by Jake Needham
“Don’t worry, Sam. You can buy American cigarettes at Chitose. You won’t have to ration those.”
Tay said nothing. He wasn’t about to admit to August that he had read his mind precisely.
A few minutes later Claire returned and set a white china cup and saucer on the table next to Tay’s seat.
“The rest of the pot’s on a warmer in the galley, Sam. Help yourself when you’re ready for more.”
Tay took that as a subtle declaration from Claire that she had no intention of playing stewardess for the next twenty-four hours just because she was the only woman on the plane. He wondered what it said about him that she had felt the need to make that clear to him.
“There are some sandwiches and fruit up there, too,” August added. “It’s not fine cuisine, but it will keep you from starving. They’ll cater some Japanese food for us while we’re refueling. It’s usually pretty good stuff.”
Tay tried the coffee. It was unexpectedly rich and tasty so he lit a Marlboro, leaned back in his seat, and thought about how it could possibly have come to be that he was enjoying his morning coffee and cigarette sitting on an unimaginably expensive private jet seven miles or so over the Pacific Ocean bound for Washington D.C. The more he thought about it, the more improbable it sounded, so he decided the best thing to do was simply to ask.
“Why am I here, John?”
“Don’t you want to be?”
“No.”
August chuckled. “You set all this in motion, Sam. You’re responsible for finding the right string to pull on here, and my guess is you want to know what’s on the other end of it just as much as I do.”
“If that’s your guess, then your guess is wrong.”
“You mean like a minute ago when I guessed you were worried about running out of cigarettes?”
Tay said nothing.
“I really don’t know what’s going on here, Sam, and I want your help in putting the pieces together.”
“The CIA wants to kill you. Somehow I don’t find that all that hard to understand.”
August shrugged and took a puff on his cigar.
“If you wanted my help, John, all you had to do was ask for it. You didn’t have to get the Thai army to kidnap me in the middle of the night.”
“I didn’t want to waste time arguing with you. So, I asked a Thai general who owed me a favor to get you to the airport as quickly as he could. Maybe your escorts didn’t explain that as clearly as they should have.”
“They didn’t explain anything at all. Why didn’t you just call me? When you’re in a country run by a military dictatorship and armed soldiers show up at your door at three o’clock in the morning, you normally don’t assume there’s an innocent explanation.”
“Yeah, I get that. Sorry.”
They each sat and smoked quietly after that. Tay finished his cigarette first and then his coffee, and then he stood up. He glanced toward the back of the cabin and saw Claire and Woods talking quietly over their own coffee cups.
“Anybody want more coffee?” he called out.
When they both shook their heads, Tay went up to the galley to refill his own cup. He didn’t offer to get August any. He wasn’t a stewardess either.
August was looking at something on an iPad when Tay got back. Tay sipped his coffee and waited for August to finish what he was doing, but when he didn’t show any signs of doing that Tay grew impatient.
“Why does the CIA want to kill you, John?”
August closed the iPad case and put it down on the sofa.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s not the CIA that’s really behind this at all.”
“Didn’t you just tell me that you’ve identified this woman as Rebecca Sternwood?”
August nodded.
“And that Rebecca Sternwood works for the CIA?”
“That doesn’t mean the whole Agency wants to kill me. Maybe there’s some other reason she’s involved in this.”
“Like what?”
“Figuring that out is why I need you, Sam.”
“You think it could be personal?”
August shrugged.
“Have you ever tried to kill this woman?”
August gave Tay a dead-eyed look and said nothing.
“And you don’t know of any other reason she would have a personal grudge against you?”
“No.”
“I really can’t see this being a personal thing, John. If someone did have a grudge against you, they wouldn’t have to blow up a hotel in Hong Kong. There have to be an awful lot of easier ways to get to you.”
August took another puff on his cigar and stubbed it out in the ashtray attached to the end of the couch.
“Look, Sam, I didn’t get much sleep last night and I’m too whacked right now to think about this anymore so I’m going to sack out until we get to Japan. That seat you’re in goes completely flat and there are some pillows and blankets in that closet up at the front so you can sack out, too. If you’re not sleepy and you want to watch a movie, just push that button on the side of the table next to you and the top lifts up to become a touch screen video monitor. Or there’s another iPad in the top drawer of the table and the Wi-Fi works pretty well so you can hit the net if you want. Whatever you do, we’re going to have plenty of time to chew this over before we get to Washington. Right now, I need some sleep.”
And with that August kicked off his shoes, stretched out on the couch, and rolled over with his back to Tay. It looked to Tay as if August was fast asleep in less than a minute.
The rest of the trip went faster than Tay expected it to. While the plane was being refueled in Japan, they went into the lounge and he bought three packs of Marlboros and a paperback copy of a Don Winslow novel called The Force that he had been meaning to read.
After the aircraft took off again, they all went into the galley and each of them helped themselves to the sushi, teriyaki chicken, miso soup, and Japanese beer that had been boarded during the fueling operation. It was as good as August had promised and somehow the subject of the CIA wanting to kill all of them didn’t come up again while they were eating.
After the dishes had been returned to the galley, Tay turned on his reading light and was happy to find it was bright enough for him to read comfortably in spite of his rapidly deteriorating vision. After a while he closed the book and tried watching a movie, but with his reading light off and the cabin in near darkness he had trouble staying awake. Finally, he stopped fighting it. He went up to the closet and got himself a blanket and a couple of pillows, then he moved his seat into the flat position and was asleep in minutes.
When he woke, the navigation map displayed on the monitor on the front bulkhead said they were somewhere over Lake Huron a couple of hours out of Washington. Everyone else looked like they were still asleep, so Tay went up to the galley, found the coffee, and figured out how to work the coffeemaker. While it was running, he went to the toilet, then he poured himself a cup of the fresh coffee and returned to his seat.
“Stewardess! Oh, stewardess!” August called out from the couch without bothering to roll over. “I’ll take a cup of coffee, too, please.”
Tay put the cup he was carrying down next to the couch for August, then went back to the galley and got himself another one. When he came back, August was sitting up, rubbing his eyes, drinking the coffee.
“Damn, Sam, that’s really good coffee. You’re going to make somebody a fine wife one of these days.”
Tay just grunted. It was far too early in the morning to get into a verbal joust with August. Or too late at night. Or too something.
“What happens when we get into Washington?” Tay asked instead.
August appeared to turn that over in his mind while he finished his coffee.
“We’re landing at a small airport in Virginia just south of Washington. It’s in a place called Manassas. You ever heard of Manassas?”
Tay shook his head.
“The first major battle of the American Civi
l War took place there. The Union army thought all it had to do was stroll down to Richmond, kick some ass, and the rebellion would collapse in a week. The Confederates met them at Manassas and crushed the Union army, which then retreated to Washington in a disorganized route. Some people say the Confederates might have taken Washington if they had kept the pressure on the Union army right at that moment, but they didn’t. They hesitated, and eventually they lost the war.”
“Why do I get the feeling there was supposed to be a lesson somewhere in that story?”
“There was. Never hesitate. Push your advantage and you can take Washington.”
“We have an advantage?”
“Sure, we have an advantage, and we’re going to use it to take Washington.
“What’s our advantage?”
“We’re not here. We can’t be. We’re dead.”
“Speak for yourself.”
August grinned. “That’s why we’re coming in at night. I don’t want anyone spotting us by accident. The longer we can keep them thinking they succeeded in Hong Kong, the better our chances of getting to them will be.”
“Exactly who is this they and them you keep talking about?”
“Ah well, that’s where you come in, Sam. You’re going to figure that out for me.”
Tay started to ask how he was supposed to do that. He knew nothing about Washington. He had never even been there before. And he knew nothing about how Washington worked. What he had read and heard from time to time about the functioning of the government of the United States made absolutely no sense to him. Maybe you had to be an American to understand a place like Washington.
But he didn’t tell August any of that. He felt far too goofy from spending the last twenty-four hours on an airplane to conduct a serious conversation. That would have to wait for tomorrow.
“What happens after we land?” Tay asked instead.
“A couple of vehicles will be waiting at the plane to take us to a safe house the Band maintains near the offices.”
A safe house? Seriously?
Was August pulling his leg? Tay felt like he had gone to sleep and woken up in the middle of a spy movie, the plot of which didn’t make the slightest sense.
“Don’t we have to go into the terminal and go through customs and immigration first?” Tay asked.
August just looked at him.
“Oh,” Tay said, “I get it. You don’t do customs and immigration. The usual rules don’t apply to you.”
August smiled. “And as long as you’re with us, Sam, they don’t apply to you either.”
“What do we do after we get to this safe house?”
Tay almost snickered when he said safe house, but with the application of iron self-discipline he was able to avoid it.
“Get a shower, some food, a little sleep, and wake up tomorrow ready to kick ass and take names.”
“I suppose you have a plan for how we’re going to go about doing that.”
“To tell you the truth, Sam, I’ve got no fucking clue. What we know for sure now, thanks to you, is that Rebecca Sternwood set us up to be killed by that bomb in Hong Kong. She works for the Agency and she’s out there somewhere. I guess maybe we find her, look her up, and ask her why she did it.”
Woods walked past them in the aisle on his way to the galley to get some coffee.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” he muttered.
Chapter Thirty-One
They landed in darkness somewhere that didn’t really seem to Tay to be anywhere.
Two big, black SUVs of some American make he couldn’t identify were waiting for them on the tarmac. Their plane taxied right up to the vehicles and while the whine of the engines was still dying away they were bundled into them, then driven by silent, formidable-looking men out of the airport, along mostly nondescript suburban streets, and down characterless freeways. What Tay saw outside the windows looked utterly interchangeable with probably thousands of other streets and freeways in hundreds of other towns and cities. The only way he knew he was in Washington D.C. was because August had told him he was.
A little over half an hour after pulling away from the plane, the two vehicles entered a dignified neighborhood of traditional row houses lining cobblestoned streets and brick sidewalks. Many of the houses flew American flags from staffs mounted alongside front doors or between second-floor windows. The flags gave the area the air of a historical theme park, and for all Tay knew maybe it was.
The neighborhood reminded Tay a little of the area where he lived in Singapore, but it seemed older, more anchored in a time that Tay instinctively thought had to have been better than this one. Singapore didn’t have much of a history, it hadn’t been around long enough to have one, and Tay blamed that for the sense of being untethered from place and time that occasionally threatened to overwhelm him.
Both vehicles pulled to the curb in front of a three-story, red-brick row house. Two brass carriage lanterns with flickering gas flames flanked a black lacquered door with a huge gold knocker in the shape of a horse’s head at its center. Flower boxes overflowing with bright red geraniums hung under every window. Very agreeable, very gracious, very elegant.
If this is what safe houses are like, Tay thought, it’s a shame no one ever invited me to stay in one before this.
The door opened and a middle-aged woman wearing a white apron over a black dress stood smiling in the light dancing from the gas flames of the carriage lanterns.
“Sally will show you to your room, Sam.” August put a hand on Tay’s shoulder and handed him his bag. “If you want a sandwich or a drink, just ask her.”
“What happens now?”
“We take a shower. We get some sleep. We all make ourselves human again. Then in the morning, we’ll figure out where we go from here.”
In spite of the graciousness of the surroundings, Tay was overwhelmed by a sense of disorientation. His head was full of cotton wool from the twenty-four-hour flight, and everything was made much worse by the twelve-hour time change. Nothing seemed quite real as he followed the woman up the staircase to the third floor. There is a point at which the effects of fatigue are almost indistinguishable from the effects of alcohol. Judgment is impaired, reactions slow, and temper is hard to control. He was nearly there so he just plodded on up the stairs, putting one foot in front of the other, and tried to concentrate on not biting the head off the next person who spoke to him.
At the third-floor landing, the woman ushered Tay through a polished mahogany door and he found himself in a bedroom with a distinctly masculine feel to it. A dark-stained wooden floor covered with a worn red and blue oriental rug, two brown leather chairs flanking a table in front of a fireplace, a huge double-doored wardrobe cabinet, and a large bed covered by a dark green duvet.
“Can I get you something to eat, sir?” the woman asked.
Tay was slightly surprised to hear the woman speaking with a distinct English accent.
“You’re British?” he asked. “Not American?”
The woman smiled slightly. “Perhaps a drink, sir?”
Well, Tay thought, he probably deserved to have his stupid question ignored, didn’t he? America was the least homogenous nation on earth. Americans came from everywhere and spoke with every known accent. To assume someone wasn’t an American just because they spoke with an English accent was silly.
Tay mentally slapped himself and said, “Nothing, thank you.”
“Bathroom’s through there,” the woman said, indicating a door across the room. “You’ll find a bathrobe and extra towels in the wardrobe. And if you need anything at all, there’s a call button next to your bed.”
Tay dropped his travel bag on an upholstered bench at the end of the bed.
“I’m sure I’ll be fine. Thank you.”
“I’ll wish you a very good night then, sir.”
When the woman closed the door behind her, Tay walked over and examined it. Somewhat to his surprise, he found there was a hotel-style locking bolt on the i
nside and when he closed it there was a solid clunking sound. He wasn’t sure why he even bothered to close it. He had no idea what kind of security the house had, but he imagined it was formidable. After all, a safe house had to be safe, didn’t it? That was the whole idea. Surely a bolt inside the door of a third-floor bedroom didn’t make much practical difference one way or another.
Tay took off his shoes and stretched out on the bed. Was he tired? Utterly exhausted. Was he sleepy? Not a bit.
Tay looked at his watch and realized that he didn’t even know what time it was. His watch said it was a little after six, but was that six in the morning or six at night? It was dark so surely it was six at night. Or was it? If his watch was still on Bangkok time, it was probably telling him that it was six in the morning in Bangkok, which was of no value to him at all. And he was reasonably sure his watch was on Bangkok time because he must have reset it to local time at some point when he was in Thailand. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he had never gotten around to resetting his watch at all and it was still showing Singapore time. The more he thought about it, the more confused he got.
He supposed he could have asked the woman what time it was, but he hadn’t thought of it and, now that she was gone, he realized he really didn’t care.
Tay got up and rummaged through his bag until he found one of the packs of cigarettes and the Don Winslow novel he had bought when they refueled in Japan. He had tried to start the book on the plane, but his concentration had failed and he honestly couldn’t remember anything of what he had read so he decided to start it over from the beginning. He noticed there was an ashtray and a box of matches on the table next to the bed and he wondered if all the bedrooms had ashtrays or if that was just for him.
He had read forty pages and smoked two cigarettes when fatigue finally overcame him. He undressed, dumped his clothes on one of the chairs in front of the fireplace, and cut off the room lights, then he crawled back into bed and pulled the duvet up to his chin. He thought about reading a little more, but he quickly gave up the idea and turned off the bedside lamp.
