The man resembled a scarecrow, thin and wrinkled. He looked almost comical, but there was nothing funny about his expression. Had the guy been Arab, Danny would have run for his life. But he was white, probably American, and certainly nuts. He rushed straight for the bar, heaving himself onto a stool with an explosive grunt. Hunching his shoulders like a vulture, he glared at Danny until the Israeli sauntered over to ask what he wanted.
“Drink.” American, for sure.
“What kind of a drink, sir?” What an idiot.
“Give me anything with alcohol or so help me Christ, I’ll tear you apart and get it myself.”
Normally, Danny would have laughed at him, but the customer spoke with such force that he believed the crazy old bastard would have tried it. “Sure thing, sir, anything you say.”
Danny poured a measure of brandy into a snifter, but before he could set the drink on the bar, the American lunged for the bottle. The man snapped off the speed pourer with a practiced twist and upended the bottle to his lips. Three swallows vanished in as many seconds before the geezer set the bottle carefully on the bar top.
“Sorry about that, son,” Harry White rasped. “But you were taking too damn long. If you knew what I’ve been through in the past couple weeks, you would’ve done the same thing.”
“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” Danny backed away.
“Tell you what, kid, if you’ve got any bourbon back there, Jack Daniel’s preferably, I promise not to bite. Deal?” The expression of madness was transformed into a smile that was almost grandfatherly.
Danny poured a shot of bourbon and wisely left the bottle on the bar. Stealing a glance at Sara, he saw her watching the whole bizarre exchange with a smirk. She looked as if she expected such repulsive behavior from Americans. Bitch.
Harry gulped down the bourbon and helped himself to another, pouring until the glass could not hold one more alcohol molecule. When he brought it to his lips, he didn’t spill a drop. “You’re a lifesaver, my friend. A goddamned lifesaver.” The liquor filed the sharper edges off Harry’s voice. “Eight or ten more of these and I might feel human again.”
“Mr. White?” a female called from the lobby. She was poised at the entrance to the bar with a startled look. Her chest heaved because she had been forced to run into the hotel, chasing after the octogenarian. Wearing a conservative gray suit with an off-the-rack blouse and a ridiculous bow, to Danny she was the picture of a government employee. She trod across the marble lobby floor, her sensible shoes clacking with a horse-like clomp. “Oh, thank God, Mr. White. I was afraid I’d lost you for a second.”
Harry nodded at his drink. “A second was all I needed.”
The harried young woman was Jessica Michaelson. She worked for the CIA under the cover of a cultural attaché and had been assigned the job of minding Harry White until his flight back to the United States. As the lowest-ranking CIA agent at the embassy, she had been saddled with Harry for nearly a week now. While not involved with his debriefing, she had to keep the curmudgeon occupied when he was not in meetings with the more senior officers, including the station chief.
Jessica had read the report of what Harry had been through in the past couple of weeks, and even in its sanitized version his experiences were harrowing. But after a week with him, she felt her pity wearing thin and was hoping the terrorists would come and take him away again.
From a portion of the report that Jessica Michaelson had read, Harry’s own words from a stenographer’s transcript described what had happened to bring him to the care of the CIA:
I’d just escaped the gun fight and was real tired. I smelled like hell and my whiskers were itchin’ something fierce. I think I picked up some critters in that cell too. Anyway,
I was walking along, looking for something, anything that I could recognize, but all the signs were written in squiggly letters that looked like they were done by a blind two-year-old. Then I saw one sign I could read, and damned if fate isn’t one cruel bitch. It was on a church bulletin board, and it was for an Alcohol Anonymous meeting that was going to start a half hour after curfew had been lifted. I hid out for the night in an alley a couple blocks away. The next morning, I went to the church at the appropriate time, but it was hard to step inside. This being the Holy City and all, I expected lightning to strike me dead at any moment.
Well, I went in and the group looked at me like they’d been expecting me. I sat quiet for a while and listened to the men and women, most of ’em were Americans or British. After twenty minutes of waiting for God’s wrath for desecrating the meeting. I stood up and told the group that my name was Harry and with my fingers crossed behind my back told them that I was an alcoholic. I said I’d been sober for a couple of hours now, having come down from a thirty-seven-day binge that started in De Moines, Iowa, and ended in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I told them that most of the details in between were still a bit fuzzy.
I know what I was doing was wrong, you understand. I think AA is one hell of a fine program, and it does some amazing things for folks who want to get their lives back together but I needed help pretty badly and I figured these people, seeing me in the state I was, would have a little pity. They all listened, actually they were hanging on my every word. They seemed to know each other’s stories pretty well, and I was laying something entirely new on them. They fell all over themselves offering support and advice. Well anyway, after the meeting, a guy came up, told me his name was Walt Hayes from Missouri, and that he was a reporter for Newsweek.
Walt said he’d help me figure out how to get home. Said he had some friends at the American embassy. Later that day he took me to the embassy, introduced me to some attaché or other, and after I told her the true story, she sicced all you CIA flunkies on me. Hey, how about that drink now?
Interviewer: In just a little while, Mr. White. Tell us again about the woman holding you who you thought was a nurse.
For the rest of the details of Harry’s adventure, Jessica had broken a few security protocols and listened to the old man’s ramblings when she spent dinners with him at the embassy cafeteria, including his dim recollections about the shoot-out at Dulles Airport and the names of a few of his captors.
Her superiors had acquiesced only partially to Harry’s continuous entreaties for alcohol and allowed him a drink after each day’s debriefing, saying they wanted him fresh for the next session. But now that Harry was finally being returned to the United States, he had bolted from the car transporting him from the embassy to a hotel in Tel Aviv prior to his flight. Because Harry wasn’t in any sort of custody, and those that had taken him had gone deep underground, the CIA had agreed to give him a few hours of free time provided that he was under constant surveillance. This also gave the operatives a convenient place away from prying eyes to hand Harry over to agents of the FBI, who would actually be accompanying him on his flight home.
Hot on Jessica’s heels into the bar were two additional CIA minders, both men wearing lightweight jackets to conceal their weapons. They too were breathing heavily and looked at Harry with mild shock, for he had managed to outrun them all.
“Mr. White, you weren’t supposed to do that,” Jessica chided. She moved close so only he could hear when she continued. “We’re here for your protection.”
Harry turned and pinned her with his stare. “It’s not my fault you guys can’t keep up. If there had been something to drink in that car of yours, I wouldn’t have needed to get in here so quickly. I told you to get me one with a mini-bar.” He shot a smile toward Danny. “How about a little ginger ale?”