'Like cookbooks?' the boy added.
Sofia shook her head and sighed as though on stage. 'No,' she explained on Trudi's behalf. 'I'll bet you used to write for magazines and stuff, didn't you? Like Vogue or something.'
Trudi smiled, but she looked disheartened to Miguel.
'Yes, Sofia. I wrote restaurant reviews. For magazines and newspapers. Not much call for that sort of skill these days, though.'
'Ah,' Miguel said, suddenly understanding. 'I knew a man once who worked for McDonald's. I used to manage their herds in Mexico. So you would write stories about eating in such places?'
'Oh my God, Papa,' his daughter said as though he'd fatally embarrassed her.
Trudi Jessup, however, seemed to give the question a good deal of thought, and whatever she thought, it apparently amused her.
'Yes,' she said after a moment. 'That's what I would do. I'd eat in places… like McDonald's… and write a story about it. That's how I came to miss the Disappearance. I was in Sardinia, researching a story for Gourmet Traveller.'
'I know that magazine,' Sofia said. 'There were copies on Miss Julianne's boat, after the Wave.'
It wasn't exactly like a silence fell over them. The Wave had long ago receded, after all. But their good humor was subdued a little.
'I was in Edmonton,' Adam said. 'On a school trip.'
'Oh,' Trudi gasped unexpectedly. 'You poor boy.'
Miguel wondered what she meant, and she registered his puzzlement immediately.
'Don't you understand, Miguel?' she asked. 'Edmonton was cut in half by the Wave. The city was madness, they say. Pure killing madness.'
Adam nodded, and the candlelight gave him a haunted look.
'It was,' he said. 'It was like a curtain of bright sparkles high in the sky. I saw a pair of police cars and an ambulance cross the Wave and crash into buildings on the other side. Another cop ran past me, shouting for people to get back while she was talking on her radio. The Wave reached out and snatched her.'
Adam shook his head.
'I saw her eyes… She didn't even get a chance to scream.'
Adam shivered.
'This is why we drink,' said Miguel, taking his refilled glass from Trudi Jessup.
'Amen to that,' she said.
43
New York Yusuf Mohammed could think of no prouder moment than this as he stood in the shell of a ransacked department store to meet the warriors of his very first saif. The store, housed in a grand old building, had been thoroughly looted. Every window on the ground floor was broken, letting in the wind and rain and an acrid smell of burning chemicals from the battle that rumbled a few miles to the south. For the most part his men, all Africans like him, all of them converts to the religion of peace, were recent arrivals. Only Tony Katumu, a former Serengeti National Park ranger, had been in America for more than a month. The others-two Ugandans, one Kenyan, and a lighter-skinned Algerian-had all arrived via the Canadian wastes in the last two weeks. They were all seasoned fighters, but they could not keep the look of wonder from their eyes whenever they moved through the city streets. Even as a tomb, New York had the power to overwhelm a newcomer. Yusuf remembered his own sense of insignificance the first time he had glimpsed Manhattan's skyline from a distance. He'd felt as though he was trespassing in a burial ground for ancient gods. A blasphemous thought, of course, that he flinched away from the very moment he'd had it.
His men-he was still getting used to that characterization, his men-checked their kits one final time before heading out. Around them, in the cavernous ruins of the department store's ground floor, the warriors of the other saif, all of them newly arrived via the overland route from the north as well, were busy with final checks and preparations. They did not look much like an army. No two men were dressed alike, and although most were armed with AK-47s, the rest of their equipment was a grab bag of scavenged body armor, webbing, helmets, packs, and a jumbled bazaar of civilian clothing, bits and pieces of military camouflage, and whatever trinkets each man thought useful or necessary to have. Some carried extra water; some had pockets bulging with energy bars. The men of Yusuf's saif traveled light, at his insistence: their personal weapons and extra ammunition, a fighting knife, two canteens of water and a dozen water purification pills, a map, a small first-aid kit. As the commander of a saif, Yusuf was supposed to have the option of night vision goggles, but there were not nearly enough to go around, and he was comfortable fighting in the dark at any rate. Most of the raids he had carried out as a member of the Lord's Resistance Army had taken place after dark. He also worried about being blinded by bright flashes while he was wearing them.
'Tony,' he said, 'I am told you are familiar with the part of the city where we are to fight.'
The former park ranger nodded as he adjusted the sling of his assault rifle.
'When I first arrived in New York, I was sent down there with four men from Dar es Salaam,' he said. 'They were bandits, but their clan had negotiated passage and salvage rights in our part of the city in return for providing fighters. I watched over them while they picked over a couple of blocks. But I made my own notes and maps as we had been taught. I know it well.'
'Then you shall lead us down there,' said Yusuf, 'once we find out exactly where they need us most.'
The Algerian, a wiry brown-skinned fisherman by the name of Selim whose livelihood had been ruined by the Israelis' nuclear contamination of the Mediterranean, grinned wickedly. 'They want us to go to hell,' he said. 'It's just down that way.'
He jerked his thumb as if to point somewhere off to the south.
The other men all chuckled or grinned. It was nervous laughter. The sounds of battle reached them as a dull volcanic roar rolling up out of the gray distance. Even when the rain fell heavily enough to make conversation difficult, it was still not so loud as to drown out the thunder of the Americans' big bombing raids and the constant crash of their artillery. Yusuf had learned since becoming the commander of his own saif that the island he had been able to see from his dugout on Ellis was the location from which most of the American shelling originated. Governors Island it was called, and the governor of New York, an infidel known as Schimmel, was actually based there, as was the regiment of militia he controlled. They were fighting alongside the army in Manhattan now, and Yusuf had been told that they were not nearly as formidable an opponent as the regular American soldiers he would meet. Indeed, Sheikh Ozal's lieutenants, who had sat him down and all but overwhelmed him with information and details about the battle as soon as he was elevated to the level of commander, had insisted that whenever he found himself faced by a militia unit, he should press forward at all costs, for if the American line was to break anywhere, it would be there. To that end Yusuf had driven his small band of men to distraction, making them memorize the differences in uniforms and equipment between regular U.S. Army units and Governor Schimmel's militia, who were very helpfully dressed in gray camouflage, not green and brown.
'While we wait, we should look at those photographs of the American soldiers again,' Yusuf said, drawing a chorus of groans and pleas from his men.
'Not again,' said Selim. 'Please, not again.'
As they burned off nervous energy waiting for their orders to head out to the front line, a strange quiet descended. Yusuf turned around and found that Ahmet Ozal and, even more surprisingly, the emir himself had appeared at the rear of the store. All discipline evaporated as fifty or sixty fighters pressed forward to get closer to their leaders. As sworn members of the Fedayeen Ozal, their first loyalty was to their Turkish lord, but the emir was a legendary figure, almost mythical, and his very rare appearances were always eagerly discussed and fondly remembered by the men afterward. The emir never spoke harshly to anyone. He had a knack of remembering a man's name and the smallest, least important details of his life, if he had met him once before. He was also generous to a fault, often sending out small gifts and tokens of appreciation to the men for their efforts even when his duties precluded him from walking among them. It was rumored that he took no plunder from the city, spending any and all tribute, which was rightfully his, to support the families of his fighters instead. The story of how he had
