Brainfire (30 page)

“You don't believe me, Chip? Is that it?”

“John, look. I believe you. Okay? I believe you think you're telling the truth, okay? That's what I believe.”

Rayner stood up. He turned as if to leave, but Alexander had grabbed his wrist across the table.

“I heard about your brother, John. A bad business. A really tough break,
really
.”

Rayner could feel the grip tighten. He sat down again, watching the other man's smile as one might keep a cautious eye on a cocked weapon. He saw it coming, he saw it coming from a long way back, he could hear its reverberations already, even before Alexander went on talking.

“Then this business of being with Dubbs when he bought it.” Alexander shrugged. “That's a lot of real hard tension, John. Anybody could break, you know?”

“Is that what you think?”

Alexander in short, quick gestures was patting the back of Rayner's hand. It must have been more of a signal than a kindness because Rayner saw a second man come through the doorway and stand there watching the table, hands in the pockets of his coat, his face sullen and dark.

“A friend of yours?” Rayner asked.

“You might say. I'm training him.”

“What happens now?”

Alexander rubbed his moustache lightly. “Yesterday I got this message from London. You want to hear about it?”

Rayner didn't speak; he understood.

“Well, Gull—our old friend Gull—said you'd had what is commonly known as a nervous breakdown.”

Gull, Rayner thought. It was growing louder now, like a terrible ringing in his ears, like some far thunder in his head.

“A nervous breakdown,” Alexander said. “Now in my book that could mean a whole lot of things. I guess, on the lower end of the scale, you need a couple of weeks' rest. Right?”

A dream, Rayner thought. It was the noise you heard in a dream.

“Higher up, of course, it could be worse. It could, for example, indicate some pretty heavy-duty medication. Right? You following me, John? It could mean—well, a guy's head might be more than just a little fucked up.”

Rayner looked toward the doorway. The other man, like someone posing for a statue, hadn't moved. So good old George had put out the bad word on him: the blacklist effect.
Fucking Gull
.

“I understand Himself's private doc put you on some real dope, John,” Alexander said. “That's what the old wire said yesterday. Bad case of the breakdowns. And something worse.”

Worse? Rayner wondered. What could be worse than this plethora of lies? this bullshit? What could be worse?

“According to Gull, you took classified material from the Embassy. Some computer print-out concerning a Russian dude.”

“You believe that? You really believe that?”

Alexander shrugged. “It's a serious charge—”

“Gull's a liar—”

“Who knows? But the brief I got on you, John, was to apprehend for hospitalization. Sorry, I mean. But that's the chit that came down after the message from London. Look, it won't be too bad. At least you'll be safe from this character running around this nice old seaside town with your number written on his heart, right?”

Apprehend. Hospitalization. The theft of classified material. The Ambassador's private doctor. Alexander must think it—he must really believe it.
Rayner's gone off the fucking deep end. Nice guy, couldn't ask for a nicer one, but the death of the brother, well, took it damn hard, then the killing of the old pal Ernie Dubbs, it was insult to injury, poor fucker
. But George Gull—why had Gull lied? What was George concealing?

“You think you're taking me, Chip?”

“Got to, friend. No options in the matter.”

“You think—you think I've flipped?”

“Flipped?” Alexander shrugged. “I think you need a good long rest. And the facilities are just downright terrific, John. Terrific.”

Rayner stood up, pushing his chair back from the table. Pointless, he thought. Pointless plead, beg for some time, ask for a break, explain. Explanations would only take you back to one dead Russian parapsychologist. Mumbo-jumbo Boulevard.
Oh, sure, John. The guy had a trick deck
.

“You'll have to stop me, Chip.”

“Ah, the macho route,” Alexander said. “My young associate over there is armed.”

“You'll still have to stop me, Chip.” Rayner stepped away from the table. The young man moved slightly in the doorway. “You're going to have to give that friend of yours the order to shoot. Are you prepared to do that?”

“Yessir,” Alexander said. “I make one piddling little signal and you're broken, John. No halfway measures. None at all.”

Rayner paused. He could feel the fluorescent lights overhead: electronic pulses trapped in tubes. He could hear a plate smash in a distant kitchen and the sound of a man's voice bitching, “Comes outta your wages.” He could feel Chip Alexander's sense of purpose, a tangible thing. Apprehend. Hospitalize. The madhouse. Some nice little compound in West Virginia, where all the freaked-out, burned-up espionage fellows went when their nerves were shot or they were security risks or they were too juiced or too doped to be any good—the ruins, the sad and miserable wreckage of this business of thinking you can secure a world and make it safe with ribbons of blood-red tape. He stared at the young man in the doorway. Hands bunched in the coat pockets. Gull, you fucker. What were you playing at all along? Were you dickering with the other side, getting your palm nicely greased? Was that it? Did that explain your outrage over the Andreyev print-out? Dear Christ, was that why you had me followed—because you wondered what Dubbs was up to? George, George, George, how long? How long? How goddam long?

“Be good to yourself, Rayner,” Alexander said. “Be a good kid and come along with me in a nice peaceful manner, huh? It stinks if we have to shoot a joint up.”

“Give your signal, Chip. Go on. Give your dip-shit over there the signal. What is it? Do you drop the menu? Wave your handkerchief?”

“No. I lift my left hand. I put it against the back of my neck.”

“Let me see you do it, Chip.” Madness, Rayner thought. Well, maybe. Maybe. Maybe there wasn't a line you could inscribe in the world and say,
All you sane ones this side, all the crazies over there
. He stared at Alexander's left hand. It was motionless, upturned, on the table.

“You don't really want to see it, John,” Alexander said.

“Don't you fucking understand, Chip? Gull's with the other side. Don't you understand that?”

Alexander laughed. “Now tell me that Ambassador Quarterman is also a Soviet agent.”

Rayner sighed. “I'm walking out of here. Over there. You see that elevator? That's where I'm going.”

“Be my guest, John.”

Again, Rayner hesitated. “One chance, Chip. Give me one goddam chance.”

“It's not like I'm on my own, John. If it was just me—maybe I'd think it over. But my young friend over there, well, he's
keen
. Remember what it was like to be
that
keen?” Alexander shifted his left hand slightly, crumpling a paper tissue, dropping it in the ashtray. He looked at Rayner, and almost as if a moment of regret touched him, he said, “The car's just outside. Let's get it over with. Okay?”

“Chip, call him off. For a moment. That's all I need. You can do that.”

“Then what? We'd still have to come after you. I told you, kid, he's goddam eager.” Alexander gazed at the crumpled tissue. “Then you got to consider how bad I'd look if I let you slip. Right?”

Rayner looked at the face of the young man.

A killer. The sullen, unadorned face. It wouldn't even flinch. It existed only for Chip Alexander's ridiculous signal. Rayner thought of Isobel: how she would laugh at that—signs, signals, little gestures that meant death: the freemasonry of assassination. Walk, Rayner thought. Just turn and walk to the elevator.
Do it!

From the corner of his eye he saw the elevator door slide open. He thought: Christ, no. Not now. Why now? But she was coming across the floor toward him with that graceful walk of hers, that high strut, as if even the most casual of clothes deserved to be worn with grace. She approached, sliding her arm through his, smiling, smiling at Alexander—and yet the smile was tense, suggesting she had intuited the dark edge of the situation.

“I got lonesome,” she said.

“I didn't think I'd be gone this long,” he said.

“Anyway, I'm hungry. How about some lunch? Can you afford me?”

Alexander, even as he returned her smile, looked momentarily distressed, confused. The hand that held the Kleenex was tight now, the knuckles hard and upraised. Rayner wondered: Do we both die? Isobel and me? He realized she was pulling on his arm gently, drawing him away from the table, away from Alexander. She was drawing him toward the doorway, toward the young man, whose own expression had become one of mild bewilderment as if his internal clockwork, already preset, had come unsprung.

“Good to see you again, Chip,” Rayner said.

“Likewise, I'm sure,” Alexander said, turning in his seat to look toward the doorway. Is there a signal, Rayner wondered, for two killings? Does he have to rub his neck twice? Does he have to do something as fucking stupid as that? Isobel was pulling him into the doorway, where the young man sidestepped and stared toward Alexander for guidance, for fine-tuning of his blown controls.

They stepped into the lobby. The young man moved just behind them. Any moment now, Rayner thought, straight through the back. But Chip Alexander obviously hadn't made his gesture because now they were going through the front door to the street—the overcast midday sun, passing traffic, the blown and beautiful perfume of the sea that seemed to Rayner just then a magnificent creation.

They ran toward where the station wagon had been parked; then Rayner—remembering the man with the pistol, remembering how like a flag the sight of the car would be—drew Isobel inside a shop doorway; he held her against him, hearing a small bell ring above his head as he shoved the door open with his foot.

“Trouble?” she asked.

“There's got to be a stronger word than that,” he said.

He looked around the store. Of all places it was a wild candy emporium, a paradise of rainbow stripes and polka dots, saltwater taffies, monstrous lollipops that lay in huge glass jars like primitive art forms, reds and greens and splashes of brilliant yellow. Rayner stared toward the back of the store, where, through an open doorway, a man in a white uniform was mixing a sugary paste in a large metal vat. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

He pulled her into the back room.

The man said, “Hey—”

“My apologies,” Rayner said.

“There's a sign says employees—”

“I know about signs,” Rayner said. Beyond vats, jars, rows of chocolate bears and jelly beans and licorice delights, he saw a glass-paneled door. “Where does that go?” he asked.

“The seafront, but—”

He hurried toward the door, hauling Isobel after him. The beach, the backs of the large hotels, an expanse of shell-littered sand dotted here and there by windblown umbrellas and shades.

“Okay,” he said. “To put this whole deal mildly, we're in a bind—”

“We?”

“I don't think it's time to start arguing—”

“Let me guess, Rayner. You need a safe place?”

“You and me both,” he answered.

She looked a moment out toward the ocean. Sea-birds, tossed on currents of air, hovered above the gray water. She seemed to think a moment, then said, “Okay. Okay.”

4.

There was a great darkness behind her eyes. Her body shuddered; her flesh was damp, a sheet of cold sweat. She could barely hear the man's voice, which reached her as if he were calling to her from across a valley through which a river rattled and roared—but the roaring, she realized somehow, was in her own ears.

It was stupid to get out of bed. Don't you realize that? How can you expect me to trust you if you don't obey me
?

She tried to say something:
Yes
.

But her mouth was parched and she couldn't even ask for water. Cold:
she was so cold
.

I had even prepared a special treat for you
, he said.

She forced her eyes open. Sometimes it seemed to her that she wasn't hearing things properly. Words became scrambled, disjointed, obscenely meaningless.

A special treat
.

She opened her mouth. There was no moisture on her tongue, on the roof of her mouth, in her gums. Water. If they could give me water. But I'm being punished. For what I did to the woman. For the silly trick with the window. I'm being punished for all this now. A violent muscular spasm went through her and then there was more cold sweat pouring from her body and she wanted so badly to find the strength to say simply, Water. Please.

You can't have the treat now, of course
.

In this old age there's nothing, nothing, one by one they leave you, old friends, old loves, one by one they die out like yesterday's fires—what keeps you going on, what makes you want to

I had arranged for a telephone link between here and Tel Aviv. You could have spoken to your family. Not now. You've made me very angry
.

In this old age they speak as if you were a child again. Scold. Punish. Reward. Her sweat was so cold it seemed to freeze her to the bedsheet. There was a vicious muscular contraction in her body and her legs began to shake. She opened her eyes a little, hardly more than a slit, aware of some vague and distant light. A telephone link. It didn't make sense. A telephone link to Tel Aviv. These were words. Words.

Now I have had it canceled
.

Please, she wanted to say. Please, no.

Furthermore, you won't receive any medication until morning
.