Naisbitt sipped his scotch. “This one does,” he said.
Oates sighed. “Well, look,” he said, “I’ve known you a long time. I didn’t have you on here to start an argument with you. We’re both too old for that.”
“Oh,” Naisbitt said, “I don’t mind a good row now and then, if it’s in a worthy cause. Keeps the blood up.”
“Look,” Oates said, spreading his hands, “this’s probably over nothing anyway. Chances are what I’ve got left to ask you’ll be perfectly acceptable to you, and there isn’t a problem at all.”
“Easily determined,” Naisbitt said. “What do you plan to ask me?”
Oates put his head back and laughed. “Oh, Neville, Neville,” he said, “I remember Dad, how Dad would come home after he’d spent an evening drinking and arguing with you, and.…”
“We seldom disagreed,” Naisbitt said. “Your father and I almost never disagreed. We often became choleric discussing someone else, with whom we disagreed, but I can’t think of three occasions, other than when you and he were not on good terms, when we failed to see eye to eye.”
“Well,” Oates said, “all right: discussing someone else. But you get my meaning. Dad would say: ‘Neville Naisbitt’s the bloodiest-minded man on earth.’ And now I know what he meant.”
“Carl’s memory is precious to me,” Naisbitt said, “but invoking it as you are doing doesn’t palliate my concern about your intended line of inquiry. If, as you suggest, the questions will not trouble me to answer, then it can’t do any harm to tell me now what those questions are.”
Oates shook his head. He took another drink of scotch. “I don’t do that,” he said. “I’ve been at this racket quite a while now, and I learned a long time ago that the fighter doesn’t leave his fight in the gym. The interviewer doesn’t rehearse his guest. You do that and all the spontaneity, all the readiness of wit, all the freshness of anecdote: all of that is lost. And the viewers can tell. They can tell when you’ve canned it before you served it, and all over the city, all over the country, you can hear those channel zappers flipping somewhere else.” He picked up the glass and took a gulp, finishing the contents. He put it on the tray and gestured toward Naisbitt’s drink. “Better sink that one, dear Neville, if you would. We’ll get rolling here, and see where we’re going, and maybe we can get you out of here at a relatively decent hour for your visit with the Walkers.”
Naisbitt gestured toward his drink. “You can go ahead and take it away,” he said. “I think I’ve had enough to hold me.” He folded his hands at his waist.
“Okay, as you wish,” Oates said. “People,” he said loudly, “going back to work now. Everybody set to go.”
The camera operators reappeared from the shadows and returned to their machines. Fisher climbed up onto the platform and removed the tray and whisky glasses, putting them on the floor in front of the platform. The monitors came on with the spectrum again. The digital clocks read 21:41:10:04 when she said: “And: ready. Tape is rolling.”
“This ‘impedimenta,’ ” Oates said. “All the baggage. All the people. Not only must the logistics of transport be formidable — so must the expense. Who pays the bills?”
Naisbitt exhaled deeply. He picked up his cane from the floor beside him and placed it on his lap. He glared at Oates with his jaw clenched.
Oates laughed delightedly. “Okay, Neville,” he said, “let’s try it another way. Would it be fair to say that the principal source of funds for the Ipswich Ensemble for most of its life has been the American Central Intelligence Agency, and its predecessors? That all of your gallivantings’ve been mostly for the purpose of maintaining an intelligence network against radical organizations, here and around the world? That the reason you’ve been such a frequent visitor to our colleges and universities, or were in the Sixties and Seventies, was that you were pre-empting and co-opting student radicals?”
“Tom,” Naisbitt said, leaning forward, “it would be fair to say that history is a pattern of repetition. Every generation has sacrificed its children. And every generation has strived to sacrifice its parents, or at least what they believe. If we are, in fact, all outlaws, it has been of necessity. The Ensemble was our modest initiative toward changing that pattern. An effort to preserve international concord by acquainting the young early with the realities and people of friendly nations, and their goals as well. And when we have succeeded, when the friendships made have endured, our hopes for mutual assistance have, yes, been realized.”
Oates laughed. “And yet, and yet,” he said, “all this time, haven’t you been aware? That you were collaborating in an enterprise strictly forbidden by American law? Didn’t it, wasn’t it the purest chance, lucky coincidence, someone’s careless oversight to probe a little deeper, that accounts for the fact that the Ensemble wasn’t publicly named among the CIA-funded fronts divulged in Sixty-seven? Haven’t you been, in fact, outlaws? For the CIA?”
Naisbitt cleared his throat. He gazed at Oates. “I repeat: If we have been outlaws, it was of necessity.”
Oates laughed again, incredulously. “That’s Marx,” he said. “That’s Marx. ‘Ends justify the means’: Isn’t that what it is? Didn’t one of your American alumni, young man named Sam Tibbetts, didn’t he die under very suspicious circumstances in a London jail last year? Don’t you have to answer such questions, at least to yourself, and your conscience?”
Naisbitt studied the rug. He looked up at Oates, who was still smiling. “It would be fair to say, Tom, that I have much to answer for in this life. And one of the greatest blunders I ever committed,” he said, pausing as Oates leaned forward eagerly, his eyes shining, “was the night in San Francisco when your dear late father called you a fucking jellyfish only with a smaller brain, and no ethics at all.”
Oates’s eyes opened wide. Naisbitt detached the microphone clip from his tie, draped its cord over the arm of his chair, stood with difficulty and marched between the camera and Oates toward the stairs leading off the platform. When he passed Oates’s chair, without looking down he said: “Whelp.”
45
Gerald Ward sipped his port. He piled Stilton cheese deliberately on a small round slice of light rye bread and put it in his mouth. He drank from his demitasse. He folded his hands at his waist. He regarded Fiona Cangelosi. “Ms. Cangelosi,” he said, “you deserve your reputation.”
“My ‘reputation,’ ” she said. “And just what might that be? And: where?”
“For being formidable,” Ward said. “And: in the halls of Congress.”
“The only times I’ve ever visited Congress,” she said, “were when I was a little girl, and my parents brought me there, and then when I first came to Washington to work for the Bureau. And I went there on my own, one day of my vacation, because I didn’t remember much about my first visit, and I thought I should.
“As for the ‘formidable,’ ” she said, “I’ll take that as flattery. I don’t know how much you know about legats, Congressman, but when I was selected as one, and sent to London, I was very proud.”
“I know quite a bit about legats,” Ward said. “That was my allusion to your fame — both individual and corporate — in the halls of Congress. We, I, at least, would have enjoyed the opportunity to learn even more than we already know about such distinguished employees of the Bureau as yourself. We would have admired the opportunity to benefit from your particular instruction last summer, for example. You would have been most welcome. But for some reason or other, you were unable to come.”
She smiled. “I believe,” she said, “I believe I was out of the country? At the time?”
“Way out,” Ward said, smiling back at her. “Malta, wasn’t it?”
“There’d been bombings,” she said. “There was an order to reduce personnel to only necessary staff. And there was one person who was very necessary, but had a family emergency back home and they gave him a humane leave. So I went there for a while. But just to fill in. For a while.”
“Until t
he Congress took its Thanksgiving recess,” Ward said, “and some of the dust settled down.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “All I know’s that they really needed someone who could get there in a hurry, someone who traveled light, and I was relatively nearby in London, so I was the one who went.”
“And became, for all practical purposes,” he said, “safely incommunicado.”
“I didn’t feel incommunicado,” she said. “My bosses knew where I was. They had no trouble reaching me.”
“Yes,” Ward said. “Yes. That was the explanation for your sudden travel, I expect. They knew how to find you in a hurry, and ship you somewhere else. I admire your candor. Let me, as you put it, respond with some of my own.”
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. He used his loosely clenched hands to prop his chin. “I’m sixty-four years old. I’ve traveled around this country a lot and I’ve seen a lot of things. Perhaps it will not surprise you to learn that the things that have impressed me the most in the thirty-nine years since I left home were those involving black people.
“In the North as in the South, and in the West as well, I did not see moral differences in the ways that black and other minority people were treated. There were differences in the amount and variety of violence employed, to be sure, but those distinctions were not moral. There were subtler differences between the means of excluding black children from quality education in the southern schools than there were in the northern ones, but they did not rise to moral levels. The virtual exclusion of most minority adults from rewarding employment was morally the same in Los Angeles, where it was directed against Mexicans, as it was here in New York, where Puerto Ricans were targets too. But the plain, universal fact that I saw obvious wherever I went was that white people in this country had become accustomed — simply had a nasty habit — of monopolizing the better things of American life. And, you will forgive me for saying this, but I think they still do, if they could get half a chance to indulge it.
“Now you see, Ms. Cangelosi, that all conditioned me. When I got to the Congress, by the time that I got there, I had acquired a habit of my own. I study what I see. Anytime I saw something I didn’t recognize, that I hadn’t seen before, I mentally sort of hunkered down, and studied it some more. Made sure I understood it just as clearly as I could. Because sometimes things that look familiar, harmless and familiar, aren’t that at all.
“Take the government, for example,” he said. “The federal government. What I had seen of it from the outside was benevolent and kind, at least for the most part. And when it wasn’t exactly kind or benevolent, it was still the best hope we had. The Kennedy Justice Department? Lyndon Johnson’s legislation? Without them, where would we be? Still in the back of the bus, was where. I loved my government. Including, of course, your employer, the implacable FBI. It wasn’t the county sheriffs who caught and prosecuted the killers of Viola Liuzzo, of Andrew Cheney and the rest. It was the FBI who stood between murderous racism and us. Oh, I loved my government.
“When I first ran for Congress,” he said, “I said that publicly. I had to, you see, because I was having an awful time with Bobby Seale. Huey Newton, too, and Eldridge Cleaver — all of those fine gentlemen gave me a real hard time. I don’t mean that they did it personally, ma’am. I don’t mean that they came around and paid me any visits. Called me an Oreo, or a handkerchief head, or Tom — they would’ve done that, probably worse, if they’d paid any real attention to the way I addressed the problems of a black Republican trying to succeed a white Democrat in an affluent district. But I didn’t catch their eye. What I mean is that what they did, and what they said, just played hell with my campaign. There I was, a nice young fellow, trying to succeed, and I needed everybody who could vote to vote for me. I had no margin to spare. White or black or spotted green — I really did not care. All I wanted from people was a fair hearing in the morning and a vote by evening on Election Day. And all those damned niggers out in Oakland, raising hell like that? All they did was torment me, ’cause I was the same color, and I could see the good white folks in what I wanted to become my district, looking out the corners of their eyes and thinking: ‘Most likely one them Panthers, another one them revolutionary bastards, gonna rape our women next.’
“Well, I overcame it. Somehow. I wore a suit, and I talked soft, and I was most respectful. And I was very careful, too, to make it abundantly clear that I was disassociating myself from all those paranoid black folks shooting at policemen. Telling people to set fires, burn the cities down. Saying that the federal government was full-throttle out to get them, kill them and their families.
“But privately,” he said, “ ’way down deep in my soul, I remained suspicious. Everything I’d ever seen’d taught me that when black people made some allegations about the government, and Whitey, they were usually telling the truth. So why were these Panther people saying all these bad things? Why were they making these wild claims about my government?
“Well,” he said, “I got to Congress, and I had some time, and some power to ask questions. Which I could make people answer. Those I could locate, at least,” he said, nodding at Fiona. “And in the course of time, I found out that those rabble-rousers really had some points. They were not completely nuts. Were not all that far off.” He leaned toward her. “In fact, they were quite right. I found out about COINTELPRO. Ever hear of that? ‘Counter Intelligence Program’?”
“Yes, I have,” she said.
“Well then, Ms. Cangelosi,” Ward said, “then you must know what I mean. Here was the FBI, this fine investigative body, of which, no matter what you say, I think you’re still a part — and I mean no offense by that, nor do you have to answer me — and what was our nation’s finest doing to these folks? Why, they were carrying out the domestic side of the Bureau’s habitual policy of ignoring its own charter. And any other laws or constitutional provisions that prove inconvenient to them. Here is this arrogant outfit, just as clearly prohibited from spying on its own citizens as it is from sending legats abroad to spy on foreign nationals, going right ahead and doing just exactly as it pleased. Opening their mail. Breaking up their marriages, and busting in their homes. Trying to get them, shoot each other. Making them rebel. Using agents provocateurs to drive them to those extremes. Making them paranoid. I did not agree with those folks, those Black Panthers, not at all. But out in public you’ve got people saying: ‘Work within the system. Make the system work the way that it’s supposed to do.’ I’d been one of those people. I was saying that. And behind the scenes of that selfsame system, you’ve got people working full-time to subvert what’s being said. People in the same job you’ve got, Ms. Cangelosi, now. Doing every evil thing that popped into their minds.
“Now, that’s by way of background. That’s just telling you. Telling you that I’ve got reasons. I think, because I have to think, that if we’re going to tell people that this whole damned thing can work, those of us that work it have to play by the damned rules.
“Your status as a legat,” he said, “the very existence of the job, is a violation of the Bureau’s charter. It’s against the law. You’re an attorney, I think?” She nodded. “You’re sworn, you’ve been sworn twice. Once when you were admitted to the bar, and once again when you entered government. To uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States. And yet there you were, breaking both your oaths, participating not only officially but proudly in an ongoing, defiant, systematic violation of the law. The charter expressly confines the FBI to the investigation of offenses against federal law, committed in the United States. Period. No international jurisdiction. No enterprises in espionage. No ifs, no ands, no buts. So what does the FBI do? It ‘detaches’ agents for assignment, putatively by State — which somehow or other always spontaneously decides to send the particular legat where the Bureau wanted him — or her — to be, and there the agent does exactly the job of work that the Bureau had in mind. It’s hypocrisy,” he said, “and it’s espionag
e.”
“It’s not espionage, Congressman,” Fiona said. “The work I did in London, whatever you may think about the propriety of my being there to do it, was not espionage. The work I did at Grosvenor Square was strictly confined to liaising with my British counterparts in order to assist American law enforcement officers working on cases arising in territories under their jurisdiction. I’m aware that in the past some overzealous Buagents have gone off on frolics of their own, playing spy and so forth, but that sort of foolishness isn’t allowed any more. Seat of Government was very strict on that point. If I’d done it, and gotten caught, I would have been fired.”
“Uh huh,” Ward said. He surveyed the table. He rested his gaze on the easterly end. “Florence,” he said, “I must say, you do give the most stimulating parties.”
“What?” Fiona said.
Ward looked at her. “I merely said,” he said, “that dinner at the Walkers’ is always stimulating.”
“Oh no,” Fiona said. She shook her head twice. “You all but called me a liar there, Congressman.”
“I did no such thing,” he said.
“Rubbish,” she said. “If you responded like that to another Member’s remarks in a floor colloquy, you’d be liable to censure. Now, with all due respect and so forth: I seem to recall you boasting you’re the fellow who plays by the rules. Well, that means you don’t get to snicker at what I say, and then go run and hide behind some chivalrous decorum that says you can’t answer me. You’ve impugned my veracity. You’ve been challenged, sir, for that. Respond.”
Outlaws (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) Page 40
