by Michael Crow
“Pretty good reflexes for an old guy,” she says. She’s done something to her hair, ditched the officewear for hip-slung jeans and a ribbed top. “How about some dinner? I was in the mood for expensive French, since Uncle’s picking up the tab. But considering your wardrobe? You like ethnic?”
“Thai, Mex, Chinese, Viet, whatever. I’m easy. Just one question. All you mid-twenties chicks shop from the same catalog or what? Those jeans, that top…”
“‘Chicks’?” She laughs. “That’s just so quarter-century-ago, Ewing.”
“I know. But it’s a lot more polite than right-this-minute cop and military nomenclature.”
“Which is all you know, because those guys, and scummy drug dealers, are who you’ve been hanging out with for years, while the world’s been spinning right out from under you. You never noticed?”
“Oh, I noticed all right. Just never found a way to get back on board and still be able to do the job. It’s an alternate universe from yours.”
“So we’ll go to one at least a little more like yours for dinner, okay? You know Adams Morgan?”
“No, can’t make him.”
“It’s a neighborhood, not a guy, for Christ’s sake.” Allison laughs. “Three-quarters yuppified, which accounts for all the good little restaurants. The other quarter? Not a gangbanger world like Anacostia and South East, but some urban grit. You’ll feel right at home, I think. How about we do Mexican? Because pretty soon you’ll be eating Far East an awful lot. Las Lobos Cantina has super-hot tomatillo sauce.”
I get up and move to the door. “Oh, by the way, you can leave your wallet here,” she says. “Actually, you have to.”
Right. No ID. Seems like an unnecessary precaution at this stage, but house rules are house rules.
Which seem to have various extensions outside the house. We’ve got a chaperone, who introduces himself as Rob when we meet in the foyer. Then we’re in the Mini, moving along unfamiliar streets to Adams Morgan. I see at once Allison’s description was in the X-ring; at the edges of the stream of yuppies I spot at least two dealers on the short walk to this Las Lobos place. They’ve toned down the gangsta look—it’s all about fitting in, for sure—but I’d bet my life they’re holding, waiting for customers.
“Two players, small-time. One by that phone booth, the other near the Laundromat, by the alley,” I say. “The laundry guy’s packing. Probably a new niner, stainless steel. Not used to the weight. He keeps brushing it with his elbow.”
“You mean the kid in the black pants? He’s a fixture around here,” Rob says.
“Sure, must be his office,” I say. “You and I go over and hassle him, he might show us his fresh tool.”
“Let’s skip that,” Rob says.
I’m pretty sure Allison and Rob aren’t carrying, but he’s probably field-trained. Same cohort as Allison. They could be five years out of college, together in their first serious affair after four or five false starts with other partners. They’re tuned into each other. But, I’m almost certain, strictly professionally. Westley probably teams them because they look like a pair of lovers, they give off that aura. Except to a trained watcher.
Inside the cantina, I make sure I get a seat with my back to the wall, and note all exits.
“You always on full alert?” Rob asks.
“Auto-reflex.” I pause. “Same as you, though you’re subtle about it. You scanned the tables, assessed the clientele when we came in. Pretty smooth.”
“Chicken enchiladas, with that tomatillo sauce, for me,” Allison says, shutting down this little exchange. “Dos Equis all around?”
The beers come, then the food. Poor acoustics, loud mariachi blaring. We can barely hear each other, so forget being overheard. But naturally there’s no talk about the job. Allison wants to draw me out, and I let her. Why not? It’s all in the dossier Westley has to’ve given her. She just wants to see how I’ll present it.
I do it straight, as she and Rob eat enchiladas with that hot green sauce she recommended and I tuck into beef fajitas. Where did I grow up? All over, military gypsy, never anywhere longer than two years, if you don’t put together a couple of separate stays outside Camp Lejeune. Born there, in fact, some time after my father, Gunnery Sergeant Thomas “One Way” Ewing, returned from his last tour in Nam with his Viet bride in tow. Left there when he did some embassy postings, spent two years in Yokohama and two years in Guam later on when he was assigned fleet duty.
“What was that like?” Allison asks.
“Wired off from the world. Very closed community. School, everything, right on the bases. The ethic was dependents didn’t mix much with the locals.”
“Sounds kind of claustrophobic,” Rob says.
“Felt like prison, when I was fourteen in Yokohama,” I say, knowing neither of them can comprehend. CIA newbies don’t come from military families. They’re mainly middle-, upper-middle class, they’ve got bachelor’s and maybe advanced degrees from Stanford and Georgetown and MIT in computer science or Middle East Studies, they’re likely to be fluent in Mandarin or Farsi or Arabic as well as one or more of the major European languages. Junior year abroad, some post-grad studies in St. Petersburg or Beijing. Their passports are nearly full of visa stamps before they set foot on the Farm.
I laugh, give them something as we’re finishing the meal that maybe isn’t in the dossier. “You know how it is at fourteen, hormones doing a number on you. I was off-base in Yokohama as much as I could manage. Wanted some action, wanted some weed or speed. No luck. Not a lot of drugs on the streets in Japan. It was easier to score on base. Lots of supply sergeants’ pencils weren’t real sharp about certain crates that came in.
“Anyway, that left girls. Not much luck there, either. Supply sergeants’ daughters were easier than the wildest Japanese girls. Tended toward ugly, though. But I did make it with one lovely local. Miko Yamaguchi. God, I still remember that.”
“At fourteen? No way I’m believing you. This is a brag story, Luther,” Allison says.
“Oh, it’s true,” I say, pulling up the sleeve of my waffle shirt, showing them a six-inch scar on my left forearm. “Problem was, Miko had a boyfriend. Who happened to be the son of a local Yakuza underboss. The boyfriend and two of his pals jump me one night. But I’m big for my age. I hammer them. I pay extra attention to the boyfriend’s face. Radically rearrange his features, specially the nose and his dental work. Next time I’m in the neighborhood, two of the Yak’s men grab me, hold me down, give me this cut on the arm, tell me they see me around again, it’ll be my balls.”
Rob and Allison stay slick. They’re grinning. I don’t have even ten years on them, and they’re humoring me like an old man. “So. You have to go back to the base hospital, get maybe twenty stitches, your father finds out, of course, and whips your butt. Bye-bye, sweet Miko,” Allison says.
“Affirmative. And then one night my papa and five or six of his buddies go down to the Yak’s bar, kick the shit out of him, the two cutters, and miscellaneous personnel. They then procede to totally trash the bar. Anything that could be broken got broken. Hoo-ah!”
“Sounds like an international incident of serious proportions,” Rob says lightly, as if he’s being bullshitted and wants it clear he knows it. “Wicked repercussions.”
“Zero repercussions, Rob,” I say, hard-eyed and holding. “This guy’s a gangster, a walking billboard of criminality with Yak tattoos covering his chest, back, and arms. Minus his left little finger, too, which means he lost face with his boss over some earlier fuck-up and had to atone in the traditional way. Is he likely to go to the police? Is he going to lodge a complaint with the American base commander? Worst of all, what if his boss finds out what he ordered done to me? He’d lose his other little finger.”
“Colorful! I think he’s got you, Rob,” Allison says. “Hey, one more beer for the road, guys?”
“No thanks,” I say. “I sense I’ll be getting an early wake-up call tomorrow.”
“Prescient, Lu
ther,” Allison says. “Can you tell fortunes, too?”
five
NO CALL NECESSARY. I’M UP BEFORE SUNRISE, PULLING on sweatpants and a hoody to go for a run, which is something I’ve skipped way too often these past years.
I’m in the foyer, my hand on the door latch when a guy I haven’t met grasps my wrist. I start to spin into a kick, pure reflex, when Westley materializes between us.
“You can’t, Luther,” he says.
“Can’t go for a run?” There’s no hand on my wrist now. In fact there’s no sight of whoever it was grabbed me. A cold bolt streaks up my spine, stops at the base of my neck.
“Leave the house alone,” Westley says. Early as it is, he’s already in suit and tie. His tone is easy, like he’s trying to soothe a dog that’s bared its fangs. “You want to run mornings, do it all you want. But let me know first. I’ll have a partner for you.”
“I like to run alone.”
“House rules. You’re never out by yourself. Put off the run for a half hour or so. Let’s have some breakfast, talk about your program.”
For a moment I consider telling him no, I’m going out. Very dumb, to permit any such notion to even flicker. No question I’d be stopped. No real surprise, that door guard. But I’m jolted when Westley leads me into an office done up like an English parlor with nailed leather Chesterfields and paintings of horses on the walls, and I see two cups on saucers beside a silver coffeepot, a creamer, and a sugar bowl on a round mahogany table.
It clicks. Sensors or cameras in my room. Somebody watching over me in my sleep, somebody knowing the moment I get out of bed, somebody aware if I’m just up for a quick piss or getting dressed and leaving. And Westley knows I never eat anything in the morning. Always get started with nothing but strong coffee, heavy on the cream and sugar, and cigarettes.
There’s an open pack of Camel Wides, a Bic lighter, an ashtray next to one of the cups. I don’t need to be told where to sit. I do need to start keeping who I’m working with front and center in my mind. Need to light that up bright and keep it lit. And shuck the habits and attitudes of Dugal’s narc squad.
“So,” Westley says, pouring coffee for me. “Room suit you? You getting on okay with Allison? So far, so good?”
“So far,” I say.
“So, good enough. All right. As we discussed, this is going to be easy duty, no strain, no stress. But maybe you need to get back up to speed in a couple of ways. Your weapons skills are as sharp as ever, I hear. What about the rest?”
“Not as good with my hands as I used to be,” I admit. “Haven’t had much use for that in a long time.”
“No problem. I’ll bring in a sparring partner every day. There’s a place here where you can work out.”
“Okay.”
“Next. As we discussed, some Russian practice every day. And you’re going to need some Korean, too. Just enough to get by in a pinch. Plus some style things. Manners, behavior, gestures. You know the drill.”
“Sure. Fit in, don’t stand out, don’t give offense. Unless you mean to.”
“Exactly. Now let’s talk weapons. Nothing heavy, no military-type tools. Your role will be purely, absolutely defensive. What you brought with you would be perfect, except they’re yours. You’ll need things just as concealable under a suit, but no serial numbers, no history, no discoverable source. Make a list of what you want, give it to Allison today.”
“So when do I get the exact who, where, and what? In detail?”
“Closer to the fact. Right now, let’s just take care of these few basics.”
“Fine. But how close to the fact?”
Westley laughs. “I won’t wait until five minutes before your plane takes off, you can count on that. You’ll know everything you’ll need to know to fulfill your task in plenty of time to digest, analyze, plan for various scenarios.”
“Who decides what I don’t need to know?”
“I do.”
There’s no perceptible change in Westley’s voice, but I feel absolute confidence, absolute authority behind it. At the same moment, there’s the sense that I’m seeing the man for the first time. He must be in his sixties. Even features, thin lips, skin still fairly taut but bearing the fine furrows and creases of age. No distinguishing marks, nothing anybody would remember. His gray eyes seem cold and soulless as the steel rims of his glasses, but in my trade half the people you run into have eyes like that.
“And if I decide there’s something vital missing, some blank that could blow the op and me away, what about that?”
“There won’t be that sort of blank,” Westley says. “But you can ask me. I might even answer. Unlikely, but I might.”
“Ghosts playing a game with ghost rules.”
“That’s just occurring to you? I don’t think so. You’ve always known we’re called ‘spooks’ for good reason,” Westley says.
Allison’s waiting in the foyer, wearing sweats and doing straight-leg stretches, her heel on the staircase’s banister. “How long do you usually like to go?” she says, not looking at me, bending at the waist until her chin is almost touching a knee. “One K, max, am I right?”
“Wrong. Five minimum. Under thirty minutes.”
“Really?” She gives me a look that says she knows I’m full of shit, moves past me to the door, sniffs. “Smoker, too! I don’t think I’m going to get up to aerobic level if I pace you.”
There’s no place near we can go except Dupont Circle, which starts out looking really small but gets bigger and bigger with each labored lap. Labored for me. I hardly ever work out in any way, but in my head I’ve retained the cracked illusion that physically I’m still the eighteen-year-old who charged right through Special Forces training. Just how cracked that is gets demonstrated conclusively when, by the tenth lap, Allison starts running backward and stays side by side with me. She’s even laughing, while I’m starting to pant.
“Hey, don’t let me crash into anything that isn’t really soft, okay?” she says. “Hate having to keep turning my head to see if my way’s clear.”
“How ’bout a bus? That soft enough?”
“Don’t get bitter.”
“Oh, never. That’d be so inappropriate.” I have to gulp two or three breaths before I can even get that out. Goddamn Westley. He knows I’ve spent most of my time sitting on my skinny ass in a car with Ice Box for too many years. Knows it’s going to take a hard and concentrated effort to get back into the shape I’ll need to be. And uses humiliation as an incentive to get me on that road.
It’s working, too. When we’re finished, I’m determined I’ll run every morning, put myself through whatever PT torture it takes to get back to speed. Westley’s got me taped to the millimeter.
Lunch is in-house. An invisible kitchen, an invisible cook, but a steam table in the dining room, first floor rear, overlooking a fenced-in patio. The food’s standard government agency cafeteria for grades GS-13 and below: choice of mediocre meat loaf or breaded, fried fish patties, plus oversteamed peas and carrots, broccoli, mashed potatoes. Or the mini–salad bar, mainly a big bowl of nearly frozen iceberg lettuce with canned chickpeas, shredded carrots, croutons and bacon bits for add-ons.
Westley doesn’t eat this, and not because he’s GS-15. I’ve seem him scarf MREs and unnamable local specialties I’d want my dog to test first before I tried them, in that bad place we’d spent a year in. He’s out somewhere, doing whatever he does. It’s just Allison, Rob, and the semi-phantom that seized my wrist at the door this morning, who turns out to be a fairly small but lithe-looking guy called Terry.
“Yum yum. Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you,” Allison says, her plate heavy with meat loaf, mashers, and a load of gravy.
“Not a bad James Earl Jones,” I say.
“God. Movie-referential again. She’s always doing this,” Rob says. He’s a salad-only eater. “Okay, I’ll play. The film was, uh, Gardens of Stone, right? James Earl Jones, top sergeant. James Caan, next sergeant. Som
e actress with a short neck. Director…I give up.”
“Anjelica Huston, and her neck’s not so short. Coppola directed. How could you not know Coppola directed?” Allison says.
“Why not? Obscure film, a week in theaters, then straight to video,” Rob says. “You know it was Coppola, Luther?”
“Sure,” I say, experiencing a definitely gummy aftertaste of meat loaf. “Jones and Caan, they’re two-tour Vietnam lifers now running the infantry company that does all the formal military burials at Arlington. Caan hates it, wants out. But he’s got this real dick of a CO, played by that weird dude who was as likely to show up in David Lynch flicks as Dennis Hopper, what’s his name? Dean Stockwell.”
“Bingo,” Allison says. “So you spend some serious VCR time, too, Luther?”
“Nah, gotta be DVD. To get the full experience.”
“Limiting, limiting,” Allison says, shaking her head. “Lots of the greatest movies, the older ones, haven’t made it to DVD. I mean, think about it. Real classics, like Best Years of Our Lives, The Lion in Winter, The Conformist, The Night Porter, almost all of Garbo and Bergman.”
“You’re not buying any of this, I hope, Luther,” Rob says. “Her favorite all-time great, the one she’s watched six times, is, get this: Gladiator! You can’t imagine the depth of her interest in Russell Crowe. She cries when he slices the SPQR tattoo off his arm. Her big dream is that one day they’ll somehow meet and Crowe’ll be hit by the love-at-first-sight phenomenon.”
“Wrong,” Allison says.
“Wrong what?” Rob says.
“I don’t cry when he cuts the tattoo.”
Terry giggles. That’s it. He looks sideways at her and giggles.
“I only cry with rage when that spineless bitch stands over his dead body in the Colosseum and says, ‘He was a soldier of Rome.’ It’s her fault he got killed, dammit. She should be taken out and shot.”
“Oh, okay, just jump a whole bunch of centuries. ‘Taken out and shot.’ Little cognitive continuity problem here, Allison?” Rob’s smiling big-time.