He held me close and whispered, “We don’t dare talk in your room.”
“Aren’t you carrying this—” He cut me off with a violent shake of his head.
“I’m not being paranoid. This morning I couldn’t find a book, looked high and low, finally looked under the bed. I found a bug.”
I didn’t understand. “Are you zipped? There are bugs everywhere.”
“Not a bug bug,” he whispered harshly. “An electronic one—microphone and transmitter and battery. Size of your little fingernail.”
“How in the world would you recognize—”
“Christ and Buddha, don’t you ever watch the cube? You can buy them over-the-counter at Radio Shack. Somebody’s eavesdropping on me, probably you, too.”
“You think it’s… James?”
“Or Will. If it were the government, I wouldn’t’ve found the bug with a microscope.”
“That’s terrible.”
“That’s only half of it. The first half is Katherine.”
It took a second for the name to register. “The suicide.”
“The one who died. I thought I saw her Friday night, the day before she died. You know I had to go to Washington.”
I nodded. He was part of a show in a gallery there.
“Thought I’d take the red-eye, save a couple of bucks. Went down to Penn to catch the two a.m. Going down the escalator to the train, she was coming up. She had a wig on, but no way you could disguise that nose.”
“Sure it was her?”
“I sort of half waved, then caught myself. She saw me and looked away.”
“What are you driving at?”
“Don’t you see? James gave her an assignment in Denver. Remember? And here she is, sneaking in from Washington at two in the morning. And the next day she’s dead.”
“My God.”
“You see? It’s too much of a coincidence. It’s possible, just possible, that she did commit suicide. Not likely.”
I held him more tightly. “Somebody found out she was… working for the government.”
“A counterspy, double agent, whatever. What probably happened was, they had somebody following me, checking me out. Saw her, reported… maybe she was under suspicion anyhow. They force-fed her some pills and washed them down with booze.”
“The Times said there was a suicide note.”
“Right. In her typewriter.”
The door to the shower room slammed and I felt a chill down my back, under the hot water.
“What are we going to do?” I whispered.
“Right now? We—” I put my hand over his mouth. A man was using the urinal. There were only three men on this floor, and they were all closer to the other john. My heart was banging.
“Sammy? Is that you?”
The urinal flushed. “Maintenance,” an unfamiliar voice said. I held on to Benny with my teeth clenched and eyes squeezed shut. Then the door slammed again.
“Was that the maintenance man?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never talked to any of them. Benny—stay with me. I’m afraid.”
He stroked my shoulder softly. “I don’t think we’re in any danger yet. They don’t have any reason to suspect that we think they’re anything other than they said they were.”
“You left the bug where it was?”
“Of course. And you should do the same if you—no. Just assume there is a bug, in your room somewhere. Don’t bother to search.”
“You will stay with me tonight?”
He kissed me. “Sure.” If there was a bug under my bed that night, it heard nothing more erotic than two people staring at the ceiling.
It was a good idea to keep my diary as loose sheets. After Benny left in the morning, I removed all the pages that referred to any of this spy stuff, tore them up, and flushed them away (after retyping the innocent parts). I decided I might keep a separate diary if there were some way to absolutely hide it.
24. Apparent and Absolute Magnitude
The organization that O’Hara and Benny have made contact with is neither small nor without a name. Of the people they’ve met, only James is aware that he belongs to the Third Revolution (Katherine also knew the name, and was willing to the for it, though that happened in a way she had never foreseen).
The FBI is aware of the 3R, and is concerned. They have dossiers on over twelve thousand members and suspect there are some fifty thousand more, protected by the tight cell system. They are wrong by an order of magnitude: the Third Revolution claims over six hundred thousand Americans and resident aliens (including one from outer space). About one out of five operates at the “expediting” level, which is mostly target practice and weapons drill. Fewer than one in five thousand is aware of the actual size and strength of the organization, which has over a million small arms stashed around the country, and tonnes upon tonnes of high explosive, made into standardized bombs, for sabotage. And two nuclear devices, one permanently sealed under the subway tracks in Washington, three blocks from the Lobbies’ Office Building.
Of the very few people in Washington who are aware of the true danger presented by 3R, one is the FBI’s second-in-command, who is also 3R’s first-in-command.
The 3R’s attitude toward America would have been easily understood by the soldier of the previous century who said, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
25. Diary of a Spy
(The following entries written in tiny script on cigarette papers, hidden between two pieces of cardboard that formed the bottom of a box of tampons. She got the trick from the Marquis de Sade.)
29 October. I gave my report to James last night, same place as the first meeting. He seemed interested and sympathetic, as were the others, and agreed that there might be a pattern, which a better mathematician could extract. Benny was too nervous. I hope they don’t suspect anything. He gave his report and was warmly congratulated. James had already seen the letters, of course. The bill comes up for “second reading” next week, and well find out then whether the letters had the desired effect. The meeting was subdued because of Katherine’s death. Damon, who shared her faith, said a short prayer in Arabic. It was grotesque. Did James kill her? Damon? I gave my “ultimatum” to James, and he accepted it without question. He said he would do the same in my position. Toward the end of the meeting I felt lulled. That’s dangerous. They seem nice people, full of concern and social consciousness. One or more of them are capable of putting a bug under Benny’s bed and, probably, killing a person for being on the wrong train. I’m frightened but also fascinated. Only seven weeks before the quarter’s over, and I can escape to Europe without arousing suspicion. But Benny?
30 October. Benny and I discussed possible stratagems. He’s even more scared than I am, with good reason. Talked for hours and wound up where we’d started. He raised an interesting, possibly hopeful, point. The bug might easily be left over from the previous tenant Benny knows that she was a small-scale drug dealer. So either the police or her wholesaler could have been eavesdropping on her. Also, Katherine. All I really knew of her was her intensity. Alvarez, in The Savage God, says that every suicide “has its own inner logic and unrepeatable despair,” and for some reason that sounded like Katherine. Maybe she wasn’t the woman on the escalator. It’s a big city, full of unrelated twins.
6 November. I really don’t know. Benny and I are trying to convince each other that it’s just paranoia. The meetings are innocent enough on the surface. Nothing’s said that would raise an eyebrow at the Grapeseed. But there’s so much goatshit mystery around it. Today a stranger sat down across from me at lunch and struck up a conversation. When the other person left he said he had a request from James: would I be willing to give a speech to a small group, comparing the state of civil liberties in the Worlds with those here. I told him what I’d told James. Nothing public. He said it would be only about forty people, and very private. I agreed to do it. In fact, I’m looking forward to it. It won’t be what he expects.