Cold Harbor

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  After the cold of the garage, the warmth of the house prickled his skin. The lights in the pantry were off. Through the swinging door that led to the kitchen, Gibson heard Ogden open the refrigerator. The last thing Gibson wanted was to get drawn into a game of cat and mouse on Ogden’s home turf. Better to take him in the pantry and end it quickly. But to do that, he needed to lure Ogden back in this direction. Gibson looked at the garage-door opener still in his hand. Did he dare go to that well one more time? He stepped into the corner behind the kitchen door and pressed the button.

  In the kitchen, Ogden swore as the rumble of the garage door opening echoed through the house. Wondering aloud who to call for a faulty garage-door motor, he pushed through the door, which swung back and forth angrily. In the strobing kitchen light, Gibson watched Ogden open the back door and stare accusingly at his disloyal garage. Gibson took two steps and pressed a stun gun to Ogden’s neck. The man’s back arched painfully as his muscles locked up and he cried out before crumpling to the ground.

  For a moment, Gibson stood over Ogden, waiting for a sense of victory. Something. He’d imagined this moment so many times in his cell. But instead of triumph, when he looked down at Ogden prostrate at his feet, doubt elbowed its way to the fore. Gibson pushed it away, mistaking it for simple fear. Finish the job, he chided himself—finish what you set out to do. Why should he expect to feel anything? He hadn’t accomplished anything yet.

  It occurred to him that the garage door was still open. Stupid. He ducked down, planted a knee on Ogden’s back, and watched the street until the garage door finished closing. Beneath him, Ogden was shaking free. A syringe of ketamine put a stop to that. Gibson knelt on Ogden until the powerful anesthetic took effect. It should knock Ogden out for hours, but Gibson secured his wrists and ankles with zip ties, a hood over his head. No sense taking the chance that he’d gotten the dose wrong.

  Gibson searched Ogden, emptying the man’s pockets and removing a watch and a ring. It all went into a ziplock bag except for the cell phone and car keys, which he left on the kitchen counter. The ziplock went upstairs with him to the master bedroom. Gibson found a suitcase in a closet and packed enough clothes for a week. Toiletries. The gun from the bedside table. The passport and cash that he found in a bureau drawer. Ogden’s college diploma came out of its frame and was tucked into the suitcase. Gibson perused the framed pictures on a credenza, picking one of Ogden’s parents. Like the rest of the house, Ogden’s bedroom was a pristine affair, and Gibson left it that way.

  Suitcase packed, he carried it down to the kitchen and took a tour of the house. He went room to room, making sure that he hadn’t overlooked anything. If Gibson had expected to come away with a sense of Ogden’s personality, then he’d visited the wrong house. He couldn’t get over the utter banality of Ogden’s home. The generic, Pottery Barn veneer, everything tasteful while having no taste of which to speak. He’d wanted something more from someone with the power to disappear a man from the face of the earth.

  The last door he tried opened into an office. Gibson sat at the desk and tapped the spacebar to wake the computer. He’d brought equipment to hack the log-in, but the computer didn’t have one. No doubt Ogden knew better than most that log-ins were a sham.

  Gibson used one of Ogden’s credit cards to book train tickets to Fort Lauderdale, New York City, and Chicago. Bus tickets to a half dozen other cities. Hotel reservations. Last, Gibson slid a CD into Ogden’s computer and initiated a complete wipe of the hard drive. It would take hours, and Gibson would be long gone before it finished, but it would give investigators one more misleading question to puzzle over.

  Ogden and his suitcase went in the trunk of his own car. Gibson sat on the bumper to catch his breath. Moving Ogden reminded him how much strength he’d lost in the last eighteen months. Either that or Ogden weighed considerably more than the 190 listed on his driver’s license. Gibson checked the time—right on schedule. He borrowed Ogden’s thumb to unlock his cell phone and scrolled through Ogden’s calendar.

  On Saturday evening, Ogden was taking his girlfriend and her boys to a Capitals game at the Verizon Center in DC. Sunday, he was watching the NFL playoffs with “the boys.” Other than that, his weekend looked open. Next, Gibson went through Ogden’s texts from the last twelve hours, looking for any last-minute plans that might not have made it to the calendar.

  Nothing. So far so good.

  He read the threads between the girlfriend and the group texts to his friends, getting a feel for how Ogden wrote to each. He was more formal and reserved with the girlfriend, casual and jocular with the guys. Gibson wrote an apologetic text to the girlfriend on Ogden’s behalf. Something had come up at work, he’d been called back in, and it looked like it could be a working weekend. Cell phones weren’t allowed inside Langley so Gibson wrote that Ogden might be incommunicado if this situation went badly. Ogden was sorry and would make it up to the girlfriend. Gibson relayed the same message to “the boys” but in far coarser terms.

  The girlfriend replied to his message, and Gibson spent fifteen minutes going back and forth with her. She wasn’t happy. Clearly, this wasn’t the first time that Ogden’s responsibilities had interfered with their plans. Gibson played the part of the repentant boyfriend stuck between a rock and a hard place.

  I have to go in. It’s my job.

  I know. I’m just disappointed about tomorrow. The kids were looking forward to it.

  So was I. Tell them I’m sorry.

  There was a pause. In text, Ogden was reserved and never wrote “I love you” first. Gibson made a point of breaking that rule now:

  I love you.

  Love you too. Are you ok?

  Frustrated. Missing you. Wish it could be another way.

  Hopefully the CIA would read something sinister into that text later. But in the short term, Ogden’s uncharacteristic display of emotion had the desired effect.

  Oh baby it will be alright. Call me when you can.

  I’ll try. Gotta go.

  Gibson didn’t reply after that, leaving room for Ogden’s colleagues to invent subtext that suited their narrative. Then he placed a call to the main line at the Chinese embassy. He got an automated message, but that didn’t matter. He left the line open for two minutes before hanging up. That ought to give them something to talk about at Langley.

  Satisfied, Gibson connected Ogden’s phone to an external battery. Enough to power the phone for two weeks, not that it would need that long. Next he put the phone and battery in a padded envelope stamped and addressed to Ogden’s parents in San Diego. It went out on the front steps. Until it was picked up on Saturday, cell records would show the phone connected to his “home” cell towers. Then its cross-country journey would provide investigators with one more wild goose to chase down.

  Gibson backed slowly out of the garage and out onto the deserted street. He shifted the car into drive and waited for the garage door to close for the last time before accelerating away into the night. It was a straight shot south to Dulles. At the hotel, Gibson backed in beside the Yukon and transferred Damon Ogden and his suitcase from one trunk to the other.

  He reviewed all the false trails that he’d left for investigators to chase down: train tickets, bus tickets, plane tickets, phone traveling cross-country to San Diego, calls to the Chinese embassy, and Ogden’s car parked at a hotel near an international airport. The first rule of disappearing was to make it difficult for anyone to follow you. Creating a sea of misinformation was textbook procedure, and with any luck that would be exactly how the CIA would interpret what Gibson had left for them. He wanted them to think their man was on the run, possibly going over to the Chinese. He wanted them scouring the four corners of the globe far, far from abandoned power plants in Northern Virginia.

  Gibson dragged Ogden down the long service corridor into the deep recesses of the power plant. Gradually, the howling wind faded from earshot until the only sound was of Ogden’s heels scraping the concrete floor.

/>   In the cell, Gibson laid Ogden gently on his back. Once he unbound his wrists and ankles, Ogden looked almost peaceful. Undressing Ogden, he methodically folded each piece of clothing and stored it in a garbage bag. Getting an unconscious man into a jumpsuit proved to be a nightmare. It was like dressing the world’s most uncooperative five-year-old. When she wasn’t in the mood, Ellie’d had a way of going limp that increased her body mass. Ogden was worse.

  Don’t think about Ellie now.

  When he finally finished, Gibson sat on the end of the cot and took a last look at his handiwork. He’d been over every square inch of this room a dozen times, but with Ogden lying there, it had stopped being an abstract exercise and become all too real. Over the past week, he’d stripped the windowless, eight-by-ten bathroom down to the floor. The tile, the mirror, the toilet paper dispenser—anything that might be fashioned into a tool or a weapon had been removed. The feet of the cot were bolted into the floor. All that remained of the original bathroom were the toilet and sink.

  In one corner, crates of protein bars were stacked to the ceiling. Gibson couldn’t stop by three times a day to feed him, but if Ogden rationed himself, he should have no problem making them last. Not that Gibson envied him the constant diarrhea and stomach pain as his body adjusted to its new, one-dimensional diet. It would be unpleasant, but Ogden would survive. Or he wouldn’t. That was up to Ogden now. But he had everything that Gibson had been given.

  Looking at Ogden on the floor, Gibson remembered waking up in his cell for the first time. The anger. The despair. The hopelessness. Eighteen months. A forced—and now likely permanent—separation from Ellie, the most important person in Gibson’s world. That was what Ogden owed him. Gibson wouldn’t hurt him, wouldn’t kill him. But he’d promised his father that Damon Ogden would know how it felt. In eighteen months, Gibson would let him go. But Ogden wouldn’t know that. He wouldn’t know how long he’d been there or how long he had left. Wouldn’t know if he’d ever be free. This was fair. Just. Eye for an eye. Who knew, Ogden might even make a friend or two while he was here.

  Gibson left Ogden lying on the floor of the cell and went out into the hall. He took one last look at the prisoner. He’d check in on him in a few months when the heat was off, but until then, Damon Ogden would be alone with nothing but his conscience for companionship. Gibson swung the door closed, expecting a rush of euphoria. He’d done what he’d set out to do. What he’d promised his father in the cell. When that didn’t come, he waited to feel anything at all. Nothing. He felt nothing. He turned the locks and slid the dead bolts into place. It would take a tank to knock this door down.

  Now Damon Ogden would finally pay.

  Still nothing.

  He stepped back. It had been a long day, and he was exhausted. He needed sleep—in the morning he would feel like a new man. Duke had promised him that he would. He wished Duke were here to reassure him. Discouraged, he stowed his gear in a cubbyhole and went out down the service corridor, scattering debris to cover the drag marks. He didn’t expect anyone to come this way, but if they did he didn’t want to leave a trail of bread crumbs to Ogden’s door.

  It was a cloudless night. At the top of the stairs, the sky flexed and then crumpled like a beer can in God’s fist. It pressed down on Gibson, vertigo spinning him, driving him to his knees. As bad as it had ever been. Static filled his eyes, and he couldn’t breathe. Bear knelt beside him.

  “One,” she said.

  He closed his eyes.

  “Two.”

  He took a halting breath.

  “Three . . .”

  At ten, Gibson climbed tentatively to his feet.

  “I wasn’t sure I’d see you again,” he said.

  “You’re still being silly.”

  “Why are you here? I thought you didn’t want anything to do with this.”

  “Because you need my help. I told you that.”

  “But why would you help me at all? I don’t understand.”

  “Because you came for me. I’m returning the favor.”

  “I was too late, Bear. I’m always too late.”

  “No,” she said. “No, you weren’t. Look at me. Gibson, look at me. My daughter is safe because of you. Catherine is safe. You gave her a chance. You did that.”

  “Stop it.”

  “You’ve helped so many people. Why don’t you see that?”

  “You’re not going to talk me out of this,” Gibson said. “He has to pay. He has to understand what he did.”

  “You will regret this for the rest of your life. You already regret it.”

  “You would say that.”

  “I’m not saying it, stupid. You are.” Bear began to cry.

  He felt terrible, but his mind was made up. The irony of that sentiment was, unfortunately, lost on him. “I’m sorry, Bear. He has to pay.”

  Gibson got back in the SUV. He started the engine and waited for Bear to get in. She stood in the wash of the headlights, unmoving. He left her there and drove home in silence, trying not to think about her dire warnings. The static in his eyes made it hard to drive, and Gibson needed both hands on the wheel. For the first time in weeks, he couldn’t sleep unless every light was on.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The next morning, Gibson woke to an awful headache. He’d spent a largely sleepless night tortured by Bear’s warning at the power plant. Afraid that she might be right. That this had all been a terrible mistake. And where was his dad? This had been Duke’s idea in the first place. Why wasn’t he here to explain why Gibson didn’t feel fixed? That had been the whole point, hadn’t it? But it was as if the ghost of his father knew that he’d written a bad check and wanted to avoid paying up. Gibson felt hollowed out. All he wanted was to turn off his alarm and sleep forever. He lay there listlessly with a pillow over his face.

  Why didn’t he feel better?

  Because he wasn’t finished. Ogden might be safely stashed away, but Gibson still had much to do. The rest of the weekend was dedicated to being seen. To establishing an alibi and passing convincingly for someone who hadn’t kidnapped a CIA officer and imprisoned him in an abandoned power plant. Gibson couldn’t very well do that from his bedroom floor. He would feel better once the weekend was behind him.

  That had to be it.

  He dragged himself from the floor and into the shower. At the diner, he worked a double shift. Operating on only a few hours of sleep, he still had to sell himself as energetic and well rested. He mainlined caffeine all day and feigned a cheerful, upbeat demeanor. After his shift, punchy and exhausted, his body begging for sleep, Gibson forced himself to hang around and eat dinner with Toby. Priority one was minimizing the amount of uncorroborated time he spent between now and when Damon Ogden officially went missing on Tuesday morning.

  Maissa was coming home for a weeklong visit in February, and Toby was in high spirits. He talked animatedly throughout dinner while Gibson nodded in the appropriate places. He appreciated the opportunity to listen without needing to contribute much to the conversation. When the plates had been cleared away, Toby remembered something. He left the table and returned with a cardboard box. He put it on the table between them.

  “What is it?” Gibson asked.

  “It’s yours.”

  Gibson lifted the lid. Inside he saw framed photographs. A bust of James Madison that had belonged to his father. His passport. His discharge papers from the Marines. A tattered social security card and other personal effects. His wedding ring. A bundle of letters in blue envelopes. From a stack of photographs, he picked out one of Nicole holding a sleeping Ellie at the hospital.

  At the bottom of the box, he found a framed photograph that his father had kept on his desk. In it, Gibson sat in an armchair, Bear cozy in his lap. She’d been seven, Gibson eleven, brother and sister in all but name. She’d harassed him for a year to read her a book, and when she finally wore him down, she’d been ready with The Lord of the Rings. It had taken them two years to finish, but Grace Lombard,
Bear’s mother, had snuck a photograph that first night. It had come out so perfectly that most assumed it had been staged. To Gibson, the photograph represented an idealized version of his childhood. He hadn’t noticed before, but when he saw Bear now, she was the girl from this picture. She even wore the same dress.

  He felt a sweeping gratitude to have all these memories back but didn’t understand how. Gibson looked up at Toby questioningly.

  “I might have bribed your landlord to let me go through your apartment before he sent everything to the dump,” Toby said.

  “Thank you so much.”

  “I’m just sorry it’s taken until now. I wanted it to be a surprise, but we’ve been so busy, and I kept forgetting.”

  “No, it’s amazing. I thought I’d lost all of this.”

  Toby picked out a photograph of Ellie on her first day of kindergarten. “You have a beautiful daughter, Gibson. I’m proud of how hard you’ve worked to get back on track. How is the job search coming?”

  Feeling guilty, Gibson updated Toby about his nonexistent job search. Toby asked question after question, and Gibson’s lies became more and more convoluted. It surprised him how hard it was to keep it up. Thankfully, Toby’s work soon interrupted.

  Around eleven, Gibson dragged himself home. He unpacked the box and set the pictures out on the floor close to where he slept. When he came back from turning on all the lights, Bear was sitting on the floor, looking at Ellie. He braced for another lecture, but Bear didn’t say anything. That was almost worse, but Gibson was too tired to argue about it tonight. He stretched out on the floor and fell asleep looking at his daughter.

  His alarm woke him at 5:45 a.m. The last thing Gibson wanted to do was to go for a run at this hour, but he got up and got dressed anyway. Then he lurked at his front door, peering out through the curtain until he saw his landlady begin her morning pilgrimage to fetch the Sunday paper. He met the seventy-five-year-old widow on the sidewalk. Normally, Mrs. Nakamura didn’t have much to say to him, but this morning she launched into an excited soliloquy about how the Packers were going to trounce the Cowboys. Her green-and-gold Packers jersey flapped excitedly around her knees, and it seemed a little early to be this fired up, but there was no stopping her. She invited him upstairs to watch the playoffs that afternoon. Gibson said he had to drive down to Richmond but promised to stop by if he got back in time.