I often find myself pondering the meteoric descent of Icarus, wondering what he thought of on the way down.
And what about his father, watching? What was going through his father’s mind?
And Isabella’s, when the plane exploded, what was she thinking? But no, I never think about that, I never think about Isabella, my second wife, whom I believed I had saved. I never think about Icarus or Isabella or any of those doomed fliers—
What …?
Oh.
Tocade and Geneva. Certainly I think about them, because I’m drawn to people who—, we all are in this profession, it’s a fatal attraction. We lust after them, we feed on them, we want to pass on the kiss of living death. You see, we want to say: you are just like us after all, corruptible. You can be bought; or if you cannot be bought, you can be broken. You can be brought to acknowledge that multiple compromises—even shady ones, even ones that in ordinary circumstances you would find abhorrent—are the sine qua non of a nation’s good.
You want me to recall the moment when I would say this obsession began? Let me see … with a photograph, I suppose, a photograph of the man and my daughter in a bistro because of course I had to keep them under surveillance for my daughter’s own protection as well as mine, and for the good of the nation. For global peace, in fact, because you understand, I’m sure, that Françoise and her mother were flashpoints, Achilles’ heels—you see the risk?—they could be used for blackmail, they never fully understood, I believe, the extent to which I worried about them …
So I showed her the photograph and Françoise said, “You can’t have him, Papa. I won’t let you. He’s mine.”
“Where did you find him?”
“I’m not going to tell you,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you anything about him. I want you to leave us alone.”
“My dear,” I said, stroking her hand. I was very, very fond of her, very proud of her beauty. “You know how futile that is. I already know his place and date of birth, his military service record, his reading habits, and his medical record, for which reason let me strongly advise you to take proper protection during sex.”
“I hate you, Papa,” she said.
She didn’t hate me, of course. Not then. Not until after I saved her life, after which she knew … But earlier, before all that, she didn’t hate me. For one thing, she cared too much about her allowance and her little atelier in the seventh, but because she was in love in that desperate intemperate way—that way in which one is only in love once in a lifetime—because of this, I decided to sound him out myself.
“Monsieur Charron,” I said, presenting my card at the Paris Book Fair. “Mather Hawkins of Trident Books, a small literary press. We share—”
What?
Oh. Yes, you make an interesting point, Dr. Reuben. Something there is that doesn’t love erasure. There’s some core of identity that insists on declaring itself, even when aliases and codes are a way of life. So. Yes. Mather Hawkins.
“Mather Hawkins,” I said. “We share an interest in African and East European writers.”
“Yes?” he said, studying my card. “I haven’t heard of you.”
“We’re a high-literary-end operation, very small, and we work out of New Haven, not New York.” He was a nobody himself then, a mere peon at one of the big houses, but someone to watch, people said, une affaire à suivre, tough and brilliant, un stratège ténébreux, a voracious and encyclopedic reader, and an attentive one, with a knack for spotting future literary success. This was long before the creation of his own small but brilliant publishing house, Editions du Double, but already that was what people in the book trade were saying. He had a lean and hungry look that excited me. I can use people who have that look.
“I thought we might be of use to each other,” I said. We were speaking in French, you understand. His English is so-so; I made my French sound merely adequate, my accent deliberately poor.
He raised one eyebrow. “Really?” he said, and I asked him, “May I buy you a drink?” and he said, “Why not?” And then over scotch-and-soda at the Brasserie de Cluny, he asked bluntly, “Who’s on your publishing list?”
“Drozic, for one,” I said, removing an elegant little poetry collection from my briefcase. “As you know, Gallimard publishes him here.” I watched him leaf through the book. I was very proud of that production, which I’d had some old Yale classmates put together. I had them do the translation and design a chapbook. My classmates are bibliophiles who keep a hand-set press, a genuine antique, and I had them do a print run of ten copies.
“Beautiful cover,” he said appreciatively.
“I’ve heard that the book as artefact matters to you.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Oh, on the grapevine. It matters to us too, but to fewer and fewer in the trade, as we both know to our sorrow.”
“How big is your print run?” he wanted to know.
“Very small,” I said. “Five hundred copies.”
“How can you afford paper like this?” he asked, fingering it.
“We have a private backer,” I said. “Patron of the arts. This sort of thing is his hobby. And here,” I added, taking from my briefcase a novella, an exquisite little thing with matte silk covers, “the Algerian writer Virginie Khalid. Gallimard does her too, as you know.”
I remember the way he turned the pages, the way he touched them. He is a man for whom books—books themselves, you understand, the physical objects—are items of erotic interest as well as being repositories of ideas and occasions for stylistic bravura. It pleased me to watch him, it pleased me that my daughter had found him. She has inherited my good taste, I thought. I watched the way Charron caressed the pages with his fingers as he spoke, and I understood why my daughter desired him.
“I’m surprised to learn these writers have English-language publishers,” he said. “Even in France, they don’t sell. They have very few readers. The cognoscenti, the literati, that’s all. And American publishers are notoriously—”
“To our dishonor,” I agreed. “But at Trident, we have a small yet distinguished readership, by subscription only.” I leaned across the table. “At present, our only conduit to writers such as these is via the French translations. As you know”—and I lifted my eyebrows ruefully—“it’s difficult for Americans to get access to certain countries and certain books. We’re looking for a contact in Paris who can go to Prague, for example, or to Budapest, more easily than we can. We want someone French-speaking—”
“You speak French fluently enough,” he said, and he was the kind of man whose eyes hold yours and challenge them, he never lowers his gaze, and nor do we, of course, it is the very essence of our training, so I eyeballed him back and I said, “But I’m unmistakably an American speaking French,” and he laughed at that.
“You are,” he said.
“So you can see,” I pointed out, “how this restricts my mobility in Algeria, say, or French Cameroon. You can see how it puts certain areas and contacts off limits. What I want is a scout who can make direct connection with writers in Belgrade or Casablanca or Djibouti, especially with those writers who have to stay … in the shadows, shall we say? Even within their own countries.”
“We’re talking about Muslim writers.”
“Well,” I said, shrugging. “If that’s your mode of categorization. I’d call them African and East European. Does this interest you?”
“I’m listening,” he said, and then I produced my little list. “These are writers who’ve attracted our attention,” I told him. “Some are published in French, but none are in English yet.”
I remember he turned that X-ray gaze on me again and went straight for the flaw in my pitch. “If your only access is via French translations, how do you know about the ones not yet published in French?” he asked, but I was just as fast, I was equal to him, and I told him that we’d heard about them through scholarly contacts, through specialists in the literatures of Eastern Europe and Afric
a. Trident’s editorial board members were all academics, I told him.
He studied the names for a long time and then he looked at me. “Given what I know about American publishing,” he said, “this is a curious list.” I raised my eyebrows and waited. “No American publisher would touch these books,” he said, and I rushed in with a preemptive comment where angels might well have taken pause.
“Because the writers are political activists, you mean?”
“Of the sort not approved by your State Department,” he said.
Well, I thought. So. I’ve got you on my line, little fish. You know a lot about these writers, it would seem. I leaned across the table, close to him, and spoke low. “You are political, monsieur.”
“No,” he said impatiently. “I’m not. Or not in any sense that you would mean. Nevertheless, I’m fully aware that no American publisher would touch these writers. They’re too prickly. Dissidents within the Communist Bloc, yes, and against socialist African regimes. But they are noted intellectuals who are also critical of the US.”
“That’s our point, you see,” I said. “No American publisher would touch them except a small one like ourselves, with private backing.”
“And with subscription readers.”
“We understand each other,” I said.
“Which means,” he said with a strange little smile, “that there’ll be no trace of your existence in the trade journals. Should I doubt your claims, I mean.”
He met my eyes directly, at high voltage, and I eyeballed him back.
“Our subscribers are people like you,” I said. “They care about literary style, not politics. They’re bibliophiles. They have a passion for the book as objet d’art, and they’re willing to pay for rice paper and a hand-set press. We could do business, you and I.” And then I baited my hook. “Both our patron and our subscribers are very wealthy indeed. Your expenses would be covered, it goes without saying. But beyond that, remuneration would be generous. Extremely generous, I believe you will find.”
“I’ve been getting the impression,” he said, “that you’d be offering substantial inducement. What exactly do you want me to do?”
“Make contact with these authors, write reports on them, get their manuscripts to us. You could scoop Gallimard for the ones who aren’t published in France yet. You’d get French rights.” My gaze was just as intense as his, and just as focused, because this is where I become excited with the chase, this is when the real thrill of recruiting kicks in. It’s an art form, really, and a science. Once I know I’ve hooked him, I give my prospect some slack, I play him on the line, I pull him toward me, I let him run loose, I feign indifference, I hold the line taut, I reel him in.
Minutes passed, I think, and neither of us broke eye contact by more than a blink because I cannot bear to miss a second at this stage, I have always loved to watch from close up that interval of teetering on the brink—what’s the catch? the prospect is asking himself; is this too good to be true? what’s going to be demanded of me?—before capitulation comes. And so I waited patiently for my daughter’s lover, the ambitious young publisher, to swallow bait and hook and line and sinker. We can keep this all in the family, I thought.
And then, without lowering his eyes from mine, without blinking, he began to tear my list into little pieces and to drop the confetti in his scotch. “Do you think I’m stupid?” he asked, rising. He poured the scotch over my head.
From that moment, I feared for my daughter and for myself. “J’ai une tocade pour lui, Papa,” she had told me, and I could see it. She was crazy about him. And for myself, I felt a nerve fluttering violently behind one eye which I knew to be the warning tic of obsession and should have heeded, but already it was too late.
“If I lost him, Papa,” my daughter said, “I’d want to die.”
No one dies for love, I assured her, and I did not add—or not, at least, for her ears—but one can die from knowing too much and people do die from presuming to think that they can’t be broken or bought. I promised myself as I reached for a napkin and brushed the scotch and sodden confetti from my suit: You will come to regret this, Mr. Charron. You will pay for this.
I put him down for surveillance, code name Tocade.
He may already work for them, I wrote. Watch him closely.
I also gave all the relevant information to Sirocco. Know him? I asked. Does he work for your crowd?
But Sirocco, as I realized far too late, answered all questions both ways, and he followed Tocade more assiduously than I could have imagined.
5.
Lecture notes: Technology of Modern Warfare and Intelligence Gathering:
CHEMICAL WARFARE
The organo-phosphate nerve agents were developed as a more or less accidental offshoot of insecticide research, and our arsenal of superior chemical weaponry has an important deterrent impact. The fear factor alone is a potent negotiating tool. Classical symptoms of nerve agent poisoning are as follows: difficulty in breathing, drooling and excessive sweating, violent vomiting, involuntary defecation and urination, twitching, jerking, staggering, cramps, headache, disorientation, dimness of vision, convulsions, and finally paralysis and death from asphyxiation, generally within minutes after inhalation.
The aim of this lecture on Chemical Warfare is not to outline drills and procedures for survival in a CW environment, nor to rehearse strategies for deployment of such agents, all of which will be dealt with later, but rather to familiarize you with the chemical and physical processes involved in toxicity, detection, and decontamination.
Physical and Chemical Properties
1. Vapor Pressure.
The more volatile a liquid, the more readily will molecules move from the liquid to the gaseous phase, at which point they can enter the body by inhalation and can attack the eyes. Hence, the more volatile a liquid, the more likely a lethal dose can be achieved. The measure of volatility is the vapor pressure, which, for any given substance, increases with temperature.
2. Toxicity.
The measure of toxicity expresses the interrelationship of the concentration of vapor with time (i.e., with the duration of exposure to the nerve agent). The same effect can be achieved by short exposure to high concentrations as by longer exposure to lower concentrations.
3. Physiological Action.
Agents can be classified by the different effects they achieve: choking agents, nerve agents, blood agents, blister agents, vomiting agents, and tear agents. Agents with relatively mild effects (e.g., blistering, vomiting, temporary blinding) can be used for crowd control and riot control. Agents with stronger effects (incapacitating, lethal) can be deployed in search-and-destroy operations or to render occupied territory safe.
Desirable Features of Chemical Agents for Use in Warfare
1. Toxicity.
Agents should be as toxic as required to achieve the desired effect.
2. Stability.
Agents must be stable or capable of being stabilized between the time of production and use.
3. Precursors.
Agents must be able to be produced from raw materials readily available in the theater of operations, or from precursors (e.g.: the innovative use by the US since 1987 of the sarin artillery projectile, in which two precursors of sarin, both nontoxic, are stored in separate canisters and can be transported separately and safely. At the site of operations, when both canisters are inserted into the projectile and fired, the chemicals mix to form the deadly and volatile sarin).
4. Dissemination.
Agents must be able to be weaponized for dissemination in concentrations capable of producing the effects desired (e.g., by loading into projectiles or missile warheads for dispersal as vapor cloud, or by spraying from crop dusters).
5. Producibility.
If possible, agents should be able to be produced quickly in existing commercial plants (e.g., fertilizer factories).
6. Corrosiveness.
Agents should not be corrosive to their storage cont
ainers (barrels, shells, missile projectiles).
7. Action Against Protective Systems.
If possible, agents should be capable of minimizing the effectiveness of protective equipment worn by the target population.
How Nerve Agents Work
The nervous system coordinates all the functions of the human body. Impulses from the brain are conveyed through the spine and major ganglia (central nervous system) to a network of sensory and activator nerves (peripheral nervous system).
The brain initiates commands via the sympathetic nerve chain, which produces epinephrine (adrenaline), and this in turn initiates enzyme action and muscle/tissue movement. The parasympathetic nerves work in tandem with the sympathetic nerves in a complex machinery of checks and balances. Thus the sympathetic nervous system will accelerate heartbeat when the brain senses danger, and the parasympathetic nervous system will slow it down again when the brain senses that the threat has passed and that increased blood flow is no longer required.
Nerve cells are not directly connected with one another, but they meet at junction points called synapses, the body’s sparkplugs, so to speak, which function as neurotransmitters. Electrochemical impulses leap back and forth from cell to cell.
What nerve agents do, to put it succinctly, is sabotage the neurotransmitter system. The body’s infrastructure is destroyed. All messages from brain to body are scrambled.
To put it even more bluntly: the functioning of your body is fucked up.
All codes become unreadable at this point, and meaning vaporizes, and even the meaning of questions grows faint, like a radio signal at the edge of being lost, or like a battery emitting the weak sonic cries that foretell its extinction, and what are we …? what is it that we …? we hold which truths to be self-evident …?
… and what is this mechanism of which we are part, and which we have enshrined in National Security, as most likely to effect our safety and happiness?
Due Preparations for the Plague Page 23