Vector

by James Abel

  Utley said, “I keep asking myself, is there a crossover point? Did I ever meet him? Or even see him before? It was like he was gloating at me . . . like it was personal with him.”

  Eddie leaned forward on his desktop, weight on his palms, palms on his blotter. I’d pulled my chair up close, and Izabel stood, arms folded, staring at Utley as if he were a suspect, which is what he was to his own people, he said.

  “Everyone at the office treats me differently since it started,” Utley said. “I guess I’d do the same if he had approached them. The FBI’s interviewed my wife, parents, neighbors. Staff meetings? I’m out. And the questions! Did I ever meet the guy before? Have I had previous dealings with Jihadists? Did anyone approach me and I kept quiet about it? They’re in my computer. They ask about college. Did I attend certain meetings at Princeton? Was there something I didn’t say when I was vetted for the job?”

  “Was there?” Izabel asked coldly.

  “No.”

  “Nothing like sympathy from your own side,” Eddie said.

  First impression, he was candid. And burdened, fast aging; the thick brushed hair tinged with gray at the tips, the crow’s feet by the brown eyes deepening. He mentioned that he was fifth-generation government service with diplomat ancestors going back to the Spanish-American War. If his career ended, so would that chain of proud family history.

  Utley said, “I would have been one of the people you’d have briefed had you come to Washington. So I figured I’d come to you. Maybe you saw something in Brazil, something that may help.”

  “Have a Danish,” Eddie said. “There’s cheese and blueberry. You look like you could use some energy. Then let’s go over Tol-e-Khomri again. And see your pictures.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”

  His career is over by way of association. He’ll always be the point man for the worst attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, unless he figures out how to help. His name will be synonymous with destruction.

  I said, “The pictures, Kyle.”

  “Dr. Nakamura, you’re sure that when you were on the island, no one mentioned Tol-e-Khomri?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Utley looked at the closed file, reluctant to open it even though he’d come with it, and he glanced meaningfully at Izabel. “Need to know, Colonel Rush. You and Major Nakamura have the clearance to see this. But Captain Santo is, er, not in that category.”

  He turned to Izabel, expecting her to leave, and she shook her head. Utley turned to me, waiting for me to order her to go. I shook my head also. She wouldn’t have gone anyway. Eddie explained to him, “Look, she stays. If it weren’t for her, Joe and I would be dead. And you’d know nothing about Brazil. You came this far. You’ve already said more than you should. So don’t be stupid. Technically, we’re ordered to cooperate with her. Any fallout is on us.”

  Utley sighed, visibly weighing infractions. But in the end he had come too far to stop now. He opened the file. The lesser of two bad choices. I saw with surging interest that the top shot was an aerial. From a drone, reconnaissance plane, or satellite.

  Kyle said, “Like I said, it’s the name of a Syrian village, but also the name of a refugee camp in southern Turkey, where the people from that village showed up.”

  I was eyeing a tent city, a sprawling mass of quickly thrown-up tents, lean-tos, shacks, and latrines, miles in diameter. Troops patrolled outside a fence. Smoke—choking cooking-fire smoke—made it harder to see details. A convoy of dump trucks snaked in through a front gate, past sandbags, packed with human cargo. I saw tethered goats. I saw a line of women with buckets for water on their heads. I saw a water truck and Red Cross and Red Crescent tents. Thousands of displaced people, desperate ones, were there.

  “People fleeing fighting to the south. People trying to get to Europe. More coming every day,” Kyle said.

  Next shot, this time a close-up, more trucks, except the passengers were exclusively men or boys.

  “They’re not all so innocent,” Kyle said. “Some pretty bad guys are mixed in there, too. They came to disrupt.”

  I saw more photos. Life in the camp. A ditch into where men and boys urinated. A shower facility marked in Arabic, WOMEN. Except a lot more women lined up outside than the facility could hold. Refugees standing four deep, a quarter mile back, waiting to eat, or lying listlessly in sleeping bags beneath lean-tos. The sense of building pressure coming from the photos. The sense that two-dimensional images could not hold all the need. I saw angry people, massed, yelling at the soldiers. Fists raised. Signs waving. Hate. Let us out! Feed us! Let us leave this place!

  “The jihadists pushed it, encouraged it,” Utley said.

  Watching the inevitable progression to outburst was like sitting in a silent movie, as it rolled out frame by frame. I saw the first AK-47. It must have been smuggled into the camp by the jihadists. I saw a Turkish soldier on the ground, screaming in pain. A tent was on fire. A Humvee was smoking. A section of fence was trampled. Women threw rocks and bottles at retreating troops.

  “They took over the camp for some hours,” Kyle said. “When the troops came back it got pretty bloody.”

  In my hand, people were now running away from the fence. I saw clumps of earth bursting upward, and a body in the air, its limbs folded at impossible angles. The face seemed detached from the shoulders, as if it had materialized from dust. Another face rushed toward the satellite eye so swiftly that the cheek muscles were pulled back as if by g-force, as if the man was an astronaut. Concrete blocks flew in the air, light as Lego pieces.

  “Jesus Cristo,” Izabel Santo said.

  The riot and aftermath unfolded, and life became death, structure disintegrated, tent fabric became cinders, geometry disassembled into atoms of blood. The soldiers were inside the camp again. The settling dust revealed overturned cooking pots and burned Humvees and the truncated base of what had been a Quonset hut a few hours before. I saw a field of untouched beans, and a small boy, naked, screaming, urinating without realizing it, beside a shredded, smoking cotton chair that lay sideways as if it had fallen to earth from outer space.

  I saw bodies, wrapped in blankets, in a row.

  “Dr. Nakamura, Dr. Rush, you’re sure that no one mentioned this place when you were in Brazil?” Kyle asked.

  “Sorry,” said Eddie.

  Utley’s sigh conveyed lost hope. He’d known before boarding the train that his quest for answers was long odds. His hands seemed to move by themselves, turning over more photos. In the next one light was grayer; either clouds had rolled in or time had passed, dusk approached.

  Utley said, “During the period when the troops evacuated, these next images occurred.”

  More vehicles arrived; a couple of Land Rovers and a Ford Escape. Running toward the wreckage, jihadists left vehicle doors open. One fighter was down on a knee, the body of a woman bent backward over it as he cradled her in his arms. Her right leg, poking from a singed chador, looked obscenely bare. The man’s stricken eyes were upturned as if he knew a drone was there. He cursed God, drones, cameras. His scarf had fallen off. His face was white, his beard dark; the shaking fist pantomimed rage or retribution.

  The photo quality was so good that I saw tears streaming. Next shot, the face was closer; it lurched toward me by sidestepping time. The countenance was weathered, in a place where heat and sun suck away human juice. I saw squint lines at the eyes; sunburn and goggle marks disappeared into beard; teeth that were cared for. The close-up was so good that I saw a small gap between the front top incisor and the tooth to its left. Just a bit of extra space.

  Kyle said, “We believe this man may be an American.”

  Eddie looked up sharply.

  Utley nodded. “There are more Westerners there than we care to admit. The dumber ones, low IQ, failures at work, are easy to track through the Web . . . we have a list. But smarter ones stay away from t
he Net now. Some have been recruited; others find their way to a certain village in Turkey, a certain inn in Pakistan. They surrender their passports. The more sophisticated groups have started keeping those U.S. or European passports active. They hope to send the owners back home after training. These traitors are told to tell their families back home they’re in the Peace Corps. Or backpacking. Believe me, the disinformation is top quality. Postcards sent to families from vacation spots. Phone calls home. Dad and Mom think little Bobby is on a beach in Thailand, because he says so. His passport has a stamp to prove it. But he’s in Jakarta. He’s in Brazil. Colonel, the bad guys are wising up.”

  Eddie nodded, seeing it. “Why waste a fighter on the battlefield when you can slip him home, do far worse damage, and get lots of PR, all over the world?”

  Kyle Utley looked miserable. “One rumor is they’re being coached by an American who knows D.C., how it works.”

  “Rumor or fact?” said Izabel.

  “That’s the problem, trying to understand, isn’t it?”

  “This guy in the photo is one of these people?” I asked. “He’s the one who approached you?”

  “I wish I knew,” admitted Kyle. “All I know is, the man who threatened me mentioned this place. He was American, I think. See the tooth, in front? The gap?”

  “It’s the same guy?”

  “I said I’m not sure. Maybe I just want it to be. My boss says it’s wishful thinking,” Utley sighed. “And my guy looked different, except for the tooth. He had an Army tattoo. This man doesn’t.” Utley picked up a Danish, stared at it as if he didn’t know what it was, and put it down. He said, weakly, “I hoped you might help somehow.”

  “Why not make the photo public? Say he’s a person of interest? Have you seen this man? If he’s here, like you say, back from there, someone might recognize him.”

  Utley shook his head and his lips tightened. I could see what he’d look like when he reached age sixty. “The FBI won’t do it. They’ve listed hundreds of people as persons of interest. Their tip lines are overflowing. They’re getting three thousand calls and e-mails a day. ‘It’s my neighbor.’ ‘It’s the guy from the 7-Eleven.’ ‘It’s the Pakistani student in the dorm.’ So if there’s no hard reason to add more names, they don’t. Besides,” he said, in a lower voice, glancing at Izabel, in for a penny, in for a pound, “Americans are involved in defense at the camp, so it’s touchy. If these shots got out, they’d be worth ten thousand new jihad recruits. Congressional hearings. Who failed? Who screwed up? Careers down the drain.”

  He was right about the secrecy. I’d done things myself, things you get medals for, but the kind of medals that—after they are pinned on you—are removed, boxed up, and locked away in a safe. We want our heroes to relieve us of moral choices. They take credit. We get to feel good.

  Utley started to say something else but caught himself. It was the first time he’d done that. So he has secrets, too. He said, subject changing, “I should never have walked out of that bar. I should have just finished my burger.”

  “Thanks for your time,” I said, standing, extending my hand to shake, letting him know he was to leave now.

  Utley looked startled, Eddie surprised, as he had not caught Utley’s lie. But as far as I was concerned, Utley was here to share, and if he was going to conceal things I had no use for him. Eddie thought I was treating the man harshly. But Izabel Santo smiled at the corner of her mouth.

  “Up until this minute you played it straight,” I told Utley. “I appreciate that. Whatever else you’re sitting on, I’m sure you have a good reason. Good luck.”

  “We can talk about other things.”

  “No, sir. I don’t believe we can.”

  Utley blew out air. He saw that our meeting was over unless he revealed what he did not want to say. But he did not stand up. He wants to tell us. He looked at the floor, thinking, and it was Eddie who picked up on what Utley wanted us to do.

  Eddie asked him, softly, “Something else happened in that camp that we need to know?”

  Utley did not respond at first. Then, slowly, a faint head shake. It was okay to tell us what had not happened. This was an old D.C. game, and I knew how to play it. I never told you this. This didn’t come from me. Technically, I never told you a thing.

  I guessed, “You left out something the man said. Something important.”

  Utley rose and went to the window. He looked down at Broadway. He said, “People are starting to walk around out there again. It’s funny how fast things can go back to normal.”

  So he’ll shake his head when we’re wrong, and talk about bullshit when we’re right. Just like he probably does with journalists, to confirm or deny a story.

  “The man ID’d the group he works for,” Eddie guessed.

  Utley shook his head, just a bit.

  “The FBI has a lead you’re not telling us,” said Izabel, getting into the spirit of things.

  No.

  “The administration is doing something else that you’re not revealing,” I tried.

  Utley kept staring down at Broadway. He remarked, “Are the sandwiches in that deli across the street good?”

  Silence. So the White House has some other strategy. But what?

  “Navy Seals raid?”

  No.

  “Rangers? Secret mission?”

  No.

  “Well, it can’t be negotiations,” I said.

  Kyle Utley turned away from the window and gathered up the sweater he’d left by the chair, and all the photos. I reached out and took from his hand the close-up of the blond man’s face. The rage so profound that an eight-by-ten space could not contain it.

  But Kyle had not shaken his head. Negotiations?

  “I need that photo back please, Colonel Rush.”

  “You showed it to us, so why not give it?”

  “It’s not for distribution.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Do you know what happens to me if they find out I gave this to you?”

  “The same thing that will happen if they find out what you told us. It’s not like your career is going anywhere anyway just now.”

  Wordlessly, we both turned to Eddie, who nodded. Then we regarded Izabel, who hesitated, frowned, and nodded, too, in agreement. The photo—this meeting—stays secret.

  “Keep it,” Utley said. “Technically, I’m not even supposed to have these photos. I had to work to get them.”

  “I still do not understand something,” said Izabel. “You told us you have no idea who threatened you. So how can anyone be negotiating with them?”

  Utley headed for the door. He’d taken this as far as he could.

  I said to his back, reasoning out loud, “We’re threatened with an attack, unless we give them something. And then we’re ‘negotiating.’ So this must mean . . .”

  I cut myself off as I saw it. The cold sensation started in my chest and spread outward into my throat.

  “We’re giving them what they demanded?”

  Kyle Utley sagged. And turned. This time the head shake was almost imperceptible. It was like he was fighting off five generations of secret-keeping DNA, and the best he could manage, if he used all his willpower, was a two-millimeter movement of his skull. Why couldn’t the guy just say it?

  “They are close to giving in,” Izabel guessed.

  Kyle Utley blew out air. “I think so. They’re panicked. I think if there is one more attack, they’ll give them what they want.”

  I heard his light footfalls fading on the creaky floors of the old building. I heard the ding of the elevator arriving, and the ding of the doors closing again. Eddie was standing now, Izabel Santo frowning.

  “Now what do we do, Joe?”

  I eyed the jihadist’s photo. I had no idea if it was relevant. I named a general I knew at the Pentagon, a top analyst at t
he CIA, a crackerjack woman tech genius I’d worked with at Defense Intelligence, a facial software guru in the bowels of Customs Enforcement. Each of them would have access to different lists, names, codes, and priorities. Each owed me a favor. All were, in my opinion, long-term reliable. And despite recent rules designed to coordinate the efforts of intelligence agencies, only a fool would rely on a single route to find something out.

  “You know damn well what I’m going to do,” I said.

  “We promised not to share it,” said Eddie.

  “And he said Washington is about to give in. Dos, we’re an autonomous unit. The President himself ordered us involved. Utley said no one in D.C. takes him seriously. If we don’t consider avenues that others ignore, who will?”

  “And Utley?”

  “I like him.” Meaning, I hope he survives this all. But I hoped the nation got through it, more than any one of us.

  Eddie said, “Something bad is coming and I know it. No one’s taken claim for this. No one’s been caught. There’s no way they just sank into the woodwork. I keep remembering that laboratory. Every day I’m thinking, When will it come?”

  Izabel said, “Let us get to work.”

  • • •

  We spent all day into early evening on the photo, and by nine that night had run into all dead ends. Facial software came up empty. No match at Customs, at CIA, or at Army Intelligence. Nobody I spoke to knew anything about a refugee camp or Syrian village called Tol-e-Khomri. The files on fifth-columnist Americans came up blank. I guessed that I’d hear from a furious or frantic Kyle Utley sometime tomorrow, when the blowback reached him. Too bad.

  “Well,” said Eddie at ten, as we sat around an Italian meal delivered from Carmine’s, huge platters of chicken, sausage, and calamari, “Kyle said it’s probably a dead end. I guess it is.”

  “What do we have tomorrow?” said Izabel Santo. I felt her foot touch my ankle under the table. My tiredness vanished. I felt a hard stirring in my groin. My body needed food, and sleep, and it needed Izabel Santo. Anyone who thinks that sex is not sustenance is crazy. My fingertips were tingling. I allowed myself to feel the anticipation because I knew there was no romance in it, no love, promise, or future, just animal need. It was like gravity. We were two planets in close orbit. We were about to crash and burn each other up.