The Truth Itself

by James Rayburn

  “It’s your house.”

  He shook out a cigarette and lit it with a disposable plastic lighter. “I kicked these too.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I only smoke when I’m nervous.”

  “Relax, we’ll be out of your hair soon. You can get back to your busy schedule.”

  He laughed smoke and then he sat back and stared at her. “What do you want, exactly? From me?”

  “I want my daughter to grow up in America. I want to live there without threat.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not possible.”

  “It must be.”

  “And for some reason you think I can do this? Why?”

  “Philip made all us young wannabes study your methods. You were like some guru who’d wandered off to live in a cave. A legend.”

  He exhaled at the ceiling. “That’s me. The drunken master.”

  “You were, and I’m quoting Mrs. Danvers here, ‘able to conjure connections, opportunities and unexpected victories out of the ether.’”

  “Yeah, I was a regular fucking magician, wasn’t I?”

  “I thought so.”

  “Then I made twenty-two hostages disappear. Poof. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “That wasn’t your fault.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “But it happened on my watch.”

  “Look, let’s not sit here and rehash our old sins.”

  “No, let’s not.” He drank the Coke, but his eyes lingered like a lecher’s on the whiskey bottle. He turned to Kate. “This is rough on your kid.”

  “Yes. She’s been through hell.”

  “Yeah. Well. What you chose to do . . .”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “We always have choices, Kate. You knew what would happen if you did what you did.”

  “What would you have done?”

  “I’m too much of a coward to have taken the stand you did.”

  She rose. “We’ll go in the morning.”

  He shrugged and stared at the bottle, smoking. “Okay,” he said, shrugging again.

  She’d gone into the bedroom, intending to sit vigil, but she’d slept and now it was dawn and she needed to pee.

  Kate went out and Hook was standing in the doorway of the front room, wearing only frayed old khaki shorts, watching the first sun paint itself across the cliffs.

  He nodded. She said nothing, crossed to the bathroom and emptied her bladder and brushed her teeth and ran her fingers through her hair.

  When she went back into the room he was standing by the old TV. The Cutty Sark was balanced on its top. Unopened.

  “There’s something I want you to see,” he said, clicking on the local news.

  She saw people yakking in Thai, like chickens clucking, and then scenes of an air disaster in the jungle.

  “It crashed shortly after takeoff last night. Killing everyone aboard. We’re talking blown to pieces here.”

  “So?”

  “What if you and Suzie were on board?”

  She stared at him. “But we weren’t.”

  He shrugged. “Who’s to say?”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No,” he said. “I have an idea.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You want a shot at wiping the slate clean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s kill you. And, just maybe, sometime later we can bring you back to life.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Riding on the back of the dirt bike, holding onto Suzie who was squeezed between her and Harry Hook, Kate’s head was still spinning at the sheer audacity of his plan and the conviction with which he had sold it.

  Long after Hook’s departure from their shadowy unit the almost metaphysical ability he’d possessed—once he’d believed, really believed, in what he was peddling—to beguile his asset, his colleague, his reluctant superior, his murderous enemy or (god only knew) some woman in a cocktail bar he was intent on seducing, had been the stuff of myth.

  Philip Danvers himself had attested that there’d been no escape when Harry had turned it on.

  And an hour ago, in the gray light of his seedy front room, Kate had become a convert when Hook had sold her his idea with a zeal that had been irresistible.

  He’d sketched how it would work, what was expected of her and what she would have to sacrifice. His word: sacrifice.

  Hook had made his pitch with an almost Biblical fervor, and Kate had seen that if he hadn’t been drawn to the godless orthodoxies of espionage, how easily he could have become some kind of New Age huckster, or—with a spit and a polish—a smoothly grinning proselytizer of the rampant free market, selling futures or pork bellies or Ponzi schemes to suckers who couldn’t part with their money fast enough.

  Part grifter, part charlatan, part messiah.

  His plan was mad. Wild. A bravura mix of tragic truth (the plane crash) and inspired fiction, and he, somehow, had conjured it before her very eyes and made her a believer.

  Now they rode through the near-deserted early morning streets of the beach town, ready to put it into action.

  Hook swung the bike up a side road, past some ramshackle wooden houses and a stagnant pond, the surface thick with green scum. A rundown resort and a derelict apartment building, stained and peeling and surrendering to the jungle, smeared by as Hook bumped the bike up a track carved into the bush, the rear wheel spinning on gravel and threatening to lose its traction. Kate grabbed onto Suzie, sure they were all going end up in a bloody heap on the road, but Hook, kicking at the gear shifter with his flip-flop like a demented flamenco dancer, had them out of trouble and roaring on up to a small brick house that seemed ready to be consumed by the undergrowth.

  A pair of old scooters stood out front, one with a flat tire. A chicken pecked at the dirt and fled at their noisy arrival. An aged dog, surely blind and deaf, scratched at its molting coat and ignored them.

  Hook brought the bike to a halt and deployed the kickstand. He lifted Suzie off and dumped her on the sand.

  She was smiling and Hook grinned back at her, then he looked at Kate and the smile faded. “Are you ready for this?”

  “Yes,” Kate said. “I’m ready.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. Let’s do it.”

  Hook went to the front door and pounded on it and carried on pounding until somebody coughed and cursed within.

  “Lars. Lars. It’s Harry.”

  More pounding and finally the door was flung open to reveal an ancient, emaciated man dressed only in tidy whities, his sagging skin hanging like saddlebags from his scrawny body.

  “Good god, Harry, what is it?” he said in accented English.

  “There’s an emergency,” Hook said.

  “Is one of them hurt?” Lars squinted at Kate and Suzie.

  “No, but the woman needs surgery.”

  The old man said, “Come back at ten,” and started to close the door.

  Hook leaned on the door and dug in the pocket of his shorts and came out with a fistful of banknotes.

  Lars sighed and flapped a hand, waving them inside.

  - - -

  From where he stood in the doorway of the bedroom Hook couldn’t see Kate Swift’s face, just the swell of her body under the sheet as she lay anesthetized, right arm white as milk on top of the cover, a drip disappearing into a yellow bruise below the elbow.

  The rancid old Dane, Lars Johansen, scuttled into view, wearing a none-too-clean T-shirt and shorts under a green plastic bib. He waved a palsied hand.

  “Come, Harry. Help me now.”

  Hook, hands sweating in surgical gloves, closed the door and stepped into the room, which, despite the rattling air conditioner that dripped water onto the tiled floor, was feverishly hot.

  Kate’s eyes were half-open, scummy, seeing nothing.

  She lay on a makeshift operating table: a door resting on two wooden trestles. Johansen lifted her left hand and placed it ins
ide a chrome kidney bowl.

  “I need you to secure the hand, please.” Hook hesitated. “Now, Harry. Now.”

  Johansen—an esteemed surgeon in his native Denmark years ago, until a family tragedy and the subsequent plunge into alcoholism had his license yanked and sent him seeking refuge out here in the tropics—was usually assisted in these off-the-book procedures (abortions, digging bullets out of drug dealers, stitching up foreigners whose dubious legality made it impossible for them to enter the Thai medical system) by the local woman who lived with him, a crone as wrinkled and silent as one of the limestone cliffs that ringed the town.

  The woman was away, where and for how long Hook did not know, so it fell to him to aid the Danish drunk in the amputation.

  He felt panic now that what he had scripted was about to become reality, and he was overwhelmed by the moment: he heard the drip of the air conditioner, the babble of the cartoons the child was watching in the other room, the call of a bird out in the jungle, and saw sweat fall from beneath the mask of the Danish alcoholic and land on the blade of the scalpel that he held in his shaking hand.

  The pre-operative consultation had been mercifully short. Once Hook had explained their requirements the decrepit man had turned to Kate and said, “You want this?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’ll save her life,” Hook had said.

  “Ah, if Harry Henderson says it is so then I must believe it,” Johansen had said. “It is a good thing I am no longer bound by the Hippocratic Oath.”

  Kate had taken the child into a corner for a whispered consultation, and the girl had nodded and sat down in front of the tube, hugging her knees, eyes on the cartoons but shooting worried glances at the room her mother had disappeared into.

  “Harry!” the Dane barked at him, bringing the scalpel closer to Kate’s small finger.

  Hook stepped forward and gripped Kate’s wrist with his left hand, using his right to separate her other fingers from the fifth digit.

  “We begin, yes?”

  “Yes,” Hook said.

  By some miracle, as soon as the blade of the scalpel touched Kate’s finger, Johansen’s tremors ceased and he set about paring the flesh, blood crimson and profuse spilling from the hand into the kidney bowl.

  Hook looked away, staring out the window, catching his reflection in the glass—hunched and soft-edged, like a melting snowman. An iridescent blue bird swept over the roof of the house and landed on the faded red satellite dish mounted outside the window. Hook imagined painting the scene, wondering if he’d ever be able to reproduce the almost electric hue of the bird’s plumage.

  An unpleasant cracking sound startled him from his reverie and Hook saw the aged man, a miasma of boozy sweat around him, grasping the bare bone that protruded from the Kate’s fifth knuckle in the jaws of an instrument that resembled a nut cracker—the name rongeur drifted to the surface of his memory although he had no idea how he knew this.

  The Dane grunted with the exertion and the cracking sound was followed by a sharp ping as the amputated finger landed on the chrome surface of the bowl.

  Johansen wielded a rasp, no different from one he would use on wood, and shaved away at the bone jutting from the nub, then he set about closing the wound with sutures.

  “Do you still need me?” Hook asked.

  The grizzled old man shook his head, bent over his work.

  Hook dug a ziplock bag from the pocket of his shorts and lifted the severed finger, dropping it into the container and sealing the top.

  Still wearing the surgical gloves he quit the room, tucking the bag in his pocket and removing the mask as he went through to the front room where the kid watched frenzied Thai cartoons.

  “Is Mommy okay?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “In a while.”

  He headed for the front door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “You stay there, kiddo, okay?”

  Hook closed the door and stood on the steps, breathing in the muggy air, then he walked down to his bike and retrieved the liter bottle of gasoline he had stowed under the saddle that morning. Carrying the bottle he went around the back of the house, where a forty gallon drum stood rusting.

  He took the ziplock from his pocket, shook the finger onto the drum and doused the upper end and the knuckle in gasoline. He kept the nail and fingertip clean.

  Taking a moment to compose himself, he found his lighter and applied the flame to the finger, watching it flare and blaze, the sweetish smell of burning human flesh in his nostrils.

  Using a twist of wire he turned the finger to make sure it was evenly singed—shoving away nauseating childhood memories of backyard barbecues—before he knocked the still-flaming digit the ground and stood on it, pressing it into the dirt, killing the flames.

  He kneeled down and touched the tip of one of the gloves to the amputated digit.

  It was cool enough for him to lift and inspect. The pinkie was blackened and filthy, but the fingerprint was intact.

  Satisfied with his efforts he dropped the finger into the ziplock bag and secured the top.

  As Hook stood and turned toward the house he saw the child standing at the kitchen window, watching him.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Benyamin Klein believed the heat was going to fell him, to send him to the tiled floor of the hotel room like a sacrifice to Moloch.

  The room was hot, yes, with no air-conditioning, just a ceiling fan that did nothing more than lazily stir the thick, humid air, but it was an inner heat that bedeviled him, that filled his mind with all that was forbidden.

  From the moment the plane from Jerusalem had touched down an hour ago and he and his colleagues had stepped out into the searing light, into the air thick with fragrance and stink and lust, he had not been able to free himself of thoughts that were carnal and forbidden.

  The small yellow-brown women walking around in skimpy dresses and shorts cut high enough to expose the cheeks of their backsides inflamed him, just as they had more than ten years ago.

  Sweating, Klein grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and chugged it down in one gulp, moisture patterning his beard. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and brought to his mind his wife Batsheva, her broad face framed by the heavy wig she wore over her shaven head.

  In the nearly forty years they had been married he had never seen her naked. Sex had been transacted in the dark, both of them wearing rolled up flannel nightgowns. There was no touching and it was over quickly and always left him with a sense of being unclean and ashamed.

  As they had aged, after their two children were born, so these furtive gropes had ceased altogether and Klein had settled into a life of study of the Torah.

  Until the tsunami over a decade ago.

  The carnage on that jungle island teeming with rotting dead—the monstrous stench, the sheer scale of it—had left Klein unhinged, and the night before he flew back to Israel, in a filthy hotel room, he had committed an unspeakable sin.

  Standing in this hotel room, in a very different town, Klein forced that memory away.

  God knew he had atoned. He had fasted and spent more than ten years in study and prayer to erase the stain of the sin from his soul.

  And pray he must now, for the strength to do his duty to the Israeli dead in the fallen airplane without succumbing to the darkness within himself.

  As he stared down at the teffelin—the two small black leather boxes containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah—that lay on the bed, he rolled up the left sleeve of his white shirt.

  He reached for the arm teffelin and placed the black box against his exposed biceps,adjusting it so it rested against his heart and recited the blessing “lehani'ach tefillin.”

  Then he fastened the strap, winding two coils over the leather box and making another seven coils around his forearm. The rest of th
e strap he wound around his palm.

  He took the head tefillin and placed it so that the box sat above his forehead, and the knot just above his neck. He unwound the strap from his palm in order to make three coils on the middle finger. The remainder of the strap he wound around his palm again and he intoned “Baruch Shem Kovod.”

  There was a knock at the door and he assumed it was one of his team, getting ready to move to the crash site.

  He unwound the tefillin and stowed them in his bag. He donned his black jacket and as he limped across the room he heard louder, more impatient knocking.

  When he opened the door he knew he would need more than prayer to save himself.

  - - -

  Harry Hook, the kid at his side, looked at the Haredi Jew and said, “Benyamin, it’s time to settle your debt.”

  The man stared at him, then down at the child, his face settling into an expression of infinite weariness.

  Klein had aged since their last meeting. His hair sparser and whiter, his long beard more gray than brown and his dark eyes were almost lost in a crosshatching of wrinkles. When he stepped back and retreated into the cruddy hotel room, his limp was more pronounced, his left foot dragging with an audible scuff.

  Hook ushered Suzie into the room and closed the door. Klein stood at the window, silhouetted against the glaring light, keeping his back to them as if he could wish them away. A TV set, nearly as old as Hook’s, was mounted on a bracket on the wall. He crossed to the dresser and thumbed the remote, hearing the crackle as the tube came to life, and when garish cartoon figures gamboled across the screen he turned the volume up loud, filling the room with shrill Thai.

  “You watch that, while I talk to this man, okay?” Hook said to Suzie.

  The kid nodded and sat on the bed, staring up at the TV, but shooting glances over her shoulder as Hook edged the Haredi back toward the door, putting as much distance between them and the girl as he could.

  When he’d last seen the Israeli Hook had still been operational, in Thailand on the tail of a group of Tamil Tigers who’d been based in Phuket, selling heroin to fund the purchase of weapons to wage their separatist war in Sri Lanka. Hook was undercover as an arms dealer, claiming to have access to a shitload of ordnance from the wars in the Gulf, his mission to develop one of the Tamils as an asset, the White House growing uneasy about their cozy relationship with North Korea.