Bag Serials: the Ineviable Treason of Thomas Arnold Haggard #4

A fifth gin and tonic in hand and his head full of fish, at 3 a.m. Thomas Haggard mused for the fifth time on how similar that intense Aryan-looking drummer was to nameless name he exchanged pleasantries with just before boarding that fateful train to Amsterdam and Nadia said, “Oh, him again. You never did tell me his name.”

And Mr. Haggard, being the honorable man that he is, mumbled something inaudible to which Nadia said, “What was that?” and leaned within an inch of his ear.

To which Thomas again said, “mumm fumUMtomm,” resulting once again in a soft questioning reply from Nadia, her lips now skimming the remarkable coarse hairs of his left ear, her broach blossoming to him from her tall, full, utterly unremarkable chest.

To which Tom,

(being a man never so rude as to ignore a pointed question)

took out a piece of paper and wrote the name and number and address of some contact in the small Russia town of Ertsventiva who may or may not have used an alias anyway. And he said some vague things about the time and place and reason why that contact needed to set up a internet filtering system on the Iranian consulate’s house and how pleasant, remembering back, those sad islamic zealots were dressed and how polite they were and unusually hospitable.

And that night, despite being a man who resist over-indulgences when not for sake and at the behest of his lord and savor Jesus Christ, Mr. Haggard, here in Amsterdam for the first time ever, was man who made love to a beautiful woman. He was a man who saw Finnish people play nigger music and mused almost arrogantly on the secret, juicy things he had seen and that laughed loudly with a mouth full of Spanish ice cream to a Russian train attendant that surely would have made a great government information technology expert give the chance, that shared his vision for use of such expertise to make for a more free and demcratic world, that stared mercifully into his eyes through every boring exploit, every degradation at the hands of (no less patriotic) world leaders, every tedious classified assignment with nothing more then patient, gentle kindness.

And staring out his hostel window into the crisp autumn air that evening, Thomas Haggard for once felt his name not so appropriate, perhaps his life not so wasted, as a small round bullet zipped silently through his toupee just as Nadia returned from the lue. For the first time in years and for the last time in his life, Thomas Arnold Haggard felt free.