Alone in the lift ascending to the ninth floor, Casey propped his briefcase against his ankle, straightened and placed two fingers of his right hand on the pulse of his left. The doors slid open, and he stood between them while he finished the count. Eighty beats a minute. Perfect. Relieved, he picked up his briefcase and proceeded down the hall.
Weber’s receptionist wore a summer jersey of ruffles and sequins. “You have an appointment?”
“Yes, this morning.”
“Like, today?”
No surprise that she spoke American English. Weber, her boss, was retired US Navy, having gone out as Rear Admiral, Casey recalled, and immediately landing a plum of a consultancy with the Saudi’s which led to a teaching stint at Annapolis. It must have gone sour because next thing you knew, he was launching AGS, in an entire suite of posh offices a strip-mall away from the Pentagon. The Gibraltar office was merely an off-shore haven needed to placate the tax-takers. No inconvenience. It was also a handy pit stop on flights to the Middle East.
The receptionist glanced from her computer to the digital wall clock. “Nice and early?”
“Eleven, was my understanding.” Casey drew back the frayed sleeve of his blazer to check his watch. “Heavens, it’s only nine-fifty.”
“Mr. Weber won’t be in for an hour?” A sentence spoken as a question.
Americans do that, for fear, a statement might be misunderstood as a commitment.
“I can get you something to drink while you wait?” She nodded at the community of orange plastic chairs.
Casey turned away in embarrassment. “I’ll be back.”
He chose a wobbly outdoor table at the bistro around the corner and laid his briefcase on the seat next to his. Not much in there except a few maps and a resume: keep up appearances. An attempt to inflate what he regretted he was, a day-laborer hanging around the door of the international security industry waiting for work.
No menu nor price list. The waiter loomed over his shoulder, and Casey ordered an espresso. A sudden break in his vow of austerity prompted him to add, “A croissant if you have one.”
He sat back to consider how to handle Sam Weber, who would try to wheedle out the information Casey was selling before they agreed on terms. Not on your life. Pure gold it was Paige finding the hostage. Vowing she would never again set foot in a Guardia Civil station, she asked Casey to telephone the hotline to tell the authorities about the kid. He promised to make the call later from his mobile, a promise he had no intention of keeping. ‘Be sure to say the child’s sick,’ she told Casey. ‘Don’t give any names.’ Smart lady, for who could guarantee a Knight in the police force wasn’t listening in. Or checking the log of calls. Not that a spy in the force mattered. The call would never happen. Only a madman—and he was not a madman—would throw the hostage’s whereabouts to the bobbies when it was worth a fortune to the Muslims. Sell the information and be set for life. Well, a few years, anyway. But how to find a Muslim contact—a spokesman with whom he could negotiate the sale? How to access the commander, the czar, or sultan or whatever the top cat of the Army of the Second Emir called himself. One could hardly stroll into Friday mosque and say, ‘I’m here to make your day.’
The answer was Global Solutions. Sam Weber had a telescope on the non-transparent world. The challenge would be convincing him to buy-in. He would question the source. No one who knew Paige would doubt her conclusion that the child was indeed the imam’s son. But Sam didn’t know Paige from the Queen of Sheba. Would the situation sound credible? Have to pad it a bit, throw in fancy details: the informer was in top government, or an old Middle-East embassy hand—that sort of thing. If Weber bit, the rest was a cake-walk. Settle the price, and Bob’s your uncle.
The waiter lowered the tray, unloaded its contents, and left the bill. Casey computed the tip, dropped two euros, reconsidered, and took one back. Consulting was feast or famine: up to your neck in contracts; then nada. And right now, he had to sock away enough to buffer the dry spells without relying on Harold. Although Harold was a prince of a house-mate, he might, or might not be around when Casey’s HIV morphed into AIDS.
He turned his hand palm up. Too soon to check the pulse again. His self-imposed limit was three times a day. He reached for his wrist anyway. What could possibly be wrong with a harmless obsession that proved Casey O’Brannigan was alive? For now.
Ten fifty on his watch brought a replay of the morning’s trip up the lift, and ruffles at the gate. This time she ushered him into the inner sanctum. The office could have been a celebrity theme pub with Sam Weber the star. A photo of him accepting a plaque from Donald Trump when Trump was merely a billionaire entrepreneur. A snapshot of Weber saluting Felipe before his coronation as King, of Weber’s jolly wife astride a thoroughbred. The furniture was particle-board teakwood that would drive a Dane to drink. Mold darkened the wall-to-wall carpet.
Sam sprang from behind his desk. “As I live and breathe, what the hell you been up to?” The giant of a man put his arm around Casey’s shoulders and led him to the sofa. “Take a load off the feet.” Sam’s sandy gray hair was as thick and unruly, his Italian suit rumpled as if he had just emerged from a jetway. Which was usually the case. Had Sam ever been seen without a wainscot? This one wore egg-yolk near the middle button.
“Been how many years?” Sam asked, their knees almost touching as they sat side-by-side.
“Actually, six months. The seminar I gave at the American base you kindly sent my way.”
“Super outcome evaluations. Bet you’re here on a fishing expedition for a repeat performance, right?”
Casey took a deep breath, “I’ve found imam Tariq’s son.”
Sam’s face expressionless, then the smile made brilliant in a dentist’s chair-side bleach
Machine, Casey guessed.
“Fantastic,” Sam said.
He’s clueless, Casey thought and went on to explain. “The hostage, the baby the Knights of Constancia kidnapped. You’ve heard of the organization?”
Sam shrugged.
“Good. Anyway, they’re holding an imam’s kid to make sure the unveiling of their religious statue comes off without the Emir’s Army blowing them to hell. You’ve heard of that group?”
“A problem,” Sam agreed, nodding.
“If the Emir’s Army blokes restrain themselves, the baby gets returned. You know our local jihadists are backed by Saudi money. They want the kid home, and I know where he is. I’d negotiate the sale myself, but I don’t have connections.”
Sam peeled the scab of yolk from his vest with his thumbnail, then looked around for a place to put it. “Where do I come in?” He leaned and flicked the crust on the coffee table.
“I need a broker to contact the Emir’s Army and negotiate the sale of the kid’s whereabouts.”
Sam got up, moved around his desk, and sat behind it. “Coffee?”
Good play, Sam, Casey thought. Controlling the conversation, time-out to gather the wits. “Thanks, but not for me.”
“I forgot—you people drink tea.”
“Nothing, thanks.”
“Hey, don’t be ashamed. My own wife drinks tea. Sarah,” he called to the receptionist. She appeared, tugging her skirt over the leg-band of her knickers. Casey looked away.
“A pot of Bigelow’s and the usual for me. And keep the damn door shut.”
Were Americans born rude? Casey wondered. Or was it their awful food?
Sam turned back to him, “You sure this hostage is the real McCoy?”
“I saw him,” Casey lied. “My informer took me to the site.” Anticipating Sam’s next question, Casey headed him off. “Sorry, can’t name names. My informant’s a London contact with e
mbassy savvy. Leave it at that.”
Sam pressed for details Casey created as he went along, God forbid he would be put to the test to remember what he said.
Sam did a half-turn in his swivel chair, swung back. “I might buy-in, but I will not sell the Islams information, and they go straight for the asset, and the acquisition goes south, they’ll chop off my head. A nasty tendency. If I buy the information, the location of the asset—”
“Not asset, the kid.”
“The kid. And sell the actual physical asset owned by myself back to the Islams. See what I’m saying? And you understand, of course, hostage reconciliation comes with considerable overhead.”
“You mean recapture, not reconciliation.”
“Reconciliation’s what we call it.”
The door opened, and Sarah entered with a tray bearing a Styrofoam cup of coffee, a carafe of water rapidly losing steam, one Lipton bag, and a handful of those little envelopes full of the horrible chalk Americans call cream. “Anything else?”
Sam waved her away.
Casey fixed himself a tepid cup as Sam settled back to spin out a scenario. “Here’s what we’re looking at. Hypothetical, you understand. First, we have to be in possession of the asset.”
“Kid.”
“To negotiate a clean exchange.” Sam launched into a long-winded explanation of the pitfalls. A tedious description of vetting intermediaries, and of finding a neutral ground to park the asset.
“Whatever,” Casey said.
Sam complained about risk assessment, the cost of cameras, vehicles, and armed facilitators.
“You mean mercenaries?”
“Facilitators, they’re called.”
Sam’s stream of words became blather. The tributes to the expertise of AGS and praise of Sam’s vast experience in hostage negotiation, half of the examples made up, Casey suspected, which made him wonder if Sam were lying more than he, himself, lied. His fingers hovered over his wrist; he drew them back. He listened until irritation got the better of him, and he broke in with, “And my take-home?”
Sam shook his head as if Casey should know better than to ask.
Thirty minutes later at the same outdoor table in the bistro, Casey tried to rid his head of Sam’s idiotic jargon. They were to meet again the next day. Zoom in with the telephoto—as Sam put it.
A new waiter, and another coffee, this time an Americano. Casey shook down a packet of sugar and tore it open with his teeth. Overhead the noon sun bore directly onto the choppy Straits of Gibraltar, scorching the intrepid sunbathers on the ratty beach. Church bells chimed from a neighborhood higher up the Rock. A wooden-planked ferry glided toward the pier. Ragged Moroccans came down the gangplank and into the unwelcoming arms of British customs.
Casey finished the dregs of the cup and was gathering energy to find his way back to the car park, when the caffeine fired every neurotransmitter in his brain: the Knights of Constancia were getting seriously screwed. And he was the greedy bastard throwing them to the dogs. Or rather, to the Army of the Second Emir who would bomb, shoot, rape and chop up every bloomin’ Christian on the face of the earth. Never mind that the Knights were absolutely daft. They were Christian daft, civilized daft, whereas the Muslims were—well—Muslims. Worse, he was betraying Paige, bless her heart, violating the trust of this perfectly lovely lady. Casey glanced around at the other tables: shoppers with Marks and Spencer bags, a couple sharing a single compote of ice-cream. He felt their disapproving eyes staring not at a fellow human being, but at the despicable two-headed worm he was.
Jump ship. Call it off. Forget Sam, his facilitators, the lot of them.
And goodbye to the jewel dropped in his lap? He pocketed the extra packets of sugar and rose to leave. He looked down at his hand, closed his eyes, opened them to a vision of the hand of his future. The inevitable day when the bones were fragile as a trout’s, the flesh thin as onion skin. He placed his fingers on his pulse, held them firm, counting, not letting go until satisfied the beat went on.
10
The purple sea sparkled lavender as if amethysts rode the waves. In the brisk wind, the huge contemporary windmills waved their arms hysterically above the whitewashed walls of an Andalusian village. Along the highway, electrical poles bore plywood platforms atop their cross-beams where storks could build their nests. Shaggy messy nests with strings and straws spilling over the rims, like sombreros upside down. I glanced over at Casey at the wheel and said, “When you get a chance, look it up. These big-guy-birds winter in Africa and blow in for the summer.”
“Who does?” Tony asked from the back seat.
Casey downshifted and said, “You’re blind? Storks, right in front of you.”
Tony lowered his head to look out the side window. “The locals must build these special supports. I’m touched they’re so kind to wildlife.”
“Touched.” Casey mocked under his breath.
I heard Tony’s exasperated sigh from behind me and wondered how many of Casey’s smart-ass remarks I could put up with. It might be a long afternoon. The other evening when I reminded Casey about visiting the baby in the church, I’d mentioned the doctor who X-rayed my ribs would be coming with us. Casey threw a fit, paced his apartment, stopping only to take his pulse, that bizarre habit. What got into him? He knew I had no prescription or admitting authority. I reminded him without a practitioner we might as well not go at all. At that, Casey backed off.
A low-flying stork dipped toward the windshield, then veered upward in a wonderful sweep of black and white. “They bring babies,” Tony said.
“You believe that shit and call yourself a doctor?” Casey said.
I tapped his knee. “Don’t be literal.”
Casey was in his usual schoolboy outfit of a button-down shirt with its tail over the belt of his jeans. He ran his fingers through his unmanageable hair to flip it out of his eyes, a gesture I always found endearing. Until today.
“How much farther? Tony asked.
The closer we got to the church, the tighter the muscles in my stomach. The last words I said to the woman were, “I’ll be back with el doctor.” Doc-tor I had repeated. She seemed to get it, and I banked on her wanting help with the kid. But if she told the Knights, they might have moved him to another hideout. Or the farmer could be waiting with his rifle ready to blow out my brains.
Casey made a sharp left onto the church’s access road and straddled the ruts, the Audi plunging through clouds of gray dust. Tony leaned forward with his hand on the back of my seat to steady himself as the car lurched over potholes. I half-turned to face him. “That’s it up ahead. Bombed to bits in the Civil War. The chapel’s all that’s left, where they’ve hidden the baby. Left him in the middle of nowhere.”
Tony’s voice hardened. “Happened every day in Mauretania. Thugs holding out for a few dirham’s ransom. The only way we Docs without Borders could function was to ignore the politics and treat whatever came through the door.” Tony looked ahead through the windshield. “Lovely building. Gothic I’m struck by the solitude. Reminds me of Tintern Abbey.”
“Exactly what my father used to say,” I replied. “Visigoth, he told me. The opinion of an armchair archeologist. Casey, you can pull up there near the entrance.”
We got out, and as I stood with my hand on the door handle, I said, “Listen. Hear a generator?”
Tony reached for his bag. “I’m right behind you.”
The door was unlocked, and I ushered Tony and Casey into the medieval cavern of a room. When I took off my sunglasses, I made out the woman and the farmer playing dominos in the kitchen, a six-pack of Reina Cervesa under the table.
The woman rushed toward me, the ragged hem of
her black skirt brushing the floor. “Senora.” With her hands on my shoulders, she kissed me quickly on the right cheek, then the left. The farmer did not look at us, acted as if we were not there. The woman must have taken care of him in her own way. He lifted a bottle of beer and topped his mug, plastic with a pink teddy bear decal. He was in what looked to be the same black baggy work-pants and black cap he’d worn the last time I saw him. No rifle in sight.
Tony leaned over the crib. “Come here.”
I went up beside him. “His name’s Hamid,” I said. The child yawned, squirmed, and fell back into a stupor. I touched a tiny finger. “Why’s the skin peeling?”
The grandmother tugged Tony’s sleeve and held up the jug of her medicinal whiskey as if for approval. Tony sniffed the contents and shook his head. She looked at his black bag, placed her hand on her heart and stepped aside, either grateful for the intervention, or resigned to it.
Tony began undressing the baby. “Bloody hell. Poor little nipper can hardly breathe in all the shit. Spaniards aren’t the worst. You should see Native American babies strapped to a board—never mind.” His skilled hands drew the child’s arm through a sleeve. He tipped the kid forward and gently rolled the shirt up and off, then hesitated at the leggings. I leaned over the rail and unfastened a complicated row of snaps.
“I don’t like this lethargy.” Tony checked the diaper. “Dehydrated, all right.” He turned to Casey. “Over here, please, my Spanish won’t cut it. Ask the grandmother if there’s been vomiting, if he’s been eating solids, taking liquids? Is she—?”
Casey held up his palm. “One question at a time.” He spoke to the woman and launched a three-way discussion among himself, the woman and Tony in rapid-fire Spanish interspersed with English.
“Looks bad,” Tony muttered as he read the temporal artery thermometer. He palpitated the lymph nodes and winced.
At the sight of the otoscope, Hamid shrieked, gathered a second wind and howled. Tony waited until the baby wound down then patiently examined each ear and the mouth keeping up a running narrative directed at me as if training an intern. “Dry lips, oral rash. Any experience with Kawasaki? Not the motorcycle, the disease.”
The Loss of What We Never Had Page 8