would not notice, one moving ahead of me and then picking me up again, an invisible dance as I moved through the streets of Rome. J advised me of ways to circumvent such techniques; I will practice more in America, J tells me.
One must move without leaving a shadow, J says, and I quite like that phrase, that idea. Because the alternative is to be caught and to die.
J let me keep my Belgian passport with its French first name and Lebanese last name and provided me a rental car to drive to Paris. In Paris I flew to Miami. My seatmate was one of those tiresome boors who take a simple nod of hello as an invitation to interrogate you about every aspect of your life: where you went to school, where you live, what you do, what you like-and then must bury your every answer under his opinions. I am sure such people simply cannot abide the sound of silence or the shallowness of their own thoughts, but then I realized I need people like that-they give information. Information is power. This is my job now.
I was frightened for a moment that either this inquisitor was not an innocent nosy passenger, but rather either friend or enemy determined to catch me in a lie seven miles up, either to teach me a lesson or to unmask me. He told me that he sells enterprise software to large financial institutions and I decided he was telling the truth. I learned some important basics about banks and their operations; this might be useful to me one day, in selecting a target, in interpreting data.
At immigration they looked hard-without trying to seem so-at my Arabic face and they asked for my reasons to come to the United States. I explained I was here on business, as the sales representative of a start-up software company based in Brussels. J had given me brochures and I had memorized the product features. They asked their useless questions and I sailed through.
What would have happened, though, if I had been caught in a lie? Would I have been abandoned? I suppose I very well might have been; secret warriors can never be acknowledged. It would have been a harsh lesson.
From Miami, a seductive jewel of a city, I flew to New Orleans, a seductive ruin.
I expected that I would be followed at the airport-them trailing me to see if I had been trailed, to avoid a repeat of my Roman debacle, when I thought myself so clever. A necessary precaution. I spotted one man following me, but I am sure more lurked in my wake, and I’m not going to claim a victory I did not earn. Following J’s instructions, I took a cab first to the Audubon Zoo, trying to lose any shadows in the milling crowds, then I walked to Tulane, eyeing anyone who might be following, then took another cab to the Superdome. I walked through a hotel, checked into a room using my false name, but never set foot in it, walking through the back of the hotel, grabbing a final cab to a chain hotel in the suburb of Metairie.
New Orleans is a strange half city now. It reminds me of a once-treasured plaything abandoned by a child. Entire stretches of the city remain utterly devastated-here in a country that prides itself, incessantly, on its wealth, its ambition, and its (shall I be frank?) superiority. Yet here is this blister on America’s soul. The neighborhoods that have returned to a semblance of normalcy still give the sense of lives lived on an edge, of a hope tempered by the possibility that the city will never regain its former life.
I know how New Orleans feels. It is the way I feel.
And so, I arrived two months ago, and we started our work. Because it is a city where people are constantly coming and going, staying, leaving-no one will notice us here in the ruins.
I had no instructions at the final hotel. How was I to find my new colleagues? Adrift, I thought perhaps I would show initiative. I went for a walk, heading toward a local mall, and they grabbed me shortly after I arrived at the mall, escorting me into a dark Lincoln Navigator. I wasn’t afraid. We exchanged assigned code phrases, ones J gave me in Rome. They drove me to a large home outside the city proper-near a swath of a wealthy neighborhood ruined by floodwaters, close to Lake Pontchartrain-and to a large house, which had fresh paint, a new roof, a sense of restored solidity. The neighborhood remains mostly abandoned; those who can afford nice houses can afford to leave.
The leader here is Mr. Night. Is he reading my words? If you are, Mr. Night, you must admit, your name is the definition of pretentious. But it suits him: dark, unknowable, yet somehow comforting. If we listen to him, we’ll stay alive as we go to battle.
I am honing my skills. I am learning how to travel and lose someone if followed, how to follow someone without him knowing, how to encode information so I can pass it undetected, how to communicate back to my network without being discovered or found, how to identify people who need to die, how to get close to them.
And they will teach me how to kill. Not simply the techniques of murder. But they will teach me not to hesitate. J said this is the secret to killing. You cannot hesitate.
In three days, on Sunday, the holy day here, we will head out into the world, us six, to do our duty without a moment’s hesitation.
15
The motel was old and clean, owned by a smiling Pakistani couple. Ben signed Pilgrim’s counterfeit charge card (in the name of James Woodward) with lip-biting care, trying to make it identical to the tight scrawling signature on the card. Ben asked for a room on the side of the motel away from the highway. He drove the car around to the back and half-carried, half-walked Pilgrim into the room and onto one of the twin beds.
He’d found a Target store near Georgetown, a small city north of Austin, and purchased clean clothes, towels, a duffel bag, snack food, a large bottle of antiseptic, bottled water, boxes of bandages and Coban medical wrap, saline solution, peroxide, and the most elaborate first aid kit offered. He also bought a pair of forceps in the pharmacy section, thinking, As if I’m really going to dig metal out of him. Down the street was a grocery store and he bought two bottles of cheap Chianti.
He peeled the blue shirt and khaki pants off the groggy Pilgrim and dumped the bloodied clothes on the floor. Hard strength wired Pilgrim’s body; not gym or tennis muscles like Ben’s. A scar wandered like a river on a map across Pilgrim’s stomach; another seam of healed tissue bisected his shoulder. It was as if the story of a life lived in shadows was burnt into his skin. Now a neat puckering wound marred the other shoulder. An awful purpling continent of a bruise extended from hip to knee on the leg. A tear across the forearm revealed where a bullet had pierced and exited. Ben gently inspected Pilgrim’s legs and arms, testing for broken bones. All seemed whole.
“Bullet’s still in my shoulder,” Pilgrim said. “Gonna tell you what to do. Trusting you, Ben.”
“If I screw up, I’m sorry.”
“You’ll do great.”
Ben followed Pilgrim’s directions: He eased Pilgrim to the tub, irrigated the wound with water, disinfected both wound and forceps. Then, back on the bed, towels beneath the shoulder, Ben probed gently with the forceps into the wound.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, so it’s going to hurt like a bitch,” he said.
Pilgrim never screamed. In the meat of his flesh the forceps touched, then closed on a slug of metal. Ben inched the bullet free, holding his own breath along with Pilgrim. Ben dropped the bullet on the side table with a plunk, swallowing a trickle of bile that rose into his throat.
“Okay,” Pilgrim mumbled. “Irrigate it. With force. Hard.”
Ben helped him back to the tub and chugged water over the wound, emptying several bottles, then pouring saline, then rinsing with peroxide. Pilgrim gritted his teeth. Ben smeared a generous spread of antibiotic ointment on gauze for the bandage. He applied pressure with the bandage, and then secured the pad with stretchy self- adhesive medical wrap, colored bright blue.
He opened one of the screw-cap bottles of cheap-jug Chianti he’d bought for Pilgrim to kill the pain and Pilgrim took a giant swig of the red wine. Then Ben cleaned, disinfected, and wrapped the forearm wound.
Pilgrim let out a long sigh. “Okay, doctor, you’re done. Thank you.”
Ben went to the sink. Blood speckled his hands, the new beach towels he had bought, his pants he’d slipped on when he got home, back when his life was normal. His hands stayed steady, though, and he stuck them under the jetting water.
“I’m gonna down more of this premium vintage.” He inspected the label. “Did you get you some wine, Ben?”
“I never drink before surgery.” Ben noticed Pilgrim had gulped down a third of the bottle. Pilgrim closed his
