The General and the Elephant Clock of Al-Jazari (10 page)

“The usual. Tequila.”

“You’re on,” he said, and Gabriel launched himself off the side of the pool. Ten laps later, and John never caught up. He wasn’t far behind, though, maybe just the length of Gabriel’s long legs.

Gabriel threw a towel over John’s head, and he dried himself off.

“You want me to find you a pool back home, so you can work the arthritis out of your knee and kick my ass on a regular basis?”

Gabriel pulled him over by the waistband of his trunks, wrapped a dry towel around his waist. “I was thinking that very thing.”

They took the stairs up to their room, stripped out of their wet trunks. John went into the shower first, and when he came out, he saw the red light on the phone was blinking. He’d stuck his cell into the suitcase when they’d gone downstairs. He picked up the receiver, listened to the message. It was from Kim, asking him to call home right away, no matter how late. He dug out the cell, scrolled down through four phone messages that sounded increasingly frantic. He punched in the number for home, and Kim picked up before the second ring. “Uncle John?”

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s trouble, I don’t know….”

“Is anyone hurt?” Kim hesitated again. “Who?”

“Juan. He’s not hurt, not really, it’s just that I was out tonight, taking pictures, and Abdullah came with me. And we saw him.”

“You saw him where?”

“Running with the baby gangbangers, Uncle John. Sureños 13. Wearing their colors. With a piece in his pocket. He pretended he didn’t know us, and we followed him when he left, picked him up and brought him here. He says he was just blowing off steam, it was no big deal.”

“Kim, he had a weapon? You’re sure?” John looked around the room. Gabriel was coming out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist, his face happy.

“Yeah. I’ve got him locked in one of the bedrooms. Billy’s with him. Uncle John, I didn’t know what to do! I just….”

“Pull it together,” John said. “You need to tell Gabriel what’s happened.”

“Oh, God, no! Can’t you….”

John handed over the phone. “It’s Juan. He isn’t hurt, but there’s trouble, Gabriel.”

John watched Gabriel’s face turn sick and white, his eyes blank. He looked like someone had just thrown a bucket of cold water in his face. John turned back to the computer, pulled up the page for Southwest Airlines to see if he could find them a fast plane home.

“Let me speak to him, Kim.” There was a pause, and Gabriel said, “He said he wouldn’t talk to me? Kim, you listen to me. Listen. Don’t let him out of the house. Secure him with duct tape if you have to but keep him there until I get there. Have you called his mother?”

John looked up, and Gabriel caught his eye, shook his head. “A sleepover. Great. Okay, Kim. Hang tight. I’ll be home as soon as I can.” Gabriel disconnected, threw the phone down on the bed. He stood there in his towel, frozen, staring down at the phone.

“Looks like there’s a 1015 out of Dulles,” John said. “Let me see if I can find anything earlier.”

“I did this, John.” Gabriel had his hands over his eyes. “This is on me. I couldn’t wait, I was so fucking miserable whenever we were apart, which was all the time, so lonely every time you left I felt like I wanted to rip my chest apart. And when it got so bad I couldn’t stand it, I got married, had the kids, tried to be somebody else, anyone else so I could spread it out a little bit.” He was pacing now, and John leaned back against the table, watched him.

“And it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t let you go, John, and when it got so bad again I thought no more, I can’t live this way, wearing the mask, always hiding behind that mask, I left. And when I did, I took that bright, happy kid who loved his mom and loved his school and loved riding with me in the chopper and I turned him into this.” He held up a hand when John started to speak. “No, don’t say anything. You know I’m telling the truth. He was full of light. And I just couldn’t let him finish growing up with a mom and a dad and an all-American family. I couldn’t do it, and now look where we are.”

Gabriel leaned over the table, his broad back so bent and humble John felt his throat close up just a bit. He wanted to reach out and touch him, but he was afraid the extra weight of his hand might be enough to break Gabriel’s back completely.

“Yes, you did it.” Gabriel straightened up, stared at him. “You did it and I did it, and he has made some choices, too. So what do we do now? We go home and work on our family and we help him walk back into the light. Okay? Settle down. Nothing’s happened yet. There’s time.”

“John, what if he really has done something? He had a gun. Kim said he had a gun. What if he’s done something he can’t go back from?”

“Let’s not make this any worse than it already is, okay? He’s still Juan. He’s still your kid that you’ve loved since he was born.”

Gabriel reached up, wiped roughly across his face with the heels of his hands. Then he turned and picked up the phone again, punched in a number. “Kim? If he won’t speak to me, then you go into the room and hold him down and put the phone up to his ear, you understand me? Just do it!”

John turned back to the computer. “Okay, I’ve got a 0745 out of Dulles.”

Gabriel was talking now. “Son, this is Dad. I know you’re mad right now. I don’t know what’s going on. But I wanted to tell you that I love you. No matter what, you’re my son and I love you. I’ll be home tomorrow, and we’ll figure this out. Juan? Will you talk to me, buddy?” He waited a moment, and John could see his shoulders sag. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. I love you, now and forever. I’ll speak to you tomorrow.”

He turned back to the bed, threw down the phone again. “Martha thinks he’s having a sleep-over. I’m not going to call her until I get home.”

“We can be on the early flight,” John said. “That will put us home at….”

“No.” Gabriel put his arms around him, rested his chin on John’s head. “No, you need to go to Tunis, and I need to go back to Albuquerque. I’ll take care of this, and you go get these boys, okay?”

“I don’t want to leave you. I’ve spent too many years leaving you, Gabriel. We’re better together.”

“You’re happy here. I can see it on you. You want to do this and you’re happy to be back in DC. Let me go take care of the family. Promise you won’t get killed when I’m not there watching your back, okay?”

“Brightman seems like a nice kid. He was a Ranger. He should be good to go.”

Gabriel nodded. “Yeah. Just be careful. Brightman, he’s lost an eye. He didn’t say anything about it, but he’s blind in one eye. Probably from whatever gave him that pretty scar on his forehead. But I wonder why he didn’t say anything.”

“I didn’t notice.”

“I’m sure that’s why they discharged him. Painter wouldn’t have let him work security with one eye. Why did you decide you wanted him for your aide, anyway?”

John tugged him close, wrapped him up as tightly as he could, felt Gabriel’s heart beating through layers of muscle and bone and skin. “I’m Batman, baby.”

I
T
WAS
more complicated than that, but John was used to going on instinct when he was choosing his team. Brightman had a still, controlled air. They were going to need that quality to get everyone home safely. But John read through the file Painter had given him, wondered if he’d made a colossal mistake.

They were sitting up against the headboard, reading files, both of them too keyed up to sleep. John handed the folder to Gabriel. “You are not going to believe this.”

Brightman had been discharged due to his blind eye, but he would have been discharged regardless, since he’d assaulted the eye surgeon who was trying to fix said eye. There were three notes from Painter, and John recognized the army shorthand. Brightman was an excellent soldier, top of his class infantryman, had qualified in LRR, long-range recon. But his forward progress had been marred by what Painter thought was a problem with authority. He’d been disciplined twice for physical assaults toward a superior, and that was before he’d had the head injury that cost him his eye and led to the assault on the eye doctor.

“Oh, man.” Gabriel pulled off his reading glasses and leaned his head back, closed his eyes. “Three strikes. I wouldn’t have guessed that, John. I’ve known a few guys with short fuses, but they always had that jitter, you know? Like they should have been kept on their Ritalin a little longer.”

“We don’t know the whole story,” John said, tugging the glasses and files from Gabriel’s hands and putting them on the bedside table. “Painter made an assumption based on reading old progress reports, but I want to hear the other side of the story. Brightman seems to be the kind of kid who just takes it and takes it until he can’t take it anymore.” He reached out, ran two fingers down Gabriel’s jaw, over his mouth. “Like you. I love you, Gabriel. I know you don’t need to hear that right now.”

Gabriel turned into his arms, buried his face in John’s chest. “Yes, I do. I do need to hear it.”

It was the tenderness that always broke his heart, John thought, sliding his hands over Gabriel’s warm back, holding him tightly against his chest. Tasting the worry on his mouth, then feeling his sigh, warm breath, and the weight of his head, the way it drooped on John’s shoulder. They fit together like two pieces of a puzzle, legs tangled, arms around each other, Gabriel’s head on his shoulder, John snuggled warmly against a neck that was so sweet and tender to the bite. After so long, to be able to sleep together every night, wake up together in the morning, it was unbearably sweet. John had to remind himself sometimes not to get used to it, not to take it for granted. Because anything could happen. Something could pull them away from each other. If they weren’t careful, the separation would feel like the end of the world.

The morning haze over the DC skyline was as gray and cool as his mood as he navigated airport traffic. Gabriel hadn’t slept, was swinging between outrage and fury and panic over what his boy had done, what had been done to him. John kept his hand on his back, grounding him, until the last possible moment when they had to separate, and he had to let Gabriel go on alone.

Brightman was already at the hotel when he got back from the airport, waiting in the lobby. John waved him up to the room. “Brightman, you’ve got my permission to go into my room and work, okay? You don’t have to wait for me. Don’t think of it as my bedroom, but as operational headquarters.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Sanchez had to fly back to Albuquerque this morning. A family emergency.”

John recognized the droop to Brightman’s shoulders. He was sure his own were drooping as well. “Is he coming back?”

“I hope so.” John hesitated. “There’s a problem with his son. It may take a while.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll pick up his assignments. If you just tell me what to do, I’ll do whatever you want.”

John forced himself to let the plane go, to bring his attention back around to the young man standing in the elevator with him. “When we get upstairs, let’s talk for a bit, Brightman.”

His shoulders drooped even farther. “Yes, sir.”

Brightman followed him like he was heading to the principal’s office. John opened the door, studied the little coffee pot by the sink. He pulled up the room service menu. “Brightman, what do you want? General Painter is going to treat us to breakfast.”

Brightman looked interested at this, looked at the menu over John’s shoulder. “Those eggs Benedict look good.”

They did look good, but after pizza last night, John decided to go for the fruit bowl with yogurt. “Call down for the food, and have them bring up a pot of coffee with, and a couple of bottles of water. We eat, then we get to work.”

John pulled his yellow legal pads to the center of the table, got the Sharpies from his messenger bag. At the center of the page, he wrote
Ali Bahktar
in big letters, circled the words. Then he wrote some additional words, drew lines from the central circle.
Family
,
grandfather
,
education
,
history
,
religion
. “What is that, sir?”

“It’s a variation of a mind map,” John said. “For us, these are areas of influence we need to know about. Any one of them might be more powerful at different times, but they all have some power.”

“I don’t know what a mind map is,” Brightman said, and he pulled a chair up to the table to watch John draw.

“Think of it like an outline,” John said, pushing a yellow legal pad over to Brightman. “It’s a tool for strategic planning, for strategic thinking. The benefit is the creative way you can find connections between disparate elements. Okay, do this.” He drew a star in the middle of the page. Inside the star, he wrote,
Sam’s Perfect Life
. “So what goes with this? Love? Work? Family?” Brightman picked up a marker, hesitated a moment. “Don’t write two good eyes, Sam. This is a map of the possible, of the future.”

Brightman’s neck flushed with color. He pulled the map over and stared down at the star. John pulled off the top sheet, drew his own star in the middle. Then he wrote
Gabriel
, in big block letters, put a thick line to his star.
Kim
was next.
Work
.

Brightman watched him, then turned back to his own paper.
Self-Discipline
, he wrote, drew a circle around it.
Self-Control
.
Education
.
Physical strength
.
Mom
.
Work
. He connected all his words to the star with thick, bold lines.

“Good,” John said. “Now, move out from there.” On his paper, he drew more circles, started filling them in. Next to
Kim
, he put
success
in his
work
and
family
and
love
. “These outer circles are connected to the inner circles, see? They are the things we want, or hope for, the things we need to work on to accomplish a goal.”

Brightman was scribbling hard, filling up his paper, and John pulled a couple of blank sheets off the pad and put them on the table next to his original so he could keep going.