Wheels-up. A term relating to flight. They’re heading for a flight. We’re heading for a flight. My eyes flicker open, and I try to pull data in—where I am, who’s here—try to assess its meaning. I’m in the back of a large SUV. A Chevy, or so says the emblem on the steering wheel. The vehicle of choice of American embassies everywhere. And I’m not in a robe anymore. Someone dressed me. God, I hope it wasn’t Carlisle.
I look outside and see it’s already dark as we pass through the outskirts of Prague, outskirts that are quickly giving way to weedy fields and clumps of birch forest visible in the headlamps. The clock on the dashboard says 11:42 p.m.
Carlisle sits beside me, leaning forward, jacket off, no attempt to hide his shoulder holster and pistol any longer. His arm is braced on the driver’s headrest, and he’s watching the road ahead of us, scanning, searching. He presses a phone to his ear.
“Get ahold of General Aliyev,” he shouts, as if the person he was talking to was very far away. “Tell him we’re en route to the airstrip. ETA to Ashgabat is seven hours. Got it? Seven hours. Don’t disappoint me now.”
I try to work out where Ashgabat is. Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan. Somethingstan, anyway. What’s there? Oil. Dictators. Secret prisons. Turkmenistan—that’s it. Run by a man beloved by the US, hated by everyone else, his own citizens most of all. A dictator the US keeps in its pocket for such things as it doesn’t have the stomach to do itself.
Carlisle hangs up, slides the phone into his pants pocket.
“What’s in Ashgabat?” I say as clearly as the drugs will let me.
He turns to me and seems surprised I can speak. “A charming coffeehouse. Serves an excellent local cake made with almonds and honey,” he says. “It’s not too far from a special facility we have there. Someplace you can cool your heels until your father decides he wants you back.”
“I’ve told you everything I know,” I say, certain he can hear the fear in my voice.
“And what do you know exactly, Gwendolyn?” Carlisle says, turning to me, the broad expanse of his chest and the even broader expanse of his stomach angrily straining at the buttons of his shirt. “That your father’s a hero who tried to stop Bohdan Kladivo and a corrupt Agency man from stealing a vast sum of money? Is that what he told you?”
“Something like that,” I say.
Carlisle shakes his head, turns back to the road, and sighs. “Isn’t there another possible narrative, Gwendolyn? What besides such absolutely unheard of integrity makes a man put his life in danger? Hell, put his daughter’s life in danger?”
He leaves the questions hanging there, supplying no answers as we exit the highway and turn left onto a dirt road. It’s rural here. Very empty. Fields, stubbly and recently harvested, shimmer in the moonlight.
What Carlisle’s getting at is clear enough. Money. Money would make a man put his life, and even his daughter’s life, in danger. I turn away from the idea, actually turn my head away. I know my father to be an honest man who would never lie to me or put me in harm’s way. But as soon as this thought crystallizes in my head, my own memory retorts by throwing a brick through it. The lies he told about what he did for a living. The danger he put my mother and me in by accepting a post in Algeria. So if he’s a liar and a shitty husband and father, why can’t he also be a thief?
“It’s not true,” I say aloud. But it’s reflexive, an automated response. Like closing your eyes when you sneeze. Like doubling over when you get punched in the stomach.
Carlisle smiles. “So every daughter believes,” he says. “But he betrayed himself, Gwendolyn. He tried to steal Zoric’s money. Joseph Diaz and Bohdan Kladivo tried to steal it back. Thieves stealing from thieves; that’s what the world has come to.”
“Stop it,” I say, focusing my gaze out the window. We’ve entered a forest, spooky bare branches desperately clutching at nothing at all. Fuck Carlisle. Fuck Carlisle even if he’s right.
“Sad part is, Gwendolyn, you rescued him, then he left you—again, a second time.” Carlisle’s eyes are back and forth from me to the road, but I can tell he’s proud of the garden of doubt he’s sowing. “You don’t have to believe me, of course. But at a certain point, you must decide what you really know to be true.”
The SUV rounds a corner, then slows suddenly. Both Carlisle and I look out the windshield and see why. A panel van marked with the words SKUPINA CEZ printed below an orange corporate logo is parked in the middle of the road. Safety cones are standing like sentinels to form a barrier blocking us from going any farther, while a worker in a reflective yellow vest and hard hat is standing in front of us holding a stop sign.
“The hell is this?” Carlisle says.
“No idea,” the driver says. “Some power company thing, looks like.”
Yellow lights on the roof of the van spin, and two spotlights on stands point downward at a spot in the road where two more workers are standing with shovels in hand. There’s machinery of some sort, an air compressor maybe, humming nearby.
The driver lowers the window and gives a shout but the worker with the stop sign points to his ear. The driver shouts again, and this time the man approaches.
“Look, we’re trying to get through,” the driver says.
The worker shakes his head. “All is,” he says, struggling with his English. “Very bad here. No go. No go.”
Carlisle leans forward holding an ID card. “This is a diplomatic vehicle, you understand?” he says. “By law, you have to let us pass.”
But the man just smiles apologetically and walks back to his post, blocking us with his stop sign.
“For Christ’s sake,” Carlisle says, slamming the palm of his hand into the driver’s headrest. “Go tell them to get out of the way!”
The driver hesitates, then throws the SUV into park and climbs out. I can see him in the headlights, gesturing with his hands, pointing. The man with the stop sign just shakes his head.
It’s at this moment that the interior of the SUV is illuminated by blue flashing lights. Both Carlisle and I turn to see a Czech police car pulling up behind us.
“Shit,” Carlisle hisses. “Shit.”
There is something here he recognizes, some pattern he’s seen before. My eyes dart back to the driver. The man with the sign and the two other workers are converging around him.
The butt of a flashlight raps against Carlisle’s window, not impolite, but leaving no question as to who’s now in charge. It’s a female cop, dark curly hair jutting out from beneath her hat, leather jacket shiny and new. The flashlight is held in one hand while the other rests on her sidearm.
“Goddammit,” Carlisle hisses, and lowers the window halfway.
The cop says something in Czech that is unmistakably an order and shines the flashlight onto Carlisle’s face. He produces the magic ID card once again, but the cop waves this away. I have no idea what she’s saying, but it’s clear she wants him to get out of the car.
Unbidden and out of nowhere, Carlisle’s words somehow come back to me: But at a certain point, you must decide what you really know to be true.
I return my eyes to the driver and three workers. Something peculiar is happening there, as well. One of the workers, directly behind the driver, has a pistol with a silencer in his hand.