by G. M. Ford
Go south. That was his whole carefully wrought plan. Go south. If he hadn’t been so afraid, he’d have laughed. It seemed like an eternity since the trench coats had pushed their way into the house this morning. Seemed like he hadn’t had a second to think and all he knew for sure was that the scene in his head, the beach, the tower in the distance, the men in white shirts…he had no idea where it was located…or, for that matter, whether it existed anywhere outside of his head…but…but if it did, he knew damn well it was somewhere south of where he was now.
He waited for the light two blocks uphill to change and then stepped out onto Sylvain Street. A steady stream of traffic moved downhill in his direction. He started down the incline. That’s when he spotted the Town Car coming up the hill.
Paul kept walking. There was no turning back now. He let gravity pull him down the hill, his feet slapping on the concrete as he broke into a run. The car’s window slid down. Paul and the driver made eye contact as he flashed by.
The guy behind the wheel tried to move over into the left lane but nobody would let him in. He momentarily hit the brakes, as if to stop and jump out, but the tandem metro bus to his rear wasn’t having it. He had no choice but to continue on up the hill.
Paul let fear and the incline propel him forward, running full out now across the narrow frontage road that paralleled the freeway, out onto the bridge, which he felt certain he could cross before the Lincoln could manage to negotiate the narrow maze of one-way streets and get turned around.
As the river of traffic on his left become a trickle, he checked over his shoulder and then bolted across all four lanes to the uphill side of the bridge. He was slower now, his legs leaden and spent, his hips threatening to burst from the sockets as he crested the arch of the bridge and started down the other side…down toward the low-rent condos on the corner of Sylvain Street and Barlow Boulevard.
His breath was ragged. He sounded like a locomotive as he jelly-legged it around the corner…exhausted, slowing nearly to a stop and then picking up the pace again as he approached the corner. His nose had begun to run. As he ran, he wiped it with his sleeve.
A fast walk was all he could manage now. His body burned. He was ashes as he turned the corner. All he wanted to do was breathe when he heard the sound of tires pulling to a stop on his left.
He dropped his bag. Something in his soul told him to fight. Told him that going along with these people would somehow be the end of him. At that moment it didn’t matter who he was or who he wasn’t. All that mattered was the animal will to survive.
He balled his hands into fists and turned to face his attackers. A guttural growl began to rise in his throat. His vision began to cloud with fury. A long thin scream reached his ears and then began to fade. He turned toward the approaching sound. The scream was coming from the brakes of a battered blue VW Bug as it ground to a stop along the curb. The passenger door flopped open.
“Hey, big fella.”
The voice sounded familiar. The city lights showed the car packed to the headliner. He bent at the waist and peered into the little car. It was her. The girl who’d cut his hair. What was her name? Brianna? No…Brittany. That was it. He was far too spent to talk. She mistook his grimace for a smile.
“Where you headed?” she asked.
All he could manage was a shrug. He checked the street, but they were alone.
“Want a ride?”
Without answering, he plucked his bag from the sidewalk and eased himself into the passenger seat. He pulled the door closed. “Let’s go,” he wheezed.
14
His driving was shaky. Deputy assistant cabinet members didn’t drive much. In the city, on his own time, he used cabs. Otherwise he always had a driver. But not today. Today he held the wheel with both hands, making little corrections, trying to keep his wife Christine’s Cadillac between the lines. His first thought was that the steering must be faulty. He made a mental note to call for a service appointment. By the time he’d driven five miles, he’d reevaluated and correctly ascribed the problem to “operator error.” In his business, correctly identifying the problem was essential to operational success.
The exit was hard to miss. Private freeway exits in suburban Maryland pretty much screamed for attention. All the sign said was NSA EMPLOYEES ONLY. In case you made a mistake, they gave you plenty of room to turn around and your own little entrance back onto the freeway. If that wasn’t enough to send you on your way, well then, since 9/11 anyway, it got real complicated for you after that.
Even for a man in his position, a wearisome series of protocols was required to gain entry. Botching any of them would get you a lengthy interview with the Secret Service. Hell…he was already cheating. He had the sequence of interior turns and access codes written down. The page lay open on the passenger seat. He wondered how many agency rules he was violating by having committed the codes to writing. Triple figures probably. Years ago, a long-running joke said the initials stood either for “No Such Agency” or “Never Say Anything.” He recalled how, about ten years ago, the Baltimore Sun had outed NSA once and for all, by pointing out that the long-denied agency was the second largest user of electricity in the state of Maryland. Twenty-one million dollars’ worth of power usage managed to raise more than a few eyebrows. Combined with surreptitiously taken aerial photographs showing roughly eighteen thousand parking spaces surrounding the bunkerlike facility, the story made it clear that whatever the agency was doing in the way of electronic surveillance, they were doing a lot of it.
He was still marveling about how long the ten-mile trip from D.C. seemed when the exit sign came up. He used his right hand to fold the directions and return them to his jacket pocket as he wheeled off the freeway and up the tree-lined drive to the first guard gate. He could tell the Marine in the booth recognized him even though the last time he’d been on the grounds was before the kid had been born. He felt better.
Twenty minutes later, he knocked softly on the office door marked DEPUTY DIRECTOR, a designation reflecting the highest perch a civilian could attain within an organization always headed by a general or an admiral. He didn’t wait for an answer. He grabbed the steel handle and pushed open the door.
Ronald W. Jacobson, deputy director of the National Security Agency, got to his feet and ambled out from behind the desk as his visitor entered the room. He smiled and extended a hand, then used the hand to pull the other man into a brief embrace. “Bob,” he said as they hugged and then stepped back to admire the view. “How nice to see you.” His tone made it sound like a surprise visit, rather than a cryptic request that he drop everything and come on down this morning.
Somewhere on the far side of fifty, Jacobson had a thick head of salt-and-pepper hair and a grip seemingly designed to drop you to your knees. Unlike Bob, who had softened considerably around the middle, Jacobson looked like he had always looked, like an ex–Special Forces op, a lean, mean fighting machine, like he used to be so fond of saying, two hundred pounds of airborne hell, the kind of guy who got himself down to Quantico twice a year on his own time, just to work out on the shooting range, not because his present position required any such certification, but simply because he was that kind of guy.
Jacobson gestured toward the black leather chair to the left of his desk and then returned to his seat. Still smiling, he started in on the social protocol. “How’s Christine…”
They tripped their way through the obligatory social chatter. An air of tension hung in the room.
“Your note…” he began. “Sounded pretty dire,” he half joked. He ran his eyes around the room in an exaggerated manner. “Maybe we ought to take a walk.”
Jacobson laughed a humorless laugh. “Wouldn’t do any good,” he said. “Trust me.” He spread his big hands. “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.”
“The technology’s gotten that good, has it?”
“You don’t want to know,” Jacobson assured him.
He twirled his finger in the air. Jacobson got
the message. “This room gets electronically swept every morning. This morning I had them make an extra pass,” he said. His hard black eyes moved over his visitor like ants over a Popsicle.
“We’ve got a problem,” Jacobson said.
“Interesting pronoun.”
“I knew you’d think so.”
“You know what Mark Twain said about pronouns?”
The banter made Jacobson uncomfortable, made him feel like he was being played with. He kept himself bland. “No. What did he say?”
“He said pronouns were like kisses. When bestowed indiscriminately, they tend to lose their meaning.” Bob smiled. “Last time we spoke, you were sending your oldest boy to camp for the summer and were feeling guilty about it.”
“He’s a junior at Harvard.”
“So how can ‘we’ have business.”
“It’s old business,” Jacobson said.
“How old?”
“Back at the beach.”
“Really?”
“It’s been updated.”
“How’s that?”
“The name Wesley Allen Howard came up.”
“Came up?”
Jacobson sat back in his chair, laced his fingers across his washboard middle, and took his visitor in. “Someone ran an Internet search on the name.”
“Someone who?”
“A woman who runs a group home for retarded adults.”
Bob straightened in the chair. “And why would she be doing that?”
“They found one of her charges in a railroad car. Seven years ago. Damn near dead with the front of his head caved in.” Jacobson’s chair squeaked as he sat forward. “He’s been living in a group home for adults. A complete goner. Didn’t speak. Didn’t know shit from shoe polish.”
“And then?”
“He got hit by a car.” Before his increasingly anxious guest could ask another question, Jacobson went on. Told him the whole tale of plastic surgery and recuperation. “We’ve got a couple of photos of what he used to look like when he lived at the home, but nothing of his present appearance.”
“Nothing?”
Jacobson reached into his top drawer and came out with a manila file folder. He slid it across the desk. His guest used a fingernail to flop the folder open.
Bob winced at the picture inside. “Jesus,” he breathed. “That’s not going to be of much help.”
“Not, it’s not.”
The air in the room was thick as motor oil.
“We can’t take a chance here,” Bob said.
“No, we can’t.”
“The time frame is scary.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No matter what it takes…” Bob let the sentence trail off.
“Indeed.”
“You’re already at risk here.”
“I’m waist-deep in somebody else’s swimming pool.”
“We have to know.”
The deputy director nodded his agreement.
“What do you need from me?” Bob asked.
“I need the Bureau to keep out of this. But it can’t look like—”
“It’s their pool you’re wading in.”
“I know.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“You’ve got the clout. Make it happen.”
His guest sighed and looked out the window, out over the acres of cars to the dark circle of woods beyond. “I’ll make a few calls.”
“I’ll keep you posted from this end.”
“What have you got in mind?
Jacobson told him. “Just like the old days,” he said.
“Except these days we’re public figures.”
The visitor got to his feet. “This gets out, we’re going to be a hell of a lot more public than we care to be.”
“You still live in the same place?” Jacobson asked.
Bob frowned at the personal nature of the question but said he did.
“Still walk to that little coffee shop for coffee and a Danish every morning and then grab a cab from there.”
The visitor’s spine stiffened. He knew better than to ask, so he nodded.
“We need to talk…I’ll meet you there.”
“Have you been—”
Jacobson cut him off. “Same as everybody else in the upper echelons of government, Bob, nothing more, nothing less.”
Bob shook his head. “Let’s hear it for George Orwell,” he said, turning to leave.
“And, Bob.”
He swiveled his head back toward the desk. Jacobson was as close to a smile as he got.
“Maybe you ought to leave those directions you’ve got folded up in your jacket pocket. I’ll see to it they’re properly disposed of.”
15
The dream was old and tired. At least he thought so. In a mind where the remembered and the imagined slept in the same bed, it was hard to tell if anything under the covers could be considered real.
Problem was the whole scenario read like something out of a bad novel. The house was old and stood alone on a barren hilltop. The dream was already under way when he arrived. They already had her. The rank smell of decay already assailed his nostrils. He was in pursuit and in a panic when the dream opened and he found himself confronted by a family of…what to call them…hillbillies was as close as he could get…a clan of hillbillies who owned the house, degenerate and dirty, their speech so slurred and archaic as to be indecipherable, they never lost a step in their relentless pursuit, as he ran from room to room, following the fading timbre of her voice, down trapdoors in the floor, through secret openings in the walls and every other horror movie contrivance, all of it to the beat of their great pursuing boots pounding on the wooden floors behind him.
Often as not these days, he was able to rouse himself from the terror, although he remained unsure as to how he managed to do so. It was like he somehow reached out from the land beyond and gave his own shoulder a shake. A voice in his head would say, “Hey, man…we’re there again. In that dream…Wake up…wake up…”
The hand was gentle this time…“Hey hey.” Was that her voice? he wondered as his heart began to push burning blood through his veins.
“Come on now. You got to…”
His eyes popped open. He stared straight ahead. In the distance, a dim yellow sun was either setting or rising, he couldn’t tell which. Steel-wool clouds pressed against the light like a dressing on a wound, allowing only thin glints of the sun to escape around its uneven edges. To his right, sparse vegetation rolled by the dim reflection…by the…he lifted his hand and touched it…by the window. To his left…to his left…what was her name again? Brittany. That was it. Brittany drove with one hand and gently patted his shoulder with the other. He sat up in the seat and ran both hands over his face. He swallowed a hundred questions and looked around again.
“My granddaddy would have said you were ‘shakin’ like a hound dog passin’ a peach pit.’” She pulled her hand from his shoulder and put her attention back on the two-lane road in front of her. “I don’t know what in heck you were dreaming about, but it wasn’t good, I can tell you that.”
It was new country, like no other land he could recall having seen before.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“East of the mountains.” She sensed his confusion. “You been asleep for hours, man. Ever since we left the city.” She pointed out the windshield and yawned. “It’s darn near morning.”
He rubbed his eyes and looked around the car. Other than the seating area, the car was filled nearly to the roof line. His legs were little more than a dull ache. He tried to stretch but didn’t have the room. He poked around with his hand, found the lever, and tried to put the seat back. Felt like he was crushing something. He stopped.
“We’re gonna have to pull in for gas real soon here,” she said, tapping the dashboard with a multicolored fingernail. “We’ll get out and rearrange things. See if maybe we can’t get you a little more legroom.”
He nodded his appreciati
on.
“You know. Everything happened so fast, I never asked you where you were headed.”
He thought it over. “I’m headed wherever you’re headed,” he said finally.
She cast him a questioning glance. “You drive?” she asked.
“A car?” he asked.
She burst out laughing and then, just as quickly, choked herself off. “I don’t mean to be impolite,” she said, waving a hand his way, “…but I’m telling you, man, you truly are a stranger in a strange land.”
Blood began to rise in his face. “How so?”
She checked to see if he was kidding. “You serious?” she said.
He assured her he was.
“Well, let’s see…” She brought a fingernail to her chin. “You’ve got no idea what your name is…no clue as to where you’re going. You never been out in the desert before. You don’t know if—”
“I can drive” was out of his mouth before he thought about it.
“You got a valid license?”
“Why?”
“’Cause it’s a long way, and I’d like a little help with the driving if I can get it.”
“What’s a long way?”
“Alabama.”
“What’s in Alabama?”
“I told you…my family.”
He began to pat himself down. Nearly as he could tell, his pants contained nothing other than the roll of money in his right pants pocket. Then he got around to feeling up the jacket and discovered a lump on the left. He slipped his hand inside and pulled out a battered brown wallet.
She was watching the road now. “’Cause if you don’t have a license and we get stopped for something…I mean like that’s the end of the trip right there. They’ll sure as shootin’ take you and the car and leave me sittin’ there on the highway somewhere.”
He used his thumbs to pry open the center section of the wallet. No money, just a folded-up piece of white paper, which he extracted.
She was still talking. “’Cause I’d rather do the driving myself than have that shit come down. That’s the last thing I need. I’m thinking this is…”
