T. Bunn - Drummer in the Dark

“She’s not an insert, and I can’t reach her.”

“If you like, we could send a couple of agents by, make sure she’s okay.”

Wynn hesitated, then decided it was time for drastic action. “Her name is Jackie Havilland.” He read off her address and phone numbers. “You’ll let me know what you find out?”

“Soon as we know something, I’ll be in touch.”

Wynn stripped off his jacket and tie in one continuous motion. He stretched out on the sofa, comforted by the sounds of his office winding down. People talked, phones rang a final time, a staffer answered with his name. The noise granted him substance and a place where he belonged. At least for another few days.

He had no real sense of falling asleep. He knew where he was the entire time, lying there on the lumpy leather sofa, the slick armrest hard against the back of his head. He could even feel the rise and fall of his chest. But a patina gradually spread over him, staining him the same arid yellow as the ambassador’s window back in Cairo.

The scene unfolded, not against his closed eyelids but rather across all his other senses. Gradually he listened and heard the wind pick up, until it was howling through his office as loud as it had upon their return journey through the Western Desert. The windstorm blistered his unprotected skin with lashings of sand. An ocher-and-orange storm bellowed just overhead.

The wind heightened further, until its lament shrieked and sobbed and cried words he could almost understand. A desert dirge filled his nostrils and covered his body with desiccated tears. The weight upon his chest increased until it grew hard to draw breath. He struggled, but he was pinned down now, trapped and unable to move or even weep. As he lay and wished for the strength to find a place safe from the storm he would always carry with him, he felt a liquid red burning upon his hands. The caustic blaze spread up his arms, across his chest, his face, his eyes, his heart.

“Wynn?”

He gasped, or thought he did, and found himself sitting up even before he had fully opened his eyes. Gradually the sands departed, and the howling wind diminished. Carter stood in the open doorway, watching him anxiously. “Are you sure you’re up to going by the Hutchings’?”

In response, he rose and slipped on his jacket, stuffed his tie in his pocket, and brushed at his sleeves. Slapping away not dust but rather the impression that lingered from his dream. When it did not depart, he motioned for Carter to lead them out. Resigned to the fact that he would remain ever scalded by his sister’s blood.

The taxi ride seemed as endless as the surrounding night. Carter spoke several times, but the words became lost in winds that still whispered and threatened. Every time Wynn blinked his eyes, he could feel the desert grit grinding away, streaking his vision and choking off his air.

When Esther opened the door for them, Wynn slipped by both her smile and her welcome and entered the crowded living room. There were at least a dozen people scattered about, many of whom Wynn recognized from the committee hearings. Graham’s wheelchair was in its usual spot, the sofa alongside still dimpled from where Esther had risen. Wynn walked over and sat down.

Up close, Graham looked truly ravaged. But the eyes were brilliant, the strongest light in Wynn’s entire day. Esther sat down at Wynn’s other side and slid over the box of tissues. “You need to use these every once in a while and clean his face. Swallowing is such a struggle.”

On the opposite sofa, Kay sat surrounded by officials and staffers. When Wynn looked over, she asked, “You all right?”

“Sure.”

“I heard one of your interviews on the way over. CBS used it as their lead story, that and how the financial markets are going ballistic. The banks’ spokesman did everything but blame you for the bubonic plague. You sounded very solid by comparison. Very sane.”

A young woman in one of the dining room chairs said, “If I read this correctly, Senator, I’d say we should hit them head-on. Explain that the currency traders acting for hedge funds and private equity funds are the ones imperiling the financial health of our nation. Not us.”

Kay exchanged smiles with Carter, two people who had been at the game for a very long time. She said, “Tell her for me.”

“Your ideas are fine,” Carter said. “But they won’t wash.”

“It’s all too far away,” Kay agreed. “None of this really concerns the average person. That’s why the banking lobby’s managed to wreak as much legislative havoc as they have.”

“Our only hope,” Carter said, “lies in finding something that will put a local face on this thing. Something that defines a threat people can point to and say, this could cost me big time.”

“Other than a severe recession,” Kay added. “Or a meltdown of our banking system. Let’s try to avoid both of those.”

Wynn turned his attention back to the figure in the wheelchair. Graham reached out the one hand still mobile, a trembling leaf fighting his own storms. Wynn gripped it very gently, and allowed his hand to be drawn back over to rest upon the wheelchair arm. He could feel every bone beneath Graham’s skin. But there beside this man who could do little more than sit and wait for death to strike the final blow, Wynn found peace. The winds stopped their whispered wrath. He could swallow down the sorrow born of all his futile days, and breathe free.

The phone rang. Esther rose to answer. The talk swirled. Beyond the window the night glowed with tiny lights that came and braved the darkness for a time, then departed. Wynn stayed where he was, listening to all the lessons the old man left unspoken.

“Wynn?”

Esther gazed down at him, both hands clutching the phone to her chest. “Something terrible has happened.”

Tuesday

Our agents found the house by the light the fire made against the rain.” Agent Welker sounded grim as the news he carried, hard as the night. “The old place went up like a torch. Rain was hissing and dancing off the roof. The local cops stopped a lone male driving a Chevy with stolen plates. Turns out he smelled like he’d bathed in gasoline. Had quite an arsenal in his trunk. He refused to supply any ID. They’re holding him on suspicion of arson.”

The room around him was a single set of eyes, silent as the grave. “What about Jackie?”

“I’m sorry, Congressman. I really am. The agents tried to make it up the stairs. The place was a furnace. These are good men, believe me, I checked. If they say they tried, that’s what they did.”

A chiming came from where his jacket was slung over the sofa back. Wynn gestured at the room, urging someone to pick up his phone. Carter was the first to move. “I understand.”

“Apparently the agents heard music and they think a voice. But who was actually in there, we won’t know until the firemen finish going through the ashes.”

Carter stepped over to him and said, “It’s Jackie.”

The agent heard that. “You’ve got the woman on another line?”

“Hold on a second,” Wynn said, trading phones. “Are you all right?”

“Barely. We almost had a heart attack. We were just working away, minding our own business, then whoosh. The whole place went up like a bomb.”

Jackie did not sound the least bit worried. In fact, if Wynn had to put a name to her tone, it would have been elation. “Where are you?”

“Millicent Kirby’s upstairs front room. We wanted to go to a hotel but Millicent wouldn’t leave her house. We knew they were on to us soon as they cut our feed into Hayek’s mainframe. But we had enough by then. Almost everything, in fact. Colin just did these huge dumps. Basically ever since then we’ve been trying to figure out what it is we’re looking at.”