In Which Sarge Faces the Needle...

Cpl.,

Easter. I always think of Tanner's painting. The two apostles at the empty tomb, not quite dawn, the reconsiderations made of what is truly possible.

I had to be at the restaurant early. I've moved back into the house on the beach, but I've set up several more booby traps, something I should have done earlier, as well, I've set up a remote camera unit that transmits to a set I have in my car. The screen looks like a book, specifically, Graham Greene's Journey Without Maps. If they want to kill me, they shouldn't send in the clowns this time. I've gotten lazy, but when I saw them shoot at my dog, something was reborn in me. Something that wanted to live.

Still, the thirst for the needle is unslaked, and the local supplier eats his breakfast here most everyday. Always, two eggs up with french toast and bacon. He knows I have the taste, I can sense it, my skin itches when I serve him. I want to ask and then I want to kill him, but I hold myself distant from the turmoil, and he watches with a bemused smile.

"More coffee, sir?" I ask. He nods. Looks at me. I pour.
"You want a taste," he says under his breath to me, like it's a fact.
"I've had my brekkie," I say and move to another table, of three old women planning a day's shopping. He breaks the yolk on his egg and slathers his french toast then adds maple syrup until it drowns his plate. I break out in a cold sweat, Sam comes up behind me and slaps me on the back.
"Look who was out late last night," he laughs. I apologize to him and get myself back together. I think about how many ways I could kill the dealer with a fork, or a coffee pot, or more ominiously, a spoon. My hands.

They shake. But only for a second. I think of Cody. I think of you and Nwargo in the jungle. I am happy you ignored my advice. Smitty reports he was ambushed and killed four Separatist-terrorists, but he was almost hamstrung and has been rehabbing back in Berlin. It seems our movements, at least those emanating from my command, are being followed too well. I think of Ranger, silent in the middle of a stream. So I serve my eggs, pour my coffee and learn to keep my mouth shut. At night I wake up with dreams in my head: Ahmet asks me for more potatoes, but how can he? He has no mouth. It has been cut out of him. His blood fills coffee cups and from behind me I hear Aglionby yelling at Cody; a silent chorus, that is the only word, for they look ready to pronounce but do not, of Sierra Leone Army regulars, many of them decaying visibly, stand at attention surrounding me. They must have crawled out of the street, for outside the windows the streets, fleshy, begin to pulsate and crumble. Cody whines as Aglionby begins to scream and Cody whines again, louder; I wake up. There is Cody, nuzzling me, pushing me awake, the curtain breathes in from the window and I hear in the distance the sound of the eternal crashing with the temporal. Deep night. I sit on the edge of the bed and stare off, the Southern Cross promises sun tomorrow, peace seems to settle in. I wipe sweat from the back of my neck.

I want to take Cody along the ocean, think about the ships and the contests with the sea, but I am still a little snakebit by the events of last week. I decide to wait for the morning. I try to sleep. I think about leaving to find the man. To take his heroin. I wouldn't pay him. The bastard stabbing his eggs, thinking I'm nothing but a dead-ender looking for a fix. He tips poorly, he half-laughs when he walks out the door.

With the dawn, desire fades. Cody must run with the waves, chase the birds. I follow him into the beginning of the day. I begin to make plans as I run behind him. He looks back at me and occasionally barks and sets out after a slow bird or God knows what. Things must change, then Cody is in the water, he brings me out a stick that has traveled far. It is a gift far greater than any I ever received in Tallinn.

I throw the stick, and he brings it back to me, again and again.

I must learn how they trace me.

with gladness at your well-being,

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 Makes a Digression After a Long Walk Past the Shipwrecks...

Cpl.,

Immediately after I received your communication I was in touch with Smitty and Morebeeck, the Dutchman, they both assured me a medical team was there within hours, yet my confusion at the turn of events deeply troubled me. I called to Cody who was chasing blue tongued lizards and skinks, he bounded over to me and we took a walk along the shores of the great ocean.

The waves pounded the shoreline, the sky was a sheet of grey. The wind whipped at my windbreaker and Cody dashed in and out of breaking water, barking sometimes at the gulls. I thought about the oddities of your message. A GPS? Not the dossier on Boigny and his bases of operation? The list of his spies throughout the neighborhood? On how many fronts do the Canucks sneak? Too soon my questions had to take a backseat to my responsibilities here. My shift at the restaurant was due to begin.

I called to Cody and we returned to the house. The rain came as I changed and windowpanes rattled as if all the dead sailors were pleading entrance from the elements. The ocean roared.

Today I moved through the shift as if in a dream. Once I went to a table with their order, but I looked at them all stupidly. They looked back at me, wondering what I was doing with their food by just holding it there. I had no idea who had ordered what. Less than fifteen minutes and it seemed like they had ordered last year. Do I offend the woman by giving her the steak? Or will it be more offensive to guess she had the salad? One thing I've learned in my short while as a waiter is this, if you don't act like their eating is exactly why you exist, they will treat you as if you had just rolled around in shit. Meanwhile, I was thinking about you and Nwargo. I could not bring myself away from fears and questions about what was going on in Africa. I wondered frequently if when I next addressed you I would be addressing a corpse.

Not a pleasant thought amigo.

But a letter is an act of faith, and Cody's joy at my return buoyed my spirits. I decided I would try to lift your spirits as well. Along with this missive that only offers puzzlement and worry, I add some music. It is a woefully inadequate consolation unless you consider my complete faith in your abilities otherwise to extricate yourself from the position given you. And you and I have both learned to take what we can get. Remember that night we spent humming old Beatles songs in Jagat? The cold seemed to be alive, breathing frost through the uninsulated windows and doorways, the lame barman sang the choruses of "She Loves You" and "Let it Be" with us; sometimes I believe the reward of this job lies in the memories and the memories lie in the songs.

Take my advice, if you would, and get Nwargo to Cairo for treatment and then let him disappear again. Use any doctors there he suggests, I don't believe we want to trust any of our own right now. Meanwhile, I will try and set up a new line of communication so that we may continue to communicate with Nwargo. I believe I will refrain from informing Ottawa of any of this. If you believe I double-crossed you, think back to what happened the next morning in Jagat. Sometimes the rosy fingers of dawn streak blood.

The Playlist to accompany this missive:

Side A:
1. Tokyo Witch - Beach House
They play this song at the restaurant a lot. One of the college girls who works there sings along with it sometimes.
2. (I'm) Stranded - the Saints
3. No More Heroes - the Stranglers
4. It's a Man's Man's Man's World - James Brown
When Murrow aced Fourquais in Calgary she swears she was humming this song.
5. Spellbound - Siouxie and the Banshees
6. Step into the Realm - the Roots
When I was in Paris, my next door neighbor would play this song every morning. The walls would shake. He was a good kid, eventually I had him do a few errands for the Maple Leaf. Nothing major.
7. Rose Rouge - St. Germain
8. I'm On My Way - Mahilia Jackson
During the worst days at Freetown I would catch myself singing this over and over again. The piano swirls; looking out over the Atlantic from Freetown one can see where the hurricanes are born.
9. Eye of the Tiger - Survivor
10. The Sniper Song - Naked Raygun
11. B.O.B. - Outkast

Side B:
12. Solitary Man - Neil Diamond
Another one from Tallinn.
13. Dirty Boots - Sonic Youth
Our lives have been built out of mud. Let others have the illusion that their lives are potentially of a purity. The world is too dirty for us to fool ourselves of any nonsense.
14. Fire and Rain - James Taylor
15. Mad World - Gary Jules
When the chorus at Notre Dame sang this at McAlpern's funeral, I think all of Montreal teared up. He was a good man, Calrissian insists his was a careless death, but you, Ranger and I know better.
16. You Gonna Wreck My Life - Howlin' Wolf
17. Going Underground - the Jam
18. Who Knows - Marion Black
This is on many of my tapes for long trips.
19. The Glamorous Life - Sheila E.
20. Some Velvet Morning - Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood
Well, another Tallinn song.
21. Life During Wartime - the Talking Heads
22. The Pin in the Night - Nathan Johnson
We don't see a lot of movies, I know, the damn life, but I saw this movie Brick, the soundtrack seemed one for our own lives. Full of sudden pitfalls and tempo changes and then moments of unadorned beauty, sometimes not in that order.
23. Africa - Toto
24. Keep on Loving You - Reo Speedwagon
Sometimes the Maple Leaf seems a symbol of contradiction and unmet ideals bordering on the lost, and then, there's that moment, for me it is often found when I cross the Lions' Gate Bridge at dawn, just in from God knows where and happy finally, for the light of dawn, when I feel this is not a sacrifice we make, but an honour. Vancouver stretches out then, like a string of pearls hung on the morning.

There is work to be done I know Cpl., but there are roads to travel, and now more than ever, we cannot lose our way in a fog of despair. Know, that even without the GPS, Boigny was closing fast on Nwargo. The prize is real, and they know that.

with thanks for your continued good health and Nwargo's good fortune,

Sarge

In Which Sarge Begins A New Assignment and Mistakes are Made...

Cpl.,

They are all the same. It's my third day now, my second lunch rush went fine; once I forgot to put in an order, but I blamed it on the cooks and though many of the people were rude, short and boorish, I did see Adelaide again, she's the woman who named herself after the city where she found Jesus. Just like last time, she ordered the scrambled eggs, bacon and pancakes. And just like last time, she read the Bible and suddenly got up and ran to the bathroom, her large skirt brushing the tables and the annoyed patrons who looked up at her, slightly disgusted. I hated them, but, in this outfit, I am powerless to act. Here, I serve.

"Found Jesus." What an odd phrase. It seems we look all over the world for some sign of somebody other than ourselves, but we keep tripping over the bodies we left behind. Newcastle does not offer any amazing possibilities for redemption, but after the scars of Yalova, I hope it will be fruitful. I could not help Nwargo in the end, but I trust you are, though your silence pains me and fills me with odd dreams, sometimes of Africa, other times of the Canadian Rockies, with the heartbreakingly clear sky that unveils itself slowly and crookedly over the proud peaks of our land. There where we found another kind of calling and another willing master. Sometimes I wake up sweating, but here, the Pacific Ocean is a short walk away and I do feel oddly at peace. The flitting images of the bound mercenary in the Tallinn closet, of Ahmet in Yalova, his blood mingling with the softly churning hot springs in the Turkish bathhouse, they turn into my window with a final gasp, this window which overlooks two trees, a rough barked apple and a eucalyptus, and then the beach and the water, it brings some peace. I have a small house, but with this mission the leadership seems to have warmed to me a little, it is well situated.

The Australians are an odd bunch, and here, in Newcastle, just like in England, there is a lot of coal and all kinds of international corporations hover: their regional offices in to make some more millions. If they rub shoulders with those who rain severed arms and broken dreams like those we hunt, well, in the end, I don't think they care, as long as Newcastle remains with its coal. I actually live in the suburb of Stockton to the north, and where I walk I pass the shells of shipwrecks, ours are not the only unfortunate days, and I imagine the last desperate moments as well as the optimistic first moments, when the ships left harbor expecting to find at the end of their destination, other piers. I have acquired a dog, Cody, he is a mutt, short and stubby, mottled brown and white and uncommonly cheerful. I believe he has some herding blood in him. We are here, him and I, in an attempt to pick up the scent of a trail gone cold, and to dig out information on a plot of apocalyptic overtones. In short, we do what we usually do.

In order to do that, I have adopted the guise of waiter. I must go now, I'm working a split shift and just dropped in to quickly walk Cody and look for news of you. The surf is beautiful, Cody chased after gulls and we watched a front move out across the ocean, kicking back winds that have gathered all the surfers into the long rows that trail down the beaches just to the north of my beach. I will write more of my escape from Yalova and my first days here soon.

always warmest,

Sarge