days.”
I stood quietly and looked off across the compound. The wall was too high for me to see the ocean from where we were, but I could smell the salt in the heavy night air. Somewhere not very far away there were lovers cuddling on palm-lined beaches, fishing boats dragging home nets filled with lobsters, children playing tag on scruffy jetties, and seaside shacks filled with tourists drinking at wobbly tables. Somewhere out there, I reminded myself, normal people were still living normal lives.
But that was beyond the wall, out in the world I had left behind. Or that had left
“You’ve really got to face it, Jack.”
Just John’s voice was gentle now. He sounded like a priest trying to talk somebody out of jumping off a bridge.
“You’re on the inside now. You’re one of us.”
All I could do was stand and shake my head. I looked back at Barry Gale’s body lying facedown in the dirt, his arms still handcuffed behind him. The little Colt had left two small, tidy holes in Barry’s left temple. Thin streams of drying blood had run down from each wound and joined together into a single, thicker stream just above Barry’s ear. It was a neat, professional job of extinguishing a man’s life.
“I’m not one of you,” I said after a while. “I’m nothing like you.”
FIFTY TWO
The morning after they shot Barry Gale, I woke well before daybreak and sat out on the balcony at the Phuket Yacht Club watching the ocean turn from black to blue steel as the sky slowly lightened. I ordered a pot of coffee from room service and made a promise to myself that by the time it was all gone I would decide.
A hard little seed of anger had formed inside me overnight. I cherished it. I nursed it. I willed it to grow.
It grew.
And after I finished the last of the coffee, I knew exactly what I was going to do.
I lifted the telephone and made the call I had been mentally rehearsing on and off as I tossed restlessly through the night, struggling with dark dreams that either made no sense, or worse, did.
It took me quite a while to reach the man I wanted to reach, but after I did and I told him enough to get his attention, he said he would leave immediately. Still, it would take him at least a full day to get to Phuket, possibly longer.
After that I walked the beach for an hour wondering if I had done the right thing.
When I got back to the hotel I wandered around until I found a shop and bought some T-shirts and a bathing suit. Around noon I called Anita, but I didn’t tell her much. I said that I’d had to go out of town for a couple of days and that I would explain when I got back. Surely the whole story sounded unbelievably strange to her, but I guess she must have heard something in my voice because she didn’t question me too closely. She only told me to keep safe and left it at that.
Later in the afternoon I put on my running shoes and jogged listlessly on Nai Harn Beach for a half-hour. I was pleased and a little surprised to find that the footing was firm and I began stretching myself, pushing harder and harder until I was up to my usual pace. Almost before I realized it, I had covered several miles and with each crunch of my shoes on the hard-packed sand I became still more certain.
The longer I ran the more my conviction hardened and I ran the beach that afternoon until the blood pounding in my ears was all I could hear and the ache of my legs was all I could feel.
Then I did it all over again the next morning. And I did it once more the next afternoon.
IT WAS MY third morning in Phuket. I finished my run and came back to my room and found him sitting quietly on the floor outside the door. We talked until early afternoon and I told him everything. Then we ordered some sandwiches and coffee from room service and I went over it all again. This time he took notes.
When I was done he started asking long and detailed questions and I answered them all as well as I could. It was almost six that evening before we both finally fell silent.
Tired of talking, we walked out onto the terrace and watched in silence as the sun slid toward the surface of the sea, aiming itself exactly at a gap between two tiny islands that were several miles offshore. Five or ten minutes must have passed without either of us saying another word.
Eventually it was my visitor who broke the silence.
“What made you so sure I didn’t know about all this already, Jack?”
“I wasn’t sure.” I thought about it some more. “You just don’t seem to me to be a guy who would be part of this kind of thing.”
“Too honorable?”
“Not really. Just too smart.”
We let our half-smiles hang in the air for a moment.
“How long have we known each other, Jack?” the man finally asked.
“Oh God, I don’t know. We were roommates our last year at Georgetown, so I guess that makes it… what? Twenty-odd years now?”
The man nodded. “Yeah, about that.”
The sun hid behind a cloud for a moment and the terrace slipped into a gray half-light.
“When I was first appointed White House counsel, I heard from everybody I’d ever met. I had a million best friends. You were probably the only guy I’d ever known who didn’t call me.”
“I was probably the only guy you’d ever known who didn’t want anything from you then.”
“But you do now.”
“Yeah.”
“Then lay it out for me, Jack. Tell me exactly what it is that you
I put it as plainly as I could.
“I want to be absolutely certain the president knows about this. If he does, and it’s what he wants, then there’s not a damned thing I can do about it no matter what I believe. But if he doesn’t know, he ought to, then he can do whatever he thinks he should.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
The bottom rim of the sun touched the ocean at last and we watched silently as the huge red ball slid through the horizon.
“I can tell you right now, Jack, nothing like this came out of the White House. I don’t know who these guys are, but they’re not ours. It sounds to me like somebody at the Pentagon or CIA has gone way over the edge.”
The man shook his head in disgust.
“I really hate goddamned fucking cowboys like that. There are so many good people who care so much, but sometimes…”
He trailed off with a rueful smile.
Just as the sun’s topmost edge plopped out of sight, there was a sudden bright flare. An arc of brilliant emerald green exploded out of the ocean and expanded like a shock wave until it was swallowed up by the darkening sky.
I turned to say something about it and saw that my visitor was holding out his hand.
“I’ve got to leave, Jack, but I can promise you one thing. I will tell the president the whole story tomorrow. You have my word on that.”
We shook and I walked him back inside. We crossed the room through the gathering gloom.
“Oh, hey, I almost forgot,” my visitor suddenly said.
The man picked up his briefcase from where he had left it by the door. He swung it onto the desk and snapped open the catches. Reaching inside he produced a box of cigars and handed it to me.
