"Barney Harrigan!"

The name, the voice, the memory stunned her. Her fingers shook and she steadied the instrument against her ear.

"Is this Naomi Forman?" the voice inquired, still tentative and uncertain. The red numbers on the digital clock read three a.m. The hour of desperation. Would the voice of Barney Harrigan announce disaster? No call could come at that moment without a reason. Barney Harrigan! She shivered at the ancient memory, the old painful love, her own awful guilt. From the beating pulse in her throat and the sudden emptiness in the pit of herself, she knew it still lingered. Hadn't she killed it for good years ago? Five. Nearly six.

"I can't believe it."

"I'm sorry." He offered the obligatory apology.

Kicking off the comforter, she sat cross-legged on the bed.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"Fort Lauderdale."

"I didn't know you moved out of Manhattan."

Had he moved since she had last looked up his name in the Manhattan directory, a guilty whim? The address had changed. It was not the place in SoHo they had once shared, in which they had once loved. The flame had burned hard and hot, ending finally, the reasons blurred by time.

"I'm at my parents' place in Lauderdale. I dropped off Kev."

"Kev?"

"My son."

"Son?"

"I married a few years ago. He's four."

A brief pause, a mite too long.

"Congratulations." Her tone was sarcastic, and she was embarrassed by her reaction. He ignored it.

"Why I called..." He hesitated, clearing his throat. "...At this ungodly hour. But you see, I just found out. And you were the only person I could talk to in Washington."

So it was Washington he needed. For a fleeting moment, she had allowed a part of herself to yearn for something more. He had her at a distinct disadvantage. He had found someone else to love. She had not. As if he had won and she had lost.

"It's very complicated," he said. "But it boils down to this."

So he was boiling down again. He had once called it the bottom line. How bitterly she had reacted to that phrase. The bottom line, he had ranted, is that I cannot live a life that is totally political. Not everything is politics and causes, there is home and hearth. Family. Sharing.

Their old one-note argument. She hadn't been ready for surrender. Not then.

"Charlotte." He coughed. "My wife." A bark of hoarseness quickly cleared. "She has been captured by the Glories." He paused, obviously waiting for a reaction. In her mind, the Glories were merely a vague collection of information. Rich, powerful, right-wing, espousing a totalitarian view of the world, a dubious religious sect. Some called it a cult with political pretensions. Their leader was Father Glory, an Indian businessman, who believed he was the Messiah. She thought of Jim Jones, the People's Temple Guru who commanded 900 people to die in Guyana; David Koresh, who created a standoff with the government, then ordered his band of crazies to head for Armageddon; Marshall Applewhite, who talked his followers into believing that suicide would buy them a UFO to trip to a "higher level," wherever that was. Other images came to mind, shaven-headed Krishnas chanting on street corners; neatly dressed Glories selling candy, knickknacks, flowers on street corners; stories of frantic parents chasing lost adult children.

And of course, there was Bin Laden and all those associated crazies who believed, really believed, that paradise awaited them, paradise being an eternity with 72 virgins. An eternity? Yuck. Sounds like a headache to me. She remembered her own clumsy and painful deflowering. It was equally horrendous for what was his name. She had forgotten, only that his "thing" stabbed mercilessly and the whole experience was appalling. But a cult was a cult, and fools who believed such things were just that, fools and worse. Seventy-two, no less. The "thing" would have to be made of wrought iron.

Besides, this only happened to other people. Unless, of course, you were caught in the crosshairs of their horror, like on September 11th. The date stirred her disgust, and she shook it away and recalled what Barney had said about the Glories.

"How awful," she said, shrugging. It seemed an appropriate response.

"I just found out."

"How..." she asked, but he was already off, explaining in a choppy narrative. As she listened, she wondered, Why me? What has this got to do with me?

"She had gone to Seattle to visit her sister," he explained. His voice conveyed a touch of hysteria and she forced herself to listen respectfully, patiently, although her interest in the subject of his pain was marginal. "She has this sister, Susan. Both their parents are dead. I said fine. She hadn't seen her in two years. Why not? She worked pretty hard with Kevin. What's one lousy week? We both knew Susie was involved with something. But we didn't know it was that. Not the Glories. Sure, go ahead, I told her. I encouraged her. So she went." Out of the cage, Naomi thought, pulling together a picture of Charlotte and her life, hoping it would bring back the old image of her own rebellion. It didn't.

"She called every day from the coast. Spoke to Kevin and me. Told us how much she missed us. Said she had gone with Susie to some kind of farm, had met fabulous, really caring, loving people. Wonderful, I said. Just wonderful. Then she called and said she'd like to spend some more time out there." He was talking at her, not to her, compulsive, slightly hysterical. She let it happen, trapped by the old tie.

"Charlotte is 25. That's the age in their target range. They zeroed in and got her. Just like that. Imagine." She heard him swallow, picturing his bobbing Adam's apple.

A ten-year difference, Naomi calculated. From her vantage point, he had robbed the cradle. She was his age, 35.

"She seemed happy." State of mind was another. "We have this big apartment, a co-op on 74th and Fifth." Financial status. "And she loved the kid. Loved him." He paused. "Me, too. We were all very close." Family ties. Naomi winced, resisting the gnawing envy.

"Then she called two days ago." His voice broke, and the panic slid into the dark room, raising involuntary goose bumps on her thighs and arms. She waited until he cleared his throat, her ears clogged with the pounding pulse of her heart. For some reason, she felt his fear now. Was this voice really Barney's? Or some disembodied bleat that had splintered loose from an old fantasy? Keep your distance, fella, she begged. This mess is on your plate, not mine.

"She said..." His voice steadied. "She said she was not coming home. Never. That she loved me and Kevin. That she had found something important, a new way of life, something spiritual. That someday we would understand. It wasn't Charlotte talking. Not her at all. Not my Charlotte. She was different, sounded different. I couldn't understand it. First I thought she was drugged or hypnotized. But then I thought... hell, the son of a bitches brainwashed her." His voice had risen. "Am I making sense?" he said quickly, his tone lowering. "I'm just so fucking mad."

"Easy, Barney," she whispered.

"I'm really sorry for throwing this shit on your doorstep, Nay. I have no right." So the issue was rights now, she thought. Rights, after all, were her business. She was assistant director of the Human Rights Council, a group that monitored rights in countries with repressive policies, a growing menace. Did he know that? Of course. She had just started with them as they approached the exit door of their relationship. So now, invoking the word "rights," he was subliminally appealing to her sense of compassion? This might explain his motive for calling her. But the word had other meanings, in different contexts. Actually, despite his assertion, he did have the right. There was the right of past relationships, of old friendships, of shared experiences, of loving. They had once touched each other deeply. Often she had felt his mark on her, like fingerprints on her body, tangible and telling, and on her heart and soul, intangible and abstract.

"You have every right," she told him with conviction.

"The thing is," he said, his courage hardening. "I'm not going to just accept this without a fight. There has got to be some channel of official help. The FBI. Congressmen. They can't just take people, tear them away from their families, from the people who love them. This is America, dammit."

Torn away? Suppose it had been Charlotte's conscious decision. Like herself. Perhaps, she, too, had had enough. But to tear a mother from a living child, that was unnatural, wrong. Nobody can make someone do this.

"So I'm going to fight this," Barney said. "I have no set plan. But I'm going to fight. That's why I called, Nay. I need your help."

She hesitated. Help? What could she do? But at this hour who could deny a willingness...

"But how can I help?" she asked, hoping he would sense the negative spin, that she could not help. He had, indeed, the right to ask her, but not the right to enmesh her. Guilt, the eternal enemy, prodded her. The dead fetus they had created bonded them. Their baby. She had never told him, never would. Ever.

Despite her political convictions that she had the right to make this choice, she could not totally shake the guilt of the action. For a long time she had put it in back of her mind. With his call, the discomfort came raging back.

"I... I don't know if I'm the one, Barney. I mean, I know about human rights and I do have some connections in Washington. But this, the Glories. I don't know much about so-called cults."

"I need you, Nay."

"I'll grant you that you need something, Barney." She paused, hesitated. "I may be the wrong ticket. The rights I monitor deal with another dimension... governments mostly...."

"Rights are rights," Barney said. This time it was he who paused. "I'm invoking... well... what we once were to each other. I know. I know. It's bizarre. I'm pushing the envelope. Hell, we have history, Nay. History counts. And you have this heightened sense of justice and compassion."

"You're conning me, Barney," she said.

"I hope so."

"I've toughened up even more so," she said. "I don't guilt so easily." She lied. Guilt would make her comply and she knew it.

"Yes or no, Nay. I'm begging and you know from experience that's not my style."

"Shit, Barney. Why me? Why now?"

"Yes or no, Nay?"

"It's not fair, Barney."

"Is that a yes?"

"I don't want this."

Of course not, she cried within herself. He must have divined her tacit consent.

"Please, Nay. Do it."

"I'll disappoint you. I haven't got the connections you need."

"We'll see. I'll be in Washington tomorrow." He giggled incongruously while she groaned. "Today just call around, so you'll be able to point me in the right direction. Maybe that's all I'll get from you. A road map. Who to see. What to do. Where to start. What's your office number?" She gave it to him. "I'll get Kevin set with the folks. Poor kid. He's all confused. Where's Mommy? You tell me how to explain that to a four-year-old kid."

"I wouldn't know," she said thinking suddenly of their own lost baby, bitterness welling up, her gut cramping.

"God, Nay, I'm grateful," he said. She heard the click and the connection went dead.