American Subversive

by David Goodwillie

  We waited while Keith chewed. He chewed and I assume he swallowed, then he reached for his beer and swallowed some of that, too.

  We should talk about the next Action, he said finally.

  Okay, Lindsay replied. She turned to me expectantly.

  I’ve been focusing in on a few companies, I said. Let me get my notes and—

  Don’t, Keith said.

  What?

  There’s no need. I’ve figured it out.

  Figured what out?

  Our next move.

  But we do these things together, I said.

  Lindsay stopped smiling.

  The media, Keith announced, stabbing at a tomato. It’s time to shoot the messenger.

  You’re not serious.

  Keith put his fork down and leaned toward me. Do I look like I’m not serious?

  I’m not sure what you look like anymore, I said.

  He laughed, as if to break the tension.

  I’m not kidding, I said. You’re scaring me.

  Paige, said Lindsay.

  It’s okay, Keith said calmly. If you’ll just hear me out.

  Not if you’re going to suggest blowing up a newsroom somewhere.

  No, not a newsroom. A company headquarters. He put his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together. I’m talking about N3.

  I looked from Keith to Lindsay. She was already focused on me, as if awaiting my reaction.

  Lindsay, do you already know about this?

  About what?

  The National News Network.

  I think Keith mentioned something.

  When?

  Come on, I thought we’d gotten over all this nonsense, Keith said dismissively.

  So did I.

  Can I at least explain my thinking? Keith said.

  You can do whatever you want, I told him.

  Lindsay stood up to clear the plates as Keith began to speak. So, she’d heard this part, too. The part about a fourth estate turned docile, a press catering to demographics and caving to power. Did I want specifics? Keith asked. Because he could give me a lifetime of specifics. But why not start with Iraq—since that’s why I was there—and Bush’s final press conference before the invasion, the White House correspondents reduced to a state of childlike wonder by the awesome spectacle of it all, the million machinations of an empire readying for war, and the reporters who could speak at all lobbing out softballs about new weapons systems—high-speed tanks and missiles accurate to the meter. They asked how long it would take, hours or days, and who might be next. Shock and awe. Remember that? Rumsfeld, that charlatan, seizing control not of the war but the tone of the war, and they lapped it up, every last thin-lipped line. But the best part? Deciding to send them over as well. Let’s turn those pesky reporters into harmless travel writers by embedding them with the troops. Oh, it was brilliant, and by the time the war went wrong, they were back home, safe and sound, picking sand out of their teeth between bites of escargots at Café Luxembourg. Or go back further: the Times and WMD. Was that the so-called liberal media at work? No, it was a reaction to the charge is what it was. The fucking media bending over backwards not to be liberal. That’s how scared they are of criticism. Everything needs two sides now, equal time. Some deranged grade-school principal in Wichita tears a picture of monkeys out of the textbooks, and the next day forty news trucks are parked outside. And no one’s saying, Wait a minute, this is insane. No, they’re saying, Here’s the other side of the story! But there is no other side to evolution. Some things just are.

  Keith was standing now, arms out like a preacher as he spoke of regression, the new administration moving to the center, the safe ground in an economic tempest, thus insuring the asinine issues Americans had argued over for years—guns and gay marriage, the beginning of life and the end of it, an ongoing refusal to address, hell, to accept, global warming—would continue to comprise our national debate. These were things the modern world had moved past. There was no death penalty in Japan. People didn’t shoot each other in Canada. Western Europe was moving past religion, and the armies of the world were melting away, to say nothing of the ice caps, and where were we? Half of Congress thinks Darwin may have been wrong, and my God, no one calls them out. No one says, Enough! Instead, the reporters rush back to write the story by deadline. Is that a liberal press? Is that a biased media? If only they were liberal. Or independent. Or even just thoughtful; I’d take thoughtful. What happened to the intelligentsia? Our best and brightest have become our pert and prettiest. Suck-ups to power, or even the idea of it. Just watch that repulsive White House Press Dinner sometime. But it’s not just D.C. It’s Hollywood. It’s New York. Who’s the most sought-after party guest on the Upper East Side? Fucking Kissinger! America’s greatest war criminal becomes cuddly old Henry, staring at surgically enhanced socialite cleavage as he offers his bon mots and sips scotch with hands shaking from the blood of half a million men.

  Fear, Keith said. They try to make us scared, keep us scared. The press, the politicians, the left as bad as the right. He quoted Rousseau then, something about opportunity and obligation. He was speaking not of them now, but of us. What we had to do. How we’d take the very worst offender, the National News Network, and use their strategy of spreading fear against them. We’d be the other side of the argument they pretended to hold so dear.

  Was there poetry in any of this? Certainly there was truth, but bombing the nation’s delivery mechanism, even if it was broken . . . well, it would be like shooting the postman because you were sick of junk mail. Even N3, with its tongue-in-cheek news coverage, its faux patriotism and propagandist talk-show hosts. Keith had been right about Indigo, but did that give him the authority to proceed unchallenged? I stayed quiet as he spoke because this wasn’t a discussion. It was a lecture. An explanation for a decision reached in a vacuum. In a garage with a bomb. What he was looking for was not input but agreement, consent, and the only bone he tossed me was logistical. I could help decide when and where. Because it was already going to happen.

  Two more days went by and no one came for us. Keith holed up in his concrete lair; Lindsay scanned food at the supermarket. There was no sign of Aidan Cole. He’d come and gone, and sometimes, in the severed otherness of our reality, it was hard to believe he’d ever been there at all. I checked his blog incessantly, but he posted nothing significant, nothing about us. He wasn’t even covering the bombing anymore. It was old news. And the world moved madly on.

  I got back to research. N3 occupied the first twenty floors of a building (owned by its parent company) on West Fifty-first Street. The sets for the brainless morning shows and flag-draped newscasts were on the ground floor, allowing tourists to gather every dawn and dusk to lend the broadcasts that faux-everyman feel that had come to contaminate modern media. I found the building’s layout among some online real-estate-leasing records and used the telephone extensions listed on the company website to locate the offices of senior management (x0706 meant seventh floor, sixth office from reception, etc.). I printed out everything from programming times to studio-usage schedules. It didn’t take long. Was it a lack of information or a lack of intensity on my part? Because none of this felt right. And Keith had offered no more guidance. He just came in one day, picked up my pile of notes and printouts, and walked back to the garage.

  On a sunny Saturday morning, five days after we were supposed to have packed up and left, Keith announced that he and Lindsay were driving down to scout the target in New York. Another reconnaissance trip, this one without me. When they got back, we’d leave.

  You’ll clean the house like last time?

  Sure, I said. What about the garage?

  Leave it be.

  He went out to inspect the car—Lindsay’s this time. Tires, headlights, blinkers, a quick check of the engine. He looked, from the window where I stood watching, like a real mechanic, his jeans stained, his T-shirt yellowed under the arms and streaked with something metallic. His hair was slicked back, which o
nly accentuated the beard. He was waiting for Lindsay, who was working the early-morning shift. It was her last day, and afterward she was going to get her hair cut and dyed (something she’d refrained from doing, so as not to raise eyebrows at work). She pulled in a little before 1 p.m., sporting a cute red bob. It kind of worked for her, and when we were alone inside I told her as much. She giggled like a girl and squeezed my arm, then chattered incessantly as she threw a few things in an overnight bag. I took a chance and asked what she really thought of the N3 plan.

  Which is when she shut up.

  Keith came in to say good-bye. He’d changed into a fresh dress shirt, but instead of looking clean-cut, he just looked weird, unstable: bipolar.

  The beard, I said. It’s becoming conspicuous.

  It’s a disguise.

  I know, but it’s not working.

  We’ll be back tomorrow night, he said, ignoring me. And then . . . and then a fresh start. With that he nodded and walked outside. Lindsay was leaning against her car, waiting for him. He said something to her. She looked over at me and waved good-bye.

  I went through it all again. Tiles and mirrors, toilets and drains. Hair in the shower, toothpaste in the sink. When they found the house, they would probably already know who we were. Still, I cleaned. There was nothing else to do. When I finished, I drifted over to the computer and checked the news sites for the latest on Indigo, but nothing came up. Soon enough I was browsing Roorback, looking for clues. An explanation. Keith had a point: Why was Aidan risking so much when he could risk nothing and become famous? Isn’t that what people like him wanted, that one great story to dine out on?

  How long was I online? Three hours? Four? An afternoon spent reading sardonic posts—a celebration of useless information that epitomized the reasons I’d fled New York, then Washington, then, finally, myself.

  It was getting dark out. I’d been claustrophobic for weeks, but now, left alone in a house where I could touch no surfaces, left alone to guard a locked bomb factory, the feeling overwhelmed me. I walked outside and sat down in the grass. The universe was contracting, the stars like stars in a planetarium—penned in. A terrible thought dawned on me, and when it came clear, when I realized I’d probably just been set up, it was far too late to do anything about it. I’d been a fool. Keith had packed his muse into the car and together they’d vanished, as they’d first appeared, another couple on another road. And why should they come back? I was a liability now—personally and professionally. I lit a cigarette. Had I failed or had Keith? I’d followed the rules as he’d crumbled under their weight. I’d stayed consistent while he’d transformed before my eyes, become everything he’d preached against. A fateful moment of lust and our tight and vital lives had come apart. Now he was off to precipitate an Action he couldn’t justify, an Action planned so loosely, so quickly, that it seemed the work of another man entirely. Was he even going to New York? Or had he lied about that, too? He was gone and Lindsay was gone and I’d been left as a sacrifice to the gods, or worse, the authorities, because they were coming, weren’t they? Keith knew it and so he fled. They would come roaring in with vests and helmets and a hundred guns, and if they didn’t shoot me on sight, they’d take me in, an enemy combatant. The perfect proof that terror takes all forms.

  But didn’t Keith think I’d talk? Rat them out as he’d ratted on me (because, really, who else could it have been)? I could broker a deal with the Feds, tell them all I knew, except I knew nothing. I’d wandered blind through these last months, stupidly equating my doubts with some lack of faith or courage. Maybe Keith was betting I’d stay loyal to the end—the confession room with the two-way mirror. Meanwhile, they could set off the N3 bomb, then a dozen more, and truly turn the country around. Was that our purpose? Did we ever even have one—an endgame, I mean?

  I was becoming paranoid, unhinged. I lit another cigarette from the end of the first. I’d never smoked like this, like I needed to, but I inhaled and for a moment felt better. I didn’t have an addictive personality, had never smoked much weed or binged on cocaine, yet I was now an extremist, a person who had forcefully stepped over the lines that defined contemporary life, and then turned around and tried to erase them. That I would come to crave something would follow, but cigarettes? Still, it was a way to stay occupied, the endless fiddling with matches and lighters. I stood up and the nicotine rushed to my head. My eyes had adjusted to the dark and I could see the outline of the woods, hear the rustle and crunch of what lay beyond, nature repositioning itself—if the noises were natural at all. Turning then, I saw the garage, a black square in the near distance, eerie and foreboding. I paused, took one last drag, and went back inside.

  I was wired. I lay on my mattress fully clothed (gloves on my hands, shoes on my feet), tossing and turning like a child on the last night of summer. Occasionally, I could hear a car out on the road, and in that netherworld of half dreams I imagined it pulling into the driveway, then my name through a bullhorn, and the flood of lights . . .

  I woke with the dawn, sat straight up and listened for anything out of place. But the world was silent. I went downstairs and slid open the glass door. A collection of cigarette butts lay on the ground in front of me, a testament to questions unanswered. I needed to go somewhere, anywhere, if only for a little while. Leaving the property was against the rules, but did they even apply anymore? I unzipped my bag, found some shorts and a loose T-shirt, and put them on. Then I locked the house and ventured into the dewy northern morning. The heat wave hadn’t broken, but a breeze had come up and it was still early enough to be almost comfortable. I turned right at the end of the drive and walked awhile. Then I ran. The air felt like pure oxygen; I swallowed it in gulps and, for the first time in ages, felt temporarily unburdened of a world that had tightened like a cinch around my head. It was only 7 a.m. and not a single car had passed, but I didn’t want to press my luck so I turned around before the first intersection and started walking back. I walked with my hands on my hips, and gradually the adrenaline was replaced by a lesser, if equally pleasant, high. The trees were an almost rain-forest green, and I could hear a stream through the roadside brush. I thought briefly of going to investigate, but I wanted to get home before it got too—

  Someone was behind me—a car, I mean—coming around a corner. There was no time to take cover; I barely managed to turn my head from the road as it went by. The car was a late-model Lexus, silver and almost silent, and I thought it might pass without incident until I spotted the blinker, and the brake lights. I was less than two hundred yards from the house, but that didn’t matter. It was too late to take off. We had outs for every situation, dialogues we’d conceived over dozens of dinners and committed to memory by morning. It was a never-ending night of improv, this living underground, and all you could do was try to keep up the illusion, no matter how unbelievable it might be. Because your life—my life—depended on it. Depended on overcoming moments just like this, a car backing up, its white reverse lights portending any number of dangers, any number of fates. Then the window coming down, and a man leaning over to say something that could end it all.

  Need a ride to town? he asked. I’m heading down to pick up the paper.

  He was old, seventy-five or eighty, with silver hair and large glasses, and, oh, how I suddenly loved him, even as I smiled and said, Thank you, no, I need the exercise. Even as he smiled back and said, Okay, just checking, be safe now. And then he drove off, his car quiet as central air.

  Shaken, breathing deeply, I ran the rest of the way home and collapsed onto the bench that framed the deck. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I found myself gazing once again at the garage. Even bathed in sunlight, it was as lifeless and forbidding as any place I’d ever seen. That’s when I knew.

  I had to go in there.

  If the bomb was gone, I’d know for sure they weren’t coming back.

  The toolbox, like everything else, was packed up and sitting by the front door. I opened it and (wearing gloves again) r
ooted around until I found Keith’s lockpicking tools. The heavy-duty key lock on the garage door would be too strong for bolt cutters, and too advanced for a tension wrench and hook pick. That left only one option: bumping it. I’d learned to use a bump key back in Carolina, but I’d never mastered the procedure, and anyway, months had passed since then. I found it near the bottom of the kit, a small key like any other, until you looked closer and saw the shaved-down grooves, designed to tickle the stacks of a tumbler lock until the driver pins separated from the key pins. It only happened for the briefest of moments, but if you were applying exactly the right amount of force in exactly the right place—and it really was a question of finesse—the cylinder would turn and the lock would (sometimes) come undone.

  Key in hand, I walked out to the garage. The art of lock bumping was still in its infancy, and I knew of only two models—high-end BiLocks and Kwiksets—that were truly tamperproof. Keith had gone with a Medeco Biaxial, a lock advertised as impenetrable, though imperfect was more accurate. I took a deep breath and slid the key in until only one notch was left showing. Using the base of my right hand, I bumped it into the lock while applying pressure to the back of the plug. It took several tries; but then it gave. The cylinder clicked and the pins parted. I was in.

  It had been weeks since I glimpsed the first bomb—spotlit like a marquee invention at its trade-show unveiling—and the inside of the garage had changed since then; I could tell that right away, before my eyes even adjusted to the darkness. The air was cool and smelled like . . . what . . . battery acid and metallic burn. Like blood, if blood had a smell. I felt for the light switch without stepping inside, my fingers reaching along the cold wall, and when I found it, there was this instant when nothing happened. Booby trap, I thought: I’ve walked right into it, been outsmarted again.