| |
On a scale from zero to posh, Professor Bodin LaBranche’s apartment building in a poor section of New Orleans ranked no better than dowdy. The exterior bricks were stained by nearly a century of weather. But, unlike most others in the area, this building looked better the closer you looked, like a restored Model T parked in a junk yard. Every apartment’s windows were clean, the trim scraped and freshly painted, and the window boxes overflowing with well-tended flowers. The appearance was lost on Prof. LaBranche, but not the scent of the flowers. The gardenias were a tad heavy-handed for his palate, but the lemon verbena made him grin. Plus the rent was cheap, the air conditioning worked, and a mom-and-pop Cajun grocery/deli wafted seductive aromas across the street to him. Mom and Pop were his close friends. But their food ... their spicy Cajun specialties ... he loved.
LaBranche came from an old American family, far older than the Daughters of the American Revolution. His family name came from the large plantation near New Orleans where many generations of his ancestors had been slaves. It had been a successful plantation for many generations, growing rich from the work of his ancestors, and from selling off any excess ancestors. The LaBranche Plantation earned a reputation throughout the South for breeding pedigree-quality men, women, and children at reasonable prices.
When the phone rang, Professor LaBranche was sitting in his living room, on a kitten-soft leather recliner. The room was sparsely furnished. A couch for guests, a recliner for himself, and side tables for each. A blind man wants the essentials, nothing more. No coffee table to trip on. No plants to bump into. Lamps for guests stood close to the walls, out of the way. The colors didn’t match, but were mostly earth tones, so any clashing was, at worst, half-hearted.
LaBranche smiled as he faced across the room toward the two soldiers dressed as paramedics sitting on his couch. The smile and round cheeks made him look like Santa Claus must have looked when he was about thirty and only slightly overweight. If Santa were black. And blind. “May I answer this?” His grin widened. “It might be for you.” He reached toward the phone on a small table next to his chair.
Professor LaBranche couldn’t see it, but one of the soldiers grimaced back, and gave a useless thumbs up. That was about all he could do with his hands, which were duct taped together, with his forearms duct taped to his legs just above the knees. As an added measure, his ankles were duct taped together. His partner was similarly trussed.
The Professor picked up the phone. “Hello? ... Dorothy! What a delight to hear your voice. Haven’t heard from you in ages! How are you? Just yesterday I read your paper on ... Oh, really? Tell me more ... ”
A long pause while the Professor listened. Then he laughed, “No, Dorothy, I believe you. I completely and totally believe you. You see, I have a couple of guests just like yours here with me in my living room right now ... Thanks for the warning. They were armed and dangerous, but some friends of mine pacified them. I may be blind but I know the smell of gunpowder solvent all too well. At first I thought they wanted to rob me. Now I don’t think so.
“Everything about these guys says they’re soldiers. But their accent’s not American.” He paused while he replayed a memory. “I think it’s Israeli.”
The two soldiers looked at each other.
“But what the hell is going on?” LaBranche listened to Professor Anderson for a while. As he listened, his smile faded, his round cheeks gradually flattened, and the jolliness in his brow tightened.
“Agreed. Makes no sense. I’ll see what I can find out here.”
The soldiers looked at the professor’s three friends guarding them: One large black man, one small black woman, and one medium-sized Hispanic man. All were in their mid twenties, all held pistols of various makes and sizes, all wore different gang colors and jewelry, and the woman had a thick scar from her left temple to the right side of her chin.
When an amateur holds a pistol, it almost always wobbles. The stress of pointing a gun at someone, the unconscious anticipation of a loud bang and kick, the unexpected weight, the unfamiliar feel of the grip, all these factors cause inexperienced people to unconsciously shift their grip around, a little bit, but continuously. Hence the wobble.
Yet these three pistols were pointed at the soldiers’ heads as solid and comforting as a panther’s stare.
It is a law of nature that, when they meet, professionals recognize other professionals. Such meetings are almost always calm ... at least on the surface.
And, there being nothing better to do at the moment, all five professionals listened calmly to Professor LaBranche chatting with Professor Anderson.
The longer he chatted, the less he sounded like Santa, and more like an army officer.
“Yes, yes, Dorothy, we have a great many things to talk about. But that will take a while. First things first. You obviously need to call Benny and Dalton right away, right? ... So how ‘bout you call me back after you talk with them? ... Good. Take care, Dorothy. And try not to worry. I don’t know what’s happening, but I have a feeling this will work out okay ... If the others give you any trouble, have them call me ... All right. I’m looking forward to chatting with you ... Bye.”
Professor LaBranche put the phone back down and smiled stiffly in the direction of his two guests. He couldn’t see them, but he could hear them sigh. “Well, that was educational for all of us, wasn’t it? There’s other teams like you outside, aren’t there? So we’re trapped in here? The others can’t get in and we can’t get out.
“So let me think about this a minute ... You’re obviously not here to kill me, because I’m still alive. You would have killed me the moment the door opened, QED. So you must be here to take me somewhere. And you probably can’t tell me where. And I probably wouldn’t want to go on my own. Is that correct?”
One of the soldiers nodded.
The Professor said, “Please excuse a blind man, soldier, but if you don’t wear bells I can’t hear when you nod or shake your head.”
The soldier answered, “Sorry. Yes, sir ... er ... Professor. We’re here to take you somewhere. It’s a safe place, for your protection. That’s all I can say.” He thought for a moment, then, “Actually, that’s all I know.”
“Well, that’s a good start,” said the Professor. “Eventually I may just trust you and go along ... when we can. But I gather there may be others out there who might not want to take me to a safe place? Otherwise you wouldn’t need to take me to a safe place.”
“I don’t know about that, sir ... er ... Professor. I don’t know anything about any others. This was supposed to be a simple grab.”
“A simple mission? Never seen one.”
“Come to think of it, neither have I, sir. Guess I just had hopes for this one.”
“Well, if you want me safe, we definitely have a common goal. Though I don’t understand that at all. It doesn’t make sense. I’ve got no enemies. No gambling debts. No ex-wives. Haven’t slept with any married women in ... oh ... a long time. And, anyway, none of that warrants soldiers coming after me. It’s clearly got something to do with the research Dorothy and I worked on. But that was nothing. An inconsequential paper in an obscure journal.”
He paused again, thinking, then pursed his lips in frustration.
“This is simply crazy! But ... it’s real. I’d better start trying to understand it, like Dorothy.”
Professor LaBranche stared intently, with blind eyes, at his two captives. He used this trick occasionally on annoying students. He knew his blind stare would disconcert them. And he was listening intently, trying to hear their thoughts by listening to their breathing.
The results were inconclusive, so he pursed his lips in frustration again.
“Well,” he said, “It’s in my best interest to stick with a safe option, assuming I can find one, when my other options are unknown. So let’s see if we can build some trust here. Maybe you can convince me you’re a safe option, so we can work together.
“And when all else fails, go by the book. The book says you should never pass up an opportunity to eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom. We don’t know how long this will last, so here’s the essentials: The bathroom is the first left down that hall,” he pointed, “And the kitchen is obviously over there,” he pointed again. “My guess is you fellows haven’t eaten since breakfast, if then. How ‘bout I get us all some lunch? We’re making some excellent gumbo. You interrupted our cooking class. It’s sort of a neighborhood tradition. And a condition of their parole,” he nodded at the others.
The woman snorted at this, exchanging glances with the tall black man. He shrugged.
LaBranche continued, “Once we finish, there’ll be more than enough for two more.
“As for your bindings, well, we’ll bring the food to you and feed you, for now.”
“Thank you,” said the first soldier.
The professor turned to his friends. “You three probably won’t believe how lucky you were to get the drop on these two. If they’d wanted to, they probably could have killed all of us with their bare hands in five seconds. And, if I’m not mistaken, I heard the rustle of body armor under their clothes.” He turned towards the soldiers, “Is that right?”
“Our top priority is that you stay alive,” said the first one. “When you answered the door, you were right between us and your friends. With all their weapons pointed at us through you, we were afraid you’d get hurt. We couldn’t risk someone making a mistake.”
“You got that right,” said the Professor. “Firefights are unpredictable. But we can’t cut the tape holding your hands just yet. And if I were to let you go, I’d only release your ankles.” The Professor was thoughtful for a moment, then, “Oh, heavens! The gumbo needs stirring!” The Hispanic man started, shook his head, looked at the professor, opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it and went into the kitchen. The Professor called after him, “And turn it down to simmer until the okra is tender. Maybe another fifteen minutes.”
After a pause, the Professor said to the soldiers, “Tell you what, I’ll offer you the option of leaving. But I think it may be best for you and for me if you stay. What’s your choice?”
The two soldiers looked at each other, then, “We prefer to stay. There’s a standoff outside. That’s fine to keep as is. No one else will get in. And no point in leaving.”
The Professor said, “Good. Oh, and what about names? You probably don’t want to give me your real names. Do you have handles I can use?”
“You can call me Foxtrot, sir,” said the first one.
“And call me Tango,” said the other.
“Good,” said the Professor. “Now, Foxtrot and Tango, the gumbo should be done soon. And the most important thing on your minds right now should be earning my trust - trust that I’ll bet my life and my friends’ lives on - so that I’ll cut the tape holding your hands and feet sometime before you need to go to the bathroom. So tell me some stories about yourselves, and I’ll tell you some about me. And maybe my friends will tell a few of their own. It’ll help build trust all around. That’s a thing about telling stories. The story itself might be a lie. But the truth of the storyteller is always laid out plain to see.” He paused, then grinned. “And storytelling is just fun. So I’ll start with Afghanistan.”
He glanced towards his friends for a moment, and said, “You know the difference between a fairy tale and a war story? A fairy tale begins ‘Once upon a time ...’ while a war story begins ‘This ain’t no shit ...’ ”
The woman quickly interrupted him, “Professor, I ain’t sure you should be talkin’ ’bout Afghanistan right now. Maybe some other topic?”
The professor waved her interruption away. “Nonsense. It’s a topic these gentlemen will understand best.”
The woman shook her head almost imperceptibly, clenched her jaw, then went into the kitchen and came back with a chair. She sat down next to the professor, who continued, “Now, this ain’t no shit. I was a lieutenant in charge of a platoon of combat engineers. Our job was mainly route clearance, finding and neutralizing IEDs - homemade bombs - in the roads.”
The professor leaned back in his easy chair and took a deep breath. The tightness of his brow, from when he had talked to Dorothy, relaxed as he talked about the familiar subject of Afghanistan. But the Santa Claus smile was gone. His eyes stayed wary, seeming to scan the room, like that was just their normal, natural state.
“Well this day we had to clear a road through a small deserted village. Now, clearing roads was something we did every day. It was always tense. But we did it from inside our MRAPs.” To his friends he added, “That’s Mine Resistant Ambush Protected trucks. Heavily armored, with a V-shaped armored hull set high off the ground to deflect explosions away from the crew compartment. While you never felt exactly safe, you felt a whole lot better with all that armor around you. MRAPs can pretty well shrug off a hit from a standard 40-pound IED. You’d get clanged pretty good. And the truck would probably have to be towed home for repairs. But you’d walk away. Those are good trucks to be inside of.
“Unfortunately, we had to clear the village, too. That meant we had to dismount from the trucks and clear all the buildings and pathways on foot. Now, I don’t care how much body armor you’re wearing, it ain’t gonna shrug off a 40-pound IED. A few ounces of explosives will turn your foot into hamburger. A pound or two will remove a leg or two.
“Now, everything in Afghanistan was dusty. The roads were covered in dust. The mud-brick buildings were covered in dust. Even the people were covered in dust. Everything’s the same brownish gray. Even the trees, the few trees there are, were barely green. You found yourself wondering, ‘How do these people live without any green in their world?’ It was monotonous as hell, and it messed with your depth perception. Hard to see slight variations in terrain and fine texture unless the light was just right.
“The village was small. If you had a good arm, you could throw a baseball from one end to the other. My 40-man platoon had broken into eight 5-man fire teams. With two teams securing the perimeter, we spread out and, in about two hours, had cleared about half the village. My fire team was walking single file between two mud-brick houses when the sergeant behind me shouted for everyone to freeze.
“We froze. Hell, our blood froze. You could practically hear everyone not breathing.
“The sergeant said, ‘Do you see it?’
“Without moving my feet I turned around at the waist, and saw him pointing along the right side of the path, close to the wall on that side.
“I looked where he pointed. And at first I didn’t see anything. Then I looked real, real carefully. You’re always looking for something that doesn’t quite fit, something a little out of place, some disturbance in the dust and dirt. And then I saw it. I saw them. Six patches of slight depressions in the dust. Each depression about a foot long and maybe four inches wide, with about three feet from one depression to the next. So the whole collection was about twenty feet long.
“I said to myself, man, we are so fucking screwed. It was obviously a daisy chain of six 1-pound blocks of explosives. A daisy chain is where the explosives are linked to one another by det cord, an explosive rope. You detonate the det cord, which sets off all the other blocks all at once. And there’s myself and two of my men right next to it, in the kill zone. And somewhere, hidden in the dirt under our feet, there must be a pressure plate to set it off.
“But we all knew the drill. I just reminded them, ‘Furthest man back, sweep in and clear the next man. Everyone else, look for the pressure plate. Take your time gentlemen. Follow your training. Don’t rush to failure. I’m in no hurry.’
“The man in the rear was well outside the kill zone, so he used his mine detector to sweep up to the next man. When that man was cleared to move, the two of them swept to the next.
“Meanwhile one of the other fire teams came to help and worked to clear us from the front.
“Clearing booby traps is slow work. Painstakingly slow. In the next hour they cleared the lead man in the kill zone and all the men behind me. That left just me and the man in front of me in the kill zone.
“By that time they had reached the first block of explosive. Very, very gently they cleared the dust from the top and started digging around the depression. When I say gently, I mean it. We were taught to treat it like pussy. Real gentle.
“You always dug around the explosive, and gradually worked your way in toward it, then under it, before you actually moved the explosive. That’s so you could check for anti-tampering triggers that would detonate if you picked it up. That takes a lot of time, digging gently with a wooden stick or plastic probe, while lying on your belly. We preferred to use wood or plastic so we didn’t set off any magnetic triggers. We’d never seen one in Afghanistan, but there’s always a first time. The Soviets loved magnetic triggers. And the Afghans used stuff the Soviets had left behind twenty or thirty years before.
“But we found no anti-tampering triggers. It was a standard emplacement. Each block of explosive was buried about six inches down, and covered with gravel for shrapnel. It was the dust gradually settling into the gravel that caused the depressions that my sergeant had noticed.
“Another hour, and they had cleared everyone but me. But they hadn’t found the pressure plate yet, which meant it was probably close to me.
“Well I’d had a bunch of coffee that morning, and badly needed to take a leak. I figured, what the hell, my piss wasn’t heavy enough to set off a pressure plate. So I unbuttoned my cammies, whipped it out, and started pissing.
“About ten seconds after I started, just as I’m getting some relief, the wet spot where my pee hit started sparking and smoking like a miniature fireworks display, and I realized I’d just killed myself. I was pissing on the pressure plate and somehow I’d set it off. I shouted ‘Everybody down!’
“As you might guess, I stopped peeing pretty fast. But the wet dirt kept sparking and popping.
“At this point I knew I had nothing to lose, so I squatted down, still not moving my feet, and quickly but gently dug into the pee dirt, scraping off one millimeter of dirt at a time. I’m scraping fast but carefully, about one scrape every second. The dirt is still spritzing and sparking and smoking. It smelled like plastic insulation being sauteed in pee.
“After ten seconds that lasted ten years, I found what I was hoping for: a battery, a cell phone battery powering a pressure plate. It had two wires running from it. The pee, plus some salts in the dirt, had shorted the wires and caused the sparking. I reached into my pocket and pulled out wire clippers and cut both wires. Then I stood up, holding the battery, and said, ‘This pressure plate is clear. But take your time, there may be other pressure plates.’
“It took them another hour to clear the entire pathway. Turned out that was the only pressure plate.
“After the village was cleared, the platoon assembled back at the trucks. I stood in front of the men and thanked them for a professional job.
“My platoon sergeant then said, in his best parade ground bellow, ‘Lieutenant, Sir! The entire platoon took a vote and it’s unanimous: you have the luckiest mother fuckin’ dick in the entire universe. All other dicks are limp spaghetti in comparison. We admire and respect it. And from now on, every time we see it, sir, we will salute it.’ With that he saluted me with the sharpest, crispest, most respectful parade ground salute I’ve ever seen. And the entire platoon saluted with him.
“Then he said, ‘But we took another vote, sir. And it was unanimous, too: you can put it away now. Sir!’
“I snapped to attention and returned their salutes with the smartest, most respectful salute I knew how to give. Then I reached down and stuffed my dick back in my cammies, and buttoned up.
“Then we got back in our MRAPs and started carefully clearing the rest of the road.
“My MRAP made it only about a hundred meters before we were hit. Based on the size of the crater and the damage to the truck, they estimated the IED was about two hundred pounds.
“I should’ve died. It was like you put soft boiled eggs in a coffee can and shook it. Hard. And when the shock wave of an explosion passes through you, it sets off every nerve in your body. Your whole body is one blinding flash of pain. It goes away in a few seconds. But those are pretty long seconds.
“Oddly, I didn’t lose consciousness right away. Though I wish I had. Our MRAP was still at the center of a huge cloud of smoke and dust, so it was totally dark. I’d been paralyzed by the explosion. I couldn’t move a muscle. But I could smell blood. Lots and lots of blood. And I could hear the screams of the four of my men in the MRAP with me. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t help them. Then one by one their screams died out. Then I passed out.
“I woke up in a hospital in Germany.”
Professor LaBranche paused. His smile was tense and taut. His forehead creased again. His eyes bright with pain.
“I had brain damage. I was blind. Unfortunately, my hearing still worked. Sometimes I still hear the screams.”
He paused again. He took a slow breath.
“Okay, it’s your turn to tell a story.”
Foxtrot and Tango looked at each other. Then Foxtrot said, “I’ll take a stab at it. Though I don’t have anything as funny as your lucky dick. Just something I find meaningful. But ... this ain’t no shit.”
All eyes were on Foxtrot as he leaned forward to tell the story. He was in his mid twenties. Dark hair. Tan, lean face. Serious brown eyes. “Two years ago I worked on the Golan Heights. As you may know from the news, Israel cared for wounded Syrian rebels and civilians along its border with Syria. We saved several thousand lives doing so. Israel had no love for those rebels or civilians, and the Syrians had no love for Israel. Israel claimed publicly that it was a humanitarian effort. But there was a strategic motive behind it. The rebels held the territory along the border, and were fighting off the Hezbollah, which was backed by Iran, which wanted control of that border territory. Israel definitely did not want Hezbollah and Iran on that border.
“So it was a case of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. Except we weren’t friends. We just helped them survive.
“I don’t know exactly how it was coordinated. That was kept secret. But late every night my team would take a couple of armored vehicles across the border to a specified location. There we’d pick up wounded and drop off those who had already been fixed up by Israeli hospitals.
“No one we picked up ever got to stay in Israel, even if they wanted to. And mostly they didn’t want to. That was understood on both sides. Plenty of hatred there.
“Part of the reason we worked late at night was because one time, during the day, a mob of Israeli Druze stopped one of our ambulances and beat to death one of the wounded Syrian rebels. The Druze deeply hated the Syrians ... but that’s another story.
“This night we crossed into Syria and reached the transfer spot, which was a grassy field on a gently sloping hillside. We used flashlights, hunting around on foot, until we found the wounded on stretchers. There were six of them, which was normal. All appeared to be rebel soldiers. No civilians.” Foxtrot sighed. “That was always a bit of a relief. I hated seeing wounded women and children.
“But what wasn’t normal was two women standing near the stretchers.”
Foxtrot paused for a moment and closed his eyes.
“I can see them clearly. They stood holding hands, absolutely still. But what really stood out was the identical scarves they wore, covering their heads as shayla headscarves. The scarves had a dark blue background that shimmered iridescent in our flashlight beams. And gold patterns of leaves and filigree that sparkled like gold sand. And behind some of the gold patterns was a pure white that gleamed.”
He shook his head and opened his eyes. “You’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t remember much else about their appearance.”
“I walked over to them. And I saw it was a mother and daughter. The mother about 40 or 45. The girl about 15. Both slender and standing proud, facing me. I was about to tell them that I couldn’t take them with us, when the mother said in nearly perfect English, ‘You must take this to the conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. He will know what to do with it.’ And she bent over and picked up a violin case at her feet and handed it to me.
“I was a little stunned. I opened my mouth a few times without saying anything. She said, ‘You must do this. It is very important. It is more important than me or you. My daughter and I are going to walk to Turkey for asylum. I have other violins. I will get by. Our email addresses are in the violin case. Hopefully, I will return soon to retrieve it.’
“I was holding the violin case to my chest, not knowing what to do. She reached out and gripped my shoulders with both hands. She looked me straight in the eyes and repeated. ‘You must do this.’
“Then she turned and, leading her daughter, walked away into the dark.
“I stood there a few seconds thinking. Then I stowed the violin in my armored vehicle and finished my work.
“In the morning, I took the next two days leave and drove to the Bronfman Auditorium in Tel Aviv. My uniform got me in the door. And I found the conductor with the orchestra in rehearsal. I waited for him to take a break, then walked up and introduced myself, and explained why I came to be giving him a violin for safe keeping.
“At first he looked quizzical. Then suddenly his eyes went wide. He asked, ‘Did she have a teenage daughter?’ I nodded. ‘And they wore matching head scarves?’ I nodded.
“He just said, ‘Oh my God.’ And he meant it as a deep prayer. He hugged the violin to his chest like it was the most valuable thing on Earth.
“Then he said, ‘You have just done a wonderful thing. May God grant blessings to you and yours forever.’
“I asked him, ‘What have I done?’ And he said in disbelief, ‘God’s messenger asks what he has done?’ He looked up at the ceiling. ‘You do have a sense of humor, don’t you.’ Then he looked back at me. ‘Let me think ... how long ... about three hundred years ago, in a village near Milan, a man named Antonio Stradivari made violins. Some were bad but most were pretty good. And a couple ... just a couple ... were perfect. This one ... ’ Tears came to his eyes. ‘This one is perfect. This is the purest sounding violin the world has ever known, or ever will know.’
“He went on, not talking to me, just talking out loud, ‘Of course, she couldn’t risk it being taken at a checkpoint. It’s worth more than Damascus.’
“Then he looked at me and said, ‘You can find her again, can’t you? She is the angel of the violin. You must find her and bring her here! Please tell me you can. You must!’
“I explained that I couldn’t. I told him that her and her daughter’s email addresses were in the case, that she was headed for Turkey, and she would come for it as soon as she could.
“Then I left.
“I visited my family that day and the next. Then went back to the Golan. And told what happened to the others in my unit.
“Then they told me what had happened the night before.
“When they picked up the wounded, the daughter was there. They recognized the perfect scarf she wore.
“She was unconscious. Looked like she’d been riddled with shrapnel from a mortar round. Looked like the round had landed pretty close. She died on the stretcher before they could get her prepped and loaded aboard. So they had to leave her body there in the field, with those patients who had been fixed up and returned.
“She was probably buried wearing that perfect scarf. At least, I hope so.
“When she died, my buddies found the other scarf clutched in her hand. They gave it to me. They thought I might want it.”
Professor LaBranche, as he listened, sitting in his chair, pulled his knees up to his chest and hugged them.
Foxtrot looked around the room at the professor and the three others. “It’s in my left shirt pocket. It’s a reminder.” He looked at the tall black man guarding him. “Please get it.”
The tall black man gave his gun to the woman, then unbuttoned Foxtrot’s pocket and pulled out a ziplock sandwich bag with blue and gold fabric in it. He walked over to the living room window, opened the bag, and shook open the scarf. A note card fell on the floor as he did so.
Foxtrot said, “Those are the email addresses. I copied them. Just in case.
“Tell me what it looks like,” said the professor.
“It’s pretty,” said the big black man. “Just like he said.” He looked closer. “And there’s a name on it. It says Her-mees.”
The woman said, “It’s pronounced ‘Air-mez’ you meat brick.”
“Describe it to me, please,” said the professor again.
The woman said, “Hold it up to the light then.” The meat brick did so. “It’s like Foxtrot said, professor. Iridescent blue. Sparkling gold filigree in fine detail. Brilliant white behind the filigree. It’s the most beautiful scarf I’ve ever seen in my life. Only it has three small holes near the center, surrounded by a large stain of dried blood.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say,” said the professor. He put his face down on his knees, and put his hands over his ears.
The tall black man looked at the scarf from different directions like he couldn’t quite focus on it. In a rumbly voice he asked, “You said it’s a reminder. F’what?”
Foxtrot said, “God’s sense of humor.”
For a few seconds Foxtrot looked questioningly at Professor LaBranche slowly rocking. Then appeared to answer his own question. He turned to the woman. “Now it’s your turn. Tell us how you got that amazing scar.”
“Not much to tell,” said the woman. “I was about ten years old and whinin’ that I wanted some food. My momma’s boyfriend slapped me to shut me up. But he was too stoned on meth to remember he was holdin’ a knife.”
“Your momma was out at the time?”
“Yeah, she was out ... cold ... on the floor. In a puddle of her own spit. Too much cheap wine on an empty stomach.” She answered without looking at the soldier. Her eyes never left the professor.
“Professor, I think you need some medication. Right now.”
When LaBranche raised his head briefly to nod, there were tear streaks down his face.
The woman took a small bottle from her pocket, unscrewed the dropper, squirted it a couple of times in the bottle, eyeballed the amount in the dropper, and said, “Okay, professor, open up. This is a half dropper. Swish it in your mouth as long as you can before swallowing.”
The professor sat up and silently did as he was told. Then rested his head back on his knees, with his hands still covering his ears, his breathing a little choppy, and rocked very slightly forward and back.
The woman, still sitting at the professor’s side, went on, “Maybe I better straighten out some things here. The professor, I’ve heard people talk, is one helluva physicist. I heard he did some cuttin’ edge research. But he’s also one helluva storyteller ... a fuckin’ Scheherazade ... with traumatic brain injury and one whoppin’ case of PTSD.
“So lemme set this straight, if jus’ for my pers’nal reputation. I ain’ here ’cause of my parole. I’m here ’cause of his.” She nodded at the professor. “The judge don’t like him wanderin’ around the neighborhood drunk and screamin’. I’m his nurse. This here slab o’ muscle ...” she said, indicating the big black man, “... is Bertram, an orderly from my hospital. He’s here to protect me in case the professor gets violent ... It’s rare, but it happens ... And to protect the professor from himself. And this here spic ...” indicating the Hispanic man, “... is Clyde, my boy toy. He a sous chef at Jardin des Tuileries downtown. He’s a fuckin’ fine chef, and you’re gonna love his gumbo. It’s got kick. And one day he gonna be the best goddamn chef in N’awlins. I’m paid to be here for a few hours every day. But he volunteehs his time for free twice a week to cook for the professor so he don’t starve.”
The professor remained curled up and rocking.
“And that IED story the professor told, well, some of it’s just a fuckin’ story ... I read his file. I don’t know about no lucky dicks. Maybe that part of it’s true. Though for some damn reason that ain’t in his file. But I do know for a fact there was only two other soldiers in his truck and none was hurt bad by that IED. Sounds like a damn miracle to me. I read that he was the only one that screamed. And, hell, it say the only blood was from his stupid goddamn nose bleed. His file says the concussion injured more of his brain than his sight, though. They don’t know what part. Because of that he gets the screams. I don’t know. At first he couldn’t stop. They had to drug him unconscious for a month. They induced a coma to let his brain heal a bit. Well, it’s been six goddamn years now and I declare he’s getting better, because he breaks bad only about once a month now. That’s a mercy! I’m hoping he won’t have to go to an asylum, God willin’. But it’s up to the good Lord. Or fuckin’ neurophysiology. Take yo’ pick.”
She reached out and tenderly stroked LaBranche’s head. His breathing became more regular.
“By the way, my name’s Clarisse.” She paused and looked toward the kitchen. “Hey Clyde. Now would be a good time for some gumbo, if it’s ready.”
Clyde, who had been standing in the kitchen motionless and wide-eyed through the stories, now shook himself and started gathering bowls.
Clarisse went on, “Well y’all, that is just so fuckin’ adorable. We all got stories. Everybody in the fuckin’ world has got a fuckin’ story. It’s just heartwarmin’. I just feel all squishy inside. I think I’ll go find a kitten and bring it home and just love on it.”
She stood up and turned to the soldiers with rage in her eyes. “I’ve got two questions: Who the hell are you?! And What. The. Hell. Do. You. Want?!”
The soldiers might have been happier if Clarisse wasn’t still holding her pistol. Not pointing it, but gripping it stiffly at her side, her knuckles white.
Foxtrot took a calming breath and replied softly, “Clarisse ... that’s a beautiful name. We are Israeli soldiers of the Sayeret Matkal. What you call Special Forces. Our names don’t matter. And I don’t know why we’re here. That is, I don’t know the big reason why. All I know is a little reason. It’s simple. It’s what my commanding officer told me. And it’s the same as what her commanding officer told her, and on up the chain of command. I don’t know how far up this little reason goes. Someone, somewhere, must know the big reason. But I don’t know who. I was simply told, and I quote, ‘The world is about to change. If you love Israel, you must keep four people safe.’ ”