The Secrets We Live In: A Novel

by Fazle Chowdhury

  He remained silent.

  When she could not contain herself any longer, Charlotte pressed hard through her anger at him.

  "Well, then, I guess that was the last time. I can't keep doing this. I deserve better."

  Charlotte's words hit Zain like a ton of bricks. Everything he could have said wouldn’t have been what she wanted to hear, but what else could he do?

  The clock struck the hour. It wouldn't be long before his guests realized he was missing from the party. At the same time, he couldn't let this matter with Charlotte go unfinished. She was wrong about one thing: he did know how to love a woman. He was in love once, but that was so many years ago. Then, too, it was complicated.

  He remembered the day as if it were yesterday. He was twenty-three and certain he’d found the girl of his dreams. The memories of their time together remained sharp in his mind. They lingered like a bad injury. He remembered how her hair smelled like peach lemon, her lips were delightfully pure like water and soft. Her kiss was like a jolt of electricity. The gentle touch of her hands sparked his nerves in ways he had never felt since. Her laughter was like music. And he had never seen a smile as beautiful as hers.

  She was younger than him, but he found her incredibly intelligent. And he was certain they would spend their lives together. Now, all he had left was the memory of her and the faint echoes of her laughter in his ears at times like now.

  Zain closed his eyes, thinking back to when they were together, as Charlotte’s words faded to the back of his consciousness. And there she was, the woman he saw each time he closed his eyes; a beautiful girl, but she'd been out of his life for more than decades. For years, he’d tried to find her, but to no avail, and Zain was sentenced to seek out glimpses of her in every woman he met.

  “This is crazy!” he yelled out without meaning to and regretted it immediately. Charlotte was not amused.

  "Zain, what is crazy?!" Charlotte shouted, causing Zain to jump and snap out of his flashback. He looked around and blinked his eyes, taking a few seconds to remember where he was. He wasn't in the past; he was here now.

  "Would you watch your voice! People might hear you!" Zain responded in a raised whisper.

  "You've been standing there, not saying a word…Look, I don't have time, and clearly, your party means more to you than me. I’m just going to leave."

  The sounds of Charlotte’s high heels accompanied the image of her striding from the room—no doubt a beautiful sight to anyone that would see her but for Zain was so preoccupied with the past that he had entirely forgotten his conversation with Charlotte until the sound of her slamming the door jolted him out of his trance.

  Zain shook his head and went to the bathroom sink to splash some water on his face. He slicked his hair back and retrieved his favorite cummerbund from the closet. He put it on, and then his dinner jacket, and made sure he was presentable enough to join his guests.

  He poured another glass—this time whiskey, just the tonic he needed. He walked over to the window that overlooked the garden. The guests were having a good time. No one seemed to notice that he wasn't among them. He shook his head and poured the whiskey down his throat. The image of the woman who crossed his mind while Charlotte was talking to him came back. The shadows from the lights that lit his garden blurred his vision. Images of his past began to rise inside his mind.

  As the memories arose, so did his pain. It was his longing for her that had left him in such a state even after more than two decades. The old passions were just a memory, but those memories transformed themselves into real agony now. Though he’d had many lovers since, his heart was still held hostage. He knew she was gone forever, but his memories had been with him for too long. Decades later, he was still secretly looking for his first love and had no plans on ever stopping his search. If he could see her one more time…How he longed for such a moment. He wanted to hold her and never let go.

  But what if she didn’t want to see him? That question terrified Zain. Then, his mobile rang and snapped him out of it. He searched his room and found it on his nightstand next to his bed.

  “What is it, Salima?" he demanded.

  "What did you say to Charlotte?” Salima spoke with a very serious tone. “I saw her storm out of the mansion," said Salima.

  "Now, don't you start on a night like this.”

  “I don’t care about that. Did anyone else see her leave?" she asked.

  "How would I know? I’m still in my bedroom.”

  Salima tried to suppress a sigh of frustration and summoned two security team members to scout for any members of the press near the south lawn ―the only back-alley entrance to the mansion.

  Zain laughed,

  “One less headache for you.”

  “There are some people who would like to meet with you, and Ambassador Avinov is here."

  Zain liked him, but he was difficult. Regarded as more liberal than his president. During his eight-year tenure, he had negotiated several trade deals away from the sanctions category and bilaterally worked with several other countries to do profitable business. He was known to trade without the usual money market transaction route. To avoid sanctions, he bartered. Oil for access. Gas for leverage and key minerals for change.

  Zain wouldn’t be able to talk to him too long. Others would be watching, and it was wise to avoid a spectacle. Other ambassadors at the party would be suspicious if he were seen too long with Avinov.

  “The ambassador said he needs to speak to you in private as soon as possible,” Salima said.

  “He's waiting for you in the Babur study room, and he looks very serious. Wouldn’t even accept any drinks.”

  "Salima, I’m coming. I just need to get myself together a little more before I can meet him."

  Zain could hear Salima let out a little sigh, knowing he was still recovering from what he had endured with Charlotte. Zain ended the call and placed the phone in his pocket. He walked over to the floor-length mirror on his closet and adjusted his clothes. He then found a box, a well-polished luxury item with fine embossing around its borders. When he opened it, there it was. Five pens and the note,

  “From Havana — C.”

  They were Meisterstuck gold-coated classic ink pens. Zain took one with him.

  ╔ ——————————————— ╗

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  ╚ ——————————————— ╝

  On a cold breezy Capital mid-morning, Eldan was running through what looked to be a secluded 5.6-mile Valley trail. Rock Creek Park had always been his favorite since his internship, his first stint at the nation's capital away from his native California. While running, he had to be on the alert. Twice as much obstruction could come about from the odd golf ball wheezing in to hit him or a moving car. The National Zoo was near too. So he had to be alert for either a golf ball or a raging bear. Either way, the car-free road was not carefree.

  Unlike other runners, Eldan didn’t have music or a podcast to provide him with the push to run. He had been doing so from a relatively young age. A coping mechanism from the baggage of horrors he had accumulated over the years. Running was his tonic, to climb upwards, bumping into plateaus without caring about the many ditches that would often break his momentum. Not even the sharp turns or the distracting mud hindered his concentration. He also didn’t notice the many attractive females who ran in herds. His mind itself was a trail of secretive traffic lanes, plotting trails and unanswered corners.

  When Eldan saw his parked car, he realized his run was over. A disappointment he would perhaps have preferred after a little longer. But reality took precedence over the voices in his head. He took the nearest towel he could find from his 2012 blue model Smart Car. The two-seater barely had room in the back to carry his large gym bag, but it did provide him with the privilege of being able to park anywhere and everywhere. He wiped his sweat with his small white towel. He composed his breathing and breathed out all the stress that his mind and body wou
ld permit. The soothing starting sound of this vehicle was just the stimulant he needed to transition himself from his world to the workplace he would soon have to go, leading to one of his twelve-hour shifts to hammer out more policies and legislations for his Representative.

  As Eldan took a turn on Nebraska Avenue, he met traffic. An alert on his phone alarmed him. The message from the Police read, "all occupants may not enter the House building until further notice." The location was Eldan's office. Though the Donamessi was out of town, staffers were present at that time of the day. He turned on the car radio for more news. After a few minutes and still stuck in traffic, he finally learned about what had happened. The announcer first spoke of a pipe burst in the more than a century-old building. Then another breaking news came that there was an electric malfunction. A few minutes later, another radio network claimed a wall had cracked to cause a fire, and the Fire brigade had to seal off the entire building. For Eldan, all versions seemed a little contradictory to what had actually happened. He called the site janitor whom he knew well.

  "Marshall," Eldan bellowed.

  "What is going on?"

  There was static on the phone.

  "Hey Simon…you tell me," he said.

  "I meant the building. When can I get in?" Eldan asked.

  There was a slight delay in the response. Siren noises sounded in the background, and Eldan presumed the janitor was not too far away from the firemen who were probably nearby.

  "The building is off-limits. So you can't come into the office today. But maybe after they clear everything out tomorrow, they may let you in," the janitor said.

  "Thanks, Marshall!" Eldan replied.

  Being stuck in traffic and only moving every other minute gave Eldan time to ponder. The event felt oddly familiar. Eldan recalled some years back he had heard some of his contacts at Langley speak about a similar incident at their location in Byelorus. The building had become a subject of great curiosity when it was revealed the cause of the fire was based on a bug microchip that had contracted with its magnet and the metal of an adjacent water pipeline culminating into a fire.

  Was it possible that the bug he planted at the Representative's office was the source of the fire? That could not be, he felt. Something so small cannot do the kind of damage described on the radio. So it had to be something larger. But what, he asked himself.

  The radio station reported shortly after in their breaking news segment that a group of staffers who had exited the building shortly after the fire alarm described their experience at first as an eerie-like pressure in the form of an intense migraine that caused them much lethargy. Others claimed they were feeling sweaty when the weather was cool and windy. All staffers present at that time had been evacuated from the building.

  The curiosity for Eldan remained ―he knew for certain there was some correlation between the past Byelorus incident and now. Back then, staffers were withdrawn because of concerns for their welfare, but Eldan dug deep into the details of the incident.

  From 2008, the secure but visible three-floor Langley installation in Byelorus had come under some scrutiny. The Ambassador there was formally notified by the sitting dictatorial regime to vacate. Langley owned the installation entirely since 1908, and neither the Director nor the President's cabinet had any such intentions to readily give it up. But the incident, at least to Eldan, raised suspicions that perhaps a rogue intelligence faction might be responsible,  having deployed some kind of devices to vacate the building staff forcefully. Over time, Eldan conducted his own intelligence through his past connections at the Air Force. Eldan’s contacts, specializing in assessing vulnerability via telecommunications networks, discovered no local groups were involved. Instead, actors who were not on the radar took part. These were members of organized crime, also known as "The Polygon" ―a collective of various organized crime elements with roots to prison groups that exploited black markets in several regions worldwide. They had ties to several offshore businesses but most dangerously to several intelligence networks.

  Eldan had come to discover from his contacts that members of the Polygon, criminal elements behind killings, drug cartels, and racketeering were really guests of a shadow, proxy, and nameless intelligence group. Intelligence officers at Langley were aware and wanted to end it but were pressed NOT to act. Eldan later learned that Langley did not provide an encouraging response to inciting violence, but they did not condemn it either. Even when it meant Langley's interests were at harm. For years, the Polygon had operated in Africa and the Eastern part of Europe, inciting violence despite warnings from some of their key backers. Eldan suspected that Langley gave a free hand to the group spreading terror for vital information but did not realize rogue elements within that would attack its own.

  Eldan also suspected that if the group had a change in leadership, the rogue elements that were once kept at bay have now come to attack their former clients. Or worse still, what if they had new, well-funded patrons, enemies of Langley that wanted to make their presence known. But so far, no news outlets had mentioned them. Eldan hoped that this was not the worst of his imagination come true but rather his anxieties. But as he drove through the traffic, he couldn’t help but wonder about the past. The episode in Byelorus was a reality. Although known to intelligence sources in Berlin, Paris, and London, the Polygon's activities were always talked about as part of the criminal activity landscape. As Eldan understood it, despite the group's violent activities away from the western part of Europe and because of the support it provided to western spy agencies against specific jihadi terror threats, the group remained unscathed. But who permitted them to attack a Langley installation? ―a question that bothered Eldan like an irritating small stone romping from one part of his shoe to another.

  Eldan arrived at his apartment. Two very attractive blonde women joined him in the elevator. They looked like they had just finished a game of tennis. He kept his head down like he always did to not engage with anyone in the elevator, especially if they were laughing incessantly like the two blond women. However, he could not help overhearing what the two women were talking about; powerful magnets. One of the two mentioned how a security officer's pistol flew out of his holster during her shift, shot a wall, and then remained stagnantly glued to the adjacent glass. The woman who continued to speak on the matter seemed to be well qualified on Brain Tumor and sounded like an expert on meningioma. The other who seemed to draw parallels to her expertise on glioma spoke of how her ward instruments looked like they were glued to the ceiling when the doctors on the floor above did not notify the number of MRI ―Magnetic resonance imaging testing they were conducting at their respective new machines. After she complained to the building supervisor, the doctors were given a citation for potentially starting a fire and destroying the hospital building.

  One of the medical reports his sources were able to attain on the Byelorus incident showed that staff members took a long medical leave over time or simply left their positions. They suffered from extreme anxiety, with high fever and unidentified allergies. The exact causes of their ill health remained unclear. When Langley commissioned a medical team to identify the root causes, it was discovered that the soft brain tissue of those at the scene was affected at some point between the time of the incident and before the fire took place. Unable to determine the remedy, the medical team highlighted that a corner spot of the brain was damaged within five seconds.

  The death of Ambassador Janice Aubrey in 2009, a woman he knew and respected, provided many references to Eldan as he composed his thoughts. Known as a diligent financier, diplomat, and politician who served as five-term Governor as well as the Ambassador to Byelorus and the Republique, a high-profile woman of stature, she had threatened to resign over the Byelorus incident, urging the administration to act at once. Then she fell ill. One of her symptoms was shortness of breath. Eldan linked the Ambassador's death to the Byelorus episode. However, no one seemed to know what happened with no further investigations.
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  Eldan asked himself, who he knew that stood to benefit from getting Ambassador Aubrey out of the way to safeguard the Polygon for their own benefit? Was it a foreign actor or a domestic one? There remain many unexplained elements.

  As Eldan thought more, it dawned him that it may not be only the Representative's office that was bugged. The entire offices in the building, including his, may have been bugged too. That would certainly explain the fire outbreak. There must have been a large volume of magnets close to one another to spark a fire. Bugging of office spaces was not new to Eldan. In the past, he had seen the spying of mobile phones and landlines followed by claims of specific numbers on lists that predated back to the cold war era. But all that happened overseas, never domestic. Perhaps because the issue of surveillance was a toxic topic in all corners of government. However, the reality was that the government was divided. Eldan had been exposed to so much division that even when he saw protestors demanding surveillance be stopped, he asked one man who held a board depicting spying as immoral, "What would you rather have it replaced with?"

  The man answered, "Stop the spying and then stop the wars overseas. There's no need to replace it with anything."

  Bugged office spaces did not worry Eldan, but the use of information gathered to indict staff members in a criminal court did. But who would want to target his office to cause such a scandal and rift?

  ╔ ——————————————— ╗

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  ╚ ——————————————— ╝

  “Why aren't my warnings taken seriously, Salima?" Mazaar asked furiously. He was sure that the couple who had recently been wed were part of a larger plot he did not know of. He was fuming. So much so that he banged his fist against the wall for emphasis after each of his sentences. He knew he shouldn't talk to Salima that way, but he couldn't bring his temper under control.