The Old Stooped Spy

The old spy leaned over the rail of the tug peering into the murky Chesapeake.  The water looked as inky as the sky and he could only differentiate the two by the opaque lights on the eastern shore. He was listening, from a safe vantage on the aft deck, for hidden sounds of danger, signs of potential chaos.  Always attentive, without appearing to be, he was using his senses, powers of concentration, intuition. What did the sluggish chug of the diesels reveal?  Was the captain slowing for a reason? Was there a misfiring piston, a metallic creak that meant the starboard side impacted some foreign object?  If x is present, then he must react with y or z or xya or xyab; a hundred variables shifting, permuting in his head.

He often couldn’t sleep at night from a mind that wouldn’t stop thinking, worrying. During the late 90s something went awry, his anxiety had turned irrational, to hysteria, like a satellite circuit that looped back into itself, a fact he tried hard to conceal. During a manic episode that manifested itself badly on the Embassy Row cocktail circuit, the hysteria had taken on a mind of its own and he’d been ordered to see a shrink at Langley. That ultimately hadn’t gone too well and he was forced into a desk job; then subsequently thrown a bone: non-official-cover at a news agency. Let out to pasture until retirement.  And that relatively easy let down only because of his one shining achievement for the agency:  in his early career he had played a substantial role in bugging the Zil stretch limos of some members of the Soviet Politburo. One of the few HUMINT cases inside the USSR the agency had leaked to media assets. And his team had reached near folk hero status at the operations division at Langley. Up there in the same league as the agents who had tracked down and killed Che Guevara in the jungles of Bolivia in 1967. In spite of setbacks the agency had been good to him.  And he wasn’t bitter, only resigned.

Tonight, as always, he’d done his due diligence. During a leisurely stroll he’d counted the lifejacket stowage bins, noted the three tarpaulin ensconced dinghies chained with rusting locks, memorized fire extinguisher locations. 

Musing over the rail, he wondered how many times had he boarded similar vessels in far-flung places. Crossing the Dardanelles from Canakkale at midnight with crates of guns and blackened faced stowaways, traversing the muddy Rio de la Plata between Uruguay and Buenos Aires when the wet cold air cut like razors, in ’86 when that old rust bucket had sunk in the Danube after banging a bridge piling at Linz, the chaos that might have become an international incident but for the quick thinking of the station chief in Vienna. In spite of the terror he sometimes felt, outwardly he was a calm multi-tasker, constantly observing without seeming to look, sneaking a panorama of the old ferry’s upper deck in the guise of turning to pitch out a cigarette butt. From a cigarette he’d feigned smoking, nonchalantly, while elbows rested on the rough metal rail. An invented vice that was part of the guise of becoming someone he wasn’t, throwing off surveillance, making his path hard to follow.  

Everything was part of the act because interrogators could use drug-induced confessions to obtain a near photographic snapshot of a person or place in time. Who needed surveillance cameras when there was sodium pentothal? They might coerce an old lady later: “Was the gentleman a smoker?”  And the likely answer:  “He chain-smoked over the rail, taking nips from a pint bottle of gin he occasionally took from his right coat pocket; he seemed rather lonely, mournful.” Behavioral skills had been inculcated at the Farm and later on the streets, the dead drops, chalk marks on park benches, electronic listening devices, the trained paranoia, the all important Moscow Rules (someone is ALWAYS listening, watching) spy craft that had not only stayed with him but become inherent to his personality--choosing the safest table at a restaurant (preferably with his back to a corner), taking a three hour walk to meet an operative only six blocks away so that all possible tails could be lost, always planning for imminent danger, escape routes, and, above all, plausible deniability. Becoming so deep in his cover that reality itself became blurred. Everything he ever discussed with his wife was a lie or at least based in falsehood. The personality within a personality within a personality; psychiatrists called it compartmentalization.   


He was one of the best street men the agency ever had.  And it was more than talent, a gift.  He could layout in his mind the floor plan of a building he’d only entered once, go to the bathroom in the middle of the night when visiting his family on holidays without waking anyone, change his physical profile five times in a crowded airport, sketch the faces of the three passengers who shared a subway car with him in Paris a week earlier.  He could carry on endless hours of one-sided conversations at cocktail parties where nothing was revealed about himself, unless it was a lie, while reams of appreciable data could be mined from the other party, dropped tidbits here and there that often turned to gold. 


He thought about a lifetime of, if not quite successes, then pivotal moments where his luck had held. 


(to be continued....)

Battle Mask: Prologue

BATTLE MASK

A Novel

By Michael Renfro

Prologue

August, 1937

Etta had been drawn to and fascinated with the trunks—one in particular because of its soothing moss green paint—ever since she could remember. Maybe it was really a fascination with far off places. And the old trunk with its faded customs stamps represented tangible evidence that the world could indeed be traveled. She listened in rapt attention when the old folks got together and talked about how her grandfather, Gunter Gruenwald, had emigrated from Bavaria. She felt she knew him, sensing him sometimes in her dreams. And she longed to visit that ancient Teutonic village—Gruenwald—where he had come from in those blue Bavarian Mountains. And to know the circumstances that caused him to leave his family and come to America. She read books about Germany, its history, people. And took all the German language she could in school, memorized hundreds of definitions and spent hours going over conjugations. After school she’d sit cross-legged on the old shipping trunks to do her homework and wonder about Germany.

Her fascination with the trunks would change her life. Around a campfire one night the older kids were telling ghost stories and when it was her turn she went blank.

“You know the rules, Etta,” chided Arty. “You gotta tell something.”

“This stuff is silly, don’t know any ghost stories,” she said rolling her eyes.

“Then tell us your greatest fear,” demanded her brother.

“Okay, give me a minute to think,” she said leaning back against her cousin Roz. She closed her eyes and shuddered.

“What is it, being chased by wolves?” asked Arty.

“No…”

“Okay, what? And it better be good,” said Emeril.

“Just being shut up…alone, in the dark,” she said. “I think it would scare me…to death.”

“What do you mean? Locked up, how?” whispered Roz.

Her shoulders shuddered again. “I have these dreams about it, like I’m in a coffin or something,” she said trancelike with fire shadows dancing off her face.

Emeril made a mental note. He had a sadistic streak and lusted for opportunities to make it manifest. One evening a few weeks later when the lid slammed on the old box she knew instinctively she was in trouble. The younger boys were whooping and hollering, laughing at the fear in her eyes but their voices faded as strong hands pushed her down. They were just playing a game. But for Emeril it was not a joke, but something that drove him. Causing others to suffer gave him an obscene excitement. Like one of those fire starters. He said it was more than just fun. That he got tingles and goose bumps all over. “It’s ten times better than a girl,” he told an incredulous Arty.

He knelt beside the trunk so he could breathe in her fear when the lid slammed, then put his ear to the side to listen for her hysteria. The last image Etta saw before the darkness enveloped her was his face, distorted, half crazed, demonic, like a ceramic mask—as if he had become another person entirely.

When she heard the metallic cinching of the locks she kicked and banged frantically at the wooden panels until her knuckles were afire. Then she rested and tried to calm herself, think rationally. They’d come back for her, she knew. It was not the stifling heat that scared her. It was getting dark and would cool off soon. And there was enough air to last for hours. The thirst wouldn’t bother her. She was as tough as them, could go without water, just like out in the scorching cotton fields picking until her hands were bloody. She learned to pace herself until she came to the end of a four-acre row before taking a drink from the water jug.

But there is a fine line between confidence and despair.

When she no longer heard their voices her pulse quickened. Her eyes dilated, seeking awareness in her new abyss. Her lungs felt like a bellows, sucking scarce air from a fireplace. Yet she gasped for it anyway in spite of her blistering lungs. Then she wheezed and coughed frantically; at first just to expel the thick dust. Then her chest expanded and contracted uncontrollably in a futile attempt to exorcise the ramping fear. And the wheezing morphed into strange guttural sounds, like something between a deep tuberculin cough and those despondent howls made by paid mourners in Oriental cultures.

But knowing she was on the verge of losing control she tried to muster courage, summon calm. Thoughts ricocheted wildly in her brain like scared and confused rabbits, darting here and there. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this. If she had been able to move, she thought, or even bend her knees and turn over it might be bearable. Or if she could just curl up in a fetal position and wait till they released her it would be easier. But the trunk was narrow and low and almost any movement was impossible. And the boys had covered her with wads of prickly un-ginned cotton, further restricting her movement and muffling any sounds from outside her imposed tomb.

She wheezed again and again just to hear her own sound. As if it were her umbilical cord to the rational, the voice of a friend offering comfort, assuring her all was going to be okay. That she was going to make it out alive.

It was now a question of how to control the fear while she was entombed, how to deal with the frightening delusion that the hot, smothering trunk was encroaching on her being, was closing in on her, was snuffing out her life. Hysteria, she knew, might actually kill her. Yet she couldn’t control it and each moment brought a new wave of fear, another magnitude of desperation. I must hold on, must think straight, must be there when Mae returns from the errand. I must be the one who brings the medicine to Mama.

But those were her last rational thoughts for days. And had anyone been left in the old barn to notice he would have heard muffled screaming, horrific screaming. But it was hard to tell whether she was begging for mercy or begging to die.

***************

THE FATBACK CHRONICLES: Fatback's Near Miss

Both brothers were near the get away car when Fatback fired the shot. Eyewitnesses to tragic events often report that gunfire mimics firecrackers or backfiring combustion engines. In previous uncertain situations, like barroom altercations, the older of the Inseparables had counseled his younger sibling: “If you hear firecrackers get under a car.”

It was just late morning, mid-July, but the heat and humidity on the south-central Texas plains were already at record levels. There was eeriness at play. The heavens had sealed themselves. The black dirt was parched, fractured. Air off the gulf was like opening an oven to check on the Sunday roast. It hit you in the face, took your breath away. The younger brother, in a rare moment of seriousness, candor said, “Something feels strange today…like when Granny died.”

By mid afternoon the Inseparables had consumed some vodka and a flat of 24 beers, smashing the aluminum cans and throwing them into or near Fatback’s rusty trash drum just outside the kitchen door. Fatback’s children and assorted nieces and nephews, who had been told to stay clear of the visiting kin, peeped saucer-eyed into the kitchen where they sat on chrome kitchen chairs, talking loudly as drunks do. The brothers—said members of the family through back channel phone calls to each other—were out of control. An upshot was that they had created an unknown unity in the far-flung family. A loose-knit alliance had coalesced whose sole purpose was to, as another male member of the family said telephonically to Fatback, “Do something about those fools.” Many a grave discussion was held on long distance about precisely what could be done about the Inseparables. One wing of the family called for special prayer and fasting; another lobbied for blunt force trauma. Fatback was securely in the latter camp.

They, however, had not the faintest notion that their behavior brought tribulation to the family; they were just wandering, lost in the wilderness of south Texas and in their muddled thinking, mostly unaware of time and space. And no pastoral sibling seemed disposed to leave his 90 and 8 in search of the two.

They worked sometimes—usually on itinerant oil rigs or as roustabouts—but only when absolutely necessary. In a general alcohol stupor, they were not happy but showed no signs of understanding their misery. The beer was their self-medication. Everything was hilarious—to them.

When Fatback arrived home late that afternoon and found them soundly ensconced in his kitchen slurring loud, obnoxious jokes he turned on heel and went directly to his gun safe. He might have offered a temporary reprieve had they not been drinking his beer. In spite of their semi-capacitated mental states, they became alarmed when Fatback, not only ordering them out of his house, had also followed them out onto his crushed seashell driveway. The older one saw a glint as the sun caught the gun. Before he could react, the younger ran fast and low, zigzagging toward the car, having been taught well. The older held his ground for a few beats, making the mistake of wagging a finger in Fatback’s face. He had done it, he said later, simply to give the younger a chance to either get under the car or to start the engine, whichever seemed more appropriate.

But the wagging digit set Fatback off. And when enraged, Fatback acquired a high, squeaky voice, his dark face became the color of blood sausage and his hands shook. And when an enraged person—a not rational person—with shaky hands is also holding his .357 nickel-plated Magnum, there is a distinct possibility for trouble.

He’d lost a kneecap in Vietnam and limped to the right. The gimp was slight, but the older Inseparable had always said he would never feel comfortable shooting quail or deer with Fatback. “Sometimes he slips, the leg gives out,” he told the younger Inseparable.

As the younger nearly reached the car the older had the presence of mind to dart, too. Fatback tripped and as he hit the gravel a single shot was expelled from the gun. And the projectile took a cantaloupe size gash out of the fiberglass near the bumper of the get away vehicle.

Years later Fatback declared that it was an accident; that he had never intended to pull the trigger. But perception is paramount. And as any freshman law school student required to interview eyewitnesses to a mock crime knows, the sequence of fast-moving events, let alone motive, is sometimes impossible to ascertain. According to Fatback's laughing confession, the shot, and the concomitant assumption that it was premeditated on his part, had had such a broad theatrical effect that he had allowed it to stand, if for no other reason than the creation of familial folklore.

But this was no diminutive firecracker. To the fleeing brothers, the sound of the .357 Magnum’s lead piercing the air behind them was more like the concussive burst of cannon fodder, something felt more than heard. Other exhilarating incidents would come and go and the Inseparables would drift apart over the years. But in general terms it was a turning point in their lives. And specifically, it was the capstone on their realization that, wherever else they might wander, they were no longer welcome at Fatback’s Goliad, Texas, residence.

Fatback stood and dusted off. Building a legend, he drew a deep breath and blew the smoke wafting out of the barrel. Attempting to cool the still heated tube he waved it in the air knowing that they would see him in their rear view mirrors. Satisfied it had cooled, and that he had made his point, he tucked it into his Levis 501’s at the small of his back. Standing, arms akimbo, on the sea of crushed shells he watched the long, black Chevy Malibu as it rifled out between distant cornfields, trailing a white cone of dust as the Inseparables got out of Dodge.

The little children looked on in wide-eyed wonder from the large picture window. A broad grin washed over Fatback's face as he turned and limped back toward the ranch house. He cocked his head to one side, musing to himself, the all-wise older sibling. In his mind he was Marshall Matt Dillon. But when the kids became teenagers, and were no longer afraid to say so, they said he seemed more like Chester.

Butch: A Snapshot, 1977

“Why did the kids on the bus call you Butch, then?” he asked her.

“You know, because of Dad and the meat market. But I didn’t even care,” she said, with an emphasis on the word even, as spoken in the patois of the young in Terrebonne Parish at the time. “I was kind of proud of it.”

“I just pretended to be tough so chumps wouldn’t…” he started, but she cut him off, excited, in the mood to talk.

“When I was little I’d sit on the commode to make and get chill bumps thinking about how lucky I was to be a part of this.”

“Part of…what?” he asked, sitting at the kitchen table, chin resting on fist, narrowing an eye and furrowing his brow with that iconic look of the movies. Comfortable. Humored by her cuteness.

“This home, this family,” she said, pausing, looking for a way to show that she was serious; a hand gesture that would indicate the enormity of her feelings. In an awkward attempt, she cupped both hands together like a small bowl, a reverenced, Holy Grail. Her thin arms shook briefly in some uncontrollable way and something between agony and joy seemed to eke out of her into the receptacle she feigned holding. Eking out slowly and painfully like liquid from a bunched up old chamois passing through a wringer, he thought later. She looked at him, eyes unfocused, but seemed not to see him. Like she was experiencing a religious rite. Or maybe some mystical encounter with the profound. She was trance-like.

“I mean, I knew even when I was little that I had something special. That other kids didn’t have,” she confessed, her eyes wide, her nostrils flaring, her cheeks suddenly flushed.

“What time are we supposed to meet them at Bayou Blue?” he asked.

“Don’t you love your family?

“What do you mean?”  He had a knack for evasion.

“You never talk about them.”

“We don’t use words like that.”

“Like what?”

Silence.

“Like what?” she coaxed, louder.

“Love,” he pretended to laugh.

“It’s even hard for you to say the word.”

“When are we leaving?” he asked attempting to change the subject.

Silence as she packed the picnic basket with ham sandwiches and Frito Lays, inadvertently knocking the salt shaker off the table with a spastic backhanded swipe. Stooping to retrieve it, the lid came off and she slung crunchy opaque granules over the old hardwood planks. Quickly grabbing for a sudsy washcloth she knocked over a flower vase and spilled a surfeit of murky water and broken Magnolias.

The whole thing was a bit like a Lucille Ball skit. And he was never sure if she was really clumsy or it was part of a comic act, the third-child-of-seven’s craving for attention, however small the audience.

Looking up at him from the floor, the knees of her Calvin Klein jeans drenched in the suds and vase water, she suddenly evinced a floodgate of tears.

“You can go from happy to sad so quickly,” he said, holding back laughter.

“Please don’t make fun of me.”

“Is this because you feel guilty for letting your parents down?”

“I just never want to hurt them again.”

“Okay.”

“I’m totally, totally serious.”

“Okay."

************************

Just Before the War with the Fascist

I was startled into consciousness by a great banging at the door. It was fierce banging. Loud enough to shake everyone in the apartment building out of a deep sleep, except probably Josef and Naritza, the deaf couple in apartment 26 from Yugoslavia.

My new 19 inch color Toshiba was still blaring. Jack Lalanne, sleek in dark tights, was hawking health and longevity. As I stumbled past him to the exploding barricade, faintly firing synapses retraced the last scene of the Cinemax movie I had fallen asleep watching the night before. Peering through cerebral cobwebs I recollected gray uniformed SS troopers in jackboots pounding a battering ram at the door of some poor cowering physicist who was attempting to scurry into his Parisian attic.

Nearly tripping over an ottoman, I opened the door and looked down onto the top of her head, a slip of a woman in penny loafers and a black cashmere cardigan. Her hair was slicked back like Popeye’s girl. She was wearing designer glasses with black rims over rectangle-shaped lenses, the style which was probably meant to portray avant-garde. But on her face they spoke, “no-nonsense” and “I’m smarter than you.” I recognized her as Nancy Schifner who had lived in number 13 for years, taking advantage of L.A. County’s rent control laws. Someone said she was a writer for one of the late night comedy shows.

She returned neither my feigned smile nor reciprocated my offer of an outstretched hand. Her hands were white and small, almost delicate, like a little girl’s. I wondered how such a small woman could have banged the door so soundly—and not injure herself. Were these the hands that just shook the building? “She must have had a lot of practice,” entered my mind.

“You’ve got quite a set of bangers there,” and I knew that was probably a mistake as it came out of my mouth. Her eyes magnified me with dark sarcasm for a few moments before speaking. In those interminable beats I noticed just how dark and large were those windows to her world. Her head was fixed and unmovable and she didn't blink. I felt she was minutely examining every cell in my body like a giant fly. And that she saw me as something petty and reprehensible; that she was calculating how she might destroy me. Even looming over her I felt small and ashamed in her presence. Why, I didn’t know.

Before she spoke I sensed a pent up anger. But it wasn’t her visage that bespoke it; that was perfectly serene—and deceptive. It was, after all, that Mona Lisa half-smile that had lulled me into proffering a handshake.

Nor was it her voice. She didn’t speak in a loud or shrill manner. She clearly meant business but spoke evenly, almost without emotion. But she was angry at something, someone. I just couldn’t put my finger on what.

In her right hand she held a stack of glossy circulars with advertisements and clippable coupons from giant electronics stores and pizza delivery places down on La Brea. She kept this sizeable stack steady, balancing it between the heel of her right hand and the tips of her fingers. It was suspended above the level of her shoulder like a waiter might hold a tray. And her hip was slightly twisted in relation to her torso like Venus de Milo.

“See these?”

“Huh? Umm…yeah?”

“As manager it is your job to keep people out of this building who deliver these”—she slammed the entire stack at my feet with a thud that echoed across the courtyard and then paused a few beats for effect—“because it constitutes a breach of tenant privacy. And rest assured that I will be watching.”

She then straightened her cardigan and backed off the stoop of my apartment extending the index and middle fingers of her right hand into a V-shape. And pointed them alternately at her own eyes and then in the general direction of my face. It was like watching the enforcer thug in so many bad mobster movies. She possessed total confidence, never a flinch.

Embarrassed, I scanned the doors and windows around the courtyard for signs that the tenants had been aware of the ruckus. There was the sound of more than a few metallic Venetian blind panels being dropped back into place. I restrained the sudden impulse to run into the bathroom and look in the mirror and see whether my ears were red. They felt burning, hot. It was sucker punch, a set up, planned this way. She probably even leaked news of her upcoming TKO of the naïve new apartment manager to a few friends and allies. And she was nearly back to her apartment and I hadn’t even thought of a retort. At least one that I wouldn't regret.

Pretending not to be aware of the dozens of ensconced eyes that watched from behind blinds and peepholes, I hefted the stack of circulars and was about to turn back into my apartment when I heard a tapping noise. In my peripheral vision I saw a fleeting smear of movement coming from behind the window of number twelve. The sound was faint at first, then louder, a coin against glass, tap, tap, tapping on a fragile windowpane.

Focusing on the window, I recognized the old Russian babushka. I had seen her amble around the building in a loose fitting bathrobe with old Soviet military medals fastened to the lapel. She looked like a confused escapee from some asylum. Her gray hair was raked back in a loose bob and she was standing behind the half opened, dusty louvered panes.

She didn't speak but as she cranked the window open but I realized she was trying to signal me. Non-verbal communication was second nature to her, I suspected. Perhaps it was her limited English but in my mind’s eye there was something more intriguing. Perhaps she had perfected this stealthy code as a means of circumventing snooping party precinct bosses back in her old flat in Moscow with its communal bathroom. Or maybe she had been a comrade commando, carrying coded messages to the front lines deemed too sensitive for the radio airwaves. I envisioned her defending the Fatherland during the War with the Fascists.

Through the glass she waved a crooked index finger to get my attention,

[S.O.S.]

then placed it on the owlish dark ring under her right eye. Somewhat over dramatically she bobbed her head and stretched the wrinkled old skin below her yellowed eye. I could just make out the pink tissue underneath her eyeball.

[WATCH OUT!!]

With the other hand she made a left-handed hitchhiker's motion, and in three slow swoops pointed her fist with its outstretched thumb in the direction of Nancy’s apartment.

[FOR THAT ONE!!]

Then she moved her index finger from below her right eye up to the bare skin on her right temple. And with that crooked finger she made a few slow deliberate half-turns, like a make-believe screwdriver.

[SHE’S CRAZY!!!]

I blinked, almost unbelieving. The embarrassment dissipated. A sudden cathartic surge of joy filled my soul like a child alone in a massive Toys R Us store. Tingles came over me head to toe like when I went to the Super-Cuts up on Hollywood Blvd. and they massaged my neck with that vibrator thing.

Entertaining, that’s how this new little war was going to be. Sure, it might only last a few days or weeks from the outset. But it had the potential to make my life pleasurable and entertaining while it lasted. And perhaps the old babushka and I had other allies lurking around the apartment building, ready to come out of the woodwork like an enemy sleeper cell.

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