Authors: Keith Yocum
***
“You look tan and fit,” she said. “Were you somewhere warm, I hope?”
“Yes,” Dennis said. “The desert.”
“Did you get a chance to relax?” Dr. Forrester asked.
“More or less.”
“How are you feeling these days?” she said.
“Fine, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Well, work is kind of complicated, but I’m not feeling depressed, if that’s what you mean.”
“How are you sleeping?”
“Pretty good.”
“How’s your drinking?”
“No big benders to speak of.”
“You really need to watch your drinking, Dennis.”
“Yes.”
“And your daughter? Have you tried to keep in contact with her? She’s the only close family member you have.”
“Actually, that’s going really well,” Dennis said. “We talk more now than we have in years. I like talking to her.”
“What do you talk about?”
“Oh, everything: her work, my travels. Stuff like that. It’s fun.”
“Does she ever talk about her mother?”
“Sometimes, but not as much anymore: time for her to move on. Me, too.”
“And you’ve still never told her the true story about what happened around the car accident?”
“No. I won’t do that to her. She doesn’t need to have her mother’s memory defaced.”
“Well, you could always change your mind in the future,” she said.
“Maybe.”
“And how about you; have you started to move on in your personal life?”
“You mean like dating?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.”
Dennis sighed, and the expression was not lost on Dr. Forrester.
“I met a woman, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Really? How is the relationship going? How does it feel?”
“It feels—well, actually it felt really, really good: kind of exciting all over again. I felt like a silly teenager.”
“You sound sad; is the relationship already over?”
“It’s complicated because of work: can’t really discuss it. But maybe one day I can resurrect the relationship. She is really terrific.”
Now Dr. Forrester sighed.
“Ever since I’ve been on the approved list of therapists for the Agency, I’ve heard more heartbreak caused by the term ‘complications’ than you can imagine. I just hope they know what they’re doing over there to all these people.”
“They don’t know, and they don’t care,” Dennis said. “Maybe it’s better that way.”
***
“I haven’t seen you in a while,” the young woman said. “A venti mild roast?”
“Yes, you remembered,” Dennis said. “That would be great. How are your classes going?”
“Ha! You remembered, too. Well, I like Art History and Western Civ, but not the math,” she said. “I’m not one for the math. Still, thanks for asking.”
Dennis had maintained one of those modern, quasi-casual relationships with a Starbucks barista for at least a year. She was a college student at Northern Virginia Community College, and they had struck up a conversation about school a long time ago during his stops for coffee. In modern suburban society, it was the kind of connection that made strangers feel familiar when, in fact, the relationship was glancing and superficial.
“Well, you’re still working here, so things must be good,” Dennis said. “Just try not to drop out and postpone college.”
“The loans are a killer,” she said, “but I can’t think about it now. It’s too depressing.”
“You know,” Dennis said, “where I work we have small projects that we outsource to college students. Simple things like looking stuff up on the Internet. You interested some time?”
“Can I do it from home?”
“Sure.”
“How much does it pay?”
“Twenty bucks an hour.”
“Really? How long do these things take?”
“Not long. I’ll get our secretary to see if she has a project, and I’ll give it to you next time I’m in.
“Really?”
“Sure.”
The following day, Dennis visited the coffee shop during her shift and revisited his offer. “We track shipping containers all around the world,” he said. “I know it sounds dull, and some of it’s for the government, so don’t go telling folks about it. We’re not allowed to outsource this stuff to India.”
She laughed. “OK, what do I do?”
Dennis handed her forty dollars in cash, and on top he had a piece of paper with three items: two long numbers and a URL.
“All you need to do is go to that address and type in those two numbers: the first number is your login, and the second is your password. Then look at a map of the world and tell me where the shipping container is and how long it’s been stationary. There’s a little counter at the bottom of the screen that will tell you how long it’s been at its current position. Simple.”
“That’s it? And for that I get forty bucks?
“You don’t have to do it, just thought you’d be interested.”
She slid the venti mild roast over to him and said, “This one’s on me. And what’s your name?”
“It’s Dennis.”
“I’m Marie. I’ll have that stuff for you tomorrow.”
“Great,” he said, turning away, praying that the entire exchange looked like an older man shamelessly hitting on a young woman.
***
The following day Marie was not on duty, so Dennis waited yet another day and went for his mid-afternoon coffee stop.
“Hey, I got your information,” Marie said, pushing a twenty-dollar bill to him across the counter with a yellow sticky note on top with some writing. “It took like ten minutes, and I can’t take forty bucks for that,” she said.
Dennis pulled the sticky note off the bill and said, “Are you sure this is its location? Is it still moving?”
She laughed. “No, it’s been there for sixty-seven hours. I had to look up the city where it was. Hope I spelled it right!”
Dennis smiled and tried not to sound perplexed.
“Marie, I hate to ask, but are you absolutely sure this is where the container is? There was no mistake or confusion about it on the map?”
“No, I checked it several times, and when I enlarged the map, this is the town and country it was located in. Really. I don’t know how to pronounce it, but I wrote it down—Qom. It’s in Iran.”
Dennis pushed the twenty-dollar bill back and said, “Please take it, Marie, and I’ll have a venti mild roast, room for milk.”
“OK, Dennis.” She smiled. “Any more projects like that, let me know!”
***
There was nothing to do but listen to the piped-in folk-rock music, sip his coffee, and read the
Washington Post
. He expected the GPS on the shipping container to give him the answer, but he had no answers yet, only more questions.
After all the chasing, he could not put the pieces together into a coherent narrative.
He looked at the front door of the coffee shop, glanced at his watch, and took another sip of tepid coffee.
Dennis was lost in a lengthy
Post
story about the complexity of improvised explosive devices when his visitor joined him at the table.
“Peter,” Dennis said, “good to see you.”
Peter, dressed in his usual blue blazer and khaki slacks, laughed. “You still have that tan. Australia?”
“Yes.”
“Hope you had some R&R while you were there.”
“A wee bit,” Dennis said. “Mostly work.”
“It’s an interesting country. Did you know I was stationed there once?”
“No, you never mentioned it.”
“Sydney, 1976,” Peter said. “Australia had taken in thousands of Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon. Agency was convinced some of the refugees were plants by the North Vietnamese and Chinese. We assisted the Aussies in interrogating the refugees.”
“Find any plants?”
“Yes, actually: a woman. Very beautiful, spoke French and English fluently.”
“What did you do to her?”
“Flipped her, or at least we thought we flipped her into being a double agent,” he said. “God, I wonder whatever happened to her? She was quite beautiful.”
“Do you ever look back on things you’ve done and wonder about whether you did the right thing?” Dennis asked.
“No, not really,” Peter said, taking a measured sip of coffee. “Can’t really do that. It was a job: sometimes exciting, often boring, rarely dangerous. A job, that’s it.”
Dennis closed the newspaper and took a sip of coffee.
“So what’s going on in your life these days?” Peter said. “You sounded a little stressed when you called.”
“Well, I got myself into some trouble.”
“Last time we talked you were in trouble: the same trouble or new trouble?”
“Same sort of trouble.”
“Is that why you’re being watched?”
“You noticed?”
“Of course,” Peter said. “The technology has changed over the years, but a tail is a tail. It’s funny how they’re so obvious to people like us.”
“Yeah, she came in after me and sat at the back talking on the phone. I saw her last week at a restaurant with a guy ten years her senior. Think they could be a little more discreet.”
“Who’s doing the watching?”
“It’s a contract team; they’d never use employees on this one. Paper trail would be problematic.”
“I’m afraid to ask what you did to get this kind of attention, but try me.”
Dennis led him through a forty-five-minute narrative. Peter asked some clarifying questions. Both men didn’t miss a beat when the woman in the back left the coffee shop. As she did, an older man in his fifties, wearing a jogging suit, walked in and sat near them after buying a newspaper, coffee, and bagel. Dennis and Peter locked eyes in amusement and continued in lower voices.
After Dennis finished, Peter sat back in his chair like a priest who had just heard confession. In the background a plaintive male folk singer crooned about missed opportunities.
“And your theory is opium is being moved through Iran by the Agency to Europe?”
“Or we’re giving Iran something they need and they, in turn, are moving opium to Europe for us. That’s the best I can come up with, though it does sound kind of lame,” Dennis said.
“You know that Iran has one of the highest opium addiction rates in the world?” Peter said.
Dennis nodded. “That’s what I read.”
“They have more opium than almost any other country in the world, though you wouldn’t know it from their politicians,” Peter said.
“Yes, I read that, too. So?”
Peter leaned forward.
“This poem, or whatever it was, do you remember it?”
“Sure, why?”
Peter pulled out a ballpoint pen from his inside blazer pocket and pushed a napkin over to Dennis. “Write it out.”
“Really?” Dennis said.
“Sure; let’s see if you can remember it.”
Dennis thought about it for a bit, and then slowly wrote the stanza in block letters. Then he pushed it over to Peter, who turned the napkin around so he could read it. Dennis glanced casually at the older man in the jogging suit and saw his face turn slightly in Peter’s direction.
Peter stared at the napkin for a while, and then looked out the shop window that opened onto Connecticut Avenue. Pedestrians and cars moved in a stream, like capillaries feeding the heart of Washington.
Before Dennis could speak, Peter took the pen on the table, circled a word in the poem, and turned the napkin so Dennis could see it.
Peter raised his eyebrows to confirm he was asking a question.
“Yeah, I see it,” Dennis said. “So what?”
Peter stared at Dennis. “You never bothered to check this out?”
“No. It’s that important?” Dennis asked.
Peter nodded, turned the napkin around, and deliberately tore the small piece that held the stanza off the napkin. Dennis watched in amusement as Peter wadded the tiny piece of napkin into a ball the size of a BB, then plopped it into his mouth like mint and washed it down with his coffee.
“Sorry, Peter,” Dennis said. “That was just a little dramatic, even for a veteran field agent.”
“I can see now why they might be concerned about you,” Peter said. “Do you remember what project first brought us into contact? Pay attention to what I circled. For one of the best investigators I’ve ever met, I’m surprised you missed this part. Please be careful, Dennis. They’re going to ask me about this meeting, you know.”
“Yeah, I figured. What are you going to say?”
“That you told me you were in trouble, and wondered whether you should retire. And that I said, ‘yes, you should retire.’ Oh, and Margaret says hello.” Peter stood, drained his coffee, and tossed the empty cup in the trash on his way out.
***
On his way home from work, Dennis spontaneously decided to do a computer search himself instead of relying on his barista. He performed some simple switchback anti-surveillance tactics to slip a potential tail. Earlier in the day he used the hobby shop radio frequency detector on his car to see if they had bugged his vehicle but could find nothing.
After thirty minutes of evasive driving, he pulled into the rear of the Hilton Garden Inn in Shirlington, Virginia, and walked through several of the restaurants lining Campbell Avenue. He cut through a mini-mall, onto Twenty-Eighth Street South, walked a block, and then entered through the rear of another restaurant and back out onto Campbell Avenue. He quickly entered the front entrance of the Shirlington Branch Library and stood in the vestibule reading several pamphlets, periodically looking out through the plate-glass windows into the sparse crowd in the street. After twenty minutes, he entered the library and browsed the nonfiction section so he could see the front door. After another fifteen minutes he grabbed a book about the opening stages of World War I.
He sat and flipped through the book, watching the front door. He saw only two middle-school girls walk in, and finally he scooted to one of the public-access computers and started surfing the web.
No more intermediaries to surf the web,
he thought.
It was not hard to look up the word “Europium.”
After reading several more scientific articles, Dennis rubbed his eyes, more out of anxiety than fatigue. He went to the web browser settings and cleared the history of his searches. Not a single adult had entered the library since he arrived, but he was still nervous. Peter’s warning at the coffee shop was enough proof that Dennis had touched a nerve somewhere, and it was the same nerve Garder had grabbed hold of and yanked.