thicker than the grapevine but less complex. With the C-string, Malory was finally able to tie Tibor’s arms behind his back and bind his ankles in a rough imitation of a Transylvanian martyr.
“Now what?” Malory asked in his half-sleep.
“The rules,” Tibor said, with a long sigh. “Just follow the rules, Malory.” And although Malory had no idea which rules, or who else was following the same rules, Malory lifted Tibor over his head with a strength that he hadn’t manifested since he’d carried Louiza from Santa Maria sopra Minerva to the Ospedale Fatebenefratelli twenty-three years before.
“Now!” Tibor commanded.
With the heave of a Hercules, Malory launched Tibor towards the Sun. And as Tibor descended towards Earth, as the rules mandated, and the full force of his turkey-trussed, balding frame hit the water, the explosion — unlike anything Malory had heard, even from the sixty-four-foot contra-trombone stops of the cathedral of Narbonne — shattered whatever sleep had brought on the dream.
The clock flashed 05:34, September 11. Malory found the light.
WHEN MALORY HEARD THE GUNSHOT AT TIBORTINA THE NIGHT BEFORE, he first thought that he had been hit and then feared it was Louiza. But as he was running to her and she to him, he realized that the sound must have come from elsewhere and been directed at somebody else. He was happy — he remembered that sentiment — happy that it was not them, that he was close and closer and Louiza was also running.
And then he was stopped.
“Principe!” The Driver grabbed Malory around the waist in a manner both respectful and determined. “I apologize, but we must go.”
“Let me go, please,” Malory said.
“I cannot,” the Driver said. “My instructions are to protect you.”
“I,” Malory began, as the Driver pulled him towards the car, “I command you …”
But clearly Settimio’s commentary of twenty-three years before, that Malory was the one who made the choices, was the Chooser-in-Chief, did not apply to this situation. There were other rules that Malory couldn’t understand, rules that overruled Malory’s rule. And as the Driver firmly, but respectfully, shoved Malory into the passenger’s seat and locked the door, Malory saw the man with the brush cut follow Louiza up the hill to the pond. He saw the brush cut lead Louiza away.
What did he know?
He had heard a gunshot.
And after?
He had seen Louiza, alive thankfully, but in the grip of the brush cut.
He had seen Ottavia — yes, he was certain of it — running up the hill from the herb garden to the White House.
He hadn’t seen Cristina. He hadn’t seen Tibor.
Except in his dream in the Good Knight’s Inn. He had tied up Tibor in his dream. He had lifted him over his head and tossed him into the pond. And then an explosion.
And now he was awake at 5:34, sitting on the edge of the bed, bound in the vague motel smell of cigar and mold on an unwashed scrim of plastic and foam. His suitcase was open — had been opened by the Driver the night before. They had arrived — or, more precisely, the Driver had ceased his tour of the smaller roads of New York and New Jersey — well after midnight, many hours after the flight from TiborTina. A fresh pair of corduroys and a cotton dress shirt hung from the closet door. Malory’s toiletries — bypassing the Good Knight’s Inn bar soap and packet shampoo — had been neatly laid out on a towel covering the broken bathroom shelf. It was 5:34, and Malory was sitting at the edge of the bed. When the Driver knocked on Malory’s door, the digital alarm clock showed 7:30 and Malory still hadn’t moved.
“My lord,” the Driver said softly from outside. Malory stood and padded across the carpet to the door. The morning air was cool, the sun already risen, the car already humming. If the Driver was surprised at seeing Malory undressed, he had the grace not to show it. He merely guided Malory through the bathroom into his clothes and out into the car in under seven minutes. The ride to the airport was even shorter. And as the Driver had doubtless been in communication with Settimio, the private jet that had brought Malory from Rome to the United States the morning before was refueled, repiloted, and waiting for them. The Driver carried out whatever formalities were necessary to assure the U.S. government that Malory was a safe bet on a private plane. A flight attendant, a young Italian woman who identified herself as Maria Grazia, brought Malory a cup of tea with a choice of two scones — the Driver took only water — as the plane taxied towards takeoff. And at 9:15, Malory pulled his seatbelt tighter as the engines revved, or did whatever they were supposed to do, in preparation of takeoff.
Malory didn’t want to go.
What he wanted was to return to TiborTina. What he wanted was to find Louiza, to find Ottavia, to find out what he could about the explosion, about Tibor and Cristina. He had no cell phone himself, of course, and was barely aware to what extent Settimio or the Driver or anyone else might be able to find out what had happened at TiborTina the night before. The Driver and Settimio knew he was concerned. They were concerned. Everyone was concerned.