19
TEN DAYS IN A STEEL COFFIN. No way to pass the time, except to think, and to plan. Imagine if you had ten days shut off from the world; no phone, no web, no television. Cutting the electronic cord separated me from the incessant twittering chatter of modern life. The quiet might drive many people mad, but I welcomed it. The only good thing about the prison in Poland had been, after the initial weeks of questioning, the long silences, just me and the stone walls. The power of time to think is a forgotten pleasure in today’s world. This was not so different from the stretches of useless quiet in the CIA prison, except no one was torturing me. But the line I’d crossed weighed on me in a way it hadn’t when I’d thought out the plan. Howell might well issue a kill-on-sight order on me. I had broken away from the invisible cage. No second chance now.
Waking, I used the flashlight and established my tiny camp inside the steel coffin. Inside the duffels, I had the Glock and two clips of ammo I’d stolen from the safe in Ollie’s office. I had a hopefully delicious assortment of protein bars and fruit. Bottles of water. Extra batteries for the flashlight. Toothbrush, toothpaste, and toilet paper. A small container for waste. A first-aid kit and sleeping pills. A charged iPod with Mahler and the Rolling Stones and an extended battery. Two changes of clothes: gray shirts, jeans. All the cash I’d saved after the passport fiasco, a few hundred dollars.
It wasn’t much with which to start a long and dangerous journey to find my lost wife and child. I checked my watch. The cargo ship should have departed by now. A constant hum of engine played. But I didn’t want to risk opening the door and being spotted—although with thousands of containers, I thought the odds of being seen were low—until we were at least a day out of America. The ship wouldn’t turn around for a stowaway at that point; they would just arrest me and throw me in whatever small room they could improvise as a brig. They would alert the port authorities when they arrived in Rotterdam. But it was best of all if I wasn’t seen. I could keep my sanity without seeing the sky.
The container was like a womb, I told myself. Maybe when I got out I’d be reborn, ready to kick ass.
I closed my eyes again.
Felt nothing but an utter loneliness that one cannot find easily in today’s world. Nothing to do but sleep and dream about what I had lost. It couldn’t be healthy, to dream so much.
I dozed, and it wasn’t a dream: it was a memory rising to my brain like a bubble.
“What do you want to name him?” Lucy asked me. She stood by the window of our Bloomsbury flat, staring out at the rain. Gray clouds scudded low over the city, and my normal life was ticking five days to zero.
“Him. You’re sure it’s going to be a him.”
“He kicks like you.” She placed her hand on the little swell of stomach.
“I have never kicked you.”
She put a hand on my cheek. “In your sleep. When you have bad dreams. About Danny.”
My brother.
Mention of Danny always brought a silence. Maybe it only lasted a moment, but it marked a cold pause in everyday life. And the inevitable sting. At the back of my eyes, in the bottom of my throat.
I lowered the book I was reading. “Well, how about Edwin, for your dad?” Lucy’s parents had died in a car crash when she was ten, and I had thought she might want to honor her lost father or mother. She had been raised by an aunt after her parents died, gone to college on full scholarship, studied the elegance of databases, and joined the Company fresh out of school, just like me. She spoke fondly of her aunt and little of her parents, almost as if they were characters she’d read about in a novel.
“I appreciate the sentiment, monkey, but Edwin’s too old-fashioned for me.”
“Um, okay.” I stared at her, my mind a blank.
“How about Samuel Junior?” she said.
“I don’t want him named for me. Let him be his own person, entirely.”
Lucy tucked her feet under her. “I’d like to honor a loved one.”
“Well.” I loved my parents, very much, but relations with them were frosty at the moment. “How about we’ll name him for you, Lucy. Call him Lucian. He’ll have to be the toughest kid on the playground.”
“No. My mind’s made up. Daniel, for your brother.”
“You don’t have to do that. You never even knew Danny.”
“I know what he meant to you. It’s an awesome name. Let’s honor him.”
(If I could put a sticky note into my memory, it would read: This was the woman the world wanted me to believe was a traitor.)
“Then let’s put Daniel on the list.” I picked up my book again.
“Daniel. Okay. What if I’m wrong and it’s a girl?”
“Capri, for the island. Capri Capra. She’ll love us forever.”
She laughed. “Sam?”
“Yes?”
She didn’t answer me, and I glanced up at her, still watching the slow slide of rain along the glass. And then she said words she never said in real life: Do you think I could let you die?
I awoke with a start. The dark was nearly complete, and for a moment I forgot I lay nestled in the container’s cocoon.
I lay listening, wondering how long I’d slept. Today had been the first time in a long while I’d slept like a free man—no listeners, no cell, no one watching me or my dreams for evidence of betrayal. I slept again, woke again, slept again. For how long I didn’t know.
But my brain jerked me awake at a sound. An approaching buzz, sounding hard, above the soft steady thrum of the engines. An interrupting roar.
I knew the sound. A helicopter.
Lowering toward the deck.