Immediately Amy was all sympathy. "You poor thing!
Why didn't you call me? I know how you feel about animals. Where?"
"Getting off the interstate on the way home. The morning it was raining so bad. But that's not what's got me all shook, Amy. I… I looked at the thing out of my right eye and it looked just like a dog, a big mutt like a wolfhound or something. Then I saw it out of my left eye and it looked like something else. Not like a dog. I can't describe it."
"Out of your left eye?" Amy searched her friend's face. "Man, you do need a vacation."
"That's what I thought. Someplace far away. Washington seemed as good a choice as any, and that was the first thing that popped into my head."
"You're sure you're okay?"
Merry considered. The face and the clawed paw (hand?) were only faint images now, like those left behind on the retina when the TV is turned off. All around her busy men and women hurtled toward distant appointments. Each carried an attaché case or garment bag or both. Their eyes were vacant, their minds elsewhere, and the only time any of them looked anywhere other than straight ahead was when they glanced at their wrists to check the time. They looked like feeding flamingos, hunting minutes instead of tiny pink shrimp.
It frightened Merry, but she didn't let it show. It was as if everyone in the airport except Amy and herself was dead; unthinking, unseeing. Zombies. She shuddered.
"Chilly in here. I'd better go through security or I'll miss my plane."
"Right. I gotta go too. The old man'll be wondering if I took off with you." There was a brief, awkward pause and then they were hugging each other hard.
"Take it easy." Merry pulled back. "It's not like I'm going to Timbuktu or something."
"I know, but it still feels funny, watching you leave. I want postcards. Tons of postcards. Now go and get on that plane before I get silly."
Washington, D.C.—19 June
"… and so what you are really saying, Mr. Bush, is that you believe the emphasis of law enforcement in this country insofar as these various extremist groups are concerned ought to be changed."
There was silence in the Senate chamber except for the hum of the air conditioning and the soft whirr of video cameras while the man known as Bush composed his reply. He sat behind a long, curved table facing the raised dais which protected the five members of the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism. A hood of black cloth covered his head and shoulders. When he spoke it was into a special microphone which electronically distorted as well as amplified his voice. The result was a nicely theatrical quaver.
"Am I to understand, Senator, that you are actually asking for my opinion?"
The senior senator from Nebraska nodded. "Absolutely, Mr. Bush. If it were only facts we wanted we could just read your reports, couldn't we?"
The hooded man choked down his instinctive response and tried to view the hearings in the same light the senators did. They couldn't be expected to take him too seriously. Hearings on crime were good for media exposure but contributed little to the actual running of the country. Two of the men on the panel, Crawford of Texas and Eggleston of Michigan, were on the Armed Forces Committee that was meeting early this afternoon. They were anxious to wrap this session up.
So why was he frustrated and disappointed? It was always like this. The same questions to which he gave more or less the same answers. Radicals might differ wildly in their philosophers, but their methodologies for overthrowing the existing government by force were depressingly similar. They weren't really interested in his opinions. That was part of the show, the theater.
He rather liked the senator from Nebraska, though. Baker was an anomaly who thrived on the illusion that one man could actually make a difference in Washington. That ingenuousness was one reason the voters of America's heartland kept returning him to office. Whether he ever got anything done didn't seem to matter as much as the fact that he stood for something.
The half dozen television folks were already starting to break down their equipment. They looked bored. So did the junior reporter from the Post. The important questions had already been asked. Baker had requested the professional informant's opinion because the query would look good in the record.
So be it. "Well, Senator, since you've asked for my opinion, this is what I think we ought to do, based on my experiences with the shadowy side of this country over the last ten years. First off we need to legalize all victimless crimes, starting with prostitution and then marijuana use. I'm sure the American Tobacco Company will be thrilled and so will Internal Revenue. That's two big new sources of tax income." Crawford suddenly woke up and looked as though he wished he were elsewhere. The junior reporter from the Post was holding his tape recorder up high, a gleeful expression on his face. The hooded man wasn't finished.
"Next we ought to throw at least half our law enforcement resources into a war on white-collar crime. If we put away some of these bastards working for Fortune 100 companies who skim and steal millions every year, everybody in the country would benefit, not only from the reduction in crime but because all the hidden costs these crooks tack on to everything you and I buy would be eliminated. That would also make us more competitive overseas."
"Thank you, Mr. Bush—" Eggleston started to say.
"The other half of our strength needs to be focused better on organized crime. More damage is done by it in New York alone than by all the mad bombers and wacko neonazis in the whole country in a year."
"I see," murmured Baker, a bit dazed by the force and depth of the unexpected response. Informants, professional or otherwise, weren't supposed to go in for criminological analysis. He wondered who the man in the hood really was. "Thank you for your opinion, sir, though I confess I was not expecting a complete reassessment of the entire United States Justice Department and its policies. Unfortunately, this subcommittee is empowered to deal only with that branch of crime which is your specialty: those terrorist and subversive organizations which pose a threat not only to our financial and moral well-being but to the very survival of our beloved American institutions as well."
The hooded man leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. "Shoot, Senator, I don't think we have to worry about that too much. Everything's been pretty quiet lately. We know the location of all the nuts in the fruitcake."
"Your levity is not appreciated, sir," grumbled the impatient Crawford.
Baker hastened to move the hearing to a conclusion. "What we really want to know, Mr. Bush, is how to stamp out these radicals once and for all, so that hearings like this one will no longer be necessary and so that our thinly stretched resources can be better utilized elsewhere, just as you've suggested." Murmurs of interest came from the small but suddenly revived group of onlookers.
"Senator, I wish I had the answer to that one, but I'm afraid that the extremists are always going to be with us no matter what we do. It's one drawback to living in a free society. We can't eliminate them, so we have to do our best to keep them under control and minimize their influence. Like fleas on a hound. We've had to cope with dangerous fringe groups since before the Revolution. Every free government does. They're like weeds: you clean out one area and they pop up somewhere else.
"It's an ongoing, never-ending job. I know it's expensive and I really think we ought to put the money elsewhere. Who's more of a threat to the country? The guy who blows up a police station in Topeka or the one who doesn't pay a couple of million in taxes every year?"
Baker coughed into his closed fist. "I'd have to ask my constituents that one, Mr. Bush." Crawford leaned over and whispered to him. Baker nodded, then smiled and turned back to his own microphone. "We thank you for a job well done, Mr. Bush. You see, I have read the reports of your exploits. We also want to thank you for your opinions and your frank observations. Sadly, we of the Senate are compelled to deal exclusively with fiscal and historical realities and cannot allow emotion to influence our decisions." The hooded man mumbled something his mike didn't pick
up, which was probably just as well.
"I must say that I personally find it refreshing to have someone appear before this subcommittee who is not afraid to speak his mind, who says what he feels and says it straight." Baker shuffled some of the paper on the table before him. "The unique and difficult services which you provide to your country are much appreciated. I am told that within a limited field your work stands out."
"I'm just an ordinary guy doing his job, Senator."
"I beg to differ with you, Mr. Bush. What may appear ordinary to one man strikes another as exceptional. I would very much enjoy talking to you face-to-face for a change. Again, sadly, that is impossible." The black hood nodded once. Baker glanced left, then right.
"Gentlemen, if there are no further questions… ?" Eggleston was frowning at his watch. Plenty of time until the Armed Forces Committee meeting, but he didn't want to be late for lunch. The Senate dining room offered gourmet food at rock-bottom prices and Eggleston wanted to be there before all the lobster was gone.
"Thank you again for your revealing and enlightening testimony, Mr. Bush. This subcommittee meeting is at an end." Baker stood and began chatting with Mark Delarosa, the junior senator from Oregon.
Down on the floor, two men appeared and flanked the man in the black hood. The three of them exited the meeting room together. Outside, they walked thirty feet down a narrow corridor before turning and entering a small elevator. It was just big enough for the three of them. The elevator dropped to the next-to-lowest level of the Capitol Building. As it descended, the man in the middle of the elevator removed his black hood and ran a hand through his hair.
"You did fine, Josh," said one of the agents. "I think they really appreciated your frankness even if they didn't agree with your opinions. At least you woke 'em up." He pursed his lips. "How the Bureau will react is something else again."
"Let 'em scream," muttered Oak. "I don't give a damn. Besides, I didn't say anything that could damage the program. Baker asked for my opinion and I gave it to him."
"Yeah," said the other agent, "and you know what Nettles thinks of agents giving their personal opinions in public, much less to a covey of senators." Ed Nettles was the Bureau's current Assistant Director for Field Operations. He did not consider either independence or outspokenness to be praiseworthy qualities in field personnel.
"What else could I do? I had a senator ask me straight out, while I was under oath, to give my opinion. So maybe I went beyond the bounds of his intentions. He didn't go away mad. What the hell else was I supposed to do?"
"Be oblique," said the other agent, a very pretty redhead named Corcoran. "That's what Nettles would say. Be informative and don't embroider."
Oak was folding up the hood. "I'm not real good at that. I can mask my personality and my job, but not my feelings. That kind of subterfuge I leave to the doubletalkers upstairs." He handed the hood to the redhead.
The elevator let them out in the bowels of the Capitol. This was a section of the old building that visitors never saw. It would not have struck anyone as a center of power. Exposed steam pipes and water lines ran across the ceiling like rusty snakes. The large number of fire extinguishers had been placed on the walls to deal with electrical shorts, not structural fires. The walls were solid stone.
"Something's bothering you, Joshua," Corcoran said. "Come on, tell Mama Coco all about it."
"Nothing's wrong," he muttered as they started to climb stairs.
"Happy talk? Okay." She was smirking at him.
"Won't be satisfied till you know, will you? Okay, I'll tell you what it is. I am burned out. I've spent the last ten years being other people. My friends have been anarchists, assassins, revolutionaries, and murderers. I've played with their kids, made friends with their wives, and wormed my way into their trust just in time to betray them in the name of truth, justice, and the American way. All of which I know was necessary. It still stinks. The smell's starting to stick with me even when I'm not on assignment." He spat against a nearby wall. The Parks Department would not have been pleased.
"Not everybody I met wanted to blow up public buildings or wipe out minorities. A lot of them were just confused. There's a lot of leeway between someone who's confused and someone who's downright evil. But the grand juries don't take that into account when they hand out their indictments. The confused get dragged down with the dangerous. Once a man's private hatreds and bigotries are splashed all over the local papers for his neighbors to see. It doesn't matter if the jury acquits him or not; he's ruined in that town anyway."
Corcoran's expression and the hardness in her voice mitigated her attractiveness. "You spray for roaches, you're going to kill a few beneficial bugs with them. It's tough, but that's the way it is. You know that, Joshua."
"Yeah, I know it. But I don't have to like it, and it's getting harder for me to ignore it."
"Ten years. You should see Wayland," said the other agent. Wayland was the field psychologist.
"I don't need to see Wayland. I'm not cracking up. Just getting morose in my dotage. Sometimes I wish I were a little crazy. It would make working with some of the types I've had to deal with a lot easier." They arrived in a modest, clean hallway with old framed photographs on the walls. "Maybe it's just that the longer I spend in the field, the harder it is for me to tell the real bad guys from the real good guys."
They were approaching the lower entrance to the Capitol Building. Behind them was the small private garage that was used to bring in visitors who had reasons for not wanting to be seen. Ahead lay a corridor leading to steps which would emerge at the base of the two great stone stairways that fronted the building. Beyond was the reflecting pool and the long green march of the Capitol Mall.
"If you're that fed up," Corcoran told him, "why don't you talk to Nettles about it? Everybody knows Laffler recommended you for a kick upstairs. With your record and list of commendations you could go anywhere within the Bureau you wanted to."
"Swell. Except who's the poor sucker they'd send to New York in my place? How's that for a change of pace? From Tupelo to the Big Apple."
She frowned. "New York?"
"There's a new knot of nuts up there who call themselves the Repellians."
The other agent looked mystified. "Never heard of 'em."
"Neither's anybody else. They're all from the Caribbean, some black, some white. Their philosophy's part Rastafarian, part Rousseau, and part Marcus Garvey. They think everybody ought to be able to take what they need in order to live. Too bad if it happens to belong to someone else. They have the right, see, to defend themselves against all wrong believers. I'm supposed to go up there, muss up my hair and face and sit around and smoke pot all day until it's time to rip off somebody's car when transportation's required. Besides which I'm not crazy about New York. And if I turn the assignment down, which I can do, they'll probably send some poor young inexperienced schmuck who'll get himself dumped in a Harlem alley some night for letting one lousy wrong word slip."
They were at the corridor intersection now. Garage or pedestrian exit?
"Want a lift, Joshua?" the redhead asked sympathetically. She was pretty and understanding and very married. That wouldn't have stopped many of Oak's friends, but it was enough to stop him.
"Thanks, Coco, but I think I'll walk on down to the Smithsonian and see what's new. Green is good for the soul." That was the best thing about his two years in Mississippi. The restorative of the unblemished land had been there whenever he'd needed it.
"If you're that uncomfortable with undercover you ought to get out," she added.
"You don't really understand, do you? Neither of you do. It's not that I'm fed up with undercover, or my assignments. It's not that I'm fed up with the Bureau." He pushed open the twin glass doors and started toward the broad stone steps beyond. "What I'm fed up with is myself."
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6
He left the Capitol Building behind and started down Madison Drive. As he watch
ed the clusters of gawking tourists, the city kids enjoying early summer on the lawn, the busy bureaucrats and messengers on their bicycles, he was struck yet again by the sheer beauty of the city. Once you left behind the concrete and granite walls of the Congress and other government buildings and stepped out among the sunshine and flowers and trees, you no longer felt the oppressive weight of power. Washington became just another city full of busy people, and one prettier than most.
Off in the distance the thin white spear of the Washington Monument stood out against the stark blue summer sky like a cloud that had been turned on its end and rooted in the earth. Around him people oohed and aahed at the massive piles of stone. Each structure was a monument unto itself, to whichever branch of the immense bureaucracy it happened to house. Husbands read aloud the names on the signs out front to their perfectly literate wives.
Street vendors hawked hot dogs and ice cream and Italian ices. Oak fought to lose himself in the sounds and sensations of the city, but his inner thoughts wouldn't let him be. Was he really that burned out? Was it finally time to transfer to a desk where if he had to lie he could do it on paper instead of to another human being? How could somebody like Wayland help him? By advising him not to live a lie? Living lies was his profession. Where did that leave a man emotionally?
Corcoran had been right about the commendations. What he did, Oak did exceptionally well. A transfer anywhere within the Bureau was his for the asking. What would it be like to be himself for more than a few months at a stretch, instead of Cletus White or Andrew Booker or BJ Tree? To be able to go through a day's work without wondering in the back of your mind if you were going to wake up floating facedown in some unnamed bayou or ghetto Dumpster later that night?
That had happened before. Not to him, but to others less skilled in maintaining the Lie. They had signed away their lives and usefulness in a single moment of thoughtlessness. So what kept him with undercover? Why did he continue to trust his life to the flawless maintenance of a false persona?
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