Exiles (38 page)

They held Aaronson in the brig, isolated from the common soldiers, the guys picked up for taking a swing at an officer or passing out drunk in the bathroom of a German whorehouse, then waking up two days after their leave had expired. They treated him okay, hot meals and clean work clothes, and they gave him a cell with a working toilet and a reading lamp by the cot. The interrogations were polite, formal, crisp. Aaronson got the message. They were trying to break his allegiance to the movement, to bring him around, to mold him, simply by wearing him down, into a pliable tool that would fit nicely in their hands. Yet behind their treatment lay the implicit threat that they might turn up the heat, throw him into the open wards of the psych unit where he would have to survive among the GIs trying to prove that they were too demented and violent even for service in Vietnam.

They questioned him about the movement in Sweden, about Zeke and the Worm, about the leadership insurgencies that had stirred the community since he had departed. They fed him information and misinformation, led him to believe that ARMS was in a shambles, that the group had splintered into warring factions. They explained that the rift had widened between those who considered themselves Swedish immigrants and those who thought of themselves as political exiles waiting for amnesty and redemption and triumphal return to their homeland. They said that the animosity between the hard-core soldiers who had risked their lives in battle and the guys who had deserted from the European theater or from boot camp or, worse, even before enlistment, had so intensified that the once egalitarian community had developed a calcified hierarchy, a status ladder more rigid and insurmountable than any system ever dreamed of by the minds in the Pentagon. In short, they alternately harassed him, tried to break him, and flattered him into thinking that the movement he had established had disintegrated because of his absence.

“And you believed them?” Spiegel said.

“Eventually.”

Spiegel heard a metallic
click,
as if Aaronson had cocked the trigger of the pistol. He imagined that the barrel was only inches from his ear, but he decided he had better not try to verify that assumption. He had been trying to edge forward toward the brink of the cliff. He could see a ledge about ten feet below the crest. He thought if he could shift his balance forward, ever so slightly, and then distract Aaronson for a moment, he could safely make the drop. If his luck held and he didn’t injure himself in the fall, he could gain the trail and escape into the valley. Of course, it was possible that the ledge was an isolated protrusion and he would be marooned there, in Aaronson’s sights.

Aaronson didn’t seem to notice Spiegel’s incremental advance. He went on with his story.

“I’d set up a line of communication to Uppsala before I left, of course, but once they locked me up that line was cut. So I really had no clear idea. I thought they were bullshitting me, but, still, over time, they wear you down.”

“So you’re telling me that you gave in and agreed to tell them everything you knew about the movement in Uppsala?”

“No, that’s not the point,” Aaronson said. He seemed annoyed that Spiegel didn’t get it, couldn’t see the whole picture. “They’re already telling me that they knew everything going on in Uppsala, right? Why would they need me to go back there and spy for them?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“They wanted me to go back to Uppsala to get busted.”

Spiegel didn’t say anything. He was truly puzzled.

“They gave me the same valise I’d carried into Denmark, or it looked like the same one, and they packed it full of plastics and switches. They told me not to look through the bag, that they’d make sure I got across the borders and through customs and all. And they gave me back my own passport. I mean a copy of it.”

“But you must have looked anyway,” Spiegel said. “In the bag.”

“It was filled with East German banknotes, worthless shit, zipped into the inside flaps. It was a setup. The plan was, I was to carry the bag to a checkpoint at the Djurpark in Stockholm. It was all arranged, a bust that would link me and the ARMS movement to Third World terrorists with Communist backing. I’d give depositions, make a public statement about how I came to Sweden, about the shipments we’d handled, the money that had gone into the ARMS treasury. They figured that would destroy the deserter community and discredit its supporters in the Swedish government.”

“So the government would be forced to ban social services for American deserters or else face a challenge from the Sweden First Party,” Spiegel concluded.

“Yes. The deserters would starve, or leave.”

“And you agreed—”

“In exchange for protection, a pardon, passage home.”

“But . . . you would have had to leave Tracy behind,” Spiegel said.

“Would she have come with me, if she could?”

Spiegel didn’t even have to pause to think. “Yes,” he said. “I know now that she would have. She was waiting for you all the time.”

“But that wasn’t so clear to me,” Aaronson said, his voice rising. “When I came back and found out—”

“Don’t try to put the blame on me,” Spiegel cried. “Where the fuck were you? You say you set up communications with Uppsala before you left. Great. How come we never heard a fucking thing from you? And then you come sneaking back, with a plan to betray the whole movement so you can get your freedom, your passport, your new identity, leaving all the other Americans to fry. To hell with them—the guys who risked their lives deserting the army in time of war. All hail Aaronson, the hero!”

“And what about you? A guy I thought I could really trust, a brother. It took you all of about two weeks to get into Tracy’s pants—”

“So go ahead,” Spiegel yelled. He turned, and Aaronson pushed the barrel of the gun into his rib cage. Spiegel raised his arms, a gesture of submission. He could feel the ring of steel kissing his chest, imprinting a target on the soft flesh and the plank of bone that shielded his racing heart. “Shoot me. Do it!”

“No,” Aaronson said. “You’ve got to know—I didn’t go through with the deal. I never made the handoff. I’m not going to.”

“So instead,” Spiegel said, “I’m the handoff. You’re going to kill me.”

Aaronson raised the gun slightly higher so that Spiegel was practically looking down the barrel. “Why would I want to kill you?” Aaronson said. “It’s been in the papers already. Remember? Leonard Spiegel does not exist.”

A chill shook Spiegel’s whole body. Maybe Aaronson had really gone insane. Perhaps the physical exertion and the emotional turmoil of the past few days had broken him so that he was seeing things, hearing voices from within, and he could no longer distinguish reality from illusion.

“If I don’t exist,” Spiegel said cautiously, measuring each word, “I can’t hurt you. Why don’t you just let me go? I’ll hike back toward the shelter, and you can go on your way. I won’t tell anyone about our encounter. You can cross the frontier, move on to China, vanish.”

“Yes,” Aaronson said. “That’s what I want to do.” Spiegel let out a thin breath, through his clenched teeth. “But first,” Aaronson continued, “I’ve got to die.”

Aaronson tilted the gun before Spiegel’s face. Sunlight glinted off the barrel, blinding Spiegel for a second.

“I understand,” Spiegel said. “You brought me here to stand in for you one last time, to take one more dive for you. You’re going to send me out there . . .” He gestured at the open space that lay before them, the still air of the wooded valley.

“Yes, over the wall—”

“—off the edge. And then what? In a few days, Monika reports that a hiker is missing, they send out a search party. They find my body at the base of the cliff and they figure—a tragic climbing accident, a death on the trail. But it won’t be me who’s reported dead. It will be you. So the search for you is off. The church, the military police, everyone figures you tried to run away and you died. And meanwhile you’re safe in China, or somewhere else, living with Tracy, living as . . . me.”

“Well figured,” Aaronson said. “Well reasoned! If I weren’t holding this gun, I would applaud you. Consider it done, though. Imagine that you have heard my applause.”

“But there’s something you forgot,” Spiegel said. “The only way my dead body’s good to you is if I fall over the edge. If you shoot me, your plan is ruined. When they find my body, they’ll know it wasn’t a hiking accident. They’ll know it was murder.”

“So what?”

“So the gun doesn’t scare me is what.” He crouched, as if to leap forward, onto Aaronson, right into the range of the pistol.

But Aaronson jumped to his feet and backed away, keeping the barrel trained on Spiegel.

“Now hold it, Lenny. Don’t force me to use this,” Aaronson said. “I have more—”

“You won’t use it,” Spiegel said, slowly advancing. “You can’t shoot me.”

Spiegel reached out his hand. “Here,” he said. “Give me that gun.”

Aaronson hung his head. His shoulders were shaking as if he were sobbing, but Spiegel could hear no sound. Slowly, Aaronson raised the gun, and Spiegel stepped forward to take it from him. But Aaronson kept lifting the weapon, to eye level. He cocked his elbow, flexed his wrist, twisted his neck, and pointed the gun at his own right temple. He froze, and Spiegel stood by helpless, powerless. Spiegel tried to call, but his words were strangled into a whisper. “Don’t do it,” he said.

As Spiegel spoke, Aaronson raised his right arm, straight up into the air, and Spiegel heard the crack of an explosion, he heard a bullet whistle up through the trees. A small branch fell as if it were shot from the sky, and it landed on the patch of ground between them. Spiegel smelled burning powder, and he could see a little puff of smoke, a tiny cloud, dissipating in the still air. Before Spiegel could say another word, a second shot rang out, and a third, as Aaronson, his face locked in a grimace, kept squeezing the trigger. The noise from the volley of shots ricocheted off the cliffs and off the face of the mountain, and birds wheeled in the air, screaming. At last Aaronson let his arm drop to his side, and the dying noises seemed to drift away, floating down the valley, like summer wind.

“I was going to do it,” Aaronson said at last. “But I couldn’t. I guess I’m not brave enough.”

“It’s not such a brave thing,” Spiegel said. “To shoot yourself.”

“Not me,” he answered. “You. You had it figured out. I was going to kill you. But I can’t do it. I can’t.”

“I guess I should say—thanks,” Spiegel said. But he was wary about approaching Aaronson. He sensed that there could still be a trap. There might be another bullet in the chamber. Because of the echoes, the reverberations, Spiegel had been unable to keep count of the rounds Aaronson had fired.

“No,” Aaronson said. “Don’t say anything. I’m just a shit. We were both shits, to each other.”

“And now we’re even?”

“No. You still owe me.”

“I’m not going to pay with my life,” Spiegel said.

“You can pay with my death.”

“No!” Spiegel cried. “I can’t do that to you. I won’t!”

“Oh, fuck the gun,” Aaronson said, and he reared back and heaved the pistol off the edge of the cliff. It seemed to take a minute before Spiegel heard the clatter of the weapon landing on a base of loose rock. “There. You satisfied?”

“Then what is it you want from me?” Spiegel asked.

“I want you,” Aaronson said, “to make it look like I died. I want you to let me live by making me dead. Will you do this for me? It’s the last thing I’ll ask of you.”

Thoughts raced through Spiegel’s mind, brief images, passing before his mind’s eye like flip cards, of all he had done for Aaronson and of all the troubles he had endured—the fracas in the TV studio and the fight in the underground café, the May Day riot and the police interrogation. He thought of death and betrayal and loss, of his expulsion from ARMS and of Melissa’s duplicity and of the lonely death of Jorge. He thought of friends in the movement who had disappeared, of Zeke and the Worm, of Iris somewhere back at home—he no longer even knew where—and Tracy back in Uppsala or maybe already on her way to Asia, and now Aaronson himself, the last one to go, the last to seek his help.

No good had come of his efforts to help Aaronson. All he had brought about was the death of a friend and the dissolution of the movement that Aaronson had created. Spiegel had been like a bit of celestial debris, floating through space, drawn into the orbit of the nearest dominant star. Not for long, he thought. He would free himself from Aaronson’s field of gravity by helping him one last time, by sending Aaronson on his final passage and cloaking his disappearance behind a mask of death.

“Yes,” Spiegel said.

“You will?” Aaronson said. His voice seemed to tremble, to melt in relief.

“Listen.” Spiegel raised his hand and pointed off to a distant reach of the valley. Carried above the wind was an intermittent whistling sound and the steady hum of an engine. At the horizon, a wisp of smoke rose above the trees.

“Yes, that’s it,” Aaronson said.

“Can we make it?” Spiegel asked.

“Shit, I don’t know,” Aaronson said. “Let’s go.” He slipped his arms through the straps of his pack, and in what seemed like a single fluid motion, he was bounding along the cliffside trail. Spiegel had to scramble to catch up. His legs were still shaky and his movements clumsy after the standoff. He stepped awkwardly and unsteadily, breaking twigs and stumbling over rocks, struggling to keep pace.

The trail crossed the lip of the cliff and zigzagged down a series of steeply inclined ledges. Spiegel and Aaronson moved at a reckless clip, kicking up dust and rock. Stones rolled off the edge of the trail and rained on the valley floor. At every turn, their boots crunched into the dry, hard soil. The footing was loose, and sometimes they slipped and had to reach out blindly for balance. Once Spiegel teetered over the edge, and for a second he entertained the idea of letting himself drop into the welcoming blanket of spruce far below. “Come on,” Aaronson yelled from ahead, and his call echoed through the valley, the reverberant words crashing against one another as they rose in a crescendo toward the sky.