by Allen Wyler
Breeze leads Arnold to their table, says, “This is Firouz,” indicating the slimmer, shorter, of the two. The guy smiles, offers his hand. Both wear expensive-looking designer shades propped up on oily black hair and flash smiles of what Arnold swears must be professionally whitened teeth. Both wear designer denims and expensive-looking sneaks undoubtedly endorsed by some NBA star Arnold has never heard of. Basketball is the one sport he hates and has no desire to bet on.
Arnold shakes Firouz’s hand. What could this meeting possibly have to do with him?
Firouz sidesteps, nods to the other guy, a block of steroid and protein gym-bulked muscles in an orange tank-top that showcases biceps, pecs, and oversized traps. His massive shoulders seem to connect directly to his ears. “Toby, meet Karim.”
Arnold chokes on a strong whiff of acrid body odor. Soon as they release hands, Arnold steps back. He decides fanning the air might appear offensive, so he suffers.
Smiling, Firouz asks Arnold, “Want anything? Latte? Tazzo?”
“Naw, I’m good.”
Firouz extends an arm, ushering them to the door. “How about we step outside, take a walk.”
Arnold catches Breeze’s eye. She says to him, “No worry.”
And for some reason he believes her.
They stroll the manicured perimeter of Bellagio’s triangular pool/fountain to South Las Vegas Boulevard then turn north, following the sidewalk past Bonanno’s New York Pizzeria to an unoccupied balcony above the pool where a sidewalk tree casts welcome shade in the blistering desert sun. Breeze pushes herself up to sit atop the broad concrete balustrade as both hands grip the edge next to her thighs. Firouz and Karim face her, their backs to the sidewalk, the three forming a loose circle around Arnold like a wolf pack. He tries to read their eyes but sees only glare off their sunglasses, making him uneasy, especially given the mysterious nature of this meeting. At least they’re out in the open if he has to run.
From what? He feels stupid for even harboring the thought.
Yet a primitive sixth sense sets his nerves on full alert.
Breeze says, “Relax, Toby, nothing to get upset about.”
That apparent, huh? “Going to tell me what this is about?”
Firouz says, “Sure, but you need to get your head straight first, dude. Okay?”
Arnold glances around and takes some degree of comfort in the nearby foot traffic, the slap slap of flip-flops, a rainbow of tank tops, shorts, and running shoes, and the fruity scents of sunscreen. “Okay, but let’s get this over with. Whatever this is.”
Karim props his butt against the balustrade, arms crossed. Firouz remains standing, nervously pounding his fist into his palm. Breeze starts in with, “We want to talk with you about something. Sensitive.” And lets it hang a few seconds before adding, “You seem like someone who can keep a secret. Can you keep a secret, Toby?”
Making him even more nervous. “Suppose so. Depends.” He shrugs. “Dunno. Why?”
Breeze lowers her voice. “What do you know about the United States intelligence services?”
Of all the things he might’ve expected, this isn’t one. He’s at a loss for words. They stand like this, the three of them facing him, waiting. Finally, another shrug. “Not much. Nothing at all, I guess. Why?”
Firouz takes over. “Heard of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research?”
Easy answer. “Nope.” He shakes his head, now more befuddled than a moment ago.
“INR’s mission is to provide all-source intelligence support to U.S. diplomats. It’s at the nexus of intelligence and foreign policy and plays a key role in ensuring that intelligence activities are consistent with U.S. foreign policy, and that other components of the intelligence community understand the information.” Firouz stops speaking, fingers his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose.
Arnold says nothing.
“That’s us. Our job.” Breeze says, “We work for the Bureau.”
“Naw… uh-uh, no way.”
“Why’s that?” Firouz puts a sharp edge to his voice.
Karim turns away, to face the fountain, as if checking for potential eavesdroppers, stoking Arnold’s nervousness and suspicions.
“Because…” Arnold scratches his cheek, scrambling for something less insulting than what first popped into his head. “I mean, a Las Vegas escort working as an intelligence operative? You gotta be kidding me.”
Breeze lifts up her sunglasses to lock eyes with him. “Seriously.” Back down go the glasses.
Arnold paces a tight circle, massaging the back of his neck, trying to believe her, but the idea seems too preposterous to swallow.
She adds, “You’d be surprised the types of people who visit Vegas for any number of reasons. Some good, some not so good. You’d be even more surprised to learn the sensitive information they tell an escort in confidence, especially after a few martinis and some pillow talk. Believe me, what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas. Certainly not in our line of work.”
Man, that’s way over the line of credibility. But then, on second thought, it made a granule of sense. In a very perverse way, making him wonder, really? No way.
He says to Firouz, “And you?”
“And me what?”
“What do you do? Other than spy?”
“To call it spying is so old school, dude. We prefer to consider it intelligence gathering and analysis.” He pushes up the nosepiece of his sunglasses again. “But if you really want to know, we tend bar. Both of us. You’d be surprised the things people tell a bartender. Even more surprising is what they’ll talk about to each other while you’re standing right in front of them wiping water spots off a glass. Easy.”
“Now you’re asking yourself, ‘Why tell me this?’” Breeze adds. “Right?” the hint of East Coast accent creeping back into her voice.
Arnold emits a sarcastic grunt. “Wouldn’t you?”
She steps closer to him, lowers her voice. “You’re right, Toby, so here’s the pitch. We want you to work for the Bureau as an independent contractor.”
He’s stunned, the day becoming one huge surprise right after another, boom boom boom, in such rapid succession, making it extremely difficult to process any of it. He collects his thoughts enough to ask the obvious: “Doing what?”
“Intelligence analysis, Toby. What else would we want you for?” this said as if this were so obvious as to require no explanation.
He scans the three faces, wishing he could see their eyes through the cop-like wraparounds. “C’mon, guys, this is really over the top. I can’t believe you’re serious.”
Breeze drops her hands in a what-can-I-say gesture. “Then I guess we have nothing more to discuss.” She turns to her two partners. “Guys?”
Firouz shrugs. Karim continues to scan people passing by.
Arnold says, “I mean, what’s the point? Intelligence agencies employ the best analysts and analysis software on the planet. Why even bother to ask me? Do it yourself.”
Firouz’s turn. “Several reasons. Mostly manpower. We’re drowning in data, more than we can possibly digest. Plus, we don’t have enough good analysts to feed our computer the right questions. You, of all people, should know the rule garbage in, garbage out. And believe it or not, we’re totally behind on work. Our mission, meaning the mission of the Bureau, is to ensure diplomats and other intelligence consumers have total access to focused intelligence products that help build the right decisions. Politically, that is.” A pause. “The Benghazi thing, a few years back? Now there’s a perfect example of our government not being prepared. That’s our fault—maybe not the three of us standing here,” sweeping an index finger in an arc around the group, “but us in the general intelligence analysis groups.”
“So,” Breeze chimes in, “we think you’re the perfect person to ask. You want to help your country, don’t you?”
Arnold answers, “Jesus, that’s a when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife type question. It’s not worth answering. The question
specifically is what would I have to do?”
Firouz says, “We give you a target area of concern, say, the Palestinian peace talks. We give you three or four questions we need specific answers to and you put your system to work figuring them out. Once you give us the answers you’re on to the next problem. Pretty simple.”
Not that simple. There are still so many questions he doesn’t know where to start. “For you, maybe. Not me. I have to think about this before I can answer.”
“Not a problem,” says Breeze. “But I need to make one thing very clear. We asked you because you’re a person we think can keep his mouth shut. I’ve been evaluating that for the past couple days. It should go without saying, you can’t tell anyone about this discussion or our offer. And no one must ever know about the three of us. And that includes your friend Howard. We clear on this?”
No, not really.
“Don’t worry. No one would believe me if I told them. Hey, I don’t believe me now.”
Firouz steps closer, right into Arnold’s space, and Karim suddenly seems interested in what’s being said. “When we say to not say a thing, we mean it. You really don’t want to fuck up on this. Understand?”
Even with those reflective designer sunglasses hiding his eyes, Arnold got the point.
15.
“And you believed them?” Davidson asked from behind the desk, leaning back in his chair with one foot back up on the half-open desk drawer again, the other in the well. The question didn’t carry any hint of incrimination or bias, just a flat-out inquisitiveness. Arnold appreciated this.
Arnold was pacing again. “Not at first, but then I got to thinking… I mean, it sounded so preposterous that I began to wonder if there might be some element of truth to the story. You know, I started to do doublethink, like, something is so totally crazy it might possibly be true, along those lines.”
With an encouraging nod: “Then what happened?”
Arnold did a quick knee bend, just to be doing something different, to relieve his nervousness. They were getting to the part he really hated to tell. “The meeting broke up. Firouz and Karim headed off toward the city center and I went back to my room.”
“And Breeze?”
“She came with me. I think she asked if I wanted her along and I don’t think I answered, or at least I can’t remember that part of it all that clearly, my mind was so… distracted. I guess she must’ve tagged along, not saying much. Maybe I thought she was coming to pick up her clothes. I don’t know.”
Davidson began tapping a Mount Blanc pen against his lower lip. “Did she? Pick up her clothes, that is.”
Arnold felt his face heating up. “Not really. She got me into bed again.”
A smile hinted at the corners of Davidson’s face. “Take much effort?”
The blush intensified. “Guess not,” with a nervous laugh.
The lawyer didn’t probe that line of questioning further. “Then what?”
“It’s funny, she didn’t really press the offer, either, like she wasn’t trying to sell me anything. No hard sell at all. Later I went on line, Googled the INR. Everything they said came right out of their web page, almost verbatim. I’d never heard of that agency before, so it was all news to me. The more I read, the more I began to buy into their story.” Arnold’s voice trailed off as he drifted back through the memories.
After a few moments pause, Davidson asked, “Then what?”
“I started to become interested. Thought back to some of the conversations we’d had—Breeze and I—thinking maybe I could do something, ah, more productive with my work… after all, that’d be a good thing. Right?”
“Sure.”
“I started asking her questions, like where would I work, and what would I do? She said I’d work from home, that that wasn’t an issue, that they’d feed me situations to evaluate. I’d have to work secretly, but I could work on my own schedule and wouldn’t be beholden to them in any way, like certain hours. It started to sound pretty good, so I agreed to one assignment, see how that went. If everything worked out okay, we could talk about something more long-term.”
Davidson continued pen-tapping his lip. “All this time you were using the Toby Taylor name?”
“Yes.”
“And that wasn’t going to be a problem?”
“Like what?”
“How would you communicate? How would you get paid? Those sorts of things.”
“Told you earlier. I set up several false email accounts before contacting her the first time, so that wasn’t going to be a problem. It was easy to set up a PayPal or even a bank account under any of those aliases. It was a done deal.”
Davidson leveled an index finger at him. “Right. Forgot.” He leaned forward and jotted a note on a pad of legal paper. “Sorry to interrupt. Go on.”
This was the part Arnold had been dreading. He reminded himself that this was his lawyer, the one person he should tell everything. He gave a nervous laugh, “Now comes the hard part.”
The room fell silent and Arnold briefly considered sitting down but decided to just shift his weight from one foot to the other and stay standing. This was making him antsy, embarrassed, humiliated, all rolled into one dysfunctional emotion. “Okay, so they asked me to analyze three US embassies. One in Basrah, one in Riyadh, and one in Doha. Specifically, they wanted to know which one appeared most vulnerable to a successful terrorist attack.” He saw the light in Davidson’s eyes click on. “What are you thinking?”
Davidson waved off the question. “Nothing yet. Go ahead, finish your story, then I’ll ask.”
“From the look on your face I think you already know what happened. Two weeks after I gave them my analysis the Doha embassy was bombed.” He waited for Davidson to comment.
Davidson chewed on that several seconds before offering: “Could be coincidence.”
Arnold shook his head. “Don’t think so.”
“Why?”
Unable to stand still any longer, Arnold went to the window to gaze down at the deserted streets and dark shadows obscuring the mouth of an alley while considering how best to explain it. The blunt, bitter truth would be the quickest. He needed to move on from this part and just get it the hell over with.
“When I first got wind of it, I was stunned. After all, this was exactly what my analysis was supposed to help prevent. At least that’s what I was led to believe. But then I thought, hey, maybe it’s all coincidence and some terrorist group hit it before our guys had a chance to evaluate my report. And if they read it, maybe they figured it was wrong. Maybe they were just testing out my accuracy. Funny what the mind does to rationalize stupid behavior. There I was, trying like hell to make myself believe I hadn’t been duped. Christ!” He shook his head, the horrible feeling settling back over him. “Then I got to thinking: oh, bullshit. How could I be so damn stupid? I mean, three Middle Eastern-looking people con me into thinking they’re intelligence operatives wanting me to work for them… I mean, come on. No vetting process, no evaluation other than an escort screwing my brains out? Jesus!” How could he live with his stupidity?
“I can see how you could believe them. And it still might not be them. Still could be coincidence.”
Arnold turned to face him. “Oh, please! You’re just trying to make me feel better. Once I saw the news reports we had an encrypted Skype call.” Arnold paused to swallow and catch his breath. “They admitted the attack was theirs.” He clamped his eyelids together, trying to lessen the impact of the memory. “They said they used my information to finalize plans, which, of course, made me an accomplice. Claimed that made me one of them now.” Arnold paused to catch his breath, the gut-pain stealing his lungs. He held on to the back of the chair for support.
“You okay?” Davidson seemed genuinely concerned.
“Do I look like I’m okay? Hell no, I’m not okay. My stomach’s killing me.” Arnold swallowed hard and slid back into the chair then leaned over, hoping a change in position might ease it, but it didn’t,
so he fished the roll of Tums from his pocket and popped one into his mouth. “Never so much as had a cramp until all this happened. I should see a doctor, but…”
“Want to go to an emergency room? Swedish and Harborview are just up the hill. Say the word I’ll drive you up.”
Arnold shook his head. “Not while those assholes are still searching for me.”
Davidson yawned, both arms stretched high overhead, and held that pose for several seconds, his left shoulder giving an audible pop, but he didn’t flinch. “Offer’s good you change your mind. Want to continue?”
Arnold nodded.
“Which brings me back to the obvious question: If all your interactions with Breeze were as Toby Taylor and you’re sure about how well you laid down your false information, how did they know you’re Arnold Gold? This the first time they showed up at your house?”
“Yeah, the only time.” Arnold slowly dropped his head, humiliated by his own stupidity. He considered lying, say he had no idea, but Davidson should know the truth. “My bad. I screwed up.”
Silence.
“I’m listening.”
Arnold slumped against the soft, womb-like leather couch and studied the ceiling, searching for an explanation that was truthful but wouldn’t make him look like a complete putz. “Don’t know for sure, but here’s the thing…” He started scraping out his thumb nail with the other one. “Jesus… so damn stupid, can’t believe it.”
“Go on.”
With a grunt, Arnold pushed off the couch again to pace tight circles in front of the desk, too absorbed with berating himself to verbalize the answer. A moment passed before he stopped and said to Davidson, “That second night, when Breeze went up to my room? She told me to take a shower? Okay, so I did. I mean, how was I to know? Right? My wallet was on the dresser. I’d purposely left it there as a test. Figured I’d check to see if she was trustworthy or if she’d steal my money. I had already put that night’s fee in the envelope, but I left a hundred dollars for the tip in the wallet and locked the rest of my cash in the safe. Figured, okay, when I open the wallet I’ll know right away. When I came out the bathroom I noticed the wallet wasn’t positioned exactly as I’d left it. It was at slight angle and I left it parallel to the edge of the table. But when I checked later, all the money was still there. So I thought, okay, she’s not trying to rip me off and didn’t give it another thought.”