by James Grady
“Out here in the open? With a killer loose? What sense does that make?”
“Are you armed?”
“Yeah, but I’m—I’m not a real spy! I just imagine things!”
“Talk to me. Everything’s …”
Car brakes squeal!
Condor whirled. A black sedan shuddered to a halt cross-ways in this side street. The driver ducked below the steering wheel, the passenger—man, black leather jacket—
Black Leather Jacket leapt out of the sedan, slammed his hands on its roof, his double-grip aiming a pistol.
At me! Condor dropped the phone, jerked the Glock from his belt and jumped toward the truck-filled alley.
Bam! A bullet splattered the brick wall beside Condor. Metal fragments sliced his sports jacket as he dodged down the alley alongside the delivery truck.
Behind him a man bellowed: “Fucker!”
Black Leather Jacket charged the alley. Hugged the edge of the drugstore wall. Sirens filled the city air. He crouched low—whirled into the gap between the drugstore bricks and the delivery truck. Saw empty alley. Gun thrust in front of him, he scurried toward a gold SUV idling where the alley met the next street.
The driver of the super-sized SUV never turned her face toward the gun-waving black-jacketed man as he surged toward her driver’s side window. A National Public Radio report on the plight of women in the Arab world’s wave of revolutions vibrated her gigantic hippopotamus vehicle’s rolled-up windows. Regular glasses saddled her head while prescription sunglasses covered her eyes. Her left hand pressed a cell phone to that ear. Her right hand held the steering wheel as the traffic light two cars ahead of her turned green.
The SUV lurched forward as Black Leather Jacket ran from the alley. He saw only the driver’s side. The SUV’s departure cleared his view of the next section of alley’s dumpsters and parked cars. The SUV lumbered through a left turn. Neither its multi-tasking driver nor Black Leather Jacket saw a man clinging to the SUV’S door handles as he huddled on the passenger side running board. The SUV slowed for the traffic jam. Condor flopped off the running board—
And ran until he spotted a brown kiosk pole painted with a white “M”—Metro, Washington’s subway. He stumbled down escalator stairs.
Underground in the enormous gray cave, Condor caught his breath. Subway tracks bordered each side of the red-tiled platform where he stood. A nursery school group trundled past him. A curly haired girl smiled at Condor: “Where are you going?”
An electronic sign above the platform glowed computer letters: 10:41 a.m. Terrorist Threat Level Yellow. Two trains arriving.
A train roared into the station on the tracks behind him. Brakes squealed. Strangers’ eyes shot bullets at him.
Ding-dong! chimed the train stopped behind Condor as its doors sprang open. People hurried out of the cars. The school kids lined up on the other edge of the platform.
Wait. Wait. He glanced at the computer letters sliding through the electric sign: 10:42 a.m. Terrorist Threat Level Elevated to Level Orange.
Ding-dong! Condor jumped into the car a beat before the doors clunked shut. The train surged. Out the window, he saw that little girl wave good-bye.
Where are you going? Condor roared into a world of flashes. Flash and he’s sitting on an orange plastic bench in a rocketing subway train. Flash that man in the tan windbreaker avoids his gaze. Flash that blonde putting on red lipstick watches him in her compact’s makeup mirror. Flash a teenager nails him with disdainful eyes. Flash and Condor’s changing trains once, twice, three times. Flash he stands holding on to a subway car’s bright silver pole that traps his curved reflection. Flash and he’s back on another train’s orange seat, shaking, soundlessly screaming for the whole world to see.
Who he saw coming toward him was Crazy Guy—wild hair above wilder eyes. He plopped on the seat beside Condor and filled the subway car with sour body odor.
Crazy Guy muttered: “They’re everywhere! They can see you!”
“Yeah,” said Condor.
Crazy Guy bathed Condor with rancid breath, whispered: “I’m invisible!”
“True that,” said Condor.
Then he blinked. Remembered.
Gently, firmly, Condor worked his way up from the seat and past Crazy Guy, saying: “This is where I get off.”
“But nothing’s gone ding-dong!” said Crazy Guy.
“I hear things,” said Condor as he walked to the doors of the slowing train.
A slanting subway shaft telescoped into an ever-bigger, ever-brighter circle of sunlight as its escalator carried Condor up from underground darkness to the street of an ordinary high noon Monday in the capital of the new American empire.
He hiked six blocks to the huge postal service building he’d been to yesterday in the rain. Condor walked around to the parking yard of red, white, and blue vehicles. He waved at the pensioner in the guard booth who didn’t look up from his newspaper.
Condor hopped onto the loading dock, took the hall to the locker room and, when three mailmen in the corner spotted him, said: “You guys seen Burt?”
“Ain’t he still out on his route?” One man checked his watch.
“Told him not to make me wait,” lied Condor, walking away. Two aisles over, he heard them resume back in the day chatter, and knew, to them, he was not even there.
He worked his way along the aisle of green lockers. Stole a mailman uniform, a blue cap. The second mail carrier jacket he found hung loose on him but covered the Glock in his belt. Condor spotted a bin of leather mail pouches, grabbed one, stuffed it with his stolen gear and joined a group of off-shift personnel strolling past the pensioner security guard.
The metro bus he took rumbled through DC. Reflections of the skull-like Capitol Dome shimmered in the bus window glass. He covered his face as the bus rolled past swiveling video cameras perched on poles. He left the bus two blocks from an address he’d driven by a dozen times purely out of convenience or coincidence—not like some teen Romeo—went behind a green dumpster, changed into the postal jacket and cap, put his gray jacket in the pouch, and stepped out from behind the dumpster as a mailman.
Invisible.
The Cairo Arms is an eleven-story apartment complex by a park. Condor took a deep breath, walked toward its glass front doors like he knew what he was doing.
In the lobby, an old woman harangued the desk clerk. Neither of them noticed the mailman get in an elevator that whisked him up, up and away.
Seventh floor, on the side where the apartment balconies faced the park. Condor stood in the empty hall outside the door labeled 722. Reached his hand up to knock— Stopped. Inspiration lit his face. He rode the elevator up one floor.
Standing outside Apartment 822 he heard that door vibrating Bruce Springsteen.
He sang that song before I was born and he’s still around. Will I last that long?
Rode up one more floor. Standing outside Apartment 922 he heard nothing. He pressed his ear against the wooden door. Still nothing. Knocked. No one responded. Condor pulled the Glock from his belt. Hands out for balance, he raised his right foot to kick in the door—froze. Put his foot down. Wrapped his hand around 922’s doorknob, turned his wrist—
And the neglected door swung open.
Condor scurried into the apartment, the unlocked door shutting behind him.
Like a SWAT warrior on TV, Condor darted from room to room and found no one in the apartment with its jumble of law school books. In the bedroom, he stepped over a white bra and crumpled blue jeans, went to the balcony’s sliding glass door and peered down to treetops of the park.
Muttered: “Like, that changing into Superman thing is so over.”
He slid open the glass door. White curtains billowed around him.
Condor stood nine stories above the ground, far above the tallest trees in the park. Nobody else was
on a balcony to admire his view or the long fall to earth.
“It’s only a movie,” Condor mumbled as he unsnapped the leather shoulder strap from the mailbag, clipped the bag onto his belt. Condor looped the strap around the black iron railing post at the balcony floor concrete. He swung his legs over the balcony, his toes pressing concrete, his heels resting on nine stories of empty air.
And lowered himself—fell, swinging, dangling above the long drop by holding the mail pouch strap with both hands. He swung back and forth until one swing put his shoes above the next balcony down—and he let go of the strap in his left hand.
Flew/crashed onto the concrete balcony below him. Because he still grasped the strap in one hand, it came with him. He bounced to his feet and pressed against the wall.
Saw no witnesses on the other eighth floor balconies.
The Springsteen rock ’n’ roll he’d heard in the hall outside door of 822 vibrated that apartment balcony’s glass door.
Condor edged along the glass door, peered around the open curtains. Saw a bedroom. Saw a mirror reflecting the living room where a gray-haired grandfather wearing black jeans and a polo shirt rocked out to the soundtrack of his life.
“You go, man,” whispered Condor.
He looped the pouch strap around the eighth floor railing post, swung to the balcony below. He glanced around the curtains over the seventh floor balcony’s glass door, cracked open for the lilac scented spring air: bedroom, bureau, bed, door to the living room.
Condor left the mailbag and strap on the balcony’s chaise lounge. Gripped the Glock, slid the glass door open, and stepped into the bedroom. Glanced into the bathroom: shower tub, toilet, sink. He eased toward the angled-open bedroom door…
Jumped into the living room, Glock aiming—
“Fuck you!”
Startled, Condor swung Glock to shoot or—
“Awack! Fuck you!” said the green parrot in a black cage.
Condor scanned the apartment living room beyond his gunsight: glass coffee table, black leather sofa, easy chair, TV, the front door, kitchen nook.
A red On light glowed in an alarm box mounted by the front door.
He ran to the alarm box, read its LCD screen: Motion Detector Off.
The parrot hopped around in the black steel cage.
Condor slumped into the black leather chair. He put the Glock on the coffee table. Books and good art filled the walls. A wine rack stood near the kitchen.
The flat screen TV stared at Condor. Its screen played muted visions: A bald man machinegunned a Starbucks ballet. A baby stroller rolled through a hail of bullets. The TiVo clock read 1:32. The TV screen showed an imagined movie of RT/Delta finishing breakfast in Pakistan.
“Awk! Fuck you!” cawed the parrot.
“Somebody beat you to it,” whispered Condor.
The universe spun—he jerked alert. His watch read 2:25. Shock, it’s making me fall through time, lose my grasp on where and when. And what. In the TV, Condor saw RT/Delta cleaning assault rifles. They’d smell like gun oil. Like gunsmoke. Like me.
Condor left the black Glock on the coffee table.
The fridge held orange juice, carry out boxes, one apple. How can I be hungry? But he was. He microwaved white cardboard boxes of Chinese food that tasted like a golden goop of soy oil, white rice and limp broccoli. He slumped in the leather chair. His watch read 3:42. A mirage in the TV showed an RT/Delta intel officer use a red-beamed laser pointer on a satellite photo of the al Qaeda-held village. The TV scene changed to Juan blocking the stairs that morning. Chubby Hershel told a story as he walked toward Starbucks. Sarita smiled as a blue lightning bolt crackled behind her face and floated her long black hair.
Click—door lock!
Condor whirled, saw the handle of the deadbolt on the apartment door turning …
He grabbed the Glock and ran into the bedroom. The parrot cursed. Condor heard the front door swing open. Beeps shut off the alarm and a man’s raspy voice said: “We’re checking your place.”
“Awwk! Fuck you!”
Condor scurried to the bedroom balcony’s glass door.
“Nice pet,” said a second man’s voice.
Renee said: “He suits me.”
“Take long to train him?” said a third man, a sneer in his voice.
“No longer than any other male.”
Condor slipped out to the balcony, left the glass door open an inch. The curtains blocked a view of him from anyone who didn’t step onto the balcony.
Twenty heartbeats later, fingers gripped the glass door, slowly slid it open …
“Look under the bed!” yelled a man’s voice from deep in the apartment.
“Like I’d forget?” The man inside the bedroom saw a balcony only birds could get to and left the glass door open.
Condor counted to thirty. Peered cautiously into the empty bedroom: empty. The door to the living room still gaped open. Risk it: he slipped inside the bedroom.
A giant framed sepia art photo of wild horses running through a blizzard hung above the bed’s brass-poled headboard. The photo glass reflected Condor as he sneaked behind the angled-open bedroom door to listen to the voices in the living room.
Where Renee Lake sat on her couch. She wore a jacket and slacks, a chic brown shag cut above a bold face with eyes like comets and lips set in a grim line she gave the man in her leather chair and the five thugs fanned out behind him.
Renee said: “Don’t bother bugging my place. I wired it with countermeasures.”
“Are you that paranoid?” The man in the leather chair had the raspy voice.
“I’m that professional.”
“We’re all on the same team.”
“You mean the team that just lost five dead plus beaucoup collateral KIA’s?”
“But not your Condor. Tell me about him.”
“I’ve done my de-brief.”
“And I still think you should be stashed with his boss Dray in the bowels of the Graylin, but I’m just a brick agent, not a suite star. But when we leave, there’ll be a team on your door, one in the stairwell, one in the garage, one in the lobby.”
“Leave my door and hallway clean. We can’t spook any citizens, especially my neighbors. I need to maintain cover. Buck me on this and you’ll answer to my Deputy Director. He doesn’t have my sense of humor.”
“Is that what Condor likes? Word is, he has a monster crush on you.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“He even hacked into your personnel file.”
“So have you.”
“I do my job. Condor’s renegade snoop gave him this address.”
“I’ve never seen him around here.”
“What are you to each other?”
“He’s an intuitive savant. A dreamer. After 9/11, he had the weird desire to do something more than make money. He signed up, passed clearance and analyst training, got attached to my section of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center. I was his boss—only his boss. Nothing inappropriate materialized between us.”
“Materialized is such a … careful word.”
“You want sloppy, interrogate somebody else.”
“If the massacre was so sloppy that Condor survived, why is he still in the wind?”
“Beats me. Shock. Or good sense. When he called our Panic Line, two gunmen jumped him, and of course they absolutely identified themselves as jacked-up undercover cops responding to the wounded patrolman’s Officer Shot! call.”
In the bedroom, Condor grimaced: Shit!
The man in the living room said: “You think Condor just over-reacted?”
“I think he stayed alive in streets gone crazy with guns.”
“So you trust him?”
Hesitation. Then Renee said: “As I know him, he’s a good man.”
“Jus
t before we drove you over here, your people uncovered a Cayman Island bank account for him. With fifty grand in it. How did your good man earn that?”
“What? What are you …”
“The cop he shot in the street made a positive I.D. on your ‘good man.’ The analyst Sarita got hit by a bullet from a gun like he’s shooting. His fingerprints are on the Uzi recovered at the scene—only his.”
“I can’t figure that.”
The man stood. “We’ve come up with three scenarios: Your Condor is crazy, confused, or crooked. When we figure out which, we might look hard at you.”
“What you see is what you get.”
The raspy voiced man said: “Really?”
Hiding behind the bedroom door, Condor heard men leave the apartment. Heard the locks click. Heard Renee say: “Asshole.”
“Bwack!”
Footsteps entered the bedroom beyond the door he hid behind. Shoes kicked off. Bare feet padded into the bathroom. A light switch clicked. The tinkle of urine. Toilet paper unspooled. Toilet flushed. Sink water ran, stopped. A jacket got tossed onto the bed. Followed by a holstered gun.
Renee walked past his view. Didn’t look at the door that hid Condor. Why would she? Her home had been secured. Her pants were undone from the bathroom. She shut the drapes. Snapped on the bed table lamp. Her back stayed to him. Condor pushed the door away. Watched her work her slacks down, off sleek white thighs. She wore black bikini panties. Renee unbuttoned her blouse, tossed it to the bed. Condor’s gun rose as she unhooked her black bra, tossed it behind her onto the bed.
He yelled: “Stop!”
And she whirled, hands up—kung fu fighter. Saw him in the mailman’s jacket, gun locked on her. Her eyes flicked to the bed. To her holstered pistol.
“Freeze!” he said. “You were a field agent before you were a boss. I’m just an analyst, but don’t make me show you I can shoot.”
“How’d you get in here?”
“I rose to the occasion.”
Her eyes focused on the stolen uniform he wore: “Have you gone postal?”
“Yeah,” he said, “and here’s your mail: I didn’t kill anybody!”
“Let’s keep it that way.”
