Chapter 64 — Interview

The appeal unit occupied a nineteenth-century building with marble stairs, high ceilings, and the spiritual atmosphere of a printer tray.

Adaeze paused in the lobby and looked up at the molding.

"I need Europe to stop being beautiful about the wrong things."

Noor checked the floor map.

"Counterpoint: this is hideous in several morally important ways."

That helped.

Mariam did not speak as they waited for her number to be called. Nabil sat beside her with both hands locked between his knees. Eva stood. She had told them she could not sit in waiting rooms like this because ten years of dispatch work had trained her body to believe standing was the only morally serious posture under pressure.

Elias watched the people around them. An old couple with translated land records. A boy in school uniform holding a passport too tightly. A woman in a denim jacket repeating her case number under her breath as if the rhythm alone might keep her from being misplaced.

On the screen, Mariam's number changed from amber to green.

Room 14.

The case officer was a man in his thirties with tired eyes, good shoes, and a face one catastrophe short of conscience.

"Tobias Wenger," he said, indicating chairs. "We are recording for accuracy."

Noor sat still enough not to hiss.

Accuracy, in rooms like this, had a habit of arriving with a knife.

Tobias was not cruel. That made him harder to fight.

He offered water. Waited for interpretation. Explained procedure in a tone so carefully neutral it had probably taken years to perfect.

"This is a supplemental interview on route consistency and transfer eligibility," he said. "We need to clarify the night between Subotica and the Hungarian crossing."

Mariam's hand moved once toward Nabil's knee and stopped short of touching it.

Eva translated. Not softer. Not harsher. Clean.

Tobias opened the file.

"In statement two, your husband is last seen before midnight. In statement four, after first prayer. In statement six, you say you do not know whether he returned before dawn because your son was feverish. Which is correct?"

Mariam looked at the table.

"All of them."

Eva translated that too.

Tobias exhaled through his nose. Not annoyance. Administrative grief.

"Mrs. Haddad, I do not doubt that the night was difficult. I need to know what happened."

Mariam looked up then.

"It happened while my son was burning with fever and my husband was becoming a smaller answer each hour."

Something in Tobias's face shifted. Not enough. Enough to register impact.

He turned to Nabil.

"Can you tell me when your father left the hall?"

The boy stared at the water glass on the table.

"There was a thermos."

Tobias blinked.

"I am asking about time."

"Yellow," Nabil said. "By the kitchen door."

Eva translated without apology.

The officer's pen paused.

"Was it before or after the buses?"

Nabil's wrist went colder in the fluorescent light.

"Which buses?"

"The transfer buses."

"The ones at dawn or the ones after?"

Tobias sat back.

"There were not two buses in your earlier account."

Noor spoke before Elias could stop her.

"Because your earlier account kept forcing a broken night through a single slot."

Tobias looked at her.

"And you are?"

"Annoyed."

Eva shut her eyes briefly. Adaeze bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

Elias leaned forward.

"She means that the sequence may be damaged without being false."

The officer folded his hands.

"I am not opposed to complexity, Mr. Elias. I am opposed to unverifiable alteration."

Mariam said something in Arabic too low for Noor to catch.

Eva translated after a beat.

"She says the night was never altered. It was survived." The line hit procedure and fell.

Tobias turned another page.

"At present I have contradictory chronology, an unverified missing spouse event, and fingerprint records that may trigger a return transfer." He kept his voice almost gentle. "If there is corroboration, now is the time."

Noor thought of Magda's customs house, of copied kitchen notebooks and orchard pits and graves larger than ledgers. This room was smaller than all of that and knew it less.

"We have route objects," she said.

"Objects are not sequence."

"They're what sequence leaves behind."

"That may be so. It is not enough."

By the time the interview ended they had achieved exactly one mercy: Tobias had agreed to delay recommendation until the next morning if substantive corroboration appeared before midnight.

That was not nothing.

Outside, on the marble stair, Mariam leaned one shoulder against the wall and looked like a woman being held upright by masonry and spite.

"He wants the night to become a line," she said.

Eva nodded once.

"Yes."

"Can it?"

Noor answered first.

"Not honestly."

Micah had said almost nothing in the building. Now he looked toward the far service corridor where a locked freight lift and a rusted luggage sign pointed deeper under the station.

"Then we need a room that doesn't."

Father Matthias, when they returned and told him what had happened, listened without interruption, took off his glasses, and looked at Micah.

"You were asking about the baggage hall," he said.

Micah nodded.

"Yes."

The priest reached into his pocket and set a ring of keys on the table.

"Good," he said. "Because the church has been storing folding chairs where people ought to be telling the truth."