“Put him against the wall, miss. Let him sink to the floor and leave us alone.”
“Yes, sir!” The nurse did as she was ordered and fled, leaving Holland and Alex alone in the antiseptic maze.
“Now, you listen to me, Field Man,” whispered the gray-haired director of the Central Intelligence Agency, kneeling in front of Conklin. “This fucking merry-go-round of guilt had better stop—has got to stop—or nobody’s going to be any good to anybody. I don’t give a good goddamn what you or Panov did thirteen years ago, or five years ago, or now! We’re all reasonably bright people, and we did what each of us did because we thought they were the right moves at the time.… Guess what, Saint Alex? Yes, I’ve heard the term. We make mistakes. Fucking inconvenient, isn’t it? Maybe we’re not so brilliant after all. Maybe Panov isn’t the greatest behavioral whatever-the-hell-it-is; maybe you’re not the shrewdest son of a bitch in the field, the one who got canonized, and maybe I’m not the superjock behind-the-lines strategist they’ve made me out to be. So what? We take our baggage and go where we have to go.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up!” yelled Conklin, struggling against the wall.
“Shhh!”
“Oh, shit! The last thing I need is a sermon from you! If I had a foot, I’d take you.”
“Now we’re physical?”
“I was Black Belt. First class, Admiral.”
“Golly, gee. I don’t even know how to wrestle.”
Their eyes met and Alex was the first to laugh quietly. “You’re too much, Peter. I got your message. Help me up, will you? I’ll go back to the lounge and wait for you. Come on, give me a hand.”
“The hell I will,” said Holland, getting to his feet and standing over Conklin. “Help yourself. Someone told me that the Saint made it back through a hundred and forty miles in enemy territory, through rivers and streams and jungle, and arrived at the Foxtrot base camp asking if anybody had a bottle of bourbon.”
“Yeah, well, that was different. I was a hell of a lot younger and I had another foot.”
“Pretend you got one now, Saint Alex.” Holland winked. “I’m going back inside. One of us has to be there.”
“Bastard!”
For an hour and forty-seven minutes Conklin sat in the lounge. His attachable footless foot never throbbed, but it was throbbing now. He did not know what the impossible feeling meant, but he could not dismiss the beat that surged through his leg. If nothing else, it was something to think about, and he thought wistfully of the younger days, when he had both feet, and before. Oh, how he had wanted to change the world! And how he had felt so right in a destiny that forced him to become the youngest valedictorian in his high school’s history, the youngest freshman ever accepted at Georgetown, a bright, bright light that shimmered at the end of the tunnels of academe. His decline started when someone, somewhere, found out that his name at birth was not Alexander Conklin but Aleksei Nikolae Konsolikov. That now faceless man had casually asked him a question, the answer to which had changed Conklin’s life.
“Do you by any chance speak Russian?”
“Of course,” he had replied, amused that his visitor would even think he might not. “As you obviously know, my parents were immigrants. I grew up not only in a Russian home but in a Russian neighborhood—at least in the early years. You couldn’t buy a loaf of bread at the ovoshchnoi otdel if you didn’t. And at church school the older priests and nuns, like the Poles, held ferociously on to the language.… I’m sure it contributed to my leaving the faith.”
“Those were the early years, however, as I believe you mentioned.”
“Yes.”
“What changed?”
“I’m sure it’s in your government report somewhere and will hardly satisfy your iniquitous Senator McCarthy.”
The face came back to Alex with the memory of those words. It was a middle-aged face and it had suddenly become expressionless, the eyes clouded but with suppressed anger in them. “I assure you, Mr. Conklin, I am in no way associated with the senator. You call him iniquitous, I have other terms, but they’re not pertinent here.… What changed?”
“Quite late in his life my father became what he had been in Russia, a highly successful merchant, a capitalist. At last count he owned seven supermarkets in upscale malls. They’re called Conklin’s Corners. He’s over eighty now, and although I love him dearly, I regret to say he’s an ardent supporter of the senator. I simply consider his years, his struggles, his hatred of the Soviets, and avoid the subject.”
“You’re very bright and very diplomatic.”
“Bright and diplomatic,” Alex had agreed.
“I’ve shopped at a couple of Conklin’s Corners. Kind of expensive.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Where did the ‘Conklin’ come from?”
“My father. My mother says he saw it on a billboard advertising motor oil, she thinks, about four or five years after they got here. And, of course, the Konsolikov had to go. As my considerably bigoted father once said, ‘Only the Jews with Russian names can make money over here.’ Again, I avoid the subject.”
“Very diplomatic.”
“It’s not difficult. He has his share of good points as well.”
“Even if he didn’t, I’m sure you could be convincing in your diplomacy, in the concealment of your feelings.”
“Why do I think that’s a leading statement?”
“Because it is, Mr. Conklin. I represent a government agency that’s extremely interested in you, and one in which your future would be as unlimited as that of any potential recruit I’ve spoken to in a decade.…”
That conversation had taken place nearly thirty years ago, mused Alex, his eyes drifting up once again to the inner door of Sterile Five’s waiting lounge in its own private medical center. And how crazy the intervening years had been. In a stress-defying bid for unrealistic expansion, his father had overextended himself, committing enormous sums of money that existed only in his imagination and in the minds of avaricious bankers. He lost six of his seven supermarkets, the smallest and last supporting a life-style that he found unacceptable, so he conveniently had a massive stroke and died as Alex’s own adult life was about to begin.
Berlin—East and West. Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent and Kamchatka. Vienna, Paris, Lisbon and Istanbul. Then back across the world to stations in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Cambodia, Laos, and finally Saigon and the tragedy that was Vietnam. Over the years, with his facile mastery of languages and the expertise that came with survival, he had become the Agency’s point man in clandestine operations, its primary scout and often the on-scene strategist for covert activities. Then one morning with the mists hanging over the Mekong Delta, a land mine shattered his life as well as his foot. There was little left for a field man who depended on mobility in his chosen work; the rest was downhill and out of the field. His excessive drinking he accepted, and excused as genetic. The Russian’s winter of depression carried over into spring, summer and autumn. The skeletal, trembling wreck of a man who was about to go under was given a reprieve. David Webb—Jason Bourne—came back into his life.
The door opened, mercifully cutting short his reverie, and Peter Holland walked slowly into the lounge. His face was pale and drawn, his eyes glazed, and in his left hand were two small plastic containers, each presumably holding a cassette tape.
“As long as I live,” said Peter, his voice low and hollow, barely above a whisper, “I hope to Christ I never go through anything like this again, never witness anything like this again.”
“How’s Mo?”
“I didn’t think he’d live.… I thought he’d kill himself. Every now and then Walsh would stop. Let me tell you, he was one frightened doctor.”
“Why didn’t he call it off, for God’s sake?”
“I asked him that. He said Panov’s instructions were not only explicit but that he’d written them out and signed them and expected them to be followed to the letter. Maybe there’s some kind of unwritten co
de of ethics between doctors, I don’t know, but I do know Walsh hooked him up to an EKG, which he rarely took his eyes off. Neither did I; it was easier than looking at Mo. Jesus, let’s get out of here!”
“Wait a minute. What about Panov?”
“He’s not ready for a welcome-home party. He’ll stay here for a couple of days under observation. Walsh will call me in the morning.”
“I’d like to see him. I want to see him.”
“There’s nothing to see but a human dishrag. Believe me, you don’t and he wouldn’t want you to. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Your place in Vienna—our place in Vienna. I assume you’ve got a cassette machine.”
“I’ve got everything but a moon rocket, most of which I can’t operate.”
“I want to stop and get a bottle of whisky.”
“There’s whatever you want at the apartment.”
“It doesn’t bother you?” asked Holland, studying Alex.
“Would it matter if it did?”
“Not a bit.… If I remember, there’s an extra bedroom, isn’t there?”
“Yes.”
“Good. We may be up most of the night listening to these.” The director held up the cassettes. “The first couple of times won’t mean anything. All we’ll hear is the pain, not the information.”
It was shortly past five o’clock in the afternoon when they left the estate known within the Agency as Sterile House Five. The days were growing shorter, September on the cusp, the descending sun announcing the forthcoming change with an intensity of color that was the death of one season and the birth of another.
“The light’s always brightest before we die,” said Conklin, leaning back in the seat beside Holland in the limousine, staring out the window.
“I find that not only inappropriate but quite possibly sophomoric,” declared Peter wearily. “I won’t commit to the latter until I know who said it. Who was it?”
“Jesus, I think.”
“The Scriptures were never edited. Too many campfires, no on-scene confirmation.”
Alex laughed softly, reflectively. “Did you ever actually read them? The Scriptures, I mean.”
“Most of it—most of them.”
“Because you had to?”
“Hell, no. My father and mother were as agnostic as any two people could be without being branded godless pariahs. They shut up about it and sent me and my two sisters to a Protestant service one week, a Catholic mass on another, and a synagogue after that. Never with any regularity, but I guess they figured we should catch the whole scene. That’s what makes kids want to read. Natural curiosity wrapped in mysticism.”
“Irresistible,” agreed Conklin. “I lost my faith, and now after years of proclaiming my spiritual independence, I wonder if I’m missing something.”
“Like what?”
“Comfort, Peter. I have no comfort.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. Things I can’t control, maybe.”
“You mean you don’t have the comfort of an excuse, a metaphysical excuse. Sorry, Alex, we part company. We’re accountable for what we do, and no confessional absolution can change that.”
Conklin turned his head, his eyes wide open, and looked at Holland. “Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For sounding like me, even using a variation of the words I’ve used.… I came back from Hong Kong five years ago with the banner of Accountability on my lance.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“Forget it. I’m back on track.… ‘Beware the pitfalls of ecclesiastical presumption and self-absorbed thought.’ ”
“Who the hell said that?”
“Either Savonarola or Salvador Dalí, I can’t remember who.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, cut the crap!” laughed Holland.
“Why should I? It’s the first chuckle we’ve had. And what about your two sisters? What happened to them?”
“It’s a better joke,” replied Peter, his head angled down into his chin, a mischievous smile on his lips. “One’s a nun in New Delhi, and the other’s president of her own public relations firm in New York and uses better Yiddish than most of her colleagues in the profession. A couple of years ago she told me they stopped calling her shiksa. She loves her life; so does my other sister in India.”
“Yet you chose the military.”
“Not ‘yet,’ Alex.… And I chose it. I was an angry young man who really believed this country was being dumped on. I came from a privileged family—money, influence, an expensive prep school—that guaranteed me—me, not the black kid on the streets of Philadelphia or Harlem—automatic admittance to Annapolis. I simply figured I had to somehow earn that privilege. I had to show that people like me didn’t just use our advantages to avoid, but instead to extend, our responsibilities.”
“Aristocracy reborn,” said Conklin. “Noblesse oblige—nobility imposes obligations.”
“That’s not fair,” protested Holland.
“Yes, it is, in a very real sense. In Greek, aristo means the ‘best,’ and kratia is the word for ‘rule.’ In ancient Athens such young men led armies, their swords up front, not behind, if only to prove to the troops that they would sacrifice with the lowliest of them, for the lowliest were under their commands, the commands of the finest.”
Peter Holland’s head arched back into the top of the velvet seat, his eyes half closed. “Maybe that was part of it, I’m not sure—I’m not sure at all. We were asking so much … for what? Pork Chop Hill? Unidentifiable, useless terrain in the Mekong? Why? For Christ’s sake, why? Men shot, their stomachs and chests blown away by an enemy two feet in front of them, by a ’Cong who knew jungles they didn’t know? What kind of war was that?… If guys like me didn’t go up with the kids and say, ‘Look, here I am, I’m with you,’ how the hell do you think we could have lasted as long as we did? There might have been mass revolts and maybe there should have been. Those kids were what some people call niggers, and spics and the foul-ups who couldn’t read or write beyond a third-grade level. The privileged had deferments—deferments from getting soiled—or service that damn near guaranteed no combat. The others didn’t. And if my being with them—this privileged son of a bitch—meant anything, it was the best gig I ever did in my life.” Holland suddenly stopped talking and shut his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Peter. I didn’t mean to rough up past roads, I really didn’t. Actually, I started with my guilt, not yours.… It’s crazy how it all dovetails and feeds upon itself, isn’t it? What did you call it? The merry-go-round of guilt. Where does it stop?”
“Now,” said Holland, sitting up in the seat, straightening his back and shoulders. He picked up the limousine telephone, punched two numbers and spoke. “Drop us off in Vienna, please. And when you’ve done that, go find a Chinese restaurant and bring us back the best they’ve got.… Frankly, I’m partial to spare ribs and lemon chicken.”
Holland proved to be half right. The first hearing of Panov’s session under the serum was agonizing to listen to, the voice devastating, the emotional content blurring the information, especially for anyone who knew the psychiatrist. The second hearing, however, produced instantaneous concentration, engendered without question by the very pain they heard. There was no time to indulge in personal feelings; the information was suddenly everything. Both men began taking copious notes on legal pads, frequently stopping and replaying numerous sections for clarity and understanding. The third hearing refined the salient points further; by the end of the fourth, both Alex and Peter Holland had thirty to forty pages of notes apiece. They spent an additional hour in silence, each going over his own analysis.
“Are you ready?” asked the CIA’s director from the couch, a pencil in his hand.
“Sure,” said Conklin, seated at the desk with his various electronic equipment, the tape machine at his elbow.
“Any opening remarks?”
“Yes,” replied Alex. “Ninety-ni
ne point forty-four percent of what we listened to gives us nothing, except to tell us what a terrific prober this Walsh is. He hopscotched around picking up cues faster than I could find them, and I wasn’t exactly an amateur when it came to interrogations.”
“Agreed,” said Holland. “I wasn’t so bad either, especially with a blunt instrument. Walsh is good.”
“Better than that, but that doesn’t concern us. What he pulled out of Mo does—again with a ‘but.’ It’s not in Panov’s recapturing what he revealed because we have to assume he revealed almost everything I told him. Instead, it’s in what he repeated having heard.” Conklin separated several pages. “Here’s an example. ‘The family will be pleased … our supreme will give us his blessing.’ He’s repeating someone else’s words, not his own. Now, Mo isn’t familiar with criminal jargon, certainly not to the point where he would automatically make a connection, but the connection’s there. Take the word ‘supreme’ and change it by removing one vowel and inserting another. ‘Supremo’—capo supremo, hardly a heavenly supreme being. Suddenly, ‘the family’ is light years away from Norman Rockwell, and ‘blessing’ is interchangeable with a reward or a bonus.”
“Mafia,” said Peter, his eyes steady and clear despite a number of drinks that had obviously been burned out of his system. “I hadn’t thought that one through, but I marked it instinctively.… Okay, here’s something else along the same lines, the same lines because I also picked up on the unlike-Panov phrases.” Holland flipped through his legal pad and stopped at a specific page. “Here. ‘New York wants it all.’ ” Peter continued slapping over the pages. “Again here. ‘That Wall Street is something.’ ” Once more the DCI progressed through his legal pad. “And this one. ‘Blondie fruits’—the rest is garbled.”
“I missed that. I heard it, but it didn’t make any sense to me.”
“Why should it, Mr. Aleksei Konsolikov?” Holland smiled. “Underneath that Anglo-Saxon exterior, education and all, beats the heart of a Russian. You’re not sensitive to what some of us have to endure.”