The Target

by Saul Herzog

  Agata scanned Alda’s civil record. His wife had made a few calls on him. The phrase ‘drunk and disorderly’ peppered the police reports.

  “Had he been drinking, Mr. Agranov?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Lying to me is a criminal offense, Mr. Agranov.”

  “Arturs Alda wouldn’t be caught dead drinking on the job. He’s the best of the best. So was his father.”

  “He was a drinker, though.”

  “Not around here, he wasn’t.”

  “Marital problems?”

  “Listen,” Mr. Agranov said. “Arturs has been flying runs like this his entire life. He knows the terrain. He knows the sky. He knows the plane.”

  “And yesterday? What do you think happened?”

  “You know what I think happened.”

  Agata said nothing. There was nothing she could say.

  This was her problem now, not his.

  “All right, Mr. Agranov, thank you for taking the time to speak to me.”

  “Are you going to do anything about it?” he said.

  “I can’t discuss that with you. You know that.”

  “Just tell me,” he said, “because if you’re not, I’m going to go out there myself and find out what happened to him.”

  “I would strongly advise against that, Mr. Agranov.”

  “I don’t care what you advise. I only care what’s being done. I owe him that much.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “You’ll need to be quick.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  “I sure hope you do,” he said, then hung up.

  3

  Lance Spector threw his cigar butt off the end of the pier and watched it arch toward the water like a comet.

  “I can’t believe you’re going back,” he said.

  Laurel shrugged. She had a beer in her hand and took a sip.

  “It’s different for you now, I guess,” he said.

  She’d been made director of the Special Operations Group, Levi Roth’s elite covert unit, and that made her, apart from the director himself, the most important person in the CIA’s entire paramilitary apparatus.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.

  He shrugged extravagantly. Exaggeratedly.

  She shook her head, then turned and began walking away from him, back toward the house. Lance realized he’d gone too far.

  “Laurel,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that as an insult.”

  “I know how you meant it.”

  “I was just saying….”

  “You were saying that I’m putting my career, and the prospect of being in power, ahead of my principals.”

  “It’s none of my business what you choose to do with your life.”

  He was trying to appease her, but everything he said seemed only to make her angrier.

  “Oh, fuck you, and you’re sanctimonious bullshit, Lance. We can’t all afford the luxury of going back to our cabin in the mountains every time something happens that we don’t like.”

  “Is that what you think I do?”

  “Every time we need you, Roth has to come groveling on his knees, like serving your country is somehow beneath you.”

  “Serving my country and doing what Levi Roth asks are two very different things.”

  “He’s director of the CIA, Lance. It’s not like he asks you to go pick up his laundry.”

  “Roth and I have a lot more history than what you’ve been let in on, Laurel.”

  She said something under her breath that he didn’t quite catch. He knew he should have let it go, but he couldn’t.

  “What was that?” he said.

  “I said, cry me a river.”

  Lance let out a mirthless laugh. “In case you didn’t notice,” he said, “the President of the United States just tried to pin a vicious terrorist attack on me. He had every agency in the country hunting me down. He called me a traitor to the nation on national television.”

  “You know he was doing what he had to do.”

  “And what was best for his reelection campaign.”

  “So you want him to go to war with Russia? To go to war with China? Our two most powerful rivals. Just tear the whole world to pieces, burn it all to the ground, to save your reputation? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Lance shook his head. He wasn’t sure what he was saying. All he knew was what he’d known for a long time. What he’d been telling Roth, and Laurel, and anyone else who cared to listen, for a long time.

  That he was no hero.

  That he was no soldier.

  That he didn’t even deserve the dignity of the name.

  “Look, Laurel. I’m not going back. That’s it. I wish you the best of luck. I wish Roth the best of luck.”

  “The best of luck?”

  “Whatever the appropriate phrase is.”

  “Appropriate phrase?” Laurel shook her head. “I just don’t understand you, Lance. You signed up for this life. This world. You’ve risked your life for it. You’ve even killed for it. But now, it’s as if the things we do, the risks we take, the operations we lead, it’s like all of it disgusts you. Like you’re ashamed of it. Like you’re ashamed of us.”

  “I’m not ashamed of you.”

  “You know better than anyone that the job we do is necessary. It’s ugly work. It’s bloody. It feels like butchery. Believe me when I say I understand, Lance. But, the terrible truth is, someone’s got to do it.”

  “It’s not that, Laurel.”

  “A clean kill. That’s the best we can deliver. And if we don’t do it, I guarantee you that someone else will. And they’ll botch it. And then there’ll be even more blood, more needless suffering, and more innocent death.”

  “That’s not it, Laurel. That’s not it. None of it.”

  “Then what is it? What else is there for you, Lance? This is your life. This is who you are. This is what you are.”

  “Maybe it was once.”

  “It doesn’t change, Lance. I’m sorry, but there are certain things in this world you don’t just get to walk away from.”

  Lance looked at her for a long moment and wished he could believe the words she was saying. She misunderstood him, his motives, but he understood hers. And he wished more than anything that he could still believe the things he’d once taken as immutable facts. He wished he could still be the man he’d started out as.

  But he couldn’t.

  One man started the journey.

  But it wasn’t the same man who ended it.

  Like she said, the events of a man’s life, the things he did, the blood he spilled, it changed him. It stained him. Permanently. And he couldn’t just walk away from that.

  His deeds would follow him.

  To the grave.

  “Well,” he said, “you can see things your way. I’ll see them my way.”

  She let out a long sigh, then said, “You want to know why I’m going back? You want to know my way of seeing things?”

  Lance pulled a small metal box from his shirt pocket and took out another of the cigarillos. He’d purchased them in the village, some local, Mexican brand he’d never heard of, and he held it to the flame of his lighter.

  Laurel said, “Did I ever tell you how my father died?”

  Lance knew the story. Laurel’s father had been an army colonel. He was shot in the back by an Afghan soldier at Camp Qargha. Laurel was fourteen when it happened. Her mother was already dead. She spent the rest of her childhood in the Alabama foster care system.

  But the experience didn’t defeat her.

  She ended up with a scholarship to Harvard.

  Or maybe it was Yale.

  Either way.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “You know what happened.”

  “I’ve read your file.”

  She nodded. He couldn’t make out the expression on her face. He’d have thought she’d be proud of the story, but he knew
the truth was more complicated.

  “My daddy had a drinking problem,” she said.

  Lance nodded.

  “Not just like it was bad for his health,” she said. “He had a real problem.”

  Lance nodded again.

  “He was… let’s just say, he was not a happy man.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lance said.

  “I’m not trying to get your sympathy.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m just telling you, they made a big deal about my father when he was shot in Kabul. They draped a flag on his coffin. Brought him to Arlington. Had a seventeen-gun-salute over the casket or whatever it was. A riderless horse. A brass band. It was dignified.”

  “I thought…” he said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What were you going to say?”

  “I heard you didn’t attend the funeral,” he said.

  “That’s not the point.”

  Lance didn’t know what to say.

  There was a pack of cigarettes in the back pocket of Laurel’s jeans, and she took one out and lit it.

  She was a little drunk. She didn’t often smoke, and she didn’t often talk like this. He knew she’d regret it in the morning. She’d be shy around him. Apologetic.

  She preferred to keep people at arm’s length.

  “The point is,” she said, “there was a dignity in his death that had never existed during his life. At least, as far as I could tell.”

  Lance nodded.

  “That’s all I’m trying to say.”

  “I see,” he said, not sure what it was she was trying to say at all.

  “And I feel,” she continued, “that the least I can do is find that same dignity.”

  “So,” he said, “you’re saying, you’re going back to Langley so that you can have an honorable death?”

  “No, Lance.”

  “That’s what it sounds like, Laurel.”

  “I’m saying, everyone dies. All of us. Eventually.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “And when I die, I want…”.

  “A salute? A brass band?”

  “I want my life to have stood for something. Even if I mess up every other part of it. Even if I fail in every other way. Even if there’s no one left who loves me.”

  “You’re not your father, Laurel.”

  “Maybe not,” she said, “but I am his daughter.”

  He couldn’t argue with that.

  He finished his cigar and flicked it off the pier. It singed in the water.

  They both sat there in silence for a while, the moon directly in front of them. It was January, and there was a slight chill in the air.

  “Playa Bagdad,” Lance said to fill the silence.

  “It’s a strange name,” she said.

  “This place was a big deal during the Civil War,” he said.

  She nodded disinterestedly. She was thinking about what she’d said.

  He was speaking so that he wouldn’t have to.

  “Cotton from every state in the confederacy made its way on wooden carts down to this beach. There used to be a big town here. Three-story stone buildings. And a port.”

  “Where is it all now?” Laurel said, looking out over a desolate stretch of beach that extended as far as she could see in each direction.

  There was no sign at all that any town had ever been there, not a hundred years ago, not a thousand years ago.

  “Under the sand,” Lance said. “Gone. When the war ended, so did the blockade, and the blockade runners, and all the other adventurers and desperados their gold attracted.”

  “And the whores, I’ll bet.”

  Lance nodded.

  A whole world had been there. And now there was nothing at all.

  He’d been to towns like that in other places. Other parts of the world. Some of them had emptied just hours before his arrival. The people had run off, hiding in the wilderness from whatever desolation had come prowling their way, and Lance, like the wolf in a child’s tale, knew they’d been there from the still-warm bowls of food on their tables.

  “There may have been for your father,” Lance said, “but for me, there’s no atonement in war.”

  Laurel sucked on her cigarette, flicked away the butt, and lit another.

  “How can you say that?” she said. “Surely, for someone like you, war is the only path left.”

  Lance shook his head. “Even war requires a certain degree of faith in humanity,” he said. “War is for people who still have something left to fight for.”

  “You’re too wrapped up in yourself,” she said. “It’s not about you and what you’ve got to fight for.”

  “Laurel.”

  “For the record,” she said, “No one gives a flying shit about your faith in humanity.”

  Lance didn’t know how to tell her what he wanted to say, so he said, “All the fight’s gone out of me, Laurel.”

  “That’s a cop-out, Lance. You’re just pissed at Roth for what he did.”

  Lance shook his head. “I’m not pissed at Roth. I’m pissed at myself.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know he ordered your predecessor’s death.”

  “Of course I know,” Laurel said. “Clarice Snow. Your handler. The woman Roth thought you were in love with.”

  “And a woman who you coincidentally look uncannily similar to.”

  “Let’s not get into this.”

  “Well, if we’re talking like this, we might as well be clear, Laurel. You looked like her, and then you had the idea of undergoing cosmetic surgery so that you would look even more like her.”

  “I was doing my job.”

  “You were fucking with my head.”

  “I didn’t even know who you were back then.”

  “But you knew what you were doing was manipulating a man who, how should we put this, had issues.”

  “Fine. You got me. That’s what I did.”

  “You came after me, knowing full well that I didn’t want to come back. That I’d been AWOL for two years. Roth didn’t hear a peep. I wasn’t ever going to cause him trouble. I wasn’t a security risk. I’d just swallowed enough of the government’s bullshit to last me a thousand lifetimes, and I was done with it.”

  “Roth said he needed you. He said it had to be you.”

  “And what I had to say about it didn’t matter?”

  “I thought you’d had enough time to get over your issues.”

  “Get over my issues? You don’t even know what happened.”

  “Yes, I do, Lance. Yes, I do.”

  “You couldn’t know.”

  “I know more than you think.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I know Clarice Snow was pregnant with your child when Roth ordered her killed.”

  Lance had been in the process of lighting a cigar, and he stopped.

  “That’s right, Lance,” she said. “Maybe you weren’t in love with her, but she was pregnant with your child when Roth ordered her killed. That’s why you’re not coming back. Because you’re traumatized. You’re traumatized about what Roth did. He killed your woman. He killed your baby. And difficult as that is to swallow, you’re allowing it to defeat you. You’re allowing it to destroy everything you are and everything you still have to offer.”

  Lance shook his head. “That’s not it, Laurel. That’s not it.”

  “What?” Laurel said.

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Don’t tell me I’m wrong.”

  “That’s not it,” Lance said again. “That’s not it at all.”

  “It’s all right, Lance,” Laurel said. “Any man, under those circumstances, would find it difficult to come back. But eventually, you’ve got to move on with your life. You’ve got to get over what happened. I know he made a mistake, but you’ve got to find out a way to forgive him for what happened.”

  “Forgive him?” Lance said, letting out a laugh.


  Laurel looked at him. The way she was looking at him, he could tell she was beginning to lose patience. She could only try for so long to pull him back. She could only hold out so much hope. Before his eyes, he was watching a woman lose her faith in him.

  And he didn’t care.

  “Look, Lance,” she said. “This ship is ready to sail. I’ve got clearance from Roth and the president. I’m going to return to DC and set up the team that I think is capable of defending our country. The team that is capable of standing up to the threat posed by Russia and China. If you want to be part of that team, there’s a spot for you.”

  “They gave clearance for me too?”

  “Yes, they did,” Laurel said. “Of course they did. They know you didn’t do the things they accused you of.”

  Lance shook his head.

  “Fine,” Laurel said. “I’ll do it without you, Lance. There are other operatives. Other assassins. Other men in the military who will risk their lives for the safety of the rest of us.”

  She turned and started walking away. Lance stayed where he was and smoked his way through the entire box of cigarillos. Two hours passed before Laurel came back down to the pier.

  “I’m leaving at dawn,” she said. “My offer still stands. You can come with me, or go back to Montana, or you can disappear completely and never talk to any of us ever again. The choice is yours. I won’t come looking for you. You have my word on that.”

  Lance looked at her. She was so young. So full of hope, of confidence, that something could be done to make a difference in the world. It was something he was incapable of ever feeling again.

  She was about to leave again when he said, “Hey, do you know who found out Clarice was selling secrets to the Russians?”

  She shook her head.

  He swallowed. What he was about to say was difficult. It was something he’d never told anyone. Something he’d never said aloud. Something he wasn’t even sure he’d processed in his own mind.

  “It was me,” he said.

  “You?”

  “There was a GRU agent in New York. I’d been ordered to follow him, to find out who his contact was.”

  “And you found out?”

  “I followed him to a diner near Times Square, and I saw Clarice drink coffee at the table next to him. They never spoke, but she left an envelope on her table when she left.”