Any Minute Now (22 page)

“Someone made you do this?”

He nodded. “Luther St. Vincent.”

Something hard and unyielding contracted in the pit of her stomach, and now she was angry. “Why didn't you tell me this before?”

He visibly shrank from her. “I was afraid. What he had me do is unethical, at the least. At worst, it could cause a man his life. What would you think of me if I confessed?”

“The only way I would think less of you is if you lied to me.”

“I don't lie, Valerie.”

She smiled. “I know, Paulus. But you did withhold this information.”

“But not for too long.” His answering smile was water-weak. “I'm sorry.”

Her smile brightened. Now was the time to make him into a hero. “What's past is past. We go on from here, and now you're the only person who can help this subject who you say may be in mortal danger.” She lowered her voice to reinforce the urgency of her question. “Who, Paulus? Who is the subject?”

*   *   *

“Orteño.”

Preach was listening carefully to every word Valerie said, though he had no reason to. Crow had already told him.

“Felix Orteño,” she said. “St. Vincent tried to keep the subject's real identity secret, but Paulus, already becoming worried about Luther's objectives, found out.”

“A field trial, is it?” Preach barked a laugh. “My, but Luther is racing toward his own death.”

“Aren't we all?”

“Some more quickly than others,” he said quoting Crow, though, of course, Valerie didn't know that. Silence for a beat. “This news has to make its way to Gregory Whitman, and at once. Who would be best suited to do that?”

“Cutler,” she told him. “I know just how to feed it to him, too: as caff scuttlebutt.”

“Go forth,” Preach said, proud of her, “and multiply.”

Severing the connection, he opened the screen door, went out on the porch, where the rocking chair he had made himself a lifetime ago awaited him. He sat, his knees creaking, an odd thing, to be sure. He waited for Crow to come to him; it always did, in its own time and in its own way.

The late-afternoon sunlight lay heavy on his lids, the bayous were still, as if warn down by the day's heat. Surrounded by his home, he began to drowse, the past rising up like a specter, crowding his drifting mind.

When he was eleven years old Preach awoke to find that he was unable to move his limbs. He had set up camp at his usual spot in the densest part of the bayou, on the edge of the Chitimacha village, having temporarily lost his desire to sleep at home, a craving that came over him now and again when his father, paralyzed from the waist down after being shot with an arrow through the base of his spine, started raving. People believed he spoke in tongues, that he was a kind of shaman, connected to the Old Ones—creatures out of nightmares who, it was said, had roamed the bayous long before the Chitimacha came into existence. The boy Preach was having none of it, a practical bent having been forced on him in order to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, leaky and patchwork as it was.

His father had hunted the Chitimacha with a passion beyond Preach's comprehension—as if they were encroaching on his territory rather than the opposite. Preach did not resent them shooting his father; he'd killed six of their people. They had to stop him. In fact, Preach, inquisitive to a fault, sought them out. To his surprise, they befriended him, even, in their way, adopted him. He did chores for them and they paid him, both in food for his family's table and in wisdom old as time. Their elders taught him how to identify, observe, and learn from the wildlife that, in those days, teemed through the bayous.

It was early morning, and he sensed that he was hovering somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. He thought of his father, unable to walk. But in the next moment he was distracted by a different sensation, that of being in a place that was neither sleep nor wakefulness, nor anything in between. A new place; an unknown place. Nothing looked right—or the same. The butterfly hovering over his chest, the ant toiling across the back of his hand, the leaves on the trees, the lacy pattern of the thin twisted branches. In fact, he could see through the leaves, the branches, the treetops. Through the mountains beyond, through even the sky. He found himself staring at his own face. And yet it was one he didn't quite recognize. Inside him a glowing coal began to burn—no, no, not a coal—a second heart, that beat to a rhythm so complex it made him dizzy even though he was lying on his back.

He blinked, sucked in the dank, heavy air of the bayous, and was once again able to move his fingers and toes, his arms and legs. And that's when he saw the crow. It was sitting on a branch of a nearby tree, which was dead, split down the middle by a lightning strike.

The crow regarded him with its beady black eyes, cocked its head, and, damn, if it didn't look like it was smiling at him.

Later on, the crow spoke to him, a voice in his mind. Later still, the crow suggested he kill it. But it was far more than a suggestion.
I'll be more valuable to you dead than alive
, it whispered.
How can that be?
he asked. And the crow had answered,
You'll see
.

I don't want to kill you.

I know
, the crow said.
Trust me.

With a heavy heart, he slit its throat with one quick slice of his pocketknife. And then, to his utter astonishment, he did see. He saw everything.

 

20

“You are well and truly fucked.” Seiran el-Habib was grinning from ear to ear. “You can't take me back to America, can you? No, no, no. And you've been here so long I'm thinking your transport out of here is gone. Am I right? And as for those surprises you promised me, I'm thinking they just dried up and blew away.”

“
Now
can I kill him?” Flix said.

“Not until we find out what's going on,” Whitman said.

“But where are we going to go?” Charlie said. “He's right. We can't bring him back to the States.”

“And after what happened here,” el-Habib said, “you three are outlaws—fugitives from your own government. You are in no-man's-land with nowhere to hide.”

Flix slammed him in the side again, and Whitman didn't object. “Charlie, take the girl into the kitchen.”

Charlie raised one eyebrow. “And?”

“You know what and.”

He turned to Flix. “I want you to take a reading of the compound. Make sure we're alone. See what happened to the dogs we ran into last time out. And Flix—for the love of God try to find someone who's still alive and bring him back here. We need answers.”

Flix nodded and, with a last venomous look at the Saudi, vanished down a corridor. That left Whitman alone with Seiran el-Habib.

The Saudi, seeing the look on Whitman's face, held up his hands, palms outward. “Don't expect me to help you, pal. You fucked up my situation royally.”

Whitman pushed el-Habib into a chair, used phone wire to tie his ankles to the legs, his wrists behind his back. He grinned. “Well, now we have a start; you have a situation.”

Seiran el-Habib grimaced. “That's the beginning and the end of it.”

Whitman cocked his head. “Are you even a Saudi?”

El-Habib's mouth remained closed.

“Uh huh.” Whitman stepped forward, flicked open a plastic lighter, and set fire to el-Habib's beard.

The reaction was almost instantaneous. After a split second of shock, the Saudi tried to raise his hands to bat away the flames. Whitman watched as the Saudi squirmed and twisted, screaming and cursing while the flames turned his beard to charcoal wisps, and then began to eat at the skin of his face.

El-Habib kept screaming, his eyes opened wide and staring, the whites showing all around. “Stop it!” he panted. “Stop it!”

“I can't,” Whitman said, “you won't let me.”

“What … what are you talking about?”

“You won't talk to me, el-Habib, or whatever the fuck your name is. And as soon as the fire eats its way through your jaw, you won't be able to talk to anyone.”

“All right! All right!” Tears were rolling down the Saudi's cheeks, sizzling as they met the flames. “I'm dying here!”

“Not yet you aren't.”

Whitman used his forearms to snuff out the flames, but the lower half of el-Habib's face was black, red, wet, and raw. He was hysterical, cycling between screaming out his pain and sobbing.

“Sit still.” Whitman crouched down in front of el-Habib. “Fear not,” he said, his voice gentle now as he snapped open his first-aid kit. “I'll take care of you.”

*   *   *

No sooner had St. Vincent returned with Lucy Orteño to his office, than he received an urgent message for him to come down to IESAC—Integrated Electronic Surveillance and Command. Parking the girl with Jonah Dickerson, his SIC, his second in command, he hauled ass down the stairs three levels, used the fingerprint scanner to gain access.

IESAC was as large as an airplane hangar. It existed belowground, and was far larger than the footprint of the building above it. Thirty monitoring stations, manned round the clock, ranged along the right side of the space. To the left was the semicircular bank where five analysts worked collating the high-priority signals and assigning operatives to deal with them.

St. Vincent was not encouraged to see his boss, General Lewis Serling, standing with his hands locked behind his back, staring at one of five screens arrayed like a cross.

“We've lost the signal, Luther,” he said as St. Vincent came up.

Not wanting to show his ignorance, St. Vincent chose an agnostic reply. “I have a lot of signals out, Director.”

“This is the only one that concerns me,” General Serling said in his trademark rasp, caused by forty years of smoking three packs a day.

His lungs might be black as night, St. Vincent thought, but he was as healthy as a college athlete. Some humans were just built that way. He stared at the general's forest of ear hair before saying, “And why does it bring you down to IESAC?”

“Because,” Serling said slowly and carefully, “it belongs to Bluto.”

A little shiver of premonition eeled its way through St. Vincent. Bluto was the field name for Martin Price, the agent he had following Paulus Lindstrom.

“I understand,” the general went on in the overprecise tone drunks used when they didn't want anyone to know they were drunk, “that Bluto lost Dr. Lindstrom once or twice already.” General Serling wasn't drunk; he was very, very angry. “That for the past several nights Dr. Lindstrom has not gone home.” He turned to face St. Vincent, his gaze piercing, implacable. “Where was Lindstrom? What was he doing?”

When St. Vincent did not answer, the general said, “There are weapons that are simply voiced thoughts. Prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy. Do you understand me?”

“I do, but—”

“But nothing.” General Serling launched his final arrow. “Bluto is missing, Luther. He is nowhere to be found. His car was discovered about twenty minutes ago in Rock Creek Park, abandoned. Also, wiped clean, which would leave one to believe that Bluto is no longer among the living.”

Serling's expression darkened. “Bluto. A death on your watch.”

“Are you questioning my actions, Director?”

“I'm questioning the impulse behind your actions.” When St. Vincent remained mute, Serling moved so that he was between St. Vincent and the monitors. “Up until now you've led a charmed life, Luther. But your protection has given you a sense of entitlement that is unwarranted and unwise. Good as you are at your job, there is still a line you have to toe just like anyone else.”

The general's eyes were like dark pits; he looked as if he had forgotten how to smile. “Some people possess talent, others are possessed by it. When that happens a talent becomes a curse.” He held up a warning finger as St. Vincent was about to interrupt him. “I'm not the only one who thinks so. This—let's call it an intervention—comes straight from the national security adviser himself.” He paused for a moment. “Imagine, Luther, if POTUS ever got wind of this death.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Don't kid yourself, bucko. He loves his image—he loves it a shitload. He may love you now, but believe me, like any politician, he'll throw you under the bus as soon as look at you if the need arises. Bedrock self-preservation is his business—his only business. I urge you to keep that in mind as you move forward.

“And move forward you shall, because you need to redeem yourself in my eyes and those of the national security adviser. Bluto's death has sent serious reverberations throughout NSA. It's up to you to deliver the counterblow.” He bared his teeth like a lion confronted with raw meat. “Who sent us this message, Luther? Find out, will you, son? Because as sure as God made little green apples we are under attack on our home turf.”

*   *   *

“Are you going to hurt me?” the little girl said.

“No,” Charlie answered. “I'm going to make us tea.” The girl was as thin as a wasp, her breasts just budding. “Why don't you light some candles?”

Looking at her more closely as the light turned from harsh to soft, Charlie was reminded of
Lolita
—not the film versions, but the transgressive novel wherein Nabokov's prose describes Delores, Lolita, Lo, the object of Humbert Humbert's ardent desire, as being prepubescent.

Charlie checked the stove to make sure it ran on gas, then turned on a burner. She had found loose tea in a canister, alongside a wooden rack of knives, to the left of the stovetop. Sticking her nose into it, she inhaled the rich aroma. Somewhat surprised that it wasn't the usual Pakistani or Afghani varieties, she took a pinch between thumb and forefinger, kneading it, then smelling the released oils. Jasmine, she thought. But not just any jasmine—this tea had an ineffable essence that spoke of extremely high quality. Moving the canister into light thrown by a candle, she saw lines of Mandarin, below which, in smaller type was the English: Zhangyiyuan Tea Shop, 22 Dashilan Street, Xicheng, Beijing. Charlie had heard of Zhangyiyuan. It was one of the finest tea purveyors in the Mainland, with nearly two hundred teashops in Beijing. In fact, she had read somewhere that its jasmine tea-scenting technique had been elevated to one of the state-level intangible cultural heritages. What in the world would this tea be doing in a villa housing a Saudi terrorist, guarded by U.S. soldiers in the middle of Western Pakistan? It made no sense. Still pondering the possible meanings, she spooned the tea into a pot.