by John Case
The physicists exchanged glances. Finally, the one named Mark said, ‘I’d like to help you, but . . .’
‘We could get into trouble.’
‘It’s sensitive,’ Mark explained.
Frank turned the word over in his mouth, as if he was tasting it. ‘“Sensitive,”’ he repeated.
‘Yeah.’ The scientists looked at each other and nodded: that was definitely the word. ‘We’re not supposed to talk about it,’ Brian said.
‘We’re kind of “sworn to secrecy,”’ Mark added.
Frank nodded in an understanding way. ‘I guess that’s why the FBI was there. They handle a lot of the sensitive stuff. In fact, me and Neal go back a long way.’
‘Who’s Neal?’ Brian asked.
‘Gleason,’ Frank replied. ‘The guy in the sunglasses.’
Brian nodded, remembering. ‘He’s with the FBI, huh?’
‘Yeah,’ Frank said. ‘He didn’t tell you?’
Mark shook his head. ‘He didn’t actually introduce himself. I sort of got the impression they were with the embassy.’
Frank shook his head. ‘Uh-uh. Neal’s FBI all the way.’
The idea was to schmooze them, just keeping buying rounds until the subject got back to Kopervik – as it would have to, even if it took all night. So he dropped names shamelessly and gossiped amusingly. ‘At St. Albans they used to call him “Al God.”’
‘Who?’ Brian asked.
‘The vice president,’ Mark said. ‘He was talking about the vice president.’
‘Of the United States!?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But what’s St. Albans?’ Brian asked, as he drained his third pint of the evening.
‘A prep school,’ Frank said. ‘You want another beer?’
‘No, I –’
‘Waiter!’
Frank asked Mark how he ended up at NOAA, and listened attentively to a long and wandering answer which involved a girlfriend studying oceanography and an internship in Glacier Bay. They talked about global warming and the Ross ice shelf, which was apparently calving at an alarming rate. By nine o’clock he knew that Brian had a retarded brother, and by ten, that Mark had gotten the clap twice – once in college and once on a trip to India. ‘At least it wasn’t chancroid,’ Brian said, slurring the word.
Listening was an art, and Frank was a genius at it. People told him things because he was totally simpatico – whatever they had to say, he understood. He got the text, and the subtext.
‘So . . . Kopervik – what was that like?’
Mark chuckled. He could hold his liquor – unlike Brian.
‘I don’t mean any of the secret stuff,’ Frank said, ‘whatever that’s all about. I mean, Kopervik. What’s Kopervik like?’
Brian was feeling very little pain. ‘It was snowy,’ he said. ‘Lotta snow on the ground.’
‘Really!’ Frank said.
‘Thaaat’s right!’
‘Think of that,’ Frank remarked, then paused, and jumped back in. ‘So you got there, and it was snowy, and . . .’ He didn’t quite know how to go on. ‘And – well, what did you find?’
Brian peered at him over his glass. ‘You’re a very persistent person, aren’t you?’ he asked.
Frank nodded. ‘I am.’
‘Well,’ he said, pronouncing his words with exaggerated care, ‘persistence is an important characteristic, and it deserves to be rewarded.’
‘I’m glad you think so,’ Frank said.
‘So I’ll tell you what we found,’ Brian said, leaning into the table and waving off Mark’s attempted remonstrance. ‘We found –’
‘Brian!’ Mark said.
‘A big . . . white . . . horse.’
‘Jesus!’ Mark complained, getting to his feet.
‘A what?’ Frank asked, holding Brian’s eyes with his own.
‘A horse,’ Brian repeated.
‘We’ve got to go,’ Mark said, taking his friend by the arm. ‘We’ve got to get up at six.’
‘I don’t have to get up at six,’ Brian objected drunkenly.
Mark pulled him to his feet. ‘Yes, you do,’ he said. ‘We all do.’
‘What kind of horse?’ Frank asked.
Mark shook his head forcefully and threw a handful of dollar bills on the table. Then he began to drag Brian toward the exit.
‘A big one,’ Brian called out as the door swung behind him, ‘Big as a church!’ Then he laughed.
And then they were gone.
10
WASHINGTON, D.C.
MARCH 31, 1998
THE THING ABOUT Washington, Frank thought, is that it’s a kind of political theme park. There were monuments everywhere, mansions, plaques, statues, and parks. ‘History’ was all around you, so that it was impossible to go anywhere without bumping up against the past.
That’s where Reagan was shot, he thought for what must have been the hundredth time, right over there, just outside the Hilton (thinkathat). Or, That’s where the Argentine firecracker went for a swim with what’s-his-name, oh yeah, Wilbur Mills (thinkathat). Frank made a left onto Massachusetts Avenue, and soon afterward entered the rotary at Sheridan Circle. And right there, he thought, just ahead, that’s where Orlando Letelier was blown away by a car bomb. Right there. Right . . . under . . . my . . . wheels.
Meanwhile, even as this cognitive jetsam washed up against his eyes, he maneuvered his car through the city’s traffic, trawling for a parking space within walking distance of the Cosmos Club.
The car was a white Saab hatchback, a 1990 marketing mistake that he’d bought new, soon after he’d been hired by the Post. His girlfriend at the time – Monica Kingston – claimed that new cars made her amorous. It had to do, she’d said, with the ‘pheromones of money,’ an assertion that she then set out to illustrate, or prove, very nearly causing him to crash within minutes of the Saab’s leaving the dealership.
Now, Monica had moved on, and so had he. The car was old and in need of frequent repairs. He would have gotten rid of it, but it had a history. And besides, it went like hell.
There were no parking spaces. FedEx trucks and cars with diplomatic plates had taken everything, and then some. Also, he was about four blocks from the Cosmos Club, and for some reason, though he ran five miles at a clip, five days a week, he never walked anywhere. Not if he could help it. (And he usually could, though it tended, as now, to make him late to meetings.)
Then he saw it.
A Lincoln Town Car, somewhat smaller than an aircraft carrier, launched itself from a parking space next to a decapitated meter about two blocks from the club. With the reflexes of a diving goalkeeper, Frank executed one U-turn after another, setting off a cacophony of curses and horns. Pulling into the space, he yanked the keys from the ignition, jumped from the car, slammed the door, and jogged gracefully toward the old mansion in which the club was housed. It took him less than a minute to reach the broad and graceful staircase that led to the club’s mezzanine.
This was a large and pleasant anteroom in which guests were made to wait for their hosts, who were, of course, members of the club. Half a dozen couches were scattered about the room, as were an equal number of club chairs. Most of these were filled with men of a certain age, wearing a certain kind of suit. Almost all of them were reading the Times, though one or two could be seen whispering into cell phones. The walls, Frank noticed, were lined with photographs of old Washington and old Washingtonians – distinguished men and women whose common bond was membership in the club.
As a rule, he disapproved of clubs, but the Cosmos was different. (Or a little different.) It was dedicated to the arts and sciences, and included almost as many biologists and writers in its ranks as it did lawyers and foreign service officers.
This ought to have put Frank at his ease, but the truth was, he was nervous. His host, Fletcher Harrison Coe, himself an Arabist and former ambassador to Yemen, had high expectations for the series Frank was working on – a circumstance that seemed likely to end in
disappointment.
Because, of course, he’d struck out in Hammerfest.
After three days in Norway, he’d failed to buttonhole any of the crew from the Rex. Neither had he succeeded in getting aboard the ship. Nor had he been able to restart the one conversation that he’d actually had – the one with the NOAA physicists, both of whom had checked out of their hotel. With Kicklighter and Adair nowhere to be found, Frank had reconciled himself to doing his expenses while waiting for the plane to Tromso, Oslo, and the States.
And the expenses were ugly. Nineteen days on the road. Nearly $3,000 in airfare, a couple of grand on hotels, six hundred and change on meals and entertainment. Then there was laundry and local transportation, phone calls, and . . . the whole thing came to a bit more than $6,000.
He’d e-mailed the accounting to the foundation, hoping it would get lost in the ether. But it hadn’t, and now he was here, maybe ten minutes late, at Coe’s invitation.
‘There you are!’ Jennifer Hartwig glided through the room like a Valkyrie passing through a nursing home. One copy of the Times, and then another and another, were lowered around the room. ‘You’re late! Give us a kiss!’ Pecks on the cheek, and that dazzling smile, so radiant with the hint of inherited money.
‘Tell me something,’ Frank whispered as she looped her arm in his, were you the only blonde at Stanford, or were there others?’
She laughed and gave his arm a squeeze.
‘I mean, really,’ he said, ‘you’re perfect.’
She laughed again, and said, ‘Thank you, and you know what? You’re in trouble. He’s seen your expenses.’
‘Oh.’
It was Jennifer who ran the foundation’s day-to-day affairs. She saw to it that the fellows got their stipends and expense checks, wherever they happened to be, and that the newsletter came out on time – six times a year. She responded to requests for applications, coordinated among the judges of the annual competition, and served as hostess whenever the foundation’s ‘graduates’ were brought together at the foundation’s expense.
Suddenly, they were in the dining room, amid the genteel din, navigating past one table after another on their way to the one where Fletcher Harrison Coe was even now getting up to shake his hand.
‘Welcome home, Frank!’
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Frank said. ‘I couldn’t find a parking space –’
‘It’s the dips,’ Coe replied, collapsing into his chair. ‘They’re everywhere.’ He paused and, taking a pen from his shirt pocket, began to fill out their luncheon chit. ‘So! What are you having?’
Frank opened the menu and glanced at it. The strip steak was probably terrific. And the meat loaf chasseur. ‘I’ll have the vegetable medley,’ he said, smiling at Coe (whom he knew to be a vegetarian).
‘Excellent!’ Coe said, scribbling rapidly. ‘I didn’t know you were a vegetarian, Frank.’
‘Neither did I,’ Jennifer said a bit skeptically.
Frank shrugged. ‘Well, I’m just cutting back on red meat.’
‘That’s the way to start,’ Coe remarked. ‘No need to go cold turkey.’ He paused for effect, then laughed at his own joke, and signaling an elderly waiter, handed him the chit.
An interlude of civilized banter followed, during which Frank told funny stories – about the hair-raising flight from Murmansk, the Hotel Chernomorskaya, and the ‘ghosts’ who turned out to be guests stranded in the elevator. Coe reciprocated with tales of his own, recounting his days as an ambassador and, later, as a columnist for the Times (‘the one in London’).
The vegetable plates arrived, followed by a strip steak for Jennifer, which she attacked with the ferocity of a dingo. By then more than twenty minutes had passed since Frank had arrived at the club, and he was surprised to find that he was enjoying the company. He told a funny story about a snake that had gotten loose in the kitchen of a Shanghai restaurant, and Coe reciprocated with what sounded like a tall tale about a rotten egg he’d been served in Qatar.
His assistant chuckled, and Coe leaned back with a satisfied smile. ‘Soooo. . . .’ he said, looking at Frank, ‘when can we see this wonderful series of yours?’
Jennifer flashed a smile and batted her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she asked. ‘When?’
The silence was so pregnant that it seemed about to give birth to an hour. Folding his napkin with unusual care, Frank cleared his throat and leaned forward. Then he took a deep breath, fell back in his seat and said, ‘Well . . .’
Coe frowned, and Jennifer did a thing with her eyes, widening them in a way that was pure mischief.
‘Is it done?’ Coe asked. ‘The first part?’
Frank looked at him for a long moment. Finally, he said, ‘No.’
Coe rubbed his chin. ‘Oh . . . oh, dear.’
‘There were some problems,’ Frank elaborated, stating the obvious. ‘Mmm.’ The foundation chief looked away, suddenly distracted. After a moment he glanced at Jennifer, and then turned back to Frank. ‘Well, I suppose we could push it back a bit, but –’
‘I think maybe we ought to put it on hold,’ Frank said. Coe’s frown deepened. ‘The series, I mean.’
‘Hmmm,’ Coe said, and signaled for the waiter. ‘I think we’d like some coffee, Franklin. Decaf for me. Cappuccino for Ms. Hartwig. Frank?’
‘Regular’s fine.’
When the waiter had gone, Coe turned back to him. ‘Well, I have to say, this is . . . unsettling.’
Frank grimaced. ‘I know.’
‘We’d pretty much decided to use part one as our lead piece in the May issue. Now . . . well, I suppose we’ll have to look elsewhere.’
Frank grimaced in a way that was meant to be commiserating.
‘What else do we have, Jennifer?
She thought. ‘It’s a bit thin. There’s Marquardt’s piece on the Taliban. But I don’t think he has any pictures, and anyway, it’s not all that fresh. Then there’s Corona’s story about low-riders in East L.A. That’s a pretty good one, but –’
‘The thing that bothers me,’ Coe interrupted, ‘is that you spent so much time on the story. What was it? A month? Six weeks?’
‘Two months,’ Frank said. ‘It was about two months.’
‘Well, of course, these things happen, but – you spent a fortune on it, Frank.’
‘I know.’
‘Well?’
Over coffee, he explained about missing the boat from Murmansk to Kopervik, and then told them about Kicklighter and Adair’s sudden unavailability in Hammerfest. ‘So what I’ve got is a pretty good opener about the flu, but nothing about what they found.’
Coe took a last, delicate bite of a string bean, sipped his coffee, and shook his head. ‘Well, it seems to me that they owe you an explanation – at least. What do they say?’
‘They say they’re ‘away from their desks.’
‘I see . . .’
‘But they’re not gonna get away with it. I’ll doorstep Kicklighter until the Fourth of July if I have to.’
The older man nodded distractedly. ‘That’s all very well, of course, but . . . I’m not sure it’s the best way to use your time.’ Then he leaned forward, as if to share a confidence. ‘The problem is, I’m afraid I’ve been a bit of a fan. . . .’
Frank winced. He knew what was coming. ‘What kind of fan?’ he asked.
‘Well, actually, Frank – a fan of yours. And, I have to confess, I’ve been counting my chickens – our chickens – before they – well, before they’ve actually . . . hatched.’
Frank shot him a puzzled look.
‘The point is: I’m afraid I tootled on about the series with one or two managing editors . . . who are quite interested –’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Frank groaned. ‘Who?’
‘The Atlantic,’ Coe replied, ‘the Times. The Post, of course – but then, the Post is easy.’
Frank sighed.
‘I even had lunch with that idiot at Vanity Fair, but – well, I’m afraid there’s going to be a certain amount of
. . . disappointment.’ He pronounced the word as if it were a synonym for malignant.
This was about as close as Coe ever came to dressing someone down. Everything was an allusion, with the important bits buried in the subtext or hidden between the lines. Occasionally, his meaning was subtle, and difficult to suss out. In this instance, however, the exegesis was simple: Frank had committed the unforgivable sin of making Coe look foolish. He, Frank, was one of those chickens that hadn’t hatched. Or, to put it differently, he was a dud. And not just any dud, but a Very Important Dud – a VID. The Johnson Foundation sifted through thousands of applications each year, selecting half a dozen fellows for journalism’s fast track. By all accounts, Frank had been motoring along quite nicely, and then, on his way to Murmansk, he’d spun out.
‘Look – we can still do it,’ he said, surprising himself.
Coe looked skeptical.
‘The first part’s fine, really. I can finish it in a day or two.’
‘And how will you do that?’
‘It’s mostly done. I worked on it in China, and then in Europe. It’s a solid introductory piece that gets you right into the subject.’
‘What’s the lead?’ Coe asked,
‘Antigenic shift. It’s way overdue, and when it hits, it’s going to hit hard. Once that’s established, I get into the background about the wild ducks, viruses in general, and the 1918 bug in particular. I get into the way vaccines are made, and that brings us back to the antigenic shift – and the search for the Spanish flu. Which is where Kicklighter and Adair come in and, well – we leave ’em hanging. Waiting for part two.’
Jennifer surprised him by chiming in. ‘The thing I don’t understand is: if the Spanish flu did come back, wouldn’t it be kind of anticlimactic? I mean, it’s not as if it would kill so many people this time. Medical care is so much better. Am I right? I mean, people used to die of scarlet fever . . .’