by Neil Gordon
There was never a question asked. When the police arrived, from nowhere in her mind came the next step, as if then, like now, her plan had been made somewhere in the covert reaches of the soul. She told them that Pauly had been HIV-positive. That satisfied them, as she knew it would: the fag had killed himself, and there was no autopsy and no question. Pauly had killed himself because he was gay, nice and neat, and his body had been taken and buried without ever a soul asking to match a bullet to the gun or checking the thumbprint on the trigger with the impossible angle at which he would have had to fire. It satisfied her father, too: Pauly had killed himself because he was gay, and he was sick, and that was why he had said all those crazy things also.
But Pauly never would have killed himself. Pauly, handsome and brilliant, so alive, would never have killed himself, not if he’d had HIV, not if he had been forced to go into the army. He’d have died with grace had he been sick; he’d have excelled—as strong, skillful, and intelligent as the best Israeli soldier—in the army.
Besides Allison, only her mother, come from California for the funeral, had understood. Without knowing any of the details, she had still understood what Allison was determined to keep her father ever from knowing. Only her mother had understood who had killed her son, and why, and after the funeral Allison had driven her, day after day, to the cliffs at Gay Head to stand on the place where he’d shot himself and dropped into the sea while her mother, her rich, elegant, glamorous mother wept and wept into her diamond-ringed fingers.
And as for Allison, those days, standing next to her sobbing mother, slowly she felt the gray mist of memory rise and surround what she had done, pulling it into that mythological place where we tell stories about the things we cannot explain, where we come from, why we die. So much so that when she came to write about Pauly in a poem she described the incest that she thought had happened and a symbolic suicide that she knew had not and turned what she had done into a poetic myth just as her father turned what he had done into a political one. And that, too, she stored in the place where we half forget the stories we cannot bear to remember and hide what we cannot bear to know, the promises we have broken, the creatures we have killed, the people we have betrayed and, for some of us, the way we make our money. For Alley, the place where she kept the things she did for that man she had never wanted to love and could not bear to lose.
Now she saw it again, Pauly facedown on the empty beach, a sky of smoky clouds, the red clay cliffs.
She saw Ocean View, a lone house against the snow-swept beach, the green Atlantic raging beyond it.
She saw the face of the girl at Angelina’s with her father.
And suddenly, in the same visual detail, she saw, at last, the dead.
Bodies subjected to the force of cluster bombs, land mines, bullets. Bodies broken in mud, severed limbs, gaping holes in T-shirted chests, faces resting, cheek down, on pillows of blood and dirt. She saw bodies sprawled like Pauly on the beach, covering the surface of the earth with their unnegotiable departures: every jungle, every desert, every corner of the vast breadbasket and marketplace into which people like her father divided the world for their use and their profit, the millions of dead that traced the track of her father’s career.
Killed people, ruined people, wasted people. Children with ponytails and rosebud mouths, perfect beauty marks on their cheeks. Fathers with balding heads and graying beards, staring the worry of love at their babies; babies with lips wet around the nipple of a bottle of milk.
And at last, the huge shame finished the gestation that had so long measured her growth, finished its gestation and burst out in her chest, like an incubus, like a monster. And she cried not for Pauly, not for her father, but at last for herself, deep sobs that shook her body on the bed, weeping, whispering into the dark of the room: “Daddy. Daddy. How could we do that? How could we do that to him?”
EPILOGUE
What did I know, what did I know
Of love’s lonely and austere offices?
ROBERT HAYDEN
“Those Winter Sundays”
EPILOGUE
January 1995.
Fiesole.
1.
Throughout the night she had held me in the focus of those green eyes, as if more than anything that had happened, it mattered that I understand her.
Now, for the first time, that gaze fell away onto the carpet, and her face, which had been bathed in a pool of lamplight all night, fell into shadow.
I watched her for a long time, as if unwilling to accept that she was done. My heart was skipping beats on the waves of nicotine I had pumped into my blood during the night, and I rose and opened the window to find some fresh air for my aching lungs. Outside, some of those odd winter birds were trying to sing in the glacial still of the air. A thin light was up on my winter-parched lawn.
I never much knew my father, a sad man, I gather, who died under the blacklist when I was very small. My mother, I believe, is dead, and as for my only sibling, a sister, when, during the night, Rosenthal’s daughter mentioned her incidentally, and without knowing what she had said—you who like mysteries, I will let you figure it out—it was the second time I had thought of her in many years. I knew them all too little to understand this strange, nonnegotiable love that people seem to feel for even the worst families; and that of which I have no experience, I do not like to judge. I will say this, though: in that distasteful choice between abandoning moral principle for love and abandoning love for principle, I tend to find the former slightly less bizarre.
I knew I could not indulge my thoughts too long, and so when my heart had slowed, I turned and crossed back to the girl, still staring down at the carpet. I crouched before her and turned out the lamp, which let me see her face. She did not turn away, although I was very close. That may have been because she did not notice me, so lost was her expression, so desolate; it may also have been because she was past caring.
I said many things to her, then, crouching before her absent gaze, my face inches from hers. I told her that most people go through their entire lives without living an eighth as much as she had, at twenty-seven. I told her that most people never come close to knowing what she knew, about love, about people, about themselves. I told her that life is horrible, not just for her, but for everyone—rich or poor, beautiful or ugly—life is horrible, and the more thoroughly, the more honestly we live it, the more horrible it is. The real aristocracy, I told her, is not the rich or the famous, but those who are brave enough to live life openly, honestly, in all its unspeakable horror. These, whether they are criminals or saints, are the only ones who have a chance of being free. I told her that she was an extraordinary person, of singular courage and amazing originality, and that for all she had suffered, one day she would find that it had made her into that rare thing, an adult. And I told her that here, in my little world, she may always be in danger, but she would always be among peers, and she would always be free.
She was, apparently, listening. For when I had finished she nodded, and drew a huge breath into her chest. Then, again, she focused her green eyes on me and said simply, “If you still want me to, I’d like to work for you, Chevejon.”
It was a strange job interview.
Still, I did not think her story quite done.
2.
Over the next few months Rosenthal’s daughter shuttled between the epicenters of our little operation. Working mostly with Natalie—they quickly established a friendship that I thought must resemble that between Rosenthal’s daughter and her friend Martha—she set up her corporations and offices, not where I had requested but in Paris, Vienna, Zurich, and Prague, anticipating thereby an eastern European source for our product, which in the event turned out to be quite right.
My business partner, meanwhile, working with his younger brother, arranged transportation. As always, container ship was his method of choice, but he had of late purchased several sailing yachts, and they had proven surprisingly useful for smaller, very valuab
le cargoes, several of which we would be handling for this project. Finally, there has been a lot of press lately about the availability of post-Soviet submarines on the black market. Most attempts to sell them had ended up in sting operations revealing incompetent—even risible—Russian thugs as the sellers. Not so ours, which, of course, had not made the press.
That left one problem to solve, purchasing. And although it was a large one, I believed I had found rather a neat solution.
Besides, I could not have Rosenthal’s daughter wandering around like a little Natalie Rostov, pining for her Prince Andrei.
And so it was that Allison’s story did not end with that winter night in Fiesole, but some months later, in a Los Angeles spring.
3.
In early April, Nicky Dymitryck was sitting in his father’s living room, doing more or less nothing.
This was not an unusual activity for him, not since the furor over the Eastbrook resignation had died down. For some time he had been just about the most sought-after person in the media, as from Nightline to the New Yorker journalists sought to uncover the strange and circuitous roots of what had, by then, come to be universally known as “Ronaldgate.” So intense had grown the fever pitch of the media event—especially after first a U.S. attorney, then the White House counsel, and finally the attorney general himself all resigned—that after a few days of refusing all calls, Nicky had simply left, flying to Stan Diamond’s house in Aspen for the remainder of the winter.
And in the face of resolute silence from all of the principals, leading to the impossibility, for the media, of anything other than speculation, the furor slowly, finally, died down.
One more thing connected with Ronaldgate happened to Nicky.
When he returned from Aspen by commercial flight, early in January, he changed planes in San Francisco and, waiting for his connection in an airport café, found himself looking at a tall blond man, just off the red-eye from New York, drinking coffee thirstily. Slowly, Nicky recognized Dee Dennis, and Dee, apparently, Nicky, for they watched each other for several poisonous moments. Then, slowly, Dee rose, leaving money on the table for his unfinished coffee, and left the café. Nicky, in turn, after a moment in which he bitterly acknowledged that nothing had healed, left the café too.
And now it was April and still nothing had healed for Nicky Dymitryck, which was why he had not yet been back to work at the NAR and why, this day, he was sitting doing nothing in his father’s living room when the telephone rang.
It was a woman, speaking with a light German accent.
“Mr. Dymitryck? Good evening, sir. My name is Natalie Benami. You don’t know me, sir.”
He answered absently. “Yes, Ms. Benami.”
“Sir, I am in Los Angeles with some colleagues. We have a proposition we would like to discuss with you. Might you be free to join us here at your convenience?”
“What is the proposition, Ms. Benami?”
“May we tell you in person? We have no doubt whatsoever that it is something that will very much interest you to discuss.”
“I see. Well, Ms. Benami, I’m rather on hiatus from my work just now. So I’ll pass, if you don’t mind.”
The woman spoke hurriedly, before he could hang up. “Mr. Dymitryck, please don’t say that. I believe we have a great deal to discuss. We have friends in common.”
“Do we? Who?”
“I can only tell you in person, Mr. Dymitryck.”
At this, Nicky paused. Then, at last. “Where?”
“The Beverly Wilshire, sir. Please ask for me.”
“Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”
“Shall I send a car?”
“No thank you. I’ll be there at two.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Dymitryck. I wish you a very good day.”
4.
Nicky arrived at the hotel just before two, and was directed to a twelfth-floor suite by the concierge. The door was opened by a very large man in a very good suit, who looked at Nicky, then stood aside, but not before Nicky had noticed the bulge of a firearm under his suit jacket.
Inside, another huge man was standing respectfully at a distance, and seated on a sofa was a rather lanky man of perhaps forty, impeccably suited in black, with a gaunt face and widely set eyes, also black, under thick black hair. Standing was a blond woman in her mid-thirties, in well-pressed jeans, Gucci sandals, and a silk blouse that revealed, under its neck, what was clearly some very expensive jewelry. It was she who spoke, in a German accent, extending a hand.
“Mr. Dymitryck, it is an honor to meet you. May I present my husband? Luke, Nicholson Dymitryck. And my colleagues, Pietro and Gianlucca.”
The black-haired man rose slowly to shake Nicky’s hand under a piercing gaze. The other two men, clearly bodyguards, stood back and nodded respectfully. The woman kept talking, and as she talked she turned to open a closed door.
“Please come with me. Just so, gut. ” They were in a bedroom now, in which the bed had been removed and replaced with a table. And at the table, next to the curtained window, sat yet another enormous man, this one in a beige cotton suit, with a suntanned face and an air of great authority. The woman was approaching now, holding in her hands a plain bottle with a white label on which Nicky saw a penciled number.
“A present from my employer. We’re told you appreciate whiskey. And here, Mr. Dymitryck, is the man we’d like you to meet.”
It was, he had to admit, a very skillfully orchestrated seduction.
5.
The woman was speaking.
“May I present to you Commandante Tierce of the United Guatemalan Resistance? For your own protection, I will not name him further. Will you hear him out?”
At Nicky’s nod, the man began speaking in fluent, educated English.
“Señor Dymitryck, I have fought for two decades on behalf of the people of my country against the government your country installed in 1954, I do not need to tell you that. And I do not need to tell you that since—the Cold War over—your country has withdrawn its endless support for that government, we have been successful in forcing it to the negotiating table. A national reconciliation on the order of Argentina and South Africa is about to take place in my country: we are due to sit down in six months to begin the process of peace. You know all that.”
Nicky nodded. “I understand the military situation in Guatemala, Commandante.”
“Then you understand my position. The CIA has negotiated interdictions of my major lines of supply to put pressure on the upcoming negotiations with the government. It is the last American move of support for their longtime clients: to leave them in a strong position when the talks start. We have therefore no suppliers at the state level; my munitions are critically low, and without them I cannot go as an equal to the table. They are engineering a castration of my negotiating position, and if they succeed, my country will lose the reconciliation for which we have been fighting for years.”
The massive man stood, and as he did so, Nicky asked, instinctively, a reporter’s question.
“Where is the front?”
He hesitated only briefly. “The front lines have moved in to the city, señor. Our leaders are at preliminary negotiations.”
“Will you be at the table, Commandante?”
“No sir. I am a doctor. Guaranteeing the negotiating position of the Guatemalan people will be the last act of my military career.”
Standing, he awaited another question. But Nicky was silent, and at last, he concluded.
“Thank you for giving me a hearing.”
Then he was gone, followed by the bodyguards, and Nicky was alone with the couple.
In the small silence that followed, Nicky reached for the bottle of scotch, opened it, and drank from its neck. The man said something to the woman in German; she agreed. Then, at Nicky’s questioning glance, the woman explained.
“He said that our employer would not be happy to see his single-malt drunk that way. He is a great amateur of scotch.”
Nicky shrugged the comment off. “What is it you want from me?”
And now the woman leaned forward, talking earnestly. “Mr. Dymitryck, we intend to supply Tierce with what he needs to conduct his negotiations. We can undertake to paper anything through a corporate structure my colleague in Paris has developed. We do not believe there is the will to prosecute this in the States. In any case, we have a great deal of experience evading customs law. As for a covert CIA interdiction, forgive me, that is not a threat we take seriously.”
At her gesture, Nicky turned to see the man opening a suitcase. Inside he recognized night-vision glasses, a small submachine gun, a Czech antipersonnel mine, rounds of ammunition, and a handgun.
Nicky turned away. “For a profit.”
Undisturbed, the woman nodded. “We are businessmen, certainly. But I assure you, we choose our clientele wisely. We would not insult you with any other proposition. And, sir, I assure you, our expertise is unequaled.”
She was, Nicky found, hard to disbelieve. “Go on.”
“We know that money is not a consideration for you. But we ask you to consider whether or not it is time to put your knowledge, and your skill, in the service of what you cannot fail to recognize as the good fight.”
“I see.” Nicky rose now, and walked to the case of armaments, picking up the small plastic mine and holding it in the palm of his hand. It was no doubt from a post-Soviet stockpile, long common on the black market. This, the night-vision glasses, the assault weapon: he could buy them with a telephone call. As for the rest of what they would probably need—mortars, surface-to-air missiles, shoulder-launched antitank missiles—a few weeks in Europe would be a generous estimate. He turned back to the woman.
“Tell me, Ms. Benami. Who are your sources?”
She answered with a direct look. “Tziporah Rosen is our colleague in Europe, Mr. Dymitryck. She is the architect of our corporate framework, and handles any licensing issues. You know her as Allison Rosenthal.”
