“No, that’s professional wrestling. She happens to be one of the leading history experts in the state and named my brothers and me after famous people who were born in Connecticut. I’m named after JP Morgan, whose full name was John Pierpont Morgan. My brother Ethan is named after Ethan Allen, the Revolutionary War hero, and Noah is named after Noah Webster. He was the guy, you know, like Webster’s Dictionary … that would be a book that contains words, they are the things that…”
Carter shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m getting my balls busted by a guy named Pierpont.” Then as quickly as the skies darkened outside, he changed the subject, “How’s Noah doing?”
“Better,” was all I said. It wasn’t a place I wanted to go right now.
We entered a mudroom on the garden floor. French doors led to a backyard that looked more rural Connecticut than Manhattan. It looked inviting, but we had business upstairs.
As we began to climb the stairs, a sound stopped us in our tracks. Carter pulled his gun from the waistband of his jeans.
Chapter 8
I put up the stop sign.
“It’s Christina, the girl who house-sits while I’m away.”
“Is she hot?” Carter asked, going quickly from gun-toting to horny.
I cringed. “It’s not like that.”
Carter’s sly smile fell off his face. “I rest my case—what have you done with JP Warner?”
“First of all, you need to put
both
your guns away. Secondly, she is Dan Wilkins’ little sister—he used to be my contact within the FBI. She goes to Fordham and interned at GNZ. Most of her classes are at the Lincoln Center campus, so it’s convenient for her to stay here. And in return, she takes care of the place while I’m gone.”
We climbed a spiral staircase to the spacious second floor. It featured a twenty-foot ceiling and walls covered with oversized windows that provided a view of the Manhattan skyline. On a normal summer day, light would saturate the room, but the impending storm had now painted the sky black. The room looked as if I didn’t spend much time there, which was accurate. It was furnished with just the essentials—a black leather couch, flat-screen plasma TV, and a large desk.
Lauren once tried to decorate the place with what she called an “Old South antebellum motif.” When I rebuffed her, she returned with an interior decorator. That’s when I decided to have Christina move in to watch the place.
Christina was seated behind my desk, furiously typing on a laptop. She looked up suspiciously. “Hey, JP,” she greeted me, her voice jumping three octaves. “They have the new GNZ website up. You should check it out.”
It didn’t take me long to figure out the reason for her nervousness. Walking out of the bathroom was a college-age kid wearing my evergreen colored bathrobe with the letters
JP
embroidered on the pocket.
My new perspective became a distant memory. When I smelled my own cologne—very expensive cologne—my inner J-News boiled over. The young man in the robe stuck out his hand for me to shake and tried to introduce himself.
Bad move.
“JP, this is my friend Daman. They lost hot water in his dorm, so I let him borrow the shower. He was just…”
“Leaving,” I finished her sentence.
Before Daman could even stutter his way through an apology, Carter’s large arm reached out and wrapped around his neck. He then escorted—dragged—Daman down the stairs like a rag doll.
I turned my attention back to Christina. “I thought we had one rule—nobody over. There are people who would pay big bucks to get their hands on some of the information I have in here.”
“What’s your problem?” she lashed back.
“My problem is I let you live free in an apartment that you couldn’t afford in three lifetimes. All I had was one rule, and you couldn’t follow it!”
Christina wasn’t one to back down. “I’m the one doing you a favor, JP, so spare me the guilt trip. Do you know how much it would cost you to have someone look out for this place full time? Not to mention keeping that luna-chick you call your girlfriend out of here. If you want me to leave, I’ll leave!”
The front door slammed, briefly stealing my attention—Daman had left the building.
Carter returned, momentarily halting our spat. “I let the kid go,” he said as if it truly pained him. He had my bathrobe in his hands, which sparked an unfortunate visual of Daman scampering all the way back to Fordham’s Bronx campus in the buff.
“You are the most charitable man I know,” I told him.
“I think I’m getting soft.”
“Just in your midsection.”
“It’s warm moments like that I’ve missed the most since your lobotomy.”
I ignored Carter, which he interpreted as a sign to raid my refrigerator. He took out a bottle of Stella, but didn’t open it with his teeth, which made me think that maybe he truly was mellowing.
Christina and I resumed our sparring match. But she was a smart kid who knew exactly how far she could push me without getting sent back to Taco Night in the dorm cafeteria, and eventually backed down, “Listen, JP, I messed up. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“You’re damn right it won’t.”
“So where are you guys headed this time?” she attempted to change the subject.
“I can’t tell you,” I blurted, still in a frenzy, but then something hit me. “How’d you know we’re leaving?”
“It’s kinda what you do.”
“What I’m going to kinda do, is kick you out on the street if you don’t give me a straight answer.”
“Byron called. Said he’ll meet you at your stopover in Germany. How long are you going to be gone?”
“Why, planning a party?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah right, JP. I’m taking twelve hours in summer school and have two internships. And whatever social life I did have likely just ended when your henchman assaulted my only friend.”
Carter let out his booming laugh, before announcing, “You’ll have to excuse JP, he’s experiencing a midlife crisis. Being rich and famous is too rough for him. And he’s never gotten over some girl from high school, so he’s thinking about leaving the business.”
“I thought that was between us?” I snapped at him.
“Hey, I was a professional wrestler—you’re lucky I didn’t scream it into a microphone and then threaten to beat you to a pulp.”
Christina joined in his laughter—I think in wrestling they would call this a tag team. She then returned to the computer and said, “Like I tried to tell you before your ‘old guy meltdown,’ GNZ has an updated website. Do you want to know what they said about you?”
“No,” I said and trudged toward my bedroom.
She read it anyway, “JP Warner is GNZ’s Senior International Correspondent. Over the last two decades he has covered some of the world’s most important news stories, including both Gulf Wars. He also has bravely covered conflicts in the Balkans and the refugee exodus from Kosovo in Albania, Montenegro, and Macedonia. He has showcased his most brilliant moments in major conflicts. JP earned the industry’s highest honor for his work as part of GNZ’s Bosnia war coverage team. He was one of the first correspondents into Afghanistan post 9/11. JP continues to…”
I was surprised it mentioned anything related to news, especially since Cliff Sutcliffe took over at GNZ. I silently finished packing for another adventure.
Hoping it would be my last.
Chapter 9
Frankfort, Germany
July 3
Carter and I flew from JFK to Frankfurt, Germany, where we would pick up the Yugoslavian airline JAT. I was checking my phone messages, when I noticed Byron Jasper heading in our direction.
He was draped in heavy video equipment. But it was no match for the man who was five-feet-nine-inches of pure muscle. Of the three of us, it was fairly easy to figure out who didn’t have a gym membership.
“Thanks for the help, Big Ugly,” Byron addressed Carter in his usual high-pitched squeal. Byron was the only one who got to call him that without repercussions.
Carter barely turned his weary head in his direction. “I’ve been carrying you for years, so it’s about time you carried your own weight. And besides, you’re late—where were you?”
“Tonya had plans that couldn’t be broken. I can’t just drop everything whenever you wanna jet off to Serbia for a romantic weekend.”
“In other words, you weren’t allowed to leave until Tonya returned your balls.”
Byron laughed at another in a long line of good-natured barbs between the two, before turning his attention to me. When I barely responded to his greeting, he asked, “What’s wrong, J-News—upset that your girl stole your Lamar Thompson interview?”
When I took the comment in stride, he turned back Carter. “What did the aliens do with J-News? Those were fighting words I just threw his way.”
“You’ll have to excuse him—he’s having a midlife crisis. Claims he’s leaving the business. Maybe you can talk some sense into him … I’ve given up.”
But one look in my eyes told Byron that I was serious, and his tone changed, “Lamar Thompson was a god when I was growing up in South Carolina. Just shows how life can turn in an instant. You gotta do what makes you happy, JP.”
Carter shook his head in disgust. That wasn’t the ‘sense’ he had in mind.
But Byron understood where I was coming from. He was an all-American running back at the University of South Carolina, where he came in third in the voting for the Heisman Trophy. He went on to star for the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, until his promising career was put in jeopardy by a gruesome knee injury. The so-called experts said he would never come back from it, but they underestimated him. He was a man who lived for challenges, and as usual, he proved the critics wrong by making All-Pro his first year back.
But at the height of his football career, with a multimillion-dollar contract on the table, Byron walked away. It was his job, not his dream. People were shocked by such a move in an age where greed was king, but those folks obviously didn’t know Byron Jasper.
His real passion was to tell the stories of those who couldn’t tell them for themselves. He’d caught the bug one off-season when he made a rudimentary documentary, with a hand-held camera, of hurricane survivors in his home state of South Carolina. And then when a teammate named Leonard Harris was killed in a freak accident, he came to realize that life was too short to be putting off his dreams. So he signed up to become a field cameraman for GNZ. The man who once had every eye on him as he streaked to another touchdown, found his real calling behind the camera.
He got off to a rocky start when he was assigned to work for a prickly correspondent named JP Warner. He was the overeager rookie, while I was the perfectionist with no tolerance for mistakes. But Byron took on the challenge, and before long he was considered one of the best in the business. We’ve now worked together for ten years, and I refuse to work with anyone else.
Byron was also a technology junkie, which helped GNZ remain on the cutting edge of the industry. Due to his contributions, GNZ was one of the first TV news reporters to use the videophone. Since we were usually stationed in remote locations, the videophone was a revolutionary tool. The pictures were often grainy with long delays in communication, but they could take you right to the action, which gave the viewing audience a whole new perspective.
As I boarded the plane for my last assignment, I knew it was time for me to follow Byron’s lead, and chase the dream at any cost. I had to be willing to give up J-News. He was right—life really is too short. And in this business, if you lose your passion, life can become even shorter.
Chapter 10
Belgrade, Serbia
We arrived in Belgrade tired, but with a second wind of excitement.
It had always amazed me how people around the world swarmed to Carter. It was like traveling with The Beatles. Although, this usually ruined any attempts at traveling incognito. The idea that professional wrestling had expanded beyond the borders of US trailer parks was certainly a disturbing thought, but it was worth it to see him put smiles on a group of kids from a war torn country. This time was no different.
Our hotel stay was brief. I could have used about ten hours of sleep, but settled for a forty-five minute power nap. Being my final trip, I’d actually hoped for a little fun—despite the bloodiness of Belgrade we’d witnessed over the years, we’d often had a great time here. Especially the nightlife. After a few cocktails, we would be singing and dancing with the locals, and the traditional Serbian food would actually start tasting decent.
Carter never revealed the details of our mission until absolutely necessary. This was fine with Byron and me, and I think the secrecy made Carter feel like he was some strange combination of James Bond and Dog the Bounty Hunter, which he really seemed to thrive on. The only item he provided in this case was that our guide’s name was Milos and for symbolic reasons Zahir wanted to meet on American Independence Day.
We met Milos at what was the biggest event in Belgrade that night—the Euroleague Championship basketball game between the Serbian club team, Partizan, and CSKA Moscow. The arena had an aroma I uniquely related to the Yugoslavian countries—a combination of a musty basement and enough cigarette smoke to cause lung damage. The people of the region have two great loves: basketball and cigarettes.
The place was jammed to capacity a good hour before the game was to begin, and the smoke hung like cumulus cloud cover. This didn’t stop the excitable fans from singing, chanting, and even tossing firecrackers on the court.
Milos was standing in the back row of the arena, looking like a typical American teenager. He wore a replica Lebron James basketball jersey and a pair of jeans. When we approached, Carter and Milos shook hands and made small talk—in English—like long-lost friends.
Milos’ baby-face made him appear to be around sixteen, which was saying something in Serbia, where most men had five o’clock shadow on their faces by noon. But Carter insisted he was twenty-five—older than I was when I was avoiding B-1 Bombers in Baghdad during the Gulf War. Carter’s sources and guides have an impeccable record, so I never questioned them.