“You could take the envelope,” he said. “I couldn’t stop you now.”
Brinkerhoff said nothing.
Hollander looked at the shadow inside the cockpit.
He was aware of the night all at once, the stars overhead, the moon that had the appearance of something newly minted in some impossible forge. He was aware of his consciousness seeping away from him as a tide finally ebbs. He barely felt himself being helped onto the Centurion. And by the time it had taken off and swung eastward toward the great impenetrable dark of the Atlantic, he was conscious of nothing.
“Buffalo Nine,” the communications man was saying. “Buffalo Nine, are you reading?”
He had a pipe between his teeth and a look of incurable placidity; Sharpe imagined the only thing that might shake him would be the thought of falling behind in his mortgage payments.
“Buffalo Nine,” he went on saying. He was silent a moment, glanced at Sharpe, then went back to his microphone. “Marvin, are you getting this? Are you getting any of this?”
Sharpe turned to look at Dilbeck but averted his eyes at the last moment, for he knew the expression of hollowness he would encounter there. Neither Brandt nor Mulholland was answering his signal. He wanted to think there was some electronic failure somewhere, a blown terminal or a broken circuit or, at the least, the existence of some geographical obstacle—a mountain, a hill—that had caused this state of affairs.
Dilbeck, who considered the failure of machines and devices personal affronts to him, leaned forward in his chair and said, “Well, Sharpe. Well. What now?”
Sharpe dropped his hands. “Brandt’s last message was something about a plane—”
“I heard,” Dilbeck said. Ted Hollander, he was thinking. You could not put one over on Ted. You would have to be up very early to catch Ted.
“So now we assume that Hollander and his Russian friend have flown,” he said.
“It looks that way,” Sharpe said.
“Okay.” Dilbeck rose from his chair. There was the most curious smell in this communications room, he thought. It was like burned rubber. “He takes a flight with his chum. Where?”
“I hate to think the rest,” Sharpe said.
“So do I, Sharpe, so do I—but what else is there?” Dilbeck blew his nose, rolled the handkerchief up, stuck it away. “They have five or six routes they use in these situations. So far as I know, they use Mexico City, Toronto. They’ve used Montreal before now. Where else?”
Dilbeck tried to bring to mind old intelligence dossiers.
“And Havana,” he added.
“Which is it to be?”
“All of them, of course. All of them. Alert every air base and control tower within a three-hundred-mile radius of—what’s it called?—Damascus? We want one unauthorized flight—”
“We don’t even know the type of craft,” Sharpe complained.
Dilbeck stared at him. There had lately been a whine in the man’s voice he had grown mightily to dislike. “I don’t give a tinker’s shit if we know its serial number, make, year of production and the personal names of the spot welders who put it together—every unauthorized flight must be brought into radio contact and its credentials ascertained.”
Sharpe turned to his communications man. “Get your ass on that, Vic.”
“It’s going to take all night,” the communications man said.
“You haven’t got all night.”
The communications man opened a drawer and brought out a manual of call signals: he began to flick through the pages.
“Get other people in here, Sharpe,” Dilbeck said. “Delegate this operation. Use telephones. Use the radio. But for Christ’s sake, get on it!”
Dilbeck left the room and sat down on the sofa in Sharpe’s office; he was very tired. He felt a sense, too, of emptiness, and on the edges of consciousness the uneasy knowledge that he would have to explain all this. They would not understand. He could not get them to understand, not ever. The Soviets. Who would have thought it of Hollander? Airtight boxes, sealed pigeonholes, the inside of a camera. They thought you could bottle everything. They thought. Well, Whorley hadn’t exactly been able to keep his old major general in tow, had he? Let him try to cast the first stone.
God, he hoped they could bring that plane out of the air, preferably into the sea somewhere so that it might never be found save for some fragmented items of wreckage that might one day wash up on obscure beaches for the puzzled delight of holidaymakers. Yes, let that happen.
He sat with his eyes closed. In the other room he could hear telephones ringing, the radio chattering; it all sounded so hideous and unreal.
And now his tired mind came around to Thorne.
Even Leach was agreed. They had gone as far as they could with that young man. Ball’s in your court, Dilbeck, I wash my hands of him.
He rose, called Sharpe out of the communications room, then closed the door as Sharpe, chewing a toothpick, stepped into the office. He looks haunted, Dilbeck thought.
“Finesse isn’t getting us anywhere,” Dilbeck said.
Sharpe, as if he understood nothing, stared dumbly.
“Thorne’s your baby now,” Dilbeck said.
He once more closed his eyes. He was thinking of the Russians. If they had their teeth in Asterisk, courtesy of friend Hollander, they would worry it like a dog with a marvelous bone. When would his colleagues learn that there was not a hope in hell of forever containing something like Asterisk?
The sound of the telephone on Sharpe’s desk startled him. Brrrnnng. Brrrnnng—it was like some fresh alarm. He watched Sharpe pick it up. Sharpe listened a moment, frowned, then covered the mouthpiece with the palm of his hand.
“Our young friend’s at the airport,” Sharpe said.
“Intending to travel?” Dilbeck asked.
Sharpe shrugged.
“Nothing would astonish me,” Dilbeck said. “Put a lid on it. Put a very tight lid on it, Sharpe.”
5
In the men’s room Thorne caught his own ragged reflection and, for a moment, it was as if the face he saw in the glass were not his own. There were new lines under the eyes; the pallor of his skin reminded him of the weird bleached quality of a newspaper that has lain too long in bright sunlight. He turned on the cold-water faucet, splashed his face, combed his hair, but he did not check the results of these efforts in the mirror. One look had been enough. There are days, he thought, when what you see is a fool staring back at you.
Over the intercom, the sound of which echoed in the tiled bathroom, he heard a girl’s voice lisp: Passengers for Rome are presently boarding through gate number six. Rome, Thorne thought. I could go to Rome and do as the Romans do, whatever that might be.
He let the cold water run across his wrists and fingers.
The door opened. A uniformed man came in, went inside a cubicle, closed and locked the door. In the space under the door Thorne could see the pants being dropped around shiny black shoes.
Even pilots have needs, he thought.
Even pilots.
He dried his fingers on a towel that had come to the end of its tether and lay strewn across the floor like a flag of defeat. Sullied, soiled, ashen.
There was the noise of a toilet flushing.
The pilot came briskly out of the cubicle and went to a washbasin, rolling his sleeves up. He moved with the quick economy of a man who lives every day of his life with decisions of importance.
Thorne opened the door.
He walked through the main lounge, past the vacant, vaguely anxious faces of those who waited for flights or for arrivals. He went inside the cocktail bar and sat up on a stool and ordered a Bloody Mary.
The bar was crowded. There was Muzak playing. Early Beatles hits processed through the Muzak factory and sounding now like the death throes of Lawrence Welk. He looked around the bar for a sign of his fat friend, but he wasn’t around. Maybe he clocked out at a certain time? Could you hope for that? Maybe he simply went off duty and slep
t and then, like a toy made to function by a spring, rolled out of bed the next day and got back on the job.
There were a couple of beautiful people standing next to him at the bar. She was in dark-green pants and white blouse and carried her expensive jacket casually over her shoulder. He wore a blue jean suit and a white ruffled shirt open to the navel and brown-tinted glasses. He had seen them in the pages of Vogue, those asexual glossy demonstrations of what was up to date in the world of fashion. What is it tonight? Thorne wondered. A quick jet to Vegas? A jaunt down to New Orleans to enjoy some late-night fun in the French Quarter? Her face was made up in an immaculate manner; she talked as if she knew she was being observed, an actress’s flair. He hung on every word, or so it seemed, but there was a glaze across his eyes and a dead quality in the way he laughed at the right moments.
She: I don’t believe Alexis has house-trained her mutt.
He: How so?
She: I found a little pile of poop in the master bedroom.
(Laughter)
Their heads inclined at the same time as if set on a collision course.
Thorne finished his drink and once more saw his image, this time reflected in the mirror behind the bar. A young man who has had too many late nights. A little worn around the edges. A blunt instrument. The Beatles played on as if they had been wrapped in cellophane. Penny Lane you’re in.
He signaled the barman, ordered a second drink, turned around and looked across the bar. Passengers for Rome. This is the last call for TWA flight … Where is he? Thorne wondered. Where is the fat man?
He sipped his Bloody Mary.
She: Alexis always thinks she has a way with dogs.
He: What makes you think so?
She: My dear, look at the men she’s been married to.
(Laughter)
Thorne picked up his glass, moved away from the bar. He went to the back of the cocktail lounge and, screened by people, watched the front door.
Escalante—
He was dreaming. In a moment he would wake.
Marcia would be sitting on the edge of the bed.
He would get up. Have coffee. Dress. Briefcase. Car. Office. Home. Marcia.
This part is the dream, he thought.
You play ball, John.
My dear congressman.
You scratch my back.
How could he?
Pictures, flashes, Anna Burckhardt lying face down in that sleep from which there is no awakening, an old man floating in a pool, Marcia hauling her suitcases—
Last call for passengers for …
Through the open doorway of the bar he saw a straggle of newly arrived passengers drifting across the main lounge. Texans, garrulous men in garish leisure suits, broadbrimmed hats. Their women looked as if they should be carrying white poodles.
And there, across the lounge, sitting with a newspaper folded in his lap, there he was. The fat bland face, the expression one of a complete lack of curiosity such as you might expect to see in the eye of a profound retard. Thorne heard the ice cubes click in his Bloody Mary.
He stepped back against the wall.
The beautiful woman brushed past him on the way to the toilet, leaving a trace of perfume in the air. He couldn’t imagine her pissing. He couldn’t, by the same token, imagine her breathing the air he breathed. He saw the fat man get up, leave the newspaper on the sofa, and walk to a glass case that contained a replica of Washington in the year 1876. Fastidiously modeled dwellings in miniature. Tiny people in the streets, stuck, going nowhere.
He went to the telephone and pushed in coins and dialed a number; his hand adhered to the receiver. He heard Erickson’s voice at the other end, a note of irritation. The beautiful woman passed him again, the perfume stronger now, cloying, like the scent of a thousand sick petals opening for one final outrage.
Erickson, understandably, was not pleased.
“I’m sorry about the job,” Thorne said.
“Yeah,” Erickson said. “No more sorry than me. They said nothing. There was just this note from McLintock. Thanks a lot, here’s your check, goodbye, sorry it didn’t work out. I know better.”
“It was because of me,” Thorne said.
“What else is new?” Erickson said. “If you want nothing more than to proffer your apology, Thorne, then excuse me while I get back to the help-wanted column—”
Thorne said, “Wait.”
Erickson was silent.
“Have you ever heard of Asterisk?”
“It doesn’t ring any bells.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
“You’d tell me if it did?” Thorne asked.
The fat man’s nose was pressed to the glass case.
“I don’t like how you sound,” Erickson said. “Go home and lie down in a darkened room, man.”
“Erickson, listen to me, they’ve been following me around for God knows how long—”
“John, give me a break.”
“Erickson, please listen. It’s because of the Asterisk Project. You understand? That’s what it’s all about, that’s why Burckhardt was killed—”
Erickson was silent.
“Are you listening to me?” Thorne asked. I sound perfectly insane, he thought. A disembodied voice gone crazy on a telephone line.
Erickson was still silent.
“Burckhardt was killed because of it—”
The line went dead. Thorne held the receiver in his hand, put his forehead against the wall, he could feel the perspiration on his brow stick to the paneled wood. You couldn’t blame Erickson, you couldn’t blame him. He put the receiver back in place, finished his drink, and realized, with a start, a consciousness of horror, that he had just left Erickson with the verbal equivalent of twenty-five pages of blank manuscript. Only the word Asterisk had been added. Just that.
He put his hand to his forehead.
Passengers for Chicago are boarding at gate number …
Marcia, he thought.
The fat man was scratching a jowl.
Thorne put his empty glass down beside the telephone.
I expect to die, he thought. Is that what I expect?
Funny, Tarkington thought. Funny how people will go to all the trouble of making a replica like this. He couldn’t personally see the point to it. All that work and then you stick it in a glass case and people come and they look a while and they go away and they forget. All that work for nothing. Making those tiny models. I never had a hobby, never had the time for it.
He turned his face in the direction of the doorway of the cocktail lounge.
There was one joker who wouldn’t humiliate him again.
Expecting to die. No. One more death. What difference. Passengers for Chicago. Another drink. Two beautiful people in embrace. Phony. Didn’t fit. Look right. What would you have done, Senator Thorne? What would your solution have been? Dying of brain cancer. Incoherent in the last months. The brain gone. No more committees, meetings, policies, no more thoughts. John, is that you? Is that you? I can’t see, headaches blind me, come closer. They’ve been watching me, John. Did I ever tell you? It started in the war with Stalin. He isn’t dead. Did I ever tell you that, no? He’s still alive. They put a wax doll in a coffin so the people could pay homage, but he’s alive. Stalin sent the order down on me personally, John, personally. His own hand. I had a copy of the order. Watch Thorne, it said. I lost the paper. Come closer, John. Closer. Who are you? You’re not John. You’re too old.
Passengers for Chicago.
Thorne gripped the edge of the bar, finished his drink. Was it a genetic thing? Did it pass from father to son like some inexorable poison? This fear.
No.
The fat guy is out there. You couldn’t make that up. A solid fact, a thing in the real world.
He put his empty glass down.
He went out into the main lounge.
He passed the airlines desks, the pretty girls who stood in gleaming rows and made out tickets or surve
yed the weight of baggage on scales. There was a good-looking one behind the Air-India desk; she had her hair pulled tightly back, accentuating the height of the cheekbones, as if in drawing the hair back she had also somehow tightened the skin.
The old man losing his grip during those last months, the profound deterioration that took place—it was utterly pathetic. He looked up at the fluorescent lights on the high ceiling. The Air-India girl was smiling at him. He was conscious of the fat man, some fifty feet behind.
He went toward the exit.
The fat man followed.
Outside in the darkness he began to sprint toward the parking lot, surprised all at once by what his own body was capable of performing. Then he could no longer feel himself. He was no longer aware of the complex moving parts of the mechanism. This dislocation—was this the fear of death? Had Anna Burckhardt felt something like this? And her husband?
The night sky was alive with lights.
An airplane just beginning its climb; roaring along the runway, ascending, looking like some massive silvery sword. He felt the ground vibrate beneath him. Another plane was descending, a DC-10, he saw its lights grow brighter, brighter, as it came whining toward the runway.
The VW.
He couldn’t remember where he had parked the VW.
There were thousands of cars, row after row after row. Thousands. Where had he left the bug?
He stopped running a moment and tried to catch his breath. Across the spaces of darkness he could hear the footsteps of the fat man. Trying to run, to keep up.
Tarkington went from one car to the next. His lungs felt oddly raw. You put too much strain on the old pump, he thought. Kaput, just like that. He had seen it happen before. He remembered old Bill McWilliams, who always looked strong as an ox, and how, suddenly, just like that, just like a snap of your fingers or the crack of a straw, old Bill had keeled over in the heat of Istanbul. A massive coronary, they said. Now, leaning against the side of a car, straining to catch his breath, he saw himself as if from above: a mass of jelly quivering. Steam rooms, the rubber suit, he would have to find time to work this burden off.
He felt dizzy a moment. There were spots, rather like frail mosquitos, darting around in front of his eyes. This guy Thorne was young, looked fit and healthy, he could never outrun Thorne no matter what.
Asterisk Page 18
