Half World: A Novel (14 page)

I want to talk to the others.

There aren’t any others, Dorn said.

Valerov kept his eyes on the mirror, the cracks he had made.

Who is the liar now? he said.

41

Henry stood in front of the open mouth of the empty bus-station locker, the key in his hand. All that was left inside was a small flake of black leather, a last remnant of the ledger’s skin. Anyone could have taken it. Dorn, Clarke, someone sent from back east to follow Henry. It could be anywhere now, the record of what they’d done.

He had taken the secret tapes from the south office, Clarke and his Dictaphone, Clarke and Dorn, and now he burned them in the bus-station restroom, letting the reels melt in the sink before turning on the faucet.

He couldn’t find Elizabeth. She wasn’t in her apartment in the Tenderloin, wasn’t in her usual bars. He made his way south through the city to Hunters Point, Emma’s tenement, her room on the top floor. A single mattress, a chair by the window. A small pile of books by the chair. Poetry, some of the names familiar, some unknown to him. Strangers. Laundry on a line, dresses and undergarments he recognized. The radiator banging and then hissing steam.

The door finally opened and Emma came in, bundled against the cold, seemingly unsurprised to find an uninvited guest in her room.

She offered him a drink and when he declined she poured herself one, took a long swallow to prove that it was untainted, then poured another and handed him the glass. She was still wearing her coat and scarf. She stood against the wall and they drank and she watched him in silence.

“Am I in trouble?”

Her voice broke something in the room. A moment’s peace. Henry opened his eyes. He hadn’t realized he had closed them. He took a bank envelope from his jacket pocket.

“I’m going to give you some money and you’re going to leave,” he said. “You’re not going to tell me where you’re going. You’re not going to tell anyone.”

“You look like you’re in trouble,” Emma said.

Henry held the envelope. Emma set down her glass, reached for it, opened the flap.

“This is a lot.”

“You’re going to go,” Henry said, “and not stop for anything, for anyone, until you feel that you’re safe.”

Emma closed the flap, held the envelope at her side.

“Until I’m safe?”

He nodded.

She took a drink, looked at Henry again.

“What will that feel like?” she said.

*   *   *

Henry stood on the sidewalk in front of the Merchants Exchange. He set his camera on a postal box and looked through the viewfinder, adjusting the angle so he could see as much of the building as possible: the heavy stone walls, the powerful columns, a structure that had survived the last cataclysm, could survive the next. He used a short lens, which gave a vast field of vision but distorted the view, pushing the center back and bowing the edges of the frame like a fishbowl. Pedestrians passed through the glass, moving across the newly created space. When Henry was satisfied, he set the timer on the camera and stepped back into the frame.

He returned to the office to develop the film. Dorn was asleep on the sofa. Clarke sat at Henry’s desk, his head tilted listlessly to one side, half awake, watching Valerov through the window.

Valerov was hunched sick in a corner of the room. He had ripped the room apart, the walls and ceiling gutted, studs and chicken wire
exposed, newspaper insulation. Red finger streaks across what was left of the paint. The camera and microphone wires hanging free, fallen in tangles across the floor.

It was dark when Henry crossed the bridge into Oakland. No lights in the windows of the house. Inside, down the hallway, careful not to make a sound. Thomas was asleep on the floor beside his bed, legs straight, arms at his sides. Henry stood for a long moment, watching his son, and then bent to brush Thomas’s hair from his forehead, kiss the cool skin there.

He stepped into Hannah’s room. Gray moonlight through the window. One wall was covered with photographs, the entire city in black and white. Henry set the photo he had taken on her desk. No crumbled buildings, no destruction. No panic, no fear. No still-falling masonry. Just people passing on the sidewalk and the Merchants Exchange building and her father, everything secure in that moment, a day like any other.

*   *   *

“You’re not really home.” Ginnie’s voice in the dark bedroom.

“No.”

“When do you have to go back?”

“I should have gone already.”

“Come closer so I can see you.”

He took a step toward the bed and Ginnie reached over and switched on her reading lamp. A soft circle of orange light in the room. Ginnie in her blue nightgown, her hair in curlers. She sat up, watched him. He could only imagine what he looked like, the fear this struck in her. Standing folded and disheveled, his hands hanging at his sides.

“You should take a shower, change your clothes,” she said. “I’ll fix you something to eat.”

“I have to go back.”

“You should sleep for a while, Henry.”

He shook his head.

“Then lie here beside me,” she said. “Just for a minute.”

He lay on top of the covers, still in his shoes, his coat. Ginnie lay back down and closed her eyes, took his hand.

“I’m not going to let you go,” she said. “I don’t care what you have to do. I’m going to keep you here beside me.”

He didn’t move. He could feel the black water of the bay, slowly rolling. He could feel himself drifting between names. The man who belonged on that side of the water and the man who belonged on this side.

Henry said, “You have to trust me.”

“I’m trying to.”

“I’m very close.”

“Close to what?”

Ginnie’s face was drawn, her eyes wet. He couldn’t look at her eyes. He looked at her neck, her hair.

“Weir,” Henry said. “I’m almost to Weir.”

Ginnie took a breath, released it. Pulling from whatever reserves she had left.

He said, “It will all be over soon.”

She wiped her cheeks with the back of her wrist, took Henry’s hand again.

“I want you to promise that you’ll come back to me.”

Henry nodded.

“Please,” she said.

“I will.”

“You promise.”

“Yes.”

Ginnie studied his face, closed her eyes. She squeezed his hand a last time, then let him go.

42

Dorn and Clarke reinforced the chair, bolting it to two-by-fours which they then bolted to the floor. They strapped Valerov in and forced the water into his mouth, down his throat, massaging his neck until he swallowed. When he gagged and spat they were careful not to get any of the liquid on their skin. More water, then the blindfold, and then they cut the lights and left him, waited for the drug to take hold.

The window from the dark room into the dark room. Some of the microphones still worked, though there was nothing but the sound of Valerov’s breathing, the struggle for air. They sat in the office with their headphones and cigarettes, watching the black square of glass. Dorn and Clarke passed a flask. Nothing for half an hour, an hour. Grain swimming before Henry’s eyes in the darkness, tiny gray spots, like imperfections in an emulsion, underexposed film. He was beginning to wonder if they should try again when the sound began: a long, low hum, rising slowly in pitch as if reaching for something. Then Valerov’s voice, just a whisper at first, tentative, a question, what sounded like a woman’s name, a multistepped Russian word, soft then hard then soft.

More soft Russian, what sounded like the lines of a prayer. The rhythmic incantation. Then a silence, a long, protracted space, nothing, nothing, and then the screams, Dorn and Clarke lowering their
headphones and Henry lowering the gain, the men sitting back in their chairs while Valerov shrieked, the sound white and hot, a burning point of light in the dark.

*   *   *

Clarke gave Valerov vitamin injections, gave him
STORMY
with water. They let him sit in his clothes, his mess. They left him blindfolded. They were only in the room long enough to give him more of the drug and when they left they turned out the lights.

It did not seem like he slept. There was always sound coming from the room, shouting or screaming or talking or whispering, sometimes just formless noise, buzzing and humming. Whenever there was a moment of silence, Henry would think that Valerov had finally succumbed to sleep, but it would be broken soon enough by more noise.

Dorn and Clarke slept, sometimes deeply, sometimes fitfully. Henry did not sleep. He did not know how long it had been since he’d slept. He watched the dark window, listened through the headphones. He would stay awake as long as Valerov was awake. It was just the two of them now, it was down to the two of them, so he stood by the window and listened to the man come apart.

*   *   *

Dorn’s voice from somewhere in the office behind Henry, slurry with sleep.

“You want me to go in?”

“No,” Henry said.

“When?”

“Soon.”

Henry stood at the window, the red burn of his cigarette the only reflection in the glass.

“We’re missing something.” Dorn’s voice from somewhere back in the dark. “Your book, Hank. Where’s your book?”

*   *   *

The room smelled like sweat and urine, bodily waste, sour breath, gases. The heat was overwhelming. Henry turned on the overhead light. The floor was wet. The paint was peeling from what was left of the walls. An unthinkable place he had created.

Valerov didn’t move. He was breathing with some difficulty. He sat slumped, head down on his bare chest, his arms tied behind the back of the chair, the blindfold a tight black strip over his eyes.

Henry lifted the blindfold. Valerov kept his eyes closed, his head down.

“My name is Henry March. I was a colleague of the man you say you knew. I was a friend of the man.”

Valerov slowly opened his eyes. Squinting in the light, blinking rapidly.

“How long have I been here?” Valerov said.

“I don’t know.”

Valerov nodded, as if this was the answer he’d expected.

“This is your only chance to talk,” Henry said. “When I leave this room you will be back in the dark. That other place. You will be here as long as it takes.”

Valerov’s lips were dry and cracked. He ran his tongue over his bottom lip, moving some of the dead skin away.

“That is not why I am still here.”

His voice was a torn, pained thing. What was left of his voice.

“I am still here because you do not know what to do with me,” he said. “I know where I am. I am in San Francisco, California. I am in the United States of America. You cannot just open the door and set me free. Not after what has happened here.”

He licked his lips again, blinked at his bare feet.

“So the question now is something different,” Valerov said. “It is not Monarch. It is not anything I can tell you.”

Valerov looked at the wall, the door, his eyes without color, nothing but black pupil, and Henry realized that the man could no longer see, that he was still in the dark.

“The question now is one of disposal,” Valerov said.

Henry turned, unlocked the bathroom. He filled a glass with water from the sink, brought it back out, held the glass to Valerov’s lips.

“It’s just water,” he said. “Nothing else.”

Valerov’s mouth turned in an ugly smile. He took a drink, coughed, took a longer drink, gulping the water.

“It does not matter what it is,” Valerov said.

He sucked the liquid. When he stopped coughing, he spoke again.

“I know you, Henry March. I know your paperwork. I cannot see you, but I assume you resemble your photographs. I knew your friend as well. A highly intelligent man, a sensitive man. A poet. A man with a great understanding of the world.”

“What did you give him?”

“In exchange for his secrets? Your secrets? You would be disappointed. As would my colleagues back home. What did you give me for my secrets?”

“Do you know where he is?”

Valerov lifted his shoulders, winced, let them drop. “Men who betray their countries, where do they go? Rooms like this, possibly. We have rooms like this.”

“And the others?”

“Further penetration. You want to know if your organization is riddled with liars. With deceivers.”

“Yes.”

“Of course it is. As is mine. As are they all. We are all being betrayed. We are all in danger of being heard. This is not a secret. This is not one of our secrets. You are so young, your people. You are children who do not yet understand.”

Valerov stuck his tongue out. Henry brought the glass to his lips. Valerov finished the water greedily, sputtering from the overflow. When he spoke again his voice was stronger, clearer.

“My name is Grigori Sergeyevich Valerov. My father’s name was Sergei Nikolayevich Valerov. My wife’s name is Constantina. My daughters are Sasha and Padme. I am a citizen of the Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik. I am a member of the Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza.
I have nothing more to tell you, Henry March. I have told you everything.”

Henry set the empty glass on the dresser.

“I ask only that you do it quickly,” Valerov said. He tilted his head, his unseeing eyes rising. “A professional courtesy. Only what you would ask of me if our situation was reversed.”

*   *   *

Into the office, Henry turning the switches on the wall, flooding the room with light. Dorn stands from the sofa, squinting. Clarke leans forward at Henry’s desk.

“What did he tell you?”

“Nothing,” Henry says. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“Then they want him turned,” Clarke says.

“I know what they want.”

Clarke places his hands on Henry’s desk, pushes himself up. “What do you want to do, Henry? You want to open the door? You want to let him go?”

Dorn moves slowly toward Clarke, shifting his weight from one leg to another, restarting the circulation.

“Call them,” Henry says. “Call Marist. Tell them we can’t do any more.”

“It’s already done, Henry.” Clarke says. “There is no way out of here. Where is the way out?”

There is a look exchanged, Clarke and Dorn, and then Dorn is past the desks, out of the office. Henry turns to see Dorn reappear on the other side of the mirror, unstrapping Valerov, shouting at the man, knocking him to the floor.

Henry is moving again, pulling open the drawers of Dorn’s desk, rummaging through the suit coat on the back of Dorn’s chair.

Dorn screams at Valerov, whipping him with the straps. Valerov cowers against the wall by the blinded window, blocking his face with his hands, screaming in return.

Henry drops the coat, pulls the cushions from the sofa where Dorn had slept.

“You’re looking for his gun?”

Clarke’s back is to the window. He’s watching Henry. Behind him, Dorn has the straps pressed to Valerov’s neck. Valerov pulls at Dorn’s wrists, gasping.

Clarke says, “He has it.”

Henry looks past Clarke to the other room. Dorn’s revolver is tucked into the back of his belt, visible beneath the open flap of his shirt.

Out of the office. He can’t move fast enough, stumbling through the outer room, then through the door and into the brightness of the vestibule. Blinded, lurching. There is no sound. Sunlight in the vestibule. Dust in the air, turning. Then into the living room and there is no sound and then there is a muffled burst in the air, a plosive breath. Henry standing outside the bedroom door. The bedroom door open but not enough for Henry to see into the room. Inside, one man has shot the other. Either Dorn has shot Valerov or Valerov has shot Dorn and now whoever has the gun will turn it on Henry.

It is morning now. He can still feel the sunlight from the vestibule on his face. He can see Hannah walking down the hill to school, can see Ginnie and Thomas at the park, their faces warm from the sun. Henry’s face is warm from the sun. Dust spins in the air.

There is a noise, movement from inside the room. A man stirring, coming toward the open door.

He has created this. He has created something monstrous, and it will consume him, will consume those he loves, if it has something to follow, if it has a name.

There is a noise from the other room. Henry lets the first name go, the second. Henry Gladwell, Henry March. He sees now how Weir did it. You let the names go and the man follows.

The door opens, fully. A figure in the doorway.

He realizes, now. This is how Weir did it.

This is how you disappear.