Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

by David Shafer

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “Fair enough. Well, how about the shape of a suit? Its color? You must have some response to those.”

  She considered this. “Spades,” she said. “If I have to choose.”

  Most people chose spades. “Was it only rummy that you played when you were little?” Mark asked. “Any other games?”

  “Stupid ones. War. Spit. Go Fish. My dad once tried to teach us a Persian game, but it had funny cards, and we were bored.”

  Of course: she was Persian. He was pretty sure that meant Iranian. “Go Fish is an honorable game, I think. Where did you play?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, was it around a coffee table?”

  “Yes. It was.” She narrowed her eyes. “Is this one of those sneaky fake-mystic tricks? Like, everyone remembers a coffee table?”

  He narrowed his eyes at her and appeared to consider. Then he said, “Most remember a coffee table. Some a carpet. But that doesn’t make it a sneaky fake trick.” He sounded a little hurt. “We’re just talking here.” Saying We’re just talking here makes your interlocutor feel aggressive.

  “Yeah. It was this wagon-wheel thing. With a glass top.”

  He swapped the legit deck for the forcing deck. He did this quickly, beneath the cover of one of his large hands. It would have looked odd had he not spent the past ten minutes doing even slicker manipulations. “Okay,” he said, “I want you to choose a card. Then look at it and do not show me. But it’s important that you really think hard about the card once you’ve chosen it, once you’ve looked at it. I mean, I suppose you could try to think of a different one to mess me up, but then I might not be able to accomplish this. And what fun would that be?”

  “Way to lower expectations,” she said.

  He fanned the deck on the bar before her.

  “Turn around,” she said.

  If she looked at more than one card, he was cooked: there were fifty-one jacks of spades before her. But he turned his back without hesitation. At least that way he could easily prep for reswapping the decks.

  “Okay,” she said, “I’ve chosen a card.”

  “You thought hard about it? You put it back?” he asked, still turned away from her.

  “Yep.”

  He swiveled around, scooped up the fan in his left hand, and then appeared to pass it to his right. In fact, the forcing deck stayed tucked in the meat of his wide left palm and then dropped soundlessly into his lap. He concentrated intently on the legit deck, now returned to the stage. So did she. He held it as delicately as a baby bird.

  “Are you going to shuffle those?” she asked.

  “You want me to?”

  She considered. “Yeah.”

  He looked concerned. Then he shuffled the hell out of that deck. His riffles were as quick as machinery but as smooth as wavelets meeting on the sand. Crak-crak went the deck halves as he rapped their sides on each other before knitting them together like a zipper; a tiny whir rose from their arched congress. He stopped. “Here, I think,” he said, then he held the deck delicately again. “The card you chose is on top. Go ahead and look.”

  She reached out to take it.

  “Wait!” He said that so loud that the barman jumped a little and a man with horse-head cuff links lowered his Financial Times. She snatched her hand back and then looked sheepish and then annoyed. “Sorry,” he said. “I think I screwed up.” He shuffled the deck for another thirty seconds and then re-offered it to her.

  “You sure?” she asked, all scolding.

  “I’m sure.”

  She plucked the top card from the deck and brought it to her vision.

  This is actually the hardest part: enduring the disappointment in the eyes of the mark when the wrong card is drawn. He could see in her dark eyes the hope change to something like hurt. She twirled the card between two fingers for him to see—a seven of diamonds.

  “That wasn’t it?” he asked lamely. She shook her head. He looked genuinely embarrassed. Once, the mark had by chance drawn the same card as he had forced, and Mark had had to act all pleased with himself when in fact he was wondering how he was going to get the force card from the woman’s hatband. You could, of course, remove the force card from the legit deck before this stage in the routine, but that was one more maneuver that could be spotted. More than two or three close-up techniques was too many for a routine. The illusion lay elsewhere.

  “Fucking sevens,” he said under his breath.

  “Try it again,” she said to him quickly, as if he had just fallen off his bike.

  “It’s not really like that,” he said grumpily. Then he brightened a bit. “Maybe it’s the next one.”

  She was game and drew the next card. Nope. Even the air around them seemed to wilt.

  “Okay, I’m going to have to actually draw the card to the top. This is kind of an advanced maneuver.” He cupped the deck in front of himself at eye level, stared daggers at it.

  “Okay, now draw the top card. It’s yours.”

  She regarded him suspiciously. She drew the top card. This time, she could not even meet his gaze. She flopped the card down before him.

  “I take it the king of diamonds was not your card?”

  She shook her head.

  “Was your card a king at least?”

  She shook her head again. “You want to know what my card was?”

  It is when they ask this that you can stop.

  “No,” he said, convincingly deflated.

  “You want another drink?” she asked.

  “Might as well.”

  She ordered a glass of wine for him and one for herself. She raised her glass to him, but he was already gulping his, so they were both embarrassed. She returned to her notebook.

  “You have a stage name?” she asked him a minute later. “Maybe you need a stage name.”

  “A stage name? You think that’s the problem?” he asked. “How about Deveraux the Baffled?”

  “That’s pretty good. Is Deveraux your real name? What kind of a name is that?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it,” he said.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “I’m kidding. Yeah. It’s my name. It’s Acadian.”

  “Acadian? You mean, like, Cajun?”

  “Well, that makes me feel rather like a chicken dish, but yeah.”

  The SineCo rep approached from behind.

  “Mr. Deveraux? Sorry to keep you waiting. It seems that the location of your meeting has changed. I have passage for you to Hong Kong. Will that be all right?”

  Hong Kong. He’d never been. Odd, because Mark could have sworn that Straw said that Sine Wave had been up in the fjords last week. “Oh, that’s fine. Thank you for seeing to that.” So reasonable. He tried to note whether Lola had gotten any of this: Hong Kong, location changed, his unperturbedness.

  Seldom is an illusionist offered an exit like this. The reveal would come in a third act. The SineCo rep hovered behind him.

  “Well, look, Lola,” he said to her. “Good luck, okay?”

  “Oh, yeah, thank you. Mark, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, Mark.” Off the high stool and back on terra shiny, Mark found his equilibrium. He wasn’t as drunk as he had feared, could do a convincing imitation of a weary-for-good-reason business traveler. The fact that the SineCo rep had said passage and not ticket gave Mark reason to hope that he was going to Hong Kong on one of the Sine aircraft; the excitement of this prospect momentarily overpowered the torpor of six hours’ drinking. “So maybe I’ll see you again in one of these places?”

  “Unlikely,” she said. “Good luck with your meeting.” And then, sly-like, “You’ll want to work on that trick.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that,” said Mark.

  Chapter 15

  Dublin

  Coming through the sliding glass doors of the Dublin airport with her satchel and her nom de guerre, Leila saw a man holding a piece of paper on which was written in sloppy
Sharpie L. Montes. He was holding it in that who-gives-a-shit sort of way that taxi drivers use to show that they are not limo drivers. But he softened when he saw that L. Montes was a girl. He introduced himself as Dermot and was open-faced and bright-eyed and brisk; he led her past the taxi rank to a side lot and opened the door to the backseat of a clean but unfancy black car.

  When she asked, “Where’re we going?” he just said, “Stoneybatter.” When she asked where that was, he just said, “Between Cabra and the quays.” Was this a real taximan or an agent working on behalf of Dear Diary? He had a meter, but it wasn’t running. He played talk radio—people complaining about a levy on sidewalks or something. Then there was a news bulletin, but it wasn’t in English. It sounded to her like the rough forest language of a stick-waving people.

  “Is that Gaelic?” she asked Dermot.

  He turned it down. “Irish,” he said.

  “I know,” said Leila. “The language. Is it Gaelic?”

  He found her eyes in the rearview. “The English word for the Irish language is Irish.” He said it kindly, but you could tell he had said it a few times before.

  Leila was embarrassed. She actually knew that, or had known that once. In West Africa, she’d worked with an Irishman who sang beautifully and spoke his native tongue when he talked to his wife on the satellite phone. “We’re like Navajo windtalkers,” he had said to Leila, “until the guy across the train car turns out to be a Paddy.”

  Dermot brought her to the door of a little brick house on a street of little brick houses on a hill laddered with streets of little brick houses. She was met at the door by a man who quickly ushered her inside and into a kitchen and then said his name was Feargal and would she like a cup of tea. She nodded sure and he asked had she had a nice journey. So she said, “Fine. Except for the part where you people abducted me.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” said Feargal. “We usually take things a bit slower than we have with you. We’ll make our case to you as quickly as we can. There’s a meeting tonight.”

  Leila nodded, gave him zero else.

  “And, sure, while you’re waiting, would you like to take our eye test and get a number?” he said.

  Was he joking? Was that an Irish joke?

  “No. No eye test for me. Just give me back my shit and get me to California,” said Leila, tough as tacks.

  But then a girl called Sarah came in, and she was kind and took Leila to a room on the third floor of the skinny brick home that had a big window in an eave and a white mattress on an iron bed and a writing desk and a plumbed hand basin and a wooden chair with a towel on it. It looked like the bedroom that Leila had been dreaming about for years.

  “You should sleep for a few hours,” said Sarah. “You’ll want to be sharp for this next part.”

  “Look, Sarah, I am really here only to get my stuff back. I am not at all impressed with being shanghaied by you people, and I am not inclined to hear about your cause.”

  “You weren’t shanghaied. You were Caracased.”

  “What?”

  “They did a dine-and-dip on you in terminal three, didn’t they? But they gave you cover and cash? Yeah, that’s a Caracas, not a Shanghai. But anyway, c’mere: I know you need your devices and your documents back and I’ll make sure they’re returned after the meeting.”

  “How about the rest of my bags?”

  “We pulled all those into our system. The four suitcases you had going to LA will be there tomorrow and will wait for you. We separated a fifth piece, a North Face duffel that scanned as your main traveling case. That one will be brought to wherever you spend the night.”

  Leila had in fact been extensively trained about how to act in the event of abduction. But none of the information that she could recall had any bearing on this situation. That had been all about crouching behind the engine block and how to keep from crying. The course materials had not addressed soft-touch abductors who gave you a nice room to nap in and rerouted your primary traveling case so you’d have it in time for bed.

  “Sleep, Lola, for a few hours. There’s a loo with a bath back there. And I’ll make sure no one disturbs you. I’ll come get you later, and I’ll tell you where we’re going then.”

  It must have been midday when Sarah and Feargal and Leila left the little brick house. They got into a small panel van with Pat’s Flowers painted on its side. Sarah sat in the back with Leila. Feargal got in to drive but didn’t turn the key. He was waiting for something.

  “I’m supposed to make you wear a blindfold,” said Sarah.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not going to do that.”

  “I didn’t think you would,” said Sarah.

  “It’s just that things are getting Dicey Reilly around here,” said Feargal from the front.

  “If you give me my stuff back right now, I won’t look out the window. How about that?” said Leila.

  “Just go, Ferg,” said Sarah.

  He shrugged disapproval but started the van.

  They drove down a hill, past a prison that looked like a church, and a church that looked like a prison. One block was pub, pub, cobbler, bookie, pub, pub, church. And then new buildings—new as in “unfinished,” like, boom, here’s some glass and steel. Feargal was giving her a little patter about the city (“There’s the oldest boxing club in Dublin…There’s the chipper where the general got shot”) when Sarah, who had been looking out a tinted port in the van’s rear, interrupted him:

  “Ferg, what about this little white Ford here?”

  He looked in his side mirror judiciously. “Yeah, that’s no good,” he said. “Hang on.” Then he swung a very hard right into a lane. Even Leila saw the reaction from the two men in the little white Ford, watched their shoulders hunch in frustration as they drove by.

  “Go to the fishmonger,” said Sarah decisively. She must outrank Feargal, Leila thought, or else they knew each other very well.

  Feargal nodded and sped down the narrow lane. Then their progress was blocked by a clutch of undead drinkers in tattered coats who glared wreck-faced at the van but shambled aside when they got a tougher glare back from Feargal. A minute later, the flower van was idling outside a roll-up door, and Sarah was on her phone, waiting for someone to pick up, nerves only apparent from her foot joggling on the rubber-matted floor of the van. Then a change in her face and she said simply, “We need refuge,” while Feargal leaned close to the windshield—Leila realized he was showing his face to a camera she could not see. The door rolled up—more swiftly than those things usually did—and Feargal zipped in, the tires squeaking on the dry floor. The door rolled down behind them with a clatter.

  They were in the back of a fish store. Feargal and Sarah got out to speak to a man, presumably the man who had answered the phone and opened the door. He was in a bloodied white smock, silver gloves and a long knife in loops on his belt. He and Sarah talked, leaning close together. The rank and briny smell of fish was rolling into the van, its progress slowed by the refrigerated chill of the room. Sarah came back. She leaned herself into the van.

  “Okay, you’re going on by yourself. Someone else is going to collect you on the quays.”

  “No. I want you to come with me.” If there’s one you think you can trust, try to stick with that one. Leila remembered that from the courses.

  “I can’t. It’s either me or Feargal they’re after. Sorry. I was certain you were safe. That house we brought you to is a week old. But I’ll be where you’re going. You’ve just got to get to the quays.”

  Feargal, on his phone, called back to them: “Not even the quays. She’s just got to make it to the Horse Market. She can get scrubbed there.”

  “What do you mean, scrubbed?” said Leila. And she thought, Eww, a horse market? She was looking at the long knife on the fishmonger’s belt.

  But there was no time to object. Sarah took her by the hand and led her through the store and then hustled her out the front door and onto a deserted street.

  “That way,”
said Sarah, and pointed down the road. “You’ll be met at the market.” In her voice now there was urgency instead of kindness.

  Leila took off, not running, exactly, but moving quickly. She was scared. She wished she weren’t alone on a deserted street in a strange city.

  But then she rounded a corner and came into a long, cobbled square, and she wasn’t alone anymore. It was wild, teeming with man and beast—five hundred souls, easy. And the horses, if that’s really what they were, were shocking to her. A few were full-size and strong-seeming, but most of them were runted and stunted, some the size of dogs. They were being raced and prodded and kicked and brushed and preened by a strange class or type of people the likes of whom Leila had never seen, people who looked to her like white Aboriginals in gaudy leisurewear. Men in small groups were drinking from plain brown bottles, and some were staggering; boys and girls roamed in packs, flirting and fighting.

  And as she stood there taking in the anachronism, two light-eyed boys galloped past her on a pair of raggedy ponies, the ponies’ shoes ringing the cobbles, the boys bold as brass. Leila staggered back from the galloping boys and into the dark doorway of a pub.

  “Keep going, Lola,” said the man who steadied her. He was in a cap and tie and dirty shirt. “Get into the meat of it,” he said, and pointed at the market square. And then he did a quick head tick, which Leila followed, and saw that half a block away, a tall man in a too-heavy coat had been startled by the same galloping boys. She saw him look for her—it was one of the men from the white Ford.

  So she dove into the market. Cap and Tie followed her, and Too-Heavy Coat was quick behind; Too-Heavy Coat was talking into a phone, and he was making right for her. But a commotion engulfed him suddenly. Leila turned around to see what had happened: a clutch of men had surrounded him and were accusing him of some transgression, loudly, but in a language that made no more sense to her than stones clattering in a wave’s sandy pullback. Some of the men carried heavy sticks, the nonviolent purpose of which was hard to fathom. Cap and Tie brushed past her strongly. “Keep on, girl,” he said as he did. “Not far now.”