The Prisoner of Guantanamo (34 page)

“I was thinking it was kind of funny to be meeting somebody at the library, but you always were kind of into books, huh?”

“Guess so.”

“So are you gay, then?”

“What?”

“Are you gay?”

“Uh, no.”

“Oh. Good. Then come on by sometime before you leave town.”

Mercifully they had just pulled into the small parking lot by the white frame library.

“I'll do that,” he said, offering his manliest smile as he unlatched the door. “And thanks for the ride.”

“Anytime after nine.”

“Got it.”

There was no sign of Paco's Ford, which made Falk a little anxious. But when he stepped inside his emotions gave way to nostalgia.

What bowled him over most was the smell, the same musty blend of cloth bindings and old paper, and the oaken shelves and big reading table to the side where he had spent so many quiet hours of refuge. Then there was the silence, with its own hermetic quality, especially if you sat by the back window, watching the play of sunlight on the water in the tidal cove. Some things had changed. The old clock with its loud ticking was gone, replaced by a big gray wall model that hummed. There was now an Internet kiosk, and a table displaying the latest acquisitions. Most were titles from the best-seller list.

“Can I help you?”

Here was another change. The librarian was a trim woman who looked to be in her forties. No relation, he supposed, to Miss Clarkson, stern but gentle, who had always let him stay as long as he liked, as if quietly aware of all the hell breaking loose just up the road.

“No, thank you. I'm meeting someone for a little research.”

“Well, just let me know.”

“Thanks.”

Paco's car pulled up outside a few minutes later, with no one following. He looked worried until he came through the door and saw Falk. Then he broke into a huge grin and nodded to the librarian.

“So you made it,” he whispered, respecting the sanctity of the place.

“Barely. Got lucky. Where to next?”

“The nearest Internet café, I guess. Send our message, then wait for the dust to settle.”

Falk asked the librarian if she knew of any likely spots.

“That's a tough one. Blue Hill, maybe? Bangor for sure, but that's a ways. Of course, you could always use this one.” She gestured toward the kiosk. Falk felt like an idiot.

“Could we send an e-mail?”

“Long as you have a server account.”

“Let's get to work.”

For the next hour they sat at the big oak table laboring over a few sheets of notebook paper provided by the librarian, writing with the stubby yellow pencils you find in libraries everywhere. Somewhere beneath the table, Falk knew, were his initials, scratched into place with just such a pencil a quarter century ago. He wished he had time for a peek, but maybe by now someone had sanded them away. Better, perhaps, to just pretend they were still down there.

The work went quickly, and they made a pretty fair team. Once they had settled on the main points and overall thrust, they moved to the computer keyboard and Falk began to type. He began with a brief history of his work as an unofficial double agent for Endler—Falk owned the info, therefore Falk applied his own spin; if nothing else he was a quick learner—and their epistle continued with Falk's version of the recent doings at Gitmo involving Fowler, Bo, Endler, and Van Meter. He spared no evidence of Ludwig's murder and left no misdeed unrecorded. Supplementing all this were Paco's findings, which dovetailed nicely. They then offered a joint conclusion that rogue elements of U.S. and Cuban intelligence seemed determined to bring about a confrontation by misusing the above findings.

For the memo's pièce de résistance (at least, as far as the Bureau's interests were concerned), they detailed the plans of Cuban Directorate of Intelligence operative Gonzalo Rubiero, code name “Paco,” to defect to the United States, effective immediately, in exchange for citizenship and confidential relocation. Falk then briefly explained his own means of escape from Guantánamo by saying that the actions of the above conspirators had left him no choice.

It was no masterpiece, but it certainly packed a wallop.

“Anything you want to add?” he asked Paco. After all this time, he couldn't yet get used to the idea of calling the man Gonzalo.

“Looks finished to me.”

“It's as good as we're going to do with this much time. Now the question is who we send it to. My boss, or his superiors? Maybe the director himself?”

“The way I see it,” Paco said, “it's like choosing between fried clams and the lobster roll. You can't miss, either way. But if you are hungry enough, why not have them all?”

Good advice. Falk typed in the names for all three. But when it came time to send it on its way, he hesitated.

“What's wrong?” Paco asked.

“I was just remembering who we're dealing with. Thinking about what they've already done to the few people who've gotten in their way. We need some backup.”

He clicked back to the “cc” line and plugged in an e-mail address for a reporter he had dealt with in the Washington bureau of the
New York Times.
To be on the safe side, he also sent a copy to a reporter from the
Washington Post.
Nothing like the heat of competition to ensure critical mass. He didn't exactly mind that the Bureau would see those addresses, either.

Then he took a deep breath, clicked on the Send button, and sat back in the chair. They watched the blue line streak across the screen, a flare fired in distress from their leaking little raft. Now it was only a question of who would reach them first, their rescuers or their pursuers.

“What now?” Paco asked.

“I thought we might get some coffee. We can come back in an hour and check for replies.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Falk slapped his palms on his thighs and stood, a little stiff after the intense session at the keyboard. He supposed he was still weary from the long cruise across rough seas.

“Oh, my,” the librarian exclaimed, glancing out a window, “this is as busy as we've been all week.”

Two more customers had just emerged from a familiar black Suburban. One, a woman in a navy skirt and white blouse, peered through the window of Paco's Ford. The other, a man in a polo and khakis—Falk knew the uniform well—was already coming up the steps.

“I guess this means no coffee,” Paco said.

“I'm sure they'll have some at the office in Bangor.” Falk sighed as the door opened, bringing with it the noise of the highway and the cry of a seagull. “Welcome to your new life, Paco. Hope it's what you really wanted.”

EPILOGUE

T
HE STORY NEVER MADE
the papers. Too many denials and too few confirmations.

There was also the matter of the so-called Gitmo spy ring to divert the media's attention. Two more military interpreters were arrested in the week following Falk's escape, and even though all but a few minor charges were eventually dropped, it captured the public's attention for weeks.

But four months later Falk and Gonzalo were still free men, which Falk supposed was victory enough for their Nation of Two.

Gonzalo's debriefing took up most of that time, leading to yet another flurry of deportations from Cuban interest sections in Washington and New York. The Bureau then relocated Gonzalo under a new name. Just as well, since Falk would always think of him as Paco. Falk asked around about possible whereabouts, but no one would admit to knowing anything, although one agent dropped strong hints that it was out west, perhaps near Scottsdale. Apparently a woman had joined him, and Falk wondered if it might be the mysterious Elena until someone offered the tidbit that she was Venezuelan.

Falk still had his job, at least in name, even if the Bureau had stripped him of his security clearance and stuck him behind a desk in the Hoover Building where he could be watched at all hours.

There were casualties, of course.

One was Adnan, swallowed into the belly of a transport plane the day after Falk reached Navassa Island. The best Falk had been able to determine, based on covert communications with Tyndall and a few others sympathetic to his predicament, Adnan had vanished into a Yemeni dungeon for a lifetime of either torment or neglect, hidden away as one of those minor national embarrassments who could do harm only if allowed back into the light of day.

Whenever Falk thought of Adnan now—an almost daily occurrence—he remembered the propaganda poster taped up in the interrogation booth, the stylized photo of the grieving mother wishing her son would come home.

Falk's father died three weeks after their reunion, without getting to see his son a second time. The debriefers told Falk they were too busy to spare him, although he was able to phone a few times. They did let him out for the funeral. It took only a day to settle the estate. Someone appraised the lot the trailer was on, and by the time the funeral home had totted up the charges both parties agreed to call it even if Falk signed over the deed. His father was buried on a hill with a view of the island's old granite quarry, where he had worked his first job when he was young and single and hadn't yet put out to sea.

But that was in late August. Now it was a Wednesday in early December, and as Falk sat at his desk in Washington opening mail, another name from among the wounded leaped out at him from a return address atop the pile:

“Doris Ludwig, Buxton, MI.”

He carefully tore open the envelope, as if the fragile remnants of her grief might spill out and shatter on the desk. Her handwriting was neat and plain, the earnest penmanship of someone taking care not to ask for too much.

Dear Mr. Falk,

After all this time, it pains me to say that I have been unable to get anyone to answer my many questions about my husband's death at Guantánamo. I was hoping to enlist your help, since you were the investigator who called me last August. A Lieutenant Carrington from the Judge Advocate General's office tells me that you are no longer assigned to the case, and he repeated their earlier conclusion that Earl's misfortune, as he called it, has officially been ruled a “death by misadventure” due to a boating accident in an unauthorized craft.

But after speaking with you, and also with Ed Sample at my husband's bank, I am not satisfied that the Army has adequately looked into matters. May I ask if you are satisfied with their findings? I don't remember your words exactly, but you said something like, “I'll stay on top of it.” So I guess that is what I'm asking you to do now. My e-mail address is below, in case you wish to respond in that manner.

Yours truly,

Doris Ludwig

P.S.—This is NOT about money. The Army has been more than generous in that respect. But at this point I no longer know who else to turn to.

So they'd paid her off, but not enough to buy her silence. Well, good for you, Doris, even if there was little Falk could do in his current position. That much had been clear only two days ago, when Bokamper had broken a long silence to phone and suggest a meeting. They had burned each other pretty badly, but Bo sounded interested in starting over, or at least coming to terms. So, they settled on a bar in Georgetown—no starched tablecloths this time—and agreed on 9 p.m.

Bo, who had never arrived on time and probably never would, walked in with his usual swagger.

“How's your gal?”

“We're hanging in there,” Falk said. “She asks about you all the time, of course.”

“I'll bet. But I'm glad to hear you're still together. I guess she proved me wrong.”

She hadn't, actually. Pam and he still wrote every week, but the passionate tone of their earliest letters had cooled. Falk supposed distance was partly to blame. She was now stationed at Fort Bragg, just far enough to make a weekend drive impractical. But Falk suspected that Bo's earlier hunch was closer to the heart of the problem. Once she learned of his past, she seemed to step back a little, as if trying to decide if this sort of man could ever fit comfortably with her own ambitions. They had twice planned to meet for a weekend, but both times a last-minute assignment came up. At her end, not his. Falk hadn't given up, but he was beginning to wonder if maybe she wanted him to.

“Never got to tell you how impressed I was with the way you made it out of there,” Bo said. “I mean, I knew you were a sailor, but Jesus, a tropical storm?”

“Tropical depression. Downgraded almost the minute I put in. No need to make it a bigger deal than it was.”

“Whatever you say, Captain Ahab.”

“Besides, Endler is the real escape artist. I hear he's getting all sorts of credit now for having averted a major embarrassment.”

Endler's two main coconspirators hadn't come out of the affair too shabbily, either. One, a deputy secretary of state, probably got the worst of it, receiving an early retirement with a nice pension. The other, a ranking civilian at the Defense Intelligence Agency with a tendency for bombast, had been more problematic, until some bright light came up with the idea of turning him loose on the United Nations as the next U.S. ambassador. Confirmation was pending.

“What can I say?” Bo shrugged. “Another reason the Doc's so great to work for.”

“I might agree, to a point, if he hadn't set that slimeball Van Meter free.”

“Van Meter's not out of the woods yet. You watch. He'll get active time and a dishonorable discharge.”

“But not on a murder charge.”

“Not without the whole mess coming out in a court-martial. You take what you can get.”

“Meaning he'll do a year or two, then join some security firm that will let him go shoot Iraqis for three times what the Army would have paid.”

“It's a growth industry. Maybe you should get your résumé out.”

“I've considered it. At least the Arabic's still marketable.”

They talked a while longer. Drank a few beers. Falk was genuinely interested in hearing about the wife and kids, and Bo seemed genuinely interested in telling him.

But not until they paid the tab did Bo finally broach the question that had hovered between them throughout the conversation.

“So what are we now, Falk? Friends, maybe?”

“Why don't we leave it at comrades in arms? You proved that much, I guess, back at the marina.”

“I can live with that for now.”

“Yeah, but can you still sleep at night?”

“Hey, you know me.”

“All too well.”

Bo must have taken the remark in the best possible light, because he smiled. Or maybe not, because he then launched into a short lecture that Falk later figured was the message he had intended to deliver all along.

“Something like this never really dies, you know.”

“Something like what?” Did he mean friendship?

“This whole mess down in Cuba. After a while people will stop talking about it, but that won't mean it's dead. It'll just be in remission. Like a tumor. Do something to stir it up and it'll be as malignant as ever.”

“Are you warning me?”

“The warning's for everybody. Me included. So just lie low. Let it rest. 'Cause it's just not worth it. Start poking around again and you might wake up one morning in your very own Gitmo, one of those places without a name where no one knows the latitude, the longitude, or even the time of day.”

Bo was smiling, as if to say this was all hyperbole, or some kind of a joke. Falk didn't see the humor, and said nothing.

“C'mon, man, you don't think I'm serious, do you? It's not like I'd ever help them pull off something like that.”

“Maybe you wouldn't need to.”

“Like I said. You're the one who controls your future. Just don't give them an excuse to make it otherwise. Is that too much to ask, one friend to another?”

Bo smiled again, then held out his big mitt for a farewell shake. Falk gave a halfhearted wave and walked out of the bar without looking back.

And now, with Doris Ludwig's letter staring up from the desk, he finally saw her plea for help for what it really was—an opportunity to either poke at the tumor or leave it in remission, perhaps for good.

Falk drafted six different replies, striving each time for that delicate balance between compassion and passing the buck. In one he even implied that perhaps something hadn't been on the up-and-up about the investigation, and urged her to keep digging.

Then he imagined her flying out to Washington, using her kids' Christmas money so she could spend a few days traipsing down the marble corridors of Congress, shunted into undersized and overcrowded anterooms with earnest young staffers who would nod and take notes and promise action, while striking that delicate balance between compassion and passing the buck. Then they would forget her name and face by the time they had downed their afternoon lattes.

It was with that despairing image in mind that he logged on to the Internet, clicked over to the server for his personal e-mail account and called up the menu for the “Sent” basket. And there it was, still alive, even if buried beneath four months of other correspondence, less like a tumor than a piece of unexploded ordnance. He supposed Paco wouldn't mind if he fired this bombshell of theirs on one last flight of fancy, so he clicked on the Forward prompt and typed in Doris Ludwig's e-mail address. Then he added a brief preface:

Dear Mrs. Ludwig,

These are the facts as I know them. As you will note from the original date and the listed recipients, the relevant authorities have already been notified. You are welcome to pursue further action, but I can tell you from personal experience that your efforts will be likely only to produce further grief for you and those you love. But that decision is yours, and yours alone. At the very least you are entitled to know these things.

Sincerely,

Revere Falk

After hitting the Send button he finally relaxed, wishing for a moment that Paco had been there to enjoy it with him.

Then he decided he had better get to work on that résumé.