Dark Star

by Roslyn Holcomb

  “Hmmm,” the Rooster said as the turned on the bench as the tailor directed. “That’s interesting. That’s the second time our friend has gotten information to us almost too late for us to do anything about it.”

  “Well, it’s not too late sir, we only heard from Akhmed last week telling us that he has the girl.”

  “But late enough that if we hadn’t been paying attention we might have been in serious trouble. I think it would be in our best interest to check on our friend again. While it’s good to have someone inside the Department on our side, I’m starting to believe he’s not what he seems.”

  The other man nodded, shifting his weight from foot to foot in a nervous movement. “What do you want us to do with him?”

  “Do I really need to answer that question?”

  “Well it could’ve been an honest mistake.”

  “I should think that everyone should know by now that I don’t tolerate mistakes. Honest or otherwise. Take care of him.”

  “And the other? Akhmed?”

  The Rooster gazed out the panoramic window of his luxurious loft. The New York City skyline had always been one of his favorites. Marred now, of course, by the loss of The Towers, but that had been such a profitable enterprise he almost didn’t miss them. The tailor, a bundle of nervous energy, scurried about, annoying him, but he forced himself to calmness. Yelling at the man only made him fidget worse, and as he was the most talented tailor on the East Coast he simply tolerated him.

  “Have arrangements been made to bring him down to the compound?”

  “Yes, we sent the message a few days ago.”

  “Then we’ll do nothing about it. He’ll come down to Brazil just as we planned.”

  The other man nodded. “Is there anything else, sir?”

  “No. You may leave.” The Rooster stepped off the bench and walked over to some samples the tailor had brought with him. “You know, this really is a lovely charcoal gray.” He rubbed the fine wool silk blend between his fingers studying the way his name had been woven into the pinstripe. “This must be a mistake. I can’t imagine why you’d think I’d want something so ostentatious. A man in position cannot be flashy or garish. ”

  The tailor’s Adam’s apple, prominent in his painfully thin neck, bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “Of course sir. Can’t imagine what I was thinking.”

  “My initials will be sufficient.”

  * * * * *

  Tonya rolled over in bed so wonderfully satiated that she wanted to purr. As they’d done for nearly the entire month since they’d resumed their relationship, she and Nate had spent most of the previous night making love. She reached over to cuddle with him only to find nothing but empty space. Sitting up, she looked around the room, which was gradually lightening as dawn made its way across the sky. She’d more or less moved into Nate’s bedroom which was the larger of the two. It was almost Spartan in appearance with large furniture made from exotic woods. The bed was massive with four posts that were nearly as large as she was. It was absolutely perfect for lovemaking. She frowned, wondering briefly if he’d gone for a swim when she realized that the splashing sound she was hearing was the spit of the shower. Before long it shut off and Nate came out of the bathroom, a snow-white towel wrapped carelessly around his waist.

  Tonya smiled. “What on earth are you doing up so early?” Nate was many things but he was no morning glory, if he had his way he’d never waken much earlier than mid morning.

  He didn’t return her smile. Something about the look on his face and his posture made her uneasy. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “You mean other than that you have a price on your head, little sister?” he asked with a humorless laugh.

  “Yes, other than that.” She studied the tight expression on his face and suddenly she knew. The nagging unease she’d been feeling since waking up returned in full force. “You’re leaving aren’t you?”

  “What?”

  “You’re leaving.”

  “You know I have to go after the guy who put the contract on you. Nothing you say will change that. I’m going to kill that motherfucker or die trying.”

  “Not that. You’re not coming back,” she said.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The way you made love to me. Back in school we made love for months and used condoms every time, except for right before you left.” She looked directly into his eyes. “We didn’t use condoms last night.”

  Nate raised his eyes skyward as though seeking Divine Intervention. He rubbed the towel over his dripping hair. “Looking back now I think I was trying to get you pregnant so I’d have an excuse.”

  “An excuse for what?”

  “An excuse not to -- Never mind. Last night I just lost my mind. It won’t happen again.”

  “Well I was right there with you. Caught up in the crazy, too.”

  He paused for a long moment, just standing there with his feet firmly planted on the bamboo floor. Just when she thought he wasn’t going to say anything he finally spoke. “I promised I’d never lie to you again. So, this time I’m telling you that you’re right. I’ve got to go. But I swear this time I’m coming back. Come hell or high water I’m coming back.”

  Tonya struggled not to burst into tears. Some of her effort must have shown on her face because he walked over to the bed. When he reached out to embrace her, she pushed him away.

  “Baby, please don’t cry. I can’t stand it. I have to do this.”

  “You mean you’ve fucked me and now you’re going to walk out. Again.” Her voice broke on the last word. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, determined not to increase her humiliation by crying in front of him. She’d shed enough tears the last time he left. “I really must have FOOL stamped on my forehead,” she said, dropping her hands.

  “You know better than that.” He reached a hand out to her again, but he dropped it in response to her baleful glare.

  “I don’t know anything, do I? You haven’t told me a goddamned thing,” Tonya said. More than anything she wanted to get dressed and get the hell out of his house, but she was naked under the covers. Feeling too vulnerable already she didn’t want to expose herself even further.

  Nate took a deep breath, then turned and walked over to the window. His bedroom faced the beach and he stood looking out for so long that she began to wonder if he planned to say anything else. When he turned around his eyes shone wetly in the soft dawn light. “You’re right. I didn’t tell you anything because I was trying to protect you, but that’s not fair.” He shrugged, and walked back over to the bed. “And I’m not used to sharing information. It goes against my training, but since he chose to drag you into this, you have every right to know what’s going on. Let me sit down. I’m going to tell you a story.”

  “No. I need to get dressed and you do too. Let’s talk in the living room.”

  Nate shook his head as though bemused, but agreed. She wrapped the sheet around herself and rose from the bed with as much dignity as she could muster. Yes, after everything they’d done in that bed together it was ridiculous to be embarrassed now, but she couldn’t help the way she felt. She swept from the room with her head held high which was quite an accomplishment considering the circumstances. Once in her bedroom it didn’t take long to pull on fresh underwear and a loose sundress. Within a few minutes she joined him in the living room. He had on a pair of jeans and a loose t-shirt. He hadn’t brushed his hair after his shower and the drying curls gave him a boyish appearance.

  “I’m hungry,” he said. “Do you mind if I cook while I talk?” Tonya shrugged and followed him into the kitchen. “I’ve got a feeling we’re going to need this,” he said as filled the coffee maker with water. Once the machine was perking away he took out eggs and bacon from the refrigerator and began cooking breakfast. Tonya knew she was too strung out to eat, but didn’t say anything watching as he stared into space his head tilted to one side. He seemed to be working something out in his head. Whe
n he finally started speaking, his tone was so soft she had to strain to hear him.

  “Back in college I was recruited to join an agency,” he said.

  “The CIA?” For some reason she’d never suspected this. Nate had never seemed the government type. He was too free-spirited and fun loving despite his tragic past or maybe because of it.

  “No. This is an organization no one knows about. It doesn’t really have a name. None of its operatives exist. We’re freelancers. Plausible deniability and all that. If we’re caught or killed the government can pretend they have no idea who we are. Most of us call it the Department, but it’s not that organized. Anyway what it is isn’t that important. They were looking for people with special skills like me.”

  “Special skills?” she asked.

  “Language mostly. Later on we discovered that I have an aptitude for explosives but nobody knew that at the time, including me. Of course, they did call me MacGyver in college.”

  “That’s only because of your uncanny ability to make a bong out of pretty much anything. As far as I know none of them exploded. That would’ve made you a lot less popular.”

  Nate chuckled in response. “Thank God I let that shit go. But like I said, it was languages, especially Arabic that they wanted me for.”

  Tonya nodded shivering as she recalled the mornings he’d awaken speaking French. His voice deep and husky from sleep would go all over her like a silken caress, before he switched to English. It was still one of the most erotic things she’d ever heard.

  “You know I look kind of ethnic and people never know what I am. I think it’s my mother’s Basque blood,” he said with a shrug. “Grow a beard and look Arabic. Cut my hair short and people assume I’m black or at least biracial.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I think that’s why we didn’t get much heat for being an interracial couple. Nobody had a clue what you were.”

  “Plus I’m a good mimic. I’m really good with mannerisms and inflections. I’ve been everything from a Hasidic Jew to a Latino airline pilot. Anyway, so they sent me out to hunt certain criminals. One guy I’ve been after put out a hit on you. I took the contract.”

  “You took the contract? But I thought you said -- ” Tonya sputtered, unbelievably confused. All this talk about contracts and such just left her dazed. She wrote about all kinds of murder and mayhem and never gave it a thought, but this was well beyond anything she’d ever imagined. If she wrote something like this folks would say she was being unrealistic, but a Waffle House waitress who solves murders on the side -- that was just money.

  “I guess you could say I’m a double agent. Or at least I was trying to be. My assignment was to get close to this guy. Unfortunately, I didn’t know he was looking for me too. Somehow he found out that I was involved with you.”

  “Stop. Wait. You lost me again,” she said.

  “I can’t imagine why,” he said with a wry laugh. “Let me start again. The Rooster, the guy I’m after, doesn’t know who I am or what I look like. Unfortunately, I don’t know what he looks like either. Far as I know, no one does -- at least not anyone on our side. He just knows that there’s someone hunting him and that someone has ties to you.”

  “But I haven’t seen you in since college. How would he know about us?”

  Nate closed his eyes briefly, then sighed. He opened them again and began laying out bacon strips in the skillet with methodical precision. Then he carefully adjusted the skillet on the burner turning the handle until it was at a precise angle under his hands. She’d seen him do that before -- focus obsessively on the mundane to keep from freaking out. Once they’d gone hiking and got hopelessly lost. Nate spent the rest of their time wandering in the forest talking about the different tree species they spotted along the way. Made her want to kick him. Hard.

  “We think we have a mole in the Department. We operate on a strict need-to-know basis. Whoever this guy is, I don’t know him, and he doesn’t know who I am. I think he might have backtracked me through communiqués, but right now we have no idea.” He shrugged as though to indicate that it was no big deal, but it obviously was. His voice had hardened with anger. “Anyway, I’ve been following the Rooster around the world. Doing jobs for him while I tried to work my way into his inner circle.”

  “But if you worked for him how could you not know who he is?” Tonya asked feeling as though he’d suddenly started talking in petroglyphs.

  “Oh, he’s a careful bastard. He uses encrypted emails, couriers and dummy post office boxes. Never meets his operatives in person. I just found out his legal name. Until now I only had a nickname: Le Coq -- the Rooster. Tells me that he’s French though he could be from a former French colony. I’ve been after him for five years.”

  “Five years? What in the name of heaven did he do? Is he a terrorist or something?”

  “Worse. He calls himself a facilitator.”

  “A what?”

  “Well he started out as a run-of-the-mill arms dealer. Made a lot of money. We’re not sure when he expanded his product line so to speak.”

  The bacon began to sputter and he turned the heat down and began to flip the strips over. Tonya joined him at the counter. After taking a bowl out of the cabinet, she began cracking eggs for scrambling.

  “You still haven’t told me what his business is,” she said.

  “Right. Okay. Say you’re a terrorist and you hear that another terrorist has done something you like. Maybe he has a new type of bomb or chemical weapon you want to use.”

  “Okay.” A terrorist mutual admiration society? Who would’ve thought it? Did they have a Best Hits List? A Bomb of the Day, perhaps?

  “Well your typical terrorist is a pretty paranoid guy. Personality disorders of various types run rampant with them. They kill one another far more often than they do anyone else. The body count is incredibly high. If we could wait around long enough they’d probably save us a lot of trouble by just killing one another off. Unfortunately, a lot of innocent people would wind up dead in the back blow. Anyway, it’s not like they can approach another group and ask to share their methods. Nobody’s going to hold a networking event for terrorists. At least they wouldn’t before the Rooster came along. He fills the void. Connects the various groups to share and exchange information, weapons, tactics and sometimes even operatives.”

  “That’s diabolical,” she said, totally awed by the concept.

  “Diabolical? Yeah, that’s one word for it. It’s also profitable. He’s not the first one to come up with the idea. Just the first to take it global. We’ve found traces of various weapons and such amongst groups on opposite sides of the world. It’s taken a while to connect the dots, but they all lead back to the Rooster. We want him pretty bad. When I heard he’d put a contract out on you, I, well… I fucking lost it until I realized what a gift I’d been given. I knew there was only one way he could’ve found out about you, but I also knew it might provide a way for me to find him. It’s pretty simple; stash you somewhere safe, then tell him that I’ve got you.”

  “But why does he want me?”

  “He wants you as a lure for me, or at least for the guy who’s been after him, who he doesn’t know is me.”

  Tonya nodded, finally understanding what all the craziness was about. “So you’re just going to go wherever he is? By yourself? If he wants me, wouldn’t he expect you to bring me?”

  “Remember, these people are paranoid. Goodness knows they’ve got reason to be, but there you go. No, he won’t expect me to bring you. It would be stupid to bring my only asset to him that way. He’ll understand, it’s what he would do. It should be perfectly safe.” He laughed at her dismissive snort. “Okay, not safe, but not as dangerous as it sounds. He has no reason to hurt me as long as I’ve got you as my hold card.”

  “Oh yeah, going to a meeting with a crazy arms dealer slash terrorist facilitator is a perfectly reasonable thing to do,” she said.

  “Not safe, but not suicidal either. I’ve been doing this for a whi
le now, little sister, and while the Rooster may or may not be crazy I’m definitely not. At times I’ve wished I were, but I’m not,” he said with more than a hint of melancholia.

  “But Nate...”

  Nate continued in a brisk pace, closing his argument. “Look, Onion, he doesn’t know I’m the guy he’s been hunting. He thinks I’m just some low-level mechanic that’s done an occasional job for him. Having you should gain me entrée to his inner circle. Once there I can take him out.” Tonya opened her mouth to object, but he spoke over her. “Nothing you can say will change my mind. I intended to kill this guy anyway, and once he even thought about hurting you he became a dead man walking. You won’t be safe until I take him out. Or die trying.”

  “But -- ”

  “This how it’s got to be, little sister. He dies or I die. Either way you’ll be safe.”

  “And I’m supposed to be okay with that?” she said. “Do you have any idea how awful it is to know you’re risking your life for me?”

  “And for me. Without you, my life isn’t worth living. I’ve only been existing for the past dozen years. Having you back has shown me what I’ve been missing and I don’t intend to be without it any longer.”

  “Oh, Nate.” She grabbed both of his forearms. “Can’t we just run away?”

  “Run away where? This guy is international. No,” he said shaking his head firmly. “This the only way. Of course I subscribe to Patton’s maxim of not dying for my country; I plan to do my damnedest to make that sonofabitch die for his, or I would if any decent country would have him.” He grabbed her hand as he stared into her eyes with fierce intensity. “Listen to me, Tonya. Deringer wil be here. He’ll take care of you. He’s the only living person I trust with you, and he’s the only one you can depend on until I get back. Do you understand me? The only person.”

  “Yes. Yes. I understand,” she said, wanting desperately for this to be over. His vehemence was frightening her.

  “This is very important. Deringer will always have my back and he knows you’re the most important thing in the world to me. Promise that you’ll listen to him.”