Devereaux’s voice was flat but it was not heavy. It was the voice of a doctor asking a patient how he felt and
not really caring because the doctor already knew the diagnosis.
“Where the hell are we?”
“Where people don’t look for other people.”
“But we’re still in the District?”
“Perhaps.”
“Man, you made me ride around in a trunk. That’s shit, you know, man?”
“Sellers. What do you do?”
“I drive an ambulance.”
“That isn’t what I asked you.”
“I drive an ambulance.”
Devereaux hit him very hard, probably as hard as he had been struck by Captain Boll on that warm spring morning in the Lausanne police station. The difference was that Devereaux had expected the blow; the room was bright; Devereaux knew where he stood with Boll… there were so many differences. And this blow came down hard on the bridge of Sellers’ nose and broke it. They both heard the crack.
Sellers made a fuss. The blood broke down both nostrils and he tasted his own blood and his eyes teared because of the pain. He held his face, and when he tried to get up Devereaux shoved him back down on the chair at the table. He finally began to sob. When you taste your own blood, the reality of the situation penetrates.
Devereaux waited without a word for a long time. Sellers was such a small part of whatever it was that was happening. He was the corner of a package that had come unraveled and had to be worked loose before you could get to the rest of the wrapping.
Devereaux’s code name had been the last name on the
sheet of paper in Hanley’s desk. Why the question mark? And what did the other names mean? They were obviously the names of other R Section agents—but why were they listed together? And what was Nutcracker?
The questions nagged while he waited for Sellers to think through the pain. The questions made Devereaux impatient.
He pulled Sellers’ oily black hair up until Sellers almost had to rise out of the chair.
“Oh, Christ,” he screamed.
And Devereaux banged his face on the edge of the table again, breaking again that which had already been broken.
Sellers passed out.
When he awoke, he was on the floor, bathed in blood, and the swimming image of the other man remained. It was as horrible as the endless nightmare he had once floated through during a long and terrible acid trip.
“All right,” he said. “Jesus, man, don’t do that again, I can’t even breathe, I’m breathing my own blood.”
“Who do you work for? What do you do?” It was the quiet voice.
“I work for Mr. Ivers. I swear to God about that. I just work for a guy named Ivers who comes around every day and he tells me what to do. Sometimes it’s a straight pickup. You know, an old lady in a nursing home finally stops straining the family budget and we pick her up—old ladies are light, you know, like birds—and we take them to the funeral home. Sometimes we do funeral work. You know, a pinch. All over the place.”
“This isn’t getting me anywhere,” Devereaux said. His voice was very soft and it frightened Sellers to hear it.
“All right. All right, man, lay off, will you? Sometimes. Sometimes we get a pickup order.”
“What’s a pickup order?”
“Special stuff. It’s a government order. Got stamps on it. You know, all that tiny print and them pictures of eagles on them.”
“Where do they come from?”
“Orders from all over. Orders from Defense, orders from Treasury. You’d be surprised.”
“And what are the orders?”
“Man, I don’t want to get in trouble, you know?”
Devereaux said, “If you tell me everything I want to know, and it’s the truth, then I won’t kill you. If you don’t tell me everything, or you try to lie to me, then I will kill you but it will take a long time. And in the end, you’ll still tell me everything I want to know.”
“Who are you, man?” Sellers was sniffling because of the blood and the fluids in his mouth and nose. His sinuses hurt; that was the least of it.
“The last man you ever wanted to see,” Devereaux said.
They waited. The building was full of sounds. There were children running in the halls, shouting and threatening; there were television sets full of canned laughter.
“We get pickup orders. They use our service. We take them where we’re supposed to take them.”
“Where’s that?”
“Couple of places. There’s a place in Virginia, down near Roanoke, called the U.S. Center for Disease Isolation Control and Rehabilitation. That’s for ones that got contagious diseases, you know. The ones you don’t send to Atlanta. We got to wear masks and rubber gloves when
we handle them. We don’t get many of them but I don’t like those cases.”
“And who are these people?”
“I don’t know.”
They waited.
“I really swear to God I don’t know. I mean, I got guesses, but I don’t know.”
“Go ahead and guess.”
“Man, it’s plain, isn’t it? They fucked up with the government, man, didn’t they? You got to get rid of people sometimes. I mean, nobody says that to me but what the fuck do you think it would be about? You gotta be a genius to see that or what?”
Silence. This time the waiting was exhausted. There was no menace to it.
“Tell me about the other places,” Devereaux said. In another part of the building, someone was listening to a very loud rendition of
The Cosby Show
. The children were laughing. A warm spring night in the capital of the United States.
“St. Catherine’s. That’s out beyond Hancock in Maryland? You know where—”
But Devereaux knew suddenly. He was listening but he knew. The R Section had its training base in the rugged mountains of western Maryland, the same line of Appalachians that ran down from Pennsylvania and the deep mining valleys, down through the panhandle, down into Virginia and North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. He had heard vague rumors then about government contracts with various hospitals, to take care of mentally unhinged agents. And now, their directors.
Places that were secure.
Places that were under control.
Hanley was a director.
There are no spies.
Hanley’s words suddenly surged into consciousness from wherever they had been buried and floated like a leaf.
“You went to a building about five or six weeks ago. It was in northwest Washington. There was a pickup. A man about fifty-five or sixty, man was bald, had big eyes. A man with blue eyes.” He began the careful description of Hanley, creating the photograph from memory.
Sellers waited again. “Is that what this is about?”
“Yes,” Devereaux said.
“This is about that one old man?”
“Who gave the order? And where did it come from?”
“Mr. Ivers. Like always.”
“Where did it come from?”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You see. That’s where you fail me. You fail to tell me exactly what I want to know.”
He saw the other man rise. He felt the pressure of Devereaux’s foot on his left hand.
“No, man,” Sellers said.
“Where did it come from?”
“All right. Let me think. Just give me a damned minute, will you? Let me think about it.”
He closed his eyes and tried to see the order.
He opened his eyes.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” Devereaux repeated.
“I didn’t remember because I never heard of it before. Is that okay?”
“All right.”
“Department of Agriculture,” said Sellers. “Isn’t that a kick? How the hell does the Department of Agriculture have any secrets? Can you figure that out for me?”
“What section in the Department of Agriculture?”
“Man, gimme a break. I don’t read the whole damned thing. It goes on for pages. You know, name and judgment and all that jazz. I just look at the place I’m supposed to take him and if I’m gonna need to use restraints. We had to use restraints.”
“I suppose you did,” Devereaux said. It was broken. At least the part of it that would involve Sellers. The problem was what to do with Sellers.
Sellers lay on the floor, blinded and gagging on his own blood. He never realized that Devereaux was deciding his life in that moment of silence. Sellers thought it had all been settled.
Devereaux counted on his own survival—alone—once. And there was now that unfinished conversation in mind with Rita Macklin. She would say:
And you want to go back to that?
And he would say:
I protect myself. I make decisions for my own survival.
And she would say:
The good agent. (He knew her tone of voice.) Well, maybe it’s not good enough for me. No, not good enough at all.
They found Sellers on Saturday afternoon, locked in the trunk of a Budget rent-a-car parked in the crowded lot at National Airport, in the spaces reserved for Congressmen.
He was really upset and very frightened when they found him.
K
aplan died shortly after dawn on Saturday.
Hanley had been unaware of his death, though they shared the same room.
Kaplan had made a noise, started, been still.
Kaplan was the tax accountant who worked for IRS and had devised the Church of Tax Rebellion, also incorporated as the Church of Jesus Christ, Taxpayer. The death of the prophet went unnoticed for two hours.
Hanley had awakened suddenly at seven and pressed the button. The button was all-important. It was his last link to life. He was sinking away, into himself; he would be dead in a little while.
His arms were scrawny and his eyes bulged.
He did not read or watch television.
He would stare in the darkness at night; and into the light during the day. He would see nothing. His eyes seemed to react very badly to the things around him. He knew smells: The smell of Sister Domitilla, the smell
of Dr. Goddard. He heard voices but they were from far away.
There was the voice of his sister Mildred. And his mother. And the voice, very deep and very slow and very certain, of his father.
There was the voice of the Reverend Millard Van der Rohe in the pulpit of the plain wooden Presbyterian church on Sunday. The smell of dust on summer afternoons coming through the plain windows. Women with paper fans from a funeral home fanning themselves. The sweat breaking in stains across their broad backs. Men sitting as solemn as the church, listening to the words of the Lord.
And sometimes, he heard the Lord as well.
The Lord explained things to him in such a simple and wonderful way that Hanley felt glad.
He freely confessed his sins to the Lord and the Lord was as kind as the face of his mother. The Lord reached for his hand and took it and made it warm. The Lord spoke of green valleys.
Hanley became aware again.
They were closing the curtain that divided Mr. Kaplan’s bed from his own in the small white room. The room did not have a couch. No one in the room was expected to stay for a long while. There were no restraints. No one needed them. Age restrained; illness restrained; the weakness that comes at the end restrained.
Hanley waited for them to feed him. He felt like a baby again and that was comfortable. In a little while, he would go to the Lord, who had the face of his mother. The Lord smelled of his mother’s smells. The Lord comforted him. He would lie down in green pastures. There
was a summer storm coming across the meadows and he was a child in the pasture, watching the magnificent approach of the high black thunderclouds eating up the blue sky, tumbling up and up with power and majesty and glory.
He had never felt so close to God.
W
illiam said she did the right thing. Of course, she called him by his nickname but when she thought of him, she thought of him as William.
William was a software programmer and he wore very white shirts to work every day.
They had met at one of those little group parties that form after computer conventions. She had been attracted to him by his stern face, his light brown hair, and the expanse of white covering his chest. He seemed very serious and sincere. They had shared Virgin Marys together and made a date that first meeting.
They both liked music in the little clubs on Lincoln Avenue. They both lived in the Lincoln Park neighborhood and cared for plants that insisted on dying anyway. William had a cat named Samantha, which Margot Kieker thought was real cute, and it was rather touching in William to have a cat at all. The cat didn’t like Margot. She was used to that. At least William liked her.
He had theories about the seriousness of the world. He didn’t like black people very much because he had never
met very many of them; but he wasn’t prejudiced at all. He once voted Democratic and then stopped voting until Reagan. He was twenty-eight and he owned a condo and a BMW.
William said Margot did not owe a thing to some distant relative she barely remembered. Someone named “Uncle Hanley.”
For two days, she carefully cleaned her apartment, thought about William, sold $32,000 in hardware and software for the new PC line of computers, played her complete file of Boston Pops records, and thought about an old man named Hanley.
Lydia Neumann met her at 8:30 in the coffee shop of the Blackstone Hotel, where the Neumanns were staying. Leo was up and about already but he was not involved in this; it was better to keep it separate. Leo and Lydia had a lot of separate compartments and that kept them together.
Margot Kieker was drinking a Coke. Actually, a Diet Coke. And carefully applying strawberry jam to her whole wheat toast.
Lydia Neumann sat down heavily and saw no change in Margot Kieker. The hair was precise, the makeup muted, the face unlined, the eyes unclouded. No worry, no sleepless nights, no fears of tomorrow. The future was perfectly assured. Lydia Neumann felt disgust for the creature in front of her. And yet, there was curiosity as well.
“You don’t understand me,” began Margot without looking up from her toast. She was saying words that were unpleasant and she never wished to be unpleasant. There had been unpleasantness last night when she had
explained to William what she was going to do. Well, that was unpleasantness enough to last for one week.
“This really is too much,” Lydia Neumann said in her best voice. It was the voice of her Aunt Millie. It defined the world with a series of boldly drawn lines. “Do all conversations you have begin with yourself?”
Margot looked up. “I beg your pardon?” She was really puzzled.
Lydia frowned, let it go.
“You don’t like me,” Margot said. She had given it a lot of thought. “You don’t understand me though. That’s what I meant. It took me a while. You have to be careful, someone like me. I mean, I have to be careful.”
“I can see that,” Lydia Neumann said.
“You don’t even understand. You think I can’t think about things or that I don’t know what I am or what my limits are. But I do. Everyone does. Everyone my age does. We know there are rules and rules and rules and God help us if we don’t learn all the rules the way we’re supposed to.”
It was the first bitterness in her voice, the first crack of the façade.
“Do you know how many people would give their life for a job like mine?”
“And how many have,” Mrs. Neumann said. Her throaty whisper made Margot shudder.
“I worked very hard. I think you have to understand that. I’m not pretty but I can look pretty. And I am willing to work very hard, even if I have to work harder than others just to stay up. You came into my life two mornings ago and you talk about flesh and blood and you expect me to enter into a very complex thing for the sake of someone
I haven’t even laid eyes on for more than twenty years. And you called me a monster.”
Lydia Neumann stared at her.
“I am not a monster,” Margot Kieker said. “I am alone in the world and I am making my way by myself. I close the door of my apartment at night and it is my apartment—that’s a good thing—but that’s all I have. It reminds me that anything I have and anything I am still means I am alone. That doesn’t seem to mean much to you. You said you were traveling with your husband. And naturally, you work for the government. No one in the government has to worry too much about working too hard.”
“Don’t bet on it, honey.”
“Why do you patronize me?”
Yes, Lydia Neumann thought with a start: Why was she hostile to this pathetic creature with her too small nose and wide eyes?
Because of Hanley, came her own answer. This was Hanley’s legacy, all he had in the world to leave his world to. It made her mad. She and Leo might go to the end of their lives without children and there would be no legacy but it didn’t matter to them.
They were not alone. Until they died.
“Why did you call me?” Lydia Neumann said.
“You left your number. At the hotel that day. You said you would be here until today. I wanted you to go back but then, last night, I realized that I couldn’t let that poor man, whoever he is, just die.”
“Whoever he is is your great-uncle.”
“Some stranger who came to the house once. Do you know my mother was thirty-seven when she died? Breast cancer. I’m twenty-eight. My grandmother was fifty-one.
The same thing. Do you know what I think about at night alone? Just the thought of being alone. I never smoked, I don’t drink, I take care of myself. I had a mammogram last month. Every year. The doctor said that in view of my history, it might be a better idea for me to have my breasts removed surgically before any sign of disease appeared.”
She said this in her mechanical, computer voice. It was the only voice she had. It was borrowed, without accents and with rounded consonants to sound like vowels. She was crying when she said these things.
Lydia Neumann stared at her.
Margot wiped her eye with a handkerchief of white linen. The handkerchief had her initials sewn in blue. William had given her the handkerchiefs at Christmas; it was the last gift she had expected.
“I can arrange this for you,” Mrs. Neumann said.
Margot looked up.
“With your company, your supervisor. It’ll only take a few hours; a few telephone calls. It won’t appear to be what this is about at all. I am quite well known in some very upper circles in the wonderful world of computer science,” said Lydia Neumann. She touched Margot’s pale, ringless hands. “Leave it to me.”