by Dale Amidei
Jon Anthony was drowsing on his couch in the afternoon, a copy of Aquinas’ Summa Theologica slumped across his chest. He was enjoying the last week of the break before classes resumed. That morning he had finished prep work for material introduced into the syllabi of the spring semester courses he would teach. Anthony was looking forward to a few days of doing as little as possible. For him inactivity had become rare.
His buzzing cell phone, set as usual to vibrate before his "Hallelujah Chorus" ringtone would kick in, brought him back around. He sat up to grab it and saw a 202 area code on the display. With an annoyed grunt he thumbed the button to answer and set Summa down in the phone’s place. “Yeah,” he said, halfway expecting a wrong number or a recording.
“Jon Wayne. It’s been a while, compadre. This is Tom.”
Anthony blinked in surprise. He managed a confused greeting. “Dude—Happy New Year.”
On the other end of the connection, Colby laughed. “H-N-Y. I was reading your e-mail again.”
“Yeah, well … the grad school blues, man.” Anthony settled back into the couch with sigh. “You do politics for a living. You know how it goes.”
“Yes, yes I do,” Colby admitted. “For what it’s worth I’m thinking it sounds like you got the shaft.”
“It doesn’t matter now.” Anthony made a halfhearted noise. “I can find a way to patch up my program according to my adviser. Or hope that eventually enough of the PhDs who hate me finally retire.”
“How many is that?”
Despite the truth in his answer, Anthony laughed. “Just about all of them by now, Tom. Thanks for reminding me.”
“Well, it sounds like you’ve had a lot to think about lately. Being a bastard, I thought I would call and give you even more. What are friends for, right?”
Colby was tapping on a keyboard in the background. “You’re at work?” Anthony asked. He must have sounded surprised from the way his friend chuckled.
“It’s a workday for those of us who managed to escape higher education,” Colby chided. “This time I’m allowed a personal call on a business line. I had an idea when I was reading your e-mail, and it’s something that you could help with. It’s something my boss thinks that you could help with.”
Anthony sat up. An odd tone punctuated his friend’s voice as if he were thinking and talking at the same time. Seriousness had cloaked itself in the usual faux abuse. “Sounds like a pretty intense idea, Tom.”
Colby grunted. “You know what I’ve been up to lately?”
“Iraq,” Anthony answered. He knew that Colby had been there a couple of times and taken some photographs that he had attached to various emails; few details of Colby’s work had been included, though.
“I’m going back this quarter, Jon. I was wondering if you wanted to tag along.”
Anthony cleared his throat, his mind not processing what his ear had just heard. “Come again?”
“Come aboard with the State Department as a contracted adviser. We use perspectives like yours when we’re outlining our options for dealing with the folks over there. Keep us on track in the strategy sessions. Keep us off as many fatwah lists as you can manage.”
Anthony ran a hand over his eyes. Colby was giving him a headache. “You have to be kidding me.”
“Not kidding you. No references needed, your typing speed is just fine, and you don’t even have to make my coffee. The slot is yours if you want it. If you can’t, I need to find someone else—someone who happens to be your clone. Know another grad student who wants to pay off his loans by next Christmas?”
Anthony winced. “Buddy, you have no idea how much I’ve got in loans.” He heard Colby laugh.
“You have no idea how badly government agencies want to spend their money by the end of the fiscal year. Come along, Jon. State can make it worth your while. I guarantee it.”
Anthony went silent, as did Colby. “When do you need an answer, Tom? There’s a whole lot to think about.”
Colby was tapping on his keyboard again as if he were looking up something in his Web browser. “Classes start next Monday?”
“Yeah.”
Colby snickered on the other end of the line. “Well, I can give you that long, I guess. I can’t wait forever, but I can hold off until then. Sorry this is coming up so fast. I got to you as soon as I could swing it.”
“I’m not saying no. I just need to get my head around the options that come with a yes or a no, you know?” He heard Colby laugh again.
“That’s what we’d be paying you for, Jon. Getting your head around options can be a career. Let me know. If I’m not here, this number’s going to be forwarding to my cell so … whenever you decide.”
“Thanks, Tom. I mean it—thanks a bunch.”
“Later, kid,” Colby said and severed the connection.
Anthony stared at his phone for a second and then sent the number into his Contacts as “Tom work.” He remained on the couch, fixated on his phone as if it could help him determine the path to the next phase of his life. “Well … shoot,” he said aloud.
Anthony spent the rest of his Tuesday almost entirely in thought. Colby’s proposal, he reminded himself, was hitting him at a transitional time. It was a span in his life where good and bad potential decisions rotated in a whirlwind of unexpected changes. Cults specialized in recruiting people in just such situations, he knew. So did religions and politicians. Colby, he also knew, far from being manipulative or underhanded, simply had been struck by an idea. For Anthony the problem was Colby’s idea intersecting with a big crack in his personal sidewalk. Now he had just a day or two to make one of the most significant decisions of his life.
Anthony had never thought about entering government service prior to Tom’s offer. Unlike most academics, he had an instinctive mistrust of the Federal behemoth. Many students and most Britteridge faculty saw government as the means to authoritative social engineering. It was the pathway to fulfilling their vision of humanity in its ideal state. It was a portal to a goody-bag of grants and loans, which fed the world of higher education.
I am a food source, he thought. His stipend more than returned to Britteridge through the tuition of the students he taught and the fees paid to continue pursuit of his PhD. He helped feed a stand-alone microcosm: a department populated by people who answered to the next level of the food chain. Those on top remained largely unaccountable to any standard of measurement that they themselves did not control.
No material except graduates flowed out of Theological Studies. No product emerged save reputation and prestige. Articles written on sabbatical were read by few, serving instead as ledger entries that helped justify continuation of the gravy train. Credentialing existed to become tenure. Tenure’s goal was pensioned emeritus status. The entire system depended on the willing participation of hopefuls, candidates like the sleep-deprived man Anthony saw staring back from inside the Wednesday mirror.
He did not need to bring out the shoebox again to confirm the weak spot that Colby had instinctively found. Bankruptcy was no protection against student loan debt. The IRS would bleed the money out of him by the withholding of tax refunds and whatever other method it could devise in the future. He could live under that shadow, or he could make the equivalent of a house payment each month without owning a home.
Another choice would be to stay on and mold himself into a self-despised inductee of Dr. D. Richard Wainwright’s ideological corps: "objective" scholars, believing nothing and calling it "an open mind"; following deliberately short-circuited logic that considered diametrically opposed belief systems as equally legitimate; rejecting any standard of moral judgment not self-generated.
By lunchtime, Anthony had waded through every convolution of reasoning that he could bring to mind. His life had changed, and he accepted that change. He had made decisions. Others had reacted to those decisions, and no rewind button existed that could take him back to tweak the past and produce a more satisfying present. He was here, right now, moving alw
ays forward. It was the afternoon of the Wednesday after New Year’s Day. He knew which choice he could tolerate. Only one would allow him to stay true to the work and hope of people he loved and admired. Only one would not waste the efforts that had shaped Jon Wayne Anthony. Britteridge College, established 1865, would be short one graduate assistant in the coming semester.
Tom Colby was at his desk routing personnel and supply orders, preparing to form the team that would support the Al Anbar initiative. His VoIP phone rang, and he glanced at it as he always did when deciding whether to send the caller to the dulcet tones of the voicemail system. He recognized Jon Anthony’s cell number and scooped up the handset while continuing to mouse around on the requisition form in Internet Explorer.
“Yo, Jon,” he said with enthusiasm. “Tell me something good, buddy.”
“You told me what I’d be doing. What are you doing, Tom?”
Colby cocked his head in thought. “Conceptually, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Making the world a better place one FTE at a time.” He heard Anthony sigh into the phone.
His friend’s voice lowered. “Is Iraq a better place than it was before we got involved there?”
Colby considered that one for a second. “Well, some don’t think so. Before we got there, though, Kurds were minding their business one day and dead in the street from a poison gas attack the next. Hussein’s two boys were lowering people into plastic-shredding machines headfirst if they were feeling benevolent that day, and feet first if they weren’t. Saddam was doing everything he could to make us and the rest of the world think that he was building WMDs even if we haven’t found enough of them yet to shut up the left wing. I’ve seen reports from human rights groups saying Hussein executed 600,000 Iraqis while in power, not counting another 100,000 Kurds or the half-million people who died in his war with Iran. The difference now is that the Iraqis have a chance to determine their future, a chance that’s up to them. A lot of them wanted that chance longer than we’ve been there to give it to them. Being there is worth it, Jon. I’ve been there, and I’ve seen it. Trust me on that.” He could almost hear Anthony thinking on the other end.
“OK, Tom, you wanted to hear something good. You tell me if it’s good. You sold me—so now what happens?”
Colby switched tabs in his Excel workbook and double-checked the numbers that State Department accountants had given him. “What I can do is a contract through June with an option to extend: 50K plus expenses, twenty-six 40-hour weeks and federal holidays off. Say the word, I e-mail you the paperwork, and you’re self-employed.”
“Disco,” Anthony replied.
Colby assumed that was a good thing purely through his friend’s inflection. “Look for a PDF. There’s a Residence Inn not too far away. I’ll link you. Get your business settled and get down here. Keep me updated.”
“You’re the boss. See you soon, Tom. Thanks again.”
The phone’s panel went dark, and Colby cradled the handset. “Outstanding, Jon Boy. We are going to make some history.”
Anthony’s thumb scrolled down his Contacts list to “Dr Mills cell” and dialed his graduate adviser. It rang several times before he heard the man’s voice.
“Afternoon, Jon. How are you doing?” the other end of the connection asked.
“Good, Doc, I’m doing really well. Have I caught you at a bad time?”
“My time is your time, Jon. What’s on your mind?”
“I got a job, Doc. Don’t know how else to say it.” He had to wait a couple of seconds for Mills’ reply.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing, son?”
“Good thing. I’m pretty sure anyway. I’m a State Department contractor working on Iraq policy with an old Hoosier buddy of mine as of today.” He heard Mills sigh.
“Well, Jon, I can’t say I’m happy to hear that, but if you think that’s what you need to do then you’ve got my support. Have you informed the department or the registrar yet?”
“Not yet. I didn’t want you to hear this from someone else, sir.”
“Good, good to hear that. I’d rather talk you into staying on for this term, but if I can’t at least let me arrange a ‘Withdrawal by Permission’ from the Dean’s Office. I can get it by Dr. Wainwright if it’s done before Monday. You’ll have a few semesters to apply to rejoin the program. Who knows? Your contractor work may make a dissertation by the time you’re done.”
Anthony grinned. “Thanks, Doc. I’ll keep that in mind. They say it’s a good idea to keep a job diary anyway.” He heard Mills laugh.
“Stop by the office tomorrow and sign the request for me. I’ll have the Dean’s signature on it by the close of business day after tomorrow. It’ll be a surprise for our department head when he gets back to his desk.”
“I will do that, sir. Thanks for everything. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“You’re very welcome, Jon. Take care,” Mills said. The connection severed.
Anthony felt a rush; he interpreted it as a sign of having made the right choice. Decision was a cathartic act, he knew; it allowed the feeling of control to return. The loss of the perception of control was one element in the development of depression; he remembered a counselor telling him as much not long after his parents had suffered their accident. If there was anything to which he had dedicated himself lately, it was an attempt—possibly in the wrong venue—to put into words the foundational benefits of good decisions.
He pocketed his phone. He was feeling satisfied. The high would keep him going all day, and there were now many tasks needing his attention.
Chapter 5: Friends Old and New
Their dress was shabbier and dustier. They had groomed less than the first time he had seen the men—then only briefly—in the alleyway off the Hurriyah market. One seemed recovered from the boot heel to his midsection; it was acceptable considering that the operative now badly wanted to speak with him. Foreign nationals were in abundance, but only two were associated with a cream-colored Renault damaged on the right rear of the bumper.
Human intelligence, the network of contacts that his government was spending vast sums to cultivate, was a catch phrase for recruited informants. Days ago information that the men were foreigners passed to handlers. That info-nugget had landed with Army Intelligence analysts, who evaluated the source and cross-checked the information. Two hours later, McAllen’s staff followed by the General himself accessed it. The three-star called his Thuraya satellite phone, telling him a profile he flagged in the database had returned a hit.
Routines were part of human nature. People who regularly traveled naturally tended toward the most direct routes and best roads; absent any intervening concern they most often used the least-involved streets possible. The two men in the Renault had not seen fit to vary the avenues that they followed in and out of the Ghazaliyah district. Over days, the American constructed their route. By relocating his position from point to point, he determined their regular destination. He found that they returned to a second story flat at the edge of the city. Traffic was light here, on one of the streets leading to farms once owned by Uday Hussein.
The laser microphone he had signed out from the Army Intel quartermaster. That required McAllen’s approval. It sat on a tripod here in his nearby flat rented through a local assistant earlier in the week. In his line of sight, the most convenient of the men’s windows was the bathroom. It was made of rippled privacy glass, however, which would render the laser useless. Just as well, he thought; he had no interest in listening to the two urinate.
In the more distant wall was a larger window of recently replaced and therefore well-formed flat glass, an ideal pickup surface. He had sighted in on that and now waited for the pair to return. His rental’s heating was poor, but he needed the window cracked open lest it interfere with the laser. Although the chilly late-January evening air drifted in, he made the best of it: a thermos of coffee and his commercial Under Armour ColdGear kept him as comfortable as was poss
ible.
Two hours later, he heard the distinctively clattering exhaust of the target Renault as the pair returned from their Friday excursion. He downed the coffee in his metal cup and tightened the cap of the thermos. The lights were off in his flat. He leaned forward against the eyepiece of a nightscope mounted on a second tripod, using the unit’s invisible infrared illuminator to light their parking area. He did not recall the face of the driver, but was certain that the man from his alleyway encounter was there in the passenger seat.
The Renault swung into its space. He watched them go into the building. When the dim light appeared in their second-story window, he fired up the invisible, battery-powered laser of his audio unit. Slipping in a pair of earbuds that plugged into one of the two 3.5mm audio jacks, he checked the volume.
The laser light projected to the window some 350 feet distant and reflected from the flat pane of glass to a receiver mounted next to the diode in the sturdy and weatherproof aluminum housing. The unit converted the minute differences in the return time of the beam into a reproduction of the vibrations that caused them; the unit's circuit board then translated the waveform into sounds. Powered by a small battery pack, it had a run time of more than fifty hours and was undetectable, unlike any radio-frequency transmitter that he could have placed in the targeted flat.
He heard clearly the sounds of the door closing and the scrape of the deadbolt as they locked it behind themselves. He started the digital recorder attached to the other of the dual outputs on the receiver and strained to pick up any hint of conversation. Some cups rattled, and in disgust he discovered that the men failed at times to close the door to the bathroom. He found himself listening to one empty his bladder regardless.
He could hear water running—tea or coffee being prepared, he surmised. The flush of the toilet came after one of them made room for a cup or two. A smattering of conversation was audible, but to his disappointment the two spoke in Iraqi Arabic. He was just beginning to think that he had been wasting his government’s time when a cell phone—it had to be another Iraqna—chirped an incoming call.