“I was sixty-three years old when I met Annie. Tom’s mom.”
The coffee was chicory flavored, and revived me. The heat was extreme from the oven, yet the onetime State Department star did not seem to mind. The rising sun glared off his wire-rimmed glasses. Regret is acid in the human heart.
“I’d retired. Never married. I’d inherited my parents’ home in Denver, and Annie moved in next door.” The right side of his face smiled. The left side remained fixed. He’s had a stroke. He said, “I fell for her but I was… well… inept in social matters.”
“Shy,” I suggested.
“It’s funny,” he said in a way that suggested he did not think it funny at all. “In my work I’d always been good with people. I could walk into a palace with a Saudi prince who hated us and come out with an agreement. I knew how to threaten, back off, walk away. You’d think a good negotiator could do a simple thing like court a woman.”
“No one ever said that’s simple.”
“You’re kind.”
Curbing impatience, I said, “Tell me about Annie, sir.”
“She was very beautiful. She’d lost a son. She was struggling to get over it. Working in an art shop. Extra protective of Tom. When I saw his photo on TV yesterday, I thought, I was afraid something would happen, but this is even worse than what I feared.”
“What did you think would happen?”
But he would get to things in his own way. He grasped the little spoon but did not use it. “Annie wouldn’t admit it, but Tom was wounded. He’d been dragged around place to place, lived with a succession of worthless father figures. He’d lost his brother in a car crash and blamed himself; lost faith in everything; a quiet kid who spent a lot of time alone. No friends. Hours hiking or on the Net. Annie told me — later on I mean — that she’d gone into his room once and he was on his computer, on an Islamic website. He was seventeen then. More coffee?”
“Keep going, sir.”
His eyes closed. I wondered if he had fallen asleep. But then he resumed talking.
“You don’t wear a wedding ring, Colonel.”
“I’m divorced,” I said. I did not mention Karen, my fiancée, who had died a few years ago.
“I bet when you courted your wife, you did all the normal things. Flowers. Romantic weekends.”
“Oh, I think in courtship anything you do is normal.”
“I didn’t want to drive her away, tell her that Tom was in bad shape. I wasn’t his father. I was the old guy next door, who fixed things, drove them around if her car was broken. The harmless eunuch who listened to her talk about men who wanted to take her out. I just,” he said, “talked.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Why should you? Ineffective diplomats! A writer once described us as men in their underwear, dancing with brooms. I did what I did best, talk. Pontificate. Educate about good things in America. I actually thought I could get closer to the boy by telling him things I’d learned in my career.” He laughed self-mockingly.
“Good things about America?”
“We’d take drives. Annie had ignored the kid for years, so she insisted that we do things together. I told him about Iran when we were at Pikes Peak, on a picnic. I talked about how to balance threat with action. How to fool the other side in negotiations. How even presidents fold to threats behind the scenes. We traded arms but we got back hostages, Tom. It’s important to know how far the other side will go.
“Other guys talk baseball or take a kid fishing. I took him to Los Alamos to see where the atomic bomb was born. Tom just sat there. He never complained. I thought he enjoyed it. But on the day he exploded, I saw that I’d fooled myself.”
“Exploded?”
“It was the week she said she’d marry me. The happiest I ever felt. For six hours.”
I felt as if the second hand of my watch was a razor, scraping my skin as it cut away time. I wanted to shake him and demand to know where he thought Tom Fargo was going. But you let a person get to things their own way, because often you learn more if you do.
“I’d proposed the night before… had a few drinks and built up courage, and she’d shocked me, actually said yes! She said I made her feel safe. She said the boy needed a reliable man. She didn’t love me, but she respected me and that was enough. We were going to tell him at lunch. Annie worried how he’d react. She’d promised him over and over, no more men, and broken those promises.”
“You were nervous.”
He smiled, and I saw what he’d looked like when he was younger. He’d been handsome. “I wanted his approval.”
“That makes sense, sir.”
He sighed. On the blanket, his crablike fingers were scratching at the fabric, bunching it.
“I was nervous so I talked. The craziest thing started it. I looked up and saw fighter jets on maneuvers out of Colorado Springs. Suddenly I’m launching into a tirade about defense contractors. How the company that built those jets made parts in different congressional districts, to influence congressmen there. As if the kid could care! I’m going on about how diplomats want peace, generals want peace, but contractors want equipment used so they can sell more. Annie is squeezing my hand, wanting me to stop. And out of the blue, in the middle of this, Annie turns to Tom and blurts out, “Honey, Hobart and I decided to get married.”
“And Tom blew.”
“You’re damn right. I was terrified. He was screaming so loud that I could barely drive. He’s calling her a liar and a fool and demanding that I stop the car and let him out. He’s out of control. Someone ought to kill the contractors, he says, get a rifle or bombs and go to all the factories, blow them up. Make an example of one company. He’s ranting about Muslims killed by those planes. It’s all mixed up. You’re going to marry him? YOU TOLD ME THAT HE’S AN OLD MAN AND YOU HAVE NO INTEREST IN HIM!”
“Sorry,” I said.
“I knew even before she told me that we were not going to get married. I actually had to stop in the next town. He wouldn’t ride with me. She wouldn’t leave him. And she’ll protect him now, you know. She’ll never help you find him. She’ll never do anything to hurt that kid again.”
“He’s not a kid anymore,” I said, knowing that the FBI had been to see Annie. Hobart was right. She’d paid for Tom’s car. She’d given him a job. She didn’t care, she’d told Ray’s agents, if they arrested her. She’d not say anything to harm her son.
“Hobart, if that’s what made it fall apart, it would have fallen apart anyway,” I said gently.
“I know.”
“Where is he going?”
“Didn’t you hear what I said? The cities where he’s released insects? Have you found what connects them? New York? Newark? Now Memphis. Look for a defense contractor with operations in those cities. He’s doing what he said. Making an example of one company. Find other places where they have branches, wait for him there.”
Doubtful, I said, “That was an awfully long time ago. You think he’s still that way?”
“Well, he’s here, isn’t he? Attacking us, isn’t he? He went over there to join them and came back, didn’t he? Do you have a better idea? He’s targeted one company. Figure out which one.”
I heard a boy screaming in my mind. I don’t care about your stupid lectures. Someone ought to blow everyone up.
Regret smells like an old blanket, mothballs and sage, shoe polish and pinyon; it sounds like a hissing oxygen tank on a deck in New Mexico.
Haines said, “Ten years later I met my wife, Cyn, and fell in love. This house was Cyn’s. Cyn died of cancer five years ago. She left the place to me.”