Judgement

by Fergus Bannon

  Nevis' soirees never lasted more than an hour; everybody had such busy social lives they could never stay longer. Or, so they said. It was barely seven o'clock as he entered 'The Spice of Life.' Lola was sitting on a high cane barstool in the anteroom to the restaurant. She was dressed in loose red slacks, a large white rose pinned to her blouse. He noticed with secret amusement that the red shoes on her tiny feet where dangling at least a foot above the first rung of the stool.

  He walked up and kissed her on the forehead. 'Been waiting long?'

  She shook her head. 'This long,' she indicated the slightly depleted level of her martini, 'but the table's ready so we might as well go in.'

  Getting off the stool could have been difficult and even comic for someone of her size but Lola made everything look easy. Draining the martini, she grabbed his hand and started to lead him towards the dining area but he held back.

  He looked at the barman who was staring after Lola. 'A bottle of your finest champagne at our table, please.' It was supposed to sound like Noel Coward but came out more like Daffy Duck.

  The waiter gave a quick nod and dived through a door at the back of the bar. Leith turned back to see Lola staring up at him.

  'Something to celebrate?'

  'Yes, but hardly something I could discuss with a civilian like you.'

  'I warn you, I'm not good with bullshit. I get too much during the day to want to wallow in it at night.'

  'Security...national Interest...strength of the dollar.' Now he was trying to sound like Dubya or Nixon. Why was he using these stupid accents like some school-kid? Was he really that nervous?

  'I'll get it out of you,' she leaned closer, 'one way or the other.'

  He felt his loins give an involuntary twitch. Meeting women on a date after he had first made love to them could sometimes be embarrassing, but Lola had already bulldozed her way through the awkward stage.

  The roof above the restaurant was a single slope of glass facing south. Inside was a riot of sub-tropical plants, with pride of place going to a large palm at the far end where the roof was highest. The walls were covered in vines with niches where small, flowering plants grew, and in the centre of the room a tinkling fountain cascaded into a deep pool. As they passed it he stopped to peer into the jade depths.

  'Jesus Christ! There's a frigging great octopus down there.'

  'That's Su Shi!'

  'Very funny!'

  She shook her head. 'Su Shi, not sushi. The guy was a famous Chinese poet: 'Without meat a man can grow thin. Without bamboo he will grow vulgar,' that sort of thing.'

  'That certainly throws my life into a harsh perspective!'

  The door to the kitchens suddenly opened and a troop of waiters marched out, carrying plates of steaming food. Above the humid plant smells, and the salty smell from the pool, he was caught in a delicious slipstream of garlic and ginger and capsicums as the waiters passed by. His mouth began to water.

  'I love this place,' she said as the waiter showed them to their table beside one of the vine walls. The napkins and tablecloth were sky blue, the chopsticks black lacquer painted with exquisite designs.

  She looked up at him. 'You did mean it when you said you liked Sichuan?'

  'Well, my experience is limited to the Crispy Fried Beef you get just about everywhere. I like that a lot!'

  'As long as you don't mind hot food. They say the food is so heavy in spice and chilli because the humidity in the Province dulls the appetite.'

  'It's certainly pretty humid in here.'

  'I told you it'd be authentic.'

  'How do you know all this?'

  'Climbing. Sichuan is about a quarter of a million miles of mountainous territory, rising up to the Tibetan Plateau to the west. My climbing club organised a trip out there about some years back. The place was magical, thousands of tough little hills to climb topped off with mist-shrouded Buddhist monuments. Down on the plains it's like a patchwork quilt of tiny fields, with little houses nestling in bamboo groves. That was just about the best two weeks of my life.'

  He smiled, imagining what the local Chinese had thought when they had seen her climbing. It must have done wonders for the reputation of the white devils.

  'You'd better help me out then, in case I accidentally order chilli fried cockerel's testicles.'

  'Why? Don't you like them?'

  'Too salty.'

  'Ok, I'll order.'

  When the waiter came she ordered Sour and Peppery Soup for him and Braised Croaker in Chilli Sauce for her. Main courses were to be something called Double Cooked Pork and Dry-Fried Beef Flavoured with Aged Orange Peel.

  He screwed his face up at the last order. 'Couldn't we at least order sweet and sour as a fallback position?'

  'No way. I'd die of embarrassment!'

  'You do get embarrassed then. That's a relief.'

  'Speaking of which: what are you celebrating exactly?' she held her hand up as he started to speak, 'And be careful!'

  He sighed. 'I can't tell you much. We're pretty secretive at the Dept. Of Ag. We could be talking destabilisation of the wheat futures market here.'

  She whistled. 'Heavy. So really, what did you do? Assassinate a democratically elected South American leader, smuggle arms to some right wing fascist group somewhere, poison Nicaragua's coffee crop, again? What?'

  'You take a jaundiced view of the Intelligence Services.'

  'I can't think why.'

  He hesitated. 'I really can't tell you. I just done good. Can't we leave it at that?'

  She shrugged, but her eyes didn't leave his. 'Let's speak hypothetically for a moment. Let's pretend you're in the intelligence services. If you were, do you think working for them would bother you in any way?'

  'Speaking hypothetically I don't think it would, much. A few years back it would have been different. The CIA were more active in destabilising unfriendly regimes-'

  'And propping up friendly ones, no matter how vicious they were. El Salvador, Guatemala. It still goes on.'

  'Yes, but even in intelligence circles I think there's a realisation of the need for comprehensive land reform, particularly down south. I don't think they're as willing to turn a blind eye to the death squads and mass evictions that they were. Or so I've read.'

  'Or so you've read. What about domestic surveillance? That's a more recent development, at least officially.'

  He'd always hated lying. He hoped his discomfort didn't show. 'Why shouldn't we all be more open? If we haven't anything to be ashamed of, why should we care if someone looks into our affairs?'

  'I'm trying not to get angry but you're making it difficult. Sure, I agree that in a fair, liberal society with a fair, liberal government, that would perhaps be ok. But we have neither. Instead we have a government that won't tolerate real dissent. Dissent that can't find its voice in the narrow political choices offered by the Democrats or the Republicans. God knows I'm no Communist, I believe whole-heartedly in democracy, and that's why I support the rights of people to hold dissenting views.'

  'But they do have those rights.'

  'Yes, but they can't get decent jobs, because our domestic intelligence people make sure their employers get to know about their politics. Not overtly perhaps. They have all those 'privately funded' vetting agencies that do that for them, but that's just one of the more obvious examples of political repression. There are many, far subtler ways of causing these people trouble.'

  'I accept what you're saying, but you must agree we need domestic surveillance. Drugs, terrorism, that kind of thing. Isn't it so much better to stop violence and other crimes before they happen?'

  'I'm told the CIA has files on tens of millions of US nationals. Are there tens of millions of terrorists and criminals in this country?'

  'Does it matter, keeping files on innocent people? I don't know what people know about my life. Ask me any question you like.'

  'But if it's about your work, it has to be hypothetical, right?'

  He smiled.

 
'Ok: hypothetically, if you did work for the CIA, what would you find most attractive about the job?'

  'I graduated in Information Technology. Computers have always fascinated me and I seemed to spend most of my adolescence hacking into them. I like to find things out. I think, to get to the truth. I guess if I was in the CIA, I'd get to indulge myself in that way.'

  'I see. You just dig out the data on people and let the CIA do with it what they will. That would be quite a cop-out.'

  'But perhaps not so great as someone with a liberal conscience who worked for a firm of influence pedlars in Washington. Someone who was paid, and rather well I'd guess, to fight for causes she might find repulsive.'

  She nodded, smiling. 'I wondered how long it would take you to catch on. I haven't even got the excuse that I'm interested in the truth. I'm sorry. I guess I was just taking my own troubles out on you.'

  'Did it work?'

  'Not really. I guess everybody has some moral scruples about their jobs. Everybody keeps their heads down to some degree. Maybe we just keep ours further down than others.'

  'Perhaps.'

  The food arrived then. Lola's chopsticks were poised even before the waiter had put her plate down.

  She dipped a flake of fish into the thick red sauce and tasted it, her eyes glazing over.

  'Mmm. Hot and spicy. So delicious it’s almost sexual.'

  Leith took a sip of the soup and felt his taste buds go nova. He sat bolt upright on the chair, his eyes widening.

  'That's for lying to me. Dep. of Ag, my ass!' said Lola between mouthfuls.

  He drained his champagne glass, closing his eyes and using his napkin to mop away the sweat that was suddenly pouring out of his brow.

  'Thass...thass...kinda hot!' he managed, then grabbed a couple of cubes of ice from the champagne bucket and crammed them into his mouth.

  'You're so sophisticated and articulate, Bob,' she said, taking a sip of champagne, 'It can be quite intimidating sometimes.'

  Leith sucked the cool night air into his lungs as they stepped from the taxi. The meal had turned out to be exquisite once Lola had revealed the antidote to the soup. A grinning waiter had brought him a glass of ice-cold milk to quench the fires. Lola explained that many of the spices were fat-soluble, and milk was a better way than water to get them off the tongue.

  But he had to admit that even the normal strength soup they had brought, after a waiter had comically arrived with a pair of tongs to take the first plate away, had still been a little too fierce.

  Lola's apartment block was in Cabin John in Maryland, just across the river from Langley. The building was eight stories of brown sandstone blocks with chintzy little windows looking out onto streets of older buildings in the process of renovation or demolition. In the latter, walls had been torn away to reveal peeling wallpaper in bedrooms and lounges, and broken fittings in kitchens and bathrooms. Cabin John was said to be an up-and-coming suburb so he supposed she had bought the place as an investment. He turned away from the sad spectacle to look at Lola's relaxed, dreamy face.

  'You can't send me home like this. If the police caught a whiff of my breath they'd shoot me.'

  'So I've got to invite you in as some kind of humanitarian gesture?'

  'Of Gandhi-esque proportions.'

  'That's good, then. I've always prided myself on trying to help the disadvantaged.' She bent and took off her high-heeled shoes.

  Leith's brow creased in puzzlement. 'Are you expecting me to carry you up to the eighth floor?'

  'No,' she said handing him the shoes, 'I've locked myself out. I always do. Weathered mortar. Its one of the reasons I bought this place. See you up there. Apartment 62.'

  He opened his mouth to ask her what she meant but she was already by the wall on the right hand side of the entrance, hooking the tips of toes and fingers into the half centimetre spaces between the sandstone blocks. Then she was climbing fast, faster than at the weekend when the points of purchase had been fewer and less regularly spaced.

  He was fine until she got to the second floor, then nausea and dizziness hit him hard. Knees trembling, he made it the few steps into the building's vestibule. She wouldn't be able to see him now if she looked back. He rested his head against the gritty surface of the sandstone and desperately struggled to keep the image out of his mind. It took a minute or two but eventually he felt better and took the elevator to the sixth floor.

  She was waiting for him at the door.

  'Are you ok? You look a little pale.'

  He bent down to kiss her forehead. 'I walked up the stairs. Guess it was too much exercise.'

  She pulled his head down again and gave him a soft warm kiss. She seemed so small and vulnerable as he engulfed her in his arms.

  'Er…Lola?'

  'Yes, Bob?'

  'You will be a little more gentle with me this time, won't you?'

  He woke sometime in the early hours, his face wet with tears. Lola lay sleeping beside him amongst the black satin sheets.

  He had dreamt he was back in the mortuary, but it had been very hot and the air thick with the foetid stink of freshly opened stomachs. All but one of the fridge lockers had been opened, the bodies hanging out like frozen blue rag dolls.

  Lundt, dressed in black like an undertaker but wearing snow-white gloves, had led him to the closed locker.

  'Were you a relative of the deceased?' he asked in sepulchral tones.

  'No,' Leith mumbled, 'just a friend.'

  Lundt flipped open the locking lever and pulled out the palette. He unzipped the bag but held the sides together so that Leith couldn't see in.

  'Have you ever seen a leaper before?'

  Leith shook his head and, with a flourish, Lundt threw the bag open.

  His eyes seemed under the control of someone else. He struggled to keep them still but they were already panning past the feet and up the body. He began to weep as his focus of vision shifted over the jagged whiteness of the protruding bones in the lower extremities and onto the multihued jelly of the abdomen. Clenched jaws now aching with effort, eyelids prised apart as though by something hard and transparent, he could not stop his eyes in their inexorable shift towards the head of the corpse. He had seen the shattered xylophone of the ribcage, the compressed and impossibly angled neck.

  And then Lola's face, perfectly preserved.

  INTERCUT 4

  Queens, New York

  Wills had first seen the fires from the Queensborough Bridge. Now, still eight blocks away, he heard the Chrysler's tyres crunch over rubble and glass.

  The cops were struggling to keep access open for the emergency services. Crowds had formed on either side of the street, hemming in the two lines of policemen. He caught glimpses of peoples' faces as he drove through the narrow gap. On some he saw slack-jawed curiosity, but on others there was genuine fear and dread. Eventually he got to the line of policemen across the road. He flashed his ID and they let him through, the line splitting. He was waved through the maelstrom of flashing blue lights. Fearing for his tyres he pulled over soon after and, taking his bag from the trunk, began to walk towards the inferno.

  It was hard to take in. He'd been just the right age to miss the wars: too young for Korea, too old for Vietnam. But he doubted anything could have prepared him for this. Soot-grimed ambulances passed by constantly, threading their way in and out of the unsteady stream of casualties, bleeding and in their night clothes, being assisted by the paramedics away from the flames.

  Nearer now he could see what was left of the buildings on either side of the road. It was as though giant feet had stamped down, crushing all five storeys to the ground.

  He felt the misty droplets before he could make out the fountain of water arcing up from a huge crater in the middle of the road. Through the acrid smoke he could just smell the heavy pungency of raw sewage.

  A man wearing the uniform of a Captain of Police was smoking a cigarette and staring fixedly at the flames leaping out of the apartments on either side of
the crushed buildings. Wills tapped him on the shoulder. The cop seemed to have trouble tearing his eyes away.

  'Yeah?'

  'I'm Dr. Wills. I'm a pathologist. I...'

  'You want to see the bodies?'

  'Yes, I...'

  The cop was already walking back towards the roadblock. Wills hurried after him, but the cop soon stopped and was pointing ahead at something on the sidewalk. Wills struggled to see but without streetlights, and in the inconstant light of the flames, it was difficult to pick anything out amongst the rubble.

  Wills jammed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. Then he slowly opened them again. Vivid memories of airliners crashing into skyscrapers burned images into the backs of his eyelids. He’d hoped he’d never have to see anything like the things he’d seen that day again.

  It was not rubble that was strewn over the sidewalk but the remains of people. He must have walked right by them, without realising. Blackened by soot and covered by burns and congealing blood, which looked dark in the flames, they lay in rough lines. Most were naked; few of the bodies were intact.

  'How many?' he whispered.

  The cop's voice, when at last he answered, seemed cold and remote. 'We haven't matched up all the bits and pieces. That's your job. Maybe thirty. These are just the ones from the street. The ones caught directly by the blast. God knows how many others there are, crushed under the rubble, or burnt to death in those,' he pointed at the buildings.

  'Gas?' Wills asked, almost hopefully. An accident would've been easier to bear, somehow.

  The cop looked at him as though he were stupid. 'Sure, it was the gas that started most of the fires. But what ruptured the gas main, what brought the buildings down, was a truck with a few thousand pounds of explosives parked where that big hole in the ground is now.'

  Wills shuffled his feet. He felt so angry he wanted to scream, to roar his anguish and incomprehension. But when at last he managed to speak his voice too sounded distant.

  'Deliberate then?'

  'I'd say so, yes. That apartment block over the other side of the road, the one that's history, a couple of heavy Columbian drug families lived there. They owned the whole building, place was supposed to be like a palace, though the rest of the district,' he nodded his head to indicate the street, 'was a shithole even before the bomb went off.'