Dance with me, Scout. I need to smell you before you go away.
Then the music stopped and the singer’s voice boomed from the microphone, Yippee yay, you all, it’s 1997. Paige kissed him and looked balefully into his eyes and whispered, Back to soldiering, soldier boy, and lowered her forehead against him, tapping his rib cage with the crown of her skull, almost like she was asking to be let in. The band played “Auld Lang Syne” and he was slow to recognize his mother’s surreptitious jag of sobbing until he felt the wetness of her tears spotting his chest. I don’t know what’s wrong with me anymore, she squeaked, childlike, between muffled gasps. I can’t seem to hold my liquor.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Tampa, Florida
Sarajevo, Bosnia
Cairo, Egypt
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Nairobi, Kenya
Kirkuk, Iraq
Uzbekistan
Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan
Mojave Desert, California
Augusta, Georgia, April 1998
His orders, when he arrived back at Fort Bragg, were to pack his full kit and proceed with due haste to Tampa and report to CENTCOM for a weeklong series of briefings and further instructions before catching a commercial flight to Bosnia. He would be traveling under his real name as a civilian defense contractor employed by an Agency shell company known as Omega Systems. He would also carry two passports, blue and brown, the blue one ready to hand over in an emergency so he would not end up facedown on the tarmac with his head blown off by a hijacker. A level below the cover was his official mission, documented and classified, to assist NATO operations in the capture of war criminals. Ride the elevator down to the deepest level of the operational shaft and the mission went entirely black.
At MacDill Air Force Base, inside the offices of SOCCENT, Burnette was introduced to a major and his working group tasked with compiling a jihadi database, an intelligence mother-net of personalities, finances, and logistics that could be cross-referenced and matrixed with other servers and inputs. Burnette was provided with a Sony still camera that could burst digital pictures into the system by satellite, then given a block of instruction on how to access the biometric database resident on servers in Tampa. They sat him down in front of a screen for a day to familiarize himself with the list of high-value targets that might be out there with their camels and scimitars wreaking havoc in the Balkans. He was made to memorize the top-five high-value capture/kill targets, names and faces, and download to his computer another longer catch-and-release list of suspects whose activities had yet to come into focus. He watched films captured from AQ operatives and Chechens, recording the torture and murder of prisoners of war in Bosnia and Chechnya, scenarios and images of unadulterated horror twisting in his intestines that prompted him to recall the SERE class back at Bragg, the Kennedy School instructors warming up the trainees to the possibility of being beheaded on international television.
During his last intensive morning with the task force, something happened that he knew to expect but it had never happened before—his twenty-four-hour pager went off, buzzing like a June bug on his belt. Hey, that’s a first, he said sheepishly to the guys in the room, who seemed to be waiting for him to dash to the bathroom and reemerge as some comic book superhero. Burnette excused himself off to the side and stared at the pager, which flashed with the number of his own cell phone, which he retrieved from his briefcase and activated and up popped the novelty of a message in text. Your attendance requested. Tonight, 1945 hrs, and then a street address in Ybor City, and the sign off, Arnie.
Can Chambers hack my pager? Burnette asked himself, feeling naive.
The SOCCENT guys called in pizza for lunch and he worked straight through with the group until the end of the day, when the major shook his hand and said, That’s it, Sergeant Burnette. You are now switched on, and gave him a mini-dictionary in Serbo-Croat as a going-away present. At 7:15 he took a cab up along Hillsborough Bay through downtown Tampa and over to the historic, gentrified neighborhood of Ybor City, where the driver let him off at the bottom of Seventh Avenue, the nightclub and entertainment district closed to traffic. He joined the happy flow of Friday night, the prosperous mob heading to the bars and restaurants, tracking the numbers on the buildings until he found an old brick cigar factory, restored to house a cooperative of artist studios and galleries. Okay, Burnette said to himself, stepping through the main entrance, now what? The answer was announced by a placard displayed on an easel outside the plate glass front of a well-lit gallery.
Meet The Artist
Voodoo Spirits: The Houngan Priests of Haiti
Photographs by Renee Gardner
Exhibit Opening: Tonight, 8, wine and cheese
He peered through the window at the row of black-and-white photos mounted on the wall, waist-up and head shots boldly enlarged to life-sized scale, darkly luminous portraits of Haitians at some stage of ecstatic derangement, and he looked at the three people visible inside the gallery, two women and a man setting up a refreshment table, fussing over snack trays and uncorking bottles, and he looked at his wristwatch—1950, five minutes late or ten minutes early—and tried the door but it was locked. The people inside looked his way and one of the women smiled and came to let him in and he could hear the gunshots of her stiletto heels striking the polished wood flooring and he thought whoever she was—in that little black dress, its décolletage cut to showcase volcanic breasts, the dangle of diamond earrings matched by the toothy sparkle of her lipstick smile, the pixie-cut auburn hair à la Audrey Hepburn, her beauty earthbound but her glamour stratospheric—she could not possibly be the photographer, the so-called artist. Owner, patron, celebrity screw-on hood ornament—anybody but somebody who crawled in the dirt of the peristyle with the lwas.
As she approached the door she held out an arm, enticing him with a set of keys. He noticed her bracelet of eyes, the three rows of dark blue beads, but the glass cuff didn’t register in a memory that rarely cataloged or valued jewelry. She inserted the key into the lock. The door opened inward and she held it, posing. He stared at her and he stared at her, straining to see what he wasn’t seeing but sensed he should, and she returned his stare with an audacious lack of guile. Then she stepped forward in an envelope of knee-weakening fragrance and kissed him on the cheek.
Hello, Eville. Thanks for coming.
He sputtered something inarticulate, and she winked and said, Come on, come in.
He stared even harder.
She raised a plucked eyebrow and said, Maybe it’s the boob job?
Dottie? Dottie Chambers?
Renee Gardner, she drawled, holding out her hand. A pleasure, she said, and offered to guide him through a quick private tour of her work before the public arrived.
On Saturday’s transatlantic flight he tried to read one of the books his mother had given him for Christmas, a collection of Twain’s writing from Innocents Abroad, and he put on his headset and tried to watch the movie being shown, and he tried memorizing some sentences in Serbo-Croatian, and he tried sleeping, but whatever he tried to do to pass the time in a peaceful and ordinary manner, there was Dottie galloping into his thoughts. He couldn’t get far past the truth that this version of Dottie—her metamorphosis into Renee Gardner—had reeled him in. In less than fifteen minutes. By the time he left the gallery he was enchanted and, much, much worse, he was jealous, both fairly reliable signs that she had invented effective new ways to drive him crazy. He had stood in front of her photographs in awe.
Did you really take these pictures? he had to ask, and she spoke to him in a lowered voice from that moment on, establishing the confidentiality that made room for her to play her repertoire of personas simultaneously, until the gallery filled with people and she was Renee, completed, invincible, and perfect.
Tell me the truth, s
he said, and he noticed her eyes were a bit too incandescent and her voice became sweetly southern but manic the longer she talked. What was your opinion of me?
Unformed, he said, and she laughed at the lie.
You thought I was just fucking around. The camera was a prop, right. Like I was in my own little action movie or my own little spy novel, entertaining myself, pretending to be a photographer. There are one hundred photojournalists covering the story, the war, the invasion, whatever, and only one who’s not real, and that was me—except I was real.
Hey, he said, leaning to speak in her ear, are you high?
Yes! she said with gleeful disregard. I’ll tell you more about that in a minute.
They shifted their position to the next photograph and he asked her why he was here and her expression fielded the question like a small wound and she said because you’re my partner. Then she told him her secret, parts of it, and he asked, Why are you telling me this?
Well, who else can I tell? she said. I knew you were in town and I know you’re leaving tomorrow and I wanted you to come to my opening, I really did. But listen, Ev, I’m serious now. This isn’t Daddy talking.
Who’s talking? he asked tersely.
I know you hated Jackie Scott. And I hope you never get to know poor little cokehead scag Renee Gardner. This is Dottie talking. I need to know you’ll come rescue me if something goes wrong.
When are you going back down? he asked.
I don’t know. Soon, I hope. It depends if I’m lucky in love, she said, her eyes darting toward the door, unlocked and opened and the gallery owner greeting people. Renee took Ev’s hand and it seemed she had no intention of ever releasing it as she drew him ahead into the space of the next portrait. Remember this lovely old man? she asked.
Eville studied the portrait, the background darkness of the world and the darkness of human flesh, both incipient and corpselike and natural and animated, interrupted by the diabolic and overpowering radiance of the subject’s eyes.
The guy from Grande-Rivière-du-Nord, said Eville.
Right, she said. The empereur. Isn’t he beautiful? He died four days after I took this photograph. Nothing nefarious, he was just old and sick. There’s a new empereur now up there, Honore Vincent, and I’m afraid he doesn’t think very well of me. And by the way, you’ve heard about the interim commander of the police, Major Dupuys? He was recalled to Port-au-Prince.
I didn’t realize he was interim.
There’s a new chief. You haven’t heard? It’s Ti Phillipe.
They moved to the next photograph and he made the observation that although she did not seem inclined to let go of his hand, he would not run away if she did, and she said, You’re not surprised?
About Phillipe? he said. No, in a country where nothing makes sense, what makes the most sense is being an opportunist. When did you say you were going back?
Soon. Back and forth.
Do you think you’ll be going up to Le Cap? he asked. I need you to check on somebody for me. Her name’s Margarete. Margarete Estime.
Definitely, she said. Done.
There were perhaps two dozen people in the gallery now and even as they talked she could not keep herself from watching the door and then he saw by the way her eyes jumped back to hide with his, underscored by an excited if unconscious lock on his hand, that whoever she was expecting was there and she preempted his natural curiosity as he began to pivot.
Don’t look, she said. Wait a minute.
Who is it?
There were two guys, she said, easy to spot, sunglasses and gold chains and Hawaiian shirts and linen pants, not the type of guys you’d think would come to gallery openings. One was a nickel-and-dime dealer to the college student/office worker crowd, who imagined himself as her boyfriend. Jackie Scott had seen the other man around in Haiti but never met him. He was a supplier, with influential friends, who was increasingly powerful himself. The dealer liked to talk to her about his friend who spent a lot of time in Haiti and she had gambled on the validity of the connection to send an innocent message. Bring him along, I’d like to meet him. Jesus, thought Eville, I should have known. Narco-traffickers, Haiti—wasn’t this Sandy Coleman’s case?
I explained this to you in Cap-Haïtien, she said. It’s not about drugs. The drugs are something you keep staring at until you see what it’s really about.
Where’s this heading?
A honeymoon in Haiti would be nice.
She raised her left hand, her fingers fluttering an acknowledgment, and whispered, Here they come, and she threw her arms around him and kissed Ev hungrily and he closed his eyes and kissed her back. Then her lips were at his ear and she was saying thanks and she was saying, Go.
He opened his eyes and stepped away from her with his blood racing and said, I’m sold. How much is it again?
Which one? Renee said. She cocked her head coquettishly and looked at him with mild surprise.
The empereur priest.
Fifteen hundred, Renee answered with a level gaze.
What! Burnette said, genuinely taken aback.
You don’t think I’m worth it?
Excuse me, one of the men behind Burnette interrupted, stepping forward to introduce himself. Honey, from the looks of it I’d say you’re worth every penny.
Why, aren’t you sweet, Renee cooed.
Jack Parmentier, he said. If every sale is sealed with a kiss, I’m buying them all.
Aren’t you a riot, said Renee.
The sleepless gap between energies—slow and fast, passive and kinetic, Florida and the Balkans, the good son of his mother and the good son of his country—proved to be a fertile space for another invasive round of mind fornication by the daughter of Steven Chambers, his obsessive reverie of Renee Gardner, breeding in the darkness over the ocean and fading with the European dawn, the turmoil of his private thoughts as good as banished by the stricture of his mission as the plane descended through the fog into Sarajevo’s airport. On the ground she was gone, out of his head, and she would stay gone throughout the following year, when he would neither see nor speak to Dottie Chambers, a year of leap-frogging around the planet for Burnette, constant travel marked by all-consuming but infrequent intervals of sudden violence, which would remain with him not as memories but as cinematic clips, shown daily against the screen of an untroubled, abstracted conscience. Even her photograph of the empereur would remain in the packing it was shipped in from Ybor City to Fayetteville, propped against an empty wall in his barren living room.
In Sarajevo, at a freezing safe house in the bombed-out city, an almost hallucinogenic revisitation of his grandfather’s war, Eville sat at a wooden table with Colonel Vasich, who gave him a crumpled pocket notebook opened to a blank page and said, Write for me the names. Burnette wrote the targets and pushed the notebook back to Vasich, who scowled at the list and pronounced it junk. The Egyptian doctor, two months, gone. The Yemeni, dead. Number three, not in Bosnia. He proceeded to contemptuously edit the candidates. Okay, this guy, the Iranian, he is here. The Libyan, no. He ripped out the page and crossed the room to toss it into the smoky flames of the small fire in a large woodstove and then recaffeinate himself from the lukewarm pot, burnt-tasting although it had never boiled. Good, he said, your intel is very bad. And where are the Saudis? America should eliminate Saudis. Saudis wish to kill your country. But, okay, what Kovacevic asks to do, I will do.
Kovacevic? said Burnette, hearing the name for the first time, but Colonel Vasich only looked at him like he was a big joker and slapped him heartily on the back.
Burnette knew these things: America was at war behind the drapery of shadows and secrets, almost everybody in the government considered the very idea of the war one big fucking lunatic stunt, and he, Burnette, was himself at war but only halfway, given his c
ountrymen’s near total indifference to the conflict, which could reverse itself in a bloody second but not in his favor, should he be publicly exposed as an American who was actually fighting the war in a manner ladies and gentlemen might consider dirty and underhanded. The disconnect existed in his body like a low-grade influenza, an infection that wouldn’t go away. So here he was in Bosnia, like Afghanistan a wartime proving ground for jihadis, a graduate school for slaying giants, and now a lawless haven, on a hunter-killer team with no license to kill, although Vasich operated under his own flag as an agent of vengeance, unfettered by legal niceties, free to fire away to his heart’s content at his mortal enemies, the Mohammedans, the ancient Turks in all their modern incarnations.
Thirteen months later he was in the Mojave Desert, his training now specific to the harsh ecologies of Central Asia, when he was pulled off the team and put on a flight to Atlanta, connecting to Augusta, and delivered to the Friends of Golf for the second time that year. By now he found the ritual irksome, on the verge of disruptive, hauling the undersecretary’s bag in a game he knew, despite the fresh air and exercise, he would never enjoy, but this time he arrived on the course in the late afternoon to find the Friends—minus one—off by themselves in hooded insulated jackets on a windblown patio, their eighteen holes long finished, drinking Irish coffees while they awaited his arrival from the other side of the nation.
Ah, Eville, said the undersecretary, standing to greet him with a slack handshake. He seemed off-kilter, mildly disoriented, and later in the conversation would mention the incident—a spell of vertigo—he had briefly experienced on the ninth hole. Sit down, will you, he said. Thanks for coming.
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