Cooch

by Robert Cook

  Alex had stayed in touch with Mac, often weekly by phone. From time to time, Mac flew to Pittsburgh for dinner and a chat. When Alex mentioned his tentative plans for the next several years, Mac suggested a going away gift—a trip to South Dakota to shoot pheasants and spend a little downtime together. Alex was enthusiastic.

  Alex flew to Minneapolis from New York, and Mac from Dulles. They met and checked in to start the puddle jumper run. The plane had twin turboprops and landed in several small airports before finally reaching Pierre, South Dakota. As they collected their luggage, a grizzled man in a camouflage-patterned ball cap and worn plaid wool shirt walked up holding a sign reading “MacMillan.”

  “Mr. MacMillan?” he asked.

  Mac reached out to shake his hand. “That’s me.”

  “I’m Jason,” he said. “Let me help you with your stuff, and I’ll drive you to the lodge. You’ll have time for a drink before supper.”

  “Let’s do it,” Mac said. “This is Alex.”

  The drive from the airport lasted about thirty minutes. The land was flat and farmed, and the sun cast angled beams across endless fields of wheat and corn. The lodge was fairly elaborate, in a country sense. On the first floor, its log construction held a kitchen open to a large dining area, and just beyond, a huge television for watching the inevitable football games. The upper floor held two rooms, one for poker and cigars and another with a pool table and a second bar. Drinks and wine were included in the price. The taxidermy was extensive; the heads of mule deer, elk, and moose adorned the walls, while tables were graced with dead fox, pheasant, and the occasional coiled, inert rattlesnake. Guest rooms were spread among long wings extending from the public areas.

  Dinner was steaks, baked potatoes, carrots, and pecan pie with ice cream; food and wine were unlimited, with extensive banter among the group of twenty or so other guests. As they settled in near the fire to finish their wine, Alex told Mac he had decided he would return to the desert for a month or two. He was curious about being a Bedouin as an adult.

  Mac was quiet for a few moments, and then said, “It could be one hell of an intelligence opportunity for understanding and maybe tracking the Arabs, from what you’ve told me about the Bedouin gossip network.”

  “I suppose,” Alex said, after a sip of red wine. “But then, I’m part Arab. I’ll have to see how my grandfather feels about that by asking very gently—philosophically. I sort of guess he’d be fine about that conduit as long as there were no obvious fingerprints left by us. I’ll bring it up. We’ll see. It makes sense; he’s no fan of radical Islam. If for no other reason, it’s bad for business.”

  The shooting began after a full country breakfast and a ride to the fields with eight excited men in each small bus. A small trailer rolled behind, stacked with aluminum kennels for six dogs and a rack on top with rails to hold dead pheasants. Inside the bus, gun racks bolted to the floor held shotguns, and boxes of shotgun shells were stashed under the seats. One guide talked gun safety on the way to the fields while another drove.

  The eight men spread in a line at the base of a cornfield that had not been harvested. Around them were fields of corn, sunflower, and sorghum stretching to the horizon. Each field seemed about fifty yards wide and a half mile or so long. Three dogs, a Labrador and two German shorthairs, were released from their kennels and immediately began to mark their territory.

  The other three dogs, still in their kennels, began to bark and howl from the devastation of being excluded from the shooting, at least for now. Electric training collars were strapped to the necks of the first dogs; any disobedience became a sharp, momentary pain in the neck, transmitted from a small box with pointed contacts hanging snug under their necks. The dogs were to run a short distance ahead of the walking line and flush ringneck pheasant from the corn. The lodge guests would shoot the birds, and the dogs would fetch the dead or wounded bird and bring it to its owner, a guide.

  The head guide said that only pheasant roosters should be shot, to maintain the pheasant population. The penalty for killing a hen was a two-hundred-dollar fine, to be paid to the South Dakota Pheasant Conservatory after all the shooters finished razzing and teasing the hen-shooting culprit. Pheasant roosters are colorful, with long tails. Guides yell “Hen!” or “Rooster!” when single birds are flushed. In a multiple bird flush, the shooters are on their own while looking down a shotgun barrel for long tails.

  They began in a line, walking down the rows of the cornfield with the dogs crashing through in front of them. One rooster flushed and was shot before Alex could raise his gun, then another. A group of ten or twelve birds flushed suddenly and Alex shot twice, missing both times. This was a new experience for Alex, who had only ever shot birds in the United Kingdom, and just once, with Colin Alistair, his SAS buddy in Scotland. There, the birds were driven toward the shooters.

  In the US, the birds flew away as the shooters “walked them up,” with the dogs in front. It was a different shot, and in both cases, aiming with shotguns was unlike with rifles and pistols. With a shotgun, the shooter’s focus was on the bird and on swinging the gun in the path of the pheasant; with rifle and pistol it was on aligning the gun’s sights, with the target in the subconscious mind. And the smooth pull of a pistol trigger was far different from slapping the trigger of a shotgun. Still, the pheasant didn’t shoot back; he liked that part.

  Alex missed again several times, and twice, Mac killed the bird he missed. Alex focused. Two birds flushed suddenly; he was ready. He mounted his shotgun to his shoulder in a flash and shot, then at the second bird. He fired before any of the others. The first bird dropped without a flutter; the second flew on unharmed. The droppings from the back of that bird announced its fear. There was silence on the line.

  “Nice shot on the first bird,” the guide beside him said with a grin. “You missed the second one clean. That’s good—saved you two hundred bucks.” The lab ran up to the guide proudly, holding the pheasant hen gently in his mouth. The guide took it and held it up. “But you owe the kitty for this one.”

  Mac had a big grin on his face as the rest of the men hooted and hollered at Alex. Alex stood, shaking his head, grinning and feeling stupid. “Oh well, it’s a good cause, anyhow,” he said. “I guess I’ll be more careful now.”

  The men in the line killed fifty or so pheasants that day, and again the next. Alex shot four, including the expensive hen. At noon each day, they rode the bus back to the lodge for a big lunch. Some of the guests drank heavily, and then returned to the cornfields for an afternoon shoot. Alex spent more time watching out for the drinkers than he did the birds. They seemed to shoot fine in spite of the booze—probably an indication of extensive practice in combining the two that helped them, Alex decided. They still made him nervous.

  When they were ready to leave, Jason handed Alex and Mac each a box of cleaned, skinned, flash-frozen pheasant. Alex was leaving the country soon, so Mac got a bonus box.

  Southern

  Spain

  ALEX flew from Kennedy to Madrid and made his way south to Algeciras, near Gibraltar, to join his mother. A week or so later, he boarded the ferry to Tangier, in the north of Morocco, to be with his grandfather. The invitation for an extended visit had been outstanding and much discussed on the telephone for a long time. It was time for Alex to revisit his roots. Although he talked often with his grandfather by phone and made short visits, he missed his time in the desert. He missed his grandfather. He hoped he didn’t miss blowing shit up and killing people.

  When Alex settled into his room in the big kasbah house, he noticed again that the room was his alone. It was kept meticulously clean, but apparently had not been used since his last visit. The view of the harbor from the big bedroom window was sublime. Alex put his “city clothes” away in the closet, then stepped into the huge shower. A few minutes later, he walked from the room dressed in the loose garments of a Bedouin native.

  A servant met Alex as he walked into the great hall.

 
“Sheikh Kufdani awaits you. There is tea,” he said. Alex followed him into a small room that adjoined Kufdani’s bedroom. The walls were hung with Bedouin carpets, and a fire blazed in a corner fireplace despite the moderate temperature. Abu Kufdani rose from an ornate chair and opened his arms. Alex walked quickly to him and they embraced.

  “I am so happy to see you!” Sheikh Kufdani exclaimed. “I thought that you would never come; these modern phones are inadequate, and who knows who is listening these days. And you’re staying for two months or more! We have much to discuss; most of it will be in the desert, but you are here with me now. Sit, my son.”

  “I stopped in to see my mother. She is well, as are your other daughters,” Alex said as he settled into an overstuffed leather chair, away from the stifling fire.

  “Of course. I am attentive to their needs,” Sheikh Kufdani said. “I would be enormously displeased if someone was to cause them difficulty.”

  Alex nodded and smiled. There were traders of goods, important people, who relied on the goodwill of his grandfather and his trading network in the extended Muslim world. There were many Jews who had been trading in the network for generations; the Bedouin were Semites by blood after all, if not by religion for the past few centuries. Information requested by Sheikh Kufdani was information granted, and a little violence was easily arranged if, even indirectly, requested by him to protect his honor, which would certainly include the welfare of his daughters. The phrase “enormously displeased” when issued by Abu Kufdani brought swift action to cure his displeasure. Alex thought the daughters undoubtedly were safer than they would be in the house of the city mayor, or some other seemingly secure places in that city.

  In Algeciras earlier that month, Alex had been on a morning jog near his mother’s house. He had noticed a watcher who seemed to have little to do but watch the area around his mother’s house. Just after lunch that afternoon when the house was empty, Alex had dug Swarovski binoculars from his bag and settled into a kitchen chair with them, elbows resting on the table. He had a cup of tea and a notebook. He had spent two hours examining the hill where the watcher sat in the shade, idly leaning against an adobe wall. Alex had then looked over a map of the city to orient himself.

  Alex had later walked slowly by the watcher, then suddenly leaned down and lifted the man by his biceps and slammed his back into the wall. He had slid down beside the gasping man and reached for the man’s left arm. He had tucked the man’s elbow into the hollow between Alex’s right bicep and forearm, then folded the man’s hand down and held it with his right hand.

  “Tell me, my friend,” Alex had said in gutter Spanish. “Why are you watching me?”

  “I am just a humble worker, resting for a moment,” the man had gasped in Arabic-accented Spanish.

  Alex had switched to Arabic and moved his hand that held the other’s back a little, causing a sharp pain in the wrist. “You are close to dying painfully. I don’t like being watched.” Alex had quickly found that the man had been hired by a good friend of his grandfather, just to keep an eye on things. The man had a new cell phone and a number to call if there was any trouble. It was innocent, almost, but typical of his grandfather’s methods. His grandfather seemed often devious to a fault, then very direct if need be.

  Sheikh Kufdani’s

  Residence

  “SO, what are your plans for the future?” his grandfather asked. He gave Alex a little grin. “The legendary Cooch has retired from the business of killing and exploding, apparently. We should discuss that in private sometime. In my tent, rather than in a room with walls—and ears, perhaps.”

  The old man nodded slightly to Alex in respect and said, “And congratulations on your remarkable academic performance at the Carnegie Mellon. I am quite proud. I have been considering an appropriate and acceptable graduation gift for you. We should discuss this as well.”

  Alex gazed at his grandfather for more than a minute, bemused; the man worked at being underestimated. “And you know all of this how, Grandfather?”

  “There is a professor at the Carnegie Mellon named Al-Zarian,” Abu Kufdani said. “You have met him?”

  This is getting to be fun, Alex thought. He reminds me a little of Mac.

  “I have,” Alex said. “Nice man. But he is Egyptian and not Bedouin. You trust him?”

  “Of course not, but a good question,” Kufdani said. “He is the son of a business acquaintance of mine. I granted him a scholarship to teach for two years at the Carnegie Mellon as a visiting professor, where he had a good opportunity but not the wherewithal to pursue it. He was happy in return to keep an eye on you and advise me of any need you may have had. He is also a reasonably adept Islamic scholar. I thought perhaps the two of you could talk from time to time, to keep up your language skills, of course.”

  “Of course,” Alex said, then mused to himself, I wonder why I’m first seeing this part of him. Ah well, he’s on a roll. He’ll probably tell me if I shut up for long enough.

  “The Cooch matter was just asking a continuing favor of a man well connected in the intelligence business in Spain, once I was able to identify your nickname or nom de guerre, or whatever that Cooch title is,” Kufdani continued. “That rumor mill was robust when you were active in the CIA. You made quite a reputation among the commandos of the world. The information flow came to an abrupt halt when you left the service.”

  “That’s good,” Alex said. “At least about the rumors shutting down. I am not so happy that I was easy to follow in the special operations community.”

  “Nor was I, but at least at first they resisted. I now provide to Spain some selected information about the mechanisms of Arab commerce and its information flow. They in turn mine the grist of the commandos’ information rumor mill for me.

  “Enough of this,” the sheikh exclaimed. “We should have a drink and prepare for dinner. We leave at first light for the desert. We will talk much more there. Oh, and we have dinner guests.”

  The guests were two older men. One was a cousin of the Moroccan king, and was the deputy foreign minister. The other was a Bedouin of the Yahia tribe, an Imam and Islamic scholar at the local university who openly held strong Western biases in his teachings. Conversation ranged from Muslim ambitions and conflicts around Arabia to actions of the Western world. Alex was recognized in conversation as an American, yet treated as a Bedouin leader might be, perhaps because no English was spoken after their greetings. Again Alex sensed the subtle hand of his grandfather, gently nudging pieces around a chessboard.

  After dinner they settled into the small meeting room where Alex had joined his grandfather earlier. The Imam was lecturing ponderously to Alex on how the children of Shem, who was in turn the son of the Old Testament Noah of ark fame, begat the Bedouin race. The foreign minister was nodding off, his head snapping up after a long downward drift. Alex found his grandfather watching him, almost idly.

  “Tell me, Alex, are you going to stay with me for more than a month or two and assume your rightful place as a Bedouin leader, or do you have other plans?” Abu Kufdani asked. The foreign minister snapped awake and the Imam quieted. Both looked at Alex curiously. This could be an event of great note in the Arab and Bedouin communities, and they were firsthand witnesses. Abu Kufdani controlled vast amounts of the commerce in both the Arab world and Europe and was aging; a named Bedouin successor would be greatly influential and inevitably tested by others, both in Bedouin ways and in the ways of commerce.

  “I’m afraid I’ll never be a true desert dweller, Grandfather, but I have your Bedouin genes and I love the desert. I have not yet decided what I will do with the rest of my life. I’ve applied to the Arabic studies program at Oxford University. If I get in, I’ll figure out what’s to be next in my life while I learn.”

  The Imam was scribbling furiously in a notebook when interrupted. “What do you think of my grandson’s chances of getting in, my friend?” Kufdani asked.

  “I would think they are good, Sheikh Kufdani,�
� the Imam said. “I am not without influence as a scholar. It would be my honor to investigate this for you.”

  “Marvelous,” Kufdani exclaimed, as he smiled fleetingly under his full, gray beard. “I look forward to your report.”

  “Uh, yes, of course,” the Imam stammered. His words had somehow been transported from a small brag into a major commitment. His honor would suffer on bad results. Perhaps the grandson had been to college; he at least spoke well. He planned his approach.

  “Thank you. It is a great honor to have an advocate such as you,” Alex said to the Imam while his grandfather beamed and nodded. Alex liked his grandfather better all the time; it was a nice complement to the love he had felt for many years. The respect had always been there as well; it was demanded by the Bedouin culture. He supposed there was no need to tell his grandfather that he had already applied to Oxford; apparently his request for help had been granted even before asked. The Imam was hooked, and he knew it.

  Tangier

  IN the morning they boarded his grandfather’s Range Rover, already packed with clothes, goods, and presents, and began the long drive south to the desert. There was a driver, Achmed, who was Alex’s age and a best friend of many years. It was Achmed who had taught him how to be invisible in the desert, and they had learned together how to fight with the curved knife of the Bedouin, using wooden replicas. In the passenger seat rode another of his father’s retainers, his well-tended rifle adorned with silver fittings and held between his knees; he was a noted hunter and marksman.

  They finally reached the camp, where tents were used for sleeping as well as gathering places. They were set in a circle around a huge fire pit in a swept open area. Carpets woven from goat and camel hair were the floors of the tents and were strewn with elaborate pillows for sitting and sleeping. In some places, several joined tents could be used for private reflection or, more often, for discussion of commerce.