Orpheus Lost (28 page)
I
N
N
EW
Y
ORK
, mere hours before his flight, Cobb sorted through photographs. He imagined Benedict Boykin at his shoulder.
This one, not that one
, Benedict signaled. Cobb made copies, and on the copies he blacked out faces with a magic marker pen. He blacked out the face of anyone who wore combat dress. The other figures—not always naked—wore hoods that were tied at the neck. On a sheet of white paper he wrote:
Confiscated from US soldiers in Iraq
. He signed nothing. He put the copies and the sheet of paper in a brown manila envelope which he addressed to the
New York Times
. He dropped the envelope in a mailbox on East 42nd. From the mailbox, he could see the clock on Grand Central Station and the time was twenty-three minutes past nine.
He thought he knew what to expect.
He was wrong.
Back in Baghdad, he drank coffee with Iraqi militia groups. He slipped money to Shiite policemen and to Sunni drivers of cabs. He hung around bars with American wardens and guards. He reassembled his team. He watched, he listened. He was mapping out Operation Underworld.
He heard barracks talk about photographs, whistle-blowers, traitors. He monitored internet gossip. Blogs fumed
and smoked on his laptop, websites smoldered. There was speculation. There were vows to run the whistle-blower down.
FIFTH COLUMN: ARMY SABOTAGED FROM WITHIN
.
TRAITOR TOO YELLOW TO SHOW HIS FACE
.
Cobb busied himself with strategy. He told his team there would be no second chances. They had to get it right the first time.
On the blogs, detectives were rampant. Conspiracy theorists weighed in. Landmarks in the photographs were enlarged: this area of the city and not that. There were lists: who was stationed in Baghdad when, which units were where, who was known to be back in New York on the postmark day. Vectors were drawn and in a very short time the quarry was named.
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON
, Cobb read.
MILITARY DISGRACE RUNS IN FAMILY
.
EVIDENCE THAT FORMER SPECIAL FORCES MEMBER WAS DOUBLE AGENT
.
MERCENARY: FIGHTS FOR MONEY, NOT PATRIOTISM
.
On the talk shows, which Cobb picked up in streaming video, there were officers, now retired, who had been in Afghanistan. There was always considerable murkiness, they said, about Major Slaughter’s Bronze Star.
A soldier who had served in Slaughter’s unit revealed that his former officer was morally depraved. “He visited brothels,” the soldier said. “I cannot reveal on family television the things he made women do.”
SLAUGHTER CUTS AND RUNS
, headlines proclaimed. He was nothing more than a highly paid gun-for-hire and it was rumored that he was now immersed in further mercenary stunts.
It was known he had left the country.
In Baghdad, Cobb’s own men averted their eyes. Nevertheless, they said, we won’t tell the press where you are.
We’re
not stool pigeons.
“If you want out of Operation Underworld,” Cobb told them, “you’re free to go.”
We’ll go, they said. But we won’t blow the whistle on you.
There would be a Judas, Cobb knew.
Hate was a strange phenomenon, he thought. He stopped reading the blogs. He found the level of toxicity too high. Hate, he thought, was even stranger than love. Haters behaved more insanely than lovers did. They were more reckless. They lived on an adrenalin rush. That was the lure, Cobb saw.
He made contact with Benedict Boykin and they met inside the ruined shell of a house in the dangerous quarter of the city.
“You are a surprise to me,” Benedict said. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“I need help. I’ve got my weapons, but my team has quit. I need four men. Can you get me four men?”
“Not if they know who wants them.”
“They don’t need to know. I’ll wear a mask. Just say it’s an unofficial exercise and there’s money in it.”
“What’s the good of offering money?” Benedict asked. “You’ll all be killed.”
“The money will go to their families. I’m counting on you to set that up. I want the desperate ones.”
“You are a surprise to me,” Benedict said.
On the afternoon of Operation Underworld, Cobb went to a post office inside the American zone. He wore an electrician’s coveralls and a knitted cap pulled down close to his eyes. From a pay phone, he placed two calls to Promised Land. He huddled in the booth and spoke low.
“Dad?”
“Fuck the lot of ’em,” his father said. “You get a Bronze Star from me. You doing all right?”
“I’m okay. How about you?”
“Don’t worry about me,” his father said. “Where the hell are you? You still over there?”
“Yeah. Got one more thing to do and then I’ll be home.”
“You’ll have to go into the witness protection program. Or I could sit on the porch with my gun.”
“It’s that bad?”
“We could both go live in Jamaica.”
Cobb laughed. “See you, Dad.”
“I’ll let you stay around longer next time.”
Cobb didn’t trust himself to speak. By the time he had dialed Leela’s number he could not see.
“Hello?” she said.
Cobb stroked the curves of the receiver and leaned into her voice.
“Who is this?” she asked. “Is that you, Cobb? Are you crying?”
Bye, Leela, he thought, and hung up.
L
EELA WAS STILL
staring, dazed, at the headlines when the telephone rang.
“Esau Boykin,” the caller said. “Is that Leela-May?”
Leela nodded.
“Have you seen the papers, Leela-May?”
“Mnnh,” Leela said.
“I’ve had a call from Benedict, and Benedict said to tell you there’s good news.”
Leela pressed a hand over her mouth. She was leaning against the wall beside the phone. She slid to the floor. The block letters of the headlines were wet and starry, their edges jagged.
WHISTLE-BLOWER KILLED IN BAGHDAD
MILITARY MAVERICK REDEEMED
Secret torture center exposed.
Associated Press reports that a former Ba’ath-party prison used by rogue Iraqi militia groups has been discovered. One room in the prison was found to be piled with decayed and mutilated bodies. Scores of prisoners in malnourished condition, often with severe injuries due to torture, have been found. Among them are American businessmen and contractors who had been kidnapped and held for ransom. There are also many Iraqis and
foreign nationals. Those prisoners for whom there is evidence of terrorist connections—a minority, according to the present administrator of US forces in Iraq—will be transferred to prisons in the US or at Guantanamo. The remainder will be returned to their families or repatriated to their own countries.“Never have I seen such barbarism,” said the administrator of US forces in Iraq. “This is what we are up against.”
The prison was liberated in a daring and carefully planned pre-dawn raid by a small force of former members of the US military who took heavy fire from rogue troops. Among those killed was military maverick and former major in the US Army, Cobb Slaughter, leader of the raiding party.
“This was entirely a private initiative,” the administrator of US forces said, “but all those involved died as heroes as far as we are concerned.”
Two items with Baghdad postmarks arrived in Promised Land. Both were addressed to Leela and Esau Boykin delivered them by hand. He left the mail van at the roadside and walked up Gideon Moore’s long drive. He handed Leela one letter and one small package. Of the letter, he said: “That’s my boy’s handwriting. I can’t stay but a few minutes, but I’ll pay my respects to Gideon if I may.”
Leela curled up on the porch swing and opened her mail.
US Army Base, Baghdad.
Dear Leela,
First things first: Michael Bartok is alive. He’s in very bad shape, and it will be a long time before he can play a musical instrument again, but he’s alive. Both shoulders are dislocated and his hands are badly damaged. He’s to be sent back to Australia.
A few days ago, Cobb got in touch with me. He asked for my help. We always unofficially knew where the ghost prisons were. He asked me to get in touch with you if things went wrong. I promised I would. We shook hands.
That was the last I saw of him.
I’d misjudged him, I acknowledge this now. He’s to be buried in Arlington. I hope to be there. I hope to see you and his father there.
May he rest in peace.
Love,
Benedict.
The other item was a small padded envelope. Inside the bubble wrap was a tobacco tin and inside the tin was a sand dollar with a seven-petalled star. A small plain card said:
To Leela: love, Cobb
.
She knew she would take the sand dollar with her to the Daintree. High in the rainforest canopy, she would sit on the veranda with Mishka’s head in her lap. She would stroke his hair while the parakeets settled on their shoulders. Uncle Otto would play while they dreamed.
Leela stood at the foot of the steps to Calhoun Slaughter’s front porch. The old man was in his rocker with an open bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand.
They stared at each other.
Leela thought that she should try to say something light and ironic—
Are you going to shoot me, Mr. Slaughter?
—anything to stop herself sobbing in front of Cobb’s father.
He wiped the back of one hand across his eyes and held up the bottle with the other. “Want some?” he asked.
Leela nodded.
“Come here,” he said.
She sat on the porch and rested her head against his thigh. His hand, when he passed her the bottle, was wet with tears.
S
ECTIONS OF THIS
novel, in slightly different form, have appeared in the following literary journals:
Nimrod International Journal
(where section IV.1, as “The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon,” received the Geraldine McLoud award);
Southern Humanities Review; Hecate
.
Though Promised Land is the real and irresistible name of a small town in South Carolina (pop. 559 in the census of 2000), the Promised Land in this novel is entirely fictitious. Indeed, I have taken the liberty of moving the town from upstate, near the Georgia and North Carolina borders, to the coastal lowlands, somewhere between Charleston and McClellanville, but about thirty miles inland.
I wish to thank the Vietnam veterans, American and Australian, black and white, who shared with me their passionate memories. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to all those who have been called upon to put themselves in harm’s way in conflicts with which they may or may not have agreed.
Janette Turner Hospital was born in Melbourne in 1942, but her family moved to Brisbane when she was a child. She began her teaching career in remote Queensland high schools, but since her graduate studies she has taught in universities in Australia, Canada, England, France, and the United States. Her first published short story appeared in the
Atlantic Monthly
(USA) where it won an “Atlantic First” citation in 1978. Her first novel,
The Ivory Swing
(set in the village in South India where she lived in 1977), won Canada’s Seal Award (a $50,000 prize) in 1982. She lived for many years in Canada, and in 1986 she was listed by the
Toronto Globe & Mail
as one of Canada’s “Ten Best Young Fiction Writers”. Since then she has won a number of prizes for her seven novels and three short story collections, and her work has been published in twelve languages. Three of her short stories appeared in Britain’s annual
Best Short Stories in English
in their year of publication, and in 1995 one of these, “Unperformed Experiments Have No Results”, was selected for
The Best of the Best
, an anthology of the decade.
Her novel
Oyster
was a finalist for the Miles Franklin Award, the National Book Council Banjo Award, and Canada’s Trillium Award. It was a
New York Times
“Notable Book of the Year”, and one of the Observer’s Best Books of the Year in the UK.
Due Preparations for the Plague
won the Queensland Premier’s Award for Fiction and the Davitt Award for “Best Crime Novel by an Australian woman in 2003”. It was also shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Christina Stead Award for Fiction.
In 2003 Janette Turner Hospital received the Patrick White Award for lifetime literary achievement.
For several years, Janette has held an ongoing position as Adjunct Professor of English at the University of Queensland.
Janette Turner Hospital holds an endowed chair as Carolina Distinguished Professor of Literature at the University of South Carolina.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
The Ivory Swing
The Tiger in the Tiger Pit
Borderline
Dislocations
Charades
Isobars
The Last Magician
Collected Stories
Oyster
North of Nowhere, South of Loss
Due Preparations for the Plague
Harper Perennial
An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
First published in Australia in 2007
This edition published in 2010
by HarperCollins
Publishers
Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
www.harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Janette Turner Hospital 2007
The right of Janette Turner Hospital to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the
Copyright Act 1968,
no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollins
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Hospital, Janette Turner, 1942–
Orpheus lost / author, Janette Turner Hospital.
Pymble, N.S.W. : HarperCollins, 2008.
ISBN: 978 0 7322 8442 8 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978 0 7304 0038 7 (ePub)
Women mathematicians–Fiction. Musicians–Fiction.
Australians–United States–Fiction. Terrorism–;United States–Fiction.
A823.4
Excerpts from the poetry of Jalīl al-Dīn Rūmī are from
Rūmī Poet and Mystic,
translated by Reynold A Nicholson (thanks to Oneworld Publications).
Many thanks to the following: Janette Turner Hospital and the
Australian Literary Review,
for permission to reproduce the article ‘Orpheus transcendent’; to the estate of Czeslaw Milosz and to Robert Hass, for permission to use excerpts from ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’; and to Harlan Greene, for permission to reproduce his review of
Orpheus Lost.
