Last Days of the Condor (29 page)

Condor saw the blond man blink again, then say: “I didn't expect you either.”

Across the room, Faye said: “You're both the right guy.”

From off to his right, Condor heard Merle whisper:
“Don't shoot him.”

“Whoever you are, lady,” said the blond man. “I'm with you.”

Then he told Faye: “Actually, I came for you.”

And Condor grinned.

“Chris Harvie,” said Faye, “meet … Call him Condor. And this is Merle.”

“Could he … I don't know, lower the gun now?”

Yeah, he's cool.

Condor holstered the .45 and claimed the younger, taller man's hand for a shake.

Why is Faye hanging back? Like she's
 … Embarrassed. Ashamed. Scared.

“Just like you said in your text,” Chris told the green-eyed Glock-packing woman who trembled near him. “I came straight home after work.”

“Told no one?” whispered Faye.

He shook his head
no
.

And she ran to him, into his arms, buried her face against his chest and said so everyone in their known universe could hear: “I'm sorry!”

Chris kissed the top of her head, then again, said: “Whatever, it's okay.”

He'd previously only glimpsed the Faye who now stood back and stared at him, said: “No it's not.”

I've been you,
thought Condor.

The four of them sat on secondhand recycled office chairs in front of the wall made by Chris's sophisticated and expensive sound & cyber system.

Faye said: “I'm sorry, but this best choice puts you at terrible risk, your life, your career—I'm serious!”

“The big gun convinced me of that,” said Chris.

“We can't laugh about this!” argued Faye, fighting a smile.

“We have to laugh about this.”

Faye said: “You're a lawyer and there are laws and security codes we're probably breaking on top of all that, but … you have to know enough to know
why
.”

Then she revealed a framework of truth, disclosing Condor just enough, justifying and exonerating Merle, taking the blame and the blood all on her.

“And now we need you,” she told Chris.

Condor interrupted: “Tomorrow, it's got to be tomorrow.”

“What—” Chris held up a hand against both Faye and the man called Condor.

Who he frowned at, asked: “What did you mean, I'm not who you expected? This is my apartment, my home, she's my … my
I'm hers
.”

Condor said: “The way she talked, I thought you'd be taller.”

A smile twitched Chris's lips, he blushed, stared at the floor.

Faye's eyes searched that plane, too.

Let them have the moment.

Let it touch you.

Chris looked up, his motion pulling all others' eyes to him as he said: “I get it. Look, I don't do what I do because it's a job, and I didn't take this job to punch my ticket to some ‘
better
' gig, and if I'm not here to matter, I don't belong here at all.”

Faye said: “I …
You know
.”

“Yeah,” said Chris, “
I know
. But now what matters is this …
thing
we're in.”

He looked at Condor, said: “Besides the obvious cosmic reality, why does what we do next have to be tomorrow?”

“Because it's Friday,” answered Condor.

Faye told the blond man who'd loosed the tie around his neck
why, what, how
.

“Yeah,” said Chris, “it's gotta be tomorrow.”

Merle said: “What about tonight?”

Tonight was frozen pizzas, a refrigerator six-pack of cold microbrewery beer, speculation and nervous silences, things said and not said, glances, eyes full of questions and words full of hope. They used Chris's computer to map out their moves, Google street view and satellite images to scan what they'd see in the future.

As the small one-bedroom apartment filled with the aromas of baking pizza crust and simmering tomato sauce, cheese bubbling and coins of pepperoni and sausage curling their circles in toward their centers, Condor inventoried this other place where he didn't want to die.

A particular bachelor's home. “Particular,”
yes
, as in
this one
, but “particular”
more
in what was chosen and cherished.

Almost like me.

Or who you could have been
if
.

A wall of electronics. Great speakers, a dollar-devouring computer and music system, racks of CDs arranged in categories of subtle distinction. A few photos of a mom, a dad, a brother and two sisters, one older, one younger. Among the framed photos on the walls hung original art by a creator with a flair for purple and red crayons and dinosaurs, a display that screamed
nephew
to Condor. One frame held the iconic
New Yorker
magazine cover after 9/11, an all-black skyline enveloping even blacker silhouettes of twin towers. Another frame showed a rare indigo night aerial shot of the glowing U.S. Capitol dome that Condor and Chris saw from the sidewalks of every ordinary workday. Stacks of books lined walls, a couple volumes of Camus, law tomes and histories, novels. Titles Condor spotted included Dos Passos's
USA
trilogy,
East of Eden, Neuromancer, The Nature of the Game, Crimegate
. The TV was small, a few DVDs stacked beside it. A cable hookup. The quick search & secure stalk through the apartment he'd done with Faye after she broke them in had shown Condor the lone bedroom, a closet with half a dozen suits plus sports jackets, ties, plastic bagged from the dry cleaner's shirts and lots of running shoes
—“Ultimate,”
Faye'd whispered, a comment he didn't understand but let pass as strategically irrelevant. Their good luck meant frozen pizzas in the otherwise bleakly sparse refrigerator unit.

You could live like this.

Almost.

But the madness you bring with you would crash this sophisticated order.

Condor looked across the five remaining slices of pizza to the floor space where Chris sat beside Faye, asked him: “Has anybody been watching you?”

“Ah … No.”

“No odd looks at work? Strangers suddenly around? Familiar faces appearing when you didn't expect them?”

“You mean other than you?” Chris shook his head. “Nobody's watching me.”

“Somebody's always watching you. What matters is who's looking and why and what do they see.”

“Chris,” said Faye, “if we—if
I
wasn't here, is this how it would be?”

“You mean am I maintaining a normal profile and not breaking my known patterns in a way that would alert whoever is crazy enough to care?”

“I care,” said Condor.

Chris cocked his head and with an exaggerated expression of affirmation, said: “Exactly. But no, this—what's happening on the floor of my apartment on a Thursday evening, pizza with friends, not my usual after work, not a bite out or a game or a…”

He smiled at Faye. “But I've been spending more time like this lately. Waiting.”

Condor said: “What's different between now and like then?”

“Noise,” said Chris. “NPR, music or even a game. Something would be on.”

“Make that happen,” said Condor.

Chris's quick keying of commands into the sound system created a random playlist of songs heavy on alternative country/folk/rock songwriters shotgunned with jazz like Miles Davis and once fabulously famous but now tastefully forgotten moments of music.

Was one of those pop songs, a studio syncopation of electric guitars and violins and commercially soulful male voices wailing words that triggered memories in anyone who'd heard this tune more than thrice, a song with juvenile lyrics that meant nothing akin or ironic to this moment, nowhere near a
clong,
just a catchy three-minute musical chorus in rock 'n' roll slow-beat time.

Condor—

—old man grunting, straining, but quickly—

—got to his feet, his hand reaching down and finding Merle's instinctively reaching-up hand to be grasped.

“Dance with me,” he said.

Unfolding, yoga graceful, wide eyes scanning him, saying:
“What?”

“This is the chance we get. Dance with me.”

Wet filled her blue eyes but she had no strength to resist him taking her in his arms, holding her right hand with his heart-side grasp, his gun hand pressed on her blouse, on her bra strap, on her spine as he swayed them into
step-step-slide, step-step-slide
and the music played and she pressed her face against his blue shirt to dot it with her tears, as he felt the push of her breasts, the smell of her gray-blond hair and
this moment,
this moment of dancing to cheesy music he would never have picked, music that meant only this dance, this dance in an apartment where a couple who could be their children sat on the floor with beer bottles and bad pizza and watched them sway through time.

“I was afraid you wouldn't come back,” he whispered so only she could hear.

Her head shook
no
against his chest.

“We're here,” he said.

“I'm trying,” she whispered. “My best. My best.”

She held him and she danced and they danced.

The song ended. Songs do.

He stopped, she stopped, they stopped, stood in a home that wasn't theirs.

Condor saw Faye sitting on the floor, fighting sinking into slumber.

Said: “Now there's something we need to risk.”

“What?” whispered Merle standing
oh so close
to him.

“School,” said Condor as he watched Faye stir herself back to the killing edge.

Chris echoed Merle: “What?”

“You never know what you'll need to know,” said Condor.

So for thirty-seven minutes, he and Faye risked not being on a National Rifle Association (NRA)—Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)–approved range, and first with Condor's .45, then with Faye's Glock, made Chris and Merle practice aiming, firing, chambering rounds and (on Condor's pistol) learning the safety to click off. Spies made citizens learn how to load ammunition magazines even though almost no scenario envisioned that necessity, but the exercise helped demystify weapons neither Merle nor Chris knew before that night. They learned the three-point aim, breathe & squeeze, the Weaver stance, the OSS pioneered from-the-belt quick-fire move. Though such things are not advisable for long-term weapons preservation, long term for this crew projected as high noon tomorrow, so Chris and Merle practiced dry firing the pistols.
Click! Click!

After Condor and Faye reholstered their fully operational pistols, Condor again led them all through tomorrow's best-case choreography.

Then made Chris and Merle talk through the plan backwards.

Condor quizzed them on
what-if
s he answered as soon as their faces showed him they understood the scenario he'd spelled out.

He saw Faye's concentration fade.

Lied and said: “We're ready.”

Chris and Merle cleared a space on the main room's floor for a self-inflating air mattress left over from his sister and brother-in-law's visit. Merle used extra sheets, a fuzzy blue oversized blanket and two pillows to make a bed for her and Condor.

The apartment's one bathroom was in the hall.

Chris used the bathroom first, then Faye.

Faye motioned for Merle to take her turn. The older woman did.

Condor nodded toward the bedroom where Chris waited.

Told Faye: “You've done all you can do. Get what you can in there.”

The bedroom door closed behind her.

Merle came out of the bathroom, walked past Condor with a tired, tearful smile. He heard her undressing, getting onto the bed held by this floor.

Behind the closed door of the bathroom, Condor used the toilet.

Washed his hands, brushed his teeth, rinsed his mouth and spit.

Counted out the nighttime pills he chose to take—his heart, his bladder, his pains, his edgy insomnia—swallowed them with water from the sink faucet he cupped in his hand. Noted that no one living or dead was in the bathroom with him, that he was alone.

Condor stared at the man in the mirror.

Said: “There you are.”

 

26

The essence of love is betrayal.

—Chris Harvie

Not here, not now,
thought Faye as she entered Chris Harvie's bedroom.

But she knew that was a futile lie.

And as that door closed behind her, as
he
closed the exit behind
them,
Faye scanned this room lit by a lamp on the scarred wooden table holding the book he was reading, checked to be sure the shade was pulled down over the waiting-to-shatter glass window between her and the street-lit killing night.

She turned toward his comforting reach, said: “I'm sorry!”

He cupped her face, smiled at her tears: “What else could you do?”

“Not have gotten involved with you. At all. In the first place.”

“In the first place, I love you. After that, it's just how our luck got us here.”

She slid into his arms, whispered as loudly as she dared: “I love you.”

“I know.” He kissed her forehead, her wet cheeks, her dry lips.

“Come on, get in bed, go to sleep,” he said. “You're dead on your fee—

“Bad choice of metaphors,” he blurted.

“Wrong,” she said. “Dead on.”

Faye pulled the blue blouse out of her black pants, flew her hands up its line of white buttons until they were all undone. Opened the blouse. Touched the puckered white scar slashed up from her groin across her taut white stomach.