The Diplomat

            Harisha was beautiful. Milton had never heard of it before, but the entire town was an explosion of color – flowers, trees in bloom, and fountains with colored light projected through the jets. Sun-soaked streets were alive with bustling markets, while wide awnings provided shade for diners in a multitude of different lounges and cafes.

            Water was everywhere. It was the blessing of the Arizradna. Even in the hot, desert climate, water flowed through Harisha like blood through the body. Milton had never been to Arizradna before, but he was well aware of the quality of life its people enjoyed. From Harisha’s size, and its proximity to the wide desert, it could not have been anything other than a remote town in the countryside, yet all the conveniences of a major city appeared available.

            He understood why the Arizradna seemed to be in such a good mood all the time.

            They arrived at the Maize House Hotel after Milton got directions from some friendly locals. The building was larger than he would have expected for a small town like this.

            “This man, the one you call the Diplomat. Who is he?” asked Senjib.

            “When you found me, he had only just helped me escape from a nightmare.”

            “Why did he not walk the desert with you, then?”

            “He wasn’t there when I left.”

            Senjib appeared concerned. “What does this man look like?”

            “I actually have no idea.”

            “You say he saved you from a nightmare. Do you mean to say he woke you up?”

            “No. He helped me escape my captors.”

            Senjib took a step back. “Jack Milton, you are not a criminal, are you?”

            Milton laughed. “No. Actually quite the opposite, I’m an enforcer.”

            “Enforcer? Ah yes, that is the term they use in the countries of Ganlea. Here in Sarona, we call them ‘police.’ You are a police man?”

            “Narcian National Enforcement. We deal with the larger crimes, or if there’s a conflict of jurisdiction between the local authorities.”

            “And you were captured? By whom?”

            Milton let out a long breath. “I would be very curious to find out myself.”

            Senjib looked up at the hotel. His eyes searched from window to window. The light of the setting sun reflecting off the glass made the whole hotel seem to glow. “You have a debt to this Diplomat, I understand. But know that you have a friend here as well.”

            “You don’t want to come up?” asked Milton.

            “I must tend to my own affairs, Jack Milton. There are those in Harisha who must know that I am here.”

Milton stepped into an ornate lobby, with beautiful mosaics in the floor and intricate ceramic latticework panels on the walls. Milton accepted the key from the concierge and got in the elevator. As he rode up, he looked over the bottle of bluewine. The label depicted a highly stylized black and white figure, like a crude cave painting of a person with wings. The wine itself appeared dark, but through the green glass of the bottle, he could not judge much about the vintage. Milton was no expert on wine – blue, red, or white – but the bottle radiated age and class.

            The elevator reached the top floor and Milton stepped out into the hallway. The hotel was reasonably luxurious, but any pretentions of being an older, historical institution were abandoned as soon as one stepped out of the lobby. Milton found his room, number 1004, took a deep breath, and opened it.

            The hotel room was very large – a suite – and upon entering, one walked into a fairly comfortable dining room. “Jack, wonderful to see you. Please, come in.” It was the Diplomat.

            The Diplomat was impossibly handsome. He appeared to be in his late thirties, and had black hair, swept to the sides, and dark, brooding eyes, with just a hint of blue to them. Though he did not have a beard, he had just enough stubble to accentuate his chiseled jaw line. If there was one feature that could possibly be held against him, it was that he was relatively small. Milton, who from an early age had been perfectly confident in his own good looks, suddenly felt utterly inadequate.

            The Diplomat leaned back in his chair. He was clad largely in black leather, from his feet in boots resting on the table to a jerkin and a pair of gauntlets on his hands. He also wore some sort of cloak or cape on his shoulders, but this was a light, billowy fabric, and was the same dark navy blue of the clothes he had left for Milton.

            “Please, for the love of all the gods there are, tell me you have the wine,” said the Diplomat. Milton pulled out the bottle and put it on the table. “Excellent! Not that I would have held it against you, but I was worried you had already drunk it.”

            “It’s good to finally see your face,” said Milton.

            The Diplomat was already opening the bottle, though where he had gotten the corkscrew he was using, Milton could not say. The Diplomat smiled. “Yes, I imagine I had you wondering about that. Now sit down. It’s time we shared a beverage that wasn’t that foul ‘coffee.’”

            Milton sat down at the table, across from his benefactor. “I suppose I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

            The Diplomat yanked the cork out with a satisfying pop. “I only wish we could have gotten you out sooner.” He poured two glasses and handed one to Milton. “Give the wine a few minutes to breathe.” Milton accepted the glass and leaned back in his seat. The Diplomat scratched his chin and then leaned over his glass and inhaled deeply. “Chateau de la Fée. Tragically, the vineyard burned down about five years ago, so I try to save the bottles I have left for special occasions.”

            Milton decided to broach the subject. “I want you to know I am very grateful for your help. I know I would have gone mad there it if hadn’t been for you.”

            “Don’t sell yourself short. You were quite resilient on your own.”

            “Well, nevertheless, I’m grateful. What I meant to say… well, what I wanted to ask you was…”

            “Yes?” asked the Diplomat.

            “Who are you?”

            The Diplomat laughed, as if the question were particularly amusing. “Ah. Complicated question, that.”

            “How so?” asked Milton.

            “I’m a very private individual, Jack. I mean no offense, but I would prefer it if, at least for now, you would refer to me as The Diplomat, or just ‘Diplomat,’ to keep it short. Not ‘Dip’ though. A bit undignified, that one.”

            “Ok,” said Milton. The Diplomat swished the wine around his glass and finally took a sip. Milton took this as his queue to have a sip from his own glass. The wine was beyond excellent, with a thousand subtle flavors. “How did you get into my cell? Even I couldn’t see you come in.”

            The Diplomat now leaned forward, with an expression of excitement on his face. “Ah, good. Down to business. You’ll have to forgive me, I do sometimes get wrapped up in the pleasantries, but this is good. You’re going to keep me on task.”

            “And?”

            “I told you when we first met that seeing things is what I do. I can see many things, and I know many things. I know, for instance, what June Greene is, and why there are those who want to find her.”

            “Do you know where she is?”

            The Diplomat leaned back. “I couldn’t say that I do.”

            “That’s a decidedly vague answer, Diplomat.”

            Milton’s benefactor returned to his excited posture. “Indeed! Oh, this is going to be wonderful. Please, ask another question!”

            “All right,” said Milton. “What is the faceless man, and why was he down there?”

            “Ah. Well, what he is… he is a monster. What was he doing there? Well, I would have thought that was clear.”

            Milton shook his head emphatically. “Not remotely.”

            “He was there to find out where June Greene was. It took him long enough to realize you didn’t have any more of a clue than he did. I think that’s when he decided he might as well destroy your torturers.”

            “Why would he decide that?”

            “Because the faceless men – and yes, I’m sorry to tell you that he’s not the only one – are really, true monsters. They are only interested in spreading death and erasure through the world.”

            The thought was a profoundly troubling one, especially that there could be more of those things out there. “So why did you help me?” he asked.

            The Diplomat’s face turned solemn. “Jack, you remember that I asked you if you had ever heard of the House?”

            “Yes. I didn’t think they existed before you mentioned them. Is that who those people were?”

            The Diplomat shook his head. “No. That’s who I am. I am an Agent of the House.”

            “And the people who captured me?”

            “Very bad people. Whatever you’ve heard about us, remember that it was the House that saved you from that dank pit.”

            “I see.”

            The Diplomat poured another glass of wine, but something had changed. His overpowering charm had faded, and his voice did not hold the same airiness it had before. “Jack, I have a confession to make. I hope you will not take it personally, but I know that lying to you is not going to do anything to earn your respect or your trust. You need to be able to trust me, because if you don’t, well, I might as well send you home.”

            “Diplomat, I can’t say that doesn’t appeal to me.”

Now the Diplomat contorted into a kind of sad tightness, the face of someone delivering bad news to a stranger. “Jack, I should tell you that the woman who was killed in your apartment… I’m afraid you are their prime suspect.”

It had not occurred to him, but now that he thought of it, he realized that his captors had put him in a very difficult position. The woman would have been found in his bed, with his own gun’s bullets in her body, and he was nowhere to be seen. In an instant, Milton realized he was a fugitive.

The Diplomat read his expressions well. “I am so very sorry. It is an absolute miscarriage of justice that someone like you, an upstanding defender of the peace, would be the focus of such a distasteful crime investigation.”

“Can’t you help?” asked Milton, the volume of his voice betraying his desperation. “If you have all the resources of the House, can’t you find some way to let them know I’m innocent? An alibi, something?”

For what Milton realized was the first time in their conversation, the Diplomat broke eye contact. “I am so very sorry, but there is nothing that we can do. I assure you that once it is possible for us to straighten this whole mess up, we will do so.” Milton caught the Diplomat’s quick glance back. He could tell that the Diplomat was either lying to him or at least speaking deceptively, but Milton could not tell exactly why the Diplomat had treated him to this little performance.

“I guess I’m stuck for now then,” said Milton, attempting to mimic the nonchalance with which the Diplomat liked to speak. “So, why is it you want me to trust you?”

            “Jack, I had an ulterior motive in helping you escape from those people. I would like to think that if I had the opportunity to help some other poor soul in the same circumstances, that I would. But if I am honest with myself, I wouldn’t have. The House plays its cards very, very close to the chest. As much as we would like to see everyone safe and happy, it is just not something we can afford to do.”

            The Diplomat stood up. He leaned against the counter that separated the suite’s dining room from its tiny kitchen. “Jack, we’ve been watching you. You’re a good man. A smart man. Skeptical, capable, and, perhaps most impressively, resilient. A lesser man would have gone mad in that cell, tortured day in and day out, assaulted by that faceless abomination. Yet here you are, mere days after escaping from that hell, and you seem hardly the worse for wear.”

            The Diplomat walked to the door, glancing at the lock and the bolt. “An Agent needs to be resilient. Some of us go for years without any word from the House. Jack, I know that we have a somewhat negative reputation. Those who actually believe that we exist tend to think of us as monsters in our own way: the manipulators, the ‘spook show.’”

            Milton knew exactly where this was heading, He stiffened his posture, to project with body language what he was about to say. “And you claim, that is, you want me to believe, that you are not.”

            The Diplomat smiled, as if he had not heard the skepticism dripping from Milton’s words. “I do. Jack, we’re not trying to rule the world. We’re just people. Ordinary people, doing what we can to make sure we all survive. I am proud to call myself an Agent of the House. And I think you will be proud too.”

            Milton took a deep breath. “I… I’m very grateful. And frankly, flattered.”

            The Diplomat nodded, a knowingly disappointed smile on his face. “But your answer is no. I understand completely. We’re forced to live a double life, and it is hard.”

            The guilt trip was working, at least enough to make him feel bad, but Milton shrugged and said “I really can’t thank you enough for getting me out of there. I’m sure I would have wound up crazier than the Shabby Man if it hadn’t been for you.”

            The Diplomat gave a slight bow. “You are most welcome. And please, do not feel the need to apologize. Consider my assistance to be an act of good will. Perhaps in the future, you will see the House in a better light.”

            Milton laughed. “Or any light at all.”

            The Diplomat laughed as well. “Yes, very good.” He downed the rest of his glass, then put it back on the table. “For what it’s worth, Jack, I really enjoyed our chat. You are a good man, and I am sure all of this awful business back home will be taken care of in short order. Please, enjoy the hotel room as long as you’d like – my treat. I’ll see what I can do about getting you air tickets to take you home, and if I find that I can pull some strings, or if I can help you track down the bastard who killed that woman, I will.”

            The Diplomat stuck out his hand. Milton took it and shook. “Thank you, Diplomat.”

            The Diplomat gave one more solid pump, then released. “It was my pleasure. Be well, Jack.” He gestured to the bottle of wine. “Oh, and you should invite your friend up. The Djinni have excellent taste in wine, and I imagine he will enjoy it quite a bit.”

            The Diplomat stepped out the door. Milton got up and walked over to see the Diplomat off. He peered out into the hallway, looking down both ways. The Diplomat was nowhere to be seen.

            “Of course not,” he said to himself.

            The Diplomat leaned back in his seat. The heat of the day was almost too much for him to stand, but those lovely cool nights soothed him to the bone. He was in the corner of the tavern, whose adobe walls opened seamlessly into a courtyard where a band was playing some old song actually written by a Redlander, but that had become popular in Arizradna about a hundred years earlier.

            The Diplomat could name every member of the band, as well as the author of the song, and the craftsman who had assembled the band’s guitar. No one could say he was not thorough.

            He ran through the conversation with Jack Milton (29 years old, father Randolph Milton, mother Caroline Waters,) recalling every word, gesture, and tic, making sure he had not made any errors.

            Milton would make an exceptional Agent. Normally, the Diplomat enjoyed mulling over the name for a new recruit, but the Diplomat’s first attempt seemed too deliciously apt to even bother coming up with other options.

            For Jack Milton, he had decided on The Prisoner.

(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2012)