The Traveller by John Katzenbach

reformists. A true conservative Moslem wouldn’t touch a drop. Probably think the ayatollah himself would come after him. Now we’re not talking about a Saudi, here, or a North African Moslem. But a real eye-rolling hostage-taking Shiite? No chance, Does that answer your question, detective?’ Detective Barren was silent.
    ‘Detective?’
    ‘Yes. Sorry. Just thinking. Thank you, it does.’ | Trace alcohol, she thought.
    She felt dizzy.
    She hung up the telephone and stared at the words before her. Trace alcohol.
    Oh, God, she thought.
    She saw the head as if in slow motion, shaking back and forth. insistent.
    She raced to the bedroom and rifled through the papers
    until she came to an inventory of everything at Sadegh Rhotzbadegh’s house, no liquor.
    But he was at the bar, she thought. They saw him there.
    But did they see him drink?
    Oh, God, she thought again.
    She got to her feet and walked into the bathroom. For a moment she stared at herself in the mirror. She saw her own eyes open in fear and horror. Then she was overcome by nausea, bent over the toilet and became violently ill. She wiped herself clean and looked back in the mirror.
    ‘Oh, God,’ she said to her reflection. ‘He’s still out there. I think he’s still out there. Maybe, maybe, maybe, oh, God, maybe. Oh, Susan, oh, my God, I’m sorry, but he still may be out there. Oh, Susan, I’m so goddamn sorry. Oh, Susan.’
    A sob filled her throat. It burst from her lips like an explosion.
    ‘Oh, Susan, Susan, Susan,’ she said.
    And then, for the first time since the first phone call so many months earlier, she gave in to her sorrow, capitulating to all the resonances of her heart that she’d suppressed so successfully and was suddenly, completely, utterly taken over by tears.
    2 An English Lit major
    The glare off the highway filled the windshield, blinding him for a single second, and he pictured the way he’d stared across the table at his brother as his brother had said, ‘You know, I wish we’d been closer, growing up …’
    He remembered his reply, quick, flip, but accurate: ‘Oh, we’re closer than you think. Much closer.’ Douglas Jeffers drove south thinking of the wan light of the hospital cafeteria that had caught his brother’s face and made it lose its edge. The light, he thought, I always reemember the light. He pushed down on the accelerator and watched as the scrub pines and bushes on the side of the highway seemed to pick up speed, rushing toward him. America in a blur, he thought.
    He spoke out loud to himself: ‘Ninety-five. Ninety-five on
    Ninety-five,’ and he goosed the accelerator again. He felt the
    surge of the car and he watched with some delight as the
    scenery fled past beyond the windows. He had the odd
    sensation that he was standing still and that the world was
    careening past him. He gripped the wheel tightly as the car
    shuddered, swooping past a tandem-semi-trailer truck,
    caught for an instant in the conflicting velocities of the two
    vehicles. He felt the wheel beneath his fingers twitch, as
    if registering a mild complaint or warning. But the engine
    seemed to him to be roaring in excitement, basso profundo,
    as it swept up the miles. He looked down at the speedometer
    and when the needle touched ninety-five, he abruptly took
    his foot off the gas until the car had slowed to a modest sixty—
    five miles per hour. He fiddled for a moment with the radio
    dial until he got a clear signal out of Florence, Georgia,
    country and western twangy-thump, thump. The deejay was drawling a request, a tune ‘for all those striking school bus drivers in Florence, listening out on the picket line …’ And he cued up Johnny Paycheck singing,’ … now you can take this job and shove it, I ain’t working here no more …’
    Jeffers joined in the refrain and thought about the meeting two days earlier with his brother.
    He waited patiently at a small table in a corner of the hospital cafeteria until Marty finished