Labyrinth

by Jon Land

“I’m trying to make you anything that will convince you to help us.”

  The waitress returned and took their luncheon orders: two Tombs special turkey clubs, though neither man felt much like eating. Charney opted for another gin and tonic.

  “Lots of tonic this time,” he instructed. Then, back to Locke: “We wouldn’t expect you to work for nothing, of course.”

  “Can you put my life back together for me?”

  “Professionally I think we can. We could promise you a tenured position at the university of your choice.”

  “That’s quite a piece of work.”

  “There’s more, Chris. Those two novels you’ve got closeted—there are several hardcover publishers that would be glad to bring them out with large advances and a substantial sum up front for two more.”

  “You’re trying to buy me, Bri.”

  “Who’s kidding whom now, Chris? What person isn’t bought, hasn’t sold out in one way or another? It’s part of life. But there are levels of everything. I’m talking about helping you get your dream back.”

  “You didn’t say ‘we’ that time.”

  “I still have personal initiative.”

  “And apparently a great deal of power.”

  “It’s all in knowing how to use it.”

  “That must have been the part of the training I missed.” Locke hesitated, suddenly unsure. “How much else did I miss, Bri? How in the hell am I supposed to remember anything after twenty years?”

  “We won’t be leaving you alone. I’ll be shadowing you myself every step with the cavalry only a phone call away.” Charney waited as his second gin and tonic was set down before him. “I’m not asking you to act independently. I’m just asking you to run interference for two weeks at most, flush out the bastards who got Lube.”

  “I was never good at running interference. Remember my brief football career? … You’re asking me to take a pretty big risk, Bri.”

  “I can’t deny that.”

  “I don’t know, old buddy, I just don’t know.”

  Charney had one more argument to put forward, one he had hoped to avoid. “You weren’t born in this country, Chris.”

  “I don’t make any secret of that.”

  “Your father brought you over from England during World War II. Your mother, the papers said, was killed in a German blitzkrieg.”

  Locke sat silent, waiting for Charney to continue.

  Charney’s eyes went cold. “I know the truth. I know she was German-born and was a spy for Hitler all along. I know your father fled England in disgrace when her cover was blown.”

  “Fuck off!” Locke shouted, rising.

  “Sit down. I’m not finished. She walked out on you and your old man and tried to make it back to Germany. The British caught her and hanged her.”

  Locke was still standing but he hadn’t gone anywhere. We completely changed our identities.”

  “You can’t bury the truth, Chris. It’s always there if somebody’s willing to dig deep enough for it. You know that.”

  Locke sat back down on the edge of his chair. He held his fingers taut on the table, fighting back the urge to fly across and choke the life out of the man who had been one of his two best friends. And he knew he could do it. That part of the training had never left him. Maybe none of it had. He wondered if Charney had enraged him just to illustrate that.

  “Why’d you bring this up?”

  “Because you owe this country something, Chris. Your mother got a lot of people killed, and some of them were Americans. Then you came over and started fresh with no hard feelings, so let’s say I’m calling in a debt.”

  Locke felt the guilt swimming in his stomach like a shark—no, two sharks: one for a horrible accident that had cost a friend his hand, another for the crimes of a mother he barely knew. It was too much for him.

  He tapped his fingers nervously against the table. “If I play ball with you, Bri, it’ll be to help nail the bastards who took out Lube. That’s all. I want you to know that.”

  And Charney knew he had won. “Whatever you say.”

  “You still haven’t given me any idea what the Luber was onto.”

  “It’s sketchy. The only connection seems to be food.”

  “Food?”

  “He was working on the hunger conference, remember? And the village he died in was a farming community.” Charney stopped, reminding himself not to mention the massacre for fear of frightening Locke off. “He was looking at something in the fields during his last report and it scared the hell out of him. I’ll play the tape for you later.”

  “And you don’t know what it was?”

  Charney shook his head.

  “Why don’t you go down there and find out?”

  “We’re … trying.”

  Locke regarded him closely. “There’s something you’re not telling me, Bri.”

  “Only what it’s better for you not to know.”

  “Your food connection’s a little thin.”

  “It’s all we’ve got.”

  “Then what exactly am I supposed to do?”

  “We’ve pieced together the trail Lube took en route to Colombia. We even have an idea of the people he spoke with. We’re going to have you retrace his steps. The details and specifics can be worked out later.”

  Locke’s features hardened. “But there’s one thing we’d better get straight right now. If I retrace all of the Luber’s steps, I’m gonna end up joining him by the Pearly Gates, and I don’t fancy that much. Please don’t insult me by bothering to deny that possibility exists.”

  “Well …”

  “So what I want is some provisions made in the event I don’t return. I want my family taken care of.”

  Charney nodded. “Enough said.”

  “I don’t think so. I want a treasury check in the amount of five hundred thousand dollars delivered to my lawyer in an envelope to be opened if I don’t make it back.”

  “Sounds like you don’t trust me, Chris.”

  “You haven’t given me much reason to.”

  The club sandwiches came but neither man started his.

  “I’ll take care of it this afternoon,” Charney promised. “The money will be tax-free, of course.”

  “I wouldn’t have expected anything else.”

  “They’ll never have to see it, Chris. You’ll be coming back.”

  “I’m doing this for them, Bri, and for the Luber, not for you and whoever the hell it is you work for. I just wanted you to know that.” Locke rapped the table hard, then pulled the toothpick from the center of one of his sandwich quarters. “Now, when do I get started?”

  “You leave tomorrow night for London,” Charney replied softly, pushing back the pang of guilt struggling to rise inside him.

  Chapter 4

  THE NEXT DAY was a hectic one for Locke. There were so many affairs to settle. To begin with, his passport had expired and obtaining a new one with twenty-four hours’ notice had proved impossible. Charney said he’d straighten things out. Just bring in a small picture and he’d take care of the rest.

  With that behind him, Locke was left to deal with the massive Georgetown bureaucracy to obtain an emergency leave. He owed them nothing now, so he felt not the slightest compunction about taking off for two weeks in the middle of semester. If there was any regret, it was for his students. The classes would be taken by his fellows or canceled altogether.

  Locke explained the leave was for medical reasons, refusing to elaborate further. He didn’t have to, as stated in the contract that come May was being yanked from under him. He smiled at them all, feeling suddenly powerful. Brian Charney could get him his job back or obtain him an even better position elsewhere.

  As the day wore on, Locke found himself increasingly excited, even ecstatic. Charney was giving much in return for two weeks of his time, and Locke wasn’t worried about the danger. Risk plainly could not be much of a factor, or no government branch would allow an amateur to take the job. Charney was
giving him the things he wanted most, and going after the Luber’s killers wasn’t so bad either. He could never express his sorrow and guilt when his friend was alive. Maybe he could make up for it now that he was dead.

  Later in the afternoon, Locke found himself focusing on how to tell his family. Considering he hadn’t yet told them about his dismissal from Georgetown, it would all be quite a shock. But this might be good if it served to block their questions. He decided to tell Beth first and approach the kids after.

  For the time being, he would say he was leaving Georgetown of his own accord, that they had made life unbearable for him there. Other offers had already come in and now he was going to Europe for two weeks to get his head straight and sort things out. He couldn’t tell his wife the entire truth. She wouldn’t understand; Locke wasn’t even sure he did.

  On the way to Charney’s office in the State Department, he stopped off at his lawyer’s to learn that, incredibly, the envelope had arrived. Locke opened it, found the contents to be satisfactory, and then sealed the check in a fresh envelope along with a letter he had typed out before leaving his Georgetown office. The letter to his family was purely technical and advisory in nature, as he fully expected to return in one piece after his mission was complete.

  Charney was waiting for him when he arrived. They sat down opposite each other in a pair of chairs before the desk, all of the small talk and personal fronts gone.

  “We’re still piecing together Lube’s last days,” Charney explained. “He started in London where he met with a diplomat from the Colombian embassy named Juan Alvaradejo.”

  “Colombian,” Locke echoed, noting the connection with where Lubeck had been killed. “Any idea why?”

  “They’d worked with each other before and Alvaradejo was his country’s representative at the hunger conference. The Luber probably just wanted some background and ended up with the beginnings of something much greater.”

  “And that’s what I’ll be after from Alvaradejo.”

  “Just find out exactly what he told Lube. We’ve got to fit this thing together.”

  “Where to after that?”

  “Liechtenstein, then Florence.”

  “Christ, Lube was a busy man… .”

  “But we’re not sure yet who he met with anywhere but London. That’s all you have to worry about for now. I’ll deliver the rest of your itinerary to you there with the names. You’ll be staying at the Dorchester.”

  “Wow, you guys go all out.”

  “We try. Besides, it fits your cover.”

  “I didn’t know I needed one.”

  “You probably don’t. But we’re going by the book here. You’ll be playing yourself on a research tour for your next book.”

  Locke nodded. “Should be easy enough. You mean no codes, secret meetings, and all that?”

  “Just one.” Charney crossed his legs. “We need a system whereby you can contact me at all times, so I’m going to give you a number where I can be reached. Call it if you need me, leave your number, and I’ll get back to you within two minutes.”

  “You mean you won’t be watching me?” Locke posed a bit anxiously.

  “All the time? Impossible. If someone else becomes interested in the trail you’re following, putting someone on your tail would be a dead giveaway that you’re working for us. The danger factor ends up rising substantially. No, this is a far better way to go at things. Help is just a phone call away. Just make sure you know how to use an English call box.”

  “I’ve been back. I know how.”

  Charney had almost forgotten. “I’ll have your tickets and spending money with me when I drive you to the airport. What are you going to tell your wife, by the way?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Don’t say too much. If someone tries to trace you, we don’t want her inadvertently aiding their cause.”

  “You’re scaring me, Bri.”

  “Just precautions again. We don’t know who or what we’re dealing with here and until we do we play everything safe. You’re going in under deep cover. Recall the term?”

  “Vaguely. But how do I convince this Alvaradejo to see me?”

  “Just mention Lube and you should be in. He’ll want to set all the terms—time, place, all that sort of stuff. Let him. He’ll be playing it safe too.”

  “Do I mention my connection with you, your people, I mean?”

  “It shouldn’t be necessary. He’d probably prefer not to know.”

  The next ninety minutes passed with Locke asking increasingly technical, professional questions drawn from his six-month intensive tenure from twenty years before. Charney answered them all with a small smile playing on his lips. His friend was recalling the lessons. The afternoon had become a refresher course and Locke was taking full advantage. Charney was impressed.

  Chris kept his words and gestures mechanical and impassive, anything to hide the conflicting emotions clashing within him. It felt as though he was back at the Academy with Bri and Lube, another training exercise about to be undertaken. Only the last one he’d been on had ended tragically, and during the ride back to Silver Spring the brutal memories of the accident Chris had suppressed for so long rose once more.

  It had been a standard exercise for agents of the advanced, field operative level. A session of survival training in the Academy’s Disneyland, a huge wooded complex filled with obstacles promising very real danger. The object was to negotiate the serpentine paths safely with as little incident as possible, the point being to teach agents of Locke and Lubeck’s caliber an acceptance of risk. Instincts had to be honed. In the field there would be no second chances. The survival training drilled this home.

  Three days into the exercise, Locke chose a path that formed a shortcut through part of the complex. The quicker they got out, the quicker the exercise would end. Lubeck resisted, urging caution. Locke was hearing none of that and started down the path, alert and ready, he thought, for anything.

  The ground split beneath him thirty yards later, a ragged crevice that shook and rumbled. Chris managed to hold fast to the surface only to realize with horror that the crevice was closing, threatening to crush him. Then Lubeck was reaching down for the collar of his jacket, lifting with incredible strength as the vise continued to tighten. Locke’s breath had been squeezed away but at least he was rising, safe, he thought, until the vice closed on the lower portion of his leg.

  He screamed in agony as Lubeck’s meaty left hand reached lower to free his jammed calf and foot. The crevice continued to close, jagged halves starting to meet once more. Only his foot was still trapped. Chris jerked it free with the last of his strength.

  Another scream punctured the woods, Lubeck’s this time. His left hand, the one that had saved Chris’s life, was wedged in the crevice an instant away from locking tight once more. Locke fought frantically to free the Luber’s hand, though there seemed no space left to yank it through. He found a gap in the crevice wall and pulled with all his might.

  Lubeck’s scream bubbled his ears.

  The hand came free, a sickening mass of crushed bones and flesh, painted red from areas where the skin had receded altogether. Chris covered it immediately with a spare sweater. Lubeck slipped into shock and then passed out, regaining consciousness only sporadically in the day and a half that followed as Locke carried him through the mazelike woods, skirting obstacle after obstacle. Lubeck was rushed to a hospital from the base camp. Doctors saved his life but not his hand. Chris quit the Academy a week later, his drive gone, indecision and guilt replacing it.

  He plunged back into the unvarying, uncomplicated world of college and academic rigors to pursue his masters and later his doctorate. Ivy-covered walls were as good a place to hide behind as any, insulated from the outside world if nothing else. A series of teaching positions followed, Chris never quite finding what he was looking for and inevitably moving on or being forced to.

  He met Beth when she was a senior and he was coming to the e
nd of his third teaching position. Chris married her two months after graduation and life had been relatively simple at first. The three children had come. Then something had started to turn their marriage stale and perfunctory, something Locke couldn’t put his finger on. They drifted apart slowly, not in leaps and bounds but in small strides neither took much notice of. Eighteen years had passed and they were both vastly different people from the two who had met in an American literature class. They were virtual strangers to each other now. The facade was convincing enough, though, making it easy for them to live the lie quite comfortably and to feel fortunate for that much.

  Still, Locke had to admit that no matter what the situation of their marriage at present, it had been Beth who’d settled him down and helped him find the discipline and persistence required to win the position at Georgetown. Whether he ever really loved her, he couldn’t honestly be sure. But he knew she had brought warmth to his life at a time when the cold threatened to consume him. If he hadn’t loved her, he had at least desperately needed her, and when you came right down to it, wasn’t that the same thing?

  Beth’s car was in the driveway when Locke swung his LTD in. The children were away.

  “We have to talk,” he said to Beth. She was sitting comfortably on the living-room couch studying a brochure featuring the latest designs in kitchen cabinets.

  “I’m due at work. Can it wait?”

  “No, it can’t.” Chris paused. There was no sense holding back. “I’m leaving the university.”

  She looked up at him dumbfounded. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Never more so.” Locke sat down next to her. Amazing how you could live with someone so long and know them so little. “The administrative pressure’s become too much. They created an impossible situation for me.”

  “And now you’ve gone and made it even more impossible.”

  “Hear me out for a while. I’ve had other offers.” He paused, collecting his thoughts, trying to appear convincing. “I’ve known this was coming and I’ve prepared for it. Other universities have already expressed interest.”

  “Where? Where are these universities?”