He convinced Mr. Dulles-Renn-Max-shit, how’d he keep all the names straight? — to come fishing with us once. There was never a man who couldn’t fish like Max. He stared at the rod like it was a snake or something and he wouldn’t drink beer even, which didn’t put a damper on anybody but him. But they started arguing one time about something-something I didn’t really get-and I told him to be more respectful of Dave. I yelled, I guess. It was probably about the first words I’d said in months around him or anybody at that point. And the back of my head went hot and I yelped and it stopped right away. And I can remember their faces when it happened-Renn looking sheepish and Dave intrigued.
I looked over the balcony at the birds darting and flickering in their dance and realized that was why I was with Renn, with Max. Dave didn’t put me here for the protection of the program. He placed me here for my sake, because somehow being around Max was opening me up, helping to bring me back. I couldn’t really be grateful to Max for this-it wasn’t his plan; I wasn’t at all sure he was even aware of it. And it really didn’t make me any more grateful to Dave either-I couldn’t be any more grateful to Dave than I already was. But it made everything feel a little more sensible, made it fit together. There was a flow to it. A harmonic. A good, positive vibration, haha.
A moment later, I heard his voice and turned to see him coming back into the living room, hair still damp, staring at his wristwatch and talking on a cellphone I hadn’t seen before.
“…well, I’m glad I could amuse you. It isn’t funny, Nick. Dave didn’t just die; he was shot dead in the bathtub. If you guys aren’t interested, somebody is. Alan Hammond was a visionary. He just hasn’t been dead long enough to be proved right yet.” He clicked off the phone. “Remember I told you I didn’t work for America?”
“Let me guess-you lied.”
“I didn’t lie-to me, it just feels like it never happened. The job only lasted about three months, just a few months before 9/11. A friend, an acquaintance really, put me in contact with Alan Hammond, the Senator. He wanted me to work with the Senate Intelligence Committee, to keep an eye on American spooks, keep them in line. That was back when this country still wanted to keep their own spooks in line. Of course, as soon as they debriefed me and convinced themselves I was on the level, they started pushing me to do other things for them, the kind of things I wouldn’t have done for the Soviet either. Things that sent me running to the Everglades.”
“Dave knew you’d run?”
“Dave was one of the guys who debriefed me. There was Dave, Scott Cornwell and Alan Hammond’s aide Jim Avery. Cornwell was my runner and it turns out he still has the same phone number. I just called and asked him if they’d restarted the old program-or anything like it.”
That’s where I stopped him, as you’d imagine. You probably wonder what took me that long but, for a moment, I’d thought he had to be kidding.
“Jim Avery?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, giving me the eye again but my head didn’t burn. “Cornwell laughed when I asked where Avery was. He said he’s got his own business.”
I laughed-I didn’t want to make him feel dumb but I couldn’t help myself. “No kidding,” I said. “You don’t watch TV?”
“Avery’s on TV?”
“ Jim Avery? This is Your World?” He stared at me like I was talking riddles. “He’s on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He’s got his own channel!” Renn went wide-eyed. My pilot light was on dim the whole time at Dave’s but you had to be completely off to miss Jim Avery.
It took a little while to find the channel on the set in the living room-it was channel 152 or something-but then we basked in the glow of Jim Avery’s greatest hits: Be Everything You Are and Why Settle for Less than your Whole Self? and the inevitable It’s Your World, chanted by Avery and huge crowds in LA, New York, Seoul, London, Rome, Frankfurt, New Delhi, Hong Kong, Moscow, Vancouver and Prague, among others. They had ads for Your World vacations and 24-hour video-on-demand.
“Wow,” Max said and I had to nod.
“You should ask him for a job,” I said. “He’s the biggest thing going.”
Max kept staring at the tube. “It’s him,” he said haltingly. “But that’s not his hair-it has to be a toup, or implants maybe.” He started pacing around the room, looking deflated. “I see why they laughed at me-whatever became of poor Jim Avery. Wow!”
“What did Cornwell say about the program?”
“There’s no program-hasn’t been in years. He said the only reason he could answer me at all was that there was nothing to it.”
“You believe him?”
“I’m not big on belief. I listened to the sound of his voice more than what he was saying, listened to the vibrations like a stress detector. If he was lying, I would know. And,” he added, “he was one of the people who debriefed me several years ago. So he knew I would know, which means there’s no point lying.” He tapped a finger on the table-the first two times it tapped; the next two it went right into the wood, disappeared right through. He was apparently doing it without being aware of it. This would get real confusing if somebody unaware saw him. Did he do it all time without being noticed? That was a scary thought all on its own.
“I asked him about L Corp,” he continued. “He said security was a sideline, they were mostly political consulting and lobbying, media management and such.” He shook his head. “Not the place you’d expect a Miriam Fine. Or platoons of thugs with feeble mindbender power.” He came back to the couch now. “We can research it later. First, I think we should go out to dinner.”
“Out? Isn’t that dangerous?”
He shrugged again. “Everything’s dangerous-it’s just a question of more or less. I don’t think they’ve found us yet.”
That sure didn’t sound very conclusive. I was hoping for something a whole lot stronger, but he didn’t seem to be offering. “Could they have traced the phone call?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” he said casually. “Fischel’s just a committee staffer-he’s not high on the food chain. If they were tapping him for some reason, it would take a minute to recognize this conversation as worth tracing. I bounced the call off two Soviet satellites that are still up there and I timed it-believe me, they’re not as fast as the movies.”
“That’s it? That’s all the reassurance the world’s best mindbender can offer?”
“If I wait for better than that,” he shrugged, “I never get to go out to dinner.”
The town downvalley was bigger than it looked-it had the remnants of a low-rent amusement park along with a reptile zoo, several hotels and restaurants clustered along the main roads leading out to the highway-there was also a Your World Center, which I gleefully pointed out to Max as we passed. We ended up in a shed-like place off the beaten track, with an electric sign bigger than the restaurant and a round dance floor in the middle of a raised circle of dinner tables. The signs hanging by the side of the door promised Kansas steak, local lake trout and 800 different beers from around the World. They had internet access-you could order dinner from Singapore, though it didn’t mention delivery. There were a crowd of customers, but mostly at the bar and dance floor. Max shook the maitre d’s hand and he stiffened and led us immediately to a table with a clear view of the entrance and easy access to the emergency exit.