Won't Back Down

by J. D. Rhoades

  “No.” Khoury’s answer is so abrupt that Keller’s annoyed again, even after Khoury adds, “Thank you.” Again, it’s as if the words are being dragged out of him. He turns to Keller. “Mr. Keller, I would like to offer you employment.”

  Keller blinks in surprise. “Excuse me?”

  Khoury sighs. “Perhaps I will have that tea.”

  THIRTEEN

  The three of them meet in Al-Mansour’s room at a Red Roof Inn just off I-40 in Durham. It’s a good hour’s drive to the mission site, but the boss seems to think that’s necessary for security, and he’s paying. Waller’s acceptance of the situation is strained by the fact that while Al-Mansour has a room of his own, he doesn’t want to spring for separate rooms for him and Tench. It’s only a problem because somewhere between the last mission he and Tench did together and this one, Tench has begun snoring. It’s making Waller irritable.

  Waller and Tench are seated at the small table by the window in a pair of cheap, uncomfortable motel chairs. Al-Mansour is on the king bed, lying comfortably with a file folder balanced on his ample belly. He closes the folder and peers at them over a pair of gold half-glasses. “So. We move to Phase Two.”

  Finally, Waller thinks. Over a long career that’s led him from the Army to private military contract work, he’s gotten used to living like a mushroom: kept in the dark and fed bullshit. But he’s never learned to like it. “Yes, sir,” he says.

  Tench nods. “We’re all ears, sir.”

  Al-Mansour shifts his weight. “This man, this fellow who goes by the name of Khoury,” he almost spits the last word, “he has something that belongs to me.”

  Even out of the corner of his eye, Waller can see Tench’s smug, triumphant look at him. He can only hope Al-Mansour is too wrapped up in his own story to see it as well. “It might help if we knew exactly what that was, sir. So we know what we’re looking for, and can recognize it when we see it.”

  Al-Mansour shakes his head. “You won’t find it on your own. He won’t have it hidden anywhere near him. Not on his person. Not in his home. He’s too clever for that.”

  Tench speaks up. “Maybe in that warehouse where he works?”

  Al-Mansour ponders that, then nods reluctantly. “Unlikely, but still possible. If it’s there, though, it will be well hidden.”

  “So,” Tench says. “The quickest way to recovering your property is to get Khoury, or whatever his real name is, to tell us where it is.” He smiles coldly. “And it’s not information he’s liable to give up willingly.”

  Waller can tell where this conversation is going. He’s been in on a dozen like it. This is the first time it’s made him feel weary and vaguely sick. I’m feeling my age.

  Al-Mansour is nodding with approval at Tench. “Just so.”

  “Okay,” Waller says. “We pick Khoury up. Sweat him. Make him want to give it up. Whatever it is.”

  “No,” Tench says. Waller looks at him, surprised at the assertiveness in his tone. In all the time he’s worked with Tench, the man, for all his bellyaching, has always been a follower. “We could do that. But it’s like I said, right? He’s not going to give up quickly. Not after this much time.”

  Al-Mansour is nodding again. “I think we are, as you say, on the same page of music. And speaking of time, there is another factor that makes time important.”

  Waller and Tench look at each other. “Do tell.”

  Al-Mansour sighs. “Mr. Khoury and his family have some…friends.”

  Of course they do, Waller thinks. “Sir,” he says, “we’re new to this situation. So we need to know everything that’s going on here. We need to know all the players.”

  Al-Mansour nods reluctantly. “Your Central Intelligence Agency has someone detailed to protect Mr. Khoury.”

  Waller resists the temptation to bury his head in his hands. “That is definitely a factor, sir.”

  “One we should have been told from the start,” Tench says. “Sir,” he adds grudgingly.

  Waller decides to concentrate on the immediate. “How many someones are we talking about here, sir?”

  Al-Mansour makes a disparaging noise. “One agent. He moves the Khourys from place to place. I can’t believe he’s anyone of any importance.” He leans forward, eyes bright. “So here is my plan. We take out this agent. His name that he is using now is Wilson, by the way. As I said, I do not believe this is a priority. It will take some time for the Agency to send a replacement. In that time, we persuade Mr. Khoury to divulge the location of my property.”

  “And how do we do that?” Waller asks, although he already knows the answer.

  Tench answers for him. “We put pressure on him through the thing he cares about most. His family.”

  Al-Mansour nods. “Exactly.” He cocks his head inquisitively at Waller. “I’m sensing that you have a problem with this, Mr. Waller.”

  Waller smiles tightly at him. “No, sir. But you have to agree, we’re doing more now than simple intelligence gathering.”

  “You want more money.”

  Waller nods. “It’s only fair, sir.” I sell my soul, he thinks, but it’s not cheap.

  FOURTEEN

  Khoury takes a sip of the tea Keller’s prepared, then puts the cup on the coffee table. He doesn’t pick it up again. It takes a few moments before he speaks. “It has not been easy for us here.”

  Keller doesn’t answer. He’s seated in the rocker across from the couch, the only other seat in the room. He holds a cold can of Red Stripe beer in his hand. Khoury had given the can a disapproving glance as Keller sat down, but Keller’s tired of those looks. If his disapproval drives Khoury to get to the point faster, that’s fine. If it drives him out of the house, that’s fine, too.

  Khoury goes on. “We have had to move around several times. For my work.”

  “What work do you do?”

  “I am in management,” Khoury says. The vagueness is another red flag, but Keller lets him go on. “I work long hours. I cannot take my son and my daughter to school. So they have to ride the bus.” He looks at the table. “And that is when they are bullied. That, and after.”

  Keller is finally beginning to understand. The man’s not just angry. He’s ashamed. “What about Mrs. Khoury?” he asks.

  “My wife passed away. Back in Iraq.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Keller says. “But what can I do?”

  “You were a soldier, is that correct?”

  Keller’s eyes narrow. “And how would you know that?”

  Khoury shrugs. “Something in the way you carry yourself.” He smiles thinly. “Also, I asked a few questions. Am I correct, though?”

  “Yeah. But that was a long time ago. And, well, I wasn’t very good at it.”

  Khoury raises his eyes to Keller’s. “I would like for you to take my children to school. Make sure they get there safely. Meet them at the end of the school day. Get them home, and make sure they are safe until I return.”

  Keller can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Wait a minute. You want to hire me to babysit?”

  “No. This would be in the nature of security.”

  “A bodyguard.” Keller shakes his head. “Mr. Khoury, isn’t this kind of an extreme reaction to school bullying?”

  “I will pay you five hundred dollars a week,” Khoury says.

  “Mr. Khoury—” Keller begins, but Khoury speaks over him.

  “Seven hundred and fifty dollars.”

  Keller folds his arms across his chest and leans back to regard Khoury silently. Then he speaks. “Mr. Khoury, are you sure all you are worried about is a few redneck kids hassling your son and daughter?”

  Khoury meets his eyes, and for a moment, the mild-mannered, nerdy manager is gone. Those eyes are eyes he’s seen before, flat and hard and merciless. “I don’t know what else you might be talking about. But I will do what it takes to protect my children. Anything it takes.”

  Keller drains the rest
of his beer and stands up. “I can respect that. But I know you’re lying to me.” He cuts off Khoury’s rejoinder. “But you know what? I’ll take your job. You want to know why?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “One, because I came here to see my son, but he’s got a problem seeing me. That’s nothing that concerns you, but it does leave me with some time on my hands. Two, well…” He fixes Khoury’s eyes with his own. “I saw your daughter today at school. She was facing down three guys, each one of them about thirty pounds heavier than her. She was doing it to protect her little brother.”

  Khoury looks down at the table. “She is a girl. Bassim should have—”

  Keller interrupts again, enjoying the way that makes Khoury visibly clench his jaw. “Oh, I give the boy respect as well. She kept having to pull him back from charging into an ass kicking. You’ve got some good kids, Mr. Khoury. Tough. Fearless. I like that. And I don’t like bullies. Whoever they might be.” He holds out his hand. “We have a deal?”

  Khoury stands up. That look in his eyes is gone, hidden behind the middle manager facade. But now Keller knows that facade for what it is. “We have a deal.” He takes Keller’s hand, gives it a quick shake.

  When he tries to pull away, Keller squeezes tight, holding the hand in his own. “It would help,” he says, “if you come clean with me. Tell me what else you’re worried about. Think about it.” He releases Khoury’s hand.

  For a moment, that hard look is back, then it disappears behind the mask again. “Thank you, Mister Keller. Can you start tomorrow?”

  “Sure. I’ll be there at seven thirty.”

  Khoury merely nods and leaves.

  Keller takes a seat in his easy chair and picks up one of the paperbacks, a Louis L’Amour adventure called Last of the Breed. After a few minutes of trying to concentrate, he puts the book down. “What the fuck did I just do?” he says aloud. He just took a job working for someone who he knows is lying to him. A job that’s almost certainly more dangerous than dealing with a bunch of high school bullies. The look in Khoury’s eyes tells him there’s more going on than he knows. It’s then that he realizes why he said yes.

  Because that feeling, the feeling that the only thing he’s certain of is that there’s more danger than meets the eye…that feels more like being home than anything he’s felt here.

  FIFTEEN

  “You did what?” Alia tries very hard to avoid being disrespectful to her father, but she can’t keep the disbelief and outrage from her voice.

  The three of them—Alia, Bassim and their father—are seated around the kitchen table. Father had called them downstairs from their rooms after he returned from the errand he said he had to run after supper.

  Their father remains calm. “This is for your safety. I heard about you being threatened by mean boys at school.”

  “So you hired us a nanny?” They’ve been speaking Arabic until now, but Alia switches to English. It seems more suited to her anger. “Could you possibly humiliate us more?”

  She glances over at Bassim. His dark eyes move back and forth uncertainly between her and her father, like a spectator at a tennis match. She feels sick to her stomach. Bassim hates it when they argue, she knows. But she can’t contain her anger at being treated as if she were a child. “I can’t believe you did this.”

  Bassim speaks up. “Hey, it’s not like we’re in love with riding the bus. Maybe we can sleep a little later.”

  Their father turns to him, his tone icy. “Trust you to think of sleep. If you were a man, and willing to protect your sister—”

  “Leave him alone!” Alia flares, too late. She sees Bassim’s face crumple with shame, both from her father’s words and the fact that his older sister has to defend him. He gets up and leaves the room. Alia whirls on her father. “Why do you have to pick on him? What was he supposed to do? Get beaten up?”

  “To protect his family?” he snaps back. “Better than being a coward.”

  In her rage, she blindly reaches out for the thing that will hurt him most. “Like you? Running from town to town? Moving us every time you see a shadow?” She shifts back to Arabic for maximum impact. “Who’s the real coward, Father?”

  For a moment, she fears she’s gone too far. His face freezes and there’s a look in his eyes she’s only seen a few times before, a cold, dead look like the eyes of a hawk. But when he speaks, his voice is calm and modulated. “You won’t be riding the bus tomorrow,” he says. “Mr. Keller will pick you up at seven thirty.”

  “And who is this Mr. Keller?” She tries to keep the trembling out of her voice. That look in her father’s eyes never fails to unsettle her.

  “You met him today. He stopped those boys from bothering you.”

  She shakes her head. “And you trust your children with his man you just met?”

  “I know men like him,” he says. “I’ve known them all my life. They will die for you. They will take a bullet for you.” He smiles in a way that frightens her more than that look. In times like this, she wonders if she really knows her father at all. “Actually,” he says, “it’s what they’re good for.”

  SIXTEEN

  Keller’s dozing on the couch, his book splayed out on his chest when he’s awakened by the sound of a car pulling up outside and the shine of headlights through the open windows. He sits up, instantly alert, and checks the time on the wall clock across the room. Ten minutes past midnight. He tenses. In his experience, visitors after midnight rarely bring good news.

  He’s at the door before he hears the knock, the shotgun taken down from above the door and leaning against the wall in the entranceway. He looks out of the tiny leaded glass window in the old wooden door and relaxes. He opens the door. “Hey,” he says to Marie.

  “Hey,” she says. Her eyes are tired and a little red, as if she’s been crying, but not recently. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure.” He steps back and lets her in. She’s dressed in a light-yellow sundress, and he catches a subtle whiff of perfume as she passes. He’s never known her to wear perfume, but he can’t say he dislikes it. “You want something to drink?” he asks.

  She looks around at the living room, and he wonders for a moment if she’s heard him. Then she turns to him, her eyes meeting his, then skittering away. She’s nervous about something. “Sure.”

  “Tea? Water? I’ve got a couple of beers left.”

  She nods. “A beer would be good.”

  He fetches a pair of Red Stripes from the kitchen. When he re-enters the living room, she’s perched on the edge of the couch. He hands her the already opened beer, hesitates, then sits next to her. “What’s up?”

  She takes a sip of beer, then turns to him. “I’m sorry I was kind of short with you today.”

  “It’s okay.” He shrugs. “You have a lot going on.”

  “Are you really thinking about leaving?”

  “Well,” he begins, but she stops him with a hand on his arm.

  “I don’t want you to leave,” she says. She puts the beer on the coffee table, and before he can react, she leans over and kisses him, hard, so hard it rocks him back a little. He fumbles his beer onto the coffee table, not caring if it falls on the carpet, and kisses her back, caressing her hair. The touch of her lips, the feel of her hair between his fingers, brings all of the feelings he’s ever had for her rushing back in a torrent. He takes a deep breath, drinking in the scent of her like a man coming in from the wilderness. The two of them stand, still kissing, hands moving over each other’s bodies. They begin a clumsy stumble toward the bedroom, Keller guiding Marie with gentle pressure. She pulls his shirt up and over his head as the pass through the door, causing him to stumble into the doorjamb. That gets them both laughing as they fall together into bed.

  ***

  Afterwards, they’re lying side by side, breathing hard and covered with sweat.

  “Wow,” she whispers, her voice hoarse. She props herself up on one elbow and smiles. “I wondered if it would
be as good as it was before.”

  He smiles back. “And?”

  She leans over to kiss him. “Better. Probably because we’re not running for our lives.”

  He chuckles. “I thought that added spice.”

  She sits up and swings her legs over the bed. “I gave up spicy food, too. It all ties together.” He reaches out to stroke her back. She grabs his hand and kisses it. “Be right back.”

  While she’s in the bathroom, he lies back and closes his eyes. I’m glad I’m not leaving, he thinks. I want to stay. She wants me to stay.

  She comes back in and stretches out beside him, still smiling. Keller takes her into his arms and looks in her eyes. They’re everything he remembers, the brilliant blue of a sunny winter sky. Her eyelids are narrowed, her lips slightly parted with renewed desire. Keller wants nothing better than to draw those lips back to his, to lose himself in those eyes again.

  “I’m staying,” he says. “I took a job.”

  “That’s awesome.” She snuggles against him, stroking his chest.

  He caresses her hair. “Maybe I should have told you before.”

  “Well,” she chuckles, “we were a little busy.”

  “Yeah. But…”

  She looks up at him. “But what?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not important.”

  She pulls away slightly and sits up. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  He sits up as well. “I mean, would it have made a difference if you’d known I was staying? Would you still have…?”