Rosemary Herbert
Front page teaser
For Bill Wyman
—who truly knows how to celebrate Christmas—
with love and gratitude
And to the worlds of the newsroom
and public and academic libraries.
May newspaper journalism find its way and thrive again
even as technology changes, because a free press
staffed by professional reporters and editors
is nothing short of fundamental to a democratic society.
Similarly, another foundation of democracy
may be found in libraries, where staff members
protect patron privacy while they also dedicate their
efforts to ensuring freedom of access
to information.
I would like to extend my thanks to the following people who provided everything from professional expertise and practical help to friendship and encouragement: Pamela Ackerknecht, Catherine Aird, Alfred Alcorn, Tony Alcorn, Cindy Atoji, Peter Alden, Father Joseph Bagetta and the DYS crocheting group, Jean and Jim Behnke, Dana Bisbee, Paula Blanchard, Henri Bourneuf, Gerry Boyle, Margaret Byer, Mark Chapman, Rochelle Cohen, Neil Cote, Guy Darst, Nancy Day, Renee DeKona, Dick Donahue, Paul Doiron, Jane Gelfman, Dr. Herbert Gross, Bonni Hamilton, Jeremiah Healy, Barbara Herbert, Janice Herbert, P.D. James, Sande Kent, Linda Kincaid, Cara Nissman Kraft, Jeffrey Levine, Tom Libby, Reuben Mahar, Kevin McNamara, Janet Mendelsohn, Jenny Miller, Susan and Steve Moody, Elaine M. Ober, Diana O’Neill, Richard Olken, Eliza Partington, Juliet Partington, Mike Pingree, Arthur Pollock, Jeanne and Darrell Ray, John M. (Tim) Reilly, Chris Rippen, Eileen Tomaney Robinson, Tenley Rooney, Daisy and Jeremy Ruggiero, Todd Sawyer, Stephanie Schorow, Michael Seamans, John Sgammato, Al Silverstein, Clara Silverstein, Peter Skagestad, Barbara Sloane, Curtis C. Smith, JP Smith, Katy Snow, Richard Stomberg, Brian Sylvester, Sonya Turek, Cathy Weider, Karin Womer, Wayne Woodlief, and Bill Wyman. I also would like to remember the following people who always believed in me: my father, Robert D. Herbert; my grandparents, Mary and Harry Fransen; my creative writing teacher, Alfred E. Haulenbeek; and to these masters of mystery—Tony Hillerman, John Mortimer, Robert B. Parker, and Julian Symons.
With special thanks to Mary Higgins Clark, for her encouragement,
and for consenting to be a character in my mystery.
And with profound appreciation to Dick Sloane,
for his generosity and belief in me as a writer,
and to his mother, the late Vera Sloane, simply for being herself.
New York City, December 16, 2000
“Let nothing you dismay.”
Christmas Muzak was playing over the loudspeakers in Penn Station as Ellen Johansson strode to the escalator leading from the AMTRAK train waiting area to the taxi stand. So eager was she to make her date that she walked up the escalator steps even as they rose.
There was little to burden her. She carried only a purse and a small briefcase filled with correspondence, much of it written on onion-skin paper, postmarked from one of the world’s hotspots.
In the briefcase, she carried something else. A surprise she longed to present to her foreign correspondent.
Pushing through the glass doors with the crowd, Ellen buttoned up her dressy winter coat and arranged the scarf she chose especially for the occasion. It would help the person she planned to meet to recognize her. She only hoped that person would also remember to wear something similarly recognizable.
If there had been room to do it, Ellen would have paced with impatience as she waited with passengers from Boston and elsewhere who swelled the snaking line of people seeking taxis. Instead, she found herself wringing her hands, a gesture that was quite uncharacteristic.
When, at last, it was her turn for a taxi, Ellen leaned forward toward the driver’s rolled-down window and said, “Can you take me to the World Trade Center?” As she made her request, a gust of wind tossed her strawberry-blonde hair across her freckled face.
She brushed it out of her eyes as the driver barked, “Get in, lady,” in a heavily accented voice.
Ellen unbuttoned her coat in the overheated cab as it made its way out of the station and turned a corner. At the tail end of the Christmas rush, the area was thronged with shoppers. Ellen knew she looked like the out-of-towner she was, and wondered if the cabbie would try to take a circuitous route all the way to the Twin Towers. Then she would have to deal with the unpleasantness of telling him she knew better
“Mind if I smoke, lady?” the cabbie said, lighting up a cigarette before she could reply.
“Yes, I do,” she wanted to say, but decided to pick her battle instead, asking, “Are you heading for Seventh Avenue?”
“Of course, lady,” he said, assessing her through the rearview mirror. “You think I take you for a ride?” he added, chuckling at his own joke.
But his eyes seemed mirthless in the small rectangle of reflective glass.
“Alhamdulillah,” he mumbled in Arabic. By the grace of Allah.
“By the grace of any god, I’ll get to my destination,” Ellen mused inwardly while matching the man’s face, as reflected in the mirror, with his identification picture posted on the seatback in front of her. “Same man, all right,” she thought. “Samir Hasan,” his card read.
The traffic remained jammed, but Hasan demonstrated skill in crawling through it, sometimes squeezing so close to other cabs that Ellen was sure their sides would scrape or the mirrors jutting out would slam together. Looking at her watch, Ellen’s anxiety grew, but she had to admit, no driver could have improved upon Hasan’s effort. And while he wove among other vehicles, around double-parked delivery vans, and stopped on a dime to let a man push a rack of garments across the taxi’s path, he kept up an animated conversation in Arabic with another male voice on his two-way radio.
Animated, yes. But also very earnest.
Once, Ellen caught him casting his eyes back at her through the rear-view mirror with a kind of intense scrutiny. But then he shook his head as if laughing at himself.
The radio conversation might have been about anything unpleasant. Marital problems. A nasty cab dispatcher. A business deal gone bad.
Then it took on a new tone. Might they be discussing a woman in intimate detail?
