Caravan of Thieves

by David Rich

  As we droned along, my excitement leveled off and I contemplated my new identity, spy, and how it differed from soldier. Is spying a choice or is it nature? Both for me: a relief, a cloak, a release. I was glad to be rid of the rules of engagement, but this assignment was too vague. It would have been more reasonable to try to expose someone who did not want to steal arms.

  I had no status and no one to vouch for me. Soldiers have the luxury of rank among their own, who obey it religiously; spies, alone, learn that they must invent their rank and impose it on those who have no reason to respect it. No one came along and introduced himself as Nawaz Mazari, and if I asked around, I would either drive him to ground or give him cause to plant me in the ground.

  On the second day, after prayers, a Pakistani security man came up to me with an MRE in his hand. He scooped out the dessert bar, unwrapped it, and took a big bite, and smiled the crumbiest smile I had ever seen. I knocked the bar out of his hands and shoved him in the chest. He pulled his sidearm. I grabbed his arm and twisted. The gun fell and I kicked it away. We had a big audience now. I called him a dog. One of his partners picked up the gun and tossed it to him. I put my palms up and smiled as if it were all a joke, as if I were going to back down now. He pointed the gun at me and his eyes ran over the crowd to measure how far he could go. I picked up the MRE and made a show of dusting it off. I moved toward him and held it out. And, as he reached for it, I took his right forearm with my left hand and raised my knee and slammed his forearm on it. The gun went off. The bullet hit the dust and he screamed in pain. I tossed the MRE at him and walked away through the crowd.

  I told Rashid: “If you’re going to steal, it should be something that can do some good.” He was concerned that the guards would be hostile to him because of me. But I had gotten the attention I needed. And I made sure to pay special attention to the arms trucks during the stops.

  At Dera Ismail Khan, the convoy was halted because of delays on the road ahead. We camped outside of town on a flat plain of dirt and sand, grouping the trucks together protectively, like a wagon train, and cooking on propane stoves freshly stolen just the day before. Rashid was frying up khatay aloo, something with potatoes, when a man I had never seen before appeared. He was thick all over, with heavy-lidded eyes. The man nodded toward me and politely introduced himself as Nawaz Mazari. Rashid nodded and put one of the plates away. Then Nawaz invited me to join him for dinner.

  The spread was elaborate, with rugs laid, thick cushions, and abundant food for six of us. Nawaz did a lot of the talking about patience and cooperation and respect. He never referred to the fight I had or to the trucks carrying arms which I had been watching. He took a while to make sure the hint was firmly planted and then he got to the main purpose of the powwow: checking me out. Three of the men had been completely silent. I figured at least one was an Afghan. Nawaz asked me about my childhood and complimented me on my fighting skills. I told him that an American had trained me.

  “They are very kind,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “And very naive.” That got a laugh.

  “Yes, sometimes they fight against themselves and don’t even know it.” Nawaz got a bigger laugh with that. It was a successful party. I had no idea whether I passed muster but could not see any benefit to letting the party drag on. When Nawaz started asking about my wife, I told him I was tired and thanked him for the meal.

  We spent two long rainy days at Dera Ismail Khan. I did not see Nawaz again. Rashid tiptoed around me and my elevated status. We crawled up to Peshawar, and as we headed for the border, I could feel the tension tightening on Rashid and the others. They were eager to be paid but dreaded journey’s end and a possible reckoning and scrutiny of the manifests.

  Torkham was a bottleneck with trucks, cars, and pedestrians squeezing in both directions: either way you went, you were still in the bottle. Private vehicles had to be emptied of all possessions, so kids with handcarts hustled the stuff back and forth across the border for cash and whatever they could steal. I left Rashid steaming in the truck and strolled through the Torkham gate.

  Captain Ballard, Abdullah of the Ozarks, had stationed himself among the milling crowd on the Afghan side. He looked more ragged and worn, and his chronic anger went well with his new mustache. A big improvement. I slipped past him and loitered in the bazaar, watching to see if he was being watched. It looked clear, so I stood beside him until he recognized me.

  “Do you like my mustache?” He had rehearsed the line.

  “Is it real?”

  He told me he had a room at the chaikhana up the road where we could talk. His Dari had not improved. I was still wary of being seen with him, so I followed a few yards behind him. The road was crowded with Americans and Afghans, military and civilian. When Ballard reached the chaikhana, he stood at the gate outside the small tea courtyard and looked back for me. At that moment, a Marine captain coming from the other direction noticed Ballard and stopped. He grabbed the arm of the Afghan National Army lieutenant who was with him. And pointed out Ballard. It was clear that the Marine recognized him, or thought he did. Ballard spotted me, so he went through the gate and up to his room. I lingered just down the road to watch the Marine captain and his ANA friend. They were giving the chaikhana a good once-over and the ANA guy was nodding: he would be checking it out. They walked on. I went inside.

  I passed through the courtyard into the small, dark restaurant and lingered there a moment. The ANA man was not coming in right behind me, so I went on toward the rooms, which were in a building attached to the back. I knocked on Number 10 and announced myself in Dari. Ballard opened up.

  “Don’t you get tired of speaking only Dari?” He looked tired overall. Being someone new was exhausting work even if most of it consisted of waiting.

  The answer was yes, but I kept speaking Dari. “Sometimes I speak Pashto, too. Outside, just now, it looked like someone recognized you. A Marine officer. A captain.”

  “I didn’t see him,” he said in English.

  “Maybe you should back off. At least get away from here.”

  But Ballard was only interested in whether I had made contact with potential weapons sellers. I agreed to come back the next day after bringing up the subject with Nawaz.

  I could not find Nawaz that night or the next morning until I was halfway to the chaikhana and he was coming back toward the border. His eyes were bright and excited, his breath was shallow. The little ANA lieutenant was with him, and he was equally agitated.

  “We must talk,” said Nawaz. “Have tea with us this afternoon, please.” He did not introduce his companion. They seemed eager to get back to the trucks.

  “I look forward to it.” The commotion at the chaikhana was apparent from a hundred yards away. By the time I arrived, the body, Ballard’s body, covered by a sheet, was being loaded into a van. Two ANA soldiers helped the police hold back the curious. Maybe the ample supply of dead bodies helped people develop a taste for more. No U.S. troops were on the scene. Except me. I asked a boy what happened. “A man was knifed. Slit his throat,” he said.

  “Pashtun?”

  The boy shrugged. If he thought the victim was an American, he would have said so. Ballard would be treated as an Afghan and his death would not be reported to the Army for days. His Arkansas accent would not help him.

  The van pulled away and the onlookers drifted toward the bazaar and the border. The ANA soldiers backed off and groups of men slid into the tea courtyard, grabbing the tables of those who were leaving. I watched, deciding whether it was worth trying to catch a peek inside Ballard’s room. My eye caught a familiar face: the Marine captain who had recognized Ballard the day before. He was sitting alone at a table at the back, next to the restaurant wall. He took off his hat to wipe the sweat off his shaved head. And then I recognized him. He was known as Junior, not as a term of endearment: it was an epithet earned by his arrogance and disregard for everyone ranked below him. I had seen him strutting around at Camp Pendleton and at th
e mountain warfare training center as if he were a Congressional Medal of Honor winner and being treated that way, it seemed to those of us lucky enough to keep our distance.

  I remember asking a sergeant about him. “Stay away from him if you can,” he said. “He expects others to pick up his messes.”

  “Why does he expect that?”

  “His father is General Remington.”

  I was confident Junior would not recognize me and I was willing to risk the chance that he would.

  20.

  I was as blind in this caravan as I was in the last, burrowing without knowing the direction. Coffee and gas in Blythe, California, classic oasis and most inauspicious gateway: the unmarked green door that lets you into the biggest, wildest club in the world. I was hoping that as my followers avoided being seen by each other, I might spot one or two, but no luck. On past Indio and the first in the chain of golf courses that take you all the way to the ocean. How excited the first pioneers must have been to come through Death Valley and sight the first flag hanging limp against its stick. Thousand Palms, Palm Springs, and not long after Banning I turned north on 210 for a short stretch before cutting off on State 330 toward Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead. The desert grew grayer, speckled with shrubs, until the road wound around and climbed enough to find the pines. One car kept appearing in my rearview mirror. I assumed it was Shaw. I turned onto Route 18, switchbacking all the way to Big Bear.

  I parked before reaching the mall, where all the followers would have an easy time watching my movements. I stopped in a small market and asked the clerk if he knew Gloria Waters, mentioning that she had a butterfly tattoo on the underside of each wrist. I asked for the manager so he could say no, too. I made up a name, Ron Wilson, and asked about him, too, so that when they were quizzed later, they could help McColl waste some time. All that, the butterflies included, was fantasy. Kate McFarlane was never mentioned. Under the arch and into the village mall, I was on my way toward the jewelry store for more meaningless questions when I saw the tattoo parlor and detoured there. Same questions. I returned to the car and drove down the road to the Boathouse Fish Company, same routine. Willy’s Tavern.

  From there I strolled over to Schmidt’s Bakery. A thin woman, about five foot three, sat along the right wall opposite the display case, sipping a coffee with difficulty because her hand shook when she lifted the cup. Her hair was short and gray. She was forty-six years old. Her name was Loretta Sexton. I kept my back to her while I asked my questions, loud enough for her to hear. I knew she would be looking at me when I turned. I met her eyes and shook my head slightly. She understood and turned her attention back to her coffee.

  Outside I paused to look around as if considering whether it was worth inquiring at more stores. Mostly I just felt happy to have found Loretta, happy she was still alive. I knew I could rely on her when the time came. And I wanted her to know I would be coming.

  It was four p.m. If I rushed down the mountain, I could hit the worst of Los Angeles traffic, which would help percolate everyone’s impatience and frustration. I wanted them aware of each other, jockeying for position, distracted. I made a few extra freeway exits and entrances so they had to work a little harder because my route did not make sense. I parked in a lot off Hollywood Boulevard just after six thirty. The street was already crowded: tourists from around the world and around the country there to see the pavement and the facades, tourists from around town there for the clubs, and the locals working the way locals would anywhere they could find a crowd.

  Lush Life is a dive bar on Hollywood Boulevard. The last time I was there, maybe five years earlier, it was filled with bikers and only bikers. Only two bikes were parked outside this time. Now punctured punks and goths and hipsters inhabited the same grimy, burgundy Naugahyde stools and booths. Fake color stripes in hair, genuine black clothing, and pale skin comprised the regulation uniform, along with piercings and tattoos designating a secret rank which I could never penetrate. The transformation at the Lush Life suited me just fine. I could still feel hostility and paranoia when I sat down at the bar, but I guessed these patrons would be less nasty than the bikers were when the mood struck them. The ugliness of the goths’ appearance is complete and deliberate, aggressively off-putting. I respected them for it. Goths reacted to my respect with suspicion, which made me respect them more.

  The bartender was the same guy from years ago, shaved head, thick forearms covered with a dense, colorful pattern, two earrings. A small statue of Popeye with designs drawn on his forearms similar to those on the bartender’s forearms stood beside the vodka bottles next to the mirror behind the bar. I ordered a Bud and sipped slowly for a while. A few stools away sat another shaved-headed guy, about thirty, with two young girls, too young to be in a bar, all gotten up in their best black. Outside, in back, was a patio for smoking that looked like it held a few patrons. I did not go back there.

  The bartender did not have much to do yet besides chat with the waitress, who looked like her sadness would outduel her frailty in keeping her from making it through the night. When I ordered a second Bud, I asked him, “You get your arms done locally?”

  “Down on Highland, about two blocks,” he said.

  “Who would I see?”

  “Titus is the man. Three dollars.”

  I laid down three dollars, then added a hundred. “Did Titus have a woman working for him, Gloria Waters?” I said. “She’d be late forties, early fifties by now.”

  “He had a few women there. Only one I remember about that age. I think her name was Jessie,” he said.

  “Could you describe her?”

  “Could you?” He pushed the hundred back toward me. “I don’t know what the game is, pal.”

  “Butterfly tattoos inside each wrist.” The bartender just stared at me. “Someone is going to come in here in a while and ask you what I’ve been asking about. I’d like you to tell him the truth,” I said. I pushed the bill back at him. “Please buy them a round. I’m going to ask them the same questions.” I pointed to the trio down the bar. The bartender took the bill and served the drinks.

  I walked over and introduced myself and asked about tattoos and Gloria Waters. They all knew Titus, and the girls struggled to remember someone else’s name there. “I think it was Shelly,” said the one with the pink streak in her hair. “Not Shelly, something just like it. Sarah, Samantha, Julie, Jody? Maybe it was Gloria,” said the one with blue and pink and blond streaks.

  The guy said, “Why don’t you just go over there?”

  “I’m waiting for someone.” I went back to my stool and made my beer last another twenty minutes. Then Blondie walked in with Toothless. I finished my beer and smiled at Blondie and walked out. He followed me, Toothless staying behind to grill the bartender and patrons. He wouldn’t appreciate their attitude and I started to doubt he would be able to discern that they were telling the truth. Blondie grabbed my shoulder. “You were in there a long time,” he said.

  “The beers are cheap and I was thirsty.” I kept walking, turned onto Highland. He moved with me and grabbed again, firmer, and turned me toward him.

  “We’re getting tired of the runaround. This is taking too long.”

  I started walking again. “First, if you touch me again, we’re going to fight again. Right here. And that will bring cops and this will take a lot longer. Second, if you come into any establishment where I’m asking questions, I’m going to walk out and stop asking questions and this will take forever. Now fall back and follow me like a good boy.” I made sure to stare into his eyes and smile to infuriate him more.

  By the time I reached the tattoo parlor, Blondie had dropped from sight.

  The music wasn’t loud, but it seemed to come from every corner of the small storefront area, which was plastered with designs from the floorboards up to and including the ceiling. I couldn’t see any pattern to the placement, any categories, but I did not spend a lot of time looking. Two reclining chairs flanked the counter, with stools next t
o them. A thin man in his fifties appeared from a back room. His short hair was gray and so were his eyes. He wore a black T-shirt and black jeans. Flames covered his neck giving the impression of a high, starched collar. He waited patiently for me to stop looking around and to speak first.

  “I’m looking for Titus.”

  He nodded, keeping his eyes on mine. I broke with his gaze and looked outside before I spoke again. I didn’t see any of the followers. I met his eyes again and decided Titus would react best to the truth.

  “I need minor surgery. You can name your price. It’ll take about ten minutes.” He still did not speak, so I went on. “There’s a transmitter sewn into my right shoulder blade. I’d like to have it removed. If we wait too long, there’s a chance they’ll come in here to see what’s going on. Either way, there’s a chance they’ll come in after I’m gone. I’d rather you didn’t tell them about the procedure.”

  “What should I tell them?” he asked.

  “That I was asking for Gloria Waters, a middle-aged woman with tattoos on both wrists.”

  “And do I know her?”

  “Better if you don’t. But that’s up to you.”

  Titus did a lot of thinking, none of it out loud. Finally, he said, “Come in back.”

  I moved around the counter and through a curtain. Titus held open a door and we entered a small room where he did piercings. “Take off your shirt,” he said.

  I did that and turned my back to him. He moved his fingers gently across the incision, then pushed a bit harder below it to see if the thing moved. He motioned for me to sit.

  “Do you want an anesthetic?”

  “I’d rather not,” I said.

  I sat down with my back to him and he took a little while preparing. He swabbed the spot for a minute. Then he showed me the knife he was going to use. Wordlessly. He slipped on gloves and started to cut and a buzzer sounded: the front door. He looked at me and I looked toward the front. He handed me the scalpel and went out. I could feel a trickle of blood seeping down my back.