fine.
Face, face, face. Dan’s job was to set them in some sort of order, following a template of ethnic appearance and background — hello, racial profiling — and then feed it along another chain of command until the photos, using the latest facial-matching software, were compared with the CIA, FBI and everybody else’s watch-list of terrorists. Or, as some memos primly put it, ‘persons of interest’.
Another sip of coffee. Most of the photos were straight-on head shots, but sometimes you had to deal with other types as well. Like those two. He clicked on the mouse, froze the program. Two guys standing outside, arguing, it looked like, with a female Customs officer. The head shots weren’t so bad, but he had seen better. One guy was white, the other dark-skinned. Maybe Mediterranean. Hell, maybe Caribbean. Who knew?
Dan clicked the mouse one more time, as the program went on its merry way. He finished off the coffee. Just another day, he thought, in the front line against terrorism.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Brian Doyle sat in his room at a Sheraton Hotel in Memphis, staring at the phone. Another in a series of lousy phone calls with the growing young boy who was his son, and who still couldn’t understand why dad couldn’t do a better job of being around. Good question, boy, and time to get somebody to answer it for you.
He got up and left the room. It was late at night: he didn’t know the particular hour and he didn’t particularly care. The hotel was nice, with an outdoor cafe covered with canvas awnings and an outdoor pool, but he didn’t give a shit about that stuff right now. He strolled down the hallway until he found the door he was looking for, and he gave it a good pounding.
No answer.
He resumed the hammering on the door.
Down the hallway, a young guy poked his head out from an open door.
‘Hey, will you shut the fuck up down there?’ he called out.
Brian turned and glared at the guy. The guy rubbed at his face, muttered something, and went back into his room. Brian raised his hand again and then the door opened. Adrianna was there, yawning, wearing a white terrycloth robe.
‘Brian… what is—’
He pushed by her and went into her room. ‘We’ve got to talk now, princess, and I mean now.’
He turned to her, just as she closed the door. She tightened the robe around her neck. There were a couple of lights on in the room but the television wasn’t on. He guessed that he had woken her up. He didn’t care.
‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’
Brian said, ‘Lots of things. Let’s start with the first. Why am I here?’
‘You know why.’
‘No, I don’t. Explain.’
Adrianna said, ‘I needed some security assurance, with what Victor was carrying. It was essential that Victor and his package arrived at General Bocks’s office without any difficulty.’
‘Bullshit.’
Her expression didn’t change. ‘That’s not bullshit.’
‘Sure it is,’ he said. ‘Except for our regular meetings, most of us are out in the field, working on our own little assignments, whatever they are. When was the last time I was assigned security for anything? Short answer: never. So. Why am I here?’
Adrianna was silent. Brian stepped up to her, feeling the blood and the anger race through him. ‘You know why I’m here. I’m the super-patriot sock puppet, brought out to help close the deal. The good general was waffling there yesterday and then you went into this God-bless-America routine that mentioned my dad died in the World Trade Center. That’s why you brought me along. Nothing more than that. When it came to crunch time, you trotted out the story of the bereaved New York cop and his dead hero dad. Don’t tell me anything else, Adrianna. Don’t insult my fucking intelligence.’
She pushed at her hair with a free hand. ‘I won’t insult your intelligence, Brian. Security was one aspect of why you are here. And I confess the truth. Your personal history is another reason you are here. For that, I make no apologies.’
‘Well, goodie for you. I’m getting the hell out of here, and the hell back to my job.’
Brian started to brush past Adrianna and she held on to his upper arm. ‘Please. Just for a moment. May I say something?’
When Brian was in a pissy mood like right now, and especially when he was on duty, having someone grab his arm usually meant a quick slap and takedown or something equally violent. All right, but not now.
‘Okay. Say whatever the fuck you want. But I’m still leaving here and paying whatever I have to pay to fly out of Memphis tonight and get back to New York and my boy and my job. And I don’t care if the big nasty Feds cause me to lose a grade on my job or even bust me back to patrolman. So you say your piece.’
Her hand was still on his arm. ‘I used you. For that, I apologize for hurting your feelings, but I do not apologize for using you. Brian, this war has been on for a few years and it is going to continue for a very long time. And if I use what I can to shorten this war, to protect my country, I will do what it takes. If it takes long hours and using trickery and bribes to achieve our objectives, so be it. And if it means causing the untimely deaths of ten thousand of my fellow citizens to save millions, then, I will do it. And if it means using a trusted colleague’s heartbreaking story to help sway a man who can help save millions of Americans, then I will do it. With no more apologies than what I have given you.’
‘All right,’ Brian said, when she was done. ‘Fair enough. Now it’s my turn to say something.’
‘Of course.’
He took a breath, felt the hot hammering in his chest. ‘You talk about my heartbreaking story. You want to hear my real heartbreaking story, princess? Do you?’
Adrianna nodded, her touch still light on his arm. He said, ‘All right, then. Here’s a story for you. A story about a dad who got never higher than a sergeant in the department because he loved the bottle as much as he loved the job. And his family…who in hell knew what he loved there. He beat me and he beat my brother and he beat my sister. My sister is living somewhere in California, don’t ask me where, because when she moved out she never told anybody where she was going. Only California. My brother is a psychologist on Long Island, no doubt because he wanted to learn more about what my dad was like and what made him tick. My father came home mean most every night, and you know what, sure, he died on September eleventh. But he was no fucking hero.’
The breathing was quicker now, and he was stunned that his cheeks were moist, which meant he had to be crying. But why in God’s name would he be crying? ‘And the day he died, like all those others, the story about him going back to look for people was just that. A story. He was in a men’s room, probably sleeping off what had happened to him the night before, and when the plane hit his tower he got up and stumbled out. Knowing drunk old dad, he took a wrong turn and never made it out. That’s the story of my dad, the hero, the story that you wave around like a pair of black lace panties, trying to get your way.’
‘Brian, I—’
‘And one more thing. At my dad’s funeral, I couldn’t cry a single fucking tear, and neither did my brother. But my mother did, she cried these big long bouts of tears, and in the funeral-home car, heading back after my dad was buried, she sat between us, her fists clenched, and she whispered something, something I think she let slip out, because she never repeated it, not once. But you know what she whispered?’
‘No, Brian, I don’t know what she whispered.’
‘“Finally, he’s gone,”’ Brian said. ‘That’s what my mother said, after burying a man she’d spent nearly forty years with. “Finally, he’s gone.” And this is going to sound like the worst blasphemy, but she’s been a happier woman ever since September eleventh, ever since that old drunk never came home. That’s the story.’
Now Adrianna’s hand went away from his arm, up to his shoulder, up to his cheek, to gently touch the tears, and he took a deep breath and lowered his head and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, and she moved towards him, and he stepped back, and together they fell back onto her bed.
