by Pro Se Press
He smiled, not sure how real it was.
He was seated in coach on a European airline. The flight would take him to London, where he would change planes and head to Chicago from there. The passengers were a mix of European, Middle Eastern, and a few fellow Americans. The seat next to Monroe was unoccupied, for which he was glad, for it meant that he would not be tied to a conversation for the duration of the flight.
Once the flight was in full swing, a stewardess began to make her rounds. Monroe watched her as she approached, stopping to talk to the passengers in the rows before his. She was Eastern European by birth, he decided, probably from some place that was now a broken-off puzzle piece of the former Soviet Union. She was late-twenties, attractive, the sort of slim, muscular woman who had probably been involved in either ballet or gymnastics a decade earlier—a cliché almost, he supposed. She was not only a stock character, Monroe decided, but a target for the practice of the arts he had kept dormant for the span of his marriage. Now it was time to play.
“Would you like a drink, sir?” she asked him as she stood in the aisle beside his seat. Her accent confirmed his guess about her nationality. There was a definite hint of Russian or some close cousin in her voice. Her name tag said, “Irina,” and he would use that.
Name badges could be put to two kinds of uses, Monroe had long ago learned. Picking at the name, repeatedly sticking your knowledge of it under the named one’s nose could cause irritation, annoyance, bitterness. But using it wisely, placing it gently and strategically into your sentences could put the wearer of the tag at ease with you and slip a sweet little familiarity into the exchange.
“You know, Irina,” Monroe said, “I think I will have a drink. Make it a scotch, please.”
“Yes, sir,” Irina said, and she went off to fetch it.
Monroe smiled. Not too much yet: just a kind request, the insertion of her name, a smile. He realized also at that moment that it would be his first real drink since the glass of wine he had just an hour before the bullet outside the Paris Opera. He had not allowed himself the enjoyment of a drink or anything else vaguely related to relaxation in the months between the bullet and the misericord. He was ready now to enjoy that scotch.
“Here you are, sir,” Irina said as she came back down the aisle and handed him the glass.
Monroe took it slowly from her and let it hang in the air between them just long enough to make their eyes meet. “Thank you, Irina, and there’s no need to call me ‘sir.’ I don’t look that old, do I?”
The stewardess smiled. “No, sir, not at all, I just…”
“You just call every man that. I know. It’s part of the job. It’s all right if you make an exception for me, isn’t it? My name is Rick.”
And as he spoke, he let his eyes wander down just enough, just a glance at her neck, her blouse, her skirt. Enough to signal interest without seeming openly predatory, working like a pianist who knows how, and when, to hit just the right notes without going too far.
“The customer, I think you say in America,” Irina laughed, “is usually right, Rick.”
She turned and walked away, leaving Monroe to his scotch. He took the first sip, satisfied that he still had what it took. A tiny part of his mind was tempted to see if he could take it to its conclusion, maybe borrow a few hours of Irina’s time when they reached London, but he held off. It was too soon after Genevieve, he told himself, and he wanted to get to the bottom of whatever his new situation in life was going to be before he indulged too much.
Irina continued to smile at him throughout the flight, kept calling him Rick too, but he left it at that. The point had been proven, to himself, so there was no need to prove anything to her.
The Istanbul to London leg of the flight went by faster than Monroe had anticipated. He felt good and so time slipped through his fingers. He walked around Heathrow Airport for an hour between flights, had a bite to eat, and was soon airborne again. On his way to the United States for the first time in half a decade; he could hardly believe it had been that long. He had been placed in Paris by the CIA, had expected perhaps a six-month term in that station, but then Genevieve had happened and they let him stay, apparently having decided that marriage added realism to his cover. Five years away from the country of his birth: that was a record for Richard Monroe. He had mixed feelings about going back.
***
Chicago was cold. Monroe did not dilly-dally there. He got off the plane at O’Hare, stopped in the city only long enough to buy a better coat, one with a winter-worthy liner even though it was only autumn now, and figure out the Greyhound routes.
Aboard the bus an hour later and rolling out of the Windy City, destination: Cradle, Wisconsin. Monroe felt very out of sorts in that rolling tin can, crowded in with the job-seeking wanderers, runaway kids, recently released prisoners, and a few enlisted soldiers trying to get home the budget way. He had not been on a bus in years, at least not when he was really who he was. He was not counting the months as a ragged, vengeance-seeking nomad crisscrossing Europe on a heartbroken crusade, for it now felt like it had been someone else on that journey.
Mercifully, Monroe managed to doze for most of the pilgrimage, getting off only at some of the stops, only when he had to urinate. By the time the bus reached Wisconsin, most of the passenger load had changed, a few getting off or on at each stop. Monroe stayed the course, rolling past dairy fiends and little towns with old-style cemeteries and frequent baseball diamonds. The Greyhound finally stopped in Cradle and Monroe disembarked. He stood with case in hand as the bus left the scene and he began to size up the little town that he had never heard of until the Turkish warden had walked into his cell.
Cradle was indeed a small town. Except for the cars being modern and some of the sidewalk people texting or talking on BlackBerrys, Cradle might have just been thawed out from the Rockwell era. They had passed a Wal-Mart a few miles outside town and Monroe suspected that most of the town’s residents worked there or maybe on farms that lay on the edges of Cradle, for there did not seem to be enough in-town businesses to support the population of even a small settlement like this one, the several thousand that Monroe guessed might live in such a place. There was a post office, two churches, elementary school, a police station that made Monroe think of Mayberry, only one gas station in sight, the necessary diner, and just a scattering of other things: doctor, dentist, hair salon for the women and barbershop for the men. Monroe noticed a few obviously dead storefronts too, presumably victims of the Wal-Mart invasion.
So that was Cradle. What was he doing there? Standing on the corner of what had to be called Main Street—he did not bother to look for a sign yet—in a town that was probably left off most maps and that Google Earth may not even have noticed. Monroe knew that all he could do now was to wait. Whoever had wanted him here had managed to get him out of prison, fly him across the world, and demand his presence in the middle of nowhere. They would reveal themselves sooner or later, but probably sooner.
It was now afternoon in Cradle and the streets were as busy as Monroe guessed they ever got. The mailman sauntered by, and some schoolchildren, then a man who may have been the local lawyer or even the mayor. There were a few teenagers, a thirtyish mother with a baby in a carriage, and a greasy-shirted mechanic.
A few of them eyed Monroe suspiciously and he could see the idea of “Stanger,” rolling around behind their eyes. This did not bother him. He had been in so many cities in so many countries over the years that he was used to it. He wondered what the first rumor would assume him to be: travelling salesman, fugitive, prodigal son of the town, or some poor soul whose car had broken down somewhere just outside the town?
A few more townspeople drifted by and then a small child stopped right in front of Monroe. It was a little boy, probably no more than seven or eight years old, with a Scooby-Doo t-shirt showing underneath a hooded jacket that was zipped up only halfway. The kid stared up at Monroe, who must have looked toweringly tall from that angle, and spok
e in the rote way a child actor might talk in a cheap movie.
“If you are hungry, you should try the diner. It’s very good on Tuesdays.”
The boy ran off after that and disappeared around the next corner. Monroe brought up the mental calendar that he had ignored so much in recent months, remembered the date on his bus ticket, and calculated. Yes, it was Tuesday. The kid must have broken the cardinal rule of modern childhood and talked to a stranger. Lucky kid: he’d probably made a buck or two, enough to seem like a fortune when you’re seven.
Monroe turned and walked across the street to the town’s only diner. The front window looked darker than it should have in the afternoon. He approached the door to find a “Closed” sign. Under the sign was a little note on a sheet torn from a yellow legal pad, taped there on the inside of the glass. Somebody had tried poetry.
“Sorry folks,
“The oven’s broke.
“But don’t feel sorrow,
“Come back tomorrow!”
And under the clumsy verses was a smaller note:
“If you’re the repairman from RM Electric and Gas, come around back.”
RM: his initials. Monroe walked around to the side of the building, slid down the narrow alley that separated the diner from the pharmacy, and found the back door beside a dumpster and a smaller receptacle that stunk of discarded grease. He wished he was armed.
He pushed on the door, found it unlocked, and went in. The kitchen was empty, but the aroma of food, not terrible, was coming from the other part of the place. He walked through the kitchen and into the main dining area. The overhead lights were out but a small lamp glowed in one corner. In the single illuminated booth, a man sat munching on a hamburger. Across from his was a second place setting with a sandwich and a mug that still had steam floating up into the lamplight.
“Sit down already,” said the burger eater.
Monroe went over and slipped into the booth. Ignoring the food, he stared straight into the face of his companion. The suit was what he had expected. A man in black, but not one he had seen before. The man was older, maybe sixty or even sixty-five. The hair was short and gray, ex-military style. Lines of experience, most of it harsh, crisscrossed the brow and danced around the eyes. Only one of those eyes was real, Monroe realized, the other of glass, certainly.
“It took three days’ receipts to get these people to close the diner for a few hours,” the man said. “There’s really nothing wrong with the oven, of course, but I’m sure you already knew that. Do you know the one all-important rule of American diners?”
Monroe shrugged.
“Then I’ll tell you,” the burger man said. “Don’t order beyond the class of the place! Diner food is diner food and you can’t raise that bar! This is a damn fine burger and you’ll find that turkey club and coffee in front of you to be quite adequate. Now if I’d had the owner fix me a filet mignon before I kicked him out, I’d regret it later. When in Rome, do as the Romans do…and when in a diner, keep it simple!”
Monroe took a sip of the coffee, his instincts telling him that it was not drugged or otherwise malignant. “I don’t know you, do I?”
“You do now,” the old soldier said. “But I won’t tell you my real name and, after today, chances are you’ll never see me in person again. Most people who know I exist—and there aren’t too many of them—call me Mr. Nine, because they say I have as many lives as a cat. Problem is, every time I almost die but manage to crawl back to life, I seem to end up with more scars to add to my collection.”
With that, Mr. Nine lifted his fork to his face and tapped the prongs against the surface of the glass eye, creating a very sonar sort of pinging sound. He laughed at his own little trick and then looked Monroe straight in the eyes. “Now we get down to business.”
“Good,” Monroe said. “Getting here was too much a chore for there to be no payoff. Who are you with? Is it CIA, DHS, FBI, Interpol…or none of the above?”
“None of the below, actually,” Mr. Nine said. “I like to think I’m more important than any of those clusterfuck agencies. Don’t worry, I’m not here to pull you back into Central Intelligence. I’m here to offer you something much more interesting.”
“Then enlighten me already,” Monroe insisted.
“Let’s see if I’ve got all my facts straight first,” Mr. Nine said, and he proceeded to rattle off words like he was reading from a dossier, although there was nothing in front of his but a half-eaten burger and a few stray fries. “Richard Monroe, age forty, born in Massachusetts to a pair of physicians, both now deceased. Educated at Harvard and spent a year at Oxford before being granted a commission in the United States Navy where you learned something about the intelligence field. Went CIA after the Navy, worked the field on various continents for nearly a decade, did your share of wet-work too but were known mostly as a seducer and pawn-mover. You were finally stationed in Paris just about five years ago where you met and fell in love with a Genevieve Piaget, married her and went soft around the edges. She dies, you crack, dump Uncle Sam and go rogue on us, but manage to track down and take out one Baltasar al-Hamsi, a very skilled assassin who’s been on our radar for quite some time. Is all that about right,
Monroe?”
“It is,” Monroe confirmed.
“Good,” said Mr. Nine. “And now that you’ve gotten that out of your system, are you ready to put the weeping widower act aside and get back to business?”
“Maybe I’ve had enough of that business,” Monroe challenged.
“This isn’t quite the same game,” Mr. Nine said.
“Different rules then?”
“Very different,” Mr. Nine promised.
“Keep talking.”
“I color outside the lines, Monroe,” Mr. Nine said. “This is no big network of agents, just me and one operative, although there are occasional interactions with the other boys in the business. No high-tech crap either. Too much of that makes things unnecessarily complicated and too easy to bungle if the system goes down or gets hacked. Cell phones, computers when needed, GPS if we must, but we do not rely on those things. I much prefer good old-fashioned espionage and shadows. What I oversee, Monroe, are operations where we don’t want multiple agents in multiple locations tripping over each other to get to the prize. I need one man out there doing the dirty work that I’m too old—and too ugly—to do.”
“And you think I’m that man,” Monroe said.
“I hope you might be,” Mr. Nine confirmed. “You’re a two-sided coin, Monroe. There’s the sleek side: the handsome, laughing seducer with the looks and the charm to find a niche in any tribe. And then there’s the serpent: the hidden killer, ready to strike when needed, venomous to the core, even if that core doesn’t come to the surface too often. That little business in Istanbul proved to me that the core is still intact, even after five years of lovey-dovey mush in Paris. So, basically, Monroe, here’s what I’m offering: I pay you well. I set you up in the sort of lifestyle you learned to enjoy in Europe with all the fine food, fine wine, nice cars, women, too, when you’re ready for them again. In return, you keep your mind and body sharp and make sure you’re ready when I need you. That could be tomorrow and it could be months from now; the sort of situations I deal with tend to pop up unpredictably. All I really ask is that you stay in the States so it doesn’t take you days to get back here when something comes up.”
“So this is purely domestic?” Monroe asked.
“Not at all,” Mr. Nine answered. “I could need you in Shanghai tomorrow for all I know, but I’d rather have you here as a starting point. So what do you think of my offer?”
“Oh, I’m intrigued,” Monroe said, “but I need one more thing before I answer.”
“What would that be?”
“I need proof that you’re on the right side of the fence and not pulling some scam for some foreign power trying to turn an American agent to their own devices.”
“If you hadn’t asked for that proof,” Mr. Nine
said with his voice cold and hard now, “I’d have shot you where you sit. You may have run off in your grief, Monroe, but you don’t have a drop of treason in your blood, do you?”
“No, sir,” Monroe said.
And then Mr. Nine spoke. From his lips flowed a series of numbers and names and codes and secrets that very few men in the world and certainly none outside the highest levels of the CIA and comparable agencies within the United States and its closest allies would know. That was enough for Richard Monroe. He smiled and nodded. He suddenly trusted the mysterious Mr. Nine, and the future looked interesting again.
Mr. Nine lifted a small square box from his seat to the table and slid it across to Monroe. “This is for you,” he said. “Inside, you’ll find a new cell phone. Don’t try to call me; I’ll call you. Also, a gun: nothing fancy, just a basic Glock for now. More interesting tools will be provided when required for the job at hand. There’s some ammo in there too. Get some practice in. Records say you’re a good shot, but scrape the rust off, please. And one more item in the package: the keys to your new car. I hope a Lexus is all right. It’s parked around the corner. Now get out of here. Pick a city, any city in the continental states, and get yourself an apartment or even a house if that’s what you want. You’ve got enough money stocked away from when you were married, so you can set yourself up, but don’t worry about running out. As I said before, you’ll be well paid for your work. Now get out of here and get back to civilization, Monroe. Cradle, Wisconsin is not your kind of town.”
Chapter 3: A Bullet Misplaced
Monroe chose Boston. He had to settle somewhere in the United States. He wanted a city and preferred the east coast to the west. New York was too tight and full for his tastes; Miami was too hot; Washington was too political. But Boston seemed ideal: wonderfully historical, the closest major city to his birthplace and childhood world, and familiar enough from his college days in Cambridge to have sentimental meaning. But far enough removed in time from his CIA days to have a sense of freshness about it. Boston it would be then, for now at least.
