He went on with his sculpting, and offered no comments about the impending transfer, and three days later, just as Litvak had predicted, they were all ordered to report to Room 107 of the detention center’s administration sector. In Room 107, which was a large hall entirely unfurnished except for an empty bookcase and a three-legged chair, they were left by themselves to stand for close to an hour before someone came in, asked them their names, and, referring to a sheet of brown paper in his hand, brusquely said, “You, you, and you, Room 103. You and you, Room 106. You, you, you, Room 109. And make it snappy.”
Khalid, Krzysztof, and the North African were the ones who were sent to room 109. They went there quickly. No time was spent on offering farewells to the other five, for they all knew that they now were disappearing from each other’s lives forever.
Room 109, which was mysteriously distant from Room 107, was much smaller than 107 but just about as sparsely furnished. A picture-frame that held no picture hung on the left-hand wall; on the floor against the wall opposite it stood a large green ceramic flower-vase with no flowers in it; there was a bare desk in front of the far wall, facing the door. Seated behind the desk was a petite round-faced woman who looked to be about sixty. Her dark eyes, which seemed to be set very far apart, had an odd glittery gleam, and her hair, which had probably once been jet black, was dramatically streaked with jagged zones of white, like flashes of lightning cutting across the night.
Glancing at a paper she was holding, she said, looking at the Pole, “Are you Kr—Kyz—Kzyz—Kryz—” She could not get her tongue around the letters of his name. But she seemed amused rather than irritated.
“Krzysztof,” he said. “Krzysztof Michalski.”
“Michalski, yes. And that first name again?”
“Krzysztof.”
“Ah. Christoph. I get it now. All right: Christoph Michalski. Polish name, right?” She grinned. “A lot easier to say it than to read it.” Khalid was surprised at how chatty she was. Most of these quisling bureaucrats were chilly and abrupt. But she had what sounded to him like an American accent. Perhaps her being American had something to do with that. “And which one of you is Khalid Haleem Burke?” the woman asked.
“I am.”
She gave him a long slow look, frowning a little. Khalid stared right back.
“And then you,” she said, turning now toward the North African, “must be—ah—Mulay ben Dlimi.”
“Oui.”
“What kind of name is that, Mulay ben Dlimi?”
“Oui,” the North African said again.
“He doesn’t understand English,” said Khalid. “He’s from North Africa.”
The woman nodded. “A real international group. All right, Christoph, Khalid, Mulay. I think you know the deal. You’re going to be transported again, day after tomorrow. Or possibly even tomorrow, if the paperwork gets done in time. Pack your stuff and be ready to leave your quarters as soon as you’re called.”
“Can you tell us,” Krzysztov said, “Where we’re going to be sent this time?”
She smiled. “The good old U.S. of A., this time. Las Vegas, Nevada. Do any of you know how to play blackjack?”
The transport plane once had been a commercial airliner, long, long ago, in the days when the citizens of the countries of Earth still moved about freely from one place to another on journeys of business or pleasure and there were such things called airlines to carry them. Khalid had not known that era at first hand, but he had heard tales of it. This plane, whose painted hull was faded and even rusted in places, still bore an inscription identifying it as belonging to British Airways. For Khalid, stepping aboard it was in a little way like returning to England. He was not sure how he felt about that.
But the airplane wasn’t England. It was only a long metal tube with blotchy gray walls and scars on the floor to mark the places where the seats had been ripped out. Bare mattresses had replaced the seats. There was no place to sit; one could only walk about or lie down. Long bars had been soldered to the walls above the windows, something to grab if the flight turned turbulent. Threadbare curtains divided the passenger compartment into several subcompartments.
For Khalid there was nothing new about any of this. All the planes that had carried him from one detention camp to another had been much like this one. This one seemed bigger, that was all. But that was because they were going to the United States, a lengthy journey that must require a larger plane. He had only the vaguest idea where the United States might be, but he knew that it was very far from where they were now.
The small woman who had met with them in Room 109 was aboard the plane, supervising the departure arrangements. Khalid assumed that she would leave once everybody who was being transported had been checked off the master list, but, no, she stayed on the plane after the checkoff was complete and the doors were closed. That was unusual. The detention-center officials did not normally accompany the transported prisoners to their destinations. But perhaps she wasn’t actually staying. He watched her disappear through the curtain that separated Khalid’s sector of the plane from the zone up front where the official personnel were, and wondered if there might be some other door up there through which she might leave before the plane took off. In a curious way he hoped there wasn’t. He liked her. She was an amusing woman, lively and irreverent, not at all like any of the other quisling officials with whom he had come in contact in his seven years of internment.
Khalid was pleased to see, not long after the plane had taken off, that she was still on board. She emerged from the front compartment, walking carefully in the steeply climbing plane, and halted when she reached the mattress where Khalid and the North African man were sitting.
“May I join you?” she asked.
“You need to ask permission, do you?” said Khalid.
“A little politeness never hurts.”
He shrugged. She spiraled down next to him, lowering herself to the floor in a quick, graceful way that belied her age, and folded herself up opposite him on the mattress with her legs crossed neatly, ankles to knees.
“You’re Khalid, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Cindy. You’re very pretty, Khalid, do you know that? I love the tawny color of your skin. Like a lion’s, it is. And that crop of dense bushy hair.” When he offered no reply, she said, “You’re an artist, I understand.”
“I make things, yes.”
“I made things once, too. And I was also pretty, once, for that matter.”
She smiled and winked at him, rendering Khalid somehow a co-conspirator in the agreement that she had once been pretty. It hadn’t occurred to him before this that she might have been an attractive woman once upon a time, but now, taking a close look at her, he saw that it was quite possible that she had been: a small and energetic person, trimly built, with delicate features and those bright, bright eyes. Her smile was still very appealing. And the wink. He liked that wink. She was definitely unlike any quisling he had ever encountered. With his artist’s eye he edited out the grooves and wrinkles that her sixty years had carved in her face, restored the darkness and glossiness of her hair, gave her skin the freshness of youth. Yes, he thought. No doubt quite pretty thirty or forty years ago.