Vector

by James Abel

  She left in the parade of terrified civilians, hidden fighters, and jury-rigged conveyances: a bicycle with a wooden milk-crate seat, a Volkswagen pulled by mules, a horse cart with a windshield attached by bungee cords, hauling boxes of pilfered U.S. Army self-heating meals.

  That night the main artillery barrage started, and in the morning men to the left and right of him in the ravine lay still. Sullamed, the Somalian, blown to pieces; Martin Blake, screaming for his mother; Abdel Regeni, a rat running out of his body, dragging a piece of red intestine.

  Tom knew he was going to die as the enemy moved forward. But the high-quality Iraqi equipment never matched their will to fight. The Kurds opened the assault, coming hard on the right. The Sunni militia advanced on the left. The Iraqis, center, were sluggish, even prodded by the Americans. Iraqi soldiers hid behind their Humvees. As the attack faltered, Caliphate reinforcements arrived.

  Then the Iraqi troops pulled back and their allies had to do the same. A sure victory had turned into a rout, and the fighters thanked God for another day of life.

  • • •

  Afterward, it was easy for Tom to get over the border, to fetch his family back. The Turkish guards had been bribed, and knew if they stopped fighters, they would be attacked.

  In a dream, Tom remembered the refugee camp, the smell of pit latrines and unwashed bodies, gasoline generators, the mountain of discarded food cans, the medicine and viscera reek from Red Cross and Red Crescent hospital tents. Hobart Haines peered out of one tent, dressed like a doctor. Gunther the ski instructor out of another. Hodge lay beneath an overturned van, blood gushing from his mouth.

  “People got sick after eating,” Hodge told him, in the voice of a middle-aged French doctor. “Your wife was one of them. I am very sorry. She is dead.”

  • • •

  He woke and squeezed his eyes shut and tried to escape back to the camp. He could still feel the clammy cold of Sakina’s skin on his cheeks, and saw the tiny face of his son, blue. He lay in the double bed in Atlanta and smelled refugees. His son, Ayman, had been trampled during the riot.

  Tom swung his legs out of bed, said his morning prayers, facing east. They made me this way. He did not mind that today or tomorrow might be his last on earth. He’d known from the first that his life might end here. And if he got out, and made it back to Brazil, he would trust God to determine whether Cardozo would keep him alive, now that he’d been identified by the Americans. But nothing succeeds like success. Tom would take the chance.

  Maybe Cardozo would send him back to the Caliphate.

  Tom Fargo sat at the woman’s dressing table and shaved his head, careful not to cut the skin. He would have preferred dentistry to plug the gap between his teeth, but the over-the-counter resin would work for two days before it crumbled. He patted his skull dry and fitted on the $4,000 wig, bought with cash in a Rio shop that served the city’s millionaires; industrialists and oil folks, models and TV stars. The wig, Swiss virgin hair, gave his head a wiry look. “This makes your chin weak,” the “hair advisor” had protested when he bought it. “You are more handsome than this! This makes you look plain!”

  “I like it fine,” he’d said.

  From the eyeglass case came brown-tinted lenses, also bought in a Rio Zona Sul boutique. He examined himself in the mirror.

  No one will be looking for me there, anyway. No one will associate one more guest with the man on TV.

  In the bedroom Tom hung up the two sets of clothes he would need tomorrow. Lightweight sharply creased lime-green trousers. Short-sleeved pink Lacoste shirt and white Reeboks. Brooks Brothers pressed dark blue sports jacket and crisp gray slacks and loafers. On a night table he laid the printed invitation that he’d received in Seth Pryce’s PO box, its words in gold script.

  Come celebrate with us!

  He’d need to carry weapons and ammunition. But hiding them should be no problem, considering where he was going.

  In Atlanta, a perfect sunny day, hot, skies clear. For tomorrow, he saw on TV, the forecast was the same.

  The announcer grinned. “Wear sunblock today! Protect yourselves, my friends!”

  THIRTY-ONE

  In the old days, only a year ago, Eddie and I had no trouble getting into places if we needed to ask questions. We showed ID. We worked for a national agency. If we met resistance, the Admiral or an FBI official made a call, and we got in, fast.

  I’d figured that now that we were off the task force, it would be harder to see important people, but I’d not accounted for Stuart’s status in Manhattan. As head of the Columbia program, he moved effortlessly through social strata accessible to me until now only by threat or ID.

  “We’re here to see Chairman Riverside,” Stuart told the lobby guard. “We have an appointment.”

  The glass tower occupied a corner at 6th Avenue and 50th Street, a block from Broadway. The sun-drenched atrium featured artwork commissioned in the 1920s by a railroad titan who hired a Mexican communist to paint murals on his walls.

  All around us, in vivid colors, Spanish conquistadores slaughtered Aztec Indians, who morphed into white-clad farmers ridden down by Emperor Maximilian’s French dragoons. The French were replaced by Mexican soldiers, shooting at Zapata’s peasant uprising. On the fourth wall impoverished railroad workers lay tracks in scrub desert, then trudged home to shacks where peasant women rolled tortillas and fried beans, and small children slept.

  Maybe tortillas were the connection to the food company. Frozen tortillas were a product line.

  The elevator that whisked us high above the city featured an inset TV showing Wall Street news; stocks of makers of insecticides and antimalaria medicines were up, up, up. The door opened directly into a waiting room featuring a striking canvas, a cubist Picasso copy.

  Stuart nudged me. “It’s not a copy, Joe.”

  Up until now I’d appreciated Stuart’s medical knowledge but in security matters, thought him naive. He was a do-gooder, and I admired him for that. But hours ago I’d watched him pick up a phone and get through on the chairman’s private line to a secretary who said that George Riverside IV was busy. Stuart responded pleasantly, “Tell him that this is important, not a social call.”

  I stared at Stuart. Social?

  “He’s a big donor,” Stuart said now as we sat in a glass waiting room, sipping bottled water. “Allison and I sit at his table at the Explorers Club dinner every year. You should join, Joe. Tarantula appetizers. Yum!”

  “I’m not a joiner.” I figured we’d have a long wait.

  “Haven’t you figured out yet that it’s not about that?”

  “What is it about, then?”

  Stuart smiled with his mild blue eyes. Except now those eyes were looking more savvy. “Joe, two kinds of people join the Explorers Club. Those who do things. And those who want to be near people who do things. They donate money. They bankroll expeditions. Nice folks. They adventure by proxy. The truth, Joe? They don’t just donate to a cause. They donate, you might say, to envy.”

  “And they envy you?”

  Stuart shrugged. He disappeared for months into the wilds of New Guinea. He worked cholera outbreaks in Haiti. He was a soft-spoken presence who’d spent four months on the Orinoco in search of a lost Russian expedition once. He’d contracted so many tropical illnesses over the years that he ate a restricted diet. It had taken him almost a decade of hard work to convince Harvard to start up the first Wilderness Program. Columbia had followed.

  How the hell did I ever underestimate him, I thought, just because his business card lacks the word Government?

  Stuart said, “I do it because I like it. I like them. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t value in it. So join. Every bit helps.”

  “Stuey!” a voice exclaimed as a man rushed into the waiting room. “Where the hell were you Monday for squash?”

  • • •


  “The FBI was already here, asking about Tol-e-Khomri!” Riverside told us, minutes later, in his office.

  “Oh, we know that,” Stuart lied. “We just want to go over a couple things again, Legs.”

  Legs? I thought. Squash? Stuart?

  Riverside looked to be a fit white man in his mid-forties; lanky and broad shouldered, strong jaw, intelligent eyes, oddly dirty fingernails. He’d made sure that we knew that his desk was made of sustainably grown tropical hardwood, and he’d personally served us sustainably harvested guava juice bottled by his company. ONE DOLLAR OF EVERY PURCHASE GOES TO SOUTH PACIFIC FARMERS! the label said. George was showing off. The company sold pork rinds, jelly candy, and beef jerky, too.

  Stuart told me, “George is pigeon-toed, Joe, but he moves around that squash court like a cockamamy animal.”

  George laughed. “That’s because you run me ragged, Stuey. No rest for the weary, Joe.”

  “Oh, you’re far from weary, George.”

  I wanted to shout questions as George and “Stuey” laughed. The FBI had been here? Eddie and I were used to coming in and firing out questions. Instead, in the last few minutes, I’d learned that George and family enjoyed the Broadway revival of Porgy and Bess, that a fellow squash player nicknamed “Hands Christian” had broken a leg while skiing in Chile last week, that Stuart and his wife should “come along on the Rainforest Alliance trip to Ecuador. It will be fun on that little boat in the Galápagos. We donate there, you know. Preservation.”

  “Speaking of your good work, George . . .”

  And finally, we were talking about Tol-e-Khomri.

  George told us, “Two agents showed up, as I recall, after terrorists shot up that camp. I gave them our report on what happened. I had Bob Welch up here. He’s in charge of our charity work. He spent hours with them.”

  Stuart asked, “Do you remember the report?”

  “Not every detail. Why?”

  Stuart glanced at me. Pick up the ball, he meant.

  “Well, sir,” I began.

  “Call me George, please.”

  “George, there’s a correlation between the black malaria attacks and cities where you operate.”

  The color drained slowly from George Riverside’s face. He looked at Stuart as if hoping that Stuart would disavow what I’d said, but Stuart nodded. The link was clear if you thought about it. But Riverside had not thought of it until now. Maybe he operated in so many cities that the correlation had been hidden. Maybe the fact that the attacks had not been directly against his people, but whole cities, had disguised what they were really about.

  “Surely this is a coincidence,” he said.

  “Maybe,” I said. On the walls were photos: His wife and two boys holding tennis racquets. An elderly woman in a beach chair, who had Riverside’s longish face. A shot of an aid plane landed in a dirt field in Sudan. A shot of the opening of a new high school for single mothers in Nepal. George Riverside picked up the receiver on his desk phone.

  “Honey, get Bob Welch up here, will you?”

  I must have looked surprised, because he said, putting down the phone, “Honey is my secretary’s name.”

  “Oh.”

  Seven minutes later a sweaty-faced middle-aged man entered, wearing an expensive pin-striped suit that did not hide his pear shape. His balding pate was sunburned. His lips looked rubbery, and his oddly small hand, in mine, was moist. The deep, cordial voice was confident, the voice of someone else. Either Bob Welch was a self-possessed man with a sweat problem, or a nervous man with a radio host’s voice.

  “I found the business cards the FBI left, sir. Agents Mathew Friday and Roberta Weir. I also brought the file.”

  “Tell the story, Bob. Leave nothing out.”

  Dots of moisture beaded Welch’s upper lip. Possibly he was cursed to sweat all the time. He seemed more cooperative than fearful, more toady than secretive, excruciatingly aware of the proximity of the chairman.

  “Yes, sir.” The story rolled out, pretty much along the same lines that I had heard from Aya. The food arrived without incident. It was successfully distributed with several tons of other supplies. There was no indication of trouble in the camp, then suddenly guns were going off, refugees were screaming.

  “Later on the jihadists blamed it on us, but believe me, there was no problem with that food.”

  “You were there then?” I asked.

  “No, that was Christine’s job. Christine Mahin.”

  “Is Christine here now?”

  Welch shook his head. “She was so upset by what happened—afraid for her life that day—that she quit. She was with us for six years and did a great job. But she and her husband want children. Visiting trouble spots is a young person’s job.”

  “Did Mahin follow up on the poisoning report?”

  Welch nodded vigorously. “Of course! They’d blamed us! Christine was scrupulous. She checked with the doctors. They’d tried to find food residue in the empty cans, do tests. But everything was destroyed in the riot. Terrorists! They use any excuse to rile people up!”

  “Where is Christine Mahin now?” Stuart asked.

  Welch glanced at Riverside as if confirming that candor was what George wanted. George nodded as if to say, What are you waiting for? Tell them what they want to know.

  “She left months ago. She’s with the NGO that runs that camp now, working stateside. Revolving door, sir. People go from companies to NGOs and back. She’s in administration. The only travel she does is to and from her desk.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, I got a Christmas card from her. She went south,” Bob Welch said, and finally smiled as he passed the problem on to someone else. But he was still sweating as he held out a copy of the report. The manila folder was moist.

  “She’s in Atlanta, Georgia,” Bob Welch said.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The Druid Hills country Club had changed management a year earlier, the sign at the entrance said. The magnificently kept clubhouse (established 1912) and links lay just off Lullwater Road, only half a mile from the house in which Tom Fargo had spent a comfortable night.

  Tom arrived in an Uber, so his stolen car would not sit in the parking lot, visible to all. He’d walk back to the house when he was finished here, tonight. His chatty driver rolled them down a wooded access road to stop at a guard shack. Eric Englert was the name tag on the guard.

  Tom showed his invitation through the back window. “I’m not a member. But I have an eleven A.M. tee time and was told that guests for tonight’s gala can get a round in first.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Pryce. Go right in.”

  Hobart had taught Tom to use first names when talking to people. It made them friendlier. “Eric, I was told I can leave my clothes for tonight in the clubhouse.”

  “Yes, sir. Just tell them inside. Have a nice round.”

  • • •

  In a widened pocket of his golf bag were the insects and his pistol. The pro teamed him up with three players here for tonight’s event: Jerry, a retired corporate pilot; Eddy, the vice president of marketing at a soda company; Howard, a divorce attorney. Howard was the oldest but most athletic, Eddy was a cigar smoker in his thirties, and Jerry smelled of alcohol at 10 A.M. “I’m not flying planes anymore, so if I want an eye opener, I have it. Played here before, Seth?”

  Tom pretended this was like those diplomat meetings that Hobart used to describe. Chitchat, Hobart called it.

  “I’m a duffer, put on earth to make you look good.”

  Howard and Eddy smiled but clearly didn’t want the fourth man slowing their game down. Jerry roared, “I’ve heard that one before. Next you’ll want to make bets!”

  Tom laughed and despised their garish clothes, expensive watches, and costly clubs, their air of prosperity and casual indifference while elsewhere people suffered. The assumption
of the good life was so American. These people destroyed anything deemed inconvenient as they blundered across earth. Tom heard children splashing in the clubhouse pool.

  Eddy winked. “Not worried about mosquitoes, are you?”

  Howard said, “There’s not been a single case in Atlanta. That’s what I told my wife. Plus, we take Lariam.”

  Jerry nodded. “I think this manhunt near Memphis? For that Largo guy? Or Fargo? Whatever? It’s bullshit. This whole outbreak will turn out to come from a government lab.”

  Tom was grateful for his practice golf sessions on that jungle island and in Manhattan. In Brazil, sometimes low balls skipped across the water. “You’re a natural athlete,” the golf pro had told Tom at the Chelsea Piers range, in New York. There a huge cage had prevented balls from flying into the Hudson River. The city spewed toxic waste and sewage into the Hudson. But drew the line at golf balls.

  You’re the ones who need a lesson, Tom thought now.

  He’d tied the golf bag onto the electric cart.

  “Tee up, Seth,” Jerry said. “By the way, watch out for sand traps on one. And water in the rough off Lullwater, especially after the recent rain, I heard.”

  Tom eyed a catering truck pulling into the parking lot, and the maroon-jacketed waitstaff setting up tables for eight for tonight’s gala, on the stone patio overlooking the course. He noted large planters below the patio. They were filled with water from last night’s rain. He wondered if it might be possible to put the insects in the planters.

  Tom asked the guys, as if nervous, “Do grounds crews spray against mosquitoes here?”

  “Ah, don’t listen to those Chicken Littles at the CDC,” Eddy said, pointing to a series of rooftops three miles away. “Those guys get paid to scare you. All they accomplished by spraying was to kill off every bat, dragonfly, and bird within twenty miles before they ran out. If we ever get a real outbreak, nothing will stop it. Want to worry? Worry about the pond on hole two.”