James P. Hogan (62 page)

“The restaurant’s beautiful – looks right down over the center of the city. You’ll like it.”

The cocktail waiter appeared at the booth. He was Oriental in appearance. McCain ordered a Napoleon cocktail, and Scanlon took a refill of Bushmill’s Irish with a touch of water. It was getting on near ten years since they’d last seen each other at the end of the winding-down after it all, when Scanlon had disappeared to pursue his own life. Then, a month or so ago, he had called out of the blue to say he would be in Washington in early November. November 7 had seemed a good day to choose for getting together.

“So, this is one of your regular haunts, eh?” Scanlon said, raising his glass.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say regular. Once in a while, maybe….”

“And a fine place for charming the ladies out of their wherewithals, too, I wouldn’t wonder. ‘Tis a grand view out there on that side. Do you live near here?”

“No, not in the city. I’ve got a place at Warrenton, in Virginia – west from here.”

“How far would that be?”

“Oh, about thirty miles.”

Scanlon sat back and looked McCain up and down. “And speaking of ladies, do you ever see the blond partner in crime that you had back then? A bit skinny if I remember, but not bad-looking for that. She had a temper on her, too, that’d put many a man to shame.”

McCain shook his head. “Not these days. We were just doing a job, that’s all. She got together with Razz in the end. I guess they had some things in common…. At least he could hold his own with her. They both went off on one of the lunar projects.”

“Is that a fact, now?”

“Something to do with beaming power out to spaceships.”

“Since you’re still here in the area, I suppose you keep in touch with your pals from your old firm,” Scanlon said.

“I still see Bernard Foleda and his family from time to time,” McCain replied. “You remember him from all the debriefings – the guy I worked for.”

“I liked him. He said what he had to, without any frills or, fancy airs and graces, How’s he doing?”

“He retired after they started closing chunks of the Pentagon down and the excitement went out of life. Myra – that’s his wife – told me once that he couldn’t get used to not having the KGB tailing him to work every morning. It was as if he’d lost old friends. So he quit. He does things with his grandchildren and drinks with old cronies from the Pentagon Mafia.” McCain made a brief openhanded gesture. “I do see Koh every now and again. He’s into big-time politics in Asia again, and travels backward and forward to Washington. He’s always on a tight schedule, but he makes time if he can.”

The drinks arrived. McCain looked across, hesitated for a moment, then raised his glass in a toast. “Well… to old times, I guess.”

“And old friends.” They drank, and stayed silent for a few seconds. “And what about yourself?” Scanlon asked at last. “Is the world managing to keep you well enough supplied with mischief?”

McCain set his glass down and shrugged. “Oh, they gave me an allowance that’ll see me okay permanently, so money’s no problem. I fly a plane and keep pretty active. There’s a woman called Donna that I stay friendly with – I am a one-at-a-time kind of guy, whether you believe it or not. She’s a lawyer and doesn’t need full-time entanglements either, so it suits both of us. Politics and history still interest me – I read a lot.” He sipped his drink again. “And I’m collecting information on the history of espionage technology. I’m thinking maybe I’ll try writing a book about it one day.” He smiled wryly. “The only problem is, I’m not sure if there are many people left who’d have any use for it these days. Maybe commercial espionage is the only field left that pays.”

“Try writing one on mountaineering, then. Ye’ve some experience of that, too.”

McCain grinned. “Anyhow, what about you? When you called, you said something about teaching? You? Surely not.”

Scanlon looked upward and rubbed his neck in a guilty kind of way with his fingertips, “Ah, well now, it’s teaching of a kind, all right —’security adviser,’ I suppose you might call it. Some of these new nations that are appearing in Asia and all over… the people who are mixed up in the jockey-ings to run them tend to worry about their safety and such, you understand. They’ll pay well for good instructors to teach their bodyguards the business, if you follow my meaning”

McCain nodded in a resigned kind of way. “I might have guessed: know-how for sale, eh? Homicide, mayhem, explosives, booby traps…”

“A man has to make a living,” Scanlon said, using a phrase from the past, “And besides, hasn’t anyone a right to sleep easy in their own beds?”

McCain fell silent and studied his glass for a while. When he finally looked up, his face was more serious. “Kev, there’s one thing I always wanted to ask you about. What did make you switch sides back in Zamork?”

Scanlon shrugged. “Ah well, now, the KGB were never happy about having to use a foreigner for a job like that. But then, they could hardly have used a Russian with a fella like you, could they? So they took the risk and lost. I think maybe they let themselves believe too much of their own propaganda on Irish-English-American relationships…. And then, who ever understood how the Irish tick, anyhow?”

McCain drank, thought, and shook his head. “That was what you said at the debriefings and interrogations, but it never rang true – not to me. What was the real reason?”

Scanlon looked across, not answering at once, but his expression showed no surprise. Finally he said, simply, “It was Koh that did it.”

“Koh?” McCain looked genuinely astonished.

Scanlon turned his head away to gaze out through the glass wall that formed the far side of the lounge, “It was them things he used to say about civilizations: Greeks, Romans, Europe, America… even the Brits. How they all were born suddenly like living things, grew and flourished and expressed what they were in everything they did… and then they died. A few stones from the rubble are picked up by the next one and built into something better, but the race as a whole moves on and that’s what matters.” He gestured up at the darkening sky outside. “And that’s what’s going on out there, right now. Wouldn’t anyone like to think that what he did helped make a brick or two of what went into it? And when I got to thinking about it that way, how could I carry on working for the crowd I was with? Everything about that system represented where the rest of the world that mattered had come from, not where it was going to.”

McCain leaned back and looked at him wonderingly. “So it was all those hours you used to spend talking to him. Koh did it, eh? He sweet-talked an Irishman around. I wonder if he knew what he was doing.”

“Ah, to be sure he knew…. And it was watching the likes of yourself, and Razz, and the rest, and thinking what it all stood for,” Scanlon said. “I’d seen a regime that could only survive through fear – that destroyed people’s minds. And then I saw the power of the human mind, and people who would survive through overcoming fear. And I made my choice.”

McCain drained his glass, then nodded. “Poetic, and philosophical,” he complimented.

“And isn’t that what you’d expect from the Irish?”

McCain looked across the booth. “I never had any quarrel with the people, you know, Kev,” he said. “It was only the system. Look how well they’re doing now…. Oh, and guess who I got a letter from a little while ago – Andreyov. Remember him?”

“The old fella, with the white hair.”

“Yes, him. He’s back in the Ukraine.”

“Did you know that his father was there – in Germany in 1945, with Konev’s army?” Scanlon asked. They both laughed.

“He mentioned the first Russian Disney World that’s opened up outside Moscow,” McCain said. “He says Protbornov’s running it. I couldn’t make out if he was being serious or not.”

At that moment the host came back to the table and announced, “More of your party have arrived, gentlemen.” McCain looked up, puzzled, just in time to catch Scanlon giving the host a wink.

Then a woman’s voice said from behind him, “I thought you’d have picked a Japanese restaurant, Lew.”

McCain turned disbelievingly. She still had the obstinate curl of hair on her forehead that said so much about her personality, but her figure was more full now. He half-rose to his feet, speechless.

Rashazzi was behind her, grinning from ear to ear. “It’s our first Earthside leave for eighteen months,” he explained. “We couldn’t let it go by without looking you up. And the timing was perfect.” McCain shook Rashazzi’s hand, then gave Paula a warm hug.

“It was her idea” Scanlon said. “She tracked me down and called me from the Moon six weeks ago.”

“So we’re a little late,” Rashazzi said. “You know how it is – women…”

“Er, your table is ready,” the host informed them. “But if you’d like a cocktail first, we can get you another one later, Mr. Nakajima-Lin called a few minutes ago to say he’d been detained slightly, and for you to go ahead. He’ll join the party shortly.”

“No, let’s wait for him,” Rashazzi said. “I’m not starving yet.”

“We’re in Washington for a week,” Paula told McCain. “Why hurry?” Paula and Rashazzi sat down.

McCain was looking astounded. “Koh? Koh’s coming here too?”

“One of his little jaunts that you mentioned,” Scanlon said. “Just between the four of us, I think the tribe is planning on colonizing the United States.”

“So, what’s it like being scientists on the Moon?” McCain asked.

“Indescribable,” Rashazzi said. “Exhilarating. The sense of vastness, the sheer rawness of nature up there… You can’t imagine it.”

“You’re sure that’s where you really are?” McCain said over the top of his glass. “It couldn’t be down underneath Brooklyn or somewhere?” Rashazzi laughed.

“And being a scientist…” Paula said. She gave McCain a long look that was suddenly serious, just for the moment, “You had a lot to do with that, you know, Lew. I learned a lot about people, yes… But I learned what
real
science means, too.”

“How d’you mean?” he asked.

“You know what I mean. Science is realism – eliminating wishful thinking. If you can’t do that, you can’t begin. You’ll never know what truth is. You can make your own Potemkin in your head. And sometimes it can be just as difficult to break out of. But when you do, and you look back at the prison you were living a whole make-believe life in and mistaking it for reality, it’s the same feeling of release and endless room to grow.”

“Just like Koh’s ideas about evolution,” Scanlon commented.

“They’re the same thing,” Rashazzi said.

The Oriental cocktail waiter came back to the booth, and McCain stared up at him while he took Paula’s and Rashazzi’s order. His features seemed to be a mixture of Japanese and Chinese, with neither predominating – McCain had learned to distinguish them during his earlier years in the East. Then he frowned uneasily as a new thought struck him. “Your name wouldn’t be Nakajima-Lin by any chance, would it?” he asked the waiter.

“No, sir. It’s Jones.”

McCain sat back with a sigh of relief. “That’s good to know, anyway.”

“Why do you want to know?” the waiter inquired curiously.

McCain looked out at the stars beyond the far wall. “Oh, that’s a long, long story. Let’s just say that it would have been a coincidence. I’ve never been very comfortable with coincidences.”

The others smiled. Scanlon and McCain ordered refills.

Meanwhile, high in the sky outside, a particular pinpoint of light was just becoming visible, close to the Moon.

Born in London in 1941, James P. Hogan worked as an aeronautical engineer specializing in electronics and for several major computer firms before turning to writing full-time in 1979. Winner of the Prometheus Award, he has won wide popularity and high praise for his novels with their blend of gripping storytelling, intriguing scientific concepts, and convincing speculation, Mr. Hogan currently makes his home in northern California.