"But the eagle .. .
it's so atypical, and also unsigned. Would you want a certificate of authenticity? It might seem pointless now, but when your daughter goes to school, it could mean the difference between buying one year at Radcliffe or four years."
"No, ma'am," he said, walking to the painting.
"I just want it for what it is."
He stood before it, and felt its pain, its distraught, logy mind, its survivor's despair.
"I wonder how he got so much into it," she said.
He unscrewed the painting from the easel, where it had been clamped since May of 1971. It was unframed, but the canvas was tacked stoutly to a wood backing.
"I hope you'll let me pay for the framing," said the old woman.
"That at least I can do."
"I'll send you the bill," he said.
He wrapped the painting carefully in some rags, making certain not to disturb the elegant depth of the crusted pigment, and put the whole package delicately under an arm.
"All set," he said.
"Sergeant Swagger, again, I can't thank you enough.
You've made my dotage appreciably better, to no real gain of your own."
"Oh, I gained, Mrs. Carter. I gained."
The team watched him from far off, through night-vision binoculars. It had been a long stakeout until he showed, longer still since he was in there. Where had he been all afternoon? Still, it didn't matter. Now it was going to happen.
Swagger turned his truck around, pulled out, drove down the lane, and by the time he got back to Falls Road, the number-one van had moved into position, not behind his turn, as amateurs will do, but before it, letting him overtake them, and falling into position from behind that way, without attracting notice.
Swagger pulled around the van, scooted ahead and settled into an unhurried pace.
"Blue One, this is Blue Two," said the observer into his microphone.
"Ah, we have him picked up very nicely, no problems. I have Blue Three behind me, you want to run this by management?"
"Blue Two, management just got here."
"You stay on him. Blue Two, but don't rush it," came the impatient voice any of them knew as Bonson's.
"Play in the other van if you think you're in danger of being burned. Don't be too aggressive. Give me an update--""Whoa, isn't this interesting, Blue One. He didn't do the beltway. He just stayed on Falls Road on the way into Baltimore."
"Doesn't that become Eighty-three?" asked Bonson.
"Yes, sir, it does. Goes straight downtown."
"But his motel is out at BW."
"That's the credit card data. He had something with him, some kind of package. Maybe he's going to do something with it."
"Got you, Blue Two, you just stay on him."
They watched as Bob drove unconsciously into downtown Baltimore on the limited access highway that plunges into that city's heart. He passed Television Hill with its giant antennae, and the train station, then the Sun, and finally the road drifted off its abutments to street level and became a lesser boulevard called President Street just east of downtown.
"He's turning left," said Blue Two.
"It's, uh, Fleet Street."
"The map says he's headed towards Fells Point."
"What the hell is he doing there? Is he starring in a John Waters movie?"
"Cut the joking on the net," said Bonson.
"You stay with him. I'm coming in, be in town very shortly."
The men knew Bonson and his radio team were in a hangar at B-W Airport, less than twenty minutes south of town this time of night, assuming there was no backup at the tunnel.
Bob turned up Fleet, and the traffic grew a bit thicker.
He did not look around. He did not notice either the white or the black vans that had been on him since the country.
He passed through Fells Point, jammed with cars, kids, scum and bars, presumably the shady night town of the city, and kept on driving. Another mile or two and he turned on the diagonal down a beat-up street called Boston.
"Blue One, this is Blue Two. The traffic is thinning out. He's headed out Boston toward the docks. I'm going to stay on Reet, run a parallel, and let Blue Three close on him, just to be safe."
"Read you, Two," said the observer in the second van.
There was no way Swagger could tell, now that the van which had been closest to him sped away down another road and the unseen secondary vehicle closed the gap, that he was under surveillance. More important, he exhibited nothing in his driving that demonstrated the signature of a surveil lee who'd burned his trackers: he didn't dart in and out of traffic, he didn't signal right, then turn left, he didn't turn without signaling. He just drove blandly ahead, intent on his destination.
But once he passed two large apartment buildings on the right, at the harbor's edge, he began to slow down, as if he were looking for something.
It was a kind of post-industrial zone, with ruined, deserted factories everywhere, oil-holding facilities for offloading by tankers, huge, weedy fields that served no apparent purpose at all but were nevertheless Cyclonefenced.
There was little traffic and almost no pedestrian activity, it was a blasted zone, where humans may have worked during the day, but deserted almost totally at night.
The number-two van was a good three hundred feet behind him when he turned right, down another street--it was called South Clinton Street--that seemed to veer closer to the docks. The van didn't turn, it went straight, after its observer notified the first vehicle, which had run parallel down Boston, and itself turned right on the street Bob had turned down.
"Two, I have him," said the observer.
"Cool. I'll roam a bit, then take up a tail position."
"That's good work," said Bonson, over the net.
"We're going to lose you now. We're going through the tunnel."
"I'll stay on him, Blue One."
"Catch you when we get out of the tunnel."
The first van maintained about a four hundred-foot gap between itself and Swagger's truck, which now coursed down desolate South Clinton Street. Off to the right, a giant naval vessel, under construction, suddenly loomed, gray and arc-lit for drama and security. Bob passed it, passed a bank, a few small working men's restaurants, then stopped by the side of the road.
"Goddammit," said Two.
"Burned. Goddammit."
His own driver started to slow, but he was exceedingly professional.
"No, just keep driving. Just drive by him. Don't eyeball him as you pass him, don't even think about it, he'll feel you paying attention. I'm dropping out of sight."
The driver continued at the same speed, while the observer dropped into the seat well, knowing that a single driver was much less of a giveaway signature for a tail job.
And he hit the send button.
"Blue Three, do you read?"
"Yeah, I'm past the Boston-South Clinton Street exchange, just pulled over."
"Okay, he's stopped. We're going to pass him, you come on by and pull off a long way down. He's on the right. Don't use your lights. Go to night vision and monitor his moves."
The lead vehicle sped around the curve, passed several mountains of coal ready for loading on the right.
He pulled off when he was out of sight of the parked man.
"Two, this is Three. I'm in position and I've got him in my night lenses. He's just sitting there, waiting. I think he's turned off his engine. No, no, he's turned off his lights, now he's pulling ahead, he's turning in--now I've lost him."
"Okay, he's gone to ground."
"Sitrep, people," came the voice of Bonson, who had just cleared the tunnel and was now on this side of the harbor.
"Sir, he just pulled into a yard or something in the warehouse district down by the docks. Just off Boston. We have him under observation."
"I'm right at Boston Street here. Do we go east or west off of Ninety-five?"
"You go west. Go about a mile and turn left again, o
n South Clinton Street. I'm off by the side of the road just around that turn, lights off, left side of the road. Two is on the other side, around the curve. We're both about a half mile away from where he's gone to rest."
"Okay, let's meet one at a time in two-minute intervals two hundred yards this side, my side, of the location. You go first, Three, then you Two, from the other side, then I'll join you. Keep your lights on in case he's looking out. If he saw unlit vehicles, he could go ballistic."
"Sir, I honestly don't think he's seen a damned thing.
He was off in his own world. He wasn't even looking around when he stopped. He's just looking for some deserted place."
"We'll know in a few minutes," said Bonson, just as his car turned left and pulled in behind one of the vans.
Bob parked to the left of the silent, corrugated-metal building, as far back and out of sight as he could. He paused, waiting. He heard no sounds, there was no night watchman. The place was some kind of grain storage facility, again for loading cargo ships, but no ship floated in the water. He could see the shimmering lights on the flat, calm water, and beyond that the skyline of the city, spangled in illumination. But here, there was nothing except the rush of cars from the tunnel exit nearby, a separate world sealed off by concrete abutments.
He got out, taking the wrapped painting, a powerful flashlight and a heavy pair of wire cutters with him, and headed to the warehouse. It was padlocked. But where the lock was strong, the metal fastener that secured door to wall was not, and the wire cutters made quick work of it. The lock fell, still secure, to the ground, wearing a little necklace of sheared steel. He pulled the door open, stepped into a space that in the darkness appeared to be cut by bins, now mostly empty. The dust of grains--wheat mostly, though he smelled soya beans too--filled the air.
He walked, his shoes echoing on the bricks, until at last he came to the center of the room. He stopped by a pillar and a drain, then turned on the light. The beam skipped across the empty building, finding nothing of interest but more emptiness, dramatic shadows, fire extinguishers, light switches, closets, crates. He went and got a crate, pulled it into the center and set it down. Finally, he set the light on the floor, aimed back toward where he had left the package. It cast a cold white eye on the painting.
He walked over, and leaned into the circle of light.
Slowly, he peeled the rags away, until at last the painting stood exposed. He examined it carefully, saw how the tacks held the canvas to the backing. He took out his Case pocketknife, and very slowly used its blade to scrape at the paint.
It was thick and cracked easily, falling to the ground in chunks and strips. He scraped, destroying the image of the eagle, pulling at the paint, watching it flake in colored chunks downward. In a minute or so, he came to a ridge under the paint, and ran the knife blade along it until he reached a corner. It was the top of a heavy piece of paper, and it had been literally buried under the heavy oil pigmentation of the image.
With the blade, he pried the corner loose enough to get a grip on, set the knife down and very carefully pulled the sheet of paper free. It cracked off the canvas. As he finally freed it, there was a kind of soft, slipping sound: paper, sliding loose, fluting down to land with a rattle on the dirty floor. He set the backing down and bent there in the harsh light to see what secrets he had unlocked.
It was the last few sketches from Trig's book. Bob began to shuffle through them, finding images of a campus building in Madison, Wisconsin, portraits of people at parties in Washington, crowd scenes of big demonstrations.
There was a portrait of Donny. It must have been made about the time he did the scene of Donny and Julie, which Bob had seen in Vietnam. He brought those days vividly to life, and Bob began to feel his passion--and his pain.
CHAPTER fifty-two.
One man had gone ahead and returned with a report.
"He's in there with a flashlight, reading some pages or something. I can't figure it out."
"Okay," said Bonson.
"I think I know what he's got.
Let's finish this, once and for all."
The guns came out. The team consisted now of five men besides Bonson. They were large men in crew cuts in their late forties. They were tough-looking, exuding that alpha-male confidence that suggested no difficulty in doing violence if necessary. They looked like large policemen, soldiers, firemen, extremely well developed, extremely competent. They drew the guns from under their jackets, and there was a little ceremony of clicks and snaps, as safeties came off and slides were eased back to check chambers, just in case. Then the suppressors were screwed on.
Bonson led them along the road, into the lot and up to the old grain warehouse. Above, stars pinwheeled and blinked. Water sounds filled the night, the lapping of the tides against ancient docks. From somewhere came a low, steady roar of automobiles. He reached the metal door and through the gap between it and the building proper, he could see Bob in the center of the room, sitting on a crate he'd gotten from somewhere, reading by the light of a flashlight. The painting was on the floor, somehow standing straight, as if on display, and Bob was leaning against a thick pillar that supported the low ceiling. Bonson could see that the image had somehow been destroyed, yielding a large white square in its center.
What is wrong with this picture, he asked himself.
He studied it for a second.
No, nothing. The man is unaware. The man is lost.
The man is unprepared. The man is defenseless. The man is the ultimate soft target.
He nodded.
"Okay," he whispered.
One of the men opened the door and he walked in.
Bob looked up to see them as their lights flashed on him.
"Howdy," he said.
"Lights," said Bonson.
One of the men walked away, found an electrical junction and the place leaped into light, which showed the rawness of industrial space, a gravel floor, the air filled with dust and agricultural vapors.
"Hello, Swagger," said Bonson.
"My, my, what's that?"
"It's the last sketches from Trig Carter's book. Real damn interesting," said Bob, loudly.
"How'd you find it?"
"What?"
What was wrong with his ears?
"I said, "How did you find it?"
" "When I thought about his last painting, I figured it, pretty close. The reason the painting was so different was his clue: his way of saying to those who came after him, "Look this over." But no one ever came. Not until me."
"Nice work," said Bonson.
"What's in it?"
"What?"
What was wrong with his ears?
"I said, "What's in it?"
" "Oh. Just what you'd expect," said Bob, still a bit loud.
"People, places, things he ran into as he began to prepare his symbolic explosion of the math building. A couple of nice drawings of Donny."
"Trig Carter was a traitor," said Bonson.
"Yeah?" said Bob mildly.
"Do tell."
"Give it over here," said Bonson.
"You don't want to see the drawings, Bonson? They're pretty damned interesting."
"We'll look at them. That's enough."
"Oh, it gits better. There's a nice drawing of this Fitzpatrick.
Damn, that boy could draw. It's Pashin, everybody will be able to tell. That's quite a find, eh? That's proof, cold, solid dead-on proof the peace movement was infiltrated by elements of Soviet intelligence."
"So what?" said Bonson.
"That's all gone and forgotten.
It doesn't matter."
"Oh, no?" said Bob.
"See, there's someone else in the drawing. Poor Trig must have grown extremely suspicious, so one day, late, right after the big May Day mess, he followed Fitzpatrick. He watched him meet somebody.
He did. He watched them deep in conversation. And he recorded it."
Bob held it up, a folded piece of paper, the lines that were
Pashin brilliantly clear.
Bob unfolded the rest of the drawing.
"See, Bonson, here's the funny part," said Bob, loudly.
"There's someone else here. It's you."
There was a moment of silence. Bonson's eyes narrowed tightly, and then he relaxed, turned to his team and smiled. He almost had to laugh.
"Who are you, Bonson?" Swagger asked, more quietly now.
"Really, I'd like to know. I had some ideas. I just couldn't make no sense of them. But just tell me. Who are you? What are you? Are you a traitor? Are you a professional Soviet agent masquerading as an American? Are you some kind of cynic playing the sides against each other? Are you in it for the money? Who are you, Bonson?"
"Kill him?" asked one of the men on the team, holding up a suppressed Beretta.
"No," said Bonson.
"No, not yet. I want to see how far he's gotten."
"Finally it makes sense," Bob said.
"The great CIA mole. The big one they've been hunting all these years.
Who makes a better mole than the head mole hunter?
Pretty goddamned smart. But what's the deal? Why did no one ever suspect you?"
He could sense that Bonson wanted to tell him. He had probably never told anyone, had repressed his reality so deep and imposed such discipline on himself that it was almost not real to him, except when it needed to be. But now at last, he had a chance to explain.
"The reason I was never suspected," he said finally, "was because they recruited me. I never went to them.
They offered me a job when I left the Navy, but I said no.
I went to law school, I spent three years on Wall Street, they came after me three more times, and I always said no. Finally--God, it took some discipline--finally I said yes."
"Why did they want you so much?"
"Because of the NIS prosecutions. That was the plan. I sent fifty-seven young men to Vietnam, Marines, naval seaman, even a couple of junior officers. I reported on dozens more that I turned up in the other services, and many of them went, too. There was never a better secret policeman anywhere, one with less mercy and more ambition.
They could see how fierce I was. I was so good. I was astonishing. They wanted me so bad it almost killed them, and I played so hard to get it still amazes me. But that was our plan from the beginning."
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