by George Nagle
James stepped between Noi and the doorway to the vehicle. “Everything is fine; my cousin is just sick. We need to get back as quickly as possible, please.” He climbed in and Noi shut the door.
Joe came up to Noi, handed him the small carrier, and walked back.
James opened the window just in time to say “Thank you” to Joe. The man paused and gave James a small smile and wave.
Noi climbed in and they were off. Noi turned to strike up a conversation, but Tim had already turned on his music and moved to the back to lie down.
“Sir, are you sure he is okay? No disrespect, sir, but it would be most bad if he sick in here,” Noi said.
James adopted his pompous tone. “He is fine. Just let us be.”
“Oh, yes, sir.” Noi turned back around, looking very put out.
James opened some sparkling water and poured a small amount into a glass. He moved to the back and gave it to Tim, whose face was pressed into the seat.
“Jim … Jim … hey.” He gently touched Tim’s shoulder.
Tim just shook his head.
James took off Tim’s right headphone. “Jim, please drink this. It will help your tummy. Here now,” James said.
Tim didn’t move.
“Please. We are almost done, and you have been the best field partner,” James whispered.
Tim turned. He looked miserable and had puffy eyes. He sat up, drank the water, made a face of disgust, and lay back down without a word.
On the journey back, Tim did not want to stop to eat. He used the bathroom when they got fuel and came back a little shaky. He told James he had “the poopies,” but he thought it would be just that once.
About an hour later, Tim sat up. “You know, Grant, she was saying some odd things,” he said quietly out of the blue.
James glanced toward the front of the car. Noi made no response; he clearly hadn’t heard Tim.
“Not now, but I’m glad you remember. Let’s talk later,” James said with a wink.
“Okay,” Tim winked back, looking as though someone had hit him in the eye.
He now seemed perfectly fine. Must have just been way too much fruit, James decided.
***
After dinner, James confirmed that Noi would take them to the airport at about 10 a.m. the next morning for their flight and that breakfast would be at “07:30, sirs.”
James waited in Tim’s room until he was fast asleep before leaving him. He had to hand it to Tim—he had pulled off some really difficult things. James was proud of him and looking forward to what he had to say, when it suddenly struck him: Tim could draw everything he saw. He could make a perfect map of the place.
James turned to wake Tim but then thought better of it. Tim would remember, and he deserved a restful sleep.
James returned to his room, picked up his phone, and called Carissa. Even hearing her voice on the recording would be fantastic.
“... ello?” came a female voice. The line had a bad connection.
“Um, hi Carissa,” James started.
“Oh, nae, one mo’, t’is Judy. Carissa, it’s John! Her’ she comes now,” Judy said.
“Hi,” came the sweetest voice in the world, slightly out of breath. “How’s you?”
“At this moment, I couldn’t be better,” said James, and he meant it. For the first time in the last few days, he was only thinking about one thing, and it was the one thing he most wanted to think about.
“Long day? … t …me,” Carissa said in a garbled way.
“Sorry, can you repeat that?” James said.
“What’d ya say?” came Carissa’s reply.
James quickly made his way to the window, hoping that would improve the quality of the call connection. “I asked what you said?” James said.
“Love, I can’t get all of what you are saying tae me. We must have …”
“I was just calling to say hello. I’ll ring you back when I have a better connection. I hope you hear me say this.” A bit sad, James enunciated each word slowly and clearly.
“Yer, alright. Talk tomorrow, Love,” came Carissa’s reply before the phone went silent.
James sighed. He wasn’t sure what he’d been going to talk to Carissa about, but he felt disappointed anyway. Besides, he was starting to get a headache. It was time to call it a day.
***
The journey home went smoothly. Their flights were on time, and they had plans to debrief the next day with Tom and a few others.
They were able to get a direct flight home without stopping in New York for a night. James knew the Tan family wasn’t tracking them closely. They didn’t have to, as they had video, pictures, and copies of documents to keep them in line.
The first thing Tim did when he got home was check the schedule. He then walked back to James and said, “I think I like being Tim better than Jim. You can be Jim or Grant, but I think you should just be James from now on. I’m going to go watch Discovery Channel now. See you tomorrow.” He stuck out his hand with a huge grin.
James immediately shook it and said, “Well done.”
Tim gave him another long wink and was off to join Byron and Dan.
It wasn’t like Tim to initiate a handshake. Tim had learned how to do another “normal” thing. James was proud.
Chapter Twelve
James stayed in a hotel near the group in order to get a good night’s sleep before returning to his family and the chaos that reigned in a home with two small children. He was planning on moving the following weekend to Pittsburgh for his internship, as a two-hour commute was less than ideal, but first he wanted to help his dad with a few things.
At 4 a.m., James was wide awake. He wanted to go back to sleep, but he knew that was about as likely as sitting next to a quiet toddler on a plane. With a deep sigh, he threw his legs out from under the covers and sat up before falling back down on the bed again. It was going to be a long day if he continued feeling this sluggish.
After taking a shower, he felt better and thought he’d try giving Carissa a call.
“Good morning, Love,” she said in greeting.
James felt a tingle in his toes. “Good morning there, Ms. Risa. How’s you?”
“Brilliant, thanks. What time is it there? Why are you up so early? Everything all right?” Her questions came in quick succession.
James chuckled. “Well, it’s clear, then, isn’t it, why I am up at half past 4? It’s to talk to you, and that always makes everything perfect.” He hoped that didn’t sound too cheesy. He’d always scoffed at the illogical fluff so many couples spewed at each other.
Carissa loved it. “You are always so sweet. I was telling Judy that the other day, and she said it was just a ploy tae get a little some’thin’ some’thin’. I told her tae stop being so jealous and go for a soak. She had gotten pure bleezn, you know, the night before and was a bit turned out to start. Well, after that she gone and got a bug up her ...”
James took in each word and eagerly awaited the next. He didn’t have to think, process, or act on anything. Just listen to her sweet voice with that rather sexy Scots accent.
“Here I am, rambling on and on. You must be bored silly. Tell me about your days,” Carissa said a good while later.
James’s brain, which had kind of just been idling, slipped abruptly back into gear. “It’s been a lot of travel. Switching hotel rooms each night is rather wearing, to be honest. Not sure why I thought traveling for business would be fun. It really isn’t, you know. Nothing like personal travel. I get to see a lot of offices, airports, and hotels. After a bit, they all run together. Get to spend a bit of time in the same place in the States for about a month for training, then back to Aberdeen.”
“Wow, that is a bit of time away.” Her voice held a soft hint of disappointment.
“Aye, I didn’t find out about the training until recently. Very sorry on that, truly. But when I get back, I would love to see you and go out to dinner and a movie and to the club if you would?”
C
arissa’s voice was normal again. “All in one night?” She laughed. “Well, I like tae hear that you want tae make up for lost time, but one thing at a time, John, or I’ll start having tae call you Jack Flash, eh?”
James laughed. He wished every day could start off like this.
***
Later that day, James was at group headquarters when Tim and Tom came in.
“Hi, Tim,” James said with a smile. “Hey, Tom.”
“Hi ya, James,” said Tim, grinning. He was excited to be debriefed. Usually he was just called in to examine various puzzles that others couldn’t decipher.
“I was just informing Tim how we’ll be proceeding today,” Tom said.
“Which was completely unneeded, obviously. I know how these things go, Tom. I am not dumb,” Tim said in an incredulous tone.
James decided to act on that. After all, this was why Tim got so annoyed around here. He felt like he was treated like a little kid.
“Tim, I am interested in knowing a few things.” James stood up. He walked over to the white board and wrote three questions:
1. What did the individuals say when they were not speaking English
2. Can you draw the fortress, its rooms, and passages
3. How did you feel about the trip
Tom sat back, aware that James had taken control, even though he was technically being debriefed, too.
Tim studied the list. “Do you want me to do them in that order?” he asked. “And why didn’t you use punctuation?”
James laughed and corrected the punctuation. “You can do them as you want, but how about we do the drawing last?”
“Oh, good. That will take a long time ... And just the stone fortress? I can do the airports, hotel, Noi’s house, and the office too.” Tim tried to mask his excitement. He did it poorly, as it just made him look like he was sitting on a bottle shaker.
“Well, how about the whole fortress and Noi’s office?” James suggested.
Tim made a fast transition to the last question. “Right, well I feel that it was long. Very tiring. My sleep is off and I have this weird feeling at the top of my head. On my brain.” He touched the upper part of his forehead as he spoke.
“It’s called jet lag,” Tom said.
“Obviously, but he asked me to describe how I feel, not define things, Tom,” Tim fired back.
James interjected, “You can also say what you thought about everything, too.”
Tim paused. He had a rather reserved look on his face. “It was exciting, but very scary sometimes. I think I like doing my work here more and not so much in the field. Though the kids looked like they were having fun. That made me smile. Oh, and drinking all the Coke was good too. The tummy ache was horrible. And I think some of those people were bad and said weird things. I am happy to be home and see my shows. That’s it,” he ended, looking at James and then over to Tom as if to ask if that was okay.
“Got it, Tim. I think you did great. I know it was a rough trip and you did as well as anyone could have.”
Tim smiled from ear to ear as James went on. “What were people saying that you thought didn’t make sense?”
“Oh, that. Well, it was just Jie and Yan. They kept switching languages, obviously, but they didn’t even answer each other in the same language. They used Mandarin and Cantonese and Thai and ...”
“Why were they switching languages like that?” Tom asked, interrupting him.
With a dramatic flare, Tim stood up, shaking. He seemed to be expressing a lot more emotion since the trip, but like a six year old who didn’t yet know how to do it properly. “I was talking, Tom!”
“Sorry, sorry. I’ll be quiet.” Tom motioned with his hands to get Tim to sit back down.
“Tim, I thought they were switching languages, too. I’m glad you could understand all of them. That is excellent. What were they saying back and forth?” James asked calmly.
Like flipping on a light switch, Tim was calm again. “Well, at first it was just making fun of someone over paying. They said they would have given the information for free and they didn’t even have to negotiate. They never said who that was, but it couldn’t have been us because we didn’t give them any dollars.” He paused and blinked away a puzzled expression.
“What else?” James asked.
“Well, it didn’t make sense. Jie was the boss, but she kept saying things like she was suggesting them to Yan. Once she said,” Tim tried to mimic her voice, “‘Do you think we can take his spot? Maybe you can get the fields going. The kids are worth more in the field, don’t you think?’ Then she said something about if they got far enough, they could take all the operation over by replacing the top. Yan liked that,” Tim recalled. “He got excited and then got more excited when he was talking to you.”
James nodded. He knew better than to discount what blind revenge and greed could do to people.
“Anything else, Tim?” James asked.
“No. Nothing they said,” Tim replied.
James’s eyes narrowed. Tim was a literalist, after all. “Did anyone else say anything that I didn’t hear?”
“Oh yeah. The kids were all talking. A lot of them could speak a lot of languages, you know. They mostly were saying, ‘Pick me, play with me, I am soft, or come join us.’ Things like that. Some of them had marks on them. Like bad hurts and scars. I think that they need to watch them more carefully so they don’t get hurt.” Tim said this last part with determination and then went on.
“When Seim and I walked past the kitchen going to the bathroom, I could hear a lot of voices talking. They were talking about getting food ready for a feast the next day and someone was talking about needing extra help with the roof. Then two people close to the door were talking about something with getting ‘her’ feet ready and they laughed, but it was two men. They sounded like older people.”
“Any idea how many?” James asked.
Tim thought for a moment. “Obviously, I don’t know how many, but I heard four different voices and it sounded like a lot of people in the room. One of the voices was a woman and the other three sounded like men.”
“Any idea what they were talking about?”
“No, it sounded like general talking about things they needed to do,” said Tim.
James registered there were probably a lot more people there than they had seen. “That it?” he asked.
“That is all I can remember. Seim didn’t speak. Just pointed. Oh, the bathroom was very old. It had boxes on the walls like the fancy ones, but was not very nice. It was clean, though. That is it,” Tim finished.
“I can’t thank you enough, Tim. Honestly, you were great and did more to help than I could ever have expected.”
Tim just smiled and said, “You are welcome. Are we done? Can I work on the drawings now?”
“Yes, sir, you may. Tim, for the fortress especially, a map style drawing would be helpful, as well as what the whole thing looked like as we pulled up. Each of the office walls with the monitors would be great. Same for Noi’s office area,” James clarified.
“Not a problem. I like drawing.” Tim walked over and shook his hand again in the same stiff manner as before, and James smiled.
Tom walked Tim out, and James sat a moment before pulling out the file on Spara. It sounded like more adults were in that place than just the Tan family, and that Yan had taken over for Daddy, with Mom as the figurehead.
He wondered about the younger adults in the place. They were probably “leftovers” nobody had bought who had little choice about what they did. Sad, the traps people fell into through no error of their own, due to the selfishness of a few and the blind eye of many.
He put the folder away. Somehow, this matter with Spara seemed to have taken a backseat to the unexpected issue with the Tan family. He felt fired up and decided to go work it out in the combat zone training area.
Chapter Thirteen
Walking through the solid double doors to the training portion of the building a minute later, Ja
mes found a few people on the floor carrying the hanging bags and sparring equipment. He could see others working out in the weights area behind the etched glass, but he didn’t know who they were. He walked into the locker room and greeted his friend Gary, who was heading toward the other exit to the aquatics section. He was wearing a wet suit.
James changed into shorts and a t-shirt before grabbing his gloves and feet pads. Just before he closed the door to his locker, he heard his phone ring. It was his mom.
“Hey, Mom, what’s up?” James answered.
“Nice to see you’re actually talking, Mr. Quiet. Where is the thing your dad uses outside on his thing?” She could never remember what his father’s tools were called.
“Outside?” James asked in a smart-alecky way.
“Don’t be funny. He’s looking for it and can’t find it,” his mom said.
“Mom, you have to tell me a little bit more about what he’s looking for. And why didn’t he just call?” James asked.
“I don’t know. He’s running around trying to get some of the road leveled back down because he doesn’t like the tapper or something. The pavers are coming but have already said it was fine as it was. Told him he’d better not mess it up and end up costing us more.” She said this calmly before screaming, “What?”
James pulled the phone away from his ear a moment before saying, “I hope whatever that was was worth my ear drum bursting.”
“Stop whining or I’ll give you something to cry about,” she retorted.
His mom was a very caring person, but that was easy to miss due to her rather hard shell. Often there was not a lot of sympathy spared on “life’s bumps and bruises,” as she called them. As kids, getting a swift blow to the head was a daily occurrence, so much so that all four of the older ones instinctually flinched when she walked by. A determined woman, she didn’t believe in wasting money and rarely did much for herself. She had overcome a lot, much of it so that her children were fed and clothed.
The family wasn’t exactly poor, but they certainly didn’t have a great deal of money. Many nights, dinner was a bowl of oatmeal, or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The older children didn’t have brand name clothing growing up unless they bought it themselves. The age span of twenty five years between the oldest and youngest helped a bit in terms of costs, but there were no funds to send anyone to college. Even if there had been, chances are they wouldn’t have been given, as it was the family belief that if you wanted something, you had to find a way to get it. This was a lesson James had learned many times, and one of the first he could recall.
