Love Thy Neighbor

by Mark Gilleo

  “What kind of satellites did your father build?”

  “Some were for commercial purposes. TV satellites, weather satellites, communication satellites. But the good stories were the military satellites. Satellites that could read something the size of a license plate at night from 600 miles up. Satellites that could spot underground geological phenomena. Underground nuclear tests, for example … And then there was the Divinity Satellite.”

  “What did that one do?”

  “The Divinity Satellite was so secret that it was built in a hundred different locations and pulled together through five sub-assembly plants. The final assembly took place on a military base, under the watchful eye of B-2 bombers and a fully armed tank unit.”

  “So what did it do?”

  “According to my father, the Divinity Satellite was built for one purpose only — to communicate with God. He said there was no other explanation.”

  Lisa laughed and Clark’s heart melted just a little.

  “Even now, I look up at the sky sometimes and think about the pieces of metal my father made which are circling the planet hundreds of miles in the air. It’s hard to see satellites here in the D.C. area because there is too much light pollution, but if you get out in the country, away from the lights, you can actually see satellites zipping across the sky at night. They look like tiny, fast-moving stars.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “What else did your father make?”

  “All kinds of stuff. Armor piercing plates for intelligence vehicles. Made to order suitcases to hold communications equipment.”

  Lisa looked curiously at Clark. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but why was your father making this type of stuff in his garage?”

  “Are we talking about the IRS investigation?”

  “No. I’m just curious. I know, according to IRS records, your father ran a business out of his home.”

  “That’s correct,” Clark answered. “Hayden, Ltd. After he officially retired, he continued to work from his shop in the garage. He usually worked on jobs that had been subcontracted from larger companies. He knew a lot of people and they kept him busy. The defense contractor industry is a tight-knit group. Most of the big defense contractors have offices around the beltway, in Maryland, in Virginia. They reside in large non-descript buildings that cast shadows on the cars stuck in traffic on 495. My dad worked at E-Systems for years, on Route 50 near Fairfax Hospital. His company, and others, would get work for huge contracts, tens of thousands of man-hours. In order to meet the deadline for these projects, the defense contractors sub-contracted out portions of the jobs to smaller companies. In turn, these smaller companies sub-contracted out portions of their work to others. If you are good at what you do, and are a trusted individual in the community, which my father was, you could always find work. And that is how spy satellites, or portions of them, ended up being built in my garage.”

  “Pretty amazing.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, my father spent his career bouncing around between big-name defense contractors in the area, which, love them or hate them, are legitimate companies. But given his line of work, and the machines he had in the garage, he was in a profession where he could take his work home with him. Though it wasn’t until after he retired that he opened his own business, for supplemental income.”

  “I’m starting to get a picture of a man who worked very hard.”

  Clark nodded and looked away in reminiscence. “My dad had another good story he used to like to tell. One day, when he was still working at that place over there on Route 50, a big truck pulled up to the loading dock at the end of the day. A guy in dress pants and a nice shirt got out from behind the wheel of a truck.”

  “A truck driver in dress pants?”

  “Exactly. So this guy walks to the back of the vehicle as my father approached from the shop area. As the door opened my father started to scratch his head. In the back of the truck, stacked floor to ceiling, were dozens of school desks.”

  “School desks?”

  “Wooden school desks.”

  “And… ?”

  “The well-dressed driver starts waving around a work order that he has and claims he needs immediate help. My dad starts calling upstairs to see if the order is legitimate and after a few calls, and some ass-chewing, they start unloading the desks. When they finish unloading the contents, the driver goes into the cab of the truck and pulls out a blueprint. Everyone gathers around and the man explains that he wants the wooden desks turned into rungs to be used in rope ladders.”

  “Why?”

  “As my dad explained it, this guy was not into questions and answers. My dad, who was pretty quick to assess things, surmised that the ladders were for some covert CIA mission and that the desks were being used because they were untraceable sources of wood. So if one of these rope ladders got left behind, in whatever mission they were part of, the material couldn’t be traced back to its source. Or at least, someone would have a hell of a time trying to connect a wooden rung on a rope ladder with an old school desk bought from public school surplus.”

  “Makes you wonder what the government is up to…”

  “You work for them.”

  “But I’m one of the good guys.”

  “So was my father.”

  “Anything else I need to know about you?”

  “I’m the control man for Virginia Tech’s Robotics Team.”

  “The control man?”

  “The driver. The guy with the remote control.”

  “Because your father flew model airplanes?”

  “You were paying attention. My father tried to instill his love of model airplanes on me, but it didn’t stick. But I had a gift for the controls.”

  “I wouldn’t mind trying to fly a plane.”

  “Well, when you start flying model airplanes, you have to have a buddy system.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s like driving school. If you go to driving school the instructor has a brake and a gas pedal on his side of the car, just in case. Well, when you are flying a remote control airplane that can cost up to a thousand dollars, generally the guy who bought or built the plane doesn’t want some novice pilot crashing it on its maiden voyage. So they set up a buddy system. Two remote controls running on the same frequency. One of the remote controls has a switch that allows the controller of the experienced pilot to override the controller of the novice pilot. When I was young I used to fly occasionally and my father was always standing next to me with his own controller, ready to take over if I lost control of the airplane. My controller was this God-awful bright red color with a bright red flag on the end of the antenna announcing to the world to pay attention. It was the equivalent of driving a car with a ‘student driver’ sign plastered across the back of the vehicle. Standing out there on the radio control pitch with that bright red controller and matching antenna flag. It was embarrassing for a kid.”

  “Did you ever crash?”

  “I almost crashed a few times, but my old man saved me.”

  “So you didn’t like flying airplanes, but you like driving robots?”

  “It’s a lot easier to drive a robot. You are only dealing with two dimensions.”

  “What else do I need to know about you?”

  Clark stumbled a little before continuing. “There’s something else you may find either extremely interesting or extremely boring.”

  “How can I refuse a segue like that?”

  “In high school I set the national record for memorizing Pi. I memorized Pi to the 1,679th decimal place.”

  “Good God. Why?”

  “No reason really. I have a gift for remembering numbers.”

  “I would say so.”

  The new couple took turns sipping their tea and the waitress delivered the bill.

  Clark pulled out his wallet as Lisa dug into her purse. She scribbled on the back of a “buy nine, get the tenth drink free” punch card from Jammin’ Java. “Here is my home
number, though I guess, according to what you say, you might not need me to write it down.”

  “Are you saying there is another date in our future?”

  “There could be,” Lisa answered coyly.

  Clark looked at the card. “This is great. Either way, I get a free latte with only two more drinks at full price.”

  Chapter 18

  Diplomatic immunity is great if you can get it. Travis Keyes had it and flaunted it. He parked his BMW in tow-away zones, had turned drinking and driving into a hobby, and had received more than one citation for taking a shortcut over the sidewalk when the traffic was at a standstill. But that was in Dhaka, where the sidewalks and roads melted together during the raining season into puddles that could swallow both a car and its occupants.

  Pakistan was a little different. There were more rules that needed to be “officially” followed. The rules never changed, just the adherence to them. For Travis Keyes, Pakistan was far more advanced than Bangladesh. More advanced meant better perks. Better housing, better food, better amenities. But better perks also meant less freedom to break the rules. Sure, diplomatic immunity still gave him carte blanche to break all the rules he wanted, but more people noticed. More people complained. It wasn’t good diplomacy.

  The latest perk Travis had discovered was a firm-bodied office assistant in the Commercial Foreign Service Department. The dalliance had started in the embassy with a friendly glance, which escalated into an even friendlier office blowjob, and culminated with a downright personal, take-her-from-behind on the thirty-foot conference room table used to sign low-level treaties. Tonight was going to be different. Maybe something as mundane as the missionary on his own bed followed by a good night’s sleep. He had two hours to decide.

  Travis Keyes clicked the remote control and the BBC reporter came to life. His top-floor apartment with meager views was in the secured compound on the wealthy side of the city. Like everything else in his life, his TV was the best money could buy. Pumped in by satellite, his large screen flat panel was capable of pulling in two hundred and ninety-seven channels. Everything from the Discovery Network to Japanese game-shows where contestant ran through obstacle courses designed to temporarily incapacitate the participants at every wrong step. His TV provided a twenty-four hour a day, non-stop, crap-o-rama fest. The exceptions to the rule were his lifeline to the real world: BBC and CNN. He needed the coverage that both channels provided, live news fixes that never stopped running, never went off the air — an endless supply of real-world morphine, the one drug that most foreign service officers needed after a long day of dealing with the local population.

  Travis, his smoothly combed dark hair still in perfect position, loosened his red tie and took off the jacket to his navy blue suit. He went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The lone remaining Bass Ale stared at him from the sparsely populated shelf.

  The expatriate life was good if you could get over the little things. The big things were part of the package — a different country, a different language, a different culture. They were the givens that expatriates knew were part of the job. There was no more sense in complaining about them than for a felon to argue about the bars on his cell.

  It was the little things that made the difference. A real Sunday paper with the morning coffee. Not having to wake up at four in the morning to watch the Superbowl. The ability to get a pizza that wasn’t slathered in mayonnaise, or sprinkled with fish or corn or crickets or whatever the local delicacy was.

  The best way to cope was to focus on what you could get rather than what you couldn’t. And Uncle Sam with his 300 million tax-paying supporters gave well. While the pizzas may have been crap, the free housing, the tax breaks, and the all expenses paid lifestyle meant that Travis Keyes would return to the U.S. with a quarter million dollars in the bank. Uncle Sugar was sweet, indeed.

  Travis’ butt found the sofa, and a small squeak escaped from the leather-on-leather friction between the seat and back cushions. He looked up at a news story of a wayward dolphin swimming up the mouth of the Thames and flipped through the day’s short stack of mail. Travis paused at the last envelope and the wheel in his mind began to turn. He shoved his finger under the tab and ran it the length of the envelope, pulling out the bill with the subtle enthusiasm of a detective on the hunt.

  He quickly scanned the list of calls. Six to his mother, one to his brother, one to his financial planner, and one to his old college roommate to place a bet on the Lions in their first playoff appearance in years. He looked at the last two calls. “I’ll be damned.”

  He took a sip of his only surviving beer and reached for the phone on the table. He glanced at the clock on the wall and calculated the overseas time as quickly as it took him to hit the first numbers on the phone.

  The phone on the other end rang and Travis Keyes waited for someone to pick up. When the message machine system answered, he paused, thought about leaving a nasty message full of implications, and hung up instead. Diplomacy was his profession.

  Five minutes and half a bottle of beer later he said, “Fuck it.” He called the same number back, this time leaving a detailed message with his name, number, and why he was calling. Then he called the other number on the bill.

  Chapter 19

  Clark opened the door to the outside storage closet at the top of the short staircase that led to the side door. Every house on the street with a side kitchen entrance had the small storage space, a convenient architectural idea that disappeared from tract housing blueprints by the time Flower Power was in full swing. Clark pushed the handle of a snow shovel to the side and put one foot inside the closet, reaching up with his right hand. He ran his fingers along the top of the inside of the doorframe and found what he was looking for near the left corner.

  He fumbled with the key and a moment later he was inside his neighbor’s house. The house was warm and Clark unzipped his jacket but kept it on. He announced his presence to the empty home and listened to the complete silence return his call. You can never be too polite.

  Clark made his way through the kitchen and checked the gas on the stove. It was something he had learned to do at an early age, the product of growing up with a “forgetful” mother in the house. He found a red plastic watering can on the floor of the pantry in the kitchen and turned on the spigot to let the cold water run for a minute. Watching the water made Clark thirsty and he ducked his head under and took a gulp. It was an old habit, one that he had picked up from his father, a man whose hands were often too dirty, greasy, and grimy to touch the cabinets and get a glass. Clark was the only person he knew who still drank water from the tap, glass or not. People bitching about the price of gas seemed to forget that they were paying twice that amount for bottled water. Four billion people on the planet would kill for the quality of U.S. water. Except for Americans.

  Clark swallowed the chilly water and put his finger in the stream from the spigot to check the temperature. He was convinced that room temperature water was better for plants, though the last biology class he had taken was in the 10th grade and he had barely passed.

  He strolled through the living area and eyed a potted plant on the floor, the sunlight from the window tickling the upper leaves. Clark poured water into the plant and the dry soil effortlessly soaked up the elixir of life. He headed down the hall with the watering can in his hand, the spout dripping slightly.

  Liana’s room was painted pink with matching frills on the bedcover. Stuffed animals clung to one another, threatening to tumble and fall from a chair in the corner. The plant in Liana’s bedroom was smaller but just as thirsty as its larger sibling in the living room.

  Clark moved down the hall towards the master bedroom and cautiously pushed open the door to a room he had never seen, much less entered.

  The dark wooden bed was made to perfection, its white comforter almost taut. Clark hit the lights and located the plant in the corner near the window. He walked across the hardwood floors, their beams creaking as they absor
bed his weight.

  Clark slowly directed the stream of water into the pot and jumped as the phone next to the bed came to life. Water spilled on the hardwood and Clark set the watering can on the floor and went into the small master bath in search of a towel. The phone rang four times before the answering machine turned on, the recorded stern voice of Nazim echoing across the room. “You have reached the Shinwari residence. We are unable to take your call at the moment. If you leave a message we will get back to you as soon as we are able.” The English message was followed by a briefer one in Urdu.

  Clark stood near the phone for a moment staring at the black digital message machine with its lone blinking red light. When the message machine cut-off, Clark stood in eerie silence. He turned his attention back towards the plastic watering can and finished what he came to do. As he shut the door behind him, he silenced the little devil sitting on his shoulder telling him to “go ahead, listen to the message one more time.”

  The devil seemed to forget that Clark didn’t need to.

  Karim was sitting in a leather-backed chair in the corner office of the warehouse watching the local news on a small color TV while reading a stack of newspapers that Ariana had picked up during her morning errands, which was primarily a surveillance drive around the neighborhood. She made one lap around the warehouse on foot, and then drove through the maze-like industrial park she and her four-man team now called home. She drove slowly to Georgia Avenue, the main thoroughfare of traffic, and then came back to the warehouse from a small one-way entrance near a shady neighborhood on the other side of the industrial park. She kept documents in a folder on the front seat of her car, papers that showed the company she worked for and their address in the industrial complex, in the unlikely event that she was questioned by anyone with a badge on their uniform. But the south side of Takoma on the D.C. side of the line wasn’t harboring any gold mines or diamond deposits. Rabid dogs and barbed wire were the security systems of choice.