by Matthew Dunn
Isabella opened the door, a grin on her face, her eyes a bit bloodshot. “You’re bored?”
“Yeah. Bored.” Sahir made an effort to keep his attention fixed on her beautiful face and long hair, because he didn’t want to appear rude as he was checking out her slender but curvaceous body, clad in hot pants and a tight T-shirt. “But if now’s not a good time . . . ?”
Isabella frowned. “What’s in the bag?”
“Nothing. I’m going to collect my laundry later.” Sahir shrugged. “I’m trying to do anything to stop the boredom.”
Isabella laughed. “I haven’t got any tea.”
“Ah, okay.” Sahir half turned.
“But I’ve got Pepsi, milk, and wine.”
Sahir’s smile broadened. “A glass of milk would be good.”
He followed her into her apartment. It was identical to his, though hers had cannabis smoke hanging midair in the living room and a coffee table with long cigarette papers, loose tobacco, cannabis resin, a bottle of red wine, and a half-empty glass.
Isabella gestured to the couch and turned the music down. “I’d have cleaned up if I knew you were coming over.”
Sahir shrugged and lied, “Doesn’t bother me. I used to be a big pothead. Only reason I’m not anymore is because I once got busted at my university and they threatened to kick me out.”
“They’re not here now. I won’t tell if you want to share.”
“Tempting, but I’ve got to finish an essay. I need a clear head.”
“I don’t.” She sat opposite him and picked up a cigarette paper. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all. Actually, I enjoy being around smokers.”
Isabella sprinkled tobacco in the paper, unsealed the resin, lit a match, and held its flame against the cannabis. Then she rubbed her thumb and forefinger against the singed area, turning it into crumbs, which she peppered over the tobacco. She placed a rolled-up piece of cardboard at one end, ran her tongue along the paper’s adhesive edge, and sealed the joint. Putting it down, she went to the adjacent kitchenette, poured a glass of milk, came back, and handed it to him. After lighting the cigarette and inhaling deeply on the drug, she sat back down and asked, “You sure you’re here just for a drink? You seem like a nice guy, but I don’t want you to be disappointed, because I’m not the kind of girl who . . .”
Sahir raised his hand. “And nor am I that kind of man. Really, I’m just glad of some company. This essay’s driving me nuts.”
This reassured Isabella. “I hope this doesn’t sound wrong, but I’d never met an Indian guy before you moved in here.”
“And I’d never met a lady from Argentina before.” Sahir winked at her. “We have crossed borders, have we not? And there can be nothing wrong with that.”
“I agree.” Isabella screwed her eyes up as she took another drag. “So, when you finish your PhD . . .”
“If I finish it.”
“When you complete it, are you hoping to be an engineer or something like that?”
Sahir took a sip of his milk; it tasted off, but he gave no indication that it was bad. “I don’t know. My parents want me to build things, though I’m not so sure. It’s not my passion.”
Isabella nodded. “Parents can be asses like that. Mine want me to be a teacher. I can’t think of anything worse.” She leaned forward. “What is your passion?”
Sahir placed his milk on the coffee table, adjacent to Isabell’s drug stash, and let his hands drop to a position that looked natural but also kept them just out of sight. “Magic.”
“Magic? That doesn’t exist.”
“Are you sure?”
Isabella shrugged. “I think so. Yeah, I’m sure.”
“What do you think magic is?”
Isabella shrugged. “Stuff like creating fairies who live in the bottom of a garden. Or men claiming they can disappear in a puff of smoke.”
“They can, and that’s my point.” Sahir moved his fingers quickly yet accurately as he kept his eyes on Isabella. “Fairies aren’t real, but in 1917 two young English girls took photographs to show that fairies lived in their garden. People believed them. Magic became true.” He nodded toward Isabella’s latest waft of cannabis. “And smoke can hide a multitude of sins.”
“They’re just tricks.”
“I prefer to think of it as misdirection. The girls took fake images of the fairies via a medium that, at the time, was deemed incorruptible—namely, photography. And the man who vanishes behind smoke is leading his audience to believe that the smoke is like his soul and can take vacuous form, when in truth it’s a shield from which he can quickly retreat and hide before it clears.”
“They’re still just parlor tricks as far as I’m concerned.”
“You have a point.” Sahir placed a hand on the coffee table. “Real magic is amazing science in the hand of a person who knows what he’s doing.”
Isabella laughed, then coughed, while looking at her joint. “That’s the kind of thing I might say when I’ve had too many of these. It’s all a bit . . . ethereal.”
Sahir swallowed the rest of his rancid milk. “Magic must be tangible for it to be recognized as such. Otherwise it’s just unexplained phenomena.”
Isabella topped off her glass with red wine. “Amen to that, and I’ve seen no evidence of the tangible.”
“Yes, you have.”
“Where, when?”
“Here, and now.”
“What do you mean?” Isabella was staring at him, her eyes now lucid and inquiring.
“The cigarette you’re holding. It tastes like marijuana, doesn’t it?”
“Of course. It’s a joint.”
“And yet it has no marijuana or indeed anything else narcotic in it apart from nicotine.”
“What . . . ?”
“Stub it out and see for yourself.”
Isabella did what she was told; she ripped open the joint, held its remaining contents to her nose, and exclaimed, “That can’t be possible!”
“I know. But here’s the cigarette you rolled.” Sahir moved both hands onto the coffee table, holding the joint.
She grabbed it and tore it open. “This isn’t the joint I rolled. It’s only got tobacco in it.”
Sahir smiled. “Perhaps one of the two cigarettes on the bookshelf behind you is the joint you prepared.”
Isabell stood and turned. “These weren’t here before!” She tore them apart. “Tobacco, tobacco. No resin.” She grinned as she pointed at him. “I’ve no idea how you put these here. Very clever, but still a trick. Not the joint I rolled. All you’ve shown me is tricks, not magic.”
“Of course.” Sahir placed the tips of his fingers together. “Would you like to know the true magic?”
Isabella nodded eagerly.
Sahir placed a digit on the rim of the ashtray. “Can you tell the difference between cigarette ash and ash from tobacco that’s been combined with cannabis resin?”
Isabella was impatient. “Yes.”
“Pinch the ash you see and smell it; taste it as well if you like.”
Isabella did so and shook her head in astonishment. “That can’t be possible.”
“What isn’t possible?”
“I smoked a joint that I rolled with cannabis resin inside. It turned out not to have resin in it, yet it produced ash that did.” She was flummoxed. “How is that possible?”
“It’s not. It’s magic.” Sahir tapped his empty glass. “Could I trouble you for another milk?”
Isabella burst out laughing. “Of course, sweetie. You know, you’re great company. Stay as long as you like.” She moved to the kitchen, holding Sahir’s glass.
“I can’t stay too long.” Sahir followed her into the kitchen, yanked back her head, held her tight, and plunged a tranquilizer dart into her neck. “Not long now,” he w
hispered. He dragged her backwards as she lost consciousness, then he forced her limp body into the black canvas bag.
Chapter 10
IT’S AN ODD tradition to give a condemned man a hearty last meal before a rope is put around his neck or he stands in front of a firing squad. I’d have thought his nerves would benefit far more from a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of Scotch. It’s not as if he would need food to fuel his body, and I can’t imagine a man would be hungry before death.
I wasn’t hungry right now as I stared at my meal of steak, fries, and salad. No doubt the food in the diner was good. It looked good. But I just couldn’t eat any of it. Instead, I sipped my black coffee while trying to come up with an excuse for the rather scary-looking waitress as to why I’d not touched anything on my plate. I toyed with the idea of telling her that I was unwell, or alternatively telling her the truth—that my name was Will Cochrane and tomorrow she would hear about my death.
I decided to take the cowardly route; I waited for her to turn her back on me, left cash on the table, and walked fast out of the diner. I told myself I’d done this because I needed to retain every ounce of courage I had in case I needed to fight to save my life later on. It was horseshit. The truth was that nothing terrifies me more than scary women. That had been ingrained in me by, among others, a child-hating female instructor who’d taught me to swim by pushing my face in the water and pulling me out by my hair, Mrs. Eat Less, and an Irish woman from Killarney who’d loved making homemade bread and bombs.
It was raining hard and I was glad, because I didn’t want sunshine right now. Good weather makes people happy, and I didn’t like the notion that D.C. residents could be walking around with smiles on their faces on the day that I might die.
I got in my car, turned on the ignition, put my seat belt on, and muttered, “Fuck off” as the belt’s warning system started doing its thing.
It was nearly 9:00 p.m.
Trapper was due to call me in one hour.
I drove into downtown D.C., left my car in a parking lot, pulled my jacket hood over my head, and got on foot for no reason other than the fact that I needed some air and time to think. I walked along a broad avenue and passed a block-long neoclassical government building with an endless row of columns illuminated for dramatic effect. But the beauty around me didn’t register.
I wondered whether going after Trapper alone was the right thing to do when I could have easily availed myself of support from CIA paramilitary officers. But I was no different from most spies; we had to do things alone because it’s how we’d been trained. You put a bunch of guys together, and you inevitably have a weak link. You let loose a spy, and he or she achieves tremendous success or dies. There’s no in between, no weak link, nothing but uncompromising absolutes. And if you agree to accept a challenge and go out alone, there’s no turning back; you have to keep going to survive. You march or die, as my seasoned Legionnaires would yell at me every day during the brutality of my basic training. March or die; spy or die. I’d traded one for the other and in doing so had jettisoned camaraderie in favor of solitude. I’d sought this, and I was seeking it right now, because I felt very angry and needed to get up close to Trapper, with no witnesses, in order to kill him.
I’D JUST RETURNED to my car when my phone rang.
“Mr. Cochrane?”
“Yes.”
“You recall we had an appointment to speak now?”
I placed my hand over my handgun. “I do.”
“Good.” As ever, Trapper’s English was well spoken, no hint of an Indian accent. Zakaria was right: Trapper came from a privileged background and had no doubt received his education at a school that believed that good intellect was impotent if combined with anything other than pitch-perfect diction. “Are you alone?”
“Always.”
“Always? Oh, dear.” Trapper sounded earnest when he said, “I know how that feels.”
I wanted Trapper to get back to taunting me, rather than finding mutual ground about our sad backgrounds. “I’m glad you do. Why do you want to kill me?”
“Because you killed a senior Taliban leader who . . .”
“Bullshit. You’re not Taliban or affiliated to them. This is cock and bull.”
“Cock . . . ?”
“And fucking bull.”
“My goodness, Mr. Cochrane, your language . . . Are you alone?”
“I’m alone.”
“I do hope so, because if you’re lying to me, things will go bad for you.”
“I’m alone!”
“You’re in D.C.?”
“You know I am.”
“You have a vehicle?”
“I’m in one right now.”
“A road atlas or GPS?”
“I’ve got both.”
“Excellent. I want you to drive northwest, away from the city, and into the state of Maryland. Go to Germantown. Depending on your exact location in D.C., the journey should be no longer than one to two hours. When you reach Germantown, I want you to drive for another five or ten miles—I don’t care about the exact distance, just so long as you find somewhere deserted and then stop and wait for me to call you with further instructions.”
He hung up.
I drove out of the diner parking lot and headed out of the city on Route 270, while hoping I wasn’t making an awful mistake.
SEVENTY-TWO MINUTES LATER, I reached Germantown and drove for another six minutes before stopping on the side of a deserted highway, amid featureless open countryside and farmland. Rain continued to pound my vehicle. All I could see was the few yards of road ahead, illuminated by my headlights. Everything else was pitch black.
I knew this wasn’t the place where I’d die. Trapper had not been too specific about my route through Maryland and where I should stop. And I was certain I hadn’t been followed here. No—this wasn’t a kill zone; that place was somewhere else in Maryland. Soon I’d find out where it was.
I felt different from when I’d pursued Abram through the sewers. Then, I’d been totally unprepared for the possibility he wanted to kill me. But this was a premeditated moment. And though Trapper had the upper hand, we were both prepared for the probability that soon one of us would die. I’d been in situations like this before, and each time I had felt physically numb, mentally focused, and dislocated from everything that wasn’t going to help me survive. Tonight was no different.
I waited, my engine idling, my seat-belt warning system pinging.
Nearly one hour later, Trapper called. “Are you where you’re supposed to be?”
“Yes.”
He gave me precise details for my next stop. “I will meet you there.”
AFTER COVERING AN additional forty-two miles, I drove off the highway onto a rutted dirt track. More flat, open fields were on either side of me. There were no signs of any buildings, though it was so dark that it was impossible to know what lay ahead.
I passed a For Sale sign, and another one that told me I was on land belonging to Macquarie Farm. I drove for another hundred yards and stopped when the female voice belonging to my GPS announced that I’d arrived at my destination.
I thought, No, I haven’t; I’m in the middle of nowhere.
But Trapper had given me an eight-digit grid reference to find him, meaning either my GPS was faulty, or I was exactly where I should be.
I was about to reenter the grid reference to see if it prompted the navigation system to guide me to another place, when my phone rang.
“I can see you, Mr. Cochrane. Don’t worry: you’re exactly where I want you.”
I gripped my handgun. “Where am I?”
“I don’t blame you for asking. Visibility here is poor to nonexistent at night. You’re on a farm that for the last one hundred and seven years has been worked by three generations of the Macquarie family. For the majority
of that time, the farm has produced very sizeable yields of corn. But the last owners were childless, and they recently died of old age. It’s been empty and for sale for the last three years.”
I got out of the car, my gun in one hand, the other holding my cell against my ear.
“Did I tell you to get out of the car?”
“No.” I looked around, desperately trying to get my eyes to adjust to the dark. It was nearly a full moon, so I was confident I would be able to discern some features within minutes. Providing I wasn’t shot before that happened. I spotted what looked like a pinhead of light in the distance.
“Have you seen it yet?”
I didn’t respond.
“If you have,” Trapper laughed, “then you’ve seen the light.” His tone turned cold as he said, “Walk toward it, but stop when I tell you to.”
I jammed my cell between ear and shoulder, and held my gun in two hands as I moved slowly ahead. I was in a field, one that previously would have produced hundreds of bales of corn per season. But now it seemed barren. I moved my eyes in a figure eight around the pinhead of light, trying to get night vision. If Trapper had me in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle, I’d be dead by now. Either he didn’t have such a gun and needed me to get within range of whatever weapon he was carrying, or he wanted me to get closer so that he could attack me with something that would ensure my death would be slow and painful. I kept walking.
After approximately two hundred yards, the circle of light was a fraction bigger. As my eyes adjusted, I could see there was something in the distance beyond the light. It was on the horizon; maybe it was a solitary tree, or a building—I couldn’t tell.
“Keep walking.”
I did as I was told. The rain had abated, to be replaced by a fine drizzle; the air smelled of rotting grass. I asked Trapper again, “Why do you want me dead?”
Trapper hesitated before saying, “I suppose you deserve to know the truth. You killed my father.”
“Your father? He was a Taliban leader?”
“No, he wasn’t! He was an Indian man of impeccable standing in a community of fellow Muslims, but also Hindus and Christians. They loved him because he was a businessman who created jobs, a philanthropist, and a kind soul. You shot him in the head.”