Chapter 34: smooth air; Solitary; "Sleep well, Mr. Reese?" ; "I hope you're wrong."
Airspace over the Atlantic, January, 2015
Once the jet had taxied, it slipped effortlessly down the runway, pressing him into his seat. Then it was wheels-up and time to settle back for a long ride. If they had to travel that far, better they were making use of the night. He'd stay awake and read for a while, then catch some sleep overnight so he'd cut the jet-lag. There were two lay-overs for re-fueling; he'd stay on-board to keep the turnaround time short. The faster they got to Abuja, the sooner he'd be able to get to Zuma Rock.
Reese sat at Harold's desk in his flying office. He scrolled through photos and descriptions of the Rock, and a little of its history. This was one huge, impressive stone and Harold would need to narrow the search if they were going to find the Nigerian in time. To prepare, Reese jotted some notes to himself about certain landmarks on its surface, and some possible search zones he shouldn't miss.
By the sound in his voice, Reese sensed Harold was intrigued, and maybe even impressed with the Nigerian. He didn't think Harold had ever considered competition from a third party, someone or something beyond Samaritan. He guessed it must have taken some kind of IT genius to get a message directly to Harold like that.
What kind of person could this be? Who could've found the Machine, Finch, and Samaritan – without one of them suspecting his existence? And what was the Five Eyes connection? If the message was routed through a node that belonged to them, how was that possible? And Nigeria? Why there? It's true Nigeria was the wild, wild west of the cyber-crime world, like Ukraine or Russia.
But most of the cyber-crime coming from there was low-quality stuff an average computer user could spot and avoid. These foreign groups preyed on the elderly, or weak-minded users – people lured by the promise of too-good-to-be-true offers.
Reese leaned back in his chair. The scent of coffee brewing, and food warming wafted from the kitchen in the back. Not long after, a smartly-dressed woman walked forward from the rear of the jet, a tray of refreshments in her hands. She was slender, with close-cropped black hair and dark skin. Her smile was dazzling – perfect teeth, and when she spoke, a British accent.
"Good evening, Mr. Reese. My name is Hope. I'll be your flight attendant this evening. May I offer you a beverage?" He nodded and accepted a bottle of water, then asked for a coffee, too. She smiled another dazzling smile, like she'd been told to expect it, and handed him a paper menu with his dinner choices.
"I'll give you a minute," she said, and left to fetch his coffee.
Reese stayed there all through dinner at Harold's desk, browsing on his computer. Hope returned to check on him, but she seemed to notice he preferred his space and privacy. She made up the bed in the passenger bedroom and then came forward to clear the dishes.
"Is there anything else, Mr. Reese?" He smiled and said "no, I'll be fine now."
"There's coffee in the galley all night," she said, smiling back, and then she left.
For a little while, he could hear her in the galley kitchen, then a door slid closed at the back and all went quiet. He swiveled in his chair and reached behind him into one of the low cabinets. Inside, Harold stocked a generous supply of liquor, and Reese picked a whiskey. He pulled a heavy-bottomed glass from the cabinet and poured a drink to keep him company. Outside the large oval windows of the cabin he could see the wings gently flexing in the darkness. So quiet now, as if he were the only one left – circling the globe up here, alone. And if he'd looked down from the window, a few banks of clouds hung suspended far below, hiding endless ocean waves. Barely a whisper from the engines now – and smooth air to fly through.
An hour went by, and his drink was gone. Hard to stay awake. Reese stood and stretched his frame, then leaned down and splashed a little more into his glass from the bottle. On the far side of the desk, the leather couch under the windows looked too good to pass up. He lowered the cabin lights, sat down in the middle and kicked off his shoes. A soft blanket lay over one arm of the couch, and he rested his head there as he lowered himself down. That's a smell he'd always enjoyed, leather. It rose from the seat as his body warmed it. Reese stretched himself out long on the couch, with his head on the arm, and his glass tucked against him in his hand. He stared through the oval on the far side of the cabin, thoughts quiet now, sipping from his glass.
The couch was harder than the soft bed in the cabin. He didn't mind so much, except for the few spots still healing from the run-ins with Greer's people, and the Zheng before that. The break in his bone still ached sometimes, on the inner side of his right knee. It'd slowly improved, even though he hadn't taken the time to stop walking on it. Still pained him if he stretched out the knee – or if there was pressure on the break itself.
That familiar ache started when he stretched his legs on the couch. He shifted himself to ease the pull. And he drained the whiskey in his glass a little faster – to help numb the pain. By the end of another hour, in spite of pain like a toothache in his knee, he'd started to drift off...
He felt himself leaning against her, the two of them propped on pillows against her headboard. Soft light in her bedroom made the colors glow: oranges, browns and black made her room feel comfortable. Gelila reached an arm around to his chest, her long thin fingers smoothing a white cream onto his skin. She was careful not to press too hard on the bruising.
When she'd seen the marks tonight on his chest, after he'd tried to keep her from lifting his shirt, he thought he'd lost her. The look on her face – he was sure she was going to tell him to get out and never come back. It reminded him that no matter how bad things had ever been for him, it was always worse for anyone else in his life. The people who cared couldn't take it after a while. The not knowing – when he'd be gone, when he'd be back, where he was, and what had happened if he came back messed up. It was too hard to see it, and what it did to him. Too hard for anyone who really cared.
Most of those who did what he did for a living had learned the hard way – this kind of life killed relationships. Solitary was better in the long run, at least for everyone else. But a solitary life had its own issues, too. The emptiness; the sense of loss. And when it went on long enough, it got to everyone. The need, the longing for human contact. As hard as they tried, those who did what he did for a living knew it, too. How they dealt with it made the difference between a functioning agent or a self-destructive wreck. And some, like him, had had a turn at both.
So here he was, and there she was, dabbing the white cream on his skin while he leaned back against her, skin-to-skin. He could hear her breathing near his ear. And she would whisper to him every once in a while, "does that hurt, love?"
No, he would say, and she'd touch her cheek to his, knowing it did, and kiss him softly on his ear with her warm lips. He could feel the soft tapping of her heartbeat and the warmth of her skin on his back.
Reese thought of her in the Call Room that night, lying there against him. Her skin felt so warm in his hands. He felt he would float free if she wasn't there, holding him down. The weight of her body on his made him feel safe. Like he could sleep. In her arms that night, he had slept deeply, at last.
When she was through treating the bruises on his chest, she had him sit forward for a little while, while she smoothed the cream onto the marks on his back. The color of the long wide bruises had slowly turned to green, from the dark purple they'd been before. Healing cuts on his face from a spray of broken glass – nearly gone, too. But the long purple bruise that ran from the right knee, down the calf to his ankle, and then to the arch of his foot – this needed work.
The knee was the worst of the older ones, still swollen and deep purple. She'd placed a pillow under to lift it up. That knee begged to be bent, not straightened. Every time he moved it, she could see the pain in his eyes.
Reese could sense she was imagining what might have made them – the long ones. A wood baton. The Zheng had used batons to try and beat the truth from Shaw and him. They'd wanted to know where Finch was. So they'd used the wood batons on the two of them, and the long purple bruises were from those. The Zheng didn't get what they'd wanted that night. They'd just left them in that basement in Queens as a warning to the rest of the Team.
It was a few days later when he'd finally put it all together; this was the work of someone from his past, someone who knew him better than anyone else alive – Kara Stanton. As the one who'd trained him when he'd first arrived in the CIA, as his partner on more missions than he cared to remember, she knew everything about him. And she spoke Mandarin like the Zheng. She'd been the one to track him and send them.
Kara knew every side of him; she'd seen him do his best – and his worst. Every act of compassion. Every cruelty. She knew every secret he had. Over time, she'd stripped him bare of everything about himself. He hadn't seen it happening at first. And then when he did, it was too late. He should have been more careful. He thought she'd have his back. She was his partner, after all. But that meant nothing to her in the end. She just followed orders.
"Hey, you're a long way away. Come back to earth," Gelila whispered near his ear. He closed his eyes as she leaned back with him, landing them gently on the pillows behind her. He could feel her reaching to the side. She put the jar with the white cream in it on the table, and then she lifted a long green piece of a plant. It had a thick, soft, spiky shape. And she squeezed it from the tip back to the opening at the end. He watched her do it.
"This is aloe. It's good for burns. That cream is arnica. I use it for bruises all the time."
The fresh green plant in her hand produced a clear gel when she squeezed the fleshy part. Gelila reached around him, back to the center of one of the dark bruises on his chest. She let the gel drip off her fingertips to the black spot at the center of the bruise. She moved it around, lightly with a finger, until the burn was completely covered by the gel.
"Does that hurt?" she whispered.
"Stings a little," he told her, and she made a little sound near his ear. Then she reached to the table and took another piece of aloe. She stripped it of the gel inside, and then let it fall on the black center of another bruise, then another, and another, until she'd covered each one.
His knee and the bruises on his chest were the only ones that made him wince with her touch. She'd watched his eyes to see how much pressure he could bear there, and she was gentle with him, softly circling with her long thin fingers on the most painful parts, then slowly moving on. When she looked closely at his knee, and the ankle and the arch of his foot, she could see marks from the same weapon that had made the long, wide bruises on his ribs. She could imagine what had made them, and how the force of the blows had changed – harder with each strike from ankle to knee. She shuddered at the thought of a weapon wielded against him.
And on his chest, the dark purple bruises, nearly round, overlapping in a pattern over his heart. Center of mass strikes – someone had meant to take his life. Just one thing she knew could make marks like these. Gunshots into a vest, like the one he was wearing in her Call Room that night.
The wound left by a bullet hitting a vest looked just like these: a large dark bruise from the force of the bullet slamming into the vest. And then the black burn mark at the center, where fibers of the vest got so hot from stopping the bullet, that they burned a circle into the skin. Yes, Gelila had seen this before – but never so many on one person at one time.
So many questions. So many feelings should be there. And yet, no. She'd seen it in his eyes. He needed her to be strong, a little distant, too. It put him at ease to see her that way. She could take it. And when she did – when she gave no breath to her feelings – somehow that made it better for him. He could sleep. In her arms that night, he had slept, deeply, all night.
Reese was aware of someone there. He felt soft hands lifting his glass from his hand, heard soft footsteps and the sound of his glass on Harold's desk. And then hands sliding the blanket from under his head, and the cloth fluffed out over him. Were he anywhere else, he would have startled awake. But he felt so far away. So hard to lift himself awake.
She didn't want that. She didn't want him to wake. He felt her sit on the couch by his side. A feeling settled over him. This must be what peace felt like. He breathed deeply.
Her hand was on his chest.
"You chose well, John." He could feel her smiling. He felt her hand over his heart.
"What I see is two people who need each other." Feeling started to rise in his chest.
"You don't need to do all this alone."
A moment later he felt a soft touch on his lips, and her hand press over his heart. In a whisper, as she was going – "I'll never leave you, John."
The next thing he knew it was morning. Hope arrived with a hot cup of coffee.
"Sleep well, Mr. Reese?"
Zuma Rock, Nigeria
From his duffel bag, Reese pulled a pair of binoculars. He sat on a low folding stool off the ground, and sighted through binoculars at the Rock. From this vantage point, he could see part of the face, the chalky human face on the side of Zuma Rock. The surface was rough, gouged with long vertical streaks carved in the stone. There were openings here and there, crevices, maybe caves behind them. And the Rock sat next to the main highway out of Abuja. In the day, the road was packed with cars, but he was hoping traffic would slow at night. And fortunately, it wasn't much of a tourist spot. No amenities, no lot there for tourists to pull off the highway and park.
Reese moved his seat into the shade. It was hot today. January in Nigeria was hot - the dry season – 95 degrees or so, and little rainfall through the month. He lifted a liter bottle of water, and drank a long pull, then another. Sweat soaked through the center of his shirt, an old green tee from his Army fatigues. From a cargo pocket on the side of his thigh, he grabbed his knife. In the duffel bag at his feet, he had some thick sticks of meat - supplies he'd bought before heading out to the Rock. Reese peeled some of the white wrapper, and sliced off rounds of the dried meat, like sausage, from the stick. It was spicy and chewy, and with a little bread it'd make a filling meal. There was bread there, too, in a little sack in his bag for later. He took another swig of his water and looked around. It would be dusk soon, time when he could explore with less risk. He'd already picked some spots to start, but before that, he wanted to check in with Finch. Reese pulled a satellite phone from his gear, and put in his call to Harold.
"Mr. Reese. I trust you had an uneventful flight?"
"I'm here at Zuma Rock, Finch. Any good news for me?"
"Yes, just getting to that. I looked back at traffic from Nigeria or London during the roll-out of our computer game when we took down Samaritan. I was hoping the same individual might have participated, especially if he suspected what was about to happen. By cross-referencing, we've picked up a possible hit. Nigerian male, thirty-five years old, lived in London for college and grad school, then stayed to work in an undisclosed government job. He dropped out of sight after that."
"Uh-huh, so what's the connection?" Reese asked.
"When we trace him back to Nigeria, he doesn't exist. There is no one by his name born where he says he was born. All of his verifiable records begin when he arrived in London."
"False I-D," Reese said.
"Exactly. Someone wanted to create an identity for himself. New name, new credentials. He doesn't exist anywhere else with that name."
Reese looked up at the horizon toward the South. A sound had drawn his attention.
"Mr. Reese?"
"Hold on, Finch." He shaded his eyes from sun low in the sky, and listened. A thumping sound. Louder. Closer. Then he could tell it was a chopper, coming his way. Reese grabbed his duffel bag and pulled it back, deeper into the shadows. He grabbed his binoculars and sighted toward the sound. It was closing fast. Military, but the flag on the side wasn't Nigerian green and white. He didn't recognize it.
Reese pulled his phone from his pocket and held it up until the chopper came in closer. He snapped some pictures. Then he watched it fly to the front face of the Rock and hover. He looked through his binoculars, again, and from the helicopter, he could see a thin dark line with a blob on the end, dropping down from a winch arm.
In the failing light, he could see movement half-way down the Rock at a spot inside the circle of one of the eyes on Zuma's face. He could clearly see an opening in the rock there, and men shoving what looked like a large, heavy box to the edge of the opening. He saw them reach out with a metal pole, grab the winch line, and pull it in to them. Then they hooked the box to the line, and three men pushed the box off the edge. One of them steadied the box from swinging back to hit the Rock, using that metal pole. And a moment later, he waved up to the helicopter. It swung away from the Rock, with its cargo in tow.
"Mr. Reese? Is everything OK?" he heard from the sat-phone. Reese lifted it back up to speak with Finch.
"Finch, I just sent you some pictures. Military chopper just flew over me to the Rock. It lowered a winch to men in uniforms at the edge of a cave halfway up the Rock. I've got a fix on the location. They lifted a large box out of the opening. Can't tell what it is. I'm heading over there now. Maybe I can find the way in. Finch, this looks like some kind of military op to pack out his site. We may be too late to find the Nigerian."
"I'll get back to you later, Mr. Reese. I hope you're wrong."
