Don't Order Dog (18 page)

Leninsky Prospekt
Kaliningrad
November 12, 20:13
Planet Russia
 

Jeri-girl –

I left the bar last night in that most seductive of moments when lust and ambition wash over the rocks of fear and inhibition on the currents of nicotine and cheap vodka. I fell straight into bed and found myself trapped in a deep pore of musty, flesh-colored dreams where the women hovered elusive and kind and the men sat drunken and heated. Dark eyes were drinking me Jeri, and I wanted to drink them back. This was a place of restless hands and hot breath; sticky-stained tabletops and raw, twitching skin sweaty from the friction of impatient urges. Voices of strange tongues curled around the white cloud of my cigarette, as ethereal and haunting as the gummy, glistening sclera that flickered behind the veil of mascara-stained lids.

It’s the goddamn vodka Jeri, I swear it.

I know you keep asking yourself who this crazy handsome bastard of loose literary chops and oodles of air miles on Air Iraq must be, but this isn’t important. As for the ‘what’ I am, well Jeri-girl, we’re cut from the same fleeting fabric. Like you, I’m just a voyeur of the human condition, a lowly vending machine in the loathsome global cafeteria. Our professions may be different, but the endgame is still the same. We cater to the need, baby, and the need is all we need to know. If corporations were cigarettes, my love, I’d be the second-hand smoke.

It’s cold here Jeri, but nothing like the cold I knew before you.
Our kids will be gorgeous.

Ta!

-
         
Mysterious Joe’s Last Stand Guy

p.s. You’ll be pleased to see that I finally got my full mug in the Polaroid.

p.p.s. The lamb shashlik at Podvorie’s was better than losing my virginity to Cindy Arlington in the fourth grade. Don’t order dog.

p.p.p.s. What are people saying about me there? I hope you p
laced my letters in the southeast corner of the bar. It really is the optimal viewing place.
 

∞

Jeri read the letter twice before pulling out the Polaroid and laughing out loud. In the background, a large, red-brick gothic cathedral sat at the end of a long courtyard flanked by rows of dark, leafless trees. In the middle of the courtyard, a lone man stood with his hands on his hips, his heavy winter jacket unzipped to reveal the Joe’s Last Stand Saloon t-shirt he wore underneath. A black wool scarf was tightly wrapped around his neck and lower face, and a massive fur hat covered the top of his face to his dark eyebrows, its ear flaps hanging comically down to his collar. Peering out from between the oversized hat and scarf, a pair of silver aviator sun glasses reflected the gray wintery sky, and Jeri could see the distorted image of a small, child-like figure holding the camera. Only the man’s nose, tanned and perfectly ordinary, was exposed to the camera.

Jeri stared silently at the photo for several minutes before a long, heavy sigh parted her lips. She stood from her barstool behind the counter and strolled slowly over to the southeast corner of the bar where the rest of the letters and photos were hung. As she pinned the photo to the wall, her eyes met those of the sunglassed man in the photo, and a quiver of excitement slid like the soft touch of a finger down the back of her spine.

Tom Coleman looked up from the open folder in his hand and glanced at his watch. It was 3:32pm. He sat back in his chair and listened. The silence that filled the corridor outside his tiny office told him that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices were nearly deserted. Unlike Tom, his colleagues were already practicing their early escapes from the office in preparation for the upcoming holidays. No doubt most of them were busy planning parties, buying gifts, and making the endless arrangements that came with this most wonderful time of the year.

In other words, their lives were now something of a living hell.

Tom shook his head at the thought as he closed the case file and placed the thick manila folder carefully on top of the “pending” pile on his desk. He opened the top drawer of his desk and found one of the small bottles of antibacterial lotion he kept in his office. An unconscious grin appeared on his face as he squeezed a large portion of the wonderfully sterile-smelling liquid onto his hands and began slowly rubbing them together. For reasons he couldn’t explain, Tom found the act calming. He methodically rubbed the strong disinfectant into his skin, happily imagining a billion little germs being purged from his body. With his hands clean, he grabbed another file from the tall stack of new cases and absently thumbed through the dull, photocopied pages. A few pages later
, his concentration abruptly faded.

Something else was weighing on his mind.

He closed the file, stacked it neatly on top of the “new” pile on his desk and once again wiped his hands with lotion. He then turned his attention to his laptop. The latest reply in a string of emails between Tom and his brother-in-law, CIA Agent Alex Murstead, was still on the screen, and Tom found himself once again reading the tersely worded response.

Tom –

I’m not having this conversation with you any longer. The rules are the rules, and you need to stop entertaining any more ridiculous ideas for getting around them. It’s time to accept the fact you’re simply not cut out to work for the CIA.

There’s nothing wrong with working for the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a good job. It suits your skills. Hell, in this day and age you should consider yourself lucky just to have a job.

I’m serious Tom– stop pushing this. I’ve got far more important things to be doing right now.

- Alex
 

Tom closed the message with an agitated press of his finger. Nearly two weeks had passed since being told he’d failed the psych po
rtion of the CIA entrance exams. While the initial shock of the news had subsided, a lingering feeling of anger still burned like a hot coal in his stomach.

And now he was on his own.

Of course, the realization that he was on his own wasn’t surprising or even intimidating to Tom. Quite the contrary in fact. He’d been trained from his first day in the Marines to overcome difficult, if not impossible, hurdles. Hell, his entire career up to this point was defined by obstacles he’d taken on and conquered. Sure, not every obstacle had been conquered without sacrifice – he quickly shook the images of Afghanistan from his mind – but he’d always managed to find his way out of odds-against-him shit storms alive and kicking. And that was the point. That was how he’d find a way to become an agent in the CIA. He’d tackled bigger challenges than this and survived, because that’s what he was – a survivor.

Hoo-rah, motherfuckers
.

Tom leaned back in his chair and stared stoically at the ceiling, trying to piece together another solution in his head. Unfortunately, nothing was materializing. He sat deep in thought for several more minutes before finally curling his fists in frustration. If there was anything Tom begrudgingly admitted to himself, it was the fact that he was much better at investigation than strategy. As much as he hoped otherwise, a plan to get him back in front of the CIA was not going to come easily.

Conceding to this fact, Tom reluctantly decided to call it a day. He stood and quickly carried out his usual routine, straightening the stacks of files on his desk and lining up their corners neatly before wiping down his laptop. When he was finished, he cleaned his hands once more and grabbed his coat to leave. He was halfway out of the door to his office when he reached into his coat pocket for his keys and felt the sharp edge of a folded piece of paper. Puzzled, he pulled it out and unfolded it. Scrawled across the page was his own barely legible handwriting.
 

Guwahati,
Assam, India 9/25

Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia 10/5

Port Harcourt, Nigeria 10/16

Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela 10/25
 

As Tom stared at the list of cities and dates on the paper, the memory of the night at the bar a few weeks earlier came slowly back to him. Against his better judgment, he’d ended up having more than a few drinks that night, and the details were now embarrassingly hazy. He remembered sitting next to an older man at the bar –
what was his name? Skip?
– and talking about some letters one of the bartenders had received. He also recalled reading the story in the college paper – how the letters had unexpectedly started arriving a little more than a month earlier, their cryptic, ranting tone, the mocking anonymity of their author, and perhaps strangest of all, the obscure photos of the author himself. Tom and the old man next to him had discussed it for some time, and he now vaguely remembered staggering over to where the letters were hung and jotting down the places and dates where they’d come from on the notepaper in his hand.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t remember exactly why he’d done this.

Tom wadded up the piece of paper and started to toss it into the trash when a nagging thought suddenly stopped him. Was there something more to this than he remembered? Hadn’t the old man said something else? Something about
terrorism
? He hovered in the doorway trying to recall before finally relenting to his curiosity. Cursing at himself under his breath, he turned and paced back into his office.

Dropping the note on his desk, Tom sank back into his chair and pulled up an online search engine on his laptop. He glanced at the first city and date on the list before typing “
Guwahati terrorist attack September” into the search engine. The screen instantly flickered with the first of over 164,000 results. Scrolling through the first few pages, Tom found a few general articles on cases of terrorism in the city in the northeastern state of India, but nothing on any recent incidents. He typed in “Guwahati homicide September” and a fresh list of over 200,000 results popped onto the screen.

“Jesus,” he muttered to himself as he scrolled through the first few pages of results. He skimmed through several articles, several of which were written by human rights organizations. One article accused the local police of outright murder and cited a recent incident where a driver was pulled from his vehicle for speeding and mercilessly beaten by several officers before being tossed into a lake to drown. Another article described a freak accident involving two vehicles that collided and caught fire near a local market, killing a young Italian scientist. Tom shrugged dismissively and moved on. While the stories were tragic, he knew firsthand from his tours in the Marine Corps that police corruption and freak accidents were an everyday reality in third world countries like India.

Deciding Guwahati was a dead end, Tom glanced at the next location and date on the piece of notepaper and typed “Al Jubail terrorist attack October”. To his surprise, the search engine came up with a fraction of the results. Apart from a few cases of murder, including two men who were gunned down in public for displaying homosexual behavior, Tom found nothing of particular interest.
After a few more minutes of searching, he concluded Al Jubail must be one of the safest cities in the Middle East, at least for heterosexuals, and went to the next
city on his list. 

The search results for “Port Harcourt terrorist attack October” exceeded 1,200,000. Tom shook his head as he started scanning through first few pages of results. He was beginning to think the entire effort was a waste of time when, at the bottom of the second page, a headline caught his attention.

“Terrorist Explosion Kills Petronus Energy Executive”

Tom clicked on the link and the browser immediately jumped to the bright colors and flashy graphics of an international news agency’s website. A large image of a luxury hotel atrium littered with dust and debris appeared beneath the headline. Inset in the corner was a photo of an older, distinguished-looking man in a suit and tie smiling at the camera. Tom read the caption beneath the image.

“The scene from inside the Garden Landmark Hotel in the city of Port Harcourt this morning, where an explosive device planted inside a guest room killed Shahid Al Dossari, a Director of Research for Petronus Energy.”

Intrigued, Tom grabbed a notepad as he quickly scanned the article. The first thing he noted was the date. The attack on the hotel had occurred on the 19
th
of October – just three days after the letter at the saloon had been dated from the same city. The second thing Tom found odd was the anonymity of the terrorists themselves. Contrary to most such attacks, no one had claimed responsibility for this particular bombing. He scratched down the name of the victim and the name Petronus before searching under the fourth name on the list.

The search results for Puerta La Cruz numbered over 400,000 results. After ten minutes of scrolling through a seemingly endless list of incidents in the coastal Venezuelan city, Tom paused and leaned back in his chair.

What the hell am I doing?
he asked himself. He was poking blindly for a connection to a man he knew nothing about, and for whom he obviously had no evidence of being a criminal – let alone a
terrorist
. Why was he even suspicious? Because of what some drunken old man had told him at the bar? Admittedly, there was something about the older man that Tom had found persuasive, and yet the absurdity of it was obvious. A
terrorist
? Terrorists were maniacal, remorseless extremists that killed innocent people and disappeared into the shadows. Terrorists sent bombs in the mail, not letters. Terrorists didn’t write love letters. And even if they did, certainly no terrorist would write love letters to a bartender in fucking Flagstaff Arizona.

The more Tom considered it, the more ridiculous the idea sounded. He leaned forward to close the search engine on his laptop, but paused as he glanced at the name written on his notepad. 

Petronus

He stared at the name for a moment.
What did he know about Petronus Energy?
On a whim, Tom typed the name into the search engine and clicked on the first link in the results. Almost immediately a friendly looking corporate website appeared. Filling the screen was an image of a handsome young couple with two kids standing in a large grassy field. Across the bottom of the image, the words “Tomorrow’s energy today” were written in large type next to the company’s logo.  Tom scrolled past the image and stopped at the company’s mission statement.

Clean energy. It’s the dream of every environmentally-conscious energy company, and the driving force behind everything we do at Petronus Energy. From responsibly using fossil fuels to tirelessly searching for new sources of clean, viable energy, Petronus Energy is dedicated to the passionate pursuit of delivering tomorrow’s energy today.

Learn more about
our mission
, our
environmental policies
, and our
global operations
.

Tom clicked on the ‘global operations’ link. A new page immediately opened displaying a large world map. He looked at it with surprise. Each continent with the exception of Antartica was covered in a myriad of pulsing red dots. As his cursor moved over one of the dots, a small window appeared with the name and image of a company facility along with a brief summary of the operational details.

After scrolling over a few locations, it was clear to Tom that Petronus Energy was a major multinational corporation, operating everything from oil rigs and refineries to research laboratories and corporate campuses.

Looking closer at the Middle Eastern area of the map, Tom noticed that Saudi Arabia was saturated with red dots. He moved his cursor over several and quickly found Al Jubail. Again a small window popped up next to the location. Tom scanned the summary and immediately realized the city was a major operational hub for Petronus Energy, containing the company’s largest petrochemical processing facility and the primary Middle Eastern office.

Going back to the top of his list, Tom next turned his attention to India. A brief search of the northeastern corner of the country revealed another major Petronus Energy operation in Guwahati. “Isn’t that interesting,” Tom muttered to himself as he scrolled over the African country of Nigeria. To his surprise, Port Harcourt also turned out to be home to several of the company’s drilling operations. Excited by this emerging pattern, he quickly investigated the last city on the list. A moment later, Tom leaned back in his chair and smiled.

Petronus Energy had operations in every city on his list.

Whatever this mysterious letter-writer was doing, it seemed to be linked to the large petroleum company.
So what are you up to?
Tom wondered as he picked up his pen and slowly circled the name Petronus written on his notepad.