The Last Supper (39 page)

— 1 —

In a secret trial, Christopher was convicted of espionage against the People’s Republic of China. He was sentenced to “death with twenty years’ suspension of
execution and solitary forced labor with observation of the results.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Patchen asked the Chinese intelligence officer who brought him the news. They faced each other across a table laden with food in the dining room of the
Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. Neither Patchen nor the Chinese had much appetite, but both had wanted to meet in a public place.

“It means that he is under sentence of death but that the sentence will not be carried out for twenty years.”

“That’s a very cruel sentence.”

“No, it is most clement,” said the Chinese. “Many of the criminals who receive this humanitarian punishment are saved.”

“How does that happen?”

“Through the observation of results. If the prisoner reforms, or if there are special circumstances, he may not after all be executed.”

“Do you foresee such a result in this case?”

The Chinese let his eyes wander over the crowd of sleek Chinese capitalists and white tourists who were enjoying the Peninsula’s famous buffet lunch. The serving tables groaned with more
than two hundred different dishes, Chinese and Western. There was enough food in this room, for this one meal, to feed twenty imprisoned Christophers for twenty years.

Patchen repeated his question: “Do you foresee such a result in Christopher’s case?”

The Chinese emerged from his reverie and looked into Patchen’s impassive face. “It is for the prisoner to answer that question,” he said, “the prisoner and his
government. Christopher does not have a good attitude. He insists that he is not an American espionage agent.”

“That happens to be the truth.”

“Then why are you here, Mr. Patchen? We will make no progress if we are not honest with one another.”

“I agree. That’s why I’m telling you the facts. He had resigned before he landed on your territory. He was not on an official mission.”

“Is that the position of your government?”

“It’s the truth.”

The Chinese frowned. “Then there is little hope,” he said. “In order for the prisoner to be saved, he must admit his crime and understand it. That is the first condition.
Equally important, the United States must admit officially that this man Christopher
was
an American spy; your government must apologize publicly to the People’s Republic of China for
having sent the terrorist Christopher into our country to commit his criminal acts.”

Patchen and the Chinese looked at one another, two men with impassive faces, shabbily dressed by the flashy standards of the place they were in.

“How long are you prepared to wait for your apology from an American government?” Patchen asked.

“According to the terms of the sentence, twenty years. But that is a matter for your side to decide; it need not be twenty years.”

“What, in the meantime, will happen to Christopher?”

“He will perform useful work.”

“Will he be permitted to receive letters or parcels or visitors?”

“No.”

“Will he mingle with other prisoners?”

“No.”

“Then he has been condemned to twenty years of solitary confinement with the certainty of death at the end of it?”

“He is a dangerous counterrevolutionary. Perhaps he will yet show the right spirit. Perhaps a future American government will show the right spirit. We must hope that the right results
will be observed.”

Patchen did not nod or smile or make any gesture to signify that he understood. He tucked money under his plate to pay for the lunch. Then he and the Chinese stood up and walked out of the room,
leaving their laden plates on the table.

— 2 —

On the anniversary of Christopher’s capture, Tom Webster was the first to arrive at the club. Though he was not a member, the porters knew him, and when he came into the
foyer out of the bitter January wind, they greeted him by name and asked the ritual question always put to strangers: “Would you like to use the facilities, Mr. Webster?”

Webster declined, and they showed him up the stairs to the private dining room that Patchen had engaged for the evening. It was a windowless, somber room, paneled in walnut. Four weak bulbs,
screwed into a brass chandelier, gave off the only light. A silver candelabrum, charged with five unlighted candles, stood on the round table. Its mirror image, blurred and yellow, shone in the
polished mahogany. Five places had been set with the club’s worn silver.

As he waited for a drink, Tom Webster tried to imagine Christopher in his cell in China. He could not do it; instead, he pictured him as he would look on the day of his release twenty years
hence—thinner, older, broken. Although it was only seven o’clock, Webster was already drunk. The death of Molly had broken his spirit; thinking of Christopher in prison, thinking of the
dead girl, he could hardly live with his conscience. In his imagination, he shook hands with this ghost of the future and said, “I was the last one to see Molly alive; what happened in Paris
was my fault.” What would Christopher say?

An elderly waiter brought Webster a glass of Scotch whisky on a tray.

“Is that all right, sir?”

“Fine. Do you have a match? I want to light the candles.”

“I can do that for you, sir.”

“No. I’ll do it.”

When Horace Hubbard arrived, all five candles were burning. “Patchen is downstairs,” he said, “waiting for Wolkowicz.”

Webster nodded. “What is this all about?” he asked.

“Patchen didn’t say exactly. It’s about Christopher.”

Patchen and Wolkowicz arrived, followed by the old waiter.

“Double Rob Roy,” Wolkowicz said.

Patchen ordered a club soda, without ice, and drank it in silence. His graying hair was brushed flat on his long head. He wore spectacles with narrow black frames and small round lenses. These
gave him a look of meekness. Even his enemies had always thought that he would become Director; now his chances were spoiled, some said, because he had tried to protect Christopher—and,
worse, had believed his last terrible reports.

“I think we can sit down now,” Horace said.

Another waiter came in carrying a tureen of soup. Wolkowicz caught him by the sleeve and ordered another Rob Roy. He was the last to sit down, and as the legs of his chair squealed across the
floor he looked around the table with his hard eyes.

“Who’s the fifth man?” he asked.

Patchen, filling the wineglasses, paused with the bottle in his hand. “The empty place is for Christopher.”

Wolkowicz had been lifting his Rob Roy toward his lips. He paused, stared incredulously at Patchen, and then finished his gesture, drinking off half a cocktail.

Patchen lifted his own glass.

“Absent friends,” he said.

Tom Webster and Horace Hubbard raised their wineglasses and drank.

Wolkowicz drained the dregs of his Rob Roy. “Boola boola,” he said.

Patchen ate the least and was finished first. The level of wine in his glass had fallen about an inch. As the cheese was passed around, Wolkowicz filled Webster’s wineglass to the rim and
emptied the last of the Burgundy into his own.

“Okay,” Wolkowicz said, “what’s the news?”

“He’s alive,” Patchen said.

He told them what he had learned in Hong Kong.

“Where are they holding him?” Wolkowicz asked.

“We don’t know.”

“Was he wounded?”

“We don’t know.”

“What the fuck was he doing in China?”

“We don’t know.”

Webster struck the table with his fist, rattling the dishes. “What
do
we know?” he shouted. “What are we
doing
for him, God damn it?” His voice was
slurred.

Patchen gave Webster a long, cool look. “What we are doing for Christopher, Tom, is having dinner together,” Patchen said.

“I see,” Webster said. “We’re just old comrades keeping his memory alive. Is that it?”

“For the time being,” Patchen replied, “that’s it.”

Webster drank more wine.

Wolkowicz had not taken his eyes off Patchen’s face while Webster talked. Now he went on with his questions, as though the other man had not interrupted.

“Did you make any progress on identifying the plane and the pilot?”

“No. All our own pilots are clean. We polygraphed every one of them.”

“Nobody is missing?”

“Nobody. Who would be crazy enough to fly into China? Anyone who did would certainly be in the next cell to Christopher.”

“Then he must have been kidnapped,” Wolkowicz said.

Horace Hubbard spoke. “That’s possible. But by whom? It’s a blank page. We have Christopher to thank for that. He covered his tracks in a routine professional manner. He
didn’t want us to know where he was going.”

Patchen held up a hand. “Barney knows all this. We all know all this. We may never know more.”

Webster rapped on the table again, a series of sharp knocks. “David,” he said, “I don’t like that. I don’t like what you just said.”

Patchen’s expression remained the same. “I’m sorry. What would you like me to say?”

Webster had difficulty in forming words. “I’d like you to say that we’re going to keep trying,” he said, “that we’re going to find out what happened, that
we’re going to get him out. I’d like somebody to say that he was the best of us. Wasn’t he? Wasn’t he? Don’t we have any obligation to him at all?”

There was no reply. Webster struck the table again. “God
damn
it, David!” he said.

Wolkowicz put his elbows on the table and leaned around Horace in order to speak straight into Webster’s face. His voice was even rougher than usual.

“Let
me
answer Tom’s question,” he said. “The answer to your question, Tom, is no. No, we don’t have any obligation to Christopher. When he went into China,
was he on a mission for the Outfit? No. Had he torn the heart out of the Outfit by puking his crazy fucking theory all over everybody’s shoes? Yes. Was he told to leave it alone? Yes. Could
he leave it alone? Not Christopher. Paul Christopher got himself into a Chinese prison without any help from anybody. Do you think he expects the Outfit to get him out? No. Of course he
doesn’t. He may be crazy, but he’s not stupid.”

Webster seized the edge of the table. “Are you saying we’re abandoning him?”

“Ask Patchen. I thought we’d go in and get him. That made sense to me—quick in and out. We’ve got all those fucking helicopters in Vietnam. Get him out before he talks.
That was my suggestion. Patchen didn’t buy it.”

“Christopher won’t talk.”

Wolkowicz grinned, a long fixed grimace, giving them all time to remember what had happened to his teeth.

“Of course he won’t,” Wolkowicz said. “Nobody ever does.”

Webster pushed back his chair, as if to walk out in disgust. It was not easy for Patchen to show sympathy, but he touched Webster—put his hand on the other man’s hand.

“The fact is, Paul doesn’t have very many friends,” Patchen said. “The four of us are his friends. That’s not much, Tom, but it’s all he’s got. Nobody
else wants to think about him. He’s an embarrassment. A few want him to rot in China.”

“But we’re not like them,” Webster said. “We’ll feel bad about him rotting in China.”

“More than that. We’ll get him back.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Faces change in Washington. In China, too. The time will come, and when it does, we’ll get him back.”

Webster stood up. He steadied himself, gripping the back of his chair. He tried to say something, but drink had robbed him of the power of speech. He opened his mouth and shook his head, trying
to force his voice and tongue to form words. The others looked up at him.

“Tom,” Patchen said, “we all know you feel responsible because of what happened to Molly in Paris. But you’re not responsible. Barney is right: Paul is responsible, and
only Paul.”

Webster shook the chair, banging its legs against the floor. Still he couldn’t speak. Suddenly he began to cry. Fat round tears like a child’s squeezed out of the corners of his eyes
and slid over the broken drinker’s veins in his cheeks.

“I don’t think we can get him back and neither do any of you,” he said. “Do you believe it, Barney? Horace?”

Wolkowicz said, “Patchen believes it. Maybe he knows something we don’t know.”

Patchen sat very still, saying nothing, watching Webster cry like a child.

“Christopher doesn’t even know that Molly is dead,” Webster said. “Who’s going to tell him
that
when we get him back?”

“You can have that job if you want it,” Patchen said. “In the meantime, I think the four of us should keep in touch. We’re all Christopher has.”

Wolkowicz looked around the table. “Lucky Christopher,” he said.

— 1 —

Seven years had passed since Paul Christopher had seen the dead man standing in a hospital room in Peking, and still he was not sure if the face he had glimpsed and the voice
he had heard were real or if they were hallucinations.

As Christopher lay in the darkness in his cell, he reconstructed the incident in his mind, putting together fragments of memory like the smudged pieces of an old jigsaw puzzle. He did this every
night, just before he went to sleep, and just after he wrote the single word of poetry that he permitted himself every day.