by Barry, Mike
DiStasio hung up the phone, shaking. He called in Figueroa immediately. That was Figueroa’s function: to be always available. When valises were to be dropped off he did that; when DiStasio needed counsel Figueroa was obtained. Also Figueroa served as a sexual receptacle of sorts, not that DiStasio would even think of that business now. Everything in its place. Passion could not be contemplated in this moment of extreme danger. “We’re going to have to prepare to leave the country,” he said to Figueroa.
“Ah,” the man said. “I will make the arrangements.”
That was Figueroa. Unquestioned obedience. If the premier had the kind of unquestioned obedience from subordinates which Figueroa gave him, the government by now would have conquered all of Latin America. Then again, Figueroa was extremely stupid. This had to be taken into account. You could not sentimentalize a man who believed that his only purpose was to make himself fiercely agreeable.
“We will probably have to go to Bolivia,” DiStasio said.
“Bolivia is excellent. Bolivia is an excellent country. I have always wanted to see—”
“Then again, perhaps, we should go to Buenos Aires.”
“Buenos Aires is also a good possibility,” Figueroa said, “I have always delighted in Buenos Aires, its fragrances, it’s sophistication, its women—”
“It will be necessary to make arrangements for a pilot and plane. It is official business, of course.”
“Of course,” said Figueroa.
“We will have to leave immediately. By midnight in any event. We must be airborne within six hours.”
“This must be a very important mission,” said Figueroa.
“It is. It involves the whole security of the government.”
“Does it have anythiing to do with today’s difficulties?”
“It has everything to do with today’s difficulties.”
“That was a very bad business,” Figueroa said. He looked at the carpet, a delicate man whose posture gave an appearance of gravity and depth. On this basis alone he suited all of his assigned functions. “A very tragic business.”
“Life is tragic,” DiStasio said. He stood from his desk, looked around the enormous study. “We will have to take the valise with us.”
“The valise which I brought back here?”
“Exactly. The same one.”
“It must be filled with important materials.”
“It is filled with important materials,” DiStasio said. “All of our security may depend upon our getting them safely out of the country.”
“Ah,” said Figueroa. His face became very serious. “I understand.”
“The stakes are enormous. We cannot afford to fail.”
“We will not fail,” Figueroa said solemnly. “It is absolutely impossible that we will fail.” He smiiled but for just an instant a whiplash of confusion crossed his face as if he had heard voices from the yard outside the huge windows. “Why are we going to Bolivia?” he said.
“Important governmental business. A vital question of alliance with revolutionary elements—”
“We are going to carry the revolution to Bolivia!”
“Exactly,” DiStasio said, “and that in turn will increase our influence throughout the Americas.”
“Of course,” Figueroa said. “Politics is very intricate. I wish that I understood more about it. You realize that it has always been my favorite science.”
“Of course,” DiStasio said.
“Maybe I could have been a politician, if I had had university training,” Figueroa said. He paused, the look of confusion returning. “Exactly what kind of benefits can we offer the revolutionaries—”
“That is not necessary now,” DiStasio said curtly. Sometimes the man, despite his abysmal loyalty, annoyed him. It was impossible to treat Figueroa as if he were a rational person. “Just make the arrangements.”
The sharpness of the tone made Figueroa quail. His skin assumed the transparency of paper. “Of course,” he said, “of course.” He left the room quickly, moving sidewise, trying to get to the door as rapidly as possible without showing disrespect. In the hallway, then, he broke into a full run. DiStasio could hear his footsteps and then they were gone.
Less than half an hour before flight if Figueroa acted with his usual efficiency. Surely he would; at what he did, the man was the best that there was. DiStasio went to the door, secured it with a bolt and went back slowly to the cabinet half-hidden in the wall, threw back the panels and took out the valise. For the first time since Delgado had made the transfer he permitted himself to touch it, ran his hands over the leatherette tenderly, feeling an almost sensual pleasure in the pattern the texture gave back to his palms, then slowly he opened the clips the way he might unhook a woman from her clothing and lifted the top. He looked straight into the valise.
And saw it then iin its purity, the little solid bricks of it planked up under the straps, pure white and glowing, the grains at the top of it glistening.
Diluted, one of these bricks might be a quarter of a million doses, sugared and watered out with a little glycerine and a few inert materials a hundred thousand human beings would be able to take this jolt into themselves and become transported. Dreams and death lay within that case, all of them impacted into that small space, one brick a quarter of a million doses, twenty bricks two and a half million … Two and a half million voyages, and DiStasio looking at this felt transported himself, the sheer effect of this weighing upon him. His breath was shallow in his chest, pure constriction; finally he had to unleash his hands reluctantly, one by one, and stand back from the case breathing the air of the room. He felt lightheaded; almost as if he might faint and came forward then to carefully, lovingly put the lid back into place. Only when he did this did he feel the giddiness recede. He stood there, latching on the clips, looking at the case and a flicker of understanding came to DiStasio: he had been motivated thus far by greed but it was not greed alone which would send him on this voyage for he had plenty of money. He had position. It was not greed, either, which had imploded that building; no, it was something else, another kind of desire altogether and it had something to do with the power of these crystals, a silent power which overtook men and made them mad.
What was it? What was there in this valise that would drive a man like Delgado, a cynic, a beaten man, an old revolutionary, to such an excess of behavior? What, for that matter, was there about this valise which would send someone like Wulff on a journey of terror which probably involved five hundred dead men by now? DiStasio did not know, exactly. He only knew that he felt the same reaction himself, some call within him as he looked at those deadly cylinders and squares which told him that almost every sacrifice was worthwhile if, in the end, it could result in the putting of these into the supply channels. The wealth was almost identical. DiStasio did not need the money. No, it was the need …
… it was the need to filter the drug through those quarter-of-a-million doses because—and now he thought he had it—heroin was itself the revolution. It was a revolution taking place in ten million heads every day, four hundred thousand heads an hour were being overtaken by the sensations of the revolution, and if it began there, if the revolution could be brought home into the impacted psyches of all these users, then there was no question but that it could spread out and eventually overtake the world. So, it was, ultimately, a proselytizing drug, heroin, without it the world was a less mad, more contained place but the revolution was one step further away and if men were not dedicated toward revolution, toward the change of the conditions which bound them in … then what was their purpose after all? I must be a little mad, DiStasio thought, a little bit mad to think this way. It is only heroin, it is only money, this is a business transaction pure and simple, an investment. But the excitement would not drain from him; instead it seemed to be building, accumulating in small worn pockets of the psyche and finally to restrain himself he had to sit with an effort of will, clamp his hands into fists and try as much as possible to bloc
k all anticipation from his mind.
There was no turning back. Once he took this valise and left the country he could never return. The finality of this oozed through him, he thought of it—no more bureau, no more administration, no more channeling of secret information directly to the premier—and balanced it off in his mind: did he really want it to be this way? Would it not be better to let the valise go, let someone else take the responsibility and return to the man he had been twenty-four hours ago, before Delgado approached him?
No. He did not want to do that. DiStasio sat there and looked through the windows, waiting for Figueroa and made an admission which he would have thought to be impossible until all of this had happened … an impossible admission for an old revolutionary like him—but then consider Delgado … it had been the same thing.
He was tired of the revolution.
He wanted no more of the revolution.
The revolution had ransacked the country for fifteen years just as the government before it had ransacked, the only difference being that Battista had allowed others to do it for a cut of the proceeds, whereas this regime needed no intermediaries whatsoever.
They had failed—or looking at it another way they had suceeded. But in any event the country was finished.
It was best to take the valise and make for himself the best deal that he could. It was in the tradition of the government. Of all governments. The premier, granted the same circumstances DiStasio thought, would have done the same thing.
He waited for Figueroa.
XIII
Out on the flat back road, finally clear of the burning city, Wulff said, “Now we go to DiStasio.”
“He’s got an estate,” Stevens said, trying to hold the wheel steady on the difficult terrain. “He’s going to be sealed in there with heavy security. We don’t have a chance.”
“We’ll have to make our chances. There’s no choice. We’ll go in now.”
Stevens raised a hand to his face, brushed away smudge, shook his head. “You don’t stop, do you?” he said. “Not for a moment.”
“There’s no time to stop. He’s probably arranging to flee the country.”
“All right,” Stevens said, “so he’s fleeing the country. I think it would be a damned good idea if we did the same thing.”
“No,” Wulff said.
“You’ve done what you wanted to do. You’ve broken them wide open. You’ve—”
“I want the valise,” Wulff said. “They took the valise from me.”
“You don’t understand,” Stevens said, fighting with the wheel, the jeep skittering a little, hitting cobblestones, then coming back toward the center of the road with difficulty. “He’s the chief of intelligence. He’s sealed in there. We get within a mile of his estate—”
“I don’t care,” Wulff said. He checked the last pistol, everything in order. “We’re going to go in. We’ll do the best we can.”
Stevens shook his head. “It’s crazy,” he said.
“You want out?”
Stevens bit his lip, looked straight down the road. Little puffs of dust kicked up against them. “I don’t know,” he said.
“You’ve paid your dues,” Wulff said. “You were next to me when I needed it. Everything’s even now. You can go if you want to.”
“What’s the point?” Stevens said. “What’s my future in this country? How long do you think I’d last?”
“I never even considered it.”
“Not very long,” Stevens said, “not very long at all. I had a nice comfortable life you know. I lived in a hotel and had all the whiskey I needed and now and then I’d do a little job for them, little risk. I didn’t have to think about anything and I didn’t have any responsibility. Now you’ve fucked the whole thing up.”
“Sorry,” Wulff said, “I’m sorry I mucked up your life so bad.”
“Oh you didn’t,” Stevens said. Like all good drivers he was able to focus his perception of the road down a single, long narrow tunnel, outside of that he could converse, look at Wulff, carry ninety percent of his attention outside of the act of driving. He brought the jeep out of the country road to a long, flat narrow highway which looked off across empty fields, accelerated sharply, yanking the gears so that the jeep lost road adhesion momentarily, then seemed to settle at a newer, more insistent level of speed. The speedometer went toward eighty. “I took care of fucking things up myself…. We’re about five miles from there now, no more.”
“Good.”
“We’re going to go up against that man with four pistols and a jeep, is that right?”
“It could be worse,” Wulff said. “We might be unarmed altogether. He won’t like it.”
“I never thought this would happen to me,” Stevens said. “How did I get into a fucking crusade? I’ve got nothing against drugs at all. As far as I’m concerned people can shoot it, suck it, drink it, eat it or blow it up their ass. What’s the difference? It’s just another way out of the world, that’s all.”
“That’s your point of view.”
“I messed with it a little in the Navy years ago. Pot and cocaine.” Stevens’s eyes narrowed, he appeared abstracted. “It didn’t do a goddamned thing to me.”
“We’re not talking pot and cocaine,” Wulff said, “we’re talking about heroin.”
“Heroin too,” Stevens said. “What’s the difference?” A dog ran across the road; he braked sharply, swerved, accelerated out of the pocket quickly. The dog was safe. “It’s a matter of individual choice, isn’t it?”
“Not anymore.”
“Of course it is,” Stevens said. “If people want to shoot a little smack they can do it as far as I’m concerned. Why put them in prison? They should have all the smack they want; they ought to have clinics, give it away free. As far as I can tell,” he said, “there’s no drug problem up there. It’s not the drugs, it’s a drug deprivation problem. Now if they only made it available—”
“No,” Wulff said.
“No? Why not?”
“Because it wouldn’t work,” Wulff said. “You’re talking to a man who was on the narcotics squad for five years and the solution isn’t to hand out drugs on street corners or in drug stores. The only solution is to get rid of them.”
“Seems to me it’s a matter of choice.”
“Drugs are death,” Wulff said.
“So are a lot of other things.”
“Drugs are death,” he repeated. “Heroin is death and anything that leads to it is the same. All drugs are death. The people who sell them are murderers.”
“Seems to me you’ve got a rather simplistic view of things.”
“I have a goddamned simplistic view,” Wulff said, lurching in the seat, holding on for purchase. “There’s nothing complicated about it at all. Certain things in or out of this world are very simple. Heroin is one of them.”
“All right,” Stevens said, “I don’t want to get into a fucking argument—”
“No one’s arguing,” Wulff said flatly. “There’s nothing to argue about. Certain things are very simple I said. The trouble began when people were sold on the idea that they weren’t. That there were two sides to every question, that every dog had its day, that you had to consider the criminal’s rights along with the victim’s. Fuck that. That’s not truth, it’s conspiracy. Drugs are death. Have you ever seen death?”
“I’ve seen a fair amount of it,” Stevens said quietly. “I’ve seen so much of it in fact that I never intend to see it again if I can help it.”
“Have you ever seen a seven-year-old junkie? Have you ever seen a little girl holding a doll and so strung out on junk that she didn’t know her name? Did you ever see a whole city destroyed, turned into death, converted into a bombed-out zone because of drugs. Did you ever see an eighteen-year-old kid jump off a roof in front of you because he couldn’t take withdrawal anymore? Have you ever seen the soft men who peddle the stuff, the soft men in their houses on the bay, far away from all of this, laughing at it, shieldin
g themselves from what they’ve done, taking the money, filling the vein—”
“All right,” Stevens said, “all right then, you’re a fucking crusader. See where it gets you.” The road arced right and there on a hill in the other direction Wulff could see the outlines of a house, the house was shielded behind fences, gates, half-concealed by the roll of terrain so it was only barely visible at points, jutting randomly through the landscape. “You’re a fucking crusader and you’re going to clean all the drugs out of the world everywhere and drugs are death and you’re a killer, Wulff, a real killer. But that’s your problem right now. How are we going to get in there?” Stevens rolled the jeep to a stop by the side of the road and looked outward, his eyes shaded and abstract. “How?” he said.
“I’ll think of something.”
“You’d better think of something,” Stevens said, “because that place is guarded. There-are at least five men on duty all the time and they’re armed and expert.”
“I’ve gotten into worse,” Wulff said, thinking of Boston, then of New York, images of the freighter in San Francisco darting through for just a moment. “I’ve faced a lot worse and am sure I will again.”