Authors: Keith Yocum
“It’s OK, Dennis.”
“So just forget I called and—”
“I said I’d do it, Dennis. I’ve got to get going. Good-bye.”
Dennis drove through the New Hampshire countryside while the late-afternoon orange sun threw long, ugly shadows across the roadway.
Pissing off Judy was the last thing he intended, and he wondered if there was a better way he could have enlisted her help.
Was he just using her
? he wondered.
Well, yes and no.
He reached over, turned up the radio, and brooded. Perhaps he could have been more delicate with Judy. He did care about her; that was not in doubt. But it had always been easier to give in to his obsessions at work than it was to pay attention to the niceties of interpersonal relationships. Even with people he cared deeply about, like Martha. Well, she had taught him a thing or two about that.
Driving to the airport in Manchester, New Hampshire, he began to feel very tired.
“I appreciate you taking my call,” Dennis said.
“It’s a little unusual to have someone from a government agency call the university here looking for a poetry expert,” the man said. “The department secretary said you were looking for someone who knew something about the war poets.”
“Yes, I googled the subject, and your name came up, so I called George Washington’s English Department. I didn’t realize you were an expert on the war poets.”
“Forgive me for asking, but what is your name again?” the man said. “And what government branch do you work for?”
“Name’s Dennis Cunningham. I work for a US Government agency that I’m not at liberty to disclose.”
“Yes, that’s what our secretary said. It sounds very mysterious: cloak-and-dagger stuff.”
“Well, it’s hardly like that, but if you could just answer a few questions, you might be able to help us.” When Dennis was leveraging information from a civilian, he used the pronouns like “we” and “us,” rather than “I,” to infer there was a large team of agents waiting for a vital piece of information.
“I’ll try,” the man said, “but I’m just not sure what I could possibly tell you about the war poets that would be useful.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“OK, I’m willing to try. What do you want to know?”
“I only want to know about one of them,” Dennis said. “Wilfred Owen.”
“Wilfred Owen. All right. What do you want to know?”
“What kind of fellow would like the poetry of Wilfred Owen?”
The man laughed. “I’m an English professor, not a psychotherapist! I don’t even know how to answer that question!”
“OK,” Dennis said. “What kind of poet was Owen? What was special about him? Or was there anything special about him?”
“Ah, well, that’s a different question, and I can help with this one. Some would consider him the best of the war poets. I certainly would.”
“You mean he won a lot of awards? Stuff like that?”
“Heavens, no, Mr. Cunningham. There were not many awards given at the time. Most of the poets wrote for small literary magazines or newspapers. I’m reflecting what the critics would say about Owen today. I mean, it’s not a universal opinion, but it’s widely held that he was among the best, if not the best poet of that generation.”
“But what kind of person reads poetry these days?” Dennis asked. “Especially poetry written ninety-odd years ago? To me it seems a little odd.”
“A lot of young are exposed to poetry in college, and they just like it,” the man said. “But you are correct. It’s not very popular these days, certainly compared to pop music, rap, films, or even novels. And to be honest, in college, if it’s not Shakespeare, Yeats, and a little e. e. cummings, then it’s not even on the curriculum.”
“So who would follow the war poets, like Owen, these days?”
The man laughed again, this time out of exasperation.
“I can’t really answer that! All kinds of people are interested in poetry.”
Dennis pressed ahead anyway, feeling the conversation stumbling.
“What was unique about Owen?” Dennis asked. “What made him so great?”
The man sighed. “Well, I suppose you could say he had an extremely beautiful way of describing some of the worst traits of mankind.”
“What traits?”
There was a pause on the line. “Have you read any of his poems?” the man asked.
“I tried, but they’re too hard for me to understand.”
“Well, I suggest you read them again and slow down when you read,” the man said. “It’s really not that difficult. Read one line at a time. Slowly. Reread if you have to, but just read slowly. It’s not a novel or a film script. It’s more like a lyric to a song that’s painstakingly composed.”
“OK, I’ll try again,” Dennis said. “But you were mentioning something about the ‘worst traits of mankind.’ What did you mean?”
“Owen was furious about the slaughter during the war. He wasn’t alone, of course, with those feelings, but he had a unique way of describing the tragedy and horror of that war. You must understand the scale of the carnage. On July 1, 1916, for instance, Great Britain lost more than nineteen thousand men with thirty-eight thousand more wounded in a single battle in a single day. Toward the end of the war, young men like Owen grew increasingly outraged by the slaughter and wrote about it. I would think it’s an aspect of Owen’s poetry that is quite accessible, although in Owen’s case, it was quite tragic.”
“Tragic in what sense?”
“Well, he suffered a nervous breakdown during his first tour of the front. What they called shell shock in those days, but we call PTSD now. Apparently, he was trapped in a forward position for several days with the dismembered body of another British officer. He spent months convalescing and writing his best poetry. He was finally deemed healthy to return to the front, and he did so with apparent relish. Interestingly, he was awarded the Military Cross for an action soon after going back into the line.
“Even though he thought the war was a huge mistake, and other poets like Siegfried Sassoon were making anti-war statements, he still wanted to return to his men at the front.”
“So what happened to him?”
“He was killed in one of the last major actions of the war, five days before the armistice was signed. It was said that his parents were listening to the ringing of the celebratory bells in his hometown marking the end of the war when the telegram arrived with news of his death.”
“Oh.”
“There’s no doubt Owen—and perhaps millions of soldiers since the beginning of time—died from a kind of survivor’s guilt,” the professor said. “Owen couldn’t resist going back to be with his suffering trench mates. But if you ask what was unique about his poetry, I’d say that it was his eloquent outrage against the stupidity of the powers that be.”
***
Dennis could not get a handle on this young agent, Geoffrey Garder. He had read his psych profile that had turned up the usual stuff. He tested high-average on his Wechsler, his Rorschach showed no abnormal traits, and he scored normal on the ARC, a personality test the Agency had developed and used exclusively to find—it seemed—healthy, impressionable, patriotic men and women from America’s heartland.
Garder was an only child and had the classic profile for the Agency. He came from a semirural, politically conservative environment, was athletic, competitive, and patriotic. He was a good student, majored in International Affairs and had won a coveted internship at the State Department, but he also collected fine watches and was fascinated by a long-dead World War I poet.
Dennis spent all day ruminating about what had really happened to Garder—and why. He walked around the giant Langley facility; he had lunch in the cafeteria with an old friend from Translations. At the end of the day, he drove home and pulled up in front of his cold and lonely house. It was nearly dark when he parked in his driveway.
He sat in his car for several minutes with the engine running, listening distractedly to the all-news radio station, and then he knew what he had to do, even if he didn’t have all the answers and would be in a lot of trouble.
***
Massey sat in his large, elaborate chair and swiveled it slightly from side to side. His sidekick was with him as usual. Dennis asked Massey not to tell Marty they were meeting on the Garder case because he was contravening direct orders not to discuss the case.
It was a nettlesome arrangement, but Dennis felt compelled to do something about what he now believed to be true. Marty would find out sooner or later, but Dennis guessed that Massey’s power and influence could inoculate him from his boss’s wrath.
Dennis was still uneasy.
“If you suddenly think, am I being reckless,” Dr. Forrester had told Dennis in one session, “then you are being reckless and self-destructive. That’s your sign to back off and think.”
Massey looked at Dennis and said, “You’re being a little tiresome about this Garder thing.” Massey made a bridge of sorts with the fingertips of both hands touching their opposite number while his wrists stayed anchored to the desktop.
“Yes, suppose I am, and I apologize,” Dennis said, “but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Know what?” Massey collapsed his finger bridge.
“Garder is alive and well, apparently. He’s not in the digestive tract of a great white shark. He staged his own death to look like he was eaten by a shark. It was very clever, actually.”
Massey swung his head to his right, made brief eye contact with his constant companion, and swiveled back to face Dennis.
“Go on.”
“Garder planned the whole thing and knew the shark thing was plausible enough, especially in Australia. He also knew that they wouldn’t need a body to prove his death. And they wouldn’t look long for him. And he did it without an accomplice to make it clean and completely airtight.”
Massey looked down at his desk and slowly opened a red file folder. He pulled a pair of tiny reading glasses out of his coat pocket and adjusted them on his bulbous nose. After several seconds of reading, he looked up.
“Says in the report that Garder’s car was found on a remote beach in Western Australia. How do you think he managed to get away without an accomplice? Do you think he swam to Singapore? Or caught a ride on a passing tramp steamer? Or a shrimp boat?”
“No, he had a motorcycle or motorbike in the back seat of his car. A test showed that a drop of motorcycle transmission fluid was found in the back of his car. He just drove away. By himself. Probably went north. My guess is that he purchased a fake passport from someone in Australia. There is quite a cottage industry for fake passports these days. No one would follow him because they thought he was dead. Must admit it was very clever.”
Massey took off his glasses and tossed them onto the desk.
“OK. Let me grant you everything up to now. But how do you know he’s alive? This is just bullshit speculation. Come on, Cunningham, for Christ’s sake. We’re not idiots. We do this for a living. This is all you have? A drop of transmission fluid?”
“He called his parents,” Dennis said.
Massey exchanged another quick glance with his friend, this time lingering a bit, almost like they were lovers. When he returned his gaze to Dennis, there was something new in the man’s demeanor: a kind of low-grade anger.
“I assume you can provide corroboration for the contact between the parents and son?”
“I have unauthorized phone records that I will not turn over to you. But you can go through channels and get them yourself. And I talked to the parents. They’re lying to protect their son. We could pressure them if we had to, but I wouldn’t recommend that approach.”
Massey stared at Dennis; it was a cold, hostile glare, and it unnerved Dennis the longer it went on. Finally Massey pursed his lips and said, “I want you to stay in this room. Under no circumstances are you to leave or communicate with anyone until we return. No phone calls, emails, or texting. I’m going to have someone watch the door. You got that?”
“That’s a strange request,” Dennis said.
“You’re a strange man,” Massey said, standing. The two men left the room.
In all his years at the Agency he’d never been ordered to stay in a room. Was he going to be arrested? He began to berate himself for his stupid attempt to go directly to Massey. The longer he waited in the room, the deeper the funk became. After nearly fifty minutes stewing, the office door finally opened.
Massey entered first, followed by his silent friend, then Marty and Betty, Massey’s secretary. There were now five people and four chairs in Massey’s once-spacious office. A flurry of activity ensued, and another chair was procured for Betty.
Marty never acknowledged Dennis, and Dennis did his best not to look in his direction, though they were sitting next to each other.
Betty opened a spiral-bound notepad and clicked a ballpoint pen. In sensitive meetings like this, Dennis knew, the Agency preferred to have written notes. They could easily record the meeting electronically, but digital records needed to be protected, stored, encrypted, and catalogued. More importantly, those records could be requested by troublesome outsiders like the IG’s office, congressional committees, and lawyers. Written notes, on the other hand, could be sufficiently manipulated and edited—or destroyed—to avoid disclosure. And participants’ recollections of meetings were, by their nature, vague and subjective enough to provide inconclusive results.
“Cunningham, while you’ve been disobeying orders in pursuit of solving the disappearance of one of our young agents, it appears that you’ve come up with some valuable information. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you how surprising this information is. If young Garder is, in fact, alive and well, as you suggest, it would explain something that’s been puzzling us.”
“Excuse me?”
“We’re missing some funds,” Massey said.
“How much?”
“One million dollars. Perhaps a bit more.”
“And you just discovered it? The missing money was never mentioned in the earlier investigation. I never saw a single reference to it in any of the reports.”
“Suffice to say Garder had access to the funds. The money disappeared over a three-month period, and we thought it was accounted for. We were wrong. It’s complicated.”