The Green Progression

by L. E. Modesitt Jr

  As McDarvid stepped into early October sunlight, he looked to his right toward the black limousine parked directly in front of the modernistic amber glass panels that framed the center doors. Two young women, not much past college age, and dressed in tailored black, stood there, accompanied by a young man. No one else joined them for several moments, until an older woman, wearing a dark purple woolen suit, paused for a few words.

  Then another woman stopped, and a man.

  Behind the pair stood Bill Heidlinger, accompanied by George Ames. With Ames was a white-haired lady who looked as though she could only belong to the fussy accountant who posed as a lawyer.

  McDarvid shook his head, recognizing only a handful of others from the crowded church—Steve Greene, Norm Casteel, Carole Sturteval, Aaron Greenberg …

  “Jack?”

  McDarvid turned to see Steve Greene approaching. He waited until the young attorney halted before speaking. “Looks like the firm’s out in force.”

  “Yeah. I saw Carole and Norm.” Greene ran his hand through wispy brown hair that would disappear before he turned forty. “Here they come.”

  “Jack, Steve…” Norm Casteel nodded toward the two. “Carole and I were discussing how many people respected Larry.” A vague gesture encompassed the still-crowded parking lot.

  Beside him, Carole Sturteval, her short, red-blond hair kept in place by two dark blue barrettes that matched her coat, nodded. “He was an amazing man.”

  McDarvid remembered how Casteel had avoided speaking to Larry whenever possible. “I wonder how many of them really knew him.”

  “Larry was a household word in the legal community,” Casteel mentioned amiably.

  Obscenities were also household words, McDarvid reflected, looking over Casteel’s shoulder at those hurrying toward the parking lots. He looked again at the small throng that had paused by Larry’s daughters to say a word or two. McDarvid had thought about joining that group, but he had never met either girl, only recognizing them from the pictures on Larry’s credenza. Everyone at the funeral had been predictable, except for the dark-haired nymphlike woman in the third row. McDarvid had noticed her because there had been a pronounced space on either side. One of Larry’s women? He looked past Larry’s daughters and shook his head.

  “Yeah,” added Steve Greene, “getting murdered by accident. It just shows how strange life is.”

  “Tragic is more like it,” observed Casteel. “George drafted a complaint to the Mayor, suggesting more action and less talk about improved police protection.”

  Greene shook his head.

  McDarvid agreed.

  “You’re going to be handling the pesticides clients, aren’t you?” The older attorney turned to Greene.

  Greene shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Well … I think so. Carole will do more on the RCRA stuff that Larry brought in.”

  McDarvid wanted to ease backward, out of the conversation. Somehow, showing up and saying how sorry you were when the main reason for the sorrow was the fact that you might lose your job was almost more than McDarvid could handle, and having Larry’s clients divided before he was buried wasn’t helping.

  “I’ll do what I can,” murmured Carole.

  “You’ll all do fine,” rumbled Casteel. “I need to say a word to Nancy and Linda.” He turned and lumbered toward the group surrounding Larry’s daughters.

  Carole and Steve looked at each other, then at McDarvid.

  “Funerals…” mumbled the thin-haired attorney.

  “Social and political rituals,” observed Carole. “Very necessary.”

  “I suppose so,” temporized McDarvid. “Well … I need to get on the road…”

  “See you later, Jack…”

  McDarvid turned, glancing back toward the church. He looked again, feeling eyes upon him, and caught sight of a tall and muscular younger man dressed in a plain gray suit, his eyes shielded by dark sunglasses. The man’s brown hair was longer than a Secret Service agent’s and well styled, but he had the same air. McDarvid didn’t see the omnipresent earplug, but the man’s carriage and his scanning of the thinning crowd were obvious. So was his age. Outside of the man in the gray suit, Steve and Carole, and Larry Partello’s daughters, McDarvid was one of the youngest people at the memorial service.

  McDarvid shrugged and crossed the drive, then a small strip of grass, and turned right, walking past two Saabs, a pair of Mercedes, and an older Lincoln. His car—off-red, cheap, and very out of place—was parked between a royal-blue Volvo 760 and a black BMW 635 CSI with a leather shield over the front hood.

  Was it only his imagination, or had the other mourners parked their vehicles a touch farther from his than from the cars on the other side?

  He opened the door, creaking after less than a year, and edged behind the wheel. The door creaked again as he shut it behind him. The dealership had assured him the week before that the creaking had been repaired. The assurance, and the silence of the door, had lasted three days.

  Another forty minutes to get back to the office—why had he gone at all? Jonnie hadn’t. Maybe he was more worried about the office politics than Jonnie was. Or did he just have a stronger stomach?

  Outside of the attorneys from the firm, the only other person he had known was Larry, and he was dead. And he hadn’t even really known Larry. He’d never been to his house, and only eaten with him when they were entertaining clients. But that was Washington, he supposed. It really hadn’t been any different when he’d been doing economics for the Agency or running Sam’s congressional office.

  He pulled the seat belt tight, a habit that had lasted from his years in the cockpit, then turned the key. With the tiny engine whining, he flicked on the radio, turning up the country music. At least, it had some emotion.

  Then he pulled out of the parking lot and onto Vale Road, back toward Vienna. Hoping he wouldn’t get lost in the winding roads of northern Virginia, he edged up the volume on “Dusty Dixie Road.” Everyone left something or someone behind. Even Larry.

  12

  BILL HEIDLINGER’S THIN LIPS SMILED from a round face. His eyes remained china blue above his bulging pin-striped vest. “JAFFE has expressed an interest in retaining us on the chlorohydrobenzilate problem.”

  “It’s more than a problem. Because it’s an animal carcinogen, the Office of Pesticide Programs is thinking about a cancellation.” McDarvid frowned, although Jonnie’s face was calm.

  “JAFFE would agree to voluntarily suspend all sales in the U.S. for the duration of a special review. That way Environment wouldn’t need a cancellation.”

  “I don’t know if that’s possible.”

  “That’s what Larry promised Devenant.” Heidlinger shrugged. “If you can see any way to do it, draft up a strategy, the way you did for Larry, and I’ll be happy to run it by them. They aren’t interested in a legal retainer for the metals issue unless we tackle the pesticide problem as well. It’s a package deal.”

  “We’ll work up a proposal this afternoon.” McDarvid looked at Jonnie, but the younger man’s face remained politely attentive.

  “Monday or Tuesday would be fine. Take the extra time and make it good. Mr. Devenant won’t even be back from Montreal until next Thursday.”

  “Tuesday,” McDarvid confirmed.

  The two consultants stood as Heidlinger picked up a folder and began to study it, pointedly ignoring them.

  McDarvid walked out into the corridor.

  “I need to take a walk.” McDarvid turned into his office.

  “I’ll meet you at the elevators,” said Jonnie.

  “Right.” McDarvid rubbed his forehead, then took his gray suit coat off the hanger on the back of the door, stuffing his arms into the sleeves. He scanned the desktop, fingering the message slip. Carson Newell had finally returned his call while he had been in with Heidlinger. That was always the way it was. You could wait forever, but the minute you were tied up, the bureaucrat you needed to talk to invariably called.


  McDarvid stopped at the front desk. Was it Alice? “Alice?”

  “Yes?”

  “Jack McDarvid. I’ll be out for about an hour.”

  The thin woman looked at the plastic board. She kept looking. Finally, McDarvid reached over and pointed to his name. Then he pushed through the double glass doors, turning to see Jonnie repeating the same procedure.

  “Christ,” McDarvid muttered as the other came out, “Larry’s not even cold in the ground, and no one even remembers who we are.”

  “They didn’t know who we were before he died.”

  “Just who are we, anyway?”

  Cling. The elevator arrived, empty except for the Federal Express deliveryman and an empty dolly.

  “I’ve often wondered that myself.”

  They rode the elevator down silently. Outside the building, the wind whipped leaves along the gutters as the two men walked up Nineteenth toward Dupont Circle. High puffy clouds cast occasional shadows, making the wind feel even colder.

  “JAFFE might want to set up a deal like that,” McDarvid began. “Larry wouldn’t have let them. Not good old cash-on-the-barrelhead Larry.”

  “You’re right. Larry would have insisted on a full year’s retainer.”

  McDarvid laughed softly. “Yeah. But somehow Heidlinger gets to me. Maybe it’s his backdoor way of saying, ‘Play my way, and I’ll take care of you.’ At least, Larry was up front.”

  “Very up front,” said Jonnie. “Wasn’t his favorite expression, ‘Just do it, fuckhead!’?”

  “Thanks for reminding me. Maybe I’m just getting too old for this game.” He stopped at the edge of Nineteenth and Dupont Circle, ignoring the traffic lights. Then he dashed across both lanes. “You know,” he continued, brushing his hair off his forehead, “I haven’t had a job since I graduated from Amherst where I couldn’t be killed or fired at a moment’s notice.”

  McDarvid walked toward the now-empty marble fountain in the center of the circular park. At the far side of the circle, across from the newer brown brick building that fronted the Dupont Plaza Hotel, he could see three chess games proceeding on the concrete tables in the shade of the yellowing oaks.

  “Oh…?” asked Jonnie, hurrying to catch up. “You don’t talk about it much.”

  “Not much to talk about. Flying wasn’t exactly the safest thing invented, not off a bird farm, not in Southeast Asia. Of course, the Navy wasn’t selling safety. Glamour, maybe, but I wasn’t near good enough to be a Blue Angel. After that, selling real estate didn’t exactly work out. Nor did the other things. Then there was the time on the Hill. If the Congressman didn’t like what you wore to the office, he could fire you. Sam was pretty good, but the threat was still there. But that wasn’t even the worst part.”

  Jonnie made no comment.

  “It was the unreality. Every Congressman sends more than fifty thousand personal letters every year, composed on computer, signed with an autopen wielded by an intern. He gets one-page summaries of issues that affect millions written by research aides who never heard of the problem before they write it up.”

  “So … isn’t that what we do?”

  “Point taken.” McDarvid laughed. “Anyway, EPA wasn’t much better, not with the White House insisting on environmental body counts before acting and the Congress insisting that the world had to be made safe for asthmatic pigeons.”

  “I know about EPA,” observed Jonnie.

  McDarvid slowed to avoid being hit by a young black man on a bicycle. “I guess I’m just getting tired.”

  On the grass on the north side of the statue, two bearded men in fatigues stood beside a low platform. A dozen posters fluttering from poles stabbed into the turf proclaimed, “Free Elections Now!”

  “I still don’t understand what’s so bad about the JAFFE proposal,” commented Jonnie. “We do what we can on this pesticide, and that will get us the access and the resources to find out what’s really going on with the metals. It will also keep us employed.”

  “You don’t have to remind me. But if the guys at Environment are right, chlorohydrobenzilate is one of the worst pesticide carcinogens left unregulated. It’s not really even used much here. That’s why it wasn’t a high priority.”

  “So why is that a problem?”

  McDarvid sighed. “I keep forgetting. No one outside the industry understands the technicalities. Even if DEP restricts a pesticide’s use or even cancels its registration, it can be manufactured here. Even under a special review.”

  “Heidlinger said they would stop U.S. sales.”

  “U.S. sales. What about sales to Mexico, Latin America, the Philippines, and half the third world?”

  “Oh…”

  “Yeah. That’s where the money is. Their plant is here. So they ask for a special review, which can drag out two or three years. They obligingly stop the U.S. sales they probably don’t even make, and they manufacture and ship like hell for the next couple of years. And, with a special review going on, no one else who isn’t already manufacturing the stuff can. It gives them a guaranteed profit for at least a couple of years.”

  They turned and started back along the concrete walk toward Nineteenth Street.

  “… Freedom … now … Freedom … now … Freedom … now…”

  McDarvid looked to his left, toward the police car with the flashing lights and the banners behind. Another noontime protest march upon Dupont Circle. Just who wanted freedom from whom? And who cared?

  “What do you want to do?” asked Jonnie, ignoring the protesters.

  “Do I have any choice? I don’t have another job.”

  “What’s your interest in metals?”

  McDarvid shrugged. “Call it a long-standing involvement. I keep wondering why there’s been such a push for regs that cripple high technology … and who’s really behind it. Now someone wants to pay us to look into it.”

  “You don’t need JAFFE for that.”

  “Are you ready to start an independent consulting service this afternoon?” McDarvid stopped at the curb. To his right, across the divided lanes of the circle and in front of the drugstore, two homeless men sat, placards before them proclaiming their hunger and need for donations.

  “Sure. Are you?”

  The light changed, and they walked across the two sets of lanes that represented traffic largely from Massachusetts Avenue.

  “No. Six months from now, maybe, but not at this minute.”

  “But what about chlorohydrobenzilate?”

  “I promised to present a work plan. I never promised I could implement it successfully.”

  “You do like to live dangerously.” Jonnie glanced down Nineteenth Street.

  “No different than the lawyers who appeal losing cases all the way to the Supreme Court.”

  Jonnie laughed. “That’s different.”

  “Not really. We’ll make a good-faith effort. Heidlinger didn’t say we had to succeed. We’ll draft a cover letter indicating that both projects have to proceed simultaneously if the metals issue is to be successful. That way, we’re not tied to success on the pesticide thing.”

  “Can we go to Devenant directly?”

  “With what? We’re not lawyers.”

  “We have a very dead boss.”

  McDarvid shrugged. “So Heidlinger’s our boss—for now. I doubt that JAFFE could care, except for the momentary inconvenience. Remember, we’re talking about a foreign company.”

  “They still have a couple of big problems,” reminded Jonnie.

  “So do we. So do we.”

  13

  OVERSTRAINED EYES LIFTED FROM THE PAPERS. Large pale green ledger sheets divided by brown lines into innumerable boxes filled the center of the desk. To the left was an almost forgotten mug of a once-hot beverage. To the right was a stack of identical thin green file folders.

  Each folder summarized the key items about an agent in three sections. The first consisted of the name, agency, job title and description, and other personal information about ea
ch agent recruited in the American government. The second section contained summaries of the key accomplishments of each compromised official and a list of goals for that person in the upcoming year.

  Kaprushkin’s more detailed weekly reports on each American were stored somewhere in a central records warehouse.

  The final section, the focus of the Colonel’s attention, contained expense accounting—the amounts spent, the reason, and the authorizing authority.

  Kaprushkin paused and took a swallow of lukewarm black tea before continuing with transferring the summary numbers from each folder to the ledger sheets. Compiling his year-end hard-currency operational expense report was just the first step in preparing his preliminary budget request for the next year. The budget request, in turn, was but the starting point of initial departmental budget negotiations.

  The Colonel laid aside one folder and opened the next.

  Although the details differed from folder to folder, the similarity of the operations presented the ever-present danger of blurring together actual agents with those identities which served as accounting devices necessary to support his real mission.

  Kaprushkin tried not to think about the consequences of discovery of the identity behind those accounting devices. Even if such a discovery occurred, perhaps they would believe he had only been corrupt. He paused, then shook his head before making another set of entries on the ledger sheets. Then he reached for another folder.

  14

  McDARVID FOLDED THE DISH TOWEL and looped it over the oven handle, glancing around the kitchen to ensure that everything was either in the dishwasher or put back into the cupboards. The napkin holder was empty, and he rummaged through the bottom of the small pantry closet until he wrestled the oversized former cookie tin from behind the plastic shopping bag filled with paper grocery bags. He levered off the top and riffled out a handful of napkins. They went in the holder, which he replaced at the end of the table next to the bay window that overlooked the backyard.