Heat

by Campbell Armstrong

  ‘Professor Binns?’

  The professor realized at once that his first impression was mistaken. It was no young man who stood on his doorstep – au contraire, it was a woman, an attractive woman who might have passed as an effeminate good-looking man.

  The professor peered at her. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t mean to trouble you,’ she said. ‘You were recommended to me by the English department.’

  ‘Recommended?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, and swept a hand across her glistening hair. ‘I’m an exchange student. From Cornell?’

  ‘Cornell,’ said Binns. ‘And?’

  ‘I’m doing a thesis on the Lake Poets.’

  ‘And so you were sent to me,’ he said.

  ‘They said you were the man to see.’

  ‘It’s my field, certainly.’

  ‘Look. Can I come inside? It’s pretty hot out here.’

  Binns looked past her the length of the street. The morning sun was like light from a steel foundry. It burned in the dry trees; you could almost imagine it crackling against leaf and twigs. The sky was cloudless. Binns longed for rain, good rich Lake District rain, shrouds of damp mist. He stepped aside, let the woman come in. She carried a small leather briefcase. He led her inside the sitting-room where he kept souvenirs of his trips to the Lake District, as well as a few items he’d picked up in Königsberg, Kant’s home town.

  ‘Wow,’ the woman said, looking round the collection. Old books and prints, clay pipes, old glass jars alleged to have contained Coleridge’s narcotics, a willow-pattern plate that had belonged to Wordsworth, a teacup and saucer said to have been Dorothy Wordsworth’s. Binns had labelled each of these precious items.

  ‘Pretty impressive,’ she said.

  ‘I’m proud of them,’ said Binns. He surveyed his collection, then turned back to the woman. ‘Did you give me your name?’

  ‘No. It’s Phoenix. Carly Phoenix.’

  ‘Unusual name,’ Binns said. ‘What’s your specialty?’

  ‘Coleridge. The Ancient Mariner is the subject of my thesis.’

  ‘Ah, indeed, indeed.’

  ‘I’m interested in the theme of punishment,’ she said, and she smiled at the professor in such a way that even his old pederast’s heart managed a slight flutter. ‘You kill a harmless living thing, and you get punished. I like the equation. The balance.’

  ‘Well, of course, it goes beyond punishment,’ Binns said. He looked at the woman and thought how hard it was to estimate her age. Thirtyish, perhaps older. As one began one’s trek toward the seventies, it was difficult to guess the ages of younger people.

  She said, ‘It’s the idea of retribution I like.’ She picked up one of the professor’s souvenirs, a framed sketch of Lake Windermere drawn in 1870 by an unknown artist, and gazed at it. ‘The fact you can’t get away from your own actions and their consequences.’

  ‘There’s also the possibility of redemption, of course,’ he remarked.

  ‘Maybe. Of a kind.’

  Binns quoted, ‘He prayeth well who loveth well, Both man and bird and beast.’

  She countered with another quotation. ‘I pass, like night, from land to land; I have strange power of speech …’

  Binns pondered this familiar couplet a second, then asked, ‘Who was your adviser at Cornell?’

  She seemed not to have heard the question. She stared at the framed sketch. A certain slight glaze crossed her vision, as if she were under some mild kind of trance.

  ‘Was it Professor Robinson, by any chance?’ he asked.

  ‘Robinson, no,’ she said. She stirred herself from her odd lethargy and replaced the print on the shelf.

  ‘Parrish?’

  She shook her head: no, not Parrish.

  ‘If it was neither Robinson nor Parrish, who was it?’ he asked.

  She moved around the room, reflected sunlight glowing in black leather. The professor felt a weird little flash of uneasiness. Somebody turns up on your doorstep and you invite them inside without asking to see any credentials – this was folly in the modern world. Of course, she’d used the magic password, the open sesame of the Lake Poets, because this was the professor’s obsession, but just the same there was a quality to this person he couldn’t quite define. A sense, perhaps, of energy only loosely held in check? some wayward little glimmer in her eyes? She had undeniable presence, and beauty of an idiosyncratic sort – and something else, a toughness, perhaps, a hard edge, although this quality may have been associated with the black leather jacket and tight blue jeans. The professor liked to examine his own impressions; analysis was the habit of a lifetime.

  ‘I know most of the people in my field,’ he said.

  She balanced herself on the arm of a chair. Her briefcase lay in her lap. Her stare was unblinking and in its own way harsh, like a flashlight shining on the professor’s face. ‘Pasco,’ she said. ‘Richard Pasco.’

  ‘Mmm. Doesn’t ring a bell, I’m afraid. Is he new at Cornell?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  Binns was puzzled. ‘Odd I haven’t heard of him. Has he published?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘That might explain it,’ said Binns. Pasco, he thought. He made a mental note to check on Pasco and his teaching creds. He liked to keep abreast of new people in the field. He liked to be informed when he went to conferences.

  ‘I think you’ve heard of him, Professor,’ she said.

  ‘No, I can’t say I have.’

  ‘You’ve just forgotten, that’s all. You may have shot down the albatross of memory,’ and she smiled. ‘Or simply clipped a wing.’

  The professor said, ‘I doubt if I’d be so careless, Miss Phoenix.’

  ‘We’re all careless at times,’ she remarked.

  ‘I may be edging closer daily to what Browning called “The Arch Fear in visible form”, but I assure you my memory’s still in fine condition.’ The professor took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses in the folds of his robe.

  ‘The Arch Fear,’ she said. ‘The press of the storm, The post of the foe … For the journey is done and the summit attained.’

  Binns replaced his glasses, looked at the woman. He wanted to get back upstairs to his magazine, to the splendid picture of the two young men. ‘My journey isn’t quite done, Miss Phoenix. Perhaps you might be good enough to tell me how I can be of assistance to you regarding your thesis?’

  ‘How long have you been recruiting people?’ she asked.

  ‘Recruiting people?’

  ‘Don’t be coy, Professor. There’s no need for reticence.’

  ‘I’m not following you, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I think you are, Professor.’

  Binns fanned the stuffy air of the room with his hand. ‘Who are you exactly?’

  ‘A friend of Richard Pasco.’

  ‘There’s no thesis, is there?’ Binns’s throat was suddenly dry, like a small pond drained in a matter of seconds.

  ‘No thesis. No exchange student crap. There’s just you and me and the spectre of Richard Pasco.’

  The professor sat down. He saw very little future in denying his involvement in the recruitment process, even if he hadn’t done that kind of thing on a grand scale. Thirty, forty young people over a period of thirty years. That wasn’t exactly a huge trawl, compared to other academics he knew.

  ‘You recruited Richard Pasco,’ she said.

  He was flustered, his forehead hot. ‘I don’t remember him.’

  ‘Take my word for it. You recruited him. You passed him on to Langley. He was good Agency material, I guess. Young, halfway bright, not overwhelmingly ambitious, patriotic, easily swayed. Just the type.’

  The professor had the feeling his larynx was coated with chalk. ‘Miss Phoenix, if that’s your real name, I carried out a few favours for certain people. That’s all I did. I happen to believe, and I still do, that a well-informed intelligence service is essential to a nation’s security. Consequentl
y, I passed a few likely students down the line for interviews. They weren’t forced, you understand. Nobody twisted their arm.’

  ‘Who did you pass them to?’ she asked.

  ‘Really, I’m not at liberty to divulge names—’

  ‘Don’t bullshit me, Eddie. You sent them down to a place near Roanoke for training under a guy called Laird. Correct?’

  ‘Well, Laird was one, yes—’

  ‘There was somebody called Backus. Littlejohn. A woman by the name of Joan Dunne.’

  ‘You’re well-informed.’

  ‘Up to a point,’ she said. ‘Inform me further, Eddie.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Are these people still around?’

  The professor got up from his chair. He plunged his hands in the pockets of his robe and strolled about the room. He’d never had any misgivings about the recruiting business. He’d simply seen it as a way of bringing promising young people to Langley’s attention. He was part of a network of academics who did exactly the same thing. Besides, it hadn’t been illegal. In fact, he’d been pleased to do it—

  ‘Are they still around?’ she asked again.

  He said, ‘I don’t have to answer your questions.’

  ‘You’re not getting the picture, Eddie.’ She undid the clasp of her briefcase and stuck her hand inside, and although she didn’t produce a weapon she left Binns with the definite impression that she carried a gun in the case.

  He said, ‘Laird’s dead. Cancer, a few years back. Backus, Littlejohn – I believe they still work at the training facility. Dunne – I think she was promoted to Director of Training five years ago. I don’t keep in touch with these people … I hear a few things now and again, that’s all.’

  ‘James Mallory – does that name ring a bell?’

  ‘No,’ he answered.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Of course, I’m sure.’

  She was quiet a moment. ‘Nice system,’ she said. ‘Pick out a few students, pass them down the conveyor belt, give them a little flag to wave.’

  ‘Companies recruit from universities,’ he said, defensively. ‘They do it all the time.’

  ‘With a little more publicity than the Agency,’ she said.

  ‘The nature of the beast requires discretion, that’s all.’

  ‘Tell me about a man called Naderson.’

  ‘Bob Naderson’s about to retire in a couple of months. He has something to do with Science and Tech, I believe.’

  ‘What about Grimes?’

  ‘Kevin Grimes?’ She hadn’t taken her hand out of the briefcase, he noticed. ‘Electronic radar stations management.’

  ‘And Christopher Poole?’

  ‘Poole was made Executive Director two years ago.’

  ‘A hotshot.’

  The professor asked, ‘Are you through with me?’

  She shook her head. ‘I asked a few questions about you on campus this morning,’ she said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Your nickname is Queenie Binns, did you know that?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd,’ he said.

  ‘Queenie. I like it.’

  The professor felt flushed, knew his face had changed colour. He made a dismissive gesture. ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘Believe, don’t believe. That’s what they call you. It doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination, I guess.’

  ‘This is preposterous—’

  ‘Queenie Binns,’ she said. ‘Hey, why deny your nature anyway? Why hide your preferences? Ashamed of them, that it?’

  ‘I think I’d like you to leave—’

  ‘I’m not finished, Professor.’

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  She said, ‘Let me see your bedroom.’

  ‘My bedroom? Why would you want to see my bedroom, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘Oh, because I’m curious.’

  The professor’s heart quivered, jumped a beat. He had a flash of insight. ‘This is blackmail, isn’t it? You’ve come here to blackmail me. I’m not a rich man, you’re wasting your time, really—’

  ‘Just show me your bedroom, Prof. Then I’ll leave you in peace.’

  The professor turned his face toward the staircase. ‘You’ll leave. I have your word on that?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said.

  ‘Up here,’ and he began, with a weary movement, to climb the stairs. Uncovered, he thought. Exposed. The notion was humiliating. He couldn’t go near the campus again. Queenie Binns – the nickname was mortifying. He stopped halfway up, turned. The woman was one step behind him. He supposed he could try something, maybe give her a quick push, but the look in her eye was one of determination; she wasn’t the kind you could catch off balance. She was too aware. She had a feline quality. Her instinct would be razor-blade sharp. Besides, he was too old for any kind of heroic gesture.

  He opened the door of his bedroom. The magazine he’d been pawing through lay open on the bed. The room was flowery, a little overdone: he saw it through the woman’s eyes. She glanced at the magazine, picked it up, studied the photograph of the naked young men.

  ‘Nice,’ she said. ‘Well-endowed.’

  Binns said nothing. He was embarrassed. He was aware of the stack of magazines on his bedside table, the box of Kleenex, the hardened yellowy tissues that lay around like so many crumpled, misshapen flower-heads.

  ‘Never be ashamed of your proclivities, Prof,’ she said, and finally she took her hand out of her briefcase. She held a length of rope that dangled from her fingers as far as the floor.

  ‘Remember,’ she said. ‘We are what we are.’

  When she returned to the motel she undressed and sat on the edge of the bed, curtains closed, air-conditioning unit rattling under the window. She lay down on her side and closed her eyes and she was at once overwhelmed by remembered fragments of recent experience – the quick flight from London to Washington, the hop from DC to Baltimore, the kid in the next seat who threw up his in-flight dinner into a sick bag, the loudmouthed guy in the seat behind who got blitzed on miniatures of brandy and rattled out stats about airplane safety. Her head was a chamber filled with voices. She heard the professor say I’m not a rich man …

  She picked up a pencil and scribbled on a scratch pad. She wrote down the name James Mallory. Beneath this, she wrote a second name: Pagan. Around Pagan she doodled an abstract series of shapes that suggested scimitars and cubes.

  She slowly spread her legs and imagined Pagan coming into the room, the lover in shadow. She imagined him touching her. She stroked her breasts, then lowered her fingers between her legs; her hand lay motionless. Nothing. The subsidence of imagination. She didn’t want to masturbate thinking of Pagan; a counterfeit experience. She got up, opened the tiny refrigerator, hacked out some ice-cubes and rubbed them in circles against her hard flat stomach and stood very close to the air-conditioner with her legs apart – almost as if the combination of ice and icy air were some private form of self-flagellation.

  24

  LONDON

  Inside the pub on Beak Street, it occurred to Pagan that he wasn’t sure when he’d last slept. It was strange how fatigue seemed just to fade away at times, and you were blessed with that quality known as a second wind. He wondered if there were winds beyond the second one, a third, a fourth, an infinite number of them – each with diminishing returns.

  He finished his Scotch and thought about the information he’d been given by Marcia Burr – if given was the word; dragged from might have been more appropriate. She’d begun confidently, relieved to unburden herself, but after two gin and tonics she’d become increasingly reluctant, wondering aloud if she were damaging Martin’s reputation. He’s dead, she’d kept saying. He isn’t here to explain himself. The dead have a right to be left in peace, don’t they?

  Pagan had found himself in the unenviable position of having to apply a little pressure, an occasional gentle prod. Slowly, then, she’d doled out her narrative, but even when she’d finished
, Pagan had the distinct feeling she’d left something out, she’d edited the story, sanitized it.

  Foxie, facing him across the table, had asked him a question he hadn’t heard. He raised his face and said, ‘Run that past me again.’

  ‘Do you want another drink?’

  ‘Please.’

  Foxie picked up the empty glasses and headed toward the bar. Pagan idly struck a match, allowing it to burn down between his fingers. The air smelled, appropriately, of sulphur. Complicity, he thought. Treachery. Qualities he wouldn’t have associated with Martin Burr. Qualities he still couldn’t associate with him. He’d always considered Burr a figure of rectitude. He’d played by the rules, he’d never been underhand, he’d guarded his integrity jealously. But ten years ago, for some reason, he’d slipped.

  Foxworth came back from the bar with two double Scotches and said, ‘What do you make of Marcia’s story?’

  Pagan raised his glass. ‘Martin got himself involved in a business that left a bad taste in his mouth, and he regretted ever having participated in it. He looked the other way, Foxie. He stepped aside when perhaps he shouldn’t have done. That’s how I see it. God knows, I’m not going to sit here and criticize the man for a decision he made more than ten years ago. He was involved in the set-up of Pasco – a disagreeable fact, but you can’t go back and change it.’ Pagan wondered what had gone through Burr’s head all those years ago. Perhaps there were pressures Pagan knew nothing about. Perhaps promises of reciprocity had been made to Burr. We owe you one, Martin. Whatever, Burr had gone along with a plan that hadn’t made him happy in the least.

  He said, ‘According to Marcia, in whom Martin apparently had the rather endearing habit of confiding everything, Richard Pasco arrived from Los Angeles at Heathrow in July 1986 en route for Moscow. Burr had been informed that Pasco was carrying a good amount of cocaine. The old false compartment in the suitcase routine, which is bloody corny and obvious as hell. And that’s the way it was meant to be. Easy to find. The first place any trainee officer would look. But here’s the thing: Pasco was not to be searched. He was to sail straight through. No baggage exam, nothing. In short, it was intended that he deliver the goods to Moscow.’