“Funny-from what I’m reading, you’ve spent the last twenty years hiding-from everything.”
Max didn’t bend. “I said I understood-I didn’t say I was different.”
The place was quiet for a long moment before Kate gave out a long sigh.
“Okay,” she admitted, “when I came down the hill, I knew I wasn’t going to let them kill anyone else. And I knew I could do something about it.”
She was confiding now instead of confronting. But her voice gained strength as she went.
Tauber came out of the kitchen with a fresh pot of coffee and refilled the cups.
“Well now, that’s the thing, ain’t it? Knowin’ you can do somethin’ ‘bout it. There’s somethin’ big comin’ down in the next day or two and we seem to be the only ones in the world who can do somethin’ ‘bout it.” He clicked his cup into hers. “Yer daddy’d be with us if he was around.”
She was wavering, still conflicted. “They’re defense contractors. Let the government squeeze the purse strings-they can stop them.”
“They don’t need the government’s money.”
“They’ve got Jim Avery!” I burst.
“ Your World? On TV?”
“He’s the bankroll,” Tauber said.
“Hmph!” Kate puffed. “That’s some bankroll.”
“They’ve got all the connections in the world,” Max said, looking intently at her again. “No one will ever investigate your father’s death-or Dave’s. They’ll be papered over. No justice for them if we don’t make it ourselves.”
You could see this pound its way into her. She’d been holding herself in ever since the funeral and now every feeling in her simmered just an inch beneath the surface. Max sat up and his voice was straightforward, unemotional.
“I’ve spent twenty years,” he said, “hiding from what I am. Sounds like you’ve done the same. And we see the results: I’ve lost my best friend; you’ve lost your father.”
Kate was struggling now. “There’s got to be an answer,” she whispered. “There’s got to be hope.”
“Ya want Hope? Avery’ll sell it to ya, sixty bucks a barrel,” Tauber said with satire in his voice. “He’s the OPEC o’ Hope.”
Kate wheeled around so fast, we all jumped in place. “I’ve heard that!” she hissed. “Where did I-? From the man in the car! When I got home from… identifying Dad’s…body, I went into the kitchen to make coffee and I got this weird headache, like the back of my skull was hot. A probe. Dad used to probe me in high school, to make sure I hadn’t gone over some boy’s house.” Her voice wavered again and now she kept talking despite tears rolling down her cheeks. “It was the guy in the van parked across the street.”
“You can handle probes?” Max asked.
“I was a good girl,” Kate answered, lifting her chin. “When my parents made me promise never ever to do something, I only tried it a couple times.” She flashed a sly smile, almost despite herself. “Besides, I had to learn so I could go over the boy’s house, didn’t I?” Her smile faded fast. “So I followed the probe back to the guy across the street and started riding his thoughts, letting them carry me, for hours at a time.”
She saw Max’s eyes on her and she reddened.
“I had a hard time making friends, okay? I was the eerie girl in middle school who talked to herself and commented on what people were thinking instead of what they’d said out loud. Eventually, you make use of your advantages. I started getting into boy’s heads. It got me a better class of dates.” She laughed and placed her cup in the sink. “Anyway, when I got inside the guy across the street, I found out about the big operation-he’s doing security for the flight.”
“There’s a flight?” Tauber asked.
“Definitely,” Kate answered. “More than one-he’s in charge of his and two others. And there’s more besides.”
“Then they’re not goin’ to Langley,” Tauber concluded.
“Langley? That’s CIA, right?” Kate said. “It’s always in the movies.”
Max nodded. “This whole thing’s tied up with the CIA somehow. But nobody’s flying from Herndon to Langley-it’s ten miles.”
“What was weird was, he was doing security and they didn’t give him the details. All he knew was, it’s soon-”
“Tomorrow-”
“-they told him to bring his passport and warm weather clothes for a week. And they told him, This is the big shot. We won’t get another chance like this for years.”
“A chance for what? Did they tell him that?”
“To kill hope. That’s what they said, to kill hope everywhere.”
“That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Tauber said. “If they kill hope, what’s Avery got to offer ‘em?”
The room went silent for awhile. Then I heard myself speaking. “What he’s offering is a fix,” I said. They all turned to look at me and damned if I had any idea what I wanted to say but that didn’t stop the words from coming.
“My outfit had a local guy, a translator, in Najaf. He was real useful when we first got there and everybody was friendly. Six months later, everybody-Sunnis, Shiites-started targeting his family because he was helping the Americans. We had to smuggle them all to Jordan. He applied for a visa to the States and our CO promised to help him get it.
“And then word filtered down that they-whoever ‘they’ were-weren’t processing visas, not fast, and then not ever. Which didn’t stop him from showing up in my quarters every couple days, bugging me about it. ‘Are they helping me? We getting a visa?’ What was I supposed to say? ‘It’s America,’ I told him. ‘They’ll do the right thing.’ After the fourth or fifth time, no way either of us believed it.
“But it ate at me. Why didn’t he go to the CO? Why me? The answer is, because I’m not tough-never been. He came to me because I’d tell him what he wanted to hear. I gave him his fix, his hope for the week. I felt like a pusher, too. Who made me a spokesman for America?”
I could feel the memory burning inside, like it had just happened, like it was happening right now. My fists and teeth were clenched tight. “That’s what Avery’s doing-offering everybody their fix.”
We filtered around for a while, aimless, each of us wandering around the room, uncertain of the next step.
“It makes sense,” Max finally said. “It’s what Avery told us-supply and demand. If they kill hope, he’s got this huge organization designed to offer it-for a price.”
“And it’s so much safer sellin’ measured portions to them that can afford it,” Tauber said. “Real hope’s messy. Unruly. Bad business.”
“But what does the CIA have to do with it?” Kate asked.
“Five minutes talkin’ to them’ll kill any hope ya got left,” Tauber cracked and we all smiled. But the joke didn’t get us any closer to an answer.
The TV was in front of me; I wasn’t thinking of escape or boredom. I wasn’t interested in what was on. If there’s a TV in front of me, I pick up the remote and turn up the sound. Thirty seconds later, I change the channel. It’s what I do. It’s the way I survived Iraq and a year in the middle of a swamp and probably my childhood. So now I did it again, just out of habit.
“Preparations continued for tomorrow’s G8 Summit in Rome,” the announcer droned, trying to sound important if not exciting. “Demonstrations were held on four continents today in support of Indian Premier Aryana Singh’s proposal for worldwide nuclear disarmament. Rome police are out in force, covering the major squares and thoroughfares to keep the demonstrations from spiraling into unruliness.”
“There, ya see?” Tauber cracked. “Unruliness! Them bastards have hope!”
“Tomorrow’s arrivals of foreign dignitaries have been moved to Rome’s Ciampino Airport, a rigidly-secured military facility. Authorities have assured foreign governments that…”
My eyes must have gone huge. Kate saw it from across the room. “What?” she demanded.
“We’ve got it all wrong,” I said and Max slapped his forehead across the room, reading me.
“Got what wrong?”
“Everything. CIA!”
“They’re behind it?” Tauber barked. “Against it?”
“Neither. It’s not the CIA. It’s just CIA-the airport is CIA!” I ran to Kate’s computer and punched up Google. “I flew into Ciampino once on leave. The airport code-the three letter ID on your luggage?” I waited a second for the information to display. “Ciampino is CIA.”