“No. Let it be a lesson learned.”
“You’re the one who needs a lesson,” I said. “I could draw out Lucy’s kidnappers if I could get back to London. I know I could.”
“We can’t trust you. Look how you’ve disobeyed instructions.”
“But you said you don’t blame me.”
“You have not been fired, Sam, and your job classification has been reassigned so that you cannot resign without the permission of the Director. You do not have that permission. You’re ours. Do what you’re told and be glad you’re not locked in a cell for the rest of your life. We have been generous to you. Go back to that charming neighborhood bar, smile at people, be glad you’re not sucking cold soup out of a wooden bowl and being beaten every night.”
I shook my head. “I dream about my son,” I said. “Did you have that in your file, Howell? I dream about my wife and my child because I know she’s innocent and I know she and my kid are out there and… you are in my way.” I heard the iron growl in my tone, for the first time in a long time.
He was unimpressed. “You’re in your own way. Go home, Sam. Play nice. I won’t be so forgiving next time. There was a debate in the office about whether to shoot you on sight for attempting to acquire forged documents. Your actions could be those of a desperate man or a guilty man. I argued for desperate and thank God for you I won. But desperation fades. Do this twice, then you’re guilty.”
“You don’t have the balls to arrest me because you need me out here as bait,” I said. “I call your bluff. Stick me back in the cell. I’m not sitting still, Howell.”
“Go home, and we’ll pretend it didn’t happen.”
“That really is your favorite phrase, isn’t it? It didn’t happen. But sticking my head in the sand doesn’t work for me.”
Howell turned and walked away from me, lighting a cigarette as he walked, blowing out an annoyed plume of smoke.
He was wrong. Desperation doesn’t fade. It just gets stronger. I watched him walk away and then I got up and walked in the opposite direction.
I took the bus back to Brooklyn. I didn’t bother to try to shake any shadows. It made the trip much faster. I went to work, listening to Ollie tell me the same stories he’d told me yesterday, drawing lunchtime half-pints of Harp and Budweiser, jetting sodas into glasses, listening to regulars prattle on about their problems with difficult clients or troublesome bosses or wives who just didn’t understand, and when Ollie bitched about not getting full shipments of Glenfiddich-he was a crate short-I thought of an escape from this second prison.
12
August was sitting on the stoop at my apartment building when I got home.
“I’m in trouble,” I said. “Are you?” I sounded like a fifth grader caught skipping school.
He looked out onto the street like he was back home surveying the windswept plains. “From what I heard, it didn’t happen.”
“Howell is, if nothing else, consistent.”
“I think you’re lucky you’re not dead. You owe Howell big-time.”
“I am never going to be in that man’s debt.”
“Plus, I didn’t know what you were up to,” he said with a shrug. “Can I have a beer?”
“You could have gotten a beer at the bar.”
“I’m tired of hearing Ollie’s opinions,” August said.
“Sure.” We walked up to my apartment. It was bare, furnished only with the secondhand stuff the Company had bought before I moved in. I opened the fridge and handed him a cold Heineken.
“You can’t run, Sam,” he said, popping the little keg-shaped can.
“You should have told me that this morning,” I said.
“Your stunt set off a wildfire here. Some people wanted you put back into jail. Others took it as a clear sign that you were dirty. Howell fought for you. I thought you should know. You have one other friend than me, and that’s Howell.”
“What is Novem Soles? Howell asked me about it. It connects to Lucy somehow and the London bombing.”
“Never heard of it. And you shouldn’t be asking questions. Not today, when you’re lucky to be out of a noose.”
“Maybe this is the group that has her. I want you to see what you can find about it. Please.”
“You know I can’t share any classified stuff with you.”
“Then why are you here, August? A free beer?”
His cheeks reddened. “I am here to give you a warning,” he said. “You’re a horrible embarrassment, Sam. The cover-up that was involved in London to keep from the press that it was a CIA front that was bombed was enormous. Nearly two dozen people dead; we’re lucky it wasn’t worse. The British are furious and they’d just as soon kill you if you set foot back on their soil. And for the few that think you might be telling the truth, no one’s taking a bullet for you. I’m telling you, watch your back. Higher-ups who normally get their way have argued for you to be terminated. A hungry soul’s bound to pick up on the sentiment and will figure they might get a promotion if you conveniently disappear or die, Howell using you as bait and Howell’s defense of you be damned.”
“Has the order been issued?”
“It won’t be an order. Nothing written. Just a wish made and a wish granted. Like King Henry talking about Thomas Becket: ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ ” He finished his beer. “Watch your back, turbulent.”
“I’ll be fine.”
He pulled two phones out of his pocket, handed one to me. “Here. Only you have this number. If someone comes after you-call me. I’ll help you.”
My only friend. I didn’t want him to see the heavy swallow in my throat. “Thank you, August.”
I watched him leave, and then I went to bed. I think best in bed. I cleared my mind by paging through the thick bar book Ollie had loaned me. Every success in life was like a cocktail: a careful blending of elements in exact proportions, done in correct order.
I put the bar book down and I lay watching the ceiling, hatching a plan.
13
I awoke to the barest sound. I didn’t move. It was a footstep and then the slightest click of a door closing.
I was bait, and someone was hooked.
I could lay still. I could get up and see who it was. I could wait for one of Howell’s rookies to crash in the door and save my ass. But Howell, for all his warm words to me, didn’t need me alive after the bait was taken. If this was someone from the scarred man, he could dispatch me and the watchers could catch him later. I wasn’t sure the shadows were even listening to me since I’d tossed them their bugs.
Or maybe it was someone like August had said, ridding the Company of their great embarrassment.
I listened for the next footfall. Didn’t hear it. I got up from the bed with enormous care, scooted the pillow where I should be, moved on cat feet to the corner of the room behind the door.
I heard nothing else. Maybe I had dreamed the footfall. I stood in the darkness and a crazy thought wormed its way into my head: It’s Lucy, come home, finally she’s gotten away and she’s found me. It was lunacy to think it, but I did.
The air conditioner kicked on. The soft, somnolent hum masked the intruder’s movements. I had no weapons. Nothing. I waited.
