An Absence of Light (21 page)

He crossed his legs, trying to appear more relaxed than he actually felt, though he suspected that none of his consternation was escaping Lara. As always, there were things that passed between them about which neither of them ever spoke. It was one of the peculiar characteristics of their relationship that much of what they felt for each other, whether it was amorous or simply the affection of friendship, was never articulated. That, of course, was Graver’s decision, or, as he thought of it more often lately, his fault.

“I’m going to be asking you for a favor, Lara, something that goes beyond your job description,” he said. “It’s something you’d ask of a friend, a close friend… someone you’d trust… no matter what happened.”

The shadow in her expression lightened at these words, but the uncertainty remained.

“Is it personal or business?” she asked.

“Both,” he said. “And that’s the problem.”

He saw her stiffen. “Does it involve a woman?” There was an unmistakable tension in the question.

“No,” he said, “it’s nothing like that.”

As he looked at her, he realized how much he relied on her, how much he wanted to rely on her in order to weather the storm of the coining events. He felt like a doctor looking through a microscope at the cells of his own recently discovered disease. There was the danger of the loss of rationality. There was the tendency to see the vague, squirming shadows swimming in their own viscosity as something other than what they were, an inclination to see them as manifestations of Evil, Death, Divine Judgment Graver wanted someone—Lara—to be there when his fears grew to mythological proportions, when his doubts grew more articulate and wiser than his convictions, and he was in danger of believing a lie.

She might have seen something of this fear in his eyes, in his manner, or sensed it in the tone of his voice. Whatever it was, her face softened as they stared at each other, and she nodded.

Jesus Christ If he had any sense at all he would not let this woman out of his sight Without any further explanation, Graver began at the beginning and told her everything. Everything. More than he was going to tell either Neuman or Paula. More than he was going to tell Arnette. As he talked his voice grew quieter, an unconscious habit when he was preoccupied beyond the moment about what he was saying. He talked to her as if she were the only other person in his life, allowing her to see the fear and the doubt, making no excuses for his confusion and the pain he felt for all the betrayal. He tried to give her the perspective from inside his own mind, to give her some semblance of the stress of his own emotions.

When he finally finished talking, she sat silently, looking at him. She hadn’t moved a muscle. Then she dropped her eyes to her lap, to her hands.

“This is hard to believe,” she said, her voice studied, thoughtful. “You must be…”

“In a state of shock,” Graver said.

She looked up. “Yes, I would imagine so.” Then hesitantly, “I’m sorry about Dean. Very sorry. I can see… I know how this is hurting you.”

Graver shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“You understand… the risks will be real,” he said. “This is off the books. You’ll be putting your job at risk. There aren’t any guidelines, no operating procedures for this. I’m just going to do what I think has to be done. It’s a judgment call; my judgment call. I don’t want to mislead you about this.”

“No, I understand that,” she said. “It’s just… so unexpected, a little breathtaking.” She tried to smile, but it didn’t happen. “It’s just so… I don’t know, strange, I guess, when you know these people.”

One hand slid to the hem of her skirt, and she pulled at it to keep it from creeping any higher on her thighs.

“I apologize for putting you in this position, Lara. It’s awkward for me too. I didn’t do this lightly. And, honestly, I’ll completely understand if you feel that you can’t… see your way clear to do this.”

This last sounded disingenuous to him, hackneyed, and contrived, which he regretted. But he was desperate enough to do it anyway.

Again she was silent He was surprised at himself, that he could not discern what she might be feeling. He was sure that he would be able to read her reaction in her manner, in her face, but he was wrong. He saw nothing. He felt like a gambler waiting for the dice to stop spinning. But, deep down, he didn’t believe she would refuse to help him.

“I’ll do this,” she said finally, looking up. “But you’re right, this is as much a personal favor as a professional one. It’s both, really… and then it isn’t.”

Her eyes burrowed into his eyes. In this brief moment, by her manner, by her tone of voice, by the expression on her face, she was letting him know that such a request from him, and her agreement to it, would not be without its consequences.

Graver waited.

“The reality is that you are now asking for something of Lara Casares, not of your secretary,” she said. “And I will gladly do this, not as your secretary, but as Lara.” She raised a dark eyebrow slightly, wanting to know if he understood.

Graver nodded.

“I trust you,” she said. “Completely. But I’m not a fool. I understand enough of this business now to know that sometimes it’s necessary for you to lie—to withhold the truth—whatever it is you find yourself having to call it” She paused, her black eyes still holding him across the short distance between them. “I have only one request: never He to me. Lie to your secretary, if you must I’m not so naive as to think I can ask you not to do that. But never lie to me… to Lara.” She paused again. “And if you don’t understand the difference between the two, well, then, I guess it’s time for me to know that about you.”

She stopped and looked at him, almost sadly, he thought, and suddenly he realized there was a story here, behind this request, a story that had much to do with who she was and which had been entirely invisible to him for all these years until this moment Either Lara was a master of secrets herself, or he had been shamefully obtuse, having been too self-absorbed to detect a vulnerability where he had thought none existed.

“This is important to me,” she said. “Do you understand that? No lies… between you… and me.”

Graver nodded. “I understand,” he said. “Agreed.”

“I believe that,” she said. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

Graver was tremendously relieved and, at the same time, chagrined. In a real sense he already had lied to her by his vague approach. Or, if he had not exactly lied to her, he had not been entirely honest either. She saw that, and that was precisely the kind of thing she was talking about Even so, she had consented to work with him under decidedly bizarre circumstances. She had consented, but she also had put him on notice. Gently.

He called them into his office separately. Paula first, because she did not yet know of his conversation the night before with Neuman. When Graver told her of Neuman’s discovery, she was uncharacteristically quiet Like many deskbound thinkers, Paula’s understanding of life, while brilliantly analytical, was largely acquired through theories and paradigms rather than experience, and she was visibly disquieted by this harsh and untidy intrusion of flesh-and-blood reality. It was one thing to read and write about subterfuge and betrayal and quite another to find yourself wiping away the actual sweat of it.

She was sobered but not intimidated. She immediately agreed to work with Graver without any higher authority for what they were about to do. Graver was a little uncomfortable that she so readily assented to step into unchartered country with him. On the other hand, though, it was Paula’s characteristic refusal to shrink in the face of the formidable that recommended her to the job they were about to take on.

After Paula, he called in Casey Neuman.

“At this point only the three of us know about this,” Graver said. “Since I don’t know where in the hell this thing goes, it’s got to stay that way.”

The two of them were sitting in Graver’s office again, and it was late in the afternoon. Everyone had gone home. Neuman was turned almost sideways in the straight-back chair in front of Graver’s desk, one leg crossed over the other at the knee, his left arm draped over the back of the chair. As Graver spoke, Neuman was looking down at a piece of paper he had been using as a bookmark and which he was now folding and unfolding as he listened.

“What you’ve got to consider now,” Graver continued, “before you even agree to go along with this, is that something like this could go both ways. At some point down the road, next month, next year, if we deal with this thing successfully, we could be testifying for the prosecution. Fine. On the other hand, it could blow up in our feces. Let’s say we’ve discovered the breach, but we’ve botched the inquiry, or we’re hauled up on charges of running a rogue investigation that should have had authorization and direction from a higher level.”

Neuman was still listening with his head down, and Graver was beginning to wonder if he was doing too good a job with this, maybe even talking him out of it. It didn’t matter. He didn’t want to get Neuman into something he hadn’t thought through to the end. Which he probably had. Still, Graver wanted to
know
that he had.

“The thing is,” Graver emphasized, “you’ve got to imagine having to defend yourself in front of a court, in the newspapers, on television. Just make the assumption now that someday it’ll hit the media and your actions will be questioned… in public. You’ve got to think about that, and—if you decide to stay on—you’ve got to think about it tomorrow and the next day and every day until this is over. I’m telling you right now, if you can’t live with yourself after you’ve done something I’ve asked you to do, then you’d better have the guts to tell me no.”

Graver had been leaning on his desk, talking straight across it to Neuman, turning the cobblestone around and around on a stack of papers. Now he picked up the stone and tapped the wood of the desk with it Neuman looked up.

“I don’t own your soul, Casey,” Graver said with a softly measured emphasis. “I’m not going to have to grow old with what you do, and I’m not going to have to answer to your conscience. I’ve got my own to deal with.”

Neuman stared back at him, and Graver did not see any signs of trepidation, no uncertainty, no fear of the inexperienced. He didn’t know if that was comforting or not.

“I understand the rules,” Neuman said. “And I also understand that you think I can do this, or you would’ve cut me out and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“That’s right.”

“Then I’m ready to work.”

Graver looked at him and put down the cobblestone. Jesus. “Okay.” He picked up the telephone and punched in a number. “Paula,” he said, “bring in the files.”

As Graver had driven back from Arnette Kepner’s he had wrestled with the logistics of what he was about to do. He wanted to keep the investigation as small and tight as possible. Since Burtell would be out of the office now for two weeks, it would be relatively easy for Graver to communicate with Neuman and Paula about their progress. He would tell the other analysts with whom Neuman was working on other investigations that he was pulling him for a couple of weeks. The routine compartmentalization of an Intelligence Division at least eased some of the covert maneuvering that would be necessary to do this. Intelligence officers at all levels were used to not being given explanations. It was part of the business and worked to their advantage more often than not It was this claim to silence, justified by the necessity to maintain security, that so often rankled intelligence outsiders and struck them an unnecessary arrogance.

Graver had already talked with Matt Rostov about using Paula, and even though Graver would be handing in his report on Tisler the next morning, everyone would assume there would be loose ends to deal with. And Ray Besom was still out of town. These arrangements would allow Neuman and Paula to work in isolation from the others and enable him to see them regularly during the course of the day without raising any particular notice.

The first thing he would do would be to complete the report for Westrate. If there were others within CID involved along with Burtell and Besom and Tisler, they would be able to pass along the fact that the case indeed had been closed out.

Now, as they each sipped fresh cups of coffee that Neuman had stepped across the hall to make before they got started, he explained how he was going to handle Burtell.

“I’ve got someone from the outside for surveillance,” he said bluntly. Both Paula and Neuman registered shock. “There was no way I could use anyone in law enforcement in this city. Burtell’s been around too long, knows too many people. Besides, if I’m going to keep this unofficial… I couldn’t risk a leak.”

“These people,” Paula said, “they’re another agency?”

“No.”

“A
private
investigator?”

“No,” Graver said firmly. He wasn’t going to explain, and he didn’t want any questions about it He went on immediately. “As soon as we have something from them, from surveillance, we’ll follow up as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we’ve got plenty to do.”

He opened a folder in which he had been filing away notes since Sunday night after Westrate’s visit.

“First,” he said, “we’ve
got
to determine the status of the sources listed in Tisler’s contributor files for the Probst and Friel investigations. Did Tisler and/or Dean simply steal the names of real people, or do these people actually know Probst and Friel? Paula, you’ve already found out that most of these people can’t be located. Bruce Sheck, we don’t know. Colleen Synar, maybe. Let’s get to the bottom of what’s going on here. But be goddamned careful. We’re working against our own people here. They know all the tricks; they can read all the signs. And they’re expecting us.”

“If we locate them, do you want us to go ahead and talk to them on the telephone?” Paula asked.

Graver hesitated. “No. Hold off on that. Just make sure we know where we can find them.”

“What about the Seldon thing?” Neuman asked. Graver was expecting it. After all, neither of them knew what had happened that morning with Burtell after they had walked out of Graver’s office. He told them Burtell’s account of what had happened.