Covenant

by Dean Crawford

  “Warner. Ethan!”

  He rolled over on the hard bench to see a holding cell where about thirty men dressed in orange Department of Correction coveralls, most of them angry young gang hoods, watched him suspiciously. Something heavy clanged against the cell’s steel black gates loudly enough to send spasms of agony shooting through his brain.

  “Yeah?” he uttered in a dry rasp.

  The young bloods remained silent, but the portly face of a white-shirted prison officer sneered in at him from beyond the gates.

  “Get off your ass and over here.”

  Keys rattled as the door opened and Ethan Warner struggled to his feet. The floor heaved beneath him as fresh waves of pain scraped across his eyeballs, and he steadied himself with one hand against the wall before shuffling to the gates.

  “But you haven’t served breakfast yet,” he said as he yawned.

  The guard reached out and grabbed Ethan’s arm in one chunky hand.

  “You’re a born comedian, Warner.”

  The guard offered him no mercy, prodding him out of the cell and down a corridor lined with more identical cells holding hundreds of felons. Muffled voices called out a mixture of greetings, insults, and threats. Having spent overnight in holding, Ethan knew that he would now be processed and given his own Department of Correction clothing: standard procedure, along with the strip search and the questions.

  The guard guided him to the front desk, where a young cop with tightly bobbed blond hair looked up at him with a disapproving gaze.

  “Warner, Ethan. Public disorder. Again,” the guard said from behind him.

  Ethan offered her what he hoped was his best smile. “Morning, Lizzie, how you doin’?”

  Lizzie rolled her eyes, placing a piece of paper on the desk before her and grabbing a sealed plastic bag filled with loose change, a watch, and a packet of Lucky Strikes.

  “Your belongings, Mr. Warner. Sign here.”

  Ethan looked down, seeing an unfamiliar form before him.

  “Signature bond?” he asked, looking up at Lizzie.

  “Anonymous,” Lizzie said without interest. “Somebody obviously cares what happens to you, even if you don’t.”

  Ethan reached down and scrawled something approximating his signature on the slip of paper. Lizzie handed him the plastic bag. As Ethan took it from her she gripped his wrist, catching his gaze.

  “Get a grip on yourself, for God’s sake.”

  The guard gave him a shove in the direction of another set of heavy-looking doors, and moments later Ethan was propelled through them and out into the cool morning air. After passing through two sets of security gates a bustling street greeted him, vehicles thundering past and cloaking him in clouds of exhaust fumes as the jail gates slammed shut behind him.

  Ethan turned and trudged wearily down the street, ignoring the traffic and the hordes of people passing him by. He walked by a shop window and saw his reflection staring back at him, a cut beneath his left eye. He vaguely recalled arguing with someone in the street the previous night after drinking perhaps a little too much: a running volley of shouts, threats, and then blows as he’d punched someone, only to find himself flat on his back moments later.

  Then the flashing lights and sirens, more shouting.

  Then the booking and the jail.

  Just another day. Nothing matters.

  Ethan continued on his unsteady way, grabbing the “L” elevated train and following the Red Line south until he reached 47th at Fuller Park, getting off and walking toward a soaring housing project. Cars parked bumper to bumper lined the sidewalk of West 42nd Place, the project that had been his home for the past six months. An old man sitting outside with a cane greeted him with a broken-toothed smile as he walked inside.

  As he reached his apartment door he saw a broad bouquet of carnations propped against the wall, the petals battered and wilting with age. Ethan sent them ritually once a year, every year, and they were ritually returned unopened within a few days. He sighed and grabbed the drooping bouquet. The damned things were an expense he could ill afford, and he wondered again why he sent them at all.

  If you’ve got nothing, then nothing matters.

  Ethan closed his eyes, his fists clenching as a wave of despair rose up from somewhere deep within him. He inhaled and struggled against an unyielding tide of hopelessness, scrambled above it, and stamped it back down into some deep place where it could no longer bother him. Nothing to worry about. Nothing matters. He stood in silence as the panic receded, breathing alone in the center of his universe, and for a brief instant he was asleep on his feet.

  And then he heard the sound coming from within his apartment. Ethan’s eyes flicked open, his senses suddenly hyper-alert. Footsteps, crossing softly across his living room. Heavy enough to be male. Left to right. Right to left. Ethan glanced down at the door lock and saw a few tiny bright scratches against the dull steel of the barrel.

  His heart skipped a beat and a hot flush tingled uncomfortably across his skin.

  Without conscious thought Ethan set the flowers down in the corridor and slipped his key from his pocket, taking a deep breath before sliding it into the lock, turning it, and then hurling himself through the doorway.

  Ethan lunged at the form of a man standing in the center of the apartment, catching a brief glimpse of a dark-blue suit and gray hair as he swung a fist toward the man’s face.

  A knife-edged hand shot into Ethan’s view with practiced fluidity to swat his punch aside into empty air, and he felt a hard palm thump into his shoulder and propel him across the apartment. Ethan staggered off balance as the man stepped neatly aside from his charge.

  “You’re getting sloppy, Ethan.”

  The old man lowered his guard and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the apartment door. “And your security isn’t up to much. Lucky I was here, in case somebody broke in.”

  “You could have just called, Doug,” Ethan muttered, regaining his balance and ignoring the old man’s wry smile.

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  Ethan retraced his steps and grabbed the bouquet from the corridor outside before closing the door.

  Doug Jarvis glanced curiously at the decaying flowers in Ethan’s hand.

  “The bail?” Ethan asked before the old man could say anything, and was rewarded with a curt nod as Jarvis glanced around at the apartment.

  A small couch, a coffee table, and a television that Ethan hadn’t turned on in a month occupied the uncluttered room. The coffee table was stacked with library books.

  “How have you been, son?” Jarvis asked.

  Ethan had met Doug Jarvis when the old man had been captain of a 9th Marine Corps platoon. Ethan had himself served with pride as a second lieutenant in the United States Marines after finishing college, leading a provisional rifle platoon with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit during Operation Enduring Freedom before taking up employment as a war correspondent. Despite the advice he’d been given not to resign his commission, Ethan had been driven by a desire to document the horror of war and to expose the injustices he had witnessed, to be more than just a foot soldier. He had been embedded with Jarvis’s unit in Fallujah during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and had obtained footage of the war that had helped secure his career as a correspondent. They had gone their separate ways after that, maintaining only occasional contact since. The last he’d heard, Jarvis was working for the Department of Defense or something.

  “I’m getting by.”

  “Sure you are.”

  Ethan decided not to respond and gestured to the couch, acutely aware of his meager surroundings. Jarvis removed his jacket and sat down as Ethan discreetly tossed the bouquet out of sight into the kitchen.

  “So, what brings you here, Doug?”

  “There are some people from the Defense Intelligence Agency who want to talk to you.”

  The DIA, that was it. “Why would they want to talk to me?”

  “Because I recommended you. I need yo
u to come with me.”

  Ethan felt another wave of anxiety flood his nervous system. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “How long have we known each other, Ethan?”

  “Twenty years, give or take.”

  “Two decades,” Jarvis agreed, and then hesitated, rubbing his temples. “Son, I know what you went through in Palestine, but so does the department, and it’s why they want to talk to you. They’re confident that you’re the man for the job, enough to have fronted your bail on my say-so.”

  “I’m not in the business anymore, not after what happened in Gaza.”

  “I know,” Jarvis admitted. “But this time it’s different.”

  “Surprise me.”

  “Two days ago, an American scientist went missing in the field and we need to locate her.”

  Ethan knew all too well that thousands of people around the world went missing every year, vanishing from the face of the Earth and leaving their families unable to grieve or abandon the hope to which they clung so desperately. The suffering of those they left behind, people like him, could not be measured simply in terms of grief, of regret, or even of guilt. It was the corrosive anxiety of not knowing, the terrible pangs of helplessness searing and scalding through the veins.

  “Where was she when she went missing?” he asked.

  “The Negev Desert, Israel, near the border with Jordan.”

  “So call the Red Cross, inform Interpol, and hopefully she’ll turn up.”

  Jarvis smiled tightly.

  “It’s not quite that simple. Israel is in the middle of peace negotiations with the Palestinian authorities, and for once the various factions that make up Palestine’s resistance have all observed a strict cease-fire. If we raise the alarm with Interpol or have the Red Cross scouring the Gaza Strip, and either Palestinian insurgents or Israeli right-wingers are accused of abduction, both sides could walk away from the table before the signing ceremony on August twenty-sixth.”

  “So what do they want from me?”

  “They want you to go in there, discreetly, and find out where she is.”

  Ethan had seen it coming, but hearing it still felt as though someone had clubbed him around the head. On the rare occasions when Ethan could be honest with himself he accepted that his life was dull, shitty, and almost entirely devoid of hope. But if there was anything that the last two years had taught him, it was that he didn’t need the endless traveling and the artillery-shelled hotels, the vacant stares of traumatized children and the undiluted misery that war inflicted upon the innocent masses groveling for mercy beneath its wrath. The memories were a swollen abscess of pain festering deep within his chest that was slowly being drained by the passing of time. A daily diet of cigarettes, nihilism, and little else had taken its toll, but hell, he was getting somewhere, wasn’t he?

  “I can’t help you, Doug.”

  “Can’t help,” Jarvis echoed. “You working?”

  “No.” Ethan didn’t meet his gaze.

  “I wouldn’t be asking if this wasn’t important, Ethan.”

  “Israel has excellent security forces.”

  “Israel has put a cap on this,” Jarvis explained patiently, “to avoid upsetting the peace process. There’s a total media ban in force too.”

  “There’s nothing that I can do out there that they can’t.”

  “Except look. You’re good at this, Ethan; you always were. You found those people in Bogotá, didn’t you, and Somalia? You’ve got history in Gaza, friends who can help.” As Ethan continued to stare out of the window in silence, Jarvis changed his tone. “But if you’d rather just sit here and let yourself go to hell, then that’s fine by me.”

  Ethan kept his tone neutral. “My life’s good as it is.”

  “What life?”

  A stab of pain pierced Ethan’s chest. “The one that doesn’t involve me risking my life or anyone else’s. I don’t want to go back out there.”

  “So what do you want, Ethan?”

  Ethan opened his mouth to speak but found no words. His rage withered and he wondered why he had shown it in the first place. Two years with nobody to vent it on.

  Jarvis jabbed a finger in his direction.

  “You’re sitting here with your thumb up your ass waiting for your life to begin again. I’m giving you some direction, something to move toward before you self-destruct. Christ, it took some effort for the agency to even consider hiring you.”

  “I can’t,” Ethan said repentantly. He sought desperately for something to say, and was disappointed with what finally came out. “I still don’t sleep much.”

  “You think you’ll sleep better if you just keep running away from what happened?” Ethan shot him a hurt look but Jarvis continued without mercy. “You’re not that kind of man, Ethan, and you know it.”

  “So I should spend some time trying to avoid being shot in Gaza instead?”

  “Sure, or you can sit here on your ass feeling sorry for yourself. Your call.”

  A laugh blurted unbidden from Ethan’s mouth. Jarvis stood, his hands at his sides.

  “There’s nobody else I can think of who can help, Ethan. I wouldn’t be coming here asking for this after what happened to you, unless I was out of options.”

  Ethan felt as though he was slamming a door in Doug’s face.

  “I’m the last person you should be asking.” He looked up, suddenly curious. “What’s your stake in this anyway?”

  Jarvis’s features creased as he spoke.

  “The missing scientist, Lucy Morgan, is my granddaughter.”

  You should have said something sooner.”

  Ethan reveled in the breeze funneling in through the open window of the Ford Taurus as Jarvis drove them out onto South Lake Shore Drive, heading north toward the city skyline and the Willis Tower.

  “The Defense Agency’s being discreet about what is really a civilian matter. They wouldn’t front your bail until I’d had you checked out.”

  Ethan doubted the agency had been impressed by what they’d heard. He sighed and shrugged inwardly. Nothing matters so don’t get involved. Since he’d lost everything it had been easy to just ignore the world around him. What was the point in worrying? What was the point in anything? If you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing. Why would he want to fly halfway around the globe searching for some damned fool scientist?

  Ethan looked at his reflection in the car’s side-view mirror. Narrow irises floated in discs of sun-flecked gray beneath a thick mop of light-brown hair. His skin seemed more heavily lined than his years deserved, creased by both time and neglect, and the cut on his cheek was forming a line of purple bruising. You shouldn’t be doing this. You’re not ready. Go and see what Doug’s associates have to say, advise them as best you can, then walk away. Just walk away.

  “You okay?” Jarvis asked.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The Chicago Field Museum of Natural History.”

  Ethan gave Jarvis a curious glance but said nothing, looking back out of the window. The sparkling expanses of Lake Michigan glistened in the hot sunlight, the beaches and neatly maintained marinas making the South Side look more appealing than it actually was.

  It took more than twenty minutes to reach their destination through the laborious traffic, the immense porticoed edifice of the museum towering over them. Jarvis avoided the main lot and turned instead through a discreet side entrance and into a small parking lot, pulling up near a loading bay at the rear of the building.

  Ethan followed as Jarvis got out and led him toward an access door, beside which stood a tall woman. Ethan surveyed her disheveled black hair and features creased with exhaustion as they approached.

  “Ethan, this is Rachel Morgan, my daughter.”

  Rachel Morgan’s handshake was firm and dry, but her smile was feeble and her green eyes haunted by drifting shadows of pain that Ethan recognized all too quickly.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. Warner,” Rachel said, hope twinkling like
a newborn star in her eyes, before withering as she observed his tired features and the bruising on his cheek. “Please, this way.”

  Ethan followed Rachel down a narrow corridor that wound endlessly through the depths of the museum. Ethan whispered to Jarvis from the corner of his mouth, “Why the hell are we going down here?”

  The old man shook his head, refusing to be drawn.

  Rachel reached a large door and beckoned them through. Ethan found himself walking into a cavernous hall closed off to the public. Shafts of sunlight from soaring windows sliced through a galaxy of dust motes drifting on the musty air. The walls were dominated by scaffolding draped with the hallmarks of ongoing renovation, workmen in hard hats laboring high on the precarious walkways. A huge mammoth fossil dominated the center of the hall, standing three times as high as a man and with tusks as thick as Ethan’s waist. It stared solemnly down at him from the depths of prehistory as he passed by.

  At a table near the center of the hall sat two men, dressed in identical gray suits and bearing identical serious expressions. They stood as Ethan approached the table, the taller of the two extending his hand.

  “Andrew Woods, Defense Intelligence Agency. This is my colleague, Adrian Selby.”

  Ethan shook their hands as Rachel Morgan and Doug Jarvis stood unobtrusively to one side.

  “My apologies for the circumstances of your arrival here, Mr. Warner,” Woods said, “but we’re in the midst of a crisis and attempting to keep a lid on things.”

  “Doug informed me of the situation,” Ethan said.

  Woods sat down and looked at a series of papers spread across the table.

  “Ethan Warner, born 1978, Chicago, Illinois. You worked as a war correspondent.”

  Ethan was about to respond but before he could open his mouth, Selby spoke.

  “And you’re a man with a talent for finding people.”