by Gordon Kent
IVI.
Suter was coming out of a meeting when he heard about Peretz. Somebody—he didn’t remember who it was afterward, he was so stunned—caught him literally in the doorway and, squeezing past, said the sort of thing you say. Remember the Bureau guy who was here in the summer? Well, did you hear about him? Then telling the details of the beating with relish. “They don’t think he’ll live, according to the Post.”
He understood then what Shreed had meant about ruthlessness. He hadn’t thought about violence, only about the sort of job ugliness that took place within the really quite civilized bounds of government offices—threats, pressure from above, maybe some hint to his security people that he was a risk and had been talking. But, Jesus, to have him beaten—so badly that he might not live?
He thought about it for a few minutes over coffee and decided it didn’t bother him, neither the brutality of the beating nor the responsibility, should he ever need to take it. In fact, something about it excited him, not visibly but far inside, way down where some people had what used to be called a conscience—wherever morality hibernated. Down there, some different beast twitched and moved, roused from sleep by a fascinating dream.
Suter was missing several degrees of what was thought of as “warmth,” including any sense of a common humanity. Nonetheless, brain death was something he feared, loathed; the idea of lying there in a vegetative state—and perhaps knowing it?—frightened him. Even at second hand, even when it was somebody he hardly knew, like Peretz, it stunned him.
That was what Shreed had meant by ruthlessness and taking responsibility.
He worried then about Rose, and what she knew or guessed.
Paradoxically, the beating of Peretz gave him his first moments of intimacy with her. She was miserable, and she came to him almost instinctively to talk about Peretz, about Peretz’s family. Suter relished her unhappiness. What she told him about the Peretzes—two daughters, one going through some kind of crisis of puberty, the mother apparently identifying too much with her—seemed like exotic fiction. What was real was Rose’s suffering. Her husband was away and he was taking Craik’s place.
Rose wept on Suter’s shoulder, telling him about it. He had an erection. He could see the way to bed.
Zaire.
By the third day after the ambush, they were getting close to a town called Yahuma, a tiny gathering of concrete huts south of the main refugee flow. The long rains had started, daily downpours that fell most of the afternoon, then seemed to rest overnight as clouds built up hugely again in the west. It was in the rain that they came to a road.
They saw it first down a long, deforested hillside, an orange stripe along an old valley floor. It was packed with people, moving north and west. They would have to cross it.
Alan had seen it first because he was in the lead. He brought them to a halt and led them back into the trees where the rain fell less fiercely.
“People on the road. More camped along the hillside. Lot of temporary crap and some overturned vehicles. No military.”
“I think we gotta just push across with as little fuss as possible,” Djalik said. He was taking the morphine now, was in pain, anxious to get to a pickup point.
“People on the road will remember two white men,” Harry said. “And the black guy with the eye.”
“Can’t be helped.” Alan shrugged. “We don’t know they’re behind us.”
“Fuck it, let’s go,” Djalik said, and he started down the hill into the rain. He gave a wave with his left arm, the bandage grimy and bloody and looking like a stump. They started across the open ground toward the road.
Alan realized that they had reached the point of fatigue where they were making mistakes. Djalik walked out into the open without a glance. Alan reached inside for some reserve, and didn’t find one. He stumbled after.
As they moved down the spine of the hill, some of the refugee flow continued, but groups and individuals, like rivulets from a main stream, began to separate and move off into the forest. A few people simply lay down or hid at the edge of the road. Alan and Harry and Djalik looked like soldiers—guns, no women or children.
They kept walking. Djalik was heading for a stalled vehicle that had got trapped in a water-filled hole up to the door-handles, a nun standing in the road in front of it. The vehicle was hopeless, they could tell that before they ever got to it. As they trudged closer, Alan saw that there were several nuns. Two were white. He would have crossed farther along, away from the vehicle, but Djalik was in front and boring straight on because he was in pain. Djalik looked as if he meant to slip past the woman, but she moved right in front of him and stood there, hands hugging her elbows, rain pouring down her face.
“Vous vous dépêchez pour tuer plus des noirs?” she said. In a hurry to kill more blacks? She was perhaps forty, rangy, strong-voiced; her French had an atrocious accent.
Harry, right behind Djalik, said, “We’re in a hurry to get off this road, Sister.”
“So that you can kill more,” she said. Her English had a Scots accent.
Djalik looked up the road. “We gotta keep moving,” he said.
“We’re Americans,” Harry said.
“Worse and worse. Who did what to your eye, then?” She was already reaching up to touch the bandage, peel it a little back. She stared. “You ought to be in hospital,” she said.
Harry laughed. “What hospital?”
“Have you got antibiotics, then?” she asked him.
“Some.”
“Give me some, for the love of God. These people have nothing. Some painkiller—please, God!”
Alan started to say that maybe they could give her a little, and Djalik barked, “Negative that!” Alan looked at Harry, who shook his head. “We need what we’ve got.”
The other white nun, older, less strident, reached for Djalik’s hand, and he pulled it away. “What did you do?” she said.
“Bullet.”
“Let me see—”
Djalik put the bloody hand behind him. “I’m not one of your Africans.” He looked at Alan. “For Christ’s sake, let’s get off this road!”
Alan was going through his first-aid kit, looking for medicines he could spare. He made a little handful of small compresses, merthiolate, a package of aspirin. He held it out to the first nun. “I can spare these—”
She must have seen the word aspirin on the label.
“Aspirin!” she cried. “You got the gall to offer me aspirin?” She struck the things from his hand and they fell in the muddy water. “Look at them,” she shouted. “Look at them!” She pointed up the road at the thousands of people. “You make this, and then offer me aspirin!”
Alan hurried after the others. Her voice followed him as he scrambled up the bank and into the trees. “This is Africa! This is Africa!” He heard the sound when he could no longer make out the words.
Washington, DC.
In a cubicle inside the Naval Investigative Service headquarters, a female analyst disposed of a tasking order, took a quick break for the restroom and a bottle of water, and sat again at her console. Quickly looking down the cover sheet of a new order, she began to enter data. It was a little more interesting than others she had dealt with that day; it had a gamelike quality that intrigued her. Lately, she dealt with deserters’ files, and the tasks were no more interesting than adding new data to existing files. In this case, however, the search was for a name that might or might not be that of a deserter.
She skipped the redaction that had been done by somebody up the line and went to the originator’s request at the back of the hard-copy file. Here, rather than the search terms prescribed by the faceless person above her, was a cafeteria of suggestions, hunches, and outright questions: Name or nickname “Z” or “Zulu;” please search for names beginning Zul or something like that. Not African-American. May have been born or raised Chicago area. May have had a Bears ashtray. May have left Marine Corps at time of Yugoslavia breakup—1990 or 1991. Now mid-30s—may
have re-upped at least once. Check for disciplinary action re hate-group activity or membership, esp. anti-Muslim, including African-American Muslim. Maybe left Corps if ordered to Kuwait (Islamic country). Appears to have good leadership and military skills; may have been senior enlisted or officer.
She looked for the initiating agent and saw that it was Mike Dukas. Barb had worked for him once, and was ready to go the extra mile for him, because he was one of the rare agents who seemed to know that people like her existed.
She began to run searches using the prescribed search terms—last name beginning with Z; birth date 1958–1964; service period 1978–1992. As usual, too many people matched. A surprising number of ex-marines had names beginning with Z. What didn’t come up, however, was somebody who had deserted in 1990–91, was an E-4 or higher, and came from the upper Midwest.
She tried Z, Chicago. Nothing. Same for Z, Detroit, and Z, Cleveland. Was Cleveland even in the upper Midwest? She went to the web, logged on a map page, and looked at the Midwestern states. Made a list of cities. Logged off, tried them. Nada.
Zul. Names starting with Zul. This merely limited what she already had (names beginning with Z) but didn’t help noticeably—eighteen Zul-’s had left the Corps c. 1988–1992 and were more or less the right age.
So she tried first names beginning with Z.
From Chicago.
From Detroit. And got: Panic, Zoltan, b. 1961, enlisted Detroit, MI, 1980; to E4, 1983; E6 1986; reduced to E3, 1987, fighting and distribution of racial materials on federal property. To E4, 1988. AWOL 1990, Naples, Italy, en route Saudi Arabia; declared deserter, 1990. See File P805937DE for sightings and possible contacts.
She went on searching, and she compiled a list of a hundred and thirteen possibles, with nineteen likelies, but for her money Zoltan Panic was the man. She attached a little yellow sticky to the packet with her reasons. Then, because it was Dukas, she picked up the phone to call the field office in Detroit.
Zaire.
They pressed on after they crossed the road. It was one of their best days for mileage; Harry could walk pretty well now, and Djalik, although having trouble with his knees, still seemed strong. Alan had to be the scout, now. He was the only one near fit.
The next day, they came to the first of the airfields that had been marked on the map.
It was covered with refugees. There were Luo from the lakes, and Hutus from Rwanda, and even Banye Melenge families, Tutsis caught on the wrong side of the war by affiliation or bad luck. There were people from Kisangani and further east. There were Katangan shopkeepers. Every one of Zaire’s forty tribal identities could be found on the long, dirt strip.
Staring eyes. The hollow look. Vacancy. “Refugee” is what people are called when everything has been taken from them; family, homes, work, love. Perhaps so little humanity is left that it becomes easier to kill them, rape them, or ignore them. In time, if not shot or raped, starved, or beaten to death, they recover something and return to life. None of the adults on the former missionary field at Djolugana had reached that stage yet. They were corpses that breathed. Only the sound of children, laughing, crying, hungry, hurt, or curious, showed that any life remained. The children always recover first.
The missionaries, of course, were long gone.
The refugees lay where they had come to a stop, all over the field and in the tiny hangar. The smell of shit was everywhere. The feeling of fear was everywhere. Soldiers had carried a girl away last night. No one knew who they were or where they had come from. Events had narrowed to these defenseless people. Anyone with a gun would harm them. Fear, and despair, ruled absolutely.
The faces of the people on the field were far worse than Alan’s first glimpse of Harry back at the hangar. They would never leave him. He couldn’t drag his eyes away, couldn’t keep himself from looking, but he didn’t even stop walking. He couldn’t ask anybody to bring a plane in here, and it would be mobbed before it stopped rolling if he did. Djalik, however, looked uncertain.
They slung their rifles across their backs and started looking for another track going west.
Washington.
Rose had been in Houston when the call came about Abe Peretz. Bea had called late at night, at first calm and then hysterical. For Rose, it was an almost distant pain, muffled as if it came through some thick wall. She had enough of her own—the lost baby, still a horror; Alan at sea; the tension of the job. Now, her friend’s grief was almost alien.
“How is he?”
“How is he? He’s almost dead, for Christ’s sake!” Bea started to cry. “I didn’t mean to shout at you. Rose, I’m losing my mind. What will I do without Abe, Rose?”
“But he’s alive, Bea—he’ll be okay—”
“He won’t! He’s dying. They won’t tell me, but I know he’s dying. I’ve seen him. Like a little old man. What’ll I do, what’ll I do—?”
This was a new Bea. Rose knew noisy Bea and aggressive Bea and abrasive Bea pretty well, but she had never understood how heavily those Beas leaned on Abe. She flew home next day, telephoned at once, and got the pretty daughter who had been in Israel and had gone on the pill at fourteen (and then off because “Sex sucks”). Bea was at Holy Cross hospital. Abe was in surgery.
“On his head,” the girl said. She sounded calm, more mature than her mother. “He has a hematoma. Pressure on his brain. I told my mom it would be okay because if they have to go into your head, this is the most common surgery they do, but she’s a basket case.”
“Want me to go sit with her?”
“I think that would be a good thing to do.”
Hospitals at night are foreign places, deserted except for those swept there by crisis. Rose felt the alienation again, hearing her heels ring against the walls of the empty corridor. In three days, she was supposed to join the Philadelphia in Naples. Now, Bea’s suffering threatened to pull her away from that anodyne, to sensitize her, as if the howl of one woman would rouse another. Rose didn’t want to weep and shout about woe. She wanted to lose herself in work.
The two women embraced. They were alone in a waiting room big enough for thirty people. The magazines—sports, gossip, homemaking—were useless. Bea sat upright as if she must be alert for some message.
At two in the morning, a nurse murmured Bea’s name and they moved out into the corridor. A doctor was coming slowly toward them, head and shoulders bowed with fatigue. And defeat, Rose thought. She began to pray, returning to the Catholic girl she had been.
The doctor came close. He was young-looking and dark, unhandsome. He took Bea’s hand.
“Piece of cake,” he said sadly. He sounded on the verge of exhaustion. “He’s a strong guy. He’ll need four months to recover, so don’t expect a lot of jumping around for a while.”
“He’s going to be—okay?”
“Oh, sure. Maybe hearing loss in the right ear; the drum was ripped, that sensitive area around the anvil was crushed, but—hey, he’s got two ears. No paralysis. I’m gonna keep him here a couple weeks, though. He got good insurance? I don’t wanna be second-guessed because of cost, but sometimes hospital care—”
“We’ll pay—anything!” Bea began to babble. The doctor, looking sadder and more hopeless than ever, patted her hand and told her there was nothing to worry about.
It should have been Bea’s role to be paranoid and suggest that Abe’s beating had some connection to his investigation of IVI. Bea, however, was too relieved, too exhausted, and she somersaulted and became too happy. It was Rose, driving out to Maryland next day, who found herself thinking, Who mugs a jogger? Joggers don’t have anything to steal, and then thinking quixotically of the last phone call she had had from Abe, and Suter’s angry tone when she had relayed Abe’s concerns.
She wished she could call Alan. He would know. But he was busy on the boat. Maybe she could e-mail Dukas.
As she drove, Rose thought about what Alan and Dukas might say. They had the habit of intelligence, a kind of heightened awareness that was, f
rom a different point of view, skepticism, even cynicism. She had the habit of execution, doing what was asked in the best way possible. They asked questions; she avoided questions.
In two days, she would be starting the last phase before the Peacemaker launch. She had already sent the dog to the kennel. She had meant to be stripped for action, lean and mean, no entangling alliances.
Now this.
Ray Suter’s face kept popping up between her and the road. She had actually wept on his shoulder.
Now—
Now she wanted to ask some questions.
At sea, the flag deck of the Jackson.
Parsills walked into flag comm, where a female jg from one of the squadrons was doing the morning briefing. That she was pretty hardly registered on him. There was just too much to do. She was winding up, pointing at a view-graph, making some point she’d already made, and the moment she was done Admiral Pilchard thanked her and turned toward his chief of staff.
“No go on the pickup at our first possible site, sir.” The admiral looked a question at him: why? Parsills went on: “I quote Craik directly, quote, ‘I’m ankle-deep in shit and there are people dropping more all around me as I’m talking. There are about ten thousand people in the pickup area.’ Unquote.”
The admiral nodded. “Keep trying,” he said and turned to other matters.
Detroit, Michigan.
Naval Investigative Service agent Marvin Burke had never met Mike Dukas, but the analyst in DC had and said Dukas was a good guy. So Burke had put Dukas’s request on the top of his case file and had used it as a reason to get out of the office. It was an unseasonal day, almost springlike, and even the grungy old streets out near the St Clair Flats looked good to him. Here were block after block of little houses on little lots, with here and there an old car in the yard or an unkempt lawn, but most of them painfully tidy, with a lot of statues of the Virgin, some in upended bathtubs, some by miniature grottoes of concrete and lake stones. He saw window boxes with plastic geraniums, homemade wooden cutouts of fat ladies bent over from behind and of little boys with their pants down. He saw a few signs that said Get us out of the United Nations! and Neighborhood Watch and Drug Free Zone. He knew without looking at the people that this was a white neighborhood; he knew that it was heavily Slavic, a lot of the residents retirees or nearly so who had come here in 1956. He knew that people here had used to send their kids straight into the Ford plant, lifetime employment assured, and now that was over and the kids fled as soon as they could and got jobs in other cities, lived in suburbs, laughed when they heard Detroit called the Renaissance City.