The Good Assassin

by Paul Vidich

  “I was never in as deep as you,” Mueller said.

  “You got fed up and left. That’s what I meant. You got out.”

  “That’s what this is about? Leaving the Agency?”

  “That day comes for all of us. It’s only a question whether it’s a time of your choosing.” Then, almost dismissively, “I am doing my job. I’ll finish the work.” He paused again. “Think about what they’re really worried about.”

  Mueller was surprised by the remark. It was just like Graham to plant a thought. “About what?”

  Graham didn’t take the trouble to answer.

  Mueller wanted to ask his question again, but he didn’t. It wasn’t worth asking. He’d get the same answer—or no answer. There was something he wasn’t supposed to know. He knew he was in a labyrinth. There were no morals except in relation to each other. You lied to spouses, to girlfriends, to children, to parents, to Congress, but never to the director—and never to yourself. This was the trust built into the tight fraternity of colleagues whose lives depended on each other. The work required you to subvert popular leaders, bribe politicians, mislead senators, suborn friends—all within the moral gloss of a world in which ends justified the means. They did not judge each other by what they did or how, but by their accomplishments. Their fraternity was the secrets they kept. Mueller recognized Graham’s warning.

  The two men stood chatting for a long time. Half-finished thoughts came between them, occasionally broken with the sloppy wording of unrehearsed memories. Two men removed in time and place, far away from anything familiar, free under the sheltering sky to speak openly about everything but the one thing that had brought them together. Mueller knew Graham’s record, knew how the self-schooled farm boy talked his way into college, but he also was certain he knew only a fraction of the man’s “successes.” Graham’s redacted dossier he’d been shown by Lockwood cast a shadow over their conversation.

  Mueller recalled Lockwood’s comment. The incident with the woman in Guatemala. It was always a young woman, they said. Love and danger slept in the same bed. She’d been a pretty thing. A Guatemalan in her early twenties who’d become Graham’s girlfriend, but she had paid a price for their acquaintance. Árbenz’s thugs had raped her, slit her throat, and tossed her body by the side of the city’s sewer. Graham had gone quiet for a few days and then reported the incident phlegmatically, almost without sentiment or remorse, as if a show of emotion would weaken him. That’s what Lockwood had said, offering his opinion. Graham had steeled himself against whatever guilt he felt for putting her in harm’s way. That’s what they did, what they trained for, what was expected of them. Lockwood had said, “Well, he’s not a priest. None of us are. We’re spies.”

  Mueller looked at Graham leaning on the balcony, eyes gazing into the brooding darkness. Silence enveloped them in a mood that was not quite like grace. Mueller wondered. So, what else has changed?

  Mueller got his answer a moment later. Graham released his clasped hands, then closed them again, clasping and unclasping, and a great heave filled his chest.

  “Has she talked to you about me?”

  “Who?”

  “Liz. I’m talking about Liz. Has she asked about me?”

  Mueller said she hadn’t. Mueller volunteered how he knew Liz, some of which he’d shared before, and he was surprised how Graham took it in, as if he were hearing it for the first time. Mueller felt he could say anything about Liz—her hair color, shoe size, favorite food—and Graham would be fascinated.

  They talked in the way one does late at night, prisoners of the hour. Reticence vanquished by elastic time. Mueller saw Graham look up from time to time when he heard far-off gunfire, alert for an instant, but then he returned to their conversation.

  “You know what happened to me in Guatemala,” he said. “I was hardened, single-minded and full of myself—caught up in the game and our cleverness. Aware too, I suppose, that I was becoming all about the boast.”

  Graham reflected. Silence lingered. “Then I met Liz.” He looked at Mueller. “Yes, in Guatemala. I didn’t want it to happen again. The Guatemalan woman had been dead a month. But Liz was a bright, lively person, a caring woman, who converted me with that smile of hers. And she saved my life.”

  “Saved your life?”

  “She can tell you the story if she is willing to be open about it. I knew I wanted her, but I had nothing to offer her except my grief and misery. And she was gone before I could express any of it. I woke the fifth morning and she was gone. I was ready—eager—to have her, and I could see she was looking for something. I could see that she was unhappy, but at the time I didn’t know she was married. She was too conventional to give up a bad marriage for a man she’d just met. I suspect it was easier for her to have several days of fond memories than a lifetime of regret. We would have sunk into a quagmire because we weren’t right for each other—then.

  “I didn’t follow her. She left a note, but no address. I sucked up the hurt, but I could not bury the memory. I thought: I am destined to live my life with a heart that yearns for a moment I didn’t seize.”

  Graham looked at Mueller. “We grunt and sweat under moral duress in this job. Conscience weighs heavily but only for some of us does conscience offer a way out. I woke up one morning and thought that I’d live the rest of my life alone. Doing what?” He looked at his companion. “Betraying friends?”

  Mueller saw that Graham had slumped on his elbows. Never did Mueller expect to hear Graham confess so honestly.

  “She didn’t expect me to find her,” Graham said. “I don’t think she knew I was here until you brought up my name. Apparently, it came out while you were in the hotel. That’s what she told me. It’s an odd coincidence that you, George, of all people, connected us. It would have happened without you, but it was the excuse I needed to introduce myself to her again.”

  Graham was suddenly alert. His body had gone rigid, and he cocked his head to one side, listening. His eyes were raptorlike.

  “What is it?”

  “Look with your ears.”

  Mueller closed his eyes and listened.

  “It’s a trogon.”

  A hollow, throaty bird below them sang toco-toco-tocoro-tocoro. Not far away a mate repeated the sounds twice, a call-and-response.

  “Time for a walk,” Graham whispered. “Follow me. When I go down wait a minute, then follow.”

  “My hat?”

  “Leave it,” Graham said briskly. “We are going for a pee if they ask. I’ll tell them that. Just keep moving.”

  • • •

  Mueller watched Graham siphon gasoline from the army jeep parked by the lowered stanchion. They got the fuel they needed, filling a plastic container they’d found at the base of the stairs. The two men had gone two hundred feet from the checkpoint when Mueller heard the whoosh in the cane field. A moment later the blockhouse exploded in a brilliant phosphorous white. The concussive blast hit them. Mueller found himself running away from the leaping flames that consumed the checkpoint, trying to stay up with a sprinting Graham.

  Mueller worked his arms hard to keep close to Graham, shorter than Mueller, but with the advantages of being fit and a fast stride. Mueller tasted sweat that formed on his upper lip. Each labored breath and each pounding heartbeat reminded him how he’d softened in academic life.

  He stopped suddenly. He bent over, hands on knees, gasping, ears ringing. He stayed bent over until the pain eased. He looked up, eyes blurred by perspiration, and saw Graham approach with the limber stride of a champion runner. He held the gasoline container like a baton.

  “Out of shape, George,” Graham taunted. “They sent you down here to check on me and you can’t run to save your life. I bet he told you it would be an easy assignment, nothing dangerous. And you believed him.”

  Graham stood his compact self a few feet away, arms akimbo, and took in the pathetically exhausted Mueller, the spent husk of a one-time college athlete.

  “And you don’
t smoke, or drink. You have no excuse, George. The life of the mind has weakened your body. We’re safe. We’ve gone far enough. The Land Rover is just ahead and we’ll get on with the drive when I put in the gas. If it hasn’t had its tires stripped.”

  They approached the abandoned vehicle and quickly saw it had not been touched. It took three turns of the ignition to start the engine. They both took comfort in the engine’s throaty cough. Mueller didn’t turn on the headlights and put his hand on the gearshift.

  “Take your hands off the steering wheel,” Graham said sharply. He nodded out the driver’s-side window. Mueller saw shapes in the dark, and he knew suddenly they were surrounded by men who’d emerged from the culvert. Too many to count. Bearded men. Grim faces caked in dust, guns pointing at them.

  “He’s telling you to take your hands off the steering wheel,” Graham said again with urgency.

  Mueller calculated the danger, the speed of the Land Rover, the cover of darkness. Then he complied, lifting his hands in surrender. A rebel with a Thompson submachine gun had taken up a position on the road in front of the Land Rover. In the rearview mirror Mueller saw a squad of men in fatigues approach. He saw a dozen men with guns on either side. He’d trained for this once, how to surrender to danger without surrendering to fear. His eye catalogued the arsenal. New M1 Garand rifles taken from Batista’s surrendering forces, or bought from soldiers who’d deserted; a few old shotguns, one submachine gun, a bazooka, and one weapon that surprised him. The barrel of the assault rifle was trimmed with a muzzle sight. A Ceska semiautomatic weapon. Russian troops in Vienna preferred it to their own Kalashnikov, and it was a top barter item. It had the reputation of being a fine small arm—light, sturdy, and it fired twenty-five rounds a minute. The details of the weapon were fixed in Mueller’s mind, like a sonnet committed to memory. He’d owned one.

  Mueller saw the Czech pistol when the rebel pointed it through the window at his forehead. The man’s face was angular, with a straggly untrimmed beard, and eyes wide and hostile. He wore a July 26th Movement armband.

  “Hola, Americano.”

  Mueller eyed the man’s index finger, poised on the trigger. Mueller met his eyes and saw his smile, mischievous with power. His front tooth was chipped. Mueller saw all of the man at once, trying to judge his jeopardy. A shifting knot of rebels surrounded the Land Rover, looking at the scene. Mueller heard the staccato rhythm of an urgent guttural Spanish from a hasty conference taking place among several of their captors. One rebel shouted into a walkie-talkie with a voice loud enough to rouse the countryside. Urgente. Urgente. No code. No caution, only the confusion of a night skirmish.

  A commander arrived from somewhere and rebels circled him, greeting him, and then they parted to let him pass. He moved through the group and along the way he gave a bear hug, or shook a man’s hand, or gave encouragement with a hand on a shoulder. He spoke to each man in a voice that was surprisingly soft, but distinct, nodding, or eyes growing large in recognition, and always his pleasant tenor greeting.

  He was taller than the others, and he wore a cowboy hat that he’d tipped back on his head like a heartthrob cast in a Hollywood Western. He stood at the driver’s window and pondered his two captives.

  “You are Toby Graham.” He said the name phonetically, vowels stretched and accented. He looked at Mueller. “I don’t know you.” He lowered his head to address Graham. “Come with me.”

  A light rain had begun. Mueller found himself alone in the Land Rover, and the rebels had withdrawn and stood or sat in the roadside culvert under the protection of a leafy tree. Mueller had shut off the engine to conserve fuel, and he looked in the rearview mirror to the dark place where he’d seen Graham disappear in the company of the commander. Rebels didn’t shoot American prisoners. He knew that. A hostage had more value than a corpse.

  Mueller kept thinking about the Czech weapons, most likely guns from the stock made during World War II, which then entered the gray market of military weapons that armed insurgents around the world. Cash, clandestine transport, and local collaboration put them in the hands of political oppositions.

  Mueller was startled when he heard the passenger door open. He’d drifted off in an uneasy sleep with his head slumped on the steering wheel. Graham slipped into the passenger seat. Mueller glanced in the rearview mirror and then to either side of the Land Rover. The rebels were gone.

  “Let’s go,” Graham said. “Drive before they change their minds.”

  Mueller stared at Graham. “What?”

  “What’s not clear? We are free to go. Drive.”

  “He knew you,” Mueller said. “He knew your name. What is going on?”

  A wall of water was moving across the savanna and the first gusts of wind brought rain that smacked the windshield. The hurricane’s fury was upon them.

  Graham nodded. His hand commanded Mueller to drive. “Knavish speech sleeps in a ‘foolish’ ear, George. Let’s go. Now.”

  5

  * * *

  HURRICANE

  AT DAWN Mueller lay in a guestroom in Hacienda Madrigal with the wind howling outside. He and Graham had arrived as the hurricane hit, and any questions about what had kept them out were lost to the household’s urgent storm preparations. No one had a moment to pull them aside and ask why they’d been delayed.

  Electricity was knocked out first. Then the telephone. Transistor radios lost signal too. Mueller felt the crushing loneliness of the dark guestroom. Rain pelted the roof with the intensity of mad birds throwing themselves at the red tiles. It was too much to be alone. In time he made his way through the storm’s murky darkness with a whiskey bottle sprouting a lit candle and joined the small community in the living room gathered around wicked storm lamps. Mueller felt helpless in the midst of Jack’s heroic effort to coax a prize bull into the barn against the wind’s fury, his help waved off, so he’d joined the other guests. Liz politely declined his offer to help Maximo, the caretaker, take inventory of candles, flashlights, foodstuffs, and potable water. The loyal servant, a runty man with a limp, claimed his authority over the tasks with grandiose confidence. “He came with the house,” Liz whispered. “He grew up here. It’s more his house than ours.” She pointed to a large rug on the living room floor and announced to the room, “There is a storm cellar if we need it.”

  Mueller was among a few neighbors with homes close to the flood-prone river who sought shelter in Hacienda Madrigal. A few Americans, he saw. Katie was there, but when he looked again she was gone, and no one saw her leave. Graham? Among the small group there was a certain nervous pleasure and false sense of excitement. At the time, Mueller was unable to formulate this assessment—it only came to him later, thinking in retrospect—nonetheless, he felt it in the mood in the room, and he sensed it in the curious defiant way that the guests willed themselves to have a good time. It was this oblique feeling that Mueller began to sense was the worried giddiness of strangers brought together by looming jeopardy.

  The conversation came out of nowhere. Mueller was talking to the wife of an ITT executive, a big women dressed boldly in tennis whites for a garden party, who had insisted on addressing Mueller as professor, and extracted information on New Haven with intense questions that came in clipped staccato rhythm, and Mueller knew that nothing short of rudeness was going to save him from her inquisition—so when he heard his name called from behind he was quick to shift his attention.

  “You’re George Mueller, aren’t you?”

  Mueller looked at an Englishman he’d seen earlier when he entered the room. Tall man, thin, droopy eyelids, and a lazy shock of hair that he repeatedly pushed off his forehead. Younger side of middle age. Mueller, whose eyes had barely scanned the room when he entered, had, however, been drawn to this man alone with cards, playing solitaire, and from there he had noticed the man rise to look out the front door when wind tore a branch off a tree. The man sat alone, not thinking to introduce himself, and no one spoke to him. The mood wasn’t convivial and there
was no occasion for anyone in the circumstantial community to go out of his way to be polite. Mueller at one point had turned an eye toward the Englishman and he’d seen a change. He had risen and proposed cocktails to the group. Although he’d been quiet much of the morning, the prospect of alcohol revived the man. He took his gin without olive or vermouth, but still called it a martini. He went from quiet solitude to restless talker in the space of two draughts of gin, and then he toasted the group. “To humor that endures the storm.”

  And now he faced Mueller—eyes bright—and he repeated Mueller’s name, louder, as if he thought he hadn’t been heard, but of course Mueller had heard him.

  “Am I interrupting?” he asked.

  Mueller took in the man—a blush of gin on his rosy cheeks. He wore white cotton pants, white laced shoes, a cream cable-knit sweater, fully two pounds of sagging fabric.

  “I think we’re finished,” Mueller said, offering the wife of the ITT executive a courtly nod.

  “I’m Phillip Callingwood. Exciting times. My first hurricane.” The man’s eyes cast about the now morose guests who slumped in chairs, or picked at the food Liz had put out. Fruit, bread and butter, melting. Crackers. The half-dozen people had formed intimate groups of two or three to brave the storm’s claustrophobia. He offered his hand. “I work for the London Times. Their man in Cuba.”

  Mueller gripped the offered hand, but he found it limp. “Calloway, you said.”

  “Callingwood. English, not Irish.”

  “Of course.”

  Callingwood lifted his chin and eyed Mueller. “You know, the days of you Americans treating Cuba as a recreational junket for gambling and sex is about to end.” His eyes grew wide and he added, “Batista is stumbling badly to a violent end.”