Spook Country (28 page)

B rown took Milgrim to a dim, steamy Vietnamese restaurant, one with no English signage whatever. It felt like the anteroom of a sauna, which Milgrim found agreeable, but smelled of disinfectant, which he could have done without. It had the look of having been something else, long ago, but Milgrim found it impossible to say what that might have been. Perhaps a Scottish tearoom. Forties plywood with halfhearted Deco accents, long submerged under many coats of chipped white enamel. They ate pho, watching thin slices of pink beef graying in the shallow pool of hot, almost colorless broth, over sprouts and noodles. Milgrim had never seen Brown use chopsticks before. Brown definitely knew how to put away a bowl of pho, and tidily. When he was done, he opened his computer on their black Formica tabletop. Milgrim couldn’t see what he was doing. He supposed there might be wifi here, leaking down from the single story above, or that Brown might be looking at files he’d downloaded earlier. The old lady brought them fresh plastic tumblers of tea that might have passed for hot water, except for a peculiarly acetic aftertaste. Seven in the evening and they were the only customers.

Milgrim was feeling better. He’d asked Brown for a Rize, in the little park, and Brown, engrossed in whatever he was doing on the laptop, had unzipped a pocket on its bag and handed Milgrim an entire unopened four-pack. Now, behind Brown’s upright screen, Milgrim popped a second Rize from its bubble and washed it down with the tea-water. He’d brought his book in from the car, thinking Brown would probably work on the laptop. Now he opened it.

He found a favorite chapter: “An Elite of Amoral Supermen (2).”

“What’s that you keep reading?” asked Brown, unexpectedly, from the other side of the screen.

“‘An elite of amoral supermen,’” Milgrim replied, surprised to hear his own voice repeat the chapter title he’d just read.

“That’s what you all think,” said Brown, his attention elsewhere. “Liberals.”

Milgrim waited, but Brown said no more. Milgrim began again to read of the Beghards and the Beguines. He was well into the Quintinists, when Brown spoke again.

“Yes sir. I am.”

Milgrim froze, then realized that Brown was using his cell.

“Yes sir, I am,” Brown repeated. A pause. “It is.” Another silence. “Tomorrow.” Silence. “Yes sir.”

Milgrim heard Brown close his phone. Heard the rattle of china up the narrow stairwell of the house on N Street. The same sir? The man with the black car?

Brown called for the bill.

Milgrim closed his book.

MOISTURE IN THE air threatened to fall but didn’t. Larger drops fell from trees and wires. This had arrived while they were in the pho sauna, a different kind of moisture. The mountains had gone behind indeterminate scrims of cloud, shrinking the bowl of sky in a way Milgrim found comforting.

“Do you see it?” Brown asked. “Turquoise. Top one of three?”

Milgrim squinted through the Austrian monocular Brown had used in the surveillance van in SoHo. Superior optics, but he couldn’t find the point of focus. Fog, lights, steel boxes stacked like bricks. Angular puzzle-pieces of pipe, gantries of vast derricks, all of it jiggling, overlapping, like junk at the end of a kaleidoscope. And then it came together for him, one turquoise rectangle, topmost on its pile. “I see it,” he said.

“What are the odds,” Brown said, roughly taking the monocular, “of them stacking it where we can see it?”

Milgrim decided that the question was best treated as rhetorical, and kept silent.

“It’s off the ground,” Brown said, pressing the padded eyepiece into the orbit of his eye. “Up high. Less likelihood of tampering.” Even with that bit of apparently better news, it seemed, Brown was still rattled by the sight.

They stood facing a length of new gray twelve-foot chain-link, beside a long, plain-looking tavern, beige brick, out of which grew, surprisingly, a small, brown, four-story Edwardian hotel, called the Princeton. Milgrim had noticed how bars here seemed to possess these vestigial hotels. This one also had a large satellite dish, one of so archaic a pattern that he could imagine a younger person thinking it original to the building.

Behind them was a T-intersection, a tree-lined street running down into the street the Princeton stood on. The port, Milgrim thought, was like the long but oddly narrow train layout that had hugged a friend’s grandfather’s rec-room walls. The Princeton’s street bordered it, not far from CyndiNet’s little park.

“Visible from the street,” Brown said, the monocular like something growing out of his eye. “What are the odds against that?”

Milgrim didn’t know, and if he had, he wouldn’t necessarily have told Brown, who was obviously made very anxious and unhappy by this. But bolstered by the second Rize, he did attempt to change the subject: “The IF’s family, in New York?”

“What about them?”

“They haven’t been texting in Volapuk, have they? You haven’t needed any translation.”

“They aren’t texting in anything, that we know of. They aren’t phoning. They aren’t sending e-mails. They haven’t shown. Period.”

Milgrim thought about the signal-grabber that Brown had used, to get around the IF’s habit of constantly changing phones and numbers. He remembered his own suggestion, to Brown, to have the NSA do it, use that Echelon or something. What Brown had just said made him wonder, now, if someone might not already be doing that.

“Get in the car,” Brown said, turning back to the parked Taurus. “I don’t need you thinking, not tonight.”

W hat do you know about money laundering, Hollis?” the old man asked, passing her a round foil dish of peas and paneer. The four of them were having an Indian meal at the far end of the second long table. They’d ordered in, which Hollis supposed was what you did if you were plotting whatever these people were plotting, and didn’t want to have to go out.

Bobby, who didn’t like Indian, and didn’t want to sit with them, was making do with a large plain cheese pizza that had required separate delivery.

“Drug dealers,” she said, using her plastic fork to shovel peas onto a white paper plate, “wind up with piles of cash. Someone told me that the big guys throw the fives and ones away, too much trouble.” Inchmale loved factoids relating to illicit behavior of all kinds. “But it’s hard to buy anything very substantial with a truckload of cash, and the banks only let you deposit a certain amount, so the guy with bags of cash has to accept a steep discount, from someone who can get it back into circulation for him.”

The old man helped himself to colorfully flecked rice and chunks of chicken in bright beige sauce. “A sufficiently large amount of cash comes to constitute a negative asset. What could you do with ten million, say, if you couldn’t account for where it had come from?”

Why was he telling her this? “How big would that be, ten million?” She thought of Jimmy’s five thousand, in her purse. “In hundreds.”

“Hundreds, always,” he said. “Smaller than you think. Two-point-four billion, in hundreds, only took up the same amount of space as seventy-four washing machines, although it was considerably heavier. A million in hundreds weighs about twenty-three pounds and fits in a small suitcase. Ten million in hundreds weighs a little over two hundred and thirty pounds.”

“Did you see that two-point-four billion yourself?” She thought it was worth asking.

“June 2004,” he said, ignoring the question, “the Federal Reserve Bank of New York opened its vault on a Sunday, to prepare that amount for shipment to Baghdad, aboard a couple of C-130 cargo planes.”

“Baghdad?”

“We sent nearly twelve billion dollars in cash to Iraq, between March 2003 and June 2004. That June shipment was intended to cover the transition of power from the Coalition Provisional Authority to the interim Iraqi government. The largest one-time cash transfer in the history of the New York Fed.”

“Whose was it?” It was the only question she could think of.

“Iraqi funds, generated mainly from oil revenues, and held in trust by the Federal Reserve, under the terms of a United Nations resolution. The Development Fund for Iraq. Under the best of circumstances, say in a country like this one, in peacetime, keeping track of the ultimate distribution of even one billion is practically impossible. Oversight of twelve billion, in a situation like the one in Iraq? It’s literally impossible, today, to say with any authority exactly where the majority of that money went.”

“But it was used to rebuild the country?”

“Does it look like it?”

“It kept the interim government afloat?”

“I suppose it did. Some of it.” He began to eat, carefully and methodically and with evident enjoyment.

She met the eye of the Englishman who’d found her in the alley. He had dark hair, cut very short, probably in an effort to get the stylistic jump on early-onset male pattern baldness. He looked bright, she thought. Bright and fit and probably funny. She could’ve fancied him, she thought, if he weren’t some kind of international criminal, terrorist, pirate. Whatever these employers of Bobby’s were. Or multicultural criminal, not to forget the dreamy-looking boy in black, indeterminately ethnic but somehow definitely not American. The old man was as American as it got, but in what she thought of as some very recently archaic way. Someone who would’ve been in charge of something, in America, when grown-ups still ran things.

“Join me,” invited Mr. Bright Fit Criminal, from across the table, indicating the chair beside his. The old man gestured with his hand, mouth full, indicating that she should. She took her plate and went around the end of the table, noticing a yellow, rectangular plastic box, featureless except for three short black antennas, each of slightly different length, an on-off switch, and a red LED. It was on, whatever it was.

She put her plate on the table and took the seat beside him.

“I’m Garreth,” he said.

“I didn’t think you used names, here.”

“Well,” he said, “not surnames. But that’s my actual given. One of them, anyway.”

“What did you do, Garreth, before you started doing whatever this is that you’re doing now?”

He considered. “Extreme sports. Some hospital, as a result. Fines and a little jail, likewise. Built props for films. Did stunts for them as well. And what did you do, between ‘Hard to Be One’ and what you’re doing now?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Did badly in the stock market. Invested in a friend’s music store. What do you consider ‘extreme’ sports?”

“BASE jumping, mainly.”

“‘Base’?”

“Acronym. B building, A antenna, S span, as in bridge, arch, or dome, E earth, a cliff or other natural formation. BASE jumping.”

“What’s the tallest thing you ever jumped from?”

“I can’t tell you,” he said, “you’d look it up.”

“I can’t just Google ‘Garreth’ and ‘BASE jumping’?”

“I used my BASE-jumping name.” He tore a long strip from a scorched-looking round of naan, rolled it, and used it to sop up his remaining tandoori and paneer.

“Sometimes I wish I’d used my indie rock singer name.”

“Tito, there,” indicating the boy in black, “he’s seen your poster on St. Marks Place.”

“‘Tito’ is his BASE-jumping name?”

“Maybe the only name he’s got. He has a very large family, but I’m yet to hear a surname from any of them.” He wiped his mouth with a paper towel. “Are you thinking of having children?” he asked her.

“Am I what?”

“Sorry,” he said. “Are you pregnant?”

“No.”

“How would you feel about being exposed to a certain amount of radiation? Make that an uncertain amount. Not really very much. Probably. Bit dicey, actually. But likely not too bad.”

“You aren’t kidding, are you?”

“No.”

“But you don’t know how much?”

“As much as a couple of serious X-rays. That’s if things go optimally, which we expect them to. If there were a problem, though, it could go higher.”

“What kind of problem?”

“A complicated one. And unlikely.”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“Because he,” indicating the old man, “wants you to go along and see me do what I’m here to do. There’s a degree of risk in that, as described.”

“Did it surprise you that he’d ask me?”

“Not really,” he said. “He makes it up as we go along, and he’s mostly been right so far. It’s stranger who you are than that he’d invite you, if you see what I mean. Hollis Henry. Who’d believe that. But if he wants you there, you’re welcome. You mustn’t distract me, or go into hysterics, but he says you’re not the type. I wouldn’t think you were myself. But I had to ask you about the radiation risk. Wouldn’t want that on my conscience if something goes wrong.”

“I don’t have to jump off of anything?” She remembered Inchmale describing Stockholm syndrome, the fondness and loyalty one could supposedly come to feel for even the most brutal captor. She wondered whether she might be experiencing something like that, here. Inchmale thought that America had developed Stockholm syndrome toward its own government, post 9/11. But then she thought that she really should have been more likely to develop it toward Bigend than toward these three. Bigend, her every gut instinct told her, was an infinitely spookier captor (ruling out Bobby, of course, though he scarcely seemed an actor in this now).

“Nothing at all,” he said. “And neither will I.”

She blinked. “When is it?”

“Tonight.”

“That soon?”

“Stroke of midnight. Literally. But setup, on site, requires some time.” He checked his watch. “We’ll be leaving here at ten. I have some last-minute preparations, then I’ll do some yoga.”

She looked at him. Never in her life, she thought, had she had less of an idea where she might be going, either in the short or the long term. She hoped the short term would allow for a long term, but somehow it was all so peculiar, since she’d entered this room, that she hadn’t had time to be frightened.

“Tell him I’m in,” she said. “Tell him I accept his terms. I’m going with you.”

T hat jacket we put you in, in New York, for the helicopter,” the old man said, walking around Tito, who had just put on a new black hooded sweatshirt that Garreth had given him.

“I have it,” Tito said.

“Wear that, over the sweatshirt. Here’s your hard hat.” He handed Tito a yellow helmet. Tito tried it on, removed it, adjusted the white plastic headband, put it back on. “Lose the hat and jacket on your way out, of course. And give me that New Jersey license now. Remember your name?”

“Ramone Alcin,” said Tito, taking the card from his wallet and handing it to the old man.

The old man handed him a transparent plastic bag containing a phone, two plastic cards, and pair of latex gloves. “No prints on the container, of course, or the magnets. You’re still Ramone Alcin. Alberta license and a citizenship card. These are only props, costume, not serious documents. Neither will stand up to a check. The phone will speed-dial either of two numbers of ours.”

Tito nodded.

“The man you’re meeting at the Princeton will have a neck tag, for Ramone Alcin, with your picture on it. It won’t stand up to a check either, but you’ll need to be seen wearing one.”

“What is ‘Alberta’?”

“A province. State. Of Canada. The man you’re meeting, at the Princeton Hotel, will be parked on Powell, west of the hotel, in a large black pickup with a covered bed. He’s a very large man, very heavy, with a full dark beard. He’ll put you in the bed of the truck and drive it into the container terminal. He works there. If you’re discovered in the truck, he’ll claim not to know you, and you’ll claim not to know him. We very much hope, of course, that that won’t happen. Now we’ll go over the maps again. Where he’ll park the truck. Where the stack is. If you’re apprehended after having positioned the magnets, lose the phone first, then the cards and neck tag. Be confused. Speak little English. It will be awkward for you, if that happens, but they’ll have no way of knowing what you’ve just done. Claim you were looking for work. You’ll be arrested for trespassing, then locked up on immigration charges. We’ll do what we can. As will your family, of course.” He passed Tito another bag, this with a fold of well-worn bills. “In case you get out, tonight, but for any reason can’t contact us. Stay out of sight, in that case, and contact your family. You know how.”

Tito nodded. The old man understood the protocol. “Excuse me,” Tito said, in Russian. “But I must ask you about my father. About his death. I know very little other than that he was shot. I believe he may have been working for you.”

The old man frowned. “Your father was shot,” he said, in Spanish. “The man who shot him, an agent of Castro’s DGI, was delusional, paranoid. He believed that your father was reporting directly to Castro. Actually he was reporting to me, but that had nothing to do with the suspicions of his killer, which were baseless.” He looked at Tito. “If I’d valued your father’s friendship less, I might lie to you now, and tell you that his death involved some high purpose. But he was a man who valued truth. The man who shot him died in a bar fight, not long after, and we assumed that that had been the work of the DGI, who by then had determined that he was both unstable and utterly untrustworthy.”

Tito blinked.

“You haven’t had an easy life, Tito. Your mother’s illness, as well. Your uncles see that she receives excellent care. If they weren’t able to, I would myself.”

TITO HELPED GARRETH carry the Pelican case back down to the van. “All in the wrists,” Garreth said. “Can’t be straining them tonight, wrestling with this bastard.”

“What’s in it?” Tito asked, deliberately ignoring protocol as they slid the black case into the back of the van.

“Lead, mostly,” Garreth said. “Almost solid block of lead, in there.”

THE OLD MAN sat with Bobby, speaking to him quietly, calming him. Tito listened. Bobby no longer reminded him of his mother. Bobby’s fear was on some other frequency. Tito guessed he chose to allow it to overwhelm him, invited it, used it to make things the fault of others, attempted to control them with it.

Tito’s mother’s fear, after the towers had fallen, had been a deep and constant resonance, untouchable, gradually eroding the foundations of who she had been.

He looked up at the dark skylight and tried to feel New York. Trucks were rattling over metal on Canal Street, he told himself. Trains blowing past, beneath the pavement, through a maze his family had mapped with exquisite care. Had come to own, in a sense; every corner of every platform, every line of sight, many keys, storage closets, lockers; a theater for appearances and disappearances. He could have drawn maps, written out schedules, but now he found himself starting to be unable to believe in it. Like the Russian voices on his Sony plasma set, on the wall of the room that was no longer his.

“I’m Hollis,” the woman said, extending her hand. “Garreth tells me you’re called Tito.”

She was handsome, this woman, in some simple way. Looking at her now, he understood why they would make posters of her. “You are Bobby’s friend?” he asked.

“I don’t know him very well, really,” she said. “Have you known Garreth long?”

Tito looked at Garreth, who’d swept himself a section of floor, stripped down to black underpants and T-shirt, and was doing asanas. “No,” he said.

THE OLD MAN sat reading a news site on one of Bobby’s computers.

Tito and Bobby had carried the other things down. The long gray case, a folding aluminum hand truck wrapped with bungees, a photographer’s black tripod, a heavy canvas duffel.

“We’re going now,” Garreth said.

The old man shook hands with Tito, then Garreth. Then he offered his hand to the woman. “I’m pleased with our arrangement, Miss Henry,” he said to her. She shook his hand, but said nothing.

Tito, wrapped from waist to armpits, beneath his jacket and sweatshirt, in sixty feet of black nylon climbing rope, with the rare-earth magnets down the front of his jeans, the black respirator bulging out of one side pocket of the green jacket, and the yellow hard hat under his arm, led the way downstairs.