I take out a nine-by-twelve envelope filled with papers for George to sign, permission slips from school, bank forms, health forms for summer camp for the kids, release of documents re the mortgage, etc.
“Are these for real?” Walter asks.
“Mostly,” I say. “So what’s the plan?” I ask.
“We need the iPad and the Israeli. Beyond that, the less you know the better.”
I notice some guys are working on my car — the hood and trunk are open.
“I’m sending you in with two hundred pounds of halvah,” Walter Penny says, with some difficulty pronouncing “halvah.” He says it as though he’s been practicing in a mirror.
It triggers an instant flashback — cultural insensitivity. “Here we go again. Don’t you people ever learn?”
“What are you talking about?” Penny demands.
“Iran Contra,” I say, “Oliver North, Robert McFarlane, and arms-for-hostages. They sent a Bible signed by Ronald Reagan and a chocolate cake shaped like a key — baked by an Israeli, no less.”
“I still don’t know what you are talking about,” Penny says.
“You may not, but I do,” I say. “What’s the point of the halvah?”
“I figure it might appeal to this character; also high in fat, so good for these guys, and it’s not something the government food bank can distribute easily, with all the rules about nuts and seeds. They can’t use it in school lunches, hospitals, the VA, or old-age homes. And I was thinking the indigenous birds also like it. And if the men like it, we can get them more: apparently we’ve got tons — literally.”
“At what point during this ‘mission’ am I supposed to say, ‘Oh, and I have two hundred pounds of Middle Eastern sweets, aka Jew food, in the trunk if you’re interested’?”
“Play it by ear,” one of the unidentified men says.
“And why are so many agencies involved?”
“The transactions were international, with multiple money sources, and involved what would have been considered top-secret information that seemed too easily accessible to your brother and the Israeli,” Walter says.
“Do you think he’s a spy? A double agent?”
“I think it’s time to shut up and do your job,” the unidentified man says. “One pointer, when you’re with your brother and this other guy, make sure to leave a space between you and any other man — you don’t want to be collateral damage. Our soldiers are armed, the bullets are experimental pellets. We’re testing a glycerin-based product, with kind of an entry dart, something that we’ll be able to add an additional agent to if desired.”
“Agent?”
“Like a nerve agent, or a bio agent, or a little sleeping medication. Nothing for you to worry about …”
Walter Penny resumes the lead: “Earlier this week, we dropped a marker that’s sending a signal; that’s the point you need to drive to. We put a GPS in your car that will lead you there. And we’re using the same marker for the operational assistants.”
I must have looked confused.
“The soldiers,” he says. “Your car has now been wired, it’s now miked inside and out. Do not talk with us or engage in any way en route in or out. It’s two-point-five miles in, down a rutted old road, really less of a road than a path.”
Suddenly things are moving quickly. I’m ushered back into my car — sent packing.
The road is beyond dark, it is like driving into a tunnel from which all hope has been removed. The car’s headlights seem to frame things only a half-second before I am upon them. I keep driving blind towards the blinking light; a few times I am thrown off track by fallen trees and have to navigate around.
As I pull up to the spot, the GPS goes dark without my even turning it off. I flash the brights on and off a couple of times before getting out of the car.
I hear rustling in the bushes. George steps out into the headlights, looking pretty good in a kind of rough-hewn, Sunday-morning way.
“Hi, George, how are you doing?”
He moves to hug me, which seems uncharacteristic. “Are you hugging me or patting me down?” George doesn’t answer. “Glad you got the birthday gift.”
“Lousy reception,” George says. “If there’s cloud cover, I get nothing.”
“What about Netflix?”
“Slow, very slow.”
“Can I see? I’ve never seen one in person before.” He unzips his jacket and takes it out. The iPad glows. “It really is a beautiful object, isn’t it?” I tap around at the various applications.
“How do I get to the pictures?” I ask.
George taps something, and the photos of the kids open up, interspersed with images of guns and other military paraphernalia.
“What’s that?”
“Just stuff,” he says. “Remember how we used to play army and Hogan’s Heroes and all that?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I got back into it — not much to do up here.”
“Fun,” I say. I tap on his mailbox — an e-mail in Hebrew pops up. “Hard to read without my glasses,” I say, pretending not to realize it’s in another language. Until I saw the photos of the missile launchers with Arabic writing, and the e-mails from Israel, I didn’t really believe Walter Penny — I thought it was some crazy game. But now it makes sense. George always liked to be a big shot, to wheel and deal, and playing war was a childhood favorite.
“It’s so fucking slow,” George says, grabbing the iPad from me and shaking it like an Etch A Sketch.
“I’m sure there’ll be a faster one soon,” I say, taking out the envelope of papers I need him to sign. “Sorry to bother you with this stuff; I’ve not been able to get your lawyer on the line.”
“Me either,” George says. “He’s not answering my e-mails.”
“You want me to ask around about finding someone new?”
“Maybe,” George says, using the car hood as a writing surface and scrawling his signature on one document after another.
I start to relax.
“You brought my underwear?” he asks.
“Yep.”
“Good,” he says. “The stuff they give us is crap. Government-issue Jockeys, chafes around the leg — so you’re raw and can’t run, and it’s too damned binding. Big balls,” he says.
“Yes — you’ve often said that about yourself.”
“And the pots and pans?” he asks, still signing.
“Got ’em. You doing a lot of cooking?”
“It’s not like I’m in the Domino Pizza thirty-minute delivery zone.”
“What do you make?”
“Cheese sauce and peanut sauce; there’s a lot of flour, butter, cheese, peanut butter, and pasta — not so much sugar — we need more sugar. Have you got any?”
I pull a couple of packets of Splenda out of my pockets. “If you’d asked I
would have brought—”
He cuts me off, as though trying to keep it short. “Candlesticks?”
“This is what I could find,” I say, handing them to him. “They were Jane’s.”
He takes the candlesticks like that’s the most important part of all. “Matches?”
I open the passenger door of the car and dig around in the glove compartment; stuff falls out.
“Give me the flares,” George says, “I might need those.”
“This isn’t fucking trick-or-treat,” I grumble as I hand him the flares and the rest of the snacks I packed for the ride. George plucks a half-empty Coke from the cup holder and sucks it down.
“Amazing,” he says. “The flavor, it’s like the nectar of the gods. I wish they’d get a fucking Coke machine in this place.”
“I brought you a gift,” I say, pulling out the cookie tin. George immediately looks both excited and concerned.
“Is that Lillian’s tin?”