His heart shimmered deep in his chest as he opened his mailbox and found a manilla envelope. With the reverence of a rabbi watching over the Torah, he slowly pulled it from its aluminum cell. All four of its pointed ends were dog-eared, and the face of the envelope was so littered by creases and wrinkles he could have mistaken it for a mirror. It was beautiful.
Atop the stained paper sat a plain white label that read simply "SIXTEENTH".
Conklin's eyes sparkled as he clutched the package like unearthed platinum. "Bless your heart, Annie. You're a saint."
It had been a month since he had last seen his penthouse in Tel Aviv, the White City of Israel. Ignoring a panhandler, Conklin made his way across the street to his building and rode the elevator to his floor. A forgotten jug of milk sat on the counter, opened, abandoned in the midst of its task. Neutrally, Conklin knocked it over and let it be the sink's problem, as he dropped to his knees in front of the television like a young child and slipped in the cassette tape.
The tape had clearly been as mistreated as its packaging during its international venture, for white lines darted across the screen from all directions across shivering, liquid humanoids. To Conklin, it was perfect. He watched in rapt astuteness, absorbing every detail as a young woman--he had just recently adjusted to thinking of her as such--ate a comical cake shaped like a man's buttocks. He laughed with her, gently stroking the screen, unaware both of the glass boundary that barred him from the moment, as well as the practical one of time. He wept with her as she opened her eyes in the garage, at last seeing the car he'd had delivered. She collapsed on the hood, and Conklin sighed, a thin smile on his lips.
"How did you know?" came Marina's voice, clear to Conklin through its wavering instability.
"It's what I do."
There was a long period where the only sound came from the light buzzing deep within the cassette player and the ocean striking the beach a hundred feet below. Then she blew a kiss to the camera, walking toward it.
"Please come home."
And the picture disappeared.
Conklin frowned, and an audacious tear caressed his forearm.
C-NET stock was up. Conklin was surprised. The Conklin Network Conglomerate rarely spurted twice within the same quarter. Yawning, he fixed himself a drink from his liquor cabinet and sat down at his laptop, slipping on his glasses. After bypassing a few firewalls with cursory safewords, he arrived at his harddrive, a plethora of literally tens of thousands of documents stretching for miles within their contained universe of ones and zeros. Expertly navigating the maze, Conklin went from one folder to another, never leaving so much as a breadcrumb to find his way back. At last, he arrived in the stock section of the infodump station, and a file that hadn't been there before greeted him. Its name was "Stock Update".
He took a sip from his scotch, tilted his head back to make sure he was reading the title correctly, and then opened the file. The familiar company logo was almost ominous, after all these years. It was a symbol of power, and that power was of a dual nature--glee for those who run it, and despair for those who run from it. Slowly, the emblem dissolved away, revealing the file beneath. Conklin scanned over the report, seeing the recommendations from his men and analysts at home in the United States. He frowned. In his opinion, it was too soon for the big move. Then again, this was an age of information. Business like this couldn't be handled by men in their mid-forties anymore. It was still a boys' club, but the demographic had shifted south.
At the bottom was an implanted pixelated image of a megaphone. Beneath it, in letters so faint Conklin had to squint to perceive them, sat the words LIVE CABLE. Knowlingly, he fetched his wireless headset, plugged in the receiver, and clicked on the image. There was a brief screech, a moment of static that sounded like a tumultuous sea, and finally, a sharp voice came over.
"Richard!"
Conklin smiled. "You'd better hope so, Jimmy."
"Christ, I've been sitting at the phone for hours. I thought maybe, you know, with the terrorism and all..."
"Don't forget the peace talks. They've been increasing lately." Conklin took a harder swallow of his drink. "That's why you decided I should come here, remember? Or have you forgotten? It has been ten years."
Impatience with fleeting tones of sympathy replied. "Don't get bitter on me, Dick. Not when we're so close to the big one."
"I still think it's too soon to make the move."
"Your boys over here don't." Conklin silently counted to three, knowing his old friend's smile was slowly dividing his face horizontally. "And isn't that what you hired them for?"
Conklin laughed.
"Meet Dean in an hour. You know where."
Conklin met his friend Dean Lanza on a rooftop café. It was perfect for a rendezvous of that nature--too expensive for any but the financial elite to dine, but during the rare hours of the day when the same elite was actually working. The café was deserted by all but the staff, who knew Richard Conklin and stayed out of his way. Conklin carried a power that was not vindictive, but benevolant. He could condemn a man to death and be his friend right up to the final minutes.
In the distance, between the large hotels, office buildings, and apartment suites that obscured the coastline, Conklin could still see traces of the sea peeking between the concrete monoliths as he approached his friend. The handshake turned into a brief hug, and then they sat before the gourmet cuisine that awaited them, complimented by the neighborhood's finest coffee.
Lanza's tongue lingered on his upper lip, savoring the taste of the brown drink. "You can almost taste actual coffee bean." He gestured at the pasta that sat before him. "What have you ordered for me, here?"
"I can't pronounce the name, but it's a kind of rotini with spiced eggplant and parmesan cheese. Seafood, too."
Lanza wrinkled his nose. "I'm allergic to pollack."
Conklin laughed, taking a piece of white meat pinstriped by red flesh, and tossed it into his mouth. "Only the finest--genuine crab."
After hesitating a moment, Lanza shrugged, taking a forkful of the pasta. "There are worse ways to die." Conklin had no time to react to the almost philosophical statement before Lanza's eyes rolled back in his head. "How have I not had this before? It's better than sex!"
"That phrase is said far too often these days," Conklin grinned, "but it certainly is accurate here."
Lanza relished another taste of the coffee, and then leaned forward on the table, his eyes darkening. "So, then. To business."
Conklin's tongue clicked on a piece of eggplant. In the middle of chewing the same vegetable, his craggy face had sank from delight at seeing a good friend to a heavy grimace. Wordlessly, he nodded.
"How are things in Bet She'an?"
Conklin made a sly half-smile. "I brought a factory and two thousand jobs to a poor city in America's favorite ally next to the Canucks. I could get away with murder over there."
"Ironic. And convenient. How are your assets?"
Conklin glanced to his left. The stairway that went down into the kitchen and main lobby of the restaurant was empty.
"The factory's going strong. As for my human assets." He paused, stroking his chin. "You're sure they're ready?"
"I've been ghosting in and out since we met two months ago," Lanza replied. "Those kids love you, Dick. You're their godfather. Hell, if he was alive, they'd kill Jesus again just to proclaim their praises for you."
Conklin nodded. "All right. I think I've got an angle. And there's a big factory party I'm throwing in honor of its tenth anniversary. Since the kids I need will be there..."
"Drunken propositions are less dangerous than sober ones," Lanza agreed. He finished off his food, and took one last grateful sip of the coffee. "It's too bad we can't meet in the same place twice," he said, rising. "I'd sure like to eat here again."
"Wait, Dean."
Lanza turned. "Yeah?"
"What's going on? You know. Back home."
Lanza sighed. "The President is a policy sandbagging flip-flopper. Gays can marry now--with property rights. Canada's beefed up military supports our War on Terror, and the Angels lost the Series. Sorry."
Conklin sat, his hand melded to his jaw, his senses groping thousands of miles away as he absorbed it all, trying to relive it. Time separated him yet again, as did the other three dimensions.
"Remember," Lanza prodded. "Peace talks resume in a month..."
"They won't happen," Conklin affirmed, only half-aware of the café around him.
"At least," he resumed. "Not how they want them to."
Annie's letter still sat on his fridge when Conklin returned to his more modest home in Bet She'an. Her lovely cursive had faded a touch, but the morose proclamation that the divorce had been approved was etched too deep in Conklin's mind for forgetfulness to take a foothold. He did not blame her. She had stayed with him through stints of up to six years in the past, but when he took the Israel assignment despite then having a six year old daughter, Annie could not wait past two years. It was a catch twenty-two--if Conklin did not take a career-defining mission, he would be stuck as a lackey and unable to support his family. After all, manipulation was his only skill.
After unpacking his laundry, he gave it to his caretaker and dialed his foreman's number on his cell phone.
"Yes, Mr. Conklin?" Eamon sounded groggy; it was early in the morning, but the voice was deceptive, as it always sounded this way.
"Eamon, how did the week go while I was out?"
"Oh, very good. Big shipment."
Conklin nodded to himself. "Everything set for the party?"
"I cleared out a basement room, sir. No pointy objects or anything. No lawsuits for you!"
He laughed.
"All right, I'll see you on Monday." Conklin shivered lightly. He felt sleazy, planning a party where he would supply alcohol to underage youths. Whatever his intentions, it simply felt disgusting.
The Wall Street Journal had been collected by his caretaker the entire time. Conklin picked up the day's Journal, flipping to check his stock. It had remained steady. Apparently there was no need for further communication. The conversion would go as planned.
He rubbed his eyes, collapsing into a chair by the window. The sun was nearing twilight. He had been in no hurry to return to Bet She'an. Despite its natural beauty, the somewhat disheveled city reminded him far too much of his own decay. It was easy enough to ignore it in Tel Aviv--in the face of reflection, not as much. The sun slipped a bit farther toward the rises that took the outer limits of the town above sea level. The solar disc bathed the world below in milky light, matching the sky's color to the beige sand and buildings upon it. A world of color masked by a facade of monotone.
Conklin poured himself another stiff drink and watched the news, which had nothing but good things to say about the peace talks planned in Palestine. He snorted. That was the news encapsulated. Years behind the real news itself, and miles away too. Separated by barricades of time and space. Trapped within a naive Garrison state of goodwill. He finished his drink and nodded off where he sat.
Later in the following week, as he was preparing to explain why the party had not yet yielded an opportunity to work on the youths he had targeted, Conklin noticed something quaint in the present Wall Street Journal. Certain that he had misread a smudge, he pushed his glasses onto his nose and held the journal close to his face. There it was. Somehow, the C-NET stock had gone down, if only slightly.
Conklin was puzzled. This did not constitute anything agreed upon when Jimmy Hetland and he had set the coding. A severe drop representated that Conklin should flee Israel immediately, but the stock had not even dropped a full percent. Warily, he entered the stock folder on the computer. Indeed, a "Stock Update" greeted him.
When he opened it, Conklin was aghast at not seeing the celestial eagle. Instead, it moved straight to the file. He was immediately suspicious. His caution proved fair when he realized, scanning through the business material inside, that it was gibberish. Little more than salesman jargon, it was nothing like the legitimate data he would receive from headquarters. As an footnote to the deception, no live feed awaited him at the bottom--merely a small message at the very bottom.
You got lucky, Mr. Conklin.
The telephone babbled behind him. Conklin did not jump, as many would have--this faux-naivety had saved his life more than once in the past. Turning, he strode over to the phone and ripped it from its receiver.
"What!?" he barked.
"I'll keep this brief, since I know you love your privacy--so to speak. It'd be in your interest to watch some television."
The line went dead before Conklin could begin to comprehend the meaning behind the message and its elusive sender. With no other lead, he retrieved the remote control from an end table and did as suggested.
The headline, in true media style, had the words BREAKING NEWS made as vibrant and irritably difficult to ignore as possible splayed across the bottom. Cycling quickly through a few channels, Conklin quickly saw that it had overtaken all of the local and national channels available. The anchorman was babbling Arabic as fast as his lips could process it, while Hebrew characters jumped and jittered across the bottom, not missing a beat.
Conklin had analyzed all of this within the span of a second, but it was the images of blaze and burning rubble--fire and brimstone--that held him captivated as the anchorman repeated the same thing over and over again in as many languages as he could at least estimate upon reading.
"Again, Israel has been attacked. Just twenty minutes ago, in Nazareth of the North District, the Basilica of Jesus the Adolescent, run by the Salesian order, exploded in a fireball that brave firemen are still battling. It seems... yes, we have a woman ready to be interviewed, this woman says she saw the explosion..."
In shock, Conklin no longer comprehended any information given by the man, audible or visual. In the subtitles, he could see only one thing.
You got lucky, Mr. Conklin.
"Of course I've heard about the Basilica." From his office halfway across the world, Hetland groaned. Conklin could hear him rubbing his cheek--the scraggly sound of stubble being jostled back and forth grated his ears.
"Well," Conklin muttered, pacing wildly about his penthouse. If the headset were not wireless, he would have hogtied himself. "You mind telling me what the hell is going on!?"
"I can't say, not just yet. The President's taking flak over 'allowing' this to happen, so naturally he's sitting on his own indecisive ass." Hetland sighed. "We work so hard to spread democracy, and times like these, I start to wonder why."
Conklin had been near saying You can't, or you won't? but instead said nothing, allowing his friend to empty his lungs of their barbed cynicism. Collapsing into a chair, he heard the faint sound of Hetland's shoes crushing the carpeting around his desk.
"Look," Hetland said. "I'm gonna try to fix this. What do you know about the Nazareth attack?"
Conklin shook his head. "Nobody's claimed blame, which is odd, as far as terrorism goes. Israel isn't being as quick on the draw as its ancient neighbors, and peace talks are still a go for next month. I don't even know if that's good or bad anymore."
"You're out of there soon, Dick. Don't run off the course when you can see the goal line's tape." Hetland paused. "Has this given you any leverage?"
Conklin's face sank right down into jowels. "Yeah."
"Work on it. Then take an Israel Railways mainline to Haifa Bay and meet Dean on the pier."
Conklin's eyes narrowed. "Why not Tel Aviv?"
"Too risky. Our contacts in Mossad know we have an officer or two in your district, and Tel Aviv isn't a far drive from Nazareth." Hetland hesitated. "Be careful, Dick. This thing is getting shaky."
He hung up, leaving Conklin sitting, incredulous. Without so much as the freedom to scream his anger at the walls, lest they reveal a sinister undercoating, he lumbered over to his bureau. Opening the top drawer, he solemnly removed his Beretta, shoved in a clip, and left his penthouse, tucking the handgun into his bag.
Conklin took the longest route possible to Bet She'an, swooping through the metropolitan Center and West Bank districts before settling on a more direct path. He was in no hurry to do what he knew needed to be done. He was in no hurry to go to the town where he was hailed as a hero, a philanthropist, a Godsend. He could not bear to look each one of those affectionate, grateful souls in their coffee-brown eyes and feed them lies.
Richard Conklin did not want to arrive in Bet She'an, yet he drove there all the same.
One of the town's hospitals, which he had helped improve, lay near the edge of the city, where the dunes sloped down into the bowl, sitting as though keeping a gentle eye out for children harming themselves while playing in the sandy hills. Conklin pulled into the parking lot and stepped down to the dusty, gravelly roads. Though the town's boosted economy had better-paved roads, most side streets and parking lots remained nothing more than flattened bald spots in the rock and dust.
None stopped him as he walked in. Who would dare question the town's savior? Freely, Conklin scooped up a patient's manifest from the clerk's desk and looked down the list of names written in true, runic Arabic. From right to left, he scanned the page until he found the name he was searching for--Zalid b Eamon, his factory foreman's eldest son. Making a note of the room Zalid was listed as inhabiting, Conklin left the manifest on the counter and strode down the corridor.
Eamon Lanuwiya had originally come from Arabia, as he had once told Conklin over a drink, but his eldest son Zalid had possessed enough sapience to suffer personal crisis not to adjust well in the move from one culture to another. Expected to adapt, his son had instead become an outsider, eventually moving to Nazareth and working within the walls of the Basilica to find himself. Eamon had been dejected at first, but would soon boast to all--including his soon-to-be employer--about his treasured son's independence and strength of will. Conklin had seen it, as well, hidden beyond amber eyes that had seen far more in their young age than he had at the same. Though he had met the boy only once, it was unsettling to see him burned beyond recognition, eating and feeding through a series of plastic spirals.
Eamon sat hunched over the edge of his son's bed, dozing. His younger son, Talib, a boy of seventeen, sat cross-legged, never taking his eyes off of his brother's hand as it lightly twitched. The boy no doubt waited for the movement to erupt into consciousness. Conklin decided to wait a moment, letting the young man enjoy the softening delusion.
After a time, he placed his hand on Eamon's shoulder. "I'm so sorry, my friend."
"Mr. Conklin..." Eamon stirred, pushing his hand from his beard to his eyebrows and back, quickly becoming alert. "I left the factory in good hands, sir, I'm sorry about this."
Conklin felt a stab in his abdomen. The idea that a man could think he would be angry about work in these circumstances revealed an image of himself he'd have rather remained ignorant of. "Forget the factory, Eamon. You have more pressing issues."
"Thank you... Richard." Eamon's dark eyes shimmered gratefully. He watched his wounded son's chest rise and fall ever so hypnotically. After a moment, he turned back to Conklin. "I haven't eaten in days. Could you..."
"I'd be honored," Conklin stated genuinely. He patted Eamon between his wide shoulders, placing an unrequested twenty sheqelim bill in his palm, and waited patiently as the large man exited the room. Slowly, Conklin dropped into Eamon's chair. He looked over to Talib, the boy. Just nearing his manhood--and what a horrible experience with which to cross the threshold. Talib had always been a leader. A boy of charisma. Guilt gnawed at Conklin's chest, but he turned to the young man all the same.
Conklin wet his lips with his tongue. "What if I told you that you could stop things like this from ever happening again?"
Talib never looked away from his brother, despite his utmost respect for the man that sat above him. Without hesitation, he nodded.
"I'm listening."
The smell of diesel fuel and fresh fish was as inescapable as the rhythmic sounds of the sea, as Conklin stepped from his taxi and began to walk the docks of Haifa Bay. Crowds scuffled about, a large wicker basket of tropical fish being the dress code for many among them. They zoomed about, disjointed yet with a kind of urgent organization, each one with a destination and a goal. As they mobbed the market areas, the crowds thinned to a small handful of tourists and locals out for a walk. Eventually, the throng diluted to a few people scattered across the beach and fishermen tending to their boats on the wharf.
Looking out across the Gulf, Conklin could see the coast of Lebanon, Turkey farther up, and, directly ahead but obscured by a mid-summer mist, the island of Cyprus. Beyond that, the open sea, and Crete just beyond this visible horizon. He twisted his lips grimly. Hundreds of years of battle all rolled into one small pockmark on the Earthly landscape. A world borne of conflict.
"Gets me too, Dick."
Conklin turned, seeing Lanza step onto the pier from a small boat. "Didn't hear you come up there."
"You were deep in your head. You get like that sometimes."
Conklin dropped his carry-on to the planks and sat on a large bollard. "What's going on out here, Dean?"
Lanza shook his head as he knelt, tying off the mooring lines of his boat. "You tell me. You know better than I do that there's hundreds of sects out here ready to go to war."
"You stop noticing after the sixth year."
Lanza lulled a moment, then finished his knot. "I never wanted this Op, Dick."
"Don't I know it. Too bad I didn't back then." Conklin rubbed his temples. "I haven't even seen my little girl grow up, Dean. Do you know what that's like? Last time I saw her she still wanted a pony. Now she's a woman." He cleared his vision with his thumb. "I only know her through cassette tapes."
"What do you want me to say?" Lanza snapped. "You think I like running around Lebanon and Palestine, watching your ass because Jimmy doesn't have the balls he used to?" He threw his suitcase to the dock. "I never wanted to be here! And I never wanted to do this work!"
Lanza kicked the suitcase. The buckle gave way and clothes fluttered about like enormous butterflies.
"And yet I came here. You know why? You're my friend, Dick. I came here to keep you sane. For Christ's sakes, who have you seen that you know, apart from me? This whole time I did it for you, and I'll be damned if I'm going to stand here and let you toss all your baggage at me while I load mine into a two-foot bag and live out of it." He walked toward Conklin, jabbing his finger at the air. "So next time you decide to ream me for your fucking problems, maybe you can shoot your shit at someone who deserves it!"
Dust pitched up from a board behind him, and when Conklin looked back to Dean, the apple-stain on his shirt had spread to the size of a basketball. Lanza shuddered, his knees rolling, and dropped to the ground without uttering a syllable. His jaw striking his chest, Conklin staggered toward his friend like a baby taking its first awkward steps. He scanned over the younger man's features, vainly searching for signs of life that did not want to be found. A hardness balled in his gut; he faced the tough decision of properly lamenting a dead friend, or catching the man that made him as much.
Conklin's eyes shot down the dock. A grey robe swirled as someone far down turned and ran, dropping what was unmistakably a rifle in his place. His mind too numb to process anything other than instinctual reaction, Conklin ripped his Beretta from his bag and raced down the pier.
His height paying off, Conklin kept one eye on the fluttering burka and the other searching for accomplices as he shoved and shouldered his way through a startled crowd. The people around him moved out of his way, but none cowered. Homicide was, to them, about as interesting as an auto accident--a passing interest, one to meander around, but not an alien one. The assassin burst through a door into an apartment building, just before Conklin could break through the crowd and get a shot.
The clambering sounds of someone charging up a staircase greeted him as he moved through the door. Conklin ran about the room, frantically searching for stairs. When he found them, he took them two at a time, already out of breath. Ten years earlier, he'd have taken them three at a time and stepped twice as fast without breaking stride.
As he dashed around the corner before the last flight, he heard a door swinging open. He aimed the gun and fired twice, just nicking the door behind the killer. Cursing himself for not being faster, he took the last of the stairs in four leaps and kicked the door out of his way.
Conklin saw the assailant running down the corrugated metal roof, moving up and down the rises like an expert swimmer navigating a current. He let his gun send its crackle around him, and the assassin froze in his tracks.
"Stay where you are!" he bellowed.
The alloy roofs moaned in protest as he crossed them, vaulting over the occasional one or two foot gap between them. The shooter never moved so much as an inch as he approached him. His hands clasped to his sides, robe billowing in the wind, the killer refused to face him. This angered Conklin. This man was everything he hated about the area. What had Lanza done? If anyone deserved to be shot, Conklin felt it was himself. Random violence for the sake of itself. Superficial religious justification. It all swirled in Conklin's mind and made him boil with anger.
He fired. White flame licked wildly from the nose of the pistol, retreating just as quickly as though regretting its emergence. The man jolted forward, stumbling, and fell onto the roof, sliding down into the next dip. He came to a rest where rain and grime had collected, the smell pungent from the baking sun above. The aim of his gun never wavering even while blue smoke still spat from its end, Conklin jumped down to the man and turned him over with his foot.
It was not a man at all--it was a boy, no older than twelve. His pupils were dinner plates, a bronze rim of iris already beginning to glaze over. Someone had used this boy, perhaps with the promise of heroics. The worst kind of brainwashing. Conklin turned away, disgusted. How could anyone use a child like this? Backing away, he fled from the scene of his crime, an unstable growl deep in his bowels.
All the way on the train to Tel Aviv, Conklin could not pull his thoughts from his dead friend, nor the fate of the child that perpetrated his murder. All the way, he worked to convince himself his action was just.
When he got through the door of his penthouse in Tel Aviv, Conklin found a manilla envelope from a James Leandth--an anagram for Hetland. Inside the envelope was a package of the Wall Street Journal, which had "express delivery" stamped on the front. Conklin flipped open the Journal to check C-NET stock--and the bottom had essentially fallen out.
Stumbling, he dashed to his computer and moved through the digital maze at dizzying speeds, come across a new Stock Update. He watched the white eagle in its blue circular prison disappear, skipped the article, and slammed the cursor down on the live feed.
Hetland answered him almost instantly. "You've left me a hell of a mess to clean up."
Conklin was taken aback. "Jimmy, Dean is dead!"
"I'm well aware." Hetland swallowed hard. His speech slurred just a bit when he came back. "I also know you left me a goddamn body on the pier. Do you have any idea how hard that was to cloak over?" Hetland's voice had turned gutteral. "You couldn't give him a burial at sea?"
"Jesus Christ, Jimmy." Conklin shook his head in disbelief. "He was murdered. I was a little busy trying to catch the bastard that shot him! Who, did I neglect to mention, was a child."
Four swallowing sounds responded, and then Conklin heard the glass thump against Hetland's desk. "The Op's over."
Conklin's jaw froze. Hetland's callousness was something he'd never seen before. Slowly, his shock swirled into rage. He stood and stormed over to his balcony window. "Dean was our friend, Jimmy, don't you get that? You recruited him. Just as soon as he was out of college, you yanked him out of his life, and he came here for me. You killed him, Jimmy." He bit hard on his lip. "We killed him."
"You think that isn't killing me!?" A loud thud told Conklin that Hetland had kicked his desk. "I haven't seen you for ten years, D! Dean, either--and now I never will again. You think you don't like the orders I give you? Imagine having to send away your best friends. Imagine trying to keep them primed and ready, in the bullshit hope I can see them again, some day." Hetland's voice quivered, the first time Conklin had ever witnessed it do so. "So don't you sit there and demonize me. I've already done it. And you can fry in hell if you think I want to let Dean die in vain."
Conklin gazed out the window, at the ocean, watching land and reason disappear. Trying to see past that barrier of space, trying to imagine his oldest friend sitting at a desk and juggling duty and loyalty.
He cleared his throat, trying to moisten it before he suffocated. "Why was Dean in Haifa?"
"You know why."
"No," Conklin hissed. "I don't. I know what you told me. I'm asking for the truth."
Hetland didn't answer for the longest time, but Conklin was too deep in death to let him weasel around confession. Finally, Hetland sighed. "I couldn't get him to Tel Aviv in time. Dean was..." He halted, trying to find the right words. Conklin had to trust Hetland's conscience to keep the words from invention. "Dean was on a separate operation, all right? He was liaising with Palestinian sects and a few Israeli radicals to tip them off. Get them at each other's throats."
Conklin's eyelids smashed into his forehead. "Jesus Christ, Jimmy, why!?"
"Did you want to blow ten years of your life on a few teenage duds?" Hetland snapped. "I didn't think so! We had to make sure opposition was ready to go. I guess... I guess if you have that many twitching trigger fingers, one of them is going to go off."
"Yeah, I guess so," Conklin snarled. That was his work in a nutshell. Go to a group of people, embrace them, and tell them what to get mad about. "I guess one of those sects found him out, then. I guess it's your fault I shot a boy! You sound pretty damn unapologetic." Conklin's anger elated slightly. He knew he was no better than Hetland--not at the core of things. "You've got to get me out of here, Jimmy."
"Absolutely not."
Conklin could say nothing. Like a confused pupil, he sputtered: "What?"
"It's out of the question. There's too much red tape just slathering over Dean. You're going to have to get out of there yourself, Dick."
"Jesus, Jimmy..." Despite all he had heard, Conklin still couldn't believe Hetland could throw him to the dogs. "I'll never get out of Israel, Jimmy! They'll kill me! They will pull me from any vehicle I can get my hands on, and they will drive my skull into the curb. You can't leave me here!"
Hetland made a quick sound that almost sounded like a sob, then regained control of himself. "I'm sorry."
The line went dead.
Golden sunbeams washed in through the curtains, scurrying across the floor and clawing up the opposite wall. Four ceiling fans churned, desperately trying to compensate for another record-breaking heat wave in a scathing Bet She'an winter. Walking through the invisible steam, Conklin paced about, explaining. Clarifying. Ordering. Despite the heat, he wanted nothing more than to curl fetal beneath all the quilts in his home.
The boys said nothing. They had been handpicked by Talib b Eamon, who had designated them as the most idealistic and the strongest of will. Conklin had never met them, not formally. To him, each face was likened to the one next to it. Each one was the focal point of a block of clay that he was to mold, preying on the insecurities he knew each held deep in their own hearts.
On the wall he had tacked several blown-up photos taken of a neutral area of the Gaza strip, several alleys and apartment buildings circled and noted. Lanza had taken the pictures. Morbidly, his work hung on the wall not unlike the paintings of men time had forgotten. Now, he was being remembered, scrutinized. The work of an artist specializing in the style of deception.
Beyond the dark eyes of each boy was a fire, and as he talked, Conklin laid the fuse. He told them of the atrocities committed by Palestinian coalitions of the years, carefully omitting anything that would paint the assaults as retaliation--as mirrors to previous atrocities. Selective storytelling. He was now the world's most influencial journalist, picking and choosing his facts and then presenting them for his biggest article.
Facts were his gunpowder, and he was now finished loading his cannons.
A brief lull followed after Conklin finished explaining the plan of attack. Not a single eyelid dropped as each young man watched him, entranced by rapt respect. Conklin was too nulled to understand why he had decided to go ahead with the plan. It certainly wasn't about the mission. He felt no attachment of any kind to the life he once knew, with both of his friends dead in one way or another. In the end, Conklin went about his operation because he was weak. Because he did not hold the strength of will to walk away from what he had given up a family for. The op was all he had. All he was.
His own legacy to pass down through the generations--another dot on the Mid-East conflict chart.
Conklin walked over to the tables he had joined together and began opening several black briefcases. Inside some were cheap submachine guns, or terrorism's favorite weapon, the AK-47. Inside others were Russian-made Ruchnoy Protivotankovy Granatomyots, commonly known as the Rocket Propelled Grenade. He said nothing. The boys he had been speaking to for the last hour knew exactly what they were and, thanks to him, exactly what to do with them.
The worst kind of brainwashing.
There was a certain stillness about them, a reverence, as they walked toward the firearms sitting before them. As they loaded their weapons, concealing them in jackets and bags, Conklin mused momentarily on the fact that only two nuclear weapons had ever been used in combat. Yet here he was, soldiers ten years in the making executing his will. Here was the real threat of the world--idealists ripe for molding. Through history, these boys had claimed far more lives than any bomb could.
And from somewhere far away, for every worldly crime, there were men like Conklin guiding their marionettes.
The boys hesitated as they finished loading up the last of the weapons, hovering around a stool with a vest sitting atop it. It was a thick black vest that had, at one point, contained reinforced kevlar padding. Now, the ends of sienna cylinders just peeked out. This was the plan's main objective. The primary attack. One of them had to wear the vest, but they all feared it. Slowly, boldly, Talib b Eamon stepped from the back of the crowd and wrapped the vest around his torso, pulling a baggy coat around his body to hide it.
He turned to Conklin and groped at his hand, kissing his knuckle. "Father will be proud of me. Please don't let him forget why I did it." Talib pressed his forehead into Conklin's palm. "Thank you for this."
Conklin's eyebrows arched slightly, his forehead creasing and rolling like the rhythmic tide. He said nothing; he simply watched them go. He stared long and hard at the door after they had closed it, mesmerized by its knots and bumps. It reminded him of satellite maps. How inconsequential each person is in the greater sense of things. That had been the first lesson when he was trained by the Agency so many years ago. To forget about individuality. To condense it all down into balancing statistics.
What're a few boys and a few emissaries in the grand scheme of things?
His shoes clunked across the old floor as Conklin stepped out onto the balcony of his warehouse just outside the Israel-Palestine border. Slipping over the bannister, he stepped lightly onto the corrugated roof beside him, sitting down on the hot shingles, and watched the boys pack up their vans and drive them toward the Gaza. Dust and sand blew in the breeze, spattering it gently across his face, but Conklin did not close his eyes until the vans had faded into single grains and then disappeared from sight.
"Come for an announcer's view?"
Conklin glanced over his shoulder and saw a younger man standing there. His face was dark and lined, and a thick moustache connected either corner of his mouth. "Why?"
The man shrugged. "I thought the coach watches from the sidelines."
Realization flooded through Conklin's head from his gut. "That was you. Hacking my damned code. Tossing off idle threats."
The moustache stretched as the man grinned and stepped over the balcony onto the roof, leaning to compensate for the angle of the slope. "It wasn't idle--and they weren't threats."
"Mhmm." Conklin pulled a flask from inside his jacket pocket, twisting off the cap, and took a hard gulp. "And what do I call you?"
"Hasan." He sat down beside Conklin. "Shall I call you Mr. Conklin... or perhaps Dick?"
Anger spasmed through Conklin's eyes as he thought of Hetland. "No." He frowned. "Richard is fine."
"All right then, Richard. You haven't shot me yet, which tells me you have questions to ask me."
"You're goddamn right I do." Conklin took another swig of his scotch. "Who are you, who do you work for, and why have you been talking to me?"
"You know my name," Hasan smiled, looking idly at Conklin. When he saw that Conklin would not look away from the distant horizon, he conceded to look in the same direction. "And I am not an enemy. I am an agent of Mossad--the division that knows of your plan."
Conklin's gaze hardened, and his hand moved almost undetectably toward his jacket.
"Oh, we support your plan." Hasan hesitated, then bitterly added, "Or rather, my superiors do."
At last Conklin looked Hasan in the face. "And you've been trying to stop it? Is that it?" His mind flashed to Dean Lanza, dragging across the foor of the Mediterranean Sea, a shark's appetizer awaiting a customer. He clenched his fists. "Did you have my friend killed?"
"James Hetland may have abandoned you," Hasan said, almost gleefully, "but he did not lie to you. Your courier's assassination was a retaliation."
Conklin nodded, and looked back out toward the far reaches of Palestine. Sickeningly, it was easier to accept that Hetland was at fault for Lanza's death than an agent of Mossad.
Hasan gave him a moment to reflect, then prodded on. "I suppose you can't stop this?"
Conklin shook his head. "Not even if I wanted to."
"I don't suppose I have to tell you that this is wrong," Hasan grasped. "But can you at least tell me why?"
His jaws clenched together. Conklin's voice became the guttural sound of an enraged dog. "Why what!?"
"Why can't there be peace? That is what this is about, isn't it? Peace between Israel and Palestine?"
Conklin stood and towered over Hasan, smirking. "You little dipshit. You really don't get it, do you?"
Hasan shuffled away from him and stood, clutching a windowsill for support.
"You think this is about you?" Conklin leaned back against the balcony, gesturing around them. "All this, it's a playground. It's crawling with guys like me and we're just emissaries sent to whip it out with you poor schmucks and see whose is bigger. You came to me--why? With a half-assed plan to guilt me into stopping this?" He snorted, taking a last sip of his flask and then tossing it hard to the pavement.
"A half-assed plan to make you do the right thing!"
"There is no right thing!" Conklin had started shouting, and he at last ceased to care who was listening, who was watching, who was reading his mind. It all poured forth with the force of a hurricane, and he let it. "Don't you think I'm a little past guilt at this point!? I gave up my life for this! This is my goddamn life! I missed growing old with my wife--I don't even know what my little girl's favorite ice cream flavor is, and you know why? Because I've never seen her eat it."
He stopped a moment, then laughed exasperatedly. "You ask me 'Why'? How stupid can you be!?" He shoved Hasan back gruffly. "You think there's a big meaning to all this? A massive conspiracy, a battle of ideals?" Conklin laughed again. "Everybody's the hero as long as they're looking at everything from the right spot!" He cackled until his throat grumbled in protest and didn't stop.
"You want the why? Here's the why, you stupid little bastard. Trade! Dollars and fiscal ratings." He shrugged. "Good Palestinian relations might dampen our relationship with mini-Canada. Did you come to me because you expected some larger point?"
Hasan trembled with rage. "I came to you expecting any point! What is it all for!?"
"There is no point to anything out here! How many times do I have to answer the same damn question?" Conklin's ears perked up as he heard a distant pop. He immediately jerked his head over to where Talib and the boys had headed. A small puff of orange and crimson could be seen, and more followed, little bubbles of barely perceptable carnage. The common good had never looked so warped.
Conklin looked back to Hasan and thrust his thumb over his shoulder. When he spoke, he was calmer. More serene. "There's your why. So long as you poor bastards are blowing each other up, we'll always scoop up Israeli approval. If we have nothing to support, we have no relations--the only thing my country and this place agree on is war." He sank down against the wall, curling his knees into his chest and retrieving a photograph of his daughter as she was when he had last seen her.
"Why?" he muttered. "Oil. Televisions. Computers." He glared deep into the photograph, trying to picture her getting taller, fuller, older. Trying to live the memories stolen from him, blocked from him.
Separated by barriers of time and space.
"I've paid my dues," Conklin choked. "I just want to leave this place."
Hasan, who had held his hand behind him for the last ten minutes, sighed and dropped something behind him. With the edge of his foot, he nudged the gun off the roof to the streets below. Leaning forward, his hands gripping the bannister supports, Hasan stared hard into Conklin's dead gray eyes. "The only question is what you're going to do now." Hasan stepped over Conklin and hoisted himself back onto the balcony.
He started to leave, then turned back briefly. "My father was CIA too, you know. Do you know what his big contribution was?" Conklin heard the door swing open. "They sent him to the Ukraine to stimulate trade. To keep the evil Soviets from annexing the freed states that couldn't support themselves. The problem was," and his voice lowered, gargling viciously, "the only thing they had to offer the international market was small arms."
For a moment the only sound was the breeze, and the rustle of the palm trees lining the streets. "Do you know what my first big mission was?" Conklin felt Hasan loom over him, the black void of Hasan's shadow engulfing him, Hasan's voice cutting straight into his ear. "Somalia. I saw all the women and children killed with the same guns my father helped sell."
He stepped away. "You don't need to tell me that it's the same bullshit everywhere."
The door closed.
It was late. Conklin had avoided watching the local channels in his Bet She'an home. Instead, beside his recliner sat a large box of black cassette tapes. Each one contained a story he was absent for, only able to hear the telling of it. The last one was just beginning, Marina's sixteenth birthday.
All the while, he couldn't think of anything but Hasan's words hours earlier.
The only question is what you're going to do now.
His cheeks damp as the cliff face behind Angel Falls, Conklin sobbed and the tiny ring of the Beretta kissed his forehead.
Marina reacted to her car all over again. He hesitated.
"Please come home," she pleaded.
The gun trembled in his hand despite his firm grip. At last, he cast it to the floor. Conklin knew all too well that he didn't deserve the simplest escape. He was loathe to face her after what he had become, but his daughter deserved a real explanation. And so did someone else.
What're you going to do now?
He snatched the phone from its receiver beside him and dialed.
"Hello?"
"Eamon." Conklin chewed on the inside of his cheek. "I need to tell you something."
______________________________
This story has been long in the making. I first tried to write this about three years ago after I realized that no one wants to write a book or movie about realistic spies, who lie and convince for a living. Ones that don't get into fistfights on the top of speeding trains.
Too many failed attempts, descending too far into cliché and stereotype, were the result, and I scrapped the project for a long time until about early November of this years. I hope you enjoyed it.
-I
Atop the stained paper sat a plain white label that read simply "SIXTEENTH".
Conklin's eyes sparkled as he clutched the package like unearthed platinum. "Bless your heart, Annie. You're a saint."
It had been a month since he had last seen his penthouse in Tel Aviv, the White City of Israel. Ignoring a panhandler, Conklin made his way across the street to his building and rode the elevator to his floor. A forgotten jug of milk sat on the counter, opened, abandoned in the midst of its task. Neutrally, Conklin knocked it over and let it be the sink's problem, as he dropped to his knees in front of the television like a young child and slipped in the cassette tape.
The tape had clearly been as mistreated as its packaging during its international venture, for white lines darted across the screen from all directions across shivering, liquid humanoids. To Conklin, it was perfect. He watched in rapt astuteness, absorbing every detail as a young woman--he had just recently adjusted to thinking of her as such--ate a comical cake shaped like a man's buttocks. He laughed with her, gently stroking the screen, unaware both of the glass boundary that barred him from the moment, as well as the practical one of time. He wept with her as she opened her eyes in the garage, at last seeing the car he'd had delivered. She collapsed on the hood, and Conklin sighed, a thin smile on his lips.
"How did you know?" came Marina's voice, clear to Conklin through its wavering instability.
"It's what I do."
There was a long period where the only sound came from the light buzzing deep within the cassette player and the ocean striking the beach a hundred feet below. Then she blew a kiss to the camera, walking toward it.
"Please come home."
And the picture disappeared.
Conklin frowned, and an audacious tear caressed his forearm.
* * *
C-NET stock was up. Conklin was surprised. The Conklin Network Conglomerate rarely spurted twice within the same quarter. Yawning, he fixed himself a drink from his liquor cabinet and sat down at his laptop, slipping on his glasses. After bypassing a few firewalls with cursory safewords, he arrived at his harddrive, a plethora of literally tens of thousands of documents stretching for miles within their contained universe of ones and zeros. Expertly navigating the maze, Conklin went from one folder to another, never leaving so much as a breadcrumb to find his way back. At last, he arrived in the stock section of the infodump station, and a file that hadn't been there before greeted him. Its name was "Stock Update".
He took a sip from his scotch, tilted his head back to make sure he was reading the title correctly, and then opened the file. The familiar company logo was almost ominous, after all these years. It was a symbol of power, and that power was of a dual nature--glee for those who run it, and despair for those who run from it. Slowly, the emblem dissolved away, revealing the file beneath. Conklin scanned over the report, seeing the recommendations from his men and analysts at home in the United States. He frowned. In his opinion, it was too soon for the big move. Then again, this was an age of information. Business like this couldn't be handled by men in their mid-forties anymore. It was still a boys' club, but the demographic had shifted south.
At the bottom was an implanted pixelated image of a megaphone. Beneath it, in letters so faint Conklin had to squint to perceive them, sat the words LIVE CABLE. Knowlingly, he fetched his wireless headset, plugged in the receiver, and clicked on the image. There was a brief screech, a moment of static that sounded like a tumultuous sea, and finally, a sharp voice came over.
"Richard!"
Conklin smiled. "You'd better hope so, Jimmy."
"Christ, I've been sitting at the phone for hours. I thought maybe, you know, with the terrorism and all..."
"Don't forget the peace talks. They've been increasing lately." Conklin took a harder swallow of his drink. "That's why you decided I should come here, remember? Or have you forgotten? It has been ten years."
Impatience with fleeting tones of sympathy replied. "Don't get bitter on me, Dick. Not when we're so close to the big one."
"I still think it's too soon to make the move."
"Your boys over here don't." Conklin silently counted to three, knowing his old friend's smile was slowly dividing his face horizontally. "And isn't that what you hired them for?"
Conklin laughed.
"Meet Dean in an hour. You know where."
* * *
Conklin met his friend Dean Lanza on a rooftop café. It was perfect for a rendezvous of that nature--too expensive for any but the financial elite to dine, but during the rare hours of the day when the same elite was actually working. The café was deserted by all but the staff, who knew Richard Conklin and stayed out of his way. Conklin carried a power that was not vindictive, but benevolant. He could condemn a man to death and be his friend right up to the final minutes.
In the distance, between the large hotels, office buildings, and apartment suites that obscured the coastline, Conklin could still see traces of the sea peeking between the concrete monoliths as he approached his friend. The handshake turned into a brief hug, and then they sat before the gourmet cuisine that awaited them, complimented by the neighborhood's finest coffee.
Lanza's tongue lingered on his upper lip, savoring the taste of the brown drink. "You can almost taste actual coffee bean." He gestured at the pasta that sat before him. "What have you ordered for me, here?"
"I can't pronounce the name, but it's a kind of rotini with spiced eggplant and parmesan cheese. Seafood, too."
Lanza wrinkled his nose. "I'm allergic to pollack."
Conklin laughed, taking a piece of white meat pinstriped by red flesh, and tossed it into his mouth. "Only the finest--genuine crab."
After hesitating a moment, Lanza shrugged, taking a forkful of the pasta. "There are worse ways to die." Conklin had no time to react to the almost philosophical statement before Lanza's eyes rolled back in his head. "How have I not had this before? It's better than sex!"
"That phrase is said far too often these days," Conklin grinned, "but it certainly is accurate here."
Lanza relished another taste of the coffee, and then leaned forward on the table, his eyes darkening. "So, then. To business."
Conklin's tongue clicked on a piece of eggplant. In the middle of chewing the same vegetable, his craggy face had sank from delight at seeing a good friend to a heavy grimace. Wordlessly, he nodded.
"How are things in Bet She'an?"
Conklin made a sly half-smile. "I brought a factory and two thousand jobs to a poor city in America's favorite ally next to the Canucks. I could get away with murder over there."
"Ironic. And convenient. How are your assets?"
Conklin glanced to his left. The stairway that went down into the kitchen and main lobby of the restaurant was empty.
"The factory's going strong. As for my human assets." He paused, stroking his chin. "You're sure they're ready?"
"I've been ghosting in and out since we met two months ago," Lanza replied. "Those kids love you, Dick. You're their godfather. Hell, if he was alive, they'd kill Jesus again just to proclaim their praises for you."
Conklin nodded. "All right. I think I've got an angle. And there's a big factory party I'm throwing in honor of its tenth anniversary. Since the kids I need will be there..."
"Drunken propositions are less dangerous than sober ones," Lanza agreed. He finished off his food, and took one last grateful sip of the coffee. "It's too bad we can't meet in the same place twice," he said, rising. "I'd sure like to eat here again."
"Wait, Dean."
Lanza turned. "Yeah?"
"What's going on? You know. Back home."
Lanza sighed. "The President is a policy sandbagging flip-flopper. Gays can marry now--with property rights. Canada's beefed up military supports our War on Terror, and the Angels lost the Series. Sorry."
Conklin sat, his hand melded to his jaw, his senses groping thousands of miles away as he absorbed it all, trying to relive it. Time separated him yet again, as did the other three dimensions.
"Remember," Lanza prodded. "Peace talks resume in a month..."
"They won't happen," Conklin affirmed, only half-aware of the café around him.
"At least," he resumed. "Not how they want them to."
* * *
Annie's letter still sat on his fridge when Conklin returned to his more modest home in Bet She'an. Her lovely cursive had faded a touch, but the morose proclamation that the divorce had been approved was etched too deep in Conklin's mind for forgetfulness to take a foothold. He did not blame her. She had stayed with him through stints of up to six years in the past, but when he took the Israel assignment despite then having a six year old daughter, Annie could not wait past two years. It was a catch twenty-two--if Conklin did not take a career-defining mission, he would be stuck as a lackey and unable to support his family. After all, manipulation was his only skill.
After unpacking his laundry, he gave it to his caretaker and dialed his foreman's number on his cell phone.
"Yes, Mr. Conklin?" Eamon sounded groggy; it was early in the morning, but the voice was deceptive, as it always sounded this way.
"Eamon, how did the week go while I was out?"
"Oh, very good. Big shipment."
Conklin nodded to himself. "Everything set for the party?"
"I cleared out a basement room, sir. No pointy objects or anything. No lawsuits for you!"
He laughed.
"All right, I'll see you on Monday." Conklin shivered lightly. He felt sleazy, planning a party where he would supply alcohol to underage youths. Whatever his intentions, it simply felt disgusting.
The Wall Street Journal had been collected by his caretaker the entire time. Conklin picked up the day's Journal, flipping to check his stock. It had remained steady. Apparently there was no need for further communication. The conversion would go as planned.
He rubbed his eyes, collapsing into a chair by the window. The sun was nearing twilight. He had been in no hurry to return to Bet She'an. Despite its natural beauty, the somewhat disheveled city reminded him far too much of his own decay. It was easy enough to ignore it in Tel Aviv--in the face of reflection, not as much. The sun slipped a bit farther toward the rises that took the outer limits of the town above sea level. The solar disc bathed the world below in milky light, matching the sky's color to the beige sand and buildings upon it. A world of color masked by a facade of monotone.
Conklin poured himself another stiff drink and watched the news, which had nothing but good things to say about the peace talks planned in Palestine. He snorted. That was the news encapsulated. Years behind the real news itself, and miles away too. Separated by barricades of time and space. Trapped within a naive Garrison state of goodwill. He finished his drink and nodded off where he sat.
* * *
Later in the following week, as he was preparing to explain why the party had not yet yielded an opportunity to work on the youths he had targeted, Conklin noticed something quaint in the present Wall Street Journal. Certain that he had misread a smudge, he pushed his glasses onto his nose and held the journal close to his face. There it was. Somehow, the C-NET stock had gone down, if only slightly.
Conklin was puzzled. This did not constitute anything agreed upon when Jimmy Hetland and he had set the coding. A severe drop representated that Conklin should flee Israel immediately, but the stock had not even dropped a full percent. Warily, he entered the stock folder on the computer. Indeed, a "Stock Update" greeted him.
When he opened it, Conklin was aghast at not seeing the celestial eagle. Instead, it moved straight to the file. He was immediately suspicious. His caution proved fair when he realized, scanning through the business material inside, that it was gibberish. Little more than salesman jargon, it was nothing like the legitimate data he would receive from headquarters. As an footnote to the deception, no live feed awaited him at the bottom--merely a small message at the very bottom.
You got lucky, Mr. Conklin.
The telephone babbled behind him. Conklin did not jump, as many would have--this faux-naivety had saved his life more than once in the past. Turning, he strode over to the phone and ripped it from its receiver.
"What!?" he barked.
"I'll keep this brief, since I know you love your privacy--so to speak. It'd be in your interest to watch some television."
The line went dead before Conklin could begin to comprehend the meaning behind the message and its elusive sender. With no other lead, he retrieved the remote control from an end table and did as suggested.
The headline, in true media style, had the words BREAKING NEWS made as vibrant and irritably difficult to ignore as possible splayed across the bottom. Cycling quickly through a few channels, Conklin quickly saw that it had overtaken all of the local and national channels available. The anchorman was babbling Arabic as fast as his lips could process it, while Hebrew characters jumped and jittered across the bottom, not missing a beat.
Conklin had analyzed all of this within the span of a second, but it was the images of blaze and burning rubble--fire and brimstone--that held him captivated as the anchorman repeated the same thing over and over again in as many languages as he could at least estimate upon reading.
"Again, Israel has been attacked. Just twenty minutes ago, in Nazareth of the North District, the Basilica of Jesus the Adolescent, run by the Salesian order, exploded in a fireball that brave firemen are still battling. It seems... yes, we have a woman ready to be interviewed, this woman says she saw the explosion..."
In shock, Conklin no longer comprehended any information given by the man, audible or visual. In the subtitles, he could see only one thing.
You got lucky, Mr. Conklin.
* * *
"Of course I've heard about the Basilica." From his office halfway across the world, Hetland groaned. Conklin could hear him rubbing his cheek--the scraggly sound of stubble being jostled back and forth grated his ears.
"Well," Conklin muttered, pacing wildly about his penthouse. If the headset were not wireless, he would have hogtied himself. "You mind telling me what the hell is going on!?"
"I can't say, not just yet. The President's taking flak over 'allowing' this to happen, so naturally he's sitting on his own indecisive ass." Hetland sighed. "We work so hard to spread democracy, and times like these, I start to wonder why."
Conklin had been near saying You can't, or you won't? but instead said nothing, allowing his friend to empty his lungs of their barbed cynicism. Collapsing into a chair, he heard the faint sound of Hetland's shoes crushing the carpeting around his desk.
"Look," Hetland said. "I'm gonna try to fix this. What do you know about the Nazareth attack?"
Conklin shook his head. "Nobody's claimed blame, which is odd, as far as terrorism goes. Israel isn't being as quick on the draw as its ancient neighbors, and peace talks are still a go for next month. I don't even know if that's good or bad anymore."
"You're out of there soon, Dick. Don't run off the course when you can see the goal line's tape." Hetland paused. "Has this given you any leverage?"
Conklin's face sank right down into jowels. "Yeah."
"Work on it. Then take an Israel Railways mainline to Haifa Bay and meet Dean on the pier."
Conklin's eyes narrowed. "Why not Tel Aviv?"
"Too risky. Our contacts in Mossad know we have an officer or two in your district, and Tel Aviv isn't a far drive from Nazareth." Hetland hesitated. "Be careful, Dick. This thing is getting shaky."
He hung up, leaving Conklin sitting, incredulous. Without so much as the freedom to scream his anger at the walls, lest they reveal a sinister undercoating, he lumbered over to his bureau. Opening the top drawer, he solemnly removed his Beretta, shoved in a clip, and left his penthouse, tucking the handgun into his bag.
* * *
Conklin took the longest route possible to Bet She'an, swooping through the metropolitan Center and West Bank districts before settling on a more direct path. He was in no hurry to do what he knew needed to be done. He was in no hurry to go to the town where he was hailed as a hero, a philanthropist, a Godsend. He could not bear to look each one of those affectionate, grateful souls in their coffee-brown eyes and feed them lies.
Richard Conklin did not want to arrive in Bet She'an, yet he drove there all the same.
One of the town's hospitals, which he had helped improve, lay near the edge of the city, where the dunes sloped down into the bowl, sitting as though keeping a gentle eye out for children harming themselves while playing in the sandy hills. Conklin pulled into the parking lot and stepped down to the dusty, gravelly roads. Though the town's boosted economy had better-paved roads, most side streets and parking lots remained nothing more than flattened bald spots in the rock and dust.
None stopped him as he walked in. Who would dare question the town's savior? Freely, Conklin scooped up a patient's manifest from the clerk's desk and looked down the list of names written in true, runic Arabic. From right to left, he scanned the page until he found the name he was searching for--Zalid b Eamon, his factory foreman's eldest son. Making a note of the room Zalid was listed as inhabiting, Conklin left the manifest on the counter and strode down the corridor.
Eamon Lanuwiya had originally come from Arabia, as he had once told Conklin over a drink, but his eldest son Zalid had possessed enough sapience to suffer personal crisis not to adjust well in the move from one culture to another. Expected to adapt, his son had instead become an outsider, eventually moving to Nazareth and working within the walls of the Basilica to find himself. Eamon had been dejected at first, but would soon boast to all--including his soon-to-be employer--about his treasured son's independence and strength of will. Conklin had seen it, as well, hidden beyond amber eyes that had seen far more in their young age than he had at the same. Though he had met the boy only once, it was unsettling to see him burned beyond recognition, eating and feeding through a series of plastic spirals.
Eamon sat hunched over the edge of his son's bed, dozing. His younger son, Talib, a boy of seventeen, sat cross-legged, never taking his eyes off of his brother's hand as it lightly twitched. The boy no doubt waited for the movement to erupt into consciousness. Conklin decided to wait a moment, letting the young man enjoy the softening delusion.
After a time, he placed his hand on Eamon's shoulder. "I'm so sorry, my friend."
"Mr. Conklin..." Eamon stirred, pushing his hand from his beard to his eyebrows and back, quickly becoming alert. "I left the factory in good hands, sir, I'm sorry about this."
Conklin felt a stab in his abdomen. The idea that a man could think he would be angry about work in these circumstances revealed an image of himself he'd have rather remained ignorant of. "Forget the factory, Eamon. You have more pressing issues."
"Thank you... Richard." Eamon's dark eyes shimmered gratefully. He watched his wounded son's chest rise and fall ever so hypnotically. After a moment, he turned back to Conklin. "I haven't eaten in days. Could you..."
"I'd be honored," Conklin stated genuinely. He patted Eamon between his wide shoulders, placing an unrequested twenty sheqelim bill in his palm, and waited patiently as the large man exited the room. Slowly, Conklin dropped into Eamon's chair. He looked over to Talib, the boy. Just nearing his manhood--and what a horrible experience with which to cross the threshold. Talib had always been a leader. A boy of charisma. Guilt gnawed at Conklin's chest, but he turned to the young man all the same.
Conklin wet his lips with his tongue. "What if I told you that you could stop things like this from ever happening again?"
Talib never looked away from his brother, despite his utmost respect for the man that sat above him. Without hesitation, he nodded.
"I'm listening."
* * *
The smell of diesel fuel and fresh fish was as inescapable as the rhythmic sounds of the sea, as Conklin stepped from his taxi and began to walk the docks of Haifa Bay. Crowds scuffled about, a large wicker basket of tropical fish being the dress code for many among them. They zoomed about, disjointed yet with a kind of urgent organization, each one with a destination and a goal. As they mobbed the market areas, the crowds thinned to a small handful of tourists and locals out for a walk. Eventually, the throng diluted to a few people scattered across the beach and fishermen tending to their boats on the wharf.
Looking out across the Gulf, Conklin could see the coast of Lebanon, Turkey farther up, and, directly ahead but obscured by a mid-summer mist, the island of Cyprus. Beyond that, the open sea, and Crete just beyond this visible horizon. He twisted his lips grimly. Hundreds of years of battle all rolled into one small pockmark on the Earthly landscape. A world borne of conflict.
"Gets me too, Dick."
Conklin turned, seeing Lanza step onto the pier from a small boat. "Didn't hear you come up there."
"You were deep in your head. You get like that sometimes."
Conklin dropped his carry-on to the planks and sat on a large bollard. "What's going on out here, Dean?"
Lanza shook his head as he knelt, tying off the mooring lines of his boat. "You tell me. You know better than I do that there's hundreds of sects out here ready to go to war."
"You stop noticing after the sixth year."
Lanza lulled a moment, then finished his knot. "I never wanted this Op, Dick."
"Don't I know it. Too bad I didn't back then." Conklin rubbed his temples. "I haven't even seen my little girl grow up, Dean. Do you know what that's like? Last time I saw her she still wanted a pony. Now she's a woman." He cleared his vision with his thumb. "I only know her through cassette tapes."
"What do you want me to say?" Lanza snapped. "You think I like running around Lebanon and Palestine, watching your ass because Jimmy doesn't have the balls he used to?" He threw his suitcase to the dock. "I never wanted to be here! And I never wanted to do this work!"
Lanza kicked the suitcase. The buckle gave way and clothes fluttered about like enormous butterflies.
"And yet I came here. You know why? You're my friend, Dick. I came here to keep you sane. For Christ's sakes, who have you seen that you know, apart from me? This whole time I did it for you, and I'll be damned if I'm going to stand here and let you toss all your baggage at me while I load mine into a two-foot bag and live out of it." He walked toward Conklin, jabbing his finger at the air. "So next time you decide to ream me for your fucking problems, maybe you can shoot your shit at someone who deserves it!"
Dust pitched up from a board behind him, and when Conklin looked back to Dean, the apple-stain on his shirt had spread to the size of a basketball. Lanza shuddered, his knees rolling, and dropped to the ground without uttering a syllable. His jaw striking his chest, Conklin staggered toward his friend like a baby taking its first awkward steps. He scanned over the younger man's features, vainly searching for signs of life that did not want to be found. A hardness balled in his gut; he faced the tough decision of properly lamenting a dead friend, or catching the man that made him as much.
Conklin's eyes shot down the dock. A grey robe swirled as someone far down turned and ran, dropping what was unmistakably a rifle in his place. His mind too numb to process anything other than instinctual reaction, Conklin ripped his Beretta from his bag and raced down the pier.
His height paying off, Conklin kept one eye on the fluttering burka and the other searching for accomplices as he shoved and shouldered his way through a startled crowd. The people around him moved out of his way, but none cowered. Homicide was, to them, about as interesting as an auto accident--a passing interest, one to meander around, but not an alien one. The assassin burst through a door into an apartment building, just before Conklin could break through the crowd and get a shot.
The clambering sounds of someone charging up a staircase greeted him as he moved through the door. Conklin ran about the room, frantically searching for stairs. When he found them, he took them two at a time, already out of breath. Ten years earlier, he'd have taken them three at a time and stepped twice as fast without breaking stride.
As he dashed around the corner before the last flight, he heard a door swinging open. He aimed the gun and fired twice, just nicking the door behind the killer. Cursing himself for not being faster, he took the last of the stairs in four leaps and kicked the door out of his way.
Conklin saw the assailant running down the corrugated metal roof, moving up and down the rises like an expert swimmer navigating a current. He let his gun send its crackle around him, and the assassin froze in his tracks.
"Stay where you are!" he bellowed.
The alloy roofs moaned in protest as he crossed them, vaulting over the occasional one or two foot gap between them. The shooter never moved so much as an inch as he approached him. His hands clasped to his sides, robe billowing in the wind, the killer refused to face him. This angered Conklin. This man was everything he hated about the area. What had Lanza done? If anyone deserved to be shot, Conklin felt it was himself. Random violence for the sake of itself. Superficial religious justification. It all swirled in Conklin's mind and made him boil with anger.
He fired. White flame licked wildly from the nose of the pistol, retreating just as quickly as though regretting its emergence. The man jolted forward, stumbling, and fell onto the roof, sliding down into the next dip. He came to a rest where rain and grime had collected, the smell pungent from the baking sun above. The aim of his gun never wavering even while blue smoke still spat from its end, Conklin jumped down to the man and turned him over with his foot.
It was not a man at all--it was a boy, no older than twelve. His pupils were dinner plates, a bronze rim of iris already beginning to glaze over. Someone had used this boy, perhaps with the promise of heroics. The worst kind of brainwashing. Conklin turned away, disgusted. How could anyone use a child like this? Backing away, he fled from the scene of his crime, an unstable growl deep in his bowels.
All the way on the train to Tel Aviv, Conklin could not pull his thoughts from his dead friend, nor the fate of the child that perpetrated his murder. All the way, he worked to convince himself his action was just.
* * *
When he got through the door of his penthouse in Tel Aviv, Conklin found a manilla envelope from a James Leandth--an anagram for Hetland. Inside the envelope was a package of the Wall Street Journal, which had "express delivery" stamped on the front. Conklin flipped open the Journal to check C-NET stock--and the bottom had essentially fallen out.
Stumbling, he dashed to his computer and moved through the digital maze at dizzying speeds, come across a new Stock Update. He watched the white eagle in its blue circular prison disappear, skipped the article, and slammed the cursor down on the live feed.
Hetland answered him almost instantly. "You've left me a hell of a mess to clean up."
Conklin was taken aback. "Jimmy, Dean is dead!"
"I'm well aware." Hetland swallowed hard. His speech slurred just a bit when he came back. "I also know you left me a goddamn body on the pier. Do you have any idea how hard that was to cloak over?" Hetland's voice had turned gutteral. "You couldn't give him a burial at sea?"
"Jesus Christ, Jimmy." Conklin shook his head in disbelief. "He was murdered. I was a little busy trying to catch the bastard that shot him! Who, did I neglect to mention, was a child."
Four swallowing sounds responded, and then Conklin heard the glass thump against Hetland's desk. "The Op's over."
Conklin's jaw froze. Hetland's callousness was something he'd never seen before. Slowly, his shock swirled into rage. He stood and stormed over to his balcony window. "Dean was our friend, Jimmy, don't you get that? You recruited him. Just as soon as he was out of college, you yanked him out of his life, and he came here for me. You killed him, Jimmy." He bit hard on his lip. "We killed him."
"You think that isn't killing me!?" A loud thud told Conklin that Hetland had kicked his desk. "I haven't seen you for ten years, D! Dean, either--and now I never will again. You think you don't like the orders I give you? Imagine having to send away your best friends. Imagine trying to keep them primed and ready, in the bullshit hope I can see them again, some day." Hetland's voice quivered, the first time Conklin had ever witnessed it do so. "So don't you sit there and demonize me. I've already done it. And you can fry in hell if you think I want to let Dean die in vain."
Conklin gazed out the window, at the ocean, watching land and reason disappear. Trying to see past that barrier of space, trying to imagine his oldest friend sitting at a desk and juggling duty and loyalty.
He cleared his throat, trying to moisten it before he suffocated. "Why was Dean in Haifa?"
"You know why."
"No," Conklin hissed. "I don't. I know what you told me. I'm asking for the truth."
Hetland didn't answer for the longest time, but Conklin was too deep in death to let him weasel around confession. Finally, Hetland sighed. "I couldn't get him to Tel Aviv in time. Dean was..." He halted, trying to find the right words. Conklin had to trust Hetland's conscience to keep the words from invention. "Dean was on a separate operation, all right? He was liaising with Palestinian sects and a few Israeli radicals to tip them off. Get them at each other's throats."
Conklin's eyelids smashed into his forehead. "Jesus Christ, Jimmy, why!?"
"Did you want to blow ten years of your life on a few teenage duds?" Hetland snapped. "I didn't think so! We had to make sure opposition was ready to go. I guess... I guess if you have that many twitching trigger fingers, one of them is going to go off."
"Yeah, I guess so," Conklin snarled. That was his work in a nutshell. Go to a group of people, embrace them, and tell them what to get mad about. "I guess one of those sects found him out, then. I guess it's your fault I shot a boy! You sound pretty damn unapologetic." Conklin's anger elated slightly. He knew he was no better than Hetland--not at the core of things. "You've got to get me out of here, Jimmy."
"Absolutely not."
Conklin could say nothing. Like a confused pupil, he sputtered: "What?"
"It's out of the question. There's too much red tape just slathering over Dean. You're going to have to get out of there yourself, Dick."
"Jesus, Jimmy..." Despite all he had heard, Conklin still couldn't believe Hetland could throw him to the dogs. "I'll never get out of Israel, Jimmy! They'll kill me! They will pull me from any vehicle I can get my hands on, and they will drive my skull into the curb. You can't leave me here!"
Hetland made a quick sound that almost sounded like a sob, then regained control of himself. "I'm sorry."
The line went dead.
* * *
Golden sunbeams washed in through the curtains, scurrying across the floor and clawing up the opposite wall. Four ceiling fans churned, desperately trying to compensate for another record-breaking heat wave in a scathing Bet She'an winter. Walking through the invisible steam, Conklin paced about, explaining. Clarifying. Ordering. Despite the heat, he wanted nothing more than to curl fetal beneath all the quilts in his home.
The boys said nothing. They had been handpicked by Talib b Eamon, who had designated them as the most idealistic and the strongest of will. Conklin had never met them, not formally. To him, each face was likened to the one next to it. Each one was the focal point of a block of clay that he was to mold, preying on the insecurities he knew each held deep in their own hearts.
On the wall he had tacked several blown-up photos taken of a neutral area of the Gaza strip, several alleys and apartment buildings circled and noted. Lanza had taken the pictures. Morbidly, his work hung on the wall not unlike the paintings of men time had forgotten. Now, he was being remembered, scrutinized. The work of an artist specializing in the style of deception.
Beyond the dark eyes of each boy was a fire, and as he talked, Conklin laid the fuse. He told them of the atrocities committed by Palestinian coalitions of the years, carefully omitting anything that would paint the assaults as retaliation--as mirrors to previous atrocities. Selective storytelling. He was now the world's most influencial journalist, picking and choosing his facts and then presenting them for his biggest article.
Facts were his gunpowder, and he was now finished loading his cannons.
A brief lull followed after Conklin finished explaining the plan of attack. Not a single eyelid dropped as each young man watched him, entranced by rapt respect. Conklin was too nulled to understand why he had decided to go ahead with the plan. It certainly wasn't about the mission. He felt no attachment of any kind to the life he once knew, with both of his friends dead in one way or another. In the end, Conklin went about his operation because he was weak. Because he did not hold the strength of will to walk away from what he had given up a family for. The op was all he had. All he was.
His own legacy to pass down through the generations--another dot on the Mid-East conflict chart.
Conklin walked over to the tables he had joined together and began opening several black briefcases. Inside some were cheap submachine guns, or terrorism's favorite weapon, the AK-47. Inside others were Russian-made Ruchnoy Protivotankovy Granatomyots, commonly known as the Rocket Propelled Grenade. He said nothing. The boys he had been speaking to for the last hour knew exactly what they were and, thanks to him, exactly what to do with them.
The worst kind of brainwashing.
There was a certain stillness about them, a reverence, as they walked toward the firearms sitting before them. As they loaded their weapons, concealing them in jackets and bags, Conklin mused momentarily on the fact that only two nuclear weapons had ever been used in combat. Yet here he was, soldiers ten years in the making executing his will. Here was the real threat of the world--idealists ripe for molding. Through history, these boys had claimed far more lives than any bomb could.
And from somewhere far away, for every worldly crime, there were men like Conklin guiding their marionettes.
The boys hesitated as they finished loading up the last of the weapons, hovering around a stool with a vest sitting atop it. It was a thick black vest that had, at one point, contained reinforced kevlar padding. Now, the ends of sienna cylinders just peeked out. This was the plan's main objective. The primary attack. One of them had to wear the vest, but they all feared it. Slowly, boldly, Talib b Eamon stepped from the back of the crowd and wrapped the vest around his torso, pulling a baggy coat around his body to hide it.
He turned to Conklin and groped at his hand, kissing his knuckle. "Father will be proud of me. Please don't let him forget why I did it." Talib pressed his forehead into Conklin's palm. "Thank you for this."
Conklin's eyebrows arched slightly, his forehead creasing and rolling like the rhythmic tide. He said nothing; he simply watched them go. He stared long and hard at the door after they had closed it, mesmerized by its knots and bumps. It reminded him of satellite maps. How inconsequential each person is in the greater sense of things. That had been the first lesson when he was trained by the Agency so many years ago. To forget about individuality. To condense it all down into balancing statistics.
What're a few boys and a few emissaries in the grand scheme of things?
His shoes clunked across the old floor as Conklin stepped out onto the balcony of his warehouse just outside the Israel-Palestine border. Slipping over the bannister, he stepped lightly onto the corrugated roof beside him, sitting down on the hot shingles, and watched the boys pack up their vans and drive them toward the Gaza. Dust and sand blew in the breeze, spattering it gently across his face, but Conklin did not close his eyes until the vans had faded into single grains and then disappeared from sight.
"Come for an announcer's view?"
Conklin glanced over his shoulder and saw a younger man standing there. His face was dark and lined, and a thick moustache connected either corner of his mouth. "Why?"
The man shrugged. "I thought the coach watches from the sidelines."
Realization flooded through Conklin's head from his gut. "That was you. Hacking my damned code. Tossing off idle threats."
The moustache stretched as the man grinned and stepped over the balcony onto the roof, leaning to compensate for the angle of the slope. "It wasn't idle--and they weren't threats."
"Mhmm." Conklin pulled a flask from inside his jacket pocket, twisting off the cap, and took a hard gulp. "And what do I call you?"
"Hasan." He sat down beside Conklin. "Shall I call you Mr. Conklin... or perhaps Dick?"
Anger spasmed through Conklin's eyes as he thought of Hetland. "No." He frowned. "Richard is fine."
"All right then, Richard. You haven't shot me yet, which tells me you have questions to ask me."
"You're goddamn right I do." Conklin took another swig of his scotch. "Who are you, who do you work for, and why have you been talking to me?"
"You know my name," Hasan smiled, looking idly at Conklin. When he saw that Conklin would not look away from the distant horizon, he conceded to look in the same direction. "And I am not an enemy. I am an agent of Mossad--the division that knows of your plan."
Conklin's gaze hardened, and his hand moved almost undetectably toward his jacket.
"Oh, we support your plan." Hasan hesitated, then bitterly added, "Or rather, my superiors do."
At last Conklin looked Hasan in the face. "And you've been trying to stop it? Is that it?" His mind flashed to Dean Lanza, dragging across the foor of the Mediterranean Sea, a shark's appetizer awaiting a customer. He clenched his fists. "Did you have my friend killed?"
"James Hetland may have abandoned you," Hasan said, almost gleefully, "but he did not lie to you. Your courier's assassination was a retaliation."
Conklin nodded, and looked back out toward the far reaches of Palestine. Sickeningly, it was easier to accept that Hetland was at fault for Lanza's death than an agent of Mossad.
Hasan gave him a moment to reflect, then prodded on. "I suppose you can't stop this?"
Conklin shook his head. "Not even if I wanted to."
"I don't suppose I have to tell you that this is wrong," Hasan grasped. "But can you at least tell me why?"
His jaws clenched together. Conklin's voice became the guttural sound of an enraged dog. "Why what!?"
"Why can't there be peace? That is what this is about, isn't it? Peace between Israel and Palestine?"
Conklin stood and towered over Hasan, smirking. "You little dipshit. You really don't get it, do you?"
Hasan shuffled away from him and stood, clutching a windowsill for support.
"You think this is about you?" Conklin leaned back against the balcony, gesturing around them. "All this, it's a playground. It's crawling with guys like me and we're just emissaries sent to whip it out with you poor schmucks and see whose is bigger. You came to me--why? With a half-assed plan to guilt me into stopping this?" He snorted, taking a last sip of his flask and then tossing it hard to the pavement.
"A half-assed plan to make you do the right thing!"
"There is no right thing!" Conklin had started shouting, and he at last ceased to care who was listening, who was watching, who was reading his mind. It all poured forth with the force of a hurricane, and he let it. "Don't you think I'm a little past guilt at this point!? I gave up my life for this! This is my goddamn life! I missed growing old with my wife--I don't even know what my little girl's favorite ice cream flavor is, and you know why? Because I've never seen her eat it."
He stopped a moment, then laughed exasperatedly. "You ask me 'Why'? How stupid can you be!?" He shoved Hasan back gruffly. "You think there's a big meaning to all this? A massive conspiracy, a battle of ideals?" Conklin laughed again. "Everybody's the hero as long as they're looking at everything from the right spot!" He cackled until his throat grumbled in protest and didn't stop.
"You want the why? Here's the why, you stupid little bastard. Trade! Dollars and fiscal ratings." He shrugged. "Good Palestinian relations might dampen our relationship with mini-Canada. Did you come to me because you expected some larger point?"
Hasan trembled with rage. "I came to you expecting any point! What is it all for!?"
"There is no point to anything out here! How many times do I have to answer the same damn question?" Conklin's ears perked up as he heard a distant pop. He immediately jerked his head over to where Talib and the boys had headed. A small puff of orange and crimson could be seen, and more followed, little bubbles of barely perceptable carnage. The common good had never looked so warped.
Conklin looked back to Hasan and thrust his thumb over his shoulder. When he spoke, he was calmer. More serene. "There's your why. So long as you poor bastards are blowing each other up, we'll always scoop up Israeli approval. If we have nothing to support, we have no relations--the only thing my country and this place agree on is war." He sank down against the wall, curling his knees into his chest and retrieving a photograph of his daughter as she was when he had last seen her.
"Why?" he muttered. "Oil. Televisions. Computers." He glared deep into the photograph, trying to picture her getting taller, fuller, older. Trying to live the memories stolen from him, blocked from him.
Separated by barriers of time and space.
"I've paid my dues," Conklin choked. "I just want to leave this place."
Hasan, who had held his hand behind him for the last ten minutes, sighed and dropped something behind him. With the edge of his foot, he nudged the gun off the roof to the streets below. Leaning forward, his hands gripping the bannister supports, Hasan stared hard into Conklin's dead gray eyes. "The only question is what you're going to do now." Hasan stepped over Conklin and hoisted himself back onto the balcony.
He started to leave, then turned back briefly. "My father was CIA too, you know. Do you know what his big contribution was?" Conklin heard the door swing open. "They sent him to the Ukraine to stimulate trade. To keep the evil Soviets from annexing the freed states that couldn't support themselves. The problem was," and his voice lowered, gargling viciously, "the only thing they had to offer the international market was small arms."
For a moment the only sound was the breeze, and the rustle of the palm trees lining the streets. "Do you know what my first big mission was?" Conklin felt Hasan loom over him, the black void of Hasan's shadow engulfing him, Hasan's voice cutting straight into his ear. "Somalia. I saw all the women and children killed with the same guns my father helped sell."
He stepped away. "You don't need to tell me that it's the same bullshit everywhere."
The door closed.
* * *
It was late. Conklin had avoided watching the local channels in his Bet She'an home. Instead, beside his recliner sat a large box of black cassette tapes. Each one contained a story he was absent for, only able to hear the telling of it. The last one was just beginning, Marina's sixteenth birthday.
All the while, he couldn't think of anything but Hasan's words hours earlier.
The only question is what you're going to do now.
His cheeks damp as the cliff face behind Angel Falls, Conklin sobbed and the tiny ring of the Beretta kissed his forehead.
Marina reacted to her car all over again. He hesitated.
"Please come home," she pleaded.
The gun trembled in his hand despite his firm grip. At last, he cast it to the floor. Conklin knew all too well that he didn't deserve the simplest escape. He was loathe to face her after what he had become, but his daughter deserved a real explanation. And so did someone else.
What're you going to do now?
He snatched the phone from its receiver beside him and dialed.
"Hello?"
"Eamon." Conklin chewed on the inside of his cheek. "I need to tell you something."
______________________________
This story has been long in the making. I first tried to write this about three years ago after I realized that no one wants to write a book or movie about realistic spies, who lie and convince for a living. Ones that don't get into fistfights on the top of speeding trains.
Too many failed attempts, descending too far into cliché and stereotype, were the result, and I scrapped the project for a long time until about early November of this years. I hope you enjoyed it.
-I
