‘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.’
72 Event horizon
‘That 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 a 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 a 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.
73 Special forces
Going somewhere she’d never seen, at night, in a van with two men, with equipment, reminded her of the beginning of the Curfew, minus Heidi Hyde. Who had always insisted on driving, and could do all the loading alone, if she had to.
Garreth driving now. Perfect fifty kilometers per hour, along this downscale industrial strip. Smooth, considered stops. Even acceleration. Model driver. No excuse to pull him over.
Tito in back, sitting as far from the black plastic case as he could. White iPod plugs in his ears, nodding to some rhythm only he could hear. Looking tranced. Like a kid in a chill-out room. Why had they wrapped him in that black rope? It must be uncomfortable, but he didn’t look uncomfortable. She’d watched him practice a trick with it, before Garreth and the old man had wrapped him in it. Tying one end of it quickly around a vertical pipe, pulling it tight, then standing back and flicking it. The knot tight and solid when he pulled on it, but letting go instantly when he flicked it. He did it three times. She couldn’t follow his hands, when he knotted it. He was pretty enough, at rest, almost feminine, but when he moved with purpose, he became beautiful. Whatever it was, she knew she didn’t have it herself. That had been her weakness, onstage. Inchmale had once sent her to a French movement teacher, in Hackney, in an effort to change that. The man had said he’d teach her to walk like a man, that that would make her very powerful onstage. She’d satisfied him, finally, but had never even considered trying it onstage. The one time she’d demonstrated it for Inchmale, though, after a few drinks, he said he’d paid good money to have her taught to walk like Heidi.
Garreth took a right onto a main street, heading east. One-story retail, car leasing, restaurant furniture. A few blocks later, he took a left. They headed downhill, into what once would have been a neighborhood of modest frame houses. A few were still there, but unlit, each one painted a single dark color, no trim. Placeholders in a real estate game, next to small factories, auto-body shops, a plastics fabricator. Patches of weedy grass that had once been lawns, gnarled ancient fruit trees. No pedestrians here, almost no traffic. He looked at his watch, pulled over, put out the lights, and shut off the engine.
‘How did you get into this?’ she asked, without looking at him.
‘I heard that someone was looking for a really odd skill set,’ he said. ‘I had a friend who’d been in the SAS, another BASE enthusiast. We’d jumped together, in Hong Kong. He was approached first, actually, and didn’t want it. He said he was too military, not unconventional enough. He recommended me, and I came down to London and he took me along to my meeting. I couldn’t believe it, but he was wearing a tie. Bastard. Amazing. Turned out it was his club tie, the only one he owned. Special Forces Club. That’s where we went. I’d no idea there was one.’
‘What did it look like? His tie.’
‘Black and gray, thin diagonal stripes.’ She felt him glance at her. ‘And himself waiting in an alcove off a sitting room.’
She knew he meant the old man. She looked out the window, not really seeing anything.
‘He introduced us and left me there. Pot of nasty coffee. Old-school British coffee. I had a list of questions I’d prepared, but I never asked them. Just answered his. It was like some weird inversion of a Kipling script. This old man, this American, in a Savile Row suit he’d probably bought in the sixties, asking me these questions. Pouring nasty coffee. Utterly at home in this club. Wee decoration on the lapel of his suit, the ribbon for some medal, no bigger than a windowpane of acid.’ He shook his head. ‘Hooked. I was hooked.’ Smiling.
