by Chris Pavone
“But meanwhile I’ll be in jail.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely a risk.” The look on his face asks, what do you want me to tell you? Will doesn’t have any idea what sort of remedy he would have expected.
“You’ll take care of changing the picture?”
“Of course. The book can be ready for you tomorrow. You brought the cash?”
Will looks around the dumpy room populated by an untrustworthy crowd. “No, I’ll bring it tomorrow.”
“Okay, that’s cool.”
Will feels the need to assert himself here, indicate that he isn’t anyone’s sucker. He’s putting himself in a bad position, needing to trust a stranger, and not just any stranger but a criminal stranger, at a significant level of trust.
“And,” Will says, trying his best to look tough, “we’ll meet somewhere else.”
“No problem.” The man is surprisingly easygoing. Too easygoing? “Also, for an extra thousand, you want the guy’s driver’s license?”
—
On Monday Will managed to avoid everyone, spending most of the day hiding in the archives, grunting monosyllables at Stonely Rodriguez, lunching on a pint of soup at the little table, crumbled-up saltines, a fine dusting of crumbs that he swept away with his hand. After work he paid for his fake passport with his CIA-informant cash, then sat home, sulking about this new life of his.
Tuesday, he can’t hide. He has a status meeting with Gabriella, an art meeting with Jean, a sidebar to revise, on tight deadline.
Then Malcolm stops by. “You okay, Rhodes? You look like shit.”
A weekend has come and gone, the workweek has restarted, and Chloe still hasn’t responded to any of Will’s calls, or texts, or emails. She hasn’t gone back to work, and it doesn’t seem like she’s coming home anytime soon.
Will doesn’t particularly want to discuss this with Malcolm, or with anyone. It’s humiliating, it’s uncomfortable. And telling the truth will require inventing yet more lies, a whole new layer of deception, lying about the lying.
But Chloe’s absence isn’t a secret he can keep forever. The longer he waits to tell Malcolm, the more insulted Malcolm is going to end up being that Will didn’t say something sooner. They’re close friends. It might as well be now.
“I think Chloe left me.”
“What?” Malcolm walks into the office, sits down.
“We’ve been bickering, more and more, about everything.” This sounds credible. Universal, even. “And she just decided to leave. To go stay with her mother.”
“When?”
“Late last week.”
“Have you spoken to her?”
“She’s not answering my calls.”
“Holy shit, that’s awful. Did something happen? A big blowup?”
“No. I think it was a combination of all the little fights. Or honestly I don’t know what the fuck it was, Mal. What it is. I really don’t know.”
“Do you think there’s someone else?”
Will is not surprised that this is Malcolm’s theory. For Malcolm, everything is about sex.
“It’s possible, I guess. But then I don’t know why she’d go to Maine.” It’s not until he says this aloud that he considers the possibility that she hasn’t gone to Maine. Could Chloe’s departure have been instigated by something other than Will’s behavior? Now he has a whole new set of worries to keep him up at night.
In the late afternoon, he does manage to get Chloe’s mom on the phone. “Come on, Connie,” he says. “I know she’s there.”
“Oh, Will, I’m sorry but she’s just not going to speak to you. She won’t tell me why. What did you do?”
He doesn’t have a good answer for her, not something he can explain in a sentence or two. So he doesn’t.
“Please tell her I love her.”
—
Malcolm dials the number from memory, but the call goes immediately to voice mail.
“Hi,” he says. “Listen, I hear you left your husband. I can’t help but think this has something to do with our, um, arrangement.”
Malcolm doesn’t know who’s going to pick up this voice mail, listen to this call. He has to be careful, but he also has to be credible. He doesn’t want to sound like someone who’s trying to keep the secret he’s trying to keep. He’d rather sound like someone who’s trying to keep a completely different sort of secret.
“But I really need to talk to you.” He leaves his number, as if she doesn’t know it. Then he hangs up, stares at the phone, tries to puzzle through what could be going on. Things are out of control.
—
Will decides to walk home. It’ll be about six miles, two hours. It’s perfect weather, warm but dry and cloudless, a nice breeze.
Maybe he’ll walk but not go home. Maybe instead he’ll stroll into some singles bar, hit on nose-ringed young women, hey, wanna-get-outta-here? Become the cheating son of a bitch his wife already thinks he is. Elle will have become his gateway drug to a debauched life.
Will marches down the busy avenues, lost in his head, past Bryant Park and Herald Square, Madison Square and the Flatiron Building, through Union Square and Washington Square Park, people everywhere. His feet begin to hurt in SoHo, but he keeps going through Chinatown, into the Civic Center, past all the classical architecture, the columns and porticoes and broad-minded expanses of limestone.
He turns onto the Brooklyn Bridge, walks up into the sky. The sun is beginning to set, the spectacular view glowing in the gloaming, the harbor and lower Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn, the Manhattan Bridge and the Midtown skyscrapers.
Near the far side of the river, he stops dead in his tracks.
“What do you want?” he asks.
Elle is standing in the middle of the wide-planked wooden walkway. Bicycles are flying by one side of her, pedestrians marching up the other. In front of her is the borough where Will works; behind her is where he lives. Elle is in the way.
“I’ve been calling you.”
“You sure have.” Four times in the past three days, one summons after another, meetings to which Will did not show, again and again. He resumes walking, fast, and she races to catch up. “What do you want?” he asks.
“I want you to answer your goddamned phone.”
“My phone?” He digs it out of his pocket, holds it up. “This phone?”
Elle doesn’t answer.
Will nods, then tosses the phone down onto the roadway, where it bounces twice before getting flattened by a beat-up van. He keeps walking, even faster on the downhill slope.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Well, that’s a good question,” he says. “What am I doing? I’ve been working for you for five months—”
“You’re not working for me, like a personal assistant.”
“Oh, whatever. I’ve been reporting every step I take, for a half-year. Lying to everyone around me. Doing a shitty job of my job, a shittier job of being a husband. And you know what? She left me.”
“Chloe? When?”
“So if you want to track her down, and show her our little X-rated video, be my guest. You’ve already ruined my life. Well done. I hope you’re proud.”
Underfoot, the soft pliable wooden planks give way to sturdy unforgiving concrete.
“I’m finished,” he says. “I quit.”
“Quit?” She laughs. “This isn’t Denny’s. What makes you think you can quit?”
Will didn’t intend to do this; this isn’t what he planned for this evening, or planned at all. It’s just happening, as if beyond his control.
“Will, come on. Stop.”
He feels a hand wrap around his arm from behind.
“Go to hell,” he says, and wrests his arm away. The end of the bridge comes on suddenly. He descends the dark stairs that lead to the street.
“Stop.”
“Or what?” He spins around. Here under the bridge’s ramp, it’s nighttime, streetlights on, headlights. “What are you going to do? Sh
oot me?” He holds his hands open high and wide, go ahead.
“No, Will. I’m going to tell you the truth.”
“Okay. Start talking.”
“Not here.” They’re standing on a dark sidewalk, under the pulsating thrum of the traffic on the bridge overhead; down here the sounds of the traffic are loud and echoing, bouncing off the stone and concrete.
“Why not?”
“You’re not an idiot, Will. Don’t act like one. We can’t talk in public.”
“Why not? National security?” He snorts. “I don’t even believe you’re in the CIA.”
She glares at him.
“Why haven’t I met your boss?”
“Because he has other things to do. He’s not at your beck and call. Come on.” She holds out her hand, like a mother beckoning her toddler to climb out of the sandbox. “Let’s go.”
“Oh fuck you,” he says, and starts to turn away.
Then two things happen more or less simultaneously: a car screeches to a halt at the curb, with one of its rear doors flying open; and someone grabs him from behind, firmly.
Will tries to turn around, but whoever’s holding him is big, and strong. Will can’t spin, can’t punch, can barely move his arms. Instead, he raises one knee high, then brings down his heel with all his strength, stomping his abductor’s foot. The man’s grasp eases—not a full release, but enough for Will to wriggle his arm semi-free, to thrust back his elbow, which sinks into the man’s gut with a loud “Oof.”
Now Will can spin around. Rears his right arm back, ready—eager—to hit this person—Roger, of course it’s Roger—as hard as he can, again.
But that’s when the woman who calls herself Elle Hardwick punches Will in the face, laying him out for the second time in their brief, tumultuous relationship.
NEW YORK CITY
Will’s hood is yanked off.
He looks around, squinting in the brightness of overhead fluorescents. He’s seated at a conference table, with a complicated-looking phone in the middle. A credenza is stacked with office supplies, a few reams of paper, a box of binder clips.
There are no windows. A dormant LED screen dominates one wall; on another is a framed photograph of the president of the United States; a third wall contains the door, flanked by frosted glass panels. Hanging on the fourth wall is a three-foot-diameter laminated-cardboard circle, blue ringed in gold, an eagle in profile, a white shield with a red starburst, the words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA across the bottom arc. Along the top, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.
Roger is at the far end of the table, holding the felt hood, which had been pulled over Will’s head in the back of the car for a fifteen-minute ride, which felt and sounded like a journey back over the bridge, then onto Manhattan streets, potholes and short stops, a sharp turn then a steep slope, probably the ramp to an underground garage.
At the beginning of the ride, Elle had made a quick phone call. “Sorry to bother you,” she said, “but we’re on our way in.” She then listened for the space of a couple of sentences. “Again, I’m sorry, but it has to be tonight.”
Will was pulled from the car, led to an elevator, a whoosh, a ding. Guided by the elbow to walk thirty paces, with a trio of ninety-degree turns, before being deposited into this chair, and his vision returned, a gift.
Now someone knocks on the door. Roger rises, leans his large frame through the door’s, collects something.
“Here.” Roger gives Will a makeshift icepack, paper towels cinched with a rubber band. Will brings this up to his face, to his nose, which he now realizes is bleeding; his lip seems to be split; and it feels like a tooth might be loose. It’s almost funny: these people keep punching him in the face, then giving him ice.
Ten minutes later, the door opens. Elle walks in, followed by an unfamiliar man who’s wearing a suit but no tie.
“Will Rhodes,” the man says, “I understand that you have, uh, adamantly requested to meet C/O Hardwick’s supervisor. Correct?”
Will glances at Elle, who’s taking a seat at the far end of the table. She doesn’t speak, but she does make a face that says, Well, go ahead, you asked for this.
“That’s right.”
“My name is Mike Russell.” Holding out his hand. “Pleasure to meet you.”
Will shakes the guy’s hand without getting out of his seat. “Are you going to tell me your job title?” Will puts down the ice pack. “Give me your business card?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“And if I call the CIA tomorrow, and ask to speak to Mike Russell? Are they going to put me through to your line?”
“That’s not the way it works, Mr. Rhodes.”
This Mike character is wearing an ill-fitting suit, taupe, low-cut single-lapel, two-button. It’s a starkly unfashionable suit, a poorly paid bureaucrat’s suit, ninety-nine dollars at one of those discount emporiums that surround the bureaucracies’ offices. It’s a caricature of a bad suit.
“You want something to drink, Mr. Rhodes? Some water?” Mike indicates his own plastic bottle, a sweating little price sticker at the neck, $1.29, a corner-deli bottle.
Will shakes his head.
Mike sits down, halfway between Will and Elle, who says, “I’m afraid I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
Will snorts, no shit.
“I’ve given you the impression that you were recruited to provide info about the people you meet during your travels abroad. People who might turn out to be valuable intelligence targets. Well, that’s part of the story. A small part. Actually, it’s an insignificant part of what we really want from you, Will.”
Will glances again at Mike. It’s unclear whether the guy’s shirt was at one point white or whether it’s supposed to be this color, a sort of washed-out yellowish gray. It’s a hideous shirt, under a cheap suit. The type of outfit that a Hollywood wardrobe department would create for a central-casting character one-word-described as loser.
And from this angle, it seems that Mike is sporting a once-pierced earlobe, which doesn’t really go with the rest of the persona. But everybody had his youth.
“The real target of our operation—your operation, Will—is much closer to home, and much more finite: it’s Travelers.”
Will can feel his eyebrows climb his forehead.
“We recruited you because you were new to the magazine. So we knew you hadn’t yet been admitted to the inner circle. You didn’t really know what was going on, and you weren’t yet fully invested in feeding the beast.”
“Huh?”
“Organizations are like organisms, Will. They have deeply ingrained survival instincts. Which isn’t surprising, is it? After all, organizations are made up of people, and people are motivated by self-interest. We’re all self-preservationists. First and foremost, what people want is what’s best for themselves. We want to survive, we want to flourish. We get jobs, then we develop loyalty to our employers, and our loyalty helps our employers achieve success, which in turn helps us people survive. It’s a symbiotic relationship.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I work for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Will. I’m loyal to the Agency, not just because the CIA does important work, for an important cause, but because it provides my livelihood. I want the Agency to succeed, because that’s how I survive.”
The ice begins to burn.
“I’m sure Malcolm Somers feels the same way about Travelers. He’s been working there a long time. Gabriella Rivera too. I have no doubt both of them are loyal to Travelers, because their loyalty helps the magazine stay in business, which helps them survive. You follow?”
“This isn’t exactly quantum theory.”
“Sometimes, our divergent goals of self-preservation put us into conflict with one another. You can assign value judgments to these conflicts, or not. But moral or ethical opinions don’t change the essence of the situation, which is conflict. Simple. Universal.”
“Are you going to get to the point anytime s
oon?”
“You got somewhere you need to be, Will? Date night with the wife?”
“Fuck you very much.”
Will thinks he catches Mike suppress a smile.
“You’re very welcome,” Elle says. “So the CIA and Travelers are in conflict with each other, Will. Because one of these organizations is a governmental agency that collects and analyzes intelligence that’s essential to the national security of the United States of America. And the other is sort of the opposite.”
—
The secret office has no windows, no natural light, no time of day, no year. It’s buffered from the world by the more public office, the big airy light-filled room lined with shelves packed with books, and walls decorated with blowups of magazine covers, and the Wall itself, a forty-square-foot schematic of the future.
But not in here. This little room is the past, just as it has always been, since the inception of Travelers three-quarters of a century ago. A place to communicate with one other place, a space invented for one man to talk to one other man.
“My problems,” Malcolm says, “seem to be multiplying.”
“Tell me what you need to solve them.”
“I need to bring Rhodes inside.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“It’s necessary.”
“What if he balks? Decides to talk?”
Malcolm would like to say something along the lines of “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” but that’s not the way this world works. “We’ll detain him. Until he changes his mind.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“I know what we need to do.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“All right. When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Not tonight?”
Tonight there’s a piano recital that Malcolm has to attend, a command performance to make up for one he had to miss, months ago. Sylvie has begun using the pedals as well as both hands. He can’t reschedule.
“Tomorrow,” Malcolm says, “will be better.”
There’s a complex lie he could tell to justify this statement, but better not to, unless he’s asked. He’s not.