Reese chose the regular targets, the ones with the circular bull’s-eyes. The proprietor of the shooting range gave him a headset for ear protection and two boxes of ammunition for the 1911 .45.
The shooting range was outdoors, about five miles outside of the town of Piedmont. It was about an hour-and-a-half drive from St. Louis.
Reese wished he had not driven the Mercury to the shooting range. It was black, and at a distance people might think it was a law-enforcement vehicle. But people might also think he was a militia man, wanting to look tough. Reese had come to the range in dungarees and a flannel shirt and boots. Apart from the car, he blended in.
Reese set up his targets and began shooting.
He had to wait a couple of hours before he found a mark. Two men in their late thirties who came in separate vehicles. They had a lot of handguns but seemed to spend most of their time shooting heavy .44 Magnums, long-barreled hand cannons that sent bullets through the paper-man targets and burrowing into the sand mounds behind. They conversed between shots, sometimes switching their guns. Reese overheard them using the term law dogs and making curt remarks about the prospect of having “George Jefferson in the White House.” He also heard one of them talking about where to get a decent Austrian army tent.
The one who spoke about the tent was the one Reese followed.
Kolonel Tom Boback parked his Jeep in front of his small house. The house was in an isolated area in the Ozark hills. He carried his bag of guns into the house. On the wall of Kolonel Tom’s living room was a Confederate flag. He lived alone.
He’d had a girlfriend once. Her name was Missy and she was a militiawoman and, like him, a free-born White Christian American. He had taken her to northwest Arkansas, konsecrated Klan kountry, for a militia campout last year and she had taken up with Kaptain Jim Casey and sent him home alone. She had told him she was moving on. Left him for someone of lesser rank. After that, Kolonel Tom smashed out the headlights of her car. The new boyfriend did nothing about it. If he had tried, Kolonel Tom would have shot him in the head.
Kolonel Tom had been drawn to the militia movements when he was a teenager. School had been difficult for him. He was awkward-looking and not athletically inclined and he was often picked on. This experience did not make him any more sympathetic to the weak. The kids who tormented him were mostly white, yet their conduct only seemed to increase his hatred for Jews and blacks. He was expelled from high school after he pushed a girl down a flight of stairs and broke her arm. The girl had laughed at him about something he had forgotten. Life was a series of fits and starts after that. For six years, he managed to hold down a fairly well-paying union job at a supermarket. But then a Wal-Mart was built down the street and they closed the supermarket and Tom lost his job. Kolonel Tom attributed this misfortune to the continuing collapse of the U.S. economy as well as to the invasion and colonization of the country by illegal aliens.
Now he put a burrito in the microwave oven. A few minutes later, he ate it in front of the television set and washed it down with Mountain Dew. He watched the news of the senator from Illinois’s progress with mixed feelings. The possibility of a coon president disgusted him, to be sure, but it gave him comfort, too, because it was a sign that the end of the nation was at hand and that the ultimate victory would be with him and his brethren so long as they put their faith in their Lord and Savior.
Then he heard the lawn mower.
No. It wasn’t a lawn mower. It sounded like an ATV.
His ATV.
Grabbing a shotgun, Kolonel Tom went outside to investigate.
From his porch, he saw his ATV bump and roll across the front yard, no one riding it. Then he felt a gun being pressed against the side of his head.
“Drop the weapon,” a voice said.
Kolonel Tom turned swiftly. He saw a gun move in a quick arc. It made contact with his head and he went to the ground.
When Kolonel Tom regained consciousness, his vision was blurred. Then he realized that the intruder had taken his glasses. The Kolonel was very nearsighted. He was also tied up, his hands bound in front of him, looped through and around his belt. When he tugged his hands up, it lifted his belt and his pants hitched. He was on the couch in his living room.
A form before him, vague and nondistinct. A man.
The man said, “Where do you keep the rest of your weapons?”
After a moment, Kolonel Tom said, “Get out of my house, zog.”
“‘Zog’?” Reese said. “Oh. You think I’m a cop?”
“A fed. Yeah. Probably ATF.”
“Well, you’re wrong. You see this? It’s your shotgun. If you don’t tell me where the rest of your weapons are stored, I’m going to put the muzzle against your knee and pull the trigger. With the load you put in it, you’ll lose your leg.”
“Now I know you’re federal.”
Reese moved closer to him and pointed the shotgun at his knee. “You want to find out?”
“I keep the rest of my guns in the cellar,” Kolonel Tom said.
“I checked the cellar.”
“There’s another one in the barn.”
“Is it locked?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on, then.”
Reese got him to his feet and walked him out to the barn. Kolonel Tom unlocked the barn’s cellar door, which was almost flush with the ground. Then he flipped on a switch, illuminating the area beneath.
Reese said, “You first.”
Kolonel Tom began descending the steps.
Reese poked him in the back with the shotgun, saying, “You try to reach for a weapon, anything, I’ll blow a hole right through you.”
“I hear you,” Kolonel Tom said, his voice hoarse.
Reese took the room in and thought, Bingo. It was about what he’d expected, maybe even a little better.
On the wall was a black-and-white photograph of a World War II Tiger tank, some German soldiers standing around it. Another photo was of Field Marshal Rommel conferring with Hitler. Other assorted trinkets of the Third Reich lay about. There were several weapons on a cafeteria-length table. Rifles, shotguns, a couple of AK-47s, Chinese assault rifles, an ArmaLite with a leather strap, various handguns, an antitank rifle, two Uzi submachine guns, and a Mac-10.
Reese smiled and said, “Planning a war?”
“Yeah, actually,” Kolonel Tom said.
Reese couldn’t resist it. “Were you in the service?”
“No. Been in combat, though.”
“Where?”
“Training exercises. Northwest Arkansas.”
“I see.”
Reese looked at other rifles hanging on the wall. He said, “Have you got rounds for that Lee-Enfield?”
“Yeah. On the workbench. Over there.”
Reese was referring to the SMLE—short, magazine, Lee-Enfield. It had been the standard British infantry firearm in World War II and was probably the best all-around combat bolt-action rifle ever made. It could hold ten cartridges. The Enfield had a leather strap, probably vintage.
Reese took the rifle down and inspected it. It had scope mounts already drilled into it. Sporterized, though the stock was original. Reese shoved a cartridge in the breech, then rammed it home with the bolt action.
Kolonel Tom flinched.
Reese said, “Where’s the scope?”
“I traded it last year. For a television.”
“What kind of scope was it?”
“A Mauser.”
“You should have held on to it,” Reese said. “It was worth more than a television.” He put a box of rounds in his coat pocket. Then he took a wad of notes from his pants. He counted out a sum and put it on the table.
Reese said, “That’s a thousand dollars.”
“It’s worth more than that.”
“It’s what you’re getting,” Reese said. “I’m going to leave you down here. You’ll be able to get out, but I wouldn’t advise trying it too soon. Now listen to me: I’m giving you money for your rifle and I could have easily killed you. You come after me, I will kill you. Trust me, I’ve done it before.”
Kolonel Tom said, “You’re a thief. Worse than that, a federal thief. Paying me with taxpayers’ money.”
“Yeah, whatever. Now you remember what we talked about.”
Reese took the man’s eyeglasses from his coat pocket and set them on the table. “Here are your glasses.”
Then Reese went up the steps, keeping an eye on the nut job. When he got out, he closed the door behind him. Reese looked around the barn to see if there was an object he could place on top of the cellar door. His eyes came to rest on a bale of hay. But he decided it would be too heavy and the nut wouldn’t be able to get out at all and he would suffocate amid his Nazi treasures.
Reese backed out of the barn, training the Enfield on the door. If the man came out, he would kill him. He wouldn’t wait to see if he was armed. Shoot between the space on his glasses.
He put fifty yards between himself and the barn, then a hundred. Soon he was at his Mercury, which he had parked out of sight of the house. He got in it, started it, and left.
He felt better when he was a few miles down the road. Good enough that he could laugh about Kolonel Tom. He’d known guys like that in boot camp. Hate-filled Gomer Pyles who couldn’t adjust to civilian life but needed to identify with something. Some of the recruits in boot camp were already men, their personalities already formed. Some of them were borderline retarded. And then there were a few assorted mental cases, some of whom were salvageable. The military might have been able to save Kolonel Tom, Reese thought. He had known a handful of hard-core racists who, through military training, overcame their prejudices for the sake of becoming good soldiers, who learned to think not so much in terms of black and white but more in terms of military and civilian, enemy and friend. The military was one of the few successful government social programs in that respect.
Reese had been sent to the army by a judge. Once there, he adjusted and he accepted. He made a decision not to look back. A year after finishing boot camp, he volunteered for the army Rangers. He completed the training and attended all the schools, including SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape). Most of the SERE training was done in the mountains of northern Georgia, near Fort Benning. During one of the training exercises, he crossed paths with a particularly vicious marine, who had been assigned the role of enemy pursuer. Reese at that time was a mere corporal, training with two other noncommissioned officers of higher rank and a navy ensign. The ensign fell apart early and Reese took de facto command. The ensign was ultimately caught and beaten by the overly zealous marine. The next day, Reese told the others to move on. He hung back, found a tree that he liked, climbed up it, and waited. Eventually, the marine came along and Reese fell on him.
The marine fought back, treating it like regular combat, and got his arm broken for his trouble. Reese seized his weapon and took his pursuer captive. Reese was later promoted to top sergeant.
In 1983, he parachuted into Grenada with other army Rangers. It was a short-lived military action with few casualties. But Reese distinguished himself in combat. He was approached by the CIA a month later. He was interviewed and tested. They found he had an affinity for learning languages. That he was proficient with small arms, particularly grenades and submachine guns. That he was quiet and modest in appearance. That he was a natural soldier. That he was a loner, with no close friends or long-term girlfriends. That he was intelligent and a natural problem solver. That he was not psychotic but still had a rational, cold-eyed view of human nature. Eventually, they asked him if he would be interested in becoming part of what they called the “intelligence community.”
As part of his suitability check, he was interviewed by a series of psychologists to see if he was mentally stable. During one of the interviews, the subject of how he joined the army arose. Reese told the story without emotion.
The psychologist said, “Before the fight with the other boy, had you had some sort of training in self-defense? Martial arts, anything like that?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know what to do?”
“I just knew.”
“No one taught you?”
Reese said, “I don’t think you teach someone to do that.”
“Do you think you’re a violent man?”
“No.”
“Do you feel anger at your father?”
“I don’t know my father.”
He was recruited and trained. The next ten years saw him in El Salvador, Angola, London, Beirut, Beijing, and Berlin. In time, he spoke French, German, Spanish, and Arabic with a natural ease. He was less adept with Chinese and Japanese, but knew enough to get by. Working with the French intelligence agency, he was instrumental in tracking down the planner of two airline hijackings. Thereafter, the planner was shot and killed outside his hideout in the Lebanese mountains. The planner’s associates believed the killing was done with a rifle and the shooter was at least eight hundred yards away.
At this time, Reese was what the intelligence community called a “blue badger”—that is, someone working directly for the CIA.
It was sometime after the hijack planner was killed that Reese informed his superiors he was more interested in gathering intelligence than he was in being an assassin. The CIA chiefs did not interpret this as a sign of weakness, but, rather, as a sign that Reese wanted to be in management, as opposed to labor. They acceded to his wishes and he became active in E&E (escape and evasion) work. During the last few years of the Cold War, Reese was instrumental in bringing burned-out, or “blown,” agents out of the Soviet Union or China. Like David Chang, most of the agents understood that they owed their lives to Reese and his team. Some were grateful to him, others not so much.
Reese’s last E&E job had been in East Germany. He was trying to sneak a scientist across the border when they were ambushed by Stasi agents. There was a fire fight. Reese and his people managed to escape, but not before Reese took a bullet in his back.
The surgery was performed in Frankfurt and he was evacuated to a hospital in London for recuperation. Doctors told him that the bullet had narrowly missed his spine and he was lucky that he would be walking again.
It was in the hospital in London that he met and fell in love with a nurse.
Her name was Sara Jennings. She was fair-skinned and brown-haired and she had a funny-looking, beautiful mouth. She was only a few years younger than Reese (he was in his early thirties then), but she talked to him as if he were an older man, her tone patronizing and warm. “How’s our Mr. Reese this morning?”
She seemed to sense that he was depressed by what could be a long, painful recovery. He would walk again, but not without enduring strenuous physical therapy. Sara Jennings also sensed that for all his machismo, he was perhaps lonely and vulnerable.
Reese flirted with her, but soon he saw that she would be no quick, easy seduction. During his second week, she came into his hospital room and caught him watching a British ballroom dance show on television. He was captivated by it.
“Are you enjoying this?”
“I am,” Reese said. “We have nothing like this in the States. They do this every week?”
“Yes,” she said. “Have you not been in England before?”
“I live here on and off,” he said. “But I’ve never had time to watch your television shows.”
“Would you prefer Dynasty?”
He was struck by this. This cute English girl referencing American pop culture in her English voice. Teasing him. Taking the piss, as the British say.
“No. I like this better.”
Eventually, she took to visiting him in his room before she went home. Sometimes she would sit by his bed with her coat over her uniform, signaling she wouldn’t be staying long, guarding herself. They learned small things about each other. She was from Islington and her father had been a soldier who had helped evacuate Dunkirk in a fishing boat when the Germans were coming over the hill. Hehad returned to France on D-day. She asked Reese if he was a soldier, too.
No, he told her. He was a businessman.
She smiled at him then and he knew that she knew he was lying.
She said, “You were shot.”
Reese shrugged and changed the subject.
A few days later, she said, “You are a soldier, aren’t you?”
“Sort of,” Reese said.
“Have you got a wife, children?”
“No.”
“What, then? Just short-term affairs, a sad steady series of trollops?”
Yes, there had been women. Some of them prostitutes. In Berlin and Hamburg and Hong Kong. He was not ashamed of any of it. Still, he did not discuss this with her. Before he had met her, he had presumed that he preferred the short term. He also presumed that she would tease him again about his bachelorhood.
But what she did was look at him plainly and say, “There’s a void in you, isn’t there? A sadness.”
Reese smiled at her. “I think you’re imagining things,” he said.
“No.”
“And what about you?”
The nurse said, “That’s none of your business.”
Within a couple of weeks, he became accustomed to tea at four o’clock. She would sit with him while he drank his tea and ate the buttered toast she brought him. She would chat with him about seemingly mundane subjects, which he enjoyed very much. He had never known pleasant domesticity.
He would eventually say to her, “I think the English are the happiest people I know.”
“You don’t know many English,” she said.
“I’ve worked with some.”
“Made any friends?”
He didn’t answer her.
And she said, “We’re very different. You Americans love success. We wallow in failures. We love our flops.”
“Like Eddie Eagle?”
“Exactly,” she said. “You’re always looking for something better, something more. Have you worked with British soldiers?”
A moment passed. She’s smart, Reese thought. He said, “Yes.”
“Have you ever heard a British enlisted man apologize for his rank?”
Very smart.
“No,” Reese said.
“Do you miss America?”
“…I don’t know. Sometimes, I guess. What are we talking about here?”
“We’re having tea, that’s all.”
An agent from the Tokyo station had once told Reese that the perfect setup was to have a Japanese wife, an American salary, an English garden, and a Chinese cook. The worst combination: Japanese garden, Chinese salary, English cook, American wife. Something like that. He had not resided in the United States for any length of time after being recruited by the Agency. Accordingly, the notion of marrying an American woman had not really been an issue. Indeed, he had never given serious thought to marriage at all.
Until he met Sara Jennings. Like Miles Copeland, another American CIA operative, he was falling in love with an Englishwoman. And, in the process, he was becoming an Anglophile. Teatime, soccer, television shows about ballroom dancing, and so forth. He was becoming attached to these things, attached to this culture.
He was an American and he did not suffer from any identity issues. Circumstances had forced him to become a soldier. In time, he came to realize that he was good at soldiering and relieved to be out of what would have been a dead-end life in Texas. No one had forced him to join the Agency. He had been recruited and he saw it as an opportunity to do more interesting work. He still believed he was working for his country.
An attachment to an Englishwoman would complicate his life as well as his career. Perhaps even complicate his identity.
Shortly before his release from the hospital, he made a decision. He would ask the woman to go on a weekend trip with him. If she refused, that would be the end of it. If she agreed, he would take her away for a couple of days and get her out of his system.
He asked and she agreed.
Reese rented a car and together they drove to the English West Country. They stayed in a bed-and-breakfast that did not have an elevator. Climbing the stairs, Reese realized he was still weakened by his injuries and had to stop. Sara took the luggage from his hand and assisted him the rest of the way.
They had dinner at the inn and then got drunk at the local pub. Reese had never had so much fun in a bar before. He joked with Sara and talked with the locals. He had intended to maul her once he got to the room, but once there, he didn’t have the strength to try. He fell on the bed with his clothes still on. He remembered seeing her come out of the bathroom in a robe. She climbed in with him and then he was asleep.
The next morning, they made love. Tentatively at first, but then enthusiastically. After, she said, “Better?” And he laughed.
It was at breakfast that she told him she knew what he was up to.
There weren’t many other people in the dining room. It was an old-fashioned place, with small tables and black-and-white pictures on the wall of Brits walking amid rubble caused by German planes, the British people unfazed.
There was contemporary music on the radio, coming from the kitchen. Tears for Fears singing “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”
Reese sat with the woman, comfortable being quiet with her.
Sara was looking at her menu when she said, “So when were you planning to do it?”
“Do what?” Reese said.
“Give me the piss-off.”
“Excuse me?”
“The brush, as you Americans say. When are you going to say good-bye?” Her soft brown eyes lifted from the menu and rested on him.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I know.”
Reese said, “You don’t know anything.”
“I know more than you think,” she said. “That man who came to see you the other day, he’s no businessman.”
“He’s a friend.”
“He’s with MI6. If you know him, it’s because you work with him. You’re a spy, Mr. Reese.”
“I was a soldier. Now I’m in business.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re onto that sort of thing at the hospital. We’ve been vetted, sworn to secrecy, everything.”
For a while, Reese said nothing. Then he looked at her with a certain resignation. He said, “Have I lied to you?”
She gave him a minx look. “Small lies,” she said. Then her expression softened and she looked sad. “It’s okay, though. I’m not sorry, you know.”
“Not sorry about what?”
“That I met you. I’m glad, in fact. It was something, wasn’t it?”
Reese stared at her for a moment, the word was suddenly very painful to him. “What is this?” he said. “A preemptive strike?”
“Sorry?”
“Are you ending this?”
“It’s what you want.”
“Who says?”
“It what you’ve been thinking since we left London. I’m not a bloody fool, you know.”
“Okay,” he said, “maybe it is. But that doesn’t mean I can’t change my mind.”
“And what?” she said. “Drop by for a quick shag every time you’re in London. Sorry, I don’t fancy that.”
“That’s not what I had in mind,” Reese said.
“What, then?”
Reese thought about it. The biggest decisions he’d ever made, he’d made quickly and without much thought. He looked at a British family at a nearby table: the father pasty-looking and wearing thick glasses, helping his son with his food, the mother looking at a tourist’s map, Tears for Fears drifting out of the kitchen. He knew then what he wanted, and knowing gave him a comfort and faith he’d never had before.
“Well,” Reese said, “I’d have to seek a transfer to the London station. And do administrative work. I don’t think that should be a problem, particularly since I’ve been injured. It might take a few weeks to get it resolved. Then we could get married.”
She did not answer for a moment. Then she said, “You love me, then?”
“You know I do.”
Sara said, “Well then, kiss me, you stupid bastard.”
They kissed. When they parted, he saw tears in her eyes and he wiped them away.
“Don’t cry, Sara. I’m going to make you happy.”
“You’d better.”
They married a month later.
The Agency was not willing to take Reese completely out of the field. He was too valuable and few agents had his extensive knowledge of the Middle East. It was eventually decided that he could reside in London and report to the London station chief. However, he was strongly encouraged to assist the Beirut station chief as well.
After a year of that, Reese started to consider retiring from the CIA. At that time, he had been married for a year. The marriage was a happy one, happier than he’d thought it would be. When he thought of what he had said to her—“I’m going to make you happy”—he laughed at himself. It was she who had made him happy, had brought him to life. He had gotten the best of the bargain, and she knew it all along. Now they wanted to start a family. Reese discussed it with his station chief. A week later, he was flown to Washington to discuss it with an assistant deputy director.
The assistant deputy director’s name was Burl Woods. He was old-school CIA, a cowboy. It was Woods who had recruited Reese to the CIA and had overseen his career since.
Burl Woods asked Reese to become a “green badger”—a contract employee for the CIA. He was told he could make a lot of money.
“Doing what?” Reese asked.
“Selling arms,” Woods said. “We would finance you. You’d be in business. It would give you cover, you’d make some money, and we’d get some information.”
“I don’t know.”
“John,” Woods said, “come on. What are you going to do? Come back to the States, sell real estate?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe my ass. You haven’t lived here in over ten years. What were you when you went in the army, seventeen?”
“Eighteen.”
“What, are you going to go back to Texas? That’s not who you are anymore. Are you going to tell me you can go back?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re not going to like civilian life here. You’ve been spoiled. I know your wife’s not going to like it.”
“Don’t talk about my wife.”
“Okay. But am I right in saying you’d rather stay in London?”
“You might be right.”
“Then this is ideal. You’d be working with us, not for us. You’ll make some money and you’ll be helping your country.”
“Well, this is awfully nice of you, Burl,” Reese said. “But tell me. What have I done to deserve such generosity?”
“You’re the best man for this job. You know intelligence. You know Europe. You’re good with Arabs. You get along with people. You haven’t become paranoid or otherwise fucked up by the work. You can run a business.”
“Like Air America, huh?”
“Ah, that was a long time ago. Look, you know how this trade works. We need ‘independent’ businesses for cover and we need people we can trust to run them.”
“You trust me?”
“Sure. I recruited you, didn’t I? I’m no fuckup.”
Reese smiled and Burl Woods smiled back at him.
Burl Woods said, “Just think about it, will you?”
That was how Reese became an arms dealer.
Over the next few years, Reese dealt in weapons and information. During that time, virtually all his contacts with the CIA were made through Burl Woods. Reese provided details and photographs of terrorist activity in Amman, Khartoum, Baghdad, Syria, Qatar, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Tehran. Those doing business with him knew he was an American, but they believed that he was a man without country or conscience. To them, he was an affable rogue. A charming mercenary, unburdened by shame. Most of them were aware that he had been a soldier who, they believed, at some point decided to quit being a chump. He seemed to like nice things: cars, homes, girls, boats, and liquor. Sometimes he was known to provide these things, if the order was large enough. He made a lot of money and at one time was rumored to own shares in the top brothel in Hamburg, Germany.
Through his contacts with both the people seeking arms and his old friends in the European intelligence agencies, Reese learned that Europe was becoming a breeding ground for terrorists. He documented this in his written reports to Woods. In one of his reports, he warned that more terrorists were being bred in Hamburg and Barcelona than in Iran or Iraq. He wondered, though, if his reports were being taken seriously. At times, he even missed the relative simplicity of the Cold War.
Meanwhile, he and Sara were having trouble making a baby. Though he was often away from London, their sex life was relatively active and healthy. He made efforts to be home when she was ovulating. But nothing had happened. It upset her. Reese had told her not to worry about it. The doctors had examined them both and found nothing wrong. It would happen in time, Reese told her.
Once in awhile, they still socialized with people in the London intelligence community. It was at a dinner party that Reese found himself in a pissing contest with A. Lloyd Gelmers. Gelmers was still doing intelligence work then, though not very well, by most accounts. It was known that the chief of London station wanted to get rid of him. Gelmers had by then made friends with people in the Clinton administration.
After dinner, Gelmers was flirting with the wife of an attaché and he called out to Reese in an effort to embarrass him.
“Still doing consultation, John?”
Reese said, “Yeah.”
Gelmers gave his female friend a smirk and said, “John used to be one of us.”
The woman said, “A spy?”
“I was in the army,” Reese said.
“Were,” Gelmers said. “Now you’re living in a town house in London with a pretty British wife. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
Reese shrugged.
Gelmers said, “So, John. What do you think about this situation in Yugoslavia?”
“I think it’s a mess.”
“What should we do?”
“Stay out of it.”
“Stay out of it? Shall we just let the Serbs massacre at will?”
Reese was not surprised at Gelmers’s hawkishness. The Clinton administration was drumming up support for intervention in the Balkans. Gelmers, who didn’t believe in much of anything, wanted a post in the Clinton administration. As usual, he blew with the wind.
Reese said, “There are massacres everywhere, every day.”
“You defend Miloševicć? You defend fascism?”
“Miloševicć is a Communist, not a fascist. I know your people would rather forget that. Far more people were killed in Rwanda than in Bosnia. About eight hundred thousand more. We didn’t get involved then.”
“Let me understand you. Are you saying the Clintons are socialists as well as racists?”
“I’m saying it’s more convenient for Clinton to call Miloševicć a fascist than a small-time Communist thug. Which is what he is.”
“The Serbs are killing civilians.”
“We intervene, we’ll be killing civilians.”
Gelmers smiled at the girl. He said to Reese, “I had no idea you were such a fan of Serbia.”
“I’m not. But I’m no fan of the Albanians or the KLA, either. Their leaders are gangsters, too. The Balkans have a long history of slaughtering each other. It’s not something we’re going to fix. And we shouldn’t try.”
“You’re a cold man. And a fucking hypocrite.”
“All that and more,” Reese said. “But not ambitious.”
Gelmers glared at Reese for a long time. Reese smiled back at him. Then he walked off to join his wife.
A week after that conversation, Reese sold weapons to a group of Syrians. It was no different from what he had done before. Even so, he advised Burl Woods of his mission before he left London. Woods wished him luck and said he would speak with him when he returned.
A few days after that, Reese was in Belgium for a meeting. He was arrested at the train station. Hours later, he was on a C-140, heading for Washington D.C. An agent on the plane informed him that Burl Woods had died in an auto accident two days earlier.
Reese immediately thought of A. Lloyd Gelmers and how expensive vengeance can be. He thought the worst. You should have walked away from him, Reese thought. How dangerous cowards can be.
Burl was dead. Who would take his side?
For perhaps the first time in his life, Reese felt a rising panic. He said to the agent, “I need to call my wife.”
“Fuck you, traitor,” the agent said. “You’re going to prison.”