Soul searching - Recuerdos

Paul tries to solve the riddle.

He noticed two of his pursuers as he left the square, they must have lost their patience �" or have they suspected that he might meet someone under their noses… He had to bite his lower lip not to laugh in their faces. But just fifteen minutes later while he tried in vain to hail a cab, he was not hilarious anymore. The several empty cabs that passed him without stopping were a bad omen, he was left with two options the underground or walk back. Take care my boy, open your eyes! He told himself with growing apprehension. They’re after your hide and  don’t you forget it!

He went on thinking quite perturbed. He preferred to walk on the wide pavement, feeling much safer among the few pedestrians, than descend the bad lighted underground stairs and passages, and push his way in a dense crowd �" where anyone could stab him with a syringe needle or some pointed and poisonous umbrella end.

After he crossed several blocks and nothing happened, he relaxed a bit. Go straight ahead, he told himself. Don’t tie your shoe laces; don’t watch shops’ window panes to have a glimpse what’s behind you �" no surveillance checking not even out of curiosity or out of habit �" no tricks.

When he reached the hotel at last, he went straight to the bar. He needed a drink badly. He hardly crossed the bar’s threshold when a waiter dropped his empty platter on the counter with a sharp noise. It resounded well all over the entire small hall.

What a well timed welcome… Paul thought sardonically. If they didn’t bump me off outside I’m safe. I don’t think the bartender doesn’t know who I’m; they’re trying to get on my nerves.

Some ordinary guests watched him with curiosity. He ordered a double scotch paid and went right afterward to the hotel’s restaurant, he was terribly hungry.

What a somber country, what fear ridden citizens… What do they know at Langley about the mentality, the fears of the average Russian that perceives right away every move every sign without any clandestine training? Paul thought gloomily while having his supper. The moment that waiter gave the sign, almost everyone there watched me, all those who had nothing to do with it, but knew very well that I’m the current prey �" what a ghoulish feeling it was…Why was I sent here? He went on thinking munching his food, hardly noticing what he was eating. Do they think the high and mighty back home, that I’ll work some miracle, form a net or get them a source or two �" in this spider web country? Or is it a premeditated failure, in which I play the blind tool that, can be disposed of �" a sacrifice for someone’s egotistical ambitions…? With these gruesome thoughts Paul went up to his room. He did not feel like going out and mingle with some strangers in some bar or a night club, as he did almost every night before. He was exhausted mentally and physically.

Back in his room he sat a short while before the TV screen, zapped the few foreign channels absent mindedly; tried the local ones to catch up a few more words in Russian in vain. He simply could not concentrate. The early meeting with Sam troubled him, while having met Tanya or whatever her name is, later on, augmented his frustration. He did not make any foolish mistake and left her right in time, but he could not rid himself from a certain feeling, which he could not even define yet �" the inkling of having missed a rare opportunity. As soon as he realized it he switched off the TV, and sat pondering over it.

I wonder if I would have had the guts to leave her behind, get up and go if I would have met her again… He thought smiling, as if he admitted to himself his own weaknesses. But Tanya is not the last straw that broke the camel’s back… It’s Sam the herald of those who didn’t like my relation with Alicia, a waitress and a Puerto Rican on top of it… But that has nothing to do with that dubious mission of mine, there must be something else, something that must have been brewing a long time; and my relationship with Alicia have made me the appropriate and handy scapegoat. It was one of several possible explanations to this bizarre mission of his. The way he was summoned with such urgency, the haphazard briefing… All he had to do as he was told in a few words was to spend some time in this country, and wait till a certain agent would get in touch with him. Sure, I’ve been burned the moment I landed in this damn country, and if there’s such type that waits for the right time to get in touch with me, he’s lying low if he exists at all…There was talk on equipment and means, and I am supposed to persuade him to expand, to recruit some more hands and turn into a net, and here comes that operator of mine and tells me that he stinks…

With such thoughts and worries it is hard to find some self composure, and thus Paul did not fall asleep before two forty five am. almost. He managed to have a last worried look at his wrist watch, a few seconds before his anxious brain gave in to the demands of his exhausted body.

 

Haim Kadman 20.10.2010 �" all rights reserved.