Brainfire (28 page)

All she was looking for, he thought, was peace. Peace and sand and withdrawal. And I bring something else, something as rank as a dead dog, as grubby as a piece of some old skeleton, into her dark cool green world.

He went across the floor and put his arms around her. He wondered how sorry you could ever really say you were.

6.

Patrick Joseph Mallory liked to conduct his Cabinet meetings before breakfast but immediately after taking a brisk swim in the White House pool. He arrived at these sessions—a young man, his black hair wet and slicked back—with a kind of brightness that the older members of the Cabinet found irritating. Invariably, these were men who had risen late and managed to gulp down coffee before making it to the White House, men who sat in tetchy silences, fidgeting, wanting to smoke, wanting to eat, while the President, with that firmness of purpose which had first endeared him to the electorate, ran speedily through the agenda. It was rare for Mallory to encounter any genuine opposition to this or that statement of policy because he had close and workable relationships with both the House and the Senate; there was a charm to Mallory as well as a certain strength of mind. Even the skeletons in his closet were said to be so well greased that they never once creaked.

On this morning's agenda there were several trivial items that he dealt with summarily. He also passed out copies of Kimball Lindholm's report—belatedly written—on his visit to the Soviet Union. Mallory had not himself read this ninety-eight-page document except to glance at it for
tone
, which, as he had suspected, was predictable. “There is very little difference,” the Vice President had written, “between a Russian farmer and one from Kansas.” There was a sense of universal brotherhood. There were the same concerns with soil and climate and fertilizer. (In fact, so much of Lindholm's report concerned fertilizer that it became known in inner circles as “The Shit Manifesto.”) The President passed the documents out and advised his Cabinet members to read the Vice President's report as soon as possible.

The final item on a short agenda concerned the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency in supporting the push for human rights in the countries of Eastern Europe. It was the opinion of the Secretary of State, Rieckhoff, that while the effort should be continued as a matter of simple humanity a line ought to be drawn between the kinds of matériel the United States should supply to Communist dissidents. Furthermore, he had obtained new information from the CIA concerning the presence of Soviet “advisers” in the Republic of Ivory Coast, in the Republic of Botswana, and in the United Republic of Cameroon. The suggestion was made that various pressures—mainly economic—be brought against these African nations. It was Rieckhoff's opinion, and one supported by Mallory, that “Soviet advisers” had the odd habit of transmuting into “Soviet military experts.”

Kimball Lindholm was the only dissenting voice. He didn't personally give a damn about some sandy wastelands halfway across the world and he didn't give a damn what other people thought of him for holding that opinion. Mallory smiled at his Vice President with an expression that might have passed for one of tolerance. The old fella's entitled to his opinion. What the hell. But Mallory perceived more than a simple insularity in Kimball Lindholm; he saw what he thought of, on the bottom line, as an extreme form of prairie asshole. And on those few occasions when he had taken one Martini more than necessary, he had been heard to speak both badly and indiscreetly of his Vice President. But there were times when the price you paid for votes was higher than you might have liked. Kimball Lindholm bullshitted, Mallory thought, ergo, he existed. A Cartesian travesty, perhaps, but he was saddled with a philosophical reality for the next three years in the form of the little man whose opinions had been formed, somewhere around the age of ten, in the shadows of Kansas silos.

The President proposed that the Secretary of State direct the Central Intelligence Agency to consider new ways of assisting Eastern European dissidents; after all, if the Soviets were scrambling around Africa with “technical advice,” why shouldn't the United States of America, in a game of global tic-tac-toe, offer “technical advice” of another kind to those people who wanted to shape democracies in countries resistant to the notion?

At the close of the meeting, the various Cabinet members left. Only the President and his Chief of Staff, Callaway, remained behind in the Cabinet Room. Callaway had been with Mallory since the early days in Maine—the State Senate, the gubernatorial campaign, the House of Representatives, and now 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Of all his virtues, fidelity was the greatest. There were those who said that if Mallory were to go blind, Callaway would go on his knees to beg that both his corneas be transplanted into the President's eyes.

Now, in the empty Cabinet Room, the President said, “Do you ever have nightmares, Jim?”

“Sometimes,” Callaway said.

“Real bad nightmares?”

“You're getting at something,” Callaway said. “I don't need two guesses at it, do I?”

Patrick J. Mallory clasped his hands together in front of him on the table—it was as if he meant to pray but had changed his mind. He stared at his Chief of Staff for a time in silence, then said, “I'm watching my own funeral. Okay? I'm with the angelic band up there somewhere. It doesn't feel so bad. After all, I'm not stoking the old fires, right?”

Callaway, smiling, nodded.

“I'm floating on a nice old cloud. I see them lowering the box into the grave. I don't feel too bad. It isn't all blackness and horror.”

“Then it changes?” Callaway asked.

“Damned right, it changes. Because all of a sudden I see Kimball Lindholm being sworn into office and I wake up and it's cold sweat time. It's cold, cold sweat time.”

“I wouldn't worry, Mr. President,” Callaway said. “You'll outlive him.”

“I wonder if it's a contradiction in terms to say that anybody can outlive Kimball Lindholm,” Mallory said. “Ah, what the hell. You pay a certain price. And Kimball comes with the property.”

Callaway, gathering his papers, turned toward the door. There he paused and looked back at the President, as if suddenly remembering something. “You haven't given a reply to Leontov yet, and his office called this morning.”

Mallory stood up now, hands in the pockets of his dark suit. He rattled a key loosely for a time. “That's the game where they have men in shorts who kick a ball into a net?”

“Yes,” Callaway said.

“What do you think?”

“It's your decision, Mr. President. It's the first time a soccer team consisting entirely of native-born players will be playing a full international against the Soviet Union.”

Mallory thought for a moment. “What I can't stand is saying yes to anything,
anything
, from that little shit Leontov.”

Callaway shrugged and turned toward the door. “I'll do the regrets then.”

“No, wait.” Mallory looked across the room at his Chief of Staff. “Accept. I'll go. Tell Leontov that I'll go. If Kissinger could sit through soccer games, what the hell. Besides, there's the patriotic angle.”

Callaway smiled. “I'll tell Leontov.”

“Do we have a chance of winning?”

“According to the press, no. According to the team coach, yes.”

“It would be a drag to have Leontov turning smug on me if his side wins,” Mallory said. “It would be a real drag.”

2

1.

Shortly after dawn he woke and went out onto the balcony of the Ramada Inn and looked at the calm Atlantic—hardly moving, gray and sluggish, lifeless after the night's storm. The morning air was chill against his skin. He slid the door closed, reentered the room, and watched Isobel as she slept. He sat down in the chair by the balcony door. The sea was a whisper. Last night, he remembered, it had been his idea to move here out of the cottage; it had been his idea to park the old station wagon several streets away and check into the Ramada in the hope that somehow, in all its gaunt plastic splendor, its curiously lifeless quality, you could contrive to lose yourself.…

Other people go to the police, John. Don't they? Isn't that what they do when they've been shot at? Isn't that what ordinary people do
?

Ordinary people. He had forgotten the ordinary, the banal. He watched her as she slept and he kept thinking of Dubbs dying on the steps at Wembley. The second shot.
The second shot, my dear
. He closed his eyes and rubbed his face with the palm of his hand: cold, chilled.

But I forgot, didn't I? You don't go to the police, do you? You have funny little numbers you're supposed to call, right? You dial some funny little number and ask for some anonymous extension, don't you
?

Bitter. Hadn't she every right in the book to be bitter? He opened his eyes, rose wearily from the table, went back out onto the balcony. Out on the ocean, like some ancient dowager trying to keep up with changing times, an old battleship performed perfunctory maneuvers. A pall of light smoke hung over it. An attendant launch, white and sparkling as a new seabird, created a rich wake around the vessel.

The second shot, he thought.

Think.

Go over it. Say it line by line. See what you can dredge up from that burnt-out memory. Dubbs died because of Andreyev. Okay. Because he knew Andreyev's identity. That leaves me—that leaves me and I must die for the very same reason. Okay. Okay. Okay. What in the name of God was so damned important about this Andreyev anyhow? And Sally—was that just a fucking coincidence? A parapsychologist. Things that go bump in the night. No. It was no spooky séance, no half-assed deal in the dark, flying cigarette butts and ringing bells and voices coming at you through trumpets.

People don't die on account of parlor games
.

He watched the old vessel turn laboriously, as if it were a wounded whale. The plume of smoke drifted away, forming a cloud. The sea threw up a bluster of wind all at once and he went back inside the room. Isobel was awake, sitting propped up on her elbows. He was suddenly furious—not with the intruder, whoever he was, but with himself for dragging a familiar old darkness into this woman's life. Death follows some people, he thought. It comes on like a black magnet. What the hell do I know that makes me worth killing?

“Do I say good morning? Thank you very much for the hotel room?” Her voice was faintly hoarse and she was staring at him accusingly; and he thought, I deserve it, all of it.

“I didn't know it was going to happen,” he said. “Do you think I would have endangered you? Do you think that?”

She closed her eyes impatiently. “I'm trying to work out the difference between you and your brother, John. I think it's one of degree. In your world it's guns. In his world it was paper. Cut it any way you like, one's as dangerous as the other.”

She rose from the bed, clutching the sheet to her body. In the bathroom doorway she stopped, turning to him. “All I know is I was beginning to get better. I could see it, okay? Light at the end of the proverbial tunnel? I could see it. I was working my way out of being a bitch—or what I more colloquially called a cunt last night. I was beginning to understand the bits and pieces of myself. Shit!”

She slammed the bathroom door, locked it.

He stared a moment at it. Oh, Christ, he thought. What was there to say? That look in her eye, that ice-like look which seemed to throw reflections up from far within herself—he was reminded of Richard's Isobel.
The bits and pieces of myself
, he thought. She could read the books and work the cards and delve into spiritualism and learn how to grow plants and catch the latest manuals on how to be your own best friend—and in a flash, in a sweep, he could make a ruin of it all.

He could hear the sound of the shower running now. He walked up and down the room, hands jammed in his pockets, his steps quick and angry. He picked up the key, locked the door behind him, and went down in the elevator to the lobby. He bought a copy of
The Richmond Times-Dispatch
and two cardboard containers of coffee from the empty coffee shop. When he got back to the room Isobel was already dressed, toweling her damp hair. He set the coffee and the newspaper on the table.

“Room service too?” she said. “Busy beaver, aren't you?”

That tone, he thought. “Look—”

“
You
look, John.”

“No—”

“I want to say this once and once only. I don't know what kind of goddam mess you've got yourself into, and I frankly don't give a flying fuck, but don't drag me through it. Okay? Sometimes, sometimes I feel a total hatred when I hear the name Rayner. Is that strong enough for you, John?”

He sat at the table and pried the plastic lid from the coffee. It was too hot to drink. He watched her sit down opposite him. She picked up the newspaper, surveyed the front-page headline, threw the paper down; it was as if she wanted no knowledge of what was happening in the world, as if, no matter what, it was destined to sicken her. She sipped her coffee and made a face. The silence was unbearable to him now. Words he might have spoken—but he recognized their uselessness as soon as they entered his mind. He went out onto the balcony. Dial your funny little number, ask for your anonymous extension, he thought. The door slid open behind him and he heard her step out, shivering in the cold, standing against the rail a few feet from him. He looked at her and was caught once more with his own uneasy desire.

“Okay,” she said. “I withdraw. I take it all back. Friends?”

“You have every right to be angry,” he said.

“Forget it,” she said. “Let's just forget it.”

He watched the battleship plowing, like some cripple on its last run, back toward Norfolk. His call, he would have to make his call. He would have to report the gunman. He turned to her and smiled, a look she didn't return. Instead, he saw something serious in her eyes, something strangely purposeful—and he wondered if she had felt the moment of his desire, if it had somehow communicated itself to her. He turned to the door, slid it open, went back inside the room. He picked up the telephone.