It's Not What You Think

I wasn't sure that I could take him, but I doubted that Bear would let me get too hurt. Unless Cynthia intervened. He knew her and trusted her. I hadn't thought about that possibility until now.

She wore a brightly colored dress; one that I'd never seen. Lots of that going around, 'something I'd never seen.' It was low in front, showing off the fullness of her cleavage and a splash of freckles on her upper chest, lower in back, with a swingy skirt that flared out when she walked. Somehow it bothered me that she wore, around her neck, the jade pendant that I'd gotten for her at Christmas. There were no wedding or engagement rings on her hands. Just a flashy dinner ring on her right hand. Something else I had never seen before. Probably it was made of diamonds. It didn't look like Mr. AssHole spared any expense; costume jewelry would be so tacky, don't you know.

I guess that this was the culmination of the emergency Carbunkle trip to Mexico. Pfui! (to borrow an expression from Rex Stout).

As a street panhandler, I was invisible to the happy couple, but as they were getting into the sports car, Bear lifted his head and wagged his tail at recognizing Cyn. It rattled my wheelchair. The movement was enough to catch her eye and she looked at me for the briefest second. Then she turned her head back toward the interior of the car and pulled the door shut.

I was sure she had seen me. Thursday's mission was complete. Goddamn it.

*****

Friday was confrontation day. I dressed in plain pants and a regular shirt. I was wearing the legs today and carried a can of mace in my pocket, just to make sure I didn't get murdered. Bear and I walked into the Century just after I heard them finish their morning fuck on the radio I monitored.

I got on the elevator and pushed 27. Two men joined me and Bear, and they pushed the button for the lower level Parking Garage. We went all the way up. As I was about to get out of the elevator, the men each took one of my arms. One of them, I'll call him Spook1, said, "Let's have a little chat before you do anything you can't take back," in a low tone.

Bear recognized the tone and started growling.

Spook2 said, "Call him off. I don't want to hurt the dog, but I will."

"Heel, Bear. It's okay," I said. My right hand couldn't get to the mace in my pocket.

Some people got on at 18 and went down to the lobby. We continued to the lower level Parking. We got out and walked down the driveway to a black van, tinted windows -- how cliché.

Spook2 opened the side door of the van, and all four of us (including Bear) got in.

"We can't let you break up the sting we have going on, Mr. Dreyfus," he said in a perfectly normal tone of voice. It was like the next sentence was going to be 'Did you see the Astro's game last night?'

I didn't want them to dictate the terms of my 'visit' to this bit of government property. "Are you the fuckups who gave me the audio on the Cross pen? That was a terrible job. I'm an amateur, and I sussed it out right off. It didn't even have Cynthia's voice on it during the breaks or at lunch. Bad ... what's it called? ... oh yeah, bad tradecraft. And she was supposed to be on a cruise ship. Couldn't you have even changed the topic of the guy who was talking?"

Spook1 sat up a little. Spook2 said, "Mr. Dreyfus, if you let this proceed to its natural culmination, we can let you go. If not, then I'm afraid you're going to have to be detained."

"That's the choices, huh? No room for a middle ground, where I could look the S.O.B. in the face and spit on them both? C'mon guys... she's my wife and she's fucking another guy."

Spook2 said, "Either you go back home, now, or you go with us, until it's over. No middle option."

"Then I will discretely choose Door Number One, thank you very much. I'll get my van, you can follow me to my hotel and I'll check out. You guys will never see me again."

Like W.C.Fields was supposed to have said, 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. After that give up. No sense making a damn fool of yourself.' Well, this mission wasn't going to succeed.

*****

I did go back to the Red Roof Inn and check out. I got in the van and hit I45 back toward Dallas, but had an inspiring thought along the way. I pulled into the first rest stop and got out my laptop. I got my Skype to regular phone connection and called Lieutenant Roosevent Harcout in Abu Dhabi. I figured it was about 8 p.m. local time in Abu, but the base operator would be able to track him down, it he was on base that is.

He was. "Sergeant Harcourt, this is Cap'n Jim Dreyfus. I just can't call you Lieutenant, I guess. Ha Ha. How the hell are ya?"

"Five by five, sir. But you're not a Captain anymore, right? You wimped out with those puny wounds as a result of that small explosion, didn't ya?"

"Yeah, sure did. Livin' in high cotton, now. The VA shrink sends his regards... How's the unit?"

"VA shrink, huh. That sucks. The unit's 'bout twice as big as before. But I can't tell you any of that stuff, or I'd have to kill ya. We still hit everything we shoot at, though."

"That's good. Listen, I got a situation here. You still got that mangy fishing camp up in the Arkansas wilderness?"

"It ain't mangy. But it's still there."

"I need to borrow it for a couple of days... may stretch out to be longer than that."

"It's prob'ly just sittin' there, by the side of the stream, collectin' dust. Might have a couple of my cousins there, though. Just introduce yourself. There's plenty of room. Sleeps six. Or twelve if they're real friendly." He laughed.

And so I headed for Arkansas, north of Fort Smith. There isn't hardly anything north of Fort Smith but Missouri. It was the 'zarkiest part of the Ozarks. I was listening for Jed Clampett to be shootin' at some food, when up from the ground came a bubblin' crude.

I called clients, made sure they knew I was taking some time off, but would be available by email, and left. On the road to Arkansas, I found myself humming that old Roger Miller song, King of the Road:

Trailers for sale or rent
Rooms to let...fifty cents.
No phone, no pool, no pets
I ain't got no cigarettes
Ah, but..two hours of pushin' broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
I'm a man of means by no means
King of the road.

Well... that wasn't exactly me. But I felt free from all the bullshit I'd had to live with recently. I felt like the King of the Road on the long drive up to north Arkansas.

It's a lovely piece of woods, and it was exactly where Rosie had said it was. It was occupied by two men, the previously mentioned cousins of Harcourt. Only one could have been his cousin, however, since the other was an old man, with three teeth in his head. The other was more of an age with me and Rosie.

I introduced myself and we came to an understanding.

"We don' like loudness. We like to set and fish and do nothin' up here. 'S why we done come," said the older man, who introduced himself as Pap.

"Yep," said the younger, who introduced himself as Oliver. They were both black as the Ace of Spades, and Oliver was about as big as a mountain. A Rocky Mountain, not one of these pissant Appalachians.

"I'm Jim. That's Bear."

That was our arrangement. I took one of the beds in an unoccupied room and we settled in. I kept up with my business with email via my satellite link. On Sunday, sometime, Cynthia would be getting home, find the triple choice documents, and she'd also find the door locked.

I decided to fish some more. Chapter 06

Sunday rolled around and Cyn must have gotten the papers. I called the marriage lawyer on Monday morning, just to let her know about the papers being delivered, and she promised to get back to me if they were signed and sent back. All was quiet on the client side of things, except that I got an urgent email from 'Fort Worth Printing.'

Like a good little boy scout, I emailed them back and said I was on vacation, but what was the problem? I could probably fix it by remote hookup. They answered almost immediately: I was needed right away. In person. How soon could I get here? Well, I told them, it had taken me the better part of three days to get to where I was. I was some 150 miles north of Anchorage, Alaska. So the personal appearance was out.

I had baited all the hooks I had, so I went out to the stream and baited a different kind. I pulled up a lawn chair next to Pap and Oliver. I threw my line into the stream and nodded to them. They nodded back. That was enough idle chatter for a whole day.

Wednesday evening, when I did my email check, I found an IM waiting for me.

I figure you've had a chance to calm down by now. We should talk. It's not what you think. -- C

It was now 6 p.m. and the message was five hours old. The message light told me she was online now. I sent her a message:

Really?? You know me so well that you can tell what I'm thinking? Oh, I forgot. We're married and we have this deep connection. At least when you're not in 'Mexico' or on a 'team building cruise.' I don't think you know shit about 'what I think.' -- J

Her reply:

You're right. I meant: it's not what it seems. Come home and we can talk about it. Please? --C

I sent back:

Home? 'We' don't have a home. Just a rest stop between sessions where you can fuck Senor AssHole.

There was a longer pause before her next message.

You've got to come back sometime. You're not the kind of guy to just walk away. If you don't come to me, I'll come and get you at that cabin in Arkansas. So just come home and we can talk about this.

Oh. Of course. She could track my satellite internet connection because she's connected to the ISN -- the International Spy Network. I wondered if I blew my cover when I responded to Fort Worth Printing.

I sent back: Ok. Soon.

And then closed my laptop. I considered going deeper into the unhooked land of 'off grid,' for about two seconds. She was right. There would too much left behind. More to the point: SHE was the one who fucked everything up. Why should I have to leave?

I packed up my stuff, had a lengthy conversation with Pap and Oliver -- consisting of me nodding to them, they nodded back -- and took off for my home. It was mine. Not ours. It was 7:20 by the time I left Arkansas and I arrived at the house about 2 a.m. I was startled to see her car parked in the driveway. I kept driving and found a motel for the night.

By nine the next morning, her car was gone, and I hoped she was, too. I went to the house and disabled the radio transmitter first. When I walked in, the house was just like I'd left it. She'd turned off the continuous loop of her porn that was running on the desktop. When I went in the bedroom, I found all her stuff had been moved to the guest room. At least she'd had the decency to do that, but I was surprised that she was staying here. I thought I'd changed the locks.

Again, I'd reckoned without the ISN connection. Of course, she'd know how to pick a lock. Probably knew how to get another set of keys. I decided a thorough fumigation was in order.

I got a banker's box -- the kind you have to assemble yourself, and you can store papers in it -- from the closet and began pulling all the audio bugs and video bugs from the house. I checked outside as well, but didn't find any there. Each one I found, I smashed with my fumigation tool -- a ball peen hammer that I used once to get some dents out of the van. Then I'd throw the mangled bug-parts into the box. In total I found two dozen audio and video devices in the house. The remote receiver made an even twenty-five.

When I looked at the cardboard box, I noticed that the bug parts were remarkably clean. I expected that bugs smashed by a hammer would have green guts and be slimy. Well... they were slimy, all right. The slime wasn't as clean as it would have been from a squashed insect, though.

There was a note on the kitchen counter that I'd ignored while I fumigated. It said: 'Call me.'

I decided to send an IM instead. It was less personal than a call. My message was succinct: Have returned to my home. Then I went out into the back yard and played with Bear.

She got home about an hour later; she opened the front door and then came out the back door. I could tell. You know the stories that when you lose one sense, the others get stronger? Well it was kinda like that. Plus the home alarm system that I turned on beeped when a door was opened and I could hear it in the back yard.

I called Bear over and we went inside. He lapped up about a quart of water, while I went into the living room. I didn't say anything to Cyn; she didn't say anything to me, just stepped aside to let me and Bear pass.

"I see you've been staying here," I started it off.

"Yes," she replied softly. "It's my house too, you know."

"Hmmm," was all I said. Then, "Which set of papers will you sign?"

"I don't want to sign any of them. I don't want a divorce. I love you. I still love you."

"I'll proceed with irreconcilable differences, then. It is irreconcilable, you know. You think that lying to me is ok, and I don't. You think that fucking away at the Century Hotel with Mr. AssHole is ok, and I don't. No way to reconcile those two positions. You can delay things, but this is America. You can't keep me in a marriage I don't want."

"But you do want it. You want to be married to me," she insisted. "And I still love you." She was amazingly calm, but then... I knew she was a good actress.

"Really?" I said with a sneer. I wasn't as good an actor. I was hurt, and my emotions messed up my acting career. "When did you start? Was it in Ramstein? When you latched on to a sinking ship of a cripple and made yourself into an instant fiancée? 'Cause that was the start of it. Looking for a good cover story for yourself? Or was it here in Dallas? It must have been before that, because that's when the Houston crap started. Were you seeing him from the start?"

"Please, let's not talk about that. It was a job. That's all."

"Oh, please," I mocked her tone. "Let's do talk about it." And with that I put the cardboard box with the bug guts on the coffee table between us. "You're friends won't mind."

She looked in the box and thought a long moment. Then she reached into her purse and brought out the Cross pen and her lipstick, and put them on the table. She pulled the cap off the pen and showed me some additional electronics that had been carefully soldered on. Then she pulled the base off the lipstick and showed me an additional bug. I carefully lifted them up, took them into my office and treated them to the 'ooh baby' recording of Cynthia and Sr. AssHole in the lovesuite.

When that was done, I came back into the living room.

"Does it have to be that recording?" she mournfully asked.

"Why not?" I replied. "Aren't you proud of your accomplishments? How well you've done your job? By the way, which part of your job was fucking me over?"

"None. None of it." She finally began to cry. They seemed to be genuine tears, but who knew? "It wasn't ... You weren't supposed to even know."

"I wasn't supposed to notice that you were spending a quarter of your married life shacked up in Houston?"

"Look. I'm going to tell you everything. I don't know if we can salvage our marriage..."

"We can't," I interrupted.

She just nodded. "Well, you deserve to know anyway. And I want to stay married. To you.

"It's the CIA. They recruited me directly from the Admiral's staff. I wasn't thrown out of the Navy. They just changed my Navy records to look that way. I got a month off until I had to show up in Dallas for my cover job at Carbunkle. I spent that month in Germany with you. What happened in Germany was real. I swear it. I thought I maybe loved you and I wanted to find out if it would be fireworks or just a sparkler. I still reported to the Admiral, on paper, at Carbunkle. In reality I worked for the Agency."

"The CIA isn't supposed to operate on U.S. soil," I reminded her.

"And if you believe that, I've got a nifty bridge you can buy," she said. "My first assignment was I was to make contact with a Venezuelan diplomat who often came to Houston. Carlos Emellion."

"'make contact' ... is that a euphemism for 'fuck his lights out'?" I asked.

She nodded quietly, her eyes never leaving the floor. "I guess so. You and I were just getting acquainted when I got this assignment. I wasn't sure how it was going to work between us. You were so down and I didn't..."

"Are you making this about me?" I said. "It's my fault?"

"No... no. Not at all. I could have stopped any time. But he was tied up in arms and supplying money to terrorists in Saudi, so I didn't want to stop before he got nabbed."

"Says who?"

"Huh?"

"Who says he was associated with terrorists?"

"Well, the CIA."

"And they never, ever lie. You can depend on what they tell you, right? Now who's buying the Brooklyn Bridge?" I said.

That brought her up short. "Well, why would they set this whole thing up then?"

"I don't know. Ask 'them.' And how would setting up Sr. AssHole ..."

"His name is Emellion. Carlos."

"Maybe to you. To me he's Sr. AssHole. He was -- or is -- fucking my wife. He's going to be an asshole to me forever. ... Anyway, how is fucking him going to end the terrorist threat to America?"

"Well, I was supposed to get details of his banking relationships and then they'd have him."

"Oh..." I said as if the light bulb had just turned on over my head. "I see. Most international terrorist financiers will open up about their terrorist connections with their out of town piece of tail. That's natural." The sarcasm dripped.

"I didn't ... well, I was told... that he'd..." She drifted off to her thoughts.

"What?" I asked.

"It doesn't make sense," she said. Apparently, the light bulb had gone to the 'on' position over her head. "He's in the oil business... the part of the government that controls who gets the oil."

"So maybe Carbunkle wants some leverage with Sr. AssHole and put you in to provide it. He has a wife, probably, right?"

"Yeah. And she has the money in the family. He always said, 'She has the money, I have the brains.'"

"Maybe not so much brains when all the blood runs to his dick, eh?" I said. It felt better. I was now working on a problem with her. It wasn't me vs. her.

"God, I feel so stupid. They used me. Ruined my marriage. Hurt you. And it was all just for money." She looked at me. Her eye liner had run into long black streaks on her cheeks.

"IF it wasn't the government. I wouldn't put it past some CIA operator to try and hurt some Venezuelan guy. And the terrorist money thing might be true."

"I ... I don't know... but that still... I mean... I went to Houston. And I was with him..." her voice dropped to almost a whisper "... I enjoyed it. When I was with him. I liked the sex. Not as much as when we did stuff. You know. That extra stuff."

"You mean, when I hurt you?"

"You weren't hurting me. It turned me on." Her voice came back to normal and she looked at me with some spark in her eyes. "It's hard to describe. It was like extra stimulation direct to my ... well it wasn't direct to my clit. It was more like extra stimulation direct to my brain. Like you flipped a switch.

"But still, when I was with him, it was nice. I enjoyed it."

"I could tell. I heard several sessions of it," I said quietly.

"Yes. I'm so sorry about that. I know it hurt you. I'd take it back if I could. I know I'll be yours forever, if I can heal this. I don't know if I can, though. Seeing you in Houston just sitting in the wheelchair with Bear. It tore my heart."

"You know that your minders in Houston intercepted me, right?"

"No."