Shift: A Novel (7 page)

Once upstairs, Chandler didn’t know what to do: sit Naz down
and ask her a thousand and one questions or throw her on the bed and ravish her.

“I slept for five days.
Five days.”

Naz shrugged. “I know.”

Chandler pulled up short. “How do you know?”

He was behind her at that point. Her hair was looser than it had been a day and a half ago, fell down her back in lush ringlets. She wore a dark sweater, threadbare but cashmere. It clung to her back, which seemed as tiny and delicate as the thorax of a wasp. A skirt of pale gray wool rode softly over her hips; silk stockings added gloss to the curve of her calves. When Naz said, “You know how I know,” Chandler started, because he’d been so caught up in her body that he’d almost forgotten she was in the room.

“Don’t start in with that stuff about mind-reading and mental telepathy and extrasensory perception.”

“All those terms mean the same thing. And I never mentioned any of them.”

“ESP can refer to all sorts of phenomena. Remote viewing, precognition—”

“Would you be more comfortable if you predicted the results of next year’s election?”

“I do not believe—”

“Chandler.”

“—in ESP or secret CIA drug programs or two-way mirrors in seedy motels or—”

“Chandler.”

“—the existence of a part of the brain called the Gate of Orpheus—”

“Chandler!”

Chandler, pressed against the wall, looked at Naz as if she were a rising flood and he was trapped on the roof of his house.

“Your father’s name was John Forrestal.”

“Anyone could have found that out. My family is well known.”

“He hung himself from the chandelier in his office,” Naz said over him. “
‘Puto deus fio
. I am becoming a god.’ What was
my
father’s name?”

“How should I—”

“What was his name, Chandler?”

“Anthony,” Chandler said helplessly.

“And my mother?”

“Saba,” he whispered.

“Your mother disappeared after your father hung himself,” she continued. “You always suspected your grandmother chased her away. What’s Saba mean?”

“What’s—”

“Answer the question, Chandler.”

“A breeze. A gentle breeze.” He looked at Naz abjectly. “How do I—how do we know these things?”

“Answer the question, Chandler. You know how.”

“The … drug?”

Naz nodded.

“You gave me a drug. Someone—Morganthau?—made you give me a drug.”

Again Naz nodded.

“And it opened the Gate. The Gate of Orpheus.”

For the first time a look of doubt—fear—crossed Naz’s face.

“That’s the part I don’t understand. Morganthau never mentioned anything about a Gate of Orpheus. I thought I was in your mind, or that we were in each other’s. But now I think it was just you. Your”—her hands reached for a word—“consciousness somehow expanded into my mind. Into Morganthau’s.”

Chandler didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “He was really behind the mirror?”

Naz looked away. “He said he’d have me arrested if I didn’t cooperate. Solicitation,” she said, using the polite word. “He—”

“—photographs you,” Chandler finished for her. “How many—? Forty-one,” he answered himself. He answered himself because it was all there. Everything Naz had ever done. Her first sex, her first drink, her first time trading sex for drink. Somehow it was all in his mind. And he knew he was in her mind in the same way. All of him, residing forever behind those beautiful dark eyes.

He cleared his throat. “Morganthau’s real name. It’s—”

“Logan. Eddie Logan. I know. Now I know.” She shook her head in wonder. “Do you remember what you said in the hotel room? You said, ‘I’m here too.’” She took his hand, squeezed it as hard as she could. “I’m here, Chandler.
I’m here too.”

Her touch sent an electric tingle through his body, and Chandler felt a dopey but wondrous smile spreading across his face. But at the same time there was fear: not of the connection, of how it came to be or what it meant for the future, but the idea that it might be lost somehow, someday. Because if he lost the piece of himself that was her, he would never be whole again.

Another quotation sprang to his mind. Not one he’d learned for his dissertation, just something he’d read somewhere, sometime.
The gods sent Orpheus away from Hades empty-handed, and doomed him to meet his death at the hands of women
. Plato, he remembered then. The
Symposium
. Unlike most classical thinkers, Plato hadn’t revered Orpheus, but considered him a coward because he was unwilling to die for love. But that’s stupid, he told himself. I’m not—

“Chandler?” Naz’s voice cut into his thoughts. Her mouth was still open, but before she could say something else a knock sounded at the door.

“So.” Everton took a cigarette from a gold case monogrammed
RH
and lit it with a crystal lighter the size of an inkwell. “What’s with the hat? Afraid I’ll get a good look at your face, Melchior?”

Since it looked like he was going to have to deal with this fool, Melchior took a moment to scrutinize him. Or, rather, his clothes. Everton was clearly less man than mannequin, a prop wrapped in the uniform of his class. His gray wool suit, though perfectly tailored and brand-new, was ten years out of style (the lapels were practically as wide as a beauty queen’s sash, for one thing, the serge so stiff it looked like it would stand up on its own). But that was hardly surprising: fashion trends would be beneath the notice of the acting assistant deputy director for the Western Hemisphere Division, and no doubt his tailor had been cutting his suits the same way since prep school. From the crisply symmetrical half-Windsor knot to the double peaks of his white pocket square to the gold Longines with its plain leather strap peeking out from his French cuffs, Melchior couldn’t find a single aspect of the man that didn’t reek of Wasp prudery. Even his gold wedding band, narrow as solder wire and (tastefully) unpolished, seemed to hide inside the hairs on his knuckle. Really, he was the type of man who could just disappear, and it would be months before even his wife noticed.

Melchior took his hat off and set it on Richard Helms’s desk.

“I’m not the one who should be afraid,” he said, pulling a Medaille d’Or from his breast pocket and lighting it with his Zippo.
“Drew.”

Everton’s eyes followed the glowing tip of Melchior’s cigar like a rabbit transfixed by a swaying snake.

“The elusive Melchior,” he said, averting his gaze with difficulty. “I’ve always wanted to meet you, just to find out if you were real. That story with the slingshot still makes the rounds.”

“You should see what I can do with a cigar.”

Everton ashed so hard he broke his cigarette in half.

“I, ah, read about that in your report. Actually, I have a few questions about your account of your time in Cuba.”

Melchior waved the cigar like a magic wand. “Ask away.”

It took Everton another moment to tear his eyes from Melchior’s cigar.

“Right. So. Twenty-three months ago you were dropped into the Zapata Swamp as part of Operation Mongoose. There were six people on your team: you, two American freelancers, and three Cuban defectors with contacts in the anti-Communist resistance movement. You yourself are reputed to have extensive and impressive field credentials from Eastern Europe, South America, and Southeast Asia, among other places, yet within a week of your arrival all three Cubans were dead, one of the freelancers had been deported, the other was MIA, and you were in Boniato Prison.”

“That sounds about right.” Melchior puffed contentedly. “Rip ever turn up? I owe that son of a bitch for ditching me.”

A thick stream of smoke from the broken cigarette spiraled in the air between Everton and Melchior. Melchior could tell Everton wanted to put the cigarette out, but he just kept talking.

“After nine months behind bars, you claim that not only were you released, but were brought to the office of Raúl Castro and asked to keep an eye on Red Army activity in Cuba.”

“He gave me this suit too.” Melchior flipped open the left lapel, revealing the small hole over the heart. “Took it off a man he’d had executed. Was nice enough to have it cleaned first, but he left this
memento mori
to make sure I knew what the stakes were. Even threw in a pair-a shoes. Well, sandals, really.” Melchior lifted his feet again, waggled them at Everton.

Everton threw up his hands, which caused the smoke from his broken cigarette to dance around like an impish genie.

“You
have
to realize the idea that Fidel Castro’s
brother
hired a CIA agent to work for him defies credulity.”

“With all due respect, Acting Assistant Deputy Director for the Western Hemisphere Division Everton”—Melchior sucked air dramatically—“the Company sent me to Cuba to try to get El Jefe to smoke an
exploding cigar
, so I’m not sure where you get off saying what’s credulous or not.”

“Desmond Fitz—ugh.” Everton couldn’t take it anymore. He grabbed a pencil and used the eraser to stamp out the broken cigarette. “Desmond FitzGerald read too many James Bond novels,” Everton said when the smoke had finally dissipated, leaving behind the smell of burning
Hevea brasiliensis
sap, “and is a little too impressed by what Joe Scheider
¹⁷
cooks up in his labs.”

Melchior rolled his eyes. The exploding cigar had been a stupid idea, but it was hardly the point. “Why is it so far-fetched that a pair of totalitarian governments should be prone to the same factionalism that’s in the process of ripping apart this country, not to mention this agency?”

“I don’t—”

“Listen, Drew. I been back in the States three days. Just about the longest time I been here since I was thirteen. But it didn’t take me more than three hours to see that there’s been a shift. This country’s splitting in half. Democrats on one side, Republicans on the other. Liberals and conservatives, reformers and old guard, beatniks and squares. What was the gap in the last election? A hundred thousand votes out of seventy million? High school elections have more swing than that.”

“Kennedy won. That’s all that matters.” Everton didn’t sound at all pleased by this fact.

“With a little help from Momo Giancana,” Melchior said, “who, I gotta say, seems to be moving in very elite circles these days.”

Everton’s expression didn’t exactly change at the mention of Giancana, but it stiffened with the effort of remaining impassive. “Fine,” he said in a condescending tone. “Let’s say you did meet with Raúl Castro. That still doesn’t explain why he would task an American with the job of finding out what motives the Soviets might have for a Cuban alliance.”

“With all due respect, Drew—which is to say, none—you got to stop thinking like a bureaucrat and start thinking like a spook. Segundo didn’t trust his own men to get to the source of the problem. And even if they did, he didn’t think they could fix it.”

“By ‘problem,’ I assume you mean this fanciful notion that the Russians left nuclear weapons in Cuba? We have reconnaissance photographs showing the missiles being taken off the island.”

“You have pictures of
boxes
. Those boxes could be filled with
matryoshka
dolls for all you know.”

“Nikita Khrushchev isn’t stupid enough to risk Armageddon for the sake of hiding one or two bombs on Cuban soil.”

“Those are the dolls that sit one inside the other, by the way. Like Chinese boxes.”

“I know what
matryoshka—
”

“Although I guess in China they just call them boxes.”

Everton’s ears were so red that Melchior was surprised they weren’t oozing smoke like his broken cigarette. Melchior puffed on his cigar.

“Listen to me, Drew. Nikita Khrushchev might not be stupid enough to start World War III, but there are plenty of Russians who are. People whose objectives aren’t the same as Khrushchev’s, or the Kremlin’s for that matter.”

Everton snorted. “You’re trying to tell me a rogue Soviet element was able to steal Russian warheads without anyone—KGB, CIA, or DGI—finding out about it?”

Don’t forget the mafia, Melchior almost added.

“Actually, a lot of people knew,” he said aloud. “Just not the who or the where. That’s why Segundo hired me. He found it easier to stomach the idea of a small-scale CIA operation to remove one or two pirated devices than for his country to be blown off the map when word leaked that there were nukes on its territory.”

“I repeat, we have no intelligence indicating—”

“Damn it, Drew, did you even
read
my report?
I’m
the intelligence. That’s what you pay me for, remember?”

“We
paid
you to assassinate—” Everton cut himself off. Even in Langley, there were some things you didn’t say out loud. “We paid you to deliver a box of cigars. Instead you drop off the radar for almost two years, and when you do show up it’s smelling like rum and dressed like a plantation owner. Now, if you have any proof—”

“Hacendado.”

Everton folded his hands in front of him so tightly the knuckles turned white.

“What?”

“A plantation owner is called an
hacendado
, which you’d know if you paid any attention to the goddamn western hemisphere you’re supposed to be in charge of.”

Everton opened his mouth but Melchior spoke over him. “Twenty-three
months I spent on that miserable little island, Drew, and I’m telling you there are Russian elements—call ’em rogue, call ’em crazy, call ’em whatever the hell you want, but they’re using Cuba’s proximity to the U.S. to move the Cold War in a whole new direction.”

Everton’s knuckles were so white they were practically green, and his pursed lips were equally pale, and the little crescents dancing in the hollows of his flared nostrils.

“Fine. If you have any proof of such a conspiracy, by all means, produce it now. And by proof I mean something more than a blazer with a hole and a stain that looks like it was made by an exploding cigar. Pen, I mean. An exploding pen.”