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AFTER SEVERAL DAYS of island hopping, catching flights to remote outposts, and taking vast stretches of healing sleep in between, Jack arrived in Brisbane. From Brisbane, he immediately booked a flight for Sydney and settled into the window seat.
Once secured by the seatbelt and after receiving a complimentary drink, he took a long steady look at himself in the porthole. The surface reflected sundry bruises metastasizing from purple to saffron. Aviator glasses hid most of the damage from children who would have cried, women who would have recoiled, and men who would have sneered. Airport security inspected him more closely, but after meticulous searches of baggage and passport, passed him through.
To the world-weary man he had become, he was ugly and deformed, a failure and a scamp. He was supposed to be a government hack, not some sort of superhero destined to take on the world with his bare fists. A man of conscience can handle only so much blame, shame, disgust, and introspection. Self-knowledge cures nothing. It only serves to make a man weaker and increasingly vulnerable. He wasn’t supposed to be a soldier of fortune or of misfortune. And he wasn’t supposed to face mortality in his thirties. The anticipation of death should have come much later, when fewer years loomed in front of him than lingered behind, when he was old and sick and ready to bid farewell, after he sculpted a life he could be proud of. Between the bookends, the pages of his biography should have contained his lady of choice, a house on a half-acre, and a passel of kids to carry on his name.
Curiously, he had never been afraid of dying. All men die, except his path to glory would probably come sooner rather than later. When it happened, it would arrive in a blaze of gunfire or at the point of a knife or in a crash of metal. In the blink of a fading eye, he would be gone. No grave to be dug for his body. No memorial to be conducted for his soul. No monument to be erected for his legacy. Life was cheap, this he had always known. But something inside him was broken beyond repair. Jack Coyote had become irrelevant. He was a blip on a screen, a fading memory, a lone man circling a small planet populated by seven billion other frantic souls, surviving on his wits while running from invisible enemies. He could hold a pity party but no one would come. He could console himself by remembering he was a data analyst, a software coder, a hacker, a lover of women, and a seeker of truth, not that any of it counted for much. By accident or misfortune, he stumbled across inconvenient truths, which led to greater truths, such as how leaders can become corrupt enough to sacrifice their integrity for an idea. Nothing was out of bounds to achieve their goals. War, rape, enslavement, breaking basic laws of humanity, using God as a shield, greed as a motivator, and power as an excuse, all for the hollow notion of brinkmanship. They did it by corralling the masses, studying their habits, tracking their movements, cataloging their associations, starving their bodies, brainwashing their minds, connecting with their basest instincts, putting down their rebellions, and silencing their voices. All of it done to achieve complete and utter control even while the sands of time slipped between their fingers, signifying they themselves were nothing. Because of this and for many other reasons, he decided to heed the spark of humanity still beating in his breast and conduct a mission of mercy.
He found her obituary in a local paper. Madelyn Gibbons, beloved daughter of George and Mildred Gibbons, loving sister of Michael and Julie Gibbons, cherished granddaughter of Evelyn and Daniel Gibbons and of Gerald and Kay Darling. Left this life much too soon but will live in the hearts of her dear ones forever.
Determined to look up Madelyn’s family and tell them of her fate, he would throw caution to the winds, bow down to the gods, and confess his sins. On his knees, with joined hands raised in supplication. Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. He told himself the impulse may be a noble one but the idea was stupid, flat-out reckless. He asked himself what good it could possibly do. Yet how could he go on without doing this one small thing for Maddie, not just telling her family how she died but how she celebrated life to the very end. He argued with himself. He stewed about it. He paced the dimensions of his room. At one point, he decided to get blinding drunk and forgot the whole damn thing. Better for everyone all around. And safer for him. Except for one small point. A stupid notion called integrity. It took more courage to admit his role in Maddie’s demise than to run and hide and pretend it never happened.
After two days of hiding out in an inn at the outskirts of Sydney, he cleaned himself up, tidied his scraggly beard, combed his overlong hair, dressed in hand-pressed clothes, and set out during the early evening hours of a rainy day.
At the funeral home, tears were copious and hearts were bleeding. Black-attired mourners milled around with somber faces and hand-shielded whispers. The woman laid out in the coffin was a shadow of the lady he made love to a little more than a week ago. What struck him most was her utter youth and her undeniable beauty, more so in death than in life. Possibly for the first time ever, she was at peace.
He filed past the family and paid his respects. The parents looked him over with blank expressions. The brother was stoic and unapproachable. The sister became interested when he mumbled his condolences. Her eyes—piercing eyes very much like her sister’s—met his with curiosity. “Thank you,” she said simply. And then, “Your accent. It’s American?”
He responded with a slight nod.
“How do you know Maddie?”
“We met in Nauru.”
“You live there?”
“On holiday.”
“There was a man who ...” Letting her words drift off, she glanced towards her overwrought parents, clutching each other’s hands to hold themselves together. Deciding, she stood with purpose, straightening her skirt and flipping back her hair, the gesture so much like her sister’s. With a subtle nudge of her head, she slid her arm through his elbow and led him aside, speaking softly. “The authorities in Nauru told us she was with a man when it happened. Are you that man?” Her eyes were direct, piercing, hypnotic. A man could get lost in those eyes. “An American tourist, they said.” When he didn’t answer, she nodded with comprehension, her eyes surveying the room. “Where are you staying?”