Halovic stepped out of his car and into the sticky warmth of a late summer afternoon. His nose wrinkled in disgust. From the smell and the flies buzzing around his head, he guessed that the owners of the StarBrite Motel rarely bothered to have their trash removed. Or perhaps they simply could not afford it, he thought coldly, eyeing the deserted parking lot again.
The contrast between this place and the tidy suburban communities he’d grown used to seeing around Washington was striking. It was a reminder to him that America’s elites built their fortunes on the backs of the poor, both abroad and here in their own land.
The StarBrite Motel’s office was no cleaner or fancier inside than its exterior suggested. Dust Leered a rack of sunfaded tourist brochures and local maps near the rusting screen door. Flies circled lazily around the room. The smell of fried food and stale beer hung in the air.
Halovic let the screen door spring closed behind him and walked up to the deserted front desk. The sound of a television filtered out through an open door behind the desk. From the muted crowd noises he heard, he assumed the set was tuned to one of the mass sporting events which seemed to preoccupy so many Americans. A baseball game, perhaps?
He stood waiting for a moment, listening, and then cleared his throat.
“Excuse me, please? Is anybody there?”
Halovic was proud of his assumed German accent. Together with his own native speech patterns, simply substituting “I” for “th” and “v” for “w” made his words decidedly Teutonic. The accent lent credence to his new alias as Karl Gruning, a German postgraduate student on an extended vacation to America.
“Be right there, mister,” a slow, southern drawl answered him from the back room. The owner of the voice, a wizened old man, emerged a few seconds later, blinking rapidly against the sunlight streaming in through the windows. He finished buttoning a plain white shirt that had clearly seen cleaner days and smiled nervously, showing an uneven row of yellowing, tobacco-stained teeth. “Now, then, what can I do for y’all?”
“I would like a room, please. You have a vacancy?”
“A room?” The old man seemed surprised by the notion that anyone would want to stay at his establishment. Then he roused himself. “That ain’t no problem, mister. I’ve got plenty of rooms.”
He looked Halovic up and, down, clearly weighing what the traffic would bear. “Now, I charge twenty-five bucks a night~ash. In advance.” He looked almost defiant as he continued: “I don’t take no credit cards. And no checks, neither. Too much trouble.”
Halovic nodded. Better and better. He had hoped that the motel oh’s -Keeping would be on a par with his eanliness. Carrying out this phase of the mission already entailed more risk and personal exposure than he would have preferred. At least staying in this rattrap would not require leaving a paper trail for the police to follow. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a full wallet, and carefully counted out fifty dollars in crisp ten-dollar bills. “That is not a problem. I would like to stay at least two nights, please.”
“Two nights?” The old man seemed even more astonished, but not so astonished, Halovic noted, that he neglected to grab the money in front of him. “You can have number five. Tidied it up myself yesterday.”
He reached under the counter for the right key and dropped it onto the desk in front of Halovic. “Scuse me for asking, mister, but you’re a foreigner, ain’t that right?”
The Bosnian smiled politely. “Ja, that is right. I am German.”
“Thought so,” the old man said with satisfaction. “I thought so.” His eyes narrowed in speculation. “Now, I don’t mean to pry or nothing, but I was wondering what you’re doing here in town. Can’t say as we get many foreign tourists here in Walker’s Landing.”
Halovic allowed himself to look embarrassed and eager at the same time. “I have come for the shooting. To shoot the guns, you understand?”
“The shooting?” Understanding dawned on the motel owner’s lined face mixed in with some surprise. “You mean you come all the way from Germany to fire off a few rounds at our local gun club?”
“Oh, no. That is, not only to shoot.” Halovic paused, pretending to search for the right English words. “I am in America on a holiday. A sabbatical. I was in Richmond when I was told of your gun club.” The Bosnian shrugged. “It seemed a good opportunity, you understand? Firearms are restricted in my country. There are few places to shoot. It is not like here.”
The old man nodded slowly. “I’ve heard about them goddamn gun control laws like they gotwer~pe.” Although obviously still puzzled that anyone would come ad way to Walker’s Landing when there were more and better firing ranges closer to Richmond, he had clearly decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Well, mister, I sure do hope you enjoy your stay.”
He nodded toward the door. “There’s a working phone in number five. You need anything, you just give me a holler, you hear?”
“Dazzle.”
“If you get hungry or want a drink, there’s a couple of bars and a diner in town, just up Route 250. Okay?”
Halovic politely nodded his understanding and turned to leave. He could feel the old man’s interested gaze as he walked back to his car. That was not surprising, really. In fact, he fully expected the story of the gun-crazy foreigner to be all over Walker’s Landing by nightfall.
That was exactly what Sefer Halovic wanted.
It was still daylight when he wandered up the road into town, trudging slowly along the grassy verge in the stifling heat. Although an occasional car or pickup truck passed him, the traffic was extremely light. Walker’s Landing was not really on the road to anywhere in particular. Certainly, the hamlet had very little to attract anyone to itself, he decided. Two churches, wood-framed houses, and a combination general store, post office, and pharmacy lined Route 250. Poorly paved streets on the right and left led off to more houses and a tiny school.
He stopped first at one of the local bars, the Riverfront. He didn’t stay long.
A loud rock sound track pounded at him as he walked in the door. Four or five customers were scattered around the bar, all of them in their early to mid-twenties. Halovic frowned at the bare wood dance floor and drum set that dominated one end of the interior. This place was not what he was looking for. This was a dance club, not a drinking saloon. Besides, the bartender and two of his patrons were black.
Halovic made sure that everyone noticed the hard, angry scowl he directed at them before he spun on his heel and stalked out. He had an image to create and maintain.
The Riverfront’s sole competitor looked more promising.
The Bon Air Bar sat at the north end of town, flanked on one side by a rutted, boggy field the bar’s customers used as a parking lot, and on the other by a small stand of trees. The ‘brick building’s brown-painted wood-shingle roof might seem rustic or even homey at night, but the harsh late afternoon sunlight would not tolerate such friendly illusions.
Right now the Bon Air Bar looked bleak and shabby. A neon sign on the roof advertised Budweiser beer, but Halovic wasn’t sure it would actually light once the sun went down.
This time he heard country-western music coming out of a corner jukebox. There was no sign of a dance floor. The room smelled of tobacco smoke and beer, and its dark wood paneling seemed to absorb the dim light. The only bright color in the bar was a five-foot American flag tacked up across one wall. Two middle-aged men sat together, talking, while a younger man, thin with long hair, tended bar. A TV blared in one corner, tuned to yet another baseball game.
Halovic stood in the doorway for a few moments, taking in the scene in front of him. He actually liked country-western music, which had a fair-sized following in Eastern Europe. And this appeared a quiet place, one not used to strangers, but certainly more restful than the Riverfront. It should suit his needs.
He walked over and sat down on a red plastic barstool. When the bored-looking young bartender glanced in his direction, he asked for a beer, carefully picking an American brand.
He sipped the pale, cold brew cautiously, comparing it unfavorably to the darker, warmer European beers he’d first tried as a student in Sarajevo and then again as part of the intensive preparation for this mission at Masegarh. Alcohol was forbidden to followers of the Prophet under normal circumstances, but God would understand the need to camouflage himself in this land of unbelievers. He was supposed to be a German and Germans drank beer.
Still drinking slowly, he let his eyes focus on the unfamiliar game being played out on the television set. And then he waited.
“I don’t guess they have much baseball where you come from, mister.”
Halovic looked away from the TV to find the bartender looking at him. He shagged and smiled politely, clearly puzzled by what he had been watching. “That is true. In Ger many we play football what you call soccer. It is a fast game and very simple. But this” he nodded toward the set “this baseball of yours is so difficult. So complicated.”
“It’s not all that tough, actually.” The bartender grinned and held out his hand. “My name’s Ricky Smith, by the way.”
Halovic shook hands with the younger man and introduced himself. “Karl Gruning. From Leipzig.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Smith nodded toward the television again. “You want me to explain the finer points of the game?”
“I would be very grateful,” Halovic lied smoothly. He sat back on his stool and sipped at his beer, content to let the bartender’s gibberish about double plays, foul balls, and the rest wash over him.
The afternoon and early evening passed quietly. Halovic studied the men coming into the bar, noting faces and even names when he could hear them. Most wore work clothes, faded blue jeans or coveralls. Some had obviously come straight from their jobs or farms. While there were men in their twenties and thirties, the bulk of them were older.
By six-thirty there were ten or twelve men inside the Bon Air all familiar to each other. Most came up and greeted the bartender, who in turn introduced the German tourist, “Karl.”
Halovic answered their questions easily, describing Germany and the journey he planned across America. But he was always quick to turn the conversation back to baseball or to firearms and sport shooting.
One of the men talking to him paused to light a cigarette and then spoke around it. “I heard it’s real tough to buy guns overseas. That true?”
Halovic nodded. “That is so. The authorities, they do not like citizens to own weapons. Even for hunting or sport. It is strictly forbidden in many places.”
The man and several of his companions shook their heads in disgust. One muttered something about “goddamn guy’mints.”
Their heads turned toward the TV as a sudden roar burst from the televised crowd. The man with the cigarette whistled and nudged the others. “Well, I’ll be damned! Will you look at that! A grand slam! That boy hit a goddamn grand slam!”
Halovic carefully concealed his contempt. These people were like children easily distracted and amused by trivialities. No wonder they were held in thrall by the rich and powerful in this country’s cities and suburbs. Perhaps it was time to begin shaping the conversation to suit his purpose in coming to this backwater town.
He waited until the cameras cut away from the stadium and back to the network studio for a recap of the other games played that day. The commentator was a black man.
After listening to the sports anchor rattle off meaningless statistics for a few moments, Halovic suddenly remarked sharply, “Ah, get him out of here. I don’t want to see him.”
One of the older men seated nearby shook his head slowly. “He ain’t that bad, Karl. You should hear ”
“No, no, I don’t care if he is good or bad,” Halovic countered. He grimaced. “I am just tired of all the blacks I see on television all the time. It’s worse here even than in Germany.”
Without pausing, he launched into a bitter fusillade against “the Turks, Arabs, and Africans who infest Germany’s streets and steal jobs from true Germans.”
As he spoke, Halovic carefully noted the reaction from the group. The four men he’d been talking with all frowned slightly or showed neutral reactions. When he finished, there was a small embarrassed silence. To his chagrin, nobody took the bait he’d laid out, and someone quickly changed the subject to the latest movies and TV shows.
Dinnertime came and Halovic ordered a barbecue sandwich. The crowd thinned only slightly during the dinner hour, then grew again until the Bon Air was comfortably filled.
The group sitting near him changed as men drifted in and out, and he took advantage of that to occasionally throw out a biting reference to the problems caused by blacks in America, comparing them to similar situations in Europe. He also complained about the interracial marriages and about black people’s “low intelligence and tendency toward crime.”
Most ignored his remarks, or changed the subject, or simply left quickly. A few argued the points with him, or even agreed to some extent. Despite that, none of them reacted in the way that he had hoped.
By ten o’clock Halovic was beginning to feel the effects of the beer he’d been drinking, even at his limited rate. His eyes smarted from the tobacco smoke and the stuffy air, so he made his excuses, paid his bill, and left.
The walk back through town to his dingy motel room helped ease some of his frustration but not all of it. Although he had known that this part of General Taleh’s master plan would take time and some risk to implement, he was all too aware of the days slipping past.
AUGUST
19
(D
MINUS
118)
Halovic rose early the next morning. He exercised in his room, showered, and changed into jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. It was just after dawn when he stepped out into the muggy air.
Already aware of the sweat beginning to soak the back of his shirt, he crossed the highway and walked back to the diner he’d spotted the night before. There were three waitresses working that morning, one of whom was black. He was careful not to sit at one of her tables and he took pains to make his disdain for her known.