by Garbo Norman
The irony did not hit Burke quickly or all at once. In fact it came to him rather slowly, in fragments, as he sifted through the events set off by his failure to kill Abu Hamaid. The crazy part was, that if he had carried out his assignment to shoot the Arab leader, he would not have immediately left the Service and would certainly not have changed his appearance. Which further meant, that he would have been readily available when they wanted him — and would now, undoubtedly, be dead.
Sitting against a tree in the early morning damp, he thought: so here I am again.
But it was not really the same. He had no rifle this time, nor did he have any assignment to kill. Still, there was the familiar wait in the rising mists, the tightness in his stomach, and the identical wish that whatever he had to do would be done quickly and without accident or surprise. And again, with the same practicality, he lifted his hands, examined them in the dull, grey light, and was pleased to find they were steady.
He was sitting just off a dirt path that followed a stream through a densely wooded area that might have been anywhere, but was actually less than five miles from the center of downtown Washington. The path ran in a straight line at this point and Burke was able to see north along it for perhaps two hundred yards before it disappeared in the fog. There was a cluster of birch close by and he studied the dark rings on their trunks and wondered, if he were painting them, how many of the markings he would leave out so as not to take too much away from the silver, which was the really beautiful part. When he had first begun to paint, he would have left nothing out. Whatever he saw, he would have painted in, simply because it was the truth. He knew better now, knew that most of art was deception and that truth could often be better expressed through selective lies. A bright thought, but not his. Burke guessed it was Picasso who had first said it, but wished it might have been someone else, someone who had not gone so far off the deep end and spent his last yean laughing at the idiots who sanctified every piece of silliness he chose to label with his name.
Burke adjusted his weight, feeling a slight ache in his bad shoulder. It was not quite 6:45 and he had about another fifteen minutes to wait He hoped nothing went wrong and that this would be the end of it. Yet he knew instantly how foolish any Such expectation would be. Even if everything went well, there could be no true end, at least not for him. And there was still always the chance of a real foul-up. His shoulder was better, but far from great, and this could make an important difference in his reaction time. It might have been smarter for him to let the wound heal for another week or two, but he had run out of patience and smartness. And if there was any chance he had not been able to see this for himself, Angela had been worried enough to point it out less than twelve hours before.
“You’re still acting like an idiot,” she told him. But her voice was quiet, and she was not really angry. Only unhappy.
“Well, once an idiot, always an idiot.” He grinned. “Confucious.”
“Why can’t you at least wait a few days more? You’re still half crippled. You wince every time you put your shirt on.”
“A few days won’t make any difference in my shoulder, and I’m anxious to get this done with.”
“Get what done with? Living?”
They were in the room he used as a studio and he was going over some papers at his desk. He did not answer.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Something safe and brilliant. Just have faith.”
He reached for her and kissed her. She gripped him hard. “I’m just so damn scared,” she whispered. “I don’t want to lose you again.”
“Nobody’s losing anybody.”
But later it was necessary to tell her about the money. He had put off the telling until the last possible moment and this was finally it “Listen,” he said gently, “I expect to live to at least a hundred, but we still have to be practical. We still have to get something cleared up for you.” He took a valise out of a metal cabinet in his bedroom closet. “There’s almost half a million in cash in here. It’s good, clean money so you don’t have to worry about that part of it.” He smiled. “It’s sort of my retirement fund, my reward for twenty years of devoted service to my country. What the hell. It’s better than a gold watch.”
She stared wide-eyed, first at the valise, then at him. “You mean you’ve been keeping that in the closet all this time?”
“No. It’s been in a large safe deposit box until this morning. But I was the only one who could have gotten it out.”
Angela frowned slightly, a fine furrow between two delicately arched brows.
Tomorrow you can take a box under your own name and put the money there. If by some crazy chance you don’t hear from me in … let’s say in two weeks at the outside, you might want to consider some time deposits, or possibly even treasury certificates. If you wish, you can get some advice on that.”
Her face was carefully frozen. “To hell with advice. I’m going straight to the nearest track with that bundle. And if’ there’s anything left when I’m through there, I’ll try the crap tables in Vegas.”
“Fine.”
“Or maybe,” she said “I’ll just give it away in a continuing series of Idiot-of-the-Month-Awards in memory of my ex-husband, the super-idiot of all time.”
“Anything that will make you happy.”
“The only thing that will make me happy,” she said with her face intact, “is for us to leave here tomorrow, or the day, or the week, or the month after that, never be apart again for as long as we live, and never come back.”
“Don’t you think that would make me happy too?”
“Then let’s do it, for God’s sake!”
“I can’t”
“You mean you won’t”
“I can’t let that man be president”
“My hero!”
“It’s not heroics, Angela.”
“No? Then what is it? In your own way you’re as bad - -Ludlow. You both think the fate of the nation lies in your hand “I didn’t go after this. It was dumped on me.”
“It’s not your responsibility, damn it!”
“Who else’s?”
“There are two hundred million other people in this country.”
“None of them know what I know.”
‘That’s not true.” Her voice had turned as cold as her face “You’ve forgotten Tony and the president. Don’t they know much about Ludlow as you?”
“Yes, but …” He was surprised and puzzled. He had expected many things from her, but not this. He needed a moment for regrouping.
She refused to allow it. “But what? But their judgment on the country’s needs isn’t as good as yours?”
He was silent.
“What makes you think you’re in a better position than the president of the United States to decide on the proper qualifications for his successor? If he, the president, thinks Tom Ludlow is the best man around to lead the country during the next four years, who are you to think differently?”
“No one very important,” he said softly. “Only Richard Burke. And there’s even been some confusion about that lately. But as long as that’s who I am, I’m afraid I can’t think and make judgments as anyone else. And there’s no way under heaven for me to ever make myself believe that someone like Ludlow is the man to be placed within finger-pressing distance of that terrible little black box.”
“No way under heaven,” she mimicked bitterly. “You’re playing God, that’s what you’re doing. Why can’t you just leave it alone?”
“I couldn’t live with it, Angela.”
“All right, then die with it.”
“I’m not planning to die for quite a while yet** “Of course not. That’s why you’ve just turned your whole goddamned estate over to me,” she said and ran from the room;
He slid out of bed at 1:00 A.M. and dressed silently in the dark. Angela seemed to be sleeping. But as he bent to kiss her, she opened her eyes. “I promise you,” she whispered fiercely, “I promise
you … if you don’t come back, I swear to Christ I’m going to throw every lousy dollar out the fucking window.”
The woods were silent. There was not even a breeze. The only sound Burke heard was an occasional drop of moisture falling from a branch. He watched the path at the place where it disappeared into the mist. No way under heaven, he thought. Remembering his own words, he knew he was not nearly as certain as he had sounded last night. Was he really trying to play God? He had been more strongly affected by the accusation than he cared to admit, but this was an empty, bitter, cynical time. There were no certainties, and he was not about to be swept up in that particular net. He believed in what he was doing. He knew he was the only one who could be counted on to do it. His certainty was that it needed to be done.
Perhaps Angela was right to call it all an ego trip. All motives were suspect, all purity of purpose maligned. Yet it was only ego and vanity that got you out of bed in the morning and kept you from blowing out your brains by dark. They were not dirty words.
The possibility of death was there, of course, but he had lived with it for so long that his defenses were carefully put together. What he had come to feel, rather than fear, was regret — regret at the possible interruption of so many plans, of so much left unfinished. He knew that life would simply go on as though he had never been. So what did it matter? He had seen and felt this clearly enough as he stood outside Angela’s window that night and watched her responding to another man. That had been his first true extinction, his first clear awareness that no part of you was really left after you were gone. The soul, of course, was something else, but this was not something to which he had ever given much thought.He heard the faint sound of someone running. Watching the point where the path disappeared, he heard the sound long before he expected to see the runner. The steady, disciplined beat was as individual as a signature. Burke looked at his watch an: saw that it was 7:01. Exactly on schedule. Even in his morning exercise, there was no break in precision. There was a purity to the man that might almost have been beautiful, thought Burke, if it wasn’t so frightening.
He rose, stepped onto the path, and stood waiting until he saw the jogger emerge from the mist. Then he started towards him. He walked slowly, almost lethargically, keeping his hands in plain view at his sides. To anyone watching he would not have appeared at all threatening. There was nothing about him :. make him look different from any well-dressed area resident out for a casual, early morning stroll. Yet seeing him now, from a distance of almost a hundred yards, the runner abruptly broke stride and cut his pace. Gradually, he slowed until he was re longer running, but walking, a tall, slender, straightbacked mar in a dark blue warm-up suit. He still carried himself, Burks thought, as though nothing in God’s world could ever bend him They were both moving so slowly now that the distance between them hardly seemed to be closing at all. But it was. And they finally came together like two animals of the same species, cautious but not unfriendly, meeting in a quiet mood somewhere in the jungle. They stopped about four feet apart and just stood looking at one another.
It was Ludlow who spoke first. “Richard?” He knew, yet did not know, and had to be sure.
Burke nodded. “Hello, Tom.”
“It’s a funny thing. At two hundred yards, I felt it was you, and fifty yards closer, I knew it was. When I was close enough to see your face, I had doubts.” He smiled, genuinely pleased — an urbane, charming man who might simply have been greeting an old friend after long separation. “It’s a good face. I don’t think I would ever have known you from your face.”
Burke was silent. He was waiting to feel an emotion of some sort. This was, after all, the moment. Yet he felt only the same curious apathy that seemed to come over him during certain periods of great stress.
“The amazing thing is that I wasn’t even surprised,” said Ludlow, still apparently enjoying the uniqueness of the situation. “It was as though I had been subconsciously expecting it.” He smiled almost fondly at Burke. “You know, you’ve come to play a very important part in my life. Lately, you’re the last person I think of before sleep at night, and the first one on my mind when I awake.”
“I’m flattered,” said Burke. Old working habits had slipped into gear and he was taking automatic inventory. Ludlow’s hands, like his own, were in plain sight at his sides; his stance was easy and relaxed.
“Quite honestly, Richard, I underestimated you. I never considered you capable of stirring up this much trouble. It was actually Tony who knew you better.” Slowly, carefully, he raised a hand to smooth his hair as a sudden breeze threatened to ruffle it. “Tell me. How were you finally able to trace this to me?”
“What difference does it make?”
“I think I have a small right to be curious. This was a high-priority, top-level operation. Our best talent was involved. I’d like to know who slipped.”
“No one really slipped. I suppose I just got lucky. I picked up a lot of loose ends, tied a few together, and bugged your house.
I finally heard you talking to the president one night.”
Ludlow grimaced in disgust. “Then I was the one. I was stupidly careless. No. I suppose it was really arrogance, which can be even more dangerous.”
Grudgingly, Burke admired the man’s poise. There was no visible fear, not even concern. Yet he bad to know what he faced They stood about four feet apart in the mist, but their eyes met and stayed together. It might have been the gaze of lovers. There was that kind of heat.
“Why didn’t you just pick me off as I went by?” said Ludlow.
“Is that what you would have done?”
“You know it.”
“No I don’t. Not really.”
“Haven’t you noticed?” said Ludlow. “There have been a great many people trying to kill you?”
“Yes, but that was a campaign. Not you personally.”
“What’s the difference? You would have been just as dead.” The pale eyes were puzzled. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at”
“Eighteen years ago you had me tied to a tree, helpless. Why didn’t you kill me then?”
“I almost did.” Ludlow smiled ruefully. “As it turns out, I should have.”
“But you didn’t.”
Ludlow stared at him. “You mean that’s why you didn’t put one into me from behind a tree just now?”
“I felt I owed you that much.”
“And now?”
“Now I figure we’re even.”
“Good Lord! You don’t really believe that line of nonsense, do you?”
Burke did not answer. His shoulder was starting to ache and he knew he should not be standing there. He hoped Ludlow would declare himself soon.
“I know from way back what a humanist fool you can be,” said Ludlow, “but not even you could be that much of a Boy Scout. No. I don’t buy that. Not for a minute. And I don’t think you do either.” He smiled queerly. “You know why?” He laughed. “Because when you cut through all the silly Sunday School sentiment, you know in your heart that I’m exactly what this country needs for survival in our sunny, little, nuclear jungle. And because you do know it, because you do sincerely care about what happens to a couple of hundred million poor, helpless slobs Out there, you can never really get yourself to finish me.
“Please, Richard.” Ludlow’s voice had taken on new urgency. “Too many people have already died in this comedy. Good people, with good motives. And all wanting essentially the same things. It’s insane. Don’t you know that by now? So let’s drop it right here. Let’s walk away from this place and one another and call it finished. It’s not really all that complicated. Just stay off my back and let things take their course. Promise me that and I’ll have Kreuger call off his hounds. His heart was never in this anyway. You know how he feels about you.”
“I know. He loves me like a brother.”
“It happens to be true. This has torn him apart. He just believed I had something valuable to offer and that you would never
allow me to offer it. The man is a true patriot. I know patriots are out of fashion these days, but I thank God we still have a few like Tony.”
God and patriotism! thought Burke, nibbing his shoulder.
“What’s the matter with your shoulder?”
“A small bite from one of my brother’s hounds.”
As though in empathy, Ludlow chewed his lip. “Listen, Richard Finish this thing before it’s too late. You’ve been carrying that load inside you for eighteen years. Isn’t that long enough? Whatever we were then, we’re not anymore.
Burke did not reply. His hands were in his coat pockets now, his shoulders hunched against the chill.
“All I’m asking is a chance,” said Ludlow softly. “Just give me your word on that and this nightmare will be over. No one will bother you again.”
“Just my word?”
“Your integrity has never been in doubt”
“What about your word?”
“I’m telling you, Richard. Walk away from here and it’s over this minute. What other assurances can I give you? If I don’t keep my word, if you see any sign at all of Tony’s hounds, you can blow the whistle on me then.” He smiled sardonically. “I promise you the Washington Post will always be happy to print any horror story you choose to come up with about me.”
Burke was still looking at him as though he were far off. Ludlow had been too much for him once. Perhaps he still was. There was only one way to find out.
“All right,” he said quietly.
“You’ll give me a chance?”
Burke nodded. His mouth was as dry as old leaves, and a sharp sad pain, almost pleasurable in its intensity, was working its way through him.
“You won’t regret it, Richard.” Ludlow held out his hand across the four feet between them, across the eighteen years, across the twenty-three dead.
Burke gazed at it for a long moment. Then Burke pulled a hand free of his coat pocket and reached for the one that was waiting.
Ludlow gripped hard, and in a single fluid motion, yanked Burke forward, drove a knee into his groin, and hit him in the neck with his free hand, a chop that dropped him rolling in the dirt. Eyes blurred with pain, Burke barely saw the kick coming and could not have avoided it if he had. It caught him in the side of the head, and it was only because Ludlow was wearing son running shoes, that his skull was not caved in. He lay on his back.