Earlier that week the shorter of the two men shot the ambassador in the head and left him bleeding on the sidewalk while the taller man pushed the ambassador’s wife into the back seat of a dusty gray car. Both these men wore black masks and smelled of sweat and tobacco. The shorter man drove the car and the taller man sat beside the woman in the back seat. She was not crying but her fingers were trembling. Courage surprises us, the ambassador once told his wife. He said, It’s like that stray cat you’re always feeding. It comes to you when it’s ready. The taller man had covered the woman’s head with a dark hood that scratched her face and reeked of sour milk. This happened a block from the Hotel Tunisia under a bright North African sun.
Barker tossed beers to Henry and Leon and opened a can for himself. Barker said, Did you watch the news last night? Henry said, You mean Billy MacCaferty? Leon popped his beer and took a sip. He said, God, I loved the hell out of that girl. Barker nodded and said, We all loved beautiful Billy. Then Henry lifted his beer and said, To our poor Billy.
The late morning sun heated their shoulders, the backs of their necks. The water was gold and brilliant from the light. Leon had an eleven foot flat bottom skiff. The boat was painted dark green with a varnished gray interior. An eight horsepower trolling motor got them around the Newport News reservoir without scaring the fish. Sunlight reflected off the varnish of the boat, bringing a glare to everything.
I dated Billy during our junior year, Henry said. He reeled in his line an inch or two to keep it taut. Henry was small boned, delicate. He had thinning blond hair and nervous fingers. Henry said, That was too long ago, thirty years easy. I knew that face, though. I saw her on the TV and knew that face. The girl hadn’t changed in thirty years. I said to my wife, You know who that is, don’t you? That’s our Billy MacCaferty. In trouble again, I said.
We all dated her, Barker said. Even Leon here. Imagine our Leon dating Billy MacCaferty. Leon said he could imagine it just fine. Barker ignored him and tapped the bowel of his pipe against the side of the boat. Barker had a big black handlebar mustache and a smooth pink head. His arms and legs were thick and muscular with puffed veins beneath the surface of sun burnt skin. Barker said, I don’t want her dying over there. The whole decapitation thing is too barbaric to contemplate. Civilized people don’t need that grief, nobody does.
I don’t know why you can’t imagine me and Billy, said Leon. He was slim and tall and had a graying brown beard and tortoise shell glasses. I was more involved with her than either of you, Leon said. And not just high school. I dated Billy the entire year we worked at Langley. Leon never discussed his job. Barker and Henry taught physics at William and Mary and knew Leon worked at Langley but didn’t know what he did for a living. Leon and Billy were both data analysts in counterproliferation. Their job was to find out who had the bomb and who was developing the bomb and what countries were thinking about developing the bomb. They also collected data on how powerful that bomb was and who intended to do what with it. The Langley people wanted to know if these countries could be persuaded to stop. Then Leon took a sip of beer and said, You know I went to bed with her.
We all went to bed with her, Barker said.
The new widow was having difficulty breathing. The hood still smelled of sour milk and the material was prickly and dense. She had to breathe through her mouth to get air and avoid the stench.
Strong hands gripped her upper arms. These were the two men who had done the shooting and kidnapping and had stood on either side of her during the video. They were moving her again. Yesterday there were three men, the two kidnappers and the man who was filming them. The two men had black silk Thobs and black ski masks and each man cradled a Russian AK47 across his right arm. The widow held up a copy of Essahafa, a Tunisian newspaper, for the man filming them to record the date. Then she had read a prepared statement. She tried to stop the tremor in her hands and in her voice but had no luck. The statement said her husband had been executed for crimes against the faithful by the group Heaven’s Fire. Her husband was J.M. Williams, the ambassador to Tunisia. The statement said that the U.S. had five days to deliver two million gold. If the gold wasn’t there by midnight of the fifth day, Heaven’s Fire would behead her. The widow had difficulty reading the word behead. Her throat constricted. Tears appeared from nowhere and her eyes became hot and swollen. One of the two men nudged her back with his knee and she finally said the word.
Behead.
Now they were moving her. They had covered her head with the hood again, that scratchy, smelly hood. The widow hadn’t bathed or changed her clothes in days. Three, four, she didn’t know. She wore the same white linen pants, the same white linen jacket. Her husband’s blood had dried to a cakey brown on the sleeve and lapel. Blood was on her favorite white cotton blouse, too, the one with the pale blue monogram on the right cuff. B.M.W. Like the car, she always said.
The widow felt the sun through the linen. They were hurrying down stone steps. The hands that gripped her upper arms were pulling her along. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept. Sand was entering her tan leather sandals through the woven
slits and rubbing against her toes and the bottoms of her feet. Run with us or I will kill you now, the man on her left said. He whispered it close to her ear. His fist punched into her lower back, the pain snatching her breath.