Deadly Waters

by Theodore Judson

“I was in the real army,” said Method, looking out the window at the desert.

  “I see,” said Taylor and forced himself to chuckle. “Yes, I’m sure the old veterans aren’t much impressed with the Army Reserves. Ha ha.”

  Method made no response.

  “So,” said Taylor, what do your friends call you? Michael? Mike? You can call me John.”

  “We’re both civilians now,” said Method, “so you don’t need to call me ‘sir” or ‘colonel.’ Method will do. Never bother me with that first name crap again.”

  Taylor did not know how to react to this. Thankfully Mondragon interrupted the conversation. “Be nice, Method. John is our Russian expert.”

  “How long have you been studying Russian?” asked the colonel.

  “I speak a little,” said Taylor, stunned that Mondragon called him an expert. “I’m sort of an amateur Russian actor, you might say.”

  The ex-military man did not seem to care much for actors. He showed his teeth to Taylor, and John decided the colonel was not smiling.

  “He acts to learn,” interjected Mondragon. “A soldier plays war games to get better at war; a student of languages acts to perfect his skills.”

  *

  The colonel showed deference to Mondragon, if not to Taylor. John concluded that the ex-military man did not know how to act friendly toward others, thus he behaved with indifference toward him. The four of them got on well enough during the rest of the day’s long drive toward the Rockies. They had lunch in a little town named Ely, where there was an authentic Mexican restaurant, and Mondragon presided over their table, telling amusing stories about his ex-wives and girlfriends. Jack wished he had gone on road trips like this one before, instead of working day after day at the office.

  “I never had a chance to go through these little towns,” mused Taylor to the others.

  “You always worked,” said Mondragon. “When did you last have a vacation?”

  We were fighting off the Benton takeover here this last year, thought Taylor. “Let’s see... 1979? Right after my son was born.”

  “Did you ever have a vacation?” Mondragon asked Harris.

  “Dad’s business always required us to work sixty hour weeks,” said Eddie. “At my aviation company we had to fill—”

  “I think the answer is no,” said Mondragon. “Do you ever take vacations, Colonel?”

  “My work was like a vacation every day,” said Method. The man’s delivery of his words made it impossible to tell whether he was serious or not.

  “We’ll each have lots of vacation time soon,” said Mondragon. “You might enjoy some real time off, Colonel.”

  The night had come by the time they reached Grand Junction in Colorado, twenty-six miles east of the Utah border. Taylor would have gone back to sleep during the trip, had he been able to relax while Colonel Method was a few feet from him. John insisted on his own room at the motel that night, lest Mondragon decide he should spend the night in the same room as the strange man with leather skin.

  In the morning the four of them had a light breakfast, bought temporary fishing permits at a filling station, and drove to a spot west of the city, where a guide and a large inflated raft awaited them. The Colorado River had fallen to seasonal lows in November. The water was unbelievably cold, colder than John Taylor thought water could get without freezing. On that stretch of river the current gradually narrowed into the tight sandstone canyons common on the Utah side of the border. Only inside the Grand Valley in Colorado was the flood plain wide and overgrown with cottonwood trees that made elongated forests among the millions of acres of sagebrush desert.

  Taylor knew nothing of freshwater fishing and was surprised the fish were biting in such cold conditions. Ed Harris snagged a lovely two-pound rainbow trout on his second cast. After Mondragon showed Taylor the basics of putting out a line, even John brought in a brown, several rainbows, and a silvery fish with a high dorsal fin Mondragon identified as a grayling. Mondragon, as Taylor would have expected, knew everything about the river.

  “The upper Colorado rises east and north of here,” he told the group on the raft. “The largest dam on the upper drainage area is on the Gunnison tributary east of Montrose, Colorado. That forms the Blue Mesa Reservoir. West of here, in central Utah, the Green River flows into the Colorado, making it a real river. At its highest level in the spring, the river is never more than, oh, about one sixth the flow of the Mississippi. Size doesn’t keep it from being the river in the southwest. The three big dams on the upper Green’s drainage are the Strawberry in Utah, the Fontenelle in southwest Wyoming, and the biggest of the three, the Flaming Gorge Dam in the old Brown’s Hole region of northeast Utah, north of Vernal. Did you know, Jack, the term ‘Hole,’ as in Brown’s Hole, Jackson Hole, Hole in the Wall, is an old western term for an outlaws’ hideout?”

  Taylor did not know that.

  “Back to the river,” Mondragon continued, “every town, every city in this part of America depends on this river. I don’t mean just the irrigation and the drinking water the communities take from the Colorado; I mean every city from here down to Las Vegas and LA needs the electricity this river produces to keep going. If anything should happen to this river, the whole region would suffer an economic collapse. The whole country would be pulled into a depression.”

  “Is it going to run away?” said John. Taylor had meant his remark to be mildly ironic, and was baffled when everyone on the raft but himself and the guide laughed aloud at his small jest.

  “A comic actor,” said Colonel Method, and slapped Taylor on the back as though the two of them were old pals.

  By early afternoon they had floated to a place on the river called Rabbit Valley. There they had to leave the raft or else enter Utah, a state in which they had no licenses to fish.

  The outfitting company had a vehicle awaiting the party there and drove the four of them back to the point on the Colorado where they had started in the morning. All four men had enjoyed good luck on the water that day and were in good spirits as they rode in the SUV back to Grand Junction and their evening meal. Taylor noted that Colonel Method seemed to be in an almost jovial mood, or perhaps it was merely that he had not brought a gun on the fishing expedition, and thus appeared less threatening than he had the day before.

  “It’s early still,” said Mondragon upon reaching the motel. “Only three o’clock. Why don’t you and the Colonel stay here, Ed. I want to take John up top of the Grand Mesa. There’s something I want to show him.”

  “Can’t we do it later,” said Taylor. “I’m freezing.”

  “This one time, my friend,” said Mondragon, very nearly pleading. “I’ll turn up the heat. We’ll be back here within the hour. I promise. You don’t want to miss this. We’ll meet you two in the lounge,” he said to Ed and Method. “We won’t be long.”

  Taylor and Mondragon drove south of Grand Junction on Highway 50. Rather than drive all the way atop the high Grand Mesa to the Colorado Monument, Mondragon turned onto a dirt road that ran parallel to the river and drove west until the trail took them to higher ground about half way up the side of the mesa. From there the two middle aged men could see north to Douglas Pass and a long course of the Colorado from its descent out of the White River National Forest in the east to its entry into the burnt orange canyon lands to the west. Mondragon gave Taylor his binoculars so he could view the entire panorama.

  “I need to ask you something,” said Erin , getting out of the vehicle. He led Taylor to a fallen tree some two hundred feet from the road and asked the other man to sit beside him. “I have to ask you to be quiet for the next five minutes,” he put his hand on Taylor’s forearm. “Don’t say anything until I’ve finished.”

  In the next few moments he said things Taylor could not believe he was hearing. But for the strong grip Mondragon kept on his arm, Jack Taylor would have bolted away from his college chum long before Mondragon had completed his speech.

  “This is insane!” said Taylor at on
e juncture. Mondragon kept on speaking.

  Taylor sensed the clouds moving overhead and saw the birds, and he thought that these details could not be real, that this was a dream brought on by too much drinking. Maybe, if God were kind, he would awake in his own bed back in San Francisco and never have to worry about this again. When Erin fell silent and let go of his arm, Taylor ran a few steps away from him in the direction of the parked SUV.

  “No! No! No!” John pointed with his index finger at the ground each time he said it. “I will have nothing to do with this!”

  Mondragon did not respond. He followed his disgruntled friend up the slope at a leisurely pace, stopping twice to turn and look at the river through his binoculars. “This would be the most humane--or perhaps, I should say--the most human course of action,” he told Taylor. “We would be giving the nation a dose of reality, at what is really a very low price.”

  “No!” exhaled Taylor, panting hard from the climb. “Get me out of here! Do you know how many people will die? No, I don’t want to discuss it. This has to be a joke. Tell me this is a joke.”

  Mondragon drove them off the slope and back to the highway. As they approached the ragged outer reaches of Grand Junction, Taylor’s outbursts fell to a lower volume, not because he was less outraged but because his anger had exhausted him. “I should go straight to the police,” he said.

  “You do what you have to do,” said Erin. “I should tell you now, they won’t believe you.”

  “How could you get involved in anything like this, Erin?”

  “Revenge,” said Mondragon.

  “For what?”

  “For everything they did to me, to Al Harris, to you, to everybody that has been ground under or left out,” said Mondragon. “Look, Jack, when the Darrin Bentons are running the world, what could we do that would be morally wrong? Have you read a newspaper lately? Kids are killing kids. The adults running this country are better armed and no less wrongheaded.”

  “By modern standards, maybe you’re right to be so angry at this county,” said Taylor. “Not by what I have in my heart. My dad fought for this country, for Christ sake. My uncle Pat is buried over in France. Why do you think I want to destroy America?”

  “If that’s the way you feel,” said Mondragon, “then I’m sorry I breached the subject with you.”

  They merged with the four lanes of traffic as they entered the outskirts of town. Taylor happened to look out the passenger window at the same time as a beat-up Subaru hatchback pulled even with the SUV. In the driver’s seat of the little car was a young man in dreadlocks who had metal objects hanging from his pierced ears and nostrils. He noticed Taylor staring at him and in response stuck out his tongue at the older man, revealing yet another piece of metal, this one a silver stud that had a five pointed star made of turquoise on its exposed end. A young woman in the driver’s seat laughed at her friend’s actions and gave Taylor a universally recognized gesture with her middle finger as she and her companion sped past Erin’s oversized vehicle.

  “Most of those old Japanese beaters have two cycle engines,” said Mondragon. “Add oil every couple thousand miles, and the damn things run forever. That’s why the counterculture types love Subarus from the Seventies--no money needed for maintenance.”

  Taylor’s heart, the heart carrying the code that told him right and wrong, sank when he looked at the young couple. Their thoughtless, vulgar response to him had greater effect than the hundreds of words that Mondragon had used to seduce him.

  “My son,” whispered Taylor.

  “What’s that?” said Mondragon.

  “That kid looked like my son,” said Taylor. “Not in his natural features; Jerry is much tall, thinner. I mean to say this one has the same things in his head my boy does. He treats me the same way, too.”

  John Taylor paused. He would later reflect that Mondragon had waited for him to speak again, showing that Erin must have been confident of what Taylor would say next.

  “Contempt,” he said, letting it hang in air between them. “Contempt,” he repeated a second later, “that’s everything he feels for me, for the company, for my lifetime of work.”

  He looked straight ahead at the road while he spoke.

  “And my role?” he asked, wishing he were somewhere else and so drunk he could not remember he knew Erin Mondragon, or that he had a son. “I won’t kill anyone; I’ll tell you that at the beginning.”

  “No, of course not,” said Mondragon. He nearly patted Taylor on the shoulder. He thought better of it at the last moment and drew back his hand. “The operation will be nothing like that. You’ll see. Everyone will be given ample warning. No one will get hurt. You’ll be doing some Russian acting. Just like in the plays.”

  “This Russian I will pretend to be...?” said Taylor.

  “Vladimir Petrovski,” said Mondragon. “A very bad fellow. Former spy. He betrayed his own people. Lives in America now, back east somewhere. Not that it matters. This means everything to me, Jack. Having you with us, I mean.”

  That evening at dinner Mondragon was in a giddy mood and uncharacteristically drank too much wine. “John’s with us all the way!” he told Ed Harris and Colonel Method and clapped his hands together as though applauding himself. “Everything is falling into place.”

  XIII

  11/12/06 17:28 EST

  The real Vladimir Petrovski was in Camden, New Jersey, speaking on the phone to his literary agent, Stanley Reese. “But Meeester Reeessss,” Mr. Petrovski was exclaiming , “why don’t they want thees book?”

  “I’m sorry, Ivan,” said Stanley Reese into his cell phone.

  “Vladimir,” Petrovski corrected him.

  “Waldomeer,” said Reese, “they loved your first book. The Code of the Spies, wasn’t it? That was the Eighties. The Cold War was big then. Where is it now? Nobody talks about it anymore.”

  “The Cold War is over,” said Petrovski, surprised that Reese had not heard the news.

  “You see,” said Reese. “My point exactly. Even you admit it. The Cold War is so over, babushka.”

  “Did you call me a grandmother?” asked Petrovski, scratching the salt and pepper beard he thought made him look more American, because it made him resemble the late Jerry Garcia.

  “Babushka—bashmushka,” said Reese. “I thought it meant ‘friend.’”

  “I was on Letterman,” protested Petrovski.

  “When did that happen?” asked Reese. “I missed that. Was this in the Eighties, too?”

  “Dave said I was vanderfool. I told my Kruschev story. You know the one: Stalin is dying and he has Kruschev visit his bedside. Stalin asks him: ‘Who is buried in Lenin’s tomb?’”

  “I’m sure this goes somewhere, Waldo,” interrupted Reese. “Russian stories are always funny. Look at Tim Allen—”

  “Tim Allen?” said Petrovski.

  “He’s Russian, or maybe French. He’s from Michigan, close to Canada. Lots of Russians up there. My point is, Dave was being kind. You’re not as funny as most Russians, Waldo. That’s why the publishers don’t want fiction from you.”

  “I’m writing a new book, very nonfictional,” said Vladimir, “about Alger Hiss. I have evidence straight from secret files.”

  “That’ll put the readers on pins and needles. What is that? Ancient history? You going to write another book about who really killed Caesar? Wait, is there anything in those files of yours about Princess Di?”

  “We did not take surveillance of her and the degenerate crowd of lumpen aristocrats about her,” said Petrovski. “I do haf information on the attempt to kill the Pope.”

  “That’ll maybe get some nuns worked up,” said Reese, “and nuns buy Bibles; they don’t buy regular books. You need to do something more contemporary. Make it domestic; that means in the US.”

  “Did you read my book?” asked Petrovski.

  “Saw the movie and bought the t-shirt.”

  “I vas headlines in New York Times twenty-six years ago upon my de
fection,” said Petrovski. “I was on cover of Time. My book is bestseller for twenty-four weeks. Today, Vladimir Petrovski, former European director of KGB, is living in cold vater flat in New Jersey. He is seventy-eight years old and has no pension.”

  “Couldn’t your old country pay you a pension?”

  Petrovski held the phone at arm’s length and wondered if Reese could have said that.

  “My country no longer exeests,” he informed Reese.

  “Sorry to hear that,” said Reese. “I’d love to help you, Waldo, but you’ve got to give me product. I can move product. No product; I can’t move it.”

  “Product?” repeated Vladimir.

  “Make something up,” suggested Reese. “You know why the Nazis have had legs and you guys don’t?”

  “Hitler vas more outrageous character?”

  “No,” answered Reese, “because writers have been able to put Nazis in the modern world. I mean: The Boys from Brazil,, The Man in the High Tower, Fatherland, all those Len Deighton novels Michael Caine made into movies. People don't believe the Nazis ever went away. You need to give the Commies the same treatment. Make up some conspiracies, things that the last Commie hangers-on have got planned for America.”

  “That would be... lying,” said Vladimir.

  “Who’s going to fact check this?” asked Reese. “Your country doesn’t exist anymore. You said so yourself. Let your imagination run wild. Gotta go now, ciao.”

  “Ciao?” said Vladimir, putting down his phone.

  He looked about his two-room apartment, at the dingy sofa in his living room/kitchen, at the newspapers scattered across the floor, at the sink full of dirty dishes and the torn curtains over the sink, and he wondered why he had ever left his cozy dacha in the Sparrow Mountains.

  “Oh yes,” he remembered, “they were going to shoot me.”

  XIV

  1/3/07 08:20 EST

  Margaret Smythe of the DoD and Ronald Goodman--both recently moved to the posts of consultants inside the NSA--were having a hard time being in front of Senator Hasket’s committee. Congress was not in session that soon after the New Year, and only the Senator himself and a couple of his senior aides were present at the hearing, and they sincerely wished they were somewhere else. Senator Hasket was not merely his usual cranky self that morning; he, out of perhaps the entire galaxy of committee chairmen, read nearly everything presented to him, including the fantastic report on possible domestic terrorist acts Smythe and Goodman had prepared.