Walking Back The Cat

by Robert Littell

  "Whatever I lost/' he said, "I found it here."

  Robert Littell

  coming from the bowels of the desert; it sounded as if several dozen horseflies were trapped in a shoe box. Then he heard the distant but distinct ring of metal striking metal.

  "Lieutenant," Finn called. "Come on over and take a listen to this — something funny's going on here."

  Pilgrim grabbed his M16 and joined Finn. He heard the faint buzzing too. Finn scrambled up the side of the mound and kicked at something half-buried in the sand. He knelt down next to it and, using his hands to scoop away the sand, uncovered an Iraqi helmet. Without thinking he leaned down and pressed his ear to it, the way he had done as a child with a seashell.

  "What is it?" Pilgrim shouted.

  Finn only shook his head. He looked as if he were going to vomit. Pilgrim climbed up to where Finn was kneeling in the sand. Sinking down next him, he bent his ear to the helmet. Then he looked up.

  "They're all in hell," Finn whispered, "dozens of them, hundreds maybe. They're screaming in some strange language."

  Pilgrim turned to stare at the giant earthmover. "Holy Jesus," he breathed. "They bulldozed a mountain of sand up against the exits. The poor sons of bitches are trapped in their bunkers." He gazed at the earth-mover, which was crawling like a giant insect over a distant dune. "Like the man says, war doesn't decide who's right," he muttered with a bitter laugh. "It decides who's left."

  Kneeling in the sand, the two men looked at each other. Finn started clawing at the sand. He kept at it until blood seeped from under his fingernails. Then he slumped back on his haunches and turned his head away and closed his eyes and tried to think his way into the lobe of the brain where emotions originated in order to root them out.

  Eight days later, at a base camp in Saudi Arabia, Lance Corporal Finn got into a fistfight with a major who reprimanded him for failing to salute an officer. According to sworn testimony at the subsequent court-martial, Finn then caused "grievous bodily harm" to the three MPs who tried to arrest him. He wound up being sentenced to a high-security Seattle brig, where he served fifteen months: twelve for the original crime, and three more for breaking the arm of another prisoner. The night of his release, in a bar in south Seattle, he almost lost it again when a couple of drunken college football players made the mistake of joking about his shaved head.

  A big red-faced Irishman with permanently bloodshot eyes stepped between them. "How the lad cuts his hair has to be his affair, doesn't it, now?"

  The football players measured the Irishman, who stood six four in his

  Walking Back the Cat

  stockings and blocked out the exit light over the door. Suddenly sober, one of them said, "You have got a point."

  "I don't need help," Finn snapped.

  "I wasn't helping you," the Irishman said pleasantly. "I was helping them." He climbed onto the stool next to Finn. "What's your name?"

  "Finn."

  The Irishman offered a thick paw. "Mine's Stu. Friends call me Irish Stu."

  "Coming from the brig this morning, I bought breakfast at a diner up on the hill called Irish Stu's. They were launching hot-air balloons in the field behind it. When I was a kid, I had an uncle who flew hot-air balloons; he used to take me up with him and let me pilot them."

  "Irish Stu's my place," the big Irishman said. "I'm the local hot-air-balloon guru." He sized up the young man. He liked the look of him, he liked that he made no bones about having been in the brig. "The johnny who washes my dishes just headed for greener pastures. Can't blame him none. In his shoes I'd have done the same." Irish Stu squinted down at Finn. "You wouldn't by any chance be looking for a job, would you, now?"

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  "It's a matter of plotting the winds," Finn explained. As the others watched, he pulled a wooden box from the back of the pickup, inflated a small balloon, fitted it with a battery-powered transmitter and released it into the darkness. He tracked the balloon on a miniature receiver for several minutes, transferred the bearing to the map, then shook his head. "We need to launch further south," he said.

  They drove back to where they had seen a rutted trail angling off from the tarmac and bumped along it for half a dozen miles. Finn launched another of his small balloons. The Apaches passed a hand-rolled cigarette around as he plotted the flight path of the balloon on the logging map. "We went too far," he called.

  "Make up your mind," Nahtanh groaned.

  "Take your sweet time," Alchise told Finn.

  Piling into the pickup, they backtracked several miles. Finn inflated another balloon, fitted it with a transmitter and released it. The Apaches stood around him, listening to the ticking of the receiver while he pored over the logging map. "Another five hundred yards ought to do it," he decided.

  Finn released his fourth balloon and plotted its course on the map. "Ground zero," he said excitedly as the ticking grew faint. "Let's launch."

  The Apaches unfolded Finn's great yellow-and-black air bag on the ground. Nahtanh pulled the pickup over, raised the hood, hooked up the giant fan to the car battery and started to blow air through the hooped crown into the hollow of the envelope. Petwawwenin loaded the two Ml6s, Finn's shotgun, Alchise's knife and the carton of ammunition into the gondola. Finn lashed the propane canister to the aluminum frame, hooked up the fuel lines and lit off the nozzles. As the nylon skin stirred on the ground, he sent a bubble of hot air into the envelope. The Spirit of Saint Louis swelled, then slowly began to right itself. The three Apaches scrambled into the gondola as it rose off the ground.

  "Holy shit!" Petwawwenin cried.

  "Take a look at us!" Alchise exclaimed.

  Finn gave the balloon a long shot of hot air as it skimmed over the rocky fields on the edge of the Jicarilla Reservation, then soared up and over a sea of scrub oaks. He leveled off at a hundred feet as the dark folds of the hills spread out below. In the east the horizon was tinged with a hint of dawn. Far ahead, they could make out the faint glow of chalk cliffs

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  shimmering in the light of the full moon, which was partly hidden by thin bands of clouds. As they sailed closer, they spotted the steeple towering over the dark walls of the fortress, and a dim light in a room halfway up the steeple. Petwawwenin slapped a clip into one of the Ml 6s and worked the first bullet into the chamber. Gripping the double-edged knife with his only hand, Alchise polished the blade on the side of his jeans.

  As The Spirit of Saint Louis approached the Adobe Palace, Finn tugged on the red strap attached to the rip panel in the crown, spilling hot air out of the envelope. The balloon gradually lost altitude. At fifty feet it drifted silently over a narrow steel bridge spanning an arroyo. A small shed with a light flickering in a window stood on the Adobe Palace side of the bridge.

  "Looks like there's a guard posted at the bridge," Finn said.

  "He's mine," Alchise said.

  A ruined tower at the far corner of the three-sided fortress loomed out of the darkness. "Watch out," Petwawwenin warned.

  Finn reached up, gripped the red strap and hung on it, spilling great gulps of hot air out of the balloon. With a bump the gondola touched down short of the tower and slammed into its adobe wall. Overhead, the nylon of the air bag collapsed into the roofless tower.

  Clutching their weapons, Finn and the three Apaches leaped clear of the gondola. Huddled in the shadow of the adobe wall, they could see a woman stick her head out of a second-floor window in the church steeple. She listened for a long moment, shrugged and disappeared back into the room. Finn put his lips next to Alchise's ear. "Take out the guy guarding the bridge," he whispered, "then come back in through the main gate."

  "I need to say it, man," Alchise whispered back. "We had you figured for a White Eye. You're one hell of an Apache."

  Finn accepted this with a solemn nod. Moving soundlessly, Alchise vanished into the night.

  Finn gestured to a breach in the fortress wall. Petwawwe
nin and Nah-tanh grunted. Standing with his back to the wall, Finn waited until the moon ducked behind a cloud, then vaulted over the breach in the adobe and sprinted across the floor of the fortress to the side of the church. The two Apaches, their Ml6s swiveling nervously, caught up with him. Classical music drifted down from the second-floor room over their heads. With his back flat against the church wall and the barrel of his pump-

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  action shotgun resting lightly on his shoulder, Finn peeked around the corner of the building and studied the fortress.

  "Listen up," he whispered. "We got one lady on duty up in the church. She's all yours, Nahtanh. Then we got laundry drying on a roof, which means the long low building under the laundry is probably some kind of barracks. Judging from the laundry, I'd say we're dealing with six people in the barracks, eight at the outside. The building has two doors. Pet-wawwenin, you take the door on the left, I'll take the one on the right. When we go in, whoop it up so we sound like a war party as opposed to a church choir. Okay? Let's move it."

  Bending low, Finn darted across the fortress to the shadow of the adobe wall, then made his way along it until he was standing next to one door of the barrack. He could make out Petwawwenin, his M16 at the ready, standing with his back to the wall next to the other door. He waited another thirty seconds to give Nahtanh time to reach the second floor of the church. Then, signaling to Petwawwenin with his shotgun, he stepped away from the wall and turned and kicked the door open and, whooping at the top of his lungs, burst into the barracks.

  Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of Petwawwenin, his Ml6 in one hand, a flashlight in the other, as he came flying through the door at the far end of the long room. A heavyset man wearing boxer shorts and a white T-shirt rolled off an army cot and lunged for a pistol in a shoulder holster hanging from a chair. Petwawwenin pinned him in the beam. Finn cut him down with a blast from his shotgun, pumped a fresh cartridge into the chamber and looked around for another target. Across the room Petwawwenin twisted to his right and fired from the hip at a man diving for an Uzi. The impact of a quarter of a clip-full of bullets sent him reeling into a wall, where he collapsed.

  Four more men came off their cots with their arms over their heads. "For God's sake, don't shoot," one of them whimpered.

  "Cover them," Finn cried. He kicked in the door to the John and dove through it, his shotgun at the ready, but the room was empty. He kicked in another door that led to a small office with a cot in it. A pair of night binoculars and an empty shoulder holster hung from wooden pegs on the adobe wall. Returning to the barracks, he yelled, "Where's the kid? Where's Swan Song?"

  The four men with their hands thrust over their heads stared at him, too frightened to speak.

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  Finn spotted another door at the far end of the barracks and kicked it open in time to catch a glimpse of a burly figure jumping out an open window. He plunged through the window after him, rolled once on the ground as a pistol coughed up two rounds from the darkness and came back up on his feet, his shotgun held in one hand in front of him.

  "Where'd he go?" Finn yelled up to Nahtanh, who was leaning out of the church window, one hand gripping the shirt of a terrified woman, the other squeezing off single rounds from his M16 at the crumbling tower in the third corner of the triangular fortress.

  The sky in the east was laced with streaks of gray, and Finn suddenly realized he was able to see. He inched his way along an adobe wall; in the Special Forces he had been trained in house-to-house combat, so the drill was second nature to him. He ducked under the sill of a paneless window and flattened himself against the wall on the other side of it. Taking two shotgun cartridges from his pocket, he tossed them through the window into the tower. A pistol shot rang out, and then a second. Whirling to his right, bending low, Finn dove through the door into the tower firing and pumping and firing and pumping and firing again. He heard a pistol clatter to the floor. A figure staggered out from the shadows under what was left of a staircase. Blood was trickling from the corner of his open mouth. He sank slowly to his knees.

  Finn dropped to his knees in front of the wounded man. "Where's the kid?" he asked urgently.

  The wounded man swallowed, then fell over backwards.

  Finn strode out into the courtyard. Petwawwenin was covering the four prisoners lined up against the adobe wall, their hands over their heads. The Apache pressed the barrel of his Ml 6 into the ear of the nearest man and was about to question him when the wooden door at the base of the single tower still standing in the fortress squeaked open. A thin man appeared in the shadows. He was clutching Doubting Thomas, bound and gagged, in front of him with one arm and jamming the muzzle of an Uzi into the side of the boy's jaw with his other hand.

  "You want the kid alive, lay down your guns and back off," the man called in a high-pitched voice.

  Petwawwenin looked at Finn, who brought the barrel of his shotgun back until the tip rested on his shoulder and started slowly toward the man holding Thomas. He sensed he was losing control over the demon in the pit of his stomach. He could feel himself slipping down the slope; he

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  knew he wouldn't survive another atrocity. Rage mounted in him like bile.

  "No," he said. Then he howled, "Noooooooool"

  Alchise materialized from behind the great arched double doors. Finn could make out red stains between the three ash streaks on his face, and red glistening on the silver blade of his bone-handled knife. In one flowing gesture, Alchise reared back and sent the knife spinning through the air toward the man holding Thomas. The man must have spotted Alchise the same moment Finn did, because he lunged to his right as the knife flew past his head and embedded itself to the hilt in the adobe behind him. For the bat of an eye his grip on Thomas loosened. Twisting, the boy wrenched himself free. "Hit the deck," Finn screamed. Thomas flattened himself on the ground. The man started to lower the muzzle of his Uzi as Finn stepped forward and dropped the shotgun off his shoulder and holding it in one hand and pointing it the way someone points an accusing finger, fired into the man's startled face.

  Robert Littell

  lot, angled his head and narrowed his eyes and half-smiled, almost as if he recognized the agent he had never set eyes on before. "It goes without saying, they were both right," he remarked, speaking fluent Russian without a trace of an accent. "They were talking about the same sovereign." He studied Parsifal through his Ray-Bans. "So you are the famous —perhaps I should say infamous — Edouard Cheklachvilli, better known by the nom de guerre Parsifal, the namesake of the knight at King Arthur's Round Table who occupied the legendary Siege Perilous, the seat reserved for the one destined to find the Holy Grail and fatal for any other occupant."

  Parsifal scrutinized the newcomer on the hilltop. "You will be Prince Igor, the warden of the heart of the heart of darkness."

  "In which automobile did you plant the explosive charge?"

  "The green Toyota, halfway down the line of parked cars."

  "Are you absolutely certain the remote radio detonator will function at this distance?"

  "Le Juif, who was a genius at electronics, made it and tested it."

  Prince Igor took the binoculars from Parsifal, walked to the lip of the hill, inspected the line of cars and found the green Toyota. The two police dogs had already gone past it. "When it came to wetwork, Le Juif always said you were incredibly talented. You have lived up to your reputation." He turned briskly toward Parsifal. "I confirm the order. When the Jogger passes, you are to activate the explosive charge and kill him."

  "Why? What is to be gained?"

  A stillness, like the one that installs itself before a vicious storm, settled over the hilltop. Silver worry beads materialized in Prince Igor's left fist, and he began to work them through his long graceful fingers. Click, click. Click, click. "Isn't it sufficient that I confir
m the order?"

  "Under ordinary circumstances," Parsifal said, speaking softly, measuring his words, "it would be enough." His eyes narrowed and focused on the worry beads. He remembered Green Bow Tie's description of Egidio's Medici in the CIA screening room: "he was sitting in the row behind Egidio threading these silver beads through his fingers, you could see the light glinting off them, you could hear the beads clicking against each other." Parsifal looked up. "But given the importance of the target and the likely consequence of the wetwork operation . . ."

  He let the sentence hang in the air between them.

  Pulling at an earlobe, Prince Igor approached. "It suits our masters in Moscow that the Jogger should be eliminated."

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  Parsifal's nostrils twitched as they detected the sweet-tart scent of a strong perfume masking a strong body odor. There was no doubt about it: he was face to face with the Resident whom La Gioconda had encountered in the movie theater.

  Sniffing delicately at the air, Parsifal said, "Out of curiosity, I'd be interested in hearing the logic behind this operation."

  Prince Igor kneaded his worry beads thoughtfully. "Out of curiosity—I am curious to see how you will react—I will educate you. I suspect it will even give me a certain visceral pleasure."

  From the waistband under his windbreaker Prince Igor produced a long-barreled Smith & Wesson with a silencer fitted onto its tip. Pointing it at Parsifal's knees, he drew closer. "The pistol is at the heart of the logic behind the operation." He glanced at the museum complex; a wedge of police motorcycles riding ahead of the Jogger had started up the hill. "You know me as Prince Igor, sent from Moscow by a rejuvenated KGB to reactivate the network of agents and pursue Russian interests in North America. In a previous incarnation I was a Medici who went by the name of Cleveland." As he talked, he worked the worry beads through the fingers of his left hand. Click, click. "You will not be familiar with the term Medici, at least in the sense I am using it; Medici was an in-house appellation at CIA headquarters in Langley. It described the handful of major players in the halcyon days when Congress could identify America's enemies and threw endless amounts of money at the problem. Then the Cold War ended, or so Congress, in its infinite wisdom, decided. Not all of us over at the CIA agreed, so we created a consortium of like-minded people. Cleveland disappeared in a boating accident and I surfaced as chief of the consortium. Our goal was to turn the clock back, to eliminate the traitors and fellow travelers in the military and civilian and intelligence branches of government who were sapping the free world of its moral and physical strength to resist Russia." Click, click, click.