Who’s Your Pal?
We walked in silence for a long time, both of us scared and wondering if we had done the right thing. More than the relative safety of the Lahu village, however, I regretted that I would miss Noriko’s message, and maybe Noriko herself. I really wanted to see her again. I had so many questions that I wanted to ask her. Doreen’s skepticism was sound, but Noriko was still my closest link to Anonymous Man.
After three hours of hiking without incident, our fears abated a little. The winding trail we followed seemed to have a purposeful direction and we thought it only a matter of time before it dumped us into some small Thai village or onto a paved road where we could hitch a ride.
We rested by a stream and splashed our faces with its cool water. Big rocks studded the creek, and the banks were covered with heavy vegetation and lined with tall trees. We lunched on some of the provisions that Pu had left behind for us.
“You know,” Doreen said, “there’s a spot on Mount Lemon that looks a lot like this, only minus the bamboo. Zeeva and I often stopped there. I wonder how the bitch is doing.”
“Still mad at her, huh?”
“She deceived me, Guy.”
“I don’t know, Doreen, maybe you should give her the benefit of the doubt. She was a good friend to you.”
“You said yourself that she was a pro. I have no idea what she wanted from me, but the point is she lied.”
“She never really lied, Doreen, she just wasn’t completely honest.”
“Same thing as far as I’m concerned.”
“You weren’t this upset when Jim Fielding screwed you over. What he did was a lot worse, don’t you think?”
“He was a man. You expect men to be liars. Zeeva was the best friend I ever had, and that hurts.”
“Can’t a man be a friend?”
“Not the way Zeeva was, no.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. It’s just the way it is. It’s the same with guys, right? Guys have their buddies. A buddy is different than a girlfriend. You connect on a different level.”
I knew what she meant, but it made me feel…lonely. This Guy had never really had either, girlfriend or buddy. I had sisters. I wished Max were my buddy.
“What about me?” I asked.
“What about you?”
“I’m a guy. We’re pals.”
“That’s another thing all together. That’s,” she paused, “blood. We’ve known each other all of our lives.”
“Have we?”
“Huh?”
“Have we really known each other all of our lives?”
“You mean figuratively?”
“Literally,” I said.
“I watched mom change your diapers, you dope. What are you getting at?”
“Nothin’.”
Doreen stood up and slung her pack over her shoulder. “Don’t start getting weird on me, Guy. Come on, let’s go while we still have some light. I’d like to be out of these hills today if we can.”
“You know,” I said, as we started walking again, “I can’t wait to start reading the next journal.”
“Has it not occurred to you that these journals could be pure fiction? The man could have just made them all up. It wouldn’t be so hard to do, you know.”
“I don’t think so, Doreen.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know. Besides, if they weren’t authentic then why would those creeps want them so badly, huh? They’re real.”
“I’m just saying that you shouldn’t put so much, I don’t know…hope, in them.”
“Hope?”
“Well, yeah. What is it you hope to learn from these stupid diaries?”
“I don’t know, Doreen. What do you think he’s trying to tell me?”
“I don’t think he’s trying to tell you anything. I think the guy is crazy, and it’s all just a cruel joke. I think you should burn the whole damn bunch and forget about him. When he sees that you’re no longer interested, he’ll leave you alone.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be left alone.”
“Guy, what is it you really want from Anonymous Man, huh?”
“The truth.”
“The truth about what?”
“About me.”
“The journals aren’t about you, they’re about him.”
“Yeah, I know that, but I can relate to him.”
Doreen laughed. “What could you possibly have in common with him?”
“More than I know,” I said. “That’s why I want to keep reading the journals.”
“I find your obsession a little frightening, frankly.”
“And I find your abhorrence of my obsession a little conspicuous.”
Doreen threw up her hands in exasperation and picked up her pace, marching ahead.
“Okay, okay,” I said, trotting up beside her. “Let’s change the subject.”
“Gladly.”
“You know what I’d like to know?”
“Guy…” she warned.
“Don’t worry, it’s not about him. It’s about Max.”
“Who?”
“Max Stormer, the guy Pu said he met on one of Noriko’s treks. The same guy you thought was a hunk, remember? He was also the one who saved my life on the train and who beat the crap out of those two monks back at the station. What I wonder is how he knew those two monks were bogus.”
“It must have been when the two girls shook hands with them.”
“Huh?”
“The guide book says that a monk here isn’t allowed to touch a woman.”
“Ah, so the girls were casing the place. Clever. One of them was Johanna, and I bet the other—”
“Shut up, Guy. I don’t care. I’m not interested in any of their little games anymore. In seventy-two hours I plan to wake up at home in my own bed, and Thailand, Zeeva, your ridiculous Mr. A—all having been nothing but a bad dream.”
“I think Max likes you…”
“Shut up, Guy. I’m not playing your little game either.”
“I think he’s available…”
“Guy, enough!”
“Okay, okay…jeez. Take a pill, Doreen.”
We hiked on. Doreen forbade further mention of anyone or anything connected to Thailand or Mr. A. She talked only of the future: of being back in school, the plays she was going to try out for next semester, of seeing our sisters again, of shopping, and of moving on.
I knew it was all crap. There was no way she’d ever forget the past week. Whether she liked it or not, she was different now, as was I. But I let her play out her little fantasy. I figured she had been through enough already, and that it was all my fault. I kept my mouth shut.
“Do you have any idea where we are going?” I said, after trekking up and down at least three big hills and fording a couple of streams. “Circles maybe?”
Doreen checked her compass. “We’re okay. We’ll come across a road or village eventually. A couple more hours maybe.”
“In less than that it’ll be dark. We’ll lose the sun over these hills before you know it.”
“We keep hiking and if we don’t come across something soon, we’ll make camp at the first decent looking spot.”
Two hours later, the mountain’s shadow on our heels, we set our packs down along a sandy riverbank and called it camp. Dinner was a box of crackers.
“We’ll be out of here tomorrow,” Doreen said. “I’m sure of it.”
“Whatever you say, Magellan.”
I set my flashlight on top of a large rock and sat so that leaning against it the light shined over my shoulder at knee level. I took out the journal that the Lahu boy had given me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Doreen said.
“What does it look like?”
“Put it away.”
“Come on, Doreen, you’re as curious as I am. This guy is damn interesting.”
“Not to me, he isn’t. I told you, I don’t care anymore.”
“Do w
hat you want, but I’m going to sit here and read this puppy.”
Doreen growled. “You know what your problem is?”
“D—all of the above.”
“You obsess on everything. It’s not healthy.”
“Tell me something I don’t know. Besides, this time I think I have good reason.”
“No, I think—”
“Forget it, Doreen. There’s no way you’re going to keep me from reading this journal so would you please shut up. Come sit by me and we’ll read it together.”
“I don’t want to read it.”
“All right. I’ll read it to you.”
“Don’t waste your breath.”
“Hey, after twenty years of crying uncle, these lungs could inflate the Goodyear blimp. Don’t you worry.”
Doreen plugged her fingers into her ears. “Then I’m not going to listen.”
“Oh yes, you will.”
And she did.
Call Me Fuckwit
Excerpts from Journal Six.
…It was 1949 and I was in Ben-Gurion’s office when I first saw him. I was there at Moshe Dayan’s request. Dayan and I had met many times, and he had taken a liking to me. The war was over. Israel had miraculously survived, and America was considering establishing ties with the fledgling nation. The world’s new superpower sent a commission of military personnel to consult with Ben-Gurion.
He was a representative of military intelligence. He looked a little worse for wear—grayer, heavier, smugger—but I recognized him immediately. Only now, he was Brigadier General Sharc.
Sharc took no notice of me except for a disapproving roll of the eyes at my slovenly, unmilitary dress. I was introduced to him by my Hebrew name, Elias. I chose, however, to speak only in Hebrew, an insult that Ben-Gurion and Dayan thought amusing, as both of them knew I was fluent in English. No one in the room knew, however, that I was an American. That knowledge, along with my sorely missed friend Chaim, died when the Arabs overran the kibbutz he was defending in the first weeks of the war.
On the morning of the last day of meetings, it finally dawned on Sharc that he knew me. I was sipping coffee and reading the paper on the hotel terrace when he pulled a chair up at my table and sat down.
“Boker tov,” I said.
“Quit with the Hebe talk, Channing. You don’t fool me.”
I laughed. “What took you so long?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I was in no hurry. I thought I’d let you make an ass out of yourself while I figured out what your game was.”
“So what’s my game?”
“I’ll get to that. What I’d like to know is how a jerk-off like you got from being a disgraced American soldier on the German front to Dayan’s right hand man. You’re no Jew-boy, so what the hell are you doing over here?”
“What do you want, Sharc?”
“That’s Brigadier General, Sir, to you.”
“Screw you,” I said. “It’s because of you that my men are dead. I’m no longer in your war, your army, or your country. You’re in mine. So don’t even start with me, Sharc.”
“Sorry, boy, but you got your figurin’ all messed up. One word from me and I can stick your stupid ass in a US army cell where you will spend the best part of your miserable life. I got a list of charges I can pin on you the length of a roll of potty paper, from desertion to conspiracy. And don’t think your new friends in this fluke of a country can help you either. They won’t take kindly to your duping. Nobody likes being made an ass of.”
“You speak from a lifetime of experience, no doubt,” I said.
“Don’t push me, Channing.”
“Cut the conceit, Sharc. What are you after?”
He grinned, obviously pleased with what he was about to say. “Well, boy, as much as I hate to admit it, you’ve shown yourself to be a fair soldier. I’ve done some snooping into your activities over here, and I think you’ve gotten yourself some decent hands-on experience in matters that could be of benefit to your country. You seem to have a talent for bein’ who you ain’t, for makin’ trouble and gettin’ out of it, for sabotage and for killin’. If half of what I hear is true, then I’m impressed. The deal is, you’re coming to work for me.”
“You can get your hands out of your pants right now, Sharc, because there’s no way in hell I’ll work for you.”
“Who’s posing now?” he snorted. “If you like this doomed country and want to help it out, then you’re coming with me. And if you love your mother country and have an ounce of brains, you’re on my team.”
“What team?”
“Intelligence, son. There’s another war of another kind raging out there. The Reds are out to take over the world and it’s our job to keep an eye on the commie bastards and see that they don’t.”
“Give me a break, Sharc. What shell-shocked paranoid dreamland are you living in?”
“Hey,” he snapped, “while them Brits and Hebes and desert niggers have been diddling each other over here for the past thirty years, the commies have spread to the four corners and set up housekeeping. They’ll have the bomb soon, if they don’t already, and ain’t nothin’ gonna be the same then.”
“And what do you expect me to do about it?”
“You’ll do what you’ve been doin’, only you’ll be doin’ it for Uncle Sam, better equipped, better financed, and deeper. I have you and you know it.”
···
I might have just left it all behind—Sharc, America, Israel, soldiering, the past—and taken my chances. But there was nowhere to go. And besides, I had taken a liking to my hopeless new home, and I didn’t want to abandon her. I knew I couldn’t have been of use to her if Sharc were against me. With him and his intelligence team on my ass I’d be compromising Israel’s own intelligence. I cut a deal, making it clear that I would in no way spy on my friends. He agreed.
A month later I was back in the States where I underwent eighteen grueling months of training in the fine arts of espionage. I was forbidden contact with anyone outside my small group of fellow spooks. There could be no trail leading either to us or from us. We answered only to Sharc. For reasons of national security—a catch-all phrase that I would hear over and over—my family was informed that I had deserted and was presumed to have died in a German POW camp. The others on my team—there were twelve of us—all met a similar fate, though only I received the ignominy of having been branded a deserter. This was Sharc’s idea of a sense of humor, and payback.
Sharc had handpicked every one of us. We were all battle-tested ex-soldiers with records of smarts and derring-do. “Crazy sons-a-bitches,” as he fondly called us. One of first things Sharc did was give us code names. We stood at attention and Sharc went down the line sizing us up and pronouncing our new names: Hawk, Cobra, Hammer, Hyena, Knifer, Bolt, Piranha, Beast… For me, Sharc saved more of his uproarious humor. Call me Fuckwit.
Our vows of loyalty were not enough for Sharc. He made sure he had a noose around each man’s neck before he chose him, to ensure that no one would stray from the fold. Sharc rode us hard and cut us no slack. Although we weren’t commandos, much of our training was similar to theirs. We were spies, secret agents working for an agency that didn’t exist, and for a country that would disavow any knowledge of our actions if ever we were caught. Furthermore, we worked absolutely alone. After our training was completed, I never saw any of the others again.
Two team members were killed the first year in the field, the details of which Sharc would not divulge. In the next five years, four more members died or disappeared. After ten years, we had been whittled down to four of our original twelve. Sharc wasn’t disappointed. His boys had done their jobs well, and he had gotten his money’s worth out of us. Well enough to have earned him another little star on his shoulder.
Sharc recruited new meat over the years, but that, like everything else about the Organization, was on a strictly need-to-know basis. After some twenty-five years only two of the original tribe remained—the one called Pir
anha and me. That Piranha had survived didn’t surprise me in the least. I always considered him the brightest and toughest of us all. He was also Sharc’s favorite.
I tried to leave the Organization a few times, but either through cajoling or threats, Sharc convinced me to stay. Agent Fuckwit had become a very valuable operative. Losing me would have meant losing a part of himself. No one left.
Then a postcard with a picture of the aurora borealis arrived. I stared at the eerie, swirling lights for a long time and wondered, why now? What made my friend Hennes think I was in trouble and needed this psychic sledgehammer? I had to find out.
Hennes
Excerpts from Journal Six, continued…
…Whenever I showed up at his home, always unannounced, Hennes dropped whatever he was doing, poured some port, and led me into his den with its glowing fireplace and book-covered walls. There we would sit across a polished oak coffee table in oversized leather chairs, and talk the night away.
I’ve been around the globe fifty times and have been entertained by royalty, prime ministers, dictators, celebrities, and some of the wealthiest executives in the world, in castles, mansions, chalets, and the finest hotels; but none cheered me more than my friend’s simple den. It wasn’t the first time that I had traveled a thousand miles just to spend a relaxing evening in that room with him. It was the closest thing I had to a home, and he the closest thing to family.
Hennes had helped me plenty over the years. He was knowledgeable and well connected with the European intelligentsia. I often sought his expertise on matters of history, politics, economics and international affairs.
And if there was one thing in my life that I knew for certain, it was that Hennes could be trusted. The man had no temptations but knowledge. He seemed to live purely in the world of ideas. He wasn’t interested in money or power or fame. But if Sharc were to have known about my friend and confidante, he’d have had him erased in a second. No one was to be trusted, and intimacy on any level was strictly forbidden. For female companionship, prostitutes were advised, and never the same one twice.
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