No Way Back (5 page)

SHE’S STANDING BY THE WINDOW AND HALF-TURNS
quickly when I walk into my lockless room: large, slightly canted eyes the pale blue of a Siberian husky’s, almost black hair with perfect bangs and a sharp cut at the jawline, and a smile that almost cracks my heart. She’s wearing a tight black turtleneck over a short, russet suede skirt and matching suede ankle boots. She says hello, tells me her name is Nadya. In perfect Russian, slight Moscow accent.

Nadya. Not something real but unappealing to the American ear, like Ludmilla or Svetlana. Not tutor-prim, plain, stiff. The damned profile again.

Nadya’s smile is a sham, she’s brisk, all business. But that’s okay; the devious bastards knew it would be, since she’s stunning—not per the general American standard, but exactly the way I can never resist. Maybe they don’t know it would still have been okay if she wasn’t, so long as she was as bright and quick as she soon proves to be.

She suggests we go to the library, which turns out to be on the second floor and fully equipped with walls of
books, plus a complete suite of high-end video and audio gear. None of this interests her. We sit on a sofa, a meter apart, she curls her legs under her and faces me. Then she begins an I’d-like-to-get-to-know-you-better conversation, like a girl you just met in a bar who’s maybe a little intrigued but wary, too: What do I do? Is my work interesting? She guessed so. Hers is sometimes a bit boring, but a couple of evenings a week she goes out dancing, though most of the men she meets in Washington are also a bit boring. New York must be more interesting, she’s sure. Am I married? No? Do I mean never, or just not at the moment? Never? Why not? So what do I do for fun? Really? And your girlfriend doesn’t mind? There isn’t one? Ah. You mean they don’t know about each other, don’t you? You’re wicked, a real dog. I wouldn’t stand for that. Not for a minute.

All in Russian. A game develops. She wins. I can’t lure or trick her into speaking a single word of English. We go back and forth in Russian, drinking coffee and smoking, for almost three hours. I learn a lot about her: born in Moscow, raised in the U.K., came to the States after Cambridge, hasn’t had a regular boyfriend in almost a year, sometimes feels she’s wasting her youth, spending too many nights alone just surfing the Web. None of it true, I’m sure, except maybe the Moscow bit. She pounces like a cat every time I skitter on pronunciation, syntax, or preferred current usage.

“Not nearly as creaky as I expected. A bit old-fashioned, a bit stiff here and there. Not to worry,” she says in English—BBC, not American, so maybe the U.K. bit at least is true—as she’s leaving, putting on that beautiful smile she was wearing when she first looked at me across my room. “Tomorrow then, Luther? Super.”

Oh yes, super. They’ve punched the right button, sending me little Nadya. I like this girl, this game. It’s a
shame, I find myself thinking, about the circumstances. I’m wishing we’d met in the real world, as real people. I’m missing her alluring presense already. But my mood rises from its slump when I go back to my room, sit at the desk, and begin that list Westley told me to make. I start thinking of all the weapons I’ve used, how they felt in the hand, how they performed. I circle in on a few things I’ve handled but never owned. It’s a wish list and Westley’s buying, so what the hell. Pretty soon I’ve filled a small mental box with what I consider the very finest tools in the world. Gives me a kind of Christmasy feeling, just as the encounter with Nadya did. Can’t wait to unwrap those packages.

Defense only, not offense, Westley said. So. Primary: Wilson SDS, a small, supertuned and absolutely reliable custom version of the old classic 1911 .45 ACP. With a custom Mitch Rosen shoulder holster to carry it unseen and safely under my left armpit even in condition one, cocked and locked, and a double mag case on the offside. Secondary: a Springfield XD in .357 SIG; it out-Glocks a Glock, it’s lighter yet holds twice the rounds of a SIG 239. A Kramer horsehide small-of-the-back holster for it, plus a belt-clip double mag holder that’ll also carry a SureFire Z2 combat flashlight. For my pants pocket, I want a Boker folder with a four-inch ceramic spearpoint; no steel knife made can cut as surgically as a properly sharp ceramic blade.

Now the backup, in case some little incident turns into a true goat-fuck. I’ll want a very nice leather attaché case, custom-made with Kevlar armor forming the hard-sides, and custom-pocketed inside to hold the ultimate revolver, a .357 Magnum Korth, Swiss-made, each by a single gunsmith, and as perfectly smooth and precise as the finest Swiss chronometer available. Worth every penny of the $6,000 it’ll cost. Plus three full speedload
ers for the Korth, two full spare mags for both the Wilson and the XD, and four grenades: one smoke, one stun, one gas, one frag.

Perfect, I’m thinking as I survey the list. The finest gear there is, in a neat, unobtrusive carry mode. Not at all what I’d choose for a night assault on a military target, but ideal for a protection job. Even Westley, though, with all his resources, will have some trouble putting my package together in time for me to work out with everything, break the pistols in by putting a few hundred rounds through them and so forth. The only items readily available are the XD and the ammo: has to be Hornady XTP.

“Scribble, scribble, scribble,” I hear from the doorway behind me.

“Love letter to Nadya, Allison,” I say, not turning. “Amazing how fast it happens sometimes, isn’t it? What do the French call it?
Coup de foudre?
”

“How about coup de takeout dinner in front of a couple of DVDs?” she says.

Shit. Just like Helen, the girl I had until—Christ, it wasn’t even a month ago that I left her. Or she left me. Graduated from her fancy college in Baltimore, went back to her parents in Connecticut for the summer, probably getting ready now to move to California, grad school at Stanford. This is getting beyond psych profile. This is getting really personal, really spooky. Can Westley know everything? Is there a thing inside my head or outside in my whole life he isn’t conscious of, down to the smallest detail?

Cancel that, Luther. The emotional bonds with Helen were tissue thin, and I’m utterly indifferent to Allison as a woman. But assume everything is known, accept it. Get into the role, say something in character. Every
word you utter is being recorded, either electronically or in somebody’s head.

I swivel, watch Allison walk over, hand her my list.

“I’ll deliver your love letter later. I won’t even read it first. Well, maybe a quick glance in private,” she says, pocketing the paper. “So, you’re cool with takeout?”

“Oh yeah, I’m very cool with takeout and a movie.”

“Okay! You pick the food, I’ll choose the movies. Chinese, Thai, or pizza? Really excellent pizza, very thin crust, crispy.”

“You’ve convinced me. Pizza. This place, they deliver everything-you-can-think-of-type pies?”

“Sure. I go for everything, too.”

“Extra anchovies, then?”

“Double extra, since neither of us have dates tonight. So, in the library? Say forty-five, fifty minutes if I go call right now?”

“Nineteen hundred ten, sharp. The library.”

“Military time, European airport time. Still always have to translate in my head,” she says, heading out. “Um, eighteen hundred hours is…right, so you mean ten after seven? You do.”

“I’ll be on aroma alert.”

Her laugh disappears with her down the corridor.

Westley’s nowhere, Rob’s out somewhere, and Terry’s probably clocked out, replaced by another Terry type who’ll do nightwatch on the first-floor front.

So it’s just Allison and me. Pizza’s great, movies not. Allison’s so rapt during the first,
Proof of Life
or something with Meg Ryan, the dreadfully implausible hippy wife of an oil company executive who’s been kidnapped by Colombian rebels, that she dribbles sauce down her front and doesn’t notice. When I groan for the third or
fourth time over some idiocy or other that comes out of Ryan’s mouth, she says, “Oh, give her a break. She didn’t write this.”

“She didn’t bother acting it, either.”

“Who cares? Look at him. He’s unbelievable. Cool beyond belief.”

Him, naturally, is Russell Crowe. Rob did warn me. But at least a decent military adviser choreographed the big scene in which Crowe and a squad of mercs hit the rebel camp and snatch the hostage. “Not bad,” I say when the firefight ends.

“So it’s like that? Actual action?”

“Close enough, in terms of fire and maneuver. The way Crowe’s rifle jams on him. What’s missing is certain details.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, like your hands are shaking, you’re shaking all over, you’re white with fear and your mouth’s so dry you can’t speak, or you’re screaming and drooling like a lunatic. And very frequently there’s piss running down your legs and you don’t even know it.”

“Despite all the training? Like his SAS-type training. Aren’t you on autopilot, sort of? Kind of like a machine?”

“There is no training in the world that approximates the way a firefight rattles your bones. All the training does is maybe keep you from total freeze-up or panicked dirt-chewing when the noise, the confusion, the terror hit you like a hurricane.”

“Shit.”

“That’s right. A very loud, very disorienting storm of it,” I say.

She doesn’t respond, just keeps on watching the screen.

“Even the best books, written by very experienced guys who’ve seen it all, done it all, are crap,” I say.

“Why’s that, do you think?” She glances at me, a hint of appraisal in her eyes.

“Because there is no way at all of conveying how it feels. Gotta live through it once or twice to know.”

And instantly I’m thinking why the fuck am I ranting? What am I trying to prove to this young thing here? That I’m merely another testosterone-overloaded asshole? Annie once told me that just because I’m a jarhead brat doesn’t mean I have to keep acting like a jarhead. “Look at your father, for instance,” she’d said.

My father. Right. Old-school Marine lifer, total believer in Semper Fi legend, been in shit so deep so many times it’s a miracle he survived. Just a classic jarhead gunnery sergeant, scruffed and tough and foul-mouthed—on the surface. Only better read in tactics, strategy, and military history than most of the officers he served under—most of whom got dead and One Way Ewing didn’t ’cause he was also smarter in the fight. Smarter with people, too. He’d have just patted Allison’s hand, said something like fuckin’ A, that’s just the way it is, this movie’s real as real. And dropped it there, not another word, smiling a big smile. He’d have been that cool about it.

Pizza’s long gone, she’s on her second beer and I’m still nursing my first and only, when movie number two rolls. It’s some tired thing with Pitt as a CIA contractor and Robert Redford, who looks like his makeup’s been slathered on by an inept mortician, as his field officer. Allison’s laughing and chuckling from the first scene, becomes more and more amused as the plot congeals. She’s practically howling during the final stretch.

“Watch a lot of CIA movies, do you?” I ask.

“Sure! They’re always such a hoot. The poor bastards try so hard, but they never get anything right. Same with you and cop movies, I expect.”

“Yeah. When I want some laughs I give the comedy
section of the video rental place a big miss, head straight for the action/adventure section. Love the jokes, like guys shooting their pistols sideways, ejection port up, actually hitting their targets and never getting their eyes put out by hot flying brass.”

“Wait a sec. You can so shoot like that, if you have to.”

“Really? They teach you that at the Farm?”

“You keep making this agricultural reference. I’d love to know what you’re talking about.”

“Got it from a movie.”

“Figures!” She laughs. “I think I even know which one. But no, I haven’t shot like that. I don’t shoot. But maybe when you go to the range I’ll tag along, give it a try?”

“Okay. Just make sure you’re at least two lanes to my right. And wearing heavy-duty goggles, not regular shooting glasses.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know much better than me. Well, naturally. But big deal. You don’t have to be so damned superior and professorial about it.”

“No one’s ever used that term to describe me before.”

“It’s a wonder. If that’s true. Which I deeply doubt. I’ll bet at least a few of your girlfriends have. Patronizing lectures about warrior stuff. Probably it works on some girls.”

“Hey, I assumed I was having an exhange of views with a colleague, not talking to a slightly kinky student.”

“And I think you’re absolutely style-consistent, when it comes to women, anyway.”

“Ow. That hurts.”

“Hurts? Hah!” Allison laughs at me now. “If you have any tender spot at all—and it’s looking to me as if you do not—it certainly isn’t in that area.”

And that’s the first time, I’m thinking, this girl’s been wrong.

THE GODDAMN BED’S TOO SOFT. THEN IT’S TOO HARD.
I try this position, that one. No good.

I lie very still, systematically tensing and then relaxing every muscle group from my feet on up. Still no good. There’s a riot in my head, a mad crowd of images pushing and shoving that I can’t control at all.

Fucking Westley.

It’s nearly midnight when the movie ends, Allison’s headed off to her room and I’m on my way to mine when a stiff finger taps me once on the shoulder. I spin, jolted, and there’s Westley, eyes blank as ever behind those steel-rimmed glasses.

“I have something on my mind,” he says. “Discuss?”

We go down to that pseudo-Brit drawing room. Coffee is already on the table, just as before. He waits until I’ve lit a cigarette, taken a sip.

“You’re a quick study, Luther,” he says. “Is Allison handling everything properly? Is she up to this?”

“Hasn’t been much to handle yet. She’s fine.”

“You’re wondering why I’m asking. It’s quite simple. She hasn’t done a major operation before. I have very high hopes for her. So I’m concerned she does well, doesn’t make any missteps the first time out. I’d like you to keep an eye on her. No intervention. Just report back to me from time to time as the op progresses. Keep me informed of her progress, or any mistakes you see developing.”

“Spy on a spy? Not really my game.”

“Oh, but it is, in a way. Eyes and ears, that’s all I’m asking.”

“Hard to report anything to a man who keeps your kind of office hours.”

Westley smiles. “Not too hard. Not much different from Sarajevo—except we won’t be in a combat zone.”

Yeah, Sarajevo. Worst place on earth—at the time. Those of us in Westley’s little private army (several dozen ex–Special Forces guys, ex-SAS, ex–French Foreign Legion, ex-Spetsnaz) call him “The Man Who Isn’t There,” pretending a bitter irony. The truth’s that phrase is a sort of verbal crossing of fingers, or knocking on wood. He’s always there—materializing when you least expect or want him, fading away like a phantom, without a trace.

Most of the force are assigned to train Bosnian combat troops; I draw sniping, teamed with a Muslim girl named Mikla whose hopes of shooting for the Yugoslav Olympic team were shattered by the war. I’m armed with a .50-caliber Barrett and I’m taking out Serbs easily with that weapon, sometimes at ranges of a mile or more. The fucks just explode for no apparent reason, which must terrorize the shit out of any Serbs nearby. Because at those kinds of distances, the boom of the rifle isn’t heard until several seconds after the bullet hits.

I get high on that, really juked.

Off hours, I gravitate toward the Spetsnaz guys, who welcome me because I speak Russian. We hang at cafés, getting drunk on the local brandy, trading stories. They’re leading small Bosnian units in night assaults on Serb positions in the mountains. They ask me if I want to go along on a couple. I’m young and stupid, so I do. I dig it, hosing Serbs up close with an MP5, tossing white phospherous grenades into bunkers.

One day, hidden in the ruins of a shelled apartment building with Mikla, I turn two Serb artillary officers way up the mountain into pink mist with one shot. Lucky angle, lucky hit.

“Perfect,” I hear. I turn, there’s Westley, big binoculars to his eyes. No idea how he knew where we’d be that day, or how he got into the room without me or Mikla noticing. “Call it a day, Luther,” he says. “Come with me.”

Westley’s concerned with his Russian guys; calls it a Cold War reflex of his, never trusting Russians. He says he knows I’m tight with them, asks me to keep him informed about what they’re up to, especially if they’re straying beyond the rules of engagement he’s set up. Which seems weird to me, because those rules are loose as rubber bands. But I do what he wants—whenever he appears, since I can never find him.

Then, a few months later, something so weird happens I still can’t be sure it wasn’t a hallucination. The top Russian—a guy called Vassily who did three straight years in Afghanistan—wants to take his Bosnians on a silent raid of a Serb outpost that’s been giving us some mortar trouble. Invites me along.

A moonless night, but clear skies, stars like diamonds on black velvet. Vassily, two other Russians, a dozen Muslims, and me are all wearing white parkas and over-pants. We’ve got MP5s and shorty AK-74s, but Vassily’s
orders are that they are not to be used unless we’re counterattacked from another position. We’ll hit our target like ghosts, using knives, sharpened trench shovels, those short, heavy, brutally hooked Spetsnaz machetes. Takes us two hours to make the thousand-yard crawl through dry, powdery snow from our start point up to the Serb mortar post. We’re up against their sandbags, unseen and unheard, when Vassily hand-signals a stop. I can hear a couple of Serb sentries cursing the cold, smell the pungent smoke of their cigarettes. The clock’s ticking quarter-speed, it seems. Then Vassily hand-signals and we’re over and into the trench almost as one man. No screams, no shouts. Just the thunk of shovel blades splitting skulls, the wet hiss of knives plunging up under rib cages and spitting hearts, the soft crunch of steel cutting through thoraxes. It’s mainly a visual blur, a white blizzard covering green-uniformed Serbs. I slash the throat of a huge Serb with my K-bar Warthog, then power-cut from sternum to navel. Turn, see Vassily decapitate a Serb with a powerful backhand sweep of his Spetsnaz machete. Turn again, and freeze.

There’s Westley, leaning over the sandbag parapet. Apparently unarmed, or at least not using anything. Just looking down, scanning as we clean the trench. His eyes seem to stop on me, hold for a second or two, then sweep on.

It’s finished in two, maybe three minutes. At least thirty Serbs dead, inch-thick blood on the trench floor looking black in the starlight, streaks of it black on our white snowsuits. Vassily hand-signals, we’re out of there, sliding down the snowy slope fast as we can, like human luges. I try to spot Westley, can’t find him anywhere. And he isn’t there when we all regroup at the start line.

Three nights later, Vassily and I are getting drunk in a
café when Westley appears at our table. He doesn’t join us for a drink. He simply says, “I understand your unit sent a lot of Serbs to Allah with cold steel recently. Nice. Well executed.” Then he leaves.

Vassily empties his glass, looks at me. “Him, I saw there too, little brother. Watching us,” he says. “But I don’t let myself believe it.”

“Scribble, scribble, scribble.” That’s my wake-up next morning, though I’m not really asleep, but still pondering if it was really me who did and felt what some madman did and felt in Sarajevo. No knock, no hello. Allison just walks right over, puts an inch-thick stack of—what?—postcards on my night table, then heads back to the door. Her ponytail swings as she swivels her head toward me.

“Westley wants all those addressed to your friend Annie in Baltimore. Says you’ll be able to figure out plausible dates for each place. The road trip story you told Westley you fed your friends, remember? They’ll get mailed from each place on the right dates. He also requests you try for something a bit more personal than the usual ‘wish you were here.’ Throw in at least a couple of credible details, but don’t overdo it, sentiment-wise.

“Oh, one more thing. Your checkbook and some forms will be on your desk later. You’ve got to set up automatic withdrawls to cover your monthly condo maintenance payments, utility bills, car loan, all that. But let’s run first.”

We do twenty laps around the Circle. Allison doesn’t pace me backward this time. But I’m breathing a hell of a lot harder than she is at the end. Back at the house, she goes to her room, I go to mine. By the time I’m finished showering, my heart rate is back to normal. It’s scary how long that took. Age? Or is my physical condition poorer than I ever imagined?

I slip into my cargoes, pull on a black Oriole T, head downstairs, needing caffeine bad. Follow my nose to the kitchen, which turns out to be just below that rear dining room. Allison’s not there, but I get grins from Rob and Terry—until I pour myself a mug of coffee and, ignoring the array of muffins, croissants, two kinds of granola, and a bowl of oranges, light a Camel.

“That is so unhealthy, man,” Terry says, his spoonful of granola halting midway between the bowl and his mouth.

“Yeah. No wonder Allison waxes you when you run,” Rob says. “And she only runs when she has to. Once a month, usually.”

I add cream and sugar to my coffee, take a long drag and a big sip. Not bad; probably Panama La Fiorentina. “Patches don’t work. Tried nicotine inhalers, till I realized I was overdosing.”

“How did that become apparent?” Rob asks.

“Started noticing I was only putting seven out of ten rounds into the X-ring at twenty-five meters, instead of all ten. Shakey hand, Rob. You know?”

“Could have been all that caffeine.”

“Oh no. Had the caffeine level taped. Same way I learned how many army-issue stay-awakes I could safely down on missions without bringing on the jitters. Only variable was the puffer.”

“All that stuff will kill you. You’re committing suicide. Glad I’m not addicted to anything,” Terry says, rising from the table and putting his half-finished bowl of granola into the stainless-steel sink.

“You are, man,” I say.

“To what?”

“Endorphins. Why the hell else do you feel so shitty when you don’t get your full daily workout?” Just guess
ing here, but an educated one. “Because you didn’t get your endo high.”

“Gotcha, Terry,” Rob says, chuckling. He looks at me. “Allison calls it NoExS, days Terry misses. His version of PMS. He gets kind of cranky.”

Terry shrugs, leaves the kitchen, no doubt headed for wherever it is he mostly lurks during his shift. I finish the Camel and my coffee, go for seconds on both.

“So, Luther. Busy day for you. Allison’s arranged lots of surprises.

“Already got one.”

“I hate writing postcards, myself. But your day is definitely going to get better.”

“What about yours? Looking forward to it, are you?”

“Frankly, no,” Rob says. “First part, anyway. I have to drive to Langley, put in some quality face time with a few people. People who actually like meetings, and feel depressed if there aren’t at least three long ones on their daily agenda. I get depressed if there’s any at all.”

“Comes with being on staff. With any agency.”

“That it does, Luther. The price we pay for the good stuff.”

“And that would be?”

“Oh, this and that. Closer to your field of endeavor than you might have imagined. Anyway, gotta go. Langley calls. Maybe catch you at dinner.”

Rob gone, I pour a third mug of coffee, take it up to my room, spread Allison’s little present over my desk. It’s like a photo map of the route I told Annie and everyone else at my suspension party I’d be taking. First stop Biloxi and the Redneck Riviera, where I might have run into college girls getting some last beach time before the fall semester started. Then New Orleans, Galveston, Padre Island, and into Mexico: Tampico, Vera Cruz,
Mérida, the Yucatán coast. Finally Belize. She’s included a tourist brochure for each place, from which I’m supposed to crib those one or two authentic details.

Big help. I can estimate drive time, and how long I might stay in a particular place, so dates are no problem. I date them all. But after “Hey, Annie” on the very first, my pen—one of several different ballpoints and roller-balls, since I can be expected to lose pens—just hovers in the air. I’ve never written to Annie. Never written much of anything to anyone, anytime or anywhere.

I’m stuck. I stay stuck. Not a word down, when Allison comes in what has to be hours later, looks over my shoulder.

“That’s pathetic,” she says. “Postcards, Luther! Not an essay for
Foreign Affairs
, or an op-ed piece for the
New York Times
. Come on.”

“Been trying.”

“Not hard enough, that’s clear. I can’t believe this. It’s more than pathetic. I mean, you’re fine in conversation, you’re smooth enough, sometimes funny. Even witty.”

“Talking’s different.”

“No, it isn’t.” She sighs, picks up the Biloxi card, holds the photo side in front of my face. “You’ve been here. You want to amuse me, make me smile, also maybe impress me a little with your cynical acuity. So you say, ‘Hey, Allison, what a waste of perfectly good sand. College brats with daddy-bought BMW convertibles staying in sleazy motels side by side with seriously overfed families with vans. All of them chugging beer and shoveling down tons of barbecue. Soundtrack to this movie’s by Dwight Yoakam, about twenty decibels above the threshold of permanent hearing loss. Dominant skin color, lobster red. Most memorable scene: beautiful blonde (Ole Miss cheerleader for sure) cross-eyed drunk and puking repeatedly on the leather seat of a new
Boxster.’ I’m grinning, despite the clichés. So will Annie, right?”

“Probably. Sounds close enough to my idiom.”

“So talk your way through the rest of these.” Allison sweeps her hand over the card layout. “Pronto. Lunch at twelve hundred hours, then a pretty crowded afternoon for you.”

I copy down as much as I can remember of Allison’s words on the Biloxi card, find myself unstuck, and actually have a little fun with most of the rest. Akumal’s a snag. It’s the one place I’ve actually been—with Helen. We spent a very sweet couple of days there. I drift into intimate memories, savor them more deeply than I should. Lose all sense of how I might “talk” to Annie about the place, since I’m half-wishing all that sweetness had been shared with her—or, semi-guilty thought, with Nadya—and not Helen. In the end, I have to go strictly flora and fauna: the iguana, looking like a minature dinosaur but chomping down brilliantly red hibiscus flowers I fed him, the sea life—parrot fish, grenadiers in tight formation, the dark wings of angelfish, the missile rush of silver barracuda after prey, all in a jungle of staghorn, fan, and brain coral. Floating for hours over it all, conscious of each regular breath through the snorkle but free of time or care.

Lame, I know, but it’ll have to do. The rest? Easiest to fake is a brief encounter with a machete-wielding mugger in scummy Belize City. Annie won’t like it, but she’ll believe my description of the puzzled look on the mugger’s face when he realizes both his arms suddenly don’t work anymore.