Nature of the Game

by James Grady

  They drove with the windows down. The warm air carried the stench of charred stone, napalm.

  Chilean flags hung everywhere, from many of the closed shops, from apartment balconies, from light poles. The buses weren’t running, traffic was light. A few people gingerly trod the pavement, looking for open grocery stores, trying to get home during the free transit period. Troops and police were everywhere, cruising in jeeps, at roadblocks, squads patrolling the sidewalks.

  “We won,” said Rivero. “We won. Viva Chile!”

  None of the Americans answered him.

  They stopped for a traffic light. Suddenly, they heard cries, shouts, looked to the left.

  On the sidewalk not twenty feet away, soldiers held a woman as an officer used a bayonet to slash her pants legs to ribbons.

  “In Chile,” yelled the officer, “women wear dresses!”

  The soldiers threw the woman into the gutter. The officer looked at the car with four men in it. Braxton and Willy waved their yellow cards. The officer saluted, and they drove on.

  Rivero craned his neck to watch as the soldiers tied the hands of the woman in the gutter. The officer spit on her. Rivero’s mouth was open, his eyes wide.

  They had to detour twice to avoid firefights between leftist sympathizers and junta troops.

  The apartment was on the fourth floor of an eight-unit building. The old woman they saw in the lobby quickly looked away as they entered the stairwell running up the building’s center.

  The apartment was crammed with tasteful family heirlooms. Willy found a baked chicken in the refrigerator. He and Jud fell on it like sharks. Braxton and Rivero said they weren’t hungry, but Rivero took one of the cold bottles of beer.

  “This dude lives,” sighed Willy, sipping his beer.

  “There’s two bedrooms,” said Braxton. “Willy, grab the first shut-eye.”

  “Gone, keemo,” said Willy, disappearing into a bedroom.

  Rivero claimed he wasn’t tired. Braxton shrugged, told Jud, “I’ll be on the phone in the other room.”

  Rivero sat on the couch, beer bottle shaking in his hands. Jud dropped into an easy chair across from him. Smiled.

  “You are American,” said Rivero.

  “Yes.”

  “I love my country. Do you love your country?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am a soldier, that’s what this is about, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Jud. “Being a soldier.”

  “I have a job. A duty.” He shook his head. “I don’t mind talking about it.”

  The windows at the end of the living room overlooked the city. A helicopter chopped its way over the rooftops.

  “You have been many places in the world?” asked Rivero.

  “A few,” Jud told him.

  “Do you think … Would the communists have taken our children to schools in Cuba? Made the women … And the church, they would have destroyed the church. They do things like that everywhere, right?”

  “I haven’t been everywhere,” said Jud. He nodded. “They’re bad people.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  They could hear Braxton mumbling into the telephone in the other room.

  “My countrymen,” said Rivero, “some were misguided.”

  “It happens,” said Jud.

  “He should have surrendered,” said Rivero.

  “I mean,” he said, a skull grin on his face, eager eyes, “look at it logically. Look at it like a soldier. There was … He was surrounded, we had him pinned down. No relief forces for him. Our superior firepower. No advantage to gain, he … Logically, he should have surrendered. There was a plane waiting for him, safe conduct guaranteed! The word of the military! He should have surrendered! Taken the plane!”

  “Like us,” said Jud evenly. “Like we will. Tonight.”

  “Yes. Yes.” He shook his head. “I am a soldier. I follow orders. I do my best. I do my job. I have duty. Loyalty.”

  His hands trembled, but he lit his own cigarette.

  “Your cross,” said Rivero. “Do you believe in God?”

  “Sure,” lied Jud.

  “Redemption. Forgiveness. Just as long as you believe.” He shook his head. “Maybe you don’t even need Jesus as long as you believe.”

  “Take it easy,” said Jud. “You’re tired.”

  “It was a military battle,” insisted Rivero. “An air strike, and then I, my men, we were ordered to attack. They shot at us! Machine guns and tear gas, it was all … Battle is chaos, you know? Instinct and insanity.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Jud.

  “You are a soldier. That is what it is all about, being a soldier. The Moneda, the shooting and fighting and running, I couldn’t be sure what I saw and they turned to me—not my uniforms—and I fired. I fired. He fell.”

  “Later, we found him …”

  “What difference does it make if it was suicide or not?” said Rivero. “Of course it was suicide! He stayed in there against overwhelming odds. Wouldn’t surrender. He doomed himself. What difference does it make if he put Fidel’s machine gun under his chin or … or I shot him? Suicide, it was suicide and he is dead.”

  A great weight rolled through the man on the couch, left him trembling. Jud leaned toward him, but Rivero waved away.

  “I am a soldier. I did what had to be done. That is all. I am not an assassin! I am not! I! Am! Not! An! Assassin!”

  “I know about assassins,” said Jud. “You’re not one.”

  Braxton carefully walked into the living room, his eyes on the man who’d been screaming.

  Rivero saw the American commander’s disapproving look, dropped his voice. “It will be better for history that everyone understands it was suicide that killed the President. Not us. Not me. Suicide. He chose to stay, so he chose to die, and that is suicide. Choosing. Like that. The last choice, eh? We welded the coffin. But it is better, because it is true, it was suicide.”

  “Yes,” said Jud, “I suppose it was.”

  “That’s why I have to go away,” said Rivero. “To keep history true. If I stay, I might … I could slip or … I must go.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you think … When will I get to come home?”

  “Just as soon as possible,” said Braxton.

  “I wish I could call my mother. Do you talk to your mother?”

  “No,” said Jud.

  “You should. You should.” Rivero shook his head. “There are so many shoulds. So many should nots.”

  Willy wandered out of the other bedroom. “Man, I’m all dexed up, I can’t sleep for shit!”

  “I am tired now,” said Rivero.

  Braxton whispered to Willy, “Phone in there?”

  Willy shook his head no.

  “Captain, why don’t you go lie down? We’ll get you when we need you.”

  Rivero nodded. Wandered into the bedroom, turned around and looked at these three strangers.

  “My country,” he said. Then he closed the door.

  For a while, the men slumped around the living room listening to sobs from behind the closed door. Braxton made more phone calls in the other bedroom. Willy and Jud stared numbly at the walls, mouths slack, eyes open, minds gone. Time stood still.

  “What’s that?” said Jud suddenly.

  Willy was on his feet, revolver drawn. “What!”

  Silence. Rivero’s door was locked.

  “Braxton!” yelled Jud, and he kicked in the door.

  The bedroom window was open.

  In the street four stories below lay a crumpled form.

  “Dude should have waited for the airplane,” said Willy.

  “We’re out of here now!” ordered Braxton.

  On the sidewalk, a handful of people had emerged to stare, but not get too close. A squad of soldiers ran toward the disturbance of law and order. Braxton nodded to Jud when they reached the street. “Check it out, be sure.”

  Jud glared at him. “The man didn’t have a chute!”

 
; Braxton looked at Jud’s face; barked, “Willy! Do it!”

  Without a glance, Willy slid away to follow orders.

  “I am in command here,” snapped Braxton.

  “Of what?” said Jud. “Of who? My orders say I’m to do a job to facilitate a situation. Well, that’s done, boss, and you’ve been a great help. But your command is over.”

  “That man was part of the mission, and until we got him to Paraguay, so were we!”

  “So was Luis, and you fucked him up, too.”

  Braxton blinked.

  “Who are you, huh?” asked Jud.

  By the body, they saw Willy look toward them, snap a quick thumbs-down, and stroll away. A soldier stopped him, but Willy flashed his yellow card and walked to the car.

  “You want to know who we are, hero?” snapped Braxton. “We’re the guys scheduled to take a plane to Paraguay tonight. We were supposed to have him in tow. We’re the guys who were gonna run a debriefing session with some friends, talk it all out with our no-chute Captain Rivero.

  “Only don’t call him that,” said Braxton. “Call him Lee Harvey. Call us Jack Ruby.”

  Braxton climbed in the car.

  And Jud remembered the Stadium, the firing squads. The woman in the street. The Watergate White House. Being a soldier.

  Slowly, Jud got in the car.

  That night, after the Gulfstream jet landed the three of them in Asunción—stand down, all clear—Jud bought a bottle of Scotch and drank himself into oblivion.

  SUBWAY

  Although he completely loved his wife, Nick Kelley was enchanted by the receptionist on the fifth floor of the Washington, D.C., think tank that Watergate Plumbers had schemed to firebomb. She had milk-chocolate skin, black hair that curled to her shoulders, warm ebony eyes, and a smile that never quite stopped. She was lean. Supple. And at least fifteen years younger than him.

  “Can I help you?” she asked when he got off the elevator.

  “I’m here to see Steve Bordeaux,” said Nick, wondering if she realized the balance of guilt and innocence in his stare.

  “Do you need me to show you the way?”

  “I get lost easily,” he said. Truthfully.

  He followed her taut hips through a maze of cheap partitions, conference tables, stacks of paper and books. Scotch-taped editorial cartoons, maps of Central America, and charts of America’s foreign affairs bureaucracies covered the walls. The people working at computer terminals wore blue jeans and ties. Nick smiled, remembering his rebel days of muckraking for Peter Murphy. Rock ’n’ rolling in the heart of the beast.

  Most of you were in grade school then. He wanted to tell them a thousand things; he wanted them to know who he was, that he’d been there. Was there still. They watched him pass by, a lean guy in a gunmetal sports jacket and not a power suit, a man whose silver black hair and hard eyes put him out of their warless generation, an average-looking guy, not too tall and on the skinny side. His tired face wasn’t in their treasured scrapbooks of personas. The looks in their unscarred eyes told Nick that they’d listen to but not hear any wisdom he could speak.

  The old guy, he thought; then he laughed aloud.

  “Excuse me?” said the pretty woman. Her perfume was musk.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “Nostalgia.”

  “That’s Steve,” she said, pointing through the open door of an office before she glided away.

  A man all of thirty-four sat behind a cluttered desk, blue shirt and loose tie, dark slacks, glasses, and a cheap haircut. He put down the proof sheets he was correcting to shake hands.

  Nick took the chair beside his desk. An intercom announced that Tom and Malcolm were wanted on a conference call.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” said Nick.

  “Hanson said you were a good guy,” Steve told him. “You know Hanson, he knows me. In this town, who you know decides where you go.”

  “My problem is I don’t know who I know. That’s why I came to you and the Archives.”

  The National Security Archives is a creature of the 1980s, one of the capital’s legion of nonprofit groups struggling to push the Sisyphean boulder of government. The Archives rents space from the older, more prestigious think tank that inflamed the Watergate men, lives off foundation grants, and exists to uncover core data about America’s foreign policy.

  “I’m after intersects,” said Nick. “I’ve got some topics. I want to check Iran-contra for links. Identify players.”

  “Anybody special in mind?”

  “An old source.” Nick shrugged. “I’ve heard some wild theories I don’t buy.”

  Steve frowned. “Like what?”

  “Like cocaine. I don’t figure the contras were running it as policy, or the CIA was being that kind of creative to fund their secret war against Nicaragua, but …”

  “But.” Steve smiled. “Anytime you get a gang-bang covert operation like the contras, you get guys who cut their own deals in the hush and the fury. Like ex–2506 Brigade members who bought into the latest anticommunist crusade. They used a fishing business to surveil the Nicaraguan coast until Customs in Miami unthawed ice blocks of shrimp and found bags of coke. And some of Oliver North’s memos talk about Young Turks in one contra group being into coke. That the kind of stuff you want?”

  “Sounds too normal,” answered Nick.

  They laughed.

  “Who is this guy you’re after?” asked Steve.

  “Not after: tracking. There may be a coke connection involving him, but it’d probably be … twisted. And very creative.”

  “What about the Barry Seal stuff?” asked Steve.

  “I don’t know the name.”

  “Not enough people do,” said Steve. “Louisiana boy. Like me, only he was Baton Rouge and I’m a Catahoula kid.”

  “A world of difference,” said Nick, and Steve laughed.

  “Barry was a pilot. Nicknamed Thunder Thighs. He got jammed up with Louisiana cops who knew he was bringing in coke and weren’t buying any of his undercover agent or CIA asset bullshit. In 1984, he was about to do hard time when he shows up at the Vice President’s Florida Drug Task Force, where he claims he can prove the Sandinistas are running coke.”

  “The White House went orgasmic. Our spooks fitted Barry’s plane with cameras. He brought back photos he claimed showed a Nicaraguan official loading his plane with coke. Of course, what was being loaded was in bags, and maybe it wasn’t an official Sandinista mission, but hey: it was great PR and our Iran-contra boys used it.”

  “What happened to Barry Seal?”

  “The law got pulled off his case for a while. In 1986, two guys machine-gunned Barry to death in his white Cadillac.”

  “Sounds like business as usual,” said Nick.

  “There’s more. A plane owned by a former CIA proprietary got shot down over Nicaragua while dropping supplies to contras. The Sandinistas caught one survivor. He talked, claimed to work for the CIA, and that started unraveling the Iran-contra scandal.”

  “I remember the plane,” said Nick.

  “Barry Seal sold that plane to our Iran-contra boys. He’d used it to smuggle coke.”

  “Ironic, but nothing for me,” said Nick.

  Steve shrugged. “What about the other half of the scandal, the Iran stuff?”

  “My guy has a link to Iran,” said Nick. “But it’s old.”

  “Are you writing history or journalism?” said Steve.

  “I’m a novelist,” said Nick.

  “Then you can just make it up.”

  “Yeah.”

  The two men smiled.

  “Later this spring,” said Steve, “we’re publishing an index of Iran-contra. We’ve got every document cross-referenced, names of almost everybody mentioned anywhere in the six key years of the scandal, organization glossaries—”

  “Biographies?” interrupted Nick.

  “Brief ones. Couple hundred listings in thirty pages.”

  “Can I get a copy of that?”

 
“Sure, but it’s easy to check if your guy’s profiled.”

  “He won’t show up on lists,” said Nick. He hesitated, decided, What you have to lose is this chance to find out.

  “Do you have anything peculiar about intelligence ops against the cocaine cartel?” asked Nick. “Not busts: strategic. Links to politics, terrorists. Long about ten years ago.”

  “Ten years ago nobody used the name cartel.” Steve frowned. “Give me a minute.” He left the room.

  Nick stared through Steve’s window toward eight-story glass-and-brick warrens he knew were filled with lawyers who worked sixty-hour weeks under fluorescent lights. He closed his eyes and amidst the aromas of ink and paper and dust burning in computer electricity, imagined he could smell musk perfume.

  “I found it,” said Steve, striding back into his office, a smudged manila file folder open in his hands.

  “This is a project I never finished. State Department cables, clipped articles, Hill testimony. Nothing about intelligence operations, but some about intelligence product.”

  “On the cartel?” asked Nick, listening to the researcher as he paged through the file, scanning for Jud’s name.

  Steve waved his hand. “On drugs and terrorists: Colombian left-wing guerrillas doing muscle work for drug dealers. Right-wingers in El Salvador using drug profits to pay for an assassination attempt on the President of Honduras. Reports of Cuban and Nicaraguan officials working the coke trade. The right-wing Gray Wolves in Turkey selling heroin and dealing with communist Bulgarian intelligence services in the same business. Plus some early ’82 stuff on the Shining Path in Peru shaking down coca growers.”

  “Same jungle,” said Nick. “Makes sense that spies, revolutionaries, and drug dealers would walk the same trails.”

  “What’s in a name?” said Steve. “Narco king or terrorist, shared tactics merge disparate groups. I toyed with writing a paper showing how the drugs would eventually turn revolutionaries into capitalists—it’s happened in Burma with the heroin and the Shans—but … other priorities.”

  “Where did the information for these cables and study papers come from?” asked Nick.

  “Since ’83, there’s been an abundance of it: busts, informants. Looking back, drugs and political outlaws were historical lines waiting to cross. Like you said: same jungle.”