Orphan X

by Gregg Hurwitz

  The choice awes Evan into silence. Jack seems to sense that this is one time not to push. He waits patiently.

  At last Evan clears his throat. “I know who I am,” he says. “I’m your son.”

  Jack makes a muffled noise of agreement and angles his head away, perhaps so Evan can’t see his face.

  The pace of training is relentless. Evan learns to breach, to scale barbed-wire fences, to rappel from trees, fences, walls. He works with an old-school surveillance engineer annoyed by his weak grasp of circuitry and with a teenage hacker frustrated with his processing speed. He’s taught how to approach people, to find and exploit weaknesses. To eliminate nonverbal tells, he masters the art of remaining still when talking or listening. Every time he lifts his hands, the interrogation specialist raps his knuckles painfully with a metal file; eventually Evan sits as if his wrists are tied to the arms of a chair. A whip-thin psychologist administers batteries of tests with esoteric questions: Have you ever cheated or betrayed a loved one? No. Have you ever had sex with an animal? No. Where does loyalty stop? When someone asks you to have sex with an animal. In the corner Jack sprays out a mouthful of coffee.

  Evan shoots standing, kneeling, prone, firing on targets from seven to three hundred yards. After he is trained on conventional targets, his marksmanship instructor moves him to human silhouettes, then full-body photos of women and children. When he hesitates, she says, “People don’t run around with target rings on their heads and chests. Man up, X.” For sniper work she dresses mannequins in clothes, then cores out lettuce heads, fills them with ketchup, and mounts them atop the collars. She walks back uprange to where he waits. “When you pull the trigger,” she says, “I want you to see a head explode.”

  As he lines up the shot, she lectures, “We keep death at a distance here, X. Hospitals and nursing homes tuck it away. Our food comes to us neatly packaged. Refrigerators preserve it. It used to be you wanted a chicken, you walked out back and snapped its neck.” Her deodorant carries to him on the breeze, citrusy and surprisingly feminine. It stirs something in his sixteen-year-old body. “My old man was a colonel, wanted me to understand that slaughterhouses did our bidding for us. When I was about your age, he took me to one. Just us and a machete and the steaming horror of an afternoon, looking Death in its rolling eyes.”

  He fires, and a lettuce head downrange turns to red mist. “Nicely done,” she says.

  Later she duct-tapes an orange over her eye, makes him tackle her and punch his thumb through it. “Good,” she pants, sprawled in the dirt, her breath hot against his neck. “Now stir your thumb. Curl it like a fishing hook. And pull out what you can.” While he does, she screams and thrashes. He stops, mortified. Her one bare eye glares up at him. “You think it’ll be calm?”

  He gathers himself, sinks his thumb back into the pulp.

  That night over dinner, Evan fingers the spattering of dried pulp on his sleeve, shoves at his food.

  Jack doesn’t need to look up. “What?”

  Evan tells him about the orange, the thumb, the screams of his instructor, how he’d been on top of her, holding her down, breathing her breath.

  Jack leans back, folds his arms. “We need to teach you to kill in the heat of the moment. And in the cold calm of premeditation. You have to live with them differently. Which means you have to train for them differently. Not just sniper distance. Not just bayonet distance. But face-to-face, eye-to-eye.”

  “So I learn to treat people as objects to be broken?”

  “No.” Jack sets his water glass down on the dining table, hard. “Conventional wisdom is that you should dehumanize the enemy. Dinks, krauts, sand niggers, numbers on the forearm. It may be easier in the short term, but long-term?” He shakes his head. “Always respect life. Then you’ll value yours. The hard part isn’t turning you into a killer. The hard part is keeping you human.”

  “Is that what the other Orphans are taught?” Evan asks.

  Jack twirls linguine on his fork, regards the bulb of pasta, sets it down. He glances over at the picture of his wife on the mantel, the one at some exotic black-sand beach where she’s knee-deep in surf, laughing, her wet sundress clinging to her thighs. Jack wipes his mouth. “No.”

  It is a confession of sorts.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s harder.” With the heel of his hand, Jack pushes his plate a few inches away. “There’s a Cherokee legend. An elder tells his grandson about the battle that rages inside every person.”

  “The two wolves.”

  “That’s right. One wolf is anger and fear and paranoia and cruelty. The other is kindness, humility, compassion, serenity. And the boy asks his grandfather, ‘Which wolf wins?’ You remember the answer?”

  “‘The one you feed.’”

  “That’s right. Our challenge?” Jack folds his cloth napkin, wipes a smudge of Alfredo from the edge of his plate. Then he looks directly into Evan’s eyes. “Feed both.”

  * * *

  A furious rapping on the front door broke Evan from his meditation. By the time he registered a return to the present tense, he was on his feet on the Turkish rug, pistol in hand, staring down the locked door across from him and whoever waited behind it.

  17

  Broken Pieces

  The angry banging on the door resumed, echoing around the hard surfaces and off the high ceiling. Eight noiseless strides took him to the side of the jamb. He’d filled in the peephole, as peepholes provided scant protection from bullets and awls, but he’d installed a pinhole camera outside in the corridor, using an air-conditioning vent as a concealment host. With a knuckle he nudged aside a hanging silk tapestry of a Thai Buddha on his wall, revealing an inset security monitor.

  He took in the high-resolution image. A T-shirt stretched tight across a feminine form. A mass of wild, wavy hair. One fist, the fist not currently engaged in the knocking, placed on an angrily cocked hip.

  Mia Hall, 12B.

  Releasing a breath, Evan dropped the Wilson Combat pistol into the pocket of an overcoat hung on a brushed-nickel wall peg and reached for the knob.

  Before the door was fully open, Mia started in. “‘Take out a knee?’ Really?”

  Evan said, “Uh-oh.”

  “‘Uh-oh’ is right. ‘Uh-oh’ as in: I spent this afternoon not in court but in the principal’s office at Roscomare Elementary.” She crossed her arms, a parental bearing of admirable effectiveness. “You really informed him that that’s how to handle a bully?”

  “I was kidding.”

  “He’s eight. He looks up to you. You need to come tell him that violence is not the way we solve problems.”

  Her expression made clear that this was not a request.

  Behind the partially opened door, the matte black handle of the pistol protruded slightly from the pocket of the overcoat. Evan tapped it in all the way and stepped out, meekly following Mia down the hall.

  * * *

  One of Peter’s eyes peered earnestly up at Evan, the other hidden beneath a pack of frozen peas. He reclined against a clutch of pillows in a bed shaped like a race car, strewn with mismatched Harry Potter sheets. A fray of hair stuck out at an odd angle, still growing in from the pirate-eye-patch/duct-tape mishap. Evan and Mia stood over him as if administering last rites.

  Peter lowered the peas, revealing a swollen eye dappled with broken blood vessels. It looked impressive but was not a significant injury. Nonetheless, Mia gasped.

  Peter smiled at Evan, flashing a prominent front tooth. “‘Next time,’ right?”

  “No,” Mia said. “Not next time. This is not what we do, Peter. Next time you’re gonna make a better choice that doesn’t land you—and me—in Mrs. DiMarco’s office. Tell him please, Evan.”

  The room smelled of Play-Doh, toothpaste, and bubblegum. A gold-foil seal of a grinning roadrunner shimmered on a homework folder on the floor: ROSCOMARE ROAD ELEMENTARY. A trio of balloons, each bearing the logo of a children’s shoe store, bumped along the ceiling. On the d
esk a Lego figure was undergoing some kind of primeval surgery, lying on a cot of tissues beside several Q-tips and a tube of superglue. A crayon drawing of the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkeys fluttered from a tack beneath the vent. Evan might as well have landed on a different planet.

  He cleared his throat. “Fighting is bad,” he said.

  Mia regarded him through a fall of hair, seemingly disappointed and encouraging at the same time. She gave him a prompting nod.

  “A better means of conflict resolution,” Evan continued, “is to tell.”

  Mia issued a noise of consternation that seemed to encompass her, Evan, the entire bedroom tableau.

  The Jaws theme sounded. Mia lifted her iPhone from her pocket and stiffened. “Sorry. I’m sorry. This is a big work problem. Can you just…?”

  Evan nodded, and she stepped into the other room, answering. He noted that she left the door open. Peter stared at him expectantly. What the hell was Evan doing here? His thoughts drifted to Katrin, holed up in the motel room waiting for sunrise and Evan’s return. Her father held hostage at this very moment. Was he bound? Gagged? Had they beaten him?

  Evan looked around the room for inspiration, found none. A family portrait sat framed on the desk, Peter a fat newborn, Mia with a dated haircut, her bespectacled husband wearing an easygoing grin. A Post-it adhered to the windowsill issued another directive from that Peterson guy: “Make at least one thing better every single place you go.”

  Evan closed his eyes and thought back to being a kid. He pictured the way Jack’s lips flickered when he sussed out the situation beneath a situation, as if they were searching for words. Evan reached for the wobbly desk chair, swung it around, sat on it backward.

  He took a breath. “Look,” he said. “I don’t know how you’re feeling about it, but I’m pissed off that a kid did that to you.”

  Peter stared down at his hands, fingers fussing along the hem of the sheet.

  Evan said, “He probably came after you and you tried to defend yourself and got popped in the face. That’s unfair, and it sucks.”

  Peter kept his eyes lowered. “I wish I could stick up for myself,” he finally said, his voice on the edge of cracking.

  “You can,” Evan said. “You’re just not big enough to do it with your fists. So why don’t you use your smarts, keep clear of this kid, stay in eyeshot of a teacher? Nothing wrong with working the situation. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And if that fails? You can always put drain cleaner in his water bottle.”

  Peter grinned and offered a fist. Evan bumped it with his own as he headed out of the room.

  The muted TV flickered over a landscape of scattered toys and dirty laundry spilled from a basket that had been dropped haphazardly onto one of the couch’s split cushions. A dinner tray lay where it had slid off the couch, littered with pieces of a broken plate and bowl.

  Mia, nowhere in sight.

  Evan walked down the hall, calling her name quietly. The door to the master was ajar, but when he entered the room, he found it empty. From the dark maw of the walk-in closet, he heard sniffling.

  “Mia?” He pushed the closet door further open and saw her sitting with her back to a rise of drawers, wiping her face, one hand clutching the ever-present iPhone.

  “Sorry. I just—Sorry. Sometimes…”

  “May I come in?”

  “Please.”

  He put his shoulders to the wall opposite her, beside the hanging blouses, and slid down to sit facing her. Her feet, shoved into actual bunny slippers. They were fluffy pink and featured a heart and stitched bubble letters that proclaimed, WORLD’S BEST MOM. The sight of them brought something deeper than just amusement. It surprised him to realize that he liked this home, where knives were for spreading butter and superglue for repairing toys.

  “Sorry I was harsh earlier,” she said. “Upstairs.”

  “You were just being protective.”

  “I’ll tell you this: Parenting ain’t for sissies.”

  “No,” he said. “Doesn’t seem to be.”

  “And with work right now…” She blew out a breath. Her hair floated back down over her forehead. “Facing it all by myself feels so fucking scary sometimes. And I know that’s pathetic with everything I have, but…”

  He watched her expression shift.

  “I did everything right,” she said. “Studied hard, worked hard, was a good wife. I know—‘Grow up,’ right? I sound naïve and entitled, but Christ. You’d think it’d work out. Better. Than this.” She fluttered a hand around the closet, the heavy sleeves of disembodied coats, the wire hangers, the crowd of sweaters bending a shelf overhead. “I have this fantasy notion of myself. Holding it together. But I can’t seem to get there. Why not?”

  He was unaccustomed to these kinds of problems, significant but not extreme, prosaic but not trivial. Everyday difficulties. A boy without a father. A toilet that wouldn’t flush. Frozen peas to bring down the swelling. She was looking at him expectantly, and he realized that an answer was due.

  “I suppose everything’s a matter of discipline and focus.”

  She made a thoughtful noise. “It might seem that way to you,” she said, not unkindly. “There’s no one else in your life—I mean, in your life all the time. People are messy. Relationships aren’t linear. They knock you on your ass. Make you detour, reverse, change focus. You can’t be perfect unless you’re alone, and then guess what? You’re alone. So you’re still not perfect.”

  An image came to Evan: Jack moving through the farmhouse late at night, thumbing up flecks of dust, aligning objects on counters, stacking the place mats and cloth napkins with assembly-line precision. Evan had always viewed those nighttime rituals as displays of mettle, an almost religious observance of setting the room, the house, the universe in order.

  “Maybe none of what we think matters really matters at all,” Mia said. “Maybe it’s the little stuff that adds up, inch by inch, until you’ve built something you didn’t even know you were building. Driving car pool. Making school lunches. Sitting bedside at a hospital night after night…” Her eyes glinted in the dark. “But that’s what takes it out of you, too.” She tilted her head back to keep more tears from spilling. “I worry that I can’t handle everything that’s coming by myself. All the mess of life. That I’m too sensitive. Too fragile. That it’ll keep coming and I won’t have what it takes.”

  “You’re not fragile,” Evan said. “You’re not afraid to show the cracks.”

  “Great.” A hint of a smile. “I’m cracky.” She stuck her arm out at an upward diagonal. “Help me up.”

  “You sure you’re ready to exit the closet?”

  She cocked her head. “There’s a mess to be picked up and laundry to be done, and I am again equal to the task.”

  He rose, grasped her hand, pulled her up. She rose as if weightless. For a moment they were close, stomach to stomach, in the tight space. Her eyes on his chin, her breath faint against his neck. And then she brushed past him, patting his side. They emerged from the bedroom together. In the living room, she turned off the TV, started folding the laundry on the couch.

  Starting for the door, he thought again of that life lesson Mia had written out for her son and stuck to the wall: “Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.” The little phrase stopped him there on the floorboards. He looked across at the Post-it and read it again, wondering if the Commandments were immutable and determinate or whether new rules could be added as one pleased. Again he thought of Jack poking around in the dark house, tidying up, making invisible adjustments that he’d make again the next night and the night after that. The farmhouse, so safe and clean and soothingly spare, had always felt somehow outside of time. This home gave the opposite impression. With its smudged handprints and framed family portraits, it seemed to contain within its walls the entire brutal cycle of life—and yet it also contained a comfort of a different kind. Though the specific thought wriggled away before Eva
n could pin it down, he sensed somewhere that this brand of comfort couldn’t exist without the brutal realities.

  In his peripheral vision, Evan sensed Mia crouch over the fallen tray. He reversed direction and joined her, helping pick up the broken pieces.

  18

  Look Closer

  Around Evan’s seventeenth birthday, a threat arises, acquainting him with the real-life stakes of the profession. News reaches Jack that a file in a classified database somewhere may have been compromised. Drawing on a tenacity forged in his early infantry-sergeant days, he locks up the house and stays awake for seventy-two hours in the dark foyer, facing the front door from a wooden stool, combat shotgun across his knees, moving only to drink from a thermos and relieve himself. A phone call from a blocked number indicates that the threat, if it was a threat at all, has passed.

  As Jack returns the wooden stool to its place at the kitchen counter, he calls Evan to his side. He throws some leftover turkey on a plate, then pours himself vodka over ice. Leaning against the sink, drink in hand, he wears a thoughtful expression; his vigil has left ample time for contemplation.

  “I need to teach you how all this works, because knowledge is power and I will not have you take the risks you will take unempowered. Our program is a full-deniability, antiseptic operation run off a black budget. The money comes straight out of Treasury. It’s printed and shipped, utterly untraceable. Which means, essentially, that we have an unlimited budget. DoD manages this, threads the needle through an outlet in the Department of the Interior.”

  “Department of the Interior?”

  “Exactly. Land management, national parks. Who’s gonna look there?”

  Jack proceeds to lay out the arcane arrangements. Bank accounts on various continents. The cash moves through a contracting agent in Aberdeen, Maryland, who doesn’t even know what he’s contracting, then filters out. P.O. boxes, traceless wires, currency swaps. Lawyers in closet-size offices rented by the week, concealed in beehive complexes housing jewelers, boiler-room operations, fly-by-night travel agencies. Desks and phones and nothing more.