“Langley? That’s CIA, right?” Kate said. “It’s always in the movies.”
Max nodded. “This whole thing’s tied up with the CIA somehow. But nobody’s flying from Herndon to Langley-it’s ten miles.”
“What was weird was, he was doing security and they didn’t give him the details. All he knew was, it’s soon-”
“Tomorrow-”
“-they told him to bring his passport and warm weather clothes for a week. And they told him, This is the big shot. We won’t get another chance like this for years.”
“A chance for what? Did they tell him that?”
“To kill hope. That’s what they said, to kill hope everywhere.”
“That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Tauber said. “If they kill hope, what’s Avery got to offer ‘em?”
The room went silent for awhile. Then I heard myself speaking. “What he’s offering is a fix,” I said. They all turned to look at me and damned if I had any idea what I wanted to say but that didn’t stop the words from coming.
“My outfit had a local guy, a translator, in Najaf. He was real useful when we first got there and everybody was friendly. Six months later, everybody-Sunnis, Shiites-started targeting his family because he was helping the Americans. We had to smuggle them all to Jordan. He applied for a visa to the States and our CO promised to help him get it.
“And then word filtered down that they-whoever ‘they’ were-weren’t processing visas, not fast, and then not ever. Which didn’t stop him from showing up in my quarters every couple days, bugging me about it. ‘Are they helping me? We getting a visa?’ What was I supposed to say? ‘It’s America,’ I told him. ‘They’ll do the right thing.’ After the fourth or fifth time, no way either of us believed it.
“But it ate at me. Why didn’t he go to the CO? Why me? The answer is, because I’m not tough-never been. He came to me because I’d tell him what he wanted to hear. I gave him his fix, his hope for the week. I felt like a pusher, too. Who made me a spokesman for America?”
I could feel the memory burning inside, like it had just happened, like it was happening right now. My fists and teeth were clenched tight. “That’s what Avery’s doing-offering everybody their fix.”
We filtered around for a while, aimless, each of us wandering around the room, uncertain of the next step.
“It makes sense,” Max finally said. “It’s what Avery told us-supply and demand. If they kill hope, he’s got this huge organization designed to offer it-for a price.”
“And it’s so much safer sellin’ measured portions to them that can afford it,” Tauber said. “Real hope’s messy. Unruly. Bad business.”
“But what does the CIA have to do with it?” Kate asked.
“Five minutes talkin’ to them’ll kill any hope ya got left,” Tauber cracked and we all smiled. But the joke didn’t get us any closer to an answer.
The TV was in front of me; I wasn’t thinking of escape or boredom. I wasn’t interested in what was on. If there’s a TV in front of me, I pick up the remote and turn up the sound. Thirty seconds later, I change the channel. It’s what I do. It’s the way I survived Iraq and a year in the middle of a swamp and probably my childhood. So now I did it again, just out of habit.
“Preparations continued for tomorrow’s G8 Summit in Rome,” the announcer droned, trying to sound important if not exciting. “Demonstrations were held on four continents today in support of Indian Premier Aryana Singh’s proposal for worldwide nuclear disarmament. Rome police are out in force, covering the major squares and thoroughfares to keep the demonstrations from spiraling into unruliness.”
“There, ya see?” Tauber cracked. “Unruliness! Them bastards have hope!”
“Tomorrow’s arrivals of foreign dignitaries have been moved to Rome’s Ciampino Airport, a rigidly-secured military facility. Authorities have assured foreign governments that…”
My eyes must have gone huge. Kate saw it from across the room. “What?” she demanded.
“We’ve got it all wrong,” I said and Max slapped his forehead across the room, reading me.
“Got what wrong?”
“Everything. CIA!”
“They’re behind it?” Tauber barked. “Against it?”
“Neither. It’s not the CIA. It’s just CIA-the airport is CIA!” I ran to Kate’s computer and punched up Google. “I flew into Ciampino once on leave. The airport code-the three letter ID on your luggage?” I waited a second for the information to display. “Ciampino is CIA.”
“And IAD?”
I scanned down the list. “Dulles.”
“They’re flying to Rome tomorrow,” Tauber said. “From Dulles to the G8.”
“To kill hope,” Kate murmured, staring at the TV, where Singh was addressing a raucous crowd from a balcony in New Delhi.
“We seek a new world,” her voice echoed across the square. “In our lifetime, we have seen walls dissolve between East and West. Now it is time to continue that work, to push down the walls of fear between us, to keep pushing until no more walls are left. This is a long road but, as the philosopher says, every journey must begin with a first step.”
The crowd cheered.
“Them bastards have hope,” Max repeated quietly. “We’re going to need passports.”
Twelve
We left for New York around two in the morning. Kate had locked herself in her room for a couple of hours, the sound of her crying surfacing every once in a while, whenever she lifted her face out of the pillow. Max went out in the afternoon, saying he was ‘going hunting,’ whatever that meant-he returned twenty minutes later, talked to Tauber a minute and went right out again. When Kate finally emerged, eyes bloodshot and suspended between collapse and explosion, Tauber quietly said, “If we’re boardin’ an international flight with no suitcases, they’ll have us in the interrogation room in about half a second.” When Kate looked up, he waved a stack of fifties in her face- apparently Max had done another bank run.
She dragged us out shopping and spent the evening expertly packing suitcases in the living room, refusing to let any of us help. But when Max finally returned at 11 with Chinese and said we’d soon be ready to go, she boiled over.
“I’m totally unreliable. I’ll be a danger to you all. I don’t know what I’m doing till I’ve done it. And I won’t be any good in a fight. There are things I’m not willing to do, even to my enemies.”
“Breaking every bone in their bodies should get us through most situations,” Max answered drily and Kate surprised herself by breaking into laughter.
“That’s very reassuring,” she said.
Tauber returned from down the block with a very lived-in hearse.
“This won’t attract attention?”
“They’ll notice ya but nobody’s gonna stop ya,” he smirked.
“Here’s your passports,” Max announced, handing each of us a packet of several. “Use the American ones for now.”
“Keep no more’n one on ya at a time,” Tauber cautioned. “The rest go in yer suitcase. Invent a good backstory for yourself, a history. Nothin’ fancy, just simple so we can all remember.”
The little blue books looked very realistic-mine had several pages of dog-eared destination stamps.
“Are these for real?” Kate asked.
“The guy who made them is the CIA’s guy in Philadelphia,” Max explained. “He has the real machines.”
“So they’re real.”
“No. The serial numbers come from dead people whose passports haven’t expired and a couple of variations in the holograms make them forgeries. So they’re just wrong enough that the government can deny us.” He smiled.
