THE BAD KIND OF TROUBLE

I'd had to have it cleared by the High Guardian. Commander Calhoun had had to sign off on it, as had Commander Putnam.

After Mrs. Lawrence's funeral, it was a good time to put the request into the security bureaucracy. Too much was going on, so my hope was that the request would slip through under a pile of other more important stuff. I was also risking that it wouldn't be me ultimately assigned, that they would honour the request, but assign another Guardian to do the interviews. Couldn't be helped.

I also had to convince everyone that the Putnam household - namely, the marthas - were any of my business. I was probably bending their household Guardian's nose out of shape, but that could not be helped either. Speaking of, he probably thought I was further rubbing his nose in it for allowing that crazy-Handmaid's beating right there in the living room, a beating at the hand of one of the Founder Aunts no less. That one was hung on the Putnam Guardian, the poor schmuck.

Me, I'd been the one to bring the Toronto-video of the Chicago-demonstration to Commanders Putnam and Waterford, right there in Putnam's study. The Lawrence handmaid had verified that the man with the baby in the video was her husband, and that the infant he was holding was the famous 'baby-Nichole'.

Of all the hoopla that that night had spun for security, it seemed that no one doubted my reason for doing follow-up interviews with the Putnam household staff.

There being only one that I was truly interested in.

She being brought in, then the door being closed behind her - she just stood looking at me, as if I weren't real. This was the woman I had always admired. She never complained, never played the victim, was never pitiful. It was no surprise that she had survived - indeed, being in the Putnam house, she looked like she was thriving.

She said, "It's really you." She then asked, "Can I approach?" Of course she could. I put my weapon onto the table and unbuttoned my tunic. She slowly came forward and slipped her arms around me as we embraced. The embrace was forever.

I said through tears, "I thought you were dead." Weeping was a bad thing for a Guardian to do. "I'm sorry, I am so sorry," I said though the waterworks. "I tried, I really did."

I pushed her half-an-arm's-length away and stared into her eyes. It really was her.

I said, "Do you know where the baby is?"

At that, it was her turn for tears.

"This is a fucked up world," she said. She said that she had taken my advice, to fade into the background. To listen and collect info. Every once in a while she would ask someone directly, but as the months and years went by, she said, "I didn't know how to describe her any more. Me, her mother," she said though her own sobs. "I probably wouldn't recognize her!"

My head was not where it should have been. If anyone had opened the door, I feared that both of us would be finished. Look who was the pitiful one now!?

So I smartened up. I roughly pushed her away, to hear her exclaim, "Hey!?"

"Honey," I said forcefully, picking up my weapon, "we have to be sharp about this. It's going to be a long game, a very long game to get her back." I said that, not having a clue how. And me, I had access to the tools to give it a shot, at least.

When I told her that - that I had access that she did not - she cried a tear and smiled, said, "Don't be so sure." She looked up at me, then said, "The marthas. Something is happening. You're at the Calhoun's? Make sure you watch the baby. Me, I'm sticking to the Putnam's Angela like glue."

She would not tell me more, except to say, "don't underestimate marthas."

Then a second disaster hit Gilead. A resistance-led, major child-trafficking crime, which the rest of the world called, 'Angel's Flight'.

Gilead had done some necessary, gruesome things to combat infertility. But 'Angel's Flight' showed how Gilead really was set apart from the infidel.

It also called me away from finding my love. Took me farther from finding our child.

NORTH BY NORTHWEST

Out there, we called him Colonel Blaine. Back in Boston, he was Commander Blaine. 'Commander' as in 'Commander of the Faithful', not in the military sense. In the Chancery, 'we run the place' sense.

In his first tour, I'd been with then-sergeant Blaine when he'd called in the strike against his own position, preventing Gilead forces from being overrun. Sending the Americans into a retreat. He'd done that as a grunt - that had begun his rise through the ranks of Gilead's God-ordained society.

Why had I now been recalled? Remember how a sergeant's only job was to call his commander a 'horse's ass', but then take a bullet for him? Blaine's former grunt had managed both. One phone-call back to the New Gilead Chancery, and I was on a troop carrier headed north-by-northwest. ('North-by-northwest'? Don't worry, I never understood it either.) I was to replace Blaine's dead sergeant-major, my first duty was to quickly establish my bona fides with the men. Then privately criticize every decision Blaine made, then get in line and make sure even his mistakes were implemented.

The rhythmic 'clickity-clack' of travel meant downtime and daydreaming. As for daydreaming, I had better get my wife and kid out of my system before my boots hit the ground in Chicago.

On parting 'I love you', was what she had mouthed to me. She had also said she was going to 'watch Angela,' who was the Putnam's child. She had implored me to keep a close eye out for the Cahoun's convalescing baby. At the Putnam's, as I left, she had mouthed the same, 'I love you'. At the time, though, I'd not known why children needed watching.

And a few days later, I discovered why. Eighty-six children trafficked from Gilead by traitorous and evil marthas. All that had broken the morning I'd boarded the troop carrier for Chicago.

Catching up to Colonel Blaine in Chicago, he and his unit were just returning from a skirmish with the Nighthawks, a terrorist group which had been around during my last tour. In the brigade bunker, I heard my name called out from the communication's shack. There was a call from Boston. The call was from a buddy of mine at the Calhoun house, "Say, dude, can you vouch for that Putnam martha?" I asked if the Putnam child had been trafficked, he confirmed that she had not. I added, "how's the martha doing? She's not arrested or anything is she?"

My buddy said, "yes, all marthas are. She'll get 'the treatment', but Putnam wants her back at his place. But before we return her, she obviously knew something. We have to know how she knew what she knew." I told him where to find 'the file' I'd left about my interviews with her. They would clear her.

What was unsaid was me kicking myself, I should have been back in Boston. Chicago, Blaine or no Blaine, was a clown-car on fire circling inside a dumpster. I'd just found my wife, she was in harm's way back east, and here we were putting on PR wars for Commanders of the Faithful.

It was not clear what a lowly grunt like me could do from a thousand miles away. I vowed that if I could, I would go get her, and between the two of us we'd look for our baby - who was 5 years old by now.

Leaving the communications tent, I strode over to Colonel Blaine's brigade office, where I was to be the new command sergeant-major. It would be my job to tell him he was being a horse's ass, and then take a bullet for him.

I just wasn't prepared for there to be three Marthas in his tent. When I came in he must have seen to look on my face. He said, "O good, you're here. Let me introduce you to some people we need on our side….."

NINETEEN DAYS

I'd missed the shit-show in Boston. Yet since I was tied to the Colonel's hip, I'd accompanied him back to Boston on a Gilead jet - a better ride than the train.

In Chicago, I'd ran into a very different Nick Blaine. No, he had not been 'spoiled' by his rank, he remained especially unspoiled by how quickly he'd risen.

Don't get me wrong, he commanded and expected respect. As his sergeant, I had been brought into some rather… let's just say, 'unorthodox' methods he was employing. 'Unorthodox' and questionable company he'd been keeping.

Strangely, it was the Iridium© satellite phone that he carried that gave it away. Iridium© was American brand. His was not standard issue. All the private conclaves that he'd had with unshackled Marthas had given me pause. What were marthas doing out this far? It was the middle-of-the-night tête-à-tête's with known Nighthawk leaders - where Blaine had ordered me and the security detail to wait outside the room.

Nineteen days after getting to Chicago, there we were, back in Boston. It felt normal back in Boston, more orderly. Once again, me, the chief NCO of his command, I was relegated to waiting outside the prison. While he went inside to hobnob with the proven heretic, Commander Joseph Lawrence - in Lawrence's prison, soon to be his gallows.

Remember how I'd said that part of my job as his sergeant-major was to inform him when he was putting a foot wrong? I stopped doing that, because it was all wrong, all of it.

Instead of a salvaging, it was after I'd been ordered to organize Commander Lawrence's secure transport from the prison first to his home, then to the Chancery - that I knew it was all wrong. After, I made a point to schedule a time to speak with the Colonel. Privately. I'd not yet said anything to him, but seeing him complicit in Lawrence's freedom - something had to give.

BOOTLEG MAINE COTTAGE ALE

I'd arrived at Blaine's after that long day helping Commander Lawrence put his house back together. His house was 'fresh' from being roughly searched because of the child-trafficking. A renovation that I, myself, had to order some of the grunts under me to carry through on. They'd not liked it. I'd never seen it before, but hearing the gripes of the boys, I understood how mutinies got fomented.

Colonel Blaine opened his door, and I lifted the six-pack of the Maine Cottage Ale.

Blaine said, "Isn't that stuff illegal?" I told him that if he did not write me up, I wouldn't write him up. Although if I wrote him up, it would be for more than bootleg ale. In I went, opened two of the bottles, gave one to him, and sat by his fire, even before being asked.

Blaine noticed my micro-insubordination, then sat, took a swig, said, "Ok, let me guess why you're here. It's your job to keep me off the Wall. Unless you have a mind to put me there yourself."

I told him that I had learned my present job from one of the best - from him. From the 'Hero of Chicago' who'd sent the Americans fleeing. I summarized: I was to privately question everything he ordered, but when it came time to be in front of the men, that there was to be no distance between us. That he and I had to act as one, and that I would stand between him…. I paused, and added, "I would stand between you and those who were putting you on the Wall."

I said to him, "Colonel Blaine, Gilead is under attack from all sides. It's not my place to criticize the way you Commanders of the Faithful see fit to lead us."

He motioned that he needed another ale. He said, "And yet, here you are."

Me, I was a man with an agenda. Apparently, so was he. I got him another ale. I next was to bet the farm on the 'ask' I was to make.

So I went for it. I made a demand that no non-commissioned grunt had ever made of an officer. "Colonel Blaine, I need you to do something for me."