In Which Sarge is Full of the Sorrow and the Pity...

Cpl.,

The days are numb. Barely measurable. I have been in an opiate haze for weeks now. A trap. Canucks, but I remember killing that bastard dealer with my own hands while around me howled Cody and where is Cody I wondered and then I didn't wonder but I slept and it was the needle that made me sleep and I saw that they wanted to make me slave to it.

After awhile I drooled and nodded my head. Some dead-end hotel in Sydney, yellowed walls and urine stains against the walls near the steps where they would take me out to some sessions with somebody I only knew as "the Medicine Man," he wore white corduroy suits and spoke Spanish to me as if he wanted to hide his English or French accent. I noticed this only at the end, but automatically answered him for weeks. In the room, the television on constantly, Australian talk shows are the worst, the hussies from Townsville or Cairns going on about some bloke who, surprise! turned out to not be fixable. He was hurt and I felt so sorry for him turns mighty quickly into he hurt me, he's selfish. Ah, daytime tv, in the end they did not have to feed me the needle to make me take it. I reached for it and it soothed me and blanketed me in release from this ugly truth of cinderblock and cockroach.

And they tried to make me talk.

I told them everything I knew about Canadian history, I told them over and over again that I didn't care, I still loved the Queen, still thought of her as part of Canada. Sentimental I said, sentimental but proud.

And there was torture. Withdrawal, the television turned to maximum volume, myself strapped down. Other things not so nice as even that but perhaps sometimes easier to endure. And where was Cody? I figured him dead and thought about how we should not become attached to the living who are not like us.

We kill them more surely than the enemy, I thought. I wept as they beat me with knotted rope and as they poured sand into my pried open mouth, but I wept for Cody. And they laughed and did not know they were not the cause of my suffering.

In this way I controlled the meaning of the torture and waited for the next fix and when it came, I knew the Medicine Man was close and I would talk to him in Spanish soon. He would be kind and fatherly, then angry and terrible. He showed me his pen made from bone. "Tanzania," he said by way of explanation. "I know," I answered, but it was just to acknowledge Tanzania. "No, Ghana," he said. "Impossible," I said, and then he had me beaten.

The jungle would unfold for me in their tortures and again I was running in my mind, Nwargo there, constantly telling me this way, that way, the trees there are dangerous! We must hide here until dark!" And then the Medicine Man asking me about Ottawa, about Calrissian. About Ranger. About Smitty. About the others.

About you.

"Where are your comrades now?" He would ask. I would not answer.

"They believe you a helpless addict. They want to kill you. They know you will talk!" And he would laugh and laugh, then stop and slap me.

"Come now, argument like this is useless."

Silence.

They broke my nose and broke it again. I never hoped for death. Only to see Cody, and walk him on the ocean's edge where arguments and sentimentalities gain the proper perspective of being nothingness itself. I dreamed of shipwrecks and those dreams saved my life. I thought of the waves and Cody, with the gulls crying their song to the end of the world and the beginning of the water.

"Come now, good Sargeant," he would continue, "you do not have to work for us, but we will not let you go." And he would lean over and peer into my face, so that we were centimetres apart, and I -- tied down -- would think about tearing out an eye with my teeth and he would laugh again.

"But you are a professional," he would finish, reading my thoughts into his argument. "You...are a professional."

The odd assortment of dead things he always had there, and photographs. They showed me Ahmet. They showed me a shattered body in Talinn. "He did not make it," Medicine Man said, "we found him in a closet. He was still alive, his ribs on the left side shattered like clam shells when they break. He could not stop screaming."

Ahmet's death was simpler, and he did not comment on it. But they had blown up the picture and it greeted me at the hotel room they stowed me in. Sometimes I would talk to the dead body in the night. Not out loud of course, biting my lips to know where my tongue was, then I would talk to Ahmet, and tell him how sorry I was.

They claimed they had killed Nwargo. Described his death. Traced it for me. But nothing could convince me of it, as they said they had gotten him in Egypt, but I did not let on and allowed myself to weep for Cody then: the one time I cried.

Medicine Man carved a map on my arm with a knife, of the Ministergarten. He laughed and told me how it was so simple when their man told them everything they needed. How could I hope to fight them, when they knew exactly when we were going to punch. I finally talked, I said,

"Tell that to Aglionby."

He slapped me. It was my turn to laugh.

Then I was silent.

They did not trust me with needles, obviously, and when I dosed myself with the heroin it was always powder, but as I began to dream more often of killing Medicine Man I found I could not make myself and they began to force me to take it. Torture was increased. The truth was more desperately needed by them as the time wiled away, and I was a tougher nut to crack than they had thought.

Medicine Man would say, "The Maple Leaf is crumbling even now. Don't you know how we despise you?" Silence.

The Medicine Man would say, "Guards, saltwater." And I would choke and he would intone over me the whole time, "This is the Maple Leaf that has made you thus. This is the water that spills from the Maple Leaf. And it will rain forever." And this would go on for hours, his voice soothing so that I didn't wonder if the guards hated him too. But they were always silent.

One night I was dreaming. Sweating. The heroin had not been given to me in a day and a half. Medince Man was gone apparently. Sam stood over my bed. He was talking but his words bent and fell, darker clouds in the darkness. He was gesturing and it felt like we were below the ocean. Echoing and crashing.

He shook me.

"For Christsake, boy-o!"

A guard stood crumpled against a dresser, a trail of blood running from his neck. The door was open and outside I saw another lump as my eyes adjusted to the light. I needed to throw up and get more blankets. Sam pulled me up.

"Nwargo's dead," I said in a monotone. I know not why.

"Nwargo's not dead you idiot, but we will be!" He hissed at me. "Come on!"

He helped carry me out as I staggered and threw up on the corpse of the guard right outside the door. He was one of the ones who had been most cruel to me when we were with Medicine Man.

One more brilliant gift I received that night: Cody ran up to me, I fell into a heap, crying, laughing, ecstatic, suddenly not sick. I began to run.

"That's better now!"

Cody ran beside me, and then we were in a van, then a helicopter, flying low over the outskirts of Sydney, where the lights stop. And then a car, driving now, Cody asleep against my leg.

I am at a safehouse now and Sam tells me I must back to Africa quickly. Cody will come with me. I will keep my job at the restaurant, Sam says, for when I need it, for Australia is still hot.

Two mornings later, we raided an orphanage and killed three French bomb makers and one of their propaganda experts. The orphanage had been used for making bomb parts because the children's hands, so nimble and small, could fit certain parts together without as great risk of blowing themselves up. Those missing hands, feet or eyes, were kept for cleaning and record-keeping. It was a terrible sight to see, and sticking the knife into Fourait, the bombmaker, not the sabateur, I had said to him, "please sir, I want some more." And I put the knife in deeper. I felt I had finally returned.

So it is to be Africa again. I know not why. I shall see Nwargo soon though, and that fills me with happiness. He will meet Cody and we will play chess. Never let Nwargo take a bishop if you can help it.

Be careful of yourself. I only wish we could have killed Medicine Man. I wonder often, as I prepare for Africa, who he is.

with best wishes,

Sarge

In Which Sarge Considers Those Things We Call Eternal...

Cpl.,

Thought you would like a picture of Cody! Truly a wonderful companion; today he was awake with the birds and we went to watch the sun perch itself on the horizon of the waters and then lift itself heaven-ward for it's daily arc. Cody chased after birds, sticks and once or twice, I believe, some creatures unseen by me who call the water and this beach their home. Often, in these moments, I almost forget who I am, but the day had other plans for me than oblivion, today I killed men.

And Cody proved himself as a true companion. I wonder though, with what eyes will he see the next sunrise? His sweetness sustains me now, truly he is a remarkable dog.

Before I narrate the strange events of the past hours, I want to ask if you got the tape I put in the last letter? As well, have you made it to Cairo?

I know we have been out of contact, but it has been delicious to imagine your surprise in Cairo, running into Smitty with that bit of knowledge and that English curry I told him to make special for you. I remember the last time we were together with Smitty and he made it and you kept yelling it tastes like mud, it tastes like mud! Well, it was Upper Guinea....It was mud! And all the more English for it. I think that was the last time we saw Neverensky alive. I remember he told us then that he was to Erdenet the following week.

Smitty, though, is eager to help you descend upon those who would presume to attack you, ignore his grumblings. A cobra's death I know you have prepared for them. It is not often I can giftwrap comradeship to my friends and death to our enemies so neatly like that, but sometimes our methods fall into place. It is not always Freetown after all.

Do you remember those lost mercenaries from Zambia, playing Russian roulette during the thunderstorm there? And then that Irishman, who insisted you shoot the whiskey bottle placed on his head and we were all rotted out from the fatigue and the death that simply meant an end to the trash and apocalyptic visions of hell, where children wondered limbless as clouds. I was blind for a week on that ratgut they called whiskey. I remember dimly making a trap with a belt I had pulled off some dead West Side Boy, and everything spinning, the rain coming and going, Christ, it must have been mid-May and my hand trembling while I'm setting the soon to be pinless grenade and never really sure if it's thunder or an explosion from far off, closer the sound is sharper and you can tell but everywhere was mud and then we were eating whatever we could find except we didn't often eat, that ratgut twisted up the insides so and I wondered if that shadow I had heard about, this Aglionby, would ever appear. There was so much to be had in Freetown, everything was there, if it were to be bottled it would be the ultimate weapon, the one that you would call Plague and if loosed, the one that would tear the trees from the earth and make the water run black with blood, and is there anything the Separtists wouldn't do for such a weapon? Libet, his lieutenant was there too, and the stories of what he did to the tendons, eyes and intestines of those who fell into his web horrifies me still.

Aglionby and Libet both dead now, just a few years later. By my hand. Aglionby a burnt human shield and Libet's blood soiling the softly falling snow of Tallinn. Freetown follows us like the perfumed hand of Guilt, it's sickly sweet smell of late spring that hung in the air between offensives and sometimes dwelt just above the smells of the pulsing earth haunts me still; it is the stain that won't wash, and yet I can still, only now, talk to the corners of that time. The flower of evil that was Western Africa continues to hypnotize in these dark moments, the clouds that breathe in and out over the ocean and the coasts as we make our way in a motorized raft to the submarine through the upset waters. You told jokes about sky gods and the beginning of time and then turned serious, "we are all the children of Africa," you said. Behind us Freetown lay smoking in the insistant rain that followed us and I could not speak except to say, "will the submarine take us south or north?" And you said it was taking us north, the ocean spray and the rain mixing and warm to the skin and though I felt an emptiness and a warmth from the equitorial weather, I shivered and idly blamed it on the night before.

I have wandered from my path, having meant to describe the events today, and I will relate them to you now.

After Cody and I had explored the coast and spent time admiring the leaping blue of the ocean, so light the color seems to have fallen from the sky with the morning sun, I found myself nearing the time to leave for my shift. Too soon I had to go and told Cody to come on. Cody stopped just shy of me and started barking. I looked around, there was nothing there. Cody gave a growl, barked again and then came running the rest of the way, but far from being relaxed by the early morning idyll, he was upset and edgy. I began to feel the same way. I examined the beach and looked for positions of cover, but the beach was empty and toward where he was barking I could see or notice nothing out of the ordinary. I wondered if he was just resisting the idea of being locked in all day.

It was perfect out, so instead of locking Cody up I told him to jump in the pick-up and we drove into Newcastle. The restaurant is really more a diner, with great light and the same people everyday. I am to wait here, according to Ottawa and report once weekly on any suspicious activities. They assure me something is happening, but mostly I feel like a target, bait to attract something. And after today I wonder if I can think anything else about this assignment?

The owner here suspects nothing about me save that I am a good fellow. Sam, an old man with three ex-wives to support and seven children, all, according to him, welschers, deadbeats, sluts and hoons, has taken a liking to me, and calls me "a fine boy" to everybody who comes in.

"Hey! You got the new guy as your waiter!" he exclaims to some of the regulars, "he's a fine boy, no yobbo this one!" And he laughs. He lived most of his life in Hong Kong but came home, he says, "to die." We were talking about various places in Hong Kong we both knew before the lunch rush. I told him I had travelled there as a student, he believes I'm from Tamworth, but I told him I did a year as a student in Toronto in case my accent slips. Cody was outside, tied up in the shade of the building and I would wonder over occasionally with leftovers from people's dishes as the morning wore on toward the noontime. Cody was about as happy as it's possible to be for most of the morning. I figured we could run it all off later.

The lunch rush started. The usual nonsense: this guy wanted the special without tomatoes and these people look at their watch and hrrumph after about thirty seconds, meanwhile they didn't order until my third time to their table and this son of a bitch wants everything whole wheat with double onion, no pickle and can he substitute spinich for lettuce and can he get his coffee half/caf like it's a fucking coffee joint and when I get a chance could I bring him some water Without ice? Asking like I'm some five year old that made a doodie in a urinal. But I smiled all the time, even when that woman wanted two chocolate milks and a milkshake.

I pretended I was serving those I had killed as a commando, as if it might take the edge off of some of my sins. I know that's sick Cpl., but it seems right to wish all our lives seemed different. I find myself wishing that very much tonight.

The lunch rush was reaching it's peak, it was about half past twelve, and over the din I heard Cody barking up a storm, the patrons were looking on as well. Three men and a woman who had been near Cody tried to melt away and came to the door of the restaurant. Two of the men were in suits, the third looked like a dock worker or a construction worker, the woman was a pure vision. Her spring skirt floated flirtaciously in the breeze and her thin sweater couldn't keep the chill of an icecube at the equator off. Her necklace looked like the kind of thing a grandma gives, unaware, or all too aware, that it will cause men to act as fools in the presence of her beloved. She flashed me a smile and asked whose dog it was out there? Her hair was straight and black, it fell like a waterfall, catching and tricking the light of the sun.

Cody barked again, straining his leash. I remembered then that he had woken me briefly a couple nights before, barking at the night. I had arisen quickly and looked out a little, and fell right back asleep, ascribing his barking to a far off siren I couldn't make out or to an animal near the house. He was barking again.

"Like the dog, Jill?" one of the men asked, and they laughed. She continued to look at me.

"That old fella?" I asked pointing toward Cody. None of them laughed. A few of the people around me did and I was immediately on my guard.

"He's a good dog," I said going on, "but he chases everything. Always barking he is. Sorry about that."

I left his name off, wondering if they already knew it. Soon enough they sat down.

I watched them surreptitiously while grabbing soup, traying drinks and just generally running around as the lunch rush exhausted itself and began to wane. They were still there talking, one of the guys in the suit seemed to be the kind of boss, if such a relationship existed. I thought of things I meant to include in my report. I wasn't worried yet, but something about them didn't jive. And Cody never barked. Except when he was chasing the waves and the gulls, and then it was the joy of the chase and of being dog vs. the elements. Cody, like us, loves best the fight he knows he cannot win. Yet he had barked at them. And then barked at them again.

The woman was trouble if ever a woman was trouble. Eve-trouble. Joan of Arc-trouble. The kind of woman private eyes go back to their offices to discover smoking in their best chair trouble. Tallinn seemed very far away and I kept trying to pull it back over me like a blanket, as something that might keep the monsters at bay.

As they paid I made sure to wander out and calm Cody as they left. Once he tried to bark, his chest rose, "calm, Cody!" I said under my breath, and he was calm and exhaled in a kind of half-huff. I fed him somebody's left-over fish patty and patted him, "soon," I said.

And I wondered what I had just meant.

I watched the four of them make their way down the street as I walked back to the restaurant and finished the shift without further incident. What did I really have to say about them? Well, to me the most damning thing was that Cody had barked at them every opportunity he had. For Ottawa, I figured, the most damning thing about them would be that they hadn't laughed at a bad joke that a few other had, or perhaps, I would argue, they didn't understand the language here, the way it's spoken. Perhaps they didn't know I'd just made a penis joke. "Yes," they would reply, "perhaps they were outsiders. Simply outsiders trying to fake their way though. Perhaps," Ottawa might continue, "and so what then? Lots of people try to pretend to be from somewhere else when they travel. Don't want to show weakness. Natural human trait." Well, they wanted anything unusual, I thought this was unusual, and a year ago I would have trusted them to trust me.

But not anymore.

Cpl., it was at this moment I realized how alone we are right now. Atomized, with only our faith and our companions to sustain us.

Cody and I made our way home in the gathering darkness, the breeze still soft, the air still light. Driving along the ocean I no longer felt abandoned. Everything runs toward the great water, and it joins us all, and Cody stuck his head out the side and caught the wind, tinged as it was with the delicious tastes of earth and sea. I pulled up at the house.

Before I even could stop Cody had jumped from the truck and tore off after something. I heard a gunshot. And then a few of its brothers.

From beneath my seat I grabbed my knife and dove out. I pulled my gun from a calf holster and wondered from where to take cover. I heard my patio window smash as a bullet flew low over the pick-up. I could hear Cody barking and knew I had to protect him as he knew the same for me.

I had six shots and nothing else save the knife. I might need to scavenge and I cursed myself out for not preparing better for this eventuality. I saw a shadow move and shot toward the bulk. The man fell hard to the sand but I didn't move. There was too much open ground and I was behind a tire of the truck knowing if they had grenades I could be very quickly dead.

I knew it was the four from the lunch rush. They don't wait long, I thought.

Cody came running back to me, twice bullets tore the sand mere inches from him. I fired three times to give him cover. He then settled up against me. I noticed he was cut across his flank. "A graze wound or from a knife?" I thought. "Here in this abandoned place," I quoted to myself, "he felt finally a friend to this earth." Cody looked up at me, he was steady-true. I patted him on his head and hoped we would have more days chasing gulls. "Why do they think I'm here," I found myself thinking. Seconds stretched out into years, crouched behind that old pick-up.

Then I saw one of them, the construction worker. He charged at me and let fly a stick bomb and as he did I fired into his torso. With Cody at my heels I ran toward the house, and dove through the shattered patio window. Bullets tore into the house and the explosion shook the foundations when the truck exploded. I threw Cody into a room and shut the door and emerged with a shotgun I took from a hiding place under one of the kitchen floorboards. It all seemed one motion again, and I felt the joy of battle well up within me. I shot the other suit as he was rushing the house, mistaking my brief absence for hiding out and knew now the woman was left. Somehow she had gotten around to behind me and my first sense of her was a punch to the kidney and I deflected her knife into my tricep as I turned around to face her, flinging her knife into some rushes a few yards away. Blood flowed down my arm and pain welled up. She looked beautiful and a little surprised she hadn't killed me yet.

Her gun was already out but I knocked it aside before it played a tune. Why hadn't she killed me from further away? Why didn't they use a sniper's rifle? Why hadn't they killed me as I slept two nights ago?

I asked her these questions in a rush as I pinned her down. Our struggle made a fingerprint of itself in the sand up near the charred truck, the frazzled corpses and the shattered house. From another world I could hear Cody beside himself in struggle with the shut door.

"Vas faire foutre a la cache," she replied and brought her leg around and plunged a knife into my side with her shoe. With great sadness I put a knife in her throat and we lay embraced a moment in a cruel approximation of love. She tried to spit at me, but she aspirated blood instead. I wondered if I would serve her too, sometime, somewhere. Her pale face caught none of the old moon's rise. I untangled myself slowly and could hear Cody throwing himself at the door again and again and barking and whining furiously all the while.

I went in the house to let him out. He barked furiously at me and then began to lick my bloody hands. I knew it was his way of apologizing, but he had nothing to apologize for. Memories, jumbled and cut up raced across my brain as I looked down at Cody and then went quickly to wash my hands clean. Silence fell around us, but I could no longer trust it. Not yet.

We would spend the night somewhere else but already I knew I could never give up this house on the ocean where the night sky traces eternity across small points of light while the waves trace the earth and make calm chorus for our bleeding opera.

"Her name was Jill," I said against the silence then, as I stepped out and came face to face with my job.

Today I killed men, Cpl., and one hell of a woman. Cody looked down at her then, silent, panting slightly. We had much work to do before the moon was down.

I hope you are well. Certainly you are missed now my friend. I pray that I don't dream tonight. Cody already sleeps: an exhausted pile slumped up against a locked door. I wonder how pleased Ottawa will be with the report I have sent them?

with best wishes,

Sarge

In Which Sarge Describes the Shadows He Saw That Night...

Cpl.,

When I left you last, I was chewing gum, holed up in the junior efficiency apartment of Aglionby, the French money launderer and saboteur who, as you might remember, was behind the failed explosions at Harbour Grace a few years back. I was in Tallinn with the snow just starting to fall. Earlier I had found a few bottles and some lighter fluid, as I said, Aglionby was not naive. With those two bottles beneath the window I also had a rifle and a coffee cup half-full of bullets, and I was digging through them, feeling their cool smoothness roll across my fingers, waiting for the shadows to become men; I also had my knife but I wished for more. The shadows would form up, I knew, it was just a matter of time. I figured seven to twelve men, probably locals, former army, led, perhaps, by a worthwhile kill or two.

Time passes slowly but goes quickly, one of those contradictions we get used to until we're leaned up against a scarred wall in the Balkans wondering where the death is. I didn't dare turn on a light, the darkness grew and the street emptied. I looked out the window and tried to listen for signs of a gathering. Would they give me the night? Twilight is brief this time of year, this far north. Then I thought about it, there was absolutely no movement and hadn't been for the last four or five minutes. From one end of the street I could see construction signs set up, blinking a slow beat against the reflecting snow. Odd.

Odd and disturbing. I chanced a closer look, trying not to silouette myself in the window. Everything I did was slow. I rolled under the window, silently thanking Aglionby's professionalism; he had chosen a stone construction, one of the few in Tallinn. There was only one accessible entrance into the building, and I had a good vantage point of anyone trying to enter. There were only eight apartments spread across the six floors. This fifth floor shared an apartment but it had been empty since I first made my entrance there earlier in the day.

I knew they would make an appearance, and if I was kept busy it would only take a few of them to make my life miserable. At this point in the game I stopped thinking of death and fate, I thought of my training, back in Banff and then across the globe, instinct took over and I felt as smooth as the bullet I earlier rubbed between my fingers. I thought about what I must do. The time was now, soon there would only be the essence of things; I had that clarity of vision one only seems to find in combat. It is the opposite of the junk, but it is its equal at least. Both highs sometime play for keeps, I could not let this night be that play: that double zero. The wheel was turning now.

I finally saw movement, two men, so where were the others? I waited. Why let them know they were right yet? I wanted to instill some doubt that I was, in fact, at Aglionby's before I revealed myself. My rifle was ready, Aglionby's body filled the air with stink and with the radiators coming on, the smell almost doubled, there was also the stink of my near-failure to accompany it: the twisted spoon lay under an end table. The apartment smelled like some Moscow den of iniquity; down the street the men's movements were slow and deliberate. Always covering each other, always keeping to the shadows. I saw another pair of men on the near side of the street coming from the other end; they were covering the other group and they were good. Everybody was covering everybody else and I leaned against the wall under a picture of some saint and just waited. They set up zones of fire and made hand gestures at each other. I understood that they too, were also waiting. The sky was dark, the snow, heavier now, fell around them in great swirls.

An SUV pulled up directly in front of the building, undoubtedly plated. The time for subtlety was over on both sides and it was time to even the odds on mine. Carefully I selected a target, the most exposed, the easiest; they would come out of the shadows with his death. It was quick. My bullet returned ten others and the apartment exploded with sound; a bullet slammed into the corpse with a thud and Aglionby jerked a danse macabre as two others followed. With Aglionby, two dead. Automatic fire cut through the night. Christmases along the avenue were being ruined, the apartment disintegrated around me, Aglionby lay there, torn up by bullets. I stayed low, the window was gone. I had another good shot and took it. He had gotten careless and it cost him. Was it time to move yet? This celebration of birth had turned into a feast of death, I readied one of the molotovs.

With the window gone the toss was easy, and with the explosion the street seemed to dance in the night. I fired into the explosion and the building seemed to shake with return fire but at least no RPGs. Perhaps they had some insane idea they would take me alive, but my cyanide pill allayed any fears of that. It was kill or be killed, the kind of fight that brings out tooth and claw. I would use the last molotov to cover my escape, I hoped to ignite one of the parked cars. I fired randomly a few bullets and rolling again under the window, looked above and saw where my aim must be true. While I was looking I thought about the syringe that I had discarded when I threw the spoon to the floor. Had that been less than an hour ago? Well less. Quickly I tried to see if I could find the syringe in the gathering night, an occasional bullet crashed into the walls around me. They thought they had me now.

There it was, among the splinters of glass, rock and wood, a broken lamp next to it.

I would fill it with bleach, one last weapon for hand to hand if it came to that, then I would throw the molotov, grab the corpse and push my way into the hall wishing for a prayer. There had been better plans but in Tallinn I always ended up clawing to survive. Briefly I thought of her face, I thought of the last time, afterwards. The light on the ceiling from outside.

They put spotlights outside trying to blind me and illuminate me. They felt comfortable waiting, after all, I would run out of bullets first and then they had me every way. I let myself sweat for a second.

Then I fired a couple blind shots to give them something to think about and picked my way to Aglionby's sink. They didn't bother responding. I was a little worried about that, but I wanted to let them know it wasn't time to get any wild ideas about the front door just yet. My hands were shaking as I worked the bleach from below the sink into the syringe. To a junkie, bleach is the closest thing, sometimes, to a hospital as there is to get. Otherwise it's blue. Had that been us? Her? I leaned back up against the wall for just a second, gathering myself, the next two minutes would determine whether I ever saw the sun again. Perhaps I prayed, a brief vision of the Virgin surrounded by bloody penitents full of fool games begging for a worthwhile life somewhere done in stained glass and then I let fly with the bottle toward an old Zapor and fired into the car with five bullets and made a run for it. I heard the car explode and then screaming, bullets ripped the apartment in an onslaught and there was crashing and falling around me as I grabbed the bleeding lump of Aglionby that was to be my shield when I forced my way into the hall and stairwell.

What kind of shield was that? I just hoped if Aglionby had to stop a bullet there might be bone between me and it. He would stop a knife well if there were someone waiting right inside the stair doors, which I thought there might be. I kicked the door out with one kick, and moved crouched into the hall listening to the bullets whine about the apartment breaking what was broken yet again and again. It was like Africa.

The hall was empty, broken lights flickered, from above I could hear a man yelling and cursing his luck, but there would be no ambulance, a few bribes had seen to that. The yelling stopped, as if he too understood that now, and there were whimpers mixed with curses and pleas in the clumsy Estonian of Tallinn, polluted as it is by its many visiters. By the time I reached the door to the stairwell, there was silence, Aglionby was slick against me, my sweat mingled with his caked blood and I readied the rifle and held the body a little away from me, crouching beneath the stiffening body so that my face and chest lay nestled against the ribs and pelvis of the man I had killed. The building was silent. I knew they were in the stairwell, and they knew I knew it. But I had no choice, with the other ones on the street waiting for me like a second team. I thought of those servants I had read about years ago in some history class; they would gather from the river the dishes the masters threw into it after eating so they could do it all again the next day. It struck me as funny and I let myself laugh as I pushed the corpse up against the door, twisted the knob and more fell into the stair case.

Immediately two shots, from above and below, rang out. I felt the reverberation as Aglionby's face was obliterated and there was a second, a second I exploited for all it was worth, as I clutched the body and jumped over the stairwell at the man below me who perhaps only saw a leaping, headless corpse before Aglionby and I fell onto him and I put my knife into the mercenary's gut although I think his back was already broken. I rolled off the corpses and picked up my rifle which had fallen when I reached for my knife and shot down and then up; in my adrenalin I squeezed off seven or eight rounds which irritated me. But I killed another and could hear the man above me wailing, that made five down, perhaps seven more, perhaps only two more, which would mean the building was clear but I wasn't counting on it. The stairwell was quiet, but I was still on the third floor, with all kinds of opportunities to meet a careless death. I only had a few bullets left at this point but I didn't want to reach for the dead man's gun, from where he was, if the man above was only badly wounded, he could put one in me if I moved toward the gun. I edged my way down. There was silence.

Then I was on the second floor, with the second team waiting below and maybe a man moving behind me from above, unless the wounded man was the only one there. There was no door here, just a short hall leading to an apartment. My veins pushed adrenalin through my body and I fought to think through the rush. In the early evening I fought the endless night. They wouldn't wait in the lobby when they could wait outside with grenades. There was no need to be subtle now.

At that moment, for some reason, I thought of the time Ranger and I had first confronted Deseilligny. He must have been on my mind because of the last communique I'd had with Ranger, but I remembered it had been in Ulan Bator, we thought we'd flagged down one of the many unmarked taxis and instead Ulan Bator had its first known drive-by. It had been a joke even among enemies. I had laughed about it once, a year or so later with Deseilligny when we called each other names in that Freetown hardware store, and I laughed now. What absurdity, this! If Death waited, I would have stories for it; above I heard the squawk of a radio go unanswered, outside they must have been marking the living and the dead which perhaps meant that nobody had checked in. Or it meant that someone had and they were trying to decoy me. Regardless, I had to get to the street now and I was out of brilliant ideas. Through the lobby there was no hope, through the second floor living room window offered perhaps even less. Silence settled in like a jeer. They had me alright, but perhaps there would be something in the second floor apartment. It was a better bet than the lobby. I picked the lock and moved in.

Now, I was a shadow.

Nobody wanted to give away anything, I looked out into the street. The apartment had been empty, from the look of it, somebody was visiting mother in the country for Christmas. I was happy there were no terrified locals to give away my position. A few things had gone right now, I could count on no more. The shadows and the night had fully bled into each other now, the falling snow picked up a few tendrils of ambient light and then I heard the slightest echo of a sound from the front door I had closed behind me. A jiggling of tumblers already unlocked. I readied my knife and moved toward the noise, becoming the man's fate. As he slowly entered I brought him down with a knee and a hand to the mouth. I pressed my face close to his, creating the odd intimacy between vanquished and vanquisher.

"Tell me," I whispered, "and you will die from lightning, otherwise, it will be the cat and the mouse."

"How many of you?"

Slowly I started to remove my hand from his mouth, my knee reached up under his throat.

"Eight. Eight! Please I want to live! Please!" A local.

More than willing to kill for a new car, or a trip to the Black Sea resorts, but I took pity.

"Who?"

"What? I don't..."

"Oh, come on," I took my knife out, "Who?" The whisper now perilously soft.

"I do not know, a man. A man with red hair! A very thin man! Very tall!" He spoke Estonian with a kirderanniku accent, from further to the north and east. A sailor's son maybe.

He continued in a sigh, "10,000 kroons." It was still silent outside, I felt his jacket vibrate, still I was rooted to the spot.

It couldn't be.

Toynbee?

"Answer it," I told him.

He spoke softly into the radio. Would he chance a distress code? He checked in, said he was still looking through the apartments on the third floor. There was a short curse and the radio broke off. I told him I had to hurt him, that I would let him live and knocked him out with a cuff to the head. Quickly I secured him with a sheet and a pillowcase and grabbed the radio. I threw him in a closet next to the front door. Nobody else was in the building, I had perhaps two minutes before they would realize I was no longer in the building but I needed to get the prize. Where was the prize waiting? One of them would know. Clearly they would send the least important into the building.

I ran to the roof. The wind had picked up since the morning. The spotlights shone up past me and I jumped from one roof to another, until I felt the radio vibrate, I found a drainpipe and slipped to the street down past where they waited for me. I began to double back, it was my only chance. The explosions surprised me. They brought bigger toys than I expected and I wondered idly if my prisoner had lived and if so, how much of him had? I never found out.

I spotted them quickly now and took aim, I would have to kill one and hope the other lived. I shot for the head first but it went wide, the next bullet traced into one of the men's guts and before the other could fire I had put one in his left knee and his gun had flown from his hands. A lucky shot. Cautiously I advanced with my knife drawn, my adrenalin pounding so that my heart felt bathed in powerlines.

There they were, a lump of shadows against the snow covered ground. One groaned, he was tough I could tell, the other convulsed. It is never pretty, but the ugliness of pain always surprises me. I had tossed my rifle away, it was empty, and my right arm hung loose with the knife, I advanced slowly. They were both still now, having seen me or heard me.

"Tell me," I said, "where can I thank your employer for his gift of bullets?" The one I had shot in the belly laughed derisively, I recognized he was Libet, one of Mercerier's foot soldiers, I put my knife into his throat, cutting his laugh short.

"Now tell me," I repeated to the one still alive, "where can I find your employer?"

"Aller se faire voir chez les grecs," he said, and lunged at me with a knife of his own. I turned him aside but my knife caught in a strap of his pack and flew off and he came back at me with curses. Without thinking, I reached into my pocket as he jumped from his one good leg at me and I plunged the syringe into his neck and pushed in the bleach as I knocked him aside. He lay quickly dead, and the snow fell heavier, already beginning to cover them as I made my way down the street with the sound of sirens from far away approaching closer.

This is how I came to leave Tallinn with the idea Toynbee might be the mole. I have no proof save perhaps the voice of a man alive or dead, I do not know. I must go back briefly to Tallinn to see her, and I will make then some final disruptions of the French shell game here, but then I must clear my name. I wonder what Ottawa thinks of all this? It used to be that I knew things like that.

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

Smitty does have talent with the goose, it's good to hear he's finally started to move on; Cordula affected him greatly and her death was truly a sad one. As for the photographs, turn your eyes away from Deseilligny’s remains, perhaps there is something that eludes us there in the periphery. Or perhaps we are missing something in its absence. Deseilligny truly had no equal as a fighter, his willingness to claw, bite and tear during hand to hand combat made him a nightmare, and a worthy enemy.

I am tired now, Cpl., and must close my eyes a bit. Once again I finish a missive on a train. Perhaps in years to come, instead of dreaming about the faces of the dead and the scars of the earth, I will dream of trains.

with best wishes in the new year,

Sarge

In Which Sarge Calls Down the Rain and it is Snow Snow Snow...

Cpl.,

What is left? I had taken a coffee cup from Aglionby's sink, dried it and threw some bullets in it; the cup sat at my feet and I leaned against the wall, looking out at the slow traffic of the holiday. I thought about Nwargo in Africa, I thought stupidly, "it's warmer there" and let my thoughts wander across the landscape of the last few months and then further back toward thoughts I need hardly describe. Idly I looked at the colors that drifted by under the window, from even just five floors up, people are reduced to the colors they wear and a few identifying features. "What tells me who I must kill?" I thought. Aglionby didn't have an answer for that.

I didn't either.

I started to get hungry from the boredom. I didn't dare leave the window and I could feel an old hunger return. It creeped up from my blood into my thoughts, and then it was in my pores. I was sweating, the corpse was beginning to smell. I knew Aglionby had a few faults, it was an idle thought.

Still people walked by to their relatives, to their friends, for meals together, for opening presents; Aglionby smelled. If there was a clock it would have counted the hours but there were only the shadows falling into the apartment, now longer. I thought about her smiling at that judge, he was a good man. I was happy for her.

Out the window nothing changed. I could feel the urge, I could smell it past the corpse. I knew he had some. I knew it was here, in the apartment where I had killed him. I needed to look out the window, to focus. I had seen it on his arms. The winters are long here, his assignment had undoubtedly bored him and the women, if they don't challenge, don't long interest. From his file, he must have never learned this about women; he must have been going out of his mind. There was nothing about tracks in his file though, it must have been a recent development: something to make the nights go away.

Let me tell you something about the thing that enslaves you, it is always interesting. It's never the same old thing. I thought about her and what had happened after dinner with the judge. I looked away from the window, appraising the room. Aglionby was sprawled out, there was a shelf with a jar, house keys splayed next to it with a keychain from the Space Needle. Fate with its obvious sense of humor, a tracing of our weaknesses like laughing at a man tripping over a rock. I looked in the jar: nothing: some change. A pencil. I settled back against the wall, looking out across the street. Nothing. The weak sun of afternoon was already beginning to fade, in an hour there would be no light, and then what?

I sat there for a few minutes trying to clear my mind. Suddenly I was exhausted. I wished Nwargo was here and looked at the corpse on the bed. His boots were Russian, there was a backpack in a corner near the bed: the eternal student. I looked in the bag, I had been trying not to because I knew what I would find there. Nobody would stop me. I tried to fool myself. I looked out the window, but wouldn't they have come by now? By now they must have had some idea that if I was anywhere, I was here. Aglionby had been dead for some hours now. Would they dare wait for night?

With my talent for escape?

I found the stuff I needed to fix, but not the stuff itself. I knew where to look for that too.

I started with his pants pockets. Nothing. The usual things. Gingerly I rolled him over a little, the bed was streaked and puddled with blood; I found his breast pocket. The baggie hadn't let the blood in but it was greasy, I was shaking and it was hard to open it right. Everything smeared. I felt sick. I looked out the window. Nothing. My hands were shaking. I thought of Greenville, the Sinoe River, my last fix and the corpses there. They had floated like logs, colors of their shattered bodies and torn clothing muted by the river. When a thing is a corpse that is all that it looks like, but you know that. I didn't want the junk, but I had the fever. I was bored and scared, the last month had shattered me. What was this betrayal by Ottawa? What had happened to those villages in the Sahel? Her smile and the judge. The endless watchfulness, the double-crossing and wondering who knew what? I told the Spanish captain that I would come to Tallinn and that was it, he would say I was in Helsinki or that I had told him Helsinki but he guessed Minsk. What kindness there can be in this! But my hands were shaking, I didn't want to be who I was anymore. I didn't want this accumulation of lies and truth so that it hardly mattered anymore if this were Greenville or Tallinn, New York or Tokyo. I wanted it all to mean something, and if it couldn't, then it couldn't matter anymore. Ottawa left me out in the cold? Calrissian, who had recruited me years ago? I wanted a reason. I wanted payback.

The junk was bubbling. I let it bubble. I dropped the spoon and immediately cursed at myself. "Fool!" I said out loud. I leaned back against the wall, without even that to distract me now. My victory over the junk meant nothing to me, a noble but meaningless gesture. I would probably still die before the next sunrise. But I refused to die a slave and I refused to die with my belly up to the French pursuit. I found a stick of gum from God knows when in one of my pockets and stuck it in my mouth, waiting for them to appear.

Undoubtedly they would be shadows. Clouds obscured the slipping sun and the snow began, ever so gently, to fall. The snow caught the light from windows and streetlights that slowly blinked on, awakening to the night. I only felt my tears then, when I thought that I loved this earth more than anything. It is good that we can still feel this way, Cpl.

It is late, I must conclude for now before I bore you completely, but you must indulge me to continue with my narrative when I am next continuing this present journey. There is a morning train, and I will try and continue it then, but I know you wait in Berlin for news of me. You have found some of that news here.

Barking like a dog? Quick thinking Cpl., it has saved me once or twice as well. Indeed, man's best friend!

without further delay,

I remain,

Sarge

In Which Sarge Wishes Peace to His Comrades and to the Demons...

Cpl.,

Here it was, they say, that Kalev's grieving wife made for him a burial mound some one thousand years ago, this hill of Toompea dominates the central geography of Tallinn and there it is, in that apartment, just off Dunkri, I thought one day I might surprise another who has grieved, perhaps with pastries from down the street and an omelet made with whatever looked nicest at the market, perhaps other days with a bottle of wine and a picnic basket. A grief that has been the foundation for castles and governments, this hill of Toompea, and I'm writing holed up in some junior efficiency apartment wondering if I have the scope on correctly. Wondering if I have ascertained the angle of the sun correctly so that I won't give myself away, but I fear Cpl., that I may already have.

Tallinn has been one disaster after another, and I wonder now how many enemies have made their way here to watch my death and to perhaps assist in it? Still, there is this junior efficiency, with it's refrigerator stocked with sausages and pickles and a half a bottle of vodka on one of the two windowsills, the corpse of Aglionby keeps me company, sprawled out across a dorm bed probably carted overland from Vilnius where he studied seven years ago. He is not the catch that Deseilligny was, but his soon to be worm-eaten hands will count no more money toward his vile cause and the information he had on me dies with him, unspoken save by my own lips: I am in Tallinn.

They suspect though, and they gather, and if they find that the woman might still be a useful bargaining chip and is still here, then I am done for. I need to know things that I cannot know fast enough about my own position but all I think of is yesterday I saw her smiling over dinner with another man, a judge. Maybe the only honest judge in Latvia. I re-read Ranger's missive, delivered by the old flower-peddler with seven fingers who served other, more desperate causes a few generations ago. It offers grim hope though, if Ramirez is right then there is a thaw in Ottawa and this might not all be for naught.

I am writing with the regrettable news that I will not be able to make it to dinner in Berlin tonight, but I will wish you anyway, the warm hopes and yes, the faith that is Christmas. Please send the same regards to Ranger and Nwargo, I have odd company for Christmas this year, but perhaps next year will offer more convivial company and more edible repast.

With fondest regards,

Sarge