The Christmas lights were switched on in the Taj Mahal. It felt like nighttime as he pulled the door shut behind him.
At the far end of the container, under the poster of the villa girl, was a raised wooden riser, giving the space a split-level effect. Brydon sat leaning against the rear wall, facing the doorway, elbows crooked over his knees, eyes on an infinite point someplace ahead of him. His gear and weapons sat leaning against the side wall near him.
He had put a CD on the tinny little player. Something Black recognized as disco. A breathy, sprite-voiced woman sang over bass and electric piano.
Black stepped forward, bringing a chair from the poker table. He set it just short of the edge of the riser so that when he sat, he and Brydon were speaking roughly face-to-face.
“Thank you,” he told Brydon.
Brydon’s eyes didn’t leave the point before him.
“I didn’t throw the grenade,” he mumbled.
“Yeah, but I owe you and Bosch for not saying anything. And Shannon.”
Brydon’s eyes showed surprise at hearing Shannon’s name.
“Yeah,” Black said. “I know.”
He looked at Brydon’s weapons.
“Merrick didn’t know about the firing pin and the slide, did he?” he asked. “That was just Caine.”
Brydon said nothing.
“Caine brought them to you at the O.P.”
Brydon just eyed Black.
“What did he offer you for them?” he asked Brydon. “What did he ask you to do?”
“Wasn’t like that,” Brydon murmured, looking at the riser.
“Okay,” Black replied.
He meant it. He believed Brydon.
“Anyway,” Black said. “I think those are from my weapons.”
Brydon screwed up his brow at Black as the song on the CD cycled over. A mash of rising keyboard tones that made Black think of someone stretching taffy. Another jumping disco tune, with the same airy woman.
“I have to ask you something,” Black said to Brydon.
“Okay.”
“It’s important, but it’s the last question I need to ask.”
“Okay.”
“What did you mean when you told Corelli that Xanadu is what comes before the end of the world?”
Brydon closed his eyes and shook his hanging head.
“You go there, it’ll just take you too, sir.”
A weight squeezed on Black’s chest and filled his throat. He felt his hand reach out involuntarily, then drop. He looked at the miserable soldier without words.
“What is it?” he finally whispered. “Why won’t you let anyone help you?”
Brydon spoke softly to the floor.
“None comin’ for me,” he said flatly.
Black shook his head, uncomprehending.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “No one’s getting left behind.”
It tasted like a slogan in his mouth. Brydon let out a heaving sigh. He dug in his pocket and brought out something small and white and rectangular. He cupped it in his hands.
The disco woman sang like a fairy giving a full-body massage.
“I wanna ask a question now, sir.”
“What?”
Brydon stared at the rectangle, cradling it.
“What were you gonna do with your life?” he said. “Before all this?”
It was the first time anyone had asked him that since his smartass friend, early in their training together.
“I was in seminary.”
“What’s that?”
“I was going to be a priest.”
Brydon let out a single hard laugh, without merriment. It was the closest Black had come to seeing him smile.
“Figures,” Brydon said, shaking his head.
He flicked his wrist and sent the white object spinning toward Black. It landed on the edge of the riser. Black retrieved it.
It was a military ID card with a picture of a soldier Black didn’t recognize. The name he did recognize.
JASON TRAYNOR
U.S. ARMY
Black turned it over in his hands uncomprehendingly. When he looked up, Brydon was looking at the floor again.
“It’s all fucking coming apart,” he said quietly.
Black shook his head, confused.
“How did you use this?” he asked. “How’d you go on leave?”
Brydon snorted.
“When was the last time somebody checked the picture against your face, sir?”
Now that he thought about it, no one had ever remotely checked his face against his ID card since the day he presented it as he drove through the main gate of Fort Benning to park his car and get on a plane to Afghanistan with his unit. Once you’re in theater, everyone just assumes you are who the name tape on your uniform says you are. Why the hell would someone fake his identity to come to this place?
He examined the picture on the card. The kid looked like the favorite son of a small town.
“I can’t be that guy, sir,” Brydon whispered.
“You’re not,” Black said. “You’re not Jason Traynor.”
“No, not that guy,” Brydon replied dismissively.
“Who?”
“The Pearl Harbor guy.”
“What?”
Black watched a tear fall from Brydon’s hidden face and strike the riser between his feet.
“Fuck Sergeant Caine!” the Wizard spat bitterly. “Fuck him for making me do it. Tell him I said, Fuck You, Sar’nt.”
A sob escaped him. He cupped his forehead in a palm and blew out a long breath.
“Who are you?” Black pleaded.
“Told you, sir,” Brydon sighed, sounding weary. “I’m a ghost.”
“Where’s your unit?”
Brydon looked up at him with glistening eyes. When he spoke his voice was clear.
“I am my unit.”
Black lunged, shouting Brydon’s name, but the pistol was too close and Brydon was too fast to it. Black recoiled away at the blast, falling backward off the riser and knocking over his chair.
The floor swayed beneath him as he crashed through the assembled lawn chairs, nearly sending the CD player and the fairy girl flying, arms out before him wildly to find the tilting doorway.
Now that you’re near
In Xanadu
Now that I’m here