by Mark Russell
Stationed before the doors, Corporal Reid was inspecting the IDs and effects of each person leaving the building. Goldman tensed. He squeezed the shoulder strap of his bag and brought his free hand to his chest. The computer printouts hidden under his shirt crackled beneath his fingertips. His temples pulsed and before he knew it he'd stepped ahead of the others walking alongside him in the corridor.
Great, he thought, just great. The last thing he needed was to stand out in any way (though his civilian attire had always done a good job of that). He slowed his pace and wished he could magically disappear as he neared the glass doors. He thought to turn round and leave by another exit, but now it wasn't possible without drawing attention to himself. His mouth became treacherously dry. As if having a mind of their own, his feet came to a sudden stop beneath him.
Reid said goodnight to the handful of personnel he'd detained and turned towards the Australian chemist. Goldman zeroed in on the Beretta auto-pistol holstered at Reid's side (after being briefed by his father-in-law that morning, Reid had donned the aforementioned weapon in readiness for his new guarding role).
'Mister Goldman, isn't it? Excuse me, sir, but may I sight identification and inspect your bag? Nothing personal, just a new Department of Defense directive that security procedures be upgraded at all US military installations.'
'What a surprise.' Goldman handed over his bag. 'Damn Arab terrorists, eh?'
Reid didn't fashion a reply and unzipped the bag.
Goldman felt a throb of panic. He was too nervous to admit outright that he didn't have his access card – even though he was certain Reid was aware of this; in that Reid had witnessed Goldman's faux pas outside the laboratory door that morning. In a contrived display of concern for his card's whereabouts, he patted his jeans and jacket, and finally the breast pocket of his blue cotton shirt.
A sharp, papery sound filled the air.
Goldman's breath snagged in his throat. Fortunately Reid's attention was elsewhere, namely the chemist's bag. Relieved the telltale sound of the printouts had fallen on deaf ears, Goldman said, 'Damn, I must have left my card at home.' Then, to make light of the admission: 'Hey, I'll have to see the payroll clerk and make sure I'm not docked a day because of it.'
'Hmm, do that,' Reid said dryly.
'So, do you want to see my driver's license?'
Reid shook his head and placed Goldman's bag on the Formica-top table that he'd carried from the canteen that afternoon. He rummaged through the bag as if he were a Chinese customs official recently reprimanded for his lackadaisical approach. After giving attention to a Swiss Army knife which had seen better days, Reid pulled out a hardcover book from the bag. Phantastica by Louis Lewin.
'I use it for research,' Goldman said hesitantly. 'It's a rare 1924 work cataloging psychoactive botanics. I couldn't believe my luck when I found it recently at a local antiquarian dealer. Needless to say, it's an invaluable reference for my present line of research.'
Reid flicked through the browned pages of his find, pausing at the odd illustration, then tapped the book against his palm, as if weighing up what the bygone counterculture publication implied about Goldman's character. He then looked along the passageway.
Goldman glanced over his shoulder. A handful of personnel waited patiently behind him. Farther back, General Kaplan's robust frame dominated the passageway. From under a prominent brow, his dark eyes studied the makeshift checkpoint.
Goldman cursed inwardly and turned back to Reid. 'Look ... I've got a Wing Chun Do class to catch in less than an hour,' he lied. 'So, um, I should get going.'
Again Reid looked over Goldman's shoulder, but this time nodded as if in acknowledgment of a passed-on instruction. He returned the book to the bag and handed the bag back to Goldman. 'Sorry for the inconvenience, sir, but I'm afraid it's a necessary evil we all must endure in these troubled times.'
'Yes, apparently. Good night.'
Reid nodded a reply and beckoned for a raven-haired servicewoman to step up to the table.
Warming the engine of his Saab 900 sedan, Goldman found a new FM station on the radio: “...thanks Lisa, and now a seven-piece band from Australia who've made a big name for themselves over here: Little River Band with Curiosity Killed the Cat”.
Goldman reversed from his space, clicked in his seatbelt and accelerated toward the main gate. He engaged the last speed bump and waved to the sentry in the gatehouse who'd raised the boom gate. The chemist drove out of Silverwood Area and into the north sector of Aberdeen Proving Ground, soon passing the Chemical Agent Storage Yard where more than a thousand one-ton containers of Mustard Agent were stockpiled.
The late-afternoon sky was a pleasing study of light and cloud as Goldman made his way along State Highway 24, all the while humming to a Mowtown song on the radio. He glanced at an attractive young woman in a convertible red sports car, her platinum hair streaming wildly in the wind as she kept alongside him. She smiled at the chemist and then sped away in a brazen display of her car's superior horsepower. Yes, Goldman never had any misgivings about leaving his workplace. A weight always lifted from his shoulders whenever he left Aberdeen Proving Ground proper, which only made the end of his working day that much better.
This afternoon he was particularly buoyed. He counted his blessings to have passed through Reid's surprise checkpoint unhindered. He recalled the juridical look on Reid's face when the guard flicked through Goldman's book. What a uniformed jerk. Goldman turned off the highway and headed for Interstate 95. Now he was back in the real world, the whole affair at the front doors seemed farcical. He could only chuckle aloud. Television comedies about the US army – which he'd viewed as a boy in Australia – popped into his head. The screwball antics of a particular comedy (Sergeant Bilko no less) played vividly in his mind as he engaged the Interstate's sea of speeding vehicles.
A bronze Dodge van with airbrushed murals of fire-breathing dragons and scantily clad maidens along its sides braked hard to accommodate Goldman's unwary intrusion on to the busy outer lane. The van's long-haired driver engaged a set of air-horns and flipped his finger while overtaking Goldman's sedan. The chemist fared better when passed in turn by an elderly woman in a Honda Civic who merely frowned at his improper employment of the lane.
He drove on without incident, relaxing his grip on the wheel and keeping a watchful eye on the many vehicles about him. The backwash of passing traffic swished through his lowered window as he reviewed his unlawful doings at his workplace. He'd smuggled out the last of his MPA and he hadn't clocked up too much illegal time on the centre's new computer, skimming through several directories before printing out two files of interest. He'd smuggled out twenty-odd pages of what he hoped would make good late-night reading: a classified report outlining the CIA's MK-ULTRA programmes during the fifties and sixties, as well as a classified report on BZ, a powerful hallucinogen developed at Silverwood Centre prior to his employment there.
All in all he was confident of his subterfuge. Didn't want to pursue any further illegalities. Didn't want to push his luck any more than what he had now there was increased security at his workplace. No, he would simply tow the line until his work contract expired, which was only weeks away.
He kept pace with the late-afternoon traffic darting about him like a school of agitated fish. Molten hues burnished the skyline as the lowering sun edged toward distant hills. The colours were a pale reminder of sunsets from his childhood. His father had worked for the Australian Department of Defence at the Woomera Test Facility, a rocket testing range in a sparsely populated region of South Australia. The brilliant desert sunsets Goldman had viewed as a boy from Woomera Village defied description. The soul-stirring colours from those times were etched permanently inside him.
He tapped the wheel in time to a catchy song on the radio. A young woman hitchhiking came into view. Considerate of hitchers, particularly when seeming so attractive, he indicated and pulled over. Pockets of gravel crunched under his tyres as he stopped in the breakdow
n lane several car-lengths ahead of the lone woman. He watched her hurried approach through the passenger-side mirror. Her denim-clad hips soon filled the mirror's reflective surface. He leaned across and pushed open the passenger door.
'Hi ... are you heading to Rosedale?' she asked, her uncertain voice peppered with hope.
'Not exactly ... but I guess it's not too far out of my way. Sure, jump in.'
The pretty hitcher held the passenger door open and looked into the cabin. Caution bettered convenience as she studied Goldman's face and overall appearance, making the chemist feel like a caged animal on display. As if an inner radar detected nothing untoward, she slid into the passenger seat and shut the door, flicking back her hair and engaging her side's seatbelt with a sharp, committing click.
She looked to be in her early-twenties. She had shortish blond hair with a long, angled fringe and wore no makeup other than a modest shade of red lipstick. Her feet were encased in expensive runners, while her svelte frame was clothed in figure-hugging jeans and a pale blue sweatshirt with an Esprit logo across its front. Afternoon sun highlighted the diamond studs in her ears and the whites of her almond-shaped eyes. She placed a trim leather jacket across her lap as Goldman fought his way back into the traffic.
He looked across at her, inhaling her faint perfume, and smiled. 'Hi. I'm Scott.'
'Um, Michelle. Thanks for the lift, um, Scott.' She paused poignantly. 'I don't normally hitch ... but my boyfriend's got my car.'
Goldman noticed a light bruise about her eye and looked back to the road. The minutes following the brief introduction were laden with silence and the nervy energy radiating from the willowy female passenger. Goldman found her presence so disquieting he was forced to ask, 'Are you, okay?'
'Well,' she said with a loud sigh, 'I just had a big fight with my boyfriend. Believe me, you don't want to know about it. He's just impossible, a complete and utter ...'
Goldman realized he'd opened an emotional floodgate.
'... he's so narrow minded and inconsiderate.' Her long-lashed eyes brimmed with moisture. 'I don't know if he's trying to give me the big nudge or what ... look, I'm sorry, I must be boring you.'
'No. Really, it's okay.'
She gazed out her window at the scenery streaking past the car. Goldman could only imagine her thoughts. Undoubtedly she was embarrassed to some degree. Most likely she was calculating her next move in the love-gone-bad struggle with her boyfriend.
'Do you mind if I smoke?'
'No, feel free.' He admired her features, her high cheekbones, her patrician nose.
'Do you want one?'
'No, thanks. I don't smoke.'
'Really?' She clicked shut her gold-plated lighter and exhaled her first drag. She inched down the window and bit her bottom lip as if appraising the situation.
'I'm sorry to lay my problems on you, but you did ask.'
'Well, I'm glad I did. You seem calmer than when you first got in.'
'Yeah, I guess,' she said reluctantly. She drew on her menthol cigarette and glanced sideways at him. 'So what's with your accent? Like, are you from England?'
'No. Australia.'
'Australia.' Her eyes narrowed and the tip of her cigarette flared orange as she sucked on it. He could almost hear the wheels turning in her head. 'Australia,' she repeated. Tendrils of smoke escaped her parted red lips. 'So where is that exactly?'
Goldman wasn't too surprised by the question. Many Americans were unfamiliar with his home country. Many confused it with Austria; though he supposed this would change once the world became more localized through improved transportation and communication technologies. 'It's, um, close to New Zealand.' That didn't help much. 'It's in the Southern Hemisphere.'
'Hmm, so you're a long way from home.' She held her Salem menthol at a gracious angle and glanced uneasily at him. 'So how long have you been here then?'
'Oh, a few years now.'
Another awkward silence fell between them. After a time Goldman found the courage to ask the question foremost in his mind: 'So tell me, did your, um, boyfriend give you that black eye?'
She turned again to the passenger window, her reflected face staring out at the failing light. He half-expected a hot-blooded response from her; but after toying with the back of her hair, she faced him and said: 'Yeah, he did ... though he's not the violent type. He wasn't himself at the time.' Her voice lowered. 'He was on cocaine.'
'Cocaine?' Goldman glanced in the side mirror and flicked the indicator switch to change lanes. 'Must be rich.' Not knowing what else to say.
'If only,' she said with open derision. 'No, he gets it wholesale from some guy in DC and he ... look I won't go into it.' She curled her lip and crushed her cigarette into the door's ashtray, really mashing it up. 'Anyhow, he's totally fried from the stuff.'
She gazed through the windshield and Goldman wasn't too surprised when she launched into another disparaging account of her boyfriend's shortcomings.
'... what gets me is that when I confront him lately about our relationship, he just passes me off with standard answers like: “The only thing that needs to be worked out is your head”. He's so full of himself. And last night was really...'
Goldman checked the rear-view mirror and tried to keep abreast of her emotional monologue, but her fetching presence only compounded his difficulty, for more than once since her time in the car had his wandering gaze settled upon her shapely legs disappearing into the darkness underneath the dashboard, or equally upon the swell of her breasts as they moved freely under her sweatshirt.
'... so he was with his work buddies at an anniversary party for the US edition of La Belle. I arrived late, angry he hadn't called me like he said he would ...'
Hardly versed in matters couture, Goldman nevertheless connected the magazine's title to her striking looks. 'So, you're a model then?'
'Sure,' she said offhandedly. 'I've worked here, and abroad.' She glanced at a passing Volvo, its chrome fittings agleam with the last light of the sun. 'I've been a model since I was sixteen.'
He didn't doubt her claim, as her fresh Nordic features had credited him with the impression of her having stepped from the glossy pages of a fashion house's catalogue, or equally from the bright lights and flashing cameras of an internationally accredited catwalk. Her breathy voice, however, soon reclaimed his attention.
'... well because of that I got out of the car.'
He looked at the softly lit instrument panel and saw he was low on fuel.
'... and that's when he hit me and drove off in my Alfa. Can you believe it?'
'Hmm, sounds difficult.'
She pushed back the lid of her gold-plated lighter and lit another cigarette. 'I don't know I should probably give up on him. What do you think?' She turned toward him and fluttered her lashes as a trail of smoke curled past her querying face.
He glanced at her and had an uncanny feeling she would figure prominently in his life. He looked back to the road, and the sudden insight, improbable as it seemed, made him uneasy. 'Well, unless you like being hit, you should stay away from him.'
'It's the first time in our six years together he's done it.'
Six years, he thought. How old is she? 'I don't know this, er, Terence, but it sounds like he's holding back on a few things. Maybe you should suggest seeing a counsellor or therapist.'
'Ha. I've already tried that. You should have seen his response. First he cracked up laughing then he turned on me for suggesting it. No, he's impossible. It'd take nothing short of a miracle to get him to express his true feelings about anything ... let alone me.'
Goldman saw a fluorescent Texaco sign flicker to life in the evening haze. 'Well,' he said, 'I just might have that miracle.'
'What do you mean?' Her milky brow pinched with query. 'What have you got?'
'Listen, I have to get petrol.' He turned down the radio and signalled to exit. 'We'll talk when we get back on the road.' He stopped in a vacant bay of the service station and asked the gangling teena
ge attendant to fill the tank. He got out of the car, stretched his arms, then headed for the mens' room.
Come on, let's move it. Michelle swung out of the car and threw on her leather jacket. She flicked her cigarette butt and yellowy-white sparks spewed across the sloping lawn in front of the gas station. She watched her breath cloud in the chill night air. She thought about Carmen. Was her friend home? She put her hands in her pockets and moved toward the service road that ran parallel with the expressway.
... damn, why doesn't C answer her phone? ... Terence thumps me and takes my Alfetta and I have to haul my sweet butt just to ...
A blaring horn disrupted her chain of thought. An iridescent black Corvette passed with a menacing growl on the nearby service road. A wolf-whistle escaped from the driver's window.
'Up yours!' She flipped a finger at the receding red tail-lights. No sooner had she than another horn sounded behind her. She spun round. Goldman was beckoning her back to his car. She skipped up the lawn, thinking this Scott guy was an okay dude. He wasn't bad looking, though didn't have much going for him in the personality department. Reticent, yet commanding. The strong silent type, she supposed. In any case she got a good vibe from him, and could only thank her lucky stars he'd picked her up from where the dithering old idiot in the rattly pickup had dropped her off.
He slipped the car into gear as she climbed back in.
'Sorry, I'm not myself today,' she apologized, light of breath.
'No problem. Here's a, um, present.' He handed her a small packet and pulled away from the gas pumps with a faint squeal of tyres. He braked before the streaming traffic on 95, intent on a more orderly entrance than his previous. And this time he merged amongst the speeding cars and trucks without incident.
