Dark Heart

by James Phelan

  “I . . .”

  “Whose blood was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you remember about Syria?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Don’t play with me.”

  “I don’t remember. What did I say yesterday?”

  He watched her in silence. Five seconds. Ten. Then he said, “That doctor from MSF said that you were talking, in some kind of a delirious state, from the time you were brought in to when he had to sedate you. You were saying the same thing, over and over.”

  “What was I saying?”

  “You can’t remember?”

  “Could I remember it yesterday?”

  The man watched her, as though her question were a test. The vein ticked away, the pulse escalated, as if Muertos’s lack of memory was stressful.

  He eventually said, “You were in severe shock, but you’re otherwise unharmed. Delirious, they said. But I need you to think, Rachel. Do you remember anything of what happened in Damascus? Anything at all?”

  “Why was I in Damascus? How did I get there?” She looked across to the doctor. “How—how did I get here?”

  “Look at me,” the Homeland agent said. “Rachel, look at me. That’s it. Now, think. Do you remember anything that can help us?”

  Rachel Muertos was silent.

  “Find Jed Walker,” he said. “Over and over. That’s what you were saying. Find Jed Walker.”

  Rachel’s eyes were blank. “Find . . . Jed Walker?”

  The Homeland agent nodded and leaned closer. Then, in a tone that suggested she should summon an answer, asked, “Who is Jed Walker?”

  “I . . . I don’t . . .” Muertos started to breathe fast, and the heart-rate monitor spiked. “I don’t . . . where . . . How am I . . . Who . . .”

  “Agent Krycek, she’s not ready,” the doctor said, moving back into the light and taking Muertos’s wrist in his hand. Her heart rate started to calm. “She needs more time.”

  Agent Krycek stared at the army doctor.

  The doctor looked down to Muertos. “Rachel, we’ll give you more time. You need rest.”

  Rachel was silent. She watched the Homeland agent, Krycek, as he stared at the doctor. The doctor was unflinching amid the weird, close to volatile, tension.

  Krycek’s face turned to Muertos and he gave her a look that could have been read as wary. Certainly serious. Curious. Suspicious.

  “I’ll be back, same time tomorrow morning,” he said to her. “We’ll talk more then. You will remember.”

  2

  Jed Walker left hospital a day after Rachel Muertos, but he didn’t know it and he wouldn’t know her name for another five minutes.

  The woman standing in front of him he did know. As well as you could know a person. And then some.

  “Hello there,” Eve said to Walker, and wrapped her arms around him. He was 230 pounds and six-three, and Eve’s hands barely touched around his back as he leaned his chin on her head. He was in his hospital gown, standing next to his bed. She wore a yellow dress that showed off her tanned arms and legs. Her chestnut hair was back in a ponytail and smelled of the ocean. Her eyes were lined with black ink and framed by long eyelashes. Walker was lost in the moment. “Husband.”

  Walker said, “You haven’t called me that in . . .”

  “Probably since we separated.” Eve let go and looked up at him. “How’d we ever let that happen?”

  “I’m pretty sure I let it happen, and you forced it to happen.”

  The smile was still on her face. “I can’t even remember why now. Can you?”

  “Something to do with you not being able to share me with all my work out there, you know, saving the world and all.” Walker stripped off his gown and pulled on his black cotton shirt, buttoned it up.

  “Oh, that’s what you used to do . . .” Eve stood on tiptoe and kissed his lips.

  “Used to do. I like that. Past tense.” Walker sat on the edge of the bed and started with his jeans. “So, why is it that you’re so enamored with me again?”

  “Enamored? No. Relieved.”

  “Same-same.” He leaned back on the bed as Eve helped him with his jeans and socks and boots.

  “You didn’t have your meds?” Eve asked, motioning to the plastic cup of pills by the bed.

  “Don’t you read the news? Opiates like that are a gateway drug to addiction. Next thing you know I’m Vicodined up to my eyeballs, and when that loses its charm I’ll be chasing some Blue Sky. Uh-uh. Too many of my old buddies in the Air Force got hooked on prescription meds.”

  “Too many of them died, too. Before they got the chance to see the inside of a hospital.”

  “So, what’s that mean? I should take my meds because I’m the lucky one?”

  “I’m saying the medical staff know what they’re doing, Jed.”

  “I’d rather feel what my leg can do. It’s fine.”

  Eve was quiet as he pulled his boots on, then said, “You nearly died on me.”

  “On you?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “If I’m going to go,” Walker said, standing up and pulling on the jacket Eve had brought him; like the rest of his new outfit, it fit like it was tailored for him. It suited the air-conditioned environment of the hospital, not needed outside if the bright shiny morning out his window and Eve’s dress were anything to go by. “That’s how I want to go. On you. Or you on me. That’s probably better for you, right? Don’t want to be squashed.”

  “Can you stop joking around?” Eve pushed him playfully in the chest. “You’re a 39-year-old man, and I’m being serious. And by serious I mean this is the last time I’m picking you up from hospital. Ever.”

  “Okay, sure, play the age card.” Walker pulled her in close. “But aren’t you older than me?”

  “I should get the doctor,” Eve said, smiling. “I think you’re having memory problems.”

  “Six months older? Seven?”

  “Respect your elders, that’s all I’ll say.” She kissed him again.

  “I’ve had worse injuries,” he said, his arms around her. “And been in far worse situations.”

  “Ten tours in Iraq and Afghanistan; yes, the whole ward has heard your stories.” Eve shifted her arms up around his neck. “But those wars were not like this. This was different.”

  “I’ve been shot before.”

  “Twice, yes; all the pretty nurses here have heard your boasting.”

  “It’d take more than a bullet or three to stop me.”

  “You nearly bled to death, you big oaf, you know that?”

  “You underestimate my liver. And blood stores. And passion.”

  “Passion to live?”

  “Not to die. Same-same.”

  “Jed . . .”

  “Baby steps.” He squeezed her tighter. “Besides, not wanting to die? That right there is a state of mind that’s kept me alive all this time.”

  “You sure picked a funny occupation with that kind of outlook and drive.”

  “Most of the people I served with didn’t want to die young.”

  “Most?”

  “There’s some bat-shit crazy people in the military, just like anywhere else.”

  “Right.”

  He let her go and they headed out of the room, Eve leading the way and reaching back to hold Walker’s hand. As they stood in the large open reception area of the fourth floor, Walker paused and looked back. The unmade bed. The EKG machine on its stand. The small table covered in newspapers and the pen he’d used for the crossword and Sudoku. The window with the impossibly blue sky beckoning beyond.

  “You look like you’re going to miss this place,” Eve said.

  Walker looked to her and smiled. “One last look, since I won’t see the inside of an emergency or recovery room until I’m about ninety, right?”

  Eve looked at him sideways. “Your father’s still out there, so I know you’re just saying what I want to hear right now.” She took a s
tep in to him and placed a finger over his mouth when he was about to speak. “No, let me finish. Maybe you have in your mind some kind of plan to not run out there and find your father. Okay. That’s great. Or maybe it’s just the painkillers, or lack of, doing the thinking for you. But Jed, look, I get it, and you know that. I was an Army brat; I know duty and honor and service better than any of the girls you ever met way back when, and I still get it. And I understand that you can never turn your back on that. But you need time off from it all, okay? Time away. It’ll be good for you. Your father and whatever he was a part of be damned, right? Right?”

  “Right.” He kissed the top of her head. “You’re right. But now is beyond being just good for me. It’s good for us.”

  “Long time coming, some might say.” Eve smiled up at him and squeezed him tight. “Some might even say it’s a lifetime too long.”

  Walker knew that Eve was referring to his military service, and beyond. About something he’d said to her, way back when, on their engagement shortly after he’d graduated from the Air Force Academy: My work won’t pull me away forever. But it had. The war on terror led to his transition from the Air Force to near-on a decade in the CIA’s pointy end of things. Then there was that last year of federal employment, of not quite being able to let things go, in the form of a short stint at the State Department, trying to unravel what his father had started. But try as he might, pretend as he did, he could never fully turn his back and shirk all responsibility. He didn’t have a choice in the matter—he’d been dragged along, by his father, and he couldn’t let it go until he had answers that were well overdue. But in that moment, right then, where he was holding onto Eve, all else seemed superfluous to a life with her. He no longer felt the need to put his own life on the line to save people he didn’t know. Not now. Not when he had this. He’d be mad otherwise. But . . .

  “That’s all behind me,” Walker said, looking around the ward from where they stood in the negative space between the nurses’ station and the lift lobby. It was a constant hum of activity, the medical staff talking and trading information and passing tablet computers and old-school files and clipboards to various hospital staff, assigning activities and chores with professional aplomb. Near the lifts was a seating area with vending machines and old magazines in a rack, next to the three sets of stainless-steel lift doors, and the fire stairs. “So, where to from here?”

  “I got us a hotel downtown with views over the Bay. Figured we can live off room service and binge watch some TV for a week or so. You wait here, invalid. I’ll bring the car to the pick-up area, call you when I’m there.”

  “I can walk fine.”

  “Do as I say,” Eve said, passing him his cell phone. “You’re going to do as I say, all week, Mr. Walker, you got that? It’s time someone looked after you for a change.”

  Walker smiled. “Sounds too good to be true.”

  Eve headed for the lift and pressed the call button, then looked over her shoulder and gave him a look. That look. He’d seen it a thousand times, and it never failed. It was a sense of I get you, and don’t you ever believe otherwise.

  Walker was silent. He’d known Eve since high school, and they’d been the best of friends before anything or anyone else important had entered his life. And that seemed to hold true now, in this truce of sorts. Reconciliation. But he felt, in his gut, that it was illusory. He watched her wave a brief goodbye. He worried that he was still unable to commit to anything like the normal life and mutual love and respect that she deserved. Not while his father was out there, with Zodiac. It nagged and clawed at him.

  The lift pinged. Out of the opening doors came a woman, and she brushed past Eve and scanned the room. Eve went into the lift and waved at him and the doors closed again.

  The woman looked around the recovery ward and then started toward the nurses’ station, but then stopped—she did a double-take, looking to her left, eyeing up Walker. Her eyes locked on his face and she headed straight for him. She was about the same height and size as Eve, about the same age, her hair jet black and cut at her shoulders. Her skin was a dark tan and her features and her body shape broadcast that she had Central or South American roots in her family.

  “Jed Walker,” she said, stopping close into his personal space. There was a panic in her eyes, urgency in her demeanor. “My name’s Rachel Muertos. You need to listen to me, and follow what I say. I’m here to get you out of here. Your life’s in danger and time’s ticking, so listen hard.”

  “Excuse me?” Walker said. He looked from the woman who introduced herself as Rachel Muertos and glanced around the ward. The scene, which he’d seen plenty of times, was purely normal. The lift pinged again. An orderly wheeled in a guy Walker knew from rehab.

  “We don’t have much time,” Muertos said, glancing over her shoulder. “There are people coming here to kill you.”

  3

  It wasn’t the first time someone had told Walker that he was going to be killed, and he suspected—for all he’d just said to Eve—that it would not be the last. Military service never really let you go. Neither did working for the CIA. And he had a third thing, a trifecta of sorts, something about which no matter how hard he may have wanted to leave this life behind, Eve was right: as long as his father was out there, a man who’d been an expert on global terror and the architect of the Zodiac terror cells, Walker was bound to live by the gun. But right then, right there, he didn’t see it; there was something about the setting of the San Francisco hospital that made him more skeptical than usual. And maybe the trace of the previous few days of pain medication was dulling his senses. Something about this Muertos woman, what she said, and the way she said it, seemed like a prank from a friend still in the service.

  “People are coming here to kill me?” Walker said.

  Rachel Muertos nodded. She looked spooked.

  “Look, if you’re referring to the hospital catering department,” Walker said, “you needn’t worry. They’ve done their best to kill me all week, and nearly succeeded with what they call meatloaf, but I’m still here. I might just be invincible.”

  Muertos looked at Walker like he was speaking another language.

  “I’ve seen your photo,” she said. “You are Jed Walker. Please, believe what I say—you’re in danger here.”

  Statement. Definitive. Official. Legitimate? Plenty of people had seen Walker’s face in the news recently, following the event that had hospitalized him earlier in the week. He’d received flowers and cards from people he didn’t know nor ever would, thanking him for putting a bad guy down. There was more to it than that, of course, and Walker knew better—those people were thanking him for keeping the Internet chugging along so that they could respond to friend requests and look up pictures of cats. Among all those notes had been some threats from anarchist groups, which Eve had tried to keep from him as she helped him open the mail. But threats on paper were not the same thing as physical reality. The former were from gutless wannabes; the latter often from unstable or deranged loners. It wasn’t a stretch to make Muertos as some kind of sycophant, there to get a piece of fame.

  “Yes, you’ve got the right guy,” he said. “Where are you from, Muertos?”

  “I’m with the State Department.” She showed her ID. “This is all very complicated, but right now I need you to—”

  Walker inspected the ID, saw it was legit. “Look, Muertos, I don’t work for the government anymore. And if someone’s coming for me in a hospital in San Francisco, well, bring them on, let’s see what they’ve got.”

  Muertos paused a beat, then said, “I’m here to get you some place safe. I’ll explain everything as we’re on the move. This place is compromised.”

  Walker gestured around. “This is hardly Benghazi.”

  “I’m not joking around.”

  “Okay. So, who’s coming to kill me?”

  “Men.”

  “Men?”

  Muertos nodded. “At least three. Maybe more.”

&nb
sp; “And who are these men?”

  “I—I don’t really know. One of them claims to be from Homeland Security.”

  “Are you here alone?”

  “I have two cars in the eastern plaza and the drivers waiting for us. Can we go now?”

  “Why would someone want to kill me?”

  “Walker, please—”

  “I really need more,” Walker said, but he could see that Muertos was genuinely scared. “Where’s this threat come from?”

  “I was hoping you could shed some light on that,” Muertos said, checking over her shoulder again, and doing little hops, almost imperceptible, from foot to foot. “Please, we really need to get out of here.”

  Walker was silent.

  “Follow me out, and we drive around and we talk. Five minutes. If you think it’s no good, then, fine, walk away. But at least I told you, warned you.” Muertos looked to the lift lobby for a moment and then focused on him again. “But you won’t think that. Not you. I’ve read your file. You need to hear this. I’ve traveled from Syria just to speak to you.”

  “Rachel, look. I’ve been out of government work for a couple of years. You’ve got more up-to-date people than me who can help you out right now. Besides, I’ve not been to Syria since the start of all that mess. Find an expert who knows the present lay of the land.”

  “This work is stateside,” Rachel said.

  “I need more, here and now,” Walker said, picking up his small backpack. “Tell me more, before I walk over there and press that button and get in the lift. Give me a decent reason to hear you out.”

  “Okay,” she said. She bit her lip as though fighting to find the right words in the moment. “So, I need your help, and I think you need mine.”

  Walker shook his head. “Like I said, I’m out.”

  “You did a year for State after you left the Agency, kicking around the Mid East for us.”

  Which meant that Rachel Muertos had high-level clearance, because the area of his posting for the State Department was classified above Top Secret.

  “Look, Muertos, I’m not the guy you need to help out with something. If you can see, I’m just now getting out of hospital.”