Spook Country (10 page)

H ad that woman in the wheelchair had an IV drip-stand in tow, one-handing her way across the intersection, the other hand keeping the chrome-plated upright of the stand erect?

Had she been legless? Hollis couldn’t say, but after the skateboarder with no lower jaw it didn’t seem like that big a deal.

“Your company’s down here?” she asked Bigend, as he turned the Maybach into an alleyway that looked as though a Bradley fighting vehicle would be the wise man’s ride of choice.

Past a delirious frozen surge of graffiti, a sort of street-fractal Hokusai wave, and under a lowering lip of coiled razor wire topping chain-link gates.

“Yes,” he said, steering onto a concrete ramp rising fifteen feet as it hugged a wall that seemed to her as though it must belong to some city infinitely older than Los Angeles. Babylon, perhaps, its only graffiti cuneiform and discreet, furtive clerkish hen-scratchings applied to the odd brick.

The Maybach came to a temporary halt on a flat, truck-length platform, facing an articulated metal door. There were bulbous growths of smoked black plastic above this, pods housing cameras and perhaps other things as well. The door, decorated with a black pointillist portrait of Andre the Giant, Orwellian in scale, rose slowly, Andre’s somber, thyroidal gaze giving way to halogen brilliance. Bigend drove forward into a hangar-like space, smaller than Bobby Chombo’s empty factory but still impressive. Half a dozen identical silver sedans were parked there in a row, beside a brand-new yellow forklift and tall, tidy stacks of new gypsum wallboard.

Bigend stopped the car. A ball-capped guard in black uniform shorts and matching short-sleeved shirt regarded them from behind mirrored glasses. A laden, multicompartmented black holster was strapped to his right thigh.

She felt a sudden intense desire to get out of the Maybach, and acted on it.

The door opened like some disturbing hybrid of bank vault and Armani evening purse, perfectly balanced bombproof solidity meeting sheer cosmetic slickness. The gritty concrete floor, blotched with crumbs of gypsum, felt comforting in contrast. The guard gestured with a remote. She heard segmented steel start to rattle down behind them.

“This way, please,” said Bigend, over the clatter of the closing door. He stepped away from the Maybach without bothering to close his door, so she left hers open as well and followed him. She looked back, just as she was catching up with him, and saw it sitting open, its interior a soft, mouthlike cavern of gray lambskin under the high-resolution brilliance of the garage’s lighting.

“We’re losing the better part of the neighborhood’s edge, as the reclamation continues,” he said, guiding her around a ten-foot stack of drywall.

“‘Better part’?”

“Majority of. I’ll miss it, myself. It unsettles visitors. Unsettled is good. Last week we opened a new suite of offices in Beijing. I’m not satisfied, not at all. Three floors in a new building, really nothing we could do with them. But it’s Beijing.” He shrugged. “What choice do we have?”

She didn’t know, so said nothing. He led her up a wide flight of stairs and into what was obviously in the process of becoming a foyer. Another guard, studying CCTV windows on a panel display, ignored them.

They stepped into an elevator, its every surface taped over with white-dusted layers of corrugated cardboard. Bigend lifted a flap of the stuff and touched the controls. They rose two floors and the door opened. He gestured for her to go ahead.

She stepped out onto a scuffed runway of more of the same cardboard, taped across a floor of some smooth gray product. The cardboard ran to a conference table, six chairs on a side. Above this, on the wall beyond, hung Anton Corbijn’s portrait of her, in perfect resolution on a screen perhaps thirty feet on the diagonal.

“A wonderful image,” he said, as she looked from it back to him.

“I’ve never been entirely comfortable with it.”

“Because the celebrity self is a sort of tulpa,” he said.

“A what?”

“A projected thought-form. A term from Tibetan mysticism. The celebrity self has a life of its own. It can, under the right circumstances, indefinitely survive the death of its subject. That’s what every Elvis sighting is about, literally.”

All of which reminded her very much of how Inchmale looked at these things, though really she believed it too.

“What happens,” she asked him, “if the celebrity self dies first?”

“Very little,” he said. “That’s usually the problem. But images of this caliber serve as a hedge against that. And music is the most purely atemporal of media.”

“‘The past isn’t dead. It’s not even past,’” quoting Inchmale quoting Faulkner. “Would you mind changing channels?”

He gestured toward the screen. The Hook appeared in her place, the Soviet cargo helicopter, photographed from below. “What do you make of all this?” The smile flashed like a lighthouse. There were no apparent windows in this room, and at the moment this screen was the sole source of light.

“You like unsettled?”

“Yes?”

“Then you like me.”

“I do like you. And something would be very wrong if you weren’t. Unsettled.”

She went to the conference table and ran a finger along its black surface, leaving a faint trace in gypsum dust. “Is there really a magazine?”

“Everything,” said Bigend, “is potential.”

“Everything,” she said, “is potential bullshit.”

“Think of me as a patron. Please.”

“I don’t like the sound of that, thanks.”

“In the early 1920s,” Bigend said, “there were still some people in this country who hadn’t yet heard recorded music. Not many, but a few. That’s less than a hundred years ago. Your career as a ‘recording artist’”—making the quotes with his hands—“took place toward the end of a technological window that lasted less than a hundred years, a window during which consumers of recorded music lacked the means of producing that which they consumed. They could buy recordings, but they couldn’t reproduce them. The Curfew came in as that monopoly on the means of production was starting to erode. Prior to that monopoly, musicians were paid for performing, published and sold sheet music, or had patrons. The pop star, as we knew her”—and here he bowed slightly, in her direction—“was actually an artifact of preubiquitous media.”

“Of—?”

“Of a state in which ‘mass’ media existed, if you will, within the world.”

“As opposed to?”

“Comprising it.”

The light in the room changed, as he said this. She raised her eyes to the screen, where a metallic blue ant-glyph had taken over the screen.

“What’s in Chombo’s container?” she asked.

“It’s not Chombo’s container.”

“Your container.”

“It’s not our container.”

“‘Our’ being you and who?”

“You.”

“It’s not my container.”

“Just as I said,” said Bigend. And smiled.

“Whose is it, then?”

“I don’t know. But I believe you might be able to find out.”

“What’s in it?”

“We don’t know that either.”

“What does Chombo have to do with it?”

“Chombo, evidently, has found a way to know where it is, at least periodically.”

“Why don’t you just ask him?”

“Because it’s a secret. He’s being paid handsomely to keep it a secret, and his personality is such, as you’ve noted, that he likes having a secret.”

“Who’s paying him, then?”

“That seems to be even more of a secret.”

“Do you think it might be the container’s owner?”

“Or its ultimate addressee, should it ever acquire one? I don’t know. But you, Hollis, are the person I’ve found whom Bobby is most likely to talk to.”

“You weren’t there. He wasn’t that glad to have Alberto bring me around. There were no suggestions of further invitations.”

“That’s where I’m convinced you’re wrong,” he said. “When he’s gotten used to the idea that you’re available for more face time, you may well hear from him.”

“What have iPods got to do with it?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Rausch told me to look for iPods being used for data storage. Do people still do that?”

“Chombo periodically loads an iPod with data and sends it out of the United States.”

“What kind of data?”

“Music, ostensibly. We’ve had no way of finding out.”

“Do you know where he sends them?”

“San José, Costa Rica, so far. We have no idea where else it might go, from there.”

“Who receives it?”

“Someone whose job is to run an expensive post office box, essentially. There’s a lot of that, evidently, in San José. We’re working on it. Have you been there?”

“No.”

“There’s quite a community of retired CIA people there. DEA as well. We have someone there now, trying to have a quiet look into things, though so far it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.”

“Why are you so interested in the contents of Chombo’s container?”

Bigend removed a pale-blue microfiber dust cloth from his jacket pocket, pulled a chair out on its casters, and gave it a good dusting. “Seat?” He offered her the chair.

“No thanks. Go ahead.”

He seated himself. He looked up at her. “I’ve learned to value anomalous phenomena. Very peculiar things that people do, often secretly, have come to interest me in a certain way. I spend a lot of money, often, trying to understand those things. From them, sometimes, emerge Blue Ant’s most successful efforts. Trope Slope, for instance, our viral pitchman platform, was based on pieces of anonymous footage being posted on the Net.”

“You did that? Put that thing in the background of all those old movies? That’s fucking horrible. Pardon my French.”

“It sells shoes.” He smiled.

“So what do you expect to get out of this, if you can find out what’s in Chombo’s container?”

“No idea. None whatever. That’s exactly what makes it so interesting.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Intelligence, Hollis, is advertising turned inside out.”

“Which means?”

“Secrets,” said Bigend, gesturing toward the screen, “are cool.” On the screen appeared their images, standing beside the table, Bigend not yet seated, captured by a camera somewhere above. The Bigend on the screen took a pale blue cloth from his pocket, pulled out a chair, and began to dust its arms and back and seat. “Secrets,” said the Bigend beside her, “are the very root of cool.”

T ito crossed Amsterdam, passing the gray, snow-dusted stalks of a makeshift public garden, then walked quickly along 111th, toward Broadway.

The snow had stopped falling.

He recognized his cousin Vianca in the distance, by the Banco Popular, dressed like a teenager. Who else would be out, he wondered, for his ride back to Chinatown?

By the time he’d reached the Broadway median, Vianca was no longer visible. Attaining the western sidewalk, he turned south, heading for the 110th Street stop, hands in his pockets. Passing a framing shop, he picked her up in the depths of a mirror, crossing diagonally, a few yards behind his left shoulder.

Descending into the tiled trench of the subway, thinly roofed with iron and asphalt, he saw his breath rising.

The number 1 local arrived, like a sign, just as he reached the platform. He would return slowly, on the 1 to Canal, then walk east. He boarded the train, certain that Vianca and at least two others were doing the same. Protocol, for the detection and identification of followers, required a minimum of three.

AS THEY LEFT Sixty-sixth Street, Carlito entered from the car behind. Tito’s car was almost empty. Vianca sat near the front end, apparently engrossed in a small video game.

Carlito wore a dark-gray topcoat, a scarf a shade lighter, black leather gloves that made it look to Tito as though his hands might be carved from wood, and black rubbers over the polished calfskin of his Italian shoes. He looked conservative, foreign, unassimilated, and somehow religious.

He seated himself to Tito’s left. “Juana,” he asked in Spanish, “she is well?”

“Yes,” Tito said, “she seems well.”

“You have met him.” It was not a question.

“Yes,” Tito said.

“You have your instructions.”

“Yes.”

Tito felt Carlito slip something into his pocket.

“Búlgaro,” Carlito said, identifying the object for him.

“Charged?”

“Yes. A new valve.”

The Bulgarian’s guns were close to half a century old now, but still functioned with great efficiency. It was sometimes necessary to replace the Schrader valve set into the flat steel reservoir that also served as a grip, but there were remarkably few moving parts. “Loaded?”

“Salt,” Carlito said.

Tito remembered the salt cartridges, with their yellowed glassine membranes sealing either end of an inch-long, strangely scented cardboard tube.

“You must prepare now, to go away.”

“For how long?” Tito knew that this was not an entirely acceptable question to ask, but it was the sort of question that Alejandro had taught him to at least consider asking.

Carlito didn’t answer.

Tito was on the verge of asking what his father had been doing for the old man when he had died.

“He must not be captured.” Carlito touched the knot in his scarf with his stiff, gloved hands. “You must not be captured. Only the item you are delivering must be captured, and they must not suspect you of having given it to them.”

“What do we owe him, Uncle?”

“He saw our way here. He honored his word.”

Carlito rose as the train pulled into Fifty-ninth Street. One gloved hand rested for an instant on Tito’s shoulder. “Do well, nephew.” He turned and was gone.

Tito glanced past boarding passengers, hoping to see Vianca still there, but she too was gone.

He reached into his jacket’s side pocket, finding the Bulgarian’s singular, meticulously made weapon. It was folded loosely, within a fresh white cotton handkerchief from China, still stiff with sizing.

On drawing it from your pocket, those around you might think you were about to blow your nose. Without looking, Tito knew that the cardboard cylinder of carefully milled salt filled the entirety of the very short barrel. He left it where it was. Now that the Bulgarian’s rubber gaskets had been replaced with silicone, an effective charge could be maintained for up to forty-eight hours.

The salt, he wondered, was it Bulgarian? Where had those cartridges been made? In Sofia? In Moscow, perhaps? In London, where the Bulgarian was said to have worked before Tito’s grandfather had brought him to Cuba? Or in Havana, where he’d lived out his days?

The train pulled away from Columbus Circle.