Vector

by James Abel

  “In other words, you don’t know what he has to say?”

  She looked annoyed. But then confident. “He said I can come if it’s okay with you.”

  I said nothing. Vicki Ponte insinuated herself further into the apartment. She sat down, like it was her apartment. She said, “Well, which do you like better? Not making deals? Or not finding out?”

  “In Brazil we would make you tell,” Izabel Santo remarked.

  “Good thing I’m not there. Believe me,” Vicki said, “on the way here I had my guys check him out. He’s no lightweight.”

  “Okay. I agree. What’s the name of this important man?”

  “He’s retired State Department. High up State Department. His name is Hobart Haines,” she said.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  JetBlue Flight 1024 to Albuquerque was delayed due to bad weather over Ohio. Otherwise I never would have made it on time. Eddie dropped me at Kennedy, that deteriorating madhouse of an airport, after letting Izabel out at the international terminal.

  “If you change your mind about coming, let me know,” she said, and kissed me on the mouth. Eddie, grinning, said nothing but raised his brows as he started up the car.

  The jet was full so I’d had to buy a Mint class seat. As Manhattan’s spires fell away I turned on my laptop and tried to reach Aya. No luck. I checked news reports. No progress in finding Tom Fargo, if they were right.

  Time stretches out on planes. It was impossible to believe we were moving at 540 miles an hour. Or that Hobart Haines had insisted he’d only speak to me in person. He seemed old and paranoid. How do I know it is really you if we talk on the phone? But he’d managed to reach me through high-level contacts, so I was humoring him now.

  I think I know where Tom is going, Haines had said.

  I watched the seat-back route map, which showed a plane zigzagging west, forgoing a straight route. I shut it off. I gazed out the window at a landscape that formerly hosted malarias. The Ohio Valley—once forest, now suburbs or farms—had produced millions of mosquitoes to sicken wagon train riders. TVA dam builders in Kentucky had contracted malaria in droves. The disease had been prevalent as far west as New Mexico. In the 1880s the East Coast from Massachusetts to Florida was rampant with it. In 1942 Washington created the Office of Malaria Control in war areas, which evolved into the CDC. By 1952 the East Coast was clean.

  I hope my trip isn’t a wild-goose chase, I thought as a flight attendant brought Mint class dinner: poached lobster, the luxury at odds with the emergency. I had a fold-down massage seat protected by a privacy-enhancing plastic shield, like a face guard on a level-four mask.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question, Colonel?”

  My neighbor, a big dome-headed man in his forties, sipped his second Grey Goose martini. People who need permission to ask a question invariably have an unpleasant one in mind.

  My neighbor had eyed me disapprovingly from the moment he’d seated himself. He’d clearly recognized me but followed the New York tradition: Don’t talk to your seatmate until time lapses in a flight. Initial silence marks you as acceptable. New York rules. What a place.

  He was robust looking, in an open-collared shirt and yellow V-necked cashmere sweater. He smelled of good cologne, so he took malaria medicine or believed he’d never catch the disease. He’d been reading stock market reports over his dinner of herb-crusted monkfish and white wine.

  “Ask away,” I said.

  “If you don’t mind, why is the government wasting money sending you people first class?”

  There was an unpleasant edge to the words you people. He probably regularly ranted against “big government,” although I suspected he loved it enough when it came to corporate bailouts. I didn’t have time for an argument. I just told the truth. Which was better than the way I’d treated Vicki Ponte, sending her home for a travel bag, then bolting to the airport, leaving her behind.

  “I’m paying for the flight, sir. Not Uncle Sam.”

  He blanched. “You?”

  “Why not? My trip. My dollar.”

  He had the self-awareness to turn red with embarrassment, grace enough to apologize by asking if he could buy me a drink, even though they were free. I was not interested in fellowship, but, contrite now, he wanted to talk. Hell, it kills time. He told me that his name was Robert Packer and he was the president of a hedge fund in Stamford, Connecticut. He was on his way to Albuquerque to meet with an important client. I didn’t care. He asked the purpose of my trip. I just said, “Family.” This was true, but not related to my family at all.

  I almost married Tom’s mother, Hobart Haines had said on the phone. We were over Texas, the pilot announced.

  “What did you just say, Robert? My mind wandered.”

  “I was asking what you learned about the investments.”

  “What investments?”

  “You know! The fund? The South American one that poured all that money into drug companies that make antimalarials, two weeks before this whole mess began?”

  I turned to him, my pulse picking up. Maybe this was one more silly rumor. But maybe Mint class travel had not been a bad idea after all. No one had said anything to me about suspicious investments. Ray just said that I didn’t understand the big picture. He’d never explained what the big picture was.

  “You don’t know?” Robert Packer looked surprised.

  “I just track disease.”

  “Well! I talk to brokers all over the world every day. We all know that the FBI’s checking out money that went into drug companies—Capper, Poong-Koman, Humbles—before the outbreak. Whoever did it made billions. By the time everyone else got in, those stocks had hit the roof.”

  “These firms are in South America, you said?”

  “Argentina and Brazil, I think.”

  “Do your, uh, friends know if the FBI found a connection between the outbreak and investments?”

  He looked puzzled. “I was asking you that.”

  “We’re compartmentalized,” I said. “The left hand never knows what the right one is doing.”

  “But that’s ridiculous.”

  “Tell me about it. Excuse me, Robert. I have work to do.”

  I e-mailed Eddie and asked him to check on the alleged investments. And then Izabel, asking her to check brokerage firms in Rio or São Paulo. Might be nothing. Might be big.

  I tried Aya again. Still no reply. I dozed, dreamless. Suddenly I was awake and we were landing. Robert Packer waved good-bye in the terminal. I rushed outside with my carry-on bag and got in line for a yellow cab, whose driver shook his head when he heard where I wanted to go.

  “Santa Fe? That’ll cost about three hundred eighty dollars. There’s a shuttle bus, though. A lot cheaper.”

  I handed over four one-hundred-dollar bills. “Big tip if you hurry up.”

  • • •

  The one-hour ride felt like five. The dawn sky was starting to lighten. We passed the twinkling lights of desert towns beneath white morning stars. The moon was a huge reddish crescent that looked closer to earth than it did back East. It seemed that it might strike the horizon. Climbing, the highway passed an Indian casino’s neon sign. The number of trucks on the road multiplied with daylight, as if they were animals emerging after sleep.

  I tried Aya again, and checked news, to read with gratitude but alarm that police in Memphis had just announced that Tom Fargo had been in their city yesterday. Positive ID.

  So the news conference worked.

  My excitement turned to dread as I watched a mom and her son—he looked about eight—being interviewed.

  “I saw mosquitoes flying out of his car! There was a hole in the door!” the boy claimed.

  Next came clips of police roadblocks near Memphis, and along rural roads in nearby Tennessee and Mississippi. Every officer in that tristate area had been provided with photo
kits and sketches of Tom Fargo, the ones I’d shown at the conference, and which now flashed on-screen.

  He’s driving around releasing mosquitoes, I thought.

  • • •

  Ping! E-mail from Aya! Finally!

  But I didn’t open it because the cab had left the interstate and was turning onto Hobart Haines’s red-dirt, suburban road, on the outskirts of Santa Fe. It was narrow enough for two cars to barely pass if they risked ruts on the side. Properties were large. Driveways snaked to half-hidden one-story homes. The land was arid; arroyos, dry runoffs from violent downpours, depressions sprouting cactus and thorn shrubs, wet leaf hackberry, quince, and peachleaf willows. The cab threw up dust. The sky was pastel blue and smeared with a single dagger-shaped cirrus cloud facing east–west.

  “Tell me what you know now,” I’d urged Hobart Haines, on the phone. “It will save time.”

  “Face-to-face is better, Colonel.” The voice had been hoarse, and hesitant, as if the man was sick. “I was a diplomat. I don’t want anything for myself. I don’t want publicity. I saw the FBI shut down your press conference. So! Just between me and you.”

  His property began at a cattle guard fence, which swung open by remote control after I phoned to tell him I was here. The house was almost invisible from a hundred yards off because it blended in, built into the mountain. Or, more accurately, it seemed to be emerging from the mountain, as a low mass of steel and concrete that jutted into the morning chill. The angular construction might have graced a 1960s architecture magazine. The steel deck—and figure in a wheelchair—was accessible from a staircase or deck-level sliding picture windows. The view would be downhill to city and valley. I smelled sage, pinyon, and coffee as I got out of the cab, and asked the driver to wait.

  “Waiting costs more.”

  “Then you will get it,” I said as a woman came down the steps from the deck. Filipino, I saw. In her late twenties. Short and slim, in denim jeans and matching lightweight jacket, long black hair falling free to her narrow waist.

  “I’m Josie. Hobart didn’t sleep, waiting for you. He is sorry he made you come so far, but he did not want people listening in on the phone.”

  “He’s sick?”

  She considered the question, a gentle intelligence in her face. “He is . . .” She searched for a word to describe his condition. “Lonely.”

  Her boot heels made snapping sounds as we mounted the deck stairway. A big house, an old man, a private nurse. Money. Haines looked shrunken close-up, and I smelled wool and age over the sharper odors of bacon and coffee. I saw a green oxygen canister beside him; unused but ready if he started to wheeze. The house seemed solid, and its sharp angles challenged a notion of deterioration. The figure looked as if a good wind could sweep it away.

  “Colonel Rush, thank you for making a long trip.”

  “I hope it will be worth it, sir.”

  Haines nodded as Josie set up folding tables and put steaming coffee mugs on them. He was a soft lump beneath a Pendleton blanket, a red stocking cap on against the morning chill. The eyes were watery blue. The voice was hoarse. I imagined Tom Fargo—at this moment—releasing thousands of vectors by a river, park, field.

  “I want to tell you a story, Colonel.”

  If regret had human sound, it would be the voice of Hobart Haines.

  An outdoor fireplace/oven sent mesquite smoke across the deck. Josie was putting down, for me, scrambled eggs with peppers mixed in. Crispy bacon. Tabasco sauce. For Hobart, oatmeal and a small spoon, for tiny bites.

  “I was sixty-three years old when I met Annie. Tom’s mom.”

  The coffee was chicory flavored, and revived me. The heat was extreme from the oven, yet the onetime State Department star did not seem to mind. The rising sun glared off his wire-rimmed glasses. Regret is acid in the human heart.

  “I’d retired. Never married. I’d inherited my parents’ home in Denver, and Annie moved in next door.” The right side of his face smiled. The left side remained fixed. He’s had a stroke. He said, “I fell for her but I was . . . well . . . inept in social matters.”

  “Shy,” I suggested.

  “It’s funny,” he said in a way that suggested he did not think it funny at all. “In my work I’d always been good with people. I could walk into a palace with a Saudi prince who hated us and come out with an agreement. I knew how to threaten, back off, walk away. You’d think a good negotiator could do a simple thing like court a woman.”

  “No one ever said that’s simple.”

  “You’re kind.”

  Curbing impatience, I said, “Tell me about Annie, sir.”

  “She was very beautiful. She’d lost a son. She was struggling to get over it. Working in an art shop. Extra protective of Tom. When I saw his photo on TV yesterday, I thought, I was afraid something would happen, but this is even worse than what I feared.”

  “What did you think would happen?”

  But he would get to things in his own way. He grasped the little spoon but did not use it. “Annie wouldn’t admit it, but Tom was wounded. He’d been dragged around place to place, lived with a succession of worthless father figures. He’d lost his brother in a car crash and blamed himself; lost faith in everything; a quiet kid who spent a lot of time alone. No friends. Hours hiking or on the Net. Annie told me—later on I mean—that she’d gone into his room once and he was on his computer, on an Islamic website. He was seventeen then. More coffee?”

  “Keep going, sir.”

  His eyes closed. I wondered if he had fallen asleep. But then he resumed talking.

  “You don’t wear a wedding ring, Colonel.”

  “I’m divorced,” I said. I did not mention Karen, my fiancée, who had died a few years ago.

  “I bet when you courted your wife, you did all the normal things. Flowers. Romantic weekends.”

  “Oh, I think in courtship anything you do is normal.”

  “I didn’t want to drive her away, tell her that Tom was in bad shape. I wasn’t his father. I was the old guy next door, who fixed things, drove them around if her car was broken. The harmless eunuch who listened to her talk about men who wanted to take her out. I just,” he said, “talked.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Why should you? Ineffective diplomats! A writer once described us as men in their underwear, dancing with brooms. I did what I did best, talk. Pontificate. Educate about good things in America. I actually thought I could get closer to the boy by telling him things I’d learned in my career.” He laughed self-mockingly.

  “Good things about America?”

  “We’d take drives. Annie had ignored the kid for years, so she insisted that we do things together. I told him about Iran when we were at Pikes Peak, on a picnic. I talked about how to balance threat with action. How to fool the other side in negotiations. How even presidents fold to threats behind the scenes. We traded arms but we got back hostages, Tom. It’s important to know how far the other side will go.

  “Other guys talk baseball or take a kid fishing. I took him to Los Alamos to see where the atomic bomb was born. Tom just sat there. He never complained. I thought he enjoyed it. But on the day he exploded, I saw that I’d fooled myself.”

  “Exploded?”

  “It was the week she said she’d marry me. The happiest I ever felt. For six hours.”

  I felt as if the second hand of my watch was a razor, scraping my skin as it cut away time. I wanted to shake him and demand to know where he thought Tom Fargo was going. But you let a person get to things their own way, because often you learn more if you do.

  “I’d proposed the night before . . . had a few drinks and built up courage, and she’d shocked me, actually said yes! She said I made her feel safe. She said the boy needed a reliable man. She didn’t love me, but she respected me and that was enough. We were going to tell him at lunch. Annie wo
rried how he’d react. She’d promised him over and over, no more men, and broken those promises.”

  “You were nervous.”

  He smiled, and I saw what he’d looked like when he was younger. He’d been handsome. “I wanted his approval.”

  “That makes sense, sir.”

  He sighed. On the blanket, his crablike fingers were scratching at the fabric, bunching it.

  “I was nervous so I talked. The craziest thing started it. I looked up and saw fighter jets on maneuvers out of Colorado Springs. Suddenly I’m launching into a tirade about defense contractors. How the company that built those jets made parts in different congressional districts, to influence congressmen there. As if the kid could care! I’m going on about how diplomats want peace, generals want peace, but contractors want equipment used so they can sell more. Annie is squeezing my hand, wanting me to stop. And out of the blue, in the middle of this, Annie turns to Tom and blurts out, “Honey, Hobart and I decided to get married.”

  “And Tom blew.”

  “You’re damn right. I was terrified. He was screaming so loud that I could barely drive. He’s calling her a liar and a fool and demanding that I stop the car and let him out. He’s out of control. Someone ought to kill the contractors, he says, get a rifle or bombs and go to all the factories, blow them up. Make an example of one company. He’s ranting about Muslims killed by those planes. It’s all mixed up. You’re going to marry him? YOU TOLD ME THAT HE’S AN OLD MAN AND YOU HAVE NO INTEREST IN HIM!”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “I knew even before she told me that we were not going to get married. I actually had to stop in the next town. He wouldn’t ride with me. She wouldn’t leave him. And she’ll protect him now, you know. She’ll never help you find him. She’ll never do anything to hurt that kid again.”

  “He’s not a kid anymore,” I said, knowing that the FBI had been to see Annie. Hobart was right. She’d paid for Tom’s car. She’d given him a job. She didn’t care, she’d told Ray’s agents, if they arrested her. She’d not say anything to harm her son.