Current Affairs

by Raskin, Barbara;

  “Something’s the matter with your telephone,” he says from the first-floor hallway. His voice sounds different. Emphatic, insistent. “I think we should get out of here.”

  I hurry down the stairs and follow him back into the kitchen. Flicking off the overhead light, he walks over to the glass-brick wall and stands there looking outside. When he finally turns around I realize something terrible is happening. Unconsciously, I back up against the refrigerator.

  “Jesus,” he hisses. “There’re men out there. Maybe two or three.”

  Panic begins playing loud kettledrums in my head.

  “What should we do, Bo? Who is it?”

  “I don’t know. I can just see shadows moving around outside. There’s too many fucking trees for me to see.”

  “So we’ll just wait,” I say loudly enough to make myself heard over my internal rock band. “We’ll just stay right where we are until they go away. They can’t get in.”

  The next time I hear Bo’s voice it’s only a hoarse whisper.

  “Get down on the floor, Natalie. Lie down.”

  I do.

  I know Bo is nearby but I can’t see him.

  Now there is the sound of glass breaking.

  My kettledrums are thundering.

  “Where’d that come from?” Bo demands. He is across the room, flattened up against the wall near the stove.

  “Upstairs,” I say. “Maybe the bathroom. There’s a big bay window in there.”

  Next comes another cascade of falling glass that seems to be from a more distant place. Maybe the window in the cellar door. Could someone reach inside and open the door that way? But there’s mesh wire over that window and the basement door into the kitchen is always locked.

  Now I hear a car engine revving up. The sound comes from the side driveway, where our cars are parked. For some reason the sound of the engine seems to get louder.

  “Oh, God.” I begin panting. “Someone’s driving around the side of the house, Bo. On the grass. They’re driving through my garden.”

  “Which side?” he howls.

  Suddenly headlights pour into the kitchen, splashing up against the walls.

  “Go!” Bo shouts. “Get out of here. Run down the hill. Go toward the zoo. Keep your head down. Go, Natalie! Now!”

  I crouch over and start to run.

  The back door sticks.

  I feel the key begin to bend from the force of my turning it. I lighten the pressure a little and finally hear it catch.

  Turn. Click. Open.

  I edge outside onto the patio. I am waiting for something to slam into me, but I keep moving, hunching along the hedge, running away from the headlights. And that’s when the car, racing its engine, smashes into the glass wall of my kitchen like a plane into the side of a mountain.

  I half roll over the waist-high brick wall that reinforces our patio. When I hear a rally of gunshots I stop for one second to look back. With the headlights illuminating the kitchen, I can see Bo explode through the wall of shattered glass and head toward the retaining wall I just hurdled.

  “Get him,” a man yells.

  And then light comes stuttering out of the darkness and Bo leaps up into the air like a deer and flings himself toward the wall.

  I stand up and start to run. The din of death and destruction fills my head as I lunge through the thick underbrush down the hill toward the parkway. I am crashing through roots and vines, swinging around trees as I skid down the steep incline.

  The animals in the zoo are shrieking and screaming and roaring. I feel hunted. Like an animal. I feel the killers coming after me. Quietly trying to find and finish me.

  My ankles are burning as if I’d been ice-skating. Someone is making sliding, scraping sounds behind me, crashing through the undergrowth like I did, but I don’t know who it is. It might or might not be Bo. I’m afraid to call out. I don’t think it’s him. Or it might be him with someone else in pursuit. I don’t want to reveal where I am. I can’t see anything. I am afraid of everything that touches my arms or legs. I flatten out on the hillside and wait while three cars speed past. When it’s dark again I cross the hard flat road of Rock Creek Parkway.

  Now I’m inside the zoo, running along the pathway down a hill toward the bears, toward the safety of the animals, where I can hide until daylight. But I am out of shape and unable to run anymore. I sink down on my knees behind an enormous tree. Now that my fear of the human terrorists subsides a little, I begin to panic about the animals—possible refugees from the zoo as well as the wide assortment native to this heavily wooded area. Snakes, skunks, rodents and opossum come out of these woods at night to invade adjoining properties, scavenging for garbage and causing panic in those who come upon them. I am hard-pressed to keep hysteria at bay.

  But not very long afterward, I hear a police car come screaming along the main service road of the zoo, its red light spinning crazily atop its roof. Then I hear Bo calling out over some kind of bullhorn.

  Calling me.

  “Natalie. Natalie. It’s Bo. Come on out. Don’t be afraid. Are you hurt?”

  For a moment, I don’t believe it’s Bo. If Bo is in that car, who was running behind me? Maybe Bo was hit by the bullets. How many people were up there at my house? Who smashed into my wall? I didn’t give them what they wanted so now they want me. Maybe there are still some of those men wandering through the zoo, hunting me, waiting for me to disclose my hiding place behind this tree.

  “Nat?”

  This time I know that it’s Bo’s voice. So, dazed and slow, I stand up and walk back toward the service road. That’s when I see Bo coming toward me, skewered by the headlights of the squad car. And then there’s a crazy circle of people forming and reforming around me, big in their blue uniforms.

  Bo clasps my shoulders.

  “Answer. Are you all right?”

  The heat hugs the darkness like a satin lining. It is difficult to breathe. I am hyperventilating, unable to speak. Each breath is uncomfortably shallow, unsatisfactory.

  I can hear traffic on the parkway, the distant rumble of people on Columbia Road. From deep within the zoo, I hear a hyena. Once. Twice. Three times. Everything is getting crazier. Everything seems upside down.

  Bo guides me toward a squad car. Someone else is in the driver’s seat. Bo opens the back door for me and I get in. He rides shotgun in the front. The overhead light is on. Bo turns around to look at me.

  I am out of it.

  There are no handles on the inside of the back doors. This is something I’d never heard about. No back-door handles. If we have an accident, I won’t be able to get out of the car. I lean back and close my eyes. I seem to have had a date with death tonight, but he stood me up. Through a fluke, I escaped dying. I avoided being murdered. I have to think about that. I have to study and memorize it, maybe even do a translation.

  “I’m pretty sure I know who it was,” Bo says soberly.

  I don’t respond.

  “Do you want to know what happened?”

  I can’t answer.

  “Your neighbors saw that car in your driveway and called the precinct even before they smashed into your wall. The squad car they dispatched was on your corner. Pretty lucky, huh? I saw it pull into your driveway before I started down the hill. I knew they were there; I had that edge over you.”

  He smiles at me; I don’t smile back.

  “But since they’d never gotten out of their car, they got away. They smashed down half the back wall of your house and then just drove away. I’ll keep security there until we can get it fixed. Listen, Nat, where would you like to go? What about your brother-in-law’s place in Georgetown? Brian here will stay with you.”

  I nod. “My purse?” I ask.

  Bo bends over and lifts it off the floor.

  “Got it—I grabbed it when I went back.” He grins. “I even threw your suitcase in the trunk. How ’bout that?”

  I look at him, but don’t answer.

  No one speaks again unt
il we are on Reservoir Road.

  The driver keeps the engine running while Bo walks me to the front door. He has to unlock it because my hands are shaking too much. He comes inside.

  “I’ve got to get back to the station,” he says. “You go upstairs and find a bed. My man will stay downstairs here all night. Okay?”

  I do as I’m told. I run up the stairs and into the master bedroom. From there I stagger into the bathroom. A wild woman looks back at me from the huge mirror over the sink. It’s not the raw red scratches on my neck and shoulders and along one side of my face. No—my entire expression has changed. The attempt on my life, my crazed run through the zoo—this steamy Graham Greene night of crazy dangers has written a new message across my face. It has made me someone different, though I don’t know who.

  After I hear the front door slam shut, I take a long shower and then crawl into Christopher’s king-sized bed.

  I sleep until noon. When I get up, I put on a bathrobe from the closet and go downstairs to make coffee. Brian, the cop, is walking around outside near the pool. He waves to me; I hold a coffee mug up in the air, but he shakes his head. I do not let myself rerun the rushes from last night. I do not let myself think about my house.

  Midafternoon I begin to get nervous, so I dig the Scott Armstrong book out of my purse. I’ve read hunks of it before, but now I flip through it with a greater sense of purpose. Oh, yes. It’s all so clearly documented. Oliver North was a traitor and Fawn Hall was his accomplice. There’s no way around it.

  Oliver North usurped authority from the president, from Congress, from America’s citizens. He traded arms for the release of our hostages in Iran but failed to secure their freedom. He took funds from Iran and other countries and secretly sent it to the contras. Presumably higher authorities were unaware of those activities; anyway, there is no accounting for what happened to all the money.

  Oliver North, Fawn Hall and Arturo Cruz, Jr., were their own government. They conducted their own foreign policy. After rereading several sections of the book, I replace it in my purse.

  Around three o’clock I shower, fix my hair and put on a khaki-colored sundress that makes me feel as if I’m going off on a safari. At four o’clock Brian drives me up to Eighteenth Street, where I enter the Pronto Press and wait while the clerk makes sixty copies of Fawn’s interview and sixty copies of a medley of quotes I compiled from The Chronology. Walking up the block to A Home Away from Home, I read through my handouts:

  • Reginald Bartholomew, the American Ambassador in Lebanon, reported on September 4, [1985] that “North was handling an operation that would lead to the release of all seven hostages. [A U.S.] team had been deployed to Beirut, we were told. Ambassador Bartholomew had been alerted directly by the NSC and would assist.” (Shultz, 12/86)

  • [May 1986:] The NSC suggests that Reagan ask Saudi Arabia to contribute money to the contras. During the summer, McFarlane calls Shultz to inform him the Saudis have donated $31 million to a contra group. It is not clear whether this includes an earlier $20 million donation received before McFarlane left office last year. (NYT 1/13/87)

  • [April 14, 1986:] It is reported that the CIA spent several million dollars refurbishing the image of the United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO), the contra umbrella organization, despite a congressional ban on aid to the rebels. (AP4/14/86; CRS “U.S. Intelligence: Issues for Congress, 1986” 1/5/87)

  • [May 2, 1986:] Lt. Col. North informed VADM Poindexter that he believed the Contras were readying to launch a major offensive to capture “a principal coastal population center” in Nicaragua and proclaim independence. North warned that if this occurred “the rest of the world will wait to see what we do—recognize the new territory—and UNO as the govt.—or evacuate them as in a Bay of Pigs.” He suggested that the U.S. should be prepared to come to the Contras’ aid.

  I concluded these quotes with an excerpt from Seymour Hersh’s introduction:

  The Iran-contra affair has correctly been viewed by most Americans as a serious foreign policy gaffe, but it is more than that—it is a symptom of a government gone amok. We do a disservice to that truth by dealing with Iran-contra merely as a scandal to be resolved … One of the major issues that emerged … was whether the President would be willing to admit he had “made a mistake” in authorizing his subordinates on the National Security Council staff to attempt to trade arms for hostages through Iran.…

  Unlocking the padlock and untangling the chain, I push open the door and go inside the shelter. A month without any ventilation has turned the small front room into an oven. The heat is impacted like a sick tooth, but I am afraid to even leave the door ajar because some drunk could enter and trap me inside. Dust has settled on the floor, atop the piles of thin, narrow mattresses and inside the two huge shipping boxes containing all our linens and pillows.

  There is a foul smell in the room. I open the bathroom door. In the sink is a backed-up pool of yellow water. Holding my breath, I stick my hand down inside the mess, but when I finally get the drain unstopped, I can’t find anything on which to wipe my hand so I end up drying it on my dress. Then I walk into the little back annex that is lined with clothes racks. There I see a streak of black race along the rear wall toward the alley door.

  A rat.

  I suppress a scream and run outside, where I wait until the first few male journalists arrive. Then, mistakenly viewing them as protection, I lead them inside. These well-dressed, well-seasoned journalists are clearly unnerved by the sight of the miserly camp mattresses stacked in the corner. But I don’t feel apologetic about having summoned them here, because this is my office. I am using my office for a press conference just as any other professional might. The fact that my office smells and is about 120 degrees, with no windows, no ventilation, no chairs and no semblance of civility, is not my fault.

  It has to do with the political values of our whacked-out local and federal governments.

  Not mine.

  As more reporters arrive, I notice them watching me with equal amounts of eagerness and suspicion. They are curious about what contribution I might make to the presidential circus snaking through Washington. But they are also silently praying I won’t embarrass them with any more facts or statistics about homelessness or the shortage of shelters in D.C. They want information, not a lecture.

  By six o’clock there are some twenty-five reporters standing in the claustrophobic heat, waiting for me to begin. I am impressed by their commitment. A camera crew from CBS, which I’d never even contacted, has also arrived and started setting up.

  But I am waiting for Bo. He finally appears about six-ten. He’s all business today. But he’s looking so good my hormones start to jangle. His beard and hair have been trimmed, highlighting their silvery slivers. He’s wearing tan cotton slacks and a white cotton shirt with epaulets, which, like my dress, has a safari flavor. Then brown loafers without socks, as usual.

  Although I’ve never addressed such a large or sophisticated audience before, I sound fairly cool when I begin.

  “Thank you for coming. I’m Natalie Karavan Myers. Yes, I’m Shay Karavan’s sister, but I’m not a mover or shaker like her.” Gracious smile. “I’m a social worker and I run this shelter for homeless women, which is temporarily closed because we’ve run out of operating funds. You can probably tell that our most pressing need is for an AC or at least some large floor fans.” I look at the impatient faces watching me. “I know newspaper policies about never paying for stories, but if you can make a contribution before you leave, a lot of women would be very grateful. You can just leave it up front on that windowsill there.”

  Embarrassment twists through the crowd like a small tornado.

  “Anyway”—I smile to let them off the hook a little—“today I’m going to distribute an interview that Fawn Hall gave to some DEA agents last summer in which she admitted to being a weekend cocaine user.”

  A delicious hum stirs the room. Breathing rhythms change like the tempo of a band shif
ting from a waltz to a fox-trot.

  “I guess I don’t have to explain why it was never released, why the DEA suppressed it. Nobody wanted Fawn Hall discredited before she appeared in front of the joint congressional committee. The Republicans didn’t want her testimony in support of Oliver North tainted by any confession of drug usage. They didn’t want her to become a symbol of the corruption in the Reagan administration. They didn’t want the issue of a possible breach in national security raised by Fawn’s being a cokehead.”

  The journalists start asking questions, but I cut them off.

  “Please, wait. Let me finish first. What Contragate shows is that government officials made private deals without congressional or presidential knowledge. We know Oliver North’s gang sold arms to Khomeini and independently negotiated for the release of our hostages. We know he solicited funds from other countries, which he then sent down to the contras in Nicaragua. In other words, Reagan’s National Security Council staff did whatever they wanted to do whenever they wanted to do it. They altered, shredded and stole official documents. Ollie North’s secretary, Fawn Hall, dated Arturo Cruz, Jr., the contra leader’s son, and did coke in Georgetown during the time she was working for North.

  “I’m no foreign-policy expert but, having lived in D.C. as long as I have, I do have a certain sense of the contradictions and inconsistencies that exist here. However, just to refresh your memories, I’ve also photocopied for you some excerpts from Scott Armstrong’s chronology of Contragate. So please pick up one set from each of the two piles.”

  There is a long quivering silence during which only the TV cameras whir and the print photographers click their shutters. Everyone is sweating profusely by now. Everyone is eager to pick up a handout and get out of here.

  “Okay,” I say, pointing to the two stacks of papers set atop two mattress piles. “Help yourselves.”

  There is a wild flurry as they begin grabbing copies. Then there is a silent pause while they read Fawn Hall’s statement. After that the questions come skidding at me like baseball grounders:

  “Where did you get this information, Ms. Myers?”