False Flag

by John Altman

  He walked back to his car, nodding hellos to teachers and parents he recognized. Rowdy kid voices drifted over from the playground: “I got you!” “No, I was safe!” “Tag, you’re it!” “No. I was safe. I’m safe!”

  * * *

  The rap of a gavel began the day’s official business.

  “The House will be in order,” said the Speaker. “Our chaplain, Father Conroy, will give the prayer.”

  The chaplain found his place between the U-shaped desks fronting the Federal-style lectern. “Let us pray. We give you thanks, merciful God, for giving us another day …”

  Michael pulled the camera onto the chaplain’s face, blurring the Ionic marble columns of the frontispiece. He nudged the focus wheel, bringing the lectern’s carved wreaths, laurel branches, and inscribed words—Union, Justice, Tolerance, Liberty, Peace: IN GOD WE TRUST—into sharp relief. Another nudge, catching both face and frontispiece without losing the letters. A final adjustment, and he also had the banner-size American flag in the background. Perfect. And just in time—from her control room, Allie was calling the crossfade, from the slow zoom to Michael’s close-up.

  “… may these days be filled with hopeful anticipation. May the power of your truth and our faith in your providence give us the confidence we must have to do the work required for service to our nation. Give all members the strength of purpose and clarity of mind to do those things that bring justice and mercy to people, and maintain freedom and liberty for our land. May all that is done this day be for your greater honor and glory.”

  Allie called a master shot. Michael tipped his camera back onto the Speaker and tweaked the focus again. “The chair examines the journal of the last day’s proceedings and announces to the House his approval thereof. Pursuant to Clause One of Rule One, the journal stands approved. The gentleman from North Carolina will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance …”

  Soon they were onto HR 1610, the Biennial Budgeting and Enhanced Oversight Act. The representative from Wisconsin’s eighth congressional district approached the microphone and cleared his throat. “This bill amends the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the Congressional Budget Impoundment and Control Act of 1974, and the Rules of the House of Representatives to change the process for the president’s budget submission, congressional budget resolutions, appropriations bills, and government strategic and performance plans …”

  Michael leaned away from the viewfinder. Only two of gallery eleven’s ten camera positions were occupied today, reflecting the degree to which HR 1610 was setting Washington ablaze. His partner was Steve Kokemuller, a towering cameraman who managed, even in jacket and tie, to look like a member of the ironworkers’ local. As the gentleman from Wisconsin droned on, Steve caught Michael’s eye and simulated putting a gun muzzle to his temple and pulling the trigger. Michael nodded, pantomiming with his hand a slow-motion explosion of brains from his skull.

  “… creates a point of order in the House and Senate against authorizations of appropriations that do not include specific authorizations covering at least each fiscal year in one or more bienniums …”

  Michael’s gaze kept wandering: down from the overhead gallery, past sparsely populated armchairs arranged in a semicircle on tiered platforms. Weak turnout today. The air was dry; the scant audience coughed, shuffled, sniffed.

  He closed his eyes. For a moment, he simultaneously occupied both this chamber and a dry, dusty marketplace in Hawija: booths and stalls covered by rainbow tents, a hostile crowd pressing close on every side, yelling and brandishing rocks; John Hicks waving his 30 mm chain gun from atop the Bradley, yelling at the crowd to get the fuck back, disperse the fuck immediately, or he would fucking shoot; a frisson crackling through air redolent of rotting garbage and diesel fumes and burning trash and dead dogs.

  Then Mitri, the Shiite translator with a sixth sense for trouble, had caught Michael’s eye, nodded toward a woman in a hijab near the front of the crowd. Michael’s rifle had snapped up, sending two warning shots over her head. This had earned him some derision back at FOB—one shot, the Marines insisted, should equal one dead haji—but it had done the trick. The woman had ducked back into the throng. The Bradley had turned a corner. Disaster averted.

  “… subtotals of new budget authority and outlays for nondefense discretionary spending, defense discretionary spending, Medicare, Medicaid, and other health-related spending …”

  His eyes opened. He pressed down a cough, adjusted his headphones, sneaked a glance at his watch. Ten past ten.

  The beginning of a long day.

  * * *

  Lunch was two hot dogs on the stone steps by the reflecting pool.

  Joggers circled. A mallard drifted by with three ducklings in tow. Flags atop the Capitol dome ruffled in a brisk breeze. A pickup crew from WJLA was shooting man-on-the-street interviews before the fluttering backdrop of red, white, and blue. A young reporter wearing a meaningless smile shanghaied costumed tourists: cowboys, pirates, sexy witches, and pretty French maids.

  Michael crumpled a hot dog wrapper, pitched it at a wastebasket, missed. He bent to retrieve it, being careful of his balance. He was just killing his Diet Coke when a voice called his name. His head turned, pulling his starched collar tight—his neck had grown two sizes since he bought the shirt.

  Matt Gutierrez was trotting over from the mall. They had met ten years ago, when Michael, fresh out of Full Sail, had toiled in the storeroom of a DC facilities house, and Gutierrez had been a runner for a production company. It was back when networks still sprang for assistants to lug the kit, back when Michael Fletcher still carried his Pentax everywhere just in case inspiration suddenly struck.

  “Your ears must have been burning last night.” Gutierrez came to a stop, breathing hard though it was only the short jog. He was fifty pounds overweight; the closest he came to exercise was marathon Call of Duty sessions with his teenage son. “Your name”—huff, huff—“came up at my dinner table.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Linda’s friend does Pilates with”—huff, huff—“a friend of Stacy’s. Trouble in paradise?”

  Michael sighed, hesitated, then nodded.

  Gutierrez pulled a face. “What happened?”

  “What ever happens?”

  “How bad?”

  “Bad. Gone to her mother’s.”

  “Fuck,” Gutierrez said with his characteristic eloquence.

  “Yeah. But maybe it’s for the best. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.”

  “So you okay, man?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” But was he? “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  “What happens next?”

  “Six months living apart, and we can file uncontested. We agreed: Keep the lawyers out of it. Everything straight down the middle. Split custody.”

  “Fuck,” Gutierrez said again.

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s Silas holding up?”

  “Rolling with the punches—at least, far as I can tell.”

  “I’m sure goddamn sorry, Mikey.”

  “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”

  “Shit happens. You flush it and move on. What else can you do?”

  Michael nodded again.

  “Well, look; Linda’s got some good-looking friends. We’ll get you back into rotation. Come on over for—”

  “Thanks, but too soon.”

  Gutierrez frowned deeper. “I don’t like the thought of you sitting alone in that house.”

  A gallows grin. “Got my cat.”

  “Don’t gotta gut it out alone, Mikey. You got friends. We’re here for you.”

  “Next time.”

  Gutierrez put up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Grab a beer soon?”

  “Definitely.”

  Michael’s old friend started back across the mall, dodging a cluster of Japanese tourists.
For an instant, Michael felt tempted to call him back. Accept the invitation. Get “back into rotation,” as Gutierrez called it, and rejoin the flow of regular life.

  The temptation quickly passed. His last chance at regular life had disappeared along with Stacy, almost a month ago. To get back into the dating scene, to climb back aboard the merry-go-round as if he were still the man he once had been … The prospect made his nads shrink self-protectively up into his body.

  But maybe laying it all on Stacy wasn’t fair. Maybe she had been a victim just as much as he had. Maybe they both had lost their chance at happily-ever-after at the instant, four years back, when Michael Fletcher had driven past a ruined bridgehead in Kirkuk and seen a hand lying in a bed of smoking rubble. Just the hand: skin and fat and bones and blood. Funny how you could tell it belonged to a child, even without anything around it to give it scale. At that instant, he had felt something slip loose inside him, falling out of place. The machine still ran, but something rattled around now, floating free, gumming up the other works.

  Or maybe it had been the day his brother climbed aboard that bus in Jerusalem. Seth Fletcher had been on his way to a football match: Beitar Jerusalem versus Hapoel Tel Aviv—right versus left. Michael pictured him laughing with his friends, joshing and joking. And then into their midst had stepped a young Palestinian wearing a loose thawb and, beneath it, a belt of explosives. And in the span of a single heartbeat, the bus had transformed from a party into a funeral pyre, a gaudy cauldron of blazing hopes and dreams.

  Or the day Michael had been sitting outside a Humvee in Hawija, working the F6A bomb robot, concentrating hard on the array of dials and joysticks and toggles, and a motorcycle had pulled up alongside and dropped something into the road, then put-putted away. Michael had glanced over at the water bottle and wondered what was inside. Not water, that was for sure—too dark and oily. And when he woke up, his left leg was missing below the knee, and he was, then and forevermore, less than a complete man.

  Or the evening when, four months after coming home from Iraq, he had walked into the Israeli embassy on International Drive after strolling past three times. Telling himself that he was just stretching his leg, so to speak, that he couldn’t stand being cooped up for another night with Stacy and the baby. That Cleveland Park, with its nineteenth-century homes and its smattering of Art Deco, was a lovely neighborhood, a perfect place to walk and brood. It beat getting stinking drunk by himself in some miserable hole of a bar. A knot forming in his stomach, ripening into a lump of dread as he had reached for the intercom. Ringing that bell had felt like a spur-of-the-moment decision—an impulse acted on without reflection. In retrospect, he guessed it had probably been brewing for years.

  He had never been to Israel. But he recognized from the shitty-smoky-sweaty streets of Iraq the Middle Eastern vibe in the lobby: earth tones, beige brick, arched windows; loose fabrics, a general lack of deodorant, the sweet scents of knafe and olivewood. Soldiers had searched him, and not gently. Then they escorted him to a small room, furnished with a table and two chairs, walled with Lucite to frustrate parabolic microphones. For five minutes, he had sat alone. Then a pretty young woman came in. Brunette, sultry. Twenty-five at the most. Wearing a pencil skirt and a brusque manner. She had asked in crisp, rapid-fire English what, exactly, he was doing here.

  He had just been offered, he replied, a job as a cameraman inside the House Gallery. Compensation for his loss in the line of duty. Throw a three-legged dog a bone. He would start in less than a week. Then he would have access … to use as Israel saw fit.

  Her mouth had tightened. And what did he expect in return?

  He had tried to explain. He was Jewish; he had lost family in the Holocaust; he had served in Iraq, been turned into less than a man, and, upon coming home, been shortchanged by America’s VA system. His brother had made aliyah to Israel and been killed by an Arab bomb on his way to a soccer game. His grandfather had changed his name upon immigrating from Europe. Nate Fleischer, a good name, a proud name, a workingman’s name—literally flesh-er, butcher—had become inoffensive and goyish Nate Fletcher, because even in America there had been signs outside stores that read No Irish, Jews, or dogs. His grandfather had been ashamed and frightened. But Michael was not ashamed. Michael was not frightened.

  She had looked at him, frowning. So he had clarified: he wanted nothing. Service would be its own reward.

  She had not softened. What did he have to offer as bona fides?

  Nothing yet, he had said. But after he started the job inside the House … well, try him and see.

  She had considered him at length, a speculative light flaring and dying inside her dark eyes. Then she had told him to leave immediately—counterintelligence watchdogs may already have seen him enter. But his claims would be assessed. There was a bar called Fiddler’s, on Irving Street NW: casement windows, a famous cheeseburger, a bus stop out front. He knew it? On the third Wednesday of every month, at 7:00 p.m. sharp, he should check the graffito above the rightmost urinal in the men’s room:

  for a good prime call 555-793-7319

  If he found a cross etched into the wall after the last digit, he should leave the bar, wait for the next bus out front, and sit as close to the back as possible.

  He had nodded. Of course they thought he was a dangle, a countermove to Pollard, too good to be true. But they would test him. And they would see.

  And so they had. Three times in as many years, he had found a new cross scraped into the wall of the bathroom, and boarded the next bus. A different person had sat beside him each time. First, a tall young redheaded woman, who had given him a package and an address in Foxhall. He had driven there the next day, parked in plain view on the street, rung the doorbell, handed the package to a housekeeper. And that had been that. Seven months had passed before he found another cross. This time a swarthy middle-aged man had led Michael off the bus a few blocks from Fiddler’s. They had walked up to a second-story apartment, and for two hours Michael had drawn detailed diagrams of security leading into the House Chamber: guards, metal detectors, dogs. And that, too, had been that. The following week, he had walked past the same second-story apartment. Through the window, he could see that it had been cleared of furniture.

  He had not heard from them again for fourteen months. Then, one Wednesday, he had found another cross beside the graffito. Again he had boarded a bus. A courtly older gentleman in a pin-striped suit—the kind of man who had no business riding a bus at all—had come and sat beside him. The man had asked, softly, if Michael had ever taken a life. Michael remembered the careful phrasing of the question, the gentle tone of voice. He had answered honestly: “not to my knowledge.” In the fog of war, of course, these things had not always been clear.

  Then the man had asked what he would be willing to do for Israel. Michael had again answered honestly: “anything.” The man had looked into his eyes and announced that they would be in touch again. That was nine months ago.

  Soon, he thought, he would find another cross on the bathroom wall.

  Just a feeling.

  He nodded to himself, once. Then he upended the Diet Coke, searching for a final drop that wasn’t there, pitched the bottle, and turned toward the first checkpoint separating him from his afternoon labors.

  North of Andover, VT

  Four hundred fifty miles north, Jana listened to the thorn branches scrabbling against the windowpane as she read. Reaching the end of Yoni’s message, she took a deep breath and read the orders again. This time, she managed to cultivate a clinical distance. Amazing—and a little sad—how quickly one adjusted. Humanity was nothing if not adaptable.

  Then her eye twitched. Her mouth pulled involuntarily. She quickly recovered her composure and smeared a hand down, wiping her face clean of emotion.

  Plastique, sarin, and now a honeypot operation in Washington, DC. But of course, the implications were not her concern. She was m
erely the tool, to be used as Yoni saw fit. No sane person chose to be the pivot upon which destiny turned. Rather, the choice was thrust on them. The pilot of the Enola Gay had not requested his mission, but he had nevertheless completed it.

  She read the message one last time. Then, having committed the salient points to memory, she closed it. The encrypted communication deleted automatically.

  She started packing at once. The same intuition that had told her to check her phone told her now to get on her way as soon as possible.

  It promised to be a full day.

  * * *

  By the time her contact wandered out from his bedroom rubbing sleep from his eyes, the sun slanted all the way across the kitchen floor. As he opened a can of sardines, she said, “I’m leaving.”

  If he felt surprise, he covered it well.

  “I’m taking the car,” she added. “I’ll be back. Don’t know when.”

  He nodded mildly, forking fish onto a plate.

  “I’m told to ask you for some equipment. Laptop, pinhole camera …”

  “After I eat,” he grunted.

  * * *

  She was on the road by one. Autumn foliage flaming yellow, simmering orange. But already half the trees were bare. “Stick season,” they called it—the long purgatory, in the American north, between autumn and winter.

  She passed looming scarecrows, rolling brown cornfields. Farmers saving money by letting the corn die and dry on the vine. But at a cost: fire hazard, mycotoxin contamination of next year’s crop. America, land of plenty, land of waste. Goldene medina—the golden country.

  In midafternoon, she caught her first glimpse of the nation’s most populous city. She had not seen the skyline since the completion of the Freedom Tower. The mirrored obelisk plugged the hole left by the country’s all-too-brief taste of reality. The sight struck her as poignant but ostentatious—an inviting target.

  The familiar jagged horizon brought back summers with Aunt Becca, and the room Jana had shared with Cousin Miriam. Stuffed animals lining the bunk beds. A poster on the wall picturing a kitten climbing out of a toilet bowl. One of Those Days, the caption had read. In that bedroom, they had asked a Ouija board to reveal their futures. (Tall, dark, handsome strangers awaited them both.) They had danced on the bed, breaking the box spring. They had fallen asleep listening to Alicia Keys. She had smoked her first cigarette, leaning halfway out a window six stories above Madison Avenue.