Chapter 6

Sunday rolled around and Cyn must have gotten the papers. I called the marriage lawyer on Monday morning, just to let her know about the papers being delivered, and she promised to get back to me if they were signed and sent back. All was quiet on the client side of things, except that I got an urgent email from 'Fort Worth Printing.'

Like a good little boy scout, I emailed them back and said I was on vacation, but what was the problem? I could probably fix it by remote hookup. They answered almost immediately: I was needed right away. In person. How soon could I get here? Well, I told them, it had taken me the better part of three days to get to where I was. I was some 150 miles north of Anchorage. So the personal appearance was out.

I had baited all the hooks I had, so I went out to the stream and baited a different kind. I pulled up a lawn chair next to Pap and Oliver. I threw my line into the stream and nodded to them. They nodded back. That was enough idle chatter for a whole day.

Wednesday evening, when I did my email check, I found an IM waiting for me.

I figure you've had a chance to calm down by now. We should talk. It's not what you think. – C

It was now 6 p.m. and the message was five hours old. The message light told me she was online now. I sent her a message:

Really?? You know me so well that you can tell what I'm thinking? Oh, I forgot. We're married and we have this deep connection. At least when you're not in 'Mexico' or on a 'team building cruise.' I don't think you know shit about 'what I think.' – J

Her reply:

You're right. I meant: it's not what it seems. Come home and we can talk about it. Please? –C

I sent back:

Home? 'We' don't have a home. Just a rest stop between sessions where you can fuck Senor AssHole.

There was a longer pause before her next message.

You've got to come back sometime. You're not the kind of guy to just walk away. If you don't come to me, I'll come and get you at that cabin in Arkansas. So just come home and we can talk about this.

Oh. Of course. She could track my satellite internet connection because she's connected to the ISN – the International Spy Network. I wondered if I blew my cover when I responded to Fort Worth Printing.

I sent back: Ok. Soon.

And then closed my laptop. I considered going deeper into the unhooked land of 'off grid, ' for about two seconds. She was right. There would too much left behind. More to the point: SHE was the one who fucked everything up. Why should I have to leave?

I packed up my stuff, had a lengthy conversation with Pap and Oliver – consisting of me nodding to them, they nodded back – and took off for my home. It was mine. Not ours. It was 7:20 by the time I left Arkansas and I arrived at the house about 2 a.m. I was startled to see her car parked in the driveway. I kept driving and found a motel for the night.

By nine the next morning, her car was gone, and I hoped she was, too. I went to the house and disabled the radio transmitter first. When I walked in, the house was just like I'd left it. She'd turned off the continuous loop of her porn that was running on the desktop. When I went in the bedroom, I found all her stuff had been moved to the guest room. At least she'd had the decency to do that, but I was surprised that she was staying here. I thought I'd changed the locks.

Again, I'd reckoned without the ISN connection. Of course, she'd know how to pick a lock. Probably knew how to get another set of keys. I decided a thorough fumigation was in order.

I got a banker's box – the kind you have to assemble yourself, and you can store papers in it – from the closet and began pulling all the audio bugs and video bugs from the house. I checked outside as well, but didn't find any there. Each one I found, I smashed with my fumigation tool – a ball peen hammer that I used once to get some dents out of the van. Then I'd throw the mangled bug-parts into the box. In total I found two dozen audio and video devices in the house. The remote receiver made an even twenty-five.

When I looked at the cardboard box, I noticed that the bug parts were remarkably clean. I expected that bugs smashed by a hammer would have green guts and be slimy. Well ... they were slimy, all right. The slime wasn't as clean as it would have been from a squashed insect, though.

There was a note on the kitchen counter that I'd ignored while I fumigated. It said: 'Call me.'

I decided to send an IM instead. It was less personal than a call. My message was succinct: Have returned to my home. Then I went out into the back yard and played with Bear.

She got home about an hour later; she opened the front door and then came in the back door. I could tell. You know the stories that when you lose one sense, the others get stronger? Well it was kinda like that. Plus the home alarm system that I turned on beeped when a door was opened and I could hear it in the back yard.

I called Bear over and we went inside. He lapped up about a quart of water, while I went into the living room. I didn't say anything to Cyn; she didn't say anything to me, just stepped aside to let me and Bear pass.

"I see you've been staying here," I started it off.

"Yes," she replied softly. "It's my house too, you know."

"Hmmm," was all I said. Then, "Which set of papers will you sign?"

"I don't want to sign any of them. I don't want a divorce. I love you. I still love you."

"I'll proceed with irreconcilable differences, then. It is irreconcilable, you know. You think that lying to me is ok, and I don't. You think that fucking away at the Century Hotel with Mr. AssHole is ok, and I don't. No way to reconcile those two positions. You can delay things, but this is America. You can't keep me in a marriage I don't want."

"But you do want it. You want to be married to me," she insisted. "And I still love you." She was amazingly calm, but then ... I knew she was a good actress.

"Really?" I said with a sneer. I wasn't as good an actor. I was hurt, and my emotions messed up my acting career. "When did you start? Was it in Ramstein? When you latched on to a sinking ship of a cripple and made yourself into an instant fiancée? 'Cause that was the start of it. Looking for a good cover story for yourself? Or was it here in Dallas? It must have been before that, because that's when the Houston crap started. Were you seeing him from the start?"

"Please, let's not talk about that. It was a job. That's all."

"Oh, please," I mocked her tone. "Let's do talk about it." And with that I put the cardboard box with the bug guts on the coffee table between us. "You're friends won't mind."

She looked in the box and thought a long moment. Then she reached into her purse and brought out the Cross pen and her lipstick, and put them on the table. She pulled the cap off the pen and showed me some additional electronics that had been carefully soldered on. Then she pulled the base off the lipstick and showed me an additional bug. I carefully lifted them up, took them into my office and treated them to the 'ooh baby' recording of Cynthia and Sr. AssHole in the lovesuite.

When that was done, I came back into the living room.

"Does it have to be that recording?" she mournfully asked.

"Why not?" I replied. "Aren't you proud of your accomplishments? How well you've done your job? By the way, which part of your job was fucking me over?"

"None. None of it." She finally began to cry. They seemed to be genuine tears, but who knew? "It wasn't ... You weren't supposed to even know."

"I wasn't supposed to notice that you were spending a quarter of your married life shacked up in Houston?"

"Look. I'm going to tell you everything. I don't know if we can salvage our marriage..."

"We can't," I interrupted.

She just nodded. "Well, you deserve to know anyway. And I want to stay married. To you.

"It's the CIA. They recruited me directly from the Admiral's staff. I wasn't thrown out of the Navy. They just changed my Navy records to look that way. I got a month off until I had to show up in Dallas for my cover job at Carbunkle. I spent that month in Germany with you. What happened in Germany was real. I swear it. I thought I maybe loved you and I wanted to find out if it would be fireworks or just a sparkler. I still reported to the Admiral, on paper, at Carbunkle. In reality I worked for the Agency."

"The CIA isn't supposed to operate on U.S. soil," I reminded her.

"And if you believe that, I've got a nifty bridge you can buy," she said. "My first assignment was I was to make contact with a Venezuelan diplomat who often came to Houston. Carlos Emellion."

"'make contact' ... is that a euphemism for 'fuck his lights out'?" I asked.

She nodded quietly, her eyes never leaving the floor. "I guess so. You and I were just getting acquainted when I got this assignment. I wasn't sure how it was going to work between us. You were so down and I didn't..."

"Are you making this about me?" I said. "It's my fault?"

"No ... no. Not at all. I could have stopped any time. But he was tied up in arms and supplying money to terrorists in Saudi, so I didn't want to stop before he got nabbed."

"Says who?"

"Huh?"

"Who says he was associated with terrorists?"

"Well, the CIA."

"And they never, ever lie. You can depend on what they tell you, right? Now who's buying the Brooklyn Bridge?" I said.

That brought her up short. "Well, why would they set this whole thing up then?"

"I don't know. Ask 'them.' And how would setting up Sr. AssHole..."

"His name is Emellion. Carlos."

"Maybe to you. To me he's Sr. AssHole. He was – or is – fucking my wife. He's going to be an asshole to me forever ... Anyway, how is fucking him going to end the terrorist threat to America?"

"Well, I was supposed to get details of his banking relationships and then they'd have him."

"Oh..." I said as if the light bulb had just turned on over my head. "I see. Most international terrorist financiers will open up about their terrorist connections with their out of town piece of tail. That's natural." The sarcasm dripped.