by Alex Carr
“Where's that fucking chopper?” someone yelled. Despite the gunfire, the figures on the outer flanks had begun to advance again, moving slowly forward, forming a loose circle around the British team.
Kat scanned the figures on the ground. Two had rolled over and were firing their guns, but one lay motionless, his left knee cocked slightly, his arms sprawled at his sides. There was no way of knowing who he was.
“Look, here!” one of the MPs yelled. “I think someone's coming.”
The figures in the outer circle had stopped advancing and were now rapidly moving back in the direction from which they'd come.
The chopper, Kat thought, please, God, let it be the chopper. And it was.
A tracer rocketed in from the left side of the screen. A Hydra, Kat guessed, from the explosion that followed, taking out a handful of the fast-retreating figures and sending the rest scattering across the hilly terrain. A second blast followed, and then a third.
The group in the ICE erupted in cheers.
“Die, you Taliban fuck!” the enthusiastic MP yelled, addressing a writhing figure on the monitor.
Kat looked away, suddenly embarrassed, not wanting to be a witness to the man's death. As she did so, her eyes caught Kurtz's. He was staring straight at her, his lips curved. He made no move to look away, but nodded instead, slightly, almost imperceptibly, as if confirming her worst fears.
He knew, Kat thought for an instant, just an instant. And then, realizing how ridiculous such an idea was, she felt suddenly guilty for having thought it.
She looked back at the monitor, and she could see the scorpion-like silhouette of the medevac helicopter and the British team scurrying toward it with their wounded. No, she told herself, these things happened. They were in a war, after all.
NOTHING, KAT REALIZED, stopping just inside the front gate, surveying the wasteland that was Ain Chock—the broken windows and tattered tarps, the garbage fires burning in the lanes. After everything Jamal had told her, she had understood nothing.
They beat us, Jamal had said once, talking about his childhood at the orphanage, and Kat had thought, Yes, they beat you. But the boy's words came back to her as she followed Kurtz into the putrid maze of the courtyard shantytown. They beat him, she thought, and the beatings themselves now seemed trivial in relation to the utter brutality of the actual place.
Third World slums can be dangerous for outsiders, especially those with obvious means, and Kat had prepared herself for a confrontation. But she could see now that there was no reason to be afraid. The inhabitants here were the castoffs of the castoffs, the ancient and the sick and the mentally faltering, those from whom life had been drained like the juice from an orange, and whose deflated faces followed Kat and Kurtz with dispassionate interest.
Someone somewhere was burning shit. The stench of it, rank and utterly familiar, reminded Kat of the months she'd spent at Kandahar, and of the lunar desolation of that place. She had not realized it at the time—none of them had—but looking back she could see a certain symmetry to their time there, a kind of perfection in the emptiness of those surroundings, the landscape scoured as they themselves had been. Scoured by rage and grief, stinking of revenge.
The orphanage itself appeared to Kat to be uninhabited, or, at least, uninhabitable. Through the broken first-floor windows Kat could see piles of garbage and upturned mattresses, walls flushed with black mold. As she and Kurtz approached the front door, two young men emerged from the dilapidated building carrying disordered bundles of electrical wire.
How much, Kat wondered, did they expect to get for their effort? A few dirham coins in the scrap market, if they were lucky. Not even enough to put a down payment on their next meal.
They were close to Jamal's age, one dressed like a soccer player in red track pants and a green-and-yellow shirt, the other playing the part of a New Jersey goodfella in blue jeans and a leather jacket. Kat was about to call to them when she heard Kurtz's stilted Arabic.
“Hey! You! What are you doing?”
The two scavengers looked up, their eyes flicking briefly from Kat to Kurtz and back again. Nonplussed, they shifted their burdens slightly and continued walking.
“Hey!” Kurtz called again, but this time Kat put her hand on his arm to silence him.
She nodded and smiled broadly, greeting the young men in the traditional manner. She was still wearing the head scarf she'd picked up at the gas station and she was glad of it, hoping it might buy her some small modicum of respectability.
The pair stopped where they were but did not return Kat's greeting.
“Brothers,” she continued, trying to erase any hint of threat from her voice. “Perhaps you can help us. We are looking for a friend, a young man close to your age. His name is Jamal.”
The sporting one fingered his bundle of wires. “There is no one by that name here,” he said forcefully.
“Are you certain?” Kat asked, glancing at the second man, the one in the leather jacket. He was standing slightly back from his friend, his eyes hard on Kat, his expression suggestive, almost sexual. Was it the look, Kat wondered, of someone who wanted to speak but could not?
“We are prepared to show our gratitude,” Kurtz interjected.
Yes, Kat thought, watching the man in the leather jacket, his eyes flaring at the suggestion of money: this one would tell them what they wanted to know. But not now, not here.
“We cannot help you,” the sporting one insisted, turning to go.
The second man moved to follow, but as he did his eyes met Kat's one final time. What passed between them then was like the look of two lovers, two people drawn to congress with each other but unable at that moment to consummate their desires.
Then, in an instant, the pair was gone, swallowed by the shadowed mouth of one of the courtyard's many narrow alleyways, disappeared into the stinking bowels of the slum.
Kat looked up at the sky. “It's getting dark,” she said.
“Yes,” Kurtz agreed unhappily. “We should go.”
“Is it ‘in like a lion, out like a lamb,’ or the other way around?” Janson had mused, trying to delay the inevitable, the real reason for his call: that the time had come to cut and run. “I never can get it straight.”
“The first one, I think,” Harry offered. “But from up here March looked a hell of a lot like a lion coming and going.”
It was April Fools' Day, the Monday after Easter, and Da Nang, barely four hundred kilometers to the north, had fallen to the Vietcong the day before. It was a matter of days, possibly even hours, before the North Vietnamese reached Nha Trang.
“What's the word on friends?” Harry asked, thinking about his earlier promise to An. “Staff and such.”
“Officially, everyone who needs a ride gets one.”
“And unofficially?”
“What do you think, Harry?”
There was An's face again, her stony prediction of his failure.
“Tell me how many you've got,” Janson relented, “and I'll get them on the transport list. It's the best I can do. We should have started moving people out weeks ago, but Martin's still convinced we can hold Saigon.”
“Three altogether. My housekeeper and her parents.”
“Names?”
Christ, Harry thought, he didn't even know. The woman who cooked his meals and kept his bathroom clean, and he had never bothered to learn her full name. “Nguyen,” he said, taking a shot in the dark, naming a good portion of the population of Vietnam. “Nguyen, An. And family.”
“You need to get them here yesterday, Harry. Sooner, if possible. People are starting to panic. You heard what happened with Ed Daley.”
Janson was referring to Daley's flight into Da Nang two days earlier to rescue women and children. The World Airways jet had been commandeered by three hundred ARVN soldiers while it sat on the tarmac and had barely made it into the air. At least one unlucky stowaway was crushed to death in the wheel well when the landing gear retracted.
“Yesterday,” Harry agreed. Then he hung up the phone and went downstairs.
Like any good servant, An had schooled herself in the culinary language of her masters. Using a dog-eared copy of the 1969 embassy wives' Bloom Where You're Planted cookbook and the small selection of canned goods imported from the Saigon commissary, An regularly attempted such American standards as tuna casserole, Swedish meatballs, and ambrosia salad.
She was in the midst of one of these concoctions, trying to make sense of a can of cream of mushroom soup, when Harry found her in the kitchen.
“Beef stroganoff for lunch today,” she announced, dumping the contents of the can into a mixing bowl and regarding the gelatinous mass with consternation.
Harry shook his head. “No, An. No lunch today.”
She looked up at him, dismayed. “You don't like?”
“Honestly? No. But that's beside the point. You've heard what happened in Da Nang?”
An nodded.
Of course, Harry thought. Death on the march, and here she was, making stroganoff for his lunch. “We need to leave for Saigon as soon as possible. You'll go get your parents.”
“Now?”
“Yes, right now.”
“But lunch?”
“I'll take care of it,” Harry told her gently. “Go get your parents.” He glanced at his watch. It was early still, barely eight. They would need to leave by noon in order to make sure they didn't run out of daylight. “You'll be back here by noon at the latest.” He tapped his watch for emphasis. “Twelve o'clock.”
An untied her apron and laid it on the counter. “Yes, Mr. Harry.”
Harry watched her leave through the garden, then started back upstairs. There was a strict protocol to observe when abandoning a station, a long list of items that needed to be destroyed, files and papers, the capture of which could be devastating to the agents implicated therein. And there was the Celestron to think of as well. The telescope would need to be packed for the long car trip south. Harry would be hard-pressed to get it all done by noon.
He had just reached the second-floor landing and was making a mental list of his priorities when he heard the phone in his office ringing. Janson again, he thought, hurrying to answer. But when he lifted the receiver it was Susan on the other end.
“Harry!” She sounded upset, possibly drunk. “Harry, it's Susan. Is Dick there?”
“No,” Harry replied coldly. It was the first time he'd spoken to Susan since she'd called to tell him she and Morrow were getting married. Her voice was like whiskey on a still-tender wound.
“He and Jack McLeod went up to the subbase in Cam Ranh three days ago,” she said shakily. “They were supposed to be back last night. No one's heard anything.”
“So it's good news.”
“Don't be an idiot.”
“Too late for that.”
Silence, then the sound of muffled sobs.
That voice, Harry thought, that perfectly cultivated mixture of vulnerability and suggestion. “I'm sure everything's fine,” he told her, hating himself for his capitulation.
“No,” she insisted. “Something's happened. I know it.” She took a deep breath, as if preparing to dive. “If you could just go down there. Just drive down and see.”
Harry laughed. “You can't be serious.”
But she was. “Please, Harry.” She was crying again, sobbing in short, shuddering bursts.
An hour down and an hour back, Harry told himself, pretending to count, in a logical way, the time it would take him to make the round-trip to Cam Ranh, when what he was actually thinking about was Susan's mouth during sex, the way her lips parted at the very moment he entered her, as if she were about to speak. An hour up, a quick check of the Cam Ranh subbase, and then back again. As if the choice could be a rational one. As if there could be any choice at all. As if he could, for even one moment, consider refusing her.
“Please, Harry. I'm scared.”
He glanced around his office at the metal filing cabinets, the stack of folders on his desk. Not as much to take care of as he'd first thought. Put a match to it and be done.
“Okay,” he said. “I'll go.”
THE PLANE CAME IN GENTLY, banking across the mine-lashed Alleghenies and the emerald cradle of the Shenandoah Valley. Over the battle-worn fields of Manassas and their moldering ghosts. Nearly five thousand dead in one day, Harry thought, trying to concentrate on anything other than his own imminent death. Almost twice as many Union as Confederate, but hardly a victory for the seventeen hundred southern boys who'd fallen along the banks of Bull Run, and whose sacrifice history would eventually prove worthless.
It was, as the captain had informed them at the beginning of the flight, a perfect day to fly. Perfect as they come, he'd announced as the 737 climbed into the desert-dry air over Phoenix for the second leg of Harry's journey. Yet Harry could taste the bitter bile of fear in his throat with each slight shift of the engines, each shudder of the wings. He did not like flying, never had, could not muster the faith needed to enter cheerfully into such a contract. As the ground loomed up beneath them, Harry closed his eyes and prayed to all the gods he didn't believe in that the end would at least come swiftly. Then the tires hit the runway and the giant craft bounced, defying the forces of gravity one last time, and Harry realized they were down.
It had been remarkably easy to give Morrow's men the slip the night before. Just after nine o'clock Harry had driven down to Kailua, parked his car in the guest lot at the King Kamehameha, and gone into the hotel bar to have a drink. Two overpriced and underpoured martinis later, having shed his dour outer layer of clothing in the lobby bathroom in exchange for a bright tourist's shirt and knee-length shorts, Harry was on his way to the airport to catch the mainland red-eye, packed into the hotel's free shuttle with a dozen sunburned Germans and a pair of hostile honeymooners who managed to sit side by side for the entire trip without once touching.
And now, some fourteen jet-lagged hours later, nearly a full day with the time difference thrown in, here he was. Back in the place to which he'd sworn he would never return. Home to the cradle and grave of all his regrets. The plane rolled to a stop and he pried himself from his seat, touching the breast pocket of his jacket, the slim rectangle of the Canadian passport.
Not Harry Comfort, he reminded himself as he made his way out onto the concourse and down to the airport's lower level. Not Harry Comfort but this other man. Harry of the goofy grin and the bad jokes. Harry who'd sold farm equipment for thirty-odd years and who'd retired with just enough money to see the world. Harry with a tourist's litter in his pockets. A mangled ABC store receipt for sunscreen and plastic sandals. A frayed brochure for sport-fishing trips out of Captain Cook. A phone number, contemplated but never used, for an escort service in Kailua-Kona.
Harry Lyttle, the type on both his driver's license and his credit card read when he handed them to the girl at the rental-car counter. Harry Lyttle of Regina, Saskatchewan. Harry of no regrets.
A PERFECT DAY. The first thing anyone said when they spoke of what had happened that morning, as if somehow the affront was worse because of it. As if the blueness of the sky, the sheer limitless clarity against which the events had unfolded, served only to magnify the horror.
In her worst moments, times like this, sleepless AMs with the clock ticking painfully forward, it was that sky Kat thought of over and over again, that brilliant liquid blue into which Max would have jumped.
Like so many others who'd lost someone that day, Kat hadn't been able to keep herself from looking for clues to her brother's death. Long after the event was over, she'd scoured the Internet for images of bodies falling, hoping and yet not hoping to recognize Max. And, like the lucky ones, she had so far been saved from the proof she so desperately wanted to find.
But he had jumped. Of this Kat was certain. Given any choice at all, Kat knew this was the one he would have chosen, just as she knew that her own fear would have held her back.
In her worst moments, sh
e stood there with him on the lip of that perfectly blue sky. Beneath them was the city, the Hudson flashing like hammered silver in the sunlight. Behind them was the fire.
In her worst moments she could not tell which was more painful: the loss of her brother or the fact that she had failed him so terribly.
Below Kat's window a chorus of male voices caromed back and forth off the street's dark façades. Europeans, Kat thought, though she did not immediately recognize the language. Dutch perhaps, or Danish, something Germanic. The men on their way back from an evening in one of the red-light districts that lay adjacent to the hotel on either side.
A calculation, Kat had thought when Kurtz stopped the Peugeot on the street outside and she realized this was where they were going to spend the night. His own subtle way of saying she was one of them, that this was where she belonged. And a part of her had thought maybe he was right, that she was no better than those women on the Avenue Lalla Yacout.
Kat rolled over on her side and clamped her musty pillow over her head, hoping to quiet not just the voices in the street but the ones inside her head as well. Max's voice and Colin's, the accusations of the dead, and her own voice, cruelest of all, insistent, telling her over and over what she should have seen all along: that she and Kurtz had been sent not to save the boy but to kill him.
Through the paper-thin wall, Kat could hear Kurtz snoring in the next room. Breathe. Pause. Breathe. Pause. And, between each breath, a moment of mortal hesitation, an instant in which it seemed his lungs would fail to catch.
This was her chance, and doubtless the last one she would get. If she left now, she was fairly certain she could find Jamal before Kurtz did. And then what? She had tried to help the boy once before and this was where it had brought them.
No, she reasoned, she would not repeat the mistakes she had made at Bagram. She would not be complicit. Slowly, she sat up and swung her legs off the bed. Moving to the metronome of Kurtz's breath, she collected her things—shoes and jacket and scarf—and let herself out into the hall. She paused for a moment outside Kurtz's door, reassuring herself that he was still asleep, then made her way down the hotel's narrow communal stairwell and out onto the dark street.