Back Blast

9

Arthur Mayberry was nearly seventy, and he looked it. Weatherworn black skin, a silver mane of hair, and Coke-bottle glasses. He had been 11-bravo, army infantry, back in Vietnam, and then he came home and drove a bus for Washington Metro Transit for forty-one years while his wife worked her way up to food services manager at a hospital in Falls Church. Arthur sired four kids along the way, which made him a man rich in many blessings, but not in much else. Now he and his wife were grandparents and empty nesters, retired and living frugally in a large but rickety two-story home in Columbia Heights.

Prices in the District had skyrocketed in the past few years as the federal government became one of the few growth industries in America, and for this reason Mayberry’s property taxes had shot through the roof. Even though his street was one of the edgiest in Columbia Heights, which was one of the lower-end neighborhoods in the heart of the District, Arthur and his sixty-eight-year-old wife Bernice could barely afford their mortgage, so they’d taken to renting out a tiny and not exactly up-to-code basement bedroom for two hundred fifty a month. They’d recently lost their last tenant when he was arrested on a possession charge, so when the knock came at their front door first thing after church on Sunday morning, Arthur found himself hoping it was someone who’d seen the For Rent sign stuck in the tiny front yard.

This street was seventy percent African American, and twenty-two percent Hispanic. There were as many Asians as there were whites, and the vast majority of the whites who lived around here were elderly, so Arthur’s hopes that he’d get a new tenant today were effectively dashed when he looked through the peephole and saw a clean-shaven white man in a blazer standing alone on his stoop.

Bernice came up beside him in the entryway. She was still wearing her hat from church. “Who is it?”

“Some man.”

“He’s here about the room,” she said confidently.

“I doubt it.”

“Why do you say—”

Arthur opened the wooden door, but left the storm door and its iron grating alone.

“Oh,” his wife said, seeing the youngish Caucasian face on the other side of the storm door.

“Yeah?”

The white man spoke through the bolted door. “Good morning.”

“Yeah?” Arthur repeated, the suspicion obvious in his voice.

“I saw your For Rent sign. Can I take a look at the room?”

What the hell? Arthur had no intention of renting to a white man. It wasn’t that he was racist, but he was a realist, and no young white man in this area with a job would want to live in a tiny basement on this street.

“Sir?” the man said after waiting ten seconds for a response.

“You from around here?”

“No, sir. Just in from Michigan. My uncle had a place in Petworth, but he passed away. I’m in town for a couple of months getting the house ready to sell.”

Arthur softened just a little. “Sure sorry to hear about that.”

“Thanks. What are you asking for the room?”

A pause. “Three hundred.”

“Really? I saw the notice you put on the board at the Giant up the street. It says two fifty.”

Arthur stiffened right back up now. “Then why’d you ask?”

A little smile from the white man. “I guess just to see if you’d rip me off.”

Everyone stood awkwardly for a moment in the doorway till Mayberry said, “Well, now you know. Price went up. Take it or leave it.”

“Can I see it?”

Arthur could feel an icy stare from his wife, standing just next to him. Bernice was generally more suspicious of people than was Arthur, and considering Arthur didn’t really believe this man’s story, he assumed his wife was ready to kick the door shut in the man’s face.

But Arthur was thinking about the three hundred bucks now, as well as the fact this guy could go and get a lawyer and make trouble if some black landlord refused to rent to him.

Mayberry snatched his keys off the wall and headed out onto the porch. Bernice followed close behind silently, but Arthur felt her misgivings. He knew if he rented the room to the man she’d tell him he was a fool, because the man was probably out of work and on drugs.

With a fatalistic sigh he led his wife and the white man down to the driveway.

Court almost didn’t give a damn what the inside of the room looked like, because the outside was as close to perfect as he could hope to find from an operational security perspective. The entrance to the basement room was off the driveway, just six steps down to a tiny patio with a storm door that looked substantial, and on the other side of that was a wooden door that looked sturdy enough. There was just a small slit window at eye level, but it afforded a full view of the driveway and, since this was a corner lot, he could use the window to see a good distance to the south, east, and north.

Court and the Mayberrys stepped into the basement room, and with three people there was little space to move around. It occurred to Court that there would be a bit more room to move if the heavyset lady took off her huge hat, but he made no mention of it. Instead he checked the space over quickly. It was just ten feet by ten feet with a tiny bathroom off the back, a kitchen counter that ran across the rear wall, and a knee-high refrigerator taking up floor space.

It was obvious this setup had been built by hand. The cheap linoleum flooring buckled from water damage and the paneling on the walls looked like a weekend project by the homeowner, and a water pipe ran across the middle of the room so that anyone over five-six would have to dip his head to move from the bed to the bathroom. But even with these limitations, it was as nice a place as any other Court had lived in the past few years, and better than most.

The bed was just a twin, but it was all that would fit. There were a table and a chair by the one little window and even a small TV that looked like it was plugged into a cable box.

Cable?

Court wondered if he’d died and gone to heaven.

On the southern wall right behind where the front door opened was an accordion door covering a small closet. The storage space was just two feet deep but six feet wide. Court peered in and noticed the back panel of the closet was rippling, as if from moisture or excessive heat on the boards.

“What’s all that?” he asked.

“Oh, that ain’t nothin’,” the landlord said. “I built this room in a corner of my basement. The water heater and the furnace are on the other side of that wall. Maybe I shoulda put a little more insulation in the wall or something, but it don’t bother nobody who stays here.”

Mayberry leaned into the closet and knocked on the wood. “See? It’s solid.”

It sounded hollow as a drum to Court, but he considered that a feature, not a glitch. The basement would have access to the main house, which meant Court would just have to make a small “adjustment” in that wall and he’d have an escape route in case someone he didn’t like came to the front door.

Court looked around the room again. “I like it,” he said.

“Didn’t get your name.”

Court was always quick with a name and a story, though like his trip from Michigan and his dead uncle in Petworth, it was never the truth. “Jeff. Jeff Duncan.”

“Got to ask, Jeff. How come you ain’t stayin’ up at your uncle’s place?”

“I won’t be able to afford the property taxes on the house, so I’ll have to sell it. Before I put it on the market, I’ll be doing some renovations. Have to shut off the water and heat while I work on the plumbing and HVAC.”

Court saw the older black man soften to him even more. It was basic social engineering. Court would say things to create an instant bond between himself and his potential landlord.

When the man replied with, “I know that’s right. Taxes are through the damn roof. It’s gotten real bad around here,” Court knew he was in with the man, but Court noticed the wife was still gaping at him like he was a fucking unicorn.

“It’s three hundred a month for the room?” Court asked.

“That’s firm,” the man replied.

Court pretended to think it over. Then he said, “I can give you first and last month’s rent. Will that do?”

The old man was on the spot. He clearly didn’t expect an offer. He stammered for a moment, then said, “No room in the driveway for your car. Hard to find parking around here.”

“No problem. I’ll keep my car parked at my uncle’s.”

The man bit his lip. He glanced to his wife, then said, “Not much of a kitchen. Toilet runs a little bit. TV is just basic cable.”

“That’s all I need.”

“Okay, then,” Arthur said. Then, “Of course I’m gonna need to see your driver’s license. Run a background check.”

Court smiled a little. “What do you say we make it four hundred a month?”

Despite the fact that he was being offered one hundred fifty dollars more per month than he’d originally been asking, Mayberry frowned. “Son, I can’t allow no criminals in here.”

“Not a criminal, Mr. Mayberry. Just a guy who’s hoping to avoid some red tape.”

“Well, that’s a problem, because I’m by the book. I guess this place isn’t for you.”

Court turned his head back and forth, scanning the small room. “You’re right. By the book is best.”

“That’s what I say.”

“Cool. Can I take a quick look at the back door?”

“The what?”

“The back door?”

“Uh… just the one door.”

“Huh,” Court said. “I could have sworn building codes say private apartments have to have two exits in case of fire. I could be wrong, though. How ’bout while you are running that background check on me, I check with the city to make sure you’ve complied with all the building and zoning laws. That way we both know what we’re getting into here.”

The African American man glared at the white man for a long moment.

Court smiled. “Like you said. By the book.”

Bernice reached out and took her husband by the arm, giving it an anxious squeeze. Slowly the corners of Arthur Mayberry’s mouth rose, and he smiled a wide, toothy grin. “All right, then. You gonna have it your way, and I’m gonna have me five hundred dollars a month, plus two fifty security deposit.”

Court calculated he’d have to burn this tiny room to cinders to do two hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of damage. But with a little smile he reached for his wallet. “A hard bargain, sir, but I like your style.”

Bernice spoke up for the first time, and apparently none of the new mutual respect between the two men had rubbed off on her. “I’ll tell you right now, young man, we’re not gonna stand for no parties.”

Court had never thrown a party in his life, but still he wondered how much of a party one might actually throw in a ten-by-ten basement with a metal water pipe running across at forehead height. “I’ll be gone a lot. I guarantee I’ll be the quietest tenant you’ve ever had.”

“And no drugs,” the woman added.

“Absolutely not.”

Jeff Duncan” handed Arthur Mayberry $1,250 and took a key, and when Arthur asked the younger man when he would actually move in, Jeff replied he’d been up all night so he’d go right to bed, and then bring some things over from his hotel that evening.

Arthur and Bernice left him in his new apartment and headed back to the front of the house. As soon as the storm door shut Bernice said one word. “Drugs.”

“You’re probably right,” replied Arthur. Plaintively he added, “But what was I gonna do? First and last month’s rent ain’t nothing to turn your nose up to. And all that bonus money.”

Bernice made a clicking sound with her tongue and said it again. “Drugs.”

Arthur sighed. He knew he’d be hearing this a lot over the next two months.

Court wedged one of the metal chairs under the door and then he took a shower, his first in days. He took the .380 pistol into the stall with him, leaving it in the soap niche. There was no soap or shampoo, so all he really did was rinse off, and there were no towels so he did little more than drip-dry, although he patted himself down with the thin comforter from the bed. He put his clothes back on, even his shoes, and then he pulled a pillow and a wool blanket off the bed and threw them in the long narrow closet behind the door to the outside. He rolled the damp comforter around the remaining two pillows and he put them under the bed sheet in the center of the bed, making an approximate man-sized shape under the sheets.

He turned off the lights in the room, walked over to the blanket and the pillow in the closet, and lay down, drawing his pistol from his pocket and putting it on the linoleum floor to the right of his body.

He thought about the locks on the doors and the wedged chair. This wasn’t exactly a high-security facility, but he was dead tired and he could barely think. Anyone who kicked open the door would see the bed, and Court hoped they would assume someone was sleeping there. They would open fire on this target first, giving Court a little warning. They wouldn’t see Court here in the closet until they stepped a few feet into the room and looked to their left, at which point Court would shoot them dead.

That was the plan, anyway. Court wondered if he’d even wake up at the sound of a shattering storm door. And of course, most attackers came in pairs, or in long lines of jocked-up operators, and his little .380 peashooter wouldn’t do much more than kill the point man and maybe one of his buddies.

No, this wasn’t much defense at all, but Court realized he needed to try to get his energy back before doing anything else to fortify the room, so he lay there with his eyes closed and tried to will himself to sleep.

He’d been on the go for over a month. Moving from place to place in Russia, in Sweden, in Germany and Belgium. Then to Spain and into Portugal, where he met up with the cargo ship that brought him to the U.S.

Eight days on the water, the daylight hours in his hiding place in the bowels of the ship like a bilge rat, the late nights walking or running the holds for exercise.

He’d had help in his escape. A Mossad officer who felt like he owed Court a debt, though in truth Court knew the man owed the debt to someone else. Still, the guy worked as Court’s genie in a bottle, granting him his wish and getting him into the United States.

Court had decided he’d have no more dealings with the Mossad officer. Court knew personal relationships were points of vulnerability, so his plan all along had been to use the man as a conduit into the U.S. and then to break contact, to go his own way.

He’d done exactly that by leaving everything behind on the cargo ship save for the clothes on his back. He hadn’t planned it exactly that way, but he heard the helicopters approaching, and he knew they were coming for him.

On shore he hotwired a car and drove it to the Greenbelt metro station on the outskirts of D.C. He used some coins he found in the car’s ashtray to buy a Metro card that got him as far as the Congress Heights Station.

He needed cash and a weapon, and he knew this area would afford him the most target-rich environment in which to obtain both.

He got what he’d been after and now he had a suitable base of operations, at least for the time being. He knew it was possible he’d have to relocate multiple times during the next few days, but he’d do what he could to keep his new safe house free of compromise.

Court’s mission here in Washington, as he saw it anyway, was very simple. His former employer, the Central Intelligence Agency, had spent the last five years trying to kill him, and he did not know why. He’d been running all that time, living abroad, off grid, staying away from relationships and ties. Looking over his shoulder all day, every day.

They’d almost caught him a few times, and during his flight from the Agency, other entities out there had come even closer to killing him.

He had grown tired of running, so he decided it was time to end this, once and for all.

In his years of small unit tactics training he had learned a great many truths, but one stood out from the rest. When the opposition attacked, it expected you to play your role; to run, to cover. But turning the tables, attacking into a threat, was often the most useful way of defending oneself.

Court’s principal trainer at CIA, a man he knew only as Maurice, used to say a mantra over and over, so often Court now heard it in Maurice’s gravelly voice. “You can run, but if you can’t run anymore, then you can hide. You can hide, but if you can’t hide anymore, then you can fight. There is nothing after the fight, so you fight until there is nothing.”

Court couldn’t run anymore, and he couldn’t hide anymore, so he came back to fight. To attack into the threat, to get answers and to get closure.

He knew he would not be leaving D.C. without a resolution to this nightmare. Either he would uncover the CIA’s motives behind the shoot-on-sight sanction against him and somehow end the sanction, or else he would die trying.

He had come up with a working theory as to what this was all about. At the beginning of Court’s career with the CIA he had been part of a small initiative called the Autonomous Asset Program. He and several other young men like him had been given individual instruction by a cadre of the CIA’s best operations officers, and then they had been sent into the world, allowed to run solo ops, tasked with difficult, deniable missions, and left, in large part, to their own devices.

The program was disbanded, Court was folded into another unit, and other than the fact that he had been given better solo training than the other CIA Special Activities Division men, the Autonomous Asset Program was behind him.

But Court had just found out the previous month that he was the last man alive from this entire program. Seventeen other young men had all been killed in the intervening years and, by necessity, Court himself had killed the only other remaining singleton asset out there.

Court saw it clearly now. For some reason the CIA was erasing anyone who had been in AAP. All the others were gone.

And now it was down to Court Gentry. The last man standing.

What he did not know was why.

He could reveal what he knew about the program and the termination order for the assets, but first he needed proof. Without proof — if he just called up the New York Times and told them what he suspected — he’d be considered a crackpot and there would be no story.

The CIA would deny his allegations, and the CIA would win, because the CIA had significantly better media outreach than Court Gentry had.

He needed proof. If he found proof, he would find justice, and that was what he was after.

Not revenge, he told himself. Justice.

There were men here, in the area, who Court felt sure would have the answers he sought. He had no illusions that they would give up their answers willingly, but Court was prepared. He’d seek these men out, find out what they knew, and rectify the mess his life had become. He told himself it was doable, that he wasn’t naive, but part of him wondered if he’d just grown too tired of running, if he was racing headlong into his own death just to end it all.

He pushed the negativity out of his mind as best he could, and he drifted off just before ten a.m., and, for the first time in months, he slept the sleep of the dead.