Mad Dogs (21 page)

36

“Sorry about this,” I said to Cari.

“Bet you say that to all the girls you kidnap.”

She lay on the narrow bed's white sheet, her blonde hair on the white pillow. Her blouse was fucia, her slacks black, her feet bare. Her hands rested cuffed on her belly. Miles of white clothesline cocooned her to the bed. She looked like a mummy. Her eyes clawed the ceiling.

“Is Cari Rudd your real name?”

“Why?”

“I'll call you anything. But I want to know who you are.”

“All I'm required to do is give you my name, rank, and serial number.”

“If all you do is what's required, then that's all you are.”

“Worked so far.”

“Yeah,” I told the woman cocooned to the bed. “So I see.”

Cari said: “How's crazy working out for you?”

I shrugged.
Don't tell her about the meds wearing off
.

“Are you going to storm around the bed and scream at me like Russell?”

Maybe she'd already figured we were running near the red line. “Russell wouldn't hurt you—well, unless.”

“Put
unless
in an equation, and it adds up to
who knows.
”

“We're trying.”

“Trying what?”

So I told her about Dr. Friedman. About blood in his ear. About Nurse Death and Russell freezing and Zane's save-his-own-life kick accidentally helping Nurse Death take hers. About matrices. Tricking the cell phone operator. Kyle Russo.

She said: “At least you and Russell have your fantasies straight.”

“Was that you outside the apartment in New York?”

Cari said: “Sure.”

“I wish I knew when you were lying.”

“I wish I knew when you were crazy.”

“What's it like working for the Agency now?” I asked.

“What makes you certain I'm CIA?”

“I'm not naïve. Silencers and credentials from multiple agencies aren't FBI issue. Plus, if the Agency had let the Bureau or other badges go full-knowledge, hands-on after us, there'd have been a cover story in the news. No, you and your crew are from my old Firm, and you're running covert.”

“Hell of a place, the Firm.” She offered me a comrade's conspiratorial smile. “Man, we could use you back. Since 9/11, we've hired more executives, more slick suit and tie directors, more P.R. spin doctors instead of more street dogs. But now, everybody's finally realizing that guys like you are too valuable to waste.”

“Nice try.”

She shrugged in her bondage cocoon.

“Is this when you try to work answers out of me?” she said.

“The only question I've got, you might not know the answer to, and if you do, you'll lie, so what's the point?”

Took three minutes before she bit. “OK, I give up. What's your all important lone question?”

“Are you knowingly working for a renegade Op inside the Agency?” I said. “That's the only scenario that makes you our flat-out enemy. If outside forces killed Dr. F, then the whole Agency—and you—are cool. Just ignorant bullets fired off target. But if a renegade Op killed Dr. F, then either you're one of them or you're their puppet. But an innocent puppet.”

“You're the ones who've got me all wrapped up in strings.”

“I won't untie ours. And don't have the time or… stomach to find any other strings on you.”

“So do you think I'm a renegade?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“You're too good.”

“Not so good. You neutralized me.”

“I didn't say you were perfect.” I shrugged. “I was talking… instincts, faith.”

She looked away.

Casually
, I said: “What do you think of the car in the garage?”

“That white Caddy?”

Yes! It's real!

Cari said: “You're figuring it's so extreme that people will notice it and not who's in it. But that won't work.”

“You work with what you've got,” I said.

Cari frowned: “What happened to your eyebrows?”

“Don't worry! I'm OK. Just a thing with fire.”

“But I shouldn't worry.”

“We don't want to hurt you. I won't let you get hurt. Before, when Zane…”

“He didn't touch me like I was a woman. Give him credit for that.”

“Absolutely!” I said. “He absolutely didn't. Wouldn't. He's a good man.”

“What about you?”

“I have my moments.”

“Yeah,” she told me. “So I see.”

That has to mean something! She wouldn't just say something like that!

“Victor?
Victor!
”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah?”

“Why are you doing this? I know you're… troubled, but you're right, you're not naïve, you got street smarts and pure fucking brain power. Vision. And all this…”

“Seemed like the best choice at the time.”

“But what about right now?”

Yeah
, I thought, what about right now. Four days on the road and already I'm drifting. And the others… We might not hold together a full week before we crash.

Cari said: “What are you going to do with me?”

“Umm…”

“We can work this out,” she said.

“OK.”

“First, you've got to untie me.”

“Ahh… No. That won't work.”

“What will work?”

“I wish you'd believe me if I told you.”

“Vic… They briefed us on all of you. I know about Malaysia and that woman—”

“Derya,” I said.

Cari shook her head: “A door opens and BAM.”

“That's how it gets you if it's good.”

Cari shrugged. “Guess so.”

She stared at me: “What's got you now?”

“Haven't you heard?” I said, knowing that this was not the time or the place to tell her everything: “I'm crazy.”

“I know about your two suicides. I understand your pain.”

“I hope not,” I whispered.

“If we talk about—”

“Go to sleep,” I said, and she heard the jailer's edge in my voice. “I'm on first watch. I'll be right here. Keeping you safe.”

“Or something.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

And I turned out the lights as she lay there. I sat in a chair. Folded my angel wings and dropped into the darkness.

37

Rain machine-gunned Bladerunners Internet Café in Kuala Lumpur that December, 1999, afternoon. Ex-pats inside that Malaysian oasis ignored the storm. Peruvian balladeer Tania Libertad moaned Spanish from a boom box on the bar beside smoldering incense. Gunfire splattered ghouls in a café computer driven by a sunglasses-wearing
Honky
—a Hong Kong Chinese cyber cowboy. Outside it was 79 degrees, would be hotter when the rain morphed to smoggy sunlight.

I sat at a table nursing a beer, my face to the door and my spine to two Australian girls whining about how they should have gone to Thailand to smoke opium instead of wasting Christmas vacation by coming to
fockin'
borin'
Malaysia. I hungered to read their Melbourne newspaper with its headline about narcissistic teenagers who'd massacred their Colorado high school classmates as if life were a computer game. But the public news wasn't my
Scramble Red
Op.

My watch read 4:17.

Any minute now, I thought.

The bell above the door dinged.

Derya hurried in from the rain, lowering her umbrella, laughing with her two female colleagues. Derya's cinnamon hair fanned out as she shook off the rain and I knew in my bones that I was lost.

Derya and her women colleagues claimed a table. They seemed not to notice me, but women are wizards of discretion.

The bell above the door dinged.

In swooped Peter Jones, so soaked no one could tell he'd only run across the street. A dramatic gesture wiped the wet from his eyes.

Who he
obviously
spotted first were Derya and her two colleagues.

“
Girlfriends!”
exclaimed Peter. “You are
so
predictable! On your way to work, stop for something
long
and
cool
or
hot
and
wet
and—
Oh My God!
It's Victor!”

Women at the table where Peter had lighted swiveled their gaze to me.

“Victor! What are you doing here? No, wait: what are you doing over
there
when I'm over
here
and today, today I'm celebrating!”

“Sit here.” Peter directed me to a chair he wedged between him and Derya.

The English blonde Peter later introduced as Julia said: “Why so happy, Peter?”

“Because,” he said, leaning back with a grin, “I am
so
homeward bound!”

Shabana was the oldest woman and spoke Bombay British. “But what about the law back in New York? You are, of course, innocent, would never traffic in Ecstasy.”

“Not as
pills
!” interrupted Peter with mock horror.

“But,” said Shabana, “how is that after two years, now you can go home?”

“Let's just say,” said Peter, gesturing for a beer, “I have it on good authority that the judge has finally seen the light.”

“Still,” I said, “if you don't watch your step, make every move just so, the light at the end of a tunnel winks out and leaves you worse off than before.”

“Absolutely!” Peter sat straight. “Absolutely right. Do we all know each other?”

In a flurry of spoken names and gestures, he made sure we did, ending with: “And Victor, this is Derya Samadi.”

Cinnamon hair framed her lean face, her clean jaw. Her skin was sun tanned Tupelo honey, her eyes were swimming pool blue. She said: “You're American.”

“Some things you can't hide.”

Derya shrugged. “People try.”

Peter sped to my defense. “Not Victor. Totally a stand-up guy. I mean, we only shared a terrible bus ride in the boonies together, but—”

“Relax, Peter,” I said.

“—but,” he ranted, having probably steeled his guts with
yaa baa
smuggled from Bangkok, “we clicked, even though Victor bums around Asia beating people up.”

“How American.” Shabana's voice.

“No,” I said. “Martial arts is about integrity, transcending violence. I first came out here on a literature fellowship. Spent the last five years in Taiwan. I teach English, embarrass myself in lots of classic schools. Last few years, it's been mostly
T'ai Chi
.”

Drug-speeding Peter blurted: “And I forgot he's a poet!”

Derya said: “Really?”

My shrug mimicked the one she'd given me. “Call me hopeful.”

British Julia grinned. “Maybe I should call you for trouble.”

My flat but polite expression told her I wasn't interested. She drank her beer.

That let me turn back to Derya. “You're from…?”

“Turkey. We cobbled together a school for women with grants from NGO's—non-governmental organizations, foundations, no politics, no religion—”

“Oh
no!
” joked Shabana. “If all you're doing is empowering women, why of course you dabble in nobody's religion or politics!”

Derya and Shabana grinned and clinked their tea cups.

Peter clapped. “I've got
the
perfect idea! You all 've been after me to help move furniture around your school—it is a sweet little school, Victor, such a good thing they're doing and not so easy in an officially Muslim country—and with my bad back—”

All three women groaned.

“Don't be bitches!” said Peter with a guilty smile. “But Victor, why, he's a bull.”

Julia drew her smile like a dagger. “Now there's an idea. Use trained muscle for something besides bullying.”

I deflected her thrust. “Exactly. It isn't what you know, it's what's you do with it.”

Peter hijacked the conversation, sparred with Julia, joked until everyone laughed.

Derya laughed from her heels.

Monkeys screaming at dawn outside my balcony found me awake. The condo the Agency put me in was on an outer ring of K.L. Litter from my supposed life was scattered through the place to support my cover. My laptop bypassed the government censored cyber networks through one of the hundred pirate satellite dishes on the condo roof. My machine held coded e-mail traffic. From me:
Linked to
access agent. On track.
Reply from Langley:
Proceed full speed. Full sanction
.

Monkeys screamed in the treetops close enough to my balcony for them to jump up and bite me. Or throw a snake up there to do their dirty work for them.

We'd moved furniture until 10 the night before—not late in K.L. where a lot of ‘daily' life means hiding from the broiling sun. ‘We' meant Julia, Shabana, bad-back Peter. And Derya, me. I was in the condo by midnight. Dawn should have found me practicing
T'ai Chi
in the gazebo on the condo's grounds, covertly mixing other martial forms into that already
hidden functions
slow motion ballet. Instead, I stood on the balcony, a cup of coffee in my hand while the monkeys screamed.

“You talkin' to me?” I movie-whispered in the thick air.

Purple storm clouds rolled across the sky.

The Agency had stashed a battered Toyota for me in the condo's underground parking garage and a motorcycle inside a TV repair shop in the ex-pat neighborhood of Bangsar, but I rode a bus into town over a superhighway that began at K.L.'s airport, where runways had been built by a construction company tied to a wealthy Saudi Arabian hero of the American-backed war against invading Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan, a rail thin bearded messianic named Osama bin Laden.

Rain fell on my trip. The bus wooshed towards the heart of K.L. Through my window, I saw the drainage ditch running parallel with the road. Beyond the storm ditch ran a covered sewer line. Past the sewer line ran a chain-link, barbed wire wall. Inside that flesh-ripping fence waited squalid shanty towns where rain pounding on tin roofs made a maddening roar and all political power flowed from Muslim
madrasas
schools.

Derya and her colleagues walked into Bladerunners at 4:19. She wore a white blouse and khaki slacks. Shabana and even Julia waved and didn't exchange looks as Derya walked to my table. After all, my offered books had to do with the English she taught (plus keyboarding, word processing). Shabana taught programming, handled birth control/women's health issues. Julia specialized in accounting.

No beer today. I drank Coke. Derya ordered tea without the sugar Malaysians crave to the point of sprinkling it on popcorn.

The first book she picked up was an English translation of classic Chinese poetry she could use with her Chinese students. Next, she picked up a paperback book.

“I don't know this William Carlos Williams,” she said.

“American poet, died before we were born. Was a doctor by day, a poet by night. Like a comic book hero. One of the Master's theses I'll never finish is on him.”

Her face glowed when she picked up a volume CIA trick boys had weathered with water and a clothes dryer.

“You have an English of Rumi! He changed my whole life! I tell everybody! One day in college, I'm walking in Ankara and from a radio in an apartment above me, I hear this voice, and it's the poetry of Jala al-Din Rumi! Magic! Opened my heart!”

“Lucky.”

“In America, do you hear poets on the radio?”

Russell was still in my future, so I said: “No.”

“How sad.” She dropped her gaze to sip her tea. “Are you really a poet?”

“Not if you count how many people have read me.”

“That's not the count that matters.” Her lips curled up ever so slyly as she nodded towards my black shoulder bag. “Do you have your poems in there?”

I shrugged.

“
Ahhh
. I see. That's right,
American
. You are supposed to, what? Invite me to your pad to see your—what-do-you-call-it?—like tattoos.”

“You mean ‘etchings'?”

“Yes! That is it!
Etchings
.” Laughter came from her heels. “But I think for that kind of rendezvous what we are talking about is really tattoos.”

“I don't have any.”

“Can you imagine? Marking yourself with something until death. Who could be so certain about what would forever be important?” She sipped tea. “So is that what you were going to do? Invite me up somewhere to see your poems? Is that your trick?”

“I don't have any tricks for you.”

“Prove it.”

The journal I gingerly pulled out of my black bag was genuinely well worn, with a torn blue cardboard-like cover: NORTHERN REVIEW. Unlike my fellowship to Asia, what it contained hadn't needed to be orchestrated by the CIA.

Derya whispered: “I was only… No. I'm glad you didn't have this somewhere else to take me to. That you knew about tattoos. Yet you brought this anyway.

“Show me,” she said.

So I turned to the first page with my by-line and she read ‘
Home
,' my 24 lines about birds who absurdly built their nests in trees of doom.

“I was young,” I told her raised eyes. “Knew everything.”

“Then?” she asked.

I turned the page. “Wrote this a couple years later.”

And she read my 8 line ‘
Mirror Blues'
about how
‘all the poems you never wrote have great titles, make sense.'

“The good news is you're getting over believing you have so much
important
to say,” she told me. “But you are too young to have so many regrets.”

“You think?”

“For you,
American
… I think yes.” She closed the journal. Gave it back. Her smile was wide and sweet. “Now I've seen your tattoos.”

She stood to go. Put the three books of other people's poems in her shoulder bag with her notebooks, textbooks, and the full body-and-face covering black
burka
she wore if she needed to visit strict Muslim neighborhoods.

“When can I see you again?”

“So soon you ask?” she asked.

“Not soon enough,” blurted truth from me before I could stop it. “And… my name is not
American
. It's
Victor
.”

“I know,” she said, turned to walk away.

Turned back. Said: “Tomorrow. Right here. Right now.”

That tomorrow, she came alone.

For 20 minutes we talked about a million nothings until suddenly Bladerunners was too… confining. The rain stopped. City air brushed our bare arms with a chill of 76 degrees, invigorating enough to inspire us to take one bus, then another, getting off laughing at K.L.'s City Centre gardens in a business district called The Golden Triangle. As we walked amidst tropical flowers, the city glistened.