Malory pulled out his chair. And as he did, he saw the piano tucked next to the table in the bay window giving out to the veranda. A baby grand with a light cherry veneer, probably nothing important. But its very lack of importance gave Malory a feeling of security, of nestled comfort. Whatever he was about to learn, whatever had happened to Tibor, to Louiza, to Ottavia couldn’t be that bad if there was music nearby.
“First,” the man said, “let me offer my condolences on the death of your friend Mr. Militaru.”
Malory heard the name, Tibor’s surname, for perhaps only the second time in his life.
“From all appearances, Mr. Militaru died from a self-inflicted gunshot that separated the greater part of the upper half of his skull from the lower. Death was immediate. Please, try the scone. It’s from the Farmers’ Market. They tell me it’s fresh.”
Malory listened as if deciphering an equation in a foreign language. But it was enough to settle the question. Tibor had shot himself. Tibor was dead.
“Where?” Malory began, but the man held up a hand.
“That is all the information I have.”
“Surely,” Malory said, “you can tell me where I am, who you are.”
“You’ll have a chance,” the man replied, “to ask questions. And maybe there will even be someone who can answer them. Someone else. Right now, I’m the one asking. So drink your tea and eat your scone. And then you can tell me why you left Mr. Militaru’s house so quickly yesterday evening.”
“Of course,” Malory said. The man pressed a button on the recorder and waited. Malory spoke. He spoke of his friendship with Tibor, his invitation to Tibor’s birthday, his position in Rome — as the director of a private foundation — and the security requirements surrounding that. His hasty departure was not of his own volition, but company policy. But as Malory spoke, his explanation played back into his own ears as something entirely tuneless and unconvincing. Backlit as he was, the man’s face was impenetrable. Perhaps there was no need to plumb the man’s private reaction. Perhaps all was for the recorder. But as Malory spoke, Malory wondered. Who was listening to the recorder?
Malory finished speaking. The man turned a page in his folder. He turned another. Malory took a bite of the scone. Tasteless. A sip of tea, cold.
“Can you explain,” the man said, turning a third page, “why we found your fingerprints on the gun that killed your friend?”
Malory could explain. Of course he could explain. Tibor had handed him the gun. He had put it back in the plastic bag as quickly as he could and then left it on the table. But the memory of what he had done, or hadn’t done, what he hadn’t prevented, made explanation seem imprecise, perhaps even false, ultimately useless. So this time, Malory chose another option and said nothing.
“Can you explain why, Mr. Malory, in addition to your fingerprints and the fingerprints of your headless friend, we found another set of prints? A set of prints a whole lot smaller? Maybe a girl? Maybe you know of whom I speak?”
Of whom he spoke? Ottavia? Malory thought. Maybe the man knew and was just feeling Malory out. Discretion. He felt Settimio just out of sight behind his right ear, whispering the word. And he said nothing. But he wondered who was listening.
“And finally,” the man stood and walked to the piano by the bay window, unmoved by Malory’s silence, “can you explain why we found a fourth set of prints on the gun, a set that is a perfect match with a man who, at a quarter to nine this morning, flew an American Airlines 767 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center?”
“Excuse me?” Malory said, unable to say nothing to a sentence so foreign in tone and meaning. “Can you repeat your question?” And although, at the beginning, Malory’s disbelief was far greater than the man’s, as the man explained the events of the morning — the four planes, the attack, the collapse, and all that followed — ten minutes of back and forth was enough to transfer that incredulity across the table.
“You really don’t know?” The man — who Malory thought was incapable of surprise — was clearly thrown off balance. “You didn’t see the TV, didn’t hear the radio, run into people on the street?”
“I’m sorry,” Malory said finally, the sound of E. Power Biggs on the taxicab sound system loud in his memory, the soundtrack of his ignorance. “Nobody. I wasn’t.”
“Come with me,” the man said. And something in the atmosphere changed. Malory still didn’t know what the man was talking about. But as he followed the man up the narrow staircase off the front hall, he felt for the first time not only that the man believed him but the weight of his own ignorance.
“Sit down,” the man said. Malory sat. The bed was soft and warm from the morning’s heat. It was covered with a quilt that broadcast an America of film and history to Malory’s untrained vision. But his fingers picked up another personality from the cotton squares, a familiar, downy heat that reminded him of the woman he had seen less than twenty-four hours before across a nearby pond. This was the room beneath the peaked gable he had seen from outside, the room he had wished to see. There was a bed, a dresser, and on top of the dresser, a television set.
“Here,” the man said, flicking on the TV. “Why don’t you look at this while you’re waiting? It’ll be an education.”
All afternoon and into the night, Malory sat on the bed and watched the TV. He watched the day rewind, replay. He watched the planes turn and return, the towers, the dust, the flames and bodies go in then out, down then up. After an hour he turned off the sound. But the images repeated themselves like the loop of Couperin’s Chaconne in a dance that accumulated force and power with each repetition. And each repetition brought an added understanding. Because of this, his plane was turned back at the airport. Because of E. Power Biggs, he hadn’t heard the news on the radio. Because of the walk to the pond, the talk with the policeman, the drive over to The Gables, he hadn’t seen the collapse, heard the name Osama, or seen the first tentative photos of the suspects. The hand that clutched the steering wheel — or whatever it was they had on airplanes — had, only a few hours earlier, left an impression on the gun Malory held by the pond of TiborTina. I danced with the man who danced with the girl who bombed the Prince …
And more. In between the videos, in between the lines of the newsreaders and the speeches of the experts and the disbelief of the witnesses, their chins lifted up to a sky that was raining the B-movies of their darkest imaginings, Malory heard the word caliph. It came in the middle of what sounded like a meaningless incantation, “the return of the Caliphate … restore the Caliph of all Islam.” But Malory felt its force. What if Ottavia were right? What if Aldana had borne a son of this Caliph-in-disguise? What if I am descended from Haroun al Rashid? What if all this destruction is to restore me to yet again another throne I never dreamed of, never desired? If there is one rule that explains everything, is there also one ruler to blame? Is this all my fault?
As the light of September 12 began to sift through the lace curtains of the upstairs room, Malory stood. Unable to turn off the image, he pulled the plug from the wall and held its prongs in his right hand as he pushed the curtain aside with his left. There were two men below, smoking in the near dawn by the gate. Even with the TV unplugged, the sun continued to rise. Without untying his shoes, without removing his jacket, Malory let the plug drop and gravity carry him towards the bed and a comforter that smelled of time before.