In the Ring

by James Lear

  I had no contact with the outside world. For all I knew, Vaughan’s neo-Nazi pals could have blown up the White House, dismantled the federal government, and be handing out firearms in school classrooms. Armageddon could have come and gone, and I’d be none the wiser. No phone, no access to the media. That microchip in my asshole was my last link to the world, and that had been shit into a bucket. Right now it was probably working its way through a sewage treatment plant on its way to pollute a river somewhere.

  In retrospect, the idea of turning into Greg Cooper didn’t seem quite so smart. It’s all very well cutting your ties with the past—we’d all do it if we could, leave everyone and everything behind and start again—but then you find that your new life comes without a safety net, you keep on falling and nobody is looking for you because you’re already dead. No concerned relative or friend was going to start asking questions, because anyone who cared—if there was anyone—had been to my funeral. You only die once.

  And here, or in some other detention facility, was where I would die. Whoever I was. The rations were getting smaller: they were starving me, I got no exercise, and I saw nobody. Even for someone who basically hates ninety-nine percent of the human race, that’s tough. What I wouldn’t give for half an hour with a college football team. . . I started hallucinating, or at least dreaming so vividly that it was hard to distinguish between dream and reality. It felt like they were drugging me. The fluorescent light was always on, day and night had no meaning, and after a while I became snow-blind, unable to see clearly, everything in my cell the same flat bright white, the images in my head so much clearer. Perhaps I’d been there for longer than I thought. Perhaps there were drugs in my food. Why didn’t they just kill me, and get it over with? What was the point of keeping me alive? Was I useful to someone—a hostage to be bargained over?

  Time passed. Nothing happened. I got weaker, or the drugs got stronger, and although there was a little jarhead in there somewhere who wasn’t quite ready to give up, the rest of me was failing fast. My legs were wasting away. My hands were shaking. I couldn’t wash or shave or clean my teeth. I stank, but in that enclosed space it was impossible to distinguish smells. I felt like I had flu, shivering, exhausted, bruised.

  I was dying.

  15

  A line of light. Greenish white, then gone.

  The sound of dishes being washed, chink chink chink, or is it bells, distant bells?

  Silence, a roaring silence like a never-ending explosion, and a sudden pounding in the chest, hard, like someone’s hitting me with their fists, thumping into me, breaking my ribs. Panic, flight, a jerk in the spine and the legs, prepare to run. Fear.

  Awake.

  Everything is white and blurred. I think there’s a TV on somewhere, a screen of some kind. Too much light. Movement, vague circles white out of white, puffy clouds coming closer and receding. Is this death?

  A face at the end of a long tunnel, like looking down the wrong end of a pair of binoculars, ridiculously far away and tiny, so tiny it makes me laugh, the breath coming out through my nose.

  The face getting closer, a brown sun in a blue sky, white clouds, coming towards me like a dolly shot in a movie, taking up more and more of the sky until all I can see is brown skin and white teeth and eyes that look into mine and a mouth that smiles and speaks, hey, you’re awake, hey Dan, how are you doing, buddy? Welcome back.

  And then the clouds cover the sun and the picture goes down to a line like on the old TV at home, a line and then a dot and closedown.

  Don’t worry. This isn’t an episode of Dynasty. The last couple of hundred pages weren’t just a dream. But it took me a while to figure out what was going on—was I still in that prison cell? Everything was familiar, the bed, the room, the face at the end of the tunnel, the sound of the voice, the words, the pain in my body, and for a second of panic I thought that I was doomed to repeat this forever, like some soul in hell.

  Jesus, they must have messed with my brain. I haven’t thought about souls or hell or eternal damnation since some horny priest tried to interest me in religion thirty years ago.

  “Dan?”

  That name. The old name. Dan. Me, I think. “Hmmm?”

  “Hey, welcome back. It’s me, Dan. It’s Luiz.”

  No, this was too much. It’s a dream, Dan, Greg, whoever you are. Don’t trust it. We’ve been here before. It’s never real. Soon you’ll wake up, with the pain in your guts from starvation, the pounding hammer behind your eyes. . .

  “Can you hear me?”

  A hand grasped mine.

  “Dan? Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand.”

  I was frozen. I couldn’t move. This was fear, pure and simple. Fear that what seemed so good would all disappear, and I’d be back in my own filth, dying. . .

  “Doctor, he seems to be in some kind of . . . I don’t know. He’s awake, but he’s unresponsive.”

  The hand never let go of mine. Someone touched my face, my eye, a light shone into me, I winced.

  “It’s okay, Luiz. He’s alive. Just give him time. Stay with him. I’ll be back in half an hour. Call me if there’s . . .” The voice faded. I think I might have slept.

  The hand was still there when I checked again.

  “Luiz.” This time I managed a word. The fear was receding, and with it the paralysis. “Hey.” My voice was cracked, old, distant.

  “There’s my man. Good to see you, Dan.” Cool fingers on my forehead. “You’re safe now. Everything’s okay.”

  My breathing felt weird, like I’d just run a mile. My guts were cramping. I guess this was relief.

  “Okay, buddy. Calm down. You’re going to be fine. The doctors are looking after you. Jesus, you’re a tough old bastard.”

  “What . . . where . . .”

  “We’ll tell you everything later. Try to relax. Listen to my voice. It’s a beautiful day out there. Blue skies, sunshine, really cold. It’s nearly Christmas. Think about that, Dan. You’ll be okay for Christmas. We’ll have a party, yeah? Food and presents and all that jazz. I don’t want a lot for Christmas. . .”

  He sang softly, slowly, stroking my forehead, holding my hand, and I drifted off again, this time into something that felt like sleep rather than prolonged incarceration.

  ***

  Two days later I was sitting in a chair. The tubes that had been feeding and rehydrating me, and pumping me full of antibiotics, were out, leaving purple bruises where the cannulas had been. I was clean, my hair and nails had been cut, but I’d kept the beard. It covered up the sores and rough patches on my sunken cheeks.

  Luiz had just taken me through the morning’s physical therapy session, and now I was eating my second breakfast, or first lunch, whatever it was. I was on a regimen of five small meals a day.

  And where was I? You guessed it. The dear old Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The Navy Med. Back where we started, completely fucked up again, being nursed by Luiz again, waiting for some cunt from the top brass or the Agency to tell me what a great job I’d done and please, pretty please Dan, would you mind dying again and turning into someone else so we can fuck you up just one more time . . . the last time . . . until the next time.

  This time the answer would be no. Not because I had anything better to do, but because, as I advance into middle age, I’ve begun to think that there might be more to life than risking it for some abstract idea of duty.

  I’d been thinking about that cabin in the woods, and even if every potential companion had let me down, I could still go it alone. I’d be happy. I’d get a dog. Become the crazy guy who turns up at the grocery store once a month, fills up his truck and drives back into the wilderness. Just me and my dog.

  Luiz’s phone rang.

  “Hello. Okay, right. Yeah, he’s ready. Give me two minutes. Thanks.”

  I finished my meal in three mouthfuls. Luiz took away the plate, gave me a cloth to wipe my mouth, brushed the crumbs off my lap. He was not authorized to tell
me what had happened. That was the job of whoever was coming up in the lift right now. I vaguely wondered who had drawn the short straw. “You see, Dan, the mission didn’t quite work out as we expected . . .”

  Luiz held the door open, admitted my visitor, and left.

  What do you know? Agent Oliver in the flesh, just as cute as the last time I saw him, before he sent me into an ambush that landed me in prison and nearly cost me my life. Well, he had guts, I’d give him that. Not everyone would have the courage to walk in and face a man they’d nearly killed by their own fuckups. Central Intelligence Agency, my ass. What intelligence? Central Ignorance Agency would be more like it. I was framing a remark along those lines, but I couldn’t be bothered. Let him say his piece and scuttle back to Langley. They’d be pleased with him: Dan Stagg was not going to cause any trouble. It was Oliver, not me, who’d get the promotion.

  He’d dressed for the occasion in informal clothes. Gone were the sharp suits and Brooks Brothers shirts; today he was in the national dress of sports casual, which could have come from Target but, I suspected, came from some designer store in the city. The informal, friendly meeting. The soft goodbye. Hey Dan, I’m just a regular guy like you, look, I wear sneakers, some days I don’t even shave, okay? Let’s try and forget my vastly superior status. We’re just people.

  Oh, sure thing, Agent Oliver. What’s that? Call you Ethan? How nice. Of course I’ll keep my mouth shut. Two thousand bucks? That’s too generous. Goodbye, and thanks.

  “Good to see you, Dan.”

  He pulled up a chair. His face registered no shock. They train them well in the CIA, because I knew I looked like shit.

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “You’re probably wondering what . . .”

  “You didn’t come and visit me in prison.”

  He didn’t like being interrupted, and for a second he scowled. Then the bland, smooth expression returned. “That was not possible.”

  “So I understand.”

  “You don’t understand.” He raised his voice by a decibel or two—but for Ethan Oliver, that was the equivalent of yelling. He took a breath. “We didn’t know where you were.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  I let the words fall into silence. Oliver fidgeted.

  “So with all the tech and all the informers and all the surveillance, you couldn’t find me in whatever prison I was in.”

  “A detention facility in Queens.”

  “You are fucking kidding me.”

  “No.”

  “Queens? Fucking Queens? I mean, all that time I was in Queens and you couldn’t even fucking find me? In fucking Queens?”

  Oliver was pale. Perhaps he’d never come across a traumatized veteran before. Well, he had one right here.

  He was alone in a room with him. I was angry, and even on heavy medication I could kill him before he had time to call for help. Even if he was armed.

  Armed. 9mm Walther Creed. I could feel the weight of it against my torso. A phantom weapon.

  “Okay, Oliver. Tell me what happened. I guess that’s what you’re here for.”

  “Yes.” He wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand; I was making him sweat. Good. When I’d finished with him, he’d be as wet as if he’d just stepped out of the shower. “That’s what I’m here for.”

  “Let’s pick things up in the Hammond Hotel, shall we?”

  “If I’m going to make sense of this, I have to go back a couple of weeks.” He bit the corner of his thumbnail.

  “Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “When you were in Manchester, you met a young man named Osman Rafiq.”

  “Yes. Oz. Who is now dead.”

  “Correct. How would you describe his role within the Vaughan organization?”

  I shrugged. “He was a minor player. A wannabe. He hung around in the hope of getting a break as a fighter, and while he was waiting he was pimped out to dirty old men.”

  “That’s one side of the story,” said Oliver. “But there’s more to it. Rafiq was also involved in the drug trade.”

  “I never saw evidence of that.”

  “Nonetheless, he was dealing to Vaughan’s associates. And others, it appears. His network was extensive.”

  “And Vaughan supplied him with the stuff?”

  “Oh, no. Vaughan is prudish when it comes to drugs. He’s no fool. He knows that the police would soon find him if he was involved in that business.”

  “You mean Oz was dealing independently?”

  “That surprises you?”

  “I was surprised that he could tie his own shoelaces. He was such a . . . I don’t know. A follower.”

  “That’s the side you saw. But behind the façade, there was an efficient businessman who used his connections with Alan Vaughan to work his way up in the drug trade.”

  “Where is this going?”

  “Rafiq made the mistake that all dealers make. He started sampling his own supply.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Your friend Andrew Reeve in MI6 has excellent relations with the greater Manchester police. They had been aware of Osman Rafiq for some time.”

  “And they didn’t bust him?”

  “The case was blocked at a high level.”

  “By senior police officers.”

  “Exactly. Who, we believe, were in Alan Vaughan’s circle.”

  “I can ID at least one of them for you.” I remembered the cocky, brown-haired bastard at the fatal party, putting something away in his briefcase. “I’m pretty sure he fired the shots that killed Oz.”

  “In return for taking the heat off Rafiq, Vaughan demanded services.”

  “You mean sex?”

  “For once, no. Vaughan was planning to bring Rafiq to America and lend him to his associates. He was going to be framed for a terrorist attack on some high-profile members of an extreme right-wing political organization.”

  “Not, by any chance, the right-wing political organization that sometimes calls itself HomeWay Investments?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “And what went wrong? How did Oz end up dead?”

  “We’re still not sure. It seems he was trying to muscle in on Vaughan’s operation—trying a bit of blackmail of his own. That didn’t go down well. Vaughan knew how to keep his clients happy, and they paid well for his discretion. Oz, it appears, started making threats.”

  “But the night before he died, he turned up at my place, covered in blood, off his head on GHB. He said he’d been beaten up and drugged.”

  “It’s possible. It’s equally possible that he got into a fight with another dealer after using too much of his own stuff. Maybe the police will figure it out. Whatever happened, it left Vaughan, and HomeWay, without a hit man.”

  “So I went in his place. What the fuck was it supposed to achieve?”

  “That’s what we didn’t figure out until it was too late. We were distracted by what we thought was the main event: the attack on the army base in New Hampshire.”

  “Yeah, what about that?”

  “Oh, it happened.” Oliver smiled. “After a fashion. They found some crazy bastard to drive a truck into the perimeter fence. There were explosives in the back, but they didn’t do too much damage. Blew the doors off the truck, gave the driver a few nasty burns, but he’ll survive.”

  “And what minority did he represent? Muslim? Gay? Democrat?”

  “As far as we can make out, he was your average small-town meth head. Lots of Nazi material in his trailer home. But there was some attempt to dress it up.” Oliver coughed; he was trying not to laugh. “They packed the cab with gay magazines and Lady Gaga CDs.”

  “Wow. That’s a pretty cunning plot.”

  “Unfortunately, the driver didn’t die as planned. Once we got him into custody, he sang like a canary, especially when his drugs started wearing off. Not much of it made sense. We couldn’t establish a credible link to HomeWay.”

  “So the missio
n was a failure.”

  “On the contrary. The attack on the army base was a sideshow. The real deal was what happened at the Hammond Hotel, two days earlier.”

  “For real? At some shitty sports conference?”

  “HomeWay has its fingers in many pies. They put resources into things like boxing; it looks legit, but it’s basically money laundering. The core business is political. They’re also known as the American Way and Home of the Brave. You’ll find them online if you know where to look, recruiting lunatics like our poor Lady Gaga fan.”

  “And I was set up to attack them.”

  “The whole thing was a performance. They staged it to look like you had pulled a gun on them for political reasons. Maximum publicity for HomeWay, maximum sympathy, makes it look like they’re not the terrorists, it’s people like you. Loners, outsiders. They got the photos and the video footage, which went straight on to social media. The cops who arrested you were fake.”

  “Jesus.”

  “HomeWay has its own security. They apprehended you, and they made you disappear. The news stories that they put out named you as Greg Cooper, and gave all the details that you had supplied to Alan Vaughan. They said you were in police custody, which was officially denied, but that doesn’t matter—HomeWay just said it was a federal cover-up. Their followers swallow any conspiracy theory they’re fed. HomeWay had the photos and the perpetrator. They could present themselves as victims of an attack by the left. It might have been more effective for them if Oz Rafiq had been the guy with the gun, as originally planned, but you were an acceptable substitute.”

  “And what about Craig Lukas? Was he part of this?”

  “Craig Lukas was acting under orders.”

  “From Vaughan?”

  “From Vaughan.”

  “I see.” I thought about this for a minute. “You mean, everything?”

  “I’m afraid so, Dan.”

  “I thought he was too good to be true.”

  “If it’s any consolation, he was one of Vaughan’s biggest victims. MI6 obtained details of payments he’s been making to Vaughan over the last five years. Huge sums.”