And West Is West

by Ron Childress

  “Yes. From the FBI. At least that’s who they said they were.”

  “Fill me in.”

  “That’s all I know. I didn’t wait around to ask what they wanted.”

  “Did you ever think they just needed to know what I’d like to know—what happened to you after that little hiking mishap of yours? You duck out of a VA hospital and then disappear. Why?”

  “I . . .” Jessica hesitates.

  “An expert on classified Air Force programs cannot go off the radar, not immediately after her discharge.”

  “I didn’t plan it, sir,” Jessica says. But how does she explain that when the Air Force discharged her it erased Jessica Aldridge? If she went off the radar, it was because that part of her didn’t exist, not for all those months. This truth, though, is not a good answer to give a commanding officer like Voigt. “I left . . . ,” Jessica says, gazing at one of the photograph-decorated walls. A quartet of F-16s caught in tight formation takes her focus. “I left because I had no wingman to watch my six.”

  Voigt stays silent for seconds. “You’ve done well flying solo. Eluding the FBI all this time.”

  “Wasn’t too hard.”

  Voigt gives a short laugh. “You’ve got a talent,” he says. Then he gets serious. “I want you to know that I did not put those people after you.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “But with all this business I have had the opportunity to think about your situation these months. I’m working on a proposition that might solve all this trouble for us, if you’re up for it.”

  Jessica responds like a recruit in boot camp. Raising her chin in the empty conference room, she states loudly and clearly, perhaps to convince herself, “I am one hundred percent, sir.”

  “Glad to hear it. There’s a C17 making a hop from Homestead to Reeger at zero six thirty. Can you be onboard?”

  “I can.”

  “Then I’ll see you tomorrow, Ms. Aldridge.”

  “Colonel,” Jessica says and leans forward as if she is standing before his desk back in Nevada—it’s the way she last saw him. “Before you go . . . can I ask you why?”

  “Why?”

  “Why, really, are you going to all this trouble for me?”

  VOIGT, TURNING TO the window behind his desk, watches a Reaper—an ugly buglike machine truth be told—touch down on the airstrip two hundred yards away. His jaw pops as he considers Jessica’s “Why?” And then he decides to be forthright. “It’s because I’m wearing silver eagles on my shoulders. I got my promotion after we took out Yarisi.”

  “But—” he hears Jessica distantly protest.

  “I know. He turned up in Yemen two months ago. For a year, though, everybody was patting themselves on the back for the kill. The UAV program got A-plus marks. The CIA got expanded powers or God knows what. I got my eagles. And then . . . we fools discover our dead terrorist is breathing, plotting to take down airliners. Pardon my French, but what followed was a world-class shitstorm about how to inform the public. Some congressional security committee ordered an inquiry to cover their rears. And that’s why we’re talking now. Your actions that night cleared our strike team. And they cleared me as squadron commander.”

  “I don’t understand. We missed.”

  “It’s how we missed that counts. You delayed firing on the initial targets because you suspected something. That something turned out to be what central intel thought was Yarisi’s convoy.”

  “But it wasn’t. And we blew it up.”

  “True. But that isn’t the bottom line. You’re aware of the cameras in our operations center—that it’s not just the terrorists who get monitored. The video that day shows you, and then me, reacting negatively to the Agency recommendation to fire on those vehicles. Anyone who watches it can see that we would have aborted the strike if given the choice.” Voigt’s eyes are on the airfield. He’s watching the bug taxi toward a ground crew. “Well, so far that anyone includes a congressman who’s not too happy about the . . . collateral damage.”

  “It was all collateral damage,” Jessica says quietly, giving Voigt pause.

  “I owe you this one, Sergeant, though I doubt it’ll put your mind to rest. The convoy we took out was bait. Yarisi was sending a look-alike on little trips around the countryside. The girls in the convoy weren’t his wives. They were kids from a nearby village. Hell, goddammit, we’ll always be at a disadvantage fighting people like Yarisi. Psychopaths. Men without morals.”

  Voigt hears no response. He worries that he has revealed too much. It is his job never to waiver in his conviction to his duty. But deep down, he trusts Jessica. Is it that they are, at bottom, kindred? But this is getting too sentimental.

  “Are you there, Sergeant?” Voigt asks.

  “I’m here.”

  “It was not my idea to separate you from the Air Force. There was pressure from some deputy in Homeland Security who’d got wind of those letters to your dad. You know, there’s little Washington hates more than a leak. My recommendation had been a psych eval and then disciplinary action. That would have slowed your career but kept you with us. And I’d still have an ace UAV driver on the team. Believe me, we don’t have a quarter of the personnel we need for the missions Washington wants.”

  There is another pause in the conversation. Then Jessica speaks. “I wanted to be a good airman for you, sir.”

  “You were. Remember that.” And then Voigt is ready to terminate this call, which has gone deeper into his emotions than he likes.

  “Colonel,” Jessica says just as Voigt readies to take back control of the situation. “What were their names?”

  He doesn’t speak for a full five seconds. “Whose?”

  “Those girls. The kids I killed.”

  “That’s war,” Voigt says. He hears his voice rising. “You didn’t kill them. The war did! Yarisi did!”

  “But you know their names?” Jessica says back to him quietly. “You know who died in the strike.”

  “I don’t keep that information in my head.” Voigt, though no longer shouting, feels offended.

  “Can you get them for me, the names? I mean, the dead aren’t classified, are they?”

  “Damn it. As a matter of fact, they are.” Voigt considers pulling rank, but then he remembers that Jessica is not under his command. She is beyond that now and she is due respect. And knowledge. Some knowledge, anyway. “That’s why the feds chased you across the country. Your dad threatened to go public about your letters.”

  “What?”

  “He thought he was helping you. But he didn’t consider that you’re the only person who could confirm his stories. Washington decided to make sure you never got the chance to talk to the press, not that you would.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad the bastards didn’t catch you. I’d hate to see one of my old team chemically lobotomized to keep her quiet.”

  “I know how to keep quiet now.”

  “No more letters to papa.”

  “No.”

  “No more questions about the dead and buried.”

  Voigt waits for Jessica’s reply and then takes silence as agreement.

  “Good. And you’ll be on that transport tomorrow?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be on board,” says Jessica.

  “We’re going to put you back to work at what you do best.”

  CHAPTER 59

  Seminole City

  Dear Winter,

  You may think a week is no time at all to a jailbird with a twenty year sentence. But doing time waiting to hear from someone when you are already doing time multiplies each day into a month. Which makes it seven months in my world since we spoke.

  First of all I expect you want to know how I got your New York address. That was easy. I asked the warden’s office. I guess they must like reading what I send out. But their spying on me makes no difference anymore. I have no secrets now. Not since I learned that my cellmate ratted out where Jessica was living. I wrote dir
ectly there in care of the landlord and this nice fellow Kelso wrote back right away with good news. He says that the FBI did not catch my little girl. He also says that a man of your description stopped by. Anyway I want to find out what has happened to Jessica since and am writing for your help. As I know not to expect favors from anyone maybe we can do a trade. I have a story to tell you. One that might set you free.

  You already know I am not much of a man. Just a two-time loser who has got what he deserves. When I was young I was the kind of punk to abandon his wife and three-month-old daughter. To shack up in a Miami Beach motel with an underage runaway. And when the bucks ran out I was dumb enough to sell an ounce of baby powder to an undercover cop. Only there was enough cocaine in the Johnsons for a ten month sentence. So adios me. Six months later though I get a letter from my runaway begging me to come get her. She is going to have my kid she says. And that is how your Zoe came into the world. Soon as I got free I headed north for her and Suzie.

  Well Suzie by then is seventeen and bored. She starts sneaking out to see me behind her parents backs. The old man caught us once. Gave me a lookover and put me down for a dirtbag. Held off calling the cops though. Probably afraid of the scandal. Just told me to get lost. Like I would. And Susie kept coming to me. Sometimes she brings Zozo. Biggest eyes on a kid you ever saw. Eyes that have me making plans for our little family. We are going to run off to Canada. To Mexico. To Australia even. All dreams. All lies. And Suzie is no dunce. She is figuring out that the best honest job I will ever get is minimum wage. That I will never have the money she needs to escape her life. Three weeks into our reunion and all we do is scrap.

  Then one night Suzie sneaks out to the Trumbull roadhouse where I told her I got a waiter job. Only she catches me in the kitchen elbow deep in soapy pots. Fuck you she starts yelling. Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you until the manager drags her out the back door. Of course I am right there. Right until she locks herself in her dad’s Land Rover. I jump into my Florida junker and block the lot exit. But Suzie drives out over the sidewalk and then torches the pavement. My mistake was to go after her. Chased her in my old wreck onto the parkway. Thats when she really took off. Her taillights disappeared around a bend and the next thing I know. Oh hell. I see the overpass and the fire.

  Every night I ask myself why I went after her. And every morning I crawl out of the sack asking for forgiveness and knowing I’ll never get it. After that what kept me going was thinking of Zozo out there living her life. Now I dont have that. So what I am telling you Ethan is something you got to believe. What happened between you and your Zoe was not what happened between me and Suzie. I aint no priest and I dont have rights so all I can do is tell you that you are not guilty. That you got to let go of your ghost. Put our little girl down into her grave before she owns you the way my ghost owns me.

  Don Aldridge

  CHAPTER 60

  Sagaponack

  “This place is sick,” Alex says, enthusiastic as a teenager, of Sergei’s mansion. After Sergei’s fiftieth, Alex had hitched a ride on his patron’s jet, which set down in East Hampton an hour before. Ethan has just arrived by jitney from the city, where he’d been holed up in his apartment since his return from Florida—until Don’s letter awoke him. Ethan and Alex have texted sporadically, but this is their first face-to-face since before Zoe’s funeral.

  Alex looks puffier than he had. He seems a little worn. This is odd to Ethan since Alex had always gotten energy from doing his art. But then Ethan had never known his friend to take a commission before. He had always painted what he’d wanted. Maybe it was the flight home. Then Ethan notices that Alex is in a windbreaker. It’s not something he would normally wear, and this jacket especially not since it is logoed. There’s an SAS over the heart.

  They are leaning on the rail of a high deck that overlooks a field and then a dune and then the ocean—Sergei has bought the land to keep the view. Ethan is facing the ocean. Alex has his elbows on the railing and is admiring the house, a small distance away and accessed by a raised walkway.

  “Truly sick,” Ethan says. “In college I wanted to be this rich.”

  “In college I wanted to be the next Jackson Pollock,” Alex says.

  Ethan turns to lean back against the railing. From the rear Sergei’s house has an Escher-like appearance. External staircases lead to dead-end cupolas as if in homage to the widow’s watches used by sailors’ wives.

  “The thing is,” Ethan says, “you still have a chance to be a Pollock.”

  “You mean, because of those reviews.” A Times critic had favorably mentioned Alex’s show at Medusa and New York magazine listed it in its Approval Matrix. “I can thank Sergei’s PR team for those.”

  “He must think highly of your work.”

  “He thinks more highly of his ability to spot talent.”

  Ethan cannot really say whether Alex’s paintings are good or not—not any more than Alex could determine if one of Ethan’s predictive algorithms was viable. After all, what’s really big in art seems to be giant puppies made of flowers or great white sharks embalmed in vitrines, and these don’t appeal to Ethan.

  The two men, hearing screeches, turn back to the ocean. Just off the beach a mass of seagulls is harassing an underwater shadow. Gleaming fish begin to leap and the birds swoop to feed.

  And then someone else comes onto the deck.

  “My man, ’bout time you got here! How is it hanging. Not too droopy, I hope.”

  “John Guan. Alex Carr,” Ethan says, introducing his two worlds.

  “Artiste par excellence, I hear,” says Guan.

  “Thanks, I think,” says Alex.

  “It’s all good,” says Guan. Then he turns to Ethan. “How cool is this? We going to be working together again, bro.” Guan, wearing his gangsta sneakers and sagging pants, is still cultivating his own style, has even added a goatee—facial hair that employment at UIB had disallowed. And this grooming actually almost works.

  Ethan looks at Guan’s outstretched hand. “I just came out to give Sergei some respect. Tell him no to his face.”

  Guan, for a second, resembles a confused robot—This does not compute. “Fuck me,” he says. “You got another job. Nyet, nyet, nyet. The Russian won’t be digging that.”

  Ethan looks at Alex, who starts to nod. I get it now, dude. Run for your life.

  “It’s not another job,” Ethan says.

  “Then why, homie? Why?” Guan asks.

  “Excuse us,” Ethan says to Alex and pulls Guan to the far side of the deck. “John,” Ethan’s face is stone now. “This isn’t the only reason, but that decimal point. Did you move it?” Ethan knows that Hoke couldn’t have done the work on his own.

  Guan takes a step back. “Homie. I mean, get real. Screw you over like that? I mean . . . shiiit. It wasn’t like that. I mean, like . . . wait. Remember that morning you called my voicemail, said you were taking a personal day?”

  How could Ethan forget? He was calling from the hospital in Ulster County while Zoe was getting her stomach pumped.

  “I was slammed that morning, bro. Eventually got to what you asked—dry-ran those patches you installed the night before. Something was buggy and I was doing a trace when Hoke pulled me in to block a hacker breach. I warned him there was shit in your code, but he blew it off. Said, ‘Fuck Winter’s bonus.’ Anyway, later, after the Islamabad car bomb and your algo got jiggy, the Hokemeister had to punk you to cover his ass.”

  “Hold up,” Ethan says. “I programmed the error? That’s not what Sergei told me.” He is getting that sick feeling in his gut again.

  Guan, grinning, leans close to Ethan’s ear. “What I told Sergei was”—Guan’s voice is barely louder than the waves breaking on the beach—“that the bad code was not your bad, that it was Hoke’s. Get me?” Ethan listens to Guan breathing in his ear. It is as if they are little boys sharing secrets. “Homie, I didn’t give Sergei the detailed why—which was because El Duce put me on another task. But yeah, bot
tom line, you did code that blip. Can’t help that Sergei thinks otherwise.” Guan pulls back and looks at Ethan as if he expects thanks.

  But Ethan is feeling paler now. His coding confidence is shaken. His desire to code, leaking away. Ruined as much by his error as by the betrayals behind it, as by the uses his talent had been put to and would still be put to. “John, you could have told someone that Hoke didn’t let you find the error. That it wasn’t all mine.” He is grasping.

  Guan squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them in a disbelieving blink. “Come on, my man. Get real. Then UIB would have put you, me, and Hoke out on our asses. Besides, you knows I was that bitch’s bitch. Anyway, so what I be saying is, today, me and you, in the here and now, we are cool, brutha. That old stuff was UIB biz. A completely diff situation, stitchuation, son-of-a-bitchuation. Not anything I would do on my own. Like I said it was all achtung, Sieg heil, jawohl mein Herr Hoke! But that’s done now. World War III’s over. Armistice’s declared. Prisoners are released. I vouched for you to Sergei, didn’t I? So you can’t hold anything against me. Right? Right, Ethan? Yo, bro. We are cool, right?”

  Ethan is walking away. Passing Alex, he grabs his duffel and descends from the deck onto a staircase that leads toward a dune.

  “Dude, where you headed?” Alex calls after him.

  “Gotta go, dude,” Ethan calls back.

  “Where? Where are you going?” Alex shouts.

  ETHAN IS NOT an outdoors type, a reveler in nature and life, a man like Thoreau to whom “the sun is but a morning star.” He sees only a fearsome nuclear sphere descending toward the western horizon, a ball that would incinerate this planet if it orbited any closer. The few others sharing the beach with him on this late September afternoon—a fisherman, an older couple with hiking poles, a twenty-something running her greyhound—seem less wary of this precariousness. Of Ethan’s, they certainly take no notice. He walks past the seaweed line and collapses by a sand castle, battered from the last tide but still possessing a turret. From his bag, he removes Zoe’s urn and pushes it into the beach between his sunken heels.