“Sorry. I was excited. But isn’t it amazing news?”
“ ‘Sorry’? You mean like in, ‘Ah, well, never mind’?”
“As in.”
“No. No grammar lessons today. My God. What a moron.”
“What’s the problem? Do you know for a fact that your cell phone is tapped?” Bird went to the glass wall and looked down. “I don’t see police or FBI cars pulling up. Oops, is that a sniper team I see?”
“It’s a cell phone, nitwit. Do you know what a cell call consists of? Little digital signals, twittering through the air like so many butterflies. Do you know where I was when you called me? In northern Virginia. Do you have any idea how many U.S. intelligence agencies are in northern Virginia? More or less all of them. Listening. To the little digital butterflies flitting through the air. God . . .”
Angel hurled her purse onto the floor. It made a hard, metallic sound, causing Bird to consider the possibility that there was a gun in there. While he didn’t think that she’d actually shoot him, a pistol-whipping was at this point not beyond the realm of possibility.
“Do you realize,” she fumed, “that you may just have put both our lives in danger?”
Bird thought, Wait a minute. He held up his hands. “I’m sorry. Truly. Pinkie swear.” He held out his pinkie finger. “Would it help if I chopped it off? The way they do in the Japanese gangster movies?”
Angel was still glowering, arms folded across her lovely chest.
“But before we chop off the pinkie, how about a drink?” Bird went to the freezer and pulled out a bottle of vodka. He half-filled a highball glass and handed it to her.
“So did Charley remove the french fry from Brendan’s nose?”
Angel looked out the floor-to-ceiling glass at the view of the Mall with its gleaming, illuminated memorials.
“Nice view,” she said.
“Do you like it? My wife thinks it’s a cliché.”
“Your wife? She’s not . . . here, is she?”
“Oh, no. She almost never comes. We have a place out in Virginia. She’s an equestrienne. A rider?”
“I know what an equestrienne is, Bird.”
“She’s pretty serious. Competing for a slot on the U.S. team. Apparently there’s this big competition coming up in . . .” Bird paused. He had enough female trouble right now without telling Angel about his Myndi–Tang Cup problem.
Angel returned to the spectacular view of the Mall. “I saw her picture in Washington Life. Some horse thing. Middleburg. Upper-burg. She is pretty.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Why don’t you have children?”
“She . . . What with the riding and all. It would mean . . . But we’re definitely planning to. Kids are great. Do they all stick french fries up each other’s nose?”
“Relax,” Angel said.
“Sorry?”
“You’re babbling. Relax. I didn’t come here to have sex with you.”
“No, I didn’t think you did, from that entrance. I was more expecting that you might shoot me.”
“I considered having sex with you. Then you pulled that cell phone stunt and revealed yourself to be a complete retard. And that’s one of my rules. I don’t sleep with retards.”
“Very sensible,” Bird nodded, taking another sip of vodka.
Angel finished her drink and set it down on the glass tabletop with a loud rap. “I’m going now. Home. To the man in my life.”
“Oh? Are you—”
“Barry. My son.”
“Oh, Barry. Well, great.”
“I read to him. Every night.”
“That’s nice. Mother used to read to me and my brother. It’s very bonding. What are you reading him?”
“The Gathering Storm.”
“Is that . . . Dr. Seuss?”
“Volume one of Winston Churchill’s memoir of World War II.”
“Oh, that Gathering Storm. Well. Gosh. How old is Barry?”
“Eight.”
“Eight? And reading Winston Churchill.”
“He’s extremely precocious.”
“When I was eight, I could barely keep up with Ferdinand the Bull. Churchill. World War II. Impressive.”
“His teacher thinks I’m strange. But by the time this kid is ten, he’ll know more history than the rest of his class put together. This kid is going to be a freshman at Harvard by age sixteen.”
“Does he get nightmares or anything, reading about Hitler and Stalin and . . . I don’t think I’d even heard about World War II until I was ten.”
“Sleeps like a baby, straight through. Wakes up smiling. My widdle koala bear. We split a Valium. Half for Momma, half for Barrykins.”
“You give him—Valium?”
“Not all the time.”
“You should write a book on child rearing. You’d get on the talk shows.”
“I’m already on them.” Angel gathered up her purse. “Okay,” she said. “So as you said—over the cell— we’re back in business. My office, ten o’clock.”
She paused on her way out. Looked out onto the Mall.
“By the way. That’s not a cliché,” she said. “That’s America.”
BIRD TOSSED AND TURNED. Finally around two, he took a pill. Why not? Barry did.
CHAPTER 10
I DON’T THINK WE’RE IN AFGHANISTAN ANYMORE, TOTO
Shouldn’t we hold off on the poison until we at least hear what it is he’s actually got?” Angel demanded.
They were in the newly organized “war room” at the ICC, a windowless and, Angel assured Bird, electronically impenetrable space. Staffers sat in cubicles beneath plaques: DL, BEIJING, LHASA, USGOV, MEDICAL, DISINFO, BUDDHA, MEDIA, INTEL.
Angel had handpicked them from among the crème de la crème of the Oreo-Cons. She had made them sign scary legal documents swearing them to eternal secrecy. But it was an easy sell. Promote conflict with China? Oreo-Cons lived for this sort of thing! The rest of the ICC staff was given a cover story that their absent colleagues had been pulled off regular duty for a rush-rush, hush-hush North Korea post-invasion scenario presentation for the Pentagon.
The Oreo-Cons were pumped. China was the Big One. As one of them said, “I don’t think we’re in Afghanistan anymore, Toto.”
Bird pecked away at his keyboard.
“No sense in not being ready,” he said to Angel. He summoned the staffer beneath the MEDICAL sign, a sallow-faced young man named Twent. “Anything on the panda enzyme?”
“No,” sighed Twent, in a way to suggest that he had been asked this one too many times.
“When do you—”
“I’m working on it.”
“Still fixated on the pandas, Bird?” Angel said. “Micromanaging much? What’s wrong with arsenic? Or cyanide?”
“Arsenic?” Bird said. “Arsenic leaves traces a blind pathologist could detect. Look, do you mind? We’re working.”
“Or your basic phosphate esters,” Angel pressed. “Malathion, parathion . . .”
“Angel,” Bird said sharply. “Could we leave this to the professionals?”
“Are you suggesting that I’m unfamiliar with this? For your information, Chemical Ali, when I was at the Pentagon, I dealt with this stuff practically on a daily basis.”
“All I’m suggesting, O Wicked Witch of the West, is that you let your own expert, Dr. Twent here, do his job. He happens to have a master’s degree in biochemical warfare from the Naval War College.”
“I still think you’re gilding the lily with this panda stuff. And BTW, it’s my ass out there on TV, not yours.”
“It’s ‘painting the lily,’ ” Bird said. “Everyone gets that wrong.”
“I’ll make a note of it. Look, I’m not going to ruin my credibility just because you’re obsessed with bumping him off with essence of panda. This isn’t one of your unpublished novels.”
Bird looked up. “Well. That was bitchy.”
Only last week, Bird had presented Angel with handsome, leather-bound
printouts of the Armageddon trilogy. Bird noticed that they remained on her desk exactly where she’d put them after thanking him somewhat perfunctorily.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Angel said.
“For your information, there’s a difference between ‘unpublished’ and ‘unpublishable.’ J. K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter book got turned down. Now she’s richer than the queen of England.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Why don’t you go prep for your showdown with the Dragon Lady?” Bird said. “I hear she’s good. Might give you a run for your money.”
Angel snorted. “Bitch is going down in two rounds.”
Staffers stared.
“Why don’t you call her a ‘war profiteer’ like you did to Private Ryan’s mom?” Bird returned to his computer. “And you’re worried about your ‘credibility’? That’s a laugh.”
“If you actually find the elusive panda enzyme,” Angel said, “why don’t you test it on yourself first?”
“See you next Tuesday!” Bird called out after her.
Without turning, Angel continued on her way and flipped Bird the bird.
Bird soothed his offended literary sensibility with the knowledge that he was now quietly at work on a fourth novel. His Armageddon trilogy was now a tetralogy in progress. Bird felt confident about this one. It was a much more mature work than the previous three. Its working title was The Armageddon Revalidation. The hero, Buck “Turk” McMaster, had been handed another against-all-odds assignment by the desk-hugging, soft-faced politicians in Washington—rescuing the Grand Xama of Nibbut, a once-proud, theocratic kingdom that had been invaded and cruelly crushed by its neighbor, Mantagolia. Good stuff, far above the genre of mere thriller writing. This, Bird sensed, truly aspired to the level of Literature.
The code name for Turk’s mission improbable was Red Bull. Bird had contemplated calling it Taurus but feared that Chick Devlin might have an embolism. He wondered if there might be some copyright problem with the energy-drink manufacturer? Surely not. They should be flattered; anyway, he wasn’t about to give up a great name like that without a formal legal demand. His agent would handle all that. This reminded him: He needed to get an agent. The last one had stopped returning his phone calls.
He was making excellent progress. Already up to chapter 10. Turk had just completed a stunning HALO (high altitude, low opening) parachute drop into Nibbut’s harsh and unforgiving mountainous terrain, a muon bomb strapped to his back. But no sooner had he landed than he was being pursued by his old nemesis, Colonel Zong. Clearly there had been another leak out of Washington. The perfidy of those pusillanimous politicians! Once again Turk had been betrayed by the very people who had sent him off to certain death. He would deal with them in due course. Bird couldn’t wait to get back to his laptop.
He emerged from the war room and stretched. He was exhausted. He would need more Adderall if he was going to get another chapter done tonight. Terrific stuff, Adderall: The writing just flowed.
He checked his cell messages. There were a half dozen voice mails, five of them from Myndi. Angel was right about one thing: The war room was electronically impenetrable. He listened to the messages. Myndi’s voice grew more frantic with each call.
“Hi, darling,” he said when he called her back.
“Walter. Where on earth have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon!”
“I’m afraid I can’t say, darling.”
“What do you mean?”
“Highly classified project. I’m working off campus. Undisclosed location, hardened rooms. Can’t get cell calls.”
“Hardened? Never mind. Do you want to know why I was calling? Or do you not care?”
Bird sighed. “Of course I care.”
Her tone lightened. “Guess what?”
“You’re pregnant?”
“Walter,” she said, reverting to her prior tone, “you know perfectly well I couldn’t be pregnant.”
“Okay. Give up.”
“I made the team!”
“Oh, that’s great. Let’s celebrate. Drive in. I’ll get us a table at Café Milano.”
“Couldn’t possibly. Way too much to do. But now, darling, now that I’m on the team, I’m going to need another mount. In fact, Sam is insisting on two more.”
“Myn. You can’t be serious.”
“Walter, I just made the U.S. Equestrian Team. Do you have any concept what this means?”
“Beyond costing me another arm and a leg? At this rate I’m going to be a quadruple amputee.”
“That is so . . . I can’t believe you said that.”
“Myn, could we just have a conversation about this instead of another jousting tournament?”
“I call you up to share the best thing that’s ever happened to me and you make amputee jokes?”
“Whoa.”
“Don’t say ‘Whoa’! You know I hate that!”
Bird yearned to be back in the electronically impenetrable war room.
“And please don’t sigh,” she said. “You know I hate that, too.”
“Myn. I’m thrilled you made the team. I’m proud that you, my own girl, will represent our country in—”
“The People’s Republic of China. I am so . . . humbled, Walter.”
“Yes, darling, and my heart, too, is truly full. But speaking as the chief financial officer of Mr. and Mrs. Walter McIntyre, Inc., I have a legitimate, even pressing concern when you call me up and ask me to go another half million dollars into debt so that you can buy two more horses.”
Silence.
“Myn? Hello?”
“Harry Brinkerhoff has offered to help.”
Brinkerhoff was a hedgefunder, a fellow member of the Hoof and Woof Club. More Myndi’s friend than Bird’s. Nice enough guy. He owned more horses than the U.S. Cavalry during the Indian Wars. He flew them around the world in a specially outfitted Boeing 757. A flying stable. Bird was as capitalist as the next person, but Brinkerhoff’s airborne stable—lushly featured in a recent issue of Plutocrat magazine—was of perhaps questionable taste at a time when the unemployment rate was above 10 percent. Brinkerhoff was in the midst of getting a divorce from wife number three—or four. Number two—three?—was a cousin of the sultan of Brunei.
“Walter? Walter, speak to me.”
“I don’t think it’s appropriate to accept a gift of that magnitude.”
“Darling.” Myndi laughed. “For Harry, this would be a rounding error.”
“Still.”
“He’s patriotic. He’s so excited about this. The Tang Cup! He’s going to fly us all over there in the plane. Is that wonderful? He wants to help us bring home the gold!”
“So you’ve already . . . are you saying this is a done deal? Before even discussing it with me?”
“It was completely spontaneous. We ran into each other last week at the club. He said he’d be happy to help if I made the team. It was en passant.”
“A half million bucks? That’s a lot of en passant.”
“If it helps your pride, darling, he’ll make it a loan. You can pay him back.”
“A loan? From the First Bank of Harry?”
“You know, this is just not good enough. Here I am, trying to make it easy for you, and all you can focus on is money.”
“We’ll talk about it this weekend.”
“I’m not here this weekend.”
“Why?”
“Walter. I do wish you’d listen sometimes. We discussed this three weeks ago. I’m in Saratoga Springs.”
“Whatever. But I won’t have you accepting money from some—”
“Some what?”
“From some guy who flies horses around in a plane!”
“It’s not your decision, Walter.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Competing at the international level has been my dream since I was four years old. I’m not about to let you screw that up for me . . . Walter . . . I�
�m talking to you, Walter. Walter?”
Bird was in the middle of a reverie, a most unpleasant one. It was a year from now. They were at the club. People were congratulating Myndi—and Harry—for “bringing home the gold.” He saw himself, looking on, the Impecunious Bystander-Husband. People were whispering, pointing. Knowing side glances. Isn’t it wonderful that Myndi and Harry have become such good friends?
He took twice his normal dose of Adderall that night and cranked on chapter 10. In the middle of the desperate firefight between Turk and Colonel Zong’s men, he suddenly stopped typing. Today was the first time he’d hung up on Myndi. He wondered: Did this represent progress?
CHAPTER 11
HAVE WE GONE OVER TO THE DARK SIDE?
As head of the U.S.-China Co-Dependency Council, Winnie Chang wielded considerable influence in the nation’s capital. Indeed, her position made her de facto China’s top nongovernmental representative in the United States.
The council’s mission statement was straightforward: “To promote commerce, mutual understanding, and harmonious relations between the People’s Republic of China and the United States.” (Translation: We’ve got you Americans by the short ones, but let’s pretend we’re friends.)
Winnie was not without critics. Anti-China hard-liners regarded her as just a high-level flunky and called her insulting names like “Beijing Betty.” But even they conceded, if grudgingly, that she cut an attractive figure. In photographs the man standing next to her was often the U.S. president, the commerce secretary, or a significant senator; no matter who, any male in the vicinity of Winnie Chang was almost always smiling or laughing and transparently thinking that it would be even nicer to have some private time with her.
She was a player in Washington society. The “Co-Dep”—as the council was called—spent heavily on local institutions: the Kennedy Center, the Washington National Opera, the Folger Theatre and Shakespeare Library, hospitals, museums, and the tonier diseases. Her residence in the “fashionable” (i.e., expensive) Kalorama neighborhood was the scene of lavish, A-list parties. Washington Life had put her on the cover, wearing a gorgeous, sleek red silk cheongsam dress, above the predictable but not-inaccurate headline CHINA DOLL.
They Eat Puppies, Don't They? Page 9