by James Church
All the conversations we’d ever had came back at me. On our walk the other day, I only remembered a few things, snatches of emotions. Now, with her sitting so close, everything was accessible. I frantically rewound all the tapes in my head, trying to remember with precision, to wade through the flood of memory onto something solid, to someplace where I couldn’t see her dimples. She didn’t help; she just sat and looked into my eyes. Walking beside the river, putting our steps in rhyme, I didn’t really have to look at her. Anyway, she had been all business. Mostly all business. But now she was across from me, looking into my eyes. She read everything. Nothing escaped her. That was always the problem. That’s probably why they put her in personnel.
There had been a time when I considered poking them out, my eyes, so she couldn’t read me. It was the only solution that I could think of short of killing myself, which I didn’t want to do at the time. Now this. First the Man with Three Fingers reappears, and now this. I should have done it; I should have poked my eyes out when I had the chance.
“No,” I said and should have left it at that, but with her, I couldn’t leave things. When she sat there, dimples and all, I was compelled. “I mean, yes, of course I’m happy to see you.” I hoped that was all my eyes were saying. “Yes and no.” I was talking too much. “No, I’m not empty. I just learned to let go.”
“Really? And where did you learn that? After all those years, where did you learn that?”
“Self-taught. Maybe it comes with age.” I stared at my hands. They seemed familiar, which was a relief. “You look good. It’s nice to see you again. So soon, I mean. Twice in so short a time.”
“You’re a liar. I could always tell when you lied to me, especially when you were talking to your hands.”
“You make it sound like it happened a lot.”
“It was constant, only you didn’t know it because you had no idea who you were then. And that’s putting it nicely.”
“And now?”
She stood up and moved closer, right next to me; I could feel myself filling and emptying again, like a minor star pulsing in a faraway corner of the universe.
“You just stopped.” She was barely whispering. “All of a sudden, you never got in touch. It was like you had died.”
“I was, sort of, dying. It was death, in a way.” I didn’t mean to whisper, too, but what else could I do? How can you talk normally when someone like her is leaning so close? “I thought about calling, but you know I don’t have a phone in my apartment. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Your office doesn’t have a phone?” She moved back and looked at my desk. I felt my face get hot. We used to talk a lot while I was at the office. I’d shut the door, and Pak didn’t interrupt. If he passed by when I was on the phone, he’d listen for just a moment and then walk away. He never mentioned it.
“Private calls.” My voice was returning little by little, but my face was still flushed, probably my ears, too. “They don’t want us to make private calls from the office. You know that, it’s in the handbook that your section puts out. Only official matters are supposed to take place on official phones. That’s the rule.” I sounded like the book of regulations that sat on the floor behind my chair. “Anyway, what we had to say to each other in those days was nobody else’s business.”
“So what was the other day?”
“That was official.”
She didn’t respond. Then came the question I hoped she wouldn’t ask. “How close were we?”
I knew what she wanted. She wanted me to say we had almost made it, almost crossed the bridge in one sweeping, final move. She wanted to hear that we could have done it. “Close,” I said.
A soft moan escaped her lips. Can a man dissolve? I looked away and considered how difficult and yet how useful it might be suddenly to become nothing more than smoke. When I looked back, she was at the door. She turned for a moment, long enough for one final word.
“Bastard.” It seemed to be her word for me these days. It wasn’t a word I liked her to say. I’d have to tell her that, if I ever saw her again.
I turned the word over in my mind a few times before I realized my phone was ringing. It was the liaison man from the Foreign Ministry. “Where have you been? I’ve tried calling and calling. We could meet for a couple of minutes, it might be interesting.”
“Hot air?”
“Enough. Miss Ban is making pleasurable sounds upstairs.”
“If the car starts, I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Otherwise?”
“Give my regards to Miss Ban.”
11
I drove out the front gate. An old lady and a small girl were on the sidewalk across the street. They walked alongside each other, their paces matched by the bow of time. For a while they held hands, then the child moved ahead, just a short burst of energy, a few steps alone, enough to make the case. She stopped and waited for the old lady to move up beside her. They started, paces matched again. Both looked ahead; the girl reached her hand up, the grandmother put her hand out. They walked like that for several steps, hands reaching for each other, not searching, sure that the space between them was nothing, that it was not permanent. Finally, one of them, you couldn’t tell which, moved the extra centimeter; maybe it was both, but I didn’t think so. They were joined and walked on—neither hurrying, neither lagging.
The car sat idling for another minute as I watched them. Which of them would not survive the winter? I hated the question. I despised myself for asking it.
One of the gate guards walked up and looked in the window. “Problem?”
“Nothing for you,” I said and turned into the street.
Chapter Four
“No one in the building knew her. There is no record of the file. It never existed.”
“What did you see, then?” It was amazing how much heat one little heater could put out. The only problem was, in order to avoid overloading the wires, he had rearranged things in the wall socket; the lights had to be off. In the morning, there was probably enough daylight coming in the window to read by; now, in the afternoon, I could barely see his face, except when he moved into the glow of the heater.
“Must have been a phantom, a place holder. It wasn’t for her. It was for her husband. That’s a guess, and I’m not going beyond that.”
“This is why I came out of my office, drove through the snow, and sit here in the dark? For you to tell me you’re not going beyond telling me you don’t have anything?” I reached in my back pocket and pulled out a pair of wire cutters.
“So, forget I told you,” he said quickly. “Don’t think about it. We’ll find something else.” Upstairs, Miss Ban walked across her office. For a lithe woman, she had a heavy tread. The liaison officer looked at the ceiling. “She’s been restless the past few days. It’s not like her. Usually she just sits.”
“What does she do?
“Some sort of research.”
“Right, research. How come she has her own office?”
“I guess someone doesn’t want her disturbed.” He poured a cup of hot water for himself. “You want some?”
I did, but I didn’t want to give the impression that a cup of hot water was a substitute for what I really needed from him. “Let’s get back to the file.” I put the cutters into my jacket pocket, where they would be visible. He bit his lower lip, calculating how much room he had to wriggle.
“Nonfile,” he said.
“Nonfile. You have many of those, or are they kept in a nonfile room?”
The liaison man looked up at the ceiling. I followed his gaze. “Maybe I’ll pay a call on Miss Ban.”
2
“Miss Ban, I am Inspector O from the Ministry of Public Security. I would like to talk to you.”
She stood in the doorway to her office, giving no sign that she was prepared to step aside. “You’ll have to make an appointment through normal channels, Inspector. You shouldn’t even be on this floor.”
“Pardon me?” I c
ouldn’t remember why I imagined her as lithe. I should have trusted my instincts. Her footsteps sounded like someone solid, and now I saw why. She was tall, solid as a rock. Not fat, not heavy, just very solid. I knew elite guards who didn’t have her build. Maybe that’s why she had this job shuffling phony files. She looked like she ate small men. “I’m not here to vacation. I’m on assignment, and I need to talk to you. I don’t make ‘appointments’ when I question people. You can consider yourself lucky you weren’t ordered to appear at my office.”
“I’ll do that. Consider myself lucky. If that’s all, I’m especially busy right now. Come back some other time, maybe in a month or two, when it’s warmer. I look forward to spring, don’t you, Inspector?” She smiled with her mouth, only it wasn’t anything that warmed the heart. It was a serious warning, and I could tell she was a serious woman. She parted her hair in the middle, not a little to one side, but right down the center line so it looked like it was done with a machine. Maybe it was. Maybe they made such machines and she had been issued one in order to make it clear she wasn’t fooling around, she was serious, and if you didn’t think so, just look at that part in her long black hair. As soon as I left, she would phone in a complaint, and the guard at the front door of the building would be given orders to keep me out. He wouldn’t try very hard, but I didn’t need the extra hassle.
“On second thought, Miss Ban, let’s just say I’m drawn to you. Let’s just say I’m lonely, and you’re lonely, and it’s warm in here. Can I come in and share the warmth? Is that a problem?”
“Nothing personal, Inspector,” she said and shut the door. I thought she might open it again, but she didn’t. It was uncomfortable standing in the corridor, too similar to the meat lockers I had to visit during one investigation of a butcher who dealt in counterfeit loin. I normally don’t wear my hat inside of buildings, but this corridor was testing the limits. I tried the handle, but it was locked. I thought of kicking the door in, but the amount of explaining and hours of meetings that would result from a complaint about destroying part of the Foreign Ministry building were more than I wanted to endure, much less Pak’s looks of disbelief each time he glanced in my office over the next few months. Besides, she didn’t look like a woman who was impressed by a man who kicked in doors.
I knocked once. “I’ll be back, darling.” I figured the last word would rocket the others along the corridor up from their desks, ears against their doors. There was a short, throaty laugh from inside, the sort of laugh a woman of Miss Ban’s frame supports easily. When I got back to the liaison man’s office, he was gone. So was the heater.
“He’s out. Visitors from afar,” a man said as he walked past me and into the next room. After a moment, he reappeared. “That one”—he pointed at the liaison man’s door—“has a heater.” He looked in the room. “He must have taken it, but he has one. It sucks electricity all day long.”
“You trying to tell me something?”
“He’s not supposed to have it, is he?”
“What makes you think I’m interested?”
“Nothing.” The man’s face was gaunt. “Nobody is interested in anything anymore. So, good, we’ll all freeze to death, everyone but him, if we don’t starve first.” He looked at me closely, his eyes ablaze with something, not fear exactly. I couldn’t tell whether he wanted to take back the words, or be assured that I had heard him.
“You have a family?”
He nodded.
“Then don’t talk crazy,” I said. “When some people get too cold, they become crazed; the words that come from their mouths become crazy. Remember that.”
He put his hand to his forehead, a gesture of despair, and waited. “What next?”
I knew right then, he would not live out the winter. At this point it was a matter of will with a lot of people. His was gone, which saddened me for some reason. I didn’t know him, but I didn’t want him to give up. “Those with heaters will sit in front of them and curse every time the power goes out. Those of us without heaters won’t notice the difference,” I said. He didn’t reply, but he didn’t walk away, so I figured he wanted the company. “You know Miss Ban, upstairs?”
“Only her tread. I don’t go up there,” he said absently.
“You have your own office?” I pointed at his door.
“No, this one is for a team, but everyone else …”
“They’ve left.”
He shrugged.
“But you stayed.”
“They say it’s an arduous march; all I do is sit in the dark. I won’t get a medal for that.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever been to Pakistan? Served there? Made a trip?” Might as well start with the biggest shot in the dark and work backward.
“No. What’s it to you?”
“Where have you been, then? I’m interested in leading a tour group.”
“You ask a lot of questions.” At least he could still fight back; maybe it would be enough motivation to stay alive, if he decided to fight.
“A question machine, that’s me. I keep asking until I get an answer. Could be the switch is stuck or a connection is loose.” Once again he didn’t respond, but there was something new, an alertness that had been drained from him only a moment ago. “Where did you serve?” I decided to see how far the conversation would go.
“Middle East. Craziness. Libya. The man’s a nut, as far as I can tell.”
“You put that in a reporting cable, I suppose. Such forthrightness is much appreciated in this building, I hear.”
“Reporting wasn’t my job.” He smiled, finally, for the first time. “Forthrightness wasn’t my area of expertise. My job was making sure the ambassador stayed out of trouble.”
“So, did he stay out of trouble?”
“He defected.” The words seemed to stick in his throat, and it looked for a moment like I might lose him for good. I nodded for him to go on, and for some reason that seemed to blow up the dam. He didn’t need any more encouragement. “The whole embassy was scared to death when the ambassador disappeared. People were angry with me; they said I should have been more alert, more aware, like I was supposed to know what he was thinking every moment, like I was supposed to be able to read his mind.” His face took on some color, and so did his voice. “A security team came out in a hurry; they told us to pretend nothing had happened and to go about our business, but no one could think straight. I was convinced they’d shoot me, take me out to the garden in the back and shoot me, but after a lot of questions they said it wasn’t my fault. Damned right it wasn’t my fault. I’ll never know what got into the man.”
“That was in Libya?”
He looked at me strangely. “No.” He didn’t volunteer where, and I wasn’t going to ask, not unless I needed to.
“You think they’ll send you overseas for another assignment?”
“I don’t think they even know I come to the office every day. I read the cables and put them in a file. This file, that file. Like I said, no one cares.” The energy was gone again. It made me uneasy to look at him, wondering how long he would last.
PART II
Chapter One
“Give me one good reason. Go ahead, just one. I’m trying to do your country some good, so why am I being held prisoner in this hotel?”
“You’re not a prisoner.” It was exasperating, having to argue with Jenö. He kept pushing even though he knew I wasn’t going to budge. “I already told you, feel free to wander around the lobby. Have you done that yet? Or you can go upstairs to the counter where they sell books. Have you seen volume twenty-two yet? Riveting. You can even play pool, if that is possible to do with gloves on.”
“You’re a strange man, Inspector.”
“Thank you, or isn’t that a compliment?”
“Surely you want things to get better for your country?”
“Don’t worry, we’ll survive.”
“Oh, I’m sure you will. But I’m not talking survival. I’m talking progress. I’m talking�
��—he looked around the lobby—“a little more heat.” For once, he kept his eyebrows under tight control. “You know what I mean?”
“I don’t have to know what you mean. I’m not anyone you need to have a meaningful conversation with. I’m only here to make sure that you stay out of trouble, or better, that trouble stays away from you. That’s possible as long as you do what I say. I suggest you just nap under the covers for the next forty-eight hours. Then I’ll wave good-bye as you go through the immigration line at the airport. As far as I’m concerned, that will count as progress, you on an airplane, lifting off and flying away.”
