The Silent Places (21 page)

“It’s okay,” she said. “I know.”

Reese said, “You don’t know anything.”

“I know more than you think,” she said. “That man who came to see you the other day, he’s no businessman.”

“He’s a friend.”

“He’s with MI6. If you know him, it’s because you work with him. You’re a spy, Mr. Reese.”

“I was a soldier. Now I’m in business.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re onto that sort of thing at the hospital. We’ve been vetted, sworn to secrecy, everything.”

For a while, Reese said nothing. Then he looked at her with a certain resignation. He said, “Have I lied to you?”

She gave him a minx look. “Small lies,” she said. Then her expression softened and she looked sad. “It’s okay, though. I’m not sorry, you know.”

“Not sorry about what?”

“That I met you. I’m glad, in fact. It was something, wasn’t it?”

Reese stared at her for a moment, the word
was
suddenly very painful to him. “What is this?” he said. “A preemptive strike?”

“Sorry?”

“Are you ending this?”

“It’s what you want.”

“Who says?”

“It what you’ve been thinking since we left London. I’m not a bloody fool, you know.”

“Okay,” he said, “maybe it is. But that doesn’t mean I can’t change my mind.”

“And what?” she said. “Drop by for a quick shag every time you’re in London. Sorry, I don’t fancy that.”

“That’s not what I had in mind,” Reese said.

“What, then?”

Reese thought about it. The biggest decisions he’d ever made, he’d made quickly and without much thought. He looked at a British family at a nearby table: the father pasty-looking and wearing thick glasses, helping his son with his food, the mother looking at a tourist’s map, Tears for Fears drifting out of the kitchen. He knew then what he wanted, and knowing gave him a comfort and faith he’d never had before.

“Well,” Reese said, “I’d have to seek a transfer to the London station. And do administrative work. I don’t think that should be a problem, particularly since I’ve been injured. It might take a few weeks to get it resolved. Then we could get married.”

She did not answer for a moment. Then she said, “You love me, then?”

“You know I do.”

Sara said, “Well then, kiss me, you stupid bastard.”

They kissed. When they parted, he saw tears in her eyes and he wiped them away.

“Don’t cry, Sara. I’m going to make you happy.”

“You’d better.”

They married a month later.

The Agency was not willing to take Reese completely out of the field. He was too valuable and few agents had his extensive knowledge of the Middle East. It was eventually decided that he could reside in London and report to the London station chief. However, he was strongly encouraged to assist the Beirut station chief as well.

After a year of that, Reese started to consider retiring from the CIA. At that time, he had been married for a year. The marriage was a happy one, happier than he’d thought it would be. When he thought of what he had said to her—“I’m going to make you happy”—he laughed at himself. It was she who had made him happy, had brought him to life. He had gotten the best of the bargain, and she knew it all along. Now they wanted to start a family. Reese discussed it with his station chief. A week later, he was flown to Washington to discuss it with an assistant deputy director.

The assistant deputy director’s name was Burl Woods. He was old-school CIA, a cowboy. It was Woods who had recruited Reese to the CIA and had overseen his career since.

Burl Woods asked Reese to become a “green badger”—a contract employee for the CIA. He was told he could make a lot of money.

“Doing what?” Reese asked.

“Selling arms,” Woods said. “We would finance you. You’d be in business. It would give you cover, you’d make some money, and we’d get some information.”

“I don’t know.”

“John,” Woods said, “come on. What are you going to do? Come back to the States, sell real estate?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe my ass. You haven’t lived here in over ten years. What were you when you went in the army, seventeen?”

“Eighteen.”

“What, are you going to go back to Texas? That’s not who you are anymore. Are you going to tell me you can go back?”

“Maybe.”

“You’re not going to like civilian life here. You’ve been spoiled. I know your wife’s not going to like it.”

“Don’t talk about my wife.”

“Okay. But am I right in saying you’d rather stay in London?”

“You might be right.”

“Then this is ideal. You’d be working with us, not for us. You’ll make some money and you’ll be helping your country.”

“Well, this is awfully nice of you, Burl,” Reese said. “But tell me. What have I done to deserve such generosity?”

“You’re the best man for this job. You know intelligence. You know Europe. You’re good with Arabs. You get along with people. You haven’t become paranoid or otherwise fucked up by the work. You can run a business.”

“Like Air America, huh?”

“Ah, that was a long time ago. Look, you know how this trade works. We need ‘independent’ businesses for cover and we need people we can trust to run them.”

“You trust me?”

“Sure. I recruited you, didn’t I?
I’m
no fuckup.”

Reese smiled and Burl Woods smiled back at him.

Burl Woods said, “Just think about it, will you?”

That was how Reese became an arms dealer.

Over the next few years, Reese dealt in weapons and information. During that time, virtually all his contacts with the CIA were made through Burl Woods. Reese provided details and photographs of terrorist activity in Amman, Khartoum, Baghdad, Syria, Qatar, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Tehran. Those doing business with him knew he was an American, but they believed that he was a man without country or conscience. To them, he was an affable rogue. A charming mercenary, unburdened by shame. Most of them were aware that he had been a soldier who, they believed, at some point decided to quit being a chump. He seemed to like nice things: cars, homes, girls, boats, and liquor. Sometimes he was known to provide these things, if the order was large enough. He made a lot of money and at one time was rumored to own shares in the top brothel in Hamburg, Germany.

Through his contacts with both the people seeking arms and his old friends in the European intelligence agencies, Reese learned that Europe was becoming a breeding ground for terrorists. He documented this in his written reports to Woods. In one of his reports, he warned that more terrorists were being bred in Hamburg and Barcelona than in Iran or Iraq. He wondered, though, if his reports were being taken seriously. At times, he even missed the relative simplicity of the Cold War.

Meanwhile, he and Sara were having trouble making a baby. Though he was often away from London, their sex life was relatively active and healthy. He made efforts to be home when she was ovulating. But nothing had happened. It upset her. Reese had told her not to worry about it. The doctors had examined them both and found nothing wrong. It would happen in time, Reese told her.

Once in awhile, they still socialized with people in the London intelligence community. It was at a dinner party that Reese found himself in a pissing contest with A. Lloyd Gelmers. Gelmers was still doing intelligence work then, though not very well, by most accounts. It was known that the chief of London station wanted to get rid of him. Gelmers had by then made friends with people in the Clinton administration.

After dinner, Gelmers was flirting with the wife of an attaché and he called out to Reese in an effort to embarrass him.

“Still doing consultation, John?”

Reese said, “Yeah.”

Gelmers gave his female friend a smirk and said, “John used to be one of us.”

The woman said, “A spy?”

“I was in the army,” Reese said.

“Were,” Gelmers said. “Now you’re living in a town house in London with a pretty British wife. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

Reese shrugged.

Gelmers said, “So, John. What do you think about this situation in Yugoslavia?”

“I think it’s a mess.”

“What should we do?”

“Stay out of it.”

“Stay out of it? Shall we just let the Serbs massacre at will?”

Reese was not surprised at Gelmers’s hawkishness. The Clinton administration was drumming up support for intervention in the Balkans. Gelmers, who didn’t believe in much of anything, wanted a post in the Clinton administration. As usual, he blew with the wind.

Reese said, “There are massacres everywhere, every day.”

“You defend Miloševicć? You defend fascism?”

“Miloševicć is a Communist, not a fascist. I know your people would rather forget that. Far more people were killed in Rwanda than in Bosnia. About eight hundred thousand more. We didn’t get involved then.”

“Let me understand you. Are you saying the Clintons are socialists as well as racists?”

“I’m saying it’s more convenient for Clinton to call Miloševicć a fascist than a small-time Communist thug. Which is what he is.”

“The Serbs are killing civilians.”

“We intervene, we’ll be killing civilians.”

Gelmers smiled at the girl. He said to Reese, “I had no idea you were such a fan of Serbia.”

“I’m not. But I’m no fan of the Albanians or the KLA, either. Their leaders are gangsters, too. The Balkans have a long history of slaughtering each other. It’s not something we’re going to fix. And we shouldn’t try.”

“You’re a cold man. And a fucking hypocrite.”

“All that and more,” Reese said. “But not ambitious.”

Gelmers glared at Reese for a long time. Reese smiled back at him. Then he walked off to join his wife.

A week after that conversation, Reese sold weapons to a group of Syrians. It was no different from what he had done before. Even so, he advised Burl Woods of his mission before he left London. Woods wished him luck and said he would speak with him when he returned.

A few days after that, Reese was in Belgium for a meeting. He was arrested at the train station. Hours later, he was on a C-140, heading for Washington D.C. An agent on the plane informed him that Burl Woods had died in an auto accident two days earlier.

Reese immediately thought of A. Lloyd Gelmers and how expensive vengeance can be. He thought the worst. You should have walked away from him, Reese thought. How dangerous cowards can be.

Burl was dead. Who would take his side?

For perhaps the first time in his life, Reese felt a rising panic. He said to the agent, “I need to call my wife.”

“Fuck you, traitor,” the agent said. “You’re going to prison.”

“Escobar.”

“Efrain?”

“Yeah.”

“George Hastings. How are you?”

“Hey, George. What’s up?”

Efrain Escobar was a detective with the county PD. He and Hastings had worked a case together. The Springheel Jim killings. Escobar was a conscientious officer; he had shared leads with Hastings and been respectful, which couldn’t be said of all policemen working in rival agencies.

Hastings explained his situation to him, whom they were looking for.

Escobar said, “And you think he’s going to get another rifle?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“How come? If he’s one of these Hinckley types, he can just get close and use a handgun.”

“He’s not a Hinckley,” Hastings said. “I don’t think he’s insane. And I don’t think he wants to get caught, either.”

“He escaped from prison?”

“Yeah.”

“Why doesn’t he just stay hidden?”

“I told you. He wants to kill Preston.”

“And you still say he’s not crazy?”

“Ah,” Hastings said, “how the hell should I know?”

Escobar laughed. “Okay, George. How many people you got working this?”

“Not many. There are politics involved. Reese hasn’t committed a homicide in the city. Least not that we’re aware of. Also, the senator’s denying that Reese is the man I followed. So I’m not in a position to request a dozen detectives.”

“Not on an ADW.”

“No. Not on an ADW.”

“Well,” Escobar said, “I suppose I could spare a couple of detectives, ask them to check out a few gun stores outside city limits. If you think it’ll help.”

“Every little bit helps. Can you have it raised at patrol-shift briefs, too?”

“I think so. Let me type up a draft. I’ll e-mail it to you, see if it’s okay.”

“That’ll be great. Listen, Eff, I’ll be frank with you. I don’t think our man is just going to walk into a local sporting goods store and buy a rifle over the counter. He’ll have to present identification, sign a lot of forms, and wait three days, minimum. And he’s not going to wait. The senator’s going to be in town for only a couple more days.”

“And when the senator’s gone, your man’s gone, too.”

“Yeah, that’s about the size of it.”

“Which would piss you off, I suppose.”

“You’re right about that, too,” Hastings said.

There was silence on the line, Hastings wondering if Escobar was judging him for a lack of professionalism, taking shots from a perp personally.

Then Escobar said, “You were saying something about sporting goods.”

“Oh, yeah. I think he’s going to be looking for a rifle on the black market.”

“Well, that’s cool,” Escobar said. “It only expands the scope of our search about twenty-fold.”

“I know. Sorry I don’t have much more than that. But … anything you can do.”

“We’ll do what we can. Listen, George. Don’t put too much on this thing, okay? The guy you’re looking for, he’s just another turd.”

“I wish he was,” Hastings said. He waited a moment, then asked, “Was there something else?”

A pause on the other end. Then Escobar said, “Yeah. How are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you just got shot. You shouldn’t be working.”

“I’m just a little bruised. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s a very big deal. At County, you’re involved in a shooting, you get forty-eight hours paid leave, mandatory. Even if you’re not injured.”

“I don’t need it.”

“You sure? A man gets shot, it does things to him. Makes him scared, gets him thinking of the fragility of life and all that stuff. You need a few days off to work those things out.”