by HN Wake
“Yeah, our last trip together.” His voice trembled. “I didn’t know it was gonna be our last trip together.”
She let him compose himself. “Raphael, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“The dive master - “
“Hector?” He smiled at the warm thoughts of the diving trips.
“Yeah. Hector said you guys met someone on your last trip. An American oil guy.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’d love to chat to that guy too. Get some background color on Dominick, you know, from someone who knew him. Any idea who he was?”
“I think he lives in KL. He is pretty rich. He bought us drinks all night.”
She took a note, acting interested. “Did he and Dominick keep in touch?”
Raphael looked like he was getting bored and maybe tired from his grief. “Yeah, I think they did. I think they went hiking together.”
Her senses shot to alert. What was he talking about? She asked, “Hiking?”
“Yeah, Dominick was into hiking.”
She craned her neck, watched him intently. “Did you go with him?”
“Nah, that’s not for me. I’m a fish. And the whole saving the rainforest…that’s not for me either. I let Greenpeace do that.” He threw it away as if it was nothing.
Her breath caught. “What do you mean?”
He looked at her confused.
She tried again. “What did you mean about saving the rainforest and Greenpeace?”
Raphael was still confused, as if the answer was obvious. “Dominick was into saving the rainforest. That’s why he went up there all the time, into the jungle.”
“Up where?”
“Into the jungles.”
“What jungles?”
“I dunno. The rainforest somewhere. He took like short-hop flights. You know, small, private planes.”
“Into the rainforest?”
“Yeah.”
Rainforests. Did Josh go with him?
She reached out and squeezed his shoulder. She needed one last piece of information from him. “Do you happen to have an email—nothing personal from him—that I can read? I just want to get a solid sense of his personality. It helps to read a few lines of his, you know, like sentence structure and word usage.”
He looked at her oddly.
“Nothing personal,” she assured him.
He went in search of his laptop and returned a moment later with it. He searched in his inbox, pulled up a brief note from Dominick and let her read it on the screen. She noted Dominick’s email address: [email protected] It was the last bit of information she needed from him. She said, “Yup, good, thanks. That helps. I have a better sense of him.” She gave his arm a squeeze. “I hope you have a safe trip home, Raphael.”
“Yeah, I dunno. I feel kinda like I’m abandoning these people.”
“You’ve done enough. And you’re going to be a doctor and continue doing good things. Don’t feel guilty.”
He hung his head as they said their goodbyes.
In the taxi ride back into Miri, she logged in the chat room on her Agency Blackberry, her mind racing with the new possibilities. What had Josh and Dominick been doing hiking around the rainforests? What had they been into that had gotten Dominick killed and Josh missing?
She sent a note to 89. “Can you get me emails going back three months from [email protected]”
His reply arrived quickly. “Easy. And I don’t need approval for that. :)”
His cheery response did nothing to lift the dread that hung over her.
13
Foggy Bottom, DC
Joyce’s cell phone rang just as she chewed on the last piece of pizza. Her phone identified the caller as her mother. She swallowed and picked up, “Hey, Mom.”
“Did you eat dinner?” Her mother’s voice was high pitched and loud.
“Just finishing.”
“What did you have?”
“Pizza.”
Her mother grumbled, “You’re too young to eat that horrible stuff.”
“Mom, that doesn’t make any sense. I shouldn’t eat fast food when I’m older. When I’m young, I can digest anything.”
“Do you know what kind of preservatives they put in there? All kinds of horrible things.”
“Mom, how’s Dad?”
“He’s fine. Fine. Working too hard. The bank’s got him on all kinds of things. Sometimes, I don’t see him until eight o’clock at night. It’s just not right.”
“He’s a banker, Mom. They work a lot.”
“Well, he doesn’t have to. He needs to tell them to not ride him so hard. The doctor told him to lower the stress on his heart. I told him he needs to tell those bank people to not ride him so hard.”
“How’s Richard?”
“He’s fine, fine. I think he’s going to propose to Lucy. I’m just not sure about her. I think maybe she might be after his money. I think her intentions maybe aren’t so pure.”
“Mom, Richard’s in insurance. He’s not ever going to make much money. I’m pretty sure Lucy knows that.”
“Well, we all know Richard isn’t as smart as you are. You shouldn’t be working for the government. You’ll never make any money there and then how will you feed yourself? You’ll keep making minimum wage and having to eat all that junk food.”
“Mom, I dig my job. It’s not minimum wage.”
“You should be in the corporate world. A heavy-hitter. Running a company. I would help you move out to San Francisco so you could get a job in the tech world.”
“Mom, I like my job.”
“Well, if you want to quit and do something else, I would help you. I could sneak some cash away from Dad to set you up.”
“Mom.”
“Silicon Valley. Lovely boys out there too. You still single?”
“Mom.”
“I bet there aren’t nice boys at that government job. Boring.”
“Mom.”
“What are you working on that’s so interesting you won’t even have a conversation with your mother?”
“You know I can’t talk about lots of what I do. But I’m onto something super interesting. It’s like being an investigator into a crime. I have to sniff around and find out what happened.”
“Who are the criminals?”
“In this case, I don’t know that they are criminals per se. That was an analogy.”
“Don’t patronize me, Joyce Terrell Tattle.”
“I’m not, Mom. I’m just saying that what I’m looking into may not actually be a crime. It’s more like I’m trying to figure out a puzzle. How about that?”
“What kind of puzzle? Who’s in this puzzle?”
“Well, some folks overseas in a country that is kind of not very high priority around the CIA so they gave it to me. You know, because I’m so new and all. But it should be a high priority. I say that for a number of reasons. Not too many of us are following it which means anything could happen and we’d be blind sided. Also there are a lot of Muslims there. But I’m not saying that to be racist—or prejudiced, or whatever—only that it could be a hot bed of extremism and we wouldn’t even know. What I’m trying to say is that it really should be a priority country but it’s not.”
“If you were in corporate, you’d be given high priority projects because of your brains.”
“Is Dad around?”
“Yes, just hold on. And promise me you’ll get some vegetables tomorrow?”
“I promise.”
Her father came on. His voice was deep and soothing. “Hi, my Joycie-Poo. How’s my girl? How’s the intelligence work?”
She smiled to herself. “It’s all good, Dad. So interesting.”
“Yeah? You chasing down some terrorists for us?”
“I’m trying.”
“Oh yeah? Good, good, keep us safe. How they treating you?”
“Fine, I guess. I’m still new, you know?”
“You’ll b
e fine. They’ll see the gem they have soon enough. You’ve always gotten ahead with your brains and your determination. It’s never taken you long to be the teacher’s pet.”
“How’s Mom?”
“She’s fine. They’re having a fundraiser at the Club next month for orphans in Thailand—“
“Malaysia borders Thailand…” she pondered out loud. “I mean, that’s an angle.”
He was used to Joyce’s non-sequiturs. “So, she’s been real busy. Hey, listen our show is about to come on…”
“Yeah, I have a big day tomorrow too,” she said, thinking about Hassan Talib in KL and hoping he would send through interesting material.
Her father asked, “When you coming home next?”
“I’m taking a long weekend in a few weeks. I’ll take the train up.”
“Good, good, okay see you soon, honey. You take care. Don’t let them push you around at Langley just because you’re the new kid. You push those bureaucrats back, you hear? I’m proud of you. I love you.”
It always made her a bit weepy to hear that from him. “Thanks, Dad. I love you too.”
She set the phone down and stared at the empty pizza box. The grease had seeped into the bottom, making a large, jagged stain. She picked it up, walked out of her apartment, down the hall, and slipped it in the trash chute.
Back inside her small studio, she climbed onto the bed—a mattress on the floor. Books were piled high in neat columns, organized by size just the way she liked it. Inside each book were notes in blue ink. She always used blue ink. It felt right against the black and white of a printed page. She bought books all the time. On the weekends she would browse bookshops. Smell the books. Feel them. She would ruffle the pages, the edges, and the corners. The best were the hard copies that still had their glossy cover, but were slightly scraped, rubbed as if the previous owner had truly loved it.
She was in a book club. They read historical memoirs. But she also preferred autobiographies and journalists that had written novels about real politics and foreign affairs—James Risen, Woodward. Of course, she kept up to date on all the ex-CIA spies writing books.
She never had gotten a bookshelf. Her intentions were to give books away once she’d finished them. Instead, she hung on to them and convinced herself she would dive back in and read the good parts a second time. She admitted she had hoarder tendencies when it came to books, despite the fact that she liked the image of herself as a free spirit.
She flipped the light on by her bed and picked up a book about Jim Thompson. He had been an operative in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA who later moved to Thailand and opened the famous Thai Silk Company. At the age of sixty-one, he went for a walk along Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands and never returned. His disappearance was never resolved.
As she cracked the binding, she thought, seventy-six percent. I’m on my bed with a new book, I’m digging into some serious intel at work, and I’m gonna get a promotion for sure. Her mother never understood her. Interesting work that used her mind was what drove her. Not money. And she wasn’t lonely. She was content with being single at her age. She had her career and that was plenty for right now.
14
Miri, Sarawak Province, Malaysia
Mac woke at 4 a.m. in the pitch black of the Marriott hotel room. She rolled over on the bed, lifted up the cover of the laptop, and logged into the Agency chat room.
89 had left a message. “Am attaching emails from [email protected]. Am sending in batches.”
She clicked open the first batch and began downloading.
Dominick had been a prolific emailer. There was a lot of chatter and chatting. He had at least three friends whom he emailed once a day. The emails consisted of long, often poetic, narratives about mosquitos, food, the heat, and the humidity.
In one email, Dominick sounded thoughtful. “The skies here are immense. You can sit on a porch and just watch the clouds pass by. They are big and puffy. The sky is shockingly blue. The air is so pure, so clean, that you can taste when the dust is stirred up. I stare at the sky a lot. It passes the time. I can sit on my porch and just watch the sky.”
One of the friends must be a medical student because they discussed various patients, prescriptions, and courses of action. “I was thinking cephalexin 500 mg every 6 hours for 14 days, but she has recurring bouts of diarrhea and I’m concerned about aggravating her symptoms. Any thoughts? PS there is lots of diarrhea here. I think maybe 50% of my patients. It must be the water. It’s tragic. Bottled water. So simple. Why is it all so hard? I can’t lie. Sometimes I lose it at night.”
One email complained about Raphael. “Raphael has been driving me crazy at the clinic. He can be super lazy. I am working so hard there to make a difference. He shows up late and leaves early. It’s like he doesn’t care.”
Another email discussed the harsh realities of working in the developing world. “I saw a bruised kid today. He presented on all limbs. Severe bruising. On ALL limbs. WTF?? In America, I would have reported his parents. Here, if you do that, nothing happens to the parents and the kid gets abused worse. It’s sickening. But my job is to heal. Not fix the entire system. OMG it’s so tragic.”
To what was likely a sister he had written, “Please let Mom know I’m okay. I think she’s worried about me.”
A month ago, he had written a friend [email protected], “Going diving to Miri next weekend. I just got a new setup for my camera so I can take underwater pictures.”
The download of batches hit a snag. Mac hit refresh and the download restarted, but the process was slow
She turned on the light, rolled off the bed, and picked up the ice bucket.
The hallway was dark and silent with only a dim wall sconce every ten feet. The carpet under her feet was a mosaic of geometric shapes.
She was so distracted, she almost didn’t notice the movement at the far end. Like an apparition, a white dressed figure had slipped past the T junction ahead. From right to left.
She sped up, passing the vending area. When she reached the end of the hallway she glanced left. It was empty.
She felt, rather than heard, the whisper shut of a door.
The ice bucket felt light and plastic in her hand. Not much of a weapon if she needed it. She felt exposed in her bare feet.
She returned toward her room.
Had the hallway been so dark when she had first come down it?
At the ice machine, she jammed the bucket against the arm and an avalanche of ice thundered alarmingly.
She glanced once over her shoulder down the long empty hallway.
Back in the room, the download was still going. She dropped the ice into a glass, covered it with bottled water, and chided herself for the scare in the hallway. Usually, she was okay being alone in the dark. She was almost always okay when she was alone. It was people that made her nervous.
“What made you come overseas?” she asked him, her head leaning against his arm. She watched his profile in the dark Four Seasons hotel room.
His gaze was far away. “Why do you ask?”
“Seems like a normal question to ask most expats.”
He slid up slightly against the headboard, moving away from her. “You want the truth?”
“Of course.” She was intrigued.
“I needed to get away from memories and a history.”
She tried to make him feel better with a trite response, “Don’t we all?”
“Not like this,” he corrected her.
“Can you tell me?”
He pulled in a big breath, stilled. She moved closer to his warm body, laid her hand flat across his chest, and felt his heartbeat.
“When I was in college,” he said, “in Amherst I played college rugby. It was a big deal. Our team was really good. So was the girls’ team. One weekend we had games in Delaware. We all stayed late, too late. Then we got in a big caravan of cars and headed back to school.”
She moved he
r hand to feel his heart in his neck.
“It was in the middle of the night on 95 North.” His voice was dull, oddly monotonous. “I was driving with my girlfriend at the time. She was on the women’s team. I must have fallen asleep at the wheel. I woke up and she was screaming and headlights were heading right at us.”
Her hand froze on his neck.
“We didn’t have a chance. I had steered the car into the oncoming traffic.” He rubbed his eyes. “The ambulances came, but it took a long time. Some of the other cars in the caravan were behind us and saw it happen. She and I were both in the front seat, trapped. When the ambulance finally came, I was passed out. They told me later there was a huge crowd and they cut us both out with those big saws. I ended up with a severe concussion and a broken leg.” He stared at the ceiling. “She ended up a paraplegic.”
She swept her hand over his warm cheek.
“When I graduated, I got out of the US quick.”
“Did you see her much after the accident?”
“No. A few times. It was difficult. She never blamed me. She has an unbelievable spirit about her.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know.”
Mac was struck by an overwhelming urge to pull him close, to wash away his demons, and to understand his distance. The urge was so strong, so immediate, that it made her heart ache.
Before she could wrap her arms around him, he disentangled and leaned out over the bed. Her hand trailed down his soft back as the sheet slid off him.
He said into the empty room, “So that’s why I left.”
He stood and walked through the dark into the bathroom.
When he returned, he slipped into the bed and wrapped his arms around her. He pulled her in close.
She allowed herself to exhale. She was needed and safe. The intimacy felt intense.
The most recent batch of emails included photos from Dominick’s dive trip in Miri. Underwater images materialized: closeups of bright coral; a distant shot of a huge bat fish; a whirlpool of small fish; and the sun streaming through a wave.
The next photo had been taken on a dive boat. She recognized it as the Monkey Diver’s boat.