by Tim Lees
“Right in the center—see here—there’s the compound. Not six or seven of ’em this time. Just Assur. Got that? The fields here will hold—well, just about anything. All we needed was a subject—worthy of the plan. You gave us that, Chris.”
“I hear you asked for me.”
“I asked,” he told me, “for the best. That’s what I got.”
“I’m not the best.”
“Reliable. Dependable. Resourceful—”
“Not the best.”
“You’re being modest, Chris.”
“Fuck off. There’s a dozen ops better than me, and anyone can tell you who they are. So what’s the deal?”
“You’re over-thinking this one, Chris.”
“First Iraq, now here.”
“Trust me, will you? Give it time, and—”
“Trust me. I’ve been hearing that a lot. I can’t explain, but trust me.”
“All I’m saying—”
“Is you’re going to fuck me over like you did before. Right? I mean, given the track record, anything else would be a fucking miracle.”
“Chris, Chris—”
He mouthed at me. I wondered how far I could push him, how long before he’d crack. And how near that might get me to the truth.
I checked my watch. “I’ve got a plane to book,” I bluffed.
He kicked his feet, screwed up his face. It could have been an act, of course. It was a good one, though, even for him. Exceptionally good.
The air hissed between his teeth.
“All right,” he said. “All right.”
He hugged his arms around himself. His fingers clenched and opened, clenched and opened.
When he spoke again, his voice was low. He kept his head down, glancing up at me, and then away again.
“I said there’s no risk. And that’s . . . mostly true, as far as we can tell.”
“But.”
“But . . . yeah.” He looked smaller now, hunched in on himself. Smaller and a lot less confident. “Everything’s got risks, we all know that. Three Mile Island, Fukushima . . . And stuff like this, it just hasn’t been done before. It’s a whole new concept. We can make projections, calculate the chances, but the fact is, after a certain point . . . we’re in the dark.”
“OK,” I conceded.
“I wanted—this is me, mind, not Special Projects. I said we had to have a fail-safe.”
He moved his hands, struggling to explain.
“They’re company men, Chris. And—well. So am I. And sometimes we, you know, what we see, it’s what the company wants us to see. We don’t plan it that way, we don’t choose it, it’s just . . . years of doing things the same way, looking at the same stuff . . . But you’re not like that.”
“I’m Registry too.”
“But not the same. It’s not—I want to make it clear—it’s not that anybody here would hide or cover up a problem. My worry is, they won’t even see it. ’Cause they won’t be looking.”
He showed me his palms. “That’s why I wanted you in here. And from the start. You know more about this entity than—well, just about anyone, I guess. You retrieved it, then you got it back from, you know . . .”
“Dayling.”
“Right, right . . .” He shook his head, grimaced, then looked up at me. “Well, fuck it, Chris. I couldn’t use Dayling, could I? And who else is there?”
Chapter 23
The Moral Thing
“It’s a runaway train. It’s going now, whatever you or I or anybody else might think. I need you to make it to stay on track.”
I said nothing.
He said, “You’re my fail-safe, Chris. You understand?”
I still said nothing.
“Jesus Christ. I nearly died in Indiana, Chris! You think I want to go through that again? Really?”
“Nearly died. Lot of people weren’t so lucky.”
“Yeah. But look. I really do believe this time it’s different. It’s a perfect circle. The god receives his audience, the grid receives the power—and we light up Chicago.”
“You’re asking me to be a part of this?”
“I’m asking you to do the right thing, Chris.”
He followed me towards the exit.
“The right thing. The moral thing. You understand?”
It had started to rain. Not much, just a few flecks, here and there. A drop fell on my lip and I licked it off, trying to define the taste of it, the taste of this new city, this new venture.
Shailer said, “Here’s how it goes. I promise you. You raise an alarm, and that’s it. No question, no compromise. On any issue. If need be we will close down till the problem’s solved.”
“On my say-so?”
“Totally, Chris. Totally.”
I watched the cars rush by on Lake Shore. Already I was weighing up the dangers, the possibilities, wondering what it could be like, to stay on for a while. Lake Shore may have been an urban racetrack, but the park beyond was large and peaceful-looking, the trees in bright, spring leaves. A few apartment blocks rose in the distance, massive and palatial. I’d been here before, but only for a short time. Not enough to get a real feel for the place. Just enough for . . .
Shailer was still talking.
“This is my career, Chris. It’s—look. I bounced back after Indiana, but—I gotta say it, I was lucky. I truly was. Anything else—especially here, for God’s sake, a major urban center, the consequences would be . . .” He shook his head. “I’m asking—I’m begging, Chris—”
“Which guard?”
“What?”
“Which guard were you talking to?”
There was only one in sight, on the far side of the car park. As I watched he raised a hand to his mouth, took a quick drag from a cigarette and hid it again.
“Him?” I said.
“That’s not important, Chris.”
“It is. So you can tell me all about it, can’t you?”
He was silent.
“Well?” I said.
“I just don’t see why you’re asking.”
To piss you off. To get under your skin. To find out what you’ll say.
“Call it a test. See what you’ll share,” I said. “We’ll start you on the small things, OK?”
“It’s . . . well. It’s embarrassing.”
“Good. Let’s hear it, then.”
“Just guy talk, really. Just . . .” He shrugged.
“ ‘Guy talk’? Now I really am intrigued.”
The chauffeur slouched on the hood of the car, listening to something on his iPod. His head made little chicken motions, back and forth.
“This guy,” said Shailer, “he’s got tats. You know. Tattoos.”
“I know what tats are.”
“Well, I’m thinking, maybe I should get one. So I asked him . . . asked him . . .”
“What? The name of his tattooist?”
“No . . . not really. I asked him how much it hurt.”
Chapter 24
Your Show
“I’ll need a place to live.”
“Of course, Chris. Anywhere you want. You like to party, there’s Lincoln Park, or Wrigleyville. Want somewhere quieter, there’s—”
“Here,” I said. “Close. Not too close. Walking distance.”
“Done.”
“You’ll sort it?”
“I’ll put the office on it. That girl—woman—” He flapped a hand over his head. “You know her.”
“Farthing.”
“Yeah, yeah. She’s based here somewhere. Does classes, I think she said.”
“She’s doing her doctorate. University of Chicago.”
“Really, Chris?”
His brow puckered.
; “University’s that way,” I said.
“Yes, I know, but . . .” and then he grinned, levelled a finger at me. “Field Ops, right?”
“What?”
“ ‘Get to know the place, get to know the people.’ You taught me that, Chris, years ago. I’ve never forgotten.”
Pity you don’t use it, then, I thought.
We were moving back towards the car now. On the landward side, the Beach House walls were thick with ivy, leaves trembling in the rain. I caught a pleasant, almost woodland smell; nothing to suggest the kind of high-tech program going on inside. It struck me that they’d picked the place for just that reason: charming, picturesque, unthreatening—the Registry’s new public image.
“Your show,” Shailer was saying. “You call the shots. We’ll do it right for once, OK?”
He watched me sideways, gauging how I took his flattery.
“There’s a manager, for day to day. He’ll do the boring stuff, keep all that out of your way. You’re there for the things that matter.”
“Such as?”
“That, Chris, that’s up to you. Anything you think’s important.”
He offered me an earnest look. The raindrops glittered in his hair, the halo of some spurious professional saint.
“Anything.”
“Anything, Chris. Anything at all.”
“Because I’m going to say this once. My involvement here is provisional. If I find out things are different from the way you’ve said, or there’s something I want fixed, and it’s not done—I’m gone. Understand?”
“Totally, Chris. One hundred percent.”
He took my hand, folding his own around it, squeezing with a gentle, constant pressure.
“We’re in this thing together, you and me. We stand or fall by what’s about to happen here. I trust you, Chris . . .”
The chauffeur swung the car door wide. Shailer kept hold of my hand.
“Remember what I told you? I don’t forget my friends. And this time round, I’m going to prove it, too.”
We drove back the way we’d come. There was a great restaurant he said he’d take me to, but I pleaded jet lag and bowed out. That probably annoyed him, though he hid it well, sucking a breath and nodding, magnanimously. “It’s the life we live, Chris.” He handed me a folder full of graphs and tables, lists of sponsors, timelines and projected outcomes. I put it on the seat beside me.
“You’ll want a week back home,” he said. “Wind up your business there, get things settled, yeah?”
I said I would.
“Two weeks,” he said. “Oh—and get yourself a good suit. Something classic. Something English, hey? That’s the image that we’ll push for you. Saville Row. Don’t fret about expense - charge the department. My department—not, you know, Field Ops.” He winked at me. “I’m in L.A., next week, spreading the word. Two or three years, and we’ll be everywhere, Chris. L.A., San Diego, Seattle—I forget where next. Vegas, maybe. But I’m always here for you. Anything you need, just call. Or call my secretary. Sometimes that’s quicker.”
“I will. Don’t worry.”
“And—Chris. I want you to consider this. It doesn’t have to be a temporary thing. What’s happening here, what we’re doing, it’s the start. We’re going to need people. Field Ops . . . it’s all right. Fine when you’re young, maybe, but you get older, want a bit more out of life . . . You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?”
“Everyone’s making me offers. I’ve never been so popular.”
“You’ll meet people, Chris. Necessary people. Take the time, get friendly, huh? Socialize a bit, make contacts. A word to the wise . . .”
I slumped down on my hotel bed and kicked off my shoes. Perhaps I was jet-lagged, or sick, or I’d developed some appalling allergy to Adam Shailer, and I’d have to avoid him the way other people avoid nuts or seafood. I felt wrung out, empty, worn down to a nub. My head was buzzing. The TV nagged and pecked at me until I switched it off. I couldn’t concentrate enough to read. For twenty minutes, I just sat and watched the shadows creeping up the buildings opposite my window, the whole town sinking into gloomy anesthesia: a numb tide drifting up to still the bustle of the day.
I made myself go out. It was a chore, it was a struggle. I had beer and pizza in a busy restaurant, then roamed the streets, slowly realizing that, unless you’re going to see a show, the Loop is not the place to visit after business hours. Big, half-empty roads, concrete mansions piled up over shop fronts and marquees . . . I stared into the window of the Disney Store, thinking, I don’t know these characters, and somehow, in my brain-dead state, this seemed to matter; a measure of how far I’d drifted from normality, how out of touch I was with everybody else’s frame of reference.
Field Ops. Bloody Field Ops.
Fine when you’re young, Shailer’d said.
Or Dayling, years before: you can’t do this forever, can you?
But people did, of course. They hung on for their pension—even carved out a nice little life for themselves, a few of them. My old mentor Fredericks had a wife, a house, a family. But he was careful with the jobs he took, had been for years. Others hadn’t been so smart, or so lucky. You could try a sideways move, as I’d done in the past. Or leave. But the job didn’t exactly qualify you for much else, and whatever you did, you’d be starting at the bottom, all over again . . .
Or you could go and work for Shailer.
I went back to my room. I hit the minibar. A couple of Bushmills, a halfway decent Scotch . . . I picked my phone up, found her number, looked at it a while. Then I hit CALL.
I was expecting voice mail. Maybe even hoping for it. But she picked up straightaway, and I blew my opening line, stumbling and stuttering like a teenager.
“Just, you know, wanted you to know that I’m in town . . .” I said.
“Yeah. I kind of knew that anyway.”
Her voice was different from the way that I remembered it: that same honey-and-smoke sound, yes, but in my mind, she’d lost the accent, and the intonation . . . memory had softened her, Anglicized her, almost.
She said, “Who d’you think booked your hotel room for you, smart guy?” and she laughed, and I laughed too, and it seemed like a good start.
We didn’t talk for long. Just catching up, really: are you well, what are you doing, all that kind of thing. And then, I think by mutual consent, we cut things short; there would be time enough to deal with all the tricky stuff, and I for one had no idea how I was going to handle that.
I slept for maybe three, four hours, and after that stared at the ceiling for a long, long time. By morning, I’d had two new texts, neither what you’d call exactly feel-good.
The god is going to eat u up, said one. Eat u up and shit u out.
I had a mild hangover, like a lead weight, pushing at the inside of my forehead.
The second said, So what do u think of that?
Chapter 25
Steam and Dream
It was spring in London, or what passed for it: gray skies from which an endless smoky rain came dribbling, and the bars and cafés smelled of wet coats, an odor which for me will always remain somehow essentially English; so much so, that when I catch a whiff of it abroad, it can fill me with nostalgia—my English madeleine.
What I felt now, though, was a kind of premonitory nostalgia, and a need to reconnect with old friends. Not knowing when I’d get another chance. I’ve done a lot of traveling in the course of my job—indeed, sometimes it seems that I’ve done nothing else—but they were short trips, in the main, a week or two, a month at most; the majority no more than a few days. Now I’d be gone—how long? Months. Five months, six months . . . and the hint that Shailer had held out, the promise: first this site, then the next, and then another. On and on. This was a prospect I had tried and failed repeatedly t
o get into my head, or form any kind of rational opinion of. It was too alien to my life; too much of a jump. I made arrangements for someone to look after my flat. If things went on too long, I’d sublet it. I didn’t really have a clear plan, for now or later.
So I called Fredericks, wanting to say hi, maybe wanting some advice. But Fredericks was already busy. He sounded breathless and excited.
“Something happening here, Chris. Might interest you.”
“Like what?”
“You need to see. How soon can you get to Paddington?”
I’d been planning to suggest a quiet drink somewhere, but now I said, “Half an hour?” and I went.
Is a railway station an emotive place? So many comings and goings, meetings and partings, fears and expectations—feelings in plenty, I suppose, though the dead eyes of commuters on a Monday morning tend to suggest otherwise.
Paddington’s one of the great Victorian stations, a huge iron shed, crude yet ingenious, like an enormous blunderbuss for firing trains out of. It’s a terminal station. The lines stop and there’s a concourse. It was packed with travelers. But while some of them were hurrying to get somewhere, a lot were simply standing, staring up into the great, enclosed space. I had no idea what they were looking for.
Fredericks met me. He was all tooled up: pack on his back, shades, leather gloves. He’d been my mentor in the early days, a scrupulous, methodical creature who liked everything just so and scorned all talk of feel or instinct. In his sixties, he still wore earrings and a biker jacket, was still working the field. He said, “Police won’t move ’em,” gesturing with his large, bulbous nose. “Going to be a problem.”
“Hm?” I was still craning up, looking for whatever was exciting everybody else.
“Got an inspector over to ‘assess the situation.’ They’re meant to send another, soon. It’s a palaver. No immediate danger to persons or property, see? Therefore, no police. They say they might do crowd control at rush hour, given the number of dozy nellies standing round, blocking the gangway.”
“Look. I didn’t really get a briefing about this . . .”
“Watch.”
