rushed at Walter, her high-pitched scream barely audible through her tears. She lunged at him, grabbing his shirt and tearing the top button off. Walter shot her and she fell to the ground. The younger woman, undoubtedly the children’s mother, drew her children to her. They held tightly to her side and she laid a hand on the head of each. All three were weeping. Walter stood there, looking at them, unsure what to do next. The shots he fired gave him away, and he could hear the villagers behind him. He had to go quickly. They would catch up to him in less than a minute. Which direction should he go? This way? That way? Whichever way he chose, this mother and her children would tell the others. He pushed them into the hut. They disappeared in the darkness, but he heard them. He heard the children crying and the mother trying to calm her babies. It may have been a strange language, but Walter knew she was comforting them, telling them, “It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright.” He tossed the grenade into the hut and began running. The explosion was the most violent thing he had ever heard, much louder than its actual sound. It was the sound of a mother and her children being attacked by millions of tiny pieces of sharp metal, a shower of death. He did not stop and he did not turn around. He navigated the rice paddies and made it into the jungle on the other side. The search for him was relentless. He evaded soldiers and villagers day after day, hiding in empty caves, climbing trees, taking cover in leafy swamps. He ate insects when his meager rations were used up. Three times he stole food, again picking on the most remote hut farthest from its village. The first of these huts was empty and he walked off with enough to eat for almost a week. The other two times he killed the occupants and took their food. Once he sneaked up behind a teenage boy who had lost his right leg at the knee. He cut his throat. The last time he beat an old man and his wife to death with the butt of his rifle. He needed to eat to live. On the twentieth day since being lowered into the high grass on a rope, he spotted a patrol of American soldiers. He didn’t have the slightest idea where he was, but he knew he had made it back safely. The odor from his backpack sickened the soldiers who rescued him, but he refused to take it off until he could deliver its contents to Headquarters. Walter’s report described everything that happened to him, down to the smallest detail. It made difficult reading for some. There were others who found it thrilling. All those who read it looked at Walter Sherman with a mixture of awe and fear. And there were the rumors. In time, Walter heard them all. He never believed them, but could not totally dismiss them. He’d been gone three weeks. In Vietnam that’s as good as forever. Had officers at Headquarters really placed bets on whether or not he would return? Had members of his own unit done the same? After the first week, had some demanded payment? When the Colonel smiled and promoted him to sergeant, was he counting his money?
New York
Maloney tried to ease things. He was an expert at that. In moments of self-doubt he often feared he was an expert at only that. Once more he saw a need to apply his gifts. Walter was still standing in front of the door to the suite. “Na Trang!” had stopped him in his tracks, but he had not yet turned to face the little man who knew more about him than he dreamed possible in his worst nightmare. Tom Maloney walked over to the bar and poured a Diet Coke. He approached Walter with it. “Take it,” he said, his voice and demeanor very much the opposite of Stein- Stein the jackal, Stein the screecher, Stein the sonofabitch. “Go ahead,” he said, handing the glass to Walter. He put his other hand on Walter’s shoulder and guided him to the couch across the room, nearest the doors leading to the patio. He motioned for Walter to sit.
“A man’s history,” he said, taking a seat himself, “it’s never a complete mystery. It’s always there waiting to be unearthed, discovered, brought into the light of day by those whose interest is served by disclosure. You should know that as well as anyone. You’ve been a historian of men for many years, haven’t you? Of course you have. And a brilliant one at that. Who else could have identified Leonard Martin and then found him? Leonard Martin, the most hunted man in America-perhaps in the entire world-and who else could have done that? No one, that’s who. You are a historian, but you’re fallible, Walter. You’re just a man. You have your limitations, like all men. We do too. But we have resources to overcome those limitations. Resources you cannot imagine. You think we live in a world where we think we know things others don’t? No. You’re wrong.” Maloney’s eyes motioned Stein out of the room, or at least out of Walter’s sight. “We know we live in that world. That world belongs to us.” Maloney left Walter sitting there and moved to a chair in the middle of the room. Nathan Stein sat off to the side and behind Walter. He said nothing. Maloney was on a roll, and Nathan recognized it as he had so many times before. Finally, Walter sipped his Diet Coke. That single, simple act worked to return the color to his cheeks and bring his respiration back to normal. He looked up into Tom Maloney’s angelic, Catholic face.
Maloney said, “Your past is safe with us. And your future too. You’re ‘the Locator,’ and you’ve created a life in which you cannot be located. We’ve been over that, haven’t we? We’ve no wish to disturb that delicate balance, unmask you before official agencies that are unaware of your existence, open your secret sores before your wife- ex-wife-your daughter, your grandsons. No one wants that. When this is over you go back to St. John, back to your past, back to your privacy. And you do so a rich man. Do you follow me here?”
“I do,” said Walter. “Sister, how do I make out the check?” It pounded in his head.
“Precisely.”
“But I don’t do that any-”
“Walter, Walter, Walter.” Maloney was on his feet, his voice louder than before, his tone harsher. His puffy Irish face reddened. He threw his hands and arms wide apart and said, “Who among us would not change the past if we could? You? Me? Nathan? Wesley, wherever the fuck he is? For damn sure, Hopman, MacNeal, Grath, that fellow Ochs, and now Louise. Leonard Martin? What about him? You think he wouldn’t give everything just to change one single day for his wife and family? But he can’t. They can’t. We can’t. You can’t. Change the past? The past is the future, for all of us. And that means you too.”
The iron gates had swung open against his will. The stone walls were breached. The enemy was pouring in. Nathan Stein-Na Trang-had changed the rules, changed everything, and Walter felt the heavy metal and broken stone weigh him down. “The future,” he thought, “what future?” Maloney was right. The past is the future.
“You’ll find Leonard Martin before he finds us, and you’ll kill him. You won’t do it for us. I know that. But you’ll do it for Gloria, for your daughter, for your grandchildren, for yourself. Will you think of the mother and her two children crying in the hut? The one-legged boy whose food you stole and whose throat you sliced open? The American whose life you saved by ending it? I hope so. I hope so because the past will lead you to your future. Change the past? No. Embrace the past and recognize that you cannot change the future.”
“Wilkes?”
“He’s gone. I didn’t get a chance to fire him. He bailed out as soon as you made his man. Chickenshit sonsofbitches; they only want the easy work.”
Walter breathed deeply. He smelled that hotel smell, a combination of food, smoke, and alcohol mixed with the expensive scent of cleanliness. There was no escaping it, even in the penthouse of the Waldorf Astoria. That might have been sign enough for Maloney, but Walter further obliged with a nod of the head.
“Walter, you have my word that when this is done you’ll never hear from us again, ever. We’re not blackmailers. Quite the opposite. We’re just clients. And, as clients, we want you to go home now. We know you’re most comfortable there. Make your plan, then make your move. But move fast.” Maloney stepped back, an acknowledgment of Walter’s freedom to leave. Walter rose up from the couch as if his whole body ached with despair and regret. Maloney thought he seemed a smaller man than before. “By the way,” he added, “we’ve taken the liberty of depositing some more money into your bank account.” Walter just nodded again and started for the door. “Don’t you want to know how much?”
The extra hundred grand still fresh in his mind, Walter asked, “How much?”
“Thirty million dollars.”
“Thirty million dollars?”
“You never know when you might need some extra cash,” Maloney said, glancing at Stein, whose attention seemed elsewhere.
“Thirty million dollars?”
Maloney just laughed as Walter walked out.
