“Memphis,” he said, having recognized the caller ID as the director’s office.
“Special Agent Memphis, hold for the director, please.”
“All right.”
He waited, and then the man himself wished him a brusque good morning.
“Good morning, sir,” he said.
“Nick, I suppose you’ve seen the Times.”
“Yes sir.”
“Are you lawyered up?”
“No sir, not yet. I’d hoped this would go away when the full forensics report on the documents came in and the suspension remained unofficial. Has that changed, sir?”
“Well, Nick, we have to discuss it, I’m afraid. Can you come in today for that discussion?”
“It’s not as if I had anything else to do,” Nick said.
“Okay, I have to restructure my whole morning, and I’ve got a lunch I can’t avoid, so let’s say three p.m.”
“Yes sir.”
“Nick, I’d like to send a car. You don’t sound upset, but I’d prefer not to take any chances.”
“That would be an excellent idea. I might lose control backing out and crush nineteen reporters to death.”
“That would probably make you America’s hero. Okay, Nick, I’ll have it there at two.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Nick continued dressing, and then, feeling rebellious, tore off the white shirt, dumped it in the hamper, and put on a nice blue one. Now that was sending a message! he thought as he tightened the tie.
41
They cut the flex-cuffs off after clamping on walking manacles that allowed him mobility and slightly more freedom of movement. He was allowed time in the bathroom. Food followed, served carefully-protein bars, a frozen meal thawed by microwave, a diet Coke. He ate it down, astounded at how hungry he was and how desperate for sleep. He began to feel slightly civilized again until a blindfold was plastered over his eyes.
Then Jimmy and Raymond marched him in the small-step shuffle of the bound man along a hallway, their bulks marshaled against his, turned him through a door, and sat him down on a folding chair. He sat for five minutes, hearing mechanical things being manipulated behind him, some small appliance of some sort, he guessed, wondering if the water phase was over and now came the telephone electrical generator for applications of voltage to delicate areas. But why coddle him first?
“All right, Sniper,” Anto said, having slipped silently into the room and sidled up close, “God help me, but I love you. I’ve fallen hopelessly into a man-crush. What a bucko you’d be. Lord, wish I was as much man.”
“Anto, have you joined the fairies now?” asked Ginger.
“Sounds like it, don’t it, boyos. No, I don’t want to fuck the fellow, I just want to pay him what he’s due, even as I struggle with the problem of putting him down. That won’t be a fun task, but it has to happen then, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” said Raymond.
“But look what he’s done. He’s made us sniper fellas look good, brave, tough, the best. He’s made us the chivalric heroes of the land, instead of the screwball creepy killer dogs we’ve been so many years. He’s stood up against the water over what was left of night, the whole morning, even into the afternoon. He is a dead-on lad, no man can deny it. Game, yes he is.”
“You think he can’t be broken, Anto?” Raymond asked.
“Maybe still.” He addressed Bob. “We found, the boys and I, that a respite, a rest, some new information, even a hope can have an immense effect on the subject. He realizes the comforts of the normal life and suddenly yet another session with the buckets don’t seem so sporting. And he realizes he can’t get his little dick hard for it again, and so he folds easylike, and there’s no need for any more water drama. We’s all knackered, we’d all like sleep, and that would be the best for all. But you’re tougher than that, I know. So here’s what it is. I’m going to show you what this little caper’s been all about. You’ll see it, you’ll know it, and to a fellow like you who’s killed near three hundred poor souls, you’ll see it ain’t, by your standards and mine, no big deal. And you’ll wonder, why on earth am I going through the tortures of wet gagging vomit-hell over this wee thing? And that too will have its way with your mind, and then we’ll have a nice little discussion and see if we can’t settle this matter amicably and make it all coolaboola, so?”
The blindfold was pried off. Bob blinked, dazzled at first, and as his vision settled in, he saw that he was in another small institutional room, linoleum-floored, bland and neutral. Before him was an actual movie screen of the old kind, not a plasma flat-screened monster television monitor, but an old white screen impregnated with glittery stone for better refraction, a true relic of the fifties. It was mounted on a rickety tripod, the sort of thing Ozzie showed Harriet and the boys the home movies on.
“Had a time finding such an antiquated piece of hardware,” said Anto. “But it’s the old things that contain the treasure. Now, Sniper, you’ve probably thought this caper was about some forgotten atrocity, no? Hmm, let’s see, the villagers didn’t want to move for the pipeline, so the contractors genocided their black heathen asses, something like that? Or some huge business deal his lordship Constable put together with the Russky mafia, Al-Qaeda, and the Home Guard? Stolen warheads for the Moluccans, heavy water for the Albanians, poisoned bird poo for the Lakota? No, it’s nothing like that, it’s merely a man trying to hide a long-ago mistake and get away with a thing you and I and all the boys and any man who’s fought for his king and country has done as well. Collateral damage. Something happened that needn’t, there was tragic loss of life, but then that’s the way of the wicked world, then and now, forever. That’s the cost of operating; it’s a crime, a shame, a tragedy, but now, do we really want to destroy so much to pursue a thing called pure justice, when a more appropriate behavior might be forgiving, followed by forgetting? I’ve had a talk with the man on the subject, as I had to know before I committed my team to this enterprise. I had to settle in me own mind the righteousness of what I was about to undertake, at such risk to meself and mine. He had to sell me and I had to buy. So I will convince you as he convinced me, and when it’s over, you’ll see what has to be done, of that I’m confident. Ginger, turn on the picture show.”
The lights came down. From behind came the electric grind of an old, small projector, also vintage, and that bright beam of light splashing against the screen before it disappeared in the opaqueness of the leader, which sprocketed through the aperture between lens and light displaying only scratches and smudges and trapped pieces of lint while that eerie movie-projector sound, familiar to anyone who’d been in a western world school anytime between 1945 and 1985, a kind of 24-frames-per-second clicking hidden in greasy grinding and turning, filled the dark air of the little room and its cargo of watchers.
Swagger put eyes to screen, saw a black-and-white, herky-jerky, grainy, badly lit, artless, dead-hand image of some kind of room full of some kind of people in the costume of a long-ago period called the early seventies. Swagger saw bushy hair covering ears, bell-bottom jeans, lots of army surplus, no baseball caps, and through all of that divined from the listless lines of customers at two counters, waiting to get to a teller, that he was in a bank and that this was some kind of security camera, exactly like the one that immortalized Patty Hearst. He could see a tall, beardless but mustached hippie kid up at the window. Bank? That meant he was watching a robbery, and he knew at once that it was that fabled day in counterculture history, February 10, 1971, when, or so it was alleged by their haters, Jack Strong and Mitzi Reilly pulled off the Nyackett Federal Bank and Trust robbery, leaving the realms of amateur radical criminals and joining the ranks of professional killers forever. Somehow it had been stolen from the police evidence room and somehow, through the political complexities of the radical underground in those days, it had been stored with Ozzie Harris, known for his probity, his toughness, his loyalty to the cause. He would be an earnest protector of the fates of Jack and Mitzi.