Bradstreet Gate: A Novel

by Robin Kirman

  “Something bothering you, Charlie?”

  “Nothing.” He joined the brunette on his bed. They kissed a moment, then he unbuttoned her top; somehow she managed to slip out of her stockings. The sight of her tan hose, shriveled on the bedspread, made him stop and rise to open a window. “I just need a moment. I’m feeling a bit off.”

  She wrapped her shirt loosely around her and lay on her side across the mattress; her finger traced the pattern in the bedspread: “So tell me more what you do, Charlie.”

  “Like I said: security.”

  “That’s a big category. You build bombers, you guard the corner store?”

  He exhaled: yet another stranger waiting for his pitch. “I’m a war profiteer.”

  “Now you’re just bragging.” Her eyes were squinty; she was smiling. She stretched her legs out toward him. “You want me to think that you’re a bad man, is that it?”

  Bad men, good men—a distinction for the bedroom, merely. Out of the blue, it seemed, he found himself thinking of Luke. The army needed more “good men” so never mind that boy he’d beaten; they’d stick Luke in fatigues again and dust him off to dodge shrapnel in the desert. And for what? So that, if he weren’t killed or maimed or otherwise destroyed, he’d earn the privilege of holding his head higher among the assholes in their town, or maybe so the girls who’d batted their lashes at him in school might do so again.

  Charlie looked across at the brunette, her attention focused on the arrangement of her limbs.

  “Are you married?” the brunette asked him. “Is that it?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  He shouldn’t be here. Instead of screwing around in a hotel, he should be on a plane headed home; he should be doing everything in his power to keep Luke from enlisting again, risking his life, getting torn apart by an IED—and for nothing—to soothe his father’s wounded pride.

  He had no doubt: it was their father behind Luke’s decision; his father’s vanity was so great that he would even sacrifice his eldest son, that once vibrant boy.

  “Excuse me, Bethany, but I need to make a call. A private one. Downstairs.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  He grabbed his coat; his last glimpse of the woman was her reflection in the hotel mirror, looking perplexed to find herself alone on the bed.

  —

  The time was nearly midnight; far too late, Charlie realized, to start phoning his house, professing his objections to his brother’s plans. Still, once he was out in the hall, he had no desire to return to his room; better to get some air, walk off his queasiness, and, with any luck, when he returned, the brunette would be gone.

  He rode the elevator to the lobby, which was quieter at this hour; only a few people crossed his path on his way out, one of them a man—lithe and handsome, with a slender jaw, a high pale brow, and bold green eyes.

  Charlie stopped short: Was he seeing ghosts now? This figure sprung from his addled, alcoholic nerves? The man’s back was to him when Charlie turned; the clothes were nondescript—rumpled sweater, jeans—and the hair was brown.

  It couldn’t actually be Storrow that he’d seen. To be sure, Charlie thought to call out the man’s name, but he hesitated, just an instant, long enough for the stranger to spin away through the revolving door. Charlie watched him cross through traffic, the side of his face red in the taillights.

  21

  Charlie’s flight out of D.C. left in three hours; he’d pushed this visit to the limit, had just returned to his hotel, to pack his bags, after the sixth and final meeting arranged by Mike McCraw. From the hall outside his room, he could hear the phone ringing.

  “Charles Flournoy. You know who this is?”

  He knew the voice as well as any; not so many years ago, seated inside a classroom in Sever Hall, he’d studied its many inflections, taking in the pitch and rhythm, adopting some of its peculiar patterns. So it had not been his imagination: that dark-haired Storrow clone he’d glimpsed three nights before. It was the man himself, after all. A guest, it seemed, in this very hotel.

  “Professor Storrow.” He couldn’t think how else to address him, though this way sounded much too childish; across the line, he heard a chuckle.

  His throat felt dry; he was nervous. “How did you know I was here?”

  “Five minutes ago, I saw you step out of a cab and I just had to ask reception. Charles Flournoy, in my hotel. Unbelievable.”

  “Unbelievable, indeed.”

  “How long will you be staying?”

  “Checking out now.”

  “Now that’s a shame,” said Storrow, lightly, as if they were easy pals. “We might have met up sooner. Well, when’s your flight? Want to grab a quick drink first?”

  “No time, I’m afraid.” In fact it was the truth: he’d yet to pack and needed to leave for the airport shortly; his morning meeting had been squeezed in at the last minute. All week, McCraw had been calling upon him, without warning, to perform for reps from the FBI, Homeland Security, and Special Forces. He’d been hustled from building to building, in and out of meetings with nameless men inside windowless rooms, encounters almost as incredible, and unnerving, as the one Storrow was proposing now.

  “I can join you in your room, chat while you pack.”

  “At the bar is better.” He’d spoken quickly, out of panic; instead, he should simply have told Storrow that he had no wish to meet. He’d need to learn how to say no; people were bound to ask for favors now that word of his deal was out. The quantity of In-Q-Tel’s investment had garnered headlines in most of the industry publications. Information Week, Mercury News, and Intel News had each called or sent reporters by for comment.

  Was he to believe it was an accident that Storrow, too, came calling now? Not since the man had shown up in his apartment back at school had they exchanged a word. Back then, Charlie had made it plain, moreover, he wanted it no other way.

  —

  Airline ticket, wallet, phone—Charlie gathered his essentials in his pockets and tossed the last of his belongings into his suitcase. He splashed cold water on his face and went downstairs to drop his luggage at reception and check out.

  A few sips of club soda, a few civil remarks, and then he’d be free to leave Storrow and this hotel behind.

  When Charlie arrived at the bar, Storrow was waiting. Almost unrecognizable, thought Charlie; he might have walked right past him if he hadn’t spotted Storrow looking so plain three nights before. His hair was a dull brown, receding at the temples; he wore simple jeans and sneakers, clothes the old Storrow would have considered without style. His once military posture had grown stooped; he turned on his stool and waved, Kingfisher in hand.

  “You don’t drink,” Charlie recalled.

  Storrow broke into a broad smile. “It’s awfully good to see you, Charlie. Awfully good. And looking so well, too.”

  “And you.” Though, in fact, even in the dim light of the bar, the years showed on Storrow. His skin was no longer that smooth blushing white; it had grown rougher and more spotted, creased at the forehead and around the mouth. His jacket, tan corduroy, was faded and even dirty at the cuffs.

  And yet, for all the wear and tear, Storrow still had an air of artificiality about him. Seated on his stool in that generic outfit, with that flat dyed hair, he seemed like an alien adopting local ways, like a visitor from someplace infinitely far away. And that was exactly what he must be, thought Charlie, wherever he’d set himself up recently: a pariah, a man living out of bounds.

  Charlie cleared his throat. Already he felt the strain of conversation, hemmed in on all sides by the unmentionables—all the events and people that connected them—everything beyond the here and now.

  “You’re where these days?” he began.

  “Virginia. But not for long. I’ve been in India the last few years—if you didn’t already get the skinny.”

  Mumbai, to be precise: at least that was where Georgia had been when
she’d called Charlie, frantic, to report a brush with Storrow. She’d been worried Storrow might be stalking her—the sort of thing he’d have expected to hear, instead, from Alice, still in the mental hospital then. But Georgia had run off. Whatever problems she was having weren’t his to deal with; this sounded like a matter for the police, Charlie had told her firmly.

  “India, that’s something.” He wasn’t about to let on to Storrow what he’d heard or in any way allude to Georgia. Her name (along with Julie’s) topped the list of unmentionables.

  He thought back to that evening, before graduation, when Storrow was seated on his sofa, mute, unable to say Georgia’s name or admit to what he’d done: succumbed to selfish impulse, broken his commitment to the school, betrayed Charlie’s trust.

  After that, even once Charlie was past anger, it had been impossible to swear by the man’s innocence on anything. He’d clung to doubt, and did still, however inconceivable that he might be sharing a drink with a murderer this evening.

  The bartender came by and Charlie ordered a scotch. Forget club soda; he needed something to settle his nerves.

  “Over four years I’ve been away,” Storrow continued, filling the silence: something, thought Charlie, at which he must have become expert. “I’d come to Mumbai for a short job, and then more work came up and, well…”

  “Time does fly.”

  “Maybe it does—for some.” Storrow raised his beer and took a swig. Neither the drinking nor the informality had been permitted himself by the old Storrow, but it seemed such sterling conduct had corroded. “When your whole life is about waiting, believe me, time is a rock. I spent years, Charlie, just waiting for people to forget. Foolish me—I see that now—not to recognize no one can forget anymore. Technology won’t let you. It’s all out there, every word ever written, every slander and speculation, there at your fingertips.” Storrow paused and put up his hand, as if in modesty. “But what am I doing lecturing to you? You of all people ought to know.”

  What did he mean by that? As if the Internet with its vast trove of information was somehow Charlie’s to account for—just because, broadly speaking, he dealt in technology. But perhaps he was reading too much into the statement; at that moment, Storrow’s tone brightened.

  “Anyway, the world turns and we struggle to keep up; that’s how it’s always been. And, in the end, it worked out. India suited me just fine.” Storrow tapped the counter and clapped—more familiar again—the reliance on clichés, the old rallying gestures. A gold wedding band shone on his left hand.

  “You’re married.”

  “Two years.” Reaching for his wallet, Storrow retrieved a pair of photos. The first was of him, also dark haired but slimmer then, with a very pretty Indian woman. It was a posed picture, taken at a formal function: the woman wore a sari and Storrow a white suit. The next picture was also posed: a studio shot of a baby girl.

  “Linsey is almost a year now. She’s the max. And there’s a new one on the way.”

  “Beautiful family. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, Charlie. Thank you. They’re what’s changed me most, you know. Head to toe.” Storrow was pointing to his hair. “I dyed it there, so I wouldn’t stick out, and now it’s for them I keep it. This way I look more like Linsey’s dad. They’re a suspicious lot, the Indians, and always glad to think they got one over on us white guys.”

  Charlie forced a smile, reminded of similarly awkward remarks he’d tried to overlook before, remarks that students like Julie Patel had found so troubling.

  Thinking of her then, the soft cheeks and mocha skin—a face not unlike that on the new Mrs. Storrow—Charlie felt his skin tingle. All of a sudden those pictures on the bar looked uncanny, this whole family exhibit perverse and contrived. He had the thought, however paranoid, that the wife and child just might be an invention.

  “Are they here with you?”

  “No, unfortunately I had to leave them back in Mumbai. It breaks me up each time I go away, but right now I’ve got no choice.”

  Insisting a bit too strongly, Charlie thought, on the settled man that he’d become. Happy in his life abroad, against all odds and with no help from the country he’d made it his life’s mission to serve—so then, why was Storrow here, ordering a second drink in a bar in downtown D.C.?

  “My mother,” Storrow went on, though Charlie hadn’t asked him. “She’s been ill.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “These last years have been hard on her.”

  That part Charlie could believe. He’d gotten an impression of the elder Mrs. Storrow from her brief statement on 60 Minutes: a trim, well-dressed, silver-haired woman, with cool green eyes and a clipped voice: I’ve always admired my son for being his own man. The comment was apparently designed to absolve her of any share she might be allotted of his potential guilt.

  “Leaving out what pain I’ve caused her, what responsibility I bear, I’m her only child; my father’s gone. So her welfare, anyway, that falls on me.” Storrow paused and stroked his chin, thoughtfully, manfully. “There are times like that, that bring home to you what your duties in life are: protecting the people in your care, above all, aging parents, children. You can imagine what I’ve felt then, sitting by my mother’s bedside much of this past year, hearing the ghastly news from Mumbai. The bombings, I mean: I don’t know if you follow what goes on over there.”

  “I read about them, yes.” There had been a series of terrorist attacks that year, bombs planted on buses and trains and in parked cars: the worst, in August, had killed more than fifty people and injured hundreds. “Must have been a scare for you…and for your family.”

  “They’ve been all right. My wife doesn’t worry the way I do; doesn’t need to…to know the things I know.” Storrow leaned in, his voice hushed. “I happened to have worked on a case involving a U.S. operative in Pakistan. The details, I’m afraid, aren’t really something I can get into. Still, it’s no secret terrorists are running the military over there and this much I will tell you—the Americans aren’t innocent here, Charlie; there’s blood on our hands, too.”

  Storrow’s forehead had grown twisted, deep wrinkles appearing. He touched his fingers to the bridge of his nose, a sign of pain or tension that Charlie recalled from those interviews after the murder, one of those oddities that had made people suspect him.

  “I’m not saying it’s our fault, Charlie, those deaths, or even our job to prevent them. It’s out of fashion, I know, jingoistic to think that way, especially these days—so I wouldn’t admit such feelings except to somebody like you. Only you, you can understand it when I tell you, what keeps me up nights—something huge and awful happens again, 9/11 awful, and I know I didn’t stop it.”

  Charlie took a sip from his glass, avoiding Storrow’s gaze. He spoke carefully. “Well, I doubt one man would be equipped to prevent a thing like that.”

  “No, you wouldn’t think so, would you? You’re all about security software systems, isn’t that right?”

  So there it was: Storrow’s first admission that he knew of Charlie’s business. He must have read the recent news of his deal, just as Charlie had kept apprised of the man’s activities. There had been one article, several years back, painting Storrow as a ruined man; no one would hire a suspected killer, no university, no law firm, and—despite Storrow’s references to work with government operatives, despite his wish to place himself among the forces great enough to cause or prevent catastrophe—no military jobs had been offered to him either.

  According to that article, at least, Storrow’s former colleagues wouldn’t even take his calls; all America had turned its back on him. He, thought Charlie, would be wise to do the same.

  “I don’t suppose you believe in karma, do you, Charlie?”

  He shook his head: not in karma and not, Charlie was starting to feel, in the sincerity of this dark-haired reincarnation of the man he’d known at school; for that Storrow, good diet and steady exercise seemed philosophy enough. “
Eastern religion was never quite my thing.”

  “Well, not mine, either, sure. I’m just playing around, son: you can’t imagine I’ve gone all native?” Storrow let out a tight laugh and brushed a spot of foam from his lip. “My wife’s family, though, they are believers; they take such notions rather seriously. But then, they’re Brahmins and rich, so why not attribute one’s fortune to the goodness of one’s eternal soul? Do no harm, rise up the ladder of being. That notion, I suppose, might appeal to a guy like you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Repairman’s son. Blue collar made good.”

  No, actually the notion didn’t appeal to him at all, nor did this line of talk. Storrow must be getting drunk, Charlie thought; his eyes were moist, his speech sloppier and more aggressive.

  “To heck with all the pretense,” Storrow barked. “You’ve made it, Charlie, let’s just say it; you’re going to be a very important man, and a very rich man soon, yourself.”

  Aha. Yes, here it comes, Charlie thought; philosophizing turns to more material concerns. He set down his drink and addressed Storrow crisply. “Whatever you might have read, you can see I’m still staying in midrange hotels, nothing is definite yet…”

  “Relax, I’m not after your money.” Storrow gave a haughty smile; Charlie could see him struggling, then, to ward off the offense. “Like I said, my wife’s family doesn’t want for money. I’m living like a king there. No need at all to work, but men like us—we must work, we must serve. I think—I know—that you believe in service, too. And that’s why I always suspected that, of all my students, you’d be the one to make a difference, to achieve something truly exceptional.”

  “I wouldn’t say I’ve done that yet.”

  “I would say that. I have said it. And it’s given me some cause for pride, knowing that I had a hand in that. Don’t you deny it; don’t you take that from me, too.” Storrow’s smile quivered.