Authors: Ernie Lindsey
I
’ve lost track
, but I think I’m about four scotches in, and I’ve explained every single detail I can think of to Phil. He’s playing some Lou Reed on the stereo and at times, I haven’t been able to figure out if he’s listening to me or
Walk on the Wild Side
.
He’s matched me drink for drink, yet his cheeks aren’t rosy, and you’d never be able to tell he’d had a sip if it weren’t for the half empty bottle he’s cradling like a football. He stopped making eye contact with me ten minutes ago, which I presume to mean that he’s so disgusted with my actions that he can’t even look in my direction.
I say, “And that’s it. Charlene’s got a hard-on for Liar Liar Pants on Fire Dallas, both of them apparently work for DPS, and, somehow, Charlene knows the details of my mission, or
missions
, plural, but I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
The words come out more slurred than I like. Liquor doesn’t mix well with me, and as it stands, I’m calling a cab when I leave here. Or, I could steal the Hummer parked outside. Around here, who would care if I ditched it in the Willamette River?
Phil stays silent for so long, the bobbing diver in his fish tank goes through four iterations of surfacing and sinking. The gentle gurgling is almost relaxing. I have to admit though that watching that little dude under the water makes me feel like I’m drowning. My chest is heavy, and I can’t take a full breath. This isn’t like me. The house-of-cards espionage happening all around me stands on shaky ground. I don’t get myself into these situations. I’m smarter than this.
Phil runs a finger across his lips. He sighs and checks the bottom of his empty glass, then sets it to the side.
Thank God, because I’m ready to call mercy.
Once he finally looks at me, he says, “When you started this, I told you—no, I
begged
you to stay smart, and you swore to me that you would. You swore. I promised your mother that you’d be fine. Anybody with a head as hard as yours has to be stubborn enough to stay alive just to piss off everyone else. I told her, ‘When the big bombs drop, the only things left will be Leo and the cockroaches.’ She bought it, every word of it. But now, goddamn it, Leo, if you don’t live to see the end of the week, score one for the cockroaches.”
Phil is that grumpy old man who’s seen everything and knows that the world can be a shitty place, but he’s normally not so gloom and doom. Anybody that can ask my mother to come back after twenty years of affairs has to be a guy who’s filled with so much lofty hope, his damn feet don’t touch the ground.
He’s always encouraged me, particularly when I was an idiot teenager trying to find my path, so this lack of
go-get-em-sonny-boy
is disconcerting.
I say, “It’s that bad, you think?” I try to stand up and the world spins on an alcohol-propelled axis. I allow gravity to pull me back down. It’s safer in the chair.
“I’ve always told you the truth, haven’t I?”
“Mostly.”
“And if I lied, it was for your own good. Like that time you were in high school; I told you Ellie Tolliver was kissing that boy out behind the Tastee-Freeze. She would’ve ruined you.”
That’s a long story that we don’t need to get into.
“I don’t like the sound of it, Leo. I don’t, not at all. And let me see if I heard you right. Two strange people approached you in the airport, they didn’t wave any credentials, and you took their word that they were from some top-secret group that’s
so
top secret, even the president hasn’t heard of them? I got some oceanfront property in Colorado if you’re that gullible.”
“I thought that—”
“No, you didn’t. You didn’t
think
at all. First, they tell you there’s a traitor in your little group of nimbly-pimbly boo-hoos, and they want you to find out who it is, and then oh, by the way, since you work for us now we need you to take out the only superhero left with more common decency than what’s in his pinky finger. That didn’t sound fishy to you?”
“Of course it did.” I’m woozy from the scotch. My cheeks are flushed warm, and I sink back into the comfy couch. All I want to do is close my eyes. It’s been a hell of a month, and I’m no closer to finding out who the real traitor might be. Something sparks way down deep in my mind like striking flint together. It’s not much, and I can’t feel it growing any clearer.
“Then why’d you take the job?”
“The money.” I’m drifting, barely able to stay in the land of the sober, but I’m still aware enough to tell him my own lies. “It’s always about the money.”
It’s never about the money, but Phil is right. I’m one stubborn son of a gun, and I’ve never disobeyed my gut instincts. That’s how I’ve survived this long, but, when Agent Kelly and Deke Carter showed me a check with an extra comma in it, I didn’t hesitate when I should’ve. I disobeyed my own principles.
Yet, when it comes to enough money to fund your retirement for good, the word “sanity” isn’t spelled with a dollar sign.
I’m ready to teeter off the edge into drunken slumber when I hear Phil say something about my mother, forgiveness, second chances, and that he’ll make some calls.
I dream about Dallas in that white pantsuit. She’s somewhere in the Maldives, having lunch with Charlene. They’re sitting in a bar out over the pristine blue water, laughing and sipping fruity drinks while I observe them from a nearby table.
Deke and Agent Kelly show up. Handshakes and hugs are exchanged as an unidentified male approaches. It’s only when he turns that I realize he’s the man who opened the door at the DPS black site. Someone says my name and laughter erupts from the table.
I wake up, thinking I’m in a cold sweat. I blink my eyes and grasp that Phil has poured a glass of water on me. I groan, asking him if that was really necessary. “You could’ve just said my name, you know.”
“What fun would that be?”
“You said something about making calls last night. Anything?”
Phil doesn’t answer. Instead, he turns toward the kitchen and tells me to follow him. I stumble down the hallway, my teeth feeling like they’re wearing sweaters, and I’m dying to get rid of this sour taste on my tongue. I smell coffee and the mere scent of it perks me up. Phil tells me to sit, then pours me a mug of the dark stuff and hands me a cup of water and two white pills to go along with it.
The steam pours up and I sip gingerly, trying not to burn my tongue.
Phil looks at me with a measure of relief and annoyance. How he gets his face into that position is anybody’s guess. I figure you have to be a parent to pull it off. He says, “First, you’re fortunate.”
I set the mug down. “Why?”
“Six of my contacts have heard of the DPS, which is a good thing. It means they’re legit and you got lucky enough to take a job from a real organization.”
“Meaning?”
“Could’ve been some terrorist group or maybe even some SALCON reps trying to flush out the guy who put a shank in Patriotman.”
“It wasn’t a shank.” I hadn’t thought of that possibility. I’m learning that I’m way too trusting of my government agencies. Or am I simply slipping? I’ve been at this for three years. It puts a lot of stress on your mind, always sneaking around, hiding your identity, trying to remember which fake passport you’re currently carrying. Will I be Jim Blount today, or am I Mark Tanner? Am I waking up in Chicago or Phnom Penh?
Phil continues, “They tell me that the DPS is new, only been around about eight months or so. Dark agency that handles the threats that nobody wants to touch because otherwise, it’d be a public relations nightmare. That’s why they’re so underground. DPS doesn’t mind getting their hands dirty, and, according to my people, they figure the less anybody knows, the better,
including
the President.”
“Any jobs I’d know about?”
“None that
look
like jobs. That girl that was kidnapped in D.C. back in January? Remember her? Pretty blonde that was all over the news?”
“Yeah, Amy…something.”
“My guys don’t know for certain, but they say that’s got DPS written all over it. That intern had intimate knowledge of how far the Vice President stretched out on a ruler, if you get my drift.”
“So the agents with DPS are like the mop-up guys?”
“More or less. They handle the dirty work but take on some big time threats, too: stuff that would send the country into a shit-flinging panic if word got out. Say a suitcase nuke goes missing from a warehouse in Tulsa. Calls are made from the higher ups for DPS to take care of it, because with the FBI, CIA—too many damn channels to keep quiet. It’s all over the media before sunset.”
I take another sip of coffee. I sort of expected this, given the man I met at the black site, but it doesn’t change anything. I was stupid enough to blindly follow their orders when I should’ve come to Phil first.
“So,” Phil says, “for right now, we don’t have to worry about you getting tortured in some SALCON prison. I gotta admit, though, when you were telling me about Kelly and Carter putting that hood on your head to go see you-know-who, it made me wonder.”
After I revealed the identity last night, saying the name out loud, Phil nearly popped a blood vessel and insisted that we never speak it again. Parabolic mics, microscopic bugs, or any high-tech listening device like that could cause bullets to fly if they knew whom we were talking about.
“Here’s what’s bothering me, son—what?”
“You called me ‘son.’”
“Don’t get used to it.” Phil gets up from the table, groans and rubs his back, and grabs two plain English muffins sitting on the counter. He knows I like them straight out of the bag. We’ve both eaten them the same way since day one. He hands mine over and says around a mouthful of his own, “They come to you and say, ‘We’ve got a traitor in close quarters, somebody that plans to blow up the White House,’ and that’s all well and good. Back when I was in and working the home turf we probably followed leads like that fifteen, twenty times a day. Jokers all around the world try to dip their hand in that honey pot because it’s an easy target and easy to get us hopping on planes to follow up. Mostly they were empty threats just to cause a little disharmony.
“Now, I can’t figure it out,” he continues, “because it seems to me that if they had it narrowed down to the eleven other boo-hoos in your sassy group, why not just put an agent on each one? Normally the suits are chasing thousands of these leads each year, right? Why would they need to recruit you if they had less than a dozen options? It seems like a lot of extra effort and paperwork to bring you in the plot, don’t you think?”
He’s making a lot of sense, and it’s something I hadn’t really thought through. Not once in the past thirty days has this thought crossed my mind. Truth be told, that’s why I hire Phil—he does this kind of thinking for me. I’m good at disappearing in dark alleys, slinking into apartments undetected, and getting close enough to Patriotman to squeeze liquidized brozantium into his ear canal, but, the more Phil talks, the more I realize that I’m damn lucky to be alive.
I lean back in the chair, gnawing on a mouthful of English muffin, and stare out the back window. It’s another beautiful day in Portland; hazy, socked-in fog with a light mist peppering the windows. The muted light still hurts my head, however, and I look away to reduce the pounding in my skull.
I can’t remember what I told him last night, so I might be repeating myself. I tell him, “They specifically said that they knew it was one of the eleven, they didn’t know who, and they couldn’t get close enough because if somebody made them, it’d set off too many red flags. You gotta remember, Dad—Phil—those people in my…that group…they might be a little messed up in the head, but they’re highly trained assassins that work with people at the uppermost levels of national security. A superhero gets out of whack, any one of those guys might get a direct-line call from the head of the NSA. The DPS knows they’re all valuable resources, so if any of the big-time suits got wind that they were snooping around, trying to eliminate an asset—even if that asset had credibly threatened the President—the pissing match would clog up the system for months. It’s no secret that Palmer’s approval rating is in the single digits, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the Holy Triumvirate would allow it to happen on sheer principle. Hell, they might even encourage—holy shit.”
Phil looks at me expectantly.
I’m out of the kitchen and down the hallway before I think to yell over my shoulder, “See if you can find any connection between George Silver and the assassins in the support group.”
He yells back at me, something about not repeating that name out loud, but I can’t make it out because the screen door slams, and I’m thundering down the front steps in twos.
I
’m sitting
across from the Secretary of Defense, George Silver, and over his right shoulder and out the window, I can see the official government helicopter sitting on a concrete landing pad. He’s wearing a dark green flight suit and a smile, so I can only assume that he flew it here himself for the meeting.
Best guess is, he was at the ceremonial opening of a new defense contractor’s building in Seattle. I remember seeing something about it on
Tonight with Don Donner
last week. He has one agent with him on detail, and the guy stands in the corner like an uptight statue, unnecessarily wearing his dark shades in the dim light of somebody’s former home.
The place has been gutted, and the only things that remain are the table and chairs where we now sit. I can see faded spots on the walls where pictures used to hang, but that’s about it for remnants of a once-lived life. Flames were already dancing off logs in the fireplace when we entered. For that, I’m thankful, because I can almost see my breath. It’s chilly up here in the mountains.
George Silver listens politely while Agent Kelly apologizes—blathers, really—for dragging him away from his mini-vacation in Seattle. She asks him how the ceremonial opening went and insists that she expected the director of DPS, Dan Clavell, who was conveniently in the Northwest for another mission debriefing, to be here instead.
“Oh, don’t worry about it, Agent Kelly.” He gives her the
pffft
hand-wave, and I’m pretty sure I see a twinkle in his eyes. I’ve seen the guy on television before, talking to reporters about the state of North Korea and Russia, or whichever evil dictator is currently
en vogue
at the moment, and I have to say, he’s a handsome devil on television, but in person, he’s mesmerizing. Bright blue eyes, full head of sparkling white politician hair, and a million-watt grin all add credence to the fact that this dude is one smooth snake charmer.
“But, sir,” she professes, “this is… I don’t know, higher up the chain than I expected.”
“Who do you think squirrels away the funding for your paycheck, Agent Kelly? Director Clavell is just there to move the white and black pieces around the board.” He turns to me, smiles, and I can’t help it, I’m taken in by his charisma as well. He says to me, “Deke and Lisa were kind enough to pass along your concerns, Mr. Craft. What can I do for you? Or should I call you Leo? Is that okay?”
He maintains eye contact, warm and friendly, and he moves in closer like he’s completely and entirely interested in what I have to say, as if I’m the only person in the room. I know this tactic—I’ve used it a few times myself—and it’s something that Bill Clinton and Steve Jobs are, and were, famous for: the reality distortion field. It’s nothing more than some trick of manufactured allure, and I’m aware of this, but damn it’s hard to ignore it when a master is laying it on thick.
I clear my throat and sit up. I can’t believe I’m about to do this. One way to overcome his tactics is to fire right back at him. Leaning in closer, up on my elbows and smiling, I maintain eye contact and say, “Leo is fine, sir. And is it cool if I call you George? We’re all buddies here, right? Same team?”
His face is frozen in that perpetual smile, but the flicker of his eyelids gives him away. He’s not used to being treated like this. Shock and awe with magnetism, that’s
his
game. Regardless, he says, “My friends call me Sparky. Are we
friends
, Leo?”
“Absolutely. Does that nickname come from the superhero that died in the fifties? That electricity guy that could shoot lightning from his fingertips?”
“Air Force call sign,” he says. I think I might actually win this battle of wills, because he leans back into his creaky chair and tents his fingertips. He rests his chin on his thumbs and asks, “What can we do to help each other?”
Believe me, I notice that he switches from “What can I do for you?” to “How can we help each other?” and it further solidifies how slick he is.
I answer, “As you know, Sparky, our friends here,” indicating Deke and Agent Kelly, “they’ve procured my services for a couple of big, big missions.”
“Yes, yes, I’m aware.”
It occurs to me that I haven’t really planned ahead well enough. I had an idea of what I was going to say, but I’m reminded of that late 1800s Prussian army guy who said something like, “
No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy
.”
I stutter and stumble through the start of about four different sentences before I hold up a hand, close my eyes, and say, “Forget finding out who wants to kill the President for a minute. That’s, like, a Tuesday afternoon in my pajamas.” Which is kind of a lie because I’m no closer to unearthing any clues than I was a week ago. I open my eyes and lean as far across the table as I can without climbing on it. “But, for the love of God, you people want me to kill Patriotman?
Patriotman?
Why?”
“I was informed that Deke and Lisa explained our reasoning.”
I shake my head, sit back, and cross my arms. “Nope. Not good enough. You don’t take out Patriotman for threatening to boycott some NATO and SALCON circle jerk. It’s not that big of a deal.”
Silver lifts a shoulder in a semi-shrug. “And would it make any difference if I told you that Patriotman has been a vocal opposition to the new cross-program policies that the entire world is trying to implement? It’s been extremely detrimental to the president’s plans.”
It’s true, Patriotman has been exceedingly vocal about that, and I wholeheartedly agree with his stance.
I study Silver, trying to pick up on any of his microexpressions to see if he’s feeding me a line of bull. I spot nothing. Either he’s good, or he believes what he’s saying. I risk digging further anyway by saying, “You and I both know that those policies will never work. Patriotman’s right—he’s not even a member of SALCON and he’s right. If it’s not separation of church and state, it’s separation of state and super-state. Ne’er the twain shall meet.”
From the corner of my eye, I spot Deke grinning. There’s a chance he’ll come around yet. Agent Kelly clears her throat, admonishing me, and Silver holds his palm up.
“Agent Kelly?”
“Sir?”
“You and Deke can give us a minute. Take Benson with you.” At the sound of his name, the guardian agent tilts his head in our direction.
Agent Kelly says, “Sir, I’m not so sure that’s a good—”
“The man asked for the truth. He’s getting the truth. We’re on a timeline here, and if it means making certain concessions, then so be it.”
“But, sir—”
“Out, Lisa. Deke, you too. Get Benson to tell you about that time he burned down that village in Pakistan. Helluva story.”
Agent Kelly opens her mouth to protest again, wisely thinks better of it, and gets up from the table. Deke gives me a look that has too many undercurrents to decipher and follows her toward the front entrance. Benson trails them and pulls the door closed behind him as he goes.
Silver looks out the window and takes a deep breath. With everyone gone, he seems weary once he exhales. His shoulders go limp and he rubs his eyes. “I’m tired, Leo.”
I want to say
So what, who isn’t?
but I let it go. Instead, I tell him, “I’m sure there’s a lot of pressure in your line of work, huh?” It’s an innocuous, throwaway statement, but what in the hell do you say to the guy who jousts other world leaders with his junk in one hand and a machine gun in the other?
“You can’t even imagine, son. Every day, we’re on the brink of war, and nobody ever sees it. We feed the media piles of bullshit about how everything is hunky dory, and we’re shaking hands and kissing babies with the Prime Minister of Whogivesafuckistan, when in reality, that robe-wearing dickwad is threatening to blow up half of Israel if we don’t clear some trade sanctions and send his people a few extra bags of rice. It’s insane what goes on. So much ridiculous nonsense that the public never sees. Every day—every goddamn day—I’m out there cutting deals to keep the bombs in their silos because, let me tell you, brother, we are one red button away from total annihilation.”
“Then you’ll forgive me for nudging you along, Sparky, but you said we’re on a timeline. What does any of that have to do with me, Patriotman, or one of the jokers in that support group who’s supposedly ready to send a missile from Whogivesafuckistan into the White House? That’s why I’m here; that’s what I want to know.”
George Silver, United States Secretary of Defense, and one of the most powerful men in the world, bites his bottom lip, puts his face in his hands, and begins to sob.
T
he car ride
home is filled with questions from Agent Kelly. Deke drives quietly while she leans over the seat and fires one after another. What did he say? I can’t believe he told you and not us; why would he do that? Doesn’t he understand that this is a matter of national security? Aren’t you going to say something? You do realize you work for us and that we sign the paycheck?
I ignore all of them. I tell her only that Silver asked me to keep this national secret just that, a secret, because the implications are so overwhelming that dozens of hands around the world will reach for that big red button if anyone finds out.
That really sends her into another tizzy, and she berates me about chain of command and how information should be shared between subordinates and superiors and eventually, she gets to a point where she’s not even yelling at me. She’s yelling at the sheer injustice of it, period, and it doesn’t have a thing to do with my situation. She’s pissed at the director of DPS, she’s pissed at George Silver for putting her in a potentially harmful situation without the proper details, and she’s seriously pissed at Deke for agreeing that if I was ordered to keep my mouth shut, that’s exactly what I should do.
“And,” Deke adds, “it was your idea to
let
him speak to the suits anyway.”
This turns her cheeks flame red. Agent Kelly goes on another tirade, and something she says catches my attention. “Patriotman was never supposed to be a part of this.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
She turns her attention back to the front window and spits out, “Nothing.”
“No, that’s something. What’re you talking about?”
“You don’t feel like sharing what Silver said, well neither do I, so let’s just leave it at that.”
Agent Kelly has a point, and I’m not willing to share what I know in order to hear her secrets. Or am I?
What would be the significance of it? What did she mean that Patriotman was never supposed to be a part of this…this
what
?
Tirade over, the car has gone silent. I stare out the window as we drive, watching the trees and cars pass in a blur, taking a trip through my memory and trying to recall every detail she gave me.
Okay, so, we were at that country-western joint… The Blazers were on. Deke was up at the bar, drinking a beer. She was sitting across from me and said, what was it… ‘We have reason to believe that one of your friends is a traitor.’
And then I said something about not having any friends…
‘Acquaintances, then. Somebody you likely know.’
I told her I don’t make a habit of rubbing elbows with the bad guys. I mean, hell, I guess you could say that I
am
the villain, in a way.
What was it she said next? She had a drink of her beer, and then…
‘You call yourselves S.A.’s, right? Superhero assassins?
‘Yeah. But that’s always kind of misleading because we’re not assassins that are superheroes. It’s just easier to say.’
‘Right. And you’re familiar with most everyone working in this field?’
‘To a point. I know codenames, real names, faces. That’s it. It’s not like we get together for wine tasting once a month.’
‘Did you know that a group of your colleagues have a support group?’
I remember being shocked by that. We’re all such hard-asses. Then I remember saying… ‘News to me. What’s it for?’
‘Anxiety. Depression. Their psych profiles suggest they’re having a difficult time performing. Over time, eliminating a perceived hero, no matter how much their deaths are justified, really puts a strain on them. Enough that there’s been underground chatter about taking out the President and ending this crusade. Problem is, we have no idea who.’
‘No shit?’
‘And that’s why you’re here, Leo. All signs indicate you’re a heartless bastard who’ll kill anything as long as there are some extra zeroes on the paycheck. Betray one of your own, and we’ll make it worth your while.’
That’s how it went down, and as I sit here in the back of this sedan that smells like Deke’s aftershave, what really bothers me about the situation is not killing one of my own—a lot of them probably deserve to be pushing up daisies—it’s the fact that she called me a heartless bastard.
Come on. That’s a bit harsh. I’m just digging the ditches that need to be dug.