Agents of Darkness

by Campbell Armstrong

  8

  Byron Truskett’s chief aide, a solitary man named Larry Deets, had joined the Senator’s staff directly from his graduate studies at Yale Law School eight years ago. On Truskett’s behalf he produced policy papers on intelligence so concise they were comprehensible to almost everybody on Capitol Hill. It was rumoured that even the President understood them. An angular figure who Brylcreemed his hair, Deets wore dark three-piece suits and ties that were always the colour of battleships. At the age of thirty-five he had dedicated his life to work, ignoring the promptings of heart and hormones.

  Byron Truskett knew very little about Deets’s personal life. He doubted if Larry had one. Last Christmas, puzzled by what seasonal token to give his aide, Truskett had turned the problem over to his executive secretary, Madge McFarlane. For reasons best known to herself she’d presented Larry with a book of coupons good for a dozen lessons at an Arthur Murray School of Dancing. Because he had no desire to look ungrateful, Deets attended for five utterly miserable weeks and then dropped the course. His teacher was a bossy little senorita from Puerto Rico who made him feel too clumsy for the intricacies of rumbas and mambos, but his want of elegance – he had large feet and knuckles like small pink doorknobs – wasn’t something over which he grieved. Dancing was frivolous, and Larry Deets much preferred the serious turns of his mind to the frolicsome turns of his feet.

  He had an important job to do, which was to help Byron Truskett build the power base that would secure him the White House at his first attempt. During his initial job-interview with Truskett years before, Deets had even then smelled the ambition on the Senator as surely as the musk of a predator. If Truskett tended to joke about his Presidential yearnings, he did so in a transparent half-hearted way. If he made self-deprecatory comments about his Presidential qualifications, it was with no conviction. There could be no mistake: Byron lusted after the Presidency. He could taste it in his mouth as if it were a hard candy packed with flavour. He dreamed it at nights and pursued it by day, patiently, a brick here, another there, building his edifice in a gradual way. Already he had favours owed him by men and women whom he’d managed to place in influential positions at State, Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and within his own Party’s National Committee.

  What Larry Deets wanted, in a life that was otherwise as empty as a derelict house abandoned even by squatters, was to be indispensable to greatness. He wanted to be the grainy figure in the background of historic photographs who hands the fountain-pen to the man signing major treaties. His loyal attachment to Byron Truskett was his best shot at a vicarious immortality.

  Deets’s office adjoined Truskett’s. At eleven-ten on the morning following the Senator’s tryst with Carolyn Laforge, Deets knocked quietly on the door, then stepped inside Truskett’s office when he heard the familiar booming. “Come.”

  Truskett’s big room was dark because Venetian blinds with unopened slats covered the windows, keeping the sun-blasted view of Washington from sight. A large fan churned hot air around. Overloaded, the air-conditioning system for the entire building had broken down. The back-up generator, neglected for years, had also failed, sending a skunk-like stench through the ductwork.

  The Senator’s face, sweaty and a little drawn on this particular morning, was lit by a Tiffany desk-lamp which Miriam had given him because she thought it added class to his office.

  Deets laid a blue cardboard folder on Truskett’s desk. “You asked to see this again.”

  Sighing, Truskett looked at the folder, which contained a record of William Laforge’s career. He was already so familiar with it he might have been able to recite it verbatim if pressed, but he kept coming back to these typewritten sheets as if haunted by the sensation that he’d overlooked something important. A man’s life, double-spaced, rendered on pale bond-paper, lost all nuance. There was nothing in these pages to suggest the inner world of Laforge.

  Truskett gazed at the top sheet, which assumed a greenish-red tint from the Tiffany lamp. “Is he really our man, Larry? Why do I keep having this damned nagging doubt?”

  Deets sat down. He considered Laforge something of a dry old fart, but he’d never utter this opinion to the Senator. Old farts were often essential to the correct operation of the nation’s institutions anyway. Besides, since the Senator was humping Laforge’s wife – Deets was rarely in the dark about Truskett’s activities – then it was two hundred per cent certain that promises had been made to William.

  “He has the experience. He knows the Agency inside-out and upside-down and sideways. No doubt of that. He shares many of your political views.” Larry Deets put no great enthusiasm in his voice. The trouble with old farts was that they often left a malodorous stink in their passing, which was what worried him. Certain areas in Laforge’s history made Deets tense; they resembled snapshots that had come out blurred and discoloured. Deets dreaded the notion of anything spoiling Truskett’s shot at the nomination during the next Party convention, which would happen if the Senator championed Laforge and Billy turned out to be, well, a rancid choice. Deets could hear the accusations already. Poor Byron, terrible judge of character. Isn’t Presidential material. Too bad. We had high hopes for him. Go ride Oblivion Expressway, chump. Given the number of elder Senators who resented Truskett’s youth, charisma and ambition – which contrasted markedly with their own desiccation, dreariness, and utter breakdown of vision – Truskett would be crucified if his support of Laforge didn’t go across. Told you so, they’d say. Can’t expect a boy to do a man’s job.

  Because he feared that the good ship Byron might founder on uncharted rocks, Larry Deets, on his own initiative, had begun to tap into that thriving underground network of information shared by senior House and Senate aides, a question here, an aside there, a whisper over Absolut two-olive cocktails in mahogany-panelled bars, a phone-number or a name doodled on a damp napkin. In this fashion Deets had gathered knowledge of his own, which he was prepared to share at the appropriate moment. For the present, though, he’d do what Truskett asked. He’d go through Laforge’s record with the appropriate impartiality.

  “You don’t overflow with passion, Larry,” the Senator said.

  “I’ve always considered passion dispassionately,” Deets remarked. “And I find it a tad overrated. For one thing, it’s usually brief. I prefer longevity. For another, it tends to get messy. I think clutter’s a sign of a mind in disarray.”

  Truskett looked at his chief aide and thought that although Deets was bright and insightful he was just a little too tight-assed, in need of loosening up. He needed to get his ashes hauled, to be laid all the way to Delaware Bay and back. But it was hard to imagine Larry in any sexual position, fellatic, cunnilingual, even missionary. Maybe he made do with masturbation. Was there beneath his pillow a linen handkerchief, stiff and discoloured from the affection he poured into it?

  Truskett opened Laforge’s folder. Jesus, what brought him back time and again to this stuff? Read between the lines. Look deeply into the spaces. Find the man. Pin the tail on the inscrutable donkey.

  “Let’s go over it one last time, Larry. I know we’re sick of it, I know it’s a chore, but I need to be sure. Let’s look at it as objectively as we can.” He picked up the top sheet. “Okay. We’ll start with dear old Iran. Laforge was assigned to ‘assist’ there from 1963 until 1965. Assist. Not exactly specific, Larry. What if somebody wants more detail?”

  “As we concluded before, detail’s hard to come by. Laforge advised the Shah’s people on gathering intelligence. That’s about it. It’s not as if he worked directly with the nasties from SAVAK – and even if he happened to come in contact with them, where’s the evidence? Records were lost in Khomeini’s revolution. And the Ayatollah, may he moulder in peace, had a bad habit of fabricating documents that implicated American citizens in the atrocities of the Shah’s secret police. Who knows what to believe about Iran? It’s like Lewis Carroll loose among the mullahs. I think Laforge can also count on something
else – what do I want to call it? The pragmatic amnesia of some of your colleagues in the Senate.”

  Pragmatic amnesia. Truskett looked unhappy a moment. Iran was a stinking pool he didn’t want to stir. The undead, waiting to be dredged up as witnesses, lay motionless under a scummy surface. It was unfortunate Laforge had been in that wretched country because there were those in the House who might focus on his role during the Shah’s regime. But Deets, hopefully, was right: time and bureaucratic chaos had blunted both memories and evidence of the Shah’s days. And there were still some in power who had good reason to be stricken by a loss of recall and a measure of guilt when Iran was mentioned. The Shah, an overnight leper, had been drawn and quartered by certain self-righteous US officials when his reign was over, mainly because he’d committed the most heinous crime of which an American ally is capable: he’d outlived his usefulness.

  Truskett turned the top sheet over. “At least the Tokyo stuff is uncontroversial.”

  “Unblemished,” said Deets.

  “Assistant station chief in Tokyo until 1971. An unremarkable time. He developed a good working knowledge of Japanese, for which the Japs loved him. He transmitted a copious amount of accurate material on anti-American nationalist movements in Japan.”

  Truskett came to the third page. “Bangkok. 1972 through 1976. Station chief. Nobody can fault his performance there. He had an excellent network reaching inside North Vietnam. Some of the information he sent back was priceless. He worked his ass off digging out MIAs. Heroic stuff.”

  The Senator stood up, strolled to the fan, placed his face close to the blades. “This heat’s a sonofabitch. Doesn’t it bother you, Larry? Don’t you ever sweat?”

  “I sweat.”

  “You don’t show it. What’s your secret, Larry?”

  “I want to say it’s mind over matter,” Deets replied. “But the truth is my sweat glands are underactive. Even as a kid, heat didn’t affect me like it does other people.”

  I knew it, Truskett thought. He’s from another planet. He walked back to his desk and looked at the folder again just as the Tiffany lamp, interrupted by some dip in the current, blinked. “Okay. Billy goes back to Tokyo as station chief in 1978, after spending a year at Langley running what was then called the Office of Strategic Research. In 1984 he’s brought home by Sandy Bach, stays in Virginia for six months where he works reorganising the East Asia Division. Then suddenly he’s shipped off to Manila in eighty-five. But not as station chief, which is what you’d expect, given his experience. Nor is he connected with the Joint US Military Advisory Group, which would have been another possibility. Instead, he’s made Special Advisor to the Chief of the Philippine Constabulary. What’s that supposed to mean? Pretend I’m on the Senate Committee and convince me it isn’t downright sinister.”

  With the air of a man reciting something learned by rote, Deets said, “Marcos was unhappy with his Constabulary. He thought it needed reorganisation, especially in its intelligence activities. Remember, he was more than mildly paranoid because in his view the hills and hollows of the Philippines were filled with Commie insurgents. Since that was the dubious basis for his declaration of martial law, he had a duty to see reds everywhere. Hence the need for more and better intelligence because he had to keep finding baddies where they didn’t even exist. So Billy did an in-depth study and reshuffled some officers and retired others to beef up ‘efficiency’, and I am hanging quotation marks round that word. I really think it was window-dressing to keep Marcos cheerful. Billy was a gift to Ferdinand from Ronnie Reagan. Marcos asked for a good man, and Ronnie, ever anxious to oblige his good pal in Manila, sent Laforge and a small team of assistants steaming off to the Pearl of the Orient.”

  “Special Advisor makes me nervous,” Truskett said. “The phrase stinks. And the association with Marcos isn’t going to win us any cigars.”

  Deets made some minuscule adjustment to the cuffs of his lead-grey jacket. “In Billy’s favour, there’s not a shred of evidence he was a buddy of Marcos. They might have shaken hands once, but it’s not as if they played rounds of golf at Wack-Wack Country Club or shared a dish of rice and listened to Imelda sing The Impossible Dream at the Malacanang Palace. All Billy did was to obey Sandy Bach and Ronnie Reagan. He was told to do a certain job, and he did it. He’s loyal to his bosses, always has been.”

  “And loyalty scores,” Truskett said as he sat down, placing his shoeless feet up on his desk. His socks were dark blue with a thin red stripe. He was very quiet for a long time. The fan suddenly quit, and the Tiffany lamp went off for about thirty seconds, and the room turned into a suffocating black box, like a capsule hurtled abruptly into deep blind space, before electricity was restored. Truskett shook his head. “We’re trying to run a goddam country and we can’t run this one building with any fucking semblance of efficiency. Sweet Jesus.”

  He leaned over the folder once more. “So. After Corazon Aquino’s ascendancy in 1986, Billy stayed on in Manila for another nine months at the request of Cory herself, which was a bit of a turnaround that definitely won him bonus points.”

  Deets said, “Maximum. You don’t often get requests from an angel, do you? But Billy surely did. He helped analyse the strengths and weaknesses of Cory’s intelligence service, and then he came home where Sandy Bach appointed him Deputy Director for Operations. And lo, that’s where we find him to this very day.” He turned his face toward the fan, enjoying the stream of air. He added, “Laforge is weak in European experience. That could be a minus.”

  “Sure, but he speaks fluent German and French, and he’s an anglophile into the bargain. I think what’s more important than any sprechen Sie Deutsch or knowing how to spread clotted cream on a scone is that fact he knows his way goddam blindfold around the Agency.” Truskett removed a sock, wiggled his long white toes as if he were somehow surprised by his feet. “Besides, there’s one constant in Laforge’s life which I think can swing it for him, and that’s his blue-blooded Americanism. When he goes before the Senate, Larry, he’s apple pie in a pin-striped suit. He’s as red-blooded as the March of Dimes, for Christ’s sake. He can’t be faulted in the patriotism department. He knows the enemy. He’s seen the whites of their eyes.”

  Deets said nothing.

  Truskett asked, “Well, Larry. What is he – a strong candidate or a weak one?”

  “Something of both, I think.”

  “What kind of answer is that?” Truskett wanted to know.

  Deets, by virtue of his position, sometimes gave equivocal responses to questions. In Washington, language had been butchered, skinned, gutted, the bones removed from the flesh, the marrow sucked loudly from the bones; sentences and phrases, no matter how artfully arranged, often lacked any nutritional value. Deets stood up. He took a glossy leather wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket and opened it. An array of credit cards was neatly displayed in plastic covers. He removed a piece of paper from a zippered compartment and handed it to the Senator.

  “Read this,” Deets said. “Maybe then you’ll have an answer to your question, Senator.”

  “I hope to God this isn’t some last-minute surprise, Larry. You know how I hate that kind of shit.”

  Deets, maestro of the enigmatic smile, said, “It may clarify things. It may not.”

  Before Truskett could look at the paper, Madge McFarlane entered the room without knocking. She’d been employed by the Truskett family for thirty years, ever since the beginnings of the dynasty in Cedar Rapids, and she believed her longevity afforded her direct access to the Senator. She was family, or liked to think so.

  “I thought you’d want to know, Byron. Alexander Bach is dead.” She had the face of a woman who loves to deliver death notices and other uplifting items of news such as typhoons, earthquakes, political assassinations. She thrived on bleakness.

  Truskett considered this information a moment. He remembered Alexander Bach as a quietly humorous figure of an iconoclastic bent. “When?”

  “Fifteen m
inutes ago. I just got word. He died in his sleep,” said Mrs McFarlane. “Flowers to the family, of course?”

  “Of course,” Truskett said.

  “Lilies, I think.”

  “Whatever, Madge.”

  “I have never known lilies to be unappreciated.” Mrs McFarlane went out to arrange the floral tribute and the message of sorrow, which she would compose herself in language that would embarrass a Hallmark copywriter.

  Truskett looked at Deets and said, “Let’s move quickly. Call Laforge. Tell him I’m on my way to see him at his place. I don’t want him to come to Washington where he might look like some overanxious vulture. Then get me into the Oval Office tomorrow. A.m. if possible.”

  Deets never made notes. He had a memory like a snare. “Don’t forget the paper, Senator. I urge you to read it.”

  “I will, Larry. On the way up to Bucks County.”

  What Charlie Galloway longed for as he sat inside his Toyota in the frazzled parking-lot of the Palms Hotel near Hollywood Boulevard was the kind of drab cloudy Glasgow day known as dreich, when the river emitted an ectoplasmic mist and gulls screeched unseen like phantom birds and dampness soaked through everything. He imagined walking up Buchanan Street from Argyle Street, feeling a chill northern drizzle blow against his face; perhaps he’d turn along West Nile or Bath Street or Sauchiehall, that most famous of Glasgow streets, and head west and walk wherever the urge took him – Kelvingrove Park, the University, Byers Road with the splendid assortment of hostelries he knew so well in those days and nights when alcohol had been a pleasant corollary to life, not the necessity it appeared to have become in these United States.

  Remembered scents made him ache. Rain on sandstone tenements. Mildewed churches. A rainsoaked Glasgow Evening Times uplifted by a sudden squall and made to stick against a wet iron railing. The rotted timber steps of the old Govan Ferry. He stared across the parking-lot, possessed by the strange sensation he existed in two places simultaneously. How was it possible he could hear the croak of a frog and smell wet parkland even as he observed the shimmering entrance to a Californian hotel across a stretch of concrete where stationary vehicles reflected light with such hot intensity his eyeballs burned? Madness, Charlie. Downright bloody insanity. You’re not yourself. Take a hundred Librium, lie down, call me in the morning.