even up into Pakistan.
Emma spent the long afternoon trying to get a message out to personal contacts she had in the area, asking them to accept the ninety-nine Untouchables as refugees, the first step in getting everyone off the leaky, dangerous ship. And she had a fairly impressive list of people to contact.
Her first choice was friends at the Pakistani headquarters of the Red Crescent, the Muslim version of the Red Cross. This considerable organization was headquartered in the city of Karachi. Two years before, in return for a sizable fee, Emma had done a series of photo shoots for them, posing with starving kids in one of Pakistan’s largest refugee camps. The Crescent’s donations skyrocketed, at which time, the charity’s executives told her if they could ever return the favor, all she had to do was ask—and she’d believed them.
She had no idea, though, if the Crescent’s headquarters’ communication center had a shortwave radio, or if they did, what channel they could be contacted on. But as this headquarters was situated in Karachi, and Karachi was a port city, with Nolan’s help, she contacted the city harbormaster on a channel found in the Taiwan Song’s radio handbook. It took forever, but finally someone was able to tell them the radio channel on which to contact the Crescent’s Karachi location.
So far, so good. But after spending an hour getting someone to actually reply to her radio call, the person she spoke to—a low-level functionary—said the Pakistani Crescent was too overburdened to take on the care of ninety-nine more refugees—especially Indian refugees.
This was just the beginning of an exasperating six hours. After the Pakistani connection went nowhere, Emma used the same tactics to contact the Indian Red Cross’s Mumbai office. The previous year she’d lent her image to an assortment of their ads, again for a large fee. It took more than two hours and many repeated hailing calls until she finally got the radio channel she needed from the Mumbai District Police. But while they were glad to talk to her, once she explained why she was calling, no one at the Indian Red Cross office wanted anything to do with the ninety-nine Untouchables, especially after they heard they’d come out of Gottabang.
She did not give up, though. She began taking a series of long-end-around routes to contact political figures she knew in both India and Pakistan, but all to no avail. Then she found a phone exchange in Gujarat that could patch her from the shortwave right into the Indian phone system. Through this, she tried contacting movie stars, pop stars, and moneymen she knew in Bollywood. But none was interested in helping her.
In sheer desperation she even tried to contact Tamil Nadu—the location of the Mother Theresa Mission. Though she got through to them, after first contacting the local police, the person she talked to just kept repeating: “We have no boats. We have no boats.” Finally, they just hung up on her.
This was how she spent the long, uncomfortable sweltering day. Nolan was always close by, but Emma did all the work—and bore the burden of the maddening indifference as each contact on her list turned her down.
By the time the sun started to set, it was clear that, while Emma had managed to rescue some of the most unfortunate people on the planet, no one wanted to take them in.
Night fell. It was still many hours before the Shin-1 would return, and they weren’t sure what would happen when it arrived. Even if the flying boat could take some of the refugees, where would they bring them?
“Have you ever heard of the SS St. Louis?” Emma asked Nolan, once she finally twitched off the radio.
He told her the name sounded familiar.
“I read a script about it once,” she went on. “This ship full of Jewish refugees somehow got out of Nazi Germany right before World War Two began. When they set sail, they were sure that some other country would take them in. But every time they reached a destination, the refugees were barred from going ashore. With each stop, it got worse—even the United States wouldn’t let them in.
“Finally they had to go back to Europe. When the war started many of the passengers wound up in the concentration camps and were murdered.”
She looked up at Nolan. Tears were streaking the last of her eye shadow. “I’m afraid that’s what’s going to happen here,” she said.
Without thinking, he took her hand. It was curiously cold.
“It