To Free a Spy (23 page)

“Like the ol’ days, Cam. Bar full of horny men, one or two wimmen. Numbers never did seem to work in our favor.”

“We always beat the odds,” Warfield said with a brief smile. It was the first one Macc had seen. A start.

After a couple of beers, Macc glanced at the lone woman. She probably wasn’t bad in her prime but the Arizona sun and dry air had claimed some of their due. “I reckon she’d like to dance with me,” he told Warfield. “No use in makin’ her wait any longer.”

Warfield glanced over his shoulder at her. He took a swig out of his glass and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Tell you what, Macclenny. Give me the first dance with her and then she’s yours if you can get her to leave me.”

“She does, you’re buyin’ the beer.”

“Deal.” The next song to come up turned out to be Ray Charles wailing Together Again. It had the slow beat Warfield liked for dancing. He and then Macc danced a couple of times with the woman, who called herself Cherokee, as the cowboys at the table looked at them. Cherokee seemed to like joking around with Warfield and Macc as they danced. Warfield was at the bar watching Macc and Cherokee sway to the music when one of the cowboys left the table and tapped Macc on the shoulder.

“My time, Son. You can move on now.”

Macc turned to look at the cowboy wearing a sweat-stained western straw hat and cowboy boots, and then at Cherokee. She shook her head.

“Looks like she’s happy right now, partner,” Macc said, and returned to Cherokee and Waylon Jennings. But the cowboy wedged in between the two. He and Macc exchanged a few words before the other two wranglers got up from the table and took a place on either side of Macc. Cherokee said something to the men and Straw Hat elbowed her aside.

“Sit down, Cherokee. This’s between us and this skinhead. You keep your mouth shut.”

Macc had stepped back to try to keep the three men in front of him when Warfield walked up. “Let it go,” he said to Macc, and then to the three cowboys, “Relax, boys. Sit back down. Everything’s cool.”

Warfield saw it coming in time to pull back out of Straw Hat’s range. He waited the split instant for the momentum of the man’s roundhouse swing to pull him forward and chopped the back of the cowboy’s neck with the edge of his hand as he went by. Straw Hat hit the dance floor nose first and didn’t move.

Macc was ducking the big end of a pool cue that the second cowboy whirled in a large arc, but recovered his balance in time to land a punch deep into the cowboy’s beer belly and an uppercut to his chin. One of the cowboy’s teeth scuttled across the dance floor and blood ran down both sides of his mouth as he landed on the sawdust, but he wasn’t through, and reached for Warfield’s ankle. Macc planted his foot in the cowboy’s stomach, this time causing the man to lose the beer and barbecue he’d eaten.

Macc heard the snick of a switch blade locking in place but Warfield caught the cowboy who wielded it in the chest with a kick that sent him reeling across the floor into the end of the bar. His rib cage took the blow. He fell to the floor and began signaling he couldn’t breathe. Warfield kicked the knife away, listened to his breathing for a few seconds and felt his ribs. At least one was broken. “Lung’s punctured, Cowboy. Take care of the good one…might wanna see a doctor.”

Straw Hat still hadn’t moved. Macc put his toe under his shoulder and flipped him over. He looked up at Macc and Warfield and shook his head. He wanted no more.

The drinkers at the bar sat still. “We got no problem with you boys,” one of them said. Macc pulled out some bills but the bartender gave him a nervous smile and said the drinks were on the house. “Sorry ’bout the trouble,” she said.

Macc told the barmaid to call an emergency crew and dropped a hundred dollar bill on the bar, and he and Warfield walked out into the heat and blinding sunlight and got back on Highway 89. After miles of red dirt and cactus and unrelenting sun, dusk was approaching when they pulled in at the Canyon Cliffs Lodge, an old one-story motel with frontier-town stone walls that formed a snaggle-toothed facade against the red cliffs behind it.

Next morning at the Cliffs Cantina a Jack Palance double served them a huge platter of scrambled eggs, sausage, hot biscuits and syrup. It was the most Warfield had eaten in months. From there it was a short hop down to Lee’s Ferry where Macc’s boat waited for them.

“You call that a
raft
?” Warfield said, when Macc pointed it out.

* * *

It took an hour to board the dozen passengers and all their camping gear. The thirty-five-foot raft was built in two sections hinged together in the middle to allow it to take the rapids. Bullet-shaped pontoons on each side provided a riding place for anyone who wanted to straddle them. Food, ice and other supplies were packed in the center of the front section of the raft along with the campers’ gear. Macc and Warfield occupied the aft part of the boat. Warfield was the swamper. It was hard work and the days were long. The temperature routinely rose above the century mark but he learned fast and tried to do more than his share of work. Macc pointed out places and objects of historical and geological interest to everyone and a couple of times a day stopped for hiking trips into a side canyon. The hikes were optional and some campers sat them out on the boat for the two or three hours the others were away.

Warfield always made the side trips and was never disappointed in the reward. He thought he’d already seen most of what the earth had to offer, but the waterfalls and rock formations and drop-offs he saw in the Grand Canyon set new standards. On one of the hiking tours far above the river, Macc showed Warfield the ledge the Sanazaro kid froze-up on years earlier, and the bluff above from which Macc rappelled down and plucked him off.

Everyone on the boat got to know each other. Late afternoons, they cooled off in the river, some fished and others scouted around the campsite for a good place to put down their sleeping gear—preferably not too close to one of the boulders that through the night radiated the heat it had stored during the long day. Around six they gathered around for a few beers in celebration of the wonders they’d experienced that day, while Macc created a meal on par with the fare in the best restaurants anywhere.

Warfield wouldn’t have believed it was possible. One night they charbroiled two-inch thick angus filets to order, with asparagus and twice-baked potato sides. That was Warfield’s favorite. Lunch was sandwiches. Never the same meal twice. The huge Styrofoam ice chest on the boat even though not refrigerated kept the block-ice solid for the entire trip.

Everyone turned in soon after dark, too drained to go any longer. The heat and the trails took it out of them. The rush of the river serenaded them to sleep. Warfield and Macc got up in time to serve eggs and pancakes, sausage and biscuits at seven. By around eight-thirty, all the camping gear was stowed on the raft and everyone was set to experience another day of grandeur.

If Warfield’s travels and experiences had diminished his capacity for awe, the
Grand,
as Macc called it, was a revival. Could there be 200 miles of such indescribable beauty in the world? Five million years of Colorado River flow had carved straight down through a mile of rock, revealing 2.5 billion years’ worth of unmatched artwork created by volcanoes, erosion and an ocean that covered the area five-hundred-million years ago. The names of the features along their route were as beautiful as the places themselves. Marble Canyon. Deer Creek. Chevaya Falls. Toroweap Point.

At night Warfield made a bed close to the river under bright stars and dreamed about the pink castles that lined the canyon walls, or the picturesque streams and waterfalls he’d cooled off in that day, or the bighorn sheep that roamed the rugged slopes, or the Anasazi Indians who lived there a thousand years ago and the foundations of their primitive home sites that were still identifiable. Nothing Macc had told him about the Grand Canyon and Colorado River flowing through it over the years came close to describing the wonders he was seeing. And time flew. In contrast to his endless days and nights over the last few months, the hours on the Colorado slipped by much too fast.

Adventure trips through the Grand Canyon began at a landing called Lee’s Ferry below the Utah border in northern Arizona. Everything below Lee’s Ferry was referenced by distance from that starting point. The notorious Lava Falls at Mile 179 came on the sixth day and had been a thread of conversation sewn by Macc among the campers all week. The river narrowed there and fed into a thirty-five foot drop. Macc said Lava was the largest navigable falls in North America.

Some of the other boatmen didn’t risk taking riders through the Lava rapids. They put them ashore upstream and from there the passengers walked around the falls and met the raft downstream. Not Macc. He drifted down near the falls to give everyone a sobering preview of the churning waters they had in store before he turned back upstream a hundred yards to begin his approach.

When the raft entered the falls, the rushing water arced over the bow and sucked the boat straight down into a black vortex. It was more than Warfield expected and he wondered if he would ever breathe air again. As soon as the chance came to gulp a breath, the boat went back under the relentless slamming and receding and plunging and backing of the fifty-five-degree water. It felt to Warfield like it lasted for five minutes and he didn’t think the boat would survive it. Finally past the rapids, Macc brought the raft about so everyone could see what they had lived through. Or to thank God, Warfield decided. It was a ride to remember.

On the final morning they devoured another lumberjack breakfast and floated the few last miles to a sandy beach where helicopters waited to take the campers to a nearby airstrip for a plane ride back to Lee’s Ferry. New friends had been made and some exchanged contact information. After everyone was lifted out, Macc and Warfield took the raft downriver a few miles to a landing where they loaded the raft onto a waiting truck for a ride back to the adventure company’s headquarters to be restocked for its next trip. Macc had a few days off and drove Warfield back to Flagstaff.

They ate Mexican at Carlos’s the night before Warfield was to return to Washington. Next morning Warfield awoke before the alarm, looked at the red numbers on the clock and decided to get up anyway. He trimmed the beard as short as he could with scissors and shaved the rest. When he was done, he watched the razor stubble swirl down the drain and knew this dark period in his life washed away with it. He looked at himself in the mirror and ran a hand across his new face. He had a good feeling about himself. About life. It had been a while.

At the airport Macc and Warfield looked at each other for a moment with mutual appreciation. “Owe you one, Macc.”

* * *

Fleming watched as Warfield walked through the gate at Washington National. As he drew closer she saw the spark in his eyes, the old purposefulness in his stride. The crooked smile that always told her things were all right. They held each other for a long time, and she was glad because it gave her time to dry her tears before he could see them. He was back.

Fumio Yoshida exited the
elevator in the lobby of the Civil Aviation Bureau and stalked through Reception, checked his wrist watch with the atomic wall clock and headed to his office without so much as a glance at his employees. Most kept their heads down as he passed by their work area but Mrs. Nakamura, his long-time administrative assistant, signaled him to say that Minister Saito had called for Yoshida twice while he was out.

Yoshida nodded and went to his own office, sat down at his desk and swiveled around to his window that overlooked Tokyo’s Narita Airport, less than a mile away. The queue of planes waited in turn for takeoff and when a 747 with its signature hump taxied to the end of the runway Yoshida stood up and moved closer to the window. His look softened as the 747 began its takeoff roll, and he turned away only after the plane was airborne.

He checked his voicemail messages and after listening to the one from his superior a second time he sat for a moment with his arms folded on top of his polished wood desk, barren except for the white legal pad centered in front of him as usual. It wasn’t often that the Japan Minister of Transport called—the routine reports and executive meetings Yoshida hated so much were sufficient to cover everything—and when he did, it wasn’t to tell him how good a job he was doing or talk about baseball.

Minister Saito worked nonstop and expected Yoshida and his other vice-ministers to do the same. Weekdays, weekends, evenings, holidays and lunch hours were all the same to Saito if there was unfinished work. Fumio Yoshida handled his own responsibilities but his priorities were different than Saito’s. And there was never any conversation between them that didn’t involve Ministry of Transport business.

He dialed the Minister. “Yoshida returning your call.”

“Hai!
Yoshida. Must meet immediately. My office, ten minutes.”

Yoshida’s heart picked up a beat. This was no time for Saito to start asking questions. His mind raced. Maybe someone under him had noticed something unusual and planted a seed with Saito. No way could it be related to his job performance. Gold plaques annually proclaiming Yoshida’s Civil Aviation Bureau the best division of the Ministry of Transport lined the walls. The government auditors sent not only their glowing official report to Saito every year, but often attached personal notes of praise for Yoshida’s precision operation. Yoshida knew his employees liked the recognition and he also knew that a substantial number of the same eleven-thousand-nine-hundred-sixty-four workers in the CAB hated his guts, but that mattered little to him. What mattered at the moment was the reason for Saito’s call.

Following the stiff manner in which he and his boss always spoke, Yoshida said, “I have commitments today, Minister. Perhaps tomorrow morning?”

“Rearrange commitments!” Saito said in his usual staccato speaking style.

Yoshida spoke humbly. “To do so would reflect poorly on the Ministry. However, I am at your command.”