Caravan of Thieves (8 page)

“He’s a degenerate, but I like him anyway. He’s gonna cooperate if we just ask him right.”

Efficient soldiers they were, but they had misjudged their customer if they thought that lame stuff would affect Dan. In another circumstance, I would have felt sorry for them. Dan shouted in pain. Sometimes I thought I could hear the punches landing. I crawled forward on the porch of the big house, closer to the window, closer, but stayed below it. The house changed colors, but the window was always right above my head. Open. I could hear.

“Join us. Join us, Dan. Tell us where the money is.”

“He can’t tell us if he’s dead.”

“You took the money, Dan. Admit it.”

“I took the money. Plenty of money. Never counted it.”

“And where is it now, Dan?” That voice was the boss. Calm and threatening. “Join us, Dan. We have a need for a man like you. Tell us where the money is.”

“I don’t know.”

They hit him and he gagged from the pain.

It became a chant: irritation, diversion, even comfort. Verses repeated like a song that gets stuck in your head. I used it to conjure the mirage and I used the mirage to conjure the conversation, and all the while I strained to see inside the house but I never could. What ritual accompanied the chant? A big pot of boiling water on a platform; Dan tied next to it, waiting to be cooked. But, no, Dan would be suggesting the recipe, selling it to them, withholding the secret ingredient.

When Dan was in the cell, the refrain played. “I never had anything I didn’t steal. Remember that.”

“I will.”

“Figure out who you are.”

“I will.”

“I never had anything I didn’t steal.”

I had never seen Dan under physical stress. Plenty of soldiers resort to gibberish after they’re wounded or when the attack is too intense. At a small station north of Jalalabad, a captain kept muttering “Go no more, go no more,” as if he were in a horror movie. I ran into him a year or so later in Kabul, drinking tea in a cool courtyard, and asked him what it meant. He had no idea, barely remembered having said it. Even through the haze of the drugs, it hurt to
see Dan like this. He kept trying to smile, but the swelling distorted his expression, making him look like a guy trying not to vomit in front of his girlfriend.

“Nobody knows me as well as you do. That’s why I couldn’t stay around. Do you understand?”

“No.”

“Yes you do.” I did. “It was wrecking my confidence,” he said. His voice was a whisper but clear. He wanted to make sure I heard him and understood him. “You’re going to make a great middleman.” I smashed the butt of my hand against the solid wall, which was as close as I could come to telling Dan how I felt about him. Dan chuckled and coughed. Then he said, “You know where the money is.”

“I don’t.”

“You do. You just don’t know it.”

“They can hear us.” We were whispering, but it sounded like a shout to me. I looked around, as I had a thousand times already, for signs of hidden microphones. Whether I found them or not, we had to assume they were there. The door opened. Two masked men came in. First they assessed whether I was going to be a problem. I sat back. They came forward and lifted Dan to his feet. As soon as they started out, I kicked one behind the knee. He buckled. The other man threw Dan against the wall and turned to me. I punched with my right. Too slow. He dodged, caught my elbow, and rammed me headfirst into the wall. By then, the other man was up. He slugged me in the kidney, but he didn’t have to. I was on my way to the floor, woozy and beaten. I looked up at him. His mouth hung open, showing the gap where his front teeth should have been.

From the next room, I could hear the desperate chorus.

“You’re out of your league, Dan.”

“National security implications. Join us. Join us.”

“We know who you are. We know your past.”

“Tell us where the money is, Dan.”

“I don’t know.”

“Bring in his son.”

They dragged me out of the cell. I didn’t resist. Before we went into the next room, I caught a glimpse of a thin man, medium height, wearing a mask, walking out the other way. I had never seen that one before.

The interrogation room had a window, a desk with a couple of bottles of water on it, and two chairs. Dan was passed out in one of them. They hadn’t bothered to tie him to it. His face was raw and swollen from the beatings. Fresh blood dripped on the dried blood on his shirt.

For the first time, I saw faces. Two guys, older than me, in their thirties, stood guard over Dan. They wore combat gear. The one on the right wore gloves. He had blond hair and a huge chin. His eyes glinted with delight. It wasn’t because he was going to beat Dan; it was because I was going to watch it happen. The one on the left held a baton. His head was shaved, and when he spoke his words were mush. His mouth did not open properly. Then Blondie said, “Maybe he’d like to take a turn hitting the old man.”

The other man said something like, “Ah wanna killminetoo.” He was mumbling to hide the gap in his mouth. But then he smiled. The combination of baldness and missing teeth made him look more zany than threatening.

The man in charge sat in a chair facing Dan. He wore fatigues and a black beret without insignia. His skin was tight and tanned and his eyes were such a light blue that he looked possessed or
alien, though you could tell they were his pride and joy and he thought everyone was transfixed by them. He said, “Stand over here, soldier, so your father can see you.”

I looked behind me. The two who brought me in were guarding the door, masks still on, weapons drawn. I moved in front of Dan. One of the guards had to move aside to make room for me. “You’re McColl,” I said. He gave me the full treatment with the eyes, blank, disinterested. But I could tell I was right and he didn’t like me knowing.

“Your father stole money from us and he isn’t cooperating. Now you’re going to have to help us.”

“You want what you’ve rightfully stolen.”

“Do not be insolent, soldier. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“National security, huh? Top secret. Hush-hush. How about if I take a vow of secrecy and we all put on our masks and do the initiation ceremony? In this case, that would be the Order of the Greedy Fucks Who Washed Out of the Third Army.”

The baton came down hard on my shoulder. I buckled for just a moment. Toothless held the baton ready, threatening more. McColl gestured for him to back away. “I know your record, soldier. I respect it. I have no gripe with you. I’m only doing what’s necessary to accomplish the mission.”

He seemed to think his little speech would convince me that torturing Dan was okay. I couldn’t see any sense in arguing with McColl and I had the feeling that I shouldn’t have shown defiance to start with. Dan wouldn’t have.

“Dan, your son is here. We’re going to kill him if you don’t tell us where the money is.”

Dan showed no sign of life. Eyes swollen tight, head slumped to a side. McColl nodded to the two men beside him. Toothless held up Dan’s head and tapped his cheek with the baton to bring him around. Blondie unsheathed a buck knife and looked at me to make sure I could see how pleased he was that it was his turn. The two guards at the door came around and held me by each arm.

“Dan, tell us where the money is. Watch. Here’s what we’re going to do to your son.” Another nod. Blondie dragged the knife diagonally across my chest. I growled low, expelling all my breath so that I didn’t scream. Dan’s eyes flickered so I know he saw the cut, but they were all staring at me and didn’t notice him. I stared at McColl and he stared at me and all I was thinking was that every minute he let me live brought him closer to his own death. I never liked killing and I never hated it, either. It was just the way things had to be. It never made me angry or sad. On my first step into the war zone, I accepted that killing was part of living. But this was different. If I lived, I was going to kill McColl as cruelly as I could. And for the first time, I was going to enjoy it. At that instant, I knew this meant a change in me, not for the better, and I did not care, not at all. I was thrilled to find it there. The blood dripped into a puddle at my feet. Toothless slapped Dan again to make him pay attention. He said something like, “Wake up.” McColl turned back to Dan.

“Where’s the money, Dan? Where’s the money?”

“I don’t know,” said Dan.

“You admitted you stole it.”

“I stole it. I never had anything I didn’t steal.” Dan raised his arm slowly. The guards tensed, poised to hit or cut the helpless guy
in the chair. Dan turned his face from McColl to me. He pointed at me. “He stole the money.”

McColl shouted, “You stole the money!”

“I stole the money. And he stole it from me. I don’t know where the money is.”

I wanted to growl again, but that would have been the only sound in the room other than the slowing drip of my blood hitting the floor. McColl stared at Dan, and Dan’s head slumped to the side as if the gaze had knocked him out. I had the sense Dan did it to mock him. McColl looked at me for a moment, then nodded to Toothless, who, again, propped up Dan’s head and gave him a slap. McColl wasn’t too quick of a thinker. I could tell that receiving information that did not fit in his tiny compartments made him want to pull the blanket over his head. I didn’t understand Dan’s game, but I knew there was a game being played.

“Let me make sure we understand you, Dan. You’re saying you don’t know where the money is, but your son does. Is that right?”

“I’m sorry, Rollie Boy. I told you not to expect much from me.”

“I’ll try to remember.”

“Answer me, Dan.”

“You have it right.”

McColl had been in command long enough to know he had to respond. He got up and paced over to the window. He looked out for a full minute. The guards stood still, waiting for orders. McColl turned back to the room. He said, “That would mean we don’t need you anymore, Dan. Do you understand that?”

Dan’s head stayed slumped on his shoulder. I gave McColl the blank stare, a taste of his own medicine. Let him try to read me. He ordered the guards to take me back to the cell.

The air refused to enter my lungs. Maybe it was too thick. I sucked hard over and over again but kept needing more. I forced my eyes open and turned to the other cot. Dan lay still. I drifted out again, but the discomfort came from more than the drugs, and I fought back to the surface and rolled off the cot onto the floor. Dan had not moved. I crawled over to him. He wasn’t cold and he wasn’t warm and he wasn’t Dan anymore. I managed to turn away before I vomited. I straightened him up a bit, folded his arms across his chest. I stood up and pounded on the walls for a few minutes and yelled at McColl. I told him Dan was dead and a lot of things about himself that he needed to know. No one answered. No guards rushed through the door to beat me up or inject me. I kicked the door. And it flew open.

I stepped into the hallway and leaned against the wall to steady myself. The drugs were still clouding me and I knew my movements weren’t sharp. I slid along to the room next door. A misshapen rectangle of light tumbled across the desk and onto the floor. No movement. No sound. I looked in. The room was empty. On a corner of the desk was my wallet, the fish knife I had used to cut the net in the river, matches, and the car check receipt from Las Vegas: all the contents of my pockets. Nothing of Dan’s was there. The light hurt my eyes when I checked outside. There was nothing to see but desert.

The rest of the building was empty. There were eight rooms like the one we were kept in. All empty. The place must have been a storage facility. I walked outside and the sun staggered me with its intensity, made me bow my head and step back inside for a moment. We were in the high desert: scrub brush, gray rocks and
sandy dirt, and small patches of Jimson weed and primrose and some blue flower I didn’t know. A gravel drive led away from the building and out of sight around a small hill. A jeep was parked twenty yards from the building. I approached. The keys were in the ignition. There was a canister of gasoline in the backseat. I caught motion out of the corner of my eye and spun around. A roadrunner dashed along the drive, into a swale, and behind a bush. The wind purred softly. I noticed the sound of a bird repeating a call but couldn’t locate it.

From the top of the small hill, I could see where the drive met the road about a half mile out. No other structures were in sight. I turned and looked back at the warehouse. The darkness and nausea and pain and death seemed as impossible and far off as the sunlight and caressing breeze had a few minutes ago.

I gathered my stuff from the desk. My wallet was fat with hundred-dollar bills, twenty of them that weren’t there before. I lifted Dan’s body to a spot on the hill, then fetched the gas can. Before I poured gas on him, I stood awhile and considered the right words for the occasion. I kept including liar and con artist, which made me start over. Father was a tough one to include also. Did he cheat time, or did it catch up to him? As in every deal Dan ever entered, the results could be tabulated later and debated: who won, who lost, did revenge mean dealing with him again? Staring hard at the body kept time from stretching out, flat and endless, colorless: the world without Dan. Finally I said, “I promise I’ll find the money, and I promise I’ll kill those fuckers.” I chuckled, thinking he would answer:
I’ve got to go somewhere for a few days. Won’t be long
. I poured the gas and lit him up.