"Come back later," Debbie Reynolds had said, "Mr. Burnham's still working."
"He's not working," Ivy had said. "Look, he's sitting."
"I beg your pardon!"
"You're welcome."
Then the Burnham fellow had done the right thing and told her to come on in.
Now, if he'd just get out of here, she could do her job and be gone.
She heard him say something like, "See you soon," and hang up the phone, and she flopped her dustrag at one of the windowsills. Flip-flop-flip-flop. Maybe she should hire her hand out as a windshield wiper.
"Excuse me?" He was standing in the doorway.
Not bad. Civilized, anyway. Debbie Reynolds didn't say "excuse me."
Be polite. Don't want to leave a bad impression. Don't want to leave any impression at all. They claim they can't tell you-all apart unless you sass 'em. "Yessir?"
He pointed to a pile of papers over by the wastebasket. "Those all get burned, don't they?"
"To a cinder."
"Good. I didn't want to have to sit here and shred them."
"I'll make sure they go up the chimney."
"Thanks. Goodnight."
" 'Night."
She waited until she heard the outer door close, then headed straight for the pile of papers.
Remember the camera in the chandelier, the microphones in the dingle-dangles. To hell with them, keep your back to them, they'll never be able to prove a thing.
She saw the first paper on the file. It was slugged TOP SECRET.
Bingo.
She turned over another paper. TOP SECRET—URGENT.
Big leagues. This stuff d make Mr. Pym sit up and take notice. Let him dribble it out at his swell affairs, he'll be so much in demand he'll prob'ly have to sell stock in himself and become a conglomerate.
But be careful. Suppose they run a search on you on the way out.
No big deal. She picked up the two papers and, keeping her back to the chandelier, walked to the desk. She found a pair of scissors and clipped off the classification slugs.
There. Now no one can say anything.
She scooped the rest of the papers into a trash bag, tied it off and dropped it onto her cart. She tidied up the desk and looked around to make sure everything was in place.
Then she left, pushing her cart ahead of her and turning out the lights.
She was amazed at how brilliant she was.
''I WONT DO IT," Eva said to her father, who was slicing smoked salmon into paper-thin leaves.
"Of course you will." He didn't bother to look at her.
"I'll leave. I'll find some other way to pay you back."
"No you won't. You don't want to go to jail again."
"I don't believe you."
"Yes you do, or you wouldn't be trying to talk me out of it. You'd've left already." He laid the razor edge of the filleting knife against the soft flesh and slashed it with quick expertise.
"But why! Don't you have any—"
"No, I don't. None at all. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for me, and it's not asking too much of you to help me."
"They could lock me up for life! You too."
"Only if you get caught. And if you do what I tell you, you won't." Pym was reassured by the certainty in his own voice. He had to convince Eva, true, but he also had to convince himself. "Now," he said, "tell me."
She told him about the squash game and the lunch and the sudden summons to the Oval Office.
"What about the allergies?"
"What I thought. He's supersensitive to chemicals. His body overreacts to everything. I put him up with an amino acid in about two minutes. I didn't have a chance to see what'11 bring him down."
"What's he like?"
"Naive. Out of his depth. He doesn't know who he is or what he's got. Nice. Kind of charming."
Charming. Pym didn't like that. He looked at Eva, but now she wouldn't look at him.
"What are his politics?"
"I couldn't tell. I don't know that he believes in anything very strongly."
"Good. The mushy ones can be prodded. Is he married?"
"Sort of. Something's wrong there, but I don't know what."
"Find out. That sounds like a real weak spot."
She didn't respond. Pym couldn't tell if she was sad or frightened. Her face was slack.
The doorbell rang. Pym frowned and looked at Eva, who shook her head. It rang again, urgently. Pym wiped his hands on a dishrag and left the kitchen.
Ivy was through the door before it was all the way open, dragging her tote bag into the living room.
"Ivy! What a nice surprise!" Pym hated surprises, especially from people who were providing him with documents stolen from the White House.
"I know I should've called," Ivy said, "but ..." With a dismissive wave of her hand, she plopped herself down onto the sofa.
She's drunk, Pym thought. Then, suddenly, from nowhere: Mother of God, she's been caught! No. Control yourself. Don't panic.
He wondered if his passport was still valid.
He forced himself to say, "Not at all, my dear. Always glad to see you."
Eva came out of the kitchen. She looked at Ivy for a long moment before saying, "Are you okay?"
"Sure." Ivy smiled.
"How's your leg?"
"No problem."
Eva said, "That's what I thought."
Pym saw Eva glare at him as she turned back into the kitchen, but he didn't know why until he looked again at Ivy and saw the stuporous grin still stretching her face.
The pills. She was carrying a load of Percodan. Had anyone at the White House noticed? Had she been fired? Was that why she was here?
"How was your day?" he asked.
"Wait'11 you see," Ivy said. "I brought you some goodies."
Eva returned with a cup of tea for Ivy, so strong it was almost black. Ivy sipped at it contentedly.
Pym could tell that Ivy was floating in a friendly fog in which time did not exist. She made no move to show him her goodies, so he pointed at the bag and said, "May I?"
"Be my guest."
He dumped the tote bag in the middle of the rug and sat beside the heap of papers. The first two papers he examined had been cut by scissors. He held them up to Ivy. "What happened to these?"
"I cut the TOP SECRET off 'em, so if they stopped me, they couldn't prove anything."
Pym blinked and bit his lip. "I see." This woman, he thought, is a live bomb. The sooner Eva can get her hooks into Burnham and retire Ivy to the sidelines, the better.
He read the two papers. Before he had finished the first, he had begun to perspire. It was a CIA memorandum about America's newest Asian oil ally, Banda. If the Mother got her hands on this, she could reap a whirlwind of publicity about the friends being wooed by the West's self-styled champion of human rights.
The other had to be a joke: a transsexual plot to blow up a Russian tanker in Cuba? But the National Security Council was not known for its pixie sense of humor.
The rest of the papers were incomprehensible—Energy Department documents and charts that looked routine but might be critical. It wasn't his job to judge.
"Lovely," he said to Ivy. "These are lovely."
Ivy was leaning back in the couch now, her feet out, her shoes off, "Glad you like 'em."
"Yes. We're developing a nice portrait of our Mr. Bumham."
Pym was exultant. This was the material he needed. It would give him credibility. It was unimpeachably authentic and (some of it, at least) undeniably important. It was also exquisitely secret: The Energy Department papers were slugged with a classification so high that Pym had never heard of it. They were to be read only by those with something called Q Clearance.
He was itching to get to work. Evening was prime time for initiating contacts.
First, however, he had to get Ivy out of there. She looked as if she was settling in for a long stay.
He said to Eva, "You should go or you'll be late. Why don't you drop Iv
y off on the way?"
It took Eva a beat to pick up the cue, and for those few seconds there was a look in her eyes that unsettled Pym.
"All right," she said at last.
"Okay by me." Ivy leaned forward and, as she searched for her shoes, said to Pym, "Having any luck with the diploma?''
"Oh!" He had shoved it out of his mind. "Yes. By the end of the week. For sure."
"Top shelf." She stood up and yawned. "I feel like I've been on a roller coaster.''
At the door, Pym ushered Ivy into the hallway, then turned to Eva and said with a sly smile, "Remember, my dear, what the sage said: 'Freedom is a precious commodity, and no price we pay for it is too high.' "
Eva looked at him as if he was a stranger who had propositioned her in an elevator. "I'd rather remember what Janis Joplin said: 'Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose.' "
Pym started to say, "Who?" but Eva was already following Ivy down the stairs.
Pym locked the door. He went to the phone and stood with his eyes closed, summoning the nmemonic tricks of recalling phone numbers. He had been taught a kind of meditative visionism: He told his mind to see a slot machine, and on top of the machine in bold gold letters was the word CONTACTS. His mind pulled the handle of the machine and, one by one, numbers dropped beneath each letter.
It worked the first time. Pleased with himself, excited, he sat on the sofa and dialed the number, rolling his code name around on his tongue.
"Hello." The voice was not familiar, but that didn't mean anything. Replacements came and went. But what if they had changed the number without telling him?
Pym held a finger over the phone cradle, prepared to sever the connection immediately, and said, "This is Mallard."
"Teal," came the reply, without missing a beat. "What do you want?"
Recognition! Affirmation! He existed I He wanted to chat, to catch up, but this was hardly the time. He said, "I want a meeting."
"When?"
"Soon."
"An hour. You know The Devil's Disciple?"
"The what?"
"A bar. In Georgetown. Carry a copy of US. I'll have People.”
Things were going too fast. He couldn't keep up. "A copy of what?"
''US, US, US.! One hour."
The line went dead.
A bar! Since when did spies meet in bars? They were supposed to meet in parks, under bridges, on rooftops, someplace where they could talk. And what was this US business?
He felt suddenly very old.
He had never been to a bar in Georgetown. What did people wear to Georgetown bars? Silk shirts and gold chains? Suppose they all looked like Michael Jackson? He didn't want to be conspicuous, like an undertaker at an orgy.
Don't worry. Be yourself. If somebody stops you at the door, say you're a seltzer salesman.
He chose an old tweed sports jacket, polyester slacks, cordovan shoes and a white shirt.
He put the most impressive of the White House documents into a manila envelope and went downstairs.
He had deduced that US was a magazine, so he stopped at a newsstand on the comer and bought a copy. Brooke Shields was on the cover, which made it difficult to distinguish US from most of the other magazines on the rack, since she was also on the covers of Mademoiselle, Vogue, Seventeen, Self, Glamour, Life and National Enquirer.
He hailed a taxi.
"Georgetown," he told the driver. "You know The Devil's Disciple?"
"You know the Washington Monument?" the driver sneered.
In the darkness, Pym slid the manila envelope inside the copy of US.
At first he thought there had been an accident or a homicide in The Devil's Disciple. Cars were triple-parked on the street. Men and women swarmed around the stained-glass windows and swinging doors. Then, as he saw drinks passed from hands to grasping hands through the doors, as he saw desperate young women trying to bull their way into the bar, as he heard a torrent of talk and laughter that sounded like a waterfall, he realized that this was not an atmosphere of fear or anger or violence.
This was a good time.
The men wore pinstripe suits or jogging clothes, army jackets or polo shirts. The women wore jeans or mumus, lounging slacks or short shorts, business suits or evening dresses.
Sybaris. In one of his many stops during his pilgrimage to Washington decades ago, Pym had read about Sybaris. Soon they will teach their horses to dance, he thought, and all will come tumbling down. About time, too.
The thought made him feel righteous, justified in what he was about to do. And then it occurred to him that he was doing it so that he could stay here forever, and righteousness gave way to uncertainty.
He had a more immediate problem: How to get into The Devil's Disciple.
What a stupid place to call a meeting! What was he supposed to do, set the place on fire? For sure, two "pardons" and an "excuse me" wouldn't work.
He could pretend to be mad, could slobber and curse and grope his way through the crowd. Middle-class Americans were terrified of crazy people. In his neighborhood, weirdos were as common as broken glass, but in this part of Georgetown they were not acceptable.
No. He might get arrested.
He would be forceful. Americans respected force. It was synonymous with good.
He took out his wallet and held it open, so that the photograph on his driver's license was visible. The rest of the license he covered with his fingers.
He took a deep breath and stepped forward.
"Police," he said. "Stand aside."
Two floozies stared at him. They didn't budge.
"Move, damn it!" he snarled.
They moved. One of them muttered, "Townie."
He shoved his way through the crowd, saying, "Police . . . move it!" And, to his delight and astonishment, the crowd parted. He felt like Moses.
When he was inside, he put his wallet away.
The bar was five-deep with drinkers. Tables for four were jammed with six or eight. Harassed, sweating barmaids elbowed their way from table to table, delivering white-wine spritzers and bons mots.
Pym tucked the copy of US under his arm so that the logo protruded prominently. He made his way to the far wall and edged along, peering over shoulders in search of a copy of People.
The din was painful because it was cumulative: People unable to hear one another speak raised their voices, which encouraged their neighbors who couldn't hear themselves speak to shout, which made their neighbors, who couldn't hear themselves shout, scream.
In the farthest comer of the room, at a table squeezed between two enormous rubber plants, beneath a poster for the movie of And Quiet Flows the Don, sat a single man, drinking something amber, reading People.
The man didn't see him, so Pym had a moment to study him. He was young (in his early thirties), blond (if the hair was his) and dressed like one of the characters in that show Pym's help liked to watch on kitchen TVs while waiting for the guests to finish their dessert and move into the drawing room: Miami Vice. He wore a white linen jacket, a cotton shirt open to the waist, lime-green slacks and soft-leather slip-ons. No socks.
How had this creature been recruited? He was a stereotype of the American go-getter: slick, hip, rich. What could the Soviet Union possibly offer him that he would value? Money?
Maybe he was being blackmailed. Maybe he had relatives in the USSR. Maybe he was a restless failure in search of cheap thrills. Pym had read newspaper accounts about all intelligence services being plagued these days by such volatile romantics.
Still, the man was not altogether stupid, for Pym now understood the advantages of meeting in a cattle car like this: In an open park, or on a Potomac bridge, two agents could be seen and, with modem technology, easily overheard. In here, a dozen rowdies could hatch a plot to firebomb the Vatican and nobody would suspect a thing.
Pym stood over the man and dropped the copy of US on the table. He said, "Teal?"
The man's eyes were sleepy, the lids drooping halfway down his e
yeballs. For a second, Pym thought he was drunk. But then he saw the eyes scan him like a computer searching a data bank, absorbing information from his shoes to the crown of his head.
"Hey, man," Teal said. "Grab a chair."
Pym sat.
"Long time no see."
Long time? Pym thought. How about never? He said, "Yes."
"What you been up to?"
"This and that. Business has been slow."
"Sure." Teal was trying to be genial, but his hooded eyes made Pym feel he was being appraised by an asp. "There was talk maybe you'd gone out of business."
Pym felt ice in the back of his throat. "What? That's—No!"
A waitress stopped at the table. She held a tray of empty glasses in one hand, a pencil in the other. She was exhausted. Perspiration streaked her eyeliner. Her long fingernails were cracked, the polish chipped. Her hair dangled like weeds. She smelled rancid.
"What'll it be, man?" Teal asked.
"Bourbon," Pym said. "Yes, bourbon."
"And bring me another Chivas, Honey."
As the waitress scribbled. Teal ran his eyes up and down her. He said, "Hey, babe, what's your sign?"
"Get stuffed," said the waitress, and she turned away.
"The Constellation of Get Stuffed." Teal laughed. "Don't you love this country?"
Pym's eyes must have betrayed his surprise, for all he was able to say was, "But what are you—" before Teal held up a hand, cutting him off, and shook his head.
"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," Teal said.
"Oh."
"So what's goin' down, man?"
"I've got a new contact," Pym said.
"Where at?"
"The White House." Nicely understated, Pym complimented himself as he waited for the impact of the three magic words to penetrate Teal's carapace of cool.
Teal said nothing. His expression didn't change. After what seemed to Pym to be a month, Teal turned away and took a sip of Scotch and spat out "The White House." Teal's contempt suggested that Pym had just revealed an agent in place at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"Yes!" Pym was angry, defensive.
"I don't know where you're comin' from, old man, but the fact is that nobody in the White House knows fuck-all worth fuck-all, except right up at the tippy-top. It's too compartmentalized. The NSC's a bunch of drones. One guy knows which Venezuelan has the clap, another guy knows which Nigerian has more Swiss bank accounts than the Swiss, and maybe a third guy knows which Berbers like to hump camels. But they never talk to each other. The only people who really know anything are functionaries in the State Department, the CIA and the NSA."