Children of the Underground

  After two hours of wandering, I headed for the steps in front of the amphitheater. I followed the procedure that I learned from Michael again. I circled the amphitheater, checking for hiding places and escape routes, looking for anything suspicious. Finished, I found a spot on the steps where I could wait with a clear view of my surroundings. It didn’t matter. Michael snuck up on me anyway. One minute I was sitting alone, and the next Michael was sitting beside me. He did it on purpose. “Why did you make us meet here?” Michael asked me before I even realized that he was there. “Cemeteries give me the creeps.”

  “I thought it was a good spot. We’ve got solid escape routes and clear views in all directions.”

  Michael smiled at me. “Yeah,” he said, “but it still creeps me out.”

  I smiled too. I didn’t even have to force it. “It’s nice to have you back, Michael. How did your job go?”

  “It’s done,” Michael said without elaborating.

  “How was your partner?” I asked.

  Michael shrugged uncomfortably. “He was a kid.”

  “Did he do the job?” I asked, knowing that this kid was basically my age—the age Michael and your father were when they first learned to kill.

  Michael shook his head.

  “But I thought you said the job was done?” I blurted out before realizing what Michael was telling me. Michael had done the job himself. I could see it in his eyes. “Won’t they find out?” I asked.

  Michael laughed. “Who’s going to tell them? I’m not telling anybody, and the kid sure as hell isn’t going to blab that he didn’t finish the first job that they ever gave him.”

  “Was he afraid?”

  “No. He was eager.”

  “Then why didn’t he do the job?”

  Michael looked out over the fields dotted with rows of white, his eyes squinting against the bright sun. From here, all the headstones looked the same. “I didn’t let him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he didn’t understand how it will change him,” was all Michael said. “If I tell you something you want to hear, can we leave this place?” My heart started racing. Michael didn’t wait for me to respond. “I’m meeting Jared tomorrow night. He got in touch with me after the Istanbul job was finished.”

  My skin tingled. “What? Where?” I asked.

  “At a bar in Georgetown,” Michael answered. An image flashed in my head, one that I hadn’t seen but had imagined hundreds of times. It was an image of your father and Jared sitting across a table from each other in a dark bar, speaking as friends for the last time. I wondered if Jared picked the same bar to meet Michael, if he and Michael would end up sitting in the same booth. “That’s why I wanted to know how you knew to come to D.C.”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “I was already here.” I didn’t bother to tell Michael why. We had more important things to talk about. “Let’s walk to the Mall,” I said. “We can talk while we’re walking.”

  “Finally,” Michael said, standing up and wiping the dust off his jeans.

  We walked over the bridge, crossing the Potomac and heading into D.C. Michael was still limping, but his limp was less pronounced now. I could tell by the way he walked that his leg hadn’t gotten better. Michael had merely learned how to disguise his limp better. I grilled Michael as we walked. He told me what he could, which wasn’t much. Michael requested the meeting. Jared selected the time and place. Michael let him, breaking his own rule.

  When I stopped questioning him for a few minutes, Michael looked me up and down. “You look good,” he said. It wasn’t flattery. The Michael that I knew didn’t do flattery. It was an observation. He thought I looked stronger.

  “I’m going with you when you meet with Jared,” I said to Michael.

  “That’s not possible,” Michael answered. “He’ll recognize you. I recognized you in St. Martin, and I’d only seen pictures. You tend to remember the faces of the people who fuck up your life.”

  “I’ll make sure he doesn’t see me,” I answered. “I need to be there.” I don’t know why the need is so strong. I trust Michael, but I don’t know how he’s going to react to seeing Jared again. Michael could walk up to Jared and hug him, or he could walk up to him and stab him in the throat. Nothing would surprise me. I want to make sure that Michael remembers what we’re trying to achieve here. We have a goal.

  “I’ll tell you everything he says,” Michael tried assuring me.

  “What are you going to say to him?” I asked. He could at least make me feel comfortable that he had a plan. So many variables were in play. How was Michael going to get him to tell us what we needed to know? Would Jared even know anything that could help us? We’d put so much emphasis on this one plan, on this one horrible person.

  “I don’t know,” Michael said. “I haven’t thought about it.” He was lying to me. I didn’t know why he was lying to me or what exactly he was lying about, but I could tell that he was lying. We were gambling everything on one conversation, and Michael wouldn’t even tell me what he was planning on saying. That’s when I realized that Michael came up with this plan to use Jared not because it was a brilliant plan, but because it was the only thing that popped into his head. For most of his life, asking Jared for help was the only thing that had worked for Michael. I needed to make sure that we didn’t blow it.

  “Okay,” I said, agreeing to let Michael go alone. If he could lie to me, then I could lie to him too. Nothing is keeping me out of that bar.

  Michael didn’t have his own place to stay, so he stayed with me. I liked having him sleep so close to me again. I liked hearing him breathe as he slept.

  Forty-one

  Michael told me where he was meeting Jared. He told me when. That’s all I needed to know.

  I left the hotel room early in the morning. When Michael asked me where I was going, I told him that I was simply too anxious to sit still all day. It wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t the whole truth. “Are you mad at me because I don’t want you to be there?” Michael asked me as I headed out the door. It almost felt like a lover’s quarrel.

  “No,” I told him. “I’ve got some things to take care of—that’s all.”

  “What sort of things?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I answered. “I’ll make myself busy.” I stepped through the door.

  “Aren’t you going to wish me good luck?” Michael asked.

  I held the door open for a moment. I didn’t look back at Michael. “No,” I told him. “I’m hoping you don’t need it.”

  I took my backpack and my last four hundred dollars in cash with me. Michael would be able to pay the hotel bills now. I walked into Georgetown. I knew a hotel not far from the bar where Michael and Jared were going to meet where you could get a room for less than two hundred dollars a night. I’d researched it when I first got to D.C. Check-in wasn’t until one in the afternoon. It was only ten in the morning when I got there. It didn’t matter. I didn’t plan on actually checking in anyway.

  A pimply-faced boy was working the front desk. He was probably a student at one of the local colleges. Is he older than me? I can’t even tell anymore. “Listen,” I said to him after walking up to the front desk. “I need a room for the day—just the day. I’ll be out by seven p.m. I’ll give you a hundred dollars in cash if you can get me in a room now.” The boy looked confused for a second. “No one else even needs to know that I was ever in the room. You’ll still have time to fill the room with a late check-in. For you, it’s a free hundred dollars.”

  The boy nervously eyed the five twenties in my hand. He looked around to see if anyone was watching him. “Just you?” he asked, with all the tawdriness that the question implied. I had no right to be insulted. I nodded. He punched a few buttons on the computer in front of him. Then he reached out and snatched the cash from my hand. He spoke in a whisper. “Here’s the key,”
he said. “The room’s on the second floor.” His excitement barely covered the fear in his voice. “What do I do if someone asks questions?” he asked.

  “Play dumb,” I answered. I assumed he could handle that.

  “Okay,” he said, giving me a conspirator’s smile. I didn’t return it. I took the stairs to the second floor and found the room. It was small but it would do. I didn’t need luxury. I looked in the bathroom. One wall was covered with a mirror above the sink. The other side of the bathroom had a small bathtub with a shower. I put my backpack down on the counter next to the sink. I unzipped it and looked inside, trying to decide if I should leave anything behind. I eyed the gun, the knife, the journals, the unopened pack of cigarettes, the cash. I took it all with me. I reminded myself that Jared was walking the same streets that I was. If I met him, I wanted to be ready.

  I walked back down the stairs and out a side door. I didn’t trust the poker face on the kid behind the counter. When I got to the street, I kept my head down as much as possible. When I was on the run with your father, I eyed everyone with suspicion. Now I was only on the lookout for one person. If Jared saw me on the street, everything could be ruined. After walking a few blocks, I hailed a cab. I didn’t have a lot of money left, but I didn’t have time to walk all the way to Old Town Alexandria, either.

  I told the cabdriver to take me back across the river to Crown Wigs, a small specialty store that advertises more than six hundred models of wigs and claims to employ experts in medical-related hair loss. It wasn’t selling novelty wigs as sex toys or Halloween costumes. It sold wigs to people who didn’t want to look like they were wearing wigs. I went inside. I was in the store for over an hour. My wig is called the Camilla. It was made from real, blond, straight hair. The bangs cover enough of my face to conceal it. The wig cost more than the hotel room, and I still wasn’t done spending. On my way to the metro back to the hotel, I bought new clothes: black pants that hung loose enough to move in and a thin gray sweater that was tight at the top but loose enough at the bottom to conceal any items I might want to hide along my waistline. I was going for stylish but practical in a way I’d never in my life imagined I’d have to worry about.

  It was the middle of the afternoon when I got back to the hotel. I went inside the same way I’d left—through the side door and up the stairs. I slid my key card into the door and, to my relief, the little green light came on and the door handle gave way. Once back inside the room, I spread my new clothes out on the bed. Then I took out the wig and walked into the bathroom. I tried on the wig in front of the mirror. It was a fight to fit the wig over my own unruly hair. I tried pulling my hair back, but I still couldn’t get the wig to look natural. I opened drawers in the vanity beneath the sink. All I found was a shower cap and a miniature sewing kit. I walked back out of the bathroom and grabbed my backpack. I pulled out the knife. I knew how sharp it was. I took it out of its sheath and walked back into the bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror and grabbed a thick chunk of curls. I raised the knife and cut. If I moved the knife in a sawing motion against the hair, it sliced through without much pain. Clumps of hair came off in my hand. With each cut, I felt a small tug against my scalp, and then I’d cut with the knife and the pain would be gone. Strand by strand, my dark hair fell to the floor.

  I tried the wig on three more times as I cut. Each time, I realized that it would look more realistic if I kept cutting. The knife was a blunt tool, not built for style. By the time I was done, my longest curl in front was no more than two inches, maybe four when pulled straight. The back was even shorter. It had been harder to control the knife when cutting the back. I slid the wig on for the last trial. I lifted my head and looked at myself in the mirror. I rustled the blond hair of the wig, letting it pitch shadows on my face. Maria was gone. I still wasn’t quite Camilla yet. I still had makeup to apply and clothes to put on and a gun and a knife to hide among their folds.

  Camilla left the hotel room at half past six, even earlier than I’d promised the kid at the front desk. I left the key card on the top of the television. I took one last look at myself in the full-length mirror in the bathroom. Only a few people in the world could have recognized me in the disguise. Your father would have. My mother might have, if she would recognize me at all. Maybe my father. I didn’t know the whole list, only that it was short. I left the gun in the backpack. I had tried to hide it beneath my sweater by tucking it in the hem of my pants, like I’d seen the men do, but it was too obvious. The knife, however, was in its now customary position, with the blade pressed against my upper thigh.

  It was before seven o’clock when I got to the bar. The sky outside wasn’t even dark, but the inside of the bar was. The bar oozed darkness. I looked around. Two men sat at the bar, and a small group sat in the booth closest to the front door. The booths ran along the right wall, opposite the bar. All the booths but the first one were empty, including the one farthest back, the one I knew Jared would pick. I felt like I’d been in that bar before. I walked over to the jukebox. I flipped through five pages of albums. Frank Sinatra. Otis Redding. This was definitely the place where Jared and your father met. I went to the bar and ordered a club soda with lime. The bartender asked if that was it, and I answered, “For now. I’m meeting someone here later.”

  The bartender served me my drink. I took a sip and walked toward the booth in the back. I didn’t have too much time to waste. Jared might come early. He might do the same thing that Michael did whenever meeting someone, circling and observing and taking mental notes. I stopped at the booth. I looked at the dark wood of the table and the black leather of the benches. Your father sat in that booth. They tried to erase the memory of your father from the world, but I knew better. He sat right there, less than a year ago, and had a conversation with his killer. In less than an hour, that same man would be here again, sitting in the same booth, talking to Michael.

  I took a seat at the bar, near the back and where I could pretend to be watching television. From that seat, I could watch Michael and Jared without looking like I was watching them. I thought that I might even be able to hear them if I concentrated and drowned out every other sound. I thought that maybe I could at least catch a few words. I faced the door. I ordered a red wine. I wasn’t planning on drinking the wine, just spilling a little bit every so often so that the bartender would think that I was drinking. I glanced over at the empty booth. I had a clear view of it from my seat. I could see both benches. I tried concentrating my hearing, trying to drown out everything but the silence emanating from the booth. The problem is, it’s hard to tell your silence from someone else’s.

  I was on my second glass of wine when Jared walked through the door. A small pool of the red liquid was gathering near my feet. I recognized him immediately. I felt a tremor run through my body. It felt like free-falling without a parachute. I recognized him even before I saw his face, when he was merely a silhouette against the light from outside. I recognized his shape, his walk, his posture. He closed the door and walked into the darkness. My eyes focused. His face hadn’t changed. How could it not? It should have grown older or weaker. I lifted my glass, further concealing my face, as he walked toward the back booth. He passed only a few feet away from me. I remembered the burning hatred with which he had once looked at you. I must have been looking at him the same way.

  For a moment, Jared’s eyes moved over me, but only barely. I was a stranger to him. I was half-relieved and half-angry. How dared he forget me? Then I remembered that I was in disguise. Jared sat down in the booth, facing the door. A few seconds later, the waitress came up to him. She seemed to know him. They spoke normally and I could hear them. I could hear almost every word. Only whispers were my enemy now.

  I looked at my watch. It was ten of eight. Michael wasn’t planning on leaving the hotel until eight o’clock. I sat at the bar for twenty minutes and watched Jared sip his Manhattan alone. His face betrayed nothing; no nervousness, no anger, no r
emorse, no happiness. His face was a mask worn for no one, seen only by me. Then Michael walked through the door.

  It was darker outside when Michael entered. I didn’t recognize him at first, framed by the gray night air. Then I recognized his limp, slight enough now that most people wouldn’t notice it, disguised as a simple hitch in his gate. Michael took a few steps into the bar and then looked around. His eyes brushed over each booth until he came to the last one and saw Jared. His mouth broke into a smile. I’d so rarely seen Michael smile that it was almost disconcerting. Michael walked toward the back of the bar. I put my head down, staring into my half-empty glass of wine, letting my blond bangs droop over my face. Michael didn’t glance in my direction.

  When Michael was only a few steps from the back booth, Jared stood and extended his hand toward Michael. Michael brushed it aside and pulled Jared into a hug. “It’s good to see you, Michael,” Jared said as the two men pushed away from each other’s grasp.