The Man Who Heard Too Much

by Bill Granger

  Jesus, he loved Will. Pa didn’t understand him, but Will did. Ma was dead, and he never thought about her. Wyoming was as big as the universe, and there was no point to touch in it except for Will.

  Shit, yes, he’d shovel shit for Will.

  They cut him a thousand times with razor cuts that year, the spooks in Army Intelligence. He heard too much, he knew too much, and he tried to keep it out of his mind. He tried to be secret, he tried to hold back his contempt for them. For Guthrie and Peterson and the men who came down from DA in trench coats and cheap suits and made him earn his mess… all the spooks. Do you know what they did? But no… you don’t tell anyone those things. Because he was so skilled at languages, he became the man who heard too much, and it was pain, after a time, a continuing pain in the gut that never went away.

  And thirteen months into service—he was stationed in D.C. at the time—he got a call from Pa in Cody. Pa was sober like always and said Will was dead. Said it flat, the way Pa said the yearling died or Ma died or the wind smelled of snow or there was fire in the mountains from the lightning storms. What? Will was dead. How could he die?

  Got run over by a deuce-and-a-half in Bangkok in broad daylight. Dead as in dead.

  Sergeant Peterson said he was sorry, but DA had lived up to its end. People did get run over sometimes in city traffic.

  “But, Sergeant Peterson, sir, you don’t seem to understand a fucking thing. I sent Will to Bangkok and I fucking well killed him. And I don’t have to do shit for you no more, Sergeant Peterson, sir.”

  Peterson started about how he, Sergeant Peterson, worked for a living and you didn’t “sir” a sergeant. But he saw tears in Michael’s eyes and stopped.

  “I understand, son.”

  “You don’t understand a fucking thing.”

  “You’re crazy, boy,” Sergeant Peterson said a moment before Michael Hampton decked him, sent him tumbling ass over backward out of that goddamn swivel chair, sliding across that lovely government-issue tile floor into the green (army green) filing cabinet, which took a nasty gash out of Sergeant Peterson’s head.

  Goddamn right. Court-martial—no goddamn Article 15 for your sorry pink ass, soldier—and a disfuckinghonorable discharge from disfucking army. Now, you go out there with a DD and try to get a job, you candy ass.

  Which he did. He could speak in tongues and not many men can do that. He went to New York, where the towers of babble needed his services in a variety of low-paying jobs. The Voice of America came to him one day and said there was a way to make up the DD, that nothing was forever, that his facility with Arabic tongues was—

  “Get the fuck out of my life, you bastards.”

  They watched him in New York. He knew they watched him. He developed the instinct of knowing when he was watched. They cut the claws off the cat and then put it outside. What are you going to do now, without your claws?

  He was very stubborn those two years in New York, living in Brooklyn near the Williamsburg Bridge, hustling all the time, living in a special crowd that drank its way through First Avenue bars after the UN shut down for the day.…

  His father fell off a horse and died.

  Michael blinked when he got the telegram. He did feel something but could not explain it to himself or anyone, not even now after all these healing reveries that came to him in strange places and helped him find his point in the universe. Saw the vast empty Wyoming world without any fixed point. No universe. Ma dead. Will dead. Now Pa. No one to smell the coming of snow on the wind, no one to hunt deer in the hills, no one to count days forward and back. All time was lost time now.

  Then the man from Washington came to him. From a bureau of a bureau. He had to talk to Michael Hampton.

  Michael was working in a subsection of the UN Agency for International Relief part-time. He was doing some radio work for ethnic stations. He was translating reports for some oil-wealthy sheiks. What are you doing, Michael? his friends asked. Everything. He worked in a daze because all time was lost.

  The man from Washington said he would make a good spy. He didn’t say “spy” but that’s what it came down to. He said the matter of the DD could be resolved. He said many things.

  When it was over, Michael told him to take the government of the United States and stick it up his ass. Or something like that.

  He lost the UN job the next day. He lost a lot of jobs. They were making it plain to him.

  The man from Washington came to him again and said he could have those things back, those jobs and perks, and all he had to do was work a little for Uncle. On the side. For real money. Serve his country and serve himself—that’s what America was all about. Hell, wasn’t he patriotic?

  Michael told him to go to hell again.

  “You won’t hold out,” the Washington man said. “When we wantcha, we gotcha.”

  But his friend, the sheik who lived on Park Avenue, said there were other places to live. He could live in Sweden. He could live in Saudi Arabia. He could live in a country that does not do the bidding of—

  Sweden by way of New York and the UN and then London. He became a journalist. A little money here and a little there. It was oil time in London, and he got caught up in it because that’s where the money was. Arabia was money and sheiks in white gowns and black Rolls-Royces and Western girls without any clothes on who did all the things you could not demand of your wife. It was the way to make some money. The Arabs liked him; they were his friends; they told him jokes they told each other about the Saudi royal family and which members were complete idiots and which thought only with their pricks. He could read the London papers and translate them into Arabic. He was the London correspondent for Radio Amman for a while. He was apolitical. It wasn’t a bad life, and he had rooms near Paddington Station.

  He wished everyone well; he wished to be left alone. He hated that dirty thing, the thing called espionage, the thing they wanted him to do in the army and after, the thing they hounded him about, the dirty and filthy thing that was all lies and deceits and mockery of decency. He would not be a spy, not for any side, not for any price. He would not know secrets. Espionage was the fatal virus that infected the world until there was no life in anything. No decency, no God, no truth or justice or freedom, just lies and lies and lies, until the world was buried to the depth of a thousand feet in the ashes of lies. Rena had said she’d love to visit America. Michael said nothing. The country was a cold place in his heart. He did not hate the country, he did not feel anything for it.

  “Do you want another beer?”

  His scrapbook closed. He said something and took change out of his pocket. The barman poured the draft slowly, and it took some minutes to fill the stein. The beer was warm and full. Michael yawned suddenly, and the black thoughts passed. It was no good to think about things you couldn’t do anything about.

  “American?”

  He looked up, startled. The man was at the next table with a Berlin paper spread out before him.

  Michael nodded.

  “You speak good German. You must be military,” he said in German.

  “No. Not at all. Not that.”

  “Ah. Then you are a spy?” Very sly, meant as a joke. The man cocked his ear in a pantomime of secrecy, then smiled and chuckled.

  The black thoughts came back. It was ludicrous. “The last thing I would ever be. I’m a journalist.”

  The old man shrugged. He lost interest. Michael really thought he was a journalist most of the time. Then he would get a call from one of his other clients, and they would pay him good money to translate accurately this report or that. Perhaps reports that had fallen into the wrong hands. Reports full of numbers and estimates, reports of things he wished to know nothing about. It was a precarious living, but he liked it because it kept him apart. And the cardinal was a good man, a friend. Only with Rena had he even thought about living with another person and sharing his bleak life.

  Rena. He saw her as she was in bed, her eyes wide open with a cat’s curiosity,
her lips open in a perfect oval of desire, her arms open, her belly straining with desire.…

  He didn’t want to drink anymore. He got up. He put down a small tip and turned. He went to the door of the tavern and looked out at the dark street that led down to the Ku’damm near the Ka-De-We department store. It was time to go to his room and sleep all night. Perhaps it would look different in the morning.

  Berlin side streets seem darker than in any other city. The night was full of noises, and the trains shuttled back and forth from East to West across elevated viaducts that festooned the city like black ornaments. Michael pulled up his collar and jammed his hands back in the pockets of the parka. He was tired now, tired enough to sleep. The bleak remembrance of Will had steeled him to what he would have to do. With himself and with the tape. They were after him again, and it was going to be the last time. They would stay away after this, no more visits from Washington men, no more threats.

  The two men began to converge from opposite sides of the street.

  At that same moment, four customers of the bierkneipe emerged on the corner, gathering before going home. One was the old man with the newspaper. “A good cool night, what do you expect for this time of year?” he said to no one.

  Michael turned. “What is the weather supposed to be tomorrow?”

  The old man blinked at him. He had offered the remark on the weather for his own amusement, not for the comment of others. “I don’t know,” he said.

  Michael pressed him. He saw the two men out of the corner of his eye. As long as he engaged these four strangers from the tavern, nothing could happen to him.

  It was impossible, they couldn’t have followed him so easily.

  The thought that they were here—already just behind him despite his run across northern Europe—gave him a moment of despair. He should surrender. He should just give up and try to explain. The world couldn’t be that unreasonable. When he was a child, he had learned to surrender, to give up when a game was too hard for him to master.

  “Herr Hampton?”

  He turned to the first one as he passed under a street lamp.

  Michael saw the glint of steel in the hand of the first man.

  Impossible. They couldn’t do this, not on a street in the middle of a civilized city, in view of these witnesses.

  “Herr Hampton—”

  The voice purred.

  Michael turned to the customers from the tavern. He looked at their faces. A couple of the men were drunk. What could any of them do?

  What would they be willing to do?

  He suddenly pushed into the group, and the sly old man went down with an angry shout.

  The first agent revealed the pistol. The second agent fired from across the street.

  The shock of sound stunned the tavern crowd.

  Michael heard the shot, felt pain, and then realized he had not been hit. The pain had come because he had expected the shot and expected to be hit.

  His footsteps echoed down the empty street. The tavern customers were shouting. Window lights winked on.

  A second shot broke. The brickwork ahead of him splintered, and a piece of brick shrapnel cut his right cheek. He did not feel the pain this time, only the wetness.

  He turned into an alley and knocked over a garbage can. It signaled with a clatter on the bricks.

  He staggered, nearly fell, ran to the back of the alley.

  Surrounded by brick walls from three buildings.

  Dead end. He leaned a moment against the wall and pushed and sobbed, as though he could push the wall away.

  The breath burned his lungs.

  He turned to face them. His breath sobbed out of his body.

  They were a hundred feet away, at the mouth of the alley.

  He ran to the shadows under a ledge and cowered.

  In that moment, he felt the grasp on his ankle. He nearly jumped away, but the grasp was too firm. It was a rat. He wanted to scream, but the sound was strangled in him.

  He shouted.

  He turned to see the creature that was fastened on his leg. He couldn’t see in the darkness. The creature had no teeth, only this devastating grip. The creature pulled, and Michael nearly tripped and fell.

  The creature spoke in German: “Are they after you? The police?”

  “Yes,” he said, horrified by the touch of the creature. There was no face, no body, only voice and darkness coming from an opening in the bricks. He tried to pull his leg away and the creature held him. He could not escape, and the killers were coming down the alley in the darkness.

  The thing around his leg tugged again, and this time he fell.

  Michael fell to one knee and then felt himself sliding back. His knees were dragged across the bricks.

  He bruised his face on the rough bricks, and the metal opening struck his head. He thought he wanted to scream while the creature devoured him. He had no words left to scream. He was passing out in a slow, dreamy way, and he was sliding down and down into real darkness. He heard metal bang above him, and then he surrendered. He surrendered in his mind. He explained to them that it was all a mistake and that he could be trusted not to reveal the contents of the tape. They agreed. They were so reasonable. They smiled at him and told him to go home. They told him to see Rena and have a good time. But it was a lie, a deceit, because there was Will. Will was crossing the street, and the big truck was rumbling down on him, crushing him beneath the immense wheels, cracking his bones and his big handsome face, taking his life when they had promised him, promised him, promised him.…

  11

  HELSINKI

  The portholes were dirty, dirtier than the weather that hustled flat rainclouds over the water of South Harbor. The Leo Tolstoy was lifted by the tide against the wharf, and the ropes squealed and groaned. For the last twenty minutes, he had been watching the modest spires of Uspenski Cathedral rise and fall, according to the movement of the freighter. It was something to do.

  The other thing to do was to listen to the fat leather spy ask his dull, probing questions. It was like being operated on by a surgeon using a spoon.

  They were in a cabin without amenities. The table was steel, and so was the bench Henry McGee sat on. There was no coffee, no whiskey, no warmth from the bulkhead walls. Bursts of rain splattered the portholes and then were beaded up and blown away by a drier wind. He had been on the ship for twenty-four hours from Copenhagen, across the shallow Baltic almost to the doorstep of the Soviet Union. But they had anchored in Helsinki instead, and Henry McGee couldn’t figure out why. Or why the fat leather spy was still trying to see if Henry McGee was the real thing.

  “Shit,” Henry McGee finally said.

  The leather spy stopped. He bowed his massive, bald head and stared at him.

  “Did you speak?”

  “I said ‘shit,’ ” Henry McGee said in plain English.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m being pecked to death by a duck,” Henry McGee said. “I picked you for a nobody the day before yesterday in Cope, and I was right then and I’m still right. I ain’t gonna answer any of your questions, and I’m not gonna sit here on this goddamn baby-ass bench giving me a blister on my balls.”

  It was too fast for the fat spy. He blinked, translating the English words slowly. He got to balls just as Henry got to the hatchway.

  “You cannot—”

  But Henry stepped on deck and felt the wet wind on his cheek. It felt good. He looked down at the water and then out to the islands in the harbor. The islands were wearing winter brown on grass and trees, and they seemed fragile things in the surging cold water. The spires of Helsinki crowded around the harbor. It was a small city of simple charms and electric trollies and brick roadways. There was a spartan elegance to it as well, as though each piece were made to exactly fit the next piece—in the way the brick walks were mended each spring, brick by brick laid in sand until a perfect path was made.

  Uspenski Cathedral, up on the hill, had stopped going up and dow
n in the porthole window. Henry smiled while the leather spy stood next to him. He felt the hand on his arm.

  He turned, and his mean eyes were the color of prison.

  “Keep your fucking hands to yourself.”

  The spy said, “Please.”

  Henry let the mean look wash down the leather spy.

  “I am to detain you only a little while.” The bald man was pleading. “At 1300 hours, the other comes. Please. I was doing what I was supposed to do, to question you, to see if you had told the truth.”

  “Just so I have to do it again for the next guy,” Henry said.

  “Please. It is my responsibility.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “I did bring you whiskey. And that woman, it was no small thing—”

  Henry lightened up. Actually, Fatso was right. Tina was no small thing. First time out of the box in two years—or in the box—and it must have taken Henry five or six seconds to do it. But then it got interesting, and Tina was a regular encyclopedia. There was that, then: Fatso had brought the girl like he was told.

  “I need air, Fatso. Had to come on deck. Why we in Helsinki anyway?”

  “Because it is ordered so—”

  “Look, Fatso, you wanna get along with me, don’t use that Moscow Center jargon. You don’t want to answer or you can’t, just say so, but don’t give me the dumb German.”

  Fatso couldn’t follow that for the life of him.

  Henry smiled. He thought about Tina in parts. Tits were great, but he had known that from the moment she had swung them in his face in the café on the Stroget. She could do things with them. And when she put her mouth on him… well, it was good to think about just now, standing on two deck of this bucket of rust. He looked down at the figures moving along the wharf and the street beyond. The rain wasn’t so bad, but the wind was having its effect and they bent to the wind. The cold didn’t bother Henry; it wasn’t like the deep-down, bone-cracking cold you got in Alaska, where your fingers could fall off like dry-rotted wood and you wouldn’t even know they were gone. He smiled.