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Authors: R.J. Ellory

BOOK: A Simple Act of Violence
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‘And how does this relate to—’
‘This is not Poland,’ Powers said. ‘Guatemala would be the equivalent of Poland, right there alongside the Mexican border. If someone came along and invaded Guatemala there would be no question in our minds about what we had to do, but this one is fine. This is three removed from Mexico, and the distance is enough not to concern ourselves.’
‘Prevention is better than cure,’ I said.
Powers shook his head. ‘There is no cure, my friend. There is only prevention. Thirty years of Cold War has proved beyond any question that there is no cure for this thing. You either do something about it before it starts, or you just watch it grow like a cancer. There is nothing that can be done about it once it has got its roots into a culture. It is a disease. Slow, insidious, this thing is amazing to watch. It’s like a virus. It ascribes to equality. It ascribes to cultural and social strength. In reality, it is nothing more than an excuse for a select few to remove those they oppose from a society, and to do it in the ways you have witnessed this evening. What you saw on the film is happening about eighteen hundred miles from where we’re sitting, and it’s happening to people who never agreed for it to happen.’ He drew on his cigarette. The ash fell onto his jacket but he ignored it. ‘Fact of the matter is that there are very few people who can face such things as this. There are very few people who are strong enough to actually look at this thing and see it for what it is. Catherine saw this. She sat in this room just like you and watched this, and even before the end of the first reel she’d decided to go.’ Powers laughed drily. ‘Far as I can tell, she’d decided she was going to do something long before she got here; she just didn’t have any clear idea of the direction to take.’
Powers expected a hundred questions, all of them important, all of them difficult to ask. I said nothing.
‘Why you?’ he asked, perhaps voicing a question he saw in my eyes.
I shrugged. ‘Tell me.’
‘No family to speak of. Very high IQ. No communist background or affiliations. You’re a loner. You’ve never really been involved with any women that have meant anything. Your politics are undecided. You are driven, committed to doing something useful and important with your life, but you don’t have the faintest clue what that might be . . . that, and other reasons that are not important.’
‘Not important?’ I said. ‘What reasons could be unimportant?’
He dismissed my question with a wave of his hand. He seemed nonchalant and unperturbed about the films we had seen. He seemed effortlessly at ease all the time. His self-assurance and balance annoyed me greatly.
‘So what do you think?’ he asked.
‘About what?’
‘About what you’ve seen here. About the discussions we’ve had, the conversations with Catherine. About the idea of doing something about what the hell is happening out there.’
‘You’re asking me what I think about it in general, or what I think I should do about it?’
‘Both.’
‘In general? Jesus, I don’t know. Something has to be done about it. How is this thing being viewed? Are they looking at this like it might be another Vietnam?’
Powers laughed. ‘Who is this “they” you’re referring to?’
‘I don’t know, the government—’
‘A government by the people and for the people. Isn’t that what the Constitution and the Bill of Rights says? Something like that, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about the government, the White House, the president—’
‘What they think is unimportant,’ Powers said. ‘At least it’s no more important than what you or I think. Those people are only in Congress and the Senate . . . hell, Reagan is only in the White House because we put him there. You’ve got to start looking at these things like it has something to do with you. Reason this society is so goddam fucked up is because everyone has got the idea that it has nothing to do with them. They go to work, and they think that the job is always gonna be there. They come home. The wife has cooked supper, the kids are playing in the yard, they watch TV. They just sit there while the world implodes and they think there’s someone who’s gonna fix it all up, that the government, the White House, the President of the United States has got this thing all figured out. Well, I’ll tell you something, John Robey . . . the President does not have it all figured out. He only sees the bigger picture. He sees communist infiltration as a realistic threat—’
‘You can’t honestly expect me to believe that the President of the United States figures that I can do something about what’s going on?’
Powers shook his head. ‘President of the United States doesn’t even know who you are - and he didn’t know any of the people that went to Vietnam either, nor those who went to Korea, or who landed at Dunkirk. We are the little guys, John, always have been, always will be. We’re never going to be generals or admirals or whatever the fuck else, but you know something? It’s not the generals or the admirals who win the wars. It’s the little guys - hundreds of thousands of them - that win wars. Catherine understands that—’
‘Enough about Catherine, okay? What the fuck is the deal with Catherine Sheridan? Jesus, I barely know the girl . . .’
‘Well, she figures she knows you, and you were the one she asked to be assigned with, and I know for a fact that she asked for you for a reason.’
‘And, don’t tell me, that reason would be?’
‘Balance.’
I frowned, shook my head, started to laugh. ‘That’s what you said. That’s not what she said.’
Powers smiled. ‘She said it first. She was the one who suggested we devote some time and energy to you. She said that of all the people she’d met here you were the one who had the most balance.’
‘And what the fuck does that mean?’
‘You have a longer perspective than most. You’re older than your age. She said you were able to look at something for what it was, not for what you thought it might be—’
‘A bit fucking esoteric, don’t you think?’
‘What do you want from me, John? What the hell is it that you want from me? You’re here because of your own willingness to be here. Lawrence Matthews spoke to you, he told you something about what we’re doing. This is where it all happens. This is the Central Intelligence Agency. This is the heart of America, where everything you read about in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights has to be maintained as a reality. This is where the people who can’t do anything about the situation they’re in get something done about it, you understand what I’m saying? And if you don’t want any part of it, if you really feel that you’ve made a serious mistake by agreeing to come here and talk about this stuff—’
‘I don’t,’ I said. I possessed my own resolve. Powers wouldn’t understand what had happened until much, much later, and neither would Catherine, but by then the months that we’d spent at Langley would be far behind us. The conversations with Dennis Powers and Lawrence Matthews would be so insignificant they wouldn’t even be remembered. ‘I came here because I was interested, ’ I said. ‘I came here because Lawrence said that there was more to our discussions than just discussions, that there might be something I could do with my life that counted for something. That’s why I came here, Dennis, and that’s why I’ve stayed. The fact that I’m still here despite all this talk of murder and assassination, despite watching films about the horrors that are being perpetrated two thousand miles away . . .’ I smiled. ‘Well, that tells you everything you need to know.’
There was silence between us for a few moments.
‘And you?’ I asked.
Powers laughed. ‘Me? Why do you want to know about me?’
‘I’m interested, Dennis . . . interested in the reasons for your decisions.’
‘I feel like I came here hypnotized,’ he replied. ‘Like I was inside some protective bubble of ignorance. I had a few of my ideals challenged. Some people made me look at things that people don’t ordinarily look at, and I felt as though I’d been given a perspective on the truth that is very rare . . .’ Powers cleared his throat, for a moment appeared pensive. ‘But it never seemed like it was something I’d asked for. I didn’t want to have my entire view of the world turned upside down. I didn’t ask for that, but I got it, and it seems that once you’ve seen the truth—’ He looked up. ‘That thing that Einstein said, that a mind once stretched by an idea can never again regain its former proportions.’
He leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘I knew there were things happening that I didn’t fully understand,’ he said. ‘At the same time I felt like I needed to understand them. I didn’t have anyone I could turn to and say “Hey, what do you think about all of this? Is this real or what? Is this what life is all about, or are we in the middle of some god-awful endless practical joke here?” I wanted to know the answer to that question. That’s what I wanted, and when I had the answer to that question I figured I’d know what I was willing to do.’
Powers opened his eyes and looked directly at me.
‘Unfortunately, in a game like this, it works the other way round. Unfortunately for us we get to do it backwards. We go out there first. We look. We see. We decide first, and then we act. We gain our experience in hindsight.’
‘So what are you telling me . . . you want me to make a decision based on nothing but what I have right now?’
‘Yeah, that’s pretty much it.’
‘And I’m supposed to go out there and kill people?’
‘We don’t want you to go out there and kill people. At least not right away. There’s training, you know? We do train people to do this stuff.’
‘So until then, what is it you do want me to do?’
‘We want you to go with Catherine Sheridan. We have people out there, people who will be working behind the lines, so to speak. We need people who can gather information on things that are happening within the government structure. We need people—’
‘Who can tell you who needs to die. That’s what you need, right? That’s what you need me and Catherine Sheridan to go out there and do.’
Powers inhaled slowly, exhaled again. ‘You can leave if you wish, John. You can pack your things and head back to college, and do whatever you were planning on doing with your life.’ He started to rise from his chair. ‘Send me a postcard from wherever you wind up. I can’t obligate you to do anything, and I’m certainly not going to attempt to force you. This is the way it works. It doesn’t work any other way. We need people. We always need people. Where do we get those people from? We recruit them. We have readers all over the country. They keep their eyes and ears open. They figure out who might be in the running for doing something a little more important than a nine-to-five in Pleasantville, change the car every three years, vacations in the Rockies, that kind of shit. They’re on the lookout for people who don’t mind getting a little bit of dirt under their fingernails in the belief that what they’re doing might count for something in the grand scheme of things. There are no medals for what we do. We can work all our lives for the greater good and we can’t even tell our next-door neighbor what a fucking hero we are. And hell, John, even if we did tell them they wouldn’t believe us. We can’t have kids. We try not to get married unless it’s within the Agency, and even then it’s a tough road because one of us might get sent to Colombia while the other one goes to London. It’s a fucked-up life, John, a really fucked-up life, but it is a life. That much I can tell you. It really is a life, and there’s something about what’s happening here that will be remembered by certain people in the years to come as the one thing that really made a difference. You either want to help, or you don’t. It’s not complicated, John, it really isn’t complicated.’
‘So what now?’
‘What now? Well, you’ve either made your decision already and you’re going to stay and learn something about this business, or you’re gonna go take a walk and use some of that objective balance and perspective that Catherine Sheridan believes you have, and you’re gonna weigh things up and make your decision, and then tomorrow, maybe the next day, you’re gonna come find me and let me know whether you want a bus ticket or a berthing.’
He walked to the door, hand on it ready to leave.
‘And if—’
‘Enough questions, John. All your questions have to be answered by you now.’
Dennis Powers opened the door. He looked up at the ceiling and smiled. ‘Don’t forget to turn the light out when you leave.’
TWENTY-THREE
Marilyn Hemmings sat down. Miller stood against the wall to the left of the door, Roth perched on the edge of a low filing cabinet. Hemmings did not apologize for the lack of space. As was the case with all visitors, Miller and Roth were transient additions to her day.
‘I couldn’t say,’ she said. ‘I said what I said. That was my opinion.’ She smiled wryly. ‘I watch CSI and live the dream, you know?’
‘I know it was your opinion,’ Miller said. ‘There’s never been a question about that.’
‘The first three were what they were,’ Hemmings said. She looked at Miller, at Roth, back to Miller as she spoke. ‘The first three were the same guy. This I don’t doubt for a moment. The fourth one, Catherine Sheridan . . .’ She paused, breathed deeply, slowly shook her head. ‘God, I don’t know. There were enough similarities, and then there were enough differences. You’re asking me to make a decision I can’t easily make.’
‘And Natasha Joyce?’ Miller asked.
‘If the Joyce woman had been fourth instead of Sheridan, then there would be no question in my mind. He beat the hell out of her, and then he strangled her. Okay, so there’s no ribbon, no lavender, but what the hell? We don’t know what happened. Maybe something disturbed him. What can I tell you? The Joyce woman feels like the same guy. It really feels like we have one guy . . .’ Hemmings didn’t finish the sentence. She looked at Miller, her expression one of resignation. ‘So what’s your take on this?’

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