“This is my job.”
“Is it?” He blew out a puff of smoke and looked out over the parking lot. “Have you been keeping tabs on your gentleman?”
“And what gentleman would that be?”
“Gustav Fabrice.”
“Yes.”
“Really? When was the last time he checked in?”
“Two days ago.”
“Well in that time, he’s killed three people. Including some poor bastard out riding his bicycle.”
Vanessa didn’t say anything.
“No witty retort, Vanessa?” He blew out a puff of smoke. “Just who the hell did you hire?”
“He came highly recommended.”
“Do you know his name’s not Gustav Fabrice?” He exhaled smoke.
“I had some idea. He worked for the CIA before freelancing.”
“And for the KGB before the Berlin Wall. I’m guessing you didn’t get that far into his background.”
“I was thorough.”
“The guy’s a psychopath.”
“Gimme a break, Santos. They’re all psychopaths. We train psychopaths and then expect them to come back to society and be normal. Well it doesn’t work that way. You can’t unlearn what we teach them.”
“Pull him out of the field and get this fucker out of my country. Now. He’s putting us all at risk.”
“And what about the marks?”
“They’re already taken care of.” Santos took one last pull and stubbed the cigarette out on the railing in front of him. He threw the butt off the side of the building. “The Messenger says we may need to reevaluate your contract at the end of this term. You better show them you have something to offer.”
As Santos turned and walked away, Vanessa said, “Who is he, Santos?”
“Who said he was a ‘he’? Besides, you’ll meet the Messenger soon enough.”
February 12th
We were married almost as soon as we had left the academy and gone into the field. I was twenty now and she was twenty-one. Since she spoke fluent Chinese, she was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency to analyze intel out of Shantou. I thought I would be taking a job as an OO with them but that wasn’t offered. They had brought me out here specifically for that, and I thought that maybe I hadn’t done well on my exams. We had brutal, five-day, twelve-hour-long written exams and then a grueling week of pain, exertion, and starvation before we officially graduated. Two years of our lives went into this training, and by the time we were through, we weren’t sure we could ever do anything else. Only three of us had made it and I thought that maybe they had recruited the other young man, the Texan, for the job, that maybe I just wasn’t good enough to make it.
Heather chose to complete her residency before moving to Shantou. She did one year and was so bored by the end that she called the CIA and begged for her job back. At this point I was just following her around and I still don’t know why. The year of her residency I just sat around, somewhat depressed, and would go for long walks or to the local library or the gym, which is where I spent most of my time.
But the CIA accepted her back and we were stationed in DC so we moved there. We got a small apartment overlooking the river and she would work from sunup to sundown. At night we would go out to bars and clubs and restaurants. Some days she had off, not many, but some, and we would go to museums or sessions of Congress or the Supreme Court. At the time, we thought government was interesting.
One day, I think it was in May, I was walking back to my car from a building downtown. I had applied for a job as an office clerk and I thought that I would be going to college part-time as well. I got to my car and heard a voice behind me. It belonged to a beautiful blond woman with glasses.
“We have an offer for you,” she said.
“Offer with who?”
“I think you can guess.”
“With the CIA?”
“No, not with the CIA. Not officially.”
“Who then?”
“You’re going to be defending this country in a way no one else will. It will be direct, no bureaucrats or paperwork. But it comes at a price. You will never live the same way again. You will never see this country the same way again. You will be revolted at first, but that will fade. If you are a spiritual man, what you will see will push that out of your life. You will be giving up what and who you are for this. But the money is unlike anything you could make elsewhere. And with secrets comes power: anything that is in secret has a lot of power, and you will be filled with them. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Then come with me now.”
“What about my car?”
“You won’t need it anymore.”
CHAPTER 41
Pain woke him up. An intense burning in his chest and shoulder. As he gained consciousness, a dullness pulsed in his upper thigh. Opening his eyes, he saw a gray sky above him, squared and blocked off. His vision coming into focus, he could tell he was staring through a backseat window. He felt the motion of the car now and the heater, which was softly blowing warm, stale air over his forehead.
The car slowed and then turned and the sky was replaced with thick trees.
“Are you awake, Isaac?”
Rhett said nothing. He pulled on the handcuffs, but they were so tight, they cut his skin. The road grew more uneven until the car finally stopped. A door opened and he felt hands pull him outside and the coolness of a forest after a rain. The ground was wet and his feet sank. It was only now he realized that he was blindfolded but could see out of the bottom of the cloth. A shove from behind prompted him to take careful steps forward.
The ground was more than wet and his feet were sucked into mud with each step: they were in a swamp. He could hear a bird off to his right and then the flapping of wings.
“You look good,” an accented voice said from behind him. “Fit.”
“How did you find me?”
“The better question is why I found you.”
“I have some idea.”
“You have more enemies than the last time I saw you.”
“Seems like it,” Rhett said, glancing down to a patch of poison ivy.
“You had the mark, Isaac. Why did you not take her down when you had the chance?”
“It amused me more to keep her alive.”
“Hm. Is that really it…I don’t think so. She does look like her. You’re not imagining that.”
Rhett was silent a moment. “What do you want from me?”
“You? Nothing. Turn right up this path.”
“Why did they take the contract?”
“She was fighting for a law in Congress that upset some people. Regulation of large banks, I believe. It affected their pocketbooks, I imagine, and they viewed getting rid of her as the easier path.”
A small trail led through a cover of trees and into an opening. The water grew deep and murky and it came up to his calves. They walked for several minutes without speaking. Rhett didn’t feel his pistol on him. He couldn’t hear the traffic from the road anymore.
He couldn’t help himself as he said, “You don’t have to do this.”
Gustav laughed. “How many marks have said the same thing to you? And you thought to yourself that you would never say such a thing when the time came for you, no? But you did. You also think you can face it like a man. With your eyes open. But you can’t. You’ll close your eyes. And you’ll beg. Stop here.”
Rhett heard nothing but his own heartbeat. “Is she dead?”
“Oh, so it was her, the resemblance. She must be quite a woman to turn you so weak. No, she’s not dead. Or maybe she is, I can’t remember.” He chuckled softly.
“If she’s still alive, I’ll give you my bank account information in exchange for her life. Six million, Gustav. You can have it.”
“You know I don’t care about money. Desperation does not look well on you.”
“What do you care about?”
He was silent.
“Gustav—
”
“Stop calling me that.”
“What should I call you?”
“Nothing. I am nothing, just like you are nothing. We’re ghosts. Half in this world and half in the next. We don’t belong here. One day I’ll be standing where you are and I’ll be as weak as you when it comes. We all are weak. But for now, it is your misfortune. That’s what it comes down to. Fortune. Do you know the difference between the slavery of Rome and the slavery of America? The Romans did not think Greeks were a different, inferior species. They knew they were human. And felt that the Gods had simply shown them disfavor by making them slaves.
“But in American slavery, the black was an animal. Not human. It was far more brutal in America than in Rome, though we like to pretend that our age is the more enlightened. Fortune was all the Romans believed in. It is all that matters in the end.”
Rhett hadn’t been listening. He spun around with both arms, an attempt to knock any weapon away. He caught empty air. He pulled off the blindfold just in time to see two flashes of orange as the rounds entered him. He lurched forward. Gustav elbowed him in the chin. Rhett attempted to kick at his groin but he easily stepped aside. Rhett tried strike after strike, but couldn’t hit him. He was too fast. He was better than him.
Out of breath, Rhett stood silently as Gustav stared at him.
“Are you done?”
Rhett said defiantly, “Give me your best.”
Gustav fired another round into the heart. He flew off his feet into the water.
He floated for several moments, sucking in breath as blood poured out of him. Gustav stood above, a grin on his face, his head tilted to the side, as Rhett slowly sank. Gustav bent down and reached into the water. He pulled out a little red notebook that was in Rhett’s breast pocket.
Rhett tried to reach for it but couldn’t. The world was blurring to broken, watery images. And then, there was nothing but the sounds that only creatures living underwater could hear, before the world went dark.
The last thing he heard was another soft spit from the pistol as a round entered his brain.
CHAPTER 42
Gustav drove on the freeway a long time. Hours. Until his gas tank was empty and the car sputtered. He pulled over on the side of the road and checked his watch: it was 12:27 in the morning. He got out of his car and began walking along the freeway. The rain had stopped but it was cold and wind was blowing. He could see headlights behind him as cars sped past him, his hair tussling in the wind and irritating his eyes.
He looked back and saw a lone car coming up. He stepped in front of it and stood staring at the headlights. The car slammed on its brakes, swerving into the next lane, the driver blaring the horn. Gustav walked to the driver’s side door. A woman was driving. He tried the door and it was unlocked.
“Move over please.”
“Who the f—”
He pulled out his pistol and placed the muzzle against her cheek. The look that came over her eyes he had seen dozens, hundreds, thousands of times. It was a look of resignation to fear. Her brain had shut off, all except the limbic system. Only two emotions remained inside her, fear and rage, and she didn’t know which one to feel. He didn’t allow her a chance to decide.
He directed her to the passenger seat, took over her spot, and began to drive. Placing the pistol on his lap, he put on his seatbelt. A Johnny Cash song was playing over the radio and he turned it up as he merged into another lane and continued down the road.
He looked to her. She was young and stylish with a scarf around her neck and a Tibetan Buddhist symbol dangling from a leather necklace. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road sat on the dashboard. The copy looked worn.
“Are you in college?” She didn’t respond. “Are you in college?”
“Wa…was.”
“You left?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
She swallowed. “You can have the car and my purse. Please, just let me out here. I won’t even call the police. You’ll—”
“Shhh…why did you leave college?”
“What?”
“College. Why did you leave college?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? One day you just woke up and were sitting in class and you went home and never went back?”
“Something like that.”
“What did you study?”
“Poetry.”
“Mmm, you know my people invented poetry. Who was your favorite poet?”
She shook her head.
“Mine,” he said, going into the car pool lane, “was Baudelaire. Are you familiar with Baudelaire?” She shook her head. “He writes mostly about love. But his love is always tainted with death. He understood death. Most poets have to force themselves to write about death but it was natural for him. Nous aurons des lits pleins d’odeurs légères, / Des divans profonds comme des tombeaux, / Et d’étranges fleurs sur des étagères, / Ecloses pour nous sous des cieux plus beaux. Do you know what that means? Did you study French?”
“No.”
“We shall have beds full of subtle perfumes, divans as deep as graves, and on the shelves will be strange flowers that blossomed for us, under more beautiful heavens…‘The Death of Lovers.’ It’s my favorite poem.” He glanced to her and back to the road. “What’s your name?”
“Billie.”
“Billie? That is an unusual name for a girl, no?”
“My parents wanted a boy.”
“I see. I wasn’t my parents’ first choice either.”
“Where are we going? Because you can just drop me off right here. I can just walk until morning so that you have time to—”
He reached over and slapped her face hard enough that her hand went to her lip. It was cut and began to bleed and he let the moment hang in the air a while. “You will speak when I ask you a question, not before. But since you are curious, ask me again.”
She was silent a moment. “Ask you what?” she said softly. “Where are we going?”
“Hell, my darling Billie. We are going to hell, all of us.”
CHAPTER 43
Henri sat in the terminal of the airport and called his wife. It was early morning there but he knew she would be up. She could never sleep without him there. His six-year-old answered and they spoke about what was planned for the day and what he was having for breakfast.
“Will you be coming for breakfast, Papa?”
“No, my darling. But I will be home soon. Put your mother on please.”
“Okay, love you, Papa.”
“Love you too.”
“He misses you,” his wife said, getting on the line. “He thinks you went out to the store. That’s what I used to tell them when you would be out all night. That you were at a faraway store getting very special groceries. It made them feel better but now I think it was a mistake.”
“No, it wasn’t. How are you?”
“I’m fine. I didn’t sleep much last night. Perhaps the neighbor should come over and warm my bed? He is just twenty.”
He grinned. “Are you trying to make me jealous?”
“No, I’m just saying a young woman like myself perhaps needs a younger man.”
“You shouldn’t say such things. Men age better than women. Our stock grows while yours dwindles.”
“Such things you say. Will you say that to your daughter?”
“No, I won’t.” He exhaled. “I miss you.”
“I miss you too. How much longer?”
“I don’t think too much longer. I’m going one last place, and if I don’t find what I’m looking for I’ll just leave.”
“Do you think it will be there?”
“I don’t know.” His phone buzzed, indicating an incoming call. It was his assistant at Interpol. “I better go. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Henri switched lines. “This is Henri.”
“Bad news, my friend. They found both marks.”
“Where?”
“
About two hours from where you are.”
Henri had to change flights and rent another car. He followed the GPS directions and only got lost once when he missed his exit on the interstate. The town, Hurricane, was small and the police precinct was in what looked like a confined, one-story office building. He parked outside and smoked a cigarette to steady his nerves before going in.
Two uniformed police officers stood by the front desk, snacking on bagels and coffee. Henri smiled at them and showed his badge.
“I am Henri Abbott. My assistant should have called.”
“Yeah,” one of the officers said, “he called. “I’m the deputy sheriff.” He held out his hand. “Tom Wasden.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, shaking hands.
“You too. You here for the bodies, huh?”
“I just need to see them.”
“Well they’re at the hospital morgue up there about four blocks. I’ll go with you.”
“I appreciate it.”
They rode in a police cruiser and Henri had the urge to smoke again but stopped himself. Instead he took out a cigarette and let it dangle from his lips unlit.
“Helluva nasty habit.”
“I know,” Henri said. “My wife is trying to get me to quit. She may succeed soon too.”
“I quit some odd five or six years ago. The money I saved I’ve been puttin’ in a college fund for the kids. You got kids?”
“I do.”
“Well there ya go. Their college could be paid for.”
“College is paid for in France.”
“No shit? Everythin’?”
“Mostly.”
“No shit. How about that.”
They parked in a police parking stall and went inside. The harsh fluorescent lights made Henri squint, and it smelled like antiseptic. The floors squeaked from a recent mopping. Tom said hello to the front-desk staff and then they rode an elevator down to the bottom floor. Morgues were always on the bottom floors.
They walked down a quiet hallway and to a room at the end of the hall. A woman worked inside, surrounded with a few metal machinist’s tables with wheels. Henri could smell formaldehyde.
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