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I turned back to the window. “You’ve got a point, Homer. Maybe they never did.”

Chapter 37

I had long admired Carmingler’s ability to summarize a situation. His facts were always neatly marshaled and if a few of them needed embellishment, as they sometimes did, he supplied it with an airy phrase or two that usually began “of course” or “naturally” or “it goes without saying.”

He had been talking now, and talking well, for almost fifteen minutes. We were in my room in the Sycamore, still on our first drinks, and he was near the end of his summary of things as he saw them, or wanted to see them, or as they should be, and I could only marvel at his single-mindedness.

“Of course,” he said, “I don’t deny that we may have made a mistake about Gerald Vicker,” and with that manly confession of near fallibility he gave me a satisfied smile, as if he had just stepped on the old homestead’s last termite.

“You knew he was recommending me for this thing, didn’t you?”

“We’d heard.”

“But you didn’t mention it to me.”

“It seemed harmless enough at the time. And we felt you could use the money.”

“Can’t you get to Simple the Wise?”

Carmingler looked pained. “We’ve tried.”

“What’s he say?”

“That we paid blackmail to get you out of jail.”

“Does he know how much?”

“Yes. He got it from Vicker.”

“Who did Vicker get it from?”

“From Tung, the man who interrogated you.”

I grinned at him. “When you question somebody for seven hours, it’s a debriefing. When they do it, it’s an interrogation.”

“You’re quibbling.”

“You want another drink?” I said.

“No.”

“Okay, let’s see if I’ve got it straight. The senior senator from Utah—”

“Idaho,” Carmingler said.

“I just wanted to make sure you were listening. The senior senator from Idaho, Solomon Simple, will rise on the floor of the Senate a week from Friday and denounce Section Two on a couple of counts. First, that it paid some Oriental despot three million dollars ransom to get three of its bungling agents out of jail and that the Secretary of State compounded the error by writing a letter of apology for the mess that his colleagues down the street were still trying to deny. All that rehash should be good for at least an hour, if he’s halfway sober.”

“He’s quit,” Carmingler said.

“Drinking?”

“Yes.”

“What was it, his liver?”

“Heart.”

“Well, after the first hour, during which he denounces the super-secret Section Two for groveling, with a couple of passing swipes at the State Department, he recounts how this same notorious agent, Lucifer Dye, is now deeply embroiled in the domestic politics of one of the South’s fairest cities in blatant defiance of all legal safeguards. I can hear him now.”

“Hear him what?” Carmingler said.

“‘Where will it all stop, Mr. President? Where will it ever end? How would you like agents of the FBI or the CIA to guide the destiny of your home town? Would you want your City Council to be elected through the machinations of ruthless, devious men who take their orders from a super-secret agency on the banks of the Potomac? Are we entering into a police state, Mr. President?’”

“You don’t do imitations very well,” Carmingler said.

“The essence is there,” I said. “At the same time Simple is making his speech, America’s favorite picture magazine will blanket the country with a sixteen-page spread on ‘The Men Who Are Corrupting Swankerton.’ ”

Carmingler almost looked startled. “Have you seen an advance copy?” he demanded.

“I just like to make things up.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t you get the White House to stop him?”

“They tried, but not too hard. They need his vote on the tax bill.”

“What about the magazine?”

“No chance.”

“You tried?”

“Yes.”

“You’re in a bind,” I said.

“So are you.”

“You could blackmail the senator. Threaten to reveal that slush fund of his.”

“I said they need his vote.”

“That close, huh?”

“It’s that close.”

“So you sent your young friend Franz Mugar down to take care of me.

“That was a mistake.”

“That’s two you’ve admitted. It must be a record.”

“There won’t be any more.”

“Sorry I can’t help.”

“You won’t then?”

“No.”

Carmingler looked at the window and said, “If it’s money—”

“It’s not.”

“It would only be for six months.”

“I don’t have six months.”

He looked at me quickly. “Do you have—”

“Don’t get your hopes up. I don’t have anything fatal. I just don’t have time to sit around in Brazil or the Canary Islands while you try to tidy things up. It’s not that important to me.”

“It is to us,” Carmingler said.

“Why?”

Carmingler’s hand darted to the Phi Beta Kappa key, which hung on the gold chain that decorated the vest of his glen plaid suit. The key didn’t seem to give him as much reassurance as it usually did. For a brief moment, a very brief one, he almost looked bewildered. “What do you want, a lecture?” he said.

“I’ve heard them all.”

“It wasn’t a good question.”

“That’s because you don’t have a good answer for it.”

He shook his head. “You’re wrong. I have an answer.”

“I’ll listen.”

“You asked why it was important.”

“Yes.”

“It’s important because it’s what we do,” Carmingler said with more fervor in his voice than I’d ever heard before. “We do a job, and you know what kind of job it is because you once did it. You weren’t all that good at it because you never really believed in it, but most of us do, and that’s something you’ll never understand because you don’t really believe in the importance of anything, not even yourself. If your wife had lived, you might have changed a little, but she didn’t and you didn’t. So you ask why it’s important. It’s important because form and substance are important to us and we’re part of both, the important part. Without us, there’d be no form and substance — no structure. There might be another one around, but not the one that we shaped. I don’t detach myself from what I do. It’s an important part of me and I’m an important part of it.”

“It’s the job,” I said.

“Yes, goddamn it, it’s the job. I think the job is important.”

“I remember,” I said. “I remember that briefcase in Manila was important.”

“It was the job.”

“You had to cut off his hand to get that briefcase. You chopped it off with a machete. All part of the job.”

“My job. Yes.”

“And your job is to make me go away. To make me disappear as if I’d never really existed. And then I’d just be something else that the senator had found in the bottom of a bottle of Old Cabin Still.”

“We’ll pay you for your loss of identity,” Carmingler said, losing a small battle to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

I said no again for the same reason that I’d once said yes, which was for no reason at all other than that it seemed the thing to do at the time.

“I’ll ask why one more time,” Carmingler said.

“Because I don’t care enough to say yes, I suppose.”

“It would be easier.”

“That’s part of it, too.”