Crooked (5 page)

I told Pat
I was feeling confident, that it was only a matter of time, and that I’d be working late again that night. In a few days, she’d see me win a clean victory.

I daydreamed through the next day’s hearing while the rest of the committee questioned Hiss and he countered masterfully, the perfect image of an honest man beset and outraged at a baseless campaign of persecution. I doodled on my notepad and looked at the crowd. The members of the press were turning against me. Let them. If my case looked weak now, it would make the truth that much more shocking.

When Hiss left at the end of the day, I trailed him far enough downtown to satisfy myself he was going home for the evening. A thought struck me—what if the Commies were following me? I circled a downtown block, looked in shop windows. What else does one do? I had a drink in a bar and left by a back way. It was close to eleven at night when I returned to the building on Seventy-First Street and climbed the stairs.

My footsteps sounded too loud in the silence of the fifth floor, and I forced myself not to hurry. I was carrying a camera and a small flashlight in my briefcase to document what hard evidence I could, and tomorrow I’d claim to have received an anonymous tip from a concerned citizen. The next time I was here I’d have federal agents with me.

I turned the key and, relieved, slipped out of the hall and into the darkened office, but I knew immediately something was wrong. I smelled fresh paint and dust; my footsteps pinged too loud and sharp. What was this? When I raised the flashlight, the beam lit bare walls. I stared. I turned all the way around in place, as if the desk and chair and shelving were going to leap out from wherever they’d hidden. I put one hand on the cool white wall. This was badly wrong, but how? Was it the wrong office? The wrong building?

I heard footsteps coming steadily and purposefully down the hallway, and I froze. Then I snapped the flashlight off and stood waiting in the darkness. A key turned in the lock. It had to be Hiss. He’d known all along; he’d watched me come and he’d trapped me. I glanced at the window and thought of climbing out in a lunatic escape attempt, but there wasn’t time even for that. Would he laugh? Arrest me? What was he planning? With a titanic effort I composed myself and turned toward the door.

It opened and two men stood there, silhouetted, and looked in at me with frank and unhurried curiosity. One was short and one tall, like a pair of comedians. The big man was a head taller and carried a steel briefcase. The smaller of them had a pistol raised.

“Please take two steps backward,” the small man said in a light European accent I couldn’t place. East German? I took two long steps back and the windowsill nudged me just above the knees. The gunman stepped inside, the large man following. He closed the door. I held up my hands in a placating gesture. I tried and failed to stutter out my last words.

“Is not to worry,” the second man said. Russian. He switched on the overhead light. Under the bright bulb, he was a heap of a man with a nose that had been broken a few times; he wore a suit of gray wool, wrinkled and elephantine. He took off his hat and set the briefcase down as if commencing a day at the office. I could see dusty outlines on the wall where the furniture had been yesterday.

The other man was younger than I’d first thought, in his midtwenties at most. Hair combed straight back but balding already, and he looked like he hadn’t been getting much sleep. Something about the bad fit of his suit made me tag him as a student.

“What’s your name?” the small man said, studying me.

“Richard Nixon,” I told him. I’d never been held at gunpoint before, and it was surprisingly awkward. I felt like a host receiving unexpected guests. I had no eye for firearms but the pistol was a small semiautomatic, not at all showy. The room was small and I was sure he would hit me if he fired.

“Hello, Richard. I’m Gregor, and this is Arkady.” He glanced up at the big man, who nodded. I made a guess that Gregor was in command here.

“Are you the police?” I asked.

“We’re not the police,” he said. I waited for him to go on. I tried sitting down on the windowsill, but it was too narrow. I stumbled and straightened up again. They watched the performance.

“And what brings Richard Nixon to this part of town at such a late hour?” Gregor asked. He leaned against the empty wall.

“I’m investigating,” I said, “a crime.”

“A crime!” Gregor said, brow knit with mock concern. “And what kind of crime is that?”

“It’s a very important case. A Soviet spy.” I glanced up at the Russian, but he said nothing, just looked over at his partner.

“A Commie spy, is that it? Very exciting,” Gregor said.

“Are you…Communists?” I asked.

“No,” Gregor said.

“I am, actually,” Arkady said, putting his hands in his pockets. “Sorry. Greggy is socialist pussy. But we work on him.”

“What did you find, Mr. Nixon?” said Gregor. “In your investigations. I’d like to know.” His accent nagged at me; he sounded as if he’d lived in half a dozen countries before his teens. His pink skin didn’t sweat.

“Just evidence,” I said. “Different kinds of evidence. Was found. Look, I don’t know who you are but you can’t hold me here.” I stepped away from the wall. The big man took his hands out of his pockets, and abruptly the room felt even smaller. Gregor stood well back, his gun out of my reach.

“Seems very serious,” he said. “Are you a policeman, Nixon? Federal agent, maybe? Counterintelligence?” He sounded like he was maybe about finished with this conversation and what I’d thought was going to be a long interrogation was just pre-execution banter.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said. It would be so lovely to be able to say I did something brave here. Laughed at their threats; spat in their faces. If I were that kind of person, post–World War II American history would have been a very different story. “Please…I’m a United States congressman, for Christ’s sake. I can tell you things. I’ll do anything.”

“Really?” the Russian said. “You are Congress?” He seemed genuinely a little starstruck.

“California,” I said. “The Twelfth District. Richard Milhous Nixon.”

“Holy shit,” Gregor said.

“Is not what I was told, Gregor,” said the taller man. “Private detective, you said. This is the big shit we are in now.”

“Shut up. I’m trying to think.”

“Congressman we can’t just dump in mudflat. Is not quite the same.”

“Shut up, please,” Gregor said, then turned to me. “Nixon! Did you take an oath?”

“A what?” I said.

“An oath of office. You took one?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“How did it run? Exact words, as much as you can remember.”

“Well, it was…just a minute.” I’ve always been proud of my memory. “It was—‘I do solemnly swear…that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’ Let me think…I’ve forgotten the middle…the ending is ‘I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.’”

“You hear it, Arkady? You understand?”

“A little. What is it you are thinking?”

“He’s federally sworn. A compact.”

“I have theory background, yes, I get that far—”

“This is the asset we’ve waited for. We’ve got the blood of the Elect here, and your field kit. From this we can stage a strategic incursion.”

“Bullshit. How?”

“You weren’t in the meetings. I’ll walk you through. You’re finally going to see what the Nth Directorate does,” he said. His lips were trembling a little.

“I think I make a call to the embassy if you don’t mind.”

“I am in authority here, Colonel, not you. You just do your part,” Gregor said. He tucked his gun into an armpit holster and stripped off his jacket. “And you just stay where you are, Mr. Nixon. We’re about to make history.”

Gregor put the briefcase on the floor between us. It had a dull, scratched metal finish, a heavy industrial look, and two locks. Each man took out a key and set it in a lock, then paused. Gregor quietly counted, “One, two,” and they turned the keys simultaneously to open it.

Arkady pawed through the contents and picked out two envelopes covered with emphatic Cyrillic script in various sizes, some of it in red. “We verify first. No mistakes,” Arkady said.

“Very well.” They each tore open an envelope and shook out a pen and a thick piece of card stock. Each wrote out a long string of characters on the card, evidently working from memory, then they swapped cards and studied the results against what was on the backs.

“Accepted,” Arkady said after a moment. “You?”

“Yes. I will be primary, you will administer. Get us a proper seal, threefold. This will be one of the exarchs. Tolerances are here.” He tossed Arkady another envelope. Arkady opened it, studied the contents, then took a measuring tape and a felt-tip pen and began marking precise points on one wall.

Meanwhile Gregor opened a metal box full of small glass bottles. He dug around in the briefcase, removed a miniature scale, and began measuring out little samples of powder and depositing them in a ceramic bowl. He poured in a few drops of clear liquid, spat into the dark mixture, and crushed all of it together using the butt of his gun as a pestle. A chalky smell filled the room and he coughed.

“Is what?” asked Arkady.

“Someone said bone. Comes from one of the dig sites.”

Arkady took the bowl and a small brush and began connecting the dots he’d made on the wall, forming odd angles and curves.

“I want you to know I’ll be alerting the authorities,” I told them. “I will expect a full accounting.”

“He does not know a thing, this one,” said Arkady.

“Stay quiet, this will be easy,” Gregor told me. “It’s all standard procedure. Arkady, you know the axes go the other way on this continent?”

“Just waiting on an entity code.”

“‘Novosibirsk L three four oh nine.’” Gregor read this from a small piece of card stock, then tore it in half twice.

“Female, then.”

“It’s the Raven Mother. We gamed it out. Mother of millions. Optimal spread for urban deployment, and she’ll—”

“I know what she does,” Arkady said. “I read the file. Xenomorph exarch. This is wise, Greggy? She is hard to stop.”

“Activation phase,” Gregor said. This part, it turned out, was quite lengthy and in Russian. They took turns reading aloud from a numbered set of note cards, dropping each one on the floor when they were finished. I heard my name twice, mixed in with the rest of it. Gregor kept an eye on me, I suppose so he could stop me in case I tried to move. I studied what Arkady had drawn on the wall. It looked like a geometric proof or an unfamiliar set of constellations. Near the center he had filled in a large black circle. It glistened, refusing to dry.

At one point, they stopped, counted off, and, to my astonishment, launched into a rhythmic chant while shuffling through a complicated set of steps and hand movements. It wasn’t a dance exactly, but it seemed like the product of a long technical rehearsal. When they finished I wondered what time it was. One o’clock? Later? I was feeling tired. The room seemed darker, although the bare bulb still shone.

“Are you ready?” Gregor said. “We’ll have six minutes from when I initiate.”

“I am still within my rights to object,” Arkady said.

“Do you exercise that right, my friend? You’d best tell me now.”

“I do not.”

Gregor took out a metal flask, shook it for five seconds, then uncapped it. “Counting six minutes from now.” He sniffed the mixture, made a face, and chugged the contents. He shivered despite the heat of the room. “Get him ready.”

“What is he doing?” I asked Arkady. He ignored me. Gregor took his shoes off and kicked them to one corner. One of his socks had a hole in the heel.

“I would like you to touch that circle on the wall,” Gregor said. He pointed to one part of the diagram.

“Why?”

“It is not important.”

“I’m not going to,” I said. I don’t know why. It seemed obscurely humiliating like a bully’s trick. I wasn’t going to touch anything.

“It is only a formality.”

“Do it, please.” Arkady looked at me grimly.

“I don’t—” I began, but there was a flash of light and then I was on one knee, the side of my face gone numb. It came to me that Arkady had just hit me. He was already hauling me forward by my wrist. I stumbled to my feet, trying to make a fist, but my nerves weren’t connecting quite right. I glanced at the wall. The circle seemed bigger. Almost a foot across.

“Initializing host,” Arkady said. There was a flash of cool on my palm, then a stinging, and my palm was bleeding.

What was this? I’d heard the Soviets had their own interrogation methods, that their foreign intelligence service dated back to 1917 or maybe earlier. That they’d do anything to get what they wanted.

“You’ll get nothing from me!” One of them chuckled.

“Just touch the circle, please.”

“No!”

“Touch it!”

“I don’t want to!” There was a breeze moving through the room now. A moment ago I’d been prepared to tell them anything, but for some reason I didn’t want to touch the circle. I fought but Arkady was heroically strong. He twisted my arm, locked the elbow, and dragged me across the room.

“What’s the matter? He should be immobilized by now.” Gregor sounded panicked.

“He resists. I don’t understand it either.”

“Cuff him!”

“No handcuffs! I have only the murder stuff.”

“Is this—I don’t understand; am I being tortured?”

“How long?” Arkady said.

There was a ringing in my ears, perhaps from the blow.

“Shouldn’t be long,” Gregor said. “Just hold him.”

“I’ve got a few drops on it now but it does nothing. He must be an outlier.”

“Fuck! You hear that? We are at the final stage,” Gregor said. And I did hear something, the sound of a woman laughing, an older woman. It sounded far away, elsewhere in the building maybe.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered.

“It’s a new world, little congressman. There’s going to be a new war. The last war. We’ll see you at the ascension, Mr. Nixon. Get his hand in, Arkady.”