Dutch Treat.

"I REMEMBER YOU," said a man in the flower shop at Grand Central as he was about to hand Martin his purchase, a bouquet of red tulips. Martin was reaching for the tulips but the man withdrew them and Martin's right hand clasped the air where the tulips had just been.

"What's that about? I paid."

"You aren't going to get your flowers unless you remember me."

Martin looked at him--bony face, narrowly set small green eyes, slightly crisscrossed. "Sorry, I don't recognize you. I've seen your type of face in the Balkans, though."

"In Srebrenica."

"True. Still, I don't remember your face."

"Maybe you wouldn't. I was a teenager then."

"Teenager?" To Martin, the man looked well over thirty--he had silvery lines in his black hair, or rather, black lines in his white hair.

"I know what's confusing you. Some of us are aging faster than others."

This encounter evoked memories for Martin, who used to work as a sergeant for the United Nations in the safe haven of Srebrenica. Even as a child he had admired the UN, and when he went to the States with his father, a banker, they visited the UN building. All that glass reflecting the gold of the setting sun struck him as splendid, even more so than the World Trade Center's apparent silverworks. When the Dutch unit was assembled for Bosnia under the auspices of the UN, he volunteered. There was not much fighting going on. Most of the massacres had already happened, most of the houses were already burned down. Well, not completely, since they were built of bricks and cement--so sometimes, you'd have a house that looked only slightly charred collapse, right in front of you, because the wood beams had burned out. The houses were more damaged than they looked, and the people, too, were more damaged than they looked. They conducted their business nearly normally, buying overpriced apples in the marketplace, but suddenly, they'd collapse--heart attack or stroke.

The UN deployed its units throughout the town. The units were lightly armed, and Martin knew that they couldn't withstand any serious attack, and that the whole thing was a show. And as he walked, he felt like an actor, unconvinced but trying to appear convincing, strutting, aware of his straight posture, muscular soccer legs, curly blond hair, and firm jaw supporting a complete set of teeth, which he kept grinding.

The Dutch were given a peculiar task: to disarm the local Muslims. They promised protection in exchange for weapons. The Muslims brought out hundreds of rifles and pistols. Next, the Dutch went house to house, searching basements and cajoling people to bring out their guns. The disarmament accomplished, the Dutch officers got together with the Serbian officers. General Mladic drank slivovitz and toasted "democracy." He glowed. Cleanly shaven and well fed, he seemed positively oily.

"Amsterdam, that's a fine city," he said to Martin. "Now that you have Russian and Bosnian prostitutes it's even better. How come you can't find a decent Dutch whore anymore in Amsterdam?"

"They all work in the provinces. You'll find them in Eindhoven or Groningen."

"You should thank us for improving your entertainment industry," Mladic said. "Come, boys, drink! Show me you aren't potheads."

Then Mladic wanted to have a weight-lifting contest. Some of his officers were stronger than he, but they didn't dare lift more than he did. He shouted, "Sissy motherfucker, what do you have all those muscles for, all that bulk? You probably can't get it up in bed either, can you?"

"Don't worry about that, General. When do we get to go to the little bordello?"

"See what the Dutch influence is? You boys have corrupted our chaste nation."

The officers walked over to the trailer-style barracks. Some girls had black circles under their eyes, and it was hard to figure out whether these came from physical abuse or failing kidneys. Martin turned to leave. The general grabbed him by the arm. "Where are you going, my friend?"

"This is too sordid and depressing."

"We'll get you virgins if you like."

"Let go. You have no jurisdiction over me."

"I'll show you your jurisdiction tomorrow," the general said, releasing his grip on Martin's biceps and pinching his cheek.

Early in the morning, artillery shelled the town and the Serb soldiers walked into the center. Martin's unit stayed in the basement of the old gymnasium during the shelling, and afterward, they walked out into the smoky streets. The captain shook hands with a Serbian officer.

"People, don't worry," came an announcement over the loudspeaker. "We are looking for a few terrorists; the rest of you are perfectly safe. Just come out, nothing will happen to you. You have a choice, either you can stay here--as you know, this town is very well protected by the Dutch peacekeepers--or move to other towns--Tuzla, Amsterdam, wherever you like."

"Terrorists?" Martin asked a Serbian officer. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't pretend to be naive. Naser Oric and his gang, they've massacred thousands of Serb peasants."

Several dozen Serbian soldiers, dressed as UN peacekeepers, went around persuading men to come with them to a protected zone.

Martin overheard General Krstic say that almost all the men looked like Oric, and that the boys were probably Oric's children. He instructed his men to make sure they got the terrorist and his accomplices; they had to be wiped out.

The Dutch soldiers sat impotently, drinking and playing cards and pretending not to hear the shrieks that came from the stadium. Martin wondered where the famous British Rapid Reaction Forces were.

THE FOLLOWING DAY, the whole world knew about the Srebrenica massacre. The Dutch peacekeepers were disbanded and shipped back to Holland in disgrace. The shame became a national shame, and eventually, the Dutch government had to resign over the scandal of supplying sham peacekeepers as accomplices to genocide. Martin quit his nascent military career and began to study religion; he was spending the year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Union Theological Seminary. Now, all the emotional baggage from his time in Bosnia hit him full force in the presence of the exhausted looking man.

"Let's have a drink when you're done with work."

"A Dutch treat?" the Bosnian asked.

"No, not in that sense. I'll treat."

"So, it's a Dutch treat." The way he pronounced it, it sounded like a Dutch threat. The man extended his hand. "My name is Esad."

They shook hands; Esad's was limp, cool, and sweaty, and as Martin squeezed and pumped it in a hearty rhythm, instead of becoming firmer, it grew limper, doughy.

They went across the street to a huge bar, Central Cafe, at Pershing Square, under the Park Avenue Bridge into Grand Central, and sat down. Esad's eyes grew shiny and more crossed. He cleared his throat. "You know what fear smells like?"

"No, what?"

"Not like tulips."

"Well, I have my ideas, but tell me yours."

"Like piss. When you walk into a public men's room, you always feel uneasy because of that smell. New York smells to me like fear. Wherever I turn, there's that smell. I learned to read that smell at the Srebrenica soccer stadium. I fell in the mud, and as I tried to get up, somebody fell over me. Shots sounded soft and muffled because I heard them through the bodies piled over me. Urine and blood poured. I couldn't breathe with all the weight on top of me and I passed out. Later, I woke up and crawled away, soaked with blood, shit, and urine. That's an experience I can't describe. You had to be there. Oh, I forgot, you were there. You were warm, drinking your Ballantines and enjoying the newest crop of Bosnian jokes. Tell me, what jokes were you retelling that evening to kill time?"

"I forgot them all that night."

After three Grolsches, Martin said, "I'm so glad to have met you. Where do you live?"

"In Astoria."

"How can you afford rent when you sell flowers? That can't bring in much."

"It's not all I do, but I still can't pay this month's rent, or last month's rent. They'll evict me soon. Worse things could happen, but why should I care?"

Martin banged the table. "I've just had an idea. Can I give you ten thousand dollars, to help you with rent and dental work?"

"You don't like my teeth? They are yellow from too much tobacco, but there's not a single cavity in them. Anyway, don't mention money."

"It would make me feel better."

"You probably feel pretty good anyway."

"It's the least I can do in the way of apology."

"And to your mind that would be that--ten thousand and you'd feel better."

"That's all I can afford. What would you like me to do?"

"I don't think you can do anything. Can you resurrect people?"

"I wish I could. I study resurrection."

"What's there to study? Can you kill people?"

"No."

"Even better than resurrection would be if you could find Mladic and kill him."

"If you--and thousands of you--can't do it, how could I?"

"You partied with him. You guys are on good terms."

"He'll probably end up in Den Haag." Martin pronounced The Hague in the native, guttural way.

"Khaggkh," echoed Esad, clearing his throat. He stuck out his tongue and spat. Green spittle flew like a bullet and hit the dark varnished floor.

Martin looked around, afraid that someone might have seen the spitting. The waitress, who looked like a ballerina with her bobbed hair, promptly walked toward them. She slid over the spittle but easily regained her balance. "Is everything all right, sir?" she asked Martin. "Would you like another?"

"Maybe in five minutes."

"May I touch your hair?" she said. "I always wanted to have such curly hair."

Martin blushed while she petted him as though he were a domesticated animal, a sheep. His scalp tingled pleasantly.

"Khaggkh won't do any good." Esad cleared his throat. "He'll be nicely fed, get the best doctors to take care of his heart and kidneys, and maybe he'll get thirty years of good retirement. That International War Crimes Tribunal, why is it in Holland? Instead of handing over the mass murderers to us, you air them on TV. And you know what? Even your beer is overrated. The Belgians make much better beer."

Martin watched the waitress at the dark cherry bar as she tilted her hips and exposed her bumpy knees.

"The whole world knows that you are all stingy."

Martin pulled his checkbook from his black blazer pocket. "I'll write you a check."

"I'm not challenging you. Anyway, I don't have a bank account."

"With this, you could open one. How can you live without a bank account?"

"I wouldn't know how to get a bank account."

"Let's go to the bank and we'll open one."

"That takes all sorts of papers."

"Just a few."

"I have none on me. I don't believe in papers. I don't want to be in this government's records. I don't want to be tracked by any government."

"How can you avoid that? You have a passport, and when you got your refugee status, as you must have after '95, you registered in many places."

"I'm not a refuse."

"Refugee."

"Same thing. I'm not an exile, I'm not a citizen. I'm nothing. Are you serious about giving me all that money? I'd do you a favor if I took your money, is that it?" Esad laughed. His body shook, and with it, the table. The knives and forks rattled and the fresh pints of Grolsch foamed up higher.

"What a way to think!" Esad said. "You don't owe me anything. You are nothing, like me; how could you owe me anything? You are sure you won't regret this?"

"Why would I?"

"You never know. Can you give it to me in cash?"

"The banks are closed now. It's just after four. I could come back tomorrow and give you the cash."

"I'm not going to be here tomorrow. And I don't want to see you again."

"Why? I thought we were becomong friends." Martin sounded hurt.

"Maybe we are. I won't ever see most of my friends again, so you'd fit right in."

Martin didn't know what to make of the situation. "Tell you what. We can go to the bank and I'll give you five hundred in cash. That's the max I can draw from Citibank. That will hold you until you can cash the check." Martin hastily tore a blank check from his checkbook, inscribed it for $10,000, and slid it across the table. The payee line remained blank.

The waitress came back with the bill, a smile on her face. Her name tag said "Katarina."

"Katarina?" said Martin. "That sounds foreign."

"Yes, Katarina Varga. It's Hungarian."

Esad rose, fingering the check. Martin left a ten dollar tip on the table and they walked out.

MARTIN AND ESAD WALKED DOWN THE BLOCK to a glassed-in Citibank atm lobby. The cash popped out from the mouth of the automaton with a hiss and a click, in fresh twenty-dollar bills that still smelled of printing dye. Martin enjoyed the smell of print money as much as the smell of tulips. Esad winked, took the bills, and gently slid them into his thin pigskin wallet. The wallet was shiny from wear, and Martin imagined that it displayed the shape of Esad's buttock. There were subtle creases where it hugged the round curve of his bone.

"Would you like to see my pictures?" Esad asked.

"Sure," said Martin.

Esad showed several men with thin mustaches and small eyes. "My father. Dead, you know. Uncle, dead, of known causes. Older brother, same thing."

"How about your mother? Sisters?"

"They're alive."

"You don't carry their pictures?"

"No, I don't believe in pictures of the living. I carry only the male line, all dead. My private ghosts. They give me strength."

"Strength for what?"

"To dream. To have visions."

"Visions of what?"

Esad's eyes shone with accumulating tears, which didn't spill over his lower lid but stayed there, growing brilliant in the glare of the sun reflected from the Grace Building across Bryant Park. In the building's shadow, low light pervaded the leaves of the park's large sycamores, their gray and white bark luxuriating, dignified in the glow. The tulip heads in Martin's bouquet bent their heads contritely toward Esad, as though worshipping his grief, or saying good-bye to him, vermilion in their beautiful shame, conducting the pulse and emotion coursing through Martin's trembling fingers as he held the bouquet.

"Thank you, my friend," said Esad. He turned away toward the B, D, and F line subway entrance alongside the New York Public Library, next to the ornate little restroom from which smells of male imprecision wafted.

"Wait!" Martin shouted. "Give me your phone number or e-mail so we can stay in touch."

"My phone is disconnected. I can't keep a phone--I talk too much. Couldn't keep up with the bills."

"Maybe now you could?"

"Oh, I have other expenses and bad habits. Plus, don't you think all the phones are bugged?"

"Let's meet at the Starbucks on the corner of Sixth and Forty-Second, the day after tomorrow, at four. I'd like to talk more."

"I don't see why. OK, if you wish."

Esad walked into the subway entrance.

Martin watched him; his walk and his back were stiff, as though his spine had been broken, and his thick silvery hair shone. Even after Esad had vanished down the stairs into the dark, Martin saw that silver light lingering in the entrance. He blinked, but it was still there.

Martin walked to Eighth Avenue, to the A line. A man in rags slept upside down on the stairs. Huge rats were leaping over the tracks. So, that's New Amsterdam? Just to think of it, all of this used to be Dutch. What happened to our influence? thought Martin. We owned this place, and where are we now? Who listens to us? We try to listen to everybody, learn all these languages, and what good does it do?

On the train, he didn't know what to do with the tulips. He let them lie on the orange seat next to him, but there they looked vulnerable, so he picked them up again and fidgeted as the hard plastic of the seat shut off his circulation, sending his left leg into tingling sleep.

He entered his apartment on the second floor above a dry cleaner's shop, on 207th Street. There was a chemical smell, and he couldn't analyze it with his nostrils--formaldehyde? Acetone? He was sure the fumes were coming from the shop, through the creaking floor. If mice could crawl through spacing in the floor, then fumes surely would.

He placed the tulips into a blue vase and poured tap water into a pot. He waited for the chlorine haze in the water to clear, and then filled the vase. The tulips perked up and stood straight, like little kings.

TWO DAYS LATER, while waiting for Esad, Martin drank two cappuccinos, enjoying the steam and foam. Esad didn't show up. Martin went to the entrance of Grand Central, but found there were no flowers being sold there. No Esad. Never mind, maybe tomorrow. He went to the bar and looked around for Katarina--maybe she'd be free for a drink?--but she wasn't there.

He checked his bank balance to see whether Esad had cashed the check. For no reason at all, he looked up at the surveillance camera in the high right corner of the room, with its red light blinking, recording, and it made him self-conscious. Is there someone watching me right now? His account balance was still over twelve thousand. Apparently, Esad hadn't cashed the check. Maybe two days wasn't enough time to cash such a large check.

A week later, the check still hadn't gone through.

MARTIN'S TULIPS WERE WANING. Well, how long can one live on water alone? They lived anyway, like prisoners of Martin's nostalgia. Their necks drooped more than ever, as though the flowers were looking for something spilled and lost. Maybe they smelled the fumes from the ground floor as well, from the gas chamber which was used to keep people looking clean and sharp and starched.

The noxious chemical smell kept Martin awake and burned his sinuses.

In the morning, he staggered down to the shop under the pretext of having his blazer cleaned. The man behind the counter was small and thin and gray, his cheeks drawn. No doubt, that's what happens when you are exposed to chemicals for a long time, thought Martin.

"By the way," Martin said, "What chemical process are you using here? I live right above you and the fumes from here are terrible."

"What fumes? I can't smell anything."

"You wouldn't. You live with them."

"Can you smell anything here?"

"Your machines are in the back."

"I have no machines. We have all our stuff dry cleaned in our twin store, two blocks down on Broadway."

"But all the chemicals stay in the clothes and they rise straight into my apartment."

"You are imagining things, my friend. Come back here and sniff if you want to."

Martin did, and he had to admit that there was not much chemical smell there.

LATER THAT DAY he saw Esad coming out of an electronics store on the Avenue of the Americas. There was a glow around him, as though he were plugged into an electronic device. Martin followed him in the street, and when Esad turned around, Martin waved, but Esad apparently didn't see him, or if he did, he pretended not to. He walked so fast that Martin thought of running to catch up, but it was a hot and humid summer day. Down the avenue, the hot air danced, refracting images and leaving illusory oil puddles on the pavement, which dissolved and evaporated when Martin approached them. Esad went into the subway, and Martin now ran, just managing to squeeze through the closing doors of the Q train. He wanted to go to the other coach but the train door was locked. At the next stop, Martin went to the coach where Esad had been but couldn't spot him there. Did Esad change coaches, too? At every stop, Martin stepped out the door to look down the platform, to see whether Esad would step out, but he didn't see him. Martin stepped off at the last stop in Astoria but saw no Esad on the platform. He was terribly thirsty, sweating and dizzy. Maybe there was no Esad? Maybe there was never an Esad, and he had imagined this whole thing all the way along. That would explain why the check never got cashed. Maybe he never wrote it.

Am I losing my mind? This damned city, with all its chemical smells and noises and light. Oh, no, it can't be; nothing that convincing and vivid would have happened as a figment of my imagination. He still felt the limpid handshake in his fist, all too real, fleshly.

Several days in a row, Martin took the Q train, hoping to run into Esad. He was mad at himself for having been so lackadaisical the day he saw Esad, for not running after him. It would have been nice to talk to Esad, to get an update, and to figure out what other ways he could help. As long as Esad didn't cash his check, Martin would be in suspense, like families of the dead whose corpses are missing and can't be buried. Now he understood the need for corporeal evidence in finding closure. If he ever saw Esad again, he'd have to give him a hug, squeeze him, make sure he was all there, not just a hallucination of an overproductive conscience.

ALMOST EVERY NIGHT, Martin had dreams about Esad. In one, they were playing soccer, using a severed head with a thin mustache as a ball. Esad kicked it and Martin flew to catch it, but he couldn't quite reach it and it slid over the tips of his fingers into the net. Martin woke from that nightmare with a terrible headache. The fumes were on again in his apartment. He decided to sniff from one corner to the other on all fours, to see where the smell was coming from. It was most intense below the artificial Persian rug in the center of the room. Martin moved the rug to better locate the leaking cracks, but now the smell diminished. He concluded that the smell must be coming from the carpet itself, so he folded it and put it in the closet. Now the noxious smell no longer permeated the apartment. How simple! He was proud of himself for eliminating the problem and changed the sheets, enjoying their coolness.

He fell asleep and dreamed that he and Esad were wrestling naked. When Martin gripped him, Esad slipped away. And when Esad gripped Martin by the neck, his oily hands couldn't hold on, and Martin slipped out of his grip. Martin gripped him again, and found that instead of trying to knock each other to the ground, they held each other's penises firmly. Esad's hand was warm and rough; Martin could feel the calluses--some of them were jagged and prickly, like glass. Maybe they were glass. Martin woke up. He was surprised that it was only a dream, and noticed that he had a hard-on. He was disappointed that it was a dream--he would have loved to see Esad again, but probably not like that. He didn't think he had any homosexual impulses.

In the morning, a little embarrassed, he didn't go out to find Esad. He pondered whether he was actually attracted to Esad. Or was it all just historical, abstract, ethical, an attraction of his conscience to the wronged party? What if history and theology were just a smoke screen?

He looked up Katarina in the phone book and called her. He got an erection while dialing. He wondered why he was doing it now and not before. Was he trying to prove something after the dream? "Who is this?" the voice in the phone demanded.

"Martin, the guy with the curly hair from the bar. You petted it. Remember?"

"I do, but how did you get my phone number?"

"It's in the phone book."

"That's terrible. It shouldn't be. Please don't call again." The dial tone ensued, mournful, like a ship already far away from its harbor.

A month later, the check went through. Esad Hajiabdic, the name on the cancelled check said. There was no phone number on the cancellation record, but there was an address, on Queens Boulevard. Martin went to the address and rang the bell, but there was no answer. He waited for hours outside the house, all in vain.

TWO MONTHS AFTER HE SAW ESAD outside the electronics shop, the planes flew into the World Trade Center.

Martin took a bus and walked to see the destructive miracle. Besides feeling horror, he adored the sight of all the smoke, as though he were witnessing the epiphany of an angry God. His throat went dry from excitement, or perhaps from the association of ideas, of smoke and thirst. He went to a deli to buy some orange juice, and there, he watched on TV as the second tower crumbled down. Two Arabic-looking men who ran the shop didn't want to charge him for the juice. "That's on us," one of them said. "How would a dollar make any difference on a day like this?" They smiled, their eyes glowing.

Martin smiled, too, as he watched the tower go down, and when he saw how happy the men were, he laughed for a few seconds, but once he left the shop, he felt queasy. The dark cloud was spreading. Men and women with ash on their hair and clothes walked past him, their eyes large with fear. They looked like pilgrims on Ash Wednesday. Seeing their fear, Martin grew terrified, too.

And when he saw the running electronic sign at Times Square post a figure, maybe 10,000 dead, he felt no Schadenfreude, only sorrow. And he remembered that he had felt Schadenfreude, and wondered about what he actually wanted, what demons were inside him. Maybe he wouldn't have been so desperate for forgiveness from Esad if he hadn't imagined that there was evil in him.

He had to wait for a few hours before the subway resumed operation. He didn't know whether another plane would crash at Times Square, or whether there would be a nuclear bomb exploding somewhere. In the subway, he looked around at the bags, and there were many, maybe from Penn Central and Port Authority. What if a bomb went off? He was surprised--and obliquely almost let down--that no bombs went off.

The following day he went to Queens again, rang the bell, but got no answer. On the way back, Martin again wondered about all the bags in the train. How come they go off in Jerusalem and Istanbul and many other cities and not in New York? Isn't it merely a matter of time?

A huge man stood in front of him on the A train. He kept looking glassily at Martin. The man's gaze grew more and more annoying to Martin, so he walked to another coach at 125th. He sat down, but as he looked up, he saw the same man staring at him again. It was as though Martin hadn't shifted from the first coach. He stood up and walked back to the first coach, but the giant followed him.

Martin looked at him with animosity, trying to browbeat him, but the man smiled lovingly, revealing a whole row of gold teeth. Any other expression on the man's face would have made sense to Martin, but this appearance of liquid love seemed cynical, invasive, threatening. Martin shuddered.

Martin walked to the other end of the coach, and the giant followed.

Am I being stalked? thought Martin.

Martin jumped off the train at 175th, even though it wasn't his stop. He felt the big presence looming behind him and quickened his pace, but when he turned around, nobody was there. With relief, he slowed his pace and walked up the stairs, and then down, to catch the next train.

Now he wasn't sure that there had been a man stalking him in the previous train. New York is merciless that way, it can give you illusions, he thought. He'd forgotten to eat all day, and with the coffee and beer he'd drunk, he'd reached a stage of weakness and dizziness.

THREE MONTHS AFTER HE SAW ESAD outside the electronics store, Martin had an eventful day. In the morning he was in the subway, which slowed down near Chambers Street. Nobody spoke in the train car. The doors didn't open and the train inched along. There were many white tulips and carnations laid out on the platform. Martin wished he could contribute. Maybe he'd have to find out how--he could buy tulips, ideally red ones from Esad, and then he'd lay them down on the platform. He had a sensation of shuddering grief at the sight of his national flowers, little Dutch souls in New Amsterdam, trying to do some good in their lame and lovable way.

Even at home, he couldn't get rid of the sensation of sadness. But worse than sadness was that terrible smell from the destroyed World Trade Center--a mix of concrete dust, burnt plastic, and the suggestion of flesh, human flesh, and perhaps burnt hair--wafting through the windows. For days he'd been encountering that smell everywhere, as the winds blew mostly from the south, along the island, and somehow it was similar to the old smell of his Persian carpet, which he took out and left on the sidewalk, next to an improvised shrine with pictures of the people from the neighborhood who had perished in the towers. Flags were everywhere, small ones glued to the shrine and large ones draping the windows on the yellow brick building across the street. There were way too many flags everywhere, as though we didn't know we were in the U.S., thought Martin.

To wash away the tragic smell of the city, Martin took a shower. He thought he heard pounding on the door, but he ignored it because it could have been an illusion. When he stepped out and wrapped a towel around his torso, he faced three cleanly dressed men in black shoes with thick rubber soles. Startled, he exclaimed, "What are you doing here? Who the hell are you?"

"Mr. Neeskens, you are coming with us."

"What's this all about?" Martin asked. "You broke into my apartment! You broke the law."

"We'll see who broke the law. Come with us, calmly."

"Why would I?"

"You'll find out in due time. We need you to help us with some information gathering."

He was fingerprinted, his papers photocopied and scrutinized, and his body was searched a little more thoroughly than Martin found comfortable.

"Just a routine procedure, sir."

"But why?"

"You'll find out when we gather enough evidence. Anyway, you know why. You tell me why."

"I have no idea."

"It's about your financing of the terrorists."

"What an outrageous idea! I didn't finance any terrorists. Where did you come up with such nonsense?"

"Now, don't pretend. We know more than you think we do, so you're better off telling us the truth."

"This is all rather mysterious to me. You have confused me with someone else."

"Tell us what Muslims you know."

"Not many. There aren't many in my field, Christian theology."

"You worked for the UN in Bosnia, and you made plenty of contacts with the local Muslims and quite possibly with the foreign fighters, the Mujahideen. We need to know how it all worked out."

"How what worked out? You know that Bosnian Muslims couldn't possibly be involved in this tragedy. Overall, they love America. America saved them. They see you as saviors."

"Maybe that's not how everybody there saw us."

"From what I could tell ..."

"Let us get straight to the point. You wrote a check for ten thousand dollars to Esad Hajiabdic, who, as soon as your check cleared, wired nine thousand dollars to Atta in Germany. Atta bought several airline tickets with the money and flew into one of the World Trade Center towers. Now, clearly Esad was merely the middleman you used to finance the terrorists."

"My God, what a strange story!"

"Yes, it is. You have some explaining to do."

He told the story of his being a peacekeeper in Srebrenica, of how he felt guilty for what had happened and wanted to make small amends, such as he could, by helping Esad. "And by the way, why are you sure Esad was involved? Maybe he merely bought a car from Atta, or something like that."

One investigator laughed. "You want us to buy your soulful story?"

"It's the simple truth."

"And the not-so-simple truth is that you have come to this country to subvert it, as an agent Al-Qaeda."

"That's outrageous!" exclaimed Martin. "I need a lawyer."

"Who gave you the money?"

"The Fulbright commission. You want to blame them?"

HE STAYED IN A SINGLE CELL for three months, with nothing to do, going out of his mind. The smell of cement and some unidentifiable gases irritated him, as did the absence of daylight. He was perpetually thirsty and hungry, and the cement dust--hovering around him like a galaxy of sinking and remote stars that have lost their light--made his throat parched. Several times he was awoken from a deep sleep to be interrogated, and on one occasion, the principal investigator--a heavy-set man with a bristly mustache who constantly perspired--said to him, "You know, we were thinking of letting you go. You're an honorable UN soldier, and something like this could have happened without your actually being consciously involved. I could buy your story. But look what we just found on this surveillance tape, recorded on 9/11. Look at this--at the time the towers were collapsing, you were in the same Palestinian-owned grocery store where a couple of the hijackers had been videotaped several weeks before. See, there you are, looking happy, laughing as the towers go down. It's too much of a coincidence for us to let it go unquestioned--there have been way too many 'coincidences.'"

Pulling a white handkerchief from his blue blazer pocket, the investigator wiped the beads of sweat that had collected on his eyebrows.

"Now you're taking a little vacation to Guantanamo Bay."