The Spy

by Garbo Norman

  “You never learn, do you, Richard?”

  Ludlow spoke quietly, without elation. Burke stared up at him. Ludlow had taken a small pistol from the back pocket of his warm-up suit and was holding it casually pointed at the ground. He appeared in no hurry to use it. Ludlow was a man who knew how to make the most of life’s more glowing moments.

  “You were doing so well, Richard. It’s too bad it has to end for you like this.”

  “You’re going to shoot me, of course.”

  Ludlow looked mildly surprised. “Of course. That’s what you should have done to me earlier with a rifle. As I told you eighteen years ago, there’s no place on this planet for sentiment It’s as obsolete as the dinosaur. And only those who know this will be able to survive.”

  “I don’t think I’d enjoy that sort of survival.”

  “Have no fear, Richard. You’re not going to have that problem.” Ludlow shook his head. “You poor, obsolete fool I really should have you stuffed and mounted in the Capitol rotunda. The nation’s own special dinosaur. You’d make a valuable warning to the citizens of the republic.”

  He started to raise the pistol when Burke fired three times through his pocket. All of the shots were in the killing zone.

  He left the body where it fell.

  But driving back to New York, his head and bowels aching, he agreed with Ludlow that shooting from ambush would have been more sensible. Still, needing to be absolutely sure, he’d had no choice. No true, self-respecting dinosaur could have done otherwise.

  Epilogue

  I

  Burke thought of them often during the year, but New Year’s Eve was a special reminder of the four.

  He and Angela were about to welcome another new year, this one together, in San Francisco, where the light was soft and steady on most days and the limitations on artists were strictly their own. People were, of course, still shooting one another. He supposed always would. But this no longer had anything to do with him. What he was interested in mostly, was Angela and the substance of their days and years, the ones still ahead. He considered himself ahead on points, and from here on he had the same odds going for him as anyone, the same chances for joy and sorrow. He was pleased to accept them. As was Angela.

  She looked younger than he now. She too now had a new face. There had been no choice: if they found her, they found him. But the result was the same. She had been beautiful before, why not now? And she was.

  “Maybe I’ll have better luck painting this face,” he said hopefully, but he didn’t. Love still clouded his brush. He continued to do well with her eyes, but of course they were unchanged.

  She laughed about it. “Never mind,” she said after his latest failure. “It proves you still love me.”

  So looking at their new faces, they shared an old love. Also, old ghosts. There was no escaping these. Unseen, they still had solidarity. Sometimes they even talked about them. When they did, it was usually Angela who started it. She had less training in silence than he.

  “Do you think they’re still looking for you?” she said.

  “There’s no reason anymore.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I’m sure Tony still thinks about me.”

  “That’s still no answer.”

  “It’s all I have,” he told her.

  Which was not entirely true. He also had conjecture. But he saw no reason to involve her in that. Beyond the facts, all he could do was imagine. And the facts were few. One was, of course, that Ludlow was dead, another tragic victim (according to official press releases) of the growing, senselessly violent rash of crime that was sweeping the capital, the country, and the world. Watching the funeral on television, Burke had found it impressive. The President and countless other dignitaries were present. The eulogy was delivered by the Secretary of State, who described Ludlow as an outstanding patriot and one of the truly great men of his time. Burke had never doubted the intensity of Ludlow’s patriotism — just its quality. Still, history had been known to honor all sorts of men for all sorts of reasons, and its standards of judgment were not necessarily his own. And if statues were sometimes erected to those so honored, many were later pulled down.

  As for Tony, he remained, for Burke, half fact, half conjecture. Walled up behind whatever new cover he had chosen, he was as invisible to Burke as Burke was to him. Having discovered that strong belief could make men willing to deceive and murder even their friends, he undoubtedly was going right on doing whatever his convictions told him to do next. Or so Burke imagined. He also imagined their unlikely but still not altogether impossible meeting. And he had a recurrent dream over which he had no control.

  “Well, schmuck,” Tony would begin, “you’ve really done it now. You’ve buried the next president of the United States.”

  Unaccountably, Burke would find himself grinning. “The sonofabitch had no integrity. To the last goddamned second of his life, he was making deals, then busting them.”

  “I know. What a president he would have made. One of our greatest.”

  “I’m ashamed of you, Tony.”

  “I just did what I had to. The same as you.” He would shake his head here. “Jesus, how did you ever get out of this?”

  “It was easy. I just remembered everything you taught me.”

  “You’re better than I ever was. You decimated me.”

  “He who has right on his side,” Burke would quote grandly, “has the strength and wisdom of ten.”

  “Bullshit! We had the right. You think the world is run with Bible maxims? You’ve hurt this country, Richard.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “You don’t know a damn thing about it. You are a self-righteous fanatic.”

  “I was trying to stay alive.”

  “Ha!”

  “At first, anyway. Later, when I found out about Ludlow, it became more.”

  “Lousy virtue-monger.”

  “I never betrayed and tried to kill a friend.”

  “I took no pleasure in that.”

  “And you even tried to use your father.”

  “If my sainted mother were alive, I’d have tried to use her too,” He would take a moment here. “But if it’s worth anything to you, Richard, through it all I’ve never loved you any less.”

  Because Burke knew the truth would embarrass him, he would say, “You’re breaking my heart.”

  “It’s over now. You’ve won. You can afford to be a little generous.”

  “Is it really over?”

  “I just said it was.”

  “And I say, ‘up yours.’”

  Tony would laugh here. “I get the distinct feeling you don’t trust me anymore. But there’s no practical reason for us to want you now. And you know it’s never been anything personal.”

  “What about leaving loose ends? And you did lose some good people.”

  “We’re not vindictive. Besides, I somehow still think of you as one of our own.”

  “And my four friends?”

  “They weren’t all such friends.”

  “Considering, they stood up damned well.”

  “Okay. So they’re bloodkin. Anyway, if it’s over for you, it’s over for them.” The deep-set eyes would look at him … very straight, very sincere. “Listen. I’m unhappy about Ludlow, but not all that sad about you.”

  “The country picked a better man than Ludlow.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “At least he has human instincts.”

  “Please, Richard. Just paint nice, love Angela, and keep your sticky, pious hands out of politics.”

  “You should have drafted your father.”

  “For what?”

  “For president.”

  “Oh, God!”

  “That’s some old man. He’s one of a kind. I love him.”

  “So do I, schmuck. But he’d have messed things up almost as fast and thoroughly as you.”

  “You don’t know as much about it as you th
ink.”

  “And you do?”

  “At least I never tried to play God.”

  Tony would laugh here, loudly, almost uncontrollably. “Christ Almighty! What do you think you’ve been doing?”

  “Following my conscience.”

  “That can be fust as fatal.”

  “What a sad thing to say.”

  Then they would be silent and just stand there, not quite looking at each other.

  “Well, old buddy,” Tony would say at last, and hold out his hand. “I’ll see you around.”

  “No you won’t,” Burke would reply. And ignoring the offered hand, he would turn and walk away.

  And this was how the imagined meeting would always end. Burke would sometimes make an effort to change it, would occasionally try to accept the offered hand just to see how it would feel. They had, after all, been friends for more than twenty years, and Tony had said there was nothing personal in his wanting to have him liquidated. But Burke was never quite able to get himself to do it. Taking that hand seemed utterly beyond him. Regardless of how hard he tried, he simply could not imagine anything impersonal about wanting to kill a friend.

  II

  Three thousand miles away near Kennebunkport, Maine, David Tomschin was also seeing out the old year. It was his first New Year’s Eve away from the City, away from the bumper-to-bumper traffic, the rolling tides of people, and the millions of nervously dancing lights. There were times during the past year when he had wondered what he was doing up here (the dark end of the earth, his mother had called it), looking out over rocks and water, watching the gulls, seeing the snow pile up and cover the earth, probably until spring. But generally, he accepted the place and condition of his life without question. He had come up in early April just for the summer and simply stayed on, living alone in a small cabin he had bought near the water. The place had been run-down and needed a lot of work; he had done most of it himself, going into town only for food and supplies. No one bothered him. People minded their own business up here. After a few months, he was even able to start writing again. He had no idea whether the stuff was any good, but at least he was covering pages. Until then, any thought of writing had just made him feel sick. Somehow in his mind the writing had been all tied up with Dolores, and he had needed time to handle that. One corner of his brain was still in mourning. Maybe it always would be. But the rest of him was back among the living.

  Before David had left New York, Ellman appeared at his door one day, his arm in a sling. David was not surprised. He had been expecting a visit from him or one of his men ever since the shooting. The only surprise was that it had taken a few weeks in coming.

  “What took you so long?” he said. “I was beginning to think you’d either forgotten about me or died.”

  Ellman settled into a chair with a sigh. “Aren’t you even going to ask how I feel?”

  “I don’t give a damn. Unless it’s real lousy.”

  “It’s real lousy.”

  “Good.”

  “That’s not very charitable.”

  “Go screw.”

  Ellman shook his head and struggled to fill his pipe, his fingers working more slowly than usual.

  “Look,” said David. “If you’re going to arrest me, then arrest me, goddamn it. But I hate all this messing around.”

  “I’m no cop, David. I’m not here to arrest anybody.”

  “Then what the hell do you want?”

  “Not much. Just to give you some information I thought you might want to hear.”

  “You got cancer?”

  The agent looked mildly hurt. “You’re a pretty tough kid, huh?”

  “Not tough enough. If I was, I’d have put that bullet in your head instead of your shoulder.”

  “And you’re sorry you didn’t?”

  “Every minute of the day.”

  Ellman reached inside his jacket, took out a snub-nosed revolver and offered it to David, butt Forward. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Then do it.”

  David stared at the gun. “Don’t tempt me, damn it.”

  “I am tempting you.”

  “You sonofabitch, you’re pressing your luck.”

  “No I’m not. But you’d better know that right now. If you don’t, if you keep trying to fool yourself about wanting to kill me, it’s going to eat your gut for the next twenty years. And finally, you’re the one who’ll die of it.”

  Sweating, David started to reach for the gun. But his hand quit on him and he just sat staring at the floor.

  The agent put away his revolver. “Good. At least that’s a beginning. In the meantime, I just thought you’d like to know the heat is off on the Burke thing.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did,” David was almost afraid to ask, “did they get him?”

  “I don’t know that either.” Ellman chewed at his pipe. “Sometimes I’m astonished at how ridiculously little I do know. But either way, whether Burke’s been picked up or not, it’s finished as far as you and I are concerned. So if you’re smart, you’ll just try to forget the whole thing.”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean it, David. No one can change what’s happened, so don’t be foolish. You’ve got a lot of good years ahead of you. Don’t turn them sour by hanging onto this.”

  David stood up. “You finished?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Okay,” David said. “Then before you get out of here, you’d better understand this. I’m not going to forget a damn thing. Just the opposite. I’m going to make sure I remember. I’m going to remember every trick, every lie, every hurt, every humiliation. I’m going to remember every obscenity committed in the name of our beloved country. And as soon as I’m able, I’m going to start fighting them. I don’t know how, but I’m going to do it Me, David Tomschin, personally.”

  Looking weary and regretful, Ellman rose. “For your own sake, I wish you didn’t feel that way.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “David …” Ellman began. But he cut himself off and, watching him, David suddenly felt there was something almost frightened in his usually controlled face. Then his jaws tightened on the pipestem, his shoulders straightened and he went out.

  Big talk, David had decided later. Sometimes you said things without thinking because they sounded good. Afterwards, you thought. So among the trees and rocks, and beside the cold Maine sea, he thought. What and whom was he going to fight? And with what weapons? Even to think about it seemed ridiculous. Yet the sound of his words still echoed like bugles. Me … David Tomschin … personally. Beautiful. History flowed around him in a rushing stream and he was the rock in the middle. Some rock. He was a skinny, big-city Jew with a damaged face, hiding among the New England goyem and mumbling vengeance in his beard. He was a joke and not a very good one at that. In a movie he knew it would have been different. In a movie it would have moved along ritual lines, with Tomschin, the hero, plotting his deeds of valor deep into the night, then marching forth to carry them out. But he was not in a movie. And there were no soft-focus fade-outs or frozen-frame finales to mark any kind of heroic end. What he had, mostly, was his loneliness. The coast of Maine could be a painfully lonely place. And no less so because he had chosen it himself.

  Still, he did have his writing, his small flow of words. And he did try to make something of them. It was true that words were not even close to being flesh. They had no real substance, and you could not lie with them in bed. Yet, in a way, you could feel them and they could create feeling in others. They might even attack, destroy, perform heroic deeds. Me… David Tomschin … personally. And what could be more personal than words? How could you dig deeper than an idea? They lasted. They stayed behind when you went on.

  Big deal.

  If Sam Ellman knew (which in itself was unlikely), he was not exactly cringing. So David Tomschin was scribbling his small cries of pain and protest in a pine hut somewhere along the coast of Maine. Who cared? Who would see his words
? And if they did see, who would believe them? And if they did believe, what could they do about them? This was, after all, America: land of freedom, love, and opportunity.

  But David knew better. He had learned a few things about America. He had made discoveries. He had seen dead flies floating in the great pot of American chicken soup. He had discovered history, found out there was injustice in the world, and learned about it first-hand. He had not yet made the other discovery — that to survive, you cultivated a distance from such facts and events. He did not yet understand that kind of retreat. He did not yet know what it meant to settle quietly into the limp acceptance that passed for serenity among certain of the citizens of his country. Or if, subtle and unadmitted, he sometimes did know, he was not yet ready to surrender to it. Maybe he never would be.

  In any case, he rarely looked that far ahead. It was enough, for now, that he was alive, that he Was in motion, and that the coming year was beginning to look .wide open.

  III

  For Pamela and Hank in New York New Year’s Eve was as much a reunion as a celebration. Hank had returned from seven weeks in Brazil only the night before. They gazed at and touched one another and felt young despite their turmoil and their years. They could still make each other feel this. It was a special kind of magic, an answer to the confusing, dangerous times and the horrors of loneliness. Also, they had obligations to one another. They wanted to dive head first into whatever lay ahead They were in love.

  ‘Tell me about Brazil,” she said, when it finally became time for such things as speech, nourishment, and the simple act of breathing slowly.

  He lifted his head grandly, brows arched. “I can’t”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s classified.”

  “What’s classified? Brazil?”

  “I’m classified, ya dumb broad.”

  She stared at him.

  “Listen,” he said, “In case you didn’t know it, you happen to have just been laid by a very high-class spy.”