They went out to see a play featuring better nudity than dialogue, to dinner at Alvaro’s, to the zoo, to Sotheby’s, where Maren bid on nearly everything just for spite and ended up owning a pencil sketch for eighteen thousand dollars, which, at that rate, Picasso had done for a hundred and forty dollars per second.
Or they stayed in and read anything, watched the telly without really seeing it, amputated yellow roses from the garden, played backgammon, and made so many ridiculous errors it seemed they were both trying to lose. No lovemaking, by silent, passive agreement.
Regardless of what they did they merely went through the motions. Frequently one would ask the other to repeat what the other had just said. They were each preoccupied with the same subject, which was, of course, the vault. That great buried tank of a room encased in four-inch special armor. Their separate imaginations attacked it from every direction, but its invulnerability defied them. There was simply no way into it, and even if they could get in, how could they carry off eight thousand pounds of diamonds without getting sizzled to death by laser or, at least, perforated by Security Section’s sharpshooters?
Impossible.
That was Chesser’s conclusion. But he hated giving up. He’d grown accustomed to the prospects of extravagant reward and maximum revenge. He’d call Massey that day and tell him it was no go. No need even to discuss it with Maren. Evidently she now realized how right he’d been when he’d told her nobody beats The System.
Chesser decided he’d take a walk first and, when he returned, place the call to Massey.
He went out, intending to be out ten or fifteen minutes at most. He turned up Albany Street, went across Gloucester Gate and into Regent’s Park. The day was one of those big cloud days, with the sun frequently shut off. Everything was dull one moment and turned on bright the next. Appropriate, thought Chesser.
He claimed an empty bench. Sat there facing a vast open area of park grass, which was occasionally punctuated by children running around their mothers. And lovers horizontally together. Chesser noticed how the lovers used their bodies to conceal their hands between them. A park policeman came by, patrolling, sanctioning the mothers and dutifully delivering half-hearted warnings to the lovers, who pulled apart until he was past and then reunited, confident he wouldn’t look back or come back, if he did.
Chesser started for home. But when he reached Prince Albert Road he gave way to impulse and went down Parkway to Camden Town. Along the way he looked at store windows containing mostly cheap things, stiff, dead fish, synthetic dresses, and clear, plastic, female lower halves immodestly inverted to show off pastel panty hose. At a bakery, scones that looked as light as meringue tricked him into buying half a dozen. They were heavy as plaster. He left the sack of them on the step of a public doorway and felt sorry for the hungry unfortunate who would find them.
He went back up Parkway loaded with depression. He told himself to lose some of it along the way, not to take it home to Maren. So he stopped in at a bookstore he hadn’t noticed before. Thumbed through an illustrated volume that made Portugal look pretty and thought maybe he’d suggest to Maren that they just take off for there. He perused a bound collection of photographs: nudes of a woman in the reach of the sea, Naissance de Aphrodite, glistening beads hung in the mounded growth at her intersection, the sockets of her thighs in tension, and all the shapes of her skin dimensionally aroused. Chesser promised himself and Maren much and better loving in Portugal.
His mood was rising. He brought his attention to an entire wall of paperback books. He’d buy a few. His excuse for being out so long. He was glad, though, that Maren was possessive. He chose three paperbacks at random. And it was at that moment it came to him, just as Mildred had predicted it would—the meaning of black will oblige. At least it was a possible interpretation of that cryptic message. He took another paperback down from its place. Strange, he thought, the way it had come to him, as though he had been guided right there to suddenly experience a sort of revelation. Not that it mattered now, but he was certain Maren would consider it a vindication of Mildred.
Returning home, he found her in the main reception room. She had some Led Zeppelin on the stereo and little more than nothing on herself, just a huge square of that finest sheer cotton called lawn. She’d pinned it snugly beneath her chin so it contained all her hair, framed her face angelically, but otherwise fell and gathered over and around her. She was on the floor, her back against the sofa, with her legs arched up to sustain a large sketch pad on which she was making notes. The pages of Watts’s report were scattered about.
She completed her thought before looking up to Chesser. He knew immediately that her disposition had changed. She was his irrepressible Maren again. He thought she also must have finally become resigned to the fact that the diamond-stealing project was canceled due to impossibility.
He sat down beside her and took her offered hello kiss. It was good to be really ensemble again. He told her, “I figured it out.”
“You did?” She seemed disappointed.
“I think so. It just came to me.”
“So, how do we get into the vault?”
“We don’t.”
“Exactly,” she said.
“What I meant is, it occurred to me what black will oblige means. At least, what it might mean.”
He took out one of the paperback books he’d bought. Its cover was a photograph of the author, a black man looking straight out, strong and belligerent.
“I used to know him,” explained Chesser.
“He doesn’t look very obliging,” was Maren’s opinion.
Chesser had to agree with her. He glanced at her sketch pad. She guarded it from his view. He only caught a glimpse of some of her handwriting in Swedish. He couldn’t read Swedish anyway.
“I called Mildred,” she said. “I asked her if she could do an apport.”
“A what?”
“An apport. Making things dematerialize so they can pass through matter and be brought back to their original state somewhere else. It has to do with the transmutation of energy in the fourth dimension.”
“I should have known that.”
She agreed. “It’s common knowledge.”
“Done every day.”
“It would have been the best way to get the diamonds,” she said, “but Mildred can’t do it.”
“She’s not much help.”
“She does apports all the time but this would take too much power—you know, all those diamonds. She doesn’t have that much power. It would have been interesting, though, doing it that way.” She smiled thoughtfully, was silent a moment, then asked, “How much is a carat?”
“Seven thousandths of an ounce,” he replied, “point zero zero seven.”
“I mean how big.”
He thought of several ordinary comparisons and then a better one came to him. He told her, “About half the size of your most very sensitive spot.”
She had to grin. “No larger than that?”
“At its best,” he added.
“Draw one … a carat for me,” she said, handing him the pen and turning to a fresh page of the sketch pad.
He drew a circle about a quarter of an inch in diameter.
She studied it a moment. “And ten times that is ten carats.”
He drew an approximation of ten carats.
“That’s not too big,” she judged seriously.
“I’ve got to call Massey,” said Chesser. He started to get up.
“You’re not supposed to call, remember? Massey was emphatic about that. Besides, I just got through talking to him.”
Chesser dropped back down. “He called you?”
“No. I told him to start renovating his building as soon as possible.”
“What building?”
“His. The one he owns, on Harrowhouse next to The System.”
“Renovate? Why?”
“To create a diversion, among other things. When there’s a lot of unusual activity around the place no one will notic
e a little more.”
Apparently she hadn’t yet given up on the deal. Chesser admired her spirit but not her obstinacy. Calmly, unequivocally, he told her it was impossible to get into the vault.
She told him he was absolutely correct.
“So, let’s just forget about it and get out of here.” He then proposed Portugal.
“We don’t need to get into the vault,” she stated.
“We’re going to apport, right?”
“In a way. At least that’s what gave me the idea.”
He saw she was serious.
“I haven’t got it all worked out yet,” she said. She flipped back to the page of the sketch pad on which she’d made her many Swedish scribbles. “You can make all the suggestions you want, but don’t ruin it with too many improvements,” she said, and began translating.…
CHAPTER 16
HARRIDGE WEAVER was the black man in black. The only white thing about him was the starched inch of clerical collar showing around his throat. Except for his teeth and eyes, of course.
He was waiting his turn at Immigration, standing there in line, looking patient and serene. He had shaved his beard, moustache, and sideburns, and wore gold wire-rimmed glasses he didn’t need. Altogether, his identity coincided unquestionably with the photograph that was officially embossed in the Algerian passport he was carrying, issued February 20, 1969, to the Reverend Gerard Pouteau.
The Immigration officer nodded to Weaver that he was next. Weaver crossed over to the podiumlike desk and presented his papers, which a sign had instructed him to have ready. First the officer ran a check on the name Pouteau, methodically referring to an alphabetically compiled list of undesirables, such as wanted persons and tax delinquents. Then the officer asked the Reverend how long he planned to stay in the United Kingdom, where he would be staying, and the purpose of the Reverend’s visit. Weaver answered all three questions routinely with believable lies.
He was passed through Immigration and customs without trouble. This was the only time in four years that he’d put himself on the line, his freedom. At least as much freedom as he had. He didn’t trust white law, and therefore couldn’t rely on the British law, which stipulated that political prisoners were excluded from the extradition agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States.
Although Weaver considered himself a political fugitive, the FBI and CIA and all the other great white hunters had him differently classified. According to them, he was wanted for murder and flight to avoid prosecution. The murder part wasn’t true, but that was how they had labeled him and that was the crime he would have to pay for if he ever went back, or was taken back.
Four years of exile had changed Weaver considerably, had driven his determination in deeper, inside, where it really counted. From his remote vantage across the ocean, he was able to observe the violence of his brothers and see more clearly why such confrontations were necessary and also why they were futile. Weaver would sit in the striking North African sunshine and view more rationally and painfully what he and his brothers had tried to accomplish. Were still trying. But how naïve they’d been at times in the past, so open in their actions, demanding their black rights, taking a position to the far Left, trying to stay just inside the line of the law. Realizing soon enough that the law could be lopsided, could come at them from any direction, and even if they found a loophole it was easy for the whites to plug it up by merely creating another white law.
Early in his exile, Weaver’s perspective had not been so objective. He was full of the humiliation of having had to run from his inevitable death. Run to escape white guns or their gas chamber or, at least, one of their cages, in which they would put all of his life.
Earlier Weaver would pace in the punishment of the North African sunshine and see only as far ahead as revenge and only as far in the past as that night in Newark when five thousand rounds of lawful bullets of various calibers and singular intent had torn around him and had blown the heart out of his good brother George. They murdered and then accused Weaver of it, and he knew they could make the charge stick because, as one of his brothers said sardonically, they had all the glue.
Weaver remembered his flight as only a blur. Of being cramped in the hole of an automobile trunk, of being transported like precious black shit, of hunching down in the rear seats of various cars, being transferred from car to car for precaution. Of riding a speedboat south from a small Florida coast town, the unfamiliarity of being on the sea a relief for him all the way to Varadero, Cuba, and on via jeep to Havana, where he stayed a week and was treated well enough.
When he got to Africa, where he would stay, he was grateful for the immunity. However, as much as he appreciated being out of reach of his enemy, he hated his enemy being out of his reach. He suffered through adjustment to his new environment, eased somewhat by many letters, a flow of the Movement’s newspapers, and infrequent visits by brothers. The latter usually left him depressed. It was as though they were coming to pay respects to a handicapped veteran of the fight, who would probably never fight again. Whenever he spoke to them about his return, they warned him with their eyes while they patronized him with their words.
What really got him through that bad time was his writing. Despite his new lack of faith in words, he turned to them. He sat in the broad blade of the North African sunshine and sent his voice into the microphone of a cassette recorder. When he played back what he felt, he felt and believed it all the more. Expression opened him, let him see his past errors. Not only the minor ones but also the principal one: the confidence that black would fearlessly, automatically follow black. Weaver believed the theory was still valid and eventually would prove itself, but for the time being it was an unrealistic expectation. Persuasion was necessary, along with dramatic examples. No past revolution could be used as an example. The structure of past revolutions, with their martyrs and swift massive overthrow, were now passe, made ineffective by the intricately organized, scientifically complex manner by which contemporary tyranny fortified itself.
A man with less resolve would have yielded to the circumstances and transferred his energy to making his own life more comfortable. But Weaver accepted the compromise, kept his basic optimism, and more intelligently channeled the force of his hate into his writing. He wrote two books and made contributions to any medium that would voice his beliefs. His spirit was catching and he believed the time would come, perhaps in his lifetime.
Exile had made Weaver a wiser man.
And much more dangerous.
That latter quality was hardly apparent as he got out of a taxi in front of the rectory of St. Edwards Church, Hanover Square. He gave the driver a beneficent smile along with a humble shilling tip, and pretended to be consulting directions that were actually an Air France pamphlet on survival under ditching conditions. Until the taxi pulled away. Then he picked up his luggage and walked across the street and down to where Chesser waited in the car.
Weaver opened the door on the passenger side and threw his luggage into the space behind the seats. No hello. Nothing. His ecclesiastical disguise surprised Chesser, who wasn’t immediately sure this was the same man he’d met with in Paris just two days before.
Locating Weaver hadn’t been difficult for Chesser. He had put in a call to the Moroccan Ministry of Public Affairs in Algiers and requested Weaver’s telephone number. He didn’t get it, of course, but the Ministry official was polite and suggested Chesser’s call might be returned. Chesser gave his name and London number and two days later Algiers was calling and it was Weaver. Chesser thought Weaver might not remember him, but Weaver did, right off. However, from Weaver’s guarded tone, Chesser thought it wise to forgo any old lost buddy routine and got directly to the proposition, outlining the general nature of it without revealing any details. Weaver was cautiously interested. He insisted on an interim meeting in Paris to hear the entire proposition face-to-face on neutral ground, instead of coming directly to London and risking everything.
&nb
sp; Chesser and Weaver had hit it off well enough in Paris. Weaver hadn’t asked as many questions about the project as Chesser had anticipated, but he’d checked out Chesser and hadn’t found a white trap. In the Paris hotel room, while Chesser revealed the scheme, they’d drunk vintage Château LaFitte straight from the bottle. Two separate bottles, actually. About half way through, they’d exchanged bottles, which signified Weaver’s acceptance of Chesser’s offer. A million dollars.
Now they were suffering through West End traffic. Weaver removed his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and tight shut his eyes a couple of times. He also released his stiff collar, ripped it off and made a sound of relief. “That fucking thing was killing me,” he said. And that was all he said for several blocks of stop and go. He just sat there observing the people on the street, particularly the girls.
Chesser remembered how outgoing Weaver had been back in ’fifty and ’fifty-one. A big, first-string tackle who should have been majoring in law rather than physical education. He had all the prerequisites, except the meaningless ones they demanded on a high-school record.
At that time Chesser was living off campus, and the girl who frequently stayed overnight and caused him to miss morning classes was Jessica, an aggressive, challenging girl out to prove how liberal she was, in mind and body. It was through Jessica that Chesser had met Weaver, when he got in with her radical element, whose big cause then was integration.
Naturally, Chesser was for integration; he’d never felt any prejudice. For him it was as uncomplicated as that. Unlike most of his companions, he didn’t feel any guilt demanding active involvement. That was probably the reason he let others make the speeches and didn’t show up at many meetings. They needed it; he didn’t.
Weaver must have sensed that quality in Chesser and liked it, found it a relief from the tension of being the object of a cause. From the first they found they could relax together. Weaver would drop by Chesser’s place anytime, get some law second hand, and borrow books. Conversely, on Saturday afternoons Chesser, from his stadium seat, felt some vicarious satisfaction in the violence he watched Weaver perform.
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