The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories

by McAllister, Bruce

  I didn’t become what I would become until maybe the second mission. I didn’t develop the habits, I mean—the crazy ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that you develop when you know that if you touch someone you love, you may be giving them a disease that will kill them—until later. Those things didn’t really start until after the first mission, though during that mission I’d meet people I liked and they’d be in the city where I needed to start the thing, and I had no choice—it was important that I start it there, in that city, if what we needed to have happen was to happen.

  I remember a young woman in—a midsized city—let’s call it Santa Livia. That’s not its real name, but I still can’t use the real names. She was an ex-Peace Corps worker and back in the States I’d have asked her out; but when I met her she was in—in Santa Livia working for a civilian aid organization. And that was the city where they wanted me to crack the hollow thing in my tooth to start it. All I needed to do after I cracked it was take the train from Santa Livia to the next two cities on the train route and cough a lot. It was in my bloodstream and that’s all it would take. I’d cough, put my hand over my mouth, cough some more, touch the railings and doors of the train as I left and entered each car along the way. It was easy. You weren’t sick yourself—you didn’t have the symptoms—and the first time you did it you couldn’t believe you were starting an epidemic. How could you be starting an epidemic just by doing that? You didn’t believe it. You were just doing what they wanted you to do.

  When I’d reach the third city, I’d crack the other three fillings on the other side of my mouth and the antibiotic would kill the Yersinia in my bloodstream; and I’d continue on the train to—let’s call them Santo Tomas and Santa Carolina . . . and Morela. If anyone tried to track the spread of it, the “vector trail,” as they called it, would end in Morela; but only the World Health Organization would know how to track it and by the time they did, my train trip would be lost in the epidemic. Everyone—the cities, the government, the aid organizations—would be overwhelmed in days by the infected and no one could charge the U.S. with anything even if we got what we wanted. The disease would move from city to city within a day, and there’d be geometric spread—the kind you get in urban areas with rats, fleas, and aerial transmission—out from those cities. I’d be evacuated along with other non-quarantined Americans before the disease could hit the capital, where I was staying.

  Spreading it that way made it look natural. That was, as I think I said, the main reason to have someone—a human carrier—do it—do it “by hand,” as we liked to say—in a couple of cities and then let it spread. Looking natural was important. The word you hear all the time in CIA movies—“deniability”—is true. It’s not just a Hollywood idea. That was the guiding principle. You don’t have to have it deniable in economic warfare, the way we do things now; but you do in covert-action matters. Economic warfare—public sector and private sector both—works better anyway.

  She had blue eyes and she liked me, I think. I didn’t know if she got out. I didn’t want to know. She was in the first city and maybe that gave her a chance, unless she chose to stay—to help. With pneumonic, if it’s an untreated population, you can have ninety to one hundred percent mortality. With bubonic it tends just to be fifty to sixty percent, so I didn’t know.

  After doing those three cities, I took the train back to the capital and found myself not looking at women or children. If I looked at them, I felt like they were going to die, that I was going to kill them—which could have been true, but not in the way it felt at the moment. I felt that my eyes—just my eyes—could do it. If I looked at them, they’d die. And with the women, if I thought they were beautiful, they’d also die because I thought it—because I thought they were beautiful.

  Later, it would get a lot worse—the superstitions and habits—but that’s how it started, on the first mission. Not looking at women and children.

  Or anyone who looked at all like my parents.

  It started with toothbrushes, I guess. That’s when I first really noticed it. Not just averting my eyes on a train, but actual things I could touch—that I took home with me, and couldn’t get away from. I wasn’t supposed to do anything to draw attention to myself when I was in the field; but after the first mission, it was like I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth, so I started buying toothbrushes, one for every day; and I’d wrap up each one in a plastic bag at the end of the day. I started doing this when I was still in the field the second time. It was in the capital city, when all of the uninfected Americans and Europeans and Chinese and Japanese were being rushed out by jet. I used up ten toothbrushes in six days—that’s more than one a day—right before I was evacked.

  Back in the States, they had me live in Minneapolis. Why, I don’t know. They didn’t check me in at Langley—Agency headquarters—when I got back. Not at first. They put me in Walter Reed, the big military hospital in DC. I was there for three days to make sure I wasn’t still carrying, and then I did go to Langley for debriefing, a week of it, if I remember correctly. And then finally to Minneapolis, where they wanted me low profile until they needed me again, which wouldn’t be for another six months. I kept buying the toothbrushes—a different one, sometimes two, for each day, and eventually rubber gloves to hold them with and plastic bags to put them in. I’d put them in the blue dumpsters behind my apartment. I wanted to burn them in a furnace, but the building didn’t have one.

  I noticed, too, that I didn’t touch things out in public, or where other people could touch what I’d touched. I could have hired a maid—the Agency would have paid for it—but I wouldn’t hire a maid. I didn’t want her touching what I’d touched in the apartment. Out in public if I touched things it would be with my left hand, the hand I never let come near my mouth.

  I was back in my own country again—with people I’d grown up with and cared about—and if I wasn’t careful (a voice was telling me), I could start it here. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but that’s how it felt. I was clean, completely clean, but that’s how it felt.

  I had no social life, even though my case agent—let’s call him Rod—kept telling me I needed one. “It’s easier in DC,” I’d tell him. “There’s no social life in Minneapolis.”

  “That’s not the reason, Matt,” he’d say, “and you know it.”

  “What are you talking about?” I’d say, pretending I didn’t know.

  “You’re agoraphobic and you need to work your way out of it. It happens. It’s going to happen in work like this. Do you want to see an Agency shrink?”

  “No.” I wanted to work it out myself. I didn’t want to be in a shrink’s office where I could touch things and the shrink might die.

  Sometimes Rod would visit me—maybe four times while I was there, during those six months—and his visits helped. Someone who knew me and thought I was okay—despite what kind of work I did—who wasn’t afraid to sit near me or touch me. He was a short, squat man, and pretty gruff—a little like Joe Friday, real old-school, OSS originally—but he reminded me of Professor Booth, because he also seemed to care. I’m not sure he did—that either of them really cared—but that’s how it felt, and it helped.

  I certainly didn’t date. I didn’t have to work. I had all this free time, but I didn’t socialize unless I had to. I told people in the building that I was a writer and I know they thought I was some rich kid who didn’t have to work, who could just write a book while everyone else worked. They didn’t like that, which meant no one wanted to be around me—which was great. I had a different name, different social security number, the usual witness-protection kind of cover; and everyone assumed I was a trust-fund kid, I’m sure. I had all the time in the world, so I read a lot. When you read a lot you don’t meet a lot of people. You don’t meet a lot of girls.

  But there was one—her name was Trisha—she lived down the hallway—but when I thought of dating her, I saw myself sitting in my car and watching it happen. They’d given me a car, a ’68 Musta
ng fastback—the kind of car a trust-fund kid would have—and I saw myself sitting in it with her and, though she wanted me to kiss her, I couldn’t. Why? Because if I did she’d jerk back like she’d been shot and I’d have to watch her get sick and die.

  It would be like time-lapse photography, like a flower in a Disney nature movie blooming real fast, the buboes blooming like flowers, and then she’d be dead.

  That’s what I’d see if I thought of asking her out, but I finally did—maybe because I thought I should. I knew I was going crazy and maybe it would help. She wouldn’t die—I knew that—and seeing that she didn’t die might just help. But when I did ask her, when I got off the phone after asking her out, I threw up. I threw up on the bed where I’d made the call. I couldn’t stop shaking and I didn’t pick her up that Saturday. I never called her again, I avoided her in the hallway, and I didn’t return her call the one time she called me two weeks later.

  I also had a chance to see my parents during those six months and didn’t. I couldn’t.

  I’d phone and tell my dad that they had me real busy, that even when I was out of the field they were keeping me busy, and he’d say, “That’s fine, Matt. I know how it goes. My good friend Gavin from the Academy was ONI and he was the busiest man I ever knew. Just hearing your voice is wonderful. Call us when you can.”

  Or he’d tease me and say, “You’re not trying to avoid us, are you?” and I’d lie and say, “You know me better than that.” I’d say it to my mom, too. “You know I love you both. If I’m not going to get to see you, I want at least to call. I want you to at least hear my voice.”

  “You know we’re proud of you,” they’d both say, and they’d mean it. I didn’t let myself wonder what they’d think if they knew what I was doing. Maybe they wouldn’t want to know.

  My dad died of a heart attack right after my third mission and I wanted to make it to the funeral, but I just couldn’t do that either. I talked to my mom for a long time on the phone, trying to explain why I couldn’t, inventing all sorts of things; and though I know she believed me—I know it made her proud—I know she was disappointed. But she’d been married to a Navy man, so she knew what sacrificing for your country was.

  I was sitting watching television in my apartment in Phoenix—this time they had me in Arizona—when my dad’s funeral started four hundred miles away. I remember looking at my watch every five minutes for an hour. I don’t remember what was on television. I remember hearing in my head what I would have said about him if I’d been there. I remember imagining his body in a casket, starting to smell, the rash and bumps, and stopping myself—and then just seeing my mother’s face and hugging her and telling her I loved her and what a wonderful man he’d been, which was true.

  At first they lied to me and said the ex-Peace Corps woman—the woman in Santa Livia, the one I’d liked—had made it out okay; but two years later—after two more missions—they admitted she hadn’t, that she’d been one of five Americans who’d died in the city because the WHO’s medical shipment to the center of the epidemic took ten days, not three; and the five were sick and so they couldn’t be evacuated. We’d delayed the WHO’s shipment, of course. It was easy to do. I’d killed her. That was the truth of it. I hadn’t delayed the shipment, but I’d killed her.

  It was knowing that she’d died that made me do what I did in the city of—the city of Zaquitos. I’m sure it was. It wasn’t a young woman, though. It was a boy, one who looked like a kid I’d played with—a friend—in the fourth grade in Florida, when my dad was stationed there. In the next country I was sent to I saw a lot of young women who were beautiful. Maybe their arms had little nicks and scars from a hard life. Maybe they were dirty from the dust and heat, but they were beautiful. People are beautiful wherever they are, whether it’s war or peace or famine or floods they’re living in. But it wasn’t a woman I decided to save, it was a boy. I remember thinking: This is someone’s kid. You’re going to have kids someday, Matt—if you’re lucky, if you make it through this—and this is someone’s kid.

  He was a mescla—a mixed-blood kid at the bottom of the social ladder. His hair was kind of a bronze color, the way hair sometimes is from Brazil and the Azores. My friend in the third grade was from the Azores. This boy in Zaquitos had light brown eyes just like my friend. His skin was dark, but he had that bronze hair and, believe it or not, a couple of freckles on his nose, too. There’d been a lot of Irish and Germans in that country in the beginning and they’d mixed and maybe it was Irish blood coming through in this kid.

  He lived on a famous dump in Zaquitos—the dump I’d gone to, to write a story about. I was there to write a story about how terrible conditions were for the people in that country’s north. They’d left the drought-stricken countryside and ended up in the favelas, the slums, and that wasn’t any better. It was worse, in fact, and that’s what I was writing about. I was a reporter for a liberal English-language paper out of the capital city; that’s what I was supposedly doing there. The agency had figured out how to use my writing skills and that was my—as they say—cover. I’d been interviewed by the newspaper the way any applicant would and I’d been hired the way anyone would be. At least that’s how it looked. A paper trail in case one was needed. I wasn’t comfortable with the job. I didn’t talk leftist jargon well enough to feel comfortable when I met other leftist journalists, but my case agent said, “Don’t worry. They can’t fire you.” The newspaper, it turned out, was funded by the Agency. Some of the editors worked for the Agency and could pipeline agents like me, and the other editors just didn’t know. That’s how it was in those days. It’s an old story now and pretty boring; but for two missions that was my cover, and it was a good one because I got to be alone a lot of the time.

  I had to make myself step up close to the boy—the one I’m talking about in the dump. Stepping up to him was hard to do because I wasn’t supposed to do that with anyone I cared about. But I did it and I asked him in Spanish if I could take his picture. Some of you know Spanish, I’m sure. I said, “Puedo fotografiarte?” and he cocked his head, and for a moment I was back in the third grade and my friend Keith was looking at me. I jumped back and nearly tripped on the garbage. I wanted to run. But in that moment I was also myself twenty years in the future looking down at my own son and feeling a love I’d never felt before. No one, especially guys, ever feels a love like that—for children, I mean—when they’re twenty-two. It’s just not what life is like when you’re twenty-two—unless you’re a father already. But that’s what I felt and that’s what kept me from running away.

  There were dirty streaks on the boy’s neck from all that sweat and dirt. His ears were dirty and all he wanted to do when he saw me was beg. He kept shaking his head and putting out his hand and saying in English, “Very poor! Very poor!” He’d try to touch me—my camera, my sleeve—and I’d step back, shaking my head, too, because I was terrified. But I made myself do it. I gave him what I had—some coins and some bills. I was shaking like crazy because I was touching the money—touching it and then giving it to him—and as I did it I could see him dying right before me. But he didn’t die, so I asked him again: “Can I photograph you?”

  “Yes!” he said, happy now, the coins and bills in his hands. “Foto! Foto!” He’d gotten what he wanted and now I could snap his picture, just like any tourist would.

  I took his picture and went back to my hotel downtown. Even though I didn’t have the roll of film I’d taken at the dump processed, I didn’t need to. I could see his face as I fell asleep. I dreamed about him; and I could see his face as I woke up and got ready to go back to the dump, where I was supposed to start the “distraction”—that’s what we called it—that morning. The favelas were a logical place for it—with all the urban rats and the incredible transiency. Everyone in that country and in bordering countries and at WHO and the UN were waiting for some epidemic to start in that country. It was a time bomb. Cholera, typhoid, something. But if we—if the Agency—could get a big
enough one going, there was a ninety percent chance that the government of—the government of that country—would topple. The military was ready for a coup. It had already tried once.

  So I stood on the dump—in all that stink and garbage—and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it with the boy there somewhere—a boy who looked like my friend and a boy who was someone’s kid—so I went looking for him, and it took an hour, but I found him. He was with his father and brothers, and I said, “Debe llevarse a su familia ad otra ciudad—ahora! Cosas malas llegan!” That meant: You’ve got to move your family to another city—right now! Bad things are coming! They looked at me like I was crazy, so I said it again and I got out the five hundred American dollars I’d had my department wire me. Living expenses, I’d explained, and that was fine with them. I said in Spanish, “I want you to be safe. You need to leave this place immediately. Do the boys have a mother?” No, she’d died, the father said. “I will give you five hundred American dollars if you will leave today—if you will leave now!”

  The father looked at me and I knew damn well what he was thinking: Crazy American. The kind that tries to “save you.” That sends money to your country because of a television show and if it gets to you it’s a penny rather than a dollar.

  He was willing to take the money, but you could tell he wasn’t going to pack up and move—not today, maybe not ever. They had friends here, other families. You don’t give that up even for five years of income, do you?

  I looked at them and waited and finally I said, “If you don’t go today, I’ll take my money back. I’ll call the police and tell them you robbed me, and I’ll take my money back.”

  When he got the point, when he saw I was dead serious, he led me to the shack they lived in—the cardboard and corrugated metal shack that had no running water or sewage—and helped his boys get things together. I just stood there. I couldn’t touch anything—anything they were going to bring. I wanted to put on rubber gloves so I could help them, but I couldn’t do that either. They’d be insulted, and I didn’t want to insult them. The boys gathered up six toy soldiers—two apiece—hammered from tin cans, a broken plastic gun, and two big balls of twine, and the father gathered up four dirty blankets, a can opener that looked bent, two pairs of pants for each of them, and a bag filled with socks, shoes, plastic plates, and cups. That’s what they had. They’d slept on the dirt floor on those blankets. I’d never really thought of how people like this lived, and here it was. How do you live like that and not stop caring? I don’t know.