“And maple syrup,” the man said. He looked questioningly at Hollander, one eyebrow arched. He had hollow cheekbones and the complexion of a worm. The All-Slavic Boy. I keep strange company, Hollander thought.
The other man, whom Hollander knew only as Brinkerhoff, called to the waitress. He ordered a short stack of buttermilk pancakes with butter and syrup. He put his hands flat on the table, one alongside the other, and studied them a moment, as if they were not his own and might at any second leap up in the air.
The truck was being towed away outside. There was the flashing orange light of a breakdown vehicle. Brinkerhoff watched it for a time.
Then he turned to Hollander and said: “Your position strikes me as slightly strange. As indeed it strikes my superiors. Your motivation, to say the least, is highly questionable.”
A world of cynics, Hollander thought. Everywhere you went you collided with the disbelievers and the skeptics, who wouldn’t recognize a logical position if they saw one.
“I made my position plain, I think,” he said. “I haven’t changed.”
“What you have to offer …” Brinkerhoff paused. His pancakes had arrived. He stared at them.
“Everything okay?” Theresa asked, smiling. She replenished Hollander’s cup with a brown liquid that he looked at distastefully.
Brinkerhoff bit into the pancake. He suggested somebody sampling wine. Hollander put out his cigarette. “You’ve had my credentials checked, of course.”
“Of course. They are as they say. Your credentials are not what concerns us.”
Hollander waited. He thought of Myers again inside his pup tent. April; the cold desert mornings would be freezing his ass.
“It’s altogether vague,” Brinkerhoff said. “You promise us—”
“Revolutionary information, was the phrase—”
“Naturally, you don’t specify. That is fair enough at this stage. Why give something away for nothing?” Evidently tired of the American delicacy, Brinkerhoff pushed his plate aside. He inserted a finger into his mouth and picked at something.
“Your own position is what puzzles us,” he went on. “You ask for no money. You run the risk of being called a traitor. All you want from us is the assurance that we will allow you to come to the Soviet Union. Why doesn’t it add up?”
Believe, don’t believe, Hollander thought. He was suddenly tired. There was too much tension. He could feel a tightness in his chest. I didn’t give up the job just because I wanted to run into more of that old hypertension, I wanted peace.
“Perhaps it’s your apparent idealism that troubles us,” Brinkerhoff said. “I think we are suspicious of that label. I sit here, I look at you, and I keep thinking to myself, Is it possible? Maybe something inside me has become hard, Hollander. But an idealist?”
The old hero complex, Hollander thought. Sometimes he felt he was insane, out of it, blown quite away. Was it idealism? You don’t look around the Pancake Palace at the blind faces of the munchers and think good thoughts. You don’t sit in plastic enclaves and undergo this deep love of your fellow man; by the same token, you don’t want to perpetuate the crassness of a synthetic society. It was balance, he thought. Balance. There was a structure that worked because of the balance. It was often uncertain, but so far nobody had started throwing nukes at each other. Do I want to be a hero?
“Information is usually bought and sold, Hollander. We’re not children. We are not, as you say, wet behind our ears. People who have information, in this world at least, offer it at the highest price. You think we are naïve? All you ask is a place in Soviet society? No money? No hard-cash payment?”
Hollander said: “I want your assistance in getting out of this country—”
“You will have to prove something. You will have to show us something.” Brinkerhoff stared at the tips of his fingers. “We have been caught before now. We have every reason to be cautious. Put yourself in our shoes for a moment. What if you have been planted? What if your purpose is to mislead?”
Hollander shrugged. “You want a little evidence, of course.”
Brinkerhoff nodded.
“I’ll be in touch.” Hollander, picking up his newspaper, folding it under his arm, stood up. Brinkerhoff watched him.
“What are you, Hollander? The idealist? Or just some common spy?”
“I’m a nut,” Hollander said. “An average, everyday, common or garden candidate for the funny farm.”
Puzzled, Brinkerhoff stared at him: “You lose me, friend. You lose me.”
Hollander left the Pancake Palace and stepped out into the rainy day. You want to sustain some equilibrium in this crazy world. Alone, you think you can provide the documents that will do just that thing. You could burn for it.
You must be pretty fucked in the head.
Tarkington said: “You asked for the fucking attaché case, that’s what I bring you, so now you tell me I fucked up again.”
He was walking up and down Sharpe’s office, trembling with annoyance, conscious of his layers of fat in motion beneath the maroon leisure suit. He knew he was going too far with Sharpe, but he had done this thing by the book and was it his fault, was it his fucking fault, that the attaché case contained only stupid blank paper?
The manila folder was open on Sharpe’s desk, the papers strewn all across it. Sharpe sat with his eyes closed and thought: A game, some joker’s playing a game. But who? The major general or our young friend Thorne? You would have to work Thorne with kid gloves.
“Okay,” he said. “Take it easy, Tarkie. Just sit down and take it easy.”
“I mean, hell, I did the goddamn job,” Tarkington said.
“A case filled with blank papers,” Sharpe said. Blank papers. This couldn’t be what all the goddamn fuss was about, that was for sure.
Tarkington sat, his legs splayed out. He closed his eyes and put his hands to the side of his face. Weariness, the weariness. When did he last have a good night’s sleep? Come to that, when did he last get laid? He opened his eyes, watched Sharpe, waited for something to happen. Sharpe, staring at the blank pages as one might at the recalcitrant clue of a difficult crossword puzzle, was thinking of Dilbeck. Back to that fucking plant kingdom, he thought.
Tarkington could feel waves of sleep press in on him. He struggled against them. I done this by the book, he thought. They can’t hang me for that.
Sharpe gathered the papers together, stuffed them back in the folder, shoved the folder into the attaché case, locked it, and stuck it in the bottom drawer of his gray metal desk.
“Thorne’s a special case, Tarkie,” he said. “You understand that? I don’t want Lykiard near him, you follow me? I don’t want Lykiard so much as to breathe on the guy. But day and night, day and fucking night, Tarkie, I want to know where he goes, who he screws, when he takes a shit. You got that?”
Tarkington thought, I’m going to need some speed about now. I’m going to need a chemical assist. Wearily, he got out of his chair. His shoulders sagged and he felt as if his legs might buckle. He looked at Sharpe; Sharpe thought of a large, overweight dog searching for cold water on a hot day.
“What do we do this for?” Tarkington said.
“It passes the time, Tarkie. Always remember that.”
Myers watched the sun as it rose and, lying flat on his belly, beat at a fly that had come buzzing in against his face. He lifted the binoculars and trained them on the site. There wasn’t any movement. You couldn’t count the guard, because he was like part of the landscape. The sun dazzled on the white wall of the structure and glistened on the wire perimeter fence. Somewhere inside that fence they had the means of blowing away some major cities of the Soviet Union. Blam blam blam.
He rubbed his eyes.
From a distance, faintly at first, he heard the sound of a chopper. He scrambled down into the arroyo toward his tent. He went inside. The sound of the helicopter grew louder. He heard it reverberate. And when he saw how the walls of the pup tent shimmered, blown by a wind, he
realized it was directly overhead.
Jesus Christ. Any minute now his tent would disappear. He stepped out, shielding his eyes, and looked up at the chopper; it was a vast sun-struck mantis. I’m bird-watching, he thought. A cactus-wren freak. A voyeur of buzzards. My feathered friends.
The helicopter was descending, coming down on the crest of the slope above him. He watched its blades spin to a halt. A man in a white helmet jumped out of the cockpit and stood looking down the arroyo at him.
“What the fuck you think you’re doing, friend?”
Myers, his eyesight fettered by the sun, watched the white blur of the helmet.
The man came down the dry wash toward him.
He was black, he had the armband of an MP, and an automatic pistol, a .45, in his holster.
“What you doing?”
Myers looked nervously at his tent. “Bird-watching.”
“Yeah? I guess this area’s just brimming with them,” the MP said.
“If you look, it is,” Myers said. “You got to know where to look.”
The MP stared up the arroyo at the helicopter. There was a second figure in the cockpit. Myers could not see him clearly.
“You know this place is off limits?” the MP said.
“Off limits,” and Myers shrugged.
The MP stared at the tent, pulled the flap back, looked inside.
“I didn’t see any signs,” Myers said.
“Bird-watching, huh?” The MP took the pistol from his holster. He leveled it at Myers. He smiled; against the dark of his skin his teeth were an impossible white. “How long you been camping here?”
“Couple days,” Myers said. “What’s with the gun, mac?”
“I got myself a bird,” the MP said.
Thorne waited in an obscure seafood restaurant called the Shrimp’s Hideaway for his lunch date. It was a place festooned with nets and harpoons and posters of old whalers. You were meant to feel nautical here; they hammered you with it. But the effect was wrecked by the gingham dresses of the waitresses, who looked like unwanted partners at a country square dance. He ordered a Campari and tonic from a waitress whose badge said Hi, I’m Cheryl.
He sat near the window, watched the street. A rundown neighborhood, old storefronts and awnings, rusting fire hydrants, unemployed men lingering on corners with a kind of resigned irritation at the world. Most of the tables in the place were empty. Candles flickered bleakly in glass jars.
When Erickson entered, looking like a store-window model in his dark three-piece suit, his hair fashionably long but not yet unruly, he came straight to the table and sat down. He was carrying a brown envelope under his arm in a rather protective fashion; he placed it on top of the table, laying his hands over it.
“Like this place, John?” he asked.
Thorne shrugged. “Is it where you people of fashion hang out?”
“It’s where we come when we don’t want to be seen, baby,” Erickson said. He asked for a scotch from Hi I’m Cheryl and he slid the envelope across the table to Thorne. Thorne took it, slipped it into his briefcase, locked the case.
“Do we go through the charade of actually eating?” Erickson asked.
“We don’t have to,” Thorne said.
Erickson sipped his drink and looked around: “I feel seasick. What is this? A goddamn trawler or something?”
“You chose it,” Thorne said. “Remember?”
Erickson played with his solid-gold cuff links a moment. He was smooth, a well-oiled machine, a young man on the rise. He was personal assistant to Senator McLintock, who served on the Air Force Appropriations Committee.
“What in the name of God do you want with that record anyhow?” Erickson said.
“The guy interests me,” Thorne said. “An old friend of my father’s.”
“And recently dead, as I understand,” Erickson said.
“Right.”
They had two more drinks. Thorne watched a cop car slide down the block, cruising.
“He was pretty batty,” Erickson said. “I gather they thought he was something of a radical. You know the kind. Old major general. Gets close to retirement. No more promo for him. So he either goes the hard-line conservative route—letters to the editor, sees commies under the bed, or they flip out like Burckhardt and get a little touchy.”
“Like how?”
“He was always writing to Air Marshal Howard, for one thing. Critical shit. This plane’s going to be obsolete in a year, so why build it? That kind of stuff. They had him pegged as a malcontent.”
“And was he?”
Erickson fingered the rim of his glass. “Your guess is as good as mine. What’s radical in the service is pretty tame outside. You know that.”
They were silent a moment. Thorne finished his drink.
“You’ve got photostats in that envelope,” Erickson said. “I don’t want to know what you need them for, so don’t tell me. When you’re through with them, scrap them. They’d bust my balls if they knew.”
Thorne understood. “Another drink?”
“You kidding? I’ve got McLintock all afternoon. He’s in a vile mood. I think he’s going through male menopause. Plus he’s teetotal. I’m going to suck LifeSavers.”
Erickson stood up.
“I owe you a favor,” Thorne said.
Erickson smiled, clapped him on the shoulder. “I won’t forget it, either. Bet on it.”
Thorne watched him go. He ordered another Campari and a plate of fried shrimp, picked at them, finished his drink, and left.
A Pontiac Catalina, an insipid green in color, picked up his red VW on Memorial Parkway and followed it to the White House.
Tarkington said to Lykiard: “No jokes with this mother. You got it?”
Lykiard nodded.
3
The night was clear, starry, a slight wind blowing away the haze that had hung all day over the city. Through the lens Dilbeck had a clear view of the crater Copernicus and, to the north, the area known as Mare Imbrium, the Sea of Rains. It was amazing, sometimes, the clarity of vision. Beside him on the darkened lawn Sharpe’s cigarette glowed intermittently red.
“Take a look,” Dilbeck said. “But don’t touch the adjustment.”
Sharpe put his eye to the telescope that Stood on a tripod. The moon appeared to shimmer, as though it were a large silver coin immersed in moving water. Very impressive, he thought.
“I built it myself,” Dilbeck said. “I’m working on a stronger one now.”
“It’s really something,” Sharpe said, straightening, stepping back from the instrument. He looked across the lawn at the house. The lights in the conservatory were pale; the shadows of a thousand plants pressed against the glass. There was no sign now of the daughter. No piano playing. In the darkness, Dilbeck sighed.
“So,” he said. There was a suggestion of finality in the way he said the word, as if he were concluding a lecture and something necessary had just been proved beyond doubt.
Sharpe held his cigarette, not knowing what to do with the butt. He somehow knew that Dilbeck thought of his lawn as one might value a Persian rug. Dilbeck moved in the direction of the house and Sharpe followed a pace or two behind. They went inside the conservatory. It smelled musty. Somewhere in the middle of all these healthy plants, Sharpe thought, there’s one rotting away.
“We have a slight puzzle,” Dilbeck said.
Sharpe stared at a pale fluorescent tube that glimmered on the far wall. Something exotic was being cultivated beneath it. He wondered if Dilbeck talked to his plants.
“Thorne’s mind,” Dilbeck said. “A man’s mind is private by nature. We live our lives locked away, don’t we? What are we ever sure of? What are you ever sure of, Sharpe?”
What is this? Sharpe wondered. Philosophy 101?
“Are you sure that you’re always doing the right thing?” Dilbeck asked, turning to face him, seeming to loom over him in such a way that the question was no mere rhetorical cant.
“I go by the bo
ok,” Sharpe said.
“Because you think the book is right?”
“It’s the only book I know.”
Dilbeck moved away in the direction of the fluorescent light. On a small table there was a glass case of the kind that housed tropical fish. Inside was a small plant.
“Brazilian edelweiss,” Dilbeck said.
Sharpe looked at the glass, the reflection of light.
“Was there something other than a blank manuscript in that case?” Dilbeck said.
“Every move Thorne makes—”
“Let’s be interested in every thought Thorne thinks,” Dilbeck said. “A man’s observable behavior can only take us so far. How do we begin to learn what he thinks?”
Sharpe put out his hand as if to touch the glass case, then he remembered he was still holding the stub of a lit cigarette. How the hell do I get rid of this?
“Pressure,” Dilbeck said. “When the time is right. If the time is ever right.”
Sharpe watched as Dilbeck moved down the tables.
“In your book,” he was saying, “in your book pressure usually means one thing. But there are other kinds. More subtle kinds.”
Sharpe thought of Tarkington slumped asleep behind the wheel of a car.
“Your predecessor was a man of some finesse,” Dilbeck said.
“Hollander?”
“He would have understood this situation rather well,” Dilbeck said. “But as he grew older he began to develop certain sensitivities. In your job, a poet is the very last thing you need to be. He had ceased to have the soul of a cement mixer.”
Sharpe felt the butt burn into his thumb. He had met Hollander only once, during the changeover. He had no particular impression of the guy. Quiet, withdrawn, too well liked by the people in the field. He had lost his sense of distance. But apart from that—what else? Nobody really knew why Hollander had quit anyhow. Tired, maybe, just plain worn out.
“I liked Ted Hollander,” Dilbeck was saying. “As a matter of fact, I still do. But liking isn’t the whole kettle of fish, is it?”
Sharpe waited until Dilbeck had turned his back, then he surreptitiously dropped the butt and stepped on it.
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