Consequence

by Steve Masover

CHAGALL: Probably. But security staff is unlikely to review unless planted equipment is discovered in building. Device will be well disguised. You’ll wear ski mask, common brand dark clothing, latex gloves. A recording leads nowhere.

  ROMULUS: What if I’m tall as a basketball center? Or paraplegic?

  CHAGALL: If you’re tall, crouch. If you’re a cripple, or a liar, or a coward, you should have pulled the plug months ago.

  ROMULUS: I’m not pulling any plugs.

  CHAGALL: Proceed to basement. Identify cable in utility room, I will specify how in written instructions. Perform splice using procedure that won’t interrupt signal—again, detail to be provided. Sufficient for now to know that procedure requires minimal tools, minimal expertise.

  ROMULUS: Requires travel.

  CHAGALL: You’ll drive. If you’re not in US enter from Canada or Mexico. Pay cash for everything.

  ROMULUS: Okay, never mind. That’s my problem. How to enter building? I can’t pick locks either.

  CHAGALL: Doors are electronically and manually keyed. I’ll provide a master for the outer door, also for utility room.

  ROMULUS: You’re a fountain of resources.

  CHAGALL: Open doors are indicated on security desk console, but signaling is not extended to kiosk.

  ROMULUS: Sounds as if you could have finished the job yourself.

  CHAGALL: I prefer to share.

  Romulus is certain he would hate Chagall’s guts if they met in the flesh. Humorless, unflappable bastard.

  ROMULUS: Need more detailed plan, diagrams, tool list. In advance, for study. This may be a regular day’s work for you but it’s out of my league.

  CHAGALL: I’ll provide a complete kit 48 hours in advance. Need to set date.

  Romulus swallows. He is acutely conscious of his uncoordinated body. Chagall, he imagines, is a flat-muscled Special Forces type. His fellow conspirator is toying with him. How much more clearly does he have to say “I can’t do this”?

  And yet. If the demolitionist were any less cagey, Romulus would doubt his ability to execute. In Chagall’s place he’d insist just as hard. And therefore: one step at a time.

  ROMULUS: What range?

  CHAGALL: Best five to seven days before our target.

  ROMULUS: How to hand off tools, etc.?

  CHAGALL: Will conceal at a location within 100 miles of site. Suggest you read up on CCTV installation, splicing UTP cable using EMI-detect/decode bypass.

  ROMULUS: Say I accomplish the splice. How will I test?

  CHAGALL: Wireless LAN is running in building, currently unsecured. There’s signal at top of stairs leading to basement. Will provide device to test communication.

  ROMULUS: What if test fails?

  CHAGALL: I will retest prior to start of operation. If your part is not completed fully and successfully, I will not proceed.

  ROMULUS: We’re heavily invested. There has to be a fallback plan.

  CHAGALL: Not negotiable, as previously discussed.

  ROMULUS: You’re necessarily providing material resources. I assume there’s significant cost. What’s the financing?

  CHAGALL: Thought you’d never wonder.

  ROMULUS: So?

  CHAGALL: It would compromise my anonymity to tell.

  ROMULUS: Is that a hint?

  CHAGALL: I intend it as misdirection. There is no shadow organization. Cash is mine, unencumbered.

  His leftmost laptop begins to log new traffic on the hacked network. Romulus studies the packets for a few moments. It’s an FTP connection, to a security software vendor. Somebody’s machine is updating antivirus definitions.

  ROMULUS: Still. Has to be a lot. Would assist in form of financing satisfy requirement for non-virtual participation?

  CHAGALL: Negative. A desperate offer, but I am willing to suspend judgment. The equipment you work with is not free either.

  ROMULUS: If I was some kind of cop I’d be pretty g.d. frustrated.

  CHAGALL: Without prejudice as to what you might or might not be, it’s not my job to help cops do theirs. Can you commit to a specific date?

  ROMULUS: I can commit to the week.

  CHAGALL: I need to know soon. By Friday, say.

  ROMULUS: Why the rush?

  CHAGALL: You deferred this for months.

  ROMULUS: I’m squeamish, that’s no secret. As I’ve said. Not my strong suit.

  CHAGALL: We’re both operating in unfamiliar territory.

  ROMULUS: I’ll withdraw if plan fails to convince I can get in and out.

  CHAGALL: Plan will be airtight. I do not intend to see our interest in target unmasked, or to sacrifice essential propaganda element.

  ROMULUS: Neither do I.

  CHAGALL: Expecting contact in 48 hours, then, drop 29b.

  ROMULUS: Yes. O&O.

  Romulus shuts down the chat link and rips another length of paper toweling to dab his forehead dry, and the back of his neck.

  Splicing and crimping is simple enough—he can handle wire. But the set up. Burglarizing a secured construction facility, with two days to prepare, in a state he’s only flown over. There are so many ways he could fuck it all up.

  He imagines himself groping down a dimly lit stairwell, missing a step, taking a hard tumble. He visualizes the fall so vividly that he starts, setting the van rocking on its struts. Romulus holds his breath, listening to the neighborhood.

  What then?

  His body splayed across a landing like a beached whale, knocked out, maybe paralyzed. In the morning, thick-muscled men in jeans and tool belts haul him up into glaring Midwestern light. Then the Homeland Security goons. Truth serums, stress positions, splints under his fingernails.

  He shakes off morbid conjecture and pushes away from the bank of keyboards and screens. Romulus ducks through the heavyweight curtain installed to conceal his laptops’ ghostly light, and settles himself in the driver’s seat. Caving in to fear will return him to the same dead end that sent him looking for Chagall in the first place. Firing up the engine, he eases away from the curb.

  A hell of a lot of people are going to read that communiqué.

  Their exhortation won’t flip everybody’s switch. How could it? But they might move a million, or two, or ten. Chagall could be right about what will draw their audience in. It’s not that the writer is doing a bad job; he’s clearly done his homework. They stand a chance of forcing realization that the time is now or never. That another decade spent mortgaging the biosphere could prove ten years too many.

  And doing his part means he’s got to walk into that goddamned construction site on the outskirts of Lincoln.

  He has little choice but to double down. Romulus has spent years taking virtual potshots at industry. Either he’s serious about his enmities or he’s a loser and a fool. He can’t bear to go back to impotent bit-twiddling.

  At a stop sign a few blocks from the freeway, no traffic behind or before him, Romulus drills down into an off-market MP3 player and queues up a track from Il Trovatore. A scene from Verdi’s opera has popped unbidden into his mind’s ear. Romulus taps an icon on the device’s screen, and a smoky soprano fills the vehicle.

  Ora il mio fine impavida,

  Piena di gioia attendo …

  Potrò dirgli morendo:

  Salvo tu sei per me!

  Leontyne Price is singing Leonora, her tragic ecstasy blooming like a peaty single malt across his aural palate. She has bartered her life for her lover’s. And now the smitten Count di Luna edges in with his doubting counterpoint, bitter, incredulous that Leonora would offer herself on the terms he’s been led to misunderstand.

  A thin rain sweeps across the roof as the voices duel and Zubin Mehta coaxes the strings forward. His windshield is misting up. Romulus cranks the defrost fan as he accelerates toward an on-ramp, singing along in imperfect tune and octaves below the heroine, willing himself to desperate resolve.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Christopher stood a few hundred yards from the cliff, by a fast-flowing fork of
the American River, watching the climbers through a pair of binoculars.

  Today marked their last practice. Duncan Caselli crouched atop a boulder a short distance from the cliff’s base, coaching over a walkie-talkie. The ground crew, Becca and Mickey, would soon send weighted backpacks skyward in lieu of the banner. Christopher followed Duncan’s instruction with a neophyte’s uncertainty while Marty and Phil cavorted up the rock face. Their seconds, Laura and Keith, followed steadily behind. Christopher’s role would kick in with the ersatz banner hoist.

  “Phil, don’t skimp on the gear,” Duncan said. “You’re training for solid protection every few feet.”

  “Sorry, Dunc.” Phil’s voice sounded strained through the walkie-talkie’s static. “I hope you’re right about this wall being harder than the real thing.”

  “No question. But don’t think about that. Be right here. Care before speed—remember the stakes.”

  “Right.”

  “You’re cool, Phil,” Marty radioed from across the cliff face. Christopher swung his binoculars over. Marty hugged the mottled gray stone, feeling his way onto a foothold Christopher could barely make out. Two ropes hung from his harness, as from Phil’s: a kernmantle weaving its way through carabiners and quickdraws to the belayer lower on the cliff, and a static line running all the way down to the ground crew, who would clip it to the mock banner once the climbers reached their marks. “Run Duncan’s rack dry,” Marty was saying. “Leave the bully’s hardware tacked to the wall.”

  “As for you, Martin,” Duncan said, “come down one nut short and it’s back up you go.”

  “Nora says he doesn’t even pick up his socks,” Laura chimed in. “You better count ’em real careful.”

  “Will do,” Duncan said. “Keep your focus, climbers.”

  Christopher seconded that, if only to himself. Duncan had put the crew through a grueling regimen, from specialty gyms to parks radiating out from the Bay Area in every direction but west. They’d been bouldering at Castle Rock, Jenner, and the Pinnacles, and climbing at Oroville, Phantom Spires, and here, at Lovers Leap. From what Christopher could tell they’d learned plenty. Still, you had to figure that scrambling like geckos over unforgiving rock wouldn’t mix well with casual banter. The bridge might be an easier climb, what with ladders running up the tower, but factor in the pressure of traffic backed up six miles into Oakland, and the cops rushing their blockade? It wasn’t going to be a romp in the park.

  He let the binoculars hang against his chest and rested his eyes on the foaming river. A fallen cedar and a length of sisal bridged the torrent around an upstream bend. Christopher figured climbing enthusiasts had strung the rope, to cross over more easily from the summer cabins behind him. The ground, carpeted with needles shed by Jeffrey pines, felt soft as a persian rug shop’s floor. River noise masked the rumble from Highway 50, and the air smelled clean and new, faintly like vanilla. His position approximated the distance between their planned blockade line and the bridge tower. Christopher had set up a tripod and camera, to explain himself should anyone come along.

  The climbers were still ascending. Christopher settled himself on a low shelf of veined white stone, and wondered what Suvali was doing. Sitting in a seminar? Following a preceptor on rounds? Their parting outside the Paint & Palette baffled him. Despite what she’d said, he couldn’t convince himself to pick up the phone. She had no romantic interest in him, or she abhorred his politics, or both. He would look like a fool if he failed to take her hints. On the other hand, she’d urged him to call, flat-out. So was he a fool if he didn’t?

  Unusually, he was carrying a cell phone, one they’d rented so he could be in touch with the action’s command post on the day of the blockade. Jammed into the front pocket of his jeans, the flip phone dug into Christopher’s thigh. His stone seat was bleeding warmth from his body. He stood, stamping his feet.

  The phone took a few seconds to boot. Christopher was surprised it registered a strong signal, even in the middle of the mountains. He remembered Suvali’s number, but hesitated. Maybe calling wouldn’t be so smart after all. Maybe it had been too long already. She could have called him, but she hadn’t; he had to factor that in. On impulse, Christopher punched in his father’s campus number instead. The phone rang. Twice. Three times. Then Professor Kalman picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Chris? I didn’t recognize your number.”

  “Sorry,” Christopher said. “I’m borrowing a cell phone.”

  “Is something the matter?”

  “No, no, just had a moment, and I thought I’d check in. Is this a bad time?”

  “I’m happy to hear from you. What’s new?”

  “Not a lot. Busy at the paper, the usual at home. How are you? I heard from Marshall that you might visit Paris on the way back from Prague.”

  “Yes,” Professor Kalman said, his voice brightening. “I’m thinking about it. It’s a good time of year, and a colleague from Tufts keeps a pied-à-terre near the Panthéon.”

  “That’s excellent.” Christopher stepped back and leaned against a tree, sheltering from the noisy river. “Are things okay between you and Marshall?”

  “I suppose.” His father sighed. “It’s good that you and he are in touch. I hear him up at all hours, in and out of the house. I have no idea what he’s up to. Your brother has turned out to be quite the introvert, Chris.”

  “Maybe that wouldn’t be so bothersome if you lived separately. Do you think?”

  Professor Kalman hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know whether Marshall wants that.”

  “If you wanted it, could you ask him to find another place?”

  “I don’t know about that either. It would be awkward.”

  “Maybe you could drop a few hints. About the different hours you keep, something like that.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Well, listen,” Christopher said after a silence. “I know you’re working, I only wanted to say hello. I won’t keep you.”

  “I’m glad you called, Chris. Let’s talk again soon.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Goodbye, then.”

  Christopher pocketed the phone. His father wasn’t going to do anything about the secret lives of day-trading offspring. Not that he should, necessarily. But spinning around in circles while their father wrung his hands—how was that supposed to help? Why did Marshall want him involved?

  The sun lit up the snowmelt tumbling by between Christopher and the cliff. Marty and Phil were approaching their targets, shallow ledges at roughly equal heights, from which they’d haul the standin for the banner. Laura and Keith were already set on their respective niches lower on the rock face, resting spots and solid perches from which they could belay the lead climbers—though Christopher had a hard time reconciling “rest” with a vertical rock face.

  He raised his binoculars and zoomed in on Marty, just a few feet shy of his ledge.

  Duncan’s voice crackled out of the walkie-talkie. “Steady,” he said. “Stay focused as you approach your goal. Marty, that means you. We’re looking for excellent anchorage here. Nuke-proof.”

  With fingers of one hand wedged into a crack, Marty pulled a small metal nut from his rack. From Christopher’s distance, he seemed to push it into solid rock. Marty pulled on the nut’s dangling cable to set it, then yanked to test the hold.

  “Marty, tie in with opposed carabiners here,” Duncan said. “Phil, same thing. You each want two secure anchors just below your ledge. Ideally, you’ll stand between them.”

  “Got it, Dunc.”

  “Roger that, coach.”

  Christopher lowered the binoculars and watched the climbers in a less nerve-racking miniature. Becca waved from where she stood amid the sagebrush and scree at the foot of the cliff, below Phil and Keith. Christopher waved back.

  “Keith, look sharp!”

  Christopher lifted his gaze to the south-team belayer, then hig
her to find Phil pumping his legs in thin air, tenuously gripping the cliff face.

  “Phil, relax,” Duncan was saying. “Stay deliberate, the rope’s your safety. Smear your shoe on the wall, don’t kick … good. Yes, push up with the ankle, give your arm some relief.”

  Christopher couldn’t take his eyes off a thin stone shower flaking off the cliff, a fine cascade arcing into the void. He missed the moment Phil slipped. One instant it looked like he’d gotten back onto the wall, the next he was plummeting earthward.

  Duncan’s voice remained steady over the walkie-talkie. “Joints relaxed,” he said. “Face the cliff.” Rooted in place, unable to grasp what he saw, Christopher went blind to the sun and trees, deaf to the river-roar. There was only Phil, a mere speck of Phil, falling soundlessly through the vast tableau.

  It was over in seconds. Maybe tenths of seconds. The rope was already tightening as Christopher’s knees began to buckle. The kernmantle stretched, then held. Phil swung like a trapeze artist. Christopher grabbed for his decoy tripod, saving himself from a near faint. Keith, steady as a statue, crouched against the belay line’s pull.

  “Everybody breathe,” Duncan said. “Phil—yes, knees bent. You want to muscle yourself to a gentle stop.”

  Christopher lifted the binoculars to the cliff, but had to lower them immediately. He couldn’t watch. His shirt clung to his torso, sweat-soaked. Marty lay against the stone, still as sleep, turned away lest the other climber’s panic infect him too.

  —

  “Falls go with the territory,” Duncan said, talking the team down from averted disaster. The leads had gained their ledges, and were taking a few minutes to settle. “It’s like boxing,” he continued. “You can’t believe it’s no big deal to get hit until you’re past the first few hooks and jabs and bloody noses. All of a sudden you get it—you survived!”

  Christopher had stopped trembling, but at that moment he hated sport, and coaches, and reckless machismo. He held himself in check. Falling was why they used ropes, he knew that. Wimps and acrophobics need not apply. Christopher had no illusions about why he’d be sitting in a decoy car while the climbers risked their necks hundreds of feet above the bay.