But Foster did take it. For some time he turned it over in his palm in the taxi, until he traded it for the phone from his pants pocket. As a matter of habit he compared the time with his watch, and dialed a number not stored in his phone. It rang once and a male voice said, “Where are you?”
“In a cab. Where are you?”
“Closing out a visit with one of your old familiars at the D.O.E. Do you know the Freer?”
“Who’s that?”
“No matter. Know the Freer?”
“I think so.”
“It’s across the street. Do you know the Peacock Room?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You know Whistler?”
“Is he a musician?”
“Painter. All that schooling and no art history?”
“I know what I like.”
“You and everybody else. How long till you’re there?”
“Probably twenty, twenty-five minutes with traffic.”
“Alright. Go in through the Sackler, it’s next door. There’s a passage into the Freer. The room’s on the third floor in the corner toward Jefferson and 12th.” The line went still. And changing the phone for the knife, again he occupied himself, and gazed over the seatbacks and shoulder-lump of driver, until at last he was deposited before the cylindrical façade of the Hirshhorn.
3.
His name was Steven Smith. There was no plaque on the door or the desk, but a thick wedge of business cards in a holder from which they were never taken. Howard Charles Foster had no idea what Smith’s middle name might be, but he felt a conviction, just here in a chair facing him from across his busy desk, that it was every bit as vague and white as the card stock and the other two names on it: a mayonnaise between bread slices. Foster had been in the new—and it seemed to him—non-assignment several months before he had been called in. It was an office Foster had visited several times prior, but it could not be said that he had visited often. It was an airless business on the third floor; it was white too. The door was a heavy wood-laminate composite with a substantial lever. There was a large window overlooking the parking lot below and the Virginia wood which crept firmly to the edge of an enforced clearing. Behind him were file cabinets in the one beige in which they are made. There was a high worktable set with working files, fat with documents, and cinched round with file bands and clips. On its corner was a light box with transparency and loupe. There were topographical maps and pushpins, and schematics tacked to the walls.
To arrive in this chair, from which Foster watched Smith listening patiently into a telephone receiver, Foster was born to an old French-immigrant family prospered by cotton, the labor of children, and the otherwise compelled; by a Yale undergraduate in ‘something useful’: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; by a nomination for the Skull and Bones, and like so many, through it a recruitment into the Central Intelligence Agency; a Masters from M.I.T. and eventually a doctoral dissertation on the predictive relationship between Moore’s Law and the scalability and speed of proliferation of enrichment technology among non-nuclear powers; by matriculation through the Langley Farm during breaks in his graduate study—while otherwise purportedly hunting in remote northern climes; eventually landing a shallow-water Asia station post as a Core Collector, under pretence of an Asia markets specialist for a Washington-based risk consultancy—mostly skimming talkative executives for rumors, and unhappy mid-level engineers and developers for substance and plot twists; he travelled perpetually, gradually cultivated a taste for whiskey and cold tea, and cocaine by the long line as pop-up Asian tycoons prefer it; attended Sunday sermon with his wife and infant when the wheels came down in D.C.; sat red-eyed on the veranda with his parents through brunch; forwarded his reports to a Langley-bound handler—Smith—who expended himself making cross-words of bills of lading, commercial invoices, spirited internal corporate communications, and Foster’s reports; and for a time this arrangement held, and they saw that it was good.
Smith listened; his eyes leapt sightlessly across the objects on his desk, and he drew a curl of phone cord flat beneath his thumbs.
Tastes had changed, however. There was a new premise, and with it a determination that Foster’s post was too thin and entirely too loud for the new way. He would be reassigned: an engagement which after some deliberation installed him in a quiet professorship at a university in Saint Louis—Washington University—warming a lectern beneath the dewy, complacent gaze of a patronage intent upon purchasing the terms of their future. These were the steps that brought him across the seal in the lobby, brought him past the credential check and through the turnstiles, and up, into the rigid, taupe-cushioned armchair from which he sat patiently watching Smith on the phone, nodding an unseen acknowledgement—nodding again. “I understand,” he said, and rest the handset quietly in the cradle. He traded the cord for a pencil and bit on the metal crown. The thought of the salivated eraser soured Foster’s mouth. “Well, Charles, they don’t know,” said Smith.
For Foster the voice was the familiar thing—its firm nasal cadence and slurred, rural Virginian vowels had become the intimate sound of the institution itself; but here in the flesh, the embodiment was an abstraction: a flaccid albino bloodhound, with a sparse, reedy mustache and a truss of dusty auburn hair, seeming never combed or cut, but of a length and state simply arrived at by some sedentary gestation. Smith was an ageless middle place; suspended anywhere between a hard-rode twenty-eight and a soft-worn fifty with equal plausibility—the way an oiled cog’s properties all become indeterminate with use. Smith’s necktie lay over the hood of a large beige computer monitor. He wore a wrinkled white Oxford going threadbare at the collar-fold over an undershirt the perfect match to his skin tone: Foster thought them summer and winter hides worn at once. “They don’t know,” he repeated, rubbed the blue bags beneath his eyes with a pinch, and smoothed his sparse mustache with the same finger and thumb. “Well, somebody knows, but not me—and whoever does won’t say.”
Foster looked over his cluttered desk and his oil-tanned keyboard and his coffee mug of chewed pencils.
“You’ve been given a new handler, Charles. That’s the point,” said Smith.
“But we don’t know who,” said Charles, “ and we don’t know why.”
“Charles, you sat right there. You heard me. The answer was, no—I don’t know—I wasn’t told; and if you want my guess, it’s going to stay that way.”
“Am I being moved out? You would just do me a favor and tell me if they were moving me out,” said Foster.
“I don’t think that’s it, Charles. Nothing about it looks that way.”
“I don’t know,” said Foster, “but you can see how it might look that way. You can see how that might be the impression. Right?” He searched with his elbows for the narrow rails, and clasped his hands. “I mean, I’m yanked from circulation like I’ve got plague, and promoted to wilderness station. Three months in I lose my case officer . . . You can see what that might look like?”
“It could’ve been Lawrence, Kansas—it’s a good post, Charles.” Smith bit on the end of his pencil. Foster watched the stamped metal slowly deform beneath his bite, rotate and compress, rotate and compress. Foster wondered if Fabre Castle and Sanford and Trusty had different flavors: he wondered if Smith favored a brand. Smith swiveled in his chair and looked from the window with his pencil. “It’s a fine posting,” he said. His eyes flicked across the landscape, and Foster eventually glanced to see what they were seeing. “I don’t know, Charles. The best way to prevent a rollup is to keep things on a thermostat, you know: turn things down when they get warm. And the consensus was things were a little warm. Prevents your people from getting dangled, and keeps my people viable: you. Besides, talent scout is at the ground floor of what we do. It’s an honorable trade.”
“Why trade handlers then?” asked Foster.
“It could be you’v
e been tapped for an escalated project. Right skill, right zip code—something like that.”
“Fine. But then why wouldn’t you know—why wouldn’t you be told who the handoff was?”
“It could be need-to-know. It could be firewalled, Charles. It could be somebody’s pet-fucking firewalled op; and then wouldn’t you feel stupid with all your glum-faced soft-shoe. Look,” said Smith, “I’m sure to find out if it’s some corporate style introduction. Otherwise, I’ll let you know what the paroles are when they’re handed down.”
Now they both turned to the window.
“You’re bound to hear something—forty-eight hours probably,” Smith said, and turned the pencil.
It was an image of Smith which Foster held firmly in mind when they talked later that day by phone. Foster envisioned the scene from earlier—the light from the window, the dusty slats of the Venetian blinds, and the dental-molded pencil: “‘Familiar,’” said Smith, the parole was ‘familiar.’ It was a password repeated only the next day in a call taken by taxi from Catherine’s apartment.
When after some twenty minutes, he unfolded his graceless length from the taxi and onto the pavement, the air was bright and humid, and his ill-fitting suit quickly vented its cool atmosphere into the day. Foster strode down Independence remembering the knife in his trouser pocket with his fingers. In the opposite pocket, with the fingers of his other hand he also remembered his paper rose: a small, carefully-creased, 92 Bright, 20 lb, acid-free origami envelope; and if necessary, edible paper attaché for his daily measure—the travel dose of cocaine he generally kept on his person with the same habituated ease of a matchbook or spare key. He passed the Hirshhorn and mused at the paradox of displaying flat things on curved walls. Crossing Ninth he tugged his cuffs from the cling of his coat sleeves, and inside the Haupt Garden he paused apprehensively to flick the paper rose into a concrete trash barrel, and resisted a spiteful temptation to send the folding knife with it.
Through the street-level entrance the Sackler spilled down a limestone shaft on a floating terrazzo stair of turquoise metalwork and polished brass handrails. He descended, followed a passage into the Freer, up into the main galleries, along the marble hall against the courtyard, and into a room like the interior of a Fabergé egg—composed entirely in emerald green, gilded shelving, and frail blue and white porcelain. As he entered, to Foster’s left hung a painting of a woman in a pale robe and red sash; and to his right, on the far side of the room stood a man examining a depiction of two peacocks—or as Foster thought them, two turkeys—in gold on a large green leather panel.
The man stood with a broad, slightly exaggerated stance, his hands clasped at the small of his back. His figure was substantial, but compact; something like an athlete in off-season. His suit was a tidy pinstripe over a banker’s blue—and Foster saw from the beam of the shoulder to the lay of cuff, it was finely shorn and fitted. But the attire, the form, and the posture, left Foster with a sense for the details of an irresolvable whole: Savile Row finery over a steeled frame—it left Foster with an impression which came formed in the single word: Navy. The man tipped his ear slightly, as though placing Foster in the room with it. “Certainly you know it’s impolite to stare,” he said. He turned toward Foster in a quick, uninterrupted motion. “Aren’t you supposed to be pretending to appreciate something, or is that too great an exertion?”
“I hadn’t gotten that far,” said Foster. He scanned the room with the sense something had escaped his notice. The man was reasonably tall, though Foster’s own unusual height confounded accurate guessing. He bore sharp features, a pair of silver glasses on a cord which lay professorially against his lapels, and a shock of black and gray hair which rest only reluctantly toward one side. Foster put him near sixty, and handsome if slightly sun-wizened. Foster was certain they’d never met. “You’re the ‘familiar,’” he said.
“I am,” said the man. “And you’re no fan of Whistler.”
“Since I guessed he was a flautist, I suppose that counts for a ‘no.’ Is that his?” asked Foster with a gesture toward the painting above the mantle.
“It is. But it’s his credit for the room which has it here.”
“The whole room?” asked Foster.
“It’s credited to him, but no—not all of it. A fellow name of Jeckyll designed it. And was nearly finished with it, too; when Whistler was fooling about with something one day—painting in the front hall or some business. In any case, Jeckyll—rather unwisely it might be said—asked Whistler’s opinion on some painted shutter doors; concerned they might clash with The Princess, I believe,” he said, indicating the painting. “Whistler said he would retouch a few details, and all would be well. Thinking this sounded fine, Leyland, the homeowner, and Jeckyll fucked-off to Liverpool or wherever—and left Whistler in London to the business of the room. Meantime, Whistler covered half of everything in gold leaf, and painted gold peacocks on the rest—he entertained guests in the room, and then wanted two thousand pounds for work that Leyland had never agreed to. Leyland paid him half, and to commemorate the occasion, Whistler painted this cockfight on Leyland’s expensive leather,” he said. “In the end he won a pittance and lost a patron. Artistic temperaments—so single minded. Sighted like a mole: sharp to the inch; blind to the foot. But that,” he said gesturing rigidly toward the painting, “was the start of it.”
Foster stood in an appreciative and deferential silence.
“I tell you this because I believe you know nothing of it,” said the man.
“Is it important?” asked Foster.
“There are no facts which are important; there are only facts which are relevant—what is important is having the relevant facts. I know this because it is a fact relevant to what we do.” On the final syllable there was the hollow snap of flip-flops from the hall, and both Foster and the man turned to see a couple in short pants, straw hats and print shirts at the threshold of the room. The couple looked about, and at the man whose angry gaze had stayed them from entering. Behind them in the hall, Foster noted a figure in heavy green long sleeve, with cropped hair and a roundly muscled head. He had emerged from nowhere in particular, but watched the couple as they gawked at the porcelain and shelving.
“No playing through,” said the man to the tourists. But they were transfixed and did not move. “Can’t you see I’m with a pupil?” he snarled at them, to which they seemed visibly discomforted, and turned away. The man in the heavy shirt followed them off, but Foster noticed that a second figure emerged and replaced him in the hall.
“Smith explained everything to you?” said the man abruptly.
“He didn’t explain anything to me, other than that he wouldn’t be my handler anymore—and to give me the parole for your call,” said Foster.
“Good.”
“Did he know?”
The man sway with a single soundless laugh—“If he did, we’re keeping secrets in a sieve. No. I don’t think so,” said the man. “I’m from the Executive Office,” he said, and provided a pause sufficient to take this up. It was a pause Foster used, and when he offered nothing but a searching gaze, the man said, “How are things with your wife, by the way?”
“We’re separated,” said Foster, and the sound of his own voice seemed to jar his feet free of the floor, where they restlessly shuffled him toward a velvet stanchion near the shelves.
“It’s no consolation of course, but it’s common: our lot, you could say. How was your visit?”
“Short,” said Foster before the question had even registered. “Cold,” he continued. “Hopeless. Probably.”
“It’s a shame to hear,” said the man. “You’ll be reporting to me directly from here on in. Exclusively.”
Foster nodded uneasily.
“You’re signed for. Entirely mine. Nothing left to do—so no concern. Was it Saint Louis? I hear it’s lovely.”
“She,” Foster started,
“she wasn’t taken with it.”
“Family?” asked the man.
“Yes. Possibly a shortage of admirers, too.”
“In due time,” said the man.
“Then it would just have come to pedigree, I think—or something else,” said Foster.
“Power is context, Doctor—there is nothing else. A queen in Siam, is a beggar in Thebes. This is for you,” he said, and produced a small black jump drive from the breast of his jacket. “Something which ought to be in your power.”
“What is it?” asked Foster, considering the innocuous little rectangle between his fingers as if it were the ampule of a foreign serum.
“Your specialty really. Or so I’m led to believe. Software. Industrial software,” said the man.
“For which machines?”
“That’ll be plain enough—you’ll recognize it.”
“And what are we doing with it?” asked Foster.
“You,” said the man, “are looking for vulnerabilities. Openings for disruptive access—remote access.”
“You want me to write malicious code—for this?” asked Foster gesturing with the drive. “You want a virus.”
“I think of myself as open minded. Consider it an opportunity for artistic interpretation. Trojan, virus, worm; whatever: the matter is academic so long as it operates in the deep background and allows real access—but in the end, I want a functional piece of discreet malware.”
“What should it do?” asked Foster, slipping the flash drive into his coat pocket and shifting uneasily on his feet.
“Whatever is possible: that is what it should do—is what it should allow us to do. Anything. Everything. As an industrial control system, it’s used in a range of applications. We should exploit every weakness and every feature. Nothing is too good for us, Dr. Foster.”
“Where is it? Will we have access to it—access to the machinery?” asked Foster.
“No. It’s in the wild. It’s everywhere. So delivery must be taken into account.”
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