The Prisoner's Wife (12 page)

“Threat comes from where the veep wants threat to come from. Right now, he wants it coming from places where there's oil. He's an oilman. Our job's proving Iraq has WMDs.”

“Problem,” Bobby said. “Since it doesn't.”

“For Christ's sake,” Shawn said. “We all know Israel's the only place in the Middle East with significant WMD capability. I mean, what are we talking here? Hundred fifty nukes underneath Dimona? More?”

“Now, now, boys,” said Calvin gently, “something else we all know—Israeli nukes don't exist. Or if, hypothetically, they do exist, they sure as shit don't count. Message is, focus on Iraq. Prove it has WMDs.”

“Whether it does or not?”

“Whether it does or not,” Calvin said. “Pakistan—we keep that low-key. I'll tell you what we do. We kidnap this Dr. Khan. Run him through enhanced interrogation. Put him under pressure. See what he says.”

“Kidnap how?” Bobby asked.

“How hard can it be? If you're right, the guy flies around the world, selling off nuke blueprints. We pick him up when he's changing planes, Schipol, de Gaulle, Dubai, Heathrow, wherever. We render him some place has no connections. Someplace poor and mean. Poland.”

At the time Calvin said this, his group—what had been Shawn's and was now Calvin's group—met in a corner office chosen not for its view of the World Trade Center but because the air-conditioning seemed to work better there than it did in other parts of the building. Even so, the heat and humidity of a Manhattan summer were hard to bear. Only Carly, slim and chic, stayed cool. Bobby—who was at a low point with his weight problem—looked like he might not make it through the afternoon. Looking that way was particularly tough on him since he had particular reasons to look relaxed. Though he was twenty years older, Bobby was planning to ask Carly out on a date. He wanted to catch her before some other agent did. Unfortunately, the thought of asking was making Bobby nervous and physically uncomfortable. He sweated more than usual.

It fell to Shawn to point out problems with Calvin's kidnap plan. “First off,” he said, “you may not know this, Calvin, but Dr. Khan is Pakistan's local hero. They feel about him the way some of us feel about George W. Protector of the nation kind of thing. Nashida Noon tells Khan—this is before the president sacks her—she tells Khan, let me know whatever you need, you've got it. So Dr. A. Q. isn't flying anyplace on scheduled airlines. He won't change planes at airports, like where the rest of us change planes. He wants to go someplace, he calls the intelligence guys. ISI. Inter-Services. Our friends in AfPak.”

“Don't treat me like I'm an ignorant person,” Calvin said.

Shawn stopped himself from saying what he thought of saying.

“Okay. So, here's what we have. Dr. Khan wants out, he makes a request—ISI provides a military plane. Most times, what I hear, that plane is full of army. Highly trained personnel. My guess, we'd need a squad of SEALs to get Khan off of a flight. We're basically talking Entebbe.”

Calvin said, “Maguire, could you step outside a minute? I want a word.”

Standing outside the corner office, Calvin lowered his voice. “Don't do that again. Do you get me, Maguire? You follow? Just don't do that again.”

Shawn, not understanding, spread his hands. Do what?

“Don't contradict me in front of other people,” Calvin said. “Not if you want to stay in this job.” He came closer, until he was touching Shawn. His hands, his arms, were trembling. “Here's the thing. If I don't say it, someone will. Rockford asked me recently. He said, Calvin, be honest. Let me know what you think of Shawn Maguire.”

In the heat of the afternoon, Shawn felt suddenly chilled, as if, in hermetically sealed Tower Seven, a sharp north wind were blowing. Through the glass door of the corner office, he could see Bobby Walters trying pre-pickup lines on the attentive new assistant.

“I asked him,” Calvin said, “I asked Rockford, do you mean what do I think of Maguire as a person or as an agent? He told me, start with, how's the guy as an agent?”

Shawn wasn't sure he wanted to know what came next.

“So you said?”

“I was honest,” Calvin said. “I told him what I thought. I said, I like the man. He was my first mentor. I said, believe me, I have feeling for Maguire, but you want my opinion, as an agent—as an agent, he is over the hill.”

Later that same day, Shawn began searching for a dignified way to leave the Agency, before the Agency left him.

*   *   *

Flying back from Chastleforth to West Sussex, the Apache pilot checked his bearings for Felbourne. He circled over the church of St. Perpetua. Shawn, looking down, saw a churchyard sapling bow low in the chopper's breathing wake.

“Real nice place you have here, sir,” said the pilot. “You want back on the sheep field?”

“Sure,” Shawn said. “Take care flying home.”

“No problem,” the pilot said, landing. “Believe me, they take real good care of the veep. Clear skies over Chastleforth.”

Danielle was waiting at the field's gate. Machine winds fanned hair around her face. Watching the Apache lift off, she said, “You must be more important than I thought.”

“Don't believe it,” Shawn said. “What happened, I got demoted one rung further down. On a goddamn watch list.”

She hooked her arm in his. Not counting last night, it was the second time she'd touched him. Together, they walked back toward the house.

“Now,” she said, “you seem a little sad. Because of what has happened where you went?”

Shawn shook his head. “Uh-uh. I was thinking, if I'd met you when I was younger, you wouldn't have been married.”

She was quiet a while, considering.

“You, though,” she said, “a man with four marriages? You would have been.”

 

15

WEST SUSSEX, 24 MAY 2004

Later that day, Shawn called London and spoke about Danielle to Ashley Caburn. By the time he was off the phone, Danielle had disappeared. Trying to find her, Shawn passed Kylie, the gamekeeper's orphaned daughter. Dressed in hand-me-downs, barelegged on a dry-stone wall, she watched Shawn's surviving doves. She reminded him of his daughter, Juanita.

At that age, Juanita had been a thin and anxious child who stayed in touching distance of her father—sensing perhaps that he'd someday leave home for good. As Shawn did. Years later, older and sadder, he tried everything he knew to restore that closeness, but that was a clock he could never wind back. Not now, not with his God-haunted daughter, now a novitiate in some West Coast ashram.

Down the village lane, someone had parked a late-model blue Chrysler. As he passed, Shawn glanced in at the backseat. Turning, he asked Kylie if she'd seen the car's driver. Or a lady with long dark hair.

Without shifting her gaze from the doves, the girl nodded. “She's nice, that lady. Picked me up. Didn't mind I'm dirty. Gave me a kiss. Went down there.” Kylie pointed toward the Grange. Moments later, she asked, still without turning her head, “She's pretty. You going to marry her?”

Shawn guessed Kylie had heard from her mother that he was now a single man. “I doubt it,” he said. “I don't think she'd marry me.”

“Yeah, well,” said Kylie, watching the birds, “you're so old.”

“Thanks for that, kid,” Shawn said. “I need reminding.”

He waved to Justin Hallam Fox, walking slowly up the lane swinging at nettles with a blackthorn stick. Sir Justin gestured toward Shawn. “Your popsy,” he said. “Saw her this morning—on the hills, running. Damn silly sport.”

As the old man shuffled on, Shawn entered the churchyard. For him, unbeliever that he was, this was a numinous place that drew him back. Even the trees, some of them, were centuries old. If this were Virginia, there'd be bus tours. Here, it was himself and Sir Justin Hallam Fox.

In their years of marriage, Shawn had never known what Martha believed. Over the time they'd lived in the hamlet, she'd crossed the lane to the church every Sunday, but what she worshipped Shawn never discovered and—he regretted it now—had never asked.

Skeptic though he was, Shawn first dated Martha after a church service in Turkey Forge. He was sixteen then, Martha a year younger. The pastor was the Reverend Jim Bob Newman. When God first called, Jimbo borrowed money from his brother Wade, who ran a low-rent gun-and-pawn-and-bait store on the road between Sugden and Shoat. With Wade's cash, Jimbo purchased a certificate of ministry from a Christian college in Tuscaloosa. Word of his sermonizing spread across the county: Foretelling the Rapture, denouncing the sins of President Johnson, Jimbo drew crowds from the pinewoods.

The other thing that made the preacher famous was the big hog. This wasn't just any big hog: It was the legendary Biggest Damn Hog in Alabama, a mythical monster, rarely seen, roaming pine plantations on the outskirts of Shoat.

Pastor Jim tracked that old beast for a year, until he pinned it down in pinewoods south of Sugden. When he saw the creature, Pastor said, he near to died of fright, Lord help us, the hog was that damn big. Jimbo stood dead still among the pines, staring at the thing, paralyzed, while the hog came, shaking the earth, heading right toward him. What saved the reverend was the fact that he had an illegal M-16 assault rifle, bought from brother Wade. Jimbo had the weapon on automatic but, the way he told it, that pig was near atop of him, more lead than meat, before the storm of shells took its legs out from under.

Sixteen-year-old Shawn traveled down through the pinewoods to see the body of the beast, before it could be moved on a low-loader or carved up for sausage. On the forest floor, he recalled, it was bigger than you'd believe. Not so big as a bus—the way early reports had claimed—but easy the size, he thought, of a recreational vehicle, if you could imagine an RV made all out of wild and hairy pork.

They never did get that hog on a truck scale, but the best guess at its weight was nine hundred pounds, plus change. Biggest hog ever, at least in the Deep South.

Another thing that was odd: Full of metal, breathing its last, the beast spoke to Pastor Newman. God, he said, spoke through the mouth of that hog. None but Jimbo heard it—it was just him and the pig there, after all—but the preacher swore blind that the creature gave voice, in tones like his mother's, only deeper.

The hog's last words were what brought Shawn to church; it was how he got his date with Martha. In the First Church of Christ Betrayed he heard the reverend reveal what exactly the hog had said, which, it turned out, was a brief injunction: “Love is all you need.”

Like the Beatles, pretty much.

When the service ended, Shawn asked Martha out for vanilla Cokes at the Battle Flag.

“Yes,” she said.

Shawn was confused. “Yes, what?”

“Didn't you just ask me out?” Shawn nodded. “Well,” said Martha, “it was yes to that.”

*   *   *

A breeze blew through Felbourne, carrying faint wind-borne scents of coffee. Looking around, Shawn saw Danielle. She'd appeared out of nowhere: standing motionless now by the oak door of the church, watching him. He came toward her, through seed-headed grass and sycamore leaves.

“I read the inscription,” she said. “I'm sorry. What time of year did she die?”

“Martha? End of summer. Sixteen months back.”

She nodded, silent. Shawn wished she hadn't found him here, by his wife's grave. It made him seem older, sadder, than he wished to be.

“Come on in. Coffee time.”

Danielle hesitated, watching him, then nodded. The smell of coffee was stronger now. There was no other house nearby; Shawn couldn't imagine where it came from. He let Danielle go ahead, across the lane, through the kitchen door. He heard her gasp.

“Who—?” Her question hung in the air.

In the kitchen—an L-shaped room—the washing machine still beeped. Miss Mop was in her cat basket, hissing, watching the visitors, fur fluffed up. Danielle picked up the cat and cuddled her.

A man Shawn knew was bending over his coffee machine. A man he didn't know was seated at his refectory table, tipped back in a bentwood chair.

“Calvin McCord,” Shawn said. “All these visits I'm getting. Bobby Walters. Now you.”

Calvin wore a suit of cerulean blue. He looked older than when he'd worked with Shawn, in the NukePro group, in Manhattan. He'd shaved his Zapata mustache; his hair was thin enough now to show the scalp beneath. When the espresso machine was adjusted to his satisfaction, he turned his attention back to Shawn.

“Tell me,” he said, “what were you thinking? I mean, do you normally leave your door wide open? Any passing badass walks right on in?”

“Like you did.”

“Correct,” said Calvin. “Except, lucky for you, I'm not a badass.” He pointed. “Laptop lying right there on the counter.”

Considering his laptop, Shawn saw someone had unlocked the case while he was out. He could guess what they were looking for.

“This evil dude steps in,” said Calvin, “this hypothetical scamp—collects that piece of gear, walks on out—tell me,” he said to the man in the bentwood chair, “how many dollars we have to the pound these days?”

The man in the bentwood chair, olive skinned, wore a khaki shirt and matching cotton trousers. “Two bucks,” he said, “plus change. You're in hock to China.”

“Okay,” Calvin said to Shawn, “let's just say the guy that's got your stuff, he's up four thousand. Profitable couple of minutes. How would you feel about that?”

“Ask me something else,” Shawn said. “Ask me how I feel about getting visits from guys I don't want to see. Bobby Walters I don't mind too much. You, I do. Plus your friend there.”

“Apologies,” Calvin said. “I should have introduced you. This is Hassan Tarkani. I believe he's about to take his feet off your table. Thank you. Hassan, meet Shawn Maguire. Colleague of mine.” He considered Danielle. “We don't, either of us, we don't know this lady.”