The Faithful Spy (8 page)

Rich looked at him and pressed on. “I mean, Barb wasn’t supposed to be home. She comes in, she starts screaming, ‘Fuck you fuck you,’ really screaming—”

So much for being polite, Wells thought.

“You have any dignity?” Wells looked Rich in the eye, a stare that had frozen guys in places much tougher than this. “You even know what that word means? Telling some guy you never met about how you cheated on your wife and got caught. I don’t know you and I don’t want to. Thanks for the Coke.” Wells picked up his bag.

“You don’t understand,” Rich said. “I’m under so much pressure. You know what it’s like trying to pay for two houses and three cars? I can’t remember the last time I slept with my wife. I just needed to touch someone. My life sucks—”

“You know what sucks?” Wells said. “Stepping on a land mine and getting your legs blown off. And you’re four years old. Riding around in a Humvee waiting to get torched by a bomb you can’t even see, like our guys are doing in Baghdad right now.”

“I know—”

“You don’t know shit. You don’t have a clue. You can’t imagine how most people in this world live. And most of ’em have never in their lives bitched as much as you did in the last five minutes. Divorce your wife. Quit screwing the maid. I couldn’t care less.”

“What the fuck do you know about how tough the world is?” Rich said. “You’re sitting here watching TV just like me.”

“Not anymore,” Wells said. He slapped a ten-dollar bill on the bar for his Coke and headed for his gate.

WELLS SAT OUTSIDE
gate C-13 furious with himself. What if the guy had swung at him? So much for keeping a low profile then. But Wells didn’t understand his countrymen anymore. They
owe
me an upgrade, Rich had said. No. They don’t owe you anything.

Wells knew he needed to relax. Rich the salesman was an alcoholic with a lousy marriage. He would get his act together. Or not. It wasn’t Wells’s business. Yet as Wells looked around the bright, clean airport he wondered whether he would ever belong in America.

BUT WHEN HE
woke the next morning in Boise he felt almost elated. He hadn’t imagined he would ever see Montana or his ma again. He could have flown straight to Missoula, but he’d wanted to drive, to be alone in the Rockies. He remembered driving down with his dad over Lost Trail Pass for weekends fishing. They’d go to Boise to watch the Hawks, the Class A minor-league baseball team, and buy his mom a present from the jewelry store downtown. “Don’t tell,” his dad always said. “It’s a surprise.”

His dad had been a surgeon at the hospital in Hamilton, south of Missoula. His mom was a teacher. His father had wanted a big family, Wells knew. But his mother had almost died when Wells was born—she’d been hospitalized in Missoula for a month—and her doctors said she could never get pregnant again. So they were three: Herbert, Mona, and John.

Wells had respected his dad, a gruff taciturn man whose skills as a surgeon were renowned across western Montana. Most days, Herbert exhausted his energy in the operating room; when he got home, he would sit in his high-backed leather chair in their living room, sipping a glass of whiskey and reading the Missoula paper. He was never mean, and he wasn’t exactly distant either. He always cheered for Wells at football games. But Herbert had rules, in and out of the operating room, and he expected those rules to be followed.

Now his mom, she was something special. Just about every kid Mona taught fell half in love with her. She was tall and beautiful and always smiling. She’d grown up in Missoula, the product of a crazy love match. In 1936, Wells’s granddad Andrew had been a sailor in the navy. On shore leave in Beirut, Andrew had fallen for Noor, the daughter of a Lebanese trader. Somehow Andrew had convinced Noor—and her family—that she belonged with him in Montana. Noor was the reason for Wells’s dark hair and complexion. And the reason he had known about Islam long before he studied the religion at Dartmouth. He was one-quarter Muslim by birth. Noor had given up her faith when she came to the United States, but she had taught Wells enough for it to intrigue him.

Not that he had much chance to see Islam in action growing up. Hamilton had been a country town when Wells was a kid, a few blocks long. He had loved growing up there, riding his bike everywhere, learning to handle a horse and build a fire. Things had changed about the time he hit puberty. MTV came along to show him and his friends what hicks they were. A lot of kids stopped feeling self-reliant and started feeling bored. Drugs crept from Seattle to Spokane to Missoula and then down U.S. 93 to the Sinclair gas station on the edge of town. He feared that the infestation had only worsened since he left.

ON HIS WAY
out of Boise, Wells had seen clouds covering the mountains. Still, he’d decided to take the shortest route home, through the mountains on Idaho 21. Now he headed northeast past Boise’s scattered suburbs, the subdivisions packed tight on the open prairie, like cows clustered against an approaching storm. The road turned north and rose toward the clouds beside a fast-running creek. The scrubby ponderosa pines thickened, and snow began to fall. As Wells crested the Mores Creek pass at 6,100 feet, fog swirled over the road. Dead trees clotted the hillsides; Wells remembered vaguely that a huge fire had devastated the area decades earlier. Even now the forest had hardly recovered. The fog grew so thick that he could no longer tell the road from the hills. He did not usually think himself superstitious, but suddenly he felt that he was passing through a netherworld, and nothing on the other side would be the same. Still, he had come too far to turn back. He eased off the gas until his Dodge was hardly moving and crept down the mountain to Lowman. Four hours to drive sixty miles.

After Lowman the weather eased. The road turned east and followed the Payette River along a valley thick with firs. Wells shook his head at his moment of weakness. Since when had the weather dictated his moods? To the south the Sawtooth Mountains cut through the clouds, fierce and broken and looking uncannily like, yes, a hacksaw’s teeth. We westerners are literal-minded, Wells thought. With land as beautiful as this there’s no need to embellish.

At Stanley he swung onto Idaho 75, alongside the Salmon River. The day brightened as the sun tore apart the clouds. Crumbling red sandstone hills gave way to mountains covered with yellow scrub grass that glowed in the light. Beside the road, men in waders cast lures into the river, hoping for steelhead. Wells felt his heart swell. He hadn’t felt so free since he’d joined the agency a decade before. He nearly pulled over and asked to borrow a line for a few minutes, but instead pressed on toward Hamilton.

But by the time he reached Salmon, the last decent-sized town before Hamilton, the sun had set. Wells stopped at the Stagecoach Inn and rented a room for forty-two dollars. He was still nearly three hours from Hamilton, and he didn’t want to wake his mother in the dark.

Salmon was a flyspeck western town, its main street a low row of battered brick buildings. Wells found himself at the Supper Club and Lounge, a dank bar with a karaoke machine and cattle skulls nailed to the walls.

“What can I get you?” the bartender said.

Wells felt his mouth water at the rich greasy smell of meat on the grill.

“A burger,” he said. The meat surely wasn’t halal—slaughtered under Koranic rules, which required the draining of all blood from the animal—but Wells found himself unable to care. He couldn’t remember the last hamburger he had eaten, and suddenly that missing memory seemed to symbolize everything else he had left behind during his decade of war.

The burger came fast. He chewed slowly, making each bite last, and listened to a forty-something woman two stools over joke with an old man in a Minnesota Timberwolves cap. “Fishing’s almost better than skydiving,” she said. “And that’s a hell of a lot better than sex, ’specially when you’re my age.” She laughed, and Wells found himself smiling. She caught him looking and raised her eyebrows. She had streaked blond hair and a wide pretty smile. She slid over and held out her hand. “Evelyn.”

“John.”

“Do you sing, John?”

“No, ma’am,” Wells said, a touch of country slipping into his voice.

“Don’t tell me you don’t sing, handsome.”

“My voice is terrible.”

She patted his hand and turned to the bartender. “Come on, punch up ‘You Are So Beautiful.’”

He had no intention of singing for this woman. Fortunately, he didn’t have to. Instead Evelyn belted out the song, her voice sliding across the notes like a car on an icy road. What she lacked in skill she made up in spectacle, shaking her hips as she leaned toward him, ending with the microphone cradled in both hands. “You—are—so—beautiful—to—me…” The half dozen barflies in the place cheered when she was done, and Wells felt a broad grin crease his face, his first real smile in far too long. She bowed to him and walked back to his stool.

“You were great,” he said.

“You’re up next.”

He shook his head.

“Maybe later, then,” she said, waving the subject aside. “What brings you to Salmon?”

“Passing through,” Wells said. “On my way to Missoula.”

“Where you from?”

This was what he’d feared. Maybe she was just being friendly, or maybe she was bored and looking for fun on a Tuesday night. He shouldn’t feel so skittish. It would be easy enough to lie, and maybe even go home with this woman. But he didn’t want to lie. Not the night before he saw his family.

“I gotta go,” he said.

“Hey, I don’t bite.” She winked and put her hand on his arm. “And I like sex better than skydiving any day.” Wells felt himself flush and stir simultaneously. He had forgotten how shameless American women could be.

“I have to get up real early tomorrow.”

“Whatever.” She turned away. Wells took a last bite of his burger and drove the three blocks to the Stagecoach. In the motel’s parking lot he very nearly turned back to the bar. He could not forget the feeling of Evelyn’s hand on his arm. His skin seemed to burn where she’d touched him. He turned off the engine and trudged up to his room. He had waited a long time for a woman, and he supposed he could wait longer. But not forever.

THE PHONE RANG
precisely at six
A.M.
, knocking him out of a dreamless sleep. He showered, then quickly dressed and prayed, bowing his head to the floor and reciting the first verse of the Koran.
“Bismallah rahmani rahim al hamdulillah rabbi lalamin…”
Outside the sun rose and the stars disappeared as the sky turned from black to blue.

Wells had the highway to himself as he headed north toward Lost Trail Pass, the border of Idaho and Montana. Lewis and Clark had followed this route on their way to the Pacific, and the mountains had hardly changed since. At the top of the pass, Wells got out of the Dodge and stood in the quiet air, looking down at the Montana hills ahead. They seemed softer and rounder than those behind.

He reached Hamilton an hour later. The town was bigger than he remembered, and new supermarkets and fast-food restaurants—a Taco Bell, a Pizza Hut—stretched along 93. He turned left on Ravalli Street. There it was. 420 South Fourth. The big gray house on the corner of Ravalli and Fourth.

Except the house wasn’t gray anymore. It was blue. And there was a tricycle in the front yard.

He walked to the door. “Ma?” he shouted. No one answered. He rang the bell.

“May I help you?” A man’s voice.

“It’s John.”

“John who?”

Wells wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere. He wouldn’t have minded if the earth itself had opened and swallowed him whole.

“John Wells. I’m looking for my mother.”

The door opened a notch to reveal Ken Fredrick, who’d been two years ahead of Wells in high school. Penny Kenny, the nastier kids called him, because his family was always flat broke. He and Wells had been something like friends. Kenny was football manager during Wells’s first two years on the team, and he had taken a lot of abuse, especially on the long bus rides to away games. The worst moment came one Friday night near the end of Wells’s first season. Three linemen opened the emergency exit and held Kenny out, his face a few inches above the asphalt of Interstate 90 as the bus hurtled along. Wells could still remember Kenny screaming, maybe the first time he’d heard real panic. After that, Wells invited Kenny to sit with him. Even in ninth grade Wells had been starting middle linebacker and running back, so Kenny got picked on less after that.

“John Wells? Bonecrusher?” Wells hadn’t heard that name in a long time. He had gotten the name because of the way he hit, jaw-dropping tackles that popped off helmets and left guys flat on the field. Running backs and wide receivers hated coming over the middle on him. Wells wasn’t especially big, but he was fast and he knew the secret, the one that coaches couldn’t teach:
Don’t slow down.
Most defenders pulled up—just a bit—before they made a tackle. They got nervous. It was only natural. Wells never slowed down.

“Man, it’s good to see you,” Kenny said. “Been a long time.” Penny Kenny opened the door and offered up his hand.

“What are you doing here?” Wells unwilling to admit the truth to himself even now.

“I live here, John,” Kenny said. “My wife and I bought the place from your mom years ago. I’m a vice president, at the Ravalli County Bank. People call me Ken now.” The pride in his voice was unmistakable.

“Where’s my ma?”

Kenny swallowed hard. “You didn’t know? She passed on, John. Breast cancer.”

Wells found himself staring at Kenny’s perfect teeth, which had been twisted and uneven when they were kids. You could be in a Crest ad, Wells thought. No Afghan dentists for you. And what are you doing in my house?

Wells wanted to live up to his nickname. His fist clenched as he looked at Kenny and Kenny’s white teeth. But none of this was Kenny’s fault. Kenny was a nice kid.

“She’s at Lone Pine,” Kenny said. “With your dad.”

“I know where my family’s buried, Kenny. Ken.”

“I’m sorry, John,” Kenny said. “I don’t know what else to say. Can I invite you in? Get you some coffee?”