Benchley, Peter - Novel 06

by Q Clearance (v2. 0)

  "You have never seen me."

  "Seen who? I don't know what you're talking about."

  Pym was bewildered until he saw her smile. He said, "Clever lady," and pushed "B," and the door slid closed.

  He had given them an hors d'oeuvre tantalizing enough to whet any journalist's appetite. He had told them about Q Clearance, which had earned him instant credibility because the deputy bureau chief had thought that only he and a few other Washington insiders had ever heard of Q Clearance. He had described himself as a low-level courier drawn unwillingly into the conspiracy by Soviet blackmailers who threatened to send his ailing mother to the gulag, impelled by loyalty to his adopted country to expose this perfidy yet fearful of going to the authorities lest he be deported or jailed or sent back to Russia. And he had detailed roughly some of the documents that had passed through his hands.

  Then, once his credibility was firmly established, he had purposely shaken it by insisting that he could not identify either the American mole or his Soviet contacts. He wasn't a hundred-percent positive, he said. Yet.

  He had given ABC nowhere near enough to run a responsible story, but had teased them quite enough to make them eager for more.

  He had decided in the elevator going up that he would not give ABC Burnham's name or his code name, B-12. Let them press for it and endure the government's evasions, equivocations and prevarications, all of which would take time, precious time for Pym and Eva to disappear—separately, with neither of them knowing where the other was, so that if either was caught the other might stay safe.

  It was the least he could do for Eva, and, as he saw it, Eva was the only person to whom he owed anything. He appraised his gratitude as professional, not personal or parental, but

  then he found himself feeling happy in the hope that she might escape, that some part of him might endure—might even someday prevail, in some tiny outpost of achievement— and he realized that he had underestimated the power of genes. Tenacious little devils.

  He had no idea how Burnham would react when Eva told him what was happening, but he prayed that Eva would have the sense—the selfishness, the base instinct for self-preservation—^to do the one thing that could save her life: run.

  He pushed open the exit door and looked out into an alley filled with trash cans. He let the door close quietly behind him and walked on tiptoe to the end of the alley. The sidewalk was deserted. He waited a moment, listening for footsteps, then stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  "Going somewhere?"

  The words kicked Pym backward a step. He stopped, frozen.

  Teal sauntered out of a dark doorway. "I thought you might pull something like this," he said. He reached for Pym's arm. "Come on."

  Pym was like a dying man: Ghastly images of torture and loneliness and death raced across his brain.

  But there was a difference: He had decided not to die.

  He ducked away from Teal's hand.

  Teal took a step, stretching to grab Pym, and his legs were spread like a hurdler's.

  Pym planted his back foot and sprang forward and slammed his right hand into Teal's crotch and heaved upward, lifting Teal a foot off the ground. His fingertips groped for substance through the flimsy fabric of Teal's cotton trousers, and when he felt it, he made a fist and squeezed as if he would mash it into paste.

  Teal shrieked. He flailed, scratching Pym's head trying to find his eyes, but Pym drove his left elbow up into Teal's throat and forced him back against the alley wall. He ducked his head and rammed his shoulder into Teal's gut, pinning him against the wall and holding him off the ground, and then he could use two hands to crush Teal's nuts. He told himself he was squeezing juice from an unripe lime, or wringing the last drop of water from a washcloth.

  Teal was still screaming—a high-pitched wail like a cat on fire.

  Then Teal fainted. Pym felt Teal's musculature sag, and he backed away and let Teal slide to the pavement.

  Pym touched his face and looked at his fingers. He felt raw bands across his cheeks, but there was no blood.

  He looked out into the empty street, and listened, and when he was certain he was alone, he left the alley and walked quickly down the block, staying in the shadows of the buildings.

  With worldly goods amounting to sixty-two dollars and eighty-eight cents, an American Express green card, a Revlon nail clipper and a handkerchief, Foster Pym turned the comer and abandoned four and a half decades of life.

  THIRTEEN

  BuRNHAM sat on the end of the bed. Eva sat at his feet hugging her knees, tears streaming down her face and falling into the maroon pattern of the Oriental carpet.

  He felt numb, as if all feeling had been sucked from him and all that remained was a shell of bones and nerves that somehow maintained a form of life. He wasn't angry, he wasn't sad, he wasn't afraid. He wasn't anything.

  No good deed ever goes unpunished. It was like a pop song with a catchy tune; it wouldn't leave him alone. It demanded all his attention, drove all other thoughts from his head. No good deed ever goes unpunished.

  It was pissing him off. He began to get angry, and because he sensed that it was healthy for him to get angry he goaded himself. Stupid shit! Your life has just gone down in flames, and you're thinking in jingles.

  He jumped up and shouted, "Jesus Christ!" and kicked a chest of drawers and howled, "Fuck!"

  Eva sobbed, for she knew he was cursing her.

  Burnham looked at the chest of drawers, at the new dent in the old wood. It wasn't sorry. It didn't regret a thing. It didn't care what Burnham thought of it.

  Then he laughed, and laughing made him feel better, so he sat down again. When he saw Eva raise her head and gaze at him with her glistening eyes, he put out his hand and ran his fingers through her hair.

  "Are we through?" he said.

  "Through what?"

  "Through feeling sorry for ourselves."

  Eva cocked her head like a curious dog. "Don't you want to kill me?" she said. "I'll understand if you do."

  "Good." Burnham laughed. "That's a comfort. You'll be lying there dead, but I'll know you understand." He leaned forward and kissed her. "Why would I want to kill you? I love you."

  "But look what I—"

  "What's done is done. Life is a long salvage operation. You save what you can." He smiled at himself. "Very profound. I wonder where I heard that." He took one of her hands. "What shall we do?"

  "What can we do?"

  "That's the point. Let's figure it out. As a friend of mine says, 'The need of doing is pressing, since the time of doing is short.' I imagine," he said, toying with her fingers, "that the smartest thing is for me to turn myself in. Cut our losses."

  "No! You can't."

  "What d'you mean, I can't?"

  "It's too late. The damage would be horrible."

  "What can they do? Put me in jail."

  "I mean the damage to the country. Yesterday, day before, you could've turned yourself in and it would've been very quiet. Nobody would've had to know a thing. They might've even let you go, or tucked you away somewhere. By tomorrow the TV people will know, and once you turn yourself in they'll have to go public with it. How'11 that look? You told me the British looked stupid in the fifties. How about the President? His right-hand man is a Russian spy? He'll be finished! The country'll be a bad joke. No. The only way to keep it quiet is to stay hidden. Then the White House can deny everything."

  "So we may have some time."

  "I wouldn't count on it." Eva looked at the floor. "The only thing that makes sense to me is for me to turn myself in."

  "What? Why?"

  "Tell them the truth. You didn't pass the documents. You didn't know anything about it. They'll have to let you off the hook. They can't prove anything different."

  Burnham shook his head. "No good."

  "Why not?"

  "You're a spy, I'm a fool. You go to jail, I get fired. I'm unemployable, I have no money, and with you in jail I have no life. No. I think we'll fir
e a few big guns and try to get out of this mess." He stood up, walked to the head of the bed and sat down by the telephone.

  "V/ho are you calling?"

  "The President of the United States."

  "At midnight? What're you going to tell him?"

  "That he's gonna hear a lot of garbage about me, that I didn't do anything, that I'll explain it all to him when I see him and that he shouldn't go off half-cocked and do something he'll regret."

  "He'll listen to that?"

  "Beats me." Burnham shrugged. "But I owe us a try. I think he might. We get along pretty well."

  Burnham dialed 456-1414, and when an operator answered he said, "This is Timothy Burnham. It's important that I speak to the President."

  "He's in the Mansion, Mr. Burnham."

  "I know."

  "Asleep."

  "Wake him up." There was a pause, and Burnham said, "I wouldn't ask this if it wasn't important."

  "Yes, sir." Again the operator paused, and Burnham could hear another voice in the background. "Hold a sec."

  There were two clicks as the call was transferred.

  "Tim? How are you, my friend?"

  It wasn't the President.

  It was Mario Epstein.

  All Burnham could think to say was, "I was trying to reach the President."

  "He asked me to take his calls," Epstein said. "You must've tired him out. Where're you calling from?"

  "It can wait, I guess."

  "Can I help?"

  "No. I'll see him in the morning."

  "Hold on a—"

  Burnham hung up. He didn't dare keep talking to Epstein. Better to be rude than to say too much, especially since he didn't know how much Epstein knew, and to say anything might be to say too much.

  "So much for—"

  There was a knock on the door—three sharp raps.

  He said to Eva, "Expecting someone?"

  She shook her head.

  He looked at the door. "Who is it?"

  "PEPCo," said a man's voice. "We got a report of a gas leak."

  "Just a second. Gotta find my pants." Burnham leaned down to Eva and whispered, "Put some shoes on. Get some money and anything else you need."

  "Why? Who—"

  "Just in case." Burnham felt for his wallet and his White House pass, and he tiptoed to the door. A brass lozenge covered the peephole in the door, and he slid it aside and put his eye to the hole.

  He saw a forest of flame-red hair and, behind it, the shoulder of a man.

  Well, at least now he knew.

  Holding his breath, he backed away from the door.

  "Let's go. Mister!" said the man. "This isn't something to fool around with."

  "Right. Right with you." Burnham beckoned to Eva as he backed toward the French doors that led out into the garden.

  She pointed at him, wanting to speak, but he held his finger to his lips—and backed into the end table beside the bed, knocking over a lamp and the telephone, which struck the floor so hard that its bell rang.

  Burnham heard the crash of a heavy foot against the wooden door.

  He opened the French doors and led Eva into the garden.

  Behind him, he heard something about "under arrest" and another slam of foot against door and a woman's voice saying, "Get him!"

  The garden was jungle dark, a confusion of vines and plants and stubby trees. There were three six-foot walls, two leading to adjacent gardens, the third into the back alley.

  They stepped into a flower bed by the far wall. Burnham bent his knees and cupped his hands and boosted Eva. She teetered for a moment at the top of the wooden wall, then swung gracefully over it and landed on her feet in the alley.

  A silenced pistol was fired—a nasty thwup sound—and the bullet must have struck the stone floor of the apartment, for it ricocheted with an angry whine and then destroyed something made of glass.

  Burnham tried to hoist himself over the wall, but as he crouched to spring, his feet sank into the soft loam of the flower bed. His jump dissolved into a squoosh.

  He tried to haul himself up the wall, but the angle deprived him of the strong muscles in his shoulders and back.

  "Can I help you?" asked Eva from the alley.

  "I don't know how. If they get me, you run."

  "They won't get you! Climb!"

  "With my fingernails?"

  "And your toes. But mostly with your head. Tell yourself you can do it. Convince yourself."

  "That's—"

  Another shot was fired, and this time it was followed by the sound of the door swinging open and slamming against the apartment wall, and by running feet and enraged voices.

  "Now!" Eva said.

  And, triggered by Eva's voice, Burnham told his muscles to explode. Like a child fleeing a neighbor's dog, he scrambled and clawed his way up the wooden wall, balanced for a split second and then fell head first into the alley in a heap of soiled seersucker.

  "Stop, Mr. Burnham!" the red-haired woman called out. "You're only making things worse."

  "Worse?" Burnham called back. "What's worse than a bullet in the brain?" He and Eva crept along the alley toward the street.

  "We're just s'posed to bring you in."

  "Sure," Burnham shouted. "That's why you're shooting at me."

  They reached the street and they ran, first down to N Street, then over two blocks, then down a couple more, until after three or four minutes Burnham was convinced they had lost themselves in the maze of Georgetown. They ducked into an alley to catch their breath.

  "Where can we go?" asked Eva. "We can't go to my apartment. The Russians'11 be watching that. For sure, we can't go to your house. And we can't just waltz into the Y. It's—"

  "Wait a minute."

  "What?"

  Burnham looked out the end of the alley. At the comer he saw a lighted phone booth. "Be right back," he said, and before Eva could protest, he was gone.

  A BELL TOWER in the distance was ringing the twelve chimes of midnight when Bumham led Eva into another dark alley. A rat scuttled between the garbage cans, and a roused cat knocked over a bottle in pursuit. At the end of the alley was a steel door, and Bumham knocked twice.

  "Where are we?" Eva whispered.

  Burnham smiled. "Waltzing into the Y."

  The door swung open on rusty hinges, and Hal said, "Come in, children. Be quick."

  He shone a flashlight on the floor for them and led the way down a dingy hall. "They've had a man outside for the past couple of hours, pretending to be a wino." Hal snickered. "The only wino in Washington who wears Corfam shoes and a Rolex watch."

  Halfway down the hall, Hal stopped at another steel door. Faded stenciled lettering said MAINTENANCE^KEEP OUT. Hal inserted a key into the imposing brass lock, turned it and pushed open the door.

  Lights went on automatically, illuminating a cozy den decorated in impeccable conservative Yankee taste: leather club chairs worn shiny and comfortable, an antique four-poster bed covered with a Rhode Island quilt, Winslow Homer prints, brass lamps on cherry end tables.

  "Wow!" Eva said.

  Hal smiled. "My lifeline to sanity."

  "How did you—"

  "Garage sales, flea markets, hearing about this and that from here and there."

  "Do they know?" Burnham asked. "Upstairs?"

  "They don't know and they don't care," said Hal. "Their attitude about everything is, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I make sure it ain't broke. I have the only key. You'd be safe here forever. But I don't imagine you want to stay forever?"

  "A day or two," Burnham said. "Till we can sort things out and decide where we can go. If anywhere."

  "You want to tell me what's wrong? I'm the soul of discretion."

  Burnham shook his head. "The less you know, the better for you. I've mixed you up too far in it already."

  "It's serious, though, isn't it?"

  "Yes, Hal. Very."

  "You sure I can't help? I have a devious mind."

  Burnham hesit
ated, then said, "All right. See if you can work this out: How do you get two people out of the country, with no passports and very little money, and with the entire federal government looking for them?"

  "My!" Hal said.

  Eva kicked off her shoes and said to Burnham, "If we're going to run again, I've got to close my eyes. I'm exhausted." She spread her arms and let herself fall backward onto the bed.

  The press of her weight on the mattress must have tripped a hidden switch, for instantly the room was filled with the pulsing, throbbing beat of Ravel's "Bolero."

  Eva sat up and said, "Christ!"

  "Apologies, my dear," Hal said, a blush suffusing his pasty face. He touched a spot on the wall, and the music stopped.

  The grin that had started to split Burnham's face now froze. "My God!" he said.

  "Oh, don't be such—"

  "No, no," Burnham said to Hal. "It's not that." The motor of his mind, which had been resting at idle, slipped into gear and began to race. "I think I . . . never mind. What time is it?" He looked at his watch. "Do you have a mirror?"

  "There's a bathroom over there." Hal pointed. "What are you—''

  "You don't want to know," Burnham said as he opened the bathroom door and stood in front of the mirror and dusted off his suit and retied his tie. "Your tape just gave me an idea, that's all." He spoke to Eva. "If they get me, you leave first thing in the morning. You should be able to make it alone. I'd try Canada first, I'd—"

  "Where are you going?"

  "Just thought I'd stop in at the office for a few minutes." He kissed her.

  "What?"

  Burnham said to Hal, "D'you have a briefcase?"

  "A briefcase? Me?"

  "How about a squash bag?"

  "Not down here." Hal found a Gucci shoulder bag. "How about this?"

  "Good." Burnham took the bag. "I'll be at the alley door in exactly an hour. If I miss, try a half hour later, then a half hour after that. If I'm not there then, say a prayer for me." He reached for the doorknob and said to Hal, "Thanks. Whatever happens."

  This was like Russian roulette but with worse odds, Burnham thought, as he crossed 17th Street and started along the last block to the White House. All or nothing. And there was no way to find out which it would be without committing himself. He would give his name and show his pass, and if Epstein had put an APB out on him with the White House police, he was finished. He was betting that Epstein hadn't thought to do it yet, that it hadn't occurred to Epstein that Burnham would be so stupid as to walk back into the White House. Unless Epstein thought he was crazy, in which case every White House policeman would be sitting at his post with his finger on the button.