Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (64 page)

 
          
 
Outside, he started along the path toward the
West Gate.

 
          
 
He heard behind him a car accelerating up
West Executive Avenue
, then the squeal of tires as the car braked
and turned toward the West Basement.

 
          
 
Idly curious, he left the path and walked to
the edge of the grass to see who was so frantic to get to work at ten-thirty at

 
          
 
night. It was a black sedan, with a red light
flashing from within each side of its grill work.

 
          
 
Mario Epstein.

 
          
 
No peace for the wicked, Burnham thought, and
he passed through the West Gate and hailed a taxi cruising
Pennsylvania Avenue
.

 
          
 
The intersection of
Wisconsin Avenue
and M Street was packed with taxis, buses,
double-parked private cars, motorcycles, bicycles, skateboarders, pedestrians,
drunks, dancers, panhandlers and junkies, so Burnham paid the driver and left
the taxi and walked the four blocks to the apartment.

 
          
 
Wisconsin Avenue
was a continuous party, and Burnham wanted
to join in, to share his own elation, to have people clap him on the back and
congratulate him and buy him drinks. Solitary triumphs were no fun at all. But
Eva was waiting for him, and she would celebrate with him and would love him
and, as important right now as love—appreciate him.

 
          
 
The thought of her made him quicken his pace.

 
          
 
A blue sedan was parked fifteen or twenty
yards this side of the entrance to Burnham's building. Burnham would never have
noticed it if it hadn't been cozied up so brazenly to a fire hydrant. The
Georgetown police were notoriously gleeful towers, and Burnham enjoyed a
fleeting fantasy of the car's owner, well oiled, returning from an evening of
revelry to discover that his GM mid-size had been removed to some remote burial
ground where only a fool would go at night.

 
          
 
Suddenly there was movement inside the sedan,
and before Burnham could obey his instinct and look away (never stare at
anything surprising, was the rule, for many surprising things will take offense
and put a bullet in you) he saw a cascade of wonderfully red hair belonging to
a woman who had locked her face onto that of an unseen man and was trying either
to suck his brains out or administer a novel form of CPR.

 
          
 
Burnham smiled benignly and walked on to the
gate that led down to the entrance to his garden apartment.

 
          
 
Where can we reach you?" asked Paula
Strong, as she pushed the button for the service elevator. "No
where," said Pym. "I am no where." "We'll have to. You only
gave us half a loaf. I mean, it's a dynamite half a loaf, don't get me wrong,
but it's still half a loaf. Like, we'll need some names before we can go with
anything."

 
          
 
"I will reach you. As soon as I am
getting names, you are getting names." The elevator arrived; it was padded
with movers' quilts, and two big trash barrels stood against the far wall. Pym
stepped inside.

 
          
 
“Push 'B,' " said Paula Strong.
"When you get to the basement, turn right, then right again, and the exit
door's straight ahead at the end of the corridor.''

 
          
 
"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.

 
          
 
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 fire 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?"