Caravan of Thieves (32 page)

M
y father, Dan, dead now, though not departed, the former and forever Minister of Collateral Damage, had sniffed out the plot by a bunch of officers to ship millions home from Iraq in body bags in the early days of the war. Dan only knew about one shipment. Retrieving it and relocating it came as naturally to him as burying nuts is to a squirrel. He stole it, but he did not want to spend it. The money lay hidden for years until about six months ago, when the plotters dug up the grave Dan had already looted and found nothing but stale air. Dan's last, and only, gift to me was a clue about where he had hidden it.

Colonel McColl and his gang killed Dan and followed me while I followed Dan's clue; I found the money and used it as bait to kill them for what they had done to him. That brought me to the attention of Major Hensel. He had just formed
SHADE
, which is short for Shared Defense Executive; it's a division of the Defense Intelligence Agency. “Concerned with national security issues involving the military,” according to the Major, who is the only one who would know. That is how I came to have the job these past months hunting down the other money-seeded graves McColl had boasted of.

I didn't burn Dan's body with the intent of ridding myself of him forever, though I thought that would be a side benefit. For any decent father, a son avenging his murder would have put the matter to rest, but that sort of decency eluded Dan even in death and he has been stalking me relentlessly, with the same irresponsibility, unpredictability, and irritating selfishness that he perfected in life, dogging me with stories I had heard many times and stories I had never heard before.

Though I studied desert combat, small arms combat, mountain combat, survival techniques, counterinsurgency, tai chi, aikido, yoga, petty thievery, breaking and entering, and other arcane street lessons, Dan studies was my major, my minor, my hobby, my relentless affliction. I hated him while he lived and avoided him as soon as I could, but his death defeated my hatred. Dan fascination, long unacknowledged, often denied, found no new poison after his death and so flourished.

Dan accompanied me out of Havre to the Canadian border, going on about the scene at the grave before the shooting.

“Nice of the old man to save your life like that.”

“He was a great guy.”

“I'd have done the same.”

I laughed.

“Tough having to put your son in the ground and then having to stand there again to find out if you did it right the first time.”

That's when I knew the purpose of this chat: Dan had been robbed of the grand stage my graveside would have provided him.

What stories would he have concocted on the spot? My last letter: He would pull a few pieces of paper from his pocket, hold them a moment, then shake his head and put them away. He could recite it by heart: a letter foreshadowing my tragic death and revealing to him the ways he had always inspired me. Funny stories would follow, oozing fatherly wisdom in the face of the stubbornness of impetuous youth. If I left an attractive widow, the show would be directed toward her. Whatever tears and laughs he evoked would be in service of that conquest.

Dan spoke up at that thought:
“I would not.”

“Because you had already succeeded, or because you had already been turned down?”

“Because at some point she would start feeling guilty and ruin all the fun.”

But he would not feel guilty.

Canada looked just like Montana. A thin white coating over a flat sheet spreading to the horizon like an exposed bed you could never roll out of. The snow started again, just enough to make a dusting on the road and on the windshield. I pulled onto the shoulder about fifty yards before the border and parked myself on the hood of my car. I took off my jacket and enjoyed the bite of the cold air. I wanted to linger, to clear my mind so I could begin to understand the puzzle of the graves. Dan receded, but just a moment later a border guard emerged from the small station on the left, which looked like a drive-through coffee stand. He wore a parka with an American flag on the sleeve and a Homeland Security patch.

“You waiting for something?”

“Yes.”

“What's that?”

“A revelation.”

He looked around for a moment, stared as if he could see the North Pole, brushed snow off his coat. “Well, trust me on this; I been working this station fifteen years and unless you're waiting for Santy Claus, you're facing the wrong direction.” He tapped on my roof and gestured with his gloved hand. “If this isn't government business then you gotta move along.”

When he got about ten yards away I said, “Truth is, I'm waiting for Ethan Williams.”

His head slowly tilted and his eyes got squinty as if I had asked him to complete a tough math equation. A car was coming up from behind me. The guard considered hustling back to his post. Instead, he put up his hand to stop the car. It slowed down and stopped next to him and he leaned down. I could only hear his end:

“Hey, Bill. You got anything I need to know about . . . ? When you coming back . . . ? It's fine. No problems . . .” Bill drove across the invisible border and the guard returned to me.

“Who'd you say?”

“Ethan Williams.”

“You a relation of his?”

“No.”

“Well, if you're waiting for Ethan, you better be patient. That boy died in Iraq years ago.”

“You knew him?”

“I know about everybody here. Except you.”

It took a day and a half to get to Chicago. Only Dan interrupted my guilty silence.

“This isn't on you. You didn't cause this.”

“Man down, a good man. Another man wounded.”

“It might have been worse if they hadn't been there.”

“How?”

“Did I ever tell you the story about the time I fell in love? Beautiful woman, lived up in San Francisco.”

“Before I was born?”

“I think you were staying with someone in Arizona and I didn't want to interrupt your life. It wouldn't have been fair to drag you away.”
Fair to him, he meant.
“A beauty she was, and rich, too. Her father was a financial wizard on the East Coast. She ran an art gallery. The walls lined with paintings I couldn't look at and the floor filled with rich friends I couldn't take my eyes off of. All of them eager to spend their money. For me, it was like being the house at a craps game; I could make a deal every time I blinked my eyes. The biggest problem was keeping track of them all. Sometimes I would hide from people trying to give me checks, which you know made them increase the size of those checks. She was perfect; I don't think she cared what deals I made. And then, suddenly, she broke it off. Not only did the checks stop coming in, everybody wanted their money back. I was devastated. At least I convinced myself of that, at first. Played the part. Of course that helped me with all the investors who suddenly needed their money back. I was too distracted to bother about such small matters. But I must have bought into my show of distress because they seemed to believe me.”

“How long did that last?”

“About a week. But I could never believe anyone's tears, not even my own. I felt lousy, but it wasn't about the woman. I felt lousy because I didn't feel lousy about the woman. I was relieved it was over. Love was a burden I did not like to bear. That was not easy to face. But once I admitted that I disliked being in love, I was elated and left town immediately with all the money.”

“Who did she catch you with?”

“She didn't catch me with anyone. Her sister confessed. Unsolicited. More of a boast than a confession.”

“Your story does not help me. There's no correlation with my situation. A woman caught you cheating; a sniper killed two men and wounded another on my watch. Not the same thing.”

Even in death, Dan did not argue or explain, though I would have welcomed either.
“Okay,”
he said.

I knew what I had to do and did not want any orders getting in my way, so I ignored Major Hensel's calls, but I left the battery in the phone. When he knew where I was, he would know what I was doing. Dan's story was like a thorn in my shoe: The irritation lingered. I had to let go of the idea of Dan dispensing wisdom. Dan did not dispense, not anything of value. Dan led you toward the truth and stood there watching you find ways to ignore it, twist it, disguise it. That was his thrill in life. As a shadow he was the same, only more so, though I suspected the thrill was gone.

The humiliating possibilities outlined in Dan's story slouched in front of me like criminal candidates in a police lineup: relief, excitement, delight, elation. Whichever I chose incriminated me. But even if I put aside the guilt and ache of losing my man, I could not place any one of those snickering partners with me at the scene. I longed for change, longed to be released from the drudgery of interviews and paperwork. But longing for change does not cause change.

The plane felt like a cage. Behind me, a young boy started to cry in a throbbing rhythm that matched the drone of the engines. The woman in the aisle seat woke herself with a snoring snort. She wiped drool from the side of her mouth and looked past me at the dull black outside the window. She closed her eyes again and her head tilted back sharply, as if she had been hit. Below, a cluster of lights looked like the marking of a drop zone. The exit row was just three in front of me.

All I had to do was admit that I was relieved and I would not mind whatever condemnation came along with it. I would be free. That temptation, posing as my shadowed reflection, winked at me in the window, tempted me to open it up. But I did not want to follow Dan's lead. I never did. Love was a burden he did not want to bear, as was the truth. Dan was a ghost and had been a ghost for many years before he died. I was not ready to become a ghost. I was not ready to open the window and get sucked out.

I was released, not relieved. Released from the routine and administration that my first job with
SHADE
had devolved into. Released from the lies and paperwork and permits required to retrieve the dead. The bundled emotions were easier to carry than any single one of them would have been.

The list of graves was wrong. I was certain we had followed the right path to obtain it, but the list was wrong, and hoping the next graves would have millions inside them would mark me as an arrogant, ignorant mark. I closed my eyes and rewalked the steps that led to the list, trying to understand where I went wrong.