by Terry Irving
He looked over and smiled. "Motorcycles help."
"They do?"
"Yeah. You go fast enough, and it fills your mind. Makes it so you can’t think of anything else. Can’t remember, can’t hear the sounds…"
"Can’t grieve for your friends." There was the slightest glint in her eyes, but there were no tears of sympathy. He was grateful for that.
"It all gets blown away in the wind and the speed and seeing how close you can come to the edge without going over."
"OK, if you’re going to put it so poetically, I’d like to try it sometime."
"You’re on."
As they walked past the reflecting pond at the base of Capitol Hill, the morning sun hit the ornate greenhouse that was the National Botanic Garden and exploded in gold shards off the glass panes.
Rick felt warmer, as if the light were the flame of a campfire.
"So, I’ve got this film. Any of you guys know where I can get it developed?"
Rick was drinking coffee with Corey, Scotty, and Steve and spinning the silver can on the dining room table. He had retrieved it from under the back porch on the way in from his morning walk.
Steve smiled. "What do you think guys like us did before we got our hands on computers? I built a darkroom when I was eight."
Scotty topped him. "I was seven."
Steve looked at his friend. "Well, I spent time working on ham radio first, OK?" He turned back to Rick. "Anyway, we can build a darkroom and a developing tank in the basement. It’ll be easy to find the chemicals we need and read up on the timing. Apparently, most porno films have to be developed… um… privately, so the instructions have to be out there somewhere."
"You sure you’re good with doing this?" Rick paused. "People seem to be taking an intense interest in this stuff, and I don’t think it’s because I got my hands on a particularly good sex flick."
"And you think these mysteriously ‘intense’ people are going to worry about a bunch of four-eyed wimps like us?" Scotty snorted. "I seriously doubt it."
Corey got up and rinsed out his coffee cup. "Well, you’ve convinced me. I’ll be away for the evening. As far away as possible." He put on his suit jacket, adjusted his cuffs, and picked up his briefcase. "Don’t wait up."
He headed briskly for the front door.
Steve scratched under his beard. "Well, I think it’s an interesting problem." He looked at Scotty, who nodded agreement.
"OK, let’s go for it. Let’s get the research done and the chemicals ready by seven tonight, and we’ll get started. I think we can do at least as well as your average hairy-palmed porn freak." Steve stood up with a dramatic sigh. "And now I have to go and be abused by GE’s finest managers for my bad attitude. It’s time for my annual review, and I suspect they don’t like my work clothes." He looked down at his T-shirt, ragged shorts, and sandals, then looked up with a big grin. "I got to tell you, I’m tempted to go in naked just to see what would happen."
That afternoon, Rick had one of those days that happened from time to time when it seemed as if the Assignment Desk had simply forgotten him. He was sent to the White House to pick up some press handouts, but when he got there, it turned out that one of the reporters had already taken them back to the bureau. He called in and was told just to stay put and wait – there would be a stand-up to take back later.
He was sitting on a leather couch in the back of the briefing room, reduced to reading a year-old copy of The Atlantic, when Jamie Mayweather slumped into the seat next to him and growled, "What the hell are you doing?"
"Reading about the war."
"Screw reading about it. I was there. Ask me about it."
Rick didn’t bother to mention that he’d been there as well. "Why’d the peace talks fold up?"
"You mean after they’d finally settled on a shape for the table? They probably went to hell for the same reason as they did in 1968. Thieu pulled the plug." Mayweather leaned back and stretched his shoulders. "About a week before the elections, it looked like maybe Johnson would get a deal and Hubert Humphrey – the Happy Warrior – would coast into the Oval Office. But the South Vietnamese suddenly got a bug up their butts." He snapped his fingers. "Presto chango. No more peace talks and Tricky Dick’s moving truck is pulling up outside the front doors of the White House."
"You think Nixon had anything to do with that?"
"I think lots of things. I only talk about things I can prove." After a second, Mayweather continued. "But it was damn convenient. On the other hand, you’d think that President Thieu would have a good reason to like Democrats. After all, it was Democrats who pulled the rug out from under his predecessor and gave him the keys to the palace."
Rick nodded. "Yeah, I’d heard that, but it was never proved."
"None of this shit is ever proved. Watergate isn’t proved. The fact that there are stacks of hundred-dollar bills sitting around in peoples’ safes isn’t proved. Hell, Oswald being a team player isn’t proved." Mayweather jumped to his feet and headed back to the booth. "Time for me to prove that I can pull a rabbit out of my ass for the 6 o’clock."
Like most of Rick’s conversations with Mayweather, it ended without a goodbye.
The sounds of hammering and boisterous conversation were echoing up from the basement when Rick got home. At the foot of the stairs, a set of thick black curtains tacked to the exposed ceiling joists blocked his way. He found the place where two curtains overlapped and pushed his way into the basement. The three computer techs were standing around a large folding table placed securely against the back wall and covered with bottles of chemicals, beakers, measuring spoons, books, and dozens of pieces of plywood in different shapes and sizes. More black curtains hung over the three small windows high on the walls.
"How’s it going?" Rick asked Eps.
Eps looked up. "Great! We’ve almost got the tank processor built, and most of the chemicals are mixed. We’re just checking to see how much sodium sulfite we need in the second developing bath."
"Sul-fide. Sodium sulfide," Scotty said firmly.
"Right, whatever. Anyway, we should be ready to go in just a few minutes."
Rick wandered over but understood neither the chemicals they were discussing nor what they were going to do with them. For a while, he examined what looked like an intricate puzzle box made out of a metal can, rubber tubing, and a lot of carefully cut plywood squares boasting an assortment of notches, slots, and smooth curves.
Apparently, Steve had built all of this. He was now consulting a ring binder filled with diagrams. As Rick watched, Steve put on a pair of thick plastic lab goggles and began to carve notches in a new piece of plywood with a small electric jigsaw. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space.
One of the things he learned in the army was to let experts do what they knew how to do, and his housemates were pretty damn good. He went over to one of the battered reclining chairs that made up the bulk of the basement furniture, and settled in to watch. The chairs didn’t actually recline, but you could only expect so much from furniture you found sitting outside on trash day.
In a much shorter time than he might have predicted, the three had mixed the chemicals and constructed what turned out to be the processing tank. It was a metal can with the top cut off, replaced by an intricate wooden lightproof cover with a hole in the center. At the bottom, a rubber hose ran out of another, smaller hole sealed with caulk, up the side, and was firmly clipped to the top.
Eps showed how the black curtains would block all light from the windows and the stairs, and held up a second set of curtains that would go up as a backup before the process began. There was even a layer of black cloth tacked across the ceiling to prevent any light leaks coming through the floorboards.
Scotty then proceeded to explain in detail how the film would be wound emulsion-side up around the wooden spool. When the one layer of the film covered the spool, two plywood spacers would go in to keep the second layer of film from touching the first layer, and the winding would r
esume. When all the film had been wound on the square spool, it would go into the metal tank and the top would be sealed and lightproofed.
"And so up until that point, you’re doing all of this in complete darkness?" Rick asked. "How are you going to do that without being able to see?"
"Braille," said Steve. "No, we all learned how to do this kind of stuff a long time ago. Didn’t you?"
Rick just shook his head.
The others laughed. "Anyway, once the film is safely in the tank, we can turn on the lights." Steve pointed to the recliner. "Your place is right where you are so you don’t get in the way."
Rick obediently did as he was told and spent a pleasant hour or so sitting in the dark listening to smart guys work as a team – a lot like the atmosphere he liked so much in the newsroom. Eventually, the winding was finished and, after turning on a dim red light, they poured in developer, checked temperatures and stopwatches, emptied the tank by unclipping the hose and letting it run into the laundry sink, and started all over with fixative and then a water rinse.
It took several hours, but eventually the film was fully developed, or at least they hoped it was developed, since they hadn’t opened the tank yet. Finally, it was left to dry overnight.
Rick began to apologize for putting them to so much trouble.
"Trouble?" Eps laughed. "This is easy. From what I read, the pervs who make feelthy peechures used to do all this inside a garden hose, sliding the film in and then pouring the chemicals through. Now that sounds tricky."
"Only if the hose had ‘kinks’ in it," deadpanned Scotty.
The three techs laughed and headed off upstairs, while Rick did a final circuit of the neighborhood. Nothing sparked his sense of danger, but he was still tense and wary. He decided to ease his fears with an extra half hour of weights.
It must have worked because he actually slept solidly for four and half hours. He paid for it when he awoke – the echoes of his screams were still bouncing off the bedroom walls.
CHAPTER 17
Friday, December 22, 1972
It had been a beautiful dawn. He had sat on the Capitol steps and watched the city slowly emerge as the morning mist withdrew to the Potomac. Then a golden wave hit the top of the Washington Monument and slid down to light up the white marble buildings that lined the Mall.
He headed back home, but by the time he had crossed Independence Avenue, the sun was gone and the sky was once again the unbroken gray of a Washington winter. Nothing appeared to be out of place at the house, but he did a recon around the block anyway.
When he came in the back door, Corey was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. "Tom Swift and his Bionic Buddies are downstairs," he said dryly. Rick poured himself a cup and headed for the basement.
They’d obviously been hard at work. They had extracted all the film from the makeshift tank and tacked it carefully to the joists with thumbtacks through the sprocket holes. It hung in long loops back and forth across the basement. Steve and Scotty were using a Tensor lamp to backlight a section, while Eps was putting away the chemicals and equipment.
"What does it look like?" Rick asked.
"Well, first off, it doesn’t look like movie film." Steve shook his head. "I don’t get it. You didn’t bring us some sort of half size photo film, did you?"
"Don’t think so. Let me look."
Where Rick expected to see the repetitive pictures of someone’s head or the outside of a building that were typical in developed film, the images looked more like the microfilm you’d see in a library. Most of the reel appeared to be shots of an open book – a ledger, possibly. The images only changed toward the end, where there were tight shots of what looked like currency.
"Wait a second," Steve said and snapped his fingers. "Does the Bolex shoot ‘single frame’?"
"Sure," Scotty answered, "that’s how we did clay-figure animations back in high school."
"That’s what it is; they shot single frames of something. Who’s got a magnifying glass?"
Rick was completely unsurprised when both Eps and Scotty indicated they had one upstairs. When they returned, Corey followed, curiosity winning out over his usual cool and uninterested demeanor.
After a few minutes of intense scrutiny, they confirmed that the majority of the images were indeed shots of a ledger with what Corey said looked like serial numbers in the left column and totals and subtotals on the right.
"Well, now we just need to print these out," Steve said. "I can do that over at a buddy’s darkroom this afternoon."
"Don’t you have to work?" Rick asked.
"Nah, I’ve got their computers working so well that half the time, I have to insert errors just to keep the bosses from thinking they don’t need me around. I can’t have that. Maintaining an image of infallibility is half the battle in this business."
Rick spent most of the Friday in safe places – the White House, the Senate, places like that. He called in favors and traded runs to avoid any assignments that would leave him exposed. He stuck to big streets like K Street and Wisconsin Avenue and was on constant alert.
Since he was prepared, nothing happened.
He checked the papers and even glanced at the local newswires, but there was no mention of a death on the tracks or a disturbance at Union Station. A tall young man with curly hair had replaced Shelley over at the affiliate service.
Finally, he called the Assignment Desk to say he was checking out for the day. Casey Ross said that was fine in a bored voice, and then, "Hey, someone tried to reach you yesterday."
"Who?"
"Do I look like your secretary? I don’t know. Probably your ex-wife."
"Or a bill collector. Did you tell them anything?"
"I don’t know anything. Nobody knows anything about you."
"That’s great. Thanks."
"Don’t mention it. Good night."
Rick hung up the phone, thinking how glad he was that he hadn’t given the desk his home address. He put on his cold-weather gear and headed out. He stood in the shadows of the curtains in the picture window watching Connecticut Avenue for a long time. The only person of interest was DC’s only bicycle courier, a gray-haired black man with one leg shorter than the other who slowly but steadily pedaled a battered bike loaded with rolls of blueprints around town.
Eventually, he went back and got the BMW. He came down the narrow sidewalk to the street and drove slowly over the tarred boards of the Metro construction – watching for anyone pulling in behind him – and then sped up and went into a series of high-speed turns and alley cut-throughs. Finally satisfied he wasn’t being followed, he headed home.
Rick did a slow cruise around the neighborhood before he pulled up behind the group house, where the lights were shining brightly in the dining room. Once again, he slid the bike into the crack between the garages and then stood, watching the street. His silent inspection revealed no lurking menaces, no knife-wielding assassins. He was anything but disappointed.
Inside, all his housemates were sitting around the dining room table, staring at stacks of eight-by-ten photograph prints. Pizza boxes on the counter showed that dinner was already over. Rick found a couple of pieces that hadn’t already had the cheese and pepperoni pulled off and sat down to eat.
"We cleaned up downstairs and rewound the film," Steve said as he handed him the can. "Then we figured it was time to bring in an expert."
Eps interjected, "And since we couldn’t find an expert, we asked Mr Gravelin to take a look."
Corey only snorted at the joke, his attention fixed on two of the photos. "As far as I can tell, it’s a record of deposits," he said. "But I don’t understand why it’s set up this way."
"What way?" Rick mumbled around his pizza.
"Careful, don’t smear sauce all over the table," Steve ordered. "I didn’t spend all day balancing sixteen-millimeter negatives in a thirty-five-millimeter holder just to end up with the photos stained with red sauce."
Corey was slowly moving a f
inger down one of the photos. "Well, it looks like a record of cash donations. These are probably serial numbers of the bills over here, but no names of fund-raisers or state committees or corporations. You can’t tell where the money came from or where it went. There’s a column here that must be some sort of code. It has ‘BBR’ or ‘MEX’ on some rows, but mostly it just says ‘1701’."
"‘1701’?" Rick finished his slice and wiped his hands. "Mayweather told me that the Committee for the Re-Election of the President is known as ‘1701’.1701’. 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue."
Corey looked up sharply and seemed about to say something, but Eps spoke up first. He’d been examining the photos from the end of the roll. "These are hundred-dollar bills, but the serial numbers aren’t in sequence, so they can’t be traced."
"Sure they can," Corey responded. "That’s how they got the Watergate burglars. The Federal Reserve and the banks now track large transfers of hundred-dollar bills by the individual serial numbers."
"See, that’s exactly the kind of dumb things bureaucracies begin to do as soon as you give them a computer." Steve shook his head in mock sadness. "No one would record all the serial numbers of all the hundred-dollar bills washing around in the system if you had to do it by hand, but it’s tailor-made for a mainframe."
Scotty nodded. "Stupid, simple, repetitive actions done real, real fast."
Rick shook his head. "Great, but that doesn’t help us. We’re not the FBI, and I don’t see a warrant around here."
Corey clearly made a decision. "That’s it; I’m out of here. If you want my opinion, this is almost certainly a record of cash contributions to the Committee, and if it is, it’s radioactive." He almost threw the photos he was holding down on the table, then brushed his hands as if he could remove the information he’d seen. "The FBI and CIA are stonewalling the committees so hard that they’ve got to have dirty hands, and the White House is playing full-court hardball."
"Mixing a few metaphors?" Eps interjected.