“Is that what I am? A foe?”
“We shall see. It will depend on how the next few moments play out. Consider it a pre-emptive move, this sifting through of medical records. I like to know everything about the people with whom I do business: marital status, family, psychological reports, even visits to one’s therapist. You’d be amazed what can be tapped into. Truly, we are living in days of miracles and wonder. But you’ve never seen a therapist, have you, Mr. Rafferty? Not as far as I could tell, anyway. Which leads me to believe that you are either perfectly sane or so hopelessly confused as to be beyond help.”
“The latter.”
“The sands have run out, the day has died. The time has come for you to hand over that which is mine.”
“And what do I get in return?”
The small man was surprised by the question. “Why, your life of course.”
“Not enough.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What makes you think I value my life so highly?”
The sun was gone and night was at hand. Only a distant streetlamp, barely there, gave any light, any contours to the room. Two shadows, alone in the dark.
Memories of Winterset.
“My father,” said Rafferty, “was thirty years dying. Thirty years. First, it was his heart—he was convinced it was going to go at any moment—then he was sure he had a tumor, then an impending aneurysm, then something that he was convinced was beriberi, which was funny considering he’d never left Iowa. Always fretting and pacing and fixating on symptoms of impeding ruin, obsessing on something, which, when it came, came in his sleep like a guest overdue. He was dying for thirty years, my father.”
There was once a time that Thomas Rafferty had seen himself as a self-anointed exile, searching for a country to be alienated from, a modern-day Count Cagliostro, wounded but still wandering. Now? Now he was only tired. When he was young, he had dreamed of moving through life, hoarding memories like postcards, falling into love violently and just as violently out again. Instead, he had stumbled on like the rest of us, making it up as he went along, bruised and abetted by the ones we purportedly love.
“You’ve traveled too much,” said the small man. “Perhaps it’s time to rest.”
“Six,” said Rafferty. “That’s how far I got. That’s how close I came. Never made it to Antarctica.” He had promised himself as a child, his family’s Book of Knowledge splayed open to exotic places like Timbuktu and Akron, that he would visit all seven continents by the time he reached the inconceivably distant age of forty. But forty came and forty went, and the seventh continent remained undiscovered. The promise lingered, however. To live a larger life. To be something more. And a promise is a promise, even if it’s only to one’s younger self—especially if it is to one’s younger self. “So, I ask you again. What makes you think I value my life so highly?”
“Fair enough. If not you, someone else, perhaps? Someone who relies on you? Might we not bargain with other people’s lives, instead?”
“No one relies on me. Not even me. It’s the one good thing I have done.”
“Then perhaps there is someone you rely on.”
Thoughts of Tamsin. “None—and again, not even me.”
The mind cries out. Mud and panic, and a stampede of bare feet and voices screaming and children crying and Rafferty numb and bedumbed. Here lies Thomas Rafferty, he never saved anyone. The threat of extinction was no longer a threat, it was almost an enticement.
Something passed between them, if not an understanding, an impasse.
“Mr. Rafferty, when first I saw you, I thought to myself, here is the type of man who is always drawn to the far side of the hill, to the shadow side of the valley, where the sun so rarely reaches. Restless, perhaps, but not foolhardy. Never for a moment did I think of you as foolhardy.”
A smile from Rafferty, Cheshire catlike in the dark. “One does one’s best to live up to one’s reputation. And when was that, exactly? When we first met?”
“Why, in Christchurch, of course. Though you seem to have been under the impression that our paths had crossed somewhere before. I have that type of face,” said the faceless man.
He’s bluffing. If he knows everything about me, he knows about Rwanda, he knows I was in the Congo. He is laying a wager that I haven’t been able to place him in any of those camps, among the dead.
“Listen, Mr.…?”
“Moore. But please, call me William.”
Does the name Billy Moore mean anything to you?
“I may be foolhardy—I’ve been called worse—but you’re right, I’m not a fool. You may think this is a hostage taking, Mr. Moore, but it’s not. This is a negotiation.”
“Tread carefully, Mr. Rafferty. When you train a falcon, you train him by hunger.”
It was an exercise in archeology, speaking with this man: words with more words packed inside, the meanings one within the other. It reminded Rafferty of the Interpol agent, how she too spoke in ellipses and asides. Had she already left for Alice Springs? Did she have any idea just how close her quarry was?
Rafferty felt the throb in his back subside. “She’s getting closer, you know that, right?”
“Who?”
“You know very well who. You don’t have much time, Mr. Moore. If you want your Saint Christopher’s medal—”
“It’s not Saint Christopher. And it’s not yours to bargain with. There is no monetary value attached to it, only value. It is Saint Anthony, Patron Saint of Lost Objects. Given in error. My mother thought it was Saint Christopher as well, but I checked. She had her saints confused. She often did.” Constantly walking in and out of rooms like a character in a play who has forgotten her lines, endlessly baffled by the turns her life has taken. Folding her son’s hand around the medal. “For you, son, to be safe.” Forgetting she had ever given it to him. There were worse diagnoses than a fused spine. “It belongs to me, and I would like you to return it.”
“That medal was lost,” Rafferty reminded him. “I found it, remember? This would infer a certain amount of ownership, no? I mean, that’s how this works, right? Finders, keepers. Listen. I will return Saint Anthony to you, but I want something in kind, something that requires your area of expertise.”
“Which is?”
“I want you to find someone for me.”
The small man wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. He waited, but there was nothing more. “That’s what you’re asking? But why? It’s the easiest thing in the world to find someone. A cursory search, social media, address books, online CVs, location-coded Instagram images, LinkedIn accounts. It requires very little expertise on your part. A woman, I suppose?”
“Correct.”
“Where?”
“Here. Nearby. Her name is Rebecca, she’s with the university, they’re in the Outback somewhere, an Aboriginal community, collecting data.”
“Data?”
“Stories.”
“Again, you hardly require my assistance, Mr. Rafferty. A simple search of university sites should reveal the information you require. You hardly need my help.”
“So, you can’t—”
“Won’t. The word you’re looking for is won’t.” Memories of Belfast crowding in, cross-walled rendezvouses, small sighs in the dark. What was her name? His first touch, his first kiss? Grace? Gracie? Mary? He’d forgotten. Names were starting to slip away; they were always the first to go. “Love, was it, Mr. Rafferty? Or something approximating it?”
“It was.” Is.
The finder could hear it in Rafferty’s voice, both the weakness and the glory. What a sad and farcical thing it is to stagger through life with a self-inflicted wound. “And what is it about this particular person that beguiles you so?”
“I saw in her a willingness to be deceived.” Stubborn and strong, but also incredibly naïf, in her way.
“An attractive quality, I’ll grant you that. But I am not in the lonely-hearts services, Mr. Rafferty.”
“I to
ld her I had something great to say, if I could only find the words.” A smile. “That was my deepest secret, you see. I didn’t.” He still carried the presence of her, like the smell of smoke in a scarf. Her hair had the scent of summer, of warm rain or wet leaves, of sliced apples.
“Apples, Mr. Rafferty?”
He had said that last part out loud. “Find her for me.”
“The medallion, Mr. Rafferty. I have indulged this forlorn nonsense long enough.” He waited but nothing happened.
Confessions always occur in the dark. “She has something of mine. I want it back.”
“Ah. So, it’s not the girl, but what she has. Now, that is much more interesting. Not a someone, but a something. Tell me, what would this particular three-legged creature you’re searching for be?”
“A letter.”
“A rare letter, I imagine.”
“You could say that.”
“And what does this letter of yours contain?”
“I don’t know.”
“I see. You don’t know what is in this letter, but you want me to find it for you and bring it back. Interesting. And who wrote this letter?”
“I did.”
A heavy silence, awaiting answers. When none came, the figure lay a soft accusation at Rafferty’s feet. “You are speaking in riddles. You say you are the author of this letter, but you do not know what it contains. Perhaps you were in a trance when you wrote it, channeling angels—or incubi more likely?” This was meant to be derisive, but was closer to the truth than he realized.
“You’re not a drinker, are you Mr. Moore? I didn’t think so. Well, I am, and I stayed up an entire night to write that letter, wrote it in a frenzy, back when everything was falling apart. I was drunk. It wasn’t a love letter. At least, I don’t think it was. Wrote it in a hotel in Hanoi, in the grips of a fever. Gin induced, I’m sure, but it may also have been an attack of calenture, a delirium brought on by the tropical heat.”
“I know what calenture is, Mr. Rafferty.”
“Whatever the cause, I scribbled it down, everything that was in me, page after page, everything that I’d done wrong, everything she had done likewise. Everything I was and everything I wasn’t, everything I could offer her, and what I never would. It was raw and open and relentless, and I don’t remember a goddamn thing I wrote. But I know she has it, and I want it back.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, “it’s the only honest thing I’ve ever written.”
It wasn’t about Rebecca. It had never been about Rebecca. It had been Tom Rafferty, groping his way home again in the dark, trying to figure out where he was, and who.
“I see. And how do you know she even has this letter anymore? She must have thrown it out years ago. I’m not a magician, Mr. Rafferty. I can’t retrieve something that has been destroyed. That which no longer exists is beyond my purview, I’m afraid. I can’t conjure objects out of smoke and wishful thinking. So, before I accept what might well be a fool’s errand, how do I know this letter exists? You say she still has it. How do you know?”
“Because I know her. She collects stories, it’s what she does. She’d no sooner throw that letter out than you would discard a lost artifact. I gave her a locket, as well, a pewter heart I purchased on a whim in a ferry gift shop. I don’t give a damn about that. Only the letter. I want it back. Three years she’s had it. Three years.”
Hanoi was tapping at the window. A drunken walk down an alleyway stenched in piss. The sour smell of the monsoon season. Rafferty at the post office, fumbling through his Vietnamese phrasebook, the hazy image of a letter being stamped and sent. He didn’t know then that this was a moment he would return to, one that would follow him like a stray dog as the years went by. Had he even scrawled the correct address? He had phoned her, weeks later, and after letting it ring and ring and ring, she had finally answered. Yes, she had the letter. “And, ah, what did you— What did you think of it?” A long pause. “What am I supposed to think?”
“Look, I don’t remember what I wrote, okay? Not exactly. I had been drinking. But whatever it was, it was from the heart.”
Another ice-riven pause. “You were drunk? I assumed as much. Huh. So you really don’t know what is in that letter?”
“No. Can you tell me?”
“No.”
“Can you return it to me then?”
“No. You don’t get to decide when this story ends, Tom. Not this time.”
Here then was the punishment for the drinking and the distances, both real and imagined, for the infidelities and the mumbled remorse that followed, for the nights when he never came home and for those when he did.
Three years. And now, suddenly, an opportunity presented itself in a tatterdemalion hotel room in a tatterdemalion town, with a small man in need of a saint and the chance to close this chapter, to bring the narrative to its rightful end.
“She’s in the Outback,” said Rafferty. “Somewhere, gathering stories. Find her, get that letter, bring it back to me, and I’ll return your medallion.”
“And if something happens?”
“Nothing is going to happen.”
The small man smiled, sadly it seemed. “Ah, but something always happens, doesn’t it? In the end.”
Rafferty ignored this. “So, we have an understanding?” he asked.
“We do. A lost medallion for a lost letter.” He held out his palm.
Shake hands with the devil, baby. Cold to the touch, and a grip so light it was barely there. It was not unlike the silhouette across from him, an inkblot given human form.
LOST ALONG THE WAY
HEADING EAST ON THE LASSETER Highway, then north along the Stuart, down gun-barrel roads of black asphalt and wild skies. Tamsin, alone at the wheel, a cooler full of beer and gas-station sandwiches beside her, transport trucks cannonballing past. Tamsin Greene, crossing the red heart of a continent, pulling the storm behind her like an angel of the avenging kind. She could see the black clouds in her rearview mirror, piling up.
Rafferty was wrong. Of course he was wrong. He was always wrong. She wasn’t with the CIA. (Why on earth would she be with the CIA? Those snakes.) No. It had been the US Defense Intelligence Agency that had first provided her with a cover, that of photojournalist. She’d shown aptitude in this area, had been trained accordingly. The CIA overthrew governments; the DIA sought to minimize casualties.
And that’s what Tamsin’s photography was—at first: a means to an end, a cover for collecting data, assessing troop movements and possible ambush points, potential adversaries, prospective allies, dangerous bottlenecks. On the ground and in the field, but then she won her first journalism award and all that changed. Turned out, her cover was who she really was, who she was meant to be. And so, without as much as a backward glance, she’d finished up her defense contracts, had signed off on all the requisite nondisclosure agreements, and had then simply… walked away. Away from the DIA, but not from the war zones. That would prove a harder habit to kick. And here she was, on a highway in the desert after the rain. Tamsin Greene, lost between shores.
Feral beasts and pariah dogs. Cattle, kicking up amber clouds in a dusty field. Road signs counting down the kilometers, and the radio picking up voices through the static. All these many and varied songlines that define us, the echoes we trail behind as we move through life, all the possibilities and plans we made, lost along the way.
Tamsin Greene is a cool machine.
PEWTER HEARTS
NOT A PERSON, BUT AN apparition, a trick of the light. The wavering heat created worms of convection above the sands. One could almost see through him. Lyle watched the man approach. But from where? It was as though he’d walked out of the desert—and in a suit, no less.
A suburb of tents, half a dozen or so, had laid their academic claims to the Outback, semi-permanent structures on raised platforms, canvas sides. Lyle, a scarecrow of a kid, had gone out to meet the mirage that was even now striding toward him, a small man that coa
lesced as Lyle drew near, separating himself from the wavering landscape behind.
“Can I help you?”
The day was shrill with heat, and Lyle, in short sleeves, with a name tag lanyard loosely noosed around his neck, felt light of head, queasy even. The nausea of distance.
The mirage stopped in front of him. “I wish to speak with Miss Rebecca Hodges.”
“Where’s your lanyard? You don’t have a lanyard.”
“I believe she goes by the name ‘Becky.’ Perhaps ‘Becks,’ in her more carefree moments.”
“Everyone has to have a lanyard. If you don’t have a lanyard, you need to leave.”
Why would he need a name tag in the middle of a desert? The small man tilted his head, studied Lyle’s own lanyard. “Lyle, is it? May I?” He extracted one of the pens from Lyle’s shirt, unscrewed the top, and removed the thin tube of blue ink inside. He tucked those into his pocket (one mustn’t litter), blew through the hollow cylinder, then raised it to his eye, peered in, satisfied. He held up this tube as though it were evidence in a crime as yet uncommitted. He was staring, not into Lyle’s eyes but at his throat. “Lyle, you have two options. Two, and only two. So consider them carefully. You can tell me exactly where she is—or—I can perform an emergency tracheotomy on you, right here, right now, and you can whistle the information to me instead. The choice is entirely yours.”
It would haunt Lyle, his not doing anything to stop this, would haunt him how the other man had been able to reach into his chest so easily, grip his arrhythmic heart in his fist and squeeze it so cruelly, so efficiently, so… elegantly.
* * *
IN THE DAYS OF CREATION, Kuniya the python had battled Liru, a venomous snake, a crushing embrace pitted against insidious poison. Rebecca made a note: Do these represent the two main ways to die? Catastrophe from the outside or something from within. A drought or a rockfall, for example, versus disease or madness. The external versus the internal? The answer, of course, was neither. It represented python and snake.
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