Clyde got back to Desiree just in time; she was reaching up under her shirt, preparing to whip out a tit in the middle of the room. Clyde plucked Maggie lightly out of her hands, rummaged in the baby bag for a bottle, and carried her up an open stairway to a mezzanine that looked out over the ground floor and the patio. He and Maggie were the only people up there, and Clyde immediately felt calmer to be looking down on the Republicans from a healthy distance.
Maggie went to sleep in his arms; time passed; Desiree came up and agreed that it would be acceptable to leave now. The immense anvil thunderheads to the west loomed high above the rolling hills covered with eight-foot corn, rolling like massive weapons of destruction spewing out lightning in all directions, bearing down relentlessly on the quarter- to half-million-dollar homes lining the golf course.
twenty
POLICY KEPT shifting against Saddam, and Betsy’s position was vindicated. That made her happy even though Spector had been at pains to make it clear to her that she would never get credit. She had gone outside of her task, and in the government it was better to follow the lines of authority than to be right. She remained as much an outcast as she had been earlier. And she received no help from any of the branches that could give her the information she needed. But she kept probing, bringing up what sources she could, reading widely to find some sort of confirming link that would tie together the misspent American aid dollars, the wandering academics, the technology of nonconventional warfare, and a few Midwestern universities.
The Iraqis had many of their best people in the States, and she could not understand why. Normally they would send promising youngsters here for training and then bring them back to home soil to do their actual work. But several Iraqi scientists who should have been in the prime of their careers were stationed in the U.S. She could only suppose that here they could get access to equipment or other resources not available at home.
But the implication was that these people were actively developing weapons—or, at least, the underlying science for a weapons program—on U.S. soil.
For a while she traced down the possibilities of a new form of anthrax as a weapon. She had read studies classified as confidential describing how the Iraqis were retroengineering the process of developing weapons-strength uranium—that instead of taking the technology forward, they had actually gone back to 1946-model Oak Ridge technology. Could they be taking a similar tack with biological weapons?
She jumped into the CDC files and dug out all she could on the development of anthrax toxins. She spent three weeks on this line of inquiry but got nowhere. When she would ask Science and Technology for help, they would stonewall her. The DCI refused to disturb the bureaucratic rhythms. The Pentagon would not even consider giving her any help.
One morning at five o’clock, when she was banging on her screen with a foam-rubber sledgehammer that Kevin had given her, Spector walked in. “I was going to ask how things were going. But sometimes nonverbal communication is more effective.”
She looked at him with blood in her eye, got up, walked over to the vault door, and shut it. “Why don’t you people help me?”
“We can’t.”
“Look, I’ll take no credit. I’ll turn everything over to somebody in S and T.”
“They don’t want it. They know you’ve touched it.”
“Can’t we move on any front?”
“No. Millikan has spread the word that you’re to be insulated. Isolated. Ignored.”
“By name?”
“No, that would be gauche. He has done something much more effective: he’s laid out the wiring diagram on investigations into this issue. You’re not on it. Except insofar as it includes your section, as a footnote of sorts—but it’s laid in such a way that anything coming from this vault will have to pass through three layers of review before it actually goes anywhere. You’ve been cobwebbed by the best.”
“What about going to the President?”
Spector blinked in disbelief and did her the favor of not laughing. “Folklore has it that the President, because of his Agency experience, is relatively sympathetic to the plight of the low-level analyst. This has caused many people in your position to harbor unrealistic ideas about going straight to the top. But there are thousands of low-level analysts who dream of doing that.”
“Is there anybody else working on this angle?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“What do I do?”
“Keep plugging away. And be careful. You and your roomie are real good at not talking openly about what’s going on. But your tone and your nuances—especially your nuances—communicate volumes. Since your run out to Wildwood, the whole nature of your conversational tone has changed. Remind me, now that you’re a branch chief, to show you the voice-wave analysis systems. They’re damned good, much better than polys at reading people. Anyway, your patterns have changed.”
Betsy leaned back and looked out the window at the dawn. He was right. Paul Moses had changed things, but it had nothing to do with the search she was carrying out. There would be no point, though, in trying to convince Spector of that.
“I’m going to keep working on it,” Betsy said.
“Good. Just wanted to let you know where you stand. You want to let me out of this place?”
June had gone by with her days divided among serious work (four A.M. to eight A.M.), branch affairs (eight o’clock to noon), and meetings ad nauseam (noon to four). She was slapped on the wrist by Spector because her branch’s productivity had declined under her tenure. “That’s because you have me doing all this nonsense,” she responded.
“Doesn’t matter. You’ve got to keep the words coming.”
Weekends were spent with Paul when Paul wasn’t busy with his own work. After the events in Wildwood he had drawn away from her to a safe distance and become more of a buddy than a boyfriend. They exchanged the occasional snuggle or smooch, but even that level of intimacy seemed to make him uncomfortable. At first she assumed he was still embarrassed over his episode of impotence. But as time went on, she began to worry that it went deeper than that and resolved to have a talk with him when she could find time.
Betsy and Cassie began to make plans for their annual Fourth of July bash. With a bit of effort one could see the fireworks display from their balcony, so they always had a few people in. This time they were going to have the Wildwood group plus Kevin, who would be in town for the first week of July running errands for Larsen. Needless to say, their neighbor, Margaret Park-O’Neil, would be there, too, so they could entertain themselves by watching her and Kevin make eyes at each other.
Paul came early and brought a huge bag of ice. He bantered with Cassie in the kitchen, then sneaked up behind Betsy and gave her a hug.
The door buzzer kept sounding as the rest of the crew showed up. Soon enough booze was consumed and food eaten that the conversation was going at a dull roar. Jeff Lippincott and Christine O’Connell had got married in the interim—each still keeping his/her name. Marcus Berry had come back in from the Midwest, where he seemed to spend a lot of time on assignment, to spend the holiday with Cassie. Kevin and Margaret Park-O’Neil resumed exactly where they had left off—Betsy gathered that they had been exchanging a great deal of e-mail in the last month.
They turned on Channel 26 to watch the concert from the Mall and kept on talking and drinking. Betsy watched Kevin carefully. He had never handled his booze well, and it didn’t take long for him to reach the point where he was speaking very loudly and slowly, as if he had to taste each word before it got out of his mouth.
Kevin was trying very hard to impress Margaret, who at least looked impressed. He was telling her, in various ways, how important he had become. About his friends at the Jordanian Embassy. About the really important people coming in from all over the world to study or lecture or do research at American universities, and how he was bending rules and cutting deals with petty bureaucrats to help get them in, and how this was all part of Larsen’s int
ernational mutual back-scratching game, which would lead, like a pyramid scheme, to even deeper connections, larger grants, and greater accomplishments. As he talked louder and slower and became less aware of his impact, the room grew quieter and quieter until, aside from Kevin, the only sound that could be heard was “the 1812 Overture” coming out of the television’s two-inch cardboard speaker. “And Dr. Larsen is giving me a huge bonus. He got some new business from Jordan, and I get a five percent commission.”
Two minutes earlier he had alluded to this business from Jordan and had mentioned that it was “a couple of million dollars.” Everyone in the room had heard it.
Now the words “five percent commission” floated in the air for what seemed an eternity. Then a huge aerial bomb exploded above the river, so loud that Kevin startled back and sloshed his drink into his lap. “Time to go watch the fireworks,” Betsy said. “Don’t lean too far over the rail, it’s a hundred feet down to the concrete.”
Margaret scurried into the kitchen and got some paper towels to get Kevin dry, an operation that caught Betsy’s eye if only because the drink had spilled into his lap.
In a strange way Betsy was more disappointed with Margaret than she was with her brother. She knew her brother. She knew that he was young and full of himself and just going through a phase, and that eventually he would snap out of it and be embarrassed by his behavior—and rightly so. But Margaret had seemed pretty sharp. That she was fawning over Kevin called her judgment into question—her judgment, or her sincerity.
Kevin stood up abruptly and headed for the bathroom. Margaret watched him go, then turned sheepishly to Betsy, perhaps reading the look on her face.
“My dad’s got a drinking problem—a typical master-sergeant thing,” she said. “So I guess this is incredibly pathological of me. I apologize.”
This went some way toward alleviating Betsy’s suspicions. “We never had booze in the house when we were kids,” she said. “Now he has to drink as part of his job. I wonder if Larsen knew what he was getting into when he hired my brother.”
Margaret said, “He’s really sweet. But I hope he doesn’t go down the same road my father did.” Then she blushed, perhaps realizing she might have gone too far. “I’d better go now.”
Paul emerged from the bathroom with one arm around Kevin and half carried him to the bedroom. He came back, looked very seriously at Betsy, and said nothing. Jeff Lippincott came in from the balcony; the fireworks were over, and Betsy had missed them. Jeff hugged Betsy and whispered in her ear, “Recheck my note.”
“My God,” Betsy murmured. Jeff had given her an envelope during the trip to Wildwood; she had put it in her pocket and then forgotten it, preoccupied as she was with Paul. Since then she had washed the shorts.
She left Cassie in charge of the party, knowing that it was in good hands, and entered the bedroom, where Kevin was snoring loudly on the bed, smelling of vomit. She dug her shorts out from deep in the ironing basket and removed the warped and fuzzy envelope. There was a sheet of paper inside, hard copy from a laser printer, fortunately waterproof.
Jeff had given her a list of names—Arabic names. Jeff was Agency, but he worked at USIA, checking visa applications, and Betsy had come across his name more than once when investigating the flow of Iraqi scientists into American universities.
Some of the names she recognized—they were people she already knew about, people on her Dirty Dozen list. But some were new to her.
Next to the column of names was a column of dates, labeled “Date of Entry.” Most of the dates were one or two years in the past. But some of them were marked July 1990. These names were the ones Betsy didn’t recognize.
Kevin had just been bragging about the big shots he was going to be bringing into the country in the coming month. None of this could possibly be a coincidence.
twenty-one
FAZOUL, THE maimed foreign student, was throwing his own Fourth of July shindig down by the river at Albertson Park, so-called because it lay across from Albertson’s grocery. The invitation specified Picnic Shelter Number Nine, a quarter mile in, close to the bluffs above the Nishnabotna. The small parking area there was full, and a couple of dozen cars were parked quasi-illegally along the shoulder of the road leading to it.
As Clyde, Desiree, and Maggie reached the parking lot next to the big shelter, they saw a banner printed out on long strips of computer paper, hung from the eave of the shelter, with letters—shapes, really—printed on it in green. He figured it was Arabic. Beneath it were smaller letters in some other script he’d never seen at all, lots of curlicues. He saw men who looked straight out of Lawrence of Arabia, dressed in white robes with towels draped over their heads; men wearing aprons and leather vests, wearing square, boxlike hats the size of McDonald’s drink holders; men in shorts and Nikes wearing T-shirts with things written on them in English and other languages; men dressed in suits and ties. Some of the women were completely veiled in chadors, just columns of black with huge black eyes peering out as through gun slits—Clyde thought of the EIU Twisters mascot, a tornado on legs, with a male cheerleader concealed inside looking out through a narrow aperture. Other women were showing their faces, and there were tawny women running around barefoot in shorts and T-shirts. Kids were everywhere, all of them dressed as if they’d just gone on a shopping spree at Wal-Mart. Clyde could hardly plant one foot in front of the other for all the kids.
All these people began to applaud. Suddenly everyone was looking at him. The applause was joined by a bizarre warbling sound from the throats of the women. He slowed, then stepped back a pace.
A large, heavy man with a goatee, dressed in a white robe with a towel over his head, was standing just in front of him; he had turned around to face Clyde and was applauding lustily, the sleeves of his robe shaking. A taller, darker, and much gaunter figure dodged around this man and headed straight for Clyde; it was Fazoul, dressed in jeans and a denim jacket. He reached out and grabbed Clyde’s right hand for a two-handed shake, the index finger and thumb of his truncated left hand gripping Clyde’s forearm in a surprisingly strong pincer. After a long and strong handshake, he pivoted on his fake leg, threw an arm around Clyde’s shoulders, and started leading him toward the shelter.
“Sorry we’re late. Had to go to another thing first,” Clyde said.
“Oh? I am doubly indebted if you cut short some other engagement to come here.”
“I’m glad you gave me an excuse to get out of it,” Clyde said. He was still reeling from the Republicans.
They’d already made a place for Desiree up at one of the picnic tables in the shelter. Clyde supposed it was a special table because they had thrown a colored rug or something over it—not a carpet remnant from Sears, but something that looked as if it had been made by hand someplace far away. Atop the table was a rustic cradle made out of strips of leather and hunks of bent wood, lined with the thickest and plushest sheepskin Clyde had ever seen. He assumed it was for Fazoul’s son, but it was empty now. Half a dozen or so women, including Desiree, were gathered in the vicinity of this table, manhandling and cooing over a couple of different babies, none of whom was Maggie.
Clyde was handed an enormous tumbler full of a white fluid with translucent hunks floating in it; this turned out to be iced buttermilk with sliced cucumber, and it was astonishingly tasty.
“Where’s Maggie?” he said to Desiree between gulps.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Isn’t this nice?”
Clyde allowed that it was. In spite of himself he scanned the area for his baby and thought he glimpsed her fifty feet away, on the grass beneath an oak tree, where a dozen women had sat down in a circle, forming a sort of human playpen where five or six infants and toddlers were staggering around falling over each other. Several babes in arms were being passed back and forth, around the circle, jiggled, rocked, and cajoled. One of them looked like Maggie.
Fazoul sat down across the table from him, straddling the bench and lifting his peg leg o
nto it with a grimace.
“It took us longer than expected to start the fire last night, so you are just in time,” Fazoul said.
“Last night?”
“You like to barbecue?”
“Sure, I guess so.”
“Come with me, please.” Fazoul planted his peg leg on the floor again and pushed himself up with his arms. Clyde followed him in the direction of the line of great trees that crowned the bluff. As they walked through a small crowd of women, someone came up and deposited a large bundle in Clyde’s arms: someone else’s baby, not more than a couple of weeks old. Fazoul seemed not to notice, so Clyde kept walking.
“You would think that a bunch of physicists and engineers and other savants would not have such trouble making fire,” Fazoul said, “but how quickly we forget such things!” Fazoul laughed and shook his head in disbelief. “The number of tree roots is astonishing.”
“You got a barbecue pit going back in the woods?”
“Exactly,” Fazoul said.
“You know, you can rent a roaster down at Budovich Hardware. Saves all that digging.”
“Unless it was a brand-new roaster, we could not be sure it had never been used to cook pork,” Fazoul said. “So your gallant efforts to protect the lamb from the dog might have gone to waste.”
“Oh.” Clyde was starting to put it together. “I see.”
“I have a son!” Fazoul exclaimed, and nodded at the bundle in Clyde’s arms. “We always hold a feast to celebrate. We needed a halal lamb for this feast—it had to be slaughtered in just the right way. This was done for us at Lukas Meats on the morning you and I met. The police dog rendered much of our meat unusable on that day, but you prevented it from defiling the carcass of the lamb, which was the most precious to us.”
“And you’re roasting it in a pit.”
“We have been doing so since, oh, something like one in the morning.” Fazoul checked his watch, a heavy stainless-steel number, and yawned.
The Cobweb Page 18