by Michael Crow
Westley smiles. “Not too hard. Not much different from Sarajevo—except we won’t be in a combat zone.”
Yeah, Sarajevo. Worst place on earth—at the time. Those of us in Westley’s little private army (several dozen ex–Special Forces guys, ex-SAS, ex–French Foreign Legion, ex-Spetsnaz) call him “The Man Who Isn’t There,” pretending a bitter irony. The truth’s that phrase is a sort of verbal crossing of fingers, or knocking on wood. He’s always there—materializing when you least expect or want him, fading away like a phantom, without a trace.
Most of the force are assigned to train Bosnian combat troops; I draw sniping, teamed with a Muslim girl named Mikla whose hopes of shooting for the Yugoslav Olympic team were shattered by the war. I’m armed with a .50-caliber Barrett and I’m taking out Serbs easily with that weapon, sometimes at ranges of a mile or more. The fucks just explode for no apparent reason, which must terrorize the shit out of any Serbs nearby. Because at those kinds of distances, the boom of the rifle isn’t heard until several seconds after the bullet hits.
I get high on that, really juked.
Off hours, I gravitate toward the Spetsnaz guys, who welcome me because I speak Russian. We hang at cafés, getting drunk on the local brandy, trading stories. They’re leading small Bosnian units in night assaults on Serb positions in the mountains. They ask me if I want to go along on a couple. I’m young and stupid, so I do. I dig it, hosing Serbs up close with an MP5, tossing white phospherous grenades into bunkers.
One day, hidden in the ruins of a shelled apartment building with Mikla, I turn two Serb artillary officers way up the mountain into pink mist with one shot. Lucky angle, lucky hit.
“Perfect,” I hear. I turn, there’s Westley, big binoculars to his eyes. No idea how he knew where we’d be that day, or how he got into the room without me or Mikla noticing. “Call it a day, Luther,” he says. “Come with me.”
Westley’s concerned with his Russian guys; calls it a Cold War reflex of his, never trusting Russians. He says he knows I’m tight with them, asks me to keep him informed about what they’re up to, especially if they’re straying beyond the rules of engagement he’s set up. Which seems weird to me, because those rules are loose as rubber bands. But I do what he wants—whenever he appears, since I can never find him.
Then, a few months later, something so weird happens I still can’t be sure it wasn’t a hallucination. The top Russian—a guy called Vassily who did three straight years in Afghanistan—wants to take his Bosnians on a silent raid of a Serb outpost that’s been giving us some mortar trouble. Invites me along.
A moonless night, but clear skies, stars like diamonds on black velvet. Vassily, two other Russians, a dozen Muslims, and me are all wearing white parkas and over-pants. We’ve got MP5s and shorty AK-74s, but Vassily’s orders are that they are not to be used unless we’re counterattacked from another position. We’ll hit our target like ghosts, using knives, sharpened trench shovels, those short, heavy, brutally hooked Spetsnaz machetes. Takes us two hours to make the thousand-yard crawl through dry, powdery snow from our start point up to the Serb mortar post. We’re up against their sandbags, unseen and unheard, when Vassily hand-signals a stop. I can hear a couple of Serb sentries cursing the cold, smell the pungent smoke of their cigarettes. The clock’s ticking quarter-speed, it seems. Then Vassily hand-signals and we’re over and into the trench almost as one man. No screams, no shouts. Just the thunk of shovel blades splitting skulls, the wet hiss of knives plunging up under rib cages and spitting hearts, the soft crunch of steel cutting through thoraxes. It’s mainly a visual blur, a white blizzard covering green-uniformed Serbs. I slash the throat of a huge Serb with my K-bar Warthog, then power-cut from sternum to navel. Turn, see Vassily decapitate a Serb with a powerful backhand sweep of his Spetsnaz machete. Turn again, and freeze.
There’s Westley, leaning over the sandbag parapet. Apparently unarmed, or at least not using anything. Just looking down, scanning as we clean the trench. His eyes seem to stop on me, hold for a second or two, then sweep on.
It’s finished in two, maybe three minutes. At least thirty Serbs dead, inch-thick blood on the trench floor looking black in the starlight, streaks of it black on our white snowsuits. Vassily hand-signals, we’re out of there, sliding down the snowy slope fast as we can, like human luges. I try to spot Westley, can’t find him anywhere. And he isn’t there when we all regroup at the start line.
Three nights later, Vassily and I are getting drunk in a café when Westley appears at our table. He doesn’t join us for a drink. He simply says, “I understand your unit sent a lot of Serbs to Allah with cold steel recently. Nice. Well executed.” Then he leaves.
Vassily empties his glass, looks at me. “Him, I saw there too, little brother. Watching us,” he says. “But I don’t let myself believe it.”
“Scribble, scribble, scribble.” That’s my wake-up next morning, though I’m not really asleep, but still pondering if it was really me who did and felt what some madman did and felt in Sarajevo. No knock, no hello. Allison just walks right over, puts an inch-thick stack of—what?—postcards on my night table, then heads back to the door. Her ponytail swings as she swivels her head toward me.
“Westley wants all those addressed to your friend Annie in Baltimore. Says you’ll be able to figure out plausible dates for each place. The road trip story you told Westley you fed your friends, remember? They’ll get mailed from each place on the right dates. He also requests you try for something a bit more personal than the usual ‘wish you were here.’ Throw in at least a couple of credible details, but don’t overdo it, sentiment-wise.
“Oh, one more thing. Your checkbook and some forms will be on your desk later. You’ve got to set up automatic withdrawls to cover your monthly condo maintenance payments, utility bills, car loan, all that. But let’s run first.”
We do twenty laps around the Circle. Allison doesn’t pace me backward this time. But I’m breathing a hell of a lot harder than she is at the end. Back at the house, she goes to her room, I go to mine. By the time I’m finished showering, my heart rate is back to normal. It’s scary how long that took. Age? Or is my physical condition poorer than I ever imagined?
I slip into my cargoes, pull on a black Oriole T, head downstairs, needing caffeine bad. Follow my nose to the kitchen, which turns out to be just below that rear dining room. Allison’s not there, but I get grins from Rob and Terry—until I pour myself a mug of coffee and, ignoring the array of muffins, croissants, two kinds of granola, and a bowl of oranges, light a Camel.
“That is so unhealthy, man,” Terry says, his spoonful of granola halting midway between the bowl and his mouth.
“Yeah. No wonder Allison waxes you when you run,” Rob says. “And she only runs when she has to. Once a month, usually.”
I add cream and sugar to my coffee, take a long drag and a big sip. Not bad; probably Panama La Fiorentina. “Patches don’t work. Tried nicotine inhalers, till I realized I was overdosing.”
“How did that become apparent?” Rob asks.
“Started noticing I was only putting seven out of ten rounds into the X-ring at twenty-five meters, instead of all ten. Shakey hand, Rob. You know?”
“Could have been all that caffeine.”
“Oh no. Had the caffeine level taped. Same way I learned how many army-issue stay-awakes I could safely down on missions without bringing on the jitters. Only variable was the puffer.”
“All that stuff will kill you. You’re committing suicide. Glad I’m not addicted to anything,” Terry says, rising from the table and putting his half-finished bowl of granola into the stainless-steel sink.
“You are, man,” I say.
“To what?”
“Endorphins. Why the hell else do you feel so shitty when you don’t get your full daily workout?” Just guessing here, but an educated one. “Because you didn’t get your endo high.”
“Gotcha, Terry,” Rob says, chuckling. He looks at me. “Allison calls it NoEx
S, days Terry misses. His version of PMS. He gets kind of cranky.”
Terry shrugs, leaves the kitchen, no doubt headed for wherever it is he mostly lurks during his shift. I finish the Camel and my coffee, go for seconds on both.
“So, Luther. Busy day for you. Allison’s arranged lots of surprises.
“Already got one.”
“I hate writing postcards, myself. But your day is definitely going to get better.”
“What about yours? Looking forward to it, are you?”
“Frankly, no,” Rob says. “First part, anyway. I have to drive to Langley, put in some quality face time with a few people. People who actually like meetings, and feel depressed if there aren’t at least three long ones on their daily agenda. I get depressed if there’s any at all.”
“Comes with being on staff. With any agency.”
“That it does, Luther. The price we pay for the good stuff.”
“And that would be?”
“Oh, this and that. Closer to your field of endeavor than you might have imagined. Anyway, gotta go. Langley calls. Maybe catch you at dinner.”
Rob gone, I pour a third mug of coffee, take it up to my room, spread Allison’s little present over my desk. It’s like a photo map of the route I told Annie and everyone else at my suspension party I’d be taking. First stop Biloxi and the Redneck Riviera, where I might have run into college girls getting some last beach time before the fall semester started. Then New Orleans, Galveston, Padre Island, and into Mexico: Tampico, Vera Cruz, Mérida, the Yucatán coast. Finally Belize. She’s included a tourist brochure for each place, from which I’m supposed to crib those one or two authentic details.
Big help. I can estimate drive time, and how long I might stay in a particular place, so dates are no problem. I date them all. But after “Hey, Annie” on the very first, my pen—one of several different ballpoints and roller-balls, since I can be expected to lose pens—just hovers in the air. I’ve never written to Annie. Never written much of anything to anyone, anytime or anywhere.
I’m stuck. I stay stuck. Not a word down, when Allison comes in what has to be hours later, looks over my shoulder.
“That’s pathetic,” she says. “Postcards, Luther! Not an essay for Foreign Affairs, or an op-ed piece for the New York Times. Come on.”
“Been trying.”
“Not hard enough, that’s clear. I can’t believe this. It’s more than pathetic. I mean, you’re fine in conversation, you’re smooth enough, sometimes funny. Even witty.”
“Talking’s different.”
“No, it isn’t.” She sighs, picks up the Biloxi card, holds the photo side in front of my face. “You’ve been here. You want to amuse me, make me smile, also maybe impress me a little with your cynical acuity. So you say, ‘Hey, Allison, what a waste of perfectly good sand. College brats with daddy-bought BMW convertibles staying in sleazy motels side by side with seriously overfed families with vans. All of them chugging beer and shoveling down tons of barbecue. Soundtrack to this movie’s by Dwight Yoakam, about twenty decibels above the threshold of permanent hearing loss. Dominant skin color, lobster red. Most memorable scene: beautiful blonde (Ole Miss cheerleader for sure) cross-eyed drunk and puking repeatedly on the leather seat of a new Boxster.’ I’m grinning, despite the clichés. So will Annie, right?”
“Probably. Sounds close enough to my idiom.”
“So talk your way through the rest of these.” Allison sweeps her hand over the card layout. “Pronto. Lunch at twelve hundred hours, then a pretty crowded afternoon for you.”
I copy down as much as I can remember of Allison’s words on the Biloxi card, find myself unstuck, and actually have a little fun with most of the rest. Akumal’s a snag. It’s the one place I’ve actually been—with Helen. We spent a very sweet couple of days there. I drift into intimate memories, savor them more deeply than I should. Lose all sense of how I might “talk” to Annie about the place, since I’m half-wishing all that sweetness had been shared with her—or, semi-guilty thought, with Nadya—and not Helen. In the end, I have to go strictly flora and fauna: the iguana, looking like a minature dinosaur but chomping down brilliantly red hibiscus flowers I fed him, the sea life—parrot fish, grenadiers in tight formation, the dark wings of angelfish, the missile rush of silver barracuda after prey, all in a jungle of staghorn, fan, and brain coral. Floating for hours over it all, conscious of each regular breath through the snorkle but free of time or care.
Lame, I know, but it’ll have to do. The rest? Easiest to fake is a brief encounter with a machete-wielding mugger in scummy Belize City. Annie won’t like it, but she’ll believe my description of the puzzled look on the mugger’s face when he realizes both his arms suddenly don’t work anymore.
Allison smiles when I hand her the cards across the lunch table. Nadya, who’s eating with us, smiles as she leads me up to the library afterward and starts a series of Russian “encounters.” She’s by turns an inquisitive customs agent, a cheating taxi driver, a suspicious militiaman, a very aggressive hooker. She critiques my responses: I inadvertently made the customs agent uneasy with my tone in a couple of phrases, almost got arrested for a single disrespectful word to the militiaman, and am bound to get my wallet and passport ripped off by the prostitute because I was way too light and flirty.
“Hard not to be, when a girl as attractive as you is talking dirty to me.”
“Rather you’d keep it businesslike, thanks very much. The hooker certainly would,” Nadya says in that upper-class English drawl of hers. But she can’t stop a flicker of a grin.
Which widens when her twin—well, almost, except this girl’s eyes are black, and aren’t just canted but also lack the lid fold—breezes into the room. Korean, I guess.
“Well, hi, Nadya! This one has to be your latest squeeze, right?” Make that Korean-American. Her accent is one hundred percent Southern California. “Hi, you. I’m Eunkyong and we’re going to do some Korean stuff, okay?”
“Hi, Yunk-jong,” I say.
“No way. It’s Eunkyong.”
“Uke-yung.”
“Hello? Slowly now. Eunkyong, okay?” she says. She rolls her eyes at Nadya. “How come I get the hopeless ones? Is he this awful in Russian, too?”
“Almost,” Nadya says.
“Wait a minute,” I start, but Nadya’s already up and leaving.
“Same time tomorrow, Luther?” she says.
“Really,” Eunkyong sighs, settling into the dent Nadya’s left behind in the overstuffed sofa, but doing nothing that counters the odd hollow I feel now that Nadya’s no longer with me. “God, I guess I have to start at the start. Do you know anything at all about Korea?”
“There’s two of them, and we don’t like one of them,” I say.
She mutters something in Korean—curses, no doubt—then moves without a hitch into educated Valley-girl lecture mode, minus the “So I’m, like, totally bummed” she’s no doubt thinking. Her face is broad but neatly arranged, her smile is sweet the few times it appears, she’s a bit stocky but still lithe when she moves. Which is fairly often—getting up from the sofa, pacing around the room, sitting back down again—over the next two hours. At the end of which I can say to her satisfaction the Korean versions of “Hello”; “How are you?”; “I’m pleased to meet you”; “Yes, sir”; “Of course, sir, I will do it immediately”; “My pleasure”; “thank you very much”; and a few other phrases beyond the usual tourist’s “How much does this cost?” and “Where is the toilet?”
She also makes me conscious of some key points of behavior and etiquette: always take your shoes off before entering anyone’s house; never blow your nose in public; avoid the number four (it’s unlucky, sounds like the word for death, and buildings skip from three to five in floor number); it’s polite to bow slightly at introductions and when saying good-bye, as it is in Japan; it’s impolite to point at anyone; and it’s “totally grotty” to write anything in red ink, or leave your chopsticks sticking vertically from your bo
wl—death signs, both.
I get the impression Eunkyong wouldn’t mind drumming even more into my head, but she leaves without a word when Allison appears bearing two big mugs and nods Eunkyong out.
“You’re about to have caffeine withdrawl symptoms, right?” she says, handing me one of the mugs. I sip. Exactly the way I like my coffee: almost as strong as espresso but cut generously with half-and-half, one spoon of sugar. I smile gratefully at her, light a Camel.
“That is so unhealthy, man,” she says, then instantly bursts into what seems like genuine laughter. “Heard you left Terry slightly miffed this morning.”
“Miffed? Yeah, well, now that I think about it. Nothing major. But, hey, you already know that.”
“So how’s it going up here? With Nadya and Eunkyong?” Her Korean pronunciation’s much better than mine.
“It’s going. Had some fun with Nadya, anyway.”
“Let me guess. When she did her whore number, right? She’s so good at that one.”
“Had me convinced,” I say, and Allison laughs again, mid-sip from her mug of what smells like chamomile tea. “Tried my best to convince her we ought to go up to my room, remove some of our clothes, make it more realistic.”
“One-track mind, Luther. No, make that two-track in your case. Sex and violence. Just think of all the things in between you’re missing.”
She’s off. Should be violence, full stop. Sex, full stop. Those are the true priorities of my life so far, but always and utterly separate. “Only one track playing here,” I say. “Pretty Nadya.”
“If you can’t damp down your hopeless little fantasies, or whatever, think you could at least keep quiet about them?” Allison says. “If you can’t, what about pretty Eunkyong, too?”
“She’s a piece of work.”
“Is she? Imagine how you must seem to her.”
“Hard labor?”
“Right. And you have some more to do. Westley says you need workouts. So, we’ve got maybe a ten-minute break here. There’s one of those white martial arts costumes laid out on your bed. After your fix, go up and put it on, then go down to the basement, mix it up a little. Suit you?”