Nature of the Game

by James Grady

  “I need to see the Director,” said Wes. “Now!”

  “Who the fuck are you?” snapped Noah. “Middle of the night, a Deputy Director at the FBI calls me up, says that our man has been abusing Bureau personnel through an NIS loan-out.”

  “Noah—”

  “They picked you up at a diner in East Jesus Nowhere right after some civilians get shot to shit. Bureau said you didn’t even stick around to inform the local—”

  “I covered your fuckin’ ass!” yelled Wes, ramming his forefinger into Noah’s chest. “I almost had him! This close! They lost him at the Vegas airport.”

  “What is this?” said Noah. “Post-Vietnam traumatic stress batshit? You burning the village to save it? We give you a low-profile, fully legal task, and you lay waste to California!”

  “I’m doing my job,” said Wes.

  “Must be,” answered Noah, “’cause you ain’t doing ours.”

  A cold chill seemed to sweep down the secret hallway, envelop Wes. Suddenly he felt alone. Naked.

  “I’m going to see Denton—now,”

  “He’s at a classified location.”

  Wes took a deep breath, closed his burning eyes. He hadn’t slept on the night flight from Vegas. “What do you want?”

  “We want this shit over. We wanted to know if there was a problem, and brother, you created one. You’re done.”

  “You don’t have that authority,” said Wes.

  Noah blinked.

  “Denton hired me, he fires me. Full responsibility, coming and going. You aren’t going to buffer him.”

  Down the hall, a door opened. General Cochran stepped into the hall to peer at them through his thick-lensed glasses.

  Noah showed bulldog teeth as he whispered, “Whether you believe it or not, your ass is through. Whether you come out of this at all depends on whether we come out of it clean.”

  “If I don’t keep going, nobody will come out of this clean,” threatened Wes.

  Billy Cochran settled his glasses on his nose.

  Noah leaned as close as he could to Wes. “You want a stake through your heart, you open your mouth—to anybody!”

  The carpet muffled Billy’s steps as he came toward them.

  “Gentlemen”–he nodded—“is there some problem?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Noah, his eyes on Wes. “We got everything under control—right, Major?”

  Then he smiled and went back into his office.

  “You’re here early,” Billy told Wes.

  “Yes sir.” Wes saw his bruised, haggard reflection distorted in Billy’s thick glasses.

  “Come to my office,” said the number two official of the CIA. “The galley provides me with fine coffee.”

  Billy turned to walk away; saw Wes hesitate.

  “It’s an invitation, Major,” said the general, “not an order. What do you have to lose?”

  They sat at the small table in the corner of Billy’s office, Wes on the edge of the couch, Billy in the chair, a silver pot and china cups between them. Coffee sweetened the air.

  “Peculiar weather,” said Billy.

  “Yes sir,” said Wes. What do you want?

  “‘Sir’? Rank has been rendered moot between us. You’re out of uniform and not plugged into this command structure.”

  “Sir, those are the requirements of my assignment.”

  “This isn’t the time to dissect your assignment’s requirements. I’m concerned with its consequences.”

  Billy leaned forward, arms on his legs, frankness on his face. “Just because you were hired by Mr. Denton and Mr. Hall—”

  “I don’t work for Noah Hall,” Wes insisted quickly.

  Billy’s words were soft: “Something happened near Las Vegas.”

  “I’m not disposed to talk about that—sir. But I’d appreciate it if you could tell me where I can find Mr. Denton.”

  “He’s finishing up a working dinner in West Germany.”

  “Shit.”

  “The menu is more creative than that,” said Billy. “German reunification, the fate of NATO, rumblings in Lithuania.

  “But here and now,” said Billy, “I’m concerned about you.

  “This isn’t like Vietnam,” said Billy, and Wes remembered the general’s sometimes-limp, the medals in his drawer. “This business often lacks clarity.”

  “The jungle was thick there.”

  “Not as thick as in Washington. That’s why there are procedures. Especially since these last few years when men like us got so far out on assignment that unfortunate incidents occurred. We are about national security. What’s ultimately crucial to the national security is that the system is maintained.”

  “What do you want from me?” asked Wes.

  “It’s not a question of what I want,” said Billy. “Being out of the loop is not a blank license or a pardon. If things happened, if there’s an ongoing crisis, the best thing would be for you to unburden yourself—through the system.”

  “Mea culpa,” said Wes.

  “If a confession is called for.” Billy shrugged. “Though I doubt all guilt is yours.”

  “Have you ever unburdened yourself like that?” said Wes.

  “I’ve never felt the need.” Billy shook his head. “Look at you. Battered. Exhausted. That tells me two things:

  “First, you’re doing something too important to be off the books. Second, your judgment has been stressed—perhaps bent beyond its limits and capabilities.”

  “Unless you use our communications system, you are unable to securely report to Mr. Denton. I’m second-in-command of American intelligence. Very little is outside my purview. Let me help you. We can bring in the General Counsel. Our security people. You are a part of a good team, Major, trust that.”

  After a minute, Wes quietly asked, “Sir, in all your operations, did you ever use current or ex–Special Forces men?”

  “Major, your job is not to inquire after my history.”

  “You’ve been a part of American intelligence a long time, sir. Like you said, very little is outside your purview.”

  “Apparently you choose to be.” Billy nodded toward the door.

  The car was parked at Wes’s corner, a gray sedan with antennae on its trunk. Three men in suits were sitting in the car.

  Wes saw them as he drove up his street; slowed down as he ran the options. Then gunned his engine and parked in the white-striped loading zone. He ran to the building’s front doors, ignored a man shouting, “Chandler!”

  Up the stairs, three at a time. When she was nursing him, Beth had given Wes a key to her apartment. He’d kept it, been proud she hadn’t asked for it back. Now it was his luck.

  Not knocking, unlocking her door, yelling her name and getting no answer as he unclipped the Sig’s holster from his belt, put the gun on the table by the door, dropped his briefcase with its money and documents on the floor, and stepped back into the hall, turning the key and locking her apartment.

  Downstairs, the building doors opened.

  Ammunition clips. They weighed down his suit jacket as he hurried inside his apartment. Prove nothing. Are legal.

  He had time to register the bare facts of home.

  Pounding on his door. “Major Chandler! Open up! NIS.”

  He opened it. Credentials out, they stepped inside without being invited. Wes didn’t know these agents.

  “You didn’t stop when we hollered,” said Agent One.

  “Nobody yelled, ‘Halt, police,’” said Wes.

  “Where you been, Major?” said Agent Two.

  “The CIA—you want to call them?”

  They looked at each other. Bad form, thought Wes. Now I know you’re not sure.

  Agent Three drifted toward Wes’s bedroom.

  “Do you have a warrant?” said Wes, halting him.

  “What kind of warrant?”

  “Any kind,” said Wes. “Otherwise, you’re invited only into the living room.”

  “I thought we we
re all on the same team,” said Agent Two.

  “I’m on detached duty to a project classified above you.”

  “Gosh,” said Agent Three flatly.

  “Where you been, Major?” said Agent One. “Las Vegas?”

  “I told you who to call.”

  “Where’s your gun?”

  “What gun?”

  “The one you brought to the range. The one you got the commander to authorize you to carry.”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Mind if we help you look for it?”

  “Got a warrant?”

  Agents One and Two laughed.

  “Ask him about the money,” said Agent One, but Agent Three just shook his head.

  “We could help each other here,” he said.

  “How’s that?” answered Wes.

  “You’re our boy—don’t matter about ‘detached duty’ to anywhere, you’re NIS. Hell, you’re a Marine: that’s Navy. That’s us. You fuck up, we clean up. You need help …”

  He shrugged. “Here we are.”

  “I need you, I’ll call you. You need something from me, run it through Greco, he’ll let me know.”

  “Greco sent us,” said Agent Two.

  The four men watched each other for a long count.

  “You tell Frank to ask his own questions,” said Wes.

  “Why don’t you tell him?” said Agent One. “He’s waiting to see you.”

  “Did he send you three musketeers to bring me in?”

  “He knew you were feeling poorly,” said Agent One.

  “You look like shit,” said Agent Two.

  Agent One shrugged. “He figured you might need a ride.”

  “I’ll call you if I do,” said Wes. “Now your invitation is withdrawn. Get out of here. I need some sleep.”

  The NIS agents exchanged a look. Agent Two shrugged.

  “Sweet dreams,” he said, leading the others to the door.

  Agent Three was the last one out. Before he left, he looked back. “I’d go see Frank soon. Real soon.”

  They closed the door behind them.

  How long do I have? thought Wes. Denton and Noah were waffling, afraid of scandal and anxious for a scapegoat, but if Wes brought Jud in, justified the desert fiasco …

  From his window, he saw that the gray car hadn’t left.

  Think!

  But his mind was full of Beth and bullets slamming into Dean, the woman in the blood-soaked blouse sprawled behind the café, the Mexican woman he’d left sobbing in that kitchen, standing in the Las Vegas airport, feeling stupid and hollow, shabby FBI foot soldiers shuffling nervously by his side, and Beth, God, how he wanted to hear her voice.

  That he knew for sure, Wes had killed six men:

  A grenade tossed into a foxhole where two VC were unjamming their machine gun. One man screamed for thirty-four minutes.

  Two NVA regulars who’d materialized out of the bush, just as stunned as he’d been by the sight of the enemy but slower to swing their rifles up; to fire.

  A long, lucky shot across a rice paddy, bang dead into an NVA officer picking up a radio phone to report the lost Marine patrol Captain Wes had gone into the bush to find.

  Dean.

  No more. Head aching, sour stomach. Please, no more.

  Beth.

  He lifted his kitchen wall phone, heard the dial tone as his eyes filled with the comfort of home, the familiar safety of—

  His baseball, the one he’d grand-slam-home-runned into the bleachers at the Army game his senior year at the Academy, the one his teammates had autographed and that he kept on a pedestal next to a row of books on the top shelf in the living room.

  It had been moved to the other end of the book row.

  Beep beep beep beep beep—Wes hung up the phone.

  Stared at it. His phone. His home.

  The gray car hadn’t moved.

  Beth’s. He was in her apartment in seconds, leaning against her closed door, panting for air.

  Easy. Easy.

  His holstered gun waited on a table by the door, his briefcase was on the floor. A phone sat on the kitchen counter. Information gave him the number of the Freer Gallery.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said the Freer switchboard woman, “no one by that name works here.”

  “What?”

  “No one by that name is on our staff list.”

  “You must be … Beth Doyle—D as in Delta.”

  “I know, sir. She’s not at the Freer. Have you tried the Smithsonian museums?”

  “She’s an archivist. With the Oriental Arts Foundation.”

  “No foundation like that is affiliated with the Freer.”

  “But you do have an archivist.”

  “I’ll check with him.”

  She’ll laugh her husky laugh, thought Wes, joke about bureaucracy and how tired I sound.

  “Sir?” said the switchboard operator. “The archivist says Beth Doyle doesn’t work for him.”

  Wes slammed down the phone.

  The walls were close in this apartment she’d sublet from a government lawyer catapulted to a sudden emergency somewhere out of town. Beth moved in …

  After Denton created this mission.

  Wes blinked; looked with eyes and not his heart.

  The apartment smelled of stale cigarette smoke. Her drafting table filled the living room—but she wasn’t enrolled in architecture school yet, her classes in engineering were night school, adult ed with no prerequisite background checks. The walls were hung with the lawyer’s art—that was his poster of the whale’s tail sliding back into the waves. The lawyer’s suits still hung in the bedroom closet, pushed aside for her skirts and slacks.

  Wes roamed the apartment. There were no pictures of her, none of her family or friends, ex-lovers or ex-roommates. No souvenirs of Thailand or Nepal—he knew she’d been there, she couldn’t have faked all she’d told him. No remembrances of Germany, and what had she done there? Worked for discos? She said she’d swum in Berlin’s public pool, fat people all around in the cool blue chlorine. Who had she worked for? For who else?

  None of the mail on the desk in the living room was addressed to her. Even that month’s phone bill bore the lawyer’s name: no need to change, as long as the checks kept coming. Wes ripped open the envelope.

  The bill covered her early days here: no long-distance phone calls to a foundation or Mother or sisters or brothers or Dad at his office, no trace that she had anyone to call.

  Two shelves held her books—physics and engineering textbooks, a half dozen paperback novels, an art book on Japanese architecture, poetry books by Emily Dickinson and Carolyn Forche. He flipped the pages in every volume: nothing fell out and he left the books where he dropped them.

  Notebooks: sketches, drawings, rough plans—but not too many, none too old.

  An address book, she had an address book—that she always carried with her.

  He opened the closet: two suitcases and a shoulder bag had her name tags—no addresses. He threw them into the living room, pulled her coats off hangars and searched their pockets, threw them on the couch: spare change, matches, pocket litter.

  In Recon, Wes always made sure his patrols carried nothing that would betray them.

  Kitchen drawers full of knives, desk drawers with only the lawyer’s papers, sparse supplies in the refrigerator. Back to the bedroom, her landlord’s clothes in three drawers, tossing out her underwear—no bras, just panties, soft and pink and white. Socks, a couple pair of panty hose, two silk scarves. Where was her jewelry? Sweaters on the closet’s top shelf: he mashed each one, tossed them onto the bed. Nothing hidden in the toes of her shoes. He threw them aside. The bed table: books, an ashtray, coffee congealed in a cup. Nothing under the bed, under the mattress. The bathroom: few cosmetics, a brush, comb. Aspirin in the medicine cabinet, a bottle of Valium prescribed by a New York doctor and birth control pills.

  A long brown hair lay in the white sink.

  But nothi
ng to prove who she was, nothing to prove who she wasn’t. Didn’t matter if she’d given him a key.

  The bathroom was bright: white walls, the sink and the shower stall, the chrome drainpipes. The mirror on the medicine cabinet showed him his face, bruised and pale and haunted.

  The toilet lid was closed. Wes collapsed on it.

  And cried. Silently at first, a tear trickling down his cheek, then a gasp and he couldn’t stop, shaking, hugging himself, trembling against the wall.

  Ten, fifteen minutes. He caught his breath. Felt his cheeks dry, felt the tile pressed against the side of his head. Tasted the salt and the phlegm on his lips, the tang of lemon-scented bathroom air.

  Heard the click of the front-door lock.

  He was in the living room, watching her back into the apartment, a grocery sack in each hand, turning, seeing him …

  “Wes!” She smiled. “When did you …”

  Then Beth saw her coats heaped on the couch, the books on the floor, her sketches scattered across the drawing table. The grocery bags slid to her feet. She wore a belt bag for a purse. A briefcase hung from one shoulder; it fell beside the grocery bags. She wore corduroy slacks and a sweater, a long black coat. Her brown hair was brushed, her widow’s peak prominent, and she wore no makeup on her wide gray eyes, no lipstick.

  “What …” She shook her head. “What happened?”

  “Who are you?” whispered Wes.

  “What?” She frowned at him. Stepped closer.

  His gun was on the table just behind her.

  “Who are you?” he said, louder, keeping her eyes on him.

  “I don’t …” She drifted closer to him, her gaze flitting from side to side, seeing the chaos of her home but still not seeing the gun. She blinked. “Did … Did you do this?”

  “Why did you come here?” he said.

  “I live here.” She shook her head. “Wes, what’s wrong?”

  “You tell me.”

  They were close. She reached out to touch him. Stopped.

  “You aren’t here,” he told her. “There’s nothing real of you here: no pictures, no letters, no life. It’s all props. Usable. Functional. Believable.”

  “You went through my things!” she whispered. She shuddered. Her hand fell to her side, and she shrank back.