The Revisionists (13 page)

“You do not want me calling your firm with this information, Ms. Wilson. That would be very bad for you and your career. Not to mention your ability to walk about as a free woman.”

Another pause. I can hear breathing, probably hers.

Her voice is less strong than before, and there’s a bit of a tremor that she can’t quite contain. “I really don’t know what—”

“You
do
know what this is about.” Still calm, his voice is ever so slightly louder than before, just to show her he does not have limitless patience. “And if you’d like me to mention it on the phone like this, I’d be happy to. Lord only knows who is listening these days. But I think a face-to-face chat would be more in your interest? You assume I’m your enemy here, which is understandable. But I have a little mercy in me, and if you’re smart you can play into that. Understood?”

An even longer silence than before. I wish I could see her, wish I could help her. But that’s not my job.

“Sir, though I’m still confused as to the nature of this call, I’d be happy to have a meeting so I can clear up any misunderstandings.”

Ever the attorney, doing what she can to cover herself. I want to applaud, even if she’s losing badly.

“Excellent. Let’s meet tomorrow afternoon. At the Topaz Bar, near Logan Circle. Two o’clock work for you?”

“Sure. Who will I be looking for?”

But he’s already hung up. And it’s time for me to protect the next Event.

It sounds like the introduction to a bad joke from this century: a Saudi Arabian and a Chinese walk into a coffee shop. But the punch line is still a few weeks away.

They stand in a long queue separated by a half dozen political staffers, lobbyists, and underpaid strivers for nonprofit organizations. It is four o’clock in the afternoon, a time when normal people are not choosing to recharge their systems with steaming cups of Brazilian or Javanese energy. But these aren’t normal people; they’re all trying to change the world, one way or another. They are idealists and utopians, Machiavellians and madmen. Some of them are working in concert, others in opposition, so many actions and plans and strategies neutralized by the other sides, by their enemies, by a world careening too quickly in one direction to respond well to sudden twists of the steering wheel. Their world-changing is tiring work indeed, and this particular branch of the Starbucks global empire does smashing business.

Across the street from us the ornately carved Library of Congress looms like the fortress of an even earlier time, its thick walls protecting the illuminated manuscripts from the plebeians, who would rather check their e-mail anyway. It seems I am surrounded by text in this city. Even without my seeking it out, it haunts me, hovers in the background, is invisibly sent from one handheld to another. I am a mere punctuation mark—we all are—in stories someone else is writing. Or has already written. Because, once again, I know the lines before they’re spoken: The Chinese is in the front, ordering a cappuccino, specifying his preference for soy milk. Perhaps he is more enlightened than his fellow contemps when it comes to consuming animals and their body fluids. In the back of the line is the Saudi, hands fidgeting inside the deep pockets of his finely tailored suit. He pretends not to recognize the bald moon in the middle of that round head at the front of the line; the Chinese now turns in profile to take his beverage to the sweetening kiosk. The Saudi stares straight ahead while the Chinese finds a table in the corner.

The Chinese sips his drink and plays with his PDA. He wears a crisp white shirt with red and blue stripes, and on his cuff links are tiny stars, as if his wardrobe is a deconstructed flag of this country where he lives and works. He operates under cover as the administrator of a group dedicated to “freeing Tibet” and keeping China’s influence out of Taiwan, and he diligently reports back to his mother country on the developments within the organization. His watch is very expensive and he never looks at it.

When the Saudi finally reaches a point within earshot of the baristas, an American is added to the joke: a large but not quite fat man with unkempt dark hair and a beard, an ex–football player who isn’t as skilled at blending in as these other two. He sits down—sans beverage—and shakes the Chinese’s hand, and then the Saudi joins them. The American’s back is to me, the Saudi is in profile, and the Chinese would be looking right at me if he could see through the American, which he probably can.

It is amazing how openly such important and secret information is exchanged here. There is no need of darkened hallways, windowless rooms, passwords. Either they know that people are watching and are so used to it that they’ve developed ways to operate on several levels, or they’re confident that they’re being protected by people even more powerful than the ones pursuing them. Either way, it’s very different from the other beats I’ve worked, requiring me to come out before the sun has set, revealing myself to the view of countless contemps. The Department won’t like it, but without a GeneScan it’s the only way I can protect this Event.

The Saudi is the youngest of the three, the scion of a powerful family with varied business interests in America. He lives here on a student visa that has no expiration date, and he hasn’t taken a course in years; he has, however, sampled more than a few coeds in that time, and his trimly bearded face is a fixture at parties and bars along M Street.

If the coffee shop were less busy, I would be able to hear them, but if it were less busy they wouldn’t have chosen this spot. Instead of hearing what they say, I am treated to alternating snippets of conversation from the closer tables. A young white woman with an electric frizz of hair is impressing upon an older man the importance of investing in Guatemala and El Salvador at this particular moment. Two young men in fashionable suits try not to flirt with each other too obviously as they show each other images on their cell phones. An elderly couple consults the map of D.C. they’ve laid on their table, debating which sites their sore arches can tolerate getting to.

I’m wearing a blue Nationals hat that I bought from a street vendor pulled just low enough to help me evade detection without drawing suspicion. I stare vacantly at a
Post
that has been left behind by someone unconcerned with the violence and love and despair its reporters are so desperately trying to convey. There’s nothing about Mr. Chaudhry’s disappearance yet; it will show up in the day after tomorrow’s edition.

I aim my internal microphone at the three men’s table without looking at them, which is difficult to do. The microphone cuts through the noise around us.

AMERICAN: We see ourselves as being in the predictability business. It’s our job to eliminate unpredictability, eliminate spontaneity. Spontaneity is destabilizing; it causes unforeseen problems. With our product, you never have to worry about unforeseen problems, that something will pop up to derail your plans, disrupt your agenda. We create predictability, which means creating a monopoly, which means you, our client, alone on top. Now, as Salem’s testimonial shows, our product is the most complete either on or off the market.

CHINESE: Is there some way to test the product against what we currently use, in order to be sure that this really adds value?

AMERICAN: We do have a few demonstrations we could show you, but that would need to occur on-site. We’d need visas to get in.

CHINESE: That wouldn’t be a problem.

SAUDI: You should tell him about that new application, you know, the one we started using last month. It’s been amazing.

They make it sound so bland. The American hands his current customer and his future one sheets of charts and bars. At least he takes a quick scan of the room before doing so, and he’s careful to keep them flat on the table, lest any photographer be hiding across the street.

Because I already know what’s happening, I don’t need to watch them very closely and can instead focus on the others in the room, the people walking by on the sidewalk. The hags should be here, at least one of them. This meeting is so important, despite the outwardly dull, pinstriped trappings. How could the hags be letting this go so smoothly?

The elderly couple is bickering now: He is tired of museums and wants to pay his respects at Arlington Cemetery tomorrow, but she replies that they spend quite enough time in graveyards as it is, and wouldn’t it be better to see the Monets? The stylish young men are slinging their bags over their well-sculpted shoulders, having decided they are sufficiently caffeinated to begin their all-night consumption of more exciting beverages. And at the only table that matters historically, the Chinese spy nods at something the American contractor says, taking out his PDA once again, typing numbers that the Archivists will pore over so many years later.

I look outside and see no suspicious loiterers on the sidewalk. On Third, two young women walking dogs have been chatting—I don’t like how stationary they are, but they don’t look like they’re hags—and finally they break up their conversation and go their separate ways. I can now see, previously concealed behind them, a man in a parked car.

His face is so colorless, almost waxy. I’m tired of being surrounded by corpses. People from my time aren’t usually as dark or as white as most of the contemps here, but then again, hags tend to come from those groups that are most resistant to mixing, that have stubbornly clung to their outdated beliefs.

I give the trio of conspirators one final glance as they continue to discuss this excellent business opportunity. Then I walk outside.

A taxi heads toward the Capitol; an announcer on a tour bus regales me with factoids as the bus sits at a red light. An apparently homeless woman offers to sell me a special newspaper about people like her (how varied and bizarre is all this printed matter!), but I shake her off. An athletic-looking man with
FEDERAL MARSHAL
printed on the back of his navy blue jumpsuit stands at a corner patiently nodding at his phone as he looks up the street, then down it. I watch his reflection in the Starbucks window, and the reflection crosses the street.

If the hag in the car were smarter, he would have done something to disrupt this meeting before it happened, maybe kill one of the three men on his way here. Could he perhaps have grander things in mind, a triple killing? But not out in the open—that would run contrary to their goals. He’s probably planning on following one of them, likely the American, because his role in the Conflagration is the largest.

I wait for pedestrian traffic to dissipate, then I approach the parked car from behind. The engine is still idling; is he hoping to run one of them down? I carefully take off my jacket and drape it over my arm, then I remove the gun from its pocket, keeping it hidden. I open the hag’s unlocked passenger door and slide in.

“Keep your hands on the steering wheel,” I tell him. The jacket conceals the gun from everyone’s view but his—the barrel is staring at his chest. He stares back at it, then at me. With my right hand I pull the door shut.

“You can have the car, I just—”

“Shut up. I know who you are. Drive south, now.”

He stares straight ahead with wide, panicked eyes. Maybe he’s trying to trick me into thinking he’s a contemp. I cock the gun to scare him into action and he pulls onto the road. He looks to be in his midtwenties; he sounds congested and his eyes are red, as if he’s having a hard time adjusting to the new beat.

He manages to drive, slowly and hesitantly, and I direct him through a few residential blocks and beneath the highway underpass. Beyond this is a series of construction sites; older neighborhoods are being dynamited and bulldozed to make way for progress.

I tell him to pull over in a narrow side street, where we’re boxed in between the last remaining brick wall of an almost demolished apartment building and a stretch of dumpsters filled with debris. “Turn off the engine and put the keys on the center of the dashboard.”

He obeys, and then he gives up the innocent-contemp act. “You have a very strange job.” He still stares ahead, as if unwilling to look at me. “You’re killing everyone around us.”

“They’re already going to die. I’m not the one doing it.”

“Except, if you stepped back and let us do what we’re trying to do, they’d all live.”

“You want to have a philosophical argument? Fine. You can run around this time thinking you’re a savior, but all you’re doing is prolonging an awful era, decades and decades of war and strife. Hatred begetting hatred. The Conflagration accelerated things—it was terrible, yes, but the end result was our Perfect Society.
That
is what I protect.”

“You’re delusional, like the rest of them.”

“
Who’s
delusional? You and your little martyrs are fools pretending to be heroes.”

“The Perfect Society, huh?” He finally looks at me. “The land of milk and honey? Where no one wants for anything, and people dance in the streets holding hands?”

“We’ve come a long way. There are difficulties sometimes, but try comparing it to anything else you can imagine. Compare it to anything else that came before and—”

“I would
love
to make comparisons, but we can’t, can we? Because all records of the past are kept under lock and key by your bosses. So whose word do we have that our society is so perfect? Oh yeah, the Government’s word.”

“If you’re trying to recruit me, you’re wasting your time.”

“
Wasting time—
what a funny concept.”

“Let’s pretend for a minute that I can see your side of the argument,” I say, the gun still pointed at him. “Let’s pretend that our Perfect Society isn’t worth the sacrifice. Or that I’m sick of doing this, and I really
want
to believe you. I could prevent the Great Conflagration, could remove billions of lives from a cauldron. I could stay here in the hate-filled 21st century and try to enjoy it, try to incrementally, painstakingly build a better world the way these people think they’re doing. But that would negate everything I’ve already done: my career in Security, the missions I’ve done for the Department, all the other disasters I’ve helped protect.”