Agents of Darkness

by Campbell Armstrong

  Posters of Truskett hung round the room. They depicted a healthy forty-three-year-old man with a friendly mouth and eyes that shone, a trustworthy face, big and open, bran-fed and Iowan, touched by the honest sunshine of the heartland. Here was a man who ate a nutritious breakfast every day of his life and was faithful to his wife and would never dream of maligning the great democracy he worked for so ably.

  He glimpsed Miriam across the room. She was in the company of Carolyn Laforge. The two women, heads inclined together, shared a confidence. Truskett wondered what. Miriam, dark-haired, was shorter than Carolyn. They were roughly the same age, late thirties, although neither showed it.

  A flashbulb went off. Miriam Truskett looked surprised, Carolyn merely smiled. Later, the photograph would reveal this marked difference between the women. While Carolyn was graceful in the presence of the intrusive cameraman, as if she were bestowing the gift of her lovely image on him, Miriam, the child of immigrant Swedish farmers, was ill at ease, caught off-balance. She didn’t have the other woman’s background, old Pennsylvania money and an expensive finishing-school. For a second Byron Truskett yielded to a vague sense of irritation, but it passed as quickly as it had come.

  He plunged deeper into the crowd, through clusters of Congressmen, influential editors, two or three Presidential aides, the House Majority Speaker, the Vice-President and his tight-lipped little wife with her bleached moustache.

  “Who’s running the country tonight, Byron?” the senior Senator from Nebraska asked. “If we’re all here, who’s minding the damn store?”

  Byron Truskett laughed. “Store’s shut, George. America’s closed for the night.”

  “I’ll bet she is.” The Nebraskan pulled Truskett to one side gently. “Speaking of minding the store, Senator, little birds tell me you’re going to make a certain recommendation about a replacement for our dying friend …”

  “It’s possible, George.”

  “You’ll get some opposition. Not from me, mind you.” The Nebraskan, George Hammer, was an ashen-skinned man who smoked too much. He wheezed when he spoke. “I’ll back your boy. He’s got experience. Besides, if he’s good enough for you …”

  “I appreciate that.”

  The Nebraskan said, “Keep one eye open for skeletons, Byron. Damn things won’t lay still. There’s more goddam archaeologists on the Hill than all Egypt. Jesus, they love nothing better than a good dig.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Skeletons, Truskett thought. There were always skeletons in this town. This was the city of old bones, of legacies that sometimes were too dangerous to be dragged into the light. He thought for a moment of the man who lay dying from cancer in the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, the man who would have to be replaced as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. What dark things moved through Alexander Bach’s sedated mind as he died? Truskett wondered. What would the Director carry with him to his grave? Truskett turned these thoughts aside even though the word skeletons echoed uncomfortably inside him.

  “I hear the White House would prefer Jerry Slotten for the job,” Hammer remarked. “He’s done a pretty fair job deputising for Sandy Bach, no question.”

  “Jerry’s a good man,” Truskett said.

  “But he’s not your man.”

  “Exactly.”

  “One other thing,” said Hammer, reaching out to detain Truskett, who was getting urgent signals from the Australian publicist. “Some people like nothing better than to see a high-flyer come down flat on his ass. Human nature’s base, Byron. Some folk just can’t stand to see a fella like yourself move ahead of the pack. Makes them envious as all hell.”

  “Good counsel, George.” Truskett smiled, patted the Nebraskan’s shoulder. “If it was the Ides of March, believe me, I’d beware.”

  “Aren’t there Ides in June?” Hammer had a slanted grin. “What the hell are Ides anyhow?”

  Truskett, still smiling, moved away. Large pyramids of An American’s Heart had been arranged in the corners of the room. Sometimes people thrust copies into the Senator’s hand for an autograph, which he gave with pleasure. He finally reached the place where his wife stood with Carolyn Laforge.

  Miriam clutched her husband’s arm possessively. She was very proud of Byron. She gazed at him like a high-school pom-pom girl with an awesome crush on the star quarterback; she had the satisfied light in her eye that suggested a recent consummation under moon-streaked bleachers. Truskett kissed her on the side of her face even as he glanced at Carolyn Laforge and wondered how anybody could look so unbearably elegant simply holding a glass of Evian. Some optical illusion? Some genetic factor? And those cheekbones – how had those marvels come about? You had to believe Carolyn had been built on one of God’s better days.

  “Congratulations, Byron. It’s a wonderful party. Everybody’s here,” Carolyn Laforge said. She had a melodic voice, just a little deeper than people somehow expected.

  “Everybody but your husband,” Truskett said. He noticed how the expensive green dress was almost the colour of her eyes. Her yellow hair, simply arranged – as if style were merely the absence of fuss – touched her shoulders. There was a fragile quality to her elegance; she might have been made from something finer, more transparent, than china. If he had learned anything in Washington, Truskett thought, it was how appearance and reality so rarely collided. Deception in this town had as many strata as some ancient rock formation.

  “You know how William is,” Carolyn said. “He’s never at ease in crowds.”

  “A loner,” Miriam Truskett said. She admired Carolyn. Often she telephoned her for advice on paintings or antiques. Carolyn had studied interior design in London and knew about art and art history.

  “Not exactly a loner,” Carolyn said. “He likes parties only when he has control of them. He’s what people call a control freak.”

  Byron Truskett finished his champagne cocktail. Later, when the party was over, he’d have his drink of choice, some good Kentucky bourbon. He said, “I’d like to see him get around more. It might do him some good.”

  “I’ll tell him that, Byron. I can’t promise he’ll listen.”

  Truskett moved a little closer to his wife. Miriam, he noticed, didn’t have Carolyn’s posture. She was slightly round-shouldered. He wanted to make her straighten her back. But how? He couldn’t whisper to her directly. She’d be embarrassed. He laid a hand very lightly on the nape of her neck and made small circular motions with his fingertips. Miriam smiled at what she took to be a display of intimacy in public. She was the great man’s wife, and he loved her and obviously didn’t care who knew it. She was on fire. Truskett was her sun and moon, all her galaxies.

  “Are you going back to Pennsylvania tonight?” Truskett asked.

  Carolyn shook her head. She had fine straight teeth, lustrous lips. “I’ll stay in town. I have some shopping to do in the morning.”

  Miriam Truskett asked, “Then why don’t we all dine together later?”

  Before Carolyn could answer, Truskett said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to count me out, sweetheart. As soon as I’m through here I have to meet with the Committee. I don’t think I can get away before midnight. Why don’t you two girls go ahead on your own?”

  “I’m sorry, I’ll have to beg off as well,” Carolyn said. “Do you mind, Miriam? I’m a little tired.”

  Miriam Truskett didn’t look disappointed. She had the resigned attitude of a woman who could never make plans without having them altered for reasons beyond her control. “Of course I don’t mind,” she said.

  Carolyn put down her empty glass. “Call me soon.”

  “Are you leaving already?” Miriam asked. “It’s early.”

  “It’s been a long day.”

  There was an exchange of kisses, quick little connections of lips and cheeks, flurries of hugs.

  “A lovely party, Byron,” Carolyn said.

  “You tell William I’ll be in touch,” Truskett said. He was aware of the Australian publicist sniff
ing around behind his back, looking for attention. He’d have to appease her somehow.

  “I’ll tell him.” Carolyn Laforge moved sleekly through the crowd and without a backward look reached the door. And then she was gone, a vision of green and gold some found dazzlingly perfect, others arctic.

  It was, Truskett thought, a matter of taste.

  “Senator,” the little Australian woman said. “You gotta talk to the hounds sooner or later. I can’t hold the buggers off any longer.”

  Byron Truskett smiled. “Bring on the circus,” he said, and he squeezed his wife’s neck, where his hand still lingered.

  William Laforge shaded his eyes and watched the sun slipping behind the stand of birch across the meadow. He saw a raven fly between branches, its wings listlessly beating the dry air. Long brown grass, brittle dandelion and wildflower stalks crackled beneath his feet; everything had been bleached by the relentless summer. He turned from the sun and clasped his hands behind his back. In the distance his house was visible, an eighteenth-century farmhouse of whitewashed field-stone and black shutters, which seemed momentarily to shimmer in the way of a mirage. The gardener had been burning off tenacious crab-grass and thin smoke drifted over the stables beyond the house. A horse whinnied, then fell silent.

  Beyond the birch a creek ran through the property. Laforge passed between the trees then walked the incline to the water’s edge. The creek, which usually clattered riotously, was quieter and slower than Laforge had ever known it in all the twenty years he’d lived here. He kneeled, plucked a pebble from the water, turned it over in the palm of his hand. Downstream, the tendrils of a willow trailed the surface of the water. The lower leaves were green and lovely, but the higher the eye travelled the browner the leaves became, as if the tree were dying from the top down.

  This dryness was everywhere on Laforge’s two hundred and seventy-one acres. At nights, with the windows open and the sky sometimes starry beyond the deathly pall that reached up from Philadelphia, you could smell the dehydrated earth. He stood up, tossing the pebble into the stream. Was it only last year he’d fished from this very place? This summer he’d seen brook trout only once or twice, runt-sized specimens that pitifully hugged the shallow shadows of the bank.

  He rubbed the palm of his damp hand on his cotton pants. He was a trim man with very soft white hair parted to the left, the relic of a boyhood style begun with his first barber in prep school forty-five years ago. When people looked at Laforge, who had the kind of tanned, well-bred face one often saw in the better marinas of the world, they had the impression of a man who had been put together very well. He was fifty-seven years old and his flesh was unblemished; many men of the same age were concerned with the menacing brown freckles of the decaying process. His stomach was flat, his pectoral muscles firm, no flesh sagged beneath the upper arms. His manner was that of a man who keeps very much to himself and who speaks only when he has something to say. He was a person to whom one would entrust a secret and feel secure about it.

  Gossip was anathema to him. Parties like Truskett’s were torture. He hated not only the babble and the scream of false laughter but also the pressure of bodies, the touch of strangers. Laforge tended to stand apart from things, always analytical when he observed and careful when he finally chose to participate, whether in a marriage, the purchase of a horse, or one or another of the many tasks he’d undertaken on behalf of the United States government. He rarely rushed into anything; he was as much a stranger to the hasty judgement as he was to the unguarded moment of passion. On the very few occasions when he’d acted without due consideration he’d always regretted it.

  He walked downstream. An old wooden bridge, covered in moss, precariously straddled the water. It shook when Laforge stepped on its weathered boards. He crossed to the other bank. A stone wall some yards above the bank marked the limits of his property. He climbed up through fern and bramble. When he reached the wall he hoisted himself over without effort. On the other side lay a narrow county road along which very little traffic ever passed. Across this desolate strip of pockmarked blacktop were the somewhat dank woodlands that belonged to Laforge’s neighbour, a reclusive billionaire he’d never met.

  Laforge knew Railsback would come from the right, from the southwest. He looked at his watch. At the same moment he heard the sound of a car. Railsback, like himself, was a punctual man. Laforge leaned against the wall in a nonchalant way, pleased to see the car was a Ford with no character, dark blue and functional and utterly forgettable. He not only approved of low profiles, he insisted on them.

  The car stopped at the side of the road and Thomas Railsback stepped out. He was a man in his late thirties who wore blue-tinted sunglasses and a short-sleeved white shirt. Like the car, there was nothing exceptional in Railsback’s appearance unless one counted the sunglasses. When he took these off he looked very ordinary, as if some important element were missing from his features. His dark brown eyes were lifeless.

  Both men shook hands briefly. Railsback was tired. He’d flown that day from Dallas to Philadelphia, where he’d hired the Ford.

  “Good timing,” Laforge said.

  Railsback folded his arms and breathed the warm air into his lungs in the uncertain way of a city man wary of pollen and microbes. “You’re looking fit,” he said to Laforge. “It must be true what they’re saying.”

  “What exactly are they saying?”

  “You know. The job. The job.”

  Laforge felt a surge of excitement at the idea of the job: he wanted it, deserved it, he alone had the authority and experience for it. But he shrugged with assumed indifference. “I don’t listen to Washington scuttlebutt, Tom. You know me better than that.”

  Railsback smiled. It was a fast little expression because he was unhappy with the shape of his new bridgework. He’d been thinking about suing his dentist; the country was a carnival of litigation. Lawyers, deafened by their cash-registers, bloated by greed, gloated from sea to shining sea. “I heard on the car radio old Sandy Bach’s in a coma. His chair’s going to get very cold unless they find somebody to sit in it pretty soon.”

  “Why do you think it might be me, Tom?”

  “The smart money says so.”

  “The smart money is sometimes very dumb.” Laforge tried to infuse conviction into his voice. It was difficult to conceal a desire for something one had coveted so many years. But an appearance of detachment was important. It would be the height of bad manners to show even a tic of ambition, whether Sandy Bach was alive or dead.

  “Other than you, who else is there? Who else has the experience?” And the friends in high places, Railsback thought.

  Laforge didn’t answer at once. He gazed across the road at the woods. Faded trespass notices hung to several trees, illegible now. Sunlight died miserably among the thick trunks. The evening had a wrong feel to it in a way that had nothing to do with the heat. Those woods, he thought. Anybody could come out of that density. Anybody at all. He wondered if suddenly he was afraid. A new sensation: he’d never felt fear in his life.

  Was it age? Did it blemish you in ways other than a general slowing-down and a cracking in your joints? Perhaps something on the inside gave way, an essence evaporated, only you didn’t know it until you needed the very quality that had disappeared.

  He looked at Railsback. “Sandy’s a fighter,” he said.

  “Sometimes you don’t come back off the ropes,” Railsback remarked. He was fond of sporting analogies. “Sometimes you’ve got nothing left.”

  Laforge laid his hand on the rough stone wall. “I didn’t ask you here to talk about Sandy, Tom.”

  “I gathered that.”

  “And I’m sorry I had to drag you all the way from Dallas. But I don’t trust telephones. I had a message from Manila. Gene Costain’s body was found in a garbage dump near the Bay.”

  “Ah, Christ,” Railsback said quietly.

  “He’d been stabbed to death.”

  Railsback had liked old Gene, even th
ough he considered it Costain’s main flaw that he thought more with his tiny head than his big one. His brain was too close to his balls. He had his lovely little whore in Manila, and she’d absconded with his heart. That was his downfall. Railsback had a little flash of Gene, that stern face all the more rigid in death, lying in a mountain of trash, the stench of it all, the putrefaction that ascended with obscene rapacity in the Manila climate.

  “I assume there’s an investigation,” he said.

  “In the Philippines you never assume anything. The Constabulary do what they can in their ham-fisted fashion. They have some help from the Embassy. But I think it highly unlikely the killer will ever be found.”

  “Has anybody spoken to Gene’s girl?”

  Laforge sighed. He had disapproved of that relationship and had advised Costain on more than one occasion to end it. “They looked for her. But she’d gone. Of course, nobody knows where she can be reached. Nobody’s seen her. The whole thing is dead-ended.”

  “Do we have any idea who might have killed him?”

  “Only in the general sense. We both know the Communists are the most plausible candidates. If you’re talking about a specific individual, no.”

  “Poor old Gene,” Railsback said.