During the short periods when he was awake, Ibrahim was dimly aware of other things. He was aware of being talked to by a man in a uniform but being unable to answer. His mouth seemed frozen, incapable of being moved. He was aware of being carried to a bath where parts of his body were stripped and scrubbed. His skin seemed to come off in pieces, like hardened candle wax. Then he was bandaged and brought back here again.
When he slept, the young Kurd had much clearer visions. He had memories of being with Commander Siriner at Base Deir. Ibrahim could still hear the leader shouting, “They will not fire a shot in these headquarters!” He remembered standing shoulder to shoulder with the commander and shooting at the enemy to keep them from entering. He remembered shouting defiance, waiting for the attack and then—there was the fire. A lake of it pouring down on them. He remembered fighting the flames with his arms, helping Field Commander Arkin beat a path with their own bodies so that Commander Siriner could get through. He remembered being pulled up, covered with dirt, carried somewhere, seeing the sky, and then hearing a gunshot.
A tear formed in his eye. “Commander—?”
Ibrahim tried to turn and look for his comrades. But he couldn’t. The bandages, he realized. Not that it mattered. He sensed that he was alone in this place. And the revolution? If it had succeeded, he would not be here with the enemy.
So many people counting on us and we failed, he thought.
Yet did they fail? Is it failure if you plant a seed which others nurture? Is it failure to have begun a thing which had daunted the best and the bravest for decades? Is it failure to have called the attention of all humanity to the plight of his people?
Ibrahim closed his eyes. He saw Commander Siriner and Walid, Hasan and the others. And he saw his brother Mahmoud. They were alive and watching him and they seemed to be content.
Is it failure if you are united in Paradise with your brothers-in-arms?
With a quiet moan, Ibrahim joined them.
SIXTY-THREE
Wednesday, 9:37 p.m.,
London, England
Paul Hood spoke to Mike Rodgers while Hood was in London en route to Washington. Rodgers was about to leave the infirmary at Tel Nef to join the Strikers for the flight back to Washington.
The men had a short, uncommonly strained conversation. Whether he was afraid of releasing rage, frustration, sadness, or whatever else he was feeling, Rodgers wasn’t letting go of anything. Getting the general to answer questions about his health and the accomodations at Tel Nef took very specific questions. And even then his answers were terse, his voice flat. Hood ascribed it to exhaustion and the depression that Liz had warned them about.
When he’d placed the call, Hood hadn’t intended to tell Rodgers about the pardon. He’d felt that that was something best done when Rodgers was rested and surrounded by the people who had orchestrated the amnesty. People whose judgment he respected. People who could explain that it had been done to protect the national interest and not to bail Rodgers out.
Ultimately, however, Hood felt that Rodgers had a right to know what had transpired. He wanted him to use the flight to plan for his future in Op-Center and not an imagined future in court.
Rodgers took the news quietly. He asked Hood to thank Herbert and Martha for their efforts. But as he spoke, Hood had an even stronger sense that there was something else taking place, something unspoken that had come between them. It wasn’t bitterness or rancor. It was something almost melancholy, as if he’d been doomed rather than saved.
It was almost like he was saying good-bye.
After hanging up with Rodgers, Hood called Colonel August. Rodgers and the Striker commander had grown up together in Hartford, Connecticut. Hood asked him to use whatever stories or jokes or reminiscences it took to keep Rodgers diverted and amused. August promised that he would.
Hood and Bicking bid a warm farewell to Professor Nasr at Heathrow, and promised to come and hear his wife play Liszt and Chopin. However, Bicking did ask him to have the pianist consider replacing the Revolutionary Etude with something less politically charged. Nasr did not disagree.
The State Department flight from London had been relaxed and filled with uncustomarily sincere compliments for Hood. They were nothing like the surface-deep congratulations which he sometimes received at meetings and receptions in Washington. Officials on the plane seemed delighted with rumors that Striker had broken a slew of secular laws in the Bekaa Valley. They were almost as happy with that as they were that the Ataturk terrorists had been found and neutralized and that Turkish and Syrian troops had withdrawn from their common border. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Tom Andrea put it, “You get tired of playing by the rules when everyone else isn’t.”
Andrea also pressed for details on who had helped Hood, Bicking, and Nasr escape the palace assault in Damascus. But Hood only sipped the Tab Clear he’d picked up in London and said nothing.
The plane landed at 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday. An honor guard was waiting for the fallen DSA operatives, and Hood stayed with them on the tarmac until the coffins had been unloaded and driven away. Then he got in the limousine which was waiting to take him and Warner Bicking home. The car had been sent by Stephanie Klaw at the White House, who had also sent along a note.
“Paul,” it read, “welcome home. I was afraid you might take a cab.”
The car took Hood home first. He held Bicking’s hand between his before climbing out.
“How does it feel to have been the pawn of two Presidents?” Hood asked.
The young Bicking smiled and replied, “Invigorating, Paul.”
Hood spent an hour lying in bed with his kids. After that, he spent two hours making love to his wife.
And after that, with his wife curled beside him, her hand in his, he lay awake wondering if he’d made the mistake of his life telling Mike Rodgers about the pardon.
SIXTY-FOUR
Thursday, 1:01 a.m.,
Over the Mediterranean Sea
When Mike Rodgers had first enlisted in the Army, he had a drill sergeant named Messy Boyd. He never found out what Messy was short for, but it had to be short for something. Because Messy Boyd was the neatest, most punctilious, most disciplined man that Rodgers had ever met.
Unfailingly, Sergeant Boyd drilled two things into his men. One was that bravery was the most important quality a soldier could have. And the other, that honor was even more important than bravery. “The honorable man,” he had said, paraphrasing Woodrow Wilson, “is one who has squared his conduct by ideals of duty.”
Rodgers took that to heart. He also borrowed the copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations Boyd kept on his desk. That started him on his twenty-five-year love affair with the wisdom of the great statesmen, soldiers, scholars, and others. It turned him into a rapacious reader, devouring everyone from Epictetus to St. Augustine, from Homer to Hemingway. It made him think.
Maybe too much, he told himself.
Rodgers sat on the wooden bench in the bumpy fuselage of the C-141B. He was absently listening to Colonel August tell Lowell Coffey and Phil Katzen about their Little League home-run rivalry with each other.
Rodgers knew that he had never acted in a cowardly way, nor had he ever behaved with dishonor. Yet Rodgers also knew that because of what had happened in the Middle East, his career as a soldier was over. He had thought it ended when he failed to retake the ROC from the Kurds at the Syrian border. That had been clumsy and stupid, the kind of mistake a man in his position could not afford to make. But with the death of the PKK leader he had found new life. Not as a soldier in the field, but as a soldier in the fight against terrorism. What would have begun in the courtroom would have become a brave and honorable battle against a terrible scourge.
Now, he thought, there’s nothing.
“General,” August asked, “what was the name of that catcher who ended up beating us both out in fifth grade?”
“Laurette,” Rodgers replied. “I forget her last name.”
“Right,” said August. “Laurette. The kind of girl you wanted to sop up with a biscuit. She was that lovely, even behind her catcher’s mask, glove, and a wad of Bazooka bubble gum.”
Rodgers smiled. She was cute. And that home-run showdown had been quite a race. But races ended with one winner and several losers.
Like the race we just ran in the Middle East.
The winner there had been Striker. Their performance had been exemplary. The losers? The Kurds, who had been crushed. Turkey and Syria, which still had millions of restless citizens within their borders. And Mike Rodgers, who had bungled security, escape, judging the character of a loyal coworker, and handling a prisoner of war.