Applewood (Book 3): The Space of Life Between

by Myers, Brendan P.

  “Who shot you?” was the first one that came to mind.

  Still half bent over dealing with the painful aftermath of his wound, the now pale Gilbert could only muster a weak smile.

  “Richards did. Who do you think?”

  “He told me you had been kidnapped,” Dugan said with a hint of confusion.

  The man shook his head before gracing him with a look he probably deserved. It said, You’re in over your head, boy. Dugan knew by then that he was. Still, he had come a long way and hadn’t expected any of this.

  “Here’s an idea,” he said with more rancor than needed, but less than he felt. “Why don’t you just tell me what the fuck is going on?”

  Teresa sent him a disapproving glance, but Gilbert seemed to appreciate the spunk. Evidently recovered from his abdominal spell, he lifted himself semi-upright.

  “I’ll be happy to,” he said agreeably. Stepping onto the pedestal, he walked to the chair and sat gingerly down. “Tell you what. Why don’t we start by you telling me what you know, and I’ll help by filling in the blanks.”

  Dugan thought carefully, reflecting on his journey thus far. When he started to speak, it was haltingly and with some trepidation.

  “I think I know this much,” he began. “Richards is with the CIA. He’s involved in some kind of scheme to get weapons and supplies to the Contras in Nicaragua.”

  “Give that man a gold cigar,” Gilbert announced in his high tenor. “But let me ask you this: Did you know that it’s illegal as hell?”

  Dugan could only shake his head.

  “Well trust me, it is,” Gilbert went on. “You see, congress passed a law banning the U.S. government from providing any aid to the Contras. But of course, President Reagan’s minions don’t really care about the law, just so long as it’s about fighting communism. I think he’s starting to lose it, frankly. The president, I mean. Believe me, from recent experience, I’m beginning to understand that getting yourself shot can change you. But I worry that in his case, being as old as he was, it only hastened his decline. I’m not sure he even knows what goes on in his own administration.”

  Dugan went thoughtful a moment. “They’re using civilian planes and ex-military guys,” he offered, just to see where it went.

  “They are indeed, but trust me, it’s all a cover for a government operation. You see, at first, they tried to get around the law by soliciting donations from private individuals, rich people or corporate types who had interests in the old Nicaraguan regime and who might like to get some of their privilege or property restored. Funny thing about the rich, though, they’re not the most charitable of people. And military hardware costs a lot of money. So, they needed to find another way to get it.”

  “Drugs,” Dugan said.

  The man opposite him raised his eyebrows. “You have been paying attention.” He paused to catch Dugan’s eye. “You realize, of course, that by virtue of knowing only that, Richards will never let you live.”

  Dugan nodded gravely. “I understand.”

  Gilbert stared at him quizzically. “And yet, here you are. I tell you what, kid, you have some brass balls. Me? I intend to get myself a thousand miles away from here.”

  When the man went silent, Dugan asked, “Who are you?”

  “Me? Oh, I’m nobody, really. A desk jockey. A mid-level analyst at the NSA, that’s the National Security Administration. But I worked the Central American desk, so I had the background and the contacts they needed. This Nicaraguan deal is a joint NSA/CIA operation, so I was chosen to be the liaison between the two, and work out of the embassy in San Salvador. That’s how I got to know Richards. He’s quite charming, don’t you think?”

  Dugan nodded in agreement. “He is. Very single minded. Not afraid to take initiative.”

  Gilbert giggled. “I like that,” he said. “Takes initiative. Well, you can say that again. That’s exactly what he does.”

  Another question occurred to Dugan. “Why does Richards want you dead?” That much was obvious now, even had Richards not already shot the man.

  Gilbert smiled. “I committed just about the gravest sin there is, kid. I broke the cardinal rule.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I wrote a memo.”

  Dugan cocked his head and waited for the rest.

  “I spent hours on it,” Gilbert began. “Just started writing and writing, pouring my guts out. I talked about the great democratic traditions of our country, threw in George Washington’s warning about entangling alliances, and Eisenhower’s fear of the military-industrial complex. I tell you, I pulled out all the stops. In great detail, I stated how wrong we were to overthrow elected governments in Guatemala and Chile, Brazil and Iran, about how we always seemed to be on the wrong side of things, or maybe, just on the side of Coca Cola and IBM and Chiquita Banana. Of course, in my defense, I was drunk at the time. But I suppose that’s no excuse. Anyway, toward the end, I intimated what we were doing to the poor people of El Salvador and Nicaragua was criminal, and I guess if you read between the lines, you might think I was so disgusted with the things we were doing, I might just go public with it.”

  He stopped when another sharp twinge seemed to pass through him. Dugan waited patiently for him to continue.

  “Anyway, kid, I think that’s why he shot me. I somehow worked up the courage to send the memo to my boss, and on a drunken whim, I sent it to the director of the NSA. That could well have been the dumbest move of all. My boss liked me. He might have just swept it under the rug. But the director is in on things, has this lieutenant colonel working for him who is pulling all the strings. I tell you, that man is about as zealous as they come, and that makes him dangerous as hell.

  “So I go into my office the next morning and check my computer, just to see if it had been read or if there were any replies, and the memo was gone. Just vanished into the ether like it had never existed. I knew right away for that to have happened, some very long strings had to have been pulled. I mean, the system is designed to save everything. That’s another law that I guess they don’t need to follow. Then, as if on cue, with my jaw still hanging down that someone had gotten inside the system, a smiling Richards knocks on my door and tells me we’re going on a road trip.

  “We accompany a Salvadoran National Guard unit to a village in the north along with American military ‘advisors’ – and let me tell you kid, that word covers a lot of ground. I’m standing there watching people get rounded up and massacred, men, women, children, no matter. It was just another day fighting communism in El Salvador, when Richards says he has something to show me and takes me off into the woods. We end up at the edge of a high bluff. There, he doesn’t say a word, just pulls out his gun. I know what’s coming and try to dodge it. The first slug grazes my head, but the next gets me in the belly. I go tumbling down the cliff, and next thing I know, I’m in the water. Then, after a long night on the riverbank, I’m receiving the best of medical care from these nice people.”

  When Gilbert stopped for a breath, Dugan could only shake his head and let out a thin smile. He recalled again the cold bloodedness with which Richards had killed the pilot, and his willingness to leave his trapped colleague in the plane. The guy was good at his job. Dugan had to give him that. Whatever that job might be, that is. How much he was freelancing versus how much was official U.S. policy, he had no idea, and at this point, it probably didn’t matter.

  “Anyway,” Gilbert went on, “this shit has to stop. People like Richards and that lieutenant colonel have to be stopped. Drowning the streets of our own country in drugs just so we can drown another country in guns and ammo has to be stopped. I don’t know how high it goes. Does the president know about it? I have no idea if he’s even still on the ball. Hell, this is an impeachable offense we’re talking about here. But the vice president? He used to be the director of the CIA. He still has lots of friends and contacts over there. I’ll bet you my last dollar that he knows, and maybe even approves. And you know what? I haven’t
yet told you the half of it.”

  Dugan waited. Soon thereafter, his patience was rewarded.

  “What they’re doing fucking up Central America and killing people down here isn’t enough, you see, so this lieutenant colonel has another bright idea. All this drug money the Contras are paying the U.S. for the arms and such is really piling up. I mean, it wasn’t supposed to be a profit making enterprise, but what are you going to do? Meanwhile, Iran and Iraq are at each other’s throats, fighting a war going on for years now and killing each other by the millions. Now, we don’t like either one of them very much and would prefer they just keep on fighting until the very last man. What if we got Iran in on it, using Israel as the go-between, to buy arms from us and use that money in Nicaragua too? Kill two birds with one stone, almost quite literally.

  “Oh, and here’s the kicker. It goes like this: ‘By the way, Iran, we know you have control over the hostages being taken in Lebanon by those crazy religious groups, so we’ll sell you arms to fight Iraq, and you give us back our hostages.’ I know it sounds crazy as all get out, but it appears to be working. A few days ago, a hostage got released for ‘humanitarian’ reasons, supposedly, but don’t you believe it. It was just a test to see how much power the Iranians have over those people. And now that the hostage has been released, I’ll bet Phase II of this craziness is already underway.”

  Dugan was dumbfounded. It was hard to believe that after the recent trauma of the Iranian hostage crisis, the storming of our embassy and the taking of our diplomats, the thousands in the streets chanting ‘Death to America,’ that America itself would now be providing weapons to those very same people. But after these past two weeks, he could believe just about anything.

  “So what’s the plan?” asked Dugan.

  Gilbert smiled and lifted a fistful of papers from his desk.

  “I’ve spent the past weeks of my convalescence documenting it all: names, dates, contacts, everything. The location of the secret airstrips. The flow of the money. The names of the banks and the shell companies fronting the operation. I’ve reconstructed as best I could all the conversations I participated in on the subject, and who they were with. I’ve included the names of all the government officials I know to be involved, as well as those who have to know. As an added bonus, I included a first person account of the massacre I witnessed. I tell you, John Dean is going to have nothing on me!”

  Dugan smiled, but still. If he remembered right, Dean testified when Nixon’s house of cards was already collapsing around him. Whether this nondescript portly fellow with the too large glasses would be believed, he didn’t know. He snuck a glance at Teresa, who answered his unasked question.

  “We leave tomorrow evening,” she said. “We have been waiting for Mr. Gilbert to recover from his wound. Though the doctor would prefer that we wait a day or two, your arrival informs us we must move quickly. We plan to take Mr. Gilbert north, through the jungle and into Honduras. It is perhaps no surprise that since Mr. Gilbert has been with us, our government and yours have stepped up patrols of the border. They do not want Mr. Gilbert to make it out. It will all be very dangerous. We are hoping that you will come with us.”

  Dugan nodded immediately, before turning to Gilbert.

  “What happens after that?” he asked.

  “We’ve been able to get a message out. I have friends at the Honduran embassy who have arranged a safe house in Tegucigalpa, as well as a meeting with a reporter from the New York Times. They’re expecting me first thing the day after tomorrow.”

  Dugan nodded, before feeling suddenly antsy and a little claustrophobic. He reached down to pick up his bag before looking at Teresa.

  “Think I need some air,” he said.

  She smiled. “Of course. Let us go.”

  Dugan nodded to Gilbert before he and Teresa made their way down the four steps, through the darkness of the winding, twisting corridors, up the zigzagging stairsteps, and finding themselves again outside.

  4

  Teresa had her head resting on Dugan’s shoulder as the two sat halfway up the hill beneath the waning moonlight. He had his arm around her and held her close in a cool embrace. Looking up to the night sky, he saw that it wouldn’t be long before the first stirrings of daylight would be making their unwanted presence known.

  “I want to thank you very much for . . . everything,” he said awkwardly, though hoping to encompass all he had experienced.

  Teresa laughed. “It is I who should be thanking you, hijo. It has been very wonderful getting to know you.”

  He squeezed her while reflecting on all he had just learned. There were still so many questions, he wasn’t sure he was smart enough to ask them all.

  “Why did you save Gilbert?” he asked first, thinking it the most obvious, and wondering if he would have done the same. He hadn’t lifted a finger to help that poor man trapped in the plane. He had rationalized it by telling himself it was Richards call. However, with a residual drop of human shame, he remembered he hadn’t at all felt bad about it.

  Teresa went thoughtful before she answered.

  “I don’t know, hijo. You saw him. Imagine an upside down turtle who cannot make himself upright. That is what he looked like lying on the banks of the river. He was so helpless. Still, it was not my decision to make, but Bernardo’s. He was with us that evening. He is a very good man, Bernardo, a kind man, and wise. It is a shame our country does not allow leaders like him.”

  Dugan recalled his brief meeting with the guerrilla leader, and the keen intelligence he had seen in his eyes. He remembered the Salvadoran soldiers in the tent being re-indoctrinated into humanity, if that were even possible. Bernardo apparently thought so. He hadn’t given up on them, anyway.

  “We are a people of longing,” Teresa said quietly.

  When Dugan turned and lifted his eyebrows, she went on.

  “You and me. All of our kind. We long for the things we can no longer have. We long to sit in the sunshine. We long to again feel warmth, if only for a minute. We long not to sustain ourselves in the manner that we must. In these and other ways, what we truly long for is to be human again. That is our most secret desire. It is why many of our kind lash out against the human. Surely you have met them, creatures like us, but who desire only to kill and destroy humanity. I admit that I too sometimes feel that way. It must be somehow embedded deeply into our being. But there is a duality to us. We long for the thing that we most love, and what we most love is having once been human. Therefore, we take it out on them, in a neverending cycle of violence. It is much the same cycle humanity goes through, with their wars and their killing. It is the cycle playing out right now in my country. And so, I think that humans and vampires, we are not so very different. Yes, there is hatred on either side, but there is also a lack of understanding. What I have tried to do, where I can, is to bridge that understanding, both among the vampire, and between vampire and human. I believe it is the only way forward for both of our kind.”

  Teresa fell silent. There was really nothing more to say. Dugan pulled her close while he considered it, and couldn’t say a word against it. He had felt many of those same emotions she described; longing, certainly, but hatred of the human more powerfully. He had always chalked that up to the centuries of humans killing their kind, and considered that hatred to be a sensible evolutionary response. But he understood all too well that becoming a vampire also made you more of who you once were. It had him.

  He remembered his last night as a human, having a conversation with his classmate, Michael Harris, who had only recently been turned, who told him the same thing. For example, in Dugan’s case, he had always felt a deep empathy for others. Having no other explanation for it, he had come to believe the empathy he felt was partly responsible for giving him the ability, even as a human, to detect faint sense memories left behind on inanimate objects. After his change, he discovered that empathy, what had once been a simple human emotion, had become a crushing burden.

  But if be
coming a vampire made him, and Michael, and Teresa more of who they were, it also made people like Stephen Harris, and the civil war colonel who had reawakened from his long slumber to plague his hometown, more of who they were. That thought terrified him, because he knew that their enmity was more than a match for his empathy. In fact, it would win out every time. He had seen it happen.

  That was one reason he had relocated to the ranch, in an effort to take his leave of the world, at least as much of it as he could. But so long as his uncle was alive, he would continue to be part of it, he knew. If it weren’t for his uncle, who was now his sole human tie, he would have long ago done his best to simply disappear. There was too much violence, too much anger, too much hatred in the world for him. He had always been keenly sensitive to such things, having suffered his own, by comparison, petty versions of it while growing up. The thought of a lifetime more of it, and for him, an eternity more, was almost too much to bear.

  Still, he let go a secret smile to know there was a less generous emotion driving his desire to vanish from the world of both human and vampire, and that was resentment. He resented having been taken so young, resented not having had the opportunity to experience so many of the things that a young man should. He pulled Teresa closer in gratitude for teaching him that there was at least one miraculous experience that even as a vampire, was still open to him. For that, he would be eternally grateful.

  Both felt it at the same time. Beneath his hand, Dugan sensed Teresa let go a slight hitch. For him, it was feeling suddenly the tremendous weight of his own head. It was the unstoppable onrush of the coming day. Lifting her head from his shoulder, Teresa turned to him and smiled.

  “It is getting near time, hijo. Let me show you where we sleep.”

  5

  Teresa again led him through the dark maze of corridors and stairways, though this time, they did not end up in the great room. This was a smaller chamber, filled with Mayan statuary and overflowing with treasures fashioned from gold, jade, and copper, each one a priceless relic of the ancient world; that part of the room not taken up by tombs, that is. Elaborate sarcophagi of long dead royals ringed the mosaic tiled floor. Chiseled into the walls were a variety of slabbish nooks that via sense memory, Dugan intuited had once been filled with perhaps a few dozen vampires. That same sense memory alerted him they were all gone.