Brainfire (42 page)

She shut her eyes again. She heard Koprow say something, a word she didn't catch, a feeling she did—impatience, the edge of anger, a sense of suspense. Mallory again—but it was difficult because there was a stubborn quality surrounding him. And then it seemed to her that she was standing alongside him and could make out the contours of his appearance, that she could have touched him if she had wanted to, could have put out her hand and touched him. The young face that was beginning, in middle age, to sag around the chin. The dark hair that was already faintly streaked with gray. She held back; she checked herself, beset again by a sense of disquieting familiarity. That face.

Exactly where tell me exactly I must know

Why was there this interference now? She thought she had silenced the child, she thought she had stopped all that a while ago but now it was coming in on her again, weak, weakening. She didn't want to hurt the child. How could she do that? And then she wondered if it made any difference at all—if, once you had begun to inflict pain and cause death, there was any difference.

Exactly where

She opened her eyes again and saw, as if some mist had developed around them, Koprow and the woman, heard them whisper together furtively, the man's head inclined toward the woman. What are they saying? What are they talking about? Mallory. Now there were voices, conversations, fragments of speech in that place where Mallory was situated.
I don't think it's likely at this stage
. What did that mean? What did that mean?
Why wouldn't they substitute at two goals down
? The soccer players, of course. Of course, what else?
It's too soon to bring a new man on, Mr. President
.

Mr. President, she thought.

Mr. President.

The President of the United States.

She had seen that face in a newspaper once, she had seen it somehow, she couldn't remember where or how, where or how in all the months of her isolation with Andreyev, in all the months of her tests, all the time she had been out of touch with the world, she couldn't remember—a glance, something on a TV screen, a newspaper picture, she couldn't recall—Mallory. The President of the United States.

An old woman. A peasant. You know nothing of world affairs. They don't touch you. Why should they touch you?

Koprow was watching her.

Tell me

Go away
didn't I stop you
before
don't make me hurt you

I must know where

That knowledge will kill you

Koprow turned to look at Katya and they whispered again. There was no reality now. There was nothing vaguely real. Only those photographs in Koprow's coat. And even they were sad and pathetic.

They whisper, what are they whispering about?

Koprow stepped toward her, placing his hands on her shoulders. “What's happening? You must tell me what's happening.”

There was a violence of pain once more in her chest. She lifted a hand to the place and tried to rub it away but it was inside, it was beneath the surface of skin, beneath bone, like a fire around her heart. She closed her eyes. It was a matter of fighting for strength, for life.

“Is it finished?” Koprow asked. “Have you completed it?”

Beneath the stadium

She closed her eyes. Tomorrow, she thought. If you can do this today, then there is tomorrow, the tomorrow you have been promised.
They are bringing in a substitute, I see
. She focused her mind, as if the mind were a series of loose strands that might be gathered into a single hard ball, something that might be concentrated, steeled, an object no longer diffuse, no longer loose—and then she had to reach, she had to reach for Mallory through a space that wasn't a space, across a time which no clock could measure. Mallory. Pain. Terrible pain.

You are beneath the stadium

I warn you
keep away

5.

He stepped out of the camper in the parking lot at the stadium, looking up into the cab where Isobel held the girl. He felt helpless all at once. This vast stadium—where was he supposed to start looking? But time was against his own helplessness; you needed to act, you needed to act fast, you needed to go inside the stadium and look even if that was hopeless. He stared across the rows of cars, across the rain, at the edifice of the stadium, at the U.S. flag that fluttered in a drearily damp way.

Then he gazed back into the cab again. Isobel watched him, and he recognized the wariness in her expression, that guarded look. It was almost like a sense of loss, as if, having come to like him, having come to a point where she thought a relationship inevitable, she had rejected the idea and was left now with only the ruins of possibilities. The kid, turning her head a little, looked at him. She's trying, goddam, he thought. She's trying to tell me. The way she's trying: beyond speech, beyond the communication of eyes, she's trying her damnedest. He felt the rain soak through the fibers of his clothing, the dampness spreading to his skin.

The girl faced the stadium now, moving her head with obvious effort.

“Where, Fiona?” Rayner asked. “Can you tell me where?”

Nothing. Nothing.

“It's a huge fucking place,” he said. “Where do I find this woman? Where, for Christ's sake?”

Demented in the rain, he thought. It was fitting.

She looked downward, her eyes moving slowly; it was as if the merest motion caused her pain. Downward, Rayner thought. What was that supposed to mean? Down, down where?

“Under the stadium? Is that it?”

The girl didn't move. That emptiness, that burnt-out look: it was all his own goddam fault. Under the stadium. Where? The locker rooms. He had nowhere else to look, did he?

“I'm taking her back to the hospital,” Isobel said.

Rayner looked toward the stadium, shrugged.

“I have to,” she said. “If you think your future lies in that place—well, you go ahead and find it. But this kid needs some kind of treatment.”

Rayner nodded. He watched Isobel's face. For a moment, for a quick second, he saw her move her face down in his direction as if she intended to kiss him—but she didn't.

“Later,” Rayner said.

“Later.” And she drew the door of the camper shut.

6.

After the second Russian goal, a simple affair, simply engineered, the Americans had sent out a substitute. Mallory, waiting for some kind of reaction from MacMillan, who had become taciturn in his obvious disappointment, felt a slight headache somewhere at the back of his skull which he attributed to the weather, the dampness, the general inconvenience of having to sit through a game in which the home team was being systematically demolished. His interest had been roused a little but more, he suspected, for patriotic reasons than through any fondness for the game itself. He wished he had some aspirin.

He watched an American attack on the Soviet goal come to nothing while he was aware, from the corner of his eye, of Leontov smirking. He raised his hand to his head as though to massage the slight ache away.

MacMillan leaned toward him and asked quietly, “Are you feeling well, Mr. President?”

Mallory looked at the other man. Did it show? “I find myself rooting for the losing team,” he said, trying to sound unconcerned. “Apart from that—”

He stopped. The pain was suddenly blinding, like some acute migraine, and he saw across his path of vision a series of jagged colored lines. There was a peripheral dimness too, as if lights had been switched off in far corners. I must be coming down with something, he thought. Flu? Some virus? He was conscious of sweating, a cold sweat.

“Can I fetch you some aspirin or something?” MacMillan asked.

“If it's no trouble,” Mallory answered. Goddam—there was a tightness in his throat, a constriction of some kind. He tried to relax, to control himself, to overcome the vague panic he was beginning to experience. He saw MacMillan move along the row of seats, politely excusing himself each time he disturbed somebody. Whatever this is, Mallory thought, aspirin isn't going to do the trick. The pain in his head, growing more intense, had spread across the top of his scalp—a tingling sensation, each small vibration burning like a tiny white-hot needle. President faints, he thought. He could see it in newspapers. They would question his health and by implication his fitness for the job. Jesus Christ, it was burning him now.

He noticed MacMillan returning with a plastic tumbler of water. MacMillan sat down and opened his palm. Three aspirin and water, the panacea. Mallory swallowed the tablets with a single gulp of water.

“I hope it helps,” MacMillan said.

“Thanks,” Mallory said. “I'll be okay, I'm sure.”

Leontov turned to look at the President. “Is something wrong? Is there anything I can do?”

For a moment Mallory felt relief—but then it came back again, a fire, a rage of flame, rushing through his head. You feared the worst: what the hell could it be? Even his eyes were sore now.

“Is something wrong?” Leontov asked again.

“My team is losing,” Mallory said.

“I noticed,” said the Ambassador.

7.

Inside the stadium, Rayner noticed how tight the security was—agents conversing through their walkie-talkies, undercover guys trying to look like casual spectators, cops. He could hear the roar of the crowd drift through the rain, a massive echo. Now his only opportunity to get past the security people and into the locker-room area was to show his Embassy pass and hope—
hope
—that his name hadn't been marked.
U.S. Embassy, London, Special Investigative Section
. Sure, sure, he thought, that's going to take me a long way. Like hell.

He walked quickly along corridors, passing under white lights, glimpsing through openings the crowd, the rows of seats that rose upward. You could lose your way here, he thought. It would be easy to step inside the maze and never get out again. Which way? Which way now? He continued to rush, clutching in his hand the ticket he had bought at the entrance, wishing it were the gun he had been obliged to jettison along with the car. You're on your own, he thought. There's nobody else now—and maybe that was fitting; maybe when you stepped into madness it was a trip you could take only by yourself.

He saw ahead of him a flight of stairs going down. The problem in negotiating it, he thought, lies in the face of the guy in the navy-blue raincoat standing there by the sign that says: N
O
A
DMITTANCE
E
XCEPT FOR
A
UTHORIZED
P
ERSONNEL
. Flash your nice little plastic card, Rayner. Your official documentation. What was the guy's affiliation anyhow? Langley? The FBI? A D.C. cop? Some private security type? Rayner hesitated. A plastic card in a grubby hand—there was an incongruity here that displeased him. Still, there was no way down those stairs without getting past the raincoat and you did what you had to—though not exactly without question.

He took his card from his wallet and went up to the man. The face, cemented into a kind of middle-aged sourness, as if all of life's ambitions had distilled themselves into the task of guarding—for God's sake—a flight of stairs, was neither friendly nor open. Rayner showed his pass and asked, “Is the Russian locker room down there?”

The man had his hands in the pockets of his raincoat. He gazed at the plastic card. The gaze was one of suspicion, of grim determination that nobody, not even if it were the Second Coming, would get down the stairs.

Rayner waited. “I have to check, see.”

Silence.

“We discovered a visa irregularity—”

“Yeah?”

“Therefore I have to talk with the Russians—”

“Therefore nothing,” the guy said. “I have instructions.”

“Me too,” Rayner said. “Looks like a conflict of instructions to me.”

“It's your conflict, buddy. It's not mine.”

“Well, yeah,” Rayner said. He stared along the corridor. There was a man with a walkie-talkie about a hundred yards away. “Who's your superior?”

The man stared at Rayner. “To get down these stairs you'd need written permission from God.”

“That tough, huh?”

“That tough.”

“And you don't know the name of your superior?” Rayner asked.

“Sure I do,” the guy said.

“You don't want to tell me?”

The man smiled. “It wouldn't make a goddam bit of difference, friend. And your little card doesn't altogether impress me. London, huh? You're way off beam.”

It was going to resolve itself, Rayner saw, in a sudden rush; even violence—a violence he could hardly afford, a confrontation he didn't relish. You couldn't reason with this guy, for sure. He was big, clumsy somehow, as if the parts of his body didn't match one another. Rayner turned away, looking once more along the corridor. One swing, he thought, one mighty godawful swing. He felt tense, knotted, wondering if he had the capacity for the surprise attack. Do it, he thought. Do it.

“I guess that's it,” he said.

And as the man nodded, Rayner brought his knee upward. He drove it sharply into the region of the groin and listened as the man gasped, groaning, slipping back against the handrail, losing his balance and slithering down a couple of the concrete steps. He stared in an astonished way at Rayner, who was already trying to pass him on the steps, but he reacted with an agility that surprised Rayner, reaching out, grasping the ankle, twisting it so that Rayner felt a jarring pain. A desk job, Rayner thought. You're not cut out for this nonsense. He lifted his free foot and swung it and heard it strike the side of the man's head; he saw the head snap back, skull against handrail, bone against metal, a look of anguish on the sour face. The hand dropped away from Rayner's ankle and he was free—free to get to the bottom of the steps, where, as he found himself in still another corridor, he could hear the guy shouting for assistance.