Fanatics

She popped a bit of toast into her mouth.

“There may be… there is. Sort of. An agenda, I mean. But not about Herat.”

“Umm-hmm.”

“At least, not directly.”

“Umm-hmm. You’re beginning to repeat yourself.”

“Mom, just let me talk, okay? You’re making me nervous.”

Mom leaned back in her chair, hooking one arm over the back. “I’m all ears.”

“I think you’re going to like this.”

“No sales pitch, okay? Just spit it out.”

“But first you have to promise to keep what I’m about to tell you secret.”

“Oh, please.”

“Listen,” I tried again, “you’re a reporter-er, journalist. I’ve got information that I know will interest you, but I have to be a whatchamacallit-an unidentified anonymous reliable source.”

“Fine. I promise.”

She wasn’t taking me seriously, but she would in a few minutes if I could lay out my information temptingly and clearly. Gaining confidence as I went along, I described finding the GPS on the shore. I reminded her about the drowned man we had read about in the morning paper a couple of days before. I told her about my visit to the hunt camp or whatever it was. The paintball splatters on the cabin. I fed her the facts without speculating. I knew she’d put it all together in a fraction of the time I had taken. And I kept something back-the two aces up my sleeve.

When I was done, I watched her face. She would have been a good poker player. Her features gave away nothing-another reason she was a killer interviewer. But I was her son. I’d been looking into that face since my cradle days. I paid attention to her eyes.

And I knew I had her.

“Let’s go into my study,” she said.

IV

I GOT THE FULL-BORE professional interview. Mom opened her pad, leaned forward, and fired questions like nails, fixing times, places, facts, with no invitations to guess or suggest hypotheses. She took notes in her personal shorthand, which nobody else could decipher.

“Let’s talk about these men you saw,” she said after we’d exhausted the basics. “You said there were ten.”

“Yup.”

“About ten or exactly ten?”

“Exactly. I counted them.”

“All dressed alike?”

I nodded. “And the clothing seemed, if not new, certainly not well used.”

“And they spoke a language you couldn’t identify. So we can rule out French, German, Italian-most of the European languages. Any others?”

“Latin.”

She almost smiled, but the poker face slipped back into place. “Polish, Ukrainian, Russian?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, let’s leave it at that. Now, don’t take this the wrong way but… skin colour?”

“Dark, but not black. Brownish.”

“All of them?”

“Yup.”

“Age?”

“The leader thirty-ish, or a little under. The others in their early twenties, a couple not even that old.”

“Teenagers. Maybe minors.”

I nodded.

She closed her pad. “Well, this looks like it’s worth a couple of hours’ investigation.”

That wasn’t quite the reaction I was hoping for, but I still had my aces.

“Speaking of Latin…” I began.

Mom nodded, and this time she allowed a smile. “Go on.”

“You’ve heard of quid pro quo?”

“Of course. Something for something. You want something in return.”

“Yup.”

“Let me guess. I turn down the Herat assignment and work on this instead.”

I nodded. “The assignment you haven’t agreed to accept, yet. Or have you?”

Mom shook her head slowly.

“So it’s not like you’re cancelling a commitment.”

“Maybe not, but let’s be realistic. You don’t have much.”

“What I’ve given you is promising, though. Admit it.”

“Yes, it is. But it isn’t enough. It may all come to nothing.”

I reached into my pocket, then placed my cellphone on the desk beside her notepad.

“I have pictures. One of them shows the leader. And you’ll see it’s not a paintball gun hanging around his neck. I checked it out on the net. It’s definitely a machine pistol.”

Her eyes widened, then immediately returned to normal. “But I don’t get the pictures unless I take your deal.”

“You don’t get anything. I clam up.”

Mom looked over my head. A shadow crossed her face.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m trying to decide if this is a dirty trick,” she said sadly.

“It is a dirty trick. And I hate what I’m doing. But I have no choice.”

She threw down her ballpoint and watched it bounce off the desk.

“Mom,” I pleaded. “Listen, will you? This isn’t about Dad and me telling you what to do. He doesn’t even know about this, and I’ll never tell him no matter what you decide. Dad and I know how brave you are, Mom. More than the two of us put together. And we know you’re committed to showing the world what’s going on in the places you go to-especially what’s happening to the women. It’s your vocation. Mine is designing furniture. Dad’s is… well, old stuff. And you and me. If something happened to you, people would admire you. But Dad and I would have to live the rest of our lives in a different world, without you in it.”

She moved her gaze to the kitchen doorway.

“Do you know what I’m afraid of, Mom? I’m terrified that if you go there and get killed, I’ll spend the rest of my life hating you. So, yes, I’m bribing you.”

Slowly I took the cellphone, still in the sealed plastic bag, from my pocket and laid it beside my own. Mom’s eyes fixed on it.

For a few minutes, we sat as if someone had sprinkled fairy dust on us and frozen us in time. Mom thought her thoughts; I prepared myself to make the final pitch.

“See, Mom, I think your confidential source-me-stumbled on some kind of para-military group, or a militia, or whatever it’s called. I think I discovered their training camp. I’ve got a few photos. I’ve got a cellphone here that one of the soldier boys kept hidden from the others. I’ll bet it’s full of phone numbers and email addresses and other stuff that a renowned journalist could easily track down and use to flesh out a story. And you’ve got a whatchamacallit-an exclusive.”

She turned her face toward me. I focused on her eyes. They had softened. She leaned back in her chair, linked her fingers behind her head, and gazed up at the ceiling, puffing her cheeks and letting the air out slowly.

“My own son,” she said.

“Don’t try the guilt thing on me, Mom. I’m too old for that. Besides, Dad’s better at it than you.”