Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

by David Shafer

  Chapter 16

  In Transit

  How long is the flight to Hong Kong?” Mark asked the SineCo rep.

  “Twelve hours,” said the man. “Patel will meet you in Hong Kong and handle you forward.”

  Ooh, he was getting handled forward. Maybe Sine Wave was plying the South China Sea. He’d be putting his seat way back and sleeping off that lounge experience. What did she say her name was? Lola Montes, like the dancer. What a fantastic name.

  The aircraft they pulled up beside didn’t look to Mark like it could be privately owned. White as dice, without a mark on it save the call letters on its tail. It was an Airbus, he saw as he climbed the stairs that came out of the cylinder of the plane like a lemon wedge. He paused midstairs and looked out at the airport, busy with little trucks.

  When Mark was a boy, after his dad left and his world had been halved, his mom bought him a remote-controlled car. Not one of those shitty, plug-in RadioShack ones but a gas-powered racer from a hobby store, with inflatable rubber wheels and a roll cage. For a month of Sundays, she took him to the parking lot of the mall that had been made obsolete by the newer mall, and he ran the crap out of that racer. His mom had to mix the fuel, and she spilled a lot, which made her curse, which she hardly ever did. What fun he had with her on those days. How had she known just what joy the racer would bring? She brought hard-boiled eggs and fruit leather for him, lithium for herself. She set up obstacle courses for his racer with sodden, cast-off sweatshirts and derelict shopping carts. But when he came home one day and, through tears, told her that a ganglet of older boys at school had jacked that gorgeous racer, she just said:

  “The world is not a fair place.”

  She said it like that, she who always stuck up for him. He was shocked. “You make it fair!” he yelled at her, furious. And she to him: “No, Mark. I can’t. It just isn’t.” And that is how she’d raised him: she’d been doting and fierce, but never promised what she could not deliver. She stepped back from the voids that he saw other mothers race to fill.

  Well, maybe it wasn’t fair, thought Mark, but it was sometimes retributive. Those monkey-bar thugs who’d taken his racer were lucky if they could even fly commercial these days. They were probably bent over rented desks or fryolators in parts of America with high cancer rates. Mark knew his mother relished his success, though she had made little comment on Bringing the Inside Out. She stuck his postcards on the door frame and bragged about him in the checkout line; she left magazines folded to his image in the break room at the tire store. And whenever he went home to see her, she’d always say the same thing to him when he left. “Make me proud,” she would say.

  He wished she were boarding this plane with him now. Wouldn’t she be proud of him? Wouldn’t she be impressed?

  He handed his jacket to the hostess at the top of the stairs and stepped into the cabin. There was room to stand unstooped, and there was a walnut conference table and there were brandy snifters arrayed and secured behind more walnut carpentry. All the seating was in smoky brown leather. And what’s this? He would not be needing to put his seat back, he saw when he walked ten steps aft; there was a bedroom on this airplane. Mark could have pumped a fist, but a hostess was already at his side with a glass of ice water.

  “The captain asked me to tell you that we’re just waiting for one more passenger.”

  “Very well. Thank you,” he said. Oh, farts. He would not have the place to himself. There might be awkward maneuvering about who got the aft cabin. If it was one of Straw’s main henchmen, Mark would have to be down dog.

  He settled himself into one of the single seats, a swiveling leather behemoth; it was like sitting in a gorilla’s lap. He fussed with his satchel and pockets again, tried to hide the fact that he was totally psyched to be on this amazing plane. He wanted to perform a complete reconnaissance—what was the lavatory like? What about the galley? And he had gotten only a peek in that aft cabin. Could you lie down and look out the window?

  A guy younger than Mark stepped into the cabin. He was dressed down, but expensive down. He nodded and grunted at Mark as he walked by and made straight for the back of the plane. Shit, thought Mark, but then the guy stopped short of the aft cabin and instead settled in another one of the singles. Mark swiveled in his chair, which allowed him to keep the guy not entirely behind his back. The guy did all the following things in quick succession: removed his shoes and put on fat socks; buckled his seat belt; squidged foam plugs into his ears; slipped a sleep mask over his eyes and noise-canceling headphones over his ears. Then, in seconds, his shoulders went slack and his lower jaw dropped a bit. One of the hostesses collected his shoes from beneath him. The other one was retracting the lemon-wedge stairs.

  Mark committed himself to some conscious relaxation; he slowed his breathing and heavied his limbs. Tried to feel his muscles and his bones, the working machine of him. The jet rolled forward into the little dance line of Heathrow. He wondered whether driving a plane on the ground was like driving a car. It was probably not at all like driving a car. When the roar happened and the aircraft sprang forward as if to escape its own metal self, Mark was at the lip of sleep. He let himself be tucked in by the g-force, pushed firmly into the huge seat and into a dream.

  He woke because someone had slipped a woolen sock in his mouth. No. No woolen sock. Terrible thirst. Dry mouth. He smacked his lips and reached for the ceiling nozzle dousing him with cold dry air. But someone was holding him down, pinning him in the seat. No, that’s a seat belt. And the seat is reclined. A hostess was quickly at his side. Wordlessly, she directed his hand to the controls hidden in the armrest beneath a flap of upholstered leather. With the buttons, she sphinctered down the cold-air nozzle and began to unrecline his seat.

  “Thank you,” he said. “May I have a glass of water?” His voice came out all dry and reedy.

  She brought it to him, and when his throat was unparched, he looked around again. The guy behind him was awake. He was working on a tablet and eating from china at the conference table.

  The guy raised his head from his tablet. “Lamb?” he said. He held up a meat-laden fork.

  Mark extracted himself from his seat, took his water, and walked aft, jingling the ice cubes in his heavy glass. He put his game face on.

  “You with Bluebird?” said the guy.

  “I work for Straw.”

  “Sure. Yeah. So do I, I guess,” said the guy. Then: “I’m Seamus Cole.” He put his fork down and held out his hand. Mark took it as he noticed the guy’s earplugs on his plate, squidged like tiny wax-smeared penises beside a half-eaten bread roll. This guy did not know he was Mark Deveraux. Is there a polite way to inform someone that he should be aware of you? Surely Bill Clinton and Sean Connery never found themselves in this situation.

  “I’m the executive engineer and information architect of New Alexandria,” said Cole. “We’re going to launch my new serve-whales tomorrow. I thought I should be on board for that.” He took a big slug of viscous brown fluid from a snifter.

  “Mark Deveraux,” said Mark.

  “No shit? You’re the guru guy. I thought you were Bluebird.”

  Bluebird? thought Mark. The security contractor? What the fuck?

  “I’m just one of Straw’s advisers, really,” said Mark modestly.

  “Sure. Like Kissinger was just an adviser.”

  Mark couldn’t tell what Cole meant by that. Perhaps being compared to Kissinger was a compliment. Plus, Mark couldn’t figure out how to ask what a serve-whale was without betraying his own cluelessness, so he stood.

  “I just have to put my eyes to this thing I’m writing,” he said.

  “Sure,” said Cole.

  Mark asked the attendant—super-politely, to distinguish himself from Cole—whether he might use the aft cabin to get some rest. She said of course but wouldn’t he like anything to eat? He asked her name and she said Monica and he said, “No, thank you, Monica, but could I please see the galley?” And she showed him t
he galley. It was all little metal trays and tools that slotted or secured into the wall, like a much cooler version of the kitchenette in the VW van his mom had borrowed from some hippie friends one summer when she and Mark drove to Texas to see about a man. The man turned out to be a disappointment, but the trip was a hoot.

  The aft cabin was a bedroom, truly, lit with tiny little spots ensconced in burled walnut. Monica showed him where the buttons to work everything were. Then Mark stripped to his underwear and lay down between real sheets. The pillow wasn’t quite right; it was too springy. So he looked out the little window into a cloudscape like a Maxfield Parrish painting, and soon he slept.

  In Hong Kong, Mark and Seamus deplaned and were met at the bottom step by Patel, who was all business. He swept them into another white sedan and then sat up front, beside the silent driver. Their bags were transferred from plane to car.

  “You will have another forty-five minutes of travel time,” said Patel. “There is some hurry. There is weather coming in, and the helicopter has its tolerances. Mr. Deveraux, Mr. Straw expects you for dinner.”

  Dinner, thought Mark, a word now drained of meaning by jet travel. Dinner could mean anything.

  They drove for fifteen minutes, at a decent clip, through two security barriers, and then they stopped at a third. Patel got out and conducted some business in the office beside the barrier. Cole didn’t look good. His face was puffy and he held his hands as if they’d just been given to him. His eyes were glazed. But then he seemed to surface from his daze and become suddenly aware of himself. He focused on Mark.

  “You sleep okay?” he asked. There was maybe resentment in his voice.

  It was the first time Mark had ever been on a helicopter. The inside was like a very nice van. Two three-man bench seats, but facing each other, and upholstered for potentates. A sort of a coffee table in the middle. More walnut. Walnut trees must live in fear of private aviation. Cole had put Dramamine patches behind both ears and kept his eyes fixed on some point outside the helicopter. Patel was immediately into a legal pad with an expensive pen.

  Mark tried to channel his helicopter excitement. The sleep on the jet had done him good, but now he was too keyed up, and no one was going to offer him a drink here. He would pay attention only to the flight, to the sea out the window, to his body in the seat. All the worrying he could expend on the job/money/debt issues or the addiction question or the lack of book progress or what he might be heading into on this yacht—he would not expend it. He would ask his brain, politely but firmly, to refrain from the distressing thoughts and attend only to the clouds and the incredible fact that he was choppering through the sky toward a megayacht.

  It worked, mostly. In fact, riding in a helicopter was much more exciting, ergono-aeronautically, than riding in a plane. As they lifted off, Mark felt his body describing a ridiculous straight-up-in-the-air line. He thought of T.C., the chopper pilot on Magnum, P.I., a show that Mark had watched religiously. Was it Thursday night? TV had been so important to him, stoking his little head with stupid fantasies. Now he pretended T.C. was piloting him.

  But he couldn’t keep the aggressor thoughts at bay: there was something wrong with his heart; the path he was on was not a good one; his mother was not proud of him; his luck would turn again; he would die alone and unloved.

  He kept returning to the scene out the window. Helicopters let you see more than planes did. No plate-size portholes, but broad rectangular windows. They were flying below the clouds, over a scudding sea without indications of scale save for little white paisleys on the blue-green that could have been whitecaps or mile-long reefs.

  He checked again on his co-passengers. Cole was looking pretty wretched. He was taking shallow sips of air. People really do get a green cast when they’re motion-sick. Patel was making notes in the margin of some widely spaced document—or pretending to, anyway, a trick Mark knew well. It began to rain and the chopper ducked lower. Mark could see the white combs breaking on the gray sea.

  When they flew lower, he could tell that they were really eating up the distance. Then their forward motion ceased. They were above some tanker-type ship. Mark scanned his section of horizon for a sign of Sine Wave but could see none. Were they stopping to refuel?

  Landing a helicopter on a ship did seem to be rather tricky. The craft hovered just above the deck for what felt like too long and then dropped the last bit suddenly. Cole’s eyes fluttered at that final jolt, and then his face filled with the obvious relief that he had not puked. Someone outside the helicopter scuttled around its skids, and someone else opened the door from the outside.

  This is Sine Wave? wondered Mark as he followed Patel out of the helicopter and set foot on the stamped metal of the vast foredeck of what appeared to be a freighter. Some distance away—like, two or three blocks away, Mark judged it—the flat face of the ship’s superstructure rose, the windows made to sparkle and bling by the setting sun before them. Cole followed Mark, and the three men walked toward the office-building-size pilothouse. It was a fair walk too; no little white car to take them.

  Where were the raked decks and sunny lounges? Where the gleaming brightwork and snapping pennants? The teak and walnut? This was a serious fucking ship, all rivets and cranes and cabling, heavy portals secured with massive mechanical locks, NO SMOKING stenciled hugely onto many surfaces. Mark saw someone emerge from a bulkhead hatch on the pilothouse. It was a crew member, but not a hottie in crisp whites. He was a South Asian in a blue jumpsuit, wearing a pistol on his thigh. He held the door open for them, looking down as he did so.

  “Mr. Patel,” said Mark before he stepped over the raised threshold, “we’re not aboard Sine Wave, are we?”

  And here Mr. Patel gave his first smile. “No, Mr. Deveraux,” he said. “Indeed we are not. We are aboard Sine Wave Two.”

  A steward, unarmed, met them just inside the bulkhead. “I am Mr. Singh,” he said to Mark. “Please follow me.” A different steward came for Cole and led him off in a different direction. Patel went with Mark and the steward.

  From the deck, the pilothouse had looked maritime-functional. But once inside, Mark saw that it had yacht-grade surfaces and appointments (again with the walnut paneling and the subdued lighting; Mark spotted a piano, an orchid in a vase, a painting on the wall that was maybe a Rothko), and there was a zing in the air, the kind produced when subjugated staff members move swiftly through corridors.

  They arrived at the door to a cabin. Mark’s cabin, apparently. Singh said, “You are to dine with Mr. Straw in forty-five minutes. I will return just prior to that. You will please not leave your room before then.”

  “Where would I go? The Lido deck?” Neither Singh nor Patel laughed. “Well. Thank you, gentlemen.” He nodded gravely at Singh. “Mr. Patel, thank you for seeing me here.”

  “It was Mr. Straw’s wish,” said Patel. The man had probably been in service for decades and had learned how to deliver a brush-off so that the sting was delayed a few beats.

  Right. Okay. This guy wouldn’t extinguish me if I were on fire. Mark’s charm was flattery-based and so only traveled up. Employees hardly ever liked him. Well, fine, whatever. He didn’t need Patel’s blessing or friendship.

  Alone, Mark checked out the cabin. It was plain, close to spartan. But the expensive kind of plain: wood with twelve coats of varnish, drawers on smooth metal bearings, only a few moving objects in the whole room. There was a berth he would need to climb into; there was a porthole; there was a little writing desk with twelve blank legal pads and a fist of sharpened pencils in the pencil well. There was a tiny and ingenious bathroom, a bar of soap engraved SW2 in the soap well. Mark looked out of the porthole at the empty sea in the last light and tried to feel like Jack London.

  Dinner was crown roast—Straw liked showy food—and lots of claret, poured by a gloved table man who held a folded square of napkin at the neck of the bottle to blot any errant drops. The third person at dinner was a man whom Straw had always referred to as “my
boon friend Parker.” This turned out to be Parker Pope, CEO of Bluebird, the security company that had recently changed its name to Blu Solutions/Logistics. He was twenty years younger than Straw but looked like he was made from the same stuff. Mostly, the two men carried on a contentious discussion about whether the Cape buffalo or the southern white rhinoceros was more difficult game. Straw said, “Rhinoceros. It’s megafauna.”

  “It’s a small-brained ungulate is what it is,” said Pope. “Whereas with the mbogo, you never know what they’re going to do. They despise men.”

  Mark tried to see both sides of it (“I’m not much of a hunter myself”), but in the end, he went with the rhinoceros, because of the armored hide. Pope seemed to set himself against Mark right then.

  “You came in with the new head of engineering, I believe,” Straw said to Mark. “Seamus Cole?”

  Mark said that he had.

  “Cole says he can mend the new drift net,” said Pope to Straw although he was looking at Mark.

  Mark bit. “Cole mends nets?” he asked Pope. “He’s a net mender?” Then, turning to Straw and adopting the intimate tone he used with him during their sessions, he asked: “Is that why we’re on such a huge vessel? Is that what we’re doing here, James? Fishing?”

  “Of a sort,” said Pope, quick as an eel. “Cole is a fisher of men. One of the best. But they like to be called data hydrologists—”

  Straw cut him off. “Mark hasn’t been belowdecks yet, Parker. And I think the phrase we went with was information architect.”

  Pope raised his hands, a sarcastic jeez Louise, sorry. “I just assumed that since you’re offering Marcus here the, uh, position, you would have been over the outlines of the project.”

  “I was going to do that tomorrow. But I may as well do it now, I guess.” Straw sounded angry, like a kid whose party had been ruined. “Mark, how would you like to be SineCo’s storyteller-in-chief?”