Julian’s eyes opened. He heard the phone buzzing, but it was too early for the alarm he’d set to be going off. He rolled to the side of the bed away from Ruthie and snatched it to turn it off. But as he did, he saw the number on the display. The area code was 202—Washington, DC. The phone buzzed again and he slid the arrow with his thumb and heard a voice like a tinny, distant radio voice. He pushed it under his pillow.
“Julian? Who’s that?” Ruthie said.
The tinny voice from the phone said something else, but he managed to click the OFF switch. “Go back to sleep, baby. It’s just my alarm.” Then he was up and moving. He rolled the clothes he’d left out into a bundle and hurried out of Ruthie’s bedroom and down the stairs.
He stopped in the living room and got dressed. The room was dark, and the world outside the windows was dark. The five-year-old white pickup truck he had bought after he returned his rental car sat in Ruthie’s driveway with a ghostly glow, waiting for him. As he dressed he noticed that against the glow the dents and marks showed up even more clearly. The street was empty and still, as though all the people had left town.
He sat down on the hassock in front of the easy chair to put on his socks and shoes. No matter what else was going on, he had told Joseph he would be at the farm by dawn to help bring in the broccoli. It was a big fall crop for the Carsons, and it was time to cut.
Julian made it out the front door before the phone vibrated again. He got into the truck and backed out into the street before he swept his thumb across the screen to answer.
“Who’s the girl?” It was Harper’s voice.
Julian said, “That’s got nothing to do with you.”
“Where are you, Julian? I get the feeling you’re in Jonesboro, Arkansas. You’re supposed to let us know where you are at all times.”
“Nobody said anything like that to me. In fact, nobody said anything to me. Everybody just left me in that building near the airport. And it’s been over two months since this phone has rung.”
Harper’s voice hardened. “It’s time to come in.”
“Come in where?”
“Fort Meade, Maryland. Drive in the Reece Road gate and tell them your name and that you’re expected at military intelligence. Anytime today will be okay.”
“I won’t be there. I have a previous commitment.”
“You want me to tell them that?”
“Yes,” Julian said. “I’m not a soldier and I’m not an agent. I’m an independent contractor.”
“All right. But I have a feeling I’ll be seeing you very soon,” Harper said.
“It won’t be today.”
“I’ll make your apologies for you, Julian,” Harper said. “But don’t lose your phone.” He hung up.
Julian drove out to the farm. When he turned onto the long gravel road to the farmhouse, he could tell that nobody else was up yet. Getting out of Ruthie’s house without letting the phone wake her had forced him to get out the door without breakfast or even brushing his teeth.
He parked his truck out of the way beyond the barn and walked to the house. He used the key that was up on the lintel to open the front door and then replaced the key. He turned on the kitchen light and began to make coffee and a large pot of oatmeal.
Coming home was not only to arrive in the house’s space. It was also to arrive in the house’s time, an unchanging moment around his eighth birthday. The thick china plates and cups all looked as they had when he was a small child, and the pans were heavy black iron and ageless.
When he had some oatmeal in a bowl and a pot of coffee made, his mother came in. “Good morning, Julian,” she said. She stepped up and kissed his cheek. “It’s so nice to have you around messing up my kitchen again.”
“It’s nice to be here.”
“You know, if you want to be with Ruthie, you could marry her and stay here with her. You wouldn’t have to drive all the way into town.”
“But she would. She has a job.”
His mother shrugged. “I’ll bet she’d think about saving on the rent if you offered her a ring.”
He laughed, and then began to eat his oatmeal while she packed lunches for the day in the fields. After another minute Leila came downstairs, kissed her mother, took a bowl and filled it with oatmeal, and sat with her brother. After a few seconds Leila’s big eyes moved to the side to hold him in her sight without moving her head. “Julian, you’re looking a little peaked. I hope you haven’t been staying awake too late and missing your sleep.” She asked her mother: “Doesn’t he look skinny and tired?”
Her mother said, “Mind your own business, Leila. You don’t hear him complaining.”
“Oh, he might be. We just can’t hear it because he’s too weak.”
“Thank you for your concern,” said Julian.
“Concern about what?” Noah and Joseph were coming in the doorway. They picked up bowls and went to the stove.
“About nothing,” their mother said. “Leila is just being Leila.”
“She does that a lot,” said Joseph, and sat down to eat.
“All day long, practically,” Noah said.
Julian finished the oatmeal and coffee and stood up to rinse his bowl. When he’d set the cup and bowl in the sink, he took his lunch box and said, “I’ll drive out there and get the crew started on the broccoli. Did I see the baskets already in the stake truck?”
Joseph said, “Both stake trucks. We stacked them up so they’d be ready to go. We’ll take the other truck and meet you out there.”
“Good.” Julian went out and took the keys off the hook on the wall by the door.
Julian drove out of the yard and down the farm road to the broccoli field. He could see in the predawn haze that the broccoli was ready. The buds were firm and tight, but none of them was already in flower. It was a good crop. There would be side shoots to harvest for weeks.
Julian’s arrival caught the attention of the work crew, and they got out of their cars, took baskets and big knives out of the back of the truck, and went to the broccoli field. Julian joined them to help set the pace.
From long practice he took a single hard slice through each stalk at an angle and put the head in his basket as he moved to the next stem. It was smooth, flawless work. When the basket was full he loaded it on the truck and took another.
His brothers and sister arrived in the second truck within minutes and went to work around him. About once every two hours his cell phone would vibrate in his pocket a few times. He would take it out and look at the screen and then put it away unanswered.
They worked until the truck was full, and then drove it back to the barn and unloaded the baskets, placing them in neat rows. Then they got more baskets and drove back out.
At lunch Leila kept coming up with more and more outrageous theories about who Noah’s secret girlfriend was, ending up unable to decide between Mayor Constance Wittles and Judge Joan Harker. Noah asked Joseph whether the new aftershave he’d been wearing had been inherited from the world’s oldest lady, who had died in New Orleans at the age of 114 a week ago, or was a concoction of his own. Joseph told Leila that the pastor was collecting votes to move the church across town so Leila couldn’t sing in the choir, because her voice made the children cry during services. The only one everyone left alone was Julian.
He barely noticed. He worked with an intense concentration and speed that the Carsons usually adopted only when a frost threatened a crop. He worked tirelessly and spoke little. Every time his phone buzzed, the others watched his expression as he looked at the number and put it away.
When the sun sank and lost its power they didn’t stop. The broccoli would be in better shape if it was harvested at a cool temperature, and they wanted to finish the patch. They worked until nightfall and then got into the two loaded trucks and drove back up the farm road. This time they locked the trucks up for the night with the produce still loaded. They would drive the trucks into town to the predawn market for sale.
Julian made a special effort to say good night to his brothers and sister, his mother and his father. Leila looked at him with a puzzled look on her face, then hugged him. “I’ll see you when I see you,” she said.
Julian climbed into his white pickup and drove into Jonesboro. When he pulled up in front of Ruthie’s house, it didn’t look right. Usually when he arrived the lights in the house were few and dim, but the curtains were open. Tonight the lights all seemed to be on, but the curtains were closed. He looked up the street. Parked just beyond the corner he could see the front end of a big black SUV.
He sat behind the wheel of his white pickup and looked at the house. The short period of unreality was over. The past two months had been as though time had gone backward to when he was seventeen. He had not liked that period of his life, but ten years later, circumstances had put him back in the same place with the same people, and life felt right this time. He had been living in the illusion that he had another chance, and that this time things were different. Ruthie didn’t say no and go off with someone else.
How could he have let himself believe that this could be permanent? People didn’t get to redo their lives so everything was right. That was a delusion. He got out of the pickup, walked to the front door, opened it, and stepped inside. There were four men in Ruthie’s living room waiting for him.
He considered punching someone, but there was Ruthie, sitting on her couch five feet from Harper. He considered running, but there was Ruthie, looking up from the couch, searching his face for an explanation. He couldn’t leave her here alone with them. Two of them were men he had never seen before. They both had buzz-cut hair and that look that soldiers had in suits, like dogs stuffed into clothes.
Julian closed the door behind him and stood still.
Waters said, “Hello, Julian. It’s good to see you. We stopped by to give you a lift to the briefing.” He looked at Ruthie appreciatively. “Mrs. Straughan graciously allowed us to wait here for you.”
“Miss Davis,” she said.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Harper. “Your divorce was so recent that I guess the records haven’t been updated.”
Julian looked at Ruthie. She was clearly waiting for him to let her know what was happening, and what he was going to do. He said, “I hadn’t planned on going anywhere tonight. Miss Davis and I haven’t had a chance to talk about it.”
Harper said, “Well, the time is running a bit shorter than we had anticipated. That’s really all I can say at this time. Miss Davis, I apologize again for the inconvenience and the lack of notice, but the country is at war.”
Julian said, “Let me get my bag.” He took Ruthie by the hand and led her to the bedroom.
Once they were inside with the door shut she said, “I thought you were out of the army, Julian. So how can they come and get you, like you were AWOL or something?”
“It’s hard to explain,” he said.
“It’s hard to explain?” she said. “That’s what you have to say to me after your friends bully their way into my house and sit right down like they own the place?”
“I told you the situation the first night I came here. I’m a civilian but I work for military intelligence. As soon as this is over, I’ll be back.”
She studied him. “I guess I’ve been stupid. You did explain the situation. You were here to have a short visit with your family and have a break from the secret, highly serious work you do.”
“It did start that way, but—”
“Good,” she said. “I hope I helped make your visit more fun. I’ve read how spies—I mean intelligence experts—like to have a new woman to sleep with whenever things get slow. But things seem to be getting busy again, so I’ll help you pack.”
She went to the closet and tossed his carry-on bag on the bed. Then she went to her dresser, opened the first wide drawer, and took out a neat stack of his underwear, and then a double handful of rolled socks, and set them on the bed. “Good thing I washed your clothes today.”
“Stop, Ruthie,” said Julian. “I don’t want to fight.”
“Why not?” she said. “You seem to be great in a fight. Men come from God knows where just to tell me there’s a war on so you have to go.”
“Because I love you,” he said. “We’re finally together like we should have been all along.”
She seemed to be paralyzed for a second, and then she stepped closer so he could put his arms around her. Then her arms came up and she hugged him harder and harder while she cried. “Come home. Then we’ll fight.”
In another minute they were out of the bedroom. He followed Harper and Waters to the front door. When they stepped out he stopped. He put the keys to his pickup truck on the table by the front door, and said, “Bye, Ruthie.”
She whispered, “Bye.”
He stepped out onto the porch and then down the steps after Harper and Waters.
A big black SUV pulled up at the curb. Harper opened the back hatch and Julian set his bag on top of the others already in the cargo space. The two men he didn’t know waited until he was seated inside the SUV and then closed the doors and stepped back. Julian saw them turn and walk toward another black vehicle that had appeared a hundred feet away.
The SUV made a turn at the end of the block and headed out toward the Jonesboro Municipal Airport. Twenty minutes later, when the SUV pulled up in front of the terminal, Harper said something to the driver while Waters took his carry-on bag and went inside to get the tickets.
Julian and Harper got their bags out and went into the terminal. Waters came toward them holding three boarding passes, but he put them in his coat pocket instead of giving each man his own. Before the passes disappeared, Julian saw that the top one said Baltimore-Washington International.
The three men went through security and then walked to the far end of the concourse where only a few airport workers ever passed. They sat for a minute or two before Waters began. “Well, thanks for modifying your busy social schedule to join us, Julian. I figured you would man up and come along without a lot of coaxing.”
Julian didn’t say anything. He was staring down the concourse. In his imagination he was running along the shiny, highly polished floor. Far down the length of it he could see the escalator that descended to the main entrance. Now and then a person would come upstairs from the security barrier. In his imagination, Julian was swinging an elbow into Waters’s face, feeling the snap of the small bones at the bridge of the nose. Then he was launching himself from the bolted-down row of seats like a runner at the starting blocks. He could be back at Ruthie’s in fifteen minutes.
“Mr. Harper was not as sanguine about the chances, which is why we had those two extra personnel. There were also two more in the car behind. Mr. Harper does not like to have to persuade people of their duty.” Waters paused. “Julian? You awake?”
Harper spoke. “He’s just feeling sorry for himself. The summer’s over, but the summer romance isn’t, I guess.”
“You think?” said Waters.
“You made the right decision, Julian,” said Harper. “It’s not even a decision at all.”
“No?” said Julian.
“Not yours, anyway. This mission will get done. We will succeed, because no mission ends until it’s a success.”
“Why do they want me?”
“Probably nothing we can’t do without you.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Mr. Bailey, Mr. Prentiss, and Mr. Ross told us to.”
Julian sat in silence.
Harper leaned closer. “When the mission is complete, you’ll come back here to Jonesboro and she’ll be waiting for you just the way you left her—freshly fucked.”
Waters chuckled, but Harper had already taken out his phone and begun reading texts and e-mails to signify that he was no longer interested in the conversation.
An hour later their flight was announced, and they boarded. The airport was sparsely populated after ten on a weeknight. Most of the people Julian could see were making their way to the same flight they were taking to BWI.
Waters had given Julian a ticket for the window seat. He assumed that was because it put both Waters and Harper between him and any opportunity to cause trouble, but Julian didn’t care. The moment had passed when he might have slipped away, and the impulse had passed with it. He was too angry to sleep this time, but he shut his eyes to keep from having to talk to Harper and Waters.
He opened them two hours later when the pressure in the cabin changed as the plane descended.
At Baltimore-Washington another pair of soldiers in civilian clothes waited at the bottom of the escalator. The two men identified themselves to Harper, escorted them to an SUV, and drove them to Fort Meade. Fort Meade was not only the home of three military intelligence units, but it was also the headquarters of the National Security Agency, so Julian was glad they were all driven in as a group. It made getting through the security at the gate quick. It was much easier to be one of five intelligence personnel arriving in a group than to be “a young black guy here at the gate, and he hasn’t got a government ID.”
The men parked the SUV in a lot beside a large barracks complex, and then escorted the others inside. Waters and Harper had apparently already been occupying rooms, and they disappeared into them. Then the men led Julian to his. He found that permanent party barracks had improved since his active duty years. They had been made less austere by the application of paint and the addition of better furnishings. One of the two soldiers gave him the key to his room and they both left.
At dawn there was a knock on the door. A soldier said, “Mr. Carson, your briefing is in one hour.”
“Where?”
“I’ll be back for you in fifty minutes.”
Julian showered, shaved, and then waited. The soldier reappeared on time, and walked with him across a road and a parking lot, past a number of other buildings like his until they reached a redbrick office building. The soldier led him to an unmarked door on the fourth floor and knocked once, then opened the door. Julian thanked him and went inside. “Good morning, Mr. Carson.”
Julian saw the gray-haired older man he had met at the hotel in Chicago and the hangar in San Francisco. “I’m sure you remember us. I’m Mr. Ross, this is Mr. Bailey, and this is Mr. Prentiss.”
“Yes,” Julian said. He repeated the names to himself. He had memorized them when Harper had said them, but wondered which was which. Now, hearing the man say them, he could tell the names were false. It was always like that. Each bit of information was a reward for great effort, one ring closer to the center of the circle. But there never seemed to be a ring where the information was true. It was only truer than the information in the last ring.
For now, the man Julian thought of as the highest in rank was Mr. Ross. He looked at Julian, his cheekbones resting on both fists. “I think it’s time we had a frank discussion, Mr. Carson.”
“Yes, sir.”
Julian noticed that in front of him on the table was a manila folder. He sensed that Mr. Ross had just closed it.
“You are a very impressive operator. You’ve worked in teams and alone. You’ve worked in South America, the Middle East, Africa, and at home. But now we’re in the middle of an operation that you seem reluctant to complete. Why is that?”
“After San Francisco nobody said anything to me about the operation. I waited for more than two months to hear from intelligence. Nobody called. I assumed that if the operation wasn’t over, I was no longer part of it.”
“You went home to Arkansas, and I understand you made good use of your time off. You spent part of the time being with your family and helping out on the farm, and part of the time reconnecting with old friends. That about right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“During your time away, we were following other avenues.”
Julian said, “You were watching to see if the old man would get in touch with me again.”
Mr. Ross’s mouth turned up and he showed a perfect row of small porcelain-white teeth as he turned to Mr. Bailey and Mr. Prentiss with a look of triumph. “You see that, Mr. Carson? That’s what I meant about you. We can train people for years and years, give them loads of time in the field. What we can’t do is make them smart.”
Julian felt the pride expand in his chest as he savored those words. He knew the words were calculated but he didn’t find the strength to resist. He knew that acknowledging his abilities was a confidence trick, but he longed for it not to be.
“Do you know why you figured out what we were doing? Because it was just what you would have done in our place.”
Julian was silent. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to admit that.
Mr. Ross said, “You look at guys like Harper and Waters. They each have at least ten years on you. Harper probably has fifteen. They’re competent, loyal, and responsible, but they’re pretty much all they’re going to be. You’re not. Whether you stay in military intelligence or go on to the CIA, you’ll run into both of them again over the years somewhere. They’ll still be perfectly okay, still doing the jobs they’re in now. But you’ll be something else—somebody else. You see?”
“I think so.”
“I know you do. I’ve got my eye on you.” He paused to impart significance to the next words. “And so do other people.”
Julian longed to know which other people. Who? But as always nothing clear and specific was to be said aloud. To ask would be to disappoint, and would prove that you weren’t ready after all.
Mr. Ross opened the manila file. Julian could see that his photograph was attached to the first page. Mr. Ross moved the page to the back of the file, and all Julian could see on the page below it was paragraph after paragraph of small unreadable print.
“You’re wondering why we’re here,” Mr. Ross said. “As you know, Fort Meade is not only military intelligence. The biggest part of it is the National Security Agency.”
He took the next sheet of paper out of the file and pointed at an address printed in a paragraph near the bottom. He held the paper out to Julian. “This is your contact at NSA. Our fugitive is still out there somewhere. This time you’re going to have a whole lot of help finding him.”