Peacemaker. Gordon Kent
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knew it, and everybody knew it was hopeless. “Mike’s serious about you,” Alan said. He put down the dog’s water bowl, and the dog made sounds in it as if a duck was trying to take off.
“He’s doing Greek salad and hors d’oeuvres and I’m doing the main stuff, and yes, I think he’s in love with me and I guess that after you he’s the next one I’d want to be that way. That okay?”
Alan grinned. “So long as I’m first.”
“You’re always first.” She cocked her head, listened. “Mikey’s awake.” She started out, turned back to him. “If it’s any comfort to you, just having you in the house makes me so horny I want to scream.” She started out again, swung back. “Correction—moan, not scream. ‘Bye.”
In the Serbian zone, Bosnia.
Zulu nodded, and Radic swung his fist and it hit the bound man with a sound like a ball hitting a glove. Zulu remembered that sound, the old catcher’s mitt heavy on his hand, his father’s throw making it ache even through the thick, old leather.
Radic looked at him. Zulu nodded again. Radic swung; the bound man screamed as the same sound struck. And again. And again. And again.
And now the Americans were here. The first ones had come in March to replace the UN. Zulu hadn’t fought them yet, perhaps never would, but he wished to. He remembered that American voice shouting in the house at Pustarla, then the running through the snow, naked, that voice and the gun booming behind him. Humiliating.
The bound man looked like raw meat. He was stripped to the waist. So was Radic, from whose sleek muscles steam rose in little wisps, like ground mist. It was still cold up here.
“Is he still alive?” Zulu said.
Radic lifted the man’s drooping head and felt in the bloody mess of his throat. He nodded.
“Cut him down.”
The men from the little pigsty of a village watched Radic. Zulu could smell somebody’s shit. They were terrified. That was the idea.
The bound man lay on the ground. Blood soaked into the dirty snow. Zulu handed Radic a sledgehammer. He nodded.
Radic swung the sledge and blood and brains spattered, and the village men began to wail.
Zulu decided that Radic was all right. He would add him to the Special Unit for Africa.
That evening. Norfolk.
As it turned out, Mike Dukas’s date had canceled and he came alone, a little sheepish that he had been stood up but probably glad, really, that he had more time in the kitchen with Rose. Alan could imagine Mike’s mental pictures of himself in their house, a kind of uncle to their child (who had been named after him), a kind of protective presence to Rose. Alan was not sure that those pictures had much to do with reality, except that Mike was a very good friend and they had been through a very tough time together and almost got themselves killed. Now, he listened to Mike and Rose chattering in the kitchen about food, and they made him happy.
Then O’Neill came, and he and Alan made a lot of noise because they hadn’t seen each other in eight months or so. O’Neill was hardly in the door before Alan lunged toward him; O’Neill swayed back and said, “Oh, I say, old chap!” and shook Alan’s hand. Then they boogied for three seconds, then gave each other high fives, and then fell on each other, squeezing and whacking and saying, “Hey, that’s fat, man, you put on fat!” and “Muscle, that’s muscle!” and each told the other he looked great, and they held on to each other and just grinned. Rose came in and smiled at them and kissed O’Neill, and Dukas asked him how the Ranch had been. O’Neill made a face and they all laughed.
“Can you eat vegetarian lasagna?” she said. She sounded worried. O’Neill was big and looked as if he ate whole cows or roadkill or something.
“If I could eat grits, I can eat anything. They gave me grits every goddam morning. I think it was a test!” He and Alan began to remind each other of horrible food they had eaten on the boat. They did a lot more happy shouting. Dukas and Rose looked at each other and shrugged and went back to the kitchen.
The Peretzes were late. The Peretzes were always late. Abe Peretz had been a kind of mentor to Alan, even though his own Naval career had ended when he hadn’t made the cut for commander. Now he worked in the J. Edgar Hoover Building and made sad jokes about being a G-Man.
“How’s the G-Man?” Alan said as he took their coats a few minutes later. They were embracing O’Neill and asking him how the Ranch had been. Alan grinned at Bea. “How’s Mrs G-Man?”
“He got a promotion!” Bea shouted. Bea shouted everything. She was handsome and noisy. “Tell them about your new job!” Bea was wearing black pants and a pale yellow, shiny blouse with a huge saxophone on it in green—the saxophone was a bizarre touch, some kind of joke? Some reference he didn’t get?—and enough buttons left unbuttoned so her very attractive cleavage showed to good advantage. She seemed very up, maybe too much so.
Abe shrugged. “So I got a promotion.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know; it’s classified.”
Bea bounced into a chair, bounced right out again. “You make me so damn mad, Abe, I could kill you! He’s been made department head. I hate false modesty!”
Abe kissed her. “Nobody would ever dare accuse you of it.” He began to explain the organizational structure of FBI headquarters, which was so complex that Alan wondered if he’d finish before the evening ended. Then he realized that O’Neill was chuckling and that what Abe was saying was an elaborate shaggy-dog story, an invention. He began to laugh, too, and Abe, seeing he’d got the joke, roared.
Then Mike and Rose came in with wine, and they all got noisier, and the dog made his rounds, poking his big nose into everybody’s crotch and spilling a wineglass, and there was a lot of loud talk. Dukas told a couple of his Clinton jokes, and Alan glanced over at Rose and saw her face shining, and she gave him a wink and he was glad that Mike’s girl or woman or whatever she was hadn’t come, because these were the people he most liked to be with. He and O’Neill sat next to each other and started saying, “Hey, remember when—” and the others tuned them out. When Alan started listening to them again, Rose was trying to talk Abe Peretz into doing his two weeks of Reserve duty at her new station, someplace called Interservice Virtual Intelligence.
Peretz whistled. “Interservice Virtual Intelligence! Wow, how’d you like them apples? Virtual intelligence, that’s for me! If you can’t have real intelligence, by all means have virtual! What do they do, Rose, teach monkeys to talk, or something?”
“I don’t start for another week. All I know is, it’s a great-looking place, they’ve got a fantastic cafeteria, and they’re hungry for analysts.”
O’Neill squinted his eyes. “As a trained interrogator, I sensed a missed step there. What is a helicopter pilot doing in something called ‘virtual intelligence’?”
“She’s hiking her ass up the ladder toward being an astronaut. I need space-related duty for my next tour.”
O’Neill looked at Alan and swung into his WW-II-Japanese-officer voice. “So, American flygirl, your intelligence is space-related!” And then to Humphrey Bogart: “You’re good, Shweetheart, you’re really good, but there’s something you aren’t telling me.”
Rose batted her eyes. “It’s something about satellites, Mister Spade, and I can’t say more because it’s classified.”
And O’Neill swung into his Big Badass voice and growled, “Who you callin’ a spade?”
“That kind of joking makes me nervous,” Bea Peretz said. Rose and O’Neill laughed, the indulgent way that people laugh about their parents, and Rose began to shepherd them all toward the table. When they were all seated, there was a sudden silence, everybody looking