Middle Man (19 page)

Shifting my hands higher, I used my forearms against the pressure. That was not going to help for long. I slid my right forearm across the marble, next to my left. The imbalance sent the right edge crashing against the wall and opened the left side. I slipped out.

Gill dropped the table.

Behind him, the door opened. The fat man carrying the rifle, and two other Asayish men, came in.

Gill wiped blood from his face. I kicked. He caught my leg and lifted and I crashed hard on my shoulder amid the broken plates and glass and the food. Gill looked at the men behind him. “I told you to wait,” he said with unmasked disdain.

I palmed the corkscrew and hopped up. Gill swung. I ducked. I hit him in the gut, which was as useful as throwing a match into a puddle. But it got me in close. He blocked another right, caught my arm and twisted. And with my left I jammed the corkscrew into his neck.

He sneered at me as if I were a driver who cut him off. “I want to know . . .” He might have lived an extra couple of minutes if he had left the corkscrew in, but that wasn't Gill's style. The blood spurted. He fell to his knees and onto his face.

Maya was still at the partition. The steak knife she had snatched clattered when it hit the floor. I stepped back from the spreading blood.

The Asayish stayed near the door. The fat man tossed his cigarette onto the floor. “Do you have any money?” he said. “The owner will want compensation for the damages.”

T
he Ki
ng was dead; long live Aza Karkukli Bannion. First stop was Incirlik Air Base near Adana in Turkey. The squadron commander of the 39th Air Base Wing Communications Squadron welcomed us in his office and told a story about how Major Hensel had introduced him to his current wife. Of course. He called in a sergeant and ordered him to show Maya the apartment we could use until our flight was ready.

Army Colonel Homer Hoyle invited Maya and me to dinner along with his wife, Lauren. I got to know Colonel Hoyle in Afghanistan, where he worked in Army Intelligence in coordination with DIA. He was a bright, dedicated officer who tried to understand things as they were rather than the way his bosses wanted them to be.

We went to a restaurant off base and sat on the patio. Three men, all in their thirties, all wearing sport shirts that were not tucked in, entered just after us and were seated a few tables away. They did an awful job of pretending not to watch us. Colonel Hoyle was subdued, not at all like the gregarious, opinionated man I had known. I thought maybe the change was due to the presence of his wife, though I did not sense that she was some kind of shrew. We reminisced a bit. They spoke about their kids and their lives in Turkey. After dinner, we took a walk through the town. The colonel nodded to his wife and she pulled Maya into a shop. We kept walking. The colonel guided me across the street to a small park, just trees and a few benches, and a plaque I could not read. When we reached a dark corner, he stopped.

“It must have been tough in Erbil,” he said. I shrugged. When he saw that I was not going to open up about it, he went on. “The three men in the restaurant were CIA. They wanted to interrogate you. I told them I would be debriefing you. But they're on the warpath. You'll be seeing CIA around lots of corners.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

He had more, but it was not coming easily to him. There was no one else in the park. I was looking for the CIA men. “Maybe we should get back,” I said.

“Wait.” He looked all around, too, and took a deep breath before he spoke again. “I knew. Last year, two of them approached me. General Howland and Colonel Vollhardt, Air Force, and they talked about me joining in with them. It was all pretty vague. They were just testing the waters. But I figured out what they were getting at. I knew.”

“It was your job to listen to them.”

“It was my job to follow up and report them. I didn't do it.”

I hated my job. Colonel Hoyle was a good man and he expected himself to be perfect and the rules expected it, too. He stared at me, and though our faces were shaded, I could see how tormented he was. I already had their names. “I'll add their names to the list,” I said.

“And mine.” By his tone I knew that was an order.

“Yes, sir.”

______

The flight to Ramstein AFB in Germany left at 0600 hours. Maya and I spent a chaste night. She talked a little about her son, worrying that she hardly knew him, hardly knew how he would react to the news. She got out of bed and looked out the window for a while.

“Do you think Johnny was evil?”

“Are you worried about your son?”

“Are you like your father?”

Dan and Bannion, I had seen both of them die. Both were perpetually in motion and motion gets attention, especially when it carries the threat of disaster. Both left me clues as they died, and the clues served the same purpose as money left in a will: It poured gas on the fire of my hatred and made it flame out. “I think John had the gift of being able to see people as they really are, stripped down . . .” I paused. She leaned forward, hanging on what I said. “And he saw himself the same way, so he thought he had to act first.”

She smiled. “You're just talking about yourself.”

She asked me to hold her and I did until she fell asleep.

At Ramstein, I asked Maya to rent the car in her name. I found the flight coordinator and booked myself on the next flight to the U.S., going to Lackland, as Rollie Waters. I was not going to board the flight. I booked a commercial flight from Frankfurt to New York as Robert Hewitt. I was not boarding that one, either. All this was just a precaution to keep Victor off my tail until I was ready to deal with him.

The school was set in the foothills outside Geneva. Iron gates, bigger than the iron gates at the houses in Houston, gave way to a bricked drive that opened onto a huge courtyard. We had to show ID to the security men at the gate. I think I saw a stray leaf on the bricks, but it might have been a fake, some student artwork. The first building was wide and beige, three stories with a mansard roof and two wings. We left the car and walked toward the door in the middle section of the building. A burly security man in a red sport coat and gray slacks watched us from a kiosk. Another one watched us from the foyer, but he did not open the door for us. There were plenty of security cameras.

The secretary seemed used to this kind of intrusion. She checked a schedule and told us that Aza was in French class, which would end in twenty minutes. She offered to call him out immediately, but Maya told her we would wait.

The terrace overlooked a swimming pool. Below lay the lake, wide and dark blue. Geneva was visible to the left, partially blocked by another three-story building. The red clay tennis courts were on the right. The soccer fields were beyond. And behind us, bulging high above the building, were snow-covered Alps.

It reminded me of a resort where I once spent the night in Colorado with a woman who insisted it was better to spend all our money at once on something really nice than spreading it out over time in crummy places. She was right. We spent the rest of the trip sleeping in the car or on rocky spots beside the road, but the resort was worth the money.

“Are you going to keep him here?”

“Johnny insisted on a Swiss school. He mistrusted the English schools. ‘They grow up to be people I dominate,' he said. ‘The schools can't be any good.' Besides, this is probably the safest place.” A sailboat appeared on the lake, too small and far away for any of the crew to be seen. Three birds lifted off and flew toward the town.

A small, thin boy with wavy, light brown hair emerged from the building on the left. He saw Maya and waved and started to run along the path.

“Don't tell him,” Maya said.

“About his father?”

“His grandfather. I don't want him to know yet that he'll be king.”

Aza ran up and hugged his mother, then broke and waited politely to be introduced. Maya introduced me as Rollie. He shook my hand. He kept his suspicions in check.

“Your father asked Rollie to come here to meet you. They're great friends.”

We sat down, and Maya asked Aza if he was happy with the school and about the food and his teachers. Everything sounded okay. He was neither sullen nor forthcoming. He was waiting for the purpose of the visit to be revealed. He had already learned that no one ever dropped in to see him just because they missed him. And my presence settled the matter quickly for him. I recognized the situation. He assumed, of course, that some disappointment would be involved.

I often imagined some stranger arriving and telling me Dan was dead. I imagined faking pain at the news, or just demonstrating my indifference, or using the sympathy to run away or even to nestle in if I were staying with Lita or one of Dan's other girlfriends who smelled nice and treated me well. But the strangers always disappointed me.

I was about ten, around Aza's age, when I was either kidnapped or left as collateral; I never found out which it was. A couple, Ollie and Marvin, knocked on the door so many times that I finally let them in. Dan was out. Ollie sat on the couch and pretended to watch TV with me while Marvin searched the apartment. Then he joined us with a big drink of Dan's booze. Pretty soon I could not hear the TV because they were arguing about whose fault everything was. Ollie told me to go to my room. But we were in my room; I slept on the couch in that place. Marvin's phone rang and he went in the kitchen and did some loud swearing. Then they told me to put on my shoes because we were leaving. Of course I told them I would not go. They started bribing me with offers of food. I made them promise to take me to the putt-putt place I had often seen from the car.

They took me to a crummy hotel and bought McDonald's burgers. I put the pickles under the covers for a surprise for them later. The arguing got worse. They argued in a way Dan never did; they did a lot of name calling. Dan's girlfriends or business associates called him plenty of names, but Dan never talked that way. Pretending he liked the people he was arguing with was an essential component of his act.

Ollie told Marvin he was a moron, and Marvin did not take long to accuse Ollie of sleeping with Dan, which I'm sure was true. He called her a slut. Marvin's phone rang, but they did not hear it, so I took it in the bathroom and answered. It was Dan. That was one of the few times it was pleasant to hear his voice. He was so calm and relaxed. I knew that overplaying things would not help with him, so I did not claim that they hit me or anything, only that Marvin was drunk and all they did was fight. Dan asked if I could sneak away. I told him I could. He said he would pick me up. I did not know where I was and the wastebasket in the bathroom said Red Roof Inn, but I had no idea which one. Dan decided I should just get out and run and, first chance I got, go into a restaurant or gas station and ask to use the phone and call him. I said I would find my own way home and Dan said, “No, pal, can't go back there for a little while unless you want to go back to the Red Roof Inn, too.”

I threw the phone in the toilet. Marvin and Ollie had lost a little steam and it was not long before Ollie demanded Marvin call Dan again. While Marvin searched around for his phone, I positioned myself near the door. He made Ollie help him look. As soon as he found it, I turned off the lights, pulled the chain off the door, and ran out.

I don't think they chased me. I heard Ollie yell, “Oh, forget the fucking kid.” I caught a bus and rode all night without calling Dan. I was still young enough to think he might worry about where I was.

Maya suggested Aza take me on a tour of the school while she spoke with Mr. Labiche, the headmaster. When she left, Aza said, “Are you dating my mother?”

I said yes because I knew he would take no as a lie. I was going to lie to him later. He had his grandfather's manners, a courtly ten-year-old. The building we were in was for the upper school. Aza was eager for the chance to wander through there with protection beside him; this was forbidden territory for a boy from the lower school. Security cameras checked our movements, and security men appeared around corners. They did not smile or nod or acknowledge us at all and it seemed that the students did not notice them. The students did not notice Aza, either. There were probably more legitimate kings attending classes there.

Aza showed me his dorm room, which he shared with two others. He had a view of the mountains. No bunk beds here. Each bed was tucked into a small alcove. Each boy had his own closet.

We left the room and walked outside toward a cafeteria where some students were hanging around. “Do your roommates steal from you?”

“The older boys come in and steal. They treat it as their right.”

“What do they take?”

“Someone took my watch. My father gave it to me. And someone took Nigel's Kindle. They don't take phones, at least.”

“What about the envelopes that come from the banks? The ones you save for your father?”

“Oh . . .” He was about to answer but caught himself because he had been told never to mention those envelopes. I could see Bannion taking Aza sailing or fishing, a special outing, just the boys, initiation, and explaining about secrets and their importance, and how the men of the family must keep their secrets from everyone, that it was secrets that made the man. Secrets were holy. And, if Aza kept the envelopes secret, there would be many more days like that one, with better secrets to follow.

Maya was approaching. Aza looked at me and said, “I have not seen my father in almost a year.”

Maya and I talked for a few moments about how beautiful the school was and how much I wished I could have attended a school like this. Aza watched me and I could feel the mistrust. If you're going to be King of Nothingistan someday, you might as well learn to be mistrustful at an early age.

Maya and Aza went off together. It was time for the bad news. I went back to Aza's room and found the paperwork I wanted from the banks, in a wooden box at the bottom of his closet. A security man was down the hallway when I came out of the room. I walked straight to him and told him Aza's father had died and grandfather, too, and that there were political implications that the kid was unaware of. It was possible that enemies might come around to take advantage of the situation. Extra security was essential. He thanked me for letting him know.

Aza was crying and looked like he meant it. Not a big hysterical show, just tears flowing down while Maya held his hand on the terrace. He was a rich, spoiled kid living at this luxury resort and would someday parade around the world calling himself royalty and I could talk to him, sympathize with him, care about him. But confronted with genuine tears at the news of his father's death, I was flummoxed, could offer no genuine consolation. I did not know how he felt. I sat next to them and said nothing.

I was taking the riches his father had left him and leaving him with his grandfather's legacy of delusion: the delusion that royalty existed as anything more impressive than a ribbon or a medal that could be bought at the art supply store. The King's patrimony was a perpetual Halloween.

Rather than one of the grand Geneva hotels, we stayed at Hotel de la Cigogne, a small hotel where Maya had stayed with Bannion early in their marriage. We walked through the old city, which felt abandoned at nine
P.M
., and ate dinner. On the way back, Maya said, “I know you laugh at my pretensions, at the Kingdom of Kurdistan.”