by Thomas Perry
One evening when it was nearly ten he picked up a backpack, slipped out the back door of the house, and went through a couple of yards to where he had parked his truck after work. He took the truck to the hospital to pick up Ruthie from her shift and drove her along the dark highway to Lake City, where he made a series of quick turns and then backed into a space behind a building and watched for the car he had noticed following on the dark highway to catch up.
He and Ruthie went to an ice-cream shop in Lake City where they and their friends used to go in high school and were delighted to find it was still there. They split a sundae and drove home, followed all the way home by the same car.
When they got home, Julian did his usual his walk around to see if anyone had been inside the house, or outside trying to get in, but there was no sign of intruders. Then he and Ruthie showered and went to bed.
Now and then he would let a period go by when he did nothing suspicious, and he let one of those times occur next. Then, early in the morning a week later, he went to the university library and borrowed some language practice tapes in Portuguese and books about Brazil. He was sure that whoever was watching him must know that he had posed as a Brazilian for over two years before he’d been recalled to the United States to look for the old man.
Julian went to the Chemistry and Physics Building and began work. He had to set up an apparatus for a chemistry demonstration to be performed at a morning lecture, fill a series of written equipment requests for physics research, and fill out the forms for the purchasing department.
He set the Portuguese tapes and the books about Brazil in his desk at odd angles and photographed them with his phone, so when he returned from lunch he could see whether they had been touched. When he returned he found they had.
That night before he went to sleep he wondered where the old man really was. He hoped it wasn’t Brazil.
34
Alan Spencer had begun to dress like a Libyan after two months in the country. On most days he wore a pair of loose white pants, a white shirt that hung nearly to his knees, and a pair of sandals. Sometimes he wrapped a scarf around his neck and pulled it up like a hood over the skullcap he wore. On hotter days he wore the kaffiyeh, keeping his neck, shoulders, and head protected. His face and hands had tanned, because he spent most of his days interviewing patients outside the medical tents.
He began to notice that the patients, particularly the ones in the remote rural areas, were more likely to approach him first, because his clothing put them at ease.
Spencer assumed that a few of the Canadians probably thought he was going native, or masquerading, but others seemed to respect him for adapting to the climate. In time a few other volunteers followed his lead. But his motives were not what they imagined. The long, loose shirt and pants made it easy to conceal his pistol and the flat pocketknife he now carried. He knew that if terrorists were to open fire at the clinic, the first shots would be aimed at the highest-value targets. They would aim for the doctors, then the nurses, all in hospital scrubs, and then anyone else who didn’t look Libyan.
Spencer’s new appearance might give him time to pull out his silenced pistol and kill one or two attackers before they realized where his shots were coming from.
As the months went by, the Canadian relief mission moved farther east, and slightly northward toward Ajdabiya, Benghazi, and Tobruk. The team encountered increasing numbers of refugees from wars and migrants hoping to reach places where they could earn a living. There were groups of Eritreans and Somalians fleeing Al-Shabaab, traveling on foot toward the Libyan port of Ajdabiya. The travelers he interviewed said that they hoped to get on boats to Greece or Italy, but if that failed they would keep going to Benghazi and try again there.
Many needed medical help, and had been in need long before they reached the clinic. All of them needed food and water. Groups would stop to rest for a day or two before they moved on, trying to marshal their strength for the big push to the Mediterranean.
As the clinic moved closer to Ajdabiya, they began to meet Syrians, Senegalese, and even a few Libyans from regions where the fighting had been heating up. All it took to explain why they were converging in the northeast was a glance at the map. Libya was the obvious place to cross the Mediterranean to southern Europe. The smuggling routes were centuries old, and the human trafficking business had been thriving for decades. The logic of getting out of the Middle East and North Africa was unassailable, obvious to everyone. The wars of the past ten years had left poverty and chaos, and the extreme danger of the escape routes deterred no one.
Nearly all the refugees spoke Arabic or had someone with them who did, so Spencer’s language skills were more in demand than ever. Traffic increased as they neared Tobruk, the stronghold of the government forces.
Because of the press of patients the Canadian relief mission exhausted its supplies two months earlier than they had expected, so they asked that the scheduled airlift to resupply them be moved eight weeks ahead. They drove into Tobruk to wait for the airlift at the airport, which Alan remembered had still been the old El Adem air base when he was in Libya. When they reached the airport, Dr. Zidane received a phone call that said there would be a three-day delay. The supplies had to be purchased, packaged, and loaded.
Spencer waited until the group had unloaded the trucks and set up camp inside the airport fence. Then he went to find Dr. Zidane alone. He said, “I know this is an unusual favor to ask, but I’d like to take a little time off.”
“Time off?” she said. “That’s a novel idea. What would you do?”
“I think I told you that when I was a child I came to Libya with my parents, who were archaeologists. When they worked in particularly remote sites, they sometimes had me staying with Libyan friends between here and Benghazi. I’d like to go and visit some of the places I remember.”
She shrugged and said, “I don’t feel I can say no to you, Alan. You’re absolutely irreplaceable, but we’re stuck here for a few days, and we don’t have enough supplies left to run at full strength anyway. But please, be very careful. You’re in the middle of a civil war.”
“I’ll be careful,” he said. “And I’ll be back in seventy-two hours, when the plane arrives.”
“Do you want to take one of the satellite phones?”
“No, thanks,” he said. “Carrying around expensive, sophisticated technology won’t make me any safer.”
He found a driver outside the airport waiting for his next passenger. The man’s pickup truck reminded Alan of the small Japanese truck he had used thirty years ago to drive himself to Morocco. The memory made him trust this truck not to break down. He asked the driver if he could take him to a village just outside Benghazi, about 250 miles away. The driver countered that Benghazi was at least 300. Spencer said the village was closer than Benghazi. They arrived at a price, and Alan climbed in beside him.
The driver’s name was Abdullah, and he was a cheerful companion. He drove with great confidence and talked about his family, his village by the sea, and his hope that the fighting would end so he could go to Benghazi and open an electronics store. Spencer could see he was watching the road for anything ahead that might harm his tires, break his springs, or blow up.
Spencer told him he was a Canadian relief worker who happened to speak excellent Arabic. He told the practiced lie about coming to Libya as a child with his parents. He said he had volunteered for the relief mission to give a little bit back to the country.
He directed Abdullah to the village near Benghazi where he had met Faris Hamzah. The road that led to the place from the south was the same one he had used to bring the money to Faris Hamzah and to take it away again. The boundaries of the village had crept outward, and now it seemed to have become a town.
Spencer looked from a distance at Faris Hamzah’s complex. Now, over thirty years later, the wall around it had been built up and buttressed and was about ten feet tall. The house had been enlarged and raised to two stories with a flat, rectangula
r roof. He could see there were two other two-story buildings on the property—possibly housing for Faris Hamzah’s guards or servants—and a garage.
The couple of dusty, scraggly olive trees of thirty-five years ago were now a couple of dozen trees. They appeared to be grouped around the space where he had once seen a half-finished fountain, so he guessed the space must be a shaded garden now.
The big house was not a surprise. Hamzah must be a powerful man if he was sending teams of killers to the United States. In Libya, power meant military power, religious power, or factional power. Hamzah had not been a soldier, and had never been even remotely pious. But he did have a family and a tribe, and a connection with the local people. His great-grandfather, grandfather, and father had built a food stall in the village market into a store, and then added a few more stores in other villages. The intelligence report on Hamzah that he had read mentioned that the family’s fortunes had not been diminished by excessive honesty, but they did not seem to have suffered for it.
Spencer guessed that Hamzah had to have kept an unambiguous connection with the cluster of villages his tribe controlled, and especially this one. In the old days, he’d held no office, and probably didn’t now. After a first attempt by Libyans in the post-Gaddafi years to hold elections, the Islamic fundamentalists had announced that they had no intention of accepting their loss. After that there were no elections for Hamzah or anyone else to run in, and no offices to win. All a man like Hamzah could be doing was promising to deliver his faction to one side or another in the civil war. Right now, he must be on the side the United States supported, the Tobruk government. Otherwise US military intelligence wouldn’t be doing favors for him.
The car passed the block and Alan Spencer made a quick decision. “Abdullah,” he said. “Please drive on this way for another quarter mile and let me off. I’ll find my way back to Tobruk later.”
Abdullah stopped, and Spencer gave him the fee they had agreed upon and another third as much.
Abdullah thanked him for his generosity, and Spencer said, “Thank you for your kindness and your patience. May Allah protect you.”
“And may he protect you,” said Abdullah. He turned the car around and drove off.
“Aameen,” Spencer muttered. “May it be so.” He stepped away from the road and onto the dusty, weedy ground. He selected a route a distance from the first buildings and walked it, staying far enough away from the village to escape notice. He avoided a junkyard and then made his way upwind of a municipal garbage heap. He found a hill he remembered that overlooked the dry river and the village on the other side. He climbed up and sat down to wait for the world to get dark.
35
When Julian Carson returned to his office in the Chemistry and Physics Building after lunch he found an e-mail waiting for him on his computer. It was from the chancellor’s office, and it had all of the formal boilerplate that was automatically added to anything originating there. There was Office of the Chancellor of the Arkansas State University and the address, phone number, and e-mail address of the chancellor’s office.
At first Julian wasn’t very interested because the chancellor’s office included pretty much everything that went on in the administration building, including the budget, the contracts and grants office, and the recruiting office.
He began to scan the message lazily, but then he sat up and read it carefully. It was addressed to Mr. Julian Carson, and it was from the vice chancellor for Campus Support, the administrator in charge of facilities.
“Dear Mr. Carson,” it said. “Please come to the Campus Support Office, Admin Room 310, at 2:00 p.m. today, December 12, for a meeting. You will be engaged for approximately one hour, so please clear your schedule from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.”
He looked at his watch. It was after one. He checked his schedule for the afternoon to be sure he was free, and then printed the e-mail and went to the Chemistry and Physics Department office.
He knocked on the door of Helen, the chairman’s administrative assistant. She called, “Come in.” And he entered. She was, as usual, running figures on her computer and scribbling notes on a scratch pad, trying to devise ways to make the department’s budget accommodate everything—faculty, supplies, scientific equipment. “Hi, Julian. What’s up?”
“I got an e-mail that says I’ve got to go to a meeting at the vice chancellor’s office, from two to three.”
She glanced up at him and held out her hand for the paper. She read it quickly and handed it back. “Safety,” she said. “That’s my guess. You’re the designated person to handle and store dangerous chemicals and fool with high voltage and all that.”
“Would all the people who do that fit in his office?”
“The English Department doesn’t usually have anything that blows up. Maybe they’re organizing an emergency planning team for disasters or something. You’re not in trouble, or they would have told me too. Do I need to assign somebody to take your place while you’re gone?”
“I don’t think so. I thought I’d put a note on my door that I’ll be back at three.”
“Good idea. Enjoy the extra hour of sleep.”
“Thanks.”
He left Helen’s office, went back to his own, and posted his note, then walked across the campus.
When Julian got to the office of the vice chancellor at 1:55 p.m., he entered and found himself in a waiting room with a receptionist’s desk without a receptionist. He sat down in one of the chairs along the wall.
At 2:00 p.m. the inner office door opened and the vice chancellor came out. Julian stood, but the vice chancellor walked past him as though he were invisible and went out the door. Julian heard a sound, turned to look in the direction of the inner office, and saw three men come out—Mr. Ross, Mr. Bailey, and Mr. Prentiss. Apparently he was in trouble after all. But he had been misleading them and wasting their time, so the only real surprise was where they had turned up.
“Hello, Mr. Carson,” said Mr. Ross. “How have you been?”
“Okay,” said Julian. He glanced at the door where the vice chancellor had gone. He was making sure nobody got between him and the exit.
“Vice Chancellor Halgren was Captain Halgren once. He was happy to lend us his office and his employee for one hour.”
“What for?” asked Julian.
“Just a little chat,” Mr. Ross said. “Come on in.”
They went into the inner office. Julian looked at the dark wood furniture and paneling, and the full bookcases. All of the books came in identical sets, and no book looked as though it had ever been touched. He sat at the table and waited.
Mr. Prentiss lifted a hard-sided briefcase to the surface of the table, and then worked a combination. He opened the briefcase, took out a thick blue file, and set it on the table in front of Mr. Ross. Then he set the briefcase on the floor.
Mr. Ross tapped his fingers on the thick file. “This,” he said, “is something we had to work very hard to get our hands on. We wanted to give you a chance to take a look.”
“What is it?”
“The old man’s army personnel file. It’s got his service record, from his signed oath to preserve and defend us from all enemies, foreign and domestic, all the way to a copy of his DD-214. It’s also got records of his contract work for military intelligence, including his final mission, the one to Libya.”
Julian kept his face blank. “Why would I want to see that? I’m not working for military intelligence anymore. I don’t care about the old man.”
Mr. Ross stopped drumming his fingers on the file and held it with both hands. “I don’t really claim to understand you, Mr. Carson. You did a good job of finding our man twice. You took a pair of Libyan agents to his house in Chicago. You got him to a meeting in San Francisco. You nearly froze to death taking a special ops rifle squad to his cabin in the mountains. Then you got frustrated and quit. You came back to your hometown and married a pretty girl. That’s not you.”
“What doesn’t fit me?”
“You haven’t forgotten about the old man. You’re still looking for him.”
“No I’m not,” Julian said.
“You’re on your computer every day checking out places where you think he might be hiding. You pick out men on the Internet who are about his age and description. You send fake coded messages to the ones you can’t eliminate by looking at their pictures.”
“Why would I do that? If it’s a fake code, it doesn’t mean anything.”
“You and the old man both know how the game is played. You didn’t think he would tell you where he was. You wanted him to know where you are. You want him to realize it’s you, so he knows how to get in touch and arrange another meeting.”
“I didn’t pretend to quit the government,” Julian said. “I quit. It’s not my job to care where the old man is now.”
Mr. Ross frowned. “Quitting only means you’re not on the payroll. You don’t quit a war and go home to spend your life counting beakers and test tubes. I knew when you handed in your scrambled phone that you were still in. You just didn’t feel like taking orders anymore.”
“So you brought me his file.”
Mr. Ross nodded. “We brought you his file. This is the most highly classified set of documents you’ve ever touched. The file wasn’t in the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. Since the giant screwup thirty-five years ago it’s been archived in a facility in the middle of the Air Force Intelligence installation at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. The building isn’t on any list of buildings or on maps of the base. The base perimeter is patrolled, and the building is guarded by people who don’t know what they’re guarding.”
“And you’re going to just hand it over to me.”
“You know better than that.”
“What, then?”