Unacceptable Risk sw-2 Page 16

"Well, thanks anyway and good day."

  Trotsky had done well. Clearly, Bowden was due in New York and the girl even knew when. That meant Sam would be around. And Gaudet would be waiting.

  Sam walked through La Guardia International Airport on his way to the taxi, having flown in from LA. Using his cell phone he called Jill.

  "We have a new problem," she started right out. "The CIA wants, and I quote, 'to know why the hell you sent the SDECE to investigate a report of a plot on the U.S.' "

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Apparently, the Turks have a guy who thought he had seen Gaudet. According to the CIA, the reports from Turkey indicated that the informant really didn't know much. Also they suspected he had been severely tortured and under those circumstances they were just as happy to have us do the ini tial interview. If it turned out there was something there, they could come along after the guy was cleaned up. I guess the Turks plugged his testicles into a wall socket, among other tricks. Figuring that since we were working Gaudet, and with the low priority and the torture and whatnot, it would be fine if we went. Only we didn't go and somehow the French did. There were pissed-off phone calls between the Turks and the CIA and Figgy Meeks right in the middle of it. The Feds are a little reluctant to criticize Figgy, since he was one of their own and they sent him to us. So they've decided they're pissed at us."

  "Get me Figgy," Sam said, doing a slow burn.

  "I thought of that. He's waiting for our call. He's at the French place in the UN."

  After a few rings Figgy picked up. "Figgy, this is Sam," Jill said.

  "Figgy, what are you doing to me?"

  "Well, I made a tactical error. The French were right near Turkey and, well, I figured-"

  "I don't believe this. You took a call at my office from the CIA?"

  "Well, yeah. I was in the office and Jill was taking a snooze, and, hell, I was one of them."

  "That's the last call you're taking. You called your French buddies and sent them and then you gave them the imprimatur of the CIA. I can't believe this. I'm speechless."

  "I won't make that mistake again. It just seemed efficient. They said he knew very little. It isn't like it was a big-deal interview. And if it was, Alfawd is dead."

  "Figgy, you haven't behaved like a friend."

  "What's that mean?"

  "It means I can't trust you." Sam hung up, fuming, wondering if he could kick the French out of the group; then he realized he couldn't. Figgy would eventually sell his "tacti cal error" line to the CIA, and the Feds still had some irra tional favor they felt they owed the French, or they were trying to buy something, or… damn… what a mess. Climbing into the taxi, he got Jill back on the line.

  "Don't let my great friend and mentor, Figgy Meeks, back in without an escort. He does no work in our office. Take him off anything to do with the journals and make sure Professor Lyman knows that Figgy has nothing to do with Bowden's journals. Let him stay at the French digs. And get a report of what the French found. It'll be a false piece of crap. Arrange for one of our people, Jim maybe, to try to see the guy, Alfawd, assuming the Turks will talk to us. Figgy claims he's dead but let's make sure."

  "Right

  Sam sighed.

  "Sam, I'm sorry. I mean about your friendship with

  Figgy"

  "I know."

  He hung up and mentally worked his way through his schedule. The plan was that he and Anna would meet Grady and Michael and then take Anna's charter jet directly from Republic Airport on Long Island to her ranch. He was hav ing misgivings about leaving headstrong Michael and Grady in New York.

  Sam first saw Anna standing on the tarmac with a strand of her hair blowing gently in the breeze. But for the errant strands her hair was pulled back tight into a ponytail, her face bright with excitement. The radiance was natural to her, nothing she consciously arranged, and it was the spontaneity of it that made her so attractive. He loved it when she dressed plainly, without baubles and makeup and all the trappings, and it was this way that she too preferred to dress. But he didn't enjoy her for long, his gaze wandering over the land scape looking for killers even as they made lovers small talk. If it wasn't killers, it was paparazzi. And if it wasn't them, he had to worry about the pilots and about Michael and what they might suspect or observe regarding his relationship with Anna. If the press learned about him and Anna, life as he knew it was over. Everything about Sam depended on anonymity.

  For some reason private jets made him feel uncomfortable of late. Especially when Anna brought them. Since he wasn't going anywhere, there was no sense thinking about it, so he shook it off.

  "God, am I looking forward to kicking back with you," Anna said. Sam hadn't yet told Anna that he had decided minutes before that he didn't dare leave New York even for a weekend. He noticed Anna's pilots watching and the arrival of curious bystanders. Something about Anna's face or her body language was begging to be touched, maybe to have him put his arm around her or hold her hand, maybe a quick kiss.

  "I think we should go riding tomorrow," she said. He knew she would love getting on Toby, her big chestnut gelding, and that made it all the harder to tell her that he couldn't leave.

  "That would be so good," he said.

  "I have some surprises for you when we get to the ranch."

  "Well, I have some surprises for you. But before we dis cuss surprises, I was wondering if maybe we could spend the weekend in Manhattan and see each other in the evening."

  "Manhattan? But we talked about the ranch… the horses… sitting by the fire…"

  "I know. And I really wanted to."

  He let her work her way through the disappointment.

  "I bought a book to read to you, it is a book of Native American lore on the subject of love, and if that fails us, due to cultural disconnect, I have some selected Shakespeare's sonnets, and a bottle of Turley zinfandel. I'm going to give you a back rub to your favorite music." Sam offered this in a low voice, which was nearly a whisper, because other travel ers stood about twenty feet behind them. He knew he sounded uncomfortable about the Shakespeare.

  Despite the audience he took her hand and gave her his best look.

  "You are a thoughtful man and so prepared… bringing things to read… The forethought… it's so charmingly old-fashioned. Manhattan will be great. And since when did you start reading Shakespeare?" He knew she was forcing herself not to complain that he would be working.

  "I didn't. I thought I would try. You keep saying he's good with words. We can always switch to Nelson DeMille."

  Anna laughed now and then looked at him. He couldn't quite read her feelings, but he knew they were good.

  "You know that I would like to hold you."

  "I know," she said, but there was the slightest hint of disappointment. No doubt she would trade one good public hug and kiss, a sort of public proclamation, for all of the poetry.

  "You know reading poetry is not an Indian thing for a man to do to impress a woman."

  "Let's pull your pants down and check to see if they're shrinking," she joked, then patted him on the back. "I'm sure your status as a strong and brave man is intact. A little poetry won't shrivel them. Since you Indians don't bring ponies anymore, I suppose the manly thing would be to take me for a ride in Blue Hades and show me sliding turns. I think I'll go for the poetry. So where in Manhattan do you have in mind? My place?"

  "You know I like your place."

  He began to walk toward a Lincoln model Town Car cab and nodded at the pilots, who already had the idea. They b egan unloading her luggage. As they walked, she said: "So who are you today? Maybe you could be Kalok Wintripp? Personally, I like that name. We could have a sort of coming out of the closet party for you and unveil your real name."

  It was a mild rebuke.

  "How about if I leak to People magazine that you're pregnant with frozen semen from the chairman of the Republican National Committee," Sam bantered.

  "Now that we're on the subject, it's probably
a good time to bring it up."

  "What?"

  "I'm pregnant by you, Sam."

  Sam stopped and whirled her around, looking in her eyes, and what he saw sent him tumbling into a whole new world.

  "It's a new life, Sam. A natural wonder." She searched his eyes. "I hope you can be proud of it."

  Grady and Michael arrived from Rio with so much lug gage they took a separate cab. Sam was grateful for the pri vacy.

  With Sam, major life events were contemplated-until now. He sat in the cab close to Anna aware that he needed to think about Gaudet, and to calculate the danger to Michael Bowden. He needed to hunt Gaudet even as Gaudet hunted Michael. Just as important he had to find Raval.

  And yet there was a new life growing in the woman be side him and it was half his. Anna's eyes had that slick shin ing look that artists and storytellers alike portray as love or adoration or both. It was as if she were making her case for the baby, speaking without words even more effectively than Cat-man. Sam wanted a trip to Universe Rock; he wanted to speak with his dead grandfather; he definitely wanted to talk about birth control and the no-bullshit pact that he thought they shared. In the instant she'd told him she was pregnant, he had felt ripped apart, even betrayed. The whole thing was a whirlwind of complications. The child would need a father, not a ghost, and right now Sam was a ghost.

  Grandfather. His mind went to Grandfather. He sensed he could be on the verge of a huge mistake.

  Calmly, even warmly, she watched him and he could feel the question.

  He forced himself not to mention that she supposedly took birth control pills. "I'm not sure how we are going to do this."

  "The baby is coming. We'll figure it out." She settled back and closed her eyes. Then she stirred herself as if she had made a decision. "There is something you should know. I'm sure the child was conceived two months ago at the ranch. You said it was okay that I had forgotten my pills in LA, remember? You may recall that I missed two."

  "At the ranch? I said it was okay?"

  "Well," she whispered despite the glass partition, "I was still half asleep and you were playing in bed and driving me nuts with the foam as I recall, the mustache…?"

  "I know. I told myself that foam and sponges are pretty effective."

  "We got the five percent. Can you think of it as a wonder ful accident?"

  At once Sam remembered a day with Grandfather. Sam was twenty-three, and it was the fall of 1985, the year before he graduated from MIT. He had taken a little time toward the end of September to work on his thesis and he went to his cousin Kier's cabin in northern California. Kier was a rural veterinarian who sometimes lived wild, off the power grid, nothing but a diesel generator and a dirt road for coming and going. It was in the Wintoon River Valley over Elkhorn Pass by road and between the Marble Mountains and the Trinity Alps, or maybe in each, depending on who you talked to, though most thought it rightly belonged as part of the Marble Mountains. It was in the Salmon River country and all ran into the Klamath river system above the redwood belt, back in the mixed conifer zone. Although the cabin was marvelously crafted and an exhibition of one man's love of wood, there wasn't much there, other than one's thoughts, to keep you company.

  Sam's grandfather had shown up-come down out of the mountains from the caves. Grandfather was a Spirit Walker, a Talth, and therefore a mystic. Spirit walkers, in addition to their communion with the spirits, were expert at surviving in the wilderness, exquisite at tracking and hunting. Mostly it seemed to Sam that Grandfather was a man who largely ex isted apart from his surroundings and whose sense of self and whose well-being were substantially disconnected from his earthly status or physical condition. Grandfather had genuine peace of mind, something that seemed to elude Sam and everyone else he knew.

  Just sitting with the man used to please Sam. Most people who were not in the grip of their surroundings were also lacking in the essential charm of humanity-the ability to give for the goodness of giving. Grandfather was anything but inhuman. When he looked at you, it felt like the whole world was springing flowers around calm lakes. That's why he had shown the picture of Grandfather to Cat-man. He thought perhaps Cat-man would see something in the eyes, even in a photo.

  The week that Grandfather showed up unannounced was warm and sunny, a time for Sam to stay in the shade and under take his college studies-but Grandfather had insisted they should have an outing. The morning after his arrival, about a half hour before daylight, they started up the mountain with water and nothing else. Grandfather mumbled that too many beavers were shitting in the creeks. They climbed for four hours and Sam began to think the unthinkable-that Grand father might have to slow down for him. Fortunately, the old man reduced the pace before Sam brought it up. Sam was never sure why.

  After six hours of grueling climbing, they came out at an alpine meadow bordered above by a tiara of snow that melted water into the meadows and mixed with the sun to make the stuff of life. As they walked among the late bloomers of the wildflowers and passed the wizened stunted pines, it seemed they were under the eye of God. When they topped the rock knob, the earth dropped away in streaks of granite and ribbons of green trees and effervescent meadows. As the eye drifted down the mountains, the trees became larger, the greens deeper. They overlooked a valley and in its bottom the churn ing of the Wintoon River could just be heard, the white of its rapids imaginable as splotches, like flowers on a vine.

  Grandfather took him around the rock on a tiny trail that put them on a ledge below the top of the dome, perhaps a hundred feet down the cliff. Here they sat. A hawk flew out over the abyss, giving their eyes perspective and their minds a fleeting reminder that some creatures could fly but men needed a contraption in order to soar. The grand quiet of the place and the slight breeze hushed the soul and seemed to bring them near creation, if not the Creator.

  "This is Universe Rock," Grandfather explained. "We will sit and take this into our spirit so that we may later breathe it out."

  Sam did not understand what he meant, but he did feel that which cannot so easily be felt with the hordes of mankind. Perhaps in part it was the scale of the place. How better to appreciate the vastness of space than to sit atop a mountain, a sort of kindergarten of the universe. Or if not a mountain, then the Tiloks' Universe Rock. Or maybe it was the solitude that was the chief ingredient. The subtleties of the soul were most likely lost in farting pistons, humming refrigerators, rolling wheels, flushing toilets, whizzing traf fic, and talking toys. Maybe it was the beauty; it could be re flected in the soul that absorbed it but could not be created there.

  "You must take what this place has to offer, put it within you and take it," Grandfather said. "There will come times, difficult times when people are pushing your feet out your ears. It is at those times that you must remember and quiet yourself. You must bring this place out from where you have hidden it and you must let it go out through every member of your body. And you must feel the peace that we feel here. Once you feel it, you must remember the eyes of your mother, the love that she felt when she knew you were alive. The white people call this compassion. We call it we pac maw. In the place of peace you surround yourself with we pac maw. You become the center of a sphere and around you is we pac maw. When the man of wrath and scorn comes and you have centered yourself in peace and put on your we pac maw, then you do not think of him as other than yourself. There is no them and us. There is only a wounded friend.

  "When you look at him, give him only we pac maw and he will see a reflection of himself. If the reflection is bad and his character is strong, his shame will not poison him and he will turn away from misdeeds and contemplate his place. If his shame is too great and he cannot turn around in his path, then he is a dangerous one. If he feels no shame, then he is a very dangerous one. Sometimes you must choose the least evil."

  Sam tried to assimilate everything he was hearing. It was by far the most he'd heard Grandfather speak in one sitting. "What do you mean 'the least evil'?"

 
"Sometimes a man must step out of his peace and leave his we pac maw. It seldom happens, but if he must, then… to fight may be the lesser evil."

  As Sam brought himself back to the here and now, he watched Anna's eyes begin to cloud with tears.

  "Give me just a few minutes to think about this miracle growing inside you," Sam said. Then he leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes and tried to do as his grandfather had instructed him. He imagined himself centered in a sphere and possessed of the mountains' peace. Then he surrounded himself with the we pac maw of his mother's eyes.

  At last he looked at Anna. He could see that she felt alone with her decision.

  He smiled. "You are feeling the weight of motherhood. No?"

  "I am. What are you feeling?"

  "Right now I need to understand you."

  "It isn't a feeling. Or maybe it is. It's more of a thought, I think. I'm scared. If we share this child, we will have to decide whether we will share together or apart. If together, we would be a family. Little families run on commitment. A man like you looks at long-term monogamy the way a thoroughbred looks at a fence. You will tell yourself the issue is anonymity, but I think it's deeper than that; it's what's inside you… Anonymity isn't really the issue." She paused as the tears returned. "I think I'm afraid because I'm so very hope ful."

  Sam knew his words had been right, but the little wrinkles on his brow were still betraying him. He would need to practice this we pac maw and figure out what lurked in the dark places of his mind.

  Baptiste and Rene walked in the Menilmontant, in a neighborhood off Rue de Couronnes, on a small side street lined with middle-class flats. When they arrived at the Flower of Paris Apartments, they climbed the stairs to the first floor off the street and took the elevator to the third. It was a nice enough place for Paris, reasonably maintained but with tiny, single bedroom flats. Space in Paris was at a premium and one had to pay for it.

  They knocked on the door of apartment number 7 and were greeted by an older woman obviously crippled from arthritis.

  "Hello. I am Baptiste, Jean-Baptiste, and this is Rene, and we are from the government. May we talk to you for a few minutes?"