Agents of Darkness

by Campbell Armstrong

  It was really very simple. William Laforge was one of those people, perhaps less rare than one might suppose from the clamorous attention given sex by the popular culture, who was asexual. He didn’t like the sensation of putting his penis inside a woman or a man or even, as he’d once or twice done, his own fist. In his teens, when his lack of sexual curiosity troubled him, he’d gone one night to a homosexual bar in Washington where an elderly man, a Congressman named Liddell from Delaware, took him to his apartment and there to bed, where the flabby politician had lain flat on his face and young Laforge mounted and entered him, prick slipping between flaccid buttocks and up and up inside an anus that was wet and slack and horrifying. The sensation Laforge experienced then was that he was being sucked up inside another human body as though the Congressman were a vacuum cleaner of a kind, that first the penis would vanish, to be followed by hips and thighs and then everything else. Sexual contact was completely menacing to him.

  Years passed, and he drifted from one useless therapist to another, before he allowed himself to try again, this time with Carolyn, a fashion model whom he met at one of those Washington parties to which he was invited when a charming single man was needed. But he waited, both out of fear and decency, until after they were married. He found the woman charming, delicious to look at, and besides a lovely wife could be an enormous advantage to a career in Laforge’s covert world, where bachelors were often suspect and considered vulnerable to the sexual skullduggery of the enemy – in those faraway days the Russians.

  In bed, Carolyn was kind and patient and in no apparent hurry to consummate the marriage. She wasn’t a virgin and she understood William’s nervousness, which at first she attributed to the twenty-year age difference between them and a certain self-consciousness on his part. He had to prove himself capable of satisfying a vigorous young wife, and she believed that that was certainly stressful enough to make him limp.

  The eventual coupling, fortified by huge amounts of brandy, was messy and brief. In a contrary way, Laforge’s terror, his lack of élan, endeared him all the more to Carolyn, who now began to perceive the true nature of his problem. He just didn’t like sex. Very well, she could be businesslike. She could cope. They would build a life around the obstacle. She understood that William would not deny her the occasional fling if it became essential. Annulment never entered her mind. He was dear to her, and sweet beyond her experience of men, who had usually treated her with a kind of deferential brutality, as if her extraordinary beauty were something to savour before ravaging. Besides, William had a career with dizzying possibilities, and she would help him shape that, and push him harder than he might have pushed himself. She would be his accessory, his companion, his confidante. She would guide him.

  Their marriage, if not founded on a mutual passion, became a kind of conjugal corporation in which William was President and she Treasurer and Secretary; and in the imaginary articles of incorporation was stated the intended business of Laforge & Laforge, Inc – the furtherance of William’s career. No matter what. Carolyn would have been mortified if anyone had accused her of sleeping with Truskett to advance William’s career. She did not think of herself as some ambitious whore. Rather she considered it her executive duty to promote William’s talents and to see that her husband’s hard work and loyalty were duly rewarded. Whether she spread her thighs in the process was not a matter of morality, more one of policy. Her body was a corporate asset.

  One drunken night a year or so after his first effort, when Laforge decided to try the possibilities of the flesh another time, Nicholas Bainbridge Laforge was conceived. This accidental offspring was shunted off to boarding school as soon as it was decent to do so. The boy felt like an invader from the start. Resentful of everything and nothing in particular, he bounced from one school to another, expelled with shameful frequency. Between institutions now, he was home, where his presence in the old white farmhouse was a source of irritation to his parents, who kept colliding with him in the kitchen or bumping into him on the stairs or being obliged to listen to the monorhythmic pounding of his stereo.

  Carolyn went to the bedroom door, opened it, stepped on to the landing and called downstairs for the boy to reduce the volume. He obliged, but without enthusiasm. Closing the door, she clasped her husband’s hands. He looked unrelaxed, concerned by the prospect of Truskett’s arrival.

  “There’s nothing to worry about, William,” she said. “The job is practically yours. In return, Truskett expects nothing except your loyalty when it comes to his own Presidential bid, which is not a very high price to pay. The longer I hang around politicians, the more I understand pragmatism is the name of the game. When the wind blows one way, a politician suddenly changes his mind. When it blows another, he remembers to change it back again.”

  She released his hands and went to the window again, where she studied the beeches. She loved this place. Sometimes on sleepless nights she would imagine herself a winged creature, a delicately-feathered night owl flying all across the property, from the county road to the fields beyond the beeches, from the creek then across the meadows to the paddock. On these flights she’d pass over the white house in which a window or two would be softly lit and she’d wonder who was lucky enough to live in such a beautiful place. She belonged here. She could conceive of no other life. This was her fortress; she lived her real life here.

  “It’s not as if there’s any great difference between yourself and Byron Truskett anyhow,” she added. “You both belong to the same political party. And even if you didn’t, you both believe in – I think the expression is – democratic principles. It shouldn’t be difficult to agree with Byron on almost anything. I’ll say this much in his favour. I think he’s managed to convince himself that he can make a difference to this country. He has certain notions that the party is bound to consider radical. Even heretical. He has social programmes he wants to implement. He wants to make a truly enormous dent in Pentagon spending. Speak of the devil.”

  Truskett’s car, a black Chrysler he drove himself – he was a man of the people, didn’t believe in chauffeurs – turned into the driveway.

  “Go down, make him a drink, get your business out of the way,” Carolyn said. “Tell him I’m taking a shower and I’ll join you both in a bit. Oh, and make Nick turn that stereo off.”

  Laforge hesitated in the bedroom doorway.

  “Go on,” Carolyn said. “Byron’s on your side.”

  Laforge watched her step inside the bathroom. The door closed behind her. He felt strangely alone for a moment, as if Carolyn had vanished without trace, one of those inexplicable evaporations that happened from time to time, an ordinary man vanishing on his way to work, a child disappearing between school and home, an average housewife walking into a void on her way to a grocery store. It was a curious apprehension he felt, alleviated finally by the sound of water running in the shower stall. He left the room and went downstairs to greet Byron Truskett.

  On the way he crossed the living-room where Nick sat. The boy, who wore his hair very thick on top of his skull but short along the sides in a fashion one might describe as neo-Mohawk, had a beercan in one hand.

  “Don’t say it,” Nick remarked. “You want me to boogie for a while.”

  “Boogie?”

  “Book, Pops. You’d probably say scram. Skedaddle. Make myself scarce. Light out. Leave. Split.”

  Laforge had problems with the new slang. How had the word ‘book’ evolved into a verb that meant ‘to depart’? He was missing something. As the century entered its final decade, it caused Laforge to wonder where in time he truly belonged. The fifties? The early part of the sixties? He had liked Eisenhower but not Nixon. He had admired Jack Kennedy to some degree, but not Lyndon Johnson. He’d liked Jimmy Carter for about three months and considered Ford an amiable hack. Reagan was fuzzy, indefinable, an impressionistic sketch. He felt adrift in time, a stranger at this point of history.

  “Who’s the visitor?” Nick asked.

&n
bsp; “Senator Truskett.”

  “Oooo,” the boy said, and winked. “Wonder what brings the mighty up to our little homestead, huh?”

  Laforge watched the boy walk towards the stairs. Nick paused and pulled an extraordinary face, thrusting his tongue behind his lower front gum to look simian. He swung his arms, apelike. “I’ll be up in my cage if you want my advice on anything. Just remember today’s the day I get my straw changed,” and, dangling his arms, he loped up the steps as if he were a gorilla.

  Laforge wished these encounters with his son didn’t depress him so. He continued to hope he would grow closer to the boy as time passed, a possibility he sadly doubted. A shadow fell upon his mind. That sense of loss he’d felt yesterday in Railsback’s company returned to him. It came down to this simple thing: he wanted to love his son but wasn’t sure how. What was a father supposed to do? Share secrets with his kid? Mutual confidantes? Buddies? The idea darkened as quickly as it had flared. He didn’t know what was expected of him. His life, spent in covert activities, hadn’t prepared him for open demonstrations of affection. Father and son. Such a mystery. He’d never been on terrific terms with his own father, a textbook publisher who, as early as the late 1950s, had smelled the wind shifting from the humanities to the sciences. He had been the first publisher to specialise in a line of textbooks on computer technology, which had made him extraordinarily rich.

  Laforge went outside as Byron Truskett, smiling his large political smile, breezed toward him, hand extended and eyes bright. Clearly he considered full frontal charm the correct way to greet a man you have cuckolded. Laforge had to admire the Senator’s brazenness even as it amused him. You fuck my wife, and you think I don’t know. He had a mischievous urge to say this aloud.

  They shook hands firmly. Truskett, brimming with health in his white open-necked shirt and tan pants, reminded Laforge of a golfer in his prime, one of those blonds whose names he could never get right. The Senator carried a black leather briefcase embossed with his initials and some kind of family crest, an affectation initiated by Truskett Senior, who’d spent his declining years in a desperate search for an aristocratic connection in his genealogy, as if he needed the imprimatur of good breeding at the end of his life.

  “We’ll all miss Sandy Bach,” Truskett said with a certain convincing solemnity. His smile went out like a dead lightbulb.

  “Yes,” Laforge remarked, thinking how easy it was to become a partner in hypocrisy. He’d worked for Sandy Bach for a long time and had never liked the man. Bach was cynical and irreverent, fond of mocking institutions such as the one he directed himself. A smirker. That was how he’d remember Sandy Bach.

  “Let’s go indoors. I’ll fix a drink,” Laforge suggested.

  Truskett, shading his eyes, looked up at the hot sun. “If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to stretch my legs. Stroll for a while.”

  “Of course, if you can stand this heat.”

  Truskett moved across the lawn toward the trees. “It’s better here than DC at least,” he said. “Here you don’t have the goddam pollution. How’s your wife?”

  You’d know better than me, Laforge thought. “She’s fine. She’ll join us later for a drink, if you have the time.”

  Truskett walked as far as the picnic table, where he laid his briefcase down. Then he sat, gazing into the trees for such a long time that Laforge wondered what had so engrossed him, and followed the line of the Senator’s vision. He saw only the still beeches. Truskett shook his head, as if to free himself from a reverie, a moment of slippage when his concentration had weakened.

  “I was just thinking what a pleasant spread this is,” he said.

  “We enjoy it,” Laforge remarked.

  Truskett laid a hand on his briefcase, fingering the embossed crest. It consisted, Laforge noticed, of an eagle’s head imposed on two crossed swords.

  “You know why I’m here, of course,” Truskett said. “I assume you haven’t had a change of heart since the last time we talked about the job.”

  Laforge, with a slight quickening of his pulse, replied, “I feel the same, Senator.”

  “Good, Billy. I’m glad to hear that.” Truskett was all smiles again. Whatever sombre thought had touched him seemed to have vanished. He even patted the back of Laforge’s arm, one old friend to another, By to Billy, a reassurance built out of a thousand shared experiences. It didn’t matter that they knew each other only superficially, because Truskett constructed friendships out of nothing all the time. It came with his territory. Laforge loathed the abbreviation of his name to Billy, even though he knew people used it behind his back. It made him sound like a small child or a parakeet. Truskett, though, was the only person who called him Billy to his face, an impertinence he allowed to pass unchecked.

  “Tomorrow, I intend to see the President,” Truskett said. “He listens to what I have to say on intelligence matters. I hope that doesn’t sound immodest.”

  “It doesn’t,” Laforge said. Like all politicians, Truskett understood the need for an appearance of humility. Braggartism didn’t win votes.

  Truskett took a toothpick from his pocket and snapped it in two, as if he were nervous, causing Laforge to wonder if the Senator felt uneasy on account of his relationship with Carolyn or whether he had some other concern he was about to raise, something he was circling.

  Truskett looked at the broken toothpick in his palm. “You and I share a belief in this country, Billy. We’ve talked about this before. We have a way of life other nations – less fortunate than us – would enjoy and profit from. Without fear of contradiction, I’d say we have the best system in the world.” Truskett laughed to himself, as if he’d remembered some old, private joke. “When I say patriotic things in public, I admit I sometimes get carried away. And some members of our press think I’m a guts and glory right-wing relic. Typically, they’re not telling the whole truth, Billy. If I was to hang a label on myself it wouldn’t be Republican or Democrat. That’s too simple-minded. I’d call myself a Constitutionalist who believes in freedom of speech and the rights of citizens to live their lives without undue hindrance from the State. I think we spend too much on our military. I don’t believe in gun-control. I don’t believe in cutting Social Security. I think abortion is a woman’s private business. I think homelessness is the government’s problem. What does that make me, Billy? The way I see it, the answer’s simple. It makes me an American.”

  Laforge wondered where the Senator was leading. Was Byron simply yielding to some confessional impulse, knowing he was secure and could sound off as he liked, freed from the confines of the usual Party cant?

  “Unhappily, our great nation has a few enemies,” Truskett said. “And the role of intelligence, as we both see it – correct me if I’m wrong – is to identify those enemies before they can harm our way of life. Am I correct?”

  “Yes,” said Laforge.

  “And sometimes we have to use covert means to undermine such people before they can injure us.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “And sometimes these means are violent.”

  Laforge said nothing. The word ‘violent’, as though trapped by heat, seemed to hang in the air obtrusively.

  Truskett said, “Violence in the national interest should be done, but never seen.”

  “No covert operation should ever be seen,” Laforge said quietly. This was leading somewhere, and although he wasn’t sure of the destination, he didn’t like the journey. Tense now, he observed Truskett’s face.

  In a deliberative manner the Senator tapped the surface of the table with his fingertips, then opened his briefcase. He removed from it a sheet of paper, which he spread on the table very carefully. It was typewritten and had been folded a couple of times. Gazing at this creased sheet, Laforge felt the rhythm of his heart alter. Somehow this piece of paper alarmed him even before he knew what it was.

  Truskett said, “If I place your candidacy before the President, Billy, and he supports you, your name is then pr
esented to the Senate for nomination hearings. Now, in the course of these hearings, I wouldn’t want anything to reflect badly on your leadership capabilities, because that in turn puts me in a shitty light, which would make me a very unhappy sonofabitch.”

  Reflect badly? Apprehension filled Laforge. He’d felt the same way during Railsback’s visit, when the gloomy woods had suggested to him a concealed figure, the avenger’s shadow, somebody who moved so lightly that no twig, no blade of grass, cracked or snapped underfoot. He gazed at the beeches. Their very familiarity calmed him. They had the solid look of reliable old friends who loaned you money when you needed it and never pressed you for its return.

  “Are you talking about something specific, Senator?”

  Truskett smiled. He was so photogenic he seemed more popular icon than man. “I don’t want to hear anybody saying that you failed to control men under your command, Billy. That’s exactly the kind of thing that isn’t going to do you or me any damn good at all. You understand me.”

  Laforge asked, “Can you be more direct?”

  Truskett did not skip a beat. “Eugene Costain.”

  Costain. Of course. What else? Laforge felt the movement of a ghost, a presence as clammy as the aftermath of tropical rain. Was it never going to go away? He looked up at the house, his house, as if it were under siege by forces he couldn’t see. “I remember Gene very well,” he said. “I was sorry to hear of his death.”

  Truskett picked up the paper and looked at it. “Costain was part of a team under your direction that was sent to the Philippines during the last few months of the Marcos regime, with the brief of improving the Marcos intelligence network. Am I right?”

  “That was the brief, yes.”

  “Specifically, Marcos wanted all the information he could get on Communist organisations. Their strengths. Weaknesses. Locations. Correct?”