“Meester Wallace, please?” Timid, a supplication more than a question.
“Hold on a sec,” Wallace said to Falk. “I’ll be right back.”
Falk took the opportunity to snoop a little more. He stepped into the small kitchen, which was spotless except for the remains of the evening meal on four stacked trays in the sink. Wallace must have eaten with them. Falk opened the refrigerator and saw cartons of juice and milk, a chocolate bar, a few carrot sticks, and a packet of beef jerky.
“Hungry?” Wallace asked in an edgy voice. Falk hadn’t heard him return.
“No. Just curious.”
“Everyone is,” he said, in a weary tone. “They’re just kids, really. No matter what they might have been when they got here.”
“I’m sure you’re right. Everything okay back there?”
“Just a homework question.”
Falk nodded toward the gleaming white stove.
“They cook their own meals?”
“It’s not plugged in. Aesthetic purposes only.” A line right out of the media tour, no doubt. But it was an odd touch, all the same. All that trouble to haul an oven here, just to give the place an extra measure of domesticity. Or maybe it had been here all along.
“So how ’bout you get to the point?” Wallace said.
“You heard about the soldier’s disappearance, I guess. From down on Windmill Beach?”
“Christ, that again? Didn’t the captain get enough?”
“The captain?”
“The security guy.”
“Captain Van Meter?”
“That’s him. Barged in like Sergeant Hulk. Scared the boys half to death. Sat on their beds and grilled ’em for half an hour. Of course, I lost it and got everybody even more upset. So forget it, no way we’re covering that ground again.”
“Sorry. I had no idea.”
“Don’t you guys talk to each other?”
“There’s a question over jurisdiction. We’re not exactly sharing notes.”
Wallace shook his head.
“Just like every other goddamn thing down here. Not that I should be using that language in front of the boys. You should’ve seen the catfights over how much to pump ’em. How long to keep ’em. Have you ever tried requisitioning textbooks through the Pentagon? I finally just went and borrowed a couple from the school up on the base. Unbelievable. But you can get what you need from Captain Van Meter.”
“It’s not that easy, I’m afraid.”
“It never is.”
“Look. I don’t even need to bother the boys. I’m just wondering if any of them saw anything that night.”
“They’re pretty much under lock and key after dark.”
“Don’t they have windows?”
He nodded.
“Can’t see the beach from them, though. Not with all the screening on the fence. You only see the horizon, way out at sea. And at night, nothing.”
“So all three would’ve been indoors?”
“That’s what they told Captain What’s-his-name, and that’s what they’d tell you.”
“Then I’ll be on my way. Mind if I have a quick look outside first?”
“Whatever gets you out of our hair.”
Wallace walked him to the door, and then turned. When he spoke next he had lowered his voice, as if he didn’t want the boys to hear. “Didn’t mean to bite your head off. It’s just that one of the boys had bad dreams for two nights after that asshole came by, and I don’t want an encore. Shakeel was the biggest head case to begin with, but with counseling he’s made a lot of progress. Would hate to see it come to nothing.”
“You should tell the general.”
Wallace shook his head. Maybe he had already tried.
“C’mon, I’ll show you the grounds of the estate.”
The lawn out back was a patch of brown grass about fifteen by twenty-five feet, with a picnic table and a small soccer goal at one end. An American football lay on the ground.
“They ever use that?”
“They throw it around. They’re pretty good. They’d rather play soccer, but the ball went over the fence a few days ago.”
“Ah. More requisitioning.”
“You got it.”
As advertised, there was a long cutaway across the mesh. The view of the sea was spectacular.
“No wonder they like it out here.”
“It’s why they have all those nature videos. They can’t learn enough about the ocean, fish, anything to do with the sea. They’d never even seen an ocean before they got here.”
What a strange place for expanding your horizons. He supposed if they ever got home, the experience might actually do them some good. Falk strolled over for a closer look. Only by putting your face up to the fence could you see Windmill Beach. And after dark, like Wallace said, you probably saw nothing. They would have been in their rooms anyway. A waste of time for him to have come, in other words.
“Okay, that’ll do it. Sorry to be a bother.”
“No problem,” Wallace said. They walked toward the exit.
“They going home anytime soon?”
“There’s been talk. And lots of paperwork. But so far that’s all it’s been.”
Falk drove back past Camp America and the prison, clearing the checkpoint, then heading for home. It was dusk, and a sense of desolation settled in as he navigated the curves. On impulse, he decided to swing by Pam’s apartment on Windward Loop. At the very least he would find out what kind of attention they were paying her. With luck she would be looking out her window and see him. Yet another similarity to a high school romance, he supposed. The lovelorn boy cruising the street of his dreams.
The neighborhood was quiet, and Falk approached as slowly as possible, without attracting too much attention. A Humvee was parked out front, and there was a sentry by the door. Even though he knew she was under house arrest, the extra security dismayed him. She hadn’t even been charged with a crime. Was all this just to keep him away? What if someone else visited? Van Meter could probably waltz right in. And what about Bo? What were the rules for him, and how had their one visit gone in his absence? He wondered how her roommates had reacted. Maybe they were still one big happy family, the usual sorority house atmosphere, except with an extra touch of sternness to ensure that their dates dropped them off on time. No more stolen kisses on the porch.
He resisted the urge to stop and drove on through to Sherman Avenue, turning left to loop back toward Iguana Terrace. In the mood he was in he might as well stop at the Tiki Bar, if only to seek out some company. With a few beers maybe he would sleep easier. If he was lucky the gossips wouldn’t be out in force.
The bar was hopping. The arrests may have damaged morale, but they hadn’t killed anyone’s thirst. Falk decided to go with something stronger for a change and ordered a gin and tonic. It was well watered, so he soon returned for another, loitering at the bar while scanning the crowd for a familiar face.
Seeing none, he picked up a stray copy of The Wire from a barstool. The movie schedule was always worth checking, but otherwise the rag was worthless. He was mildly surprised to see a small story inside about the arrival of Fowler’s team. The official line presented by the public affairs officer who had written the story was that the team was here “to evaluate the security and efficiency of current J-DOG and JIG operations.” The story urged everyone “to offer all possible assistance as they fulfill their important duties.” Blah blah blah. Next to it was their picture, all three of them squinting into the sun like golfers waiting for the last member of the foursome. Bo stood slightly apart from the others.
The only coverage of Sergeant Ludwig’s disappearance was a brief story on the memorial service Falk had missed. It said Ludwig had drowned during a late-night swim from Windmill Beach.
He was rolling up the copy to take back to the house when he was distracted by some noisy new arrivals, led by a couple of MPs still in uniform. One gave him an odd look, nodding in recognition, and then whispered
something to his buddies.
Great, Falk thought. Just what he hadn’t wanted. Now the guy was walking toward him, beer in hand and nodding again.
“You were just over at Iguana, right? The FBI guy?”
“How’d you know?”
“I was in the back with the boys. Saw you out the window when you and Wallace went for a walk. I got off shift right after you left.”
“Your sergeant’s pretty protective.”
“He’s a good man. And they’re good kids, really. Deserved better than being kidnapped by the Taliban and having an AK put in their hands. Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, well. That’s war in their part of the world, I guess.”
“Ain’t it the truth.”
Neither of them said a word for a while, and Falk figured the guy was about to head back to his friends. Instead he lingered awkwardly, looking down at his feet while peeling at the label on his beer.
“So Wallace said you weren’t working with that other guy, Van Meter.”
“That’s right.”
“Some kind of jurisdictional snafu?”
“Something like that.” Falk shrugged, trying not to lie any more than he had to.
“Well, don’t ever tell Wallace I said so, but it’s probably my fault that asshole came around to begin with.”
“How so?”
The MP looked around warily. Falk, paying closer attention now, saw that he looked to be about nineteen, only four years older than the oldest kid at Iguana. Children watching children, all of them far from home.
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it here,” the soldier said.
“C’mon.” Falk shook the ice in his empty glass. “Let me freshen this, then we’ll go for a walk.”
The kid went to tell his friends while Falk ordered a third gin. Then the two of them strolled off past the tables toward the water, down a small slope to a narrow floating dock where pleasure boats sometimes pulled in. A runabout droned past offshore in the deepening darkness, headed for the marina with its green and red running lights on. The dock bobbed up and down on the waves of its wake, groaning against the pilings.
This was a convenient getaway for the bar crowd at times. For those who felt a sudden pang of homesickness between drinks, it was a refuge for collecting yourself before rejoining the gang. It also served as a testing ground for men and women contemplating pairing off for the evening, a place to see how things went with a little privacy. Pam and Falk had come here the night she first bought him a beer, a memory that put a small stab through his chest. He thought of her locked in her house, grounded without privileges, all because her bad boyfriend had somehow pissed off the teachers.
The only other people down here tonight were a guy and his date, smooching off to the side in the glare of a streetlight. Falk led the MP toward the opposite side, down by the water’s edge.
“What’s your name, soldier?”
The kid looked down and saw that his nameplate was still taped over. So much for trusting the kids completely, Falk supposed.
“Sorry,” he said, tearing off the duct tape. “Specialist Hilger. Out of Kentucky.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“It was all ’cause of something I let slip. I told some of the guys at dinner one night about one of the kids, Shakeel. He’s thirteen and he has these nightmares. Some weeks it’s every night. Wakes up shouting, in a full sweat. We finally figured that the best way to calm him down was to take him outside. It’s against regulations—they’re not supposed to be out after dark. But, hell, it works, and it’s better than having him wake up the others. He walks it off in the moonlight, out where he can hear the waves on the rocks. So, anyway, word got around the way it always does, and this Captain Van Meter must have heard.”
“And figured he’d have a chat with Shakeel.”
“Exactly.”
“Might have been nice if Wallace had told me this.”
“I guess he figured there was no point. Shakeel told Van Meter he hadn’t even been out that night. So why put him through the wringer again for nothing.”
“For that matter, why tell me now? I can’t do a damn thing about Van Meter.”
“Because Shakeel was outside that night. And so was I. It was my last week on overnight duty, and I was sitting at the picnic table, having a smoke while Shakeel walked it off. We were both too scared to tell that asshole Van Meter, so we ended up not telling Wallace, too. But I figured somebody ought to know. Just to set the record straight.”
“Or to cover your ass.”
Hilger shook his head vigorously.
“No. I’ll be glad to take the heat for it. Hell, maybe they’ll send me home. It’s Shakeel I’m worried about. He’s due to go home. All of them are, if the brass ever stops putting it off. But if Van Meter finds out Shakeel lied to him, well …” Hilger shrugged. “God knows what would happen. He could be stuck here ’til he’s eighteen. Then they’d move him to Delta and nobody would give a fuck.”
“Point taken. I’ll keep it quiet.”
“You still don’t get it, do you? Shakeel wasn’t just out there, he saw something. Out on the water. The same night that sergeant went missing.”
Falk checked their flanks, stunned and suddenly worried. He would hardly have felt more vulnerable if someone had just rolled a live grenade beneath their feet. The smooching couple, still going at it some twenty feet away, was by all appearances completely preoccupied. But, hey, think OPSEC.
“Let’s move onto the dock,” Falk said, glancing around. “And I don’t want a word of this going elsewhere. Understand?”
“Sure. That’s the way I’d prefer it.”
The planks creaked beneath their feet as they walked to the end, just beyond a circle of light thrown by a lamp on a piling. A fish flicked at the surface, then vanished.
“So what did he see?”
“A boat. Not a big one. One of those little rubber ones.”
“An inflatable?”
“Yeah, like the commandos use.”
“Did you see it?”
Hilger shook his head.
“I was zoned out, half asleep. He didn’t tell me ’til the next night. I think it scared him, like he knew it was something he wasn’t supposed to have seen.”
“But you can’t even see the beach from there.”
“It wasn’t on the beach. The boat was passing by, just beyond the breakers.”
“In what direction?”
“East.”
“Back toward Camp America? Toward the Cuban side?”
Hilger nodded. “All three of them.”
“Three boats?”
“Three people. One boat. That’s how many people Shakeel saw.”
Falk considered this for a moment. Something didn’t add up.
“There wasn’t even a moon out that night. How could he have seen anything, much less made a head count?”
“By the lights from our place. They keep ’em on all night. It’s not as bright as the ones at Delta, but still. He saw it, all right. He’d have no reason to make it up. And I know he never heard anything about that sergeant.”
“And he was sure there were three of them?”
“Yeah.”
“So why didn’t you tell Van Meter?”
“Like I said. The kids. I wasn’t there when Van Meter came by. I just heard about it later. I could never live with it if Shakeel got busted, held here for life.”
“And you think that’s what would happen?”
“Van Meter said as much, to all three of ’em. ‘Lie to me and you’re never getting out of here.’”
“Prince of a guy.” Not to mention an idiot as an interrogator. Another dope who’d watched one too many cop shows where confrontational assholes got the goods.
“Besides, I figure if three guys are out horsing around in a raft, and one of ’em drowns, eventually one of the others is going to ’fess up, right? And if not …” He shrugged. “Then I guess they’ll have to live w
ith that.”
“So that’s what you think it was? Three guys joyriding after dark? Maybe taking a little cruise to the forbidden zone, just for kicks?”
“What else would it be?”
“I don’t know.”
But to Falk, any fellow who’d go to the trouble of first removing his wallet and keys didn’t sound like the joyriding type. An inflatable was just the sort of craft Ludwig would have been least inclined to board.
“Well, don’t worry, Hilger. You did the right thing in telling me.”
“I hope so. I’ll admit, I almost didn’t because of, well, because of what people are saying.”
“And what might that be?”
“Oh, you know. The usual stuff you hear about Arabic speakers. One of the guys in my group said he thought you were one of them.”
“Well, you know how rumors are. Like I said, you did the right thing.”
“Thanks, sir.”
Hilger took his leave, trooping back up the hill to his buddies without another word as Falk watched from the swaying dock. The amorous couple had disappeared. Falk shook his head as he thought about all the tales that must be making the rounds. It made him wonder again what Pam must be saying. Maybe Bo was right, and she was telling all to save her own skin.
He brooded about it further as he walked to a lonely table at the periphery of the Tiki Bar, finishing the third gin, then starting on a fourth. By then he was just stewed enough to come up with a plan to find out more, and he knew of only one person who could help him carry it out.
He returned to his car, groping the key into the ignition before pausing to lean against the wheel as he marshaled the remnants of sobriety. The last thing he needed was to run the car into a ditch or a big cactus, or to get pulled over by a security patrol for drunk driving. He fired up the engine and set off into the night, checking the mirror at every curve to make sure no one was following.
The turnoff was hard to find in the dark. It was even tougher negotiating the coral lane with the headlights off. He rolled down the window as he came to a stop outside the corrugated shack, listening to the engine tick, a metronome for the ratcheting chorus of night bugs. Switching off the dome light before he unlatched the door, he turned in his seat to make sure no one had followed him in.
The Prisoner of Guantanamo Page 26
