The Middleman

by Olen Steinhauer

  “Right next to you, man.”

  “I mean, what do you see in the future? Once we’ve done what we’ve been put on this Earth to do?”

  It felt like a test, which it was, but Kevin also smelled a trick question in the works. As he glanced around the bar, where men in makeup sipped prework cocktails, he thought over conversations he’d had since landing in town and making his way through the subterranean world of utopian thought. Left, right, and everything in between. So many opinions, so many dreams of tomorrow. He said, “I’ll know it when I see it.”

  Which, to Aaron, turned out to be as good an answer as any.

  Two weeks ago, the three of them were drinking beer in Jasmine’s Chinatown apartment when Aaron delivered his good news. “Word has come, comrades. We have to be ready.”

  “For what?” asked Jasmine.

  “To disappear.”

  Aaron had passed their phone numbers up the ladder, and he explained that in hours, days, or weeks, word would come. They were to leave everything behind.

  This was not entirely unexpected. Over the past months, as the media had worked itself into a frenzy of fear over the rhetoric that typified Massive rallies, the trouble in St. Louis, and the sporadic incidents of Massive followers in small towns being attacked by self-proclaimed patriots, it had been one of Bishop’s talking points: We have to make our own space for the dialectic. We have to create our own underground where we can defend ourselves against the fascists who run this country. When they come for us we’ll need a place where we can escape to. Where we can disappear. Until Aaron’s command, Kevin had assumed Bishop had been talking about a metaphorical underground. An underground of the mind. Not, apparently so.

  Aaron handed them each a piece of paper with an assigned meeting point and a signal that would identify them to their pickup. He ordered them not to share that information even with one another. “Things just got serious. Are we serious?”

  “Absolutely,” Kevin told him.

  Jasmine, giddy, nodded and laughed.

  Now, sitting in the GTO with endless highway in front of him, Kevin listened as the driver he only knew as George said, “I was up on this shit long before Bishop and Mittag.”

  “Sure you were,” said Kevin. They were an hour into their drive, taking I-80 around the north end of Sacramento. Traffic was surprisingly light.

  George gave him a look. “You don’t believe me.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “Nineteen eighty-nine—remember then?”

  “I was one.”

  “But you’ve heard of ’89, right? I mean, you got yourself some kind of education, yeah? East-West? Berlin Wall?”

  “Sure. I’ve heard of it.”

  “Well, I was ten. I remember all the noise and celebration. My dad was a Cold War obsessive. Dug a fallout shelter in the backyard in ’82—lost my virginity in that thing, by the way.” He winked. “Anyway, 1989: the Wall falls, and I remember my dad watching it on TV. Those Germans with their mullets and bottles of cheap champagne—my dad saw them and started to cry. He was so happy. Told me that the world had just changed. Wanted me to remember that moment. Enemies would become friends. Swords into plowshares. That sort of thing. I was ten, but I remember it all. I remember how excited I was. We were officially living in the future. Shangri-La. And then…” He tilted his head, cracking a vertebra. “You know what happened then?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Nada, sir. Not shit. You got McDonald’s and a long line of salivating corporations piling into the newly free countries, scooping up land and resources. You had a lot of confused Easterners fucking over their neighbors to get rich, and quick. You had a war in Yugoslavia. You had Africa slowly falling apart. Genocide in Rwanda. They had a chance,” he said, staring hard at the cars ahead, “a chance to really make something of the world. But instead it was the same old story. Greed. Nothing changed. And a decade later people were surprised we were at war all over again. It broke my dad. Hell, it nearly broke me, and I was too young to know better. A system like ours—a system that pisses away a chance for a better world, that can’t see past short-term gain…” He sighed loudly. “Every day you see it—this week it’s Plains Capital and IfW. Some rich assholes didn’t want to pay their taxes, so they slipped billions to shady bankers who hid their cash in brand-new accounts opened under other people’s names. If the journalists hadn’t made such a stink about it, you can bet your ass there wouldn’t be any investigation.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, though. Not a single rich white man—believe me—is going to pay for it.” George’s knuckles whitened as he squeezed the steering wheel. “A system like that needs to be ground into the dirt.”

  Kevin watched the side of George’s face. How old was this guy? Ten in ’89—thirty-eight? With his shoulder-length unwashed hair and the cigarette dangling from his lips, he looked like he was aiming for eighteen.

  “How long have you known Martin?” Kevin asked.

  “Don’t. Not really. Ben’s my guy. I heard him speak in some dive in Toledo. His voice stripped the paint off the walls. I was in.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard Ben Mittag speak.”

  “Not anymore, he doesn’t. His kind of speech? Gets too much attention from the Feds. That’s what happens when you talk about shooting cops and blowing up post offices. So he stepped back so the government would stay off our backs.” A grin. “Not that that helped much. But we’re still here.”

  “So who’s running things—Mittag or Bishop?”

  “You want hierarchy? Join the Democratic Party.” He looked into the rearview a moment, as if watching for shadows, then said, “What about you? You must’ve seen through the bullshit early.”

  “Why?”

  George opened a hand, bobbed his head. “I mean, you’re black. I don’t have to tell you about injustice.”

  “No, man. You don’t.” He looked out his window to see a station wagon loaded down with possessions, a young woman at the wheel. Returning home from school, or escaping her life. Almost by rote, he said, “It was the realization—maybe I was thirteen—that my life was a cliché. Dad spending his life in Haynesville Correctional. Drugs, of course. Mom trying to get off welfare and onto her feet.” He hesitated, then went off script a moment. “Funny thing is, these days people are crying about laid-off coal miners hooked on opioids. Everyone wants to get them to doctors. Back then it was the same—laid-off workers hooked on crack. But those poor bastards—in the eighties, everyone wanted to lock them up.” He cleared his throat. “There’s only one difference between then and now.”

  “Color of their skin,” George said so melodically that Kevin nearly gave him an Amen. Instead, he remained quiet until George said, “So that’s what brought you in.”

  “First I went to my recruiter.”

  “I thought maybe you were military.”

  Kevin said nothing.

  “See action?”

  Kevin stared across an ugly expanse of industrial sprawl along the outskirts of Sacramento. “A little.”

  “Afghanistan?”

  He didn’t bother answering that.

  George said, “You’ve seen the world. That’s good. And you got your foot in early through the black struggle.”

  Kevin stared at him a long moment. “It’s not a black struggle. It’s a human struggle.”

  “Sure it is,” George said, frowning. “But what are humans but a bunch of special interests? That, my friend, is why we’re going to win. We’re an army of special interests. I’m in the antigreed struggle; you can fight for your race if you want. Someone else can fight for the whales. But in the end we all work for the same thing.”

  “The end of all this,” said Kevin.

  “’Zactly,” George said as he slowed the car and pulled to the right. The exit was for Greenback Lane, a main thoroughfare lined with low houses and trees that eventually gave way to strip malls and stores: CVS, Dairy Queen, home fitness, Mexican restaur
ants, and a Red Robin burger joint, where George parked in the lot and killed the engine.

  Kevin saw nothing but families, stuffed to the gills, limping to their cars. “I already ate,” he said. “I’ll wait in the car.”

  “We’ll both wait in the car.”

  “For what?”

  George pulled a slip of paper from his shirt pocket; it was covered in cramped numbers written in pencil. Then he took out a cell phone, the sight of which surprised Kevin. George typed out a number and put the phone to his ear.

  “I love this part,” he whispered, then changed his tone and said, “Mary, this is George. It’s time.”

  4

  DAVID PARKER had been through a few beers by the time he discovered Ingrid in the living room, sharing the sofa with a man somewhere in his thirties. A small crowd of Brooklyn hipsters had gathered around them.

  “Where to start,” the man said in answer to someone. “Corruption, maybe. I don’t care what party they’re with. Wall Street buys the candidates, and when they leave office they become lobbyists so they can buy their successors. Let’s stop pretending it’s democracy.”

  A few of the hipsters nodded, as if this were fresh news. Gina Ferris, with her unruly white hair and a martini glass in her bejeweled hand, stood nearby, but all David noticed was Ingrid. His wife seemed enraptured by this pretty-boy pundit who occasionally turned to Ingrid with his angelic smile, as if all this were just for her.

  The man went on. “Paul Hanes—House majority whip from the great state of Virginia. He just pushed through a bill clearing the way for Blackstar to absorb its primary arms-manufacturing competition. Guess who Hanes’s second-largest campaign contributor is? They’re not politicians anymore; they’re corporate spokespeople. Eisenhower was right on when he warned of the military-industrial complex. But no one listened.”

  Gina spoke up. “You’re only telling part of the story, Martin. Paul Hanes is heading the Plains Capital and IfW inquiry.”

  Ingrid’s suitor—Martin, apparently—shrugged. “Hanes says all the right words, but that’s exactly how a smart guy talks just before burying an investigation.” He cocked his head, reading the irritation in Gina’s face. “But, okay. Even politicians have a moral center, whether or not they ever use it. Diane Trumble, also on the committee, is doing all right. If they get their way—and that’s a big if—then for a few weeks people are going to wake up. A couple of bankers will go to jail, we’ll all pat ourselves on the back, and then go back to sleep.”

  Martin smiled and shrugged, and that was when David realized who this guy was. Martin Fucking Bishop, “The Revolution’s New Face.”

  David had only skimmed the Rolling Stone profile, but he had heard plenty about Bishop from Sam Schumer’s Sunday evening news show, and standing there, seeing his wife gazing doe-eyed at a man much younger than him, a man who was arguably a terrorist—at that moment he was less concerned with the future of America than with the dreary state of his marriage and impending fatherhood.

  “Piñata!”

  Everyone turned to find Bill moving through the living room, herding spare children toward the backyard, where they would beat an animal until it gave them candy. It was what Bill called life training.

  The disruption gave Gina a chance to escape, and as she passed David she rolled her eyes, cheeks flushed from the confrontation. David stepped up into the space she had left. “Martin, is it?”

  Martin acknowledged his name with a nod. Beside him, Ingrid eyeballed her husband without expression.

  David leaned close and held out a hand. “David, Ingrid’s husband.”

  They shook, then fell back, Bishop deeper into the sofa beside Ingrid, David among the crowd. He smiled, trying unsuccessfully to hide his irritation. A few years ago, in Berlin or soon after, he could have managed the trick. But he wasn’t that optimist anymore. Ingrid seemed like someone else, too; in her cheeks, the color rose. David said, “Everyone I know seems to have another egalitarian utopia already packaged and ready to go as soon as the Revolution puts them in power. What’s yours?”

  Martin opened his hands. “Unlike all your friends, David, I don’t presume to know. I’m not smart enough. Few people are that smart, least of all—and no insult meant—your smart friends.”

  “And what about the guns?”

  “What about them?”

  “Sam Schumer says your followers are stockpiling guns.”

  Martin shook his head, grinning. “Schumer is a gun advocate himself, so I’ve never understood him harping on about that.”

  “But you’re not denying it?”

  “Why shouldn’t everyone have access to a weapon? Particularly these days. Or should a gun license come with a political test?”

  “But you were more specific,” David pushed, more details coming to him. “You called on people to stockpile guns for the coming revolution.”

  Martin raised his eyebrows. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Someplace reputable.”

  “Schumer Says?” He seemed amused by the idea, but: “No, David. I’m afraid I never said that.”

  David hesitated. He’d heard so much over the past year about this man from so many sources. Now Martin Bishop was here, next to Ingrid, casually batting away his accusations. All the while, Ingrid just watched. David tried not to let his frustration show but knew he was failing. “The system resists change. That’s what you said, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then how are you planning to make change?”

  Ingrid tilted her head to look him squarely in the eye, and her voice was laced with undisguised weariness and doubt when she asked, “Are you really interested, David?”

  “Of course I am,” he lied.

  Martin thought a moment, ignoring—or pretending to ignore—the marital strife his presence was exacerbating, then said, “The left and right give lip service to the dialectic. You talk things out, argue them, and the answers will float to the surface. Look, I’m hip to that, but it only works in a world where everyone’s taking part in the conversation. In this world, in this America, everyone’s closed off in their own ideologies. They’re all talking—everyone’s talking—but no one’s listening. The dialectic has failed. What’s the next step?”

  “Revolution?” David suggested. “Make everyone listen to you?”

  “Make everyone listen to each other,” he said.

  “And how do you do that?”

  “You destroy the part of the system that allows them to ignore each other. The part that teaches them that their enemies live in the other political party, or in another demographic, when the truth is that their enemies are the people above them. Rip away the veil.” Bishop scratched his ear. “What would happen if, in some basement dogfight, the pit bulls suddenly saw through it all? Not only realized they were being used, but also that their masters couldn’t control them, not really? That they were free? The dogs would unite and turn on their masters. It would be a bloodbath. You just have to wake them up. Show them that their enemy is the guy holding the leash.”

  “You collect guns,” David said. “You talk about bloodbaths.” He looked to Ingrid, to see if she was putting it together.

  “I’m talking about uniting right and left,” Bishop said, “because we’ve all got the same enemy.”

  To Ingrid, David said, “Are you listening to this?”

  She didn’t say a word. Just stared at him blankly.

  Bishop said, “Look at what’s going on around you, man. People are suffering. And we know who’s to blame. It’s not a mystery.”

  “So you’re going to decide who’s guilty,” David told him. “Martin Bishop—judge, jury, and executioner.”

  “Check out The Propaganda Ministry. People are making hit lists so long they’ll make your eyes water.”

  “Hit lists. That’s not terrorism?”

  “It’s making people accountable. Just like you are. Just like I am.”

  “Well,” David said to Bishop, “good luck
with all that.” Then, to Ingrid: “You get any food?”

  Quietly, she said, “I’m not hungry.”

  “Okay, then. Good to meet you, Martin.”

  Bishop got up to shake hands, but David was already turning away, heading to the kitchen for a fresh beer. It was a celebratory beer, for in his mind he had just shown Ingrid that the guy she was sitting next to was a dangerous demagogue. Hadn’t he?

  No, he hadn’t, but it took a while for him to understand how impotent his argument had been. He and Bill were with Amy and Nasser, painters who made ends meet designing websites, a job they complained was being automated out of existence. The four of them leaned against an artfully installed boulder pocked by cigarette burns, drinking and watching the kids. The grass was littered with hard candies from the gutted piñata, but instead of shoving them into their mouths the kids raced each other, stomping the candies deeper into the professionally fertilized soil, laughing. “Look how easily they get along,” Bill said.

  “Give them a few years,” said Amy. “Soon enough, they’ll be fighting over a slice of Soylent Green.”

  David’s mind was elsewhere. It had taken another beer, maybe three, for him to revisit his exchange with Martin Bishop and realize that he’d misunderstood the situation. No one had been interested in what he had to say. Those bearded automatons shipped in from Williamsburg hadn’t listened; he was nothing to them. He remembered Ingrid’s face when she’d said, coldly, I’m not hungry. Then the truth registered: All he’d done was humiliate himself.

  “That dick in there,” he said abruptly. “Martin. What a joke, thinking debate skills are a substitute for actual thought.”

  “You read the Rolling Stone piece?” Nasser asked.

  “Not closely.”

  “You should.”

  “I should, should I?”

  “He was in Berlin for a while.”

  “Same time you were,” Bill said, nodding.

  “You were there?” Nasser asked. “Then you really should read it. Martin Bishop fell in with some left-wing radicals.”