Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (67 page)

Jenkins was right: it was my own fault. But that was all beside the point now. I had to get Alice back. While doing as much damage to Jenkins as possible. I tried to think what they would be doing to her. Whatever they thought might be useful. Well it would not be useful to them to kill her. No point in thinking about it. I had to keep moving.

I walked several blocks further south and went into the offices of a large law firm to get at a safe telephone. I found an empty conference room, closed the door, and dialed the
Times.

“I’d like to speak to Michael Herbert, please.” Michael Herbert was to me nothing but a name that I had seen over occasional and uninteresting articles in the
Times
and that I had heard Anne Epstein mention in conversation as if he were a friend.

There was ringing, and then a voice said, “Michael Herbert.”

“Hello,” I said. “I urgently need to talk to Anne Epstein.”

“You have the wrong extension. Let me—”

“I have some extremely confidential information for her and I don’t want this call to be routed to her extension.” I was talking extremely rapidly and softly, trying to create a sense of secrecy and urgency. “Could you possibly go to her desk and ask her to take this call at your extension? It’s very important.”

There was a pause, and then he said, “I’ll see if she’s there.”

Several minutes later, Anne’s voice came on. “Hello, this is Anne Epstein. Who is this?”

“Hello, Anne. Do you recognize my voice?”

“I…”

“Don’t repeat my name. This is Nick. Do you recognize me now?”

“Yes. How—”

“It would be
extremely
dangerous for me if anyone found out I had called you about this. You cannot tell
anyone
where you got the information I’m about to give you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“What I’m about to tell you is going to seem utterly incredible. Then it’s going to seem utterly silly. But it’s not silly. It’s deadly serious. A highly ranked intelligence officer, a man with extensive power within the intelligence community and with extraordinary personal discretion over large amounts of virtually unsupervised and secret budgetary funds, has become mentally deranged. He has gradually become convinced that we are threatened by invisible aliens from another world. On a personal level it’s a tragedy the way this man is being destroyed by his illness. But the greater tragedy is that he is using not only public funds but the entire machinery of American intelligence to combat his own paranoid delusions. Vast sums of money are being spent, valuable human resources are being diverted, illegal acts are being committed — burglary, arson, even abduction. Lives are being ruined. And because there are no safeguards, no real oversight or monitoring of intelligence activities, this continues unchecked. In fact, it’s expanding in scope, and officials at the highest level of government, having initially failed to bring this thing under control, are being drawn into a massive cover-up. This whole thing goes to the heart of how citizens in a democracy place limits on the institutions through which they govern themselves. Anne, do you know where the Academy Club is?”

“Yes…”

“You should get over there within the hour. Bring a photographer. I’m going to describe this man to you — he’s currently using the name David Jenkins. He is about to cordon off the Academy Club and search it for imaginary enemies. You probably can’t quite believe what I’m telling you, which is why I want you to be there to see this particular incident. I also want you to see how the authorities will move to cover this up. Without you, this — and God only knows how many other such acts — will be carried out with impunity. When you spot Jenkins, make sure you have him photographed there.

“All I can do over the phone now is sketch out the basic facts of this story, but I’m going to see that you receive extensive background information on this man in the mail. I’m also sending you information you can check out on some of the illegal activities he’s supervised…”

By the time I had finished with Anne, she had a vision of herself as the next Woodward and Bernstein. I had to move quickly now. It was eleven, and I wanted everything to reach its peak during lunch hour, when the Academy Club would be at its fullest. From a telephone booth across the street from the Club, I telephoned my old office and got Cathy on the line.

“Cathy, I can’t talk now, but do you happen to remember the name of that doctor I saw three or four years ago? Eisenstein? Einstein? Something like that. I’ve lost my address book and I need the name… I know him well. The name has just slipped my mind, exactly when I need it… No, I’m fine. Could you look on one of the insurance claims or something… I’ll call you back in five minutes.”

I walked over to another pay phone and called again several minutes later.

“Essler. That’s it. You don’t happen to have his number there do you? … Thanks… No, I’m fine. I’ll have to stop in soon. Bye.”

That should do it right there. But to make sure I walked in through the front entrance of the Academy Club. There was an electric eye across the front hall. I positioned myself directly in its path and stepped on the carpet. Jenkins had scattered things like this around the places where I had hidden myself last year. I had no idea if he was still bothering to watch for me in the clubs, but if he was, this should generate some excitement. Especially after the telephone calls to my office.

But to be absolutely sure, I went upstairs to a telephone booth inside the Club and called Essler.

“Hello, Dr. Essler’s office.”

“Hello, I’d like to speak to Dr. Essler, please.”

“The doctor’s not available now. Is it about an appointment?”

“Well yes, I’d like to see him, but I have to speak to him—”

“The first available appointment I have is in December.”

“December would not fit in with my needs. I have to talk to him. It’s an unusual situation. I mean… it’s urgent.”

“If you’ll leave your name and a number where you can be reached, I’ll try to have the doctor call you when he’s free.” She sounded unpromising. Try to get your children into medical school. No other service profession is in a position to treat people like this.

“I’m not anywhere I can be reached. I think I’d better hold.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t do that. The doctor may be—”

“I might have to step away from the phone for a moment, but I’ll be right back.”

“Hello? You can’t do that. Who is this? Hello…”

I left the phone off the hook and headed downstairs to slip out of the Club again before Jenkins arrived. But halfway down the stairway I looked through the front hall to the entrance and saw that I had underestimated Jenkins. The outside of the entrance was already completely covered over with a tentlike structure, and there were several people gathered by the door wearing gas masks.

I quickly turned into one of the lounges off the hall with the half-formed plan of forcing open or breaking through a window again, but there I saw another man with a large canister on wheels, which was emitting a loud hiss. I had seen one just like it that morning pumping gas into Alice’s apartment. In the second before I turned and ran, I saw that three men were moving quickly through the room, waving long blind men’s canes through the entire space, poking under every piece of furniture, stabbing into the window frames and over the tables, quickly and efficiently checking every place I might be.

Charging up the stairway, I came up short behind several more men in gas masks. There were two members and three or four Club employees looking distraught, and they immediately clustered around the men in gas masks. One mask was removed, revealing the face of a man I had never seen before.

“Everyone stay calm. We have a leak in a gas main. You’ll all be evacuated as quickly as possible using the gas masks at our disposal. In the meantime, everyone should move into the small room in the northeast corner with doors. You’ll be evacuated from there one at a time. Nobody is in any danger if you remain calm and follow directions.”

More employees were appearing from the dining room, and several members appeared from the staircase in squash clothes. It was still only eleven-thirty, and there were very few members in the Club. This was not working out at all the way I had planned it. I had expected this to happen an hour later, when the Club would be full. I had assumed that they would announce that a fugitive was in the Club. I had pictured them leading out hundreds of indignant Academy Club members and then beginning a destructive search of the building. Anne would be there with photographers, and when the whole fiasco was well underway, she would go after Jenkins directly:
Colonel Jenkins? Anne Epstein of the New York Times.
Photographer clicking up near his startled face.
Can you tell us the reason for this search of the Academy Club and the name of the agency you are representing?
Or
Would you care to comment on reports that the federal government is engaged in a search for invisible aliens?
Jenkins would blink and retreat. Even if I were trapped in the building, he would have to give up and leave before they could find me.

But it was not like that. The Club was still nearly empty. The story about the leaking gas main seemed to satisfy everyone. And they were moving quickly through the building. More people were straggling down the stairs to be evacuated. I could tell from the way they held towels and napkins over their faces that gas was already seeping up to this floor.

I charged up the stairway and down a corridor on the top floor. I would wait this out on the roof. I would be safe there. But the door to the roof was locked. It never used to be locked. What now? Try the door again. Hopeless. There must be a thousand places to hide in this building. Try to think of one. Go back through the building. There will be some place.

I found myself in a small room with card tables. If I could get a window open… No, that would draw them immediately. Looking out, I could see ambulances in front of the building and people standing around outside watching. Where was Jenkins? Perhaps he was inside the building, and Anne would never find him. Would she wait for him to come out? Would she miss him entirely? I looked for Anne, but I could not see her.

I turned from the window and ran out of the room. This was all a mistake. I could hear the men moving around on the floor below. I ran through a doorway and found myself in one of the private dining rooms. There was a long table running down the length of the room and above it an enormous chandelier with elaborately curved arms branching out from a shaft which ran up into the ceiling. It was all I could think of. I climbed up onto the table and grabbed hold of one of the metal arms close to the shaft. It swayed a bit, and there was a cracking sound up at the juncture with the ceiling, but it held as I pulled myself up. The whole thing was shaking. I was agonized by the exertion and by the fear that the whole thing would come crashing down onto the table with me under it.

I managed to hoist myself up and get first one leg, throbbing with pain, over a metal arm, and then the other leg. I twisted around until I was sitting with my chest and face right up against the central shaft. The whole thing was creaking. I unbuckled my belt and rebuckled it around the shaft so that I was held firmly against it. Then I unbuttoned the front of my shirt, slipped my arms out of the sleeves, and rebuttoned it. I wrapped the sleeves over one shoulder and under the other arm and knotted them tightly around the chandelier post so that I was lashed in place. I raised my legs, which were still dangling straight down over the table, and hooked them around chandelier arms as securely as I could.

I heard people moving in the corridor. I tried to relax my body, so that when I went under, I would not suddenly slump and cause the chandelier to lurch. The giant insects were moving in with their canister, and I had just enough time before passing from consciousness to feel how horribly painful and insecure my perch in the chandelier was.

T
he first thing I felt was the pain under my arm and across the side of my neck where I hung by my shirt from the chandelier. That brought me very quickly to a level of consciousness where I also felt the extraordinary pain across my lower back where my belt cut into it and a cramping discomfort in my thigh where it lay across a thin metal branch of the chandelier. My body had sagged down and now hung inertly from the chandelier like a sack of grain.

“Nothing.”

Two men dressed in grey work clothes stood in the doorway staring straight at me.

“It sounded just like someone moaning. You know, like someone didn’t get out in time.”

Try not to move. These men could not be working for Jenkins, anyway.

“Let’s take a look next door.”

When they disappeared from the doorway, I tried to pull myself up so that I could untie the shirt and the belt. At first I did not have the strength — or rather it felt as if I did have the strength but I was too groggy and miserable to summon it. Then my fingers seemed too stumpy to untie the knot. Careful. You could hang yourself. When I had finally somehow freed myself and dragged my limbs off the chandelier arms, I lowered myself laboriously until my feet reached the table top. I stood up and fainted.

“It’s not in here.”

The two men were in the doorway staring in again. I lay in a nasty heap on the table. Jesus. Better just lie here for a moment. Feels much better than before anyway.

“Maybe it’s upstairs. Someone probably dropped something onto the floor right above us.”

Please go away.

But even when they did, I went on lying there for quite a while. Then I slid myself onto the floor and lay there. It must have been almost an hour before I stumbled downstairs and outside into the bright afternoon. The Academy Club was full of members again. In the street, people walked by without a glance. It was as if nothing had happened. But I had been tied up in that chandelier: my body ached horribly… I should call someone. Jenkins. Or Anne Epstein. They have Alice. Better get it straight in my mind first, get home.

At the entrance to my building I pressed the button, on principle, but I didn’t much care. I staggered in and collapsed on my bed. If they knew about this place, let them come. I would be here sleeping.