by James Grady
Zane said: “Nobody touch him. And be careful what else you do. We don’t want to catch the attention of any neighbors or patrolling cops.”
“Eric,” I said: “Kill the garage heat.”
Russell lifted a coil of clothesline off a wall hook. He and Zane led Cari inside. Hailey stood sentry at a darkened living room window. I slipped outside to get the mail and the newspaper off the porch. Checked the house. Turned on necessary lights.
“His name is—was—Harry Martin,” I told our Op council in the living room.
Upstairs, Russell guarded Cari in the bedroom furthest from any exit. And I was fine with that. Russell and Cari, alone in a bedroom. Made perfect operational sense. Didn’t nag at me.
“He was 71,” I said about the man whose chairs we sat in. “Far as I can tell, never married, no kids. Owned a gas station. Used to bowl. I checked his caller I.D. Five calls in six days, three of them showing up as UNAVAILABLE.”
“Telemarketers,” said Eric.
“The other two were a few days back. Local pharmacy and a private call.”
“Probably just returning his message.” Zane shook his head.
“So nobody knows he’s dead because nobody cared that he was alive,” I said. “Even if somebody besides us noticed that his newspapers and mail hadn’t been taken in, they didn’t care.”
“But what about neighbors?” said Hailey.
“There are three crayon pictures under magnets on his frig,” I said. “But I looked at the scrawled names of two kids who signed them, then spotted their high school graduation pictures mounted on his photo wall.”
“Neighbor kids,” said Russell. “Gone on.”
“His other photos are of his parents or grandparents. Friends from back in the Sixties and Seventies. A Golden Retriever wearing a party hat in this living room with President Clinton on TV in the background. Nothing more recent than that.”
Hailey said: “The calendar on his kitchen wall has a lot of not much written on it. Optometrist, dentist. Nothing for the next few weeks. How long do we stay?”
“At least until tomorrow,” I said. “Cari’s right—”
“If that’s really her name,” said Hailey.
“She’s right,” I continued. “Soon as those guys we clobbered reported in, the whole system went Red Alert, sent possees out after mad dogs.”
“How long can we stay here before…” Hailey nodded toward the garage. “And I’m not just talking about smell.”
I shrugged, my heart and mind upstairs.
36
“Sorry about this,” I said to Cari.
“Bet you say that to all the girls you kidnap.”
She lay on the narrow bed’s white sheet, her blonde hair on the white pillow. Her blouse was fucia, her slacks black, her feet bare. Her hands rested cuffed on her belly. Miles of white clothesline cocooned her to the bed. She looked like a mummy. Her eyes clawed the ceiling.
“Is Cari Rudd your real name?”
“Why?”
“I’ll call you anything. But I want to know who you are.”
“All I’m required to do is give you my name, rank, and serial number.”
“If all you do is what’s required, then that’s all you are.”
“Worked so far.”
“Yeah,” I told the woman cocooned to the bed. “So I see.”
Cari said: “How’s crazy working out for you?”
I shrugged. Don’t tell her about the meds wearing off.
“Are you going to storm around the bed and scream at me like Russell?”
Maybe she’d already figured we were running near the red line. “Russell wouldn’t hurt you—well, unless.”
“Put unless in an equation, and it adds up to who knows.”
“We’re trying.”
“Trying what?”
So I told her about Dr. Friedman. About blood in his ear. About Nurse Death and Russell freezing and Zane’s save-his-own-life kick accidentally helping Nurse Death take hers. About matrices. Tricking the cell phone operator. Kyle Russo.
She said: “At least you and Russell have your fantasies straight.”
“Was that you outside the apartment in New York?”
Cari said: “Sure.”
“I wish I knew when you were lying.”
“I wish I knew when you were crazy.”
“What’s it like working for the Agency now?” I asked.
“What makes you certain I’m CIA?”
“I’m not naïve. Silencers and credentials from multiple agencies aren’t FBI issue. Plus, if the Agency had let the Bureau or other badges go full-knowledge, hands-on after us, there’d have been a cover story in the news. No, you and your crew are from my old Firm, and you’re running covert.”
“Hell of a place, the Firm.” She offered me a comrade’s conspiratorial smile. “Man, we could use you back. Since 9/11, we’ve hired more executives, more slick suit and tie directors, more P.R. spin doctors instead of more street dogs. But now, everybody’s finally realizing that guys like you are too valuable to waste.”
“Nice try.”
She shrugged in her bondage cocoon.
“Is this when you try to work answers out of me?” she said.
“The only question I’ve got, you might not know the answer to, and if you do, you’ll lie, so what’s the point?”
Took three minutes before she bit. “OK, I give up. What’s your all important lone question?”
“Are you knowingly working for a renegade Op inside the Agency?” I said. “That’s the only scenario that makes you our flat-out enemy. If outside forces killed Dr. F, then the whole Agency—and you—are cool. Just ignorant bullets fired off target. But if a renegade Op killed Dr. F, then either you’re one of them or you’re their puppet. But an innocent puppet.”
“You’re the ones who’ve got me all wrapped up in strings.”
“I won’t untie ours. And don’t have the time or… stomach to find any other strings on you.”
“So do you think I’m a renegade?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You’re too good.”
“Not so good. You neutralized me.”
“I didn’t say you were perfect.” I shrugged. “I was talking… instincts, faith.”
She looked away.
Casually, I said: “What do you think of the car in the garage?”
“That white Caddy?”
Yes! It’s real!
Cari said: “You’re figuring it’s so extreme that people will notice it and not who’s in it. But that won’t work.”
“You work with what you’ve got,” I said.
Cari frowned: “What happened to your eyebrows?”
“Don’t worry! I’m OK. Just a thing with fire.”
“But I shouldn’t worry.”
“We don’t want to hurt you. I won’t let you get hurt. Before, when Zane…”
“He didn’t touch me like I was a woman. Give him credit for that.”
“Absolutely!” I said. “He absolutely didn’t. Wouldn’t. He’s a good man.”
“What about you?”
“I have my moments.”
“Yeah,” she told me. “So I see.”
That has to mean something! She wouldn’t just say something like that!
“Victor? Victor!”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah?”
“Why are you doing this? I know you’re… troubled, but you’re right, you’re not naïve, you got street smarts and pure fucking brain power. Vision. And all this…”
“Seemed like the best choice at the time.”
“But what about right now?”
Yeah, I thought, what about right now. Four days on the road and already I’m drifting. And the others… We might not hold together a
full week before we crash.
Cari said: “What are you going to do with me?”
“Umm…”
“We can work this out,” she said.
“OK.”
“First, you’ve got to untie me.”
“Ahh… No. That won’t work.”
“What will work?”
“I wish you’d believe me if I told you.”
“Vic… They briefed us on all of you. I know about Malaysia and that woman—”
“Derya,” I said.
Cari shook her head: “A door opens and BAM.”
“That’s how it gets you if it’s good.”
Cari shrugged. “Guess so.”
She stared at me: “What’s got you now?”
“Haven’t you heard?” I said, knowing that this was not the time or the place to tell her everything: “I’m crazy.”
“I know about your two suicides. I understand your pain.”
“I hope not,” I whispered.
“If we talk about—”
“Go to sleep,” I said, and she heard the jailer’s edge in my voice. “I’m on first watch. I’ll be right here. Keeping you safe.”
“Or something.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”
And I turned out the lights as she lay there. I sat in a chair. Folded my angel wings and dropped into the darkness.
37
Rain machine-gunned Bladerunners Internet Café in Kuala Lumpur that December, 1999, afternoon. Ex-pats inside that Malaysian oasis ignored the storm. Peruvian balladeer Tania Libertad moaned Spanish from a boom box on the bar beside smoldering incense. Gunfire splattered ghouls in a café computer driven by a sunglasses-wearing Honky—a Hong Kong Chinese cyber cowboy. Outside it was 79 degrees, would be hotter when the rain morphed to smoggy sunlight.
I sat at a table nursing a beer, my face to the door and my spine to two Australian girls whining about how they should have gone to Thailand to smoke opium instead of wasting Christmas vacation by coming to fockin’ borin’ Malaysia. I hungered to read their Melbourne newspaper with its headline about narcissistic teenagers who’d massacred their Colorado high school classmates as if life were a computer game. But the public news wasn’t my Scramble Red Op.
My watch read 4:17.
Any minute now, I thought.
The bell above the door dinged.
Derya hurried in from the rain, lowering her umbrella, laughing with her two female colleagues. Derya’s cinnamon hair fanned out as she shook off the rain and I knew in my bones that I was lost.
Derya and her women colleagues claimed a table. They seemed not to notice me, but women are wizards of discretion.
The bell above the door dinged.
In swooped Peter Jones, so soaked no one could tell he’d only run across the street. A dramatic gesture wiped the wet from his eyes.
Who he obviously spotted first were Derya and her two colleagues.
“Girlfriends!” exclaimed Peter. “You are so predictable! On your way to work, stop for something long and cool or hot and wet and—Oh My God! It’s Victor!”
Women at the table where Peter had lighted swiveled their gaze to me.
“Victor! What are you doing here? No, wait: what are you doing over there when I’m over here and today, today I’m celebrating!”
“Sit here.” Peter directed me to a chair he wedged between him and Derya.
The English blonde Peter later introduced as Julia said: “Why so happy, Peter?”
“Because,” he said, leaning back with a grin, “I am so homeward bound!”
Shabana was the oldest woman and spoke Bombay British. “But what about the law back in New York? You are, of course, innocent, would never traffic in Ecstasy.”
“Not as pills!” interrupted Peter with mock horror.
“But,” said Shabana, “how is that after two years, now you can go home?”
“Let’s just say,” said Peter, gesturing for a beer, “I have it on good authority that the judge has finally seen the light.”
“Still,” I said, “if you don’t watch your step, make every move just so, the light at the end of a tunnel winks out and leaves you worse off than before.”
“Absolutely!” Peter sat straight. “Absolutely right. Do we all know each other?”
In a flurry of spoken names and gestures, he made sure we did, ending with: “And Victor, this is Derya Samadi.”
Cinnamon hair framed her lean face, her clean jaw. Her skin was sun tanned Tupelo honey, her eyes were swimming pool blue. She said: “You’re American.”
“Some things you can’t hide.”
Derya shrugged. “People try.”
Peter sped to my defense. “Not Victor. Totally a stand-up guy. I mean, we only shared a terrible bus ride in the boonies together, but—”
“Relax, Peter,” I said.
“—but,” he ranted, having probably steeled his guts with yaa baa smuggled from Bangkok, “we clicked, even though Victor bums around Asia beating people up.”
“How American.” Shabana’s voice.
“No,” I said. “Martial arts is about integrity, transcending violence. I first came out here on a literature fellowship. Spent the last five years in Taiwan. I teach English, embarrass myself in lots of classic schools. Last few years, it’s been mostly T’ai Chi.”
Drug-speeding Peter blurted: “And I forgot he’s a poet!”
Derya said: “Really?”
My shrug mimicked the one she’d given me. “Call me hopeful.”
British Julia grinned. “Maybe I should call you for trouble.”
My flat but polite expression told her I wasn’t interested. She drank her beer.
That let me turn back to Derya. “You’re from…?”
“Turkey. We cobbled together a school for women with grants from NGO’s—non-governmental organizations, foundations, no politics, no religion—”
“Oh no!” joked Shabana. “If all you’re doing is empowering women, why of course you dabble in nobody’s religion or politics!”
Derya and Shabana grinned and clinked their tea cups.
Peter clapped. “I’ve got the perfect idea! You all ’ve been after me to help move furniture around your school—it is a sweet little school, Victor, such a good thing they’re doing and not so easy in an officially Muslim country—and with my bad back—”
All three women groaned.
“Don’t be bitches!” said Peter with a guilty smile. “But Victor, why, he’s a bull.”
Julia drew her smile like a dagger. “Now there’s an idea. Use trained muscle for something besides bullying.”
I deflected her thrust. “Exactly. It isn’t what you know, it’s what’s you do with it.”
Peter hijacked the conversation, sparred with Julia, joked until everyone laughed.
Derya laughed from her heels.
Monkeys screaming at dawn outside my balcony found me awake. The condo the Agency put me in was on an outer ring of K.L. Litter from my supposed life was scattered through the place to support my cover. My laptop bypassed the government censored cyber networks through one of the hundred pirate satellite dishes on the condo roof. My machine held coded e-mail traffic. From me: Linked to access agent. On track. Reply from Langley: Proceed full speed. Full sanction.
Monkeys screamed in the treetops close enough to my balcony for them to jump up and bite me. Or throw a snake up there to do their dirty work for them.
We’d moved furniture until 10 the night before—not late in K.L. where a lot of ‘daily’ life means hiding from the broiling sun. ‘We’ meant Julia, Shabana, bad-back Peter. And Derya, me. I was in the condo by midnight. Dawn should have found me practicing T’ai Chi in the gazebo on the condo’s grounds, covertly mixing other martial forms into that already hidden functions s
low motion ballet. Instead, I stood on the balcony, a cup of coffee in my hand while the monkeys screamed.
“You talkin’ to me?” I movie-whispered in the thick air.
Purple storm clouds rolled across the sky.
The Agency had stashed a battered Toyota for me in the condo’s underground parking garage and a motorcycle inside a TV repair shop in the ex-pat neighborhood of Bangsar, but I rode a bus into town over a superhighway that began at K.L.’s airport, where runways had been built by a construction company tied to a wealthy Saudi Arabian hero of the American-backed war against invading Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan, a rail thin bearded messianic named Osama bin Laden.
Rain fell on my trip. The bus wooshed towards the heart of K.L. Through my window, I saw the drainage ditch running parallel with the road. Beyond the storm ditch ran a covered sewer line. Past the sewer line ran a chain-link, barbed wire wall. Inside that flesh-ripping fence waited squalid shanty towns where rain pounding on tin roofs made a maddening roar and all political power flowed from Muslim madrasas schools.
Derya and her colleagues walked into Bladerunners at 4:19. She wore a white blouse and khaki slacks. Shabana and even Julia waved and didn’t exchange looks as Derya walked to my table. After all, my offered books had to do with the English she taught (plus keyboarding, word processing). Shabana taught programming, handled birth control/women’s health issues. Julia specialized in accounting.
No beer today. I drank Coke. Derya ordered tea without the sugar Malaysians crave to the point of sprinkling it on popcorn.
The first book she picked up was an English translation of classic Chinese poetry she could use with her Chinese students. Next, she picked up a paperback book.
“I don’t know this William Carlos Williams,” she said.
“American poet, died before we were born. Was a doctor by day, a poet by night. Like a comic book hero. One of the Master’s theses I’ll never finish is on him.”
Her face glowed when she picked up a volume CIA trick boys had weathered with water and a clothes dryer.
“You have an English of Rumi! He changed my whole life! I tell everybody! One day in college, I’m walking in Ankara and from a radio in an apartment above me, I hear this voice, and it’s the poetry of Jala al-Din Rumi! Magic! Opened my heart!”
