Hard Rain (10 page)

“I was talking to someone the other day who spoke very highly of you,” Dahlin said. “He referred particularly to Budapest in 'fifty-six.”

“Who was it?”

Dahlin named a name that was in the papers almost every day.

“He wasn't there,” Zyzmchuk said.

“I know that,” Dahlin said, a little sharply. “He'd been going over some of the reports from the time.”

“Why?”

“Now Ivan,” said Dahlin, “how would I know a thing like that? Don't you ever stop working?”

“Sure. Five o'clock every day. And all day Saturday and Sunday, since Gramm-Rudman.”

Dahlin's mouth opened. It made laughing motions, but no sound came out. He stuck his pipe in it. Keith turned from the window, glancing at his gold watch. I might be funny, Zyzmchuk thought, but not screamingly, like Gorbachev or the Harvard class notes.

Dahlin's mouth stopped doing whatever it was doing. “We've got something that looks like your kind of thing,” he said. “It'll get you out of the office, at least, for these last few …” Dahlin abandoned that approach, without substituting a replacement.

He needn't have been so careful: getting out of the office sounded fine to Zyzmchuk. “What kind of something?” he asked.

Dahlin nodded to Keith. Keith picked up a remote tuner and touched a button. Light glowed from the big screen on the wall. It took the shape of a face, the face, Zyzmchuk saw, of a woman about his own age, poised, well-cared-for, but slightly uneasy: the kind of face you might see in the waiting room of the best dentist in town.

A man on the screen leaned over and blocked the view. He had a fat neck, recently shaved clean by a barber's razor. He did something to the woman, saying, “This won't hurt a bit.” He did a few more things. Zyzmchuk glimpsed one of the woman's eyes as the man bent forward. It had widened very slightly: a little hole through which poise could start leaking away.

“Follow the Redskins?” said the man, with his back to the camera.

“Is that the first question?” the woman asked, sounding very puzzled.

The man on the screen laughed, the kind of laugh children provoke when they ask if God put the baby in Mummy's tummy. “Nope,” he said, “just making conversation.” He took out a notebook and moved offscreen.

The woman ran her finger across her upper lip, as though wiping sweat away, but there was no sweat to see. “Must it be so tight, Mr. Brent?”

“Excuse me?” said the man, turning. The camera caught his face in profile. Zyzmchuk could see that he had heard the woman perfectly well.

“He can't stop being tricky,” Dahlin said. “They're mass-producing boobs like that at Langley.”

“But boobs who enjoy their work,” Zyzmchuk said.

“That's what makes them boobs,” Keith said and laughed, drowning out the video. He had his hands folded comfortably across his belly, like a customer with a good seat at a Neil Simon hit.

The man from Langley had moved offscreen. “Pro forma?” he was saying, as though he couldn't believe what he'd heard. The woman's face tensed. The man announced that he was about to ask a series of questions, then put the first one: “What is your name?”

There was a long pause. The woman cast a quick look in the direction of the man; then she balled her right hand into a fist and said, “Alice Frame.”

“For Christ's sake,” Zyzmchuk said. “Is that the senator's wife?”

“You're quick to see the problem, Ivan,” Dahlin said.

“I don't see anything,” Zyzmchuk replied. “What's she doing in the flutter room?”

“You must have heard of the senator's polygraph bill.”

“I've heard of it. He wants to flutter every firstborn son and daughter in the land.”

Dahlin's mouth made its laughing motions, revealing teeth full of metal and a tobacco-stained tongue. “It's not that bad, Ivan. No more than a few hundred thousand people will be involved in all, mostly more State and Defense people, some independent contractors, a few agencies like NASA, that kind of thing.”

“And their families.”

“In some cases. The senator's trying to help.”

“By testing his own wife?”

“He's just trying to show that he's not asking anyone to do anything he wouldn't do himself. All the networks picked it up last night.”

“Surely you're not going to defend fluttering,” Zyzmchuk said.

“Not within these four walls,” said Dahlin, through a cloud of smoke.

“Except in terms of discouraging potential leakers,” Keith added.

“You mean intimidating the little guys.”

“Why not?”

“Because the machine can't detect when someone's lying. It can just write lines on paper. Its name describes it perfectly, no more, no less.” Zyzmchuk paused. He could see from their faces he'd gone too fast—it often happened when a man who spoke nine languages posed arguments based on word derivations to those with only one. “The point is that soon everyone's going to know. And then it won't even be scary anymore.” Out of the corner of his eye, Zyzmchuk saw Alice Frame, unaware of the camera in a light fixture or behind a ventilator, digging her nail into her palm and saying, “No, never.” “You can't make a joke your first line of defense,” Zyzmchuk said. “The professionals are laughing already.”

“I'm not going to argue with you, Ivan. The point is the senator has sat on the intelligence committee for twenty years; he's one of our biggest supporters; and he's very enthusiastic about this bill. That's fact one. Fact two: his wife took the test. Call it a publicity stunt if you want, but if we had results like this from anybody else, we'd investigate. I'm not talking about the polygraph report—don't waste your time reading it—but just look at her. Fact three: anything we do has to be discreet. We can't have the senator finding out we're investigating his wife.”

“Investigating her for what?”

“That's the problem.”

“Not mine,” Zyzmchuk said, looking at Keith. “If there is a problem, it's his.”

Keith flushed very slightly, but his voice was calm when he said, “It wasn't my idea.”

“I know that. But you could have discouraged him.”

“You overestimate my powers. The senator only calls on me for technical advice, never on policy.”

“That's crazy. You've written every word he's ever uttered about intelligence.”

Keith flushed a little more. It made him look very young. “Not since I left his office. He's got two staffers now working on nothing but intelligence. I haven't even seen him for a year.”

Zyzmchuk opened his mouth to say something, but Dahlin interrupted. “Ivan, please. We need your help.”

“To do what?”

Dahlin looked surprised. “A follow-up. In case, you see, there really was anything … we couldn't have it said we'd done …”

“Nothing,” Keith finished for him.

“So?” Zyzmchuk said.

“She'll have to be watched,” Keith replied.

“Oh, come on. She's not a spy. She's probably worried they're going to find out about some junket her husband took her on at the taxpayers' expense. Why don't we just drop it?”

“She's in a position to know a lot of things.”

“Then give it to the FBI. It's not our problem.”

“Not legally, perhaps, although I could make a case,” Dahlin said. “But as a practical matter, we have a close working relationship with the senator and we don't want it jeopardized by some oaf from the Bureau.”

“But suppose we do find something,” Zyzmchuk said. “What happens to your close working relationship then?”

“We'll tackle that when we have to.”

“Why don't we cross that bridge when we come to it instead?”

The room went still. Alice Frame's voice filled it. “Soviet nationals? Well, I met the ambassador at a reception once. And a few of his aides. I—I'm sorry, I can't remember any of their names.” They all looked at the screen. Alice Frame was biting her lower lip; she might have been on the verge of tears. “But I never—”

“Wait for the question, please,” said Mr. Brent.

“Turn that fucking thing off,” Zyzmchuk said. Keith touched a button. Zyzmchuk rose and walked across the room. He was giving physical expression to a mad vision of taking Keith and Dahlin by their necks and cracking their well-barbered skulls. For a moment he studied the Gorbachev photo. The resolution wasn't sharp enough to actually see urine, but there was enough supporting evidence to infer its presence.

“Why me?” Zyzmchuk asked at last.

“I think I can answer that,” Keith said. “Because it has to be flawless.”

Zyzmchuk smiled. “That's nice,” he said. He kept smiling. “I wonder,” he added, “since the senator is such a good friend, why our budget is getting so tight?”

There was a silence. Keith stood by the window, leaning his shoulder against the wall. Dahlin sat on the men's club couch with his legs crossed and his executive-length socks showing. They didn't look at each other, but signals passed between them. They were intercepted by Zyzmchuk, but not decoded.

“Specifically,” asked Dahlin, “do you mean why our budget is getting so tight that we've had to let you go?”

Zyzmchuk nodded.

Keith looked hurt. “But that's not why we're letting him go. Zyz. We've been through this. You're way over the age limit for a field man. You were a great field man. The kiosk operation was a classic—the trainees study it every year. But—”

Turning to Dahlin, Zyzmchuk interrupted. “That's what I mean, all right. Specifically.”

Dahlin folded his hands together. Zyzmchuk saw him consider and reject cracking the knuckles. “Perhaps,” Dahlin said, “something might be arranged, if you made a nice discreet job of this Alice Frame business.”

“I'm not talking about office work,” Zyzmchuk said. “It would have to be in the field.”

“Ivan, you know that's impossible.”

Zyzmchuk rose. “Then I'm sorry, I can't help you.”

Dahlin cracked his knuckles. “Oh, Christ,” he said. “Why can't you just go quietly?”

“Do you want to just go quietly?” Zyzmchuk asked. He was already at the door.

“When the time comes, yes.”

“Me too. But the time hasn't come yet.”

Dahlin sighed. “I may be able to work something with Langley. If you don't mind being seconded temporarily to them.”

“Tell them I want Prague. Second choice Budapest.”

Keith cleared his throat. “We could simply order you to do it.” He turned to Dahlin. “Couldn't we?”

Dahlin said nothing. Zyzmchuk answered for him. “I'd refuse. And then what would you do? I'm already fired.” Zyzmchuk expected some laughter at the irony of it all, but none came. Dahlin and Keith were no longer in a laughing mood. He opened the door and went out.

But he hadn't reached the end of the corridor before Keith caught up. He straightened his tie with the high-class ducks on it, cleared his throat again and said, “I hope we weren't too obscure.”

“Not at all.”

“I mean, I hope you didn't get the idea he wants you to move heaven and earth. It's not that kind of thing at all.” From behind his glasses, Keith was watching Zyzmchuk for some sign that he was following along. Zyzmchuk gave none. Keith sighed. “What he really wants, what the department really wants, is something more …”

“Pro forma?”

Keith smiled. “Exactly, Zyz. Exactly.”

10

Everything was fine.

Zorro did the driving. Zorro, the fox, so something and free; Zorro, who makes the sign of a P.

Zorro's little girl sat at one end of the backseat. Bao Dai sat at the other.

“Call me Uncle Bao,” he told her. But she didn't. She didn't call him anything. She'd been put off by the episode with the whalebone knife. A brief episode, nothing really, just waving it around. Bao Dai regretted it—he just wanted to go for a nice long drive—but Zorro had needed persuading—not to go on a nice drive, but to go on a nice long one. Now the knife was tucked away and everything was fine.

The dark countryside, the Doors—Bao Dai still couldn't believe the sound in the car—the black sky: all fine. Even the glare wasn't so bad.

Bao Dai rested his head against the rear speaker. There were six speakers in the rear. Fat bass notes pulsed in his ear. The singer sang about the scream of the butterfly. Bao Dai heard the scream. Dark night rolled by outside. He could almost forget everything. Then the music ended. Bao Dai sat up. He glanced at the girl. She was asleep.

“Where are we?” he asked.

The car slowed down. “Missouri,” Zorro said.

The car pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. “Why are we stopping?” Bao Dai said.

“I'm tired.” Zorro turned around to face him. He looked so fucking young.

“Tired?” Bao Dai had forgotten the feeling.

“I think we should head back.”

“Back?”

“Home.”

“Home?”

Zorro took a deep breath. “Please don't take this the wrong way.”

“Take what the wrong way?”

“I think maybe you need some … professional help.”

“What's that?”

“Someone to talk to.”

“I'm talking to you.”

“I'm not a professional.”

“Sure you are,” said Bao Dai. “You're a professional, all right. When it comes to me. A real pro.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“No?”

There was a long silence. A car whizzed by, then another. Zorro's face paled and darkened as the headlights swept past.

“You've been through a lot,” he said at last.

“Why do you want to talk about me all of a sudden?” Bao Dai said. No answer. “I don't want to talk about me,” he said. “Let's talk about you.”