Over barbecued beef, Norman complained about the college bureaucracy. He had spent the morning as the faculty representative on a committee that worked with the college employees' union. Michael listened impatiently.
"What do you think," he finally asked Cevic when they had finished their sandwiches, "about the presence of the intelligence community on campus?"
"Aha!" Norman said. It was the sort of question he relished on a topic he enjoyed. It would be hard to tell, though, how much he really knew about it.
"Are they here?"
"Oh yeah," Norman said. "They're here all right." But it would have been strange if Norman had said they weren't.
"Like," Michael asked, "where?"
"Well, you ask our new colleague about that. She works out of the late Ridenhour's shop, does she not? And Professor Doctor Ridenhour's department is surely the answer to your question. I mean," Norman said, "this is interesting. The other day I send you off to frolic with Lara. Now you're asking me about spookery. How about you tell me what prompts this question?"
"I just thought she had a very cosmopolitan background for a rustic setting like our own."
"Well, now I'm hurt," Norman Cevic said. And of course he was. Ahearn had never learned to pay enough attention. "I like to claim something of a cosmopolitan background. I've come a long way from Iron Falls. But here I am."
"You're a regional specialist," Michael said, rousing himself to flattery. "You're here for your own research. It's different with… Ridenhour's people."
Cevic appeared to be mollified.
"You know I worked abroad during the war," he said. "I worked all over the world at one time. The Michigan Project. Aid for International Development."
"That's why I'm asking you this question, Norman."
"Ridenhour had his great days," Norman said. "Tucked away here in the toolies but with friends at court."
Norman played with the expensive pack of cigarettes he had bought at the smoke shop in town. There it was forbidden to light one. Since he had briefly considered resuming smoking, Michael was discovering it was no longer possible to smoke anywhere. Norman held forth.
"By the late seventies the intelligence people had lost their hold on the eastern universities. Except for locations like Yale, where they were built into the bricks — but even there they had to be truly covert. So places like this flourished. You couldn't recruit in the big places — the other side made it a conscious strategy, manipulating bodies in campus demonstrations to run the Agency out. And so on. But out here the milk of patriotism never ran thin, right? The army. Military intelligence could use places like this. The uniform, the flag."
Norman kicked back in his chair, warming to the topic, the years of his provincial share in imperium.
"So, the snobs in Washington bitched that the agencies weren't getting the best people anymore. They hated to see intelligence work get to be a blue-collar occupation. They had seen the same thing happen to the officer corps. They used to say, Shit, it's getting to be like Hoover's FBI, the sons of Mormon farmers, the sons of Boston cops."
"So," Michael said, "they ended up with people like us."
"They discovered the uses of adversity. They could always operate here without much scrutiny. They could lay people off, people who were hot, keep them out here until they cooled off. For example, you'd have a guy come through, you'd discover he'd run a think tank in Hawaii, he was Bones at Yale. What's he doing here? Ask not, as they used to say. They'd send a guy here the way they used to send a promising officer to staff school, the War College. What he did wasn't necessarily what he was seen to do."
"So Ridenhour's scene was like a safe house?"
"Like a consulate. A chapter. A retreat. All those things."
"So," Michael said, "here's Ridenhour and his outfit. But the Cold War's over. Ridenhour's dead. What does life hold for these folks?"
"The captains and the kings depart," said Norman. "The peace punks are day traders online, their masters and manipulators, the young Lenins of the movement, are running departments, shoehorning their kids into Senate internships. Man, I could tell you stories. I could cite incidents. I could bring evidence to bear, man." Norman shook his head, growling.
"Nothing left?"
"Secrets, Michael."
"Secrets?"
"Maybe you can recruit in Harvard Yard again. But the walls have eyes. Places like this you can place the casualties, the burnouts, the Men Who Know Too Much. You can contain these little worlds. Beyond that," he said, straightening up, "there's damn little going on worth hiding. The Middle East action is pretty up-front in security terms. Most people are on board. What's left is the war on drugs, and nobody likes that much. It's dangerous. It's essentially boring, like it's got no cultural content. It stinks. I wouldn't look for it around here."
"I thought this was where they came when they couldn't go anywhere else."
"It's a cemetery," Norman said. Then he looked at Michael for a moment. "Except maybe for your girlfriend. She's a live one."
"You mean Lara."
Norman did a lovely bland blink.
"Did I say Lara?" He wrestled his graveled tones toward delicacy.
"You said girlfriend."
"A momentary lapse, dear boy. But I bet madame there, she's got a juicy résumé, n'est-ce pas? Checked it out?"
"I ran into classified stuff."
"Exactly," Norman said. "The thing would be to get around that."
Michael did not answer him.
Back at his computer, he ran Lara down to her lair behind the odd-looking logo that demanded his password. On prolonged examination, the insignia was a more ominous presentation than it had first appeared, hard to make out on the screen. It was a thing of colors. Was the redorange shaded figure a cockscomb? Was what appeared to be a face really one? Did it have a ferocious jaw with bloodied, mandrill-like fangs? What else lurked among the dark green stalks?
The thing was unsettling. Each time he called it up, it seemed to leave an afterimage in the middle of his screen. One of those creepy things you found out there. Everyone knew the Web was teeming with them. And some aspect of this woman lurked behind this one.
Toward dusk, Michneicki, hockey-playing apple picker, showed up to discuss his paper.
"Read the text," Michael told him.
Michneicki read aloud from The Red Badge of Courage: "'He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was a man.' So he understands that death is part of life," Michneicki declared complacently. "He matures."
"The novel is about war, Keith. It's not just a coming-of-age story. It's about the purifying effect of struggle. It's not about discovering personal identity. It's about transcending it."
Michneicki frowned, shrugged and looked at Michael for help.
"What do you get out of a game like hockey?" Michael asked him. "Does it make you feel like a small child again?"
"Huh?"
"Does it make you feel a small child? Like you're returning to infancy?"
"No way," Michneicki said.
"You're an enforcer out there. I've seen you. You like to hit people?"
The young man laughed. "Not a whole lot." He flushed and looked at his big hands. "Not really."
"Are you afraid of getting hit? Does it hurt a lot?"
"No," Keith Michneicki said.
"No. And how do you feel after a game?"
"If we win," Keith said, "great."
"Part of something bigger than yourself?"
"Well," said the young apple knocker, "the game's not about one guy."
"What's it about?"
"Winning?"
"No, I'm asking you. Is it about winning?"