Deep Cover

by Brian Garfield

  As always, Les Suffield had booked two first-class seats for him so that he wouldn’t be disturbed. The Washington Post lay on the empty aisle seat beside him. It had given him a three-column spread across the middle of the front page. HOUSE-PENTAGON COLLUSION CHARGED. Forrester Alleges Secret Phaeton Power Play. There were sidebar heads: Breckenyear Denies Charges; Pentagon Says “No Comment.” The editorial inside was cautious: “If what Senator Forrester charges is true, then certainly the public deserves, and should demand, full disclosure in open hearings.” At least, he thought, it had served to redden Webb Breckenyear’s face.

  Under the wings the weather cleared and the land began to heave and buckle, and the plane began its slow descent while still over New Mexico. Sprawls of weathered aridity, puckered by brown mountains of rock and pale earth. Another high stretch of desert, another mountain range, snow on the peaks; the plane banked and began to spiral in earnest. Mount Lemmon, bald with snow, could be recognized easily from the air: Tucson’s ten-thousand-foot landmark. Davis Monthan Air Force Base was a great grey expanse: it had been built well beyond the southeast edge of the town but Tucson had grown with swift carcinoma and now the curving rows of mass-produced tract houses and shopping centers all but encircled the base. Population 375,000, median income $8,200, nine percent of its housing units substandard, 33,000 people earning less than the poverty level—numbers meant nothing in human terms but served to placate Washington’s insatiable mania for columns of figures. Tucson was not a simple place and could not be dismissed by computer statistics.

  The newcomer saw what he expected: the plastic holy land of the Good Life, warm dry winters, palms and cacti, constant sunshine. Until World War II there had been nothing but railroad yards, dude ranches, tuberculosis sanatoriums and thirty thousand or so people. Then had come the Cold War and the population explosion. SAC had moved in and the defense plants—Matthewson-Ward, Shattuck Industries, and the smaller ones. The onetime cowtown was now the second largest city in Arizona and contained nearly a third of the state’s population within its metropolitan area.

  The boosters still hung banners across Broadway, “A Community on the March.” You still heard how Tucson was a grand place to raise a family. It was still a Middle American town, a joining town—Rotary, the Elks, the Lions, the Jaycees, the Eastern Star, the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the American Legion, the Knights of Columbus; it was a seller’s market for the Reader’s Digest and the Book-of-the-Month Club. But it was also a high crime center, a metropolis jammed with automobiles, a suburbanite sprawl with its old downtown center crumbling into slums. Alan Forrester could see the smog plainly, a well defined brown murk into which the plane descended.

  The 707 landed with a lurch on the black tire smears that planes had left before it. It taxied toward the long west wing of the terminal and from his window Forrester could see the reporters waiting just inside the glass doors of the building. The jet engines unwound and passengers crowded into the aisles but Forrester kept his seat. He watched them go down the portable stair and cross the sun-blasted concrete to the door. The cluster of reporters broke in half like the Red Sea to let the passengers by, and Forrester’s attention focused on a tall long-haired woman fighting her way against the tide with frequent distracted smiles of apology as she squeezed through the door and came outside. It was Ronnie—Veronica Tebbel.

  She had high strong bones and large eyes and she moved with graceful economy. The dark hair fell loose to her shoulders and she stopped to comb it back from her eyes with her fingers while she looked for him in the windows. He moved his hand back and forth against the plexiglass until she smiled and nodded and came along to the foot of the boarding stairs to wait for the crowd to thin out. Then she came up the stairs, long-legged and slender and full of vibrant energies. She had to be thirty-six or more but in the sunlight she moved like a twenty-year-old.

  Forrester stood up in the aisle and lifted his briefcase onto the seat—that ancient expandable briefcase, its leather tough and creased with age lines, which his father had carried to the United States Senate before him.

  The stew let Ronnie come aboard and Forrester saw her squint against the gloom inside the fuselage. She came to him with a smile and an outstretched hand. Forrester stared at her until she blushed and he said quickly, “I’d forgotten how lovely you are.”

  She smiled, but it was incomplete. Something had come up behind her eyes. She withdrew her fingers and spoke in a soft low contralto. “I thought I’d better come on board and warn you.”

  “The reporters? I saw them.”

  “They’re waiting for you like the Mexicans outside the Alamo.”

  “I’ve been besieged before. What kind of mood are they in?”

  “Edgy—your plane’s two hours late. But some of them smiled at me.”

  “Anybody’d smile at you, Ronnie. That’s the cross you bear.”

  “When a cougar bares his fangs it doesn’t pay to assume he’s giving you a friendly smile. They only wanted to pump me. You’d better fix your tie, they’ve got TV cameras—here, let me do it.”

  Her touch at his throat was light and cool and her face hovered before him. “There,” she said, and smiled. Forrester felt defensive. He reached across the seat for his briefcase and glanced out through the window. The strong warm sun slanted down, the tarmac had emptied of passengers; and he could see the reporters stirring impatiently. A tiny woman in a trim grey suit, with wire-grey hair and a simian face, had come outside and stood pointing toward the door of the plane, and a camera crew beside her circled forward to focus their portable television apparatus on the top of the boarding stairs. The woman was Nicole Lawrence, KARZ-TV’s political reporter and professional gadfly; she had traveled with him on the campaign and he knew her tart caustic tongue. “I see they’ve sent out the big guns.”

  “What did you expect? You uncovered your own artillery last night,” Ronnie said.

  “You don’t approve, do you?”

  Her smile was evanescent and nervous. “I only work here.”

  “That’s what Top Spode said. I didn’t let him off the hook and I won’t let you off either.”

  “I hate to admit this,” she said, “but anything you do is all right with me.” She seemed to have surprised herself because she added with an impatient toss of her head, “Senator, I don’t—”

  “Alan.”

  It had been a silly thing to say; this wasn’t the time for it. It only made her withdraw. “Maybe,” she said, not looking at him. ‘‘I’ll have to think about that. In the meantime before you go out there and let them stand you up against the wall, you need to know this—they’re going to hit you with questions about the primary campaign. Have you got an answer for them?”

  “Id est, am I ready to announce my candidacy. No. I’m not.”

  “Because you’re not sure if the Phaeton thing will turn into a banana peel?”

  “Maybe.”

  “The mood of the press,” she said deadpan, “is such that they’re assuming if you don’t declare for office now it’s because you’re scared the party will scuttle you over the Phaeton issue. One of them asked me if you intended to run as an Independent. Have you thought about it?”

  “No.”

  “The funny thing is, I believe you. But they won’t.”

  “They wouldn’t anyway. Candidates always deny they’re going to be candidates. That’s rule one of the great American game.”

  “Then what will you tell them?”

  “That I haven’t made up my mind.”

  “They’ll call it a cop-out.”

  “Let them,” he said. “We’d better go.”

  He took her arm but she disengaged herself. “It wouldn’t look right, would it? You’d better go out alone and let them take your picture on the stairs. I’ll creep out afterward and collect your luggage and meet you out front with the car. Will you be staying at the ranch?”

  “Not for a few days. I had Les call the Pioneer for a reservation.”
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  “I could have somebody drop your bags at the hotel if you want to stop by the office first.”

  “Good. I’ll want to get on the phone before dinner.” He walked toward the door, and stopped. “Dinner. Are you busy tonight?”

  “Is it important?”

  “Sometimes I’m not sure what’s important,” he said, and elaborated it with a lie: “There’s a lot we’ll have to discuss and there may not be time at the office. I’m going to work you hard for the next week or two.”

  “In that case I’ll break my date.” Her eyes were dark with a sort of reserve he couldn’t place. She had been married once, but her husband had been dead ten or twelve years. Still, it was possible she felt his presence, as Forrester felt Angie’s, a memory which crowded out the desire for further affinities.

  She was watching him with a soft wide expression, her lips slightly parted and her head tipped to one side. He gave her a quick smile and stepped out into the warm blaze of sunlight.

  He sat back with a huge yawn and a slow two-handed combing back of his hair. Through the doorway he saw Ronnie with a telephone receiver on her shoulder, head tilted against it to free her hands, listening to the phone and jotting on a brass-framed calendar pad. She had lovely eyes.

  She cradled the phone and ripped the top page off the pad and came into his office talking briskly:

  “I tracked down Frank Shattuck at the Mountain Oyster Club. He’ll be on the golf course in the morning but he said he’d be home by three if you’d care to drop in then.” Her voice was dry with irony. “Easy enough to see how the wind blows, isn’t it? He won’t come to you—you have to go to him.”

  “After all,” he said, “tomorrow’s Sunday.” Frank Shattuck was board chairman of Shattuck Industries, which manufactured ICBM components in its plant two miles from the gate of Davis Monthan Air Force Base.

  She poked the note into his breast pocket. “Don’t miss the appointment.” But the gesture contained an intimacy she evidently hadn’t intended and she stepped back quickly.

  He spoke to fill the silence. “We’ll have to take a raincheck on that dinner-for-two. I just talked to Colonel Ryan. He’ll skin me if I don’t come to his house for dinner. I included you in the invitation—I hope you don’t mind?”

  She turned her face: a quick smile. “No.”

  “Have you met Bill Ryan?”

  She shook her head and the hair flowed softly back and forth.

  “I expect you’ll like him.”

  Through the window he could see the courthouse square, pooled by street lamps. A couple stood in the square with two young children, pointing and talking, the father in dungarees and a zippered windbreaker talking with wide sweeps of his arm and probably explaining to the kids the functions of the courthouse.

  He felt Ronnie’s weight beside him and moved aside to give her the view. “That’s what it all comes down to—giving them something to believe in.”

  She gave him a brief warm smile.

  On the way out they passed a few night workers—pale civil servants and fluttering clerks. Forrester smiled at them with his candid eyes and answered their greetings, addressing them by name as a political animal must, and when they reached the sidewalk Ronnie laughed at him. “Did you see the way they looked at you? You’ve got those votes sewed up.”

  “Hitler had charisma. I don’t altogether approve of the personality cult in politics—even if I do owe it a great deal.”

  “You can’t make the rules, can you?” There was something grave in her voice.

  They walked up the quiet street without speaking. Occasionally her arm brushed his. She meant nothing overt by it; he was beginning to know that she was a woman in whom very little was obvious. She had come to work for him during his last campaign and he had become well acquainted with her, but only as one would become well acquainted with one’s military subordinate—clearly, but at a distance. He knew the quickness of her mind, the good efficiency of her talents. The rest was unanswered.

  They crossed an intersection under a street light and he stole a direct look at her. He thought of the cliché of the oblivious boss who has never really looked at his adoring and beautiful secretary before. Like all clichés it was worthless because it oversimplified reality. He had never been blind to Ronnie’s sexual attractions. He wouldn’t have hired her if she hadn’t caught his eye. That was the way he had always been: he liked to surround himself with decorative women. Angie had known that and Angie had never held it against him: in her own way she took a certain pride from the fact that of all the attractive women in his life she alone had held him. Now and then she had made a tart joke about it and he had composed a ritual reply: “Just because a man’s on a diet doesn’t mean he can’t read the menu.” They had laughed the way healthy people laugh who are sure of themselves and of each other. Angie had been complete in her femininity, men had always given her a second look, and he had enjoyed it as much as she had: it had confirmed his proprietary pride, which took pleasure from other men’s envy.

  He caught Ronnie’s short half-smile when they turned the corner. He was intensely aware of her electricity; aware, as well, that she liked him and was pleased by his attentions. She hadn’t tried to rebuff his interest by displays of indifference: she gave off none of the signals of misogamous frigidity he had discovered in otherwise coquettish women; still, curiously, she had surrounded herself with tensile barriers and by setting limits she had challenged his masculine determination. He felt like a small boy confronted by a new mechanical device: he would not be willing to quit prying it apart until he found out what made it work.

  “Here we are.” She handed him the keys. He unlocked the door for her and went around to the driver’s side and slid in under the wheel. “Why a station wagon?”

  “I paint,” she said, and it was only after a moment that she seemed to realize it required further explanation. “I’m a Sunday painter. Oils—landscapes, mostly. I like to drive out in the country. I need the space in back for my easel and canvases and paintbox and palette—all the impedimenta of the amateur dauber.”

  He drove west toward the freeway, moving against the incoming tide of Saturday-night traffic. “I often wondered what you did with your off time. Not that you seem to have much of it. I’ve caught you in the office on the phone at ungodly hours some nights.”

  “You have a bad habit,” she said lightly. “You always forget the difference in time zones between here and Washington.”

  It was a casual remark and he almost let it go by but then the significance of it struck him. He shot a glance at her. He couldn’t make out her expression; the light was poor. He said, “Do you mean to tell me you wait around the office every night of the week on the off-chance I might telephone from Washington?”

  “Well, it’s not only for that. We’re understaffed; usually it takes me till eight or nine to clear the decks for the next day’s action.”

  “Why in hell haven’t you said so? We can hire another secretary.”

  “It didn’t seem important,” she said vaguely. “I haven’t had anything better to do, anyway. You can’t paint at night.”

  “But what about your social life?”

  “I lead a very quiet social life,” she said, and added nothing to it.

  He made the turnoff and followed the flyover ramp up onto the freeway. He pushed the accelerator down and moved out into the left lane to pass the slower traffic. The station wagon was a big one, heavy and no better designed than most of its kind: everything rattled slightly, the steering and braking controls were not precise, and at high speed it tended to wag its tail and bounce with a lunging seasick sway. Forrester liked to drive; he had behind him a youth filled with the roar of sports cars, the memory of rallies and gymkhanas.

  He said, “Les Suffield asked you if you’d be willing to come to Washington and run my office there. Have you thought about it?”

  “I’m still thinking about it. I imagine I’ll do it, at least until November. If you de
cide to run again and they put you back for another six years, I may decide to come home. I’ve been in Washington before. I don’t like it very much.”

  “It’s a one-company town,” he said. “If you don’t like the company it’s not much of a place.”

  “That kind of social whirl doesn’t appeal to me, I’m afraid.”

  He found the turnoff, corkscrewed down under the highway and drove north toward the base. The white stripe of the road ran as straight as an architect’s line. “You said you lead a quiet life. Forgive me if I’m prying, but is that because you’re a widow?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “What’s the rest?”

  “It’s hard to put into words.”

  “When Angie died I didn’t want to face people either—nothing seemed worth the effort.”

  “Because you had no one to share it. I know.” She turned in her seat—she was far over against the door. “I knew what you were going through last year when she died but there wasn’t anything I could say that would have helped. You understand? But it’s been eleven years since my husband died. I’m not still carrying a torch.”

  “Then it’s something else.”

  “Really, I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “Another time then.”

  She put her feet flat on the floor and looked straight ahead and the next time she spoke it was to say, “We must be almost there.”

  The air-base gate was an open entrance—there were AP’s on duty but passage was not restricted and they drove through it slowly. Somewhere ahead was an interior perimeter beyond which unauthorized visitors could not go. Forrester had been here before on various occasions and knew the general area he sought, but he had to stop and ask a woman pushing a stroller where the base commander lived. Most married officers lived off-post in civilian houses but the base commander was on twenty-four-hour call and had to live on the base. The best the Air Force had done by way of privacy was to put his house behind a dusty hillock away from the other buildings. The last piece of road was indifferently paved and the wheels churned up a gritty dust that quickly got into Forrester’s nostrils and teeth but he didn’t mind; he had grown up on the taste of it. Beyond the hill he turned into the graded circular drive.