The sound’s off so I can’t hear the sound of the waves or any other ambient noise, but that’s just fine. In the corner of the screen is Denise in a bright-orange swimsuit—she had asked me earlier, “Why such a bright suit, Mom?” and I never told her the truth, So I can always see you, no matter how far you go—digging at something with a yellow plastic shovel.
Then she dumps out the wet sand in her pail, scoops up a couple of quarts of cold Atlantic water, and starts racing toward her father. She’s giggling and the water is spilling out of the bucket, and something in my voice or attitude must have betrayed me, because Tom looks and sees her approaching, and he stands still.
He doesn’t tell her to stop.
He doesn’t try to run away.
He doesn’t try to spoil her fun.
Tom stands there and takes it, and grimaces as the cold water strikes his lower back, and Denise nearly collapses she’s laughing so hard.
My Tom, my little girl.
CHAPTER 23
THE VOICE of my friend jolts me back to my grim reality.
“Amy?”
“Still here,” I say.
“First things first,” she says. “If there’s a black site in Three Rivers, Texas, it doesn’t belong to Uncle Sam or anyone connected to Uncle Sam, including any third-party contractors doing dirty work.”
I’m about to ask if she’s sure, and bite my lip. I don’t want to insult Freddy. She’s with the Second Battalion, 75th Rangers, some of the best Special Forces soldiers in the world, and highly connected to the intelligence community.
“That’s interesting,” I say.
“You want to tell me why you want to know this?”
“No,” I say.
“Okay. Now. The second request you gave me is where it goes a bit off the rails.”
“Why’s that?”
Freddy says, “The airplane registration number you sent me. Any chance it’s wrong?”
“Not a chance.”
“You sure?”
“Freddy…”
“All right,” she says briskly. “I needed to check. Amy, on the surface, the aircraft is leased to a condominium developer in the Cayman Islands. Bright Sun Lives Limited. But that’s just the surface.”
“What’s in the mud and muck, then?”
“Your Learjet belongs to First Republic Global Bank, N.A., based in Guadalajara, and with branches and sub-branches all over the world.”
Tom likes to tease me that my memory is like a computer chip, but it’s really like an old-fashioned card catalog dumped on the floor, with lots of bits and pieces of information lying around.
“I know that name.”
“You should,” Freddy says. “Back in the eighties, there was a bank called BCCI, up to its neck in laundering money for terrorists and narco-terrorist gangs. This First Republic Global is its bastard offspring.”
“Shit,” I say.
There’s a pause in the conversation, and Freddy says, “You’re not doing anything with money launderers, are you?”
I look at the frozen picture on my iPhone of my Denise and my Tom. My husband, my man. My girl, my princess.
“No, I’m not,” I say.
“Amy…”
I keep quiet.
“You okay?”
“Not really,” I say.
“You need anything else?” she asks.
“You told me this was going to be the last favor you’ll ever do me.”
“When are you going to stop believing me?” Freddy says. “And…well, I’ve always wanted to tell you this. What happened at Fort Campbell wasn’t your fault.”
“It didn’t happen at Fort Campbell,” I say. “It happened a half a world away.”
“And the other things,” Freddy goes on. “I know what horrible shit you have to see, day after day. Even most in the military don’t know that—they think all you do is file paper. But I know better, know how it haunts you. You should talk to someone, Amy.”
I sit up straighter in my Jeep Wrangler, get ready to return to my quest.
“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” I ask.
Freddy sighs. “This information…I hope it turns out to be useful.”
“You have no idea.”
“You’ll let me know?”
“Sure,” I say. “At our mutual retirement ceremonies, if we live that long.”
She laughs. “Okay…you know what you’re fighting for, right?”
I look at the freeze-frame of my Tom and my Denise, on Virginia Beach.
“I sure as hell do,” I say.
She hangs up and so do I, and I’m about to return to traffic when I look in the rearview mirror and see the flashing blue lights of a Tennessee Highway Patrol cruiser pulling up behind me.
CHAPTER 24
LESS THAN a year ago an orphaned Hamid Aziz left his nearly destroyed village in Afghanistan to fight for his tribe, for his leader, for his God, and to send money home to his remaining family, and he left with dreams of being a powerful lion, a man who would be feared in the West, and what is he now?
A waiter for a soft American and his little brat.
Hamid is at the door leading into the cell that holds the two Americans, carrying a metal food tray, with two dishes that are covered by round white plastic tops. Another man is with him, named Tonton, and Tonton is the muscle, wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and tight blue jeans, with a pistol hanging off a shoulder holster about his wide arms. He wears sunglasses all the time, and has a thin strip of a beard that crosses his bulky chin.
From his pants pocket Tonton pulls out a simple key, and inserts it into the lock—Hamid senses something is off. There are muffled, loud voices coming from inside the room, but if Tonton is nervous, he doesn’t show it. He unlocks the door, keeps a good hold on the handle. As he opens the door, the yelling gets louder.
The father is yelling at his daughter, and the daughter’s stamping her feet, screaming at the father, and Hamid thinks nothing like this would be allowed in his village, and Tonton yells, “Hey! Shut up!”
The girl is still screaming and turns and says, “I want my mommy!” and she starts running to the door.
Hamid juggles the tray—the chef, a bulky Mexican man with a thick scar on his face and one eye missing, always says, If you drop it, I’ll cut you—and tries to block the little girl from running, and Tonton moves by, bumping Hamid so he’s practically dancing in place, trying not to drop the two meals.
The girl manages to push by, and Tonton grabs her hair, twists it, and she screams louder and higher. The father finally does what a father should do—protect his daughter—and he comes at them both. Tonton’s pistol is in his hand, and he shouts at the father to step back, and the father yells and holds up his hands, and the little girl is grabbing onto the open door frame with both hands.
Hamid gets into the room, puts the tray down, and he and Tonton give the girl’s legs a good pull, and she lets go of the door frame. Hamid drops her on the other bed, crying now, no longer screaming.
Tonton still has his pistol out. Hamid backs away, wishes he had a weapon as well, and is glad that no one from his village is here to see this humiliation.