The Faithful Spy

This had happened to Wells once before. Most contractors kept their word, because they were honest or because they knew that word would get out if they didn’t. But some were real pricks. Wells wanted to put a rock through a window of one of these fancy houses. But Dale might show up at the Kermex lot with the cops, and nobody could risk that. Least of all Wells. He tossed the box of fried chicken on the lawn — maybe the smell would attract raccoons. They walked for miles down Mount Vernon in rain that turned into a full-on thunderstorm. Wells forced himself to stick with Eduardo and the others, though he worried that a cop might pick them up. Sandy Springs was the richest suburb in Atlanta, and its police didn’t look kindly on brown men wandering the streets. For long stretches, the road had no shoulder or sidewalks, and twice they were forced to jump into brush to avoid speeding SUVs. Finally they reached 285 and waited interminably for a bus. From now on Wells was bringing twenty bucks and his cell phone on these jobs, so he could call a cab if he got ditched. He had been colder and hungrier plenty of times, but he couldn’t remember being quite so furious. He expected more from his country. Beside him the Guatemalans chattered away until finally Wells tapped Eduardo’s shoulder. “You speak English?” Wells said.

Eduardo smiled. “Good as you speak Spanish.”

“Then can I ask you something? You like it here?”

“Every month I send my family seven hundred dollars. They building a house in Escuintla, where I’m from,” Eduardo said.

“When it’s done, I go home.”

“You don’t want to stay?”

“You really want to know?”

“I asked.”

Eduardo looked at Wells, considering.

“Then I tell you, man. I know all about America before I come. So big, so rich. And also you have demo-cra-cy and free-dom—”

English might not be Eduardo’s first language, but he understood irony just fine, Wells thought.

Eduardo coughed and spat at the traffic. “You act like this is the only place in the world. And everybody should be sad they don’t live here. So I’m glad I came, man. Now I seen America for myself. I won’t miss it. This place, for me, it’s a job. That’s all.”

.

da r k n e s s h a d fa l l e n when Wells finally reached his apartment. Tired as he was, he remembered to check the sliver of tape he’d fastened to the top of the doorsill and the thin black thread at the base; both were intact. He’d escaped his pursuers for another day. If anyone was bothering to pursue him. His living room looked even duller than usual. A dingy futon and a wooden coffee table marred with cigarette burns. A particleboard bookcase and a television-DVD combo with a few discs, mainly westerns like Shane. A motivational poster of an eagle flying above a generic mountain landscape. Except for the DVDs and a few books, the apartment looked as tired as it had when Wells first rented it. No pictures, no trinkets. No clothes on the floor, no dishes in the sink. Nothing that marked the place as being inhabited by a human being instead of a robot. Well, one thing: a few weeks earlier Wells had bought a fish tank and a couple of angelfish.

“Hello, Lucy,” he said to the tank. “Hello, Ricky.” He had never particularly liked fish, but he was glad to have something alive in his apartment. Half alive, anyway — the fish had been swimming slower and slower the last few days.

He knelt on his prayer rug and unenthusiastically flipped his Koran to the first sura. “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful,” he murmured in Arabic. “Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, the Compassionate, the Merciful—”

Wells broke off and set the Koran down. He tried to pray every morning and night, but he couldn’t hide from himself the truth that his faith had deflated like a leaky tire since the morning when he’d knelt hopelessly before his parents’ graves. He still believed — or desperately wanted to believe, anyway — in God and charity and brotherhood. But he had told Duto the truth when he’d said Islam had been a way of life as much as a religion for him. Being Muslim meant praying five times a day, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the mosque every Friday, not necessarily believing that Mohammed had risen to heaven on a white horse. Now he prayed alone, and without the comforts of the umma, the brotherhood, the Koran seemed increasingly foreign.

In a way the distance made him glad. He knew that when the moment came to stop Khadri, he wouldn’t have any doubts. Still, he wished he could believe in something. No country, no religion, no family. He had tried to write his son, but what could he say to the boy? “Dear Evan, you don’t know me, but I’m your real father, not that nice lawyer who’s taken care of you all these years. ” “Dear Evan, I know I disappeared from your life when you were two. ”