Russell Banks - The Darling

Zack lighted a cigarette and looked nervously back and forth along the highway. Morning traffic was thin; Cape Cod weekenders from the Boston suburbs hadn’t started their pilgrimage to the sea yet. On the floor of the backseat was a small nylon carry-on bag. Inside the bag was a tan, tropical-weight suit, size forty-two, and a dress shirt and tie from Filene’s Basement. Inside the breast pocket of the suit jacket was an envelope with five one-hundred-dollar bills and a one-way Egypt Air ticket for the 1:05 p.m. flight from Boston to Cairo — everything drawn from my going-away gift from Samuel Doe, an irony that was not lost on me.

Also inside the jacket pocket was a U.S. passport in the name of Charles Davis. The photo was of a round-faced black man who resembled Charles only slightly, but close enough that a white man would think it was an exact likeness. This took place some fifteen years ago, remember, when it was safe to assume that Charles’s face and passport photo would not be examined by a black man in uniform until he got to Egypt. Also, back then, before Americans started seeing anyone whose skin wasn’t pink as a potential suicide bomber, security was light and the technology of surveillance was slow and unreliable.

Getting a passport for Charles had been a simple matter. I’d driven Carol to the Federal Building in Boston, where for the first time in her life she applied for her passport. Ten days later it arrived in the mail, and that evening I doctored it with Whiteout and a photo-booth head-shot of one of the cooks at The Pequod, a handsome black man named Dick Stephens, divorced and lonely, Carol said. I’d pretended to have a crush on him, had spent a day in Provincetown with him, and had asked for a picture for my wallet, so I could memorialize the lovely day and had promised with lowered eyes future payment for the favor. We snapped four pictures each; I gave him mine, and he gave me his.

Carol had been uneasy with what Zack and I were up to, especially after I assumed ownership of her brand new passport, which represented to her in tangible form the power and authority of the United States government. But by then she and Zack were once again sleeping together without me, and I had assumed the leadership position among the three of us and had made my mission the only important one. Zack happily complied. He believed that when I completed my mission, he would assume ownership of at least half, possibly more, of Charles’s million-dollar cache in some secret Caribbean bank account. According to Zack, well before we saw Charles off at Logan Airport, we’d stop at a Shawmut Bank branch in the suburbs, where Charles would arrange the transfer of the funds from his account to Zack’s little checking account at the New Bedford branch.

I asked him how he could be sure Charles would be willing and able to do that.

“No way Charlie won’t deliver the goods. Until he walks into the Libyan embassy in Cairo, we can always get him busted by the feds.”

“Not without busting ourselves.”

“We can drop a dime on him, and the feds’ll greet him when he lands. He’s connected to Ghaddafi and the fucking Libyans, man. He’s an escapee from an American prison. The Egyptians’d give him up in a minute.”

“Zack, you do that, and I swear I’ll kill you.”

He laughed. “Yeah. Sure. Suddenly you’re Weather Underground again. A revolutionary. A true believer. C’mon, you just want to fuck the guy.”

“Zack, I’m doing this to save my country.”

“ Your country? What, Liberia?”

“Yes. My country. And my sons’ and my husband’s country. And their lives, I’m doing this to save their lives,” I said, and meant it, too. Believed it.

It had started to rain. Zack checked his watch. “Ten twenty-five. Shit. Where the fuck is he?” Southbound traffic was building into a steady stream. Inevitably, a trooper cruising for speeders would spot us and pull in behind the Toyota, ask us for IDs, and run the plates. My driver’s license, like my passport, was phony and long expired anyhow, and I was driving a car registered in my mother’s name.

“Maybe he fucked up getting over the fence,” Zack said. “I know that fence, and it’s not all that easy to climb. Maybe we oughta book.”

“No. We’ll wait.”

“How long? Some cop comes along, we’re in deep shit.”

“I won’t abandon him, Zack.”

“Yeah. Sure. C’mon, don’t go all high church on me. You’re in this for the money as much as I am,” he said.

“No. For maybe the first time in fifteen years, I’m acting on principle.”

“Those days, when it made some kind of sense to act on principle, are long gone, babe. Now the only people acting on principle are right-wing born-again Christians, and I’m not so sure about them. These are the eighties, babe.”

“Charles Taylor is acting on principle.”

“Yeah, right,” he said and turned to roll down the window and toss his cigarette, and there was Charles, standing in the rain beside the car, looking in at us with a broad smile on his wet face.

“Can you give a man a lift?” he asked and pulled open the rear door and got in.

DRIVING NORTH TOWARDS Boston we said little to one another. Charles exchanged his prison garb for the clothes I’d brought, and examined the ticket and cash and his new passport.

“Who’s this a picture of? This black man s’posed to look like me? Hell, I’m much prettier than this guy.”

“It’s the best I could do,” I said.

We were outside Natick, barely a half-hour from the airport. I felt strangely calm and clearheaded, as if I were merely dropping a friend off and didn’t have to go much out of my way to do it. Twice we passed a police car, and I had to remind myself to keep to the speed limit, for God’s sake, I’m helping a man break out of a federal prison, I’m a fugitive myself with a forged passport and driver’s license, my partner in crime seated next to me is a parolee, and if we’re stopped and caught, he’ll cut a deal in a minute, he’ll say anything, and will betray both me and Charles to keep from going back to prison.

Without turning, Zack said, “Charlie, maybe we should talk about our little agreement.”

“Eh? How’s that?”

“Well, as you no doubt recall, there was to be a certain payment for the services. You no doubt recall our earlier conversations on the subject. And now here we are, man. Almost home.”

In the rearview mirror I watched Charles nod and look out at the passing suburbs and smile as if to himself. He was silent for several long minutes.

Zack said, “Well? What about it? We gonna transfer those funds from your account in Switzerland or the Caymans or wherever the hell they are over to my account in New Bedford or…”

“Or what?”

“Or not. Because if not, then we’ve got a problem.”

“Really? Is that true, Hannah? I mean ‘Dawn,’ of course. Is that true? If I don’t pass Zack the money that Samuel Doe say I stole wit’ your husband, then we have a problem, you an’ me?”

“No,” I said. “This is strictly between you and Zack.”

“Good girl,” he said. “You a good girl. You a true Liberian patriot. But my friend Zack here, I dunno, man. Seems like he in this for the money. An’ once I give him the way to get it into his pocket, him don’t need me for nothin’ no more an’ can fuck up my travel plans real easy, if he want to. I think I’ll wait till I get me a boarding pass an’ they call my row to board the plane, before I give you what you want. You understand, Zack.”

“Yeah. I understand.”

Charles asked for a piece of paper and a pen. My mother’s list-making pad and ballpoint pen were clipped to a plastic holder stuck to the dashboard, and I handed him both. Charles wrote for a few seconds, tore off the top piece of notepaper, and returned the pen and pad. He folded the notepaper once and put it into his shirt pocket.