Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

by David Shafer

  “Who?”

  “Rusty Trombones. Our man who passed you the stuff with your dad’s hard drive—”

  “Yeah, thank you so much, Sarah,” interrupted Leila.

  “No. That was mishandled. Rusty was supposed to get that to the prosecutor; it was supposed to look like it came from a whistle-blower, not from someone associated with your dad’s case. That it came through your brother complicates things. It gives the Committee reason to believe that you’ve had contact with us. We kept you clean from Heathrow to Dublin to Portland to LA. But when Dylan walked into the RITSerF with that drive, there was a line drawn connecting you to us.”

  “Well, fuck ’em. I don’t care that they know that. The hard drive worked. They’re going to drop the charges against my dad. Most of them, anyway.”

  “You do care. Trust me. You don’t want to be a known Diarist right now. Not in a large American city. And they’re not dropping the charges against your dad.”

  “No. They are.” She said it too loud. “I spoke to our attorney this morning. He said the prosecutor signed off on it.”

  “Yeah, well, today a stove exploded in that prosecutor’s face. There’s a new prosecutor. And the SCIF in Kramer’s office was seized, and Rusty Trombones has vanished. He’s probably in a six-by-six at Fort Meade.”

  Leila went cold.

  “Look, Lola,” said Sarah. “Don’t worry. If things really go pear-shaped, we have a contingency for all the Majnouns. Sit tight. The Committee still may not have realized you’re connected to us. Until they do, there’s no reason to believe they’ll make things any worse for you.”

  Until? Any worse? “How long? How long do I sit tight?”

  “Give it a week. Things will probably be going one way or another within a week.”

  “What’s the contingency plan?”

  “We can probably get you all out of here. An emergency exfiltration.”

  “I don’t like this plan, Sarah. Just wait around? I want a better assignment.”

  “Well, actually, there is something else we need from you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We need to talk to your sister.”

  When Leila called her sister back in and handed her the phone, Roxana made a thing of asking Leila to step out into the hallway. Minutes ticked by. Leila walked up and down the bland corridor, but it was spookily blank: nine other office doors, each identical to Roxana’s, the elevator bank, fire stairs at the end, a water fountain.

  She was trying to super-compartmentalize, to take the problem apart. The stove that exploded in the prosecutor’s face. A line between herself and Dear Diary. Could they really undrop the charges against her father? What had happened to the free country the Majnouns had fled to?

  She sat down on the floor outside her sister’s door, anger, panic, and despair thumping through her heart. She got up and paced the hallway again, tried the door to the fire stairs, just to see that it opened.

  She did this for twenty minutes: sit down—anger, panic, despair; stand up and pace—rack your brain for some new angle on the thing.

  Leila heard a strange sound from behind her sister’s four-inch-thick door. She stood, pushed the door open, and stepped back into Roxana’s small office. Her big sister was weeping. This was the third time in Leila’s life that she had seen her sister weep; Roxana’s disability had hardened her. And when the armless weep, it is worse than when the rest of us do. Roxana was wiping her nose and eyes with a wadded napkin held in her left foot.

  “What is it, Rox?” Leila said at once, and moved to her quickly.

  A sob rose through Roxana and convulsed her, and Leila hugged her sister for the first time since she’d been home. It’s gonna be okay, she whispered in Farsi. And when Roxana could speak again, she whispered to her sister:

  “They did this.”

  “I know, Rox,” said Leila.

  Sniffle. “No. This,” said Roxana, and she touched Leila with her clavicle.

  Leila didn’t understand. Then Roxana spun on her chair and nodded Leila toward the largest of the many screens on, above, and around her desk. Onscreen were displayed two documents: an interoffice e-mail thing and what seemed to Leila to be a high-res photo of a paper document.

  The interoffice e-mail thing was sent from one twenty-five-character alphanumeric code to another twenty-five-character alphanumeric code. The subject line read: A two-fer!

  Dude. You know the drama that the Ruiners dropped on the principal in Cal because of that hot, nosy NGO girl? shit is double useful. My sleuths got old-fashioned on the background, went into the archives. Attached find doc from trial of a drug Prodigium. 1970! It was supposed to make geniuses. Made lots dead babies instead. The few geniuses it did make are mostly in full-time care by now. (wouldn’t that suck? being a genius vegetable) But check it out. One of the Prodigium betas that didn’t die now working at the LA facility. Roxana Majnoun. Hot name, but she has no arms (If she wore a hijab, she’d look like an anorexic ghost lol). Shes not commissioned. Shes there under pretense. Shes working on the gaze sink stuff. They were hoping to bring her in nice—the political department rated her amenable. But shes not playing ball. She won’t take the project to the next level. So legal should keep all options open on the principal, because they want traction on the armless sister too. Since we have the father, may as well use him.

  did you see the prosecutor job? nice, right? First exploding stove I ever ordered.

  Leila leaned close to the screen to examine the high-res photo of the paper document. Damn, it was in Farsi. Leila’s reading comprehension of Farsi had been deteriorating in her adulthood. This was troubling. Plus, Roxana wrote beautiful Nasta’liq script with her feet, so Leila didn’t want to admit that she was losing what was, technically, their mother tongue.

  But when she began reading the document, Leila found that her Farsi comprehension had come back; it was better than it had been in years. She was reading a formal letter of understanding between Baxter-Snider Pharmaceuticals and the Iranian Ministry of Health. It had clearly been drafted in English and then translated into Farsi, and that plus the mix of Western legal obliquity and Eastern pomposity made it sound stilted.

  Permission had been granted by the ministry for public-health research, and researches into—

  “What does that word mean, Rox?” asked Leila, pointing at the screen.

  Roxana sniffled and tilted her head. “Mind science,” she said.

  —mind science that would bring glory to the nation and make Iran once again the seat of medicine and learning. Baxter-Snider was free to conduct any and all discreet population-based longitudinal chemical trials of promising compounds. The ministry gave Baxter-Snider full but unnamed partnership with itself. The ministry agreed to provide Baxter-Snider unlimited access to all its current and future epidemiological research, monitoring, and outreach operations, and would temporarily cede full management and control of the nation’s prenatal and maternal programs, medical and social.

  What the fuck? thought Leila. “Rox, what do they mean when they say you won’t take the project to the next level?”

  Roxana had collected herself. “You know those SineLenses, the contacts that permit computer interface?” Leila did, but she had found the idea creepy even before all this started. “Well, these guys are working on a similar platform, but one that can actually implant devices for the purpose of data collection. See, they can do retinography from the surface of the eye just fine. But that’s still like standing on the viewing deck at the Grand Canyon, you know?” Leila did know. Not about retinography, but about that August driving vacation in—was it 1982? One of Cyrus Majnoun’s Honor America tours. “Now they’re sort of able to stash the retinography equipment in the back of the eye via these contacts.”

  “What retinography equipment?”

  “Tiny camera, tiny light, tiny transmitter.”

  “Christ, Roxana.”

  “There are great uses for that technology! For research. To find out abo
ut how information comes in, Leila. It is a very important field. There would need to be years of lab trials, obviously, and then animal trials.” Leila was shaking her head at her sister, disappointment clear in the set of her eyes and mouth.

  “I know,” said Roxana. “I guess I was stupid to believe them. Vain, maybe. But they wanted me to write something that allows instructions to be sent to the back of the eye. That’s the one I said I wouldn’t work on. I’ve told them no three times, but they still send me new data every day.”

  “Well, what are you gonna do?”

  “What the fuck do you mean, what am I gonna do? You think I would let these people use me? That I could allow this to happen while I’m around?”

  Leila shook her head. “No. Not that. I meant operationally. I mean how do we stop them?”

  Roxana softened. “Well, I’m putting my shoulder to the wheel, anyway.” Was that a pun from Roxana? About her condition? Unheard-of. “Your friend Sarah Tonin has a job for me.” Pause. “They want me to make them something.” Pause.

  Roxana, like their mother, was a fan of these pauses. “What, Rox?”

  “A piece of terrible jewelry to pin right on the chest of their whole network.”

  Since she had started writing code, at thirteen, Roxana had always called her programs jewelry; it annoyed the exclusively male cohort she’d had to endure in that particular swath of her arc upward. Terrible jewelry meant a computer virus.

  This was like the old times, when Leila would help Roxana execute the teasing defense strategies she needed to endure an armless adolescence. Old times, but with everything at stake.

  “What’s going to make it so terrible?”

  “One hundred percent circuit collapse on their network,” said Roxana, all ho-hum. “You want to make malware, you copy the guys making biomalware; they’re a few years ahead of the curve. Hand me that big manila, would you?” Roxana meant the big interoffice envelope she had carried in from the front desk. “And the Express envelope too.”

  Roxana drew from the envelope a sheaf of papers and started to leaf through them. It wasn’t just papers. It was photos and X-rays and metered waves chittered out on thermal graph scrolls and pages dense with numbers.

  But Sarah had told Leila that Dear Diary couldn’t get anything on their network, because it was solid-state or something. “Even if you can make this virus for us, how are we supposed to get it on their network?”

  “I dunno. Apparently, some guy you met in a bar was their best shot at that,” said Roxana. “Sarah said they’re working up another way.” When Roxana came to the end of the sheaf, she turned her attention to the other envelope. “Uh, Leila. You know a Lola Montes?”

  Leila snatched the envelope from her sister and examined it. “Recipient: Lola Montes, c/o Roxana Majnoun, LACLAF, Los Angeles, CA.” The handwriting was tiny. There was also a zip + 4. Leila pulled the cardboard ripcord on the envelope and removed a single sheet of paper from within. It was brittle, blank. She turned it over and over. Was this from Dear Diary? No, she had just been on the phone with them. Was there a return address? She looked for the envelope, but Roxana had already retrieved it from Leila’s lap with her left foot and was examining it closely.

  “Who’s the sender, Roxana?” she asked impatiently.

  Roxana seemed to be peering at the tiny script, or else she was pausing for effect again.

  “Leo’s Lightbulbs and Lemon Juice?”

  Leila waited until she was home and in the small room beneath the stairs. She took the tacky lampshade off the little lamp on the Ikea bedside table. She held the paper close to the light, passing it over the 60-watt bulb delicately, as a careful plumber is delicate with the blue of the torch flame on the copper pipe. She began in one corner, and as the typewritten words started to appear, she could tell up from down, right from left; she warmed the page again, this time from the upper left. The words appeared, embrowning on the raggy paper:

  Dear Lola or whatever your name is, I have this way of remembering numbers. I guess it’s a mnemonic: the numbers suggest little pictures to me, and I remember the pictures. Sometimes, that’s more confusing than it is helpful. But in this case, it may get me back to you.

  In the dining car of an underwater bullet train, two tree surgeons are playing pinochle. That was the picture I saw when you rattled off that phone number when you were on the phone with your sister the other night. Sorry for eavesdropping. But not really. That phone number only got me the LA County Large Array Facility, though. Is your sister an astronomer?

  I know you were trying to keep me from the specifics of your situation, but there’s this Internet they got now, and “middle-school principal” + “FBI” + “Los Angeles,” and I saw the news about your father. I saw what it is they’re doing to him. And so I know your surname is Majnoun. The LA Times mentioned your sister because I guess she’s some kind of prodigy. Maybe your real name’s not that important. Lola suits you fine.

  Did you ever hear the joke about the guy who goes to his shrink? Guy says, Doc, sometimes I think I’m a teepee and sometimes I think I’m a wigwam. Doc says, The problem is, you’re two tents.

  Now, I know that this joke is nominally about the double homophone. Or maybe the joke is supposed to be funny because it’s so lame, like a hardy-har-har kind of joke. But see, what I like about it, the poor schmuck just went cycling back and forth between two ideas of himself. He’s the guy, in the whole canon, who gives clearest voice to a common problem—the problem where your mind runs back and forth, binarily, between two opposite notions of itself while all the time your mind somehow also knows—because why else would the guy go to a shrink if he didn’t?—that the two poles of that endless back-and-forth cycle are probably not useful reference points anyway. Teepee? Wigwam? Were those ever really even the right words to denote distinct styles of Native American housing? And then you have the capper, where the health-care provider mocks and dismisses the patient and his complaint, which I think is pretty biting. That’s how I feel: I’m a teepee, I’m a wigwam; I’m a genius, I’m a loser. I am connected, I am alone. Yes, I concede: the drink and weed pulled that out of me more. So I’ve stopped all that. For my sisters. And for myself.

  I fear, though, that beneath my bad habits, there is still the teepee/wigwam problem. It’s always been there, it’ll always be there; it’s like the water table or something. It’s just a condition I’ll have to manage my whole life, I guess. Lots of people have those, right?

  I know—I had you at binarily. Act fast, Lola. How long do you think a weak-minded addict will stay on the shelf? Because that day you walked in? That day I saw you? I swear, my heart slowed and my breath came easier. All that rabbiting I do—it just stopped. Not stopped by like magic, but stopped with reason. You are as strange and amazing as anything my stupid little brain has ever come up with, and you are from outside of it. You have no idea what great news that is. And I’m going to lift some copy here, but there is a time for everything, that day and night here you were the still point of the turning world, and I knew for sure that I had a place in it. That place is next to you.

  The Argentines have a phrase: my media naranja, they say—my half-orange.

  But listen. Even if you’re not interested in the above, know that I am furious at these people who have harmed your family. Let me help you stop them. I am highly qualified to oppose secret nefarious cabals, and I have an idea, a new angle on the thing.

  Guess who got in touch yesterday, Lola? Mark Deveraux. He wrote to me. I think he wants to apologize or something. He’s going to be in Portland this weekend.

  We never considered just asking him for his help. Why didn’t we consider that? Your people must have decided he would never go willingly. But I think he might. Mark may be a self-centered bullshitter, but he’s no evil genius. And he got me out of a few ditches. When my parents died, I was kind of ghosting around, seeing flames everywhere, and my sisters had me going to this vulture-y trauma counselor. Then Mark showed up in some
girl’s Saab and took me up to Maine, where the girl’s parents had this pretend farm on a private island, and he installed me in one of their converted barn guesthouses, and for about a month he brought me magazines and pot and soup. Then there was this other time, when I bought the bookstore and totally failed at that, and when I had to sell it, he came and helped me pack it all up. I leaned on him hard then too.

  Point is, I think he’s a good man, at heart. Maybe he’s gotten caught up with these people without meaning to, and all he needs is to be offered a way out. That’s how it’s been with me sometimes. Like when you came to get me.

  But I want you there with me when I see him, Lola. I need you there. You’ll do a better job explaining the situation than I would. Come up here. I’m supposed to see him on Friday.

  I understand that there is some danger here, and haste. I will not waste your time, and I’m taking precautions. I will mail this care of your sister, at her workplace. And you figured out the ink thing. I knew you would. Let me know that you’re coming, and when. Leave a message on my landline saying you’re at the dentist’s office or something, and leave a callback number that is actually the date and time of your arrival. I’ll be here.

  I really am quite sure that there is something we’re supposed to do together, that there is more that is supposed to go on between us. Aren’t you? Isn’t there a held breath in your life right now? I’ve missed a few boats already, and I really don’t want to miss this one too. I realize that in that metaphor or analogy or whatever, you are a boat. That doesn’t really quite get what I mean, because I am also a boat. We are both boats and we are both passengers. We should not miss each other.

  Leo Crane

  Years ago, a boyfriend who was trying to make up for some bad behavior had written hundreds of little notes to her and left them around the apartment they shared in DC. He was the drinker, that one, a poet and a plate smasher. Those notes bought him six more months with Leila. But, finally, the affair had left her with a mild distrust of love letters.