The Silent Places

by James Patrick Hunt

Burl Woods asked Reese to become a “green badger”—a contract employee for the CIA. He was told he could make a lot of money.

  “Doing what?” Reese asked.

  “Selling arms,” Woods said. “We would finance you. You’d be in business. It would give you cover, you’d make some money, and we’d get some information.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “John,” Woods said, “come on. What are you going to do? Come back to the States, sell real estate?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe my ass. You haven’t lived here in over ten years. What were you when you went in the army, seventeen?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “What, are you going to go back to Texas? That’s not who you are anymore. Are you going to tell me you can go back?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re not going to like civilian life here. You’ve been spoiled. I know your wife’s not going to like it.”

  “Don’t talk about my wife.”

  “Okay. But am I right in saying you’d rather stay in London?”

  “You might be right.”

  “Then this is ideal. You’d be working with us, not for us. You’ll make some money and you’ll be helping your country.”

  “Well, this is awfully nice of you, Burl,” Reese said. “But tell me. What have I done to deserve such generosity?”

  “You’re the best man for this job. You know intelligence. You know Europe. You’re good with Arabs. You get along with people. You haven’t become paranoid or otherwise fucked up by the work. You can run a business.”

  “Like Air America, huh?”

  “Ah, that was a long time ago. Look, you know how this trade works. We need ‘independent’ businesses for cover and we need people we can trust to run them.”

  “You trust me?”

  “Sure. I recruited you, didn’t I? I’m no fuckup.”

  Reese smiled and Burl Woods smiled back at him.

  Burl Woods said, “Just think about it, will you?”

  That was how Reese became an arms dealer.

  Over the next few years, Reese dealt in weapons and information. During that time, virtually all his contacts with the CIA were made through Burl Woods. Reese provided details and photographs of terrorist activity in Amman, Khartoum, Baghdad, Syria, Qatar, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Tehran. Those doing business with him knew he was an American, but they believed that he was a man without country or conscience. To them, he was an affable rogue. A charming mercenary, unburdened by shame. Most of them were aware that he had been a soldier who, they believed, at some point decided to quit being a chump. He seemed to like nice things: cars, homes, girls, boats, and liquor. Sometimes he was known to provide these things, if the order was large enough. He made a lot of money and at one time was rumored to own shares in the top brothel in Hamburg, Germany.

  Through his contacts with both the people seeking arms and his old friends in the European intelligence agencies, Reese learned that Europe was becoming a breeding ground for terrorists. He documented this in his written reports to Woods. In one of his reports, he warned that more terrorists were being bred in Hamburg and Barcelona than in Iran or Iraq. He wondered, though, if his reports were being taken seriously. At times, he even missed the relative simplicity of the Cold War.

  Meanwhile, he and Sara were having trouble making a baby. Though he was often away from London, their sex life was relatively active and healthy. He made efforts to be home when she was ovulating. But nothing had happened. It upset her. Reese had told her not to worry about it. The doctors had examined them both and found nothing wrong. It would happen in time, Reese told her.

  Once in awhile, they still socialized with people in the London intelligence community. It was at a dinner party that Reese found himself in a pissing contest with A. Lloyd Gelmers. Gelmers was still doing intelligence work then, though not very well, by most accounts. It was known that the chief of London station wanted to get rid of him. Gelmers had by then made friends with people in the Clinton administration.

  After dinner, Gelmers was flirting with the wife of an attaché and he called out to Reese in an effort to embarrass him.

  “Still doing consultation, John?”

  Reese said, “Yeah.”

  Gelmers gave his female friend a smirk and said, “John used to be one of us.”

  The woman said, “A spy?”

  “I was in the army,” Reese said.

  “Were,” Gelmers said. “Now you’re living in a town house in London with a pretty British wife. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  Reese shrugged.

  Gelmers said, “So, John. What do you think about this situation in Yugoslavia?”

  “I think it’s a mess.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Stay out of it.”

  “Stay out of it? Shall we just let the Serbs massacre at will?”

  Reese was not surprised at Gelmers’s hawkishness. The Clinton administration was drumming up support for intervention in the Balkans. Gelmers, who didn’t believe in much of anything, wanted a post in the Clinton administration. As usual, he blew with the wind.

  Reese said, “There are massacres everywhere, every day.”

  “You defend Miloševicć? You defend fascism?”

  “Miloševicć is a Communist, not a fascist. I know your people would rather forget that. Far more people were killed in Rwanda than in Bosnia. About eight hundred thousand more. We didn’t get involved then.”

  “Let me understand you. Are you saying the Clintons are socialists as well as racists?”

  “I’m saying it’s more convenient for Clinton to call Miloševicć a fascist than a small-time Communist thug. Which is what he is.”

  “The Serbs are killing civilians.”

  “We intervene, we’ll be killing civilians.”

  Gelmers smiled at the girl. He said to Reese, “I had no idea you were such a fan of Serbia.”

  “I’m not. But I’m no fan of the Albanians or the KLA, either. Their leaders are gangsters, too. The Balkans have a long history of slaughtering each other. It’s not something we’re going to fix. And we shouldn’t try.”

  “You’re a cold man. And a fucking hypocrite.”

  “All that and more,” Reese said. “But not ambitious.”

  Gelmers glared at Reese for a long time. Reese smiled back at him. Then he walked off to join his wife.

  A week after that conversation, Reese sold weapons to a group of Syrians. It was no different from what he had done before. Even so, he advised Burl Woods of his mission before he left London. Woods wished him luck and said he would speak with him when he returned.

  A few days after that, Reese was in Belgium for a meeting. He was arrested at the train station. Hours later, he was on a C-140, heading for Washington D.C. An agent on the plane informed him that Burl Woods had died in an auto accident two days earlier.

  Reese immediately thought of A. Lloyd Gelmers and how expensive vengeance can be. He thought the worst. You should have walked away from him, Reese thought. How dangerous cowards can be.

  Burl was dead. Who would take his side?

  For perhaps the first time in his life, Reese felt a rising panic. He said to the agent, “I need to call my wife.”

  “Fuck you, traitor,” the agent said. “You’re going to prison.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “Escobar.”

  “Efrain?”

  “Yeah.”

  “George Hastings. How are you?”

  “Hey, George. What’s up?”

  Efrain Escobar was a detective with the county PD. He and Hastings had worked a case together. The Springheel Jim killings. Escobar was a conscientious officer; he had shared leads with Hastings and been respectful, which couldn’t be said of all policemen working in rival agencies.

  Hastings explained his situation to him, whom they were looking for.

  Escobar said, “And you think he’s going to get another rifle?”

 
“Yeah, I do.”

  “How come? If he’s one of these Hinckley types, he can just get close and use a handgun.”

  “He’s not a Hinckley,” Hastings said. “I don’t think he’s insane. And I don’t think he wants to get caught, either.”

  “He escaped from prison?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why doesn’t he just stay hidden?”

  “I told you. He wants to kill Preston.”

  “And you still say he’s not crazy?”

  “Ah,” Hastings said, “how the hell should I know?”

  Escobar laughed. “Okay, George. How many people you got working this?”

  “Not many. There are politics involved. Reese hasn’t committed a homicide in the city. Least not that we’re aware of. Also, the senator’s denying that Reese is the man I followed. So I’m not in a position to request a dozen detectives.”

  “Not on an ADW.”

  “No. Not on an ADW.”

  “Well,” Escobar said, “I suppose I could spare a couple of detectives, ask them to check out a few gun stores outside city limits. If you think it’ll help.”

  “Every little bit helps. Can you have it raised at patrol-shift briefs, too?”

  “I think so. Let me type up a draft. I’ll e-mail it to you, see if it’s okay.”

  “That’ll be great. Listen, Eff, I’ll be frank with you. I don’t think our man is just going to walk into a local sporting goods store and buy a rifle over the counter. He’ll have to present identification, sign a lot of forms, and wait three days, minimum. And he’s not going to wait. The senator’s going to be in town for only a couple more days.”

  “And when the senator’s gone, your man’s gone, too.”

  “Yeah, that’s about the size of it.”

  “Which would piss you off, I suppose.”

  “You’re right about that, too,” Hastings said.

  There was silence on the line, Hastings wondering if Escobar was judging him for a lack of professionalism, taking shots from a perp personally.

  Then Escobar said, “You were saying something about sporting goods.”

  “Oh, yeah. I think he’s going to be looking for a rifle on the black market.”

  “Well, that’s cool,” Escobar said. “It only expands the scope of our search about twenty-fold.”

  “I know. Sorry I don’t have much more than that. But … anything you can do.”

  “We’ll do what we can. Listen, George. Don’t put too much on this thing, okay? The guy you’re looking for, he’s just another turd.”

  “I wish he was,” Hastings said. He waited a moment, then asked, “Was there something else?”

  A pause on the other end. Then Escobar said, “Yeah. How are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you just got shot. You shouldn’t be working.”

  “I’m just a little bruised. It’s not a big deal.”

  “It’s a very big deal. At County, you’re involved in a shooting, you get forty-eight hours paid leave, mandatory. Even if you’re not injured.”

  “I don’t need it.”

  “You sure? A man gets shot, it does things to him. Makes him scared, gets him thinking of the fragility of life and all that stuff. You need a few days off to work those things out.”

  “After this is done,” Hastings said, his voice tense. “You going to help me or not?”

  “Don’t get mad.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “All I’m saying is, it’s okay to feel like that. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t. And, George, it’s not going to go away just because you concentrate on work. That might make it worse, actually.”

  Hastings said, “I respect what you’re saying, Eff. But it’s going to have to wait for a while. Okay?”

  “Okay, George. I’ll be in touch.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The lady behind the desk asked if he would be staying through the Thanksgiving weekend. Reese thought it would be suspicious to say he wasn’t. So he said he was.

  The lady said that was good and was surprised when he paid for the room in cash. She said, “You don’t have to do that. You can pay when you check out.”

  Reese said, “I prefer to do it this way.”

  “Okay,” the lady said, a little uncertainty in her tone. She took the money and said, “I’ll show you to your room.”

  The woman’s name was Molly Mangan and she was the owner and manager of the Chestnut Inn Bed and Breakfast, located in Webster Groves, Missouri. She was forty-one years old, divorced, and the mother of a fifteen-year-old boy. The boy’s name was Connor. His bedroom was on the third floor.

  The house was a large Colonial that had been built in the 1920s. It had been owned by a prominent attorney who had ten children. He died in the 1970s and the house passed through a succession of owners, the most recent being Jeff and Molly Mangan, who bought it in 2003. Jeff and Molly had been college sweethearts at Santa Clara University. They married two months after college graduation and Jeff began a career in Silicon Valley. Jeff made a lot of money in the silicon-chip business and by his late thirties was ready for a change in career and lifestyle. He and Molly and their son decided to move to the Midwest and open up a bed-and-breakfast. They were attracted to the St. Louis area because of the trees. They preferred the landscapes to the brown-and-yellow hues of California. They grew to like the St. Louis seasons as well, even the stifling humid summers. The bed-and-breakfast turned out to be harder work than they had seen on Newhart. For the first two years, they did not make a profit. Jeff was philosophical about this, saying they had the money now, so what was the point of going back to Silicon Valley and being miserable? Things would pick up. And things did pick up. The next year, they broke even. That same year, Jeff died of a heart attack.

  It happened while he was working in the garden. Molly heard him call out her name, and by the time she got to him, he was gone. He had never smoked and had been of normal weight. He was from a long line of men with bad hearts. He died at thirty-nine.

  Molly decided to stay in St. Louis. She had no close relations in California and she feared that Jeff’s family would attempt to take too much control in bringing up her son. She stayed and ran the business and she kept her grief to herself. She did not date or even entertain the idea of becoming involved with another man. Jeff had been the only one. The only one she had ever been to bed with, the only one she had ever loved.

  She did not wear much makeup and her clothes were not flashy. Her figure was buxom, though not plump, and some people thought she looked like she worked in a bank. She thought of herself as plain.

  Now she said to the guest, “This is your room. As I said before, there’s no television. But there’s one in the sunroom downstairs and we have DVDs and videotapes. Breakfast will be served in the dining room at eight o’clock. Tomorrow will be French toast and sausage. Thursday is Thanksgiving and there will be just a continental breakfast, if that’s okay.”

  “That’ll be fine,” Reese said.

  “Sorry, but we don’t expect many guests for breakfast on Thanksgiving. The other guests are here to visit family for the holidays. Do you have family in St. Louis?”

  “No,” Reese said. “Just passing through.”

  “Is it your first time here?”

  “Yes.”

  Molly Mangan was not worldly. But she could pick up social cues, and now she thought the man did not want to chat.

  She said, “Well, we won’t be serving dinner this evening. But you’re about twenty minutes’ drive from some lovely restaurants in the city and I’ll be glad to recommend one if you like. There are coffee and refreshments in the parlor and some magazines and books. Oh, one more thing: This is a nonsmoking inn and we don’t allow smoking anywhere on the property. I’m sorry if that’s a problem.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Well then, I’ll leave you to your room. I hope you have a pleasant stay, Mr. Bryan.”

  “Thank you, Ms.—�
�

  “Mrs. Mangan,” she said. “You can call me Molly.”

  Reese watched her briefly as she walked down the hall. He closed the door before she reached the stairs. He felt guilty looking at her backside. Okay, she had a good figure, even though she did nothing to show it off. But she was a nice lady, treated him decently. Guileless and inexperienced. A mousy nerd. Probably got straight A ’s in school. But she didn’t know what he was. She was the sort that probably thought the best of people. She made him feel sad, for some reason. He told himself to forget about it.

  Reese locked the door and drew the shades. He began unloading his bags. From a golf bag, he removed the Lee-Enfield rifle. For the next thirty minutes, he went over it, cleaning it, examining it, breaking it down and putting it back together. He had fired an Enfield before, but never at a human target. He liked the weapon and he liked its sight. But he still wanted a scope for it. He had done a quick scan in the neo-Nazi’s basement but hadn’t seen anything he liked. He would need to find a scope, bring it back here, and mount it on the rifle. The Nazi had already put in the drill mounts, but Reese couldn’t tell yet if they would line up well with a scope and remain true. He would have to see when he got the scope. If it worked out, it would take at least an hour to secure it properly. He could do the work here so long as he didn’t need to do any additional drilling.

  He had no reason to believe the police knew his identity as Paul Bryan. Still, he thought it was best not to stay in one place too long. Especially after taking a shot at a cop. That’s why he’d checked out of the Hampton Inn. Too commercial, too open. Better to be in a bed-and-breakfast.

  Reese thought of the cop now. The man who had come after him in the park. Coming alone at first, armed only with a pistol. Dumb. Reese wanted to believe the cop was in over his head. But instinct told him not to count the policeman out. The way the cop had kept his cool and not panicked, the shots he had fired into the air to let the other cops know where he was … Probably the cop was stupid and unsuited to chasing soldiers and should stick to busting intoxicated wife-beaters and street-corner drug dealers. But to believe that was to violate the cardinal rule of never underestimating your enemy. The cop was doing his job, protecting Senator Shitpoke Liar, but if the cop got in his way, Reese would not hesitate to put him down, too.