by Eric Meyer
Isra went to the ladies bathroom and came back with his wig once more in place and his makeup perfect, but it was too late for Winter Moss. She knew. Isra was shaken up and called a cab to go home. Afterward, I spent a pleasant hour with Winter. At one stage, she smiled and asked, "Schaeffer, tell me something. I mean; what's your preference? Isra or me?"
I felt as if someone had hit me with a baseball bat. "Don't get the wrong idea, Winter. He or she, whichever way you look at it, is just a contact. Some of the stuff he hands over has proved to be mighty useful, like that tip-off about those insurgents. But he’s not my type."
"What about me? Am I your type?"
She'd spoken in a voice that was deliberately pitched low and husky. Sexy. And I responded. A part of me in my pants responded even more. "You know damn well you are. It's just; we're working together. You know..."
"I can keep a secret, if you can. Your place or mine?"
In the event, we went to her place, as I was sharing a room with Niall Quinn. She had a room at the Intercontinental Hotel, probably the best hotel in Kabul, certainly the best known. It was a temporary home for many journalists, diplomats, and government ministers. In fact, many of them moved into the Intercontinental when they returned to Kabul after the fall of the Taliban. We went inside her room and didn't waste any time. It was probably the adrenaline pouring through our systems after the attack, but we went at each other like crazy, tearing off our clothes and banging away without any kind of foreplay.
She was a good lover, and she knew most every trick in the book. For the first time in a long time, I enjoyed screwing her three times during the night and late into the morning. But her professionalism didn't desert her. We'd just come to our third climax when she looked at her bedside clock.
"Jesus Christ, is that the time? I have to go. They need me out at Bagram. We have a couple of prisoners coming in for debriefing."
After that night, I didn't see her again, not socially. We met during briefings, and I suggested we renewed our acquaintanceship. She declined, and I let it go, until I found out about Isra.
She’d decided the cross-dressing Afghan boy was a potentially rich seam of intelligence to mine. She located him and asked him for his help, but he refused. He was already terrified of being found out for passing stuff to me, like that attack on the Green Zone. She pushed him hard, and still he said no. The last time, they were sitting in a crowded bar, and she decided to pile on the pressure. Before he could react, she snatched off his gorgeous wig and held it up with a triumphant shout. Everyone looked as she tossed it to the floor and walked out, leaving Isra to face the music. In most countries, he would have been the butt of a few jokes. In others, people would barely notice and just ignore it, but this wasn't most countries. It was Afghanistan, where their interpretation of Islam wasn’t kind.
Some of the men dragged him outside and worked him over for what they claimed was an insult to their religion. He told me about it afterward when I went to visit him in hospital. There was little evidence of the Isra I'd known. He was on a men's ward, and it was clear some of the other patients were giving him a hard time. The word had gone around the hospital when he went in, and besides, he could hardly hide his female clothing and make up. He stared at me when I arrived.
"Go away, Schaeffer. Look what your friend did to me."
I didn't blame him for accusing me. After all, I was the link between him and Winter Moss.
"Tell me about it, Isra."
He gave me a blow by blow account of how she'd pursued him, and he'd turned her down every time, until that fateful unmasking in the bar.
"She nearly got me killed," he wept. Real tears were rolling down his face, and I pitied him having to endure the taunts of the other patients.
"I'll help you out when you get out of here," I assured him.
"No! I want you to stay away. Stay out of my life, and with any luck, I can pick things up again. Maybe I'll move away from Kabul. Just get out of here. Go have fun with that witch of a girlfriend of yours.”
“She’s not my girlfriend, Isra,” I protested.
“Yeah, sure. Get out of my room, Schaeffer.”
I tried to reason with him because I was sorry for what she’d done to him. I also valued the little bits of intel he’d passed on, which had made the war against the Taliban that much more effective. But his life was ruined, and he was adamant. I gave up and left the hospital. Isra Farhi was off-limits. And so was Winter Moss. I couldn't avoid meeting her from time to time, but I treated her with icy cool, and I revised my opinion of her. She was a ruthless killer, for sure. She was also deceitful, untrustworthy, and devoid of any feelings of human compassion. I vowed to keep her at arm’s length, period.
We weren’t to spend much more time in country. We were still reeling from the debacle in Herat, and Winter Moss was proving to be a worse enemy than al Qaeda and the Taliban combined. In any case, we’d had enough. Niall was already spending more and more time in some kind of religious contemplation, visiting the local Catholic padre, and I began looking for oblivion in the bottle. We managed to terminate the contract early and return to the United States. I lost touch with Manuel Salazar, who took on a job as a bodyguard for a foreign millionaire businessman. Brad Olsen went back to the military. He tried the Navy first, as he'd trained with them as a Seal, but they turned him down. In the end, he went to Fort Drum, in Jefferson County, New York State, close to the Canadian border. He worked as a civilian instructor training 10th Mountain Division recruits in unarmed combat techniques.
Niall surprised us by joining the Church. It turned out he'd almost completed his training in a seminary before he signed up for the military many years before, and he only needed three months study to complete his training before ordination. The last I heard, he was assistant priest in a small church in Brooklyn.
I went to ground. I didn’t want to be found, didn’t want to see or speak to anyone. Period. All I wanted was to continue my affair with the bottle. So I did. And I was damn good at it.
* * *
The present day - Fort Drum, New York State
The anonymous spook was clever. He heard me out and waited until I'd vented my anger and calmed down. He pretended to give it serious thought.
"The thing is, Schaeffer, she’s intrinsic to this operation. All of the planning is hers, and without her, I doubt it could go ahead."
"No one is irreplaceable," I grumbled.
"She is. There's no room for discussion. You'll just have to find a way to make your peace with her and work together. until Anyway, I'll call her in, and let's see how things go."
He shouted for the guard to go find her, and then we waited. I wasn't aware of the point when I'd agreed to work with her, but I guess he considered I wasn't in any position to bargain. When you're facing a life sentence for murder you didn't commit, and the cards are stacked against you, your options are pretty limited. I heard the rattling of keys and the echoing clunk of steel doors opening and sliding shut. And then she was there, standing in front of the bars to my cell. She hadn't changed, not a bit. Elegant, smart, and cool, with a gentle half smile playing on her face. She wore a short tweed skirt that looked like a Burberry, about half a yard of material costing a thousand dollars, and a neat fitted hacking jacket cropped short to the waist. Together with thick black hose and handmade tan leather boots, she would have looked at home in an English country house. As usual, she wore just enough make up to emphasize her natural features, and her hair was cut short and precise. The effect was deliberate; fashion model meets girl next door, class and money.
"Schaeffer, it's nice to see you again. Really, I've been worried about you."
It was said the way a shark would speak to the fish it was circling for its next meal.
"You're looking good, Winter. You haven’t changed."
She ignored the praise, to her it was a given. "I understand we'll be working together again. That's nice."
I flashed a glance at the spook and then t
urned back to her. "The only thing nice about it is I know your name. I can't think of anything else good."
"You mean Mr. Smith. He’s very nice, when you get to know him."
I looked at 'Smith'. "If I'm lucky, it'll never happen."
They both ignored the barb. "Let's get down to business," Smith went on, “I'll ask Winter to fix up the paperwork, and we can get you out of here. In the meantime, we need to discuss your team. I understand you are used to working in a four-man fireteam. You have Miss Moss, so that leaves two men to be recruited. Do you have any ideas?"
I had plenty of ideas, like as soon as I got out of this place, I'd vanish into thin air. Leave the United States and never come back. But I knew these people would find me, sooner or later, no matter where I hid. The only option was to see this through, and see the business behind me. There was one upside to all this. I comprehended for the first time in many months that I'd spent twenty-four hours without taking a drink. I felt a bit shaky, but other than that my head was starting to clear, and I resolved there and then to stay off the booze until I got back, until the nightmares reappeared.
"I'll talk to my old team. Manuel may be interested. Working for crooked millionaires is not all it's cut out to be. And as for Niall Quinn, he may have some ideas, someone I can look up to replace him. I'll need a couple of days to talk to them."
He looked irritated. "Can't you just call them?"
I shook my head. "It needs to be face-to-face. This isn’t the kind of thing you discuss on the phone."
"Two days is too long. As soon as you get out of here, you have twenty-four hours. Then I want you on a plane to Kabul. Winter can brief you on the way."
"That's crazy. People can't just up and leave in the space of a few hours."
"Too bad. If you can't find two people, I'll assign you a couple of men from the contractor pool when you get over there."
Winter Moss leaned forward. "Everything we need will be provided when we get there; weapons, equipment, communications, and transport."
I guess I was slow. A night in the cells and a good kicking doesn't do much for your mental acuity, but it dawned on me what she meant.
"We? You're not planning on joining us in the field, surely? You're an analyst, not an operative. You don't have a clue…"
"Stop right there, Schaeffer. It's you who doesn't have a clue. You know nothing about what I'm capable of. I can assure you, I'm more them capable of holding up my end. I may not be a macho, posturing, Special Operations hero, but I've been in a few tough spots, and shot my way out of a couple."
I couldn't deny that. I'd already seen her in action. I could have argued and explained that Special Operations involved more than a brief street duel, but there'd be no point. I didn't reply, and after a brief pause, she got to her feet and left the cell to arrange my release.
Mr. Smith handed me a card that would get me through the gate at Andrews AFB. He checked the time on his wristwatch. I noted it was a Rolex submariner. Maybe the guy fancies himself as a latter-day James Bond. "You have twenty-four hours, Schaeffer. There'll be four seats waiting for you, so you'd better be there, with or without your two other guys. Clear?"
I nodded. "I'll be there. Remember your side of the bargain. Someone has to pay for Brad."
"I'll take care of it."
Ten minutes later, I walked out into the fresh clean morning air. It felt good. I was free, and sober, which also felt good. The downsides were an old friend and comrade had been murdered, and the cops were no nearer to finding his killer. And I'd been shanghaied into going back into the business I'd vowed never to return to, and with a person I'd vowed never to work with again. They say promises are made to be broken, but these promises were big ones. Giving up smoking in the New Year is one thing. Picking up an assault rifle and going undercover to locate and kill America's enemies is another.
Smoking can kill you, but at least it takes a few years. This operation promised to kill me much quicker, which still wouldn't locate the man who murdered Brad Olsen. I made another promise then, and this one I wouldn't break. Whatever it took, if I got out of Afghanistan alive, I was going to hunt down the person responsible and kill them. It was what I did best.
* * *
New York City
I called Manuel, and we agreed to meet in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. He hadn't changed. He kept himself fit, and his clothes shrieked of a millionaire’s budget for dressing his personal bodyguard. After all, if you're meeting the movers and shakers, you don't want your hired help to look like he bought his clothes in a thrift shop.
"You're looking good, Manuel. Life is obviously treating you well."
"And you look like shit, Schaeffer. Have you taken up professional boxing?"
Just before they let me go, Sergeant Wilson tried to take one last pop at me. He was still convinced I was guilty of killing Brad, or at least guilty of something, maybe parking next to a fire hydrant. It didn’t really matter to him. It never does to sadists. But this time I had people on my side, people with more power than him. We got into a slanging match, and although he landed a few blows, I put him on his back and walked out of the guardroom leaving him shouting threats and curses.
"Just a disagreement," I smiled, "You should see the other guy."
"Yeah, I bet. What gives? You haven't come all this way for nothing."
"I'm going back."
A shadow fell over his face. "To Afghanistan?"
I shook my head. “Not this time. The job’s in Egypt.”
“Egypt! Right now that place is worse than Afghanistan. You swore you'd never return to the old days. What's changed?"
I gave him an abbreviated version of what had happened. When I mentioned Brad Olsen, his face became cold and hard. Within our fireteam we fought in pairs, Niall and me, Manuel and Brad.
"He saved my life. Twice."
"I know that, Manuel. I was there. Brad was one helluva guy."
He nodded his head slowly. "If anyone had to die, it should have been me. Christ, Brad, of all people." He went silent for a few moments and looked at me, "You know I'd do anything to help find his killer, but right now…"
He gestured at the plush surroundings of the hotel, the lifestyle of the wealthy, the multimillionaires who needed protection from those who would wish them ill or try to separate them from their fortunes. The elevator doors opened abruptly, and a small entourage swept out. Immediately, Manuel started to scan the area for potential threats. He was back at work.
"This is my new boss, Mikhail Popoff," he said, nodding in the direction of the man in the center of the scurrying executives. He was medium height, but with the build of a wrestler. Small, piercing eyes that looked everywhere and missed nothing. The expression on his face was an indication of how he'd become rich. The name suggested he was Russian, and everything about him was Russian. I remembered an old saying from a French writer.
'Behind every great fortune there is a crime.'
Popoff was an oligarch. There was no doubt, one of the men who'd taken advantage of the fall of communism to seize the wealth of a nation. He saw his bodyguard and clicked his fingers. Manuel glanced at me, and in his expression I could see how he felt about working for, and being at the beck and call of a lowlife. I kept my face neutral. It was his affair, not mine. He didn't respond to his master's summons, and Popoff strutted toward us.
"Salazar, bring my car round. We’re going out. And have you checked it for bugs and exposes?"
"Yes, Sir."
"It better be clean this time. Last time it was worse than a Moscow cab. Any more slipups, and it'll come out of your wages."
Manuel ignored him and looked at me. "You say you're going back, and it'll help find Brad's killer?"
"Yes, I'm going back. And they tell me if we pull this off, they'll go and nail the bastard."
He nodded. "That's good enough for me." He turned to his boss. "You'd better find someone else to do your chores, Popoff. I quit." He smiled at me. "You got a c
ar?"
The Russian looked puzzled at first and then mighty pissed. He started muttering threats and curses, but his former bodyguard wasn't listening.
"In the parking garage," I told him.
"What are we waiting for?"
* * *
It felt good riding with Manuel Salazar once again. We had some good times in Afghanistan, but most were bad. They say Afghans are quick to respond to a perceived insult, often with violence and death. It was true, but they'd never seen Manuel Salazar when his Hispanic temperament bubbled to the surface and turned him into an unguided missile. He made them look like pussycats. Almost. He was Catholic, just like Niall Quinn, and I recalled one time when we were enjoying a peaceful drink in a bar.
Apparently, Manuel said something that a couple of the locals interpreted as an insult to the Prophet. They leaned over our table, thin, tough, stringy men, pockmarked faces and a chip on the shoulder big enough to plug the holes in the Titanic. They each carried an AK-47, held loosely in their hands like a Western businessman would carry his briefcase. They hissed something about infidel Christian foreigners being unwelcome in their country, especially when they insulted their religion. Manuel stayed seated, looking calm and relaxed. The Afghans stared at him, assuming he didn't understand the threat to his person. That he was another American soft touch, terrified to insult Islam, and would make a groveling apology. They were wrong on all counts.
"You reckon it's okay to insult Christians by calling them infidels?" he said quietly.
The bar had gone silent, and when one of the men barked a reply, it sounded like pebbles being tossed onto a coffin lid. "You are infidels, all of you. Infidel Christian dogs. You will humbly beg forgiveness of the Prophet, or you will die."