and the plane penetrated the enveloping black vacuum, Edgar’s stomach lurched with the dread certainty that there was only one perfectly negative experience in life, and you got to pull that number only once. Unless he was rescued by an SOB bomb in the cargo hold, the thrill of departure would be inevitably corrupted by arrival somewhere else.
Worse, arrival in a country about which Edgar knew zip, whose politics were notoriously tortuous, where he was supposed to be a reporter. Edgar didn’t know how to be a reporter. Hazily he pictured a journalist dialing up “contacts,” but he’d no idea whom he was meant to phone or what he should ask. In a moment of weakness, Edgar wished faintly that the big, big, big bag of hot air would indeed show up and take his beat back.
The flight attendant was a cow, and her cart was out of light beer. Defiantly, Edgar ordered bourbon, and wolfed down his smoked almonds.
Groping into his carry-on, Edgar lugged out his portable library. The previous afternoon he had ravaged Barnes & Noble’s burgeoning Barba section, scarfing up academic analyses (The Moorish Presence in Barba After the Siege of Lisbon), the odd political treatise (When Democratic Protest Fails: Resort to International Incident as a Consciousness-Raising Tool), recent histories (The Evolution of SOB Strategy and the Rise of O Creme de Barbear), special-interest titles (An Ill Wind: The Role of Weather in Social Defiance), and sensationalist paperbacks (I Was an SOB!—an anonymous memoir by a “reformed Barban bomber” whose authenticity had been hotly contested). His checked bags were lined with general texts on terrorism, most of which said it was bad.
Between sips of JD, Edgar plowed into the book on top, whose first iteration of the right to national self-determination was more soporific than his drink. The author had heavily quoted Tomás Verdade, president of the SOB’s reputed political wing, O Creme de Barbear. Verdade’s verbiage was long-winded and dry, laden with references to dead Barban heroes like Duarte o Estupendo and Teodósio o Terrível, dense with insistence on “defending the integrity of the predominant indigenous culture and the rights of the operative majority within the context of respect for the multiple traditions on a richly varied peninsula”—which, when Edgar applied himself, reduced to xenophobic claptrap.
Three pages and ten national self-determinations later Edgar was ready for another JD. What had he done? The narcolepsy that this Iberian slagheap had always induced in Edgar wasn’t letting up but was growing more intense. In comparison to Tomás Verdade’s prolix patriotismo, briefs on whether water company mergers violated antitrust laws ranked with Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue. The only bearable aspect of this story was violent boy-stuff. Over dinner Edgar put aside The Barban Peninsula: A Test Case in Immigration Saturation and devoured Forced Landing!, a breathless account of British Airways’ infamous Flight 321 that bulged with gory photographs.
Meanwhile, the cabin hummed with the susurrant murmur of what Edgar could only assume was Portuguese. Though a soothing drone, it raised a light sweat across the back of his neck. Zhshchaoshzhgoshshdgeshzhye … He’d hoped a year of high school Spanish would help, but this mishmash of consonant blends sounded more like Russian.
“You are a glutton for punishment.”
Edgar glanced over at the bearded, fifty-ish man in the window seat. “You mean, eating airline fettuccini?”
The man chuckled. “The books. Not by any chance headed for beautiful Barba, are you?” he asked sardonically, in-joke.
“I’m covering the province for the National Record.” The claim sounded convincing; at least Edgar’s seatmate didn’t laugh.
Rather, the man’s eyes lit like Christmas. “Why, I’m not graced by the presence of Barrington Saddler, am I? I’d read, to my dismay, that for a time you went missing!” Before Edgar could correct him, the fusty-looking character had wiped his hand on a napkin before extending it across the empty middle seat. “Dr. Ansel P. Henwood, delighted!”
Edgar didn’t know what else to do but to take Henwood’s hand. “Edgar Kellogg.”
Henwood’s fierce clasp went limp.
“Saddler’s still taking his impromptu sabbatical,” Edgar explained.
“My mistake.” Henwood drew back and distractedly wiped his hand on the napkin again. “I’d presumed that such a prominent man of letters must have turned back up, or the mystery of his tragic disappearance would have dominated the news. How quickly we forget! True, I haven’t seen his byline for a while, but then Barba’s been quiet—ominously so, some might say. I’m sure you’ll do a fine job—sir.”
Dr. Henwood seemed already to have forgotten Edgar’s name. Between withering glances thrown Edgar’s way, the man’s expression warped from crestfallen to victorious. He should have known, spoke the scornful gaze. Five-eight and dressed with festive slovenliness, Edgar mustn’t have conformed to Henwood’s preconception of his imposing predecessor.
“Fascinating assignment, of course,” Henwood allowed. “Been there yourself?”
“First time.”
Pushing back his tray, the man reared in his seat, adjusting his tweed lapels. Lacking a pipe and snifter, Henwood settled for brandy in a plastic glass. “This is my third trip. Very difficult place to come to grips with. Hard nut to crack.”
Apparently Edgar’s stony silence was misread as encouragement.
“I’m director of the University of Texas Conflict Studies Department,” Henwood preened. “We’re establishing a PhD program that focuses on Cinzeiro, among other trouble spots. Of course, in Austin we’re confronting a lot of the same complicated issues entailed in massive Mexican immigration, so there’s, shall we say—” a puckish grin—“generous grant money at hand.”
“In the last five years the SOB has killed over two thousand civilians. So they’re assholes. What’s so complicated?”
“Of course, no one endorses their methods—”
“You say that as if being cutthroat is incidental.”
“It can be a distraction. After all, throughout human history numerous causes have merited resort to violence—”
“So if you don’t give me more leg room—” Edgar gestured to a bawling infant in the middle seats—“I shoot the kid.”
“That’s oversimplifying—”
“It’s simplifying,” Edgar differed, noting that Henwood had instinctively pulled his knees back. “Hell of a way to run your affairs, isn’t it?”
“You’ll have to develop a little more sophistication for the likes of the National Record,” the academic declared haughtily. “Your predecessor has an unparalleled sensitivity to the nuances—”
“No one ever warned me when I took this job that I’d have to write horseshit.”
“A lucid argument can be made that the distinction between state and extra-state violence is artificial,” Henwood lectured, unwrapping his dinner mint. “Especially in the creation of new states. Most nations come into being through what could be perceived at the time, from an establishmentarian’s outlook, as ‘atrocities’—including our own US of A. Once a nation is founded, the violence of nation-building is elevated to heroism. The ‘terrorists’ of today are the town-square monuments
