Watchlist (20 page)

Let's see. Friends in common . . .

Bingo!

A certain “W.H.” appears on the scene, a Tunisian who lives in . . . Mexico!

In a city on the border!

Questions shoot into Anyone's mind: What on earth is a Tunisian doing in Mexico? How many Tunisians can there possibly be in Mexico for conventional reasons?

Anyone upgrades the alert to the next level. It's all too much for him, this Tunisian who lives on the border of Mexico with the United States, connected to two left-wing Brazilians who are “interested” in Pakistan. But let's not forget the really crucial information: Anyone has just won a bonus for finding a case involving sufficient coincidences for it to be analyzed by the next-level analysts. The bonus, of course, is paid in delicious dollars.

The alert reaches a more highly qualified and terribly perspicacious analyst, let's say he's called Somebody. Somebody immediately stops what he is doing (infecting the computer of a Jamaican singer with spyware) and directs his attention to W.H. (last night, at a show in a little bar in Amsterdam, the Jamaican singer performed a cover of a song that is, without question, an apologia for revolutionary violence).

And oh, oh! The analysis of W.H.'s Facebook wall reveals that he took a contradictory attitude to the Arab Spring. Sometimes he was in favor of it and sometimes he was against; at points he was moderate, at others conservative, at others radical . . . It was as if he were trying to come across as a normal person! Tremendously suspicious. Or rather: terrifyingly suspicious. And what had he gone to Mexico for? How on earth had a Tunisian guy ended up in Mexico? Facebook knows this as well: W.H. wants to live out his sexual preferences in peace. W.H. has a Mexican boyfriend whom he met in Barcelona.

The big question now is: How do João, Paulo, and W.H. know each other?

Somebody fires up the
Historic Location-Mapping Cross-Ref
erencer Program
. It takes a while to display the results, so Somebody has a quick look to see if there are any new selfies from that twenty-one-year-old Swedish girl. The Swedish girl takes photos of herself in the bathroom mirror and sends them to her boyfriend via WhatsApp—so bold! But there's nothing. Bullshit. And then the alarm sounds.

Aha!

Paulo and W.H. took the Memory and Holocaust seminar together in the Autonomous University of Barcelona seven years ago. Somebody is unsure that this is enough to justify calling his contact in the Mossad (it would get him a few pennies more, but shhhh, keep it under your hat). By the looks of things, João and W.H. don't know each other in person, and are Facebook friends through Paulo, their friend in common.

Well then, who is W.H.? Somebody reads the profile that Anyone has prepared for him: twenty-nine years old, Maghrebi (alert!), homosexual (alert!) . . . and so on. Then he sees: W.H. was in Pakistan a year ago!

It's a Maghrebi-Latin-American-gay-terrorist conspiracy!

This isn't a matter for Somebody: more than two oppressed minorities at once, as a source of anger and resentment and a motive for a conspiracy, is high-grade stuff. This must go to the next level, where another analyst, let's say Someone, will take charge of analyzing it.

Somebody, by the way, has also just received a bonus. A bonus paid, as you can guess, with money from
The Empire
's taxpayers.

At the moment when Someone receives the dossier, which is headed
GAY-TERRORIST-LATIN-AMERICAN-MAGHREBI CONSPIRACY THREATENS NATIONAL SECURITY
,
things start to snowball. Now it's João who's posting a photo of a mountain in Pakistan on Facebook. The photo isn't accompanied by a phrase this time: João just posts the image of the snowy mountain. Pretty, isn't it? Someone waits, holding his breath, for a sign that will reveal to him the meaning of this activity, and he doesn't have to wait long, in fact he has to wait only seven minutes, before Paulo clicks “like” and, two minutes later, so does W.H.!

Someone puts together a file containing all the information, compresses it, encrypts it, and sends it to the very
Director
of
The System
himself, from where it goes zooming to the
Agency
Director
, the
Defense Secretary
, and, the next day, to the
President
of the Empire
!

There's a supernatural agitation, as if they had all seen a ghost—and not the ghost of communism but rather the much-feared alliance of third-world anger with Arab terrorism and a gay revenge plot! The code breakers do not rest for a moment as they work to unravel the nefarious scheme behind that fiendishly complex strategy of photos and likes.

The
Defense Secretary
knows exactly what they have to do and the
President of the Empire
authorizes it: three drones are sent immediately to fly above the heads of the terrorists, three drones that follow the GPS signals from the three iPhones of the three unfortunates.

Now it all depends on the
President of the Empire
: if he says the word, João, Paulo, and W.H. will all be liquidated.

The
President of the Empire
thinks about the diplomatic consequences. He would rather not use his beloved drones in allied countries. How he loves his drones, by the way; how fond he is of those little flying beasties! But in this case he still isn't sure: the Brazilian president goes in pretty hard in her UN speeches, and he'd give anything not to have to talk on the phone to the Mexican president, who makes him uneasy with his incomprehensible chattering. And that hair packed full of gel! The last time the
President of the Empire
saw him, his palm was left sticky after they shook hands.

An urgent meeting is called in
The System
's
Control Room
so a decision can be made.

“Mr. President? We have a five-minute window,” the
Defense Secretary
says to the
President of the Empire
, as if they were inside an episode of
Homeland
rather than reality.

The
President of the Empire
opens his mouth and is about to say, “Go.”

“G—” says the
President of the Empire
.

“Stop!” shouts a Whoever. “Stop!” he repeats.

There is significant activity in the network. Paulo has just entered the website of a travel agency that specializes in expeditions to the Himalayas. Facebook announces that Paulo is visiting that site, and immediately João contacts him via chat: “Are you thinking of going?” he asks. “Me too! I've been saving up for years. Let's do it—I need some fresh air, things at home are unbearable.” W.H. posts a message on Paulo's wall: “I went last year, totally unmissable.”

These men aren't terrorists, they're tourists!

The
President of the Empire
orders his drones to come home (he's been missing them, the little darlings). The
Defense Secretary
looks at the
Agency Director
as if they'd just had coitus interruptus.

Before leaving
The System
's
Control Room
, the
President of the Empire
inquires about the status of the PUIICP (Protocol on the Use of Irrelevant Information for Commercial Purposes). “It's functioning at one hundred percent, Mr. President,” replies the
System Director
. “Prove it,” says the
President of the Empire
. “Don't let those individuals get away.” The
President of the Empire
leaves, but then comes back and adds, “I don't like that Tunisian being in Mexico. Poor little guy, if he really wants to live in freedom bring him here.” “As you wish, Mr. President,” the
Agency Director
answers.

To their astonishment and joy, over the following days João and Paulo start to see banners strewn all over the websites they visit, offering unbeatable deals on trips to the Himalayas. They receive personalized emails from travel agencies and airlines. The bank telephones to inform them that it has increased the limit on their credit cards.

Weeks later, João and Paulo go on holiday to Pakistan (spied on by Mossad agents). At the top of a modest mountain (not the K2, of course), João decides to leave his wife and Paulo feels happy in the knowledge that such an exotic trip gives him the right to twenty more years of sedentary life.

W.H. is offered a job in San Francisco.

Anyone, Somebody, and Someone receive their bonuses in delicious dollars.

The budget for
The System
,
The Agency
, and
The Defense Department
is increased as a result of the magnificent results of the PUIICP.

The
President of the Empire
orders the purchase of more drones, including one to deliver pizza to the Presidential Manor.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Twenty-five years before Texas Tower No. 4 became one of the Air Force's most unlikely achievements and most lethal peacetime disasters, marooning each of nineteen Air Force wives including Ellie Phelan, Betty Bakke, Edna Kovarick, and Jeannette Laino in their own little stewpots of grief and recrimination, the six-year-old Ellie thought of herself as forever stuck in Kansas: someone who would probably never see Chicago, never mind the Atlantic Ocean. Her grandfather wore his old brown duster whatever the weather, and when he rode in her father's convertible always insisted on sitting dead center in the back seat with a hand on each side of the top to maintain the car's balance on the road. This was back when the army was running the Civilian Conservation Corps, the navy exploring the Pole with Admiral Byrd, and the air corps still flying the mail in open-cockpit biplanes. Gordon had reminded her of her grandfather, in a way that stirred her up and set her teeth on edge—she'd first noticed him when he'd stood up on the Ferris wheel before the ride had begun to make sure another family's toddlers had been adequately strapped in—and her first words to him when they'd been introduced had been “Who made
you
the Ferris wheel monitor?” And when he'd answered with a grin, “Isn't it amazing how much guys like me
pretend
we know what we're doing?” she'd been shocked by how exhilarating it had been to catch a glimpse of
someone
who saw the world the way she did.

She'd always been moved and appalled by the confidence that men like her grandfather and Gordon projected when it came to getting a handle on their situations. But like her grandfather he'd had a way of responding to her as if she would come around to the advantages of his caretaking, and she'd surprised herself by not saying no when after a few months of dating he'd asked her to marry him. That night she'd stood in her parents' room in the dark, annoyed at her turmoil, and had switched on their bedside lamp and told them the news. And when they'd reacted with some of the same dismay that she felt, she'd found herself more and not less resolved to go ahead with the thing.

Her father had pointed out that as a service wife she'd see exotic places and her share of excitement, but she'd also never be able to put down roots or buy a house and year after year she'd get settled in one place and have to disrupt her life and move to another. Her children would be dragged from school to school. Her husband would never earn what he could outside of the service. And most of all, the Air Force would always come first, and if that seemed too hard for her, then she should back out now.

When her mother came into her bedroom a few nights later and asked if she really did know what she was getting herself into, Ellie said that she did. And when her mother scoffed at the idea that her Ellie would ever know why she did anything, Ellie said, “At least I
understand
that about myself,” and her mother answered, “Well, what does
that
mean?” and Ellie said she didn't want to talk about it anymore.

“Now that we see that you're not going to change your mind, we give up,” her father announced a few days later, and she didn't respond to that, either. His final word on the subject was that he hoped that this Gordon understood just how selfish she could be. She lived with her parents for two more months before the wedding and it felt like they exchanged maybe ten words in total. Her mother's mother came for a visit and didn't congratulate Ellie on her news but did mention that the military was no place for a woman because the men drank too much and their wives had to raise their children in the unhealthiest climates. She offered as an example the Philippines, that sinkhole of malaria and vice.

They were married by a justice of the peace in Gordon's childhood home in Pasadena, and her parents came all the way out for the ceremony and left before the reception. They left behind as a wedding present a card that read
Take care and all best wishes. Mom.
The following week Gordon was posted to a base in Upstate New York and Ellie spent a baffled month alone with his parents and then took the Air Force Wives' Special across the country: Los Angeles to Boston for $140, with stops everywhere from Fresno to Providence and seats as hard as benches and twenty infants and children in her compartment alone. The women traveling solo helped the mothers who were the most overwhelmed. Ellie spent the trip crawling under seats to retrieve crayons and shushing babies whose bottles were never the right temperature.

In Upstate New York the place Gordon found for her while they waited for quarters on the base was the kind of rooming house that had ropes coiled beneath the bedroom windows instead of fire escapes. She had only her room to herself, with kitchen privileges. “At least it's quiet,” he told her when he first saw it, and then asked a few days later if her nightly headaches were related to what he'd said about her room.