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Authors: Jay Brandon

BOOK: Shadow Knight's Mate
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He wondered where ‘he'—his double—had been spotted in this sprawling old city. What had he been doing?

For that matter, what was he doing now? Walking dreamily through the old continent, waiting for lightning to strike. Jack suddenly felt very far from home. He was never troubled by homesickness, probably because he hadn't had a home in so long, but suddenly he had a fierce longing to be back in America, just for a few minutes.
What's happening to my country?
He felt like a traitor, who had fled when the trouble started.

Jack hadn't touched his cell phone in hours, almost a day, which wasn't unusual for him. Sometimes he forgot it when he went on trips. His friends had always accused him of being an eighteenth-century kind of guy, even given his current occupation. Now he felt as if he'd travelled back in time to his rightful place.

Lesser Town was not quite deserted as midnight neared, but the streets felt heavy with sleep. Still, an occasional car passed, music drifted out of a few doorways. Jack stopped at one, read the sign in Czech over the door, and realized his walk had not been random. He went in.

The room inside was low-ceilinged, smoky, and so big he couldn't see the far walls. There were wooden tables with spindly old wooden chairs, filling the room but not cramming it. On the walls that he could see were posters, some of them peeling off, announcing rallies and concerts and even a chess championship. The lighting came from sconces on the walls and lamps on tables. There was no bar and no stage, though up at the front of the room a woman crooned softly. She had no microphone, and might have been a patron suddenly struck with an urge to perform.

Jack walked across a painted concrete floor. There were about a dozen people in the room, scattered among all those tables, some of them sitting alone, only two or three paying apparent attention to the singer. Jack sat at a table by the wall, near one of the sconces. There was no menu and no waiter appeared. Some of those people at the tables had cups sitting in front of them, but they might have brought their own. Jack sat quietly for five minutes, soaking up atmosphere, and finally walked over to a counter at the side of the room opposite the singer. He tapped his fingers quietly on the countertop, and suddenly a man popped up, a rotund man wearing an apron, who appeared old at first in the dimness but then revealed himself to be no older than Jack. The young man had a round face divided by a thin black moustache, and wide eyes that gaped blankly at Jack for a long moment.

“Coffee?” Jack said. “Or maybe a brandy?”

The man stared as if he didn't understand, then suddenly said, “I'll bring it to your table.”

Jack walked slowly back. No one seemed to have looked at him. This place seemed to be a sort of European opium den, each person sunk into his or her own concerns, including even the singer, who stared upward and made no eye contact with her audience.

In a minute the man from behind the counter arrived at Jack's table bringing both a coffee cup and a brandy snifter, which Jack actually sniffed as it was set in front of him. The waiter remained standing, staring down at Jack.

“Welcome to Erenray's, señor.”

Jack smiled to himself.

The waiter didn't leave. “We don't often have Americans in here,” he said, in an accent that was hard to place. Certainly not Spanish, as his greeting had implied.

Jack glanced around. “I'll recommend it to my friends when I get back home.” He pushed the other chair out with his foot. “Why don't you sit down, make me feel welcome.”

The waiter declined, but did lean forward over the chair back so their conversation was a little more intimate. “Things are going very badly for your country,” the waiter said, in a completely neutral voice that expressed neither sympathy nor satisfaction.

Jack nodded. “But I think they will get worse before they get better.”

The waiter frowned. “How can they get worse?”

Jack spoke as if viewing a scene. “Rallies celebrating American withdrawals from various places in the world, turning into anti-American riots. Counter-demonstrators. But then, who knows what will be left in place once America withdraws?”

“You have some idea?” the waiter said.

Jack nodded. “A worldwide terrorist network that has succeeded in pushing America out of the world. Then what? Will they just disband? Go back to their homes and children and tend their orchards? What will come after the
pax Americana?”

Jack didn't answer any of his own questions, just sat there musing like a young doctoral candidate in history talking about the thirteenth century. The waiter looked down at him with troubled eyes.

Jack stood up, but before he exited said one more thing: “Have you seen me in here recently?”

The waiter's look of puzzlement was answer enough. Jack moved carefully away from the table, having touched neither of
his drinks. As he walked he suddenly felt observed, though no one in the café seemed to be looking at him. He stopped for a moment, then changed direction. Stopping at the next occupied table, he spoke briefly to the two men sitting there. They answered back, looking at him curiously. Jack did the same thing at the next table, and the next. At one table he simply rapped his knuckles on the tabletop in a complicated little riff. The woman there looked up at him and nodded, which was nice. Jack smiled.

Before he stepped back outside he turned to look at the singer as well, giving her a long, significant look. She lowered her eyes from the ceiling and looked back. Then Jack turned quickly and went outside.

The nighttime city street seemed different just from the short time he'd been inside, as if a major building on the block had been razed and replaced. The streetlight flickered, and the buildings shimmered like a stage set. Jack looked left and right, saw no one and no cars in either direction, and walked straight across the street. Over there he turned left, back toward his hotel, and walked quickly, shoulders back and arms swinging like a tourist out for a hike. He kept up that pace for a block, which brought him to a shopping district, where the shops had awnings and wide picture windows. Jack slowed as if window shopping. He didn't hear anything, but still had that feeling of being watched. He walked along idly for a moment, then darted around the next corner.

That set off noises. Footsteps came running. Moments after Jack rounded the corner, two men jumped around the same corner from the direction he'd come. One of the men was short and heavy, with very broad shoulders. The other was taller and thin, with hair long enough to sway as he ran. They came to a stop together and stared down the empty street. “Which way?” the shorter one asked in French, and the other answered in a strangely-accented English, “That doorway. Look.”

There was a deeply-recessed doorway just past the shop under whose awning they stood. The bulky Frenchman jumped
with surprising speed toward the doorway, drawing a gun as he did so. He waved it in a small half-circle, stepping all the way into the recessed doorway, and saw nothing but a door, plain and nondescript like a service entrance. The man turned and said one negative syllable to his companion.

“Maybe he picked the lock,” the taller man said. He continued to speak English, but in an odd accent, one difficult to place. As his companion bent to examine the door's lock and knob, the taller man lit a cigarette and stared around the silent block thoughtfully.

Above him, Jack lay stretched in the awning. He had swung himself up into it as soon as he'd rounded the corner. It was a scary hiding place because his body weight made the awning sag, and if it began to tear or he otherwise gave himself away he would be helpless. There was nowhere to go from here.

But it made a good observation post, and that was what he'd wanted, just to check out who might be following him. He'd half-thought he knew the answer, and he was right. He looked down at the thin man with the longish hair as the man lit his cigarette and Jack got a good look at his face. He recognized it.

It was Jack's face.

CHAPTER 6

Major Everett Sloane in his desert camo fatigues took the call standing up, as if he was in the presence of his commanding officer, who was actually three hundred miles away. Sloane had the call on his speaker phone so the handful of other people in the room could hear the call.

“Your withdrawal is proceeding a little slowly,” came the voice of General Barker over the speaker. “I was hoping for more efficiency from you, Everett.”

“Things are proceeding very efficiently here, General. But we're not withdrawing.”

A long silence was followed by the single word, “What?”

“General, I'm standing in a base in Southern Afghanistan which is situated between the Sunni and Shi'ite sections. And we're not fighting. Neither are they. This is neutral ground. In the last year I have brought these sides together. I have eaten in their homes, attended their funerals. Most days I don't even wear a uniform. This base is more Switzerland than the headquarters of an occupying force, General. We have had breakthroughs—”

“That's great, Everett, and I'm sure you deserve to get written up in
Newsweek
as well as a couple of commendations, but you have different orders now.”

“Yes, General, I know. That's why I've decided to resign my commission. I'll stay on here in a civilian capacity. Leaders of both factions have asked me to do so.”

Another long silence sounded more hostile than the last. Major Sloane could imagine General Barker chewing on a cigar as he snapped out the next response: “Abandoning your post in wartime is an act of treason, Major.”

“I'd say it's my post that's abandoning me, General. And I'd be happy to debate the definition of treason with you anywhere, including in a court martial.”

Barker sounded like a man with no more time for this minor nuisance, though Major Sloane thought otherwise. He knew the commanding general of the American forces in Afghanistan had had similar problems with other battalion commanders in other parts of the country. He continued in a more placating tone, “General, we are right on the verge here. These people are talking to each other civilly, which they have never done in their history. Never. We haven't had a bombing or shooting in a month, and none committed by locals in six months, I believe. The only insurgents are those coming in from outside, and some of the locals are even helping us deal with them. Given six more months…”

“You don't have six more months,” Barker snapped over the speaker phone. “You don't have six more hours. You're relieved, Major. Your replacement will be—”

“Any replacement won't get much cooperation here,” another man in the room suddenly said, stepping forward from the wall. He did stand at attention.

“Who said that?” yelled General Barker. The others, who had seen Barker in the past, could picture him standing at his desk, cords standing out on his neck as he screamed into the phone.

Major Sloane tried to wave the man who had just spoken to silence, but the enlisted man ignored him. “Chief Master Sergeant George Lehane, General. I've already put in for retirement, and I'm overdue for it. I think I'll hang on here and help the major out. So will about two-thirds of my men, I think.”

“You don't have that many men due for retirement. Not remotely.”

“Then they'll desert, General. I'm quite sure of it.”

The longest silence of all made both men wonder if General Barker had just had a stroke. When his voice resumed it was very low and bitter. “You'll be hunted down like criminals.”

“Who'll do the huntin', General?” the master sergeant asked. “Since all the American forces are runnin' home with their tails between their legs? Sounds like all any criminal has to do is get beyond our borders and he's home free. Besides, you ain't got nobody—”

The major jumped in then. “I think that would be a very bad idea, General, if you don't mind some advice. Do you really want to see American forces fighting each other on CNN?”

“I think we can keep those idiots out of this,” General Barker snapped. “They're all too scared to venture out of the Green Zone for more than—”

Another man in the room in Fallujah cleared his throat. “May I quote you on that, General? And do you mean all war correspondents, including the one hundred and forty who have been casualties of this conflict, or were you speaking of my network in particular?”

A short silence made them think the line had been cut. Then Barker asked quietly, “Who is that, Major?”

The man in civilian fatigues answered. “Matthew Esquivel, General. CNN. I've been imbedded with this unit for eight months now. I'm surprised you haven't seen any of my stories.”

General Barker's voice ignored him and spoke directly to his subordinate. “Everett, this has been a deliberate trap for a superior officer. Insubordination of the worst kind. I'm recommending your demotion as well as removal.”

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