An Accidental American: A Novel (32 page)

Sadly, my aunt’s rule too often proves true for laminates as well. Add too much heat, and the plastic bubbles. Add too little, and your one chance at making a perfect seal is squandered. Though unfortunately, where passports are concerned, there is little room for waste.

Knowing how tricky this first attempt would be, I’d chosen to finish my passport before Graça’s. If one of the documents had to fail, I figured it was best that it was mine. There were plenty of places on the continent where I could go without papers these days, plenty of old friends who’d be willing to get me what I needed. Graça, on the other hand, needed a good fresh identity, as she would be on her own from now on.

Saying a quick prayer, I laid my passport out flat on my worktable, covered it with a cotton pillowcase, and pressed the preheated iron over the page. I counted out a full minute, then pulled the pillowcase back. It wasn’t perfect, but as far as I could tell, it looked like an adequate job. The print was clear, the fibers and seals well matched. If the name was not my own, it would be soon. Satisfied, I set the document aside, then turned the iron up just a notch and readied Graça’s passport.

We would be gone, I told myself, and this was all that mattered. But there was the question of what to do with Valsamis. I’m not a vengeful person. I’ve seen too often and too clearly the consequences of retribution and the inadequacy of justice.

Valsamis had killed Rahim and he had killed Lucifer, and I hated him for this, as I hated what he’d done to my mother. Whether he’d known about her murder or not, he was responsible for it all the same. Just as Kanj was. Just as she was. And yet I could not bring myself to condemn him. He would have to do that himself.

I laid the iron across Graça’s passport, pressing all my weight into it, and counted out the seconds. Yes, I told myself, the best we could ever hope for was to reconcile our own choices.

The group had moved from the bar to the Commodore’s dining room by the time Sproul finally arrived. He was freshly showered, his hair still damp, his face clean-shaven, but he looked pale and tired. Slightly off his game, Valsamis thought, disappointed to see that Sproul was alone. Kanj’s note was like a weight in Valsamis’s pocket, and he desperately wanted to pass off the information and head home.

Sproul took the last empty seat, at the far end of the table from Valsamis, and one of the waiters hustled over to greet him as if he were an old friend. Sproul was a minor celebrity with the staff at the Commodore, as he was nearly everywhere in the city. He knew all the waiters by name, as well as their wives and children. Every really good agent worked this way, but there was something about Sproul that made his efforts seem entirely without guile. The two talked easily for a moment, then the waiter headed off to get Sproul’s drink.

“It’s the goddamn Arabs,” Jack Bentley said. He was sitting next to Valsamis now, close enough so that Valsamis could smell the gin on his breath. “Give them a gun and they’ll shoot themselves in the foot.”

Talk around the table had turned to the dissolution, just a week earlier, of the U.S.-brokered plan to establish a new Palestinian homeland in Jordan. Predictably, it was the divisions between Arafat and Hussein that had scuttled the plan in the end.

It was a discussion they’d had many times, in one form or another; Valsamis hadn’t been paying much attention. He hadn’t seen much sense in moving the Palestinians from Lebanon to Jordan. It seemed like a temporary solution at best. Now he was focused on Sproul, trying to catch his eye to ask if the chief was on his way.

“At least with the Israelis, we know exactly what we’re getting,” a rookie agent from Istanbul interjected.

There was a murmur of general agreement, but Valsamis saw Sproul’s gaze shift uneasily toward the young man. He was a prep school kid, fresh off the Farm, and he must not have known who Sproul was.

“What?” the rookie challenged, looking back at Sproul.

Sproul didn’t say anything, but the kid must have known what he was thinking. He stammered something about the benefits of regional stability and responsibility to our allies, as if he felt the need to explain himself.

Sproul was quiet, and Valsamis thought he was going to let it go. Then he leaned forward over the table, as he always did when he wanted to make a point. “You think he gives a fuck about your goddamn New World Order?” he asked, motioning to a passing waiter. “Do you think any of them do? All he’s thinking about is feeding his kids tomorrow.”

The waiter stopped, then scuttled away, anxious at having been singled out.

Sproul was stone sober, but his voice was just a notch too loud for the room. “The Israelis don’t give a damn about this place, and neither do we. They’re slaughtering each other up in the mountains. Did you know that? They’re killing each other like fucking animals. And when the Israelis leave, it’s going to be a bloodbath.”

The kid bristled like a little dog trying to make itself look larger than it was. But Sproul was finished. He pushed himself away from the table and walked out of the dining room, heading toward the bar.

No one spoke. The kid looked around nervously. Then Bentley started laughing, as he had earlier when he’d told the joke to the two journalists, and the others joined in.

Valsamis finished his drink, then pushed his chair back and started to get up.

“What’s the matter?” Bentley put his hand on Valsamis’s elbow. “Your boyfriend get his feelings hurt?”

There was another round of laughter. Valsamis tugged his arm free and looked down at Bentley, trying to gauge the depth of the remark. “Fuck you,” he said under his breath.

“Whoa!” Bentley threw his hands up and glanced around the table, then turned back to Valsamis. “What’s your fucking problem?” he asked. “It’s no secret you’ve been trying to get your cock up Sproul’s ass since you first got to Beirut.”

Valsamis clenched his fists and for a moment was back in his father’s old station wagon, watching the empty highway fade away behind them, the silhouette of the bar growing dimmer and dimmer in the snow, the Indian kid in Valsamis’s coat and boots. And on his face, the sting of his father’s palm, the bruise that would take a good week to fade.

Bentley sniggered. “Seems like Sproul’s the only one who doesn’t know.”

“Go to hell,” Valsamis said stupidly, then turned and made his way out of the dining room and into the bar.

The two journalists were gone, and the place was uncomfortably quiet. Sproul motioned for Valsamis to join him, then ordered two beers.

“I’m sorry,” he said when the bartender had gone, and Valsamis thought Sproul had overheard Bentley. But if he had, he didn’t let on.

“I didn’t mean to lose my temper like that,” Sproul said. “I made a bit of a fool of myself, didn’t I?”

“No.” Valsamis shook his head. Behind him, in the dining room, raucous laughter erupted from the table.

“What’s up with them?” Sproul asked, looking past Valsamis.

Valsamis turned and followed Sproul’s gaze. Bentley had gotten up and was doing an obscene pantomime, a caricature Valsamis recognized immediately as himself.

“Idiots,” Sproul murmured. He took a sip of his beer and turned to Valsamis. “I forgot,” he said suddenly. “You must be wondering about the chief. I saw Bryce in the lobby on the way in, and he mentioned you were looking for him. Is something wrong?”

Valsamis put his hand in his pocket and fingered the note. The choice, then, between country and self. Between everything he believed in and everything he believed himself to be.

“No,” Valsamis said, watching Bentley. “It’s nothing.” He drew his hand from his pocket.

Feeling awkward, he said to Sproul, “I was thinking we could drive up into the Chouf on Monday morning. You could show me around.”

“There’s the big meeting,” Sproul reminded him absently. “Wouldn’t want to miss it.”

“We’ll leave early,” Valsamis persisted. “Before dawn. I’ll have you back by noon.”

Sproul hesitated, his gaze still fixed on the dining room, on Bentley. “Yes,” he said, as if the decision were an afterthought. “Yeah, sure, Monday.”

There was a noise on the stairs, and Graça and Valsamis both turned their heads. Nearly two hours had gone by since Nicole had left them, and it was the first real movement either of them had made.

Nicole appeared in the doorway. She held a small travel bag, enough room for the most meager basics. She stood there without saying anything, then ducked from view again. Valsamis could hear her footsteps on the hallway tiles as she made her way to the front door and back. When she returned, she was holding the shotgun in her free hand.

“You ready?” she asked, turning to Graça.

Graça nodded silently.

Nicole looked briefly at Valsamis, crossed the room, and propped the gun against the kitchen counter.

The end, Valsamis thought, watching her take the FEG from Graça and move toward him. Then he heard the click of the safety reengaging.

Nicole leaned across him and reached for the letters. She folded them carefully, put them back into the shoe box, and slipped the box and the FEG into her bag.

Gone to seed, I thought, closing my eyes, letting my garden lay itself out in my mind. Rafts of yellow and purple and white where I’d dug the crocuses in the previous autumn. And in the tiny cups, against the black stamens, the season’s first bees, hungry as newborns, drunk on the nectar. In the borders, the promise of lilies and liatris, the old hedge roses I’d salvaged from the grip of weeds. By the old stone wall, the green jungle where I’d left the spearmint to go wild.

“You’ll never get rid of it,” Elodie Hernot had warned me in my first summer at the house, shaking her head as I tipped the plants from their pots and set the roots into the soil I’d tilled for an herb garden. She’d been right. After three summers, there was nothing left but the mint, a whole fragrant field of it, marching forward into the lawn and up toward the house.

I knelt in the snow next to Lucifer and put my hand on his flank. It was snowing still, and the dog’s body was cold already, dissolving into the drifts where he’d fallen, as if the grave had come to him. Another hour and there would be no more trace of his passage through the world.

For the best; I could not have taken him with me, and it would have broken his heart to stay. But still, every greedy part of me wanted him alive, wanted the love-worn nub of his soul restored, if only to allow me a goodbye.

Graça shifted in the snow behind me, and I lifted my hand away and forced myself to stand. Yes, I thought, taking one last look at the garden before starting for the woods, some of what I’d planted would survive, as the roses had through all the years of neglect, but mostly there would be wild daisies and clover, and the pale orange poppies that sowed themselves each spring. Not my garden but a garden nonetheless.