by Paul Heatley
“I don’t know.”
“Your caller didn’t say?”
“No.”
“What about Anthony?”
“He’s only said one thing since I got him here.”
“What’s that?”
“Where’s Alejandra? Same thing you asked me on the phone, ain’t it?”
Tom feels everything begin to spin. His feet sink into the ground, a hole opening up beneath him. He grits his teeth. “And? Where is she?”
Jeffrey holds out his hands. “I don’t know who Alejandra is.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Well? What is she? A friend? A girlfriend? A fiancée? A wife? The two of you go off and do your own thing, and I hear from you every couple of years if I’m lucky. If you were with someone, would you have gone out of your way to tell me? No, you wouldn’t. You think Anthony’s any different?”
“Alejandra is his girlfriend,” Tom says, speaking slowly. “And she’s pregnant. We need to know that she’s safe.”
Jeffrey is silenced by this. He thinks on it for a while, until the only thing he’s able to say is, “Well, shit.”
“Yeah,” Tom says. “Shit.”
“He never brought her around here,” Jeffrey says. “I never met her.”
Tom chews on his lip, worried. More worried now than he was when in the car driving here. “We need to ask him,” he says. “We need to wake Anthony up and ask him.”
Sylvia enters the room at this point, closing the door behind her. “You’ll have a hell of a lot of trouble doing that,” she says. “He’s pumped full of painkillers, gonna be out a few hours yet.”
Tom clenches his fists down by his sides, impatient, but there’s nothing he can do about this. He exchanges a look with his father. Jeffrey doesn’t say anything about Alejandra to her, doesn’t tell her it looks like they’re going to be grandparents and this is the first they’re hearing of it.
“You want something to eat while you wait?” Sylvia says.
“No, thank you,” Tom says. He goes to one of the wooden chairs, takes a seat finally. “I’m just gonna wait for Anthony to wake.”
“You sure?” she says. “Must’ve been a while since you ate last. How long were you driving for?”
Tom wants some more time alone with his father. Sylvia will be in the kitchen, away from them. “Sure,” he says. “If it’s no bother.”
“No bother at all,” she says, smiling, leaving the room once again.
Tom turns to Jeffrey. “The phone you were contacted on – you still got it?”
“I do.”
“Go get it for me, will you?”
“It’s just a burner,” Jeffrey says. “You ain’t gonna be able to get anything from it. I already looked. Doesn’t have any numbers in it, not even the one that called me – it was screened.”
“Bring it anyway,” Tom says.
“All right, then,” Jeffrey says, getting to his feet. “But brace yourself for disappointment. There’s nothin’ to be found on it.”
He leaves the room, and for the first time since he arrived at the commune, Tom is alone again. His thoughts return, his worries, his concerns. Now, with Alejandra nowhere in sight, and Anthony asking for her, they are amplified. They are worse than they ever were.
He needs Anthony to wake up.
13
Ben can’t sleep.
It’s late, but instead of lying in bed staring at the ceiling, he’s downstairs, in the dark, staring at the walls.
He’s also on the phone.
Gerry called him, interrupting his thoughtful reverie, to tell him he’s been working late on the laptop.
“You’re still at the office?” Ben says.
“No,” Gerry says. “I’m at home. I took it with me, to get at it with some of my more … shall we say, specialist hard- and software?”
“And?” Ben says, clutching the phone tight.
“Nothing.”
Ben isn’t sure he’s heard him right. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Gerry says. “I’ve been at this thing for hours, man, and there’s no sign who – if anyone – has hacked it. Looks like the only person who’s ever accessed it is you.”
Ben isn’t happy with this. “You sure about that?”
“There’s nothing on here that shouldn’t be. No spyware, no malware, nothing like that. It’s clean, to be perfectly honest with you.”
“I highly doubt a bunch of backwoods hillbilly Nazis have the technology or the smarts sophisticated enough to leave zero trace,” Ben says. “There has to be a trail. There has to be something.”
“I’ve been thorough, man.”
Ben is silent for a moment, thinking. “That’s not good enough,” he says. “There can’t be nothing.”
“Maybe it had nothing to do with you, Ben,” Gerry says. “Maybe they found out their information another way.”
“That’s impossible. I already told you how.”
“But how can you be so sure maybe Anthony wasn’t talking to somebody else? Another agent?”
“I don’t know that, but I don’t think he’s the kind of guy with loose lips. He wasn’t gonna take that kind of risk, not with his own safety, or –” He stops himself, thinking of Alejandra. “What I do know is that his details were on my laptop. Everything was on there, and my best guess, my only guess, is they got hold of it. I want to know how, and I want to know who.”
“I’ve done all I can, Ben.”
“Then do more.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible. I’ve come at it with everything I’ve got.”
“Then find a way. Find more ways. Get at it again tomorrow. There has to be something you missed.”
Gerry doesn’t say anything.
“Are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” he says, his voice quiet.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“I heard you.”
“Good.” Ben tries to soften his tone. “This is important, Gerry.”
“I understand that.”
Ben sighs. “I’ll see you in the morning.” He hangs up the phone.
He doesn’t move from the couch. Remains where he’s sitting, presses the phone into his forehead, his hands clasped in front of his face.
He thinks of Anthony. Of Alejandra. He blames himself. It’s his fault. There’s no one else to blame. He has to atone for this. To make right what he has caused. He just doesn’t know how to start. Can’t find the beginning. It was all hinging on his laptop, on the truths held therein.
And now Gerry is telling him it holds no truths.
This isn’t acceptable. Ben needs answers.
There are footsteps on the stairs. He looks up. Carly comes down. She wears one of his shirts. Her usually perfect hair is spread out and matted where she has been sleeping on it. “Ben?” she says. Her voice croaks, thick with sleep.
“Hey.”
“What’re you doing still up?” she says. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”
“It’s nothing,” he says. “I just couldn’t sleep is all. Go on back to bed, Carly. I’ll be up in a minute.”
She comes to the bottom of the stairs, looks at him. “You want me to sit with you? I don’t mind.”
He smiles at her, shakes his head, though he’s not sure she can see this gesture. “That’s all right. But thanks.”
Carly goes back up the stairs, returns to his room. He doesn’t watch her go. His eyes return to the wall. He can’t sleep. He doesn’t deserve sleep. Doesn’t deserve anything good. Earlier, after dinner, when Carly tried to initiate sex, he couldn’t. Physically and mentally could not participate. He apologized. She kissed him on the cheek and said it was fine.
So as not to make her worry further, he goes upstairs to the bedroom. She’s already fast asleep by the time he gets there. He slides into the bed next to her, lies flat on his back, and stares at the ceiling.
14
Tom stands out on his father’s porch.
It’s dark out. Jeffrey and Sylvia are inside, sleeping. Tom looks beyond the hastily erected chain-link fence to the trees. There’s a breeze. The branches sway in it. There are men in the trees, too. From the commune. To an uneducated eye, they would be invisible in their camo and their face paint, but Tom can pick them out. He counts three, spread out in the area he can see. They’ve seen him, too. Tom waved, and they retreated deeper into the trees, where they thought they would be out of sight.
There are sentries patrolling the grounds beyond the fence, too. They clutch their guns and look stern, taking their jobs very seriously. Tom has recognized one of them as the man he earlier choked at the gate to the commune. He saw Tom on his first loop around, quickly looked away, hurried past. Every subsequent time he’s come around, he’s wearing his best war face, almost snarling, staring straight ahead. Tom can’t help grinning to himself.
He’d asked his father, earlier, if they’d thought about just upping and moving the commune.
Jeffrey rolled his eyes. “You’d think so,” he said. “But no, they wanna stay here, stand their ground, show they ain’t afraid to fight, no matter who knows they’re here. You know what these guys are like. They wanna play soldier.”
Tom turns away from the trees, distracted by the men there. He looks away, to the side, to the woodland further off, where his eyes can’t strain to pick out the men, if any, who are there.
He thinks about Alejandra.
The first time he met her.
He was still in the army back then. Back from his first tour of Afghanistan. He hadn’t yet been recruited into the CIA, hadn’t been disillusioned by the things he saw whilst running black ops missions around the world, though usually in the Middle East.
By that time, too, his father had married Sylvia, moved here. Tom had no fixed address. Overseas most of the time, and unmarried, single, no kids, he saw no need for maintaining a home. He stayed with either his father or his brother, or checked into motels or hotels. On this occasion, he was staying with Anthony, down in Harrow, Texas.
One night, while Anthony was doing whatever it was he was doing (Tom knew it was better not to ask), Tom went to a bar. He found a quiet place playing country music as he walked in. Johnny Cash first, then Merle Haggard. Tom’s taste in music was broad. He’d have preferred Springsteen, but he didn’t mind some country. He took a stool and was promptly served by the pretty young waitress behind the bar.
“What can I get for you?” she said.
What caught Tom’s attention first were her eyes. Big, round, brown, like something out of a cartoon. They stunned him for a moment, took his breath away, almost took him too long to answer. “Just a soda,” he said.
She cocked an eyebrow. “That all?”
“All I’m in the mood for.” He smiled.
She shrugged, got him his drink.
Tom watched her. Couldn’t take his eyes away. Her black hair was tied back, showed every angle of her face. Her cheekbones, her delicate jawline. She poured the soda into a glass with ice, slid it across to him. “You take it easy,” she said. “Go slow with those things. I don’t wanna have to call for the doorman.” She spoke with an accent.
“I’ll do my best,” Tom said. “Say, where you from?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your voice, I notice you’ve got an accent.”
She stiffened.
“I’m gonna guess Mexican, right?”
“What’s it to you?” Her big round eyes blazed; she was suddenly defensive.
Tom stayed cool, undeterred, could guess at her reaction. Looking like she did, sounding how she did, she probably got this kind of question a lot, and likely not from people speaking with genuine interest and curiosity like himself. “Just asking,” he said. “It sounds familiar is all.”
She remained standoffish, but he thought he saw her soften somewhat. “You go to Mexico a lot?”
“I get around,” he said.
“Guaymas?”
“Can’t say I’ve been to that part.”
“That’s where I’m from,” she said, softening more, but not completely, a conversational tone in her voice.
“So what brings you up here?” he said.
She remained wary. “Why do you ask?”
“I told you, I’m just asking. I’m curious. I’m making conversation. I’m on leave, I come to a bar, I see a pretty girl serving, and I figure I’ll talk to her.”
“Leave?” She spoke fast, disguising her blush. “Are you in the army?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“How is it?”
He shrugged. “It is what it is,” he said, not wanting to share stories of shooting, and being shot at, and worse.
“I’ve been in America a year,” she said, finally.
“A year, huh? Well, that explains how you speak such good English.”
“I practiced before I came, and I’ve practiced since.”
“What brought you up here?”
“I have an aunt lives here.”
“You still got family back in Guaymas?”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “No,” she said. There was a sadness about her suddenly.
Tom picked up on it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“My parents died,” she said. “That’s why I came here. I had nowhere else to go.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It was nobody’s fault,” she said. “It was an accident. A stupid accident.”
“What happened? You don’t have to say if you don’t want to.”
She shook her head, like it was fine; she could tell the tale. “A car crash. They had come here, to visit my aunt, my father’s sister. They were on their way home, they’d been driving for a very long time, and my father, he … he fell asleep at the wheel.”
“I’m sorry,” Tom said again.
She waved her hands like she felt foolish. “Why am I telling you this?” She laughed. “I just met you. We’ve been talking for, what, five minutes, maybe?”
Tom smiled at her. “I’d like to talk for more.”
“I have to work. People will get annoyed if I’m giving one customer all the attention instead of filling their drinks.”
“All right, then. What time do you finish?”
She chewed her lip. “I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Tom,” he said. “Tom Rollins. You?”
It took her a moment. She looked along the counter, saw a man approach, empty glass in hand, looking for a refresh. “Alejandra Flores,” she said. “People call me Ally.”
“I think I’ll call you Alejandra,” Tom said. “Because Alejandra Flores is the most beautiful name I’ve ever heard.”
She hurried off to serve the approaching customer before she had a chance to blush again.
Tom hung around until midnight, until the bar closed and Alejandra was finished work. He stood with her outside while she locked up. “There isn’t much to do, I’m afraid,” she said. “Most places are closed by now.”
“Then I’ll walk you home,” Tom said. “Or close enough to it if you don’t want me to know where you live.”
“My aunt warned me I shouldn’t walk with strange men I only just met.”
“I can understand that.”
“Maybe I’m being stupid.”
“If you think this is a bad idea, then just say so. I’ll walk away right now, no hard feelings. I’d rather you felt comfortable with me than full of worry every single step of the way.”
She looked at him for a long time. She looked straight into his eyes. Finally, she shook her head, said, “No, it’s okay, come on. Let’s walk.”
She led the way, and Tom matched her stride. She didn’t head straight home. They walked for what felt like miles around the town of Harrow, just talking, smiling, laughing.
By the end of the night, as Tom left her at the end of the walkway leading to her front door, her aunt twitching the curtains, watching them, Tom knew he was in l
ove.
Now, in the present, he doesn’t even know where she is. Doesn’t know if she’s all right. There is a pain in his heart, a stabbing sensation.
He knows.
He knows that something bad has happened.
Standing, he goes back inside the house, stepping lightly, his footsteps silent. Goes through to Anthony’s room. He’s still sleeping. Tom takes a seat in the chair by the side of the bed, watches him. Anthony’s breathing is ragged. He moans, turns to and fro.
Tom spent the rest of his leave with Alejandra. He’d visit her at the bar. He’d walk with her. He’d learn of her life, of what made her happy, of what she liked and disliked, what she loved. Of how she missed Mexico, Guaymas, how she wanted to go back, how she couldn’t imagine living the rest of her life without seeing her home again.
“This is where I live now,” she said. “But it’s not really my home. It can’t be.”
His final night, before he was due to ship out again in the morning, he walked her home, and he kissed her on her aunt’s porch. It was the sweetest kiss he’d ever had. Even now, he can feel the brush of her lips against his own, the way her tongue probed gently at his.
By the time he returned from his second tour, she was dating Anthony.
15
Senator Seth Goldberg gets out of the shower, dries and combs his hair, gets dressed and goes downstairs. It is Saturday morning. His wife, Abigail, and his daughters are in the kitchen. Abigail sits at the table, reading a book. She looks up as he enters, smiles, marks her place, puts her book to one side. The girls are in the corner of the room, looking out the French doors at the sunny day.
“Girls,” Abigail says, “breakfast.”
Danielle is six; Deborah is eight. They leave the window, come to their father, say good morning to him, hug him, kiss his cheeks. They all sit together at the table. Seth wears a black suit. Abigail wears a sky blue dress, Seth’s favorite. She looks very pretty in it, like she’s a young woman again, in college, when they first met. The girls are in matching peach-colored dresses. “You both look very beautiful this morning,” Seth says, leaning down close to first Deborah and then Danielle. Danielle giggles.
