An African Affair (30 page)

James sighed. “I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I do love you. Look, Lindsay, I’m not going to pretend I’m an innocent man or a good one, we both know better. But I’m not a monster, though it’s easy for your friend Vickie to demonize me now that we don’t work together anymore. I didn’t seem so bad to her when I was carrying out CIA orders. But I didn’t kill Maureen. I knew about the bomb—you might remember that I delayed you that day—but I never thought Maureen would get there early. Shit, she was never early. I thought she’d wait for you. It was meant as a warning, set to go off before anyone came. I cared about Maureen too. I swear it.”

Lindsay was a trained reporter. She often had to intuit who was telling the truth and who was lying. She saw how James looked down as he talked as if he was trying to convince himself rather than her. She heard the tone of despair in his voice, and she believed him. She didn’t forgive him, but she believed he didn’t know that Maureen would be killed.

“But you live a life of such corruption and violence that terrible things happen because of you whether you want them to or not,” she said. “You helped people steal medicine that might have saved the lives of hundreds of children. I knew one of those children and so did you. You say you’re not a monster. What does it take to be a monster if that doesn’t qualify?”

Lindsay’s face was flushed with emotion and she turned away, fighting tears.

James regained his composure. “Look, I’m not going to try to excuse myself to you, that would be impossible. But, for the record, that medicine saved the lives of children in the northern hospitals. It’s all corrupt. People like us, outsiders, we can’t stop it. We can’t even understand it. I just found a way to profit from it. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else. The only reason those southern hospitals could order medicine in the first place is that there was a southern president in power who took care of his own tribe. We just tried to even the score.”

“You betrayed him too, didn’t you?”

“Are you going to tell me he didn’t deserve it?”

“That’s not the point, James.” She simply couldn’t bear to continue the conversation. “I can’t argue anymore. It’s over. You’re neutralized. They have the list of all your couriers. You won’t be able to hurt anyone ever again.”

“Okay,” he said. “So it’s over. Maybe that’s a good thing for you.”

It was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Even now, as she berated and condemned him, she loved him, though she was no longer sure what that word meant. She was horrified by his actions and the justifications he used to salve whatever conscience he had, but she was still drawn to him.

“No,” she said, her voice and manner softer than before. “It’s not a good thing for me. I think you know that.”

As if he sensed her weakness, he said, “So what’s the plan? Will they pick me up at customs?”

“Yes,” she said, looking away.

“Is that your goal? What do you want to come of all this?”

She didn’t hesitate. “To stop you.”

“You’ve already stopped me. I assume they will arrest all the people in my network. I’m through. I’d have to start all over again, and that’s the last thing I’d want to do even if I could. This deal was planned to be my last, to free me, to buy me the rest of my life to forget all this. I’d hoped to do that with you . . .”

He seemed to choke up for a second and looked away, but not before she saw his eyes misting. Then he turned back to her.

“You should know that even if my network is busted, that won’t stop the drug trade. Another network will rise up. It always does.”

Lindsay wavered for a second. He was right. He was no longer a danger. But that didn’t satisfy her.

“Don’t you think you should pay for what you’ve done?” she asked. This time her voice held neither anger nor reproach. She really wanted to know what he thought.

James gently took her hand. She didn’t withdraw it, and he went on. “So, stopping me is not the issue. You want to punish me.”

She started to withdraw her hand, but he held it tighter. “I can understand that. That’s fair, right? That’s the American way.”

She relaxed her hand and let it rest in his.

“Only just make sure you know what the punishment will be, Lindsay, and take responsibility for it. You’ll be a part of it. You won’t just be writing about it this time. Do you know what they are planning?”

Now Lindsay withdrew her hand from his. There was something disturbing in his tone.

“They’re going to put you on trial. You’ll get a fair hearing. How will you like it, actually dealing in truth for a change?”

“Lindsay, you don’t understand. They can’t put me on trial. I know too much and they know I’ll use it. They can deal with me or kill me, those are their only choices, and they’ve decided not to deal with me.”

She remembered Goren and the ambassador discussing just this possibility. She’d trusted Vickie, but maybe that was a mistake. She didn’t know whether to believe him. Suddenly she was furious. How dare he put her in this position, hurt her so badly, then force her to make these impossible choices?

“It was you who decided not to deal with them when you joined the other side. And why? Because they paid more. Jesus. I still can’t believe it. How could I have been so wrong about you? Are you that good at this, really, or was I just such an easy mark? And how did you know I would be? Can people like you just smell it, the weakness, the need?”

“Lindsay, please. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t do that to us.” He reached for her hand again but she pulled it away violently.

“Us? There was never an ‘us,’ James. You used me, that’s all. And you underestimated me from the beginning. I don’t even know if your name is James.”

He gave a weak smile. “It is.”

“Well, good. You told me one truth anyway.”

“I told you more truths than I ever told anyone else.”

She turned away from him. He tried to put his hand on her shoulder, to turn her toward him, but she threw it off and refused to look at him.

“Lindsay,” he began, “I know I hurt you. I’m sorry.”

She faced him. He looked her straight in the eye, the way he used to, the way that threw her off balance with desire. This time she met his gaze evenly.

“Did I use you?” he asked rhetorically. “Yes.”

She sat unmoving, her face revealing no emotion.

“Did I love you?” he continued. “Yes. Can you understand that? Must you believe only the version that makes me into a monster?”

“You are a monster,” she blurted. “How can you live with yourself?”

He showed a quick flash of anger. “What do you hate me more for? Your list of the atrocities I supposedly committed or the fact that you think I deceived you? Is it your conscience or your pride I’m hearing?”

“I hate you for all of it. I don’t need to qualify my hatred. And what do you mean ‘supposedly’? The atrocities are well documented and very reliably sourced.”

“Stop talking like a journalist.”

“What is it you really hate about journalism, James? Is it the search for objective truth? Is that what bothers you?”

“It’s the mistaken idea that there is objective truth. And that journalists think they’re on the moral high ground.”

“No objective truth. No objective morality. No code, no rules, no right, no wrong. You developed this rationale as a way to live with your greed. You disgust me.”

She had spit it all out, finally, and it ought to have felt good, but she just felt tired and sullied and sad. She stared out the window at the same clear blue sky. The same white cotton-candy clouds. But everything else was different. She didn’t want it to end this way.

She touched his arm and said softly, “Can you try to explain, James? Can you help me try to see this from your point of view?”

James put both hands over his face, rubbing his forehead.

“What do you want me to tell you, Lindsay? That I was abused when I was a child? That I was abandoned? Rejected by my mother? Beaten by her alcoholic husband? I wasn’t. I don’t know what happened. I liked adventure. I started out within the law. I worked as an operative for these people you trust so much now. A lot of what I did wasn’t much different from what I do now. That’s where I learned to lie and manipulate and strategize, but it was supposedly for the good of my country, and they didn’t pay much, so I must have been doing it for good reasons, isn’t that how it goes? Then, after a while, I started seeing how hopeless everything was. When the first offer came to work for profit, I took it. After that, I kind of slid into what I do now, little by little, inch by inch.” He paused and looked at her. “I’m not proud of it, Lindsay. I’m trying to get out of it. I was going to Tahiti, I’m planning on building a house there. Come with me.”

Lindsay shook her head. “I can’t, James. You crossed a line I could never cross.”

“And you don’t see that by helping them kill me, you are crossing that same line?”

“Kill you? I don’t believe it,” she said brusquely. “Vickie wouldn’t be involved in murder.”

“Maybe not,” James said, “but Goren would. I’ve been wondering about him.” He turned toward the window and stared out. They sat in silence. James seemed to have given up trying to persuade her.

They were two hours from Athens and there was nothing left to say. The flight attendant wheeled a drinks cart slowly down the aisle, stopping at each row. Lindsay asked for scotch and James did the same. She stole a glance at him but could read nothing in his face. She pulled the flight magazine from the seat pocket in front of her and pretended to read it, then gave that up and placed it back where she had found it. Time passed, and she dimly heard an announcement that they would land in Athens in about forty-five minutes.

Signs of life on the ground began to appear through the clouds; first green and brown patches, looking from that distance like a flat, onedimensional grid, and then slowly, as the plane decreased in altitude, taking shape, turning into fields and trees and hills and sea. Soon she would see houses and swimming pools and cars. Soon they would be on the ground and she would have to do what she had to do.

This last part would be the hardest. He seemed calm and resigned. He had said that they were planning to kill him—was there any chance that was true? How would they bring him to trial? Maybe some kind of court-martial, but she wondered under what pretense. Would they claim national security and close the trial? It would probably seem so much easier to just make him disappear.

The voice of the captain came over the loudspeaker. “Ladies and gentlemen, due to bad weather conditions in Athens, we are diverting to Crete. A local flight to Athens will be available later in the day. Please fasten your safety belts and remain seated for the remainder of the journey. We should be landing in approximately an hour.” The passengers groaned.

Outside her window, the sky was bright blue. She felt James’s eyes on her, and turned to face him.

“Does it look like bad weather to you?” he asked.

Lindsay looked puzzled.

“This is Dave Goren. He or someone he trusts will be waiting on the tarmac in Crete. But Vickie will be waiting in Athens. When she figures out what’s happening, it will be too late.”

Lindsay got up and walked briskly to the back of the plane. She picked up the onboard telephone and, using her credit card to pay, dialed Vickie’s cell. She listened as the phone rang, slowly losing hope until, finally, she heard the recorded message. She hissed into the phone:

“Vickie, we’ve been diverted to Crete. I don’t know what to do. It’s three P.M., we land in about an hour. James says it’s a—” and then the line went dead. She walked slowly back to her seat. James was staring at her.

“Even if I wanted to stop this, I couldn’t,” she said.

“I’m not so sure,” he said. Without another word, he stood up, slipped past Lindsay, and opened the overhead bin, taking out a small black leather carry-on bag. Then he strolled toward the front of the plane, past the row where Dan Ryan, out cold from the sleeping pill, was snoring lightly. Dan had filled out his landing card before he fell asleep, and his passport and card were on his dinner tray. James brushed by Dan’s seat; the passport now in James’s pocket, he continued on to the men’s room.

About fifteen minutes passed before the lavatory door reopened and a bald man with a black mustache and bushy eyebrows emerged. Lindsay watched as he walked back down the aisle, casually dropping Dan Ryan’s passport back on his tray. She was sure that if the Texan took the trouble to look, he would see that though his photo appeared unchanged, his passport now identified him as James Duncan. She was equally sure that James’s passport displayed Dan Ryan’s name with a photo of this bald stranger attached to it.

Barely recognizable, even to her, James returned to his seat.

“They will be looking for you and your traveling companion. Goren knows me but he can’t be everywhere at once, and he won’t expect a disguise. I’ll try to get to the front of the line. You need to take the Texan’s arm so they see you together. In the confusion, I’ll get away.”

Lindsay didn’t answer, and the two sat in silence as they began their descent. The airport came into sight as the plane sank lower and lower. The wheels hit the ground with a light thud and the passengers broke into enthusiastic applause. As the plane stopped, people rose and began to collect their belongings. James moved quickly. She turned to look at him and their eyes met, both serious, both sad. He reached out and briefly touched her face with his fingers, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ears. Then he made his way to the front of the line. Lindsay grabbed her bag and pushed her way forward. She spotted James ahead of her, weaving in and out of a group of determined tourists.

There was the usual chaos in the arrival area but she managed to keep James in sight, edging closer. She was nearly paralyzed with indecision. If she helped him, he would get away with everything. She scanned passport control and saw no one she recognized. Why should she believe that this was a trap? This was more likely just another of James’s tricks.