Eye Contact

by Michael Craft

  This is absurd, Manning tells himself. Yes, he has hurt Neil. Yes, he wants him back. He wants things the way they were. But he’s not going to achieve that here, not now. He has already said that he’s sorry, and he has tried to explain that his slip with David was partly—largely, though not altogether—beyond his control. Neil’s reaction has also been partly, though not altogether, beyond his own control. Neil will have to work this out in his own mind, and that’s going to take some time. Whether or not they resume a life together, the decision is now Neil’s. There’s nothing else Manning can do to persuade him.

  Manning’s mind feels numbed by all this, and he realizes that his emotional state has not yet allowed him to deal with the tragedy of David’s sudden death. Manning has tried for nearly a week to forget what he and David did that night, to put the experience firmly behind him. But it did happen, and it surely meant something. It was more than just a dirty little episode to be swept away and tactfully forgotten. David was a friend, a young colleague, and that night he became something else to Manning, though Manning’s vocabulary is not equipped with a word to define that expanded relationship. Certainly, they became more than friends. Just as certainly, they were much less than lovers. With time, Manning may have been able to analyze it, to define it, to reconcile it with the bedrock relationship he has worked to build with Neil. But now, of course, those issues are moot. David is gone. And for all Manning knows, Neil may be gone as well.

  The crowds outside the cab are starting to thin in the minutes that precede the opening of Celebration Two Thousand. Arlen Farber has nodded off to sleep, chin to chest. Manning can afford to agonize over his emotions no longer. He tells the driver, “You can turn around now. Civic Planetarium, please.”

  At the stroke of five precisely, a clock radio clicks on just as an announcer says, “Ladies and gentlemen, our national anthem.”

  Nathan Cain’s eyes blink open. He has napped all afternoon in the dark-curtained bedroom of his office suite, exhausted from the ordeal of yesterday evening and the hectic night that followed. He needed to catch up on lost sleep, rejuvenating himself for the evening that will follow, an evening that has been planned to the minute for nearly a year.

  Through a thick Italian accent, a vigorous tenor (certainly not Paganini) wails, “And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air …” That soaring verse never fails to stir Nathan Cain’s patriotism. He can’t just sit there, let alone lie there, while a hundred thousand people at the stadium have risen to their feet. So he hops out of bed, stepping into his ostrich slippers, cinching the blue silk dressing gown around him, but he feels momentarily dizzy, and his injured hip aches—he ought to know better than to get up so fast. “O’er the laa-aand of the freeee, and the home of the braaaave.” Tumultuous whoops and applause crackle through the radio. Cain switches it off. Silence.

  He sits on the edge of the bed, kneading the torn and never-healed musculature of his leg. Its throbbing creates an eerie sensation that reminds him of a field hospital in Korea where overhead lights throbbed to the beat of a faulty generator. He grimaced as an exhausted surgeon drew the shard of metal from his thigh. Under those makeshift circumstances, anesthesia was crude at best, and that night Cain was certain that it wasn’t working at all. But he grit his teeth, he didn’t yell, he didn’t faint. Buddy, the young man who saved him—not the doctor, but the fellow soldier who dragged him from the fray and carried him to safety—sat at his side through the surgery and gripped his hand, letting Cain siphon strength from their friendship. When the wound was at last cleaned and sutured, Cain slept.

  It was a restless sleep, interrupted by the delirium of drugs and the racket of war. But then arrived that lucid moment, a brief stillness in the night when his mind cleared and guns stopped and others slept. He turned his head on the cot and saw Buddy sitting there, alert and smiling, still holding his hand. Cain smiled back at him. “I owe you for this one,” he said quietly. “You could have gotten yourself killed. What’s the matter with you, Buddy? Are you nuts?”

  “No, Nathan,” Buddy told him, leaning close to his ear. Then, in a moment of supreme weakness Buddy added, “I’m your friend. I love you.” He gently pressed his lips to Cain’s temple and kissed the salt of dried sweat from his sideburns.

  Cain stopped breathing, but his mind spun. Under the life-or-death circumstances of battlefield heroics, Buddy’s display of affection was acceptable, even appropriate, wasn’t it? But Cain knew that Buddy’s words were a testament to more than friendship. Cain also knew, deep between the crags of his drugged consciousness, that Buddy had tapped into something mutual that had never been spoken. Those unspoken words—I love you too, Buddy—stuck in Cain’s throat, and he knew that now, if ever, was the time to speak them. Dare he?

  He breathed again. “Are you nuts?” he asked. Sliding his hand from Buddy’s grasp, Cain rolled onto his shoulder, turning his back to his friend.

  Now he stands, bends over, reaches under the bed, and pulls out his briefcase, stowed there for safekeeping while he rested. Tossing it on the bed, he covers it with a fold of the comforter, leaving a telltale lump in the bedding. Then he crosses the room and opens the door to his bath.

  Inside, he removes his robe, slippers, and silk undershorts. He reaches through the doorway to a huge tiled shower room and turns the faucets. When the water running on his forearm meets his satisfaction, he steps inside and ducks under the hot spray. Without closing his eyes, he lets the drops hit him squarely in the face, remembering the next chapter in the history he has shared with Buddy.

  Both men rose quickly in the military ranks, with Buddy enjoying an extra boost from the valor he exhibited in saving Cain. Cain would retire with the rank of colonel, then focus his energies on building a communications empire, while Buddy remained in the military and eventually found himself at the Pentagon, where he now answers to only a handful of others. Cain still calls him Buddy, though he is known by his given name, of course, to the press, the public, and the presidents he has served. These two powerful men have remained close friends for nearly fifty years since that night in Korea. And they have never discussed that incident on the cot—except once, earlier this year.

  Standing in the shower now, purging his nap-grogginess, Cain goads his brain back to full alert. This accomplished, he soaps his body, washing efficiently. The finishing touch, as always, is to lather up a finger and scrub the crack between his buttocks. Then he rinses, turns off the water, and dries himself with a blanket-size Turkish towel.

  He grooms himself quickly, combing his thinning hair with a sharp, precise part that runs from the left temple to the center of his scalp. Then he slips on a clean pair of underwear and pads out of the bathroom, leaving the robe behind.

  In his bedroom, he opens several closet doors, revealing a complete wardrobe that allows him to dash from the office perfectly attired for any event, be it golf-casual or white-tie. This evening, though, he needn’t impress anyone (God knows, he won’t be seen), so he settles on basic black—turtleneck, tropical wool slacks, and plain-toed oxfords. Checking himself in a mirror, he gives a grunt of approval, then closes the closets.

  Cain crosses to the bed, uncovers the briefcase, and carries it to the door, which he opens. Walking into the vaulted space of his main office, he switches on a few lights (the blackout curtains on the west wall have been closed to the afternoon sun) and steps to the case that houses his collection of firearms. He opens the glass-paneled doors of the cabinet. Then he sets down the briefcase and opens it as well.

  Inside, there are no papers, no sensitive files, only the Nambu pistol with its unique jade handle. Maybe that’s what got him to thinking about Buddy this evening—the gun was a gift from him years ago, from his own collection, marking his rise to power at the Pentagon, an odd token of friendship, a perverse expression of love, but one that Cain understood completely and implicitly. The gun was once used by a Japanese general who took his own life as a matter of principle. More than fift
y years later, it is still in perfect working order. It has been used again recently, twice, again as a matter of principle.

  Lifting the pistol, he cradles it in his hands with a reverence befitting the Eucharist, then returns it to its little silk cushion, plumping the edges, realigning the gilt-edged display card on its miniature silver easel. Perfect. Cain closes the glass doors and, noticing a smudge, buffs it clean with the fabric of his sleeve.

  Picking up the empty briefcase, he crosses the length of his vast office, arriving at the spiral stairs that lead up to his library loft. The winding stairway is a whimsical structure that anyone would find awkward to climb—even a man younger and more agile than Cain would mount these stairs with a measure of trepidation. When this is over, Cain tells himself, he really must have an elevator installed. The project would entail a mess, however, a lengthy disarray of his quarters, so he dismisses the notion.

  Clunking upward, tread by tread, he arrives at last on the balcony among the library stacks. The bookshelves are arranged tighter than they used to be in order to accommodate the metal cabinets that have recently been installed. They house electronics that are part of the Journal’s massive computer upgrade. Even now, on a quiet Saturday evening, they hum a low-frequency drone, emitting heat—the loft space is much warmer than the office below.

  Cain retreats into one of the aisles of books, arriving behind a metal cabinet. Instead of vents, this one has doors, which he opens. There are no electronics inside, just some shelving and a few hooks, like a locker. Cain tosses the briefcase inside. It thuds against the back wall of the cabinet. From one of the hooks, he removes a hooded nylon windbreaker, black, draping it over his arm. From the top shelf, he takes a pair of dark sunglasses, a ring of keys, and a sizable black book—there’s going to be time to kill, and he might as well not waste it.

  Equipped with these provisions, he closes the cabinet and turns to the back wall of the loft. There, hidden from the view below, is a door. Cain unlocks it with one of the keys, steps through, and closes it behind him. Beyond the door is a tiny room—it may have been a broom closet—just big enough to contain a second spiral stairway, leading up. He breathes a sigh of determination, then starts his climb. His bad leg darts with pain, just as it did yesterday when he trudged those last few flights to the top of the MidAmerica Building. He knew then that he could not be encumbered by something so trivial as physical discomfort, and he knows it again now. Yesterday’s mission was a diversion, a tactical necessity, a preemptive strike, but today’s is the real thing—everything, absolutely everything, is at stake.

  Arriving at the top of the spiral, Cain rests, breathing, gripping the tendons deep within his injured thigh, waiting for the throbbing to subside. Fully a minute passes before he can move on. Then he chooses another key from the ring in his hand, opens another door, and steps out onto the tower platform of the Journal Building.

  Blinded by the slant of the early-evening sun, he dons the dark glasses and surveys the rooftop. The Journal Building is only half the height of MidAmerica, and its tower platform is much smaller, only a few yards square atop the peaking Gothic limestone structure. While David had difficulty yesterday locating the laser projector amid the clutter on the MidAmerica Building’s spacious roof, Cain has no difficulty whatever finding the projector’s counterpart up here—there is room, in fact, for nothing else. Years ago, there were radio transmitters up here, broadcasting from a single mast, but as the city grew, the transmitters moved to taller buildings, leaving the defunct antenna as a decorative finial.

  There are any number of taller buildings, better situated, that might have served as the third point of the triangle for tonight’s spectacle. But the whole plan was developed by Nathan Cain, presented to the mayor by Nathan Cain, funded largely by Nathan Cain, with no one else involved in the project who would dare suggest overruling Cain in his insistence that the Journal Building be used as a projection site. He argued that there would be a promotional advantage for those companies taking part, and it was unthinkable to deny him JournalCorp’s participation.

  Cain takes a slow walk around the apparatus. Though by no means a timid man, he is prudent enough not to let his steps veer far from the device, which is mounted only a few feet from the building’s edge. A low parapet surrounds the platform, but it was built there more for aesthetics than for function, offering little protection from the wind or from the hazards of a fall. Peeking over it, Cain recoils in response to the sweeping sense of vertigo as he glimpses past the gargoyles’ heads to the ant-stream of cars moving on the boulevard below.

  He steadies himself with a hand on the projector, dragging his fingers across the machine’s drab-painted surface as he moves around it, examining it in detail—its menacing snout, its ungainly shape, its coils and meters and dials. No, this instrument bears no resemblance to the one David Bosch examined yesterday. They look different because they are different. This one has a special, unique function. And in spite of its profusion of cryptic controls, only two must be manually operated, both simple switches, one green, one pink.

  Nathan Cain assumes his post, sitting on a folding camp stool, waiting to pull these switches. He knows when to do it, and he knows what will happen when he does. He looks at his watch; there’s still plenty of time till he must act. He’s glad he brought the book.

  It is the Bible. He rests it on his knees and opens it from the back, finding the first chapter of John. He’s always loved the way the opening verses of that book mimic those of Genesis, a sort of theological loop, a circular, perpetual, self-conscious evangelistic hiccup that spans the millennia. “In the beginning …” Cain sees the words, but his mind does not absorb them. He mulls instead the events that brought him here, the conversations and cajolery that allowed him to solidify a daring plan.

  Project Zarnik is the work of many dedicated men, but he knows he can justly take pride as its creator. The idea was so simple—it sprang to mind so naturally and will achieve its goal so cleanly. Execution of Project Zarnik, however, has been unforeseeably complex, requiring the assistance and cooperation of men less purely committed than himself—men like Buddy.

  His friend at the Pentagon was speechless when Cain first told him what he wanted, what he expected. When Buddy could at last muster words, he said, “Nathan, you’re mad.” Anticipating such a reaction, Cain was ready with his response. “Buddy,” he said, “you’re queer. Men of your rank have shot themselves for less grievous infractions. Project Zarnik needs you. I need you. If you’re not willing to sign on, I’ll understand. But I’ll also return something to you—General Sugiyama’s jade-handled pistol. You may have use for it.” So Buddy reconsidered and proved his friendship, as Cain knew he must.

  Cain sits calmly in the shadow of the apparatus, Bible open in his lap. He checks his watch again. At six o’clock precisely, he will flip the green switch. At nine o’clock precisely, he will flip the pink switch.

  Cain peers at his watch. He closes his Bible.

  Downstairs in Cain’s outer offices, Lucille Haring pecks away at her keyboard. Hours have passed since she discovered that Cain had altered Manning’s story exposing the publisher as a murderer, and she has no way of knowing when Cain might reappear from his office. So the pressure is on, and she’s been digging feverishly in Cain’s directories, but she has yet to discover anything that might shed light on his motive to kill.

  After her near-encounter with Cain when he returned to his Journal offices around one o’clock, Lucille Haring felt faint and sickly—not only because she narrowly escaped discovery of her hacking, which might have led to fatal consequences, but also because she was so hungry. As soon as she caught her breath, she got busy at the keyboard again, but decided she’d better eat. So she hurried down to the building’s main lobby, telling the guard at the elevator that she’d soon return, and grabbed a ham sandwich and a candy bar from vending machines. Arriving upstairs again, she asked the guard if the Colonel was still in his office. “Affirmative,” t
he guard answered, then admitted her with his key.

  She rushed back to her desk, peeled the plastic wrap from the sandwich, and wolfed a couple of bites, hardly taking time to taste it. Then she realized that the sandwich felt funny in her mouth, not quite right. Lifting the bread, she saw swirls of the slightest gold-green iridescence tinging the surface of the ham—probably a day or two older than it should be. She smelled it, finding it impossible to detect anything beyond the mustard. She decided to risk it, eating the rest of the sandwich quickly, without thinking about it. Having refueled, she set the candy bar aside and tapped a few keys on her computer, calling up Cain’s “editorial” directory again.

  Then she noticed a blank spot in the same list where she’d found Manning’s “hijinx” story. Digging deeper, she determined that the blank represented a story that had been deleted altogether. No problem—she could easily track it down in the electronic recesses of the mainframe and “undelete” it. A few more keystrokes, and the missing story popped onto her screen. Above the byline of Clifford Nolan, Science Editor, appeared the headline “Requiem for a Small Planet.”

  Eyes widening with interest, she leaned closer to read Nolan’s lengthy article, which presented a detailed analysis of why Zarnik’s claimed discovery was surely fallacious. But during its concluding paragraphs, the story cut off abruptly, midsentence, without finish. Reading that dangling phrase, she knew that it was typed at the moment of Nolan’s death.

  Manning was right. He conjectured in his own story, later altered by Nathan Cain, that it was Cain himself who tapped into Nolan’s exposé, visited Nolan as he continued to write it, then murdered him, absconding with Nolan’s laptop after deleting the story from the Journal’s editorial files.