by James Phelan
Gammaldi was far too drunk to be offended.
“Yeah, at least I don’t look like Jake Gyllenhaal,” Gammaldi said.
“That’s the best comeback you’ve got?” Fox sipped his beer, appraising the work of a beautician somewhere. “Seriously, why the grooming? You seeing someone?”
“Maybe,” Gammaldi said.
“Maybe?” Fox repeated, pretending to nearly choke on his beer. “I was kidding. You seriously seeing someone? Who? Is it a woman? Or a guy? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
The music changed. It came from the jukebox now, and Fox knew Gammaldi had banked it up with INXS, Powderfinger, AC-DC, Eskimo Joe, Silverchair … every Aussie song in there was set to play at least once. Gammaldi had already fleeced Fox of all the dollar bills he had to feed the machine.
“I have a girlfriend now,” Gammaldi said, and Gibbs came up and put her arms over his shoulders.
“Come and dance!” she said, pulling at him.
Gammaldi raised both eyebrows and went where he was directed, bourbon steady in his hand.
“Hey there,” Faith Williams said, joining Fox, a glass of red in her hand. She was still in her corporate-wear, a form-fitting navy pinstripe suit with a lacy top peeking through the collar.
“Hey Faith,” Fox said, receiving her kiss on his cheek. Her smell was all too familiar.
“You all right? Haven’t spoken to me much lately,” she said. Flaming red trusses of hair fell over her shoulders and down her back as she leaned on the bar next to him.
“I’m good,” Fox said, looking at her closely. Her expression and the intensity of her attention were as if she were here just for him. He fidgeted with the collar of his powder-blue shirt that was open a few buttons, the sleeves rolled up over his tanned forearms. “Been busy is all. To tell you the truth I’m not really looking forward to heading back to Africa again.”
The expression in Faith’s green eyes changed slightly. The playfulness was gone, there was real concern there.
“You don’t have to go,” she said, putting her hand on his arm. She left it there, soft, still. “Why don’t you leave this to someone else? Run it from your office for once. Let some others go in there, we’ve got a lot of good front-line operators on the books.”
“The best of them are on assignments already,” Fox said. That wasn’t gonna fly with the GSR chief of staff. There were others who could do this job and they both well knew it. “I do actually like it, being on the ground. The rush of going out. The unknown. Seeing it for myself. Feeling it.”
“Dr Galen spoke to me this afternoon,” Faith said. They both knew this was in reference to him seeing the specialist after the company psychiatrist couldn’t do enough for him.
“And?”
“And he said you’re fifty–fifty,” Faith said. “He’s concerned that—”
“I can do this—”
“This is a business that’s bigger than just you, Lachlan. What you do out there has repercussions for all of us,” Faith said. “Look, I’ll trust your judgement on this. You sure you feel ready?”
“Yeah.” Fox drained his beer, and motioned for another one. “I’ve just been thinking about it a bit too much lately. Look, I really do love that part of the job. It’s—if I think too much about it, like right now, then it gets the better of me. But when I’m there, on the ground, it’s all good. It feels like I can do anything. I know I can do it, it’s all second nature, instinctual.”
“You’re a natural at it, a born leader,” Faith said. She was in work mode now but it was tainted by her feelings for him. Their affair had ended almost as quickly as it had begun. A few weeks of comfortable, carefree abandon, of exploring carnal knowledge. “But sometimes it’s best to delegate.”
“I know,” Fox said, sipping his fresh beer, putting the walls up. He felt a little light-headed—how many drinks had he had since this afternoon? he’d started with the martinis with Jane, then beers here. At least a dozen by now. He should have eaten something.
“There’s—it’s a journey.”
“A journey?” Faith asked, fully focused on him.
“Every step I take out there in another land, it’s all so new,” Fox said. “Yeah, I know I’m about to go and see the same travesties occurring, the same mistakes being made, the same violations of a civilian population. The ramifications of violence that I know will linger for generations. But…”
He fought hard to articulate it. A mix of being drunk and close to voicing this revelation, this meaning, made it almost too hard.
“I’m constantly enthralled by every step I take out there,” Fox said. “It makes this not just a job. I see the world for what it is—it makes me notice things again. The blue sky, the songs of birds, the stars, trees, people, rivers … they’re always there but it’s like I’m discovering them for the first time, every time I turn around.”
Fox now noticed Faith differently too. Their relationship had been a convenience thing—not that they had used each other, but it was an attraction that occasionally spilled over into a passionate affair. They kept it quiet, even between the two of them. It was not a relationship with commitments but it certainly had its share of comfort. There was the temptation to go back there, but he knew now that those nostalgic thoughts were better left behind like so many other happy summer memories.
“I’m glad it makes you feel like that,” Faith said, brushing her hand over his arm again. “You should take some time out for yourself, though. Live a little. Let someone in. I’m not saying me, but someone.”
“I’m not ready for anything yet.”
“Lachlan, you can’t be human in isolation. You are human only in relationships. Don’t forget to give yourself time to enjoy life, or one day you’ll stop to take a breath and wonder where it all went.”
“Thanks, Faith. And for the record—”
“Looks like you’ve got company,” Faith said, giving a glance over Fox’s shoulder. She squeezed his arm. “You take care of yourself.”
Faith left to join the others on the dance floor, looking none too impressed but not too disappointed either.
Fox turned to see Jane Clay, newly arrived, with her handbag on the bar. She had changed clothes since their interview that afternoon, and was now wearing a shapely summer cocktail dress, black satin with bright swirls of colour. Her hair was still up but different now, designed to be messy.
“Not interrupting anything, I hope?” Jane asked.
“That? No.” Fox picked at his beer label. “We’re close friends.”
“Looks like she wants a little more than that,” Jane said. She dragged a barstool over and sat next to Fox.
“Drink?”
“Something soft for me, thanks,” she said. “I’m still feeling those two martinis.”
Fox smiled the smile of two martinis backed up by a dozen beers and a couple of Jagerbombs.
“An old friend used to tell me that two martinis were exactly what was needed to jump into the night,” Fox said. “Three martinis and you jumped right over it.”
“Um, yeah, but we had them in the afternoon on empty stomachs,” Jane said with a laugh, taking a sip of plain soda water.
“True,” Fox said. Smiled, drank his beer. Looked to the dance floor, where Gammaldi and Gibbs were mirroring each other’s actions. He couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Your friend Alister has some moves,” Jane observed.
“Yeah, it’s thanks to his low centre of gravity,” Fox said over the music.
Jane laughed with Fox, and he considered the scene more closely.
“I think he’s doing a bit too much of the dice thing,” Fox said. “And what’s that action—he feeding chickens or something?”
They laughed again, and for the first time Fox looked to Jane. There was something there in the look. A moment of knowing; of being aware that there’s some mutual measuring-up taking place. He checked himself, a little too late. L
ooked to his beer. Picked at the label.
“You all right?”
Fox laughed as another drink was placed in front of him.
“If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked that tonight…” he said.
There was an awkward pause on his part. He blinked off the blurred lines of alcohol.
“Seems a lot of people care about you,” Jane said.
Fox rubbed his face with his free hand. “Yeah,” he replied. He ran his hand around his neck, irritated. Drank more beer.
Jane shifted her hand and rested it on his leg.
“A lot of people like you too,” she said. “And you’re getting a profile. More and more people are going to want a piece of you.”
“Like you?” Fox said, a little too sharply. Her hand went away.
“Sorry. I’m—” Fox couldn’t finish the thought. He just let out a deep breath, like he’d been waiting to exhale. He didn’t want to give too much away to this reporter. On the other hand, he hadn’t spoken to someone like this aside from his shrink in God knew how long. How long had it been? A couple of months. Since Kate, Fox thought. Their first night together, on a train in St Petersburg. That sweaty summer night on his old houseboat. That goodbye. Kate …
“You ever feel … that it’s not easy?” Fox asked.
“What’s not easy?”
“I—I don’t know…” Fox thought about it. He was leaning forward with both his arms crossed on the bar. “I guess I mean that—I don’t know … like it’s not easy to be me. Yourself. You ever get that?”
“I think I know what you mean,” Jane said. She patted her hand on his leg, a little squeeze. She wore her smile in her eyes. “And you’ll be fine. You’re a survivor. Look at you. You’ve done so much in such a short time. And you’re a writer—you know how the world works as well as anyone. How people work. Your story is hot property right now, but it’s a story that’s not a fad. The rendition stuff you’ve reported on, the places that you’ve served in—it’s understandable that people want to hear what you have to say. Not to mention that you’re cute and marketable…”
“Ha. The last thing I want is to join the ranks of the disposable celebrities,” Fox said. On this he was adamant. “It seems a pretty fine line if I go down this path of being a commentator appearing on all sorts of media. I’m happy to report—but just to be there, giving my point of view. To write a movie script on extraordinary rendition? On my time in Iraq? Dramatising the stuff I’ve been through? Please…”
“Then don’t do it,” Jane said.
Fox looked at her, taking it in. It felt good to have another voice of reason.
“No one’s making you do anything,” she continued. “Well, okay, maybe Tas has twisted your arm to do my interview for The New Yorker.”
They both laughed at that but Fox held back. He was uncomfortable with things, felt they were getting out of his control. His life was getting out of control. He drained his beer, asked the barmaid for Bison Grass vodka—the bottle, and two glasses.
“I don’t think I could,” Jane said, looking at the clear fluid.
“Well I’m not one to stand on ceremony,” Fox replied, downing a glassful.
He felt her watching him. He paused before refilling, did it despite his better judgement, which was moving further and further into the background of noise in his mind as the evening wore on.
“My brother served in Iraq,” Jane said. “Just the one tour, bugged out of his Guard unit when he returned.”
“He all right?”
“He’s—no, not really,” Jane said. She took her shot of the vodka. Downed it. Winced. “When he first shipped over, he left all gung-ho, wanting to avenge or something.”
“For September eleven?”
“Yeah,” Jane said. A faraway smile on her face. “He, like me and so many people in this town, had friends in the towers. I remember reading pieces like those The New York Times published on the fifth anniversary of the attacks and—and I just wonder—I’m just angry. I lost friends that morning and half of them have never been identified, and it’s like they’re still out there, as landfill in Staten Island, or maybe there’re parts of them on the roofs of city buildings or under manholes in the city—you know they’re still finding remains?”
Fox nodded.
“It’s just this hole in my heart, and it’s like we’ve not moved on, as a city, as a nation, as people.” Jane had tears in her eyes. “It’s like we had a chance to do something special and we blew it by going to war. We went ahead and took what should have been that last option available. Yet can I accept why we do extraordinary rendition? Can I better understand why soldiers and agents of my government are out there on the front lines themselves wondering why they were ever there in the first place? Not much makes sense to me any more, so little surprises me…”
The pair sat in silence for a while. Jane had retreated into herself; Fox didn’t touch more alcohol. Another Powderfinger song played on the jukebox.
“This song…” Jane said. She put her hand on Fox’s, squeezed. The smallest hint of a smile appeared. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is,” Fox said. “It’s called ‘The Metre.’ They’re a good band. I’ll have to buy you some of their CDs, or make you a mixed compilation from iTunes.”
“Aw, shucks, a mixed tape. People still do that?”
“That’s romance, hey?” Fox said. “Okay, it’s not like I saw you on the crowded number-five train to Brooklyn and used the good people of New York to track you down via a webpage—but it’s a start.”
They were both laughing now. Jane squeezed his hand, her eyes still wet but shaped in that happy way he’d known them.
“Let’s get drunk.”
15
OUTSKIRTS OF PORT HARCOURT, NIGERIA
A nondescript four-wheel-drive with blacked-out windows sped along the road from Lagos, heading for Port Harcourt, led by a Toyota pick-up with a mounted 7.62 mm machine gun on the roll bar, two guys in the cab and another two sitting in the tray. Spotlights on the big chunky steel bumper bar—this pick-up was a mean machine, part of an armed courier convoy. Everyone was smart enough to give them a wide berth. They knew this vehicle’s purpose. Protection. An insurance policy to ensure the safe transit of whatever or whoever was in the chase car. They knew that the convoy would not stop, and they knew that the drivers and shooters would drive and shoot their way through whatever happened to be in their path.
The driver of the Toyota pick-up never reacted to the attack. As he neared an old VW van parked on the shoulder of the road, he and his passenger were shattered in the blast of a massive car bomb. The pick-up’s rear tray separated from the chassis before being swallowed up in the growing fireball. The two guys in the tray simply disappeared, eaten up in the blast.
The four-wheel-drive passed through the destruction that occurred not twenty metres ahead of it. Its tyres were ablaze as it came to a stop in the middle of the road, all the windows and most of the duco riddled with shrapnel. Almost lifeless inside—the faintest sign of movement in the back seat—a rear door opened. Smoke escaped the interior. The bloodied occupant almost emerged, but there was a smattering of rifle fire and his position was turned into bloody explosions of flesh and gore.
From the open rear door, his lifeless arm spilled out. His grip was released on the handle of a black briefcase that clattered to the road. A militant emerged from the trees and ran towards the fire. Cowering from the heat, he scooped up the briefcase and ran into the trees with it. Gone in sixty seconds.
16
NEW YORK CITY
Electrical storms in New York were really something to behold, thought Fox. The energy in the pre-dawn air made the hairs on his arms stand straight up. The rolling blanket of clouds that marshmallowed around buildings like packing material flashed with bolts of lightning. The sound of the thunder surrounded him and waved through the canyons of Manhattan, as though JDAM bombs were stri
king down.
He checked his watch—he’d slept maybe three hours. That was about standard for the past couple of months. He hadn’t had any sleeping drugs last night, either.
Fox sat in a chair by the window of the tenth-floor apartment in Stuy Town, the locals’ name for the Stuyvesant Town, a large collection of postwar apartment buildings near the East Village. He watched as fat droplets of rain shot from the sky and smashed on impact. He was dressed just in his boxers, his clothes over the back of the couch where he’d slept. In the reflection of the glass he saw the creases in his face. There was more there than the life he had led. He saw the faces of the dead in his reflection. In the year that he had lived in New York he was still haunted by all this. Still heard and saw all the shit that he’d been working through. It was like he had only scratched the surface of what was bothering him. He looked at a reflection that he hardly recognised any more.
What the hell was he doing? This wasn’t him. All this fucking drinking, drugs, losing his physical edge. Losing so much of what he used to be. Who was he becoming? This guy, this guy right at this second, it was not someone he wanted to be. Not a hero, not someone who’d saved lives. Changed lives. Or was it? Was this the path he had to go down? Was this the pain of redemption? For all those lives he’d taken along the way. They were people too. They were fucking people too … Visions in his mind’s eye went from those he’d lost to those he’d killed. Who the fuck was he to kill anyone? Was he as bad as them? Worse? Did they sit like this, thinking through all this shit—
He turned at sensing a presence next to him—a little girl, no more than five. She stood there next to him, watching the storm, a little hand resting on the arm of his chair. Her bed hair was tussled with the sweat that came with nightmares, her red flannelette pyjamas a size too big, hanging over her hands and feet. An oatmeal-coloured teddy bear had been dragged along by one of his big rabbit-like ears.
