Alternities (23 page)

Peter Robinson nodded, unsurprised. “That’s how I see it, too. The question that concerns me is why Somerset made the offer.”

“It sounds like he’s getting nervous, afflicted with a touch of NIMBY syndrome. Or someone in his Cabinet is nervous and managing to make his concerns heard.”

“Bob Taskins’ opinion is that very few people in the British government are wise to the Weasels,” Robinson said.

“There’s Home Secretary Caulton. According to Bob’s initial report, Caulton didn’t exactly leap to embrace the news that the missiles were there. And from their side, the case for relocating the launchers is easy to make. Somerset warned us that if they were discovered, he’d disavow any knowledge.”

“Having them in such an out-of—the way place strengthens that claim.”

“It does.” O’Neill paused. “There is something else, though. I didn’t see it at first.”

“Which is?”

“My first thought—my very first thought—was something on the order of, ‘that s.o.b, wants to have it both ways: He wants our missiles there for show, but he won’t risk making the islands a Soviet target.’ ”

“Like asking for a watchdog for your house and then keeping it in a storage shed because of the mess.”

“Exactly. Which made me wonder about his commitment, whether he’d ever be willing to see the missiles used. But now it occurs to me I may have had it backward.”

“How so, Gregory?”

“It could be a sign that he
is
committed to the program, that he’s thinking ahead to the domestic end of going public. Britain has been nuclear-free for a long time, since we closed our last base there in sixty-six. Having the Weasels off-shore might provide the necessary psychological distance for Parliament to accept them. In any event, Somerset might well think it necessary.”

“Maybe I should talk to Mr. Somerset directly and get this cleared up.”

“That might be wise,” O’Neill said. “But even if that is what’s on his mind, I still think it’s a bad deal for us. Because if we move the launchers to these BP oil platforms, they’re not mobile anymore. Once the announcement is made and everyone—including the Soviets—knows where the missiles are, we lose a major strategic advantage.”

“While gaining a lot more firepower. Tough tradeoff.”

“True.” O’Neill doodled idly on his notepad. “Perhaps Somerset might consider having a few eggs in each basket,” he said finally. “He can announce the fixed launchers publicly, and let Moscow know about the others privately. Best of both worlds.”

“Interesting. You’ll run it past the strategy folks in the Pentagon?”

“Pm going back there directly. I’ll take it up with the British action team. Maybe we should bring State in, too.”

“I’ll worry about that.” Robinson said “Thank you, Gregory. I’ll let you go back to whatever it was I stole you from.”

“Budget meetings.”

“Ah—I did you a favor, then. Oh, and Gregory? I’d like you to come up to Camp David this weekend. Madison has been bugging me to look at some initiatives, and I thought I might as well hear from you and E.C, at the same time. Be ready, will you?”

Profile-building was a game of biographical hide-and-seek, and Wallace had learned how to play before leaving Home. There were a hundred ways to get to a subject. He could play the old friend, the credit investigator, the lawyer seeking an heir. Neighbors talked. Relatives thought they were helping.

The hospital’s record of birth gave him a starting point: a yellow frame house on First Avenue, its backyard butting up against a railroad marshaling yard. The Haggertys had long ago left that address, but the elderly woman raking leaves in front of the house next door remembered Barbara had attended Butler University.

Three more links—the Alumni association, another helpful neighbor, and (armed with the new surname) a phone directory—brought him to the duplex Barbara Barrett, nee Haggerty, and her husband called home. That part had taken barely six hours.

The street was quiet, and Wallace was tempted to enter the house. It was the most direct, most efficient source possible, the shortest line between two points. But in midafternoon, with the Barrett family’s patterns completely unknown, the risk of being caught was too great.

As though in compensation, the contents of the Barrett mailbox offered several leads, among them a gynecologist’s name and address from a bill, and a copy of
Instructor
magazine bearing Barbara’s name.

Twenty minutes in a phone booth playing the “May I speak to… oh, I must have the wrong number” game produced the name of the intermediate school where his quarry was employed. He went there directly and posed as the parent of a student who would be transferring in. That almost got him in trouble: He had to field questions about his “daughter’s” education voucher and other matters on which he was ignorant.

But it also got him not only inside the school, but inside the principal’s office, where a lockless file drawer was plainly marked staff. He made no move then to rifle it, even when the principal was called out for a moment. It was an older school, minimally secure and isolated in a parklike campus. He would come back.

Midnight found him hiding in the campus’s natural area, timing the police patrols. He went in just after 3:00 a.m., hoping he had not overlooked an alarm system.

Haggerty’s file was a biographical treasure trove: a personal data sheet, an application for maternity leave at the end of the spring quarter, even her supervisor’s annotated evaluations. Wallace used the office’s own photofax to copy the documents, and was out in less than fifteen minutes.

“Go where you must, only leave no trail.” Wallace had been faithful to the injunction. He had been quiet and quick. The only trace he left was a broken window in the back, something which would be lost in the white noise of random school vandalism.

He read through the file in the morning, his short night abbreviated further by the early rising of his roommates. As he read, Barbara Haggerty slowly became a person. Little by little, she acquired a history. And before long, she would acquire a face.

Wallace had devoted the morning to pursuing some of the many leads offered in the file. The time was profitably spent; he had enough to stop any time. But it was important to see her, to allow her to spring up from the flat, cold file into three-dimensional reality. One glimpse could likely tell him a hundred things he did not yet know.

And so he waited, invisible among the parents, older siblings and contract buses filling the pickup lanes outside the school’s main entrance. The building emptied at four, a tidal wave of humanity dispersing itself with remarkable efficiency among the idling vehicles. The staff began to trickle out by ones and twos a short time later. Wallace had suspected they would not linger long on a Friday.

Finally his quarry appeared at the doors, her arms wrapped around a small stack of books. Even harried and fatigued, she was more attractive than in her resume photo, a halo of soft curls around a dark-eyed oval face, slim legs flashing below the knee-length skirt of her instructor’s uniform. For a moment he was tempted to approach her. “Mrs. Bennett, I’m John’s father. I wanted to ask you how he’s doing—”

Wallace quickly thought better of the idea. He hardly looked old enough to be the father of a fifth grader, much less an eighth grader. “Mrs. Bennett, you probably don’t remember me, I was in your class in 1967—” No, that was chancy too. She would be that one teacher who remembered everybody.

He was feeling something he had been warned about by instructors on both sides of the gate—the heady sense of somehow having power over this stranger by what he knew about her. It was as though he were gloating over the one-sided intimacy.
Nah, nah, I have a secret
… The impulse was personal, not professional. And recognizing that helped him to suppress it.

Wallace watched her cross the pavement to her pale blue squareback sedan and deposit her books onto the passenger seat. There was no outward evidence of her pregnancy yet, no telltale roundness that jarred with the rest of her build. Unburdened, she paused for a moment to scan the cloud-studded sky, or perhaps just to enjoy being through for the day.

Impressions cascaded down on him. Hard-working. Hard, too, he guessed. Even though he could see her sitting on the edge of her desk, telling a funny story. Velvet and steel. Unequivocal lines. Her kids liked her, but probably best when they no longer had to answer to her.

Before long, Haggerty roused herself, circled the squareback to the driver’s side, and climbed in. A moment later the car was gliding toward where Wallace was parked. He sat calmly watching. As she drove past, she became aware of his eyes on her and raised a hand from the steering wheel to wave to him uncertainly.

He smiled back and reached for his pencil. “Good-bye, Barbara Haggerty,” he said aloud, and bowed his head as he started to write.

And when he was done, he drove south, out of the city and into the farmland of Johnson County. He could not bring himself to surrender the car without savoring the pure flying joy of it, power in his hands and the freedom of an open road. It was a senseless, exhilarating selfindulgence, and he reveled in it for more than an hour before duty could call him home.

Peter Robinson hooked his folded hands behind his neck, strained the muscles of his arms and neck against each other, and yawned, an eye-squeezing, jaw-stretching yawn which he made no effort whatsoever to conceal from the others in the room.

It had already been a long meeting, and he had yet to hear from those whose thoughts most interested him. The Secretary of State had insisted on prefacing his proposals with a long-winded explication of his view of current geopolitics and then on spelling out those proposals in painful detail.

Robinson listened patiently to the Secretary natter on for several more sentences about a trilateral pact for the defense of Singapore, then wedged an interruption into a minute pause. “E.C., is this a good place to stop?”

Surprised, the Secretary looked down at his notes. “I have very little more to cover.”

Robinson hooked his folded hands over his knee. “Then why don’t you go ahead and take a moment to sum up for us, and then we’ll all take a break.”

The man’s anxious eyes showed that he knew he was being cut off. “The key thing to remember is that Malaya is the key to the entire Indonesian archipelago,” he said, stiffening in his chair. “By concluding a pact with Singapore, we can make a firm statement without intruding on an issue already joined.”

“Seems to me like drawing a line in the sand while the bully is already busy beating up your best friend,” the CIA director remarked,
sotto voce
.

The Secretary of State’s eyes blazed. “And by funneling arms and assistance through the Australians, we can have an impact on the fighting already underway,” he said sharply. “I have every reason to think that Singapore would respond positively to an approach, and the Australians have already expressed interest in acquiring our jungle combat capability—counterinsurgency aircraft and narrow-track armor particularly. I do think this deserves the strongest possible consideration.”

You’re just not in tune with what I want, E.C.
, Robinson thought.
Just look at you, starched collar and tie on a flannel-shirt day
. He nodded absently. “Thank you, E.C. Everyone, let’s stretch ’em.”

“Getting a bit chilly in here,” William Rodman said as he rose. “Maybe we could get somebody to come build a fire while we’re out draining the dragon?”

“Not with this kind of material scattered around in here,” Dennis Madison said sharply. “Unless you’ve got a blind houseboy with A1 clearance.”

“The Secret Service—” the Secretary of State began.

“Hell, an old farm blood like me doesn’t need hired help to build a fire,” Robinson said with a boyish grin. “Contrary to what the Democrats say, I’m not mentally handicapped.”

Rodman smiled broadly, and the others laughed. “I’ll give a hand,” Gregory O’Neill offered.

Eyeing the empty wood box, Robinson said, “Make it two hands, and you can lug a couple three-inch logs in from the porch.”

“Done.”

Ten minutes later, the fire was crackling briskly, the coffee and doughnuts had been refreshed, and the five had settled back into their chairs.

“Gregory, I’d like to hear from you now,” Robinson said. “What do you have to offer up for consideration?”

O’Neill looked into Robinson’s eyes with a steady gaze. “I have no new initiatives to propose.”

Cocking an eyebrow, Robinson said, “I was hoping for some new thinking about our territorial waters, at the very least.”

“There’s been no change in our capability. So I can’t in conscience propose a change in our posture.”

There was suddenly tension in the room, and Robinson was content to let it build. With almost exaggerated slowness, he leaned forward and retrieved a white-frosted French cruller from the tray. “Well, I can’t understand that,” he said between bites. “Did you read the Friday papers?”

“If you’re referring to the Norwegian incident—”

“I am. The Norwegian Navy depth-charged a suspected submarine contact in Trondheim Fjord. The fucking Norwegian Navy, Gregory. They’ve got nothing bigger than a DE in their whole kid’s-toy fleet and they’re not afraid to stuff one down the sail of a Red sub.”

“If that’s what it was,” O’Neill said. “There was no sighting, before or after. It was a sonar contact. No screw noises. No oil slick. Not even the head of the Trondheim Fjord monster bobbing to the surface.”

Grins and nervous chuckles blossomed, infuriating Robinson.

“I could arrange for one of our ships to hammer a gas bubble or a shipwreck, too,” O’Neill went on. “It’d make spectacular copy for the FNS, I agree. But the Soviet naval command will just laugh.”

Robinson had heard enough. “I’m not talking about a goddamn public relations stunt,” he snapped. “I’m talking about the fact that the Norwegians have got the gumption to draw a line and make it stick. They don’t stand for any nonsense inside their twelve-mile limit. Is it just that their captains have bigger balls than ours do? Or is there some other problem—like rules of engagement that’ve handcuffed our people so long that they aren’t worth a damn?”