Whirlwind (27 page)

She glared at him. “I have been there. It is an ugly little freeway town.” Her eyes weren’t quite as bright as they had been. She brushed her unshackled hand across drooping eyelids. Charlie figured sleep was settling. And about time too.

“That’s the one in Silicon Valley. The other one, San Carlos do Cabo, is down the coast on a cape that juts way out into the ocean. Sometimes, mostly in the summer, it’s so foggy you can’t see your hand in front of your face. But when the sun comes out, it’s God’s glory returned to earth, all green, the prettiest green you’ve ever seen. Every house has gables and chimneys and big front porches, and the farms are so beautiful that you just want to walk through the fields until the world ends. Mary and I … I mean… I’ve fancied moving there for the longest time. Raise cats and cows, but mostly cats. Buy a nice Catalina sailboat, park it at the marina, and on quiet days I’ll go out and do some serious fishing which basically means doing nothing at all. The rest of the time I’ll just lounge on the porch or lie in the hammock, drink lemonade, and read all the things I’ve meant to read twice but never quite got around to. And I’ll live the rest of my life out in peace. After all these years, I think I’m entitled to a little peace.”

“Peace.” She was slipping away now, her lips barely moving.

“That hammock is particularly on my mind. I mean to string it between two old walnut trees. I can see myself lying there in the afternoon shade with a couple of cats on my belly. I’ll be napping, of course, because there’s nothing more conducive to napping than having a dozy cat or two around. Cats have the skill of the thing and can teach you all you need to know about snoozing in a genuinely professional manner.”

Barely perceptible, her lips moved again. Charlie thought she might be trying to say “cats,” and that would be the last word she would say until morning. He’d talked her to sleep, as intended or rather talked her into yielding to the power of the two powerful soporifics he’d slipped into her milkshake about twenty minutes earlier.

Good night, sleep tight, I really do care about you, you know.

Yeah, well, that was an unfortunately honest self-confession. He genuinely and sincerely did feel something that a man of his years should not feel. What? He was unsure, a bit confused about his emotions, in fact, downright befuddled.

Not that it was a problem. He could clear things up easily enough. Same as every other occasion when he wasn’t certain about his own sentiments, he’d talk it through with his wife.

He’d made a promise to her, more than a promise, a sacred vow. He’d sworn on his honor and on his love that he would never, under any circumstances, involve their children in any of his messes.

Today he’d broken that oath. Now, pecking on his computer’s keyboard, Charlie McKenzie confessed his sin. Mary was the one person to whom he never lied, not once in his entire life.

The Mossad, he typed, had forwarded a covert message to Scott asking him to do three things: first, arrange for one of his Navajo friends to chauffeur Charlie from Gallup to the reservation where he suspected Irina would go to ground. Second, procure a few unregistered fire arms. Third, arrange for a mutual friend another doctor who, like Scott, was a bush pilot to meet Charlie next morning at the Indian Health Service’s airstrip near the village of Three Turkeys.

It was innocent stuff, Charlie wrote, and nothing that could put Scott in danger. Nonetheless, he’d broken his word, and he begged Mary’s forgiveness for that.

If he’d printed his apology out, it would have filled three single-spaced pages and another page for a renewed oath that he would never again, under any circumstances, embroil either children or grandchildren in the deadly affairs that were the daily life of Charles McKenzie, assassin and spy.

At last, having settled with his conscience, and being reasonably certain that his wife would forgive him just this one time, he went on to tell her everything that Irina had told him: the gunplay, the sickening carnage, the hijacking of a Winnebago that, later, she’d hidden behind an elementary school, and how she’d replaced it with an enormous, fire-engine-red Cadillac Escalade.

He grinned as he wrote about that. Irina’s audacity reminded him of his own.

Whirlwind? That was safe and sound, he wrote. After stealing it from Irina’s Escalade, he’d paid his Navajo driver to take it, hide it, and never say a word. If Charlie didn’t know where Whirlwind was hidden, then nobody could make him tell.

He looked up from the computer screen, glancing at Irina. She was deep asleep, a Botticelli angel in repose. It was hard to take his eyes off her. After a while, he forced himself to return to his typing.

Once Whirlwind was safe, I sashayed into the restaurant, and there she was. Cool as a cucumber, she didn’t even blink an eye. It was almost like she was expecting me.

Whereupon I arrested her. Oh, but it was a joy to behold! You’ve never seen anyone so mad. Wildcats aren’t the half of it. Despite her eloquent criticisms of my character, morals, parentage and what not, I’m pretty sure she’ll play ball with me tomorrow when I try to get her out of the soup. But just to make certain, I handcuffed her to her bed. Now she’s out like a light (two Dalmane capsules administered in a sneaky fashion will have that effect), and after I finish typing this up, I’ll be sleeping right next to her, this being one of life’s little rewards for an old fossil in the sunset of his years, and don’t give me any lip, okay?

But I have to admit, sweetheart, she’s giving me conniptions. Trouble is she reminds me a lot of you. Not on the outside, although she is a looker. But what I mean-what is getting to me-is what she’s like on the inside, it’s her heart and her brain that are the admirable things. She’s solid at the core, Mary, as solid as you.

So what is it with me and this girl, or young woman, or whatever I’m supposed to call her? You tell me. I’m buffaloed. Maybe it’s that the world has a shortage of genuinely good souls, and I’m not prepared to let anyone harm an endangered species. Maybe it’s that when I look at her, I see you. Maybe I’m just a damned old fool. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s something to do with the way I lost you, how there was nothing I could do, how I just had to stand there helpless as a child, and I will be thrice damned to hell if I’m going to stand by impotently again, not when I can do something about it.

I don’t know.

Nuts. I need a drink. Or a shrink. Or both.

He settled for the drink, a short gin and tonic from the motel’s minibar. Then he typed the last few paragraphs of his daily letter to his wife: What was Sam up to? What role did Sangin Wing and his son play? What was the puzzle inside the puzzle, and the secret inside the secret? Pretty soon, he wrote, he’d know. The Mossad was turning on the vacuum cleaner; tomorrow they’d send him every speck of data they could find about the Wing family, and especially about what DefCon Enterprises’ chief scientist was up to February seventh through the ninth. Wing had been attending a scientific conference in Tokyo then, chairing a panel when his son was arrested. Charlie wanted a transcript of the panel discussion, bios of the other members, news reports from the scientific journals, photos, anything and everything. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, he typed, but by God he’d know it when he saw it.

Leaning back, he rolled his shoulders, cracked his knuckles, then typed what he always typed at the end of his letters to Mary: love, loneliness, and regret.

He read his letter two times over, changing a word or two, and smiling to himself. Then, as he did with every letter he wrote his wife, he deleted it.

She’d get it anyway, of that he was certain, and the celestial e-mail system was one that not even the NSA could tap.

He stood and stretched. His fingers brushed the speckled ceiling of Irina’s sad little motel room as he inventoried its squalor: a cheap writing desk; worn blue carpet; tacky Indian scenes on the wall; a thin mattress; yellowed sheets.

Nothing here worth wanting. Nothing worth having. Nothing worth keeping.

Except for a woman as innocent as her dreams.

Only a day ago, he’d thought no more of her than he would of a plastic pawn, a game piece to be moved and sacrificed as he forced Sam to checkmate. Now things had changed, changed a lot. He couldn’t say why. All he knew was that he was responsible for her, a guardian angel to be sure. Whatever happened from here on was his fault and no one else’s. Arrogant ass that he’d always been, he’d thought he could muscle Sam into telling the truth. Instead, cocky, pompous, and too damned certain of his own self-righteous superiority, his neat little scheme had blown up in his face. Now Sam would kill her for sure if for no other reason than to punish him.

So, yeah, he’d done it again. Bold, brave Charlie, the guy with the foolproof plan and the lionhearted valor to pull it off. Most of the time he did. Every now and then he didn’t.

Problem. Big damned problem. He was afraid that this time would be one of those other times, blood-soaked times, and it hurt less when the blood was his own than when it was someone else’s. I know you, old man, he told himself, and with all due respect, this time, you self-centered simpleton, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.

He studied the face and form of an enemy of whom he was too fond. He smiled. Looking at her made him smile and he just plain couldn’t help it. Then he turned to the mirror and smiled again, this time at himself. The smiles were different. The first was tender, the second sardonic.

Thinking only cynical thoughts, Charlie headed for the shower. Soap and water would wash today’s dirt off easily. Would that he could do the same for his soul.

Charlie didn’t check his e-mail at all. His daughter Carly checked hers too late.

Message 1:

From: [email protected] Wed Jul 20

23:07:55

Date: Wed, 22 Jul 23:19:55 +0300

From: The Sledgehammer

Reply-To: [email protected]

X-Accept-Language: en, fr

MIME-Version: 1.0

To: “Carly M Family”

Subject: Forward to your father

References:<200195192323.QDD08478potomacmail.com>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=x-user-defined

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

X-UIDL: le705e5e2111117130f9fc99bsa0acqa

Miz C. Pis relay to Mr. McK in case he misses the msg I sent him direct that I’m unavailable to help him anymore. Also tell him I owe him zero, zip, zilch. But since he’s been a good customer, he gets one favor. Only one. The favor is I’m telling him I just took on a job for a dude named Schmidt. Remind Mr. McK that when I’m paid to do a job, I do the job I’m paid to do.

Sledge

This message may contain confidential and/or privileged information. If you are not the addressee or authorized to receive this for the addressee, you must not use, copy, disclose or take any action based on this message or any information herein. If you have received this message in error, please advise the sender immediately by reply e-mail and delete this message. If you elect not to cooperate in this matter, I will scrag your disk, melt your motherboard, and nuke your CPU. So don’t fuck with me, man.

Thursday, July 23.

Oouls are shaped in childhood. Bodies age, but character does not. Eager youth is always in us.

On the occasion of his twelfth birthday, Charlie had been given two books. The giver was his godfather, later his father-in-law. The gift was Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey in prose translation, a beautiful boxed set bound in grey canvas and illustrated with two-color linocuts.

In later life, the Iliad would enthrall an adult Charlie. At age twelve, the Odyssey bewitched him, stamping a lasting mark. Crafty Odysseus became first among his heroes, and, perhaps, his permanent, although never-acknowledged, ideal.

The Odyssey’s adventures were thrilling to be sure; he shivered with delight. But they came at a price: that saga of a wandering warrior gave young Charles McKenzie nightmares.

Or say rather a nightmare, one single recurring malignant dream that rendered him paralyzed, sweating, stiff with terror.

He dreamt it still.

At Circe’s instruction, Odysseus sailed to the shores of Hell. By the black banks of the River Styx, he dug a pit, filling it with milk, wine, honey, water, crisp barley grain, and fresh blood from the throats of sacrificial sheep.

It was the blood that did the work.

The dead came forth. From down below they cock-crowed, belly-crawling out of Hades to sip at the offering, gurgling with pleasure as they lapped life’s never forgotten wine.

Dead, all dead, every death since the dawn of time, men Odysseus knew, and women too, they crouched like sooty animals at the feast. Even Achilles, of all mortals greatest, was unable to resist the scarlet scent. That most courageous soldier, or rather his hungry ghost, fell to its knees, ringing its lips with gore.

Once a hero, now a drooling beast.

Some among the dead spoke. Hearing them was worse than seeing them, for the greater portion chittered insanity. But Achilles could be understood. Oh, yes. Easily. “I’d sooner be the lowest farmer’s lowest slave than king of all the dead.” Thus spoke the bravest of the bravest, whom every man idolized and sought to imitate.

Then a million, million mourning ghosts pressed ‘round Odysseus in their insatiable hunger, their inextinguishable despair.

Charlie dreamt the dream more often than he admitted, and when he awoke… “Charlie?”

“What?”

“You are shouting in your sleep.”

“It’s nothing, Mary. Just that dream. You know that dream.”

“No.”

“I’ve told you. It’s scared me ever since I was a kid.”

“No, I am not Mary. I am Irina.”

Charlie sat bolt upright. He heard Irina fumble at the lamp.

“You are crying, Charlie.”

For once in his life, Charlie McKenzie had nothing to say.

Ochmidt.” It was how he answered the phone. One word. It was enough.