Chapter 19.
“The people in two of these lines will be divided up and flown tonight to two remote corners of the world,” Luca Tommasi hears The Host say.
There is a slight pause before he continues.
“And so you know,” The Host adds, almost amused, “I will not be calling out the rows in alphabetical order, what would be the fun in that?”
Luca’s throat tightens. He forces air in anyway.
What part of this is fun? Luca thinks.
It has been one nerve-wracking moment after another.
“Rows O, P, Q, R, S, and T,” The Host says. “Leave the field immediately.”
Luca hears groans from his right. The sound rolls across the crowd—pain, disbelief—then bodies start moving. Heads down. Like a team walking off after a loss they didn’t see coming.
The Host waits until they have left the field before resuming.
The speakers crackle again. “Rows C, D, E, F, and G . . .”
The Host waits, clearly as a way of torturing them a little more. Luca is certain that everybody still in front of the stage is having the same difficulty breathing as he is.
“All of you please leave the field now,” The Host says.
More groans. More movement. More quiet misery. This time from Luca’s left, even louder than the ones before.
Luca forces himself not to look around too much. Looking makes it real. Looking makes you start counting.
He’d rather be on a street in Rome, making a call he understands.
This is not a call. This is a verdict.
Despite having been called out as a liar in the tent, Luca had never been any good at lying to himself. So he knew why he was here, really.
He had lost his family. Was about to lose his job before flying to Ohio. This is his chance to be the man he was meant to be. The leader of men he told himself he ought to be.
“Letters H, I, J, K, L . . .”
Here it comes, Luca thinks.
His last chance to be the father he still imagined he could be if he was somehow reunited with his family at the end of this.
There’s no time. Not even time to say a quick prayer.
The next row out is ours, and I’m gone.
Luca knows this best of all: He isn’t ready to go home because he doesn’t have a home anymore.
The Host stops again before he gets to M.
“The people in those rows are now dismissed.”
“No way!” Luca hears from his left, sees that this voice belongs to the young pilot with the perfect posture. The one everybody’s been whispering about being some form of royalty.
“There obviously must be a mistake! I must’ve been given the wrong card!” the man shouts, voice carrying across the field. “You’ve made a mistake!”
He is still yelling his head off, even louder than before. The rest of the people in his row begin to file quietly off the field, heads down.
Saad digs in and refuses to go any farther until two guards arrive, each one grabbing an arm and walking him away.
“You can’t do this,” the man yells as they walk him away, pointing at the stage as if The Host is actually standing there. “Do you know who I am?”
Then he adds this: “You’re all going to pay a price for this. And trust me: I can afford it!”
Then he’s gone.
Just four rows left now.
Two hundred people out of the original one thousand.
A and B.
M and N.
Luca sees the two young women in front of him, a German redhead and a tall Eastern European woman, holding hands. He flashes back to pulling his gun without hesitation that day at St. Peter’s. The moment he acted. The moment he didn’t freeze.
This is different.
He’d given up control when he came here.
They all did.
The Host doesn’t drag things out any further.
“Rows A and N,” The Host says. “Leave the field.”
Madre di Dio.
Mother of God, Luca thinks. I made it.
He’s still here.
His knees almost buckle. He needs this more than he wants to admit.
The two girls in front of Luca let go of each other’s hands long enough to give each other a high-five. They turn and do the same with Luca, and he happily obliges them.
“The rest of you can think of yourselves as the chosen ones—please move closer to the stage,” The Host says. “Because in a day that has already been full of surprises, I have one more.”