The Truth Itself

by James Rayburn

  What he saw caused him to cough, a spray of water dappling the screen of the tablet and he dropped the bottle and ran out onto the balcony, searching the horizon for the Zodiac, seeing it, a tiny speck in the blue expanse of water.

  Stupidly, uselessly, he waved and shouted.

  Then he calmed himself and entered the front room and collected his cell phone from the floor beside the sofa and dialed JP’s number. He heard a warble from the balcony and went out and saw JP’s iPhone flashing on the bamboo table beneath the hammock, a white ceramic mug of cold, scummy coffee reflecting the blinking red light.

  FORTY-TWO

  Lucien Benway allowed himself a smug little smile as he sat in his office before his wall-mounted TV, channel surfing. As he flipped between the American and international news broadcasts, a delicious mosaic assembled before his eyes, each fragment (Amy Robach on Good Morning America: “Already dubbed Fingergate, this is set to rock the White House to its foundations”; Bret Baier on Fox: “This is an accusing finger pointing right into the face of the president”; a dour BBC anchor with marbles in his mouth: “Fingergate, a major embarrassment for an American president already battling a plummeting approval rating”) a justification of his lobbying of Congressman Antoine Mosley.

  When the White House press secretary appeared on the screen at a media briefing, looking harried and exhausted, saying, “At this moment we have no comment,” and stalked away from the podium, questions hurled at his retreating back like rocks, Benway laughed out loud, feeling better than he had in the two years since his fall.

  Then, as he landed on CNN’s New Day, and saw Chris Cuomo introduce some hulking, bearded nonentity as, “David Burke, the freelance journalist who broke the Fingergate story,” he sat forward in his chair, swallowing his laugh.

  Cuomo said, “Okay, let’s unpack this. We’ve got a finger—a finger that independent experts, based on fingerprint evidence, have confirmed belongs to Kate Swift—found at the crash site of AirStar Flight 2605 in southern Thailand. You contend that the administration is aware of this finger but has suppressed the information?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you get the finger?”

  “Chris, I can’t disclose my source.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “All I can say is that Kate Swift’s finger was given to me by a person highly placed in U.S. intelligence.”

  “Why? Why would they do that?”

  “In the belief that the American people deserve to know what this administration is hiding from them.”

  “And what is the administration hiding? Beyond the knowledge of this body part found in a crashed plane in Southeast Asia?”

  “I think the White House’s silence speaks of complicity.”

  “Let me ask you directly: are you saying that the America administration downed Flight 2605?”

  “Let’s remember what happened in 2013 when whistleblower Edward Snowden was stuck at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport,” Burke said.

  “How is that relevant?”

  “A memo was leaked in which a senior intelligence official advised the president that, in the event of Snowden’s escape from Moscow, he would be very confident taking down a private jet and only a little less confident taking down a commercial airliner.”

  “At the time that memo was rejected by the White House as being fabricated by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.”

  “They would say that. What’s especially relevant is that the memo was written by Lucien Benway.”

  “You’re talking about Lucien Benway the disgraced ex-CIA operative who was fired after Kate Swift blew the whistle on his extra-judicial activities?”

  And up came a photograph of Benway leaving a Senate hearing two years ago during what he had come to call the “weeks of infamy”, scowling, looking squat and toad-like, and all the fizz went out of the morning’s champagne.

  “Yes. Lucien Benway, one-time head of CIA Special Operations—tasked directly by the president to mount covert operations in foreign countries—until the nature of his activities were exposed by Kate Swift. I would like to hear Lucien Benway’s take on this. And I’d like to hear from the White House if it’s keeping silent because of its history with him.”

  Benway shut the TV down and sat a moment, aware that Morse had entered the room almost silently and stood near the door.

  “Who is this David Burke?” Benway asked.

  “Until a week ago he was a minor player at The Washington Post. He was fired for writing stories that were high on hysteria and low on facts.”

  “Well, he’s had a credibility transplant now.” Benway scratched his scalp, the thin hair making a whispering sound. “How does this bottom feeder end up with Kate Swift’s finger?”

  “The Plumber?”

  Benway shook his head. “No. He’s too strategic. He’d use an intermediary.”

  “Who, sir?”

  “I see the hand of Mrs. Danvers in this.”

  “What would his motive be?”

  “Revenge. The old sodomite’s nose is still out of joint because I unseated him. And he was always overly fond of Kate Swift.”

  “It’s causing the administration more damage than you, sir.”

  “Mnnn, perhaps. But there’s always blowback and I don’t relish another inquisition by the press.”

  “Do you want me to shut Burke’s mouth?”

  “What is this Morse? Open season on reporters?” The pale man stood stolidly, staring at a spot just above Benway’s head. “It’s a tempting notion, but no, that would only enhance his credibility. Look at the Emerson thing, how quickly his brothers in the media have sanctified him. Dig around, see what you can find out about Burke. Do it as quietly as you can.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When Morse had gone Benway left his office, locking the door after him, and wandered down to the kitchen to brew himself a pot of tea.

  Nadja sat at the kitchen table smoking, drinking coffee, watching the little TV set on the counter.

  “So, you’re back in the news,” she said as she stood and clicked off the TV. “Such an unflattering photograph, dear Lucien. You look like Truman Capote after a particularly torrid night at Studio 54.”

  Nadja gave him a dismissive rub on the head, in the manner of a dowager patting a lap dog, and walked up the stairs, her mocking laughter reaching Benway as he throttled an Oolong teabag, the leaves squashed onto his palm in a fecal smear.

  FORTY-THREE

  Kate waited with Suzie in the shade of a palm tree on the beach, their bags on the white sand at their feet, while JP bought tickets for the long-tail back to the mainland. Groups of tourists lined up at the boats that rocked at anchor, a stew of accents carried on the hot, still, air.

  “Where are we going?” Suzie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “Just away from here.”

  “Is JP coming with us?”

  “No,” Kate said, “he’s not.”

  “I like him.”

  “So do I.”

  “Then why doesn’t he come with us?”

  Kate could have said: because I want to get as far away from him as I can. For his own safety.

  But she just shrugged. “He can’t. He has to stay here.”

  “With Harry?”

  “Yes, with Harry.”

  “I like Harry, too.”

  Kate said nothing, pretending to search for the Frenchman.

  The child had tears in her eyes. “I don’t want to go. As soon as I meet people I like you take me away from them.”

  Kate hugged her. “Hey, baby. It’ll be okay. I promise.”

  She looked up to see JP, wearing board shorts and a torn T-shirt, but not his usual smile, walking toward them across the sand.

  He handed her the tickets. “Okay, you’re good to go.”

  “Thanks, JP.” She reached down and shouldered her backpack.

  As JP helped Suzie into her pack he said to Kate, “I would be ’appy to go with you.�
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  “No,” Kate said, taking Suzie’s hand.

  The girl stopped and looked up at her. “Why not? Why can’t he come?”

  “Jesus, Suzie, stop with all the questions, okay?”

  The child withdrew from her as if she’d been slapped and Kate kneeled down and tried to embrace her, but the girl stepped away and walked down toward the boats.

  “Shit,” Kate said and felt like crying herself.

  “Let me talk to her,” JP said and he went after Suzie.

  He put a hand on the child’s shoulder and said something that had her looking up at him, squinting at the hard sunlight, and then she smiled and so did he and when the boatmen called for the passengers to board, the Frenchman lifted Suzie onto his shoulders and walked her through the shallow water to the long-tail and set her down under the canopy, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

  Kate, wading toward the boat, stopped as JP turned and came abreast of her.

  “Good luck, Kate,” he said.

  “Thanks,” she said, “for everything.”

  But he was already walking away, back toward the beach.

  Kate dumped her pack in the long-tail and climbed the little ladder, feeling the boat rock beneath her, feeling a jolt of pain in her left hand when she forgot, for a moment, to nurse it.

  But the pain was good.

  It cleared her mind of everything that was frivolous and stupid.

  She had one job: to protect her child.

  Kate settled down beside Suzie and when the boatman fired the engine and turned the boat toward the open sea, a cockscomb fan of water spraying them, she didn’t look back.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Hook stood on the beach, watching as a black dot detached itself from the horizon and became the Zodiac lazily bumping its way back from the neighboring island.

  JP wasn't rushing and why should he?

  The situation was awkward and last night even the Frenchman, who’d never said a bad word to Hook, had given him a certain look before he’d faded out onto the balcony to sleep in his hammock.

  Maybe that debt, at least, was finally squared.

  It was about time.

  Years ago, when Hook had still been operational here in Thailand, he’d set up a sting to bring a Filipino scumbag with ties to Abu Sayyaf separatists into his sphere of influence, engineering a drug bust that would make the Pinoy—who’d funded his holy war by peddling cocaine and under-age girls to sex tourists—his asset. But JP, just eighteen and dumb enough to supplement his scuba diving income by selling weed for the Filipino, had been a minnow caught in the net and an overzealous local cop had wanted to ride the boy hard in a country that executed drug dealers.

  Hook had gained JP’s release by throwing the Filipino the way of the cop at the cost of his operation. Fuck it, the kid had deserved it.

  JP, although Hook had never told him the exact details, knew that Hook had saved him and had sworn eternal fealty.

  Hook hadn’t needed him for much more than friendship over the years. Not until this. Not until he’d known that Kate and her daughter would’ve been too visible on their own; but a couple and a kid, well they would be just another trio of holiday makers, making happy on the balmy shores of Thailand.

  Hook, sunburned and sweating, splashed his way out to the Zodiac as it neared the shore, JP cutting the engine, letting the inflatable coast in.

  “Where are they?” Hook asked.

  “They’ve gone.”

  “They’re on the boat?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I saw them leave.”

  Hook hauled himself into the Zodiac that took water from his weight.

  “Go after them.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “She doesn’t want to see you, ’Arry.”

  “Believe me she’ll want to see me now.”

  The Frenchman just stared at him and made no move to fire the engine.

  “Come on, JP. Let’s go, man.”

  “I don’t know, ’Arry.”

  “Jesus, JP, have I ever fuckin lied to you?” Hook waved this away when he saw the Frenchman’s face. “Okay, but I made good didn’t I? Afterwards? I save your ass?”

  “Only after you dropped me in the shit.”

  So he did know, after all.

  No time to get into that now.

  Hook mopped his sweating brow on the sleeve of his shirt. “Listen, JP, the situation has changed. Kate and Suzie need to stay under the radar. Just take me to them. Please.”

  The Frenchman shook his head, his sun bronzed curls bouncing, but he yanked the outboard to life and took off, charting a course toward the open sea.

  “I don’t know if we will catch them, ’Arry,” he said. “The long-tail left a while ago.”

  “Was it full?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’ll be slow. We’ll head it off,” Hook said with a confidence he didn’t feel.

  FORTY-FIVE

  As Kate watched the long prow of the boat ride the high waves they’d hit when they’d left the protected waters of the island, she felt her earlier certainty drain away and a sudden panic seized her.

  For the first time in her life she was without options. Even after Yusuf’s death, when she’d gone public with the details of Benway’s actions, with the shopping list of atrocities they had all committed, she’d been fuelled by disgust and by revenge, her own guilt washed away by the balm of her virtue.

  And during the two years she’d spent in northern Vermont she’d been as dedicated as a method actor in assuming the role of the proprietor of a small town gift store, the smiling, friendly, unthreatening single mom. The very antithesis of the spy, the bargain-basement Mata Hari and stone killer she’d been for nearly a decade before.

  She’d lived her life a day at a time, shutting out as best she could the terror that gnawed at the edges of her consciousness and hijacked her dreams, leaving her sweating and gasping in a roiled bed.

  But there had always been a little pilot light burning in the corner of her mind, that if things went bad she would turn to the man who could make it all right.

  Harry Hook.

  She’d believed that Hook would save her because he was brilliant, yes, but most of all because he was her father.

  Sitting in the wooden boat, beside her daughter who was a sleep or pretending to be, listening to the roar of the engine and the thump of the hull as it smacked the waves, drenched by salt water, she realized how pathetic her father fantasy had been.

  Because Daddy was a delusional drunk. A lying asshole who’d collected scalps to shore up his flagging ego—who knew how many other bastards he’d spawned after his decades of one-night stands?—who’d acted the savant for an enthralled audience until he’d finally overplayed his hand, and had cost twenty-two people their lives.

  And she’d known all this, known he was a man of straw, and yet she’d still come to him and sat at his feet like a giddy acolyte and let him draw her into his lunatic plan—had sacrificed a finger to this absurdity.

  And last night, even after she’d confronted him about the failure of his scheme, she’d told him she was his daughter because she’d yearned for him to clasp her to his big strong chest and make it all okay.

  Instead, he’d crept off into the dark like a whipped dog.

  Fucking pathetic.

  Lost in this orgy of self-recrimination, Kate took time to notice that the boatman was waving his arms and shouting in Thai.

  She turned and stared to port, and there was the Zodiac with JP at the tiller and Hook, on his knees, sodden, red-faced, his hair hanging over his eyes, beckoning and bellowing.

  The boatman squawked like an enraged jungle bird, the two craft tossed in their colliding wakes, the Thai shaking his fist and shouting for the inflatable to retreat.

  But JP gunned the outboard and cut across the bow of the long-tail, and the boatman had to take evasive action, throttling back.


  The passengers, soaked and angry, were in it now, yelling, and the boatman brandished a machete, as if Hook was his namesake pirate of old.

  The Zodiac bumped into the side of the long-tail and Hook waved at Kate, bawling something up at her.

  At first she couldn’t hear him, then the long-tail’s roaring engine spluttered and stalled and in the sudden quiet she heard Hook shout, “It’s sung! The fucking nightingale has sung!”

  FORTY-SIX

  Nadja Benway sat beside her husband in the rear of his ridiculous Mercedes-Benz, the tires whispering on the wet road, staring out as they cruised down Connecticut Avenue, snow a gray blur against the night sky.

  All the windows were closed and Lucien smoked one of his foul Turkish cigarettes that always brought back to her, no matter how hard she had tried to cleanse it from her memory, the stench of the unwashed Serbian colonel who’d enslaved her; a peasant (the recipient of a battlefield commission) who’d harbored the superstitious belief that his lack of hygiene—a miasma of sweat, blood, piss, shit, slivovitz, ripe meat and rotten teeth—would protect him from enemy bullets.

  He’d left a stinking corpse lying in the black mud of rural Bosnia.

  Nadja lit a Marlboro and inhaled deeply, the menthol-infused tobacco the perfect antidote to these overheated memories.

  She saw the red neon of the Avalon Theater bleeding into the night and Morse slowed the car and stopped it beneath the marquee advertizing Michelangelo Antonioni’s L'Eclisse. When the car halted she was still expecting a trick, expecting Lucien to laugh and order Morse to drive on.

  But he waved his cigarette at the theater lobby and said, “Well, off you go. Enjoy the movie,” as if he were talking to a child.

  As Nadja cracked the door, the freezing wind stinging her cheeks, he grabbed her by the wrist and said, “I’m trusting you, Nadja. Morse’ll be here to collect you in two-and-a-half hours.”

  “Of course, Lucien,” she said, shivering in the cold, watching as the Mercedes-Benz was sucked like flotsam into the wake of the nighttime traffic.