Oath of Office

“That would follow the pattern,” Clark said. He’d let the kid change the subject for now, but they’d come back later and get to the root of his angst — insofar as such a thing was even possible.

“The Ruskis must have something they’re trying to move,” Jack mused. “Or maybe buy.”

“They look official to me,” Clark said. “I’m going with option number one.”

Jack sipped his beer again, looking up and down the street at the steady stream of people heading for the arena. “Have you ever been to a bullfight?”

“I have,” Clark said. “Wasn’t what I’d call pretty.”

“I read online they give the bull drugs, put Vaseline and other stuff in its eyes before the fight so he’s all messed up and disoriented.”

Clark took a long, slow breath. “You read that online…” He took another drink of his beer and then pointed at Jack with the neck of the bottle. “Let me ask you this. If you were going into the ring with a thousand pounds of meanness and you wanted to make absolutely sure it charged where you directed it to charge, wouldn’t you want it to be able to see?”

“I guess I would,” Ryan said.

“Not to say they don’t do a number on the poor bastards,” Clark said. “But I wouldn’t trust a damned thing I read on the Internet.”

“So you are bothered by it?” Jack asked. “The bullfights, I mean.”

“You know me, Ryan,” Clark said. “I’m not one to engage in long philosophical debates. But I’ve thought some on this. Commercial beef cattle are customarily finished out in pens where they do nothing but eat and stand around on mountains of their own shit until their appointment with a captive bolt gun in the slaughterhouse — which usually happens sometime between eighteen months and their third birthday. The Spanish fighting bulls that make it into the ring live as near-wild animals until they’re graded and sent to fight at about four years old, at which point they have one bad day.”

“So you’re saying these bulls have a chance?”

“Not a chance in hell.” Clark shook his head. “I mean, a thousand-to-one shot, maybe, if the bull displays such incredible courage that the crowd begs the guy in charge of the fight to pardon it. But for all practical purposes, the bullfight ends with a couple of feet of sharp steel stuck between the bull’s shoulder blades and the dead carcass getting dragged off by a team of mules like the ones you saw clomping down the street a few minutes ago.” He leaned forward, swirling the rest of his beer in the bottle. “You ever read The Dogs of War?”

“Sure,” Jack said. “You assigned it to us.”

Clark smiled. “I guess I did. Anyhow, take it from an old man who’s rapidly approaching his use-by date, Forsyth summed it up about right. I want to go out with a bullet in my chest and blood in my mouth, and a gun in my hand. If I was a bull, I’d take a few spears to the shoulders to get an extra year on the range and a chance to use my horns. It’d be better than getting prodded up some alley with a hot shot in my ass so I can walk into a captive bolt.” He leaned back in his chair and took a drink. “But that’s just me.”

“I’d pick herd bull,” Jack offered. “If I got to choose. A few more years with the added benefits of tending a harem of cows.”

“You young guys.” Clark shook his head. “I’d imagine every steer once aspired to those same goals. But the odds are pretty grim. My way, I get to keep my nuts and have a chance to hook the guy who’s going to kill me…” His voice trailed off and he tipped his beer bottle up the street. Jack’s eyes followed slowly.

“That can’t be good,” Ryan said.

Clark reached into his pocket and pressed the PTT switch on his radio. “Heads up,” he said. “We’ve got company. Lucile Fournier — who is now as blond as Adara — is about twenty yards from the Russians and closing.”

20

Normally, the act of simply crossing the street in Tehran was so dangerous that locals referred to it as “going to Chechnya.” Authorities had blocked the streets to control protesters during the hangings, so Dovzhenko was able to cross as if he’d been in a city that gave two shits about the lives of its pedestrians. He walked four blocks south, under the tall sycamores that lined the shaded walks of Valiasr Street, named for a twelfth-century Shiite imam. The crowds soon thinned to the usual mix of people returning home from work in the rain. Dovzhenko would never have known there had been a hanging if not for the incandescent images of the kicking boys that still burned in his brain. He’d not eaten anything since the bread and tea he’d had for breakfast, but even the tantalizing smells of saffron and five spice drifting out of the shops could not tempt him.