Passing Through the Flame (45 page)

“If it would please you to believe it,” Jango said.

“Come on!”

Jango stood up, walked to the balcony railing, and looked down at the surf crashing against the rocky base of the cliff, far below. “I’ve given them something they want in an entirely disconnected enterprise,” he said.

“What enterprise?”

“I’ve got an important job for you, Chris.”

“I said, what enterprise?”

Jango turned around to face Sargent, his face a stone mask, his eyes two hard black marbles. “It’s a very important job, and I think you’ll find it amusing.” A cool breeze blew up from the surface of the sea, ruffling Jango’s black thundercloud of hair. Sargent knew for dead certain that the subject was closed. Do I really want to know anyway? he wondered. Do I really want to know?

“Have you heard about the film I’m making?” Jango asked, his grim expression suddenly softening.

Sargent shook His head.

Jango handed him the hash pipe. “I’m producing a rock festival, and I’m producing a film to be shot there,” he said. “For reasons I won’t go into, some Movement radicals have taken it into their heads to seize control of the festival and use it for their own ends.”

“What’s this got to do with me?” Sargent said, sucking in a big charge of hash, holding it a moment, then coughing it out.

“You’re my expert in paramilitary affairs, aren’t you?”

“Oh, come on, Jango, don’t be stupid! You’re not going to waste my time setting up security for some dumb rock festival. You can hire Pinkertons or something for that. You don’t need
me
to deal with a bunch of hippies!”

Jango grinned his number-one snake grin. “You’re going to play the
other
hand, Chris,” he said. “You’re going to infiltrate this little cabal and end up leading the forces that will seize control of the festival.”

“Huh?”

“You’ll pick half a dozen of your best men, infiltrate the revolutionary group, and end up leading the strike force. They’re going to be needing someone like you; they’ll be glad to let you do it.”

Sargent handed the hash pipe back to Jango. Man, he’s come up with crazy schemes before, but nothing that makes less sense than this! There’s something scary about taking orders from a man you can’t understand, and the scariest part is that he somehow gets me to do it, to
want
to do it. And I’ve got a feeling that no matter how crazy this is going to be, he’s already figured out how to convince me to do it.

“Look, Jango,” he said, “we both know how nuts this sounds, so spare me the buildup and just tell me what it’s all about.”

“It’s really quite simple, Chris. I goaded them into it in the first place. It’ll make for a more interesting film. You’ll be a movie star.”

“What?
What?
WHAT?”

“We’ll be shooting everything that goes on at the festival, and when you lead a strike force seizing control of the stage, you’ll be screen-center in a part most actors would kill their mothers for.” Beck laughed. “Who knows, it might be the start of a whole new career. Anyway, I’ll pay you twenty thousand to do it, and five thousand to each of the men you pick. That should take care of any motivation problems.”

“You mean this whole thing is a stunt for a film?”

“Oh, it’s a bit more than that. Eden Records will be taping twenty albums at this festival. I want this coup to occur on the third day of the festival, and I want all the tapes Eden has cut destroyed in the process. Do you understand your mission now?”

“I’m beginning to get the picture,” Sargent said. “But what’s in it for you? Why is it worth fifty thousand to you to have those tapes destroyed?”

“You have no need to know that, Chris,” Jango Beck said with very convincing finality.

“What if I say twenty thousand isn’t enough?”

“You’re not going to hold me up for more than it’s worth,” Jango said. “You’ll notice the organization wasn’t able to. What makes you think you can?”

“Because I’m the thing about you that they’re scared of. But that’s not the point. I mean, what if I decide that I just don’t want to do it?”

Jango shrugged. “Well, then I’ll have to hire someone else. I’m not forcing you into it, Chris. I never force someone into something they don’t want to do, it’s an unnecessary waste of energy. It’s so much easier to find someone who has a self-interest in doing what you want done. I would’ve thought that you would’ve wanted to do this, seeing as how
she
would be there.”

“She?
Who?”

Jango smiled. “You know who,” he said. “
Her
.”

“Star...” Sargent said, and the word kicked up waves of memory from every part of his body, not so much of her body on his, or the depths of her eyes, or what she had done, but of the total feeling they had created, that peak of existence, that certainty of living the best moment of his life. And the thought that there was the barest chance that that moment might be recaptured, might somehow be reexperienced again and again, filled him with a sudden longing whose existence he had not even suspected.

“You’re a son of a bitch, Jango,” he said softly.

Jango Beck laughed. “Maybe, but think of the fringe benefits I offer. You
do
want the job?”

Despite everything, or perhaps because of it, Sargent experienced a wave of admiration for Jango Beck. Once again, Jango had maneuvered him into doing what he wanted done, and once more he had done it with the carrot, not the stick. How can you dislike a guy who gets you to obey orders by giving you orders you want to obey? If we had had officers like that, things might have gone very different in the Nam.

“Okay, Jango,” he said in a tone of good-natured surrender, “let’s hear your plan.”

“This is turning into a bullshit operation,” Ruby Berger said, her hard brown eyes pinning Ivan Blue. “As usual, Ivan, you’re mostly mouth.”

“I’ve done my part,” Ivan said. “I’ve brought this action together, and when the time comes, I’ll help front it. I’ve never pretended to be a detail man.”

“You’re amazing, you’re really amazing!”

“Come on, let’s not fight among ourselves,” Barry Stein said. “That’s the trouble with the Movement, we direct so much of our energy inward.”

He took a sip of tepid coffee and looked through the haze of cigarette smoke at Ivan and Ruby, who sat glaring at each other at either end of his threadbare office couch. We’re really not doing that badly, Stein thought. We’ve just reached one of those stages where frustration is causing us to turn in on each other. It always happens when a high-energy situation gets stuck at a stagnation point. But we’ve got to get through it and out of it fast.

Ruby cracked the rigidity of her posture and gave Stein one of those strange, almost comical tough-shy looks that she had been aiming his way in odd moments all week. “You’re right, Barry,” she said. “You’re really holding this committee together. Why did you saddle yourself with a male chauvinist bullshit artist like Ivan and a paranoiac like me?”

“You need sparks to light a fire,” Stein said. “And you’ve got to admit we’ve got plenty of both.”

“You’re really something, Barry. You’re one of the few people in the Movement who seems to know how to move things from here to there.”

“I’m one of the few people in the Movement who’s had to keep an alternate institution alive in the face of all the shit that the Establishment can throw at it. I’ve learned survival technique by surviving.”

“If you two want to get it on, I could go out for a pizza,” Ivan said.

“Fuck off!” Ruby shouted, flushing.

“Look, things aren’t so bad,” Stein said. “We’ve got what little money we need to finance the operation, and we’ve got representatives from all major Movement groups lined up to present their proposals to the first parliament of the counterculture. We’re pretty well along for the time we’ve been at it, and both of you have accomplished a lot.”

“That’s all I meant to say,” Ivan said in his best conciliatory tone of voice, turning those blue eyes on Ruby. “I never said you hadn’t done your part, I just didn’t like to hear you claim I hadn’t done mine. Okay?” He offered her his hand in half a Movement handshake. Only Stein detected the humor at the corners of his eyes and mouth.

“Okay,” Ruby said very seriously, completing the handshake. We can sometimes be as silly as a roomful of Pentagon officers ourselves, Stein thought. Maybe we’re just a silly tribe of monkeys, all of us.

But the handshake had its desired effect; when it broke, much of the tension was gone.

“We’re still left with the fact that we don’t actually have a plan for seizing control of Sunset City,” Ruby said in a much more reasonable tone of voice.

“Once we have the stage and the PA system, I guarantee we’ll be able to take over the festival,” Ivan said. “You just let
me
take care of that. That’s my thing, a poor ego-tripping thing, perhaps, but mine own. Give me a microphone, and I’ll move the world.”

“What I admire about you is your modesty, Ivan,” Ruby said. “Would it be a service to the Movement for me to underestimate my own enormous talents?” Ivan said. Then more seriously: “Or do less than I can so I won’t look like a star? You think we don’t need stars like everyone else?”

The tension lines were starting to form again. “Okay, that simplifies matters,” Stein said, trying to head off another ego clash. “We’ve reduced it to the technical problem of seizing control of the stage and the PA system. Or do you doubt that Ivan can deliver what he’s promised?”

“The son of a bitch can deliver it all right,” Ruby groused. “That’s what pisses me off so much. It’s just not the way things should be.”

“That’s what revolution is all about,” said Stein. “Using what is to bring about what should be.”

“It still galls me to think of a so-called revolutionary parading around on the
Dick Cavett Show
in a Superman suit.”

“You’re just jealous.”

“Why shouldn’t I be? Men like you have given women a hell of a lot to be jealous about. Here we are trying to create a revolutionary liberated zone, and we’re going to do it through the same old narcissistic male power trip.”

“You got any better ideas?” Ivan said smugly.

And that shut Ruby up. After a long moment of silence, she turned to Stein and said in a calmer tone of voice, “Okay, so we’ll assume that the problem is seizing the stage and the PA system. What kind of security force do you think Beck will have?”

Stein pondered the question, sipping at his coffee, which he found vile and brackish. Jango Beck’s idea of rock festival security could range anywhere from Pinkertons to Hell’s Angels. “Whatever it’ll be,” he said, “we can’t go wrong if we expect the worst.”

“Marvelous,” said Ivan.

“Barry will think of something. He’s brought us this far.”

“I, of course, had nothing to do with it.”

“I’m going to get a cup of coffee,” Stein said.

“I’ll go with you,” Ruby said. “Ivan and his ego have been dying to have a few moments alone together.”

They walked out of the office, down a long graffiti-covered hall, to the coffee machine outside Dick O’Brian’s office. As Stein turned the spigot on the coffee urn, Dick stepped out of his office. “There you are,” he said. “I’ve got a very strange dude in here wants to talk to you. You remember Sargent, the dope smuggler who gave us the list of undercover narcs? The guy who got the paper in this mess in the first place?”

Stein remembered very little of Sargent. There really hadn’t been much to remember. A letter, three phone calls back and forth making it clear that Sargent was blowing the cover of the agents because they were annoying his operation, then another letter with the list. Sargent was just a typical dope gangster serving his own ends. And they had never actually met.

“What does
he
want?”

“He wants to talk to you. He says he owes you a favor.”

“He owes me a favor?”

“That’s what the man says.”

Stein shrugged and followed O’Brian into his office. Ruby tagged behind. A tense-looking man with medium-length hair was seated on a folding chair in front of O’Brian’s desk. He wore a suede jacket and black trousers which somehow looked unnatural on him. His eyes were hot but controlled, radiating intelligence and formidability. Stein thought he looked familiar from somewhere....

“Sargent?” Stein said.

The man nodded silently.

“Got any more government secrets for us?”

“I might,” Sargent said. “Would you still have the balls to print them? After the trouble it caused you last time?”

Stein studied Sargent more closely. The man wasn’t being belligerent; he was being apologetic. Where have I seen him before? “I really don’t know what I’d do until I was faced with it,” Stein said honestly. “It was the right thing to do, but it had some terrible consequences.”

“I heard about your consequences,” Sargent said. “I heard you got taken over by a porn creep gangster because of what happened. That’s what I came here about. Say the word, and that creep is off your back. I figure I owe you one because we’re both on the same side. It’s not right that a no-good bastard should benefit from a favor you did for me.”

“I don’t understand what you’re offering to do,” Stein said, though he had flashed on exactly what Sargent was talking about.

“I’ve got what it takes to make Harry Marvin go away,” Sargent said. “One way or another.”

“What do you mean, one way or another?”

“Do you want to know?” Sargent said, measuring
Stein
with his eyes. “Or would you rather just have it done?”

O’Brian caught Stein’s eye, nodded at Ruby, indicating that maybe it would be smart for no more people than was actually necessary to hear the rest of this conversation. Because maybe, Stein realized, maybe the smart thing, the practical thing, the truly revolutionary thing, would be to take him up on it.

“Uh, Ruby,” he said uncomfortably, “uh... maybe... uh....”

“Maybe I ought to leave the room? Maybe I ought to go make some coffee? Maybe I should give one of you heroes of the people some head? I want to hear what he has to say.”

“This is
Flash
business, not committee business.”