She has unconsciously pressed her right hand to the waist of her jacket, under which she can feel the pistol nestled in the belt scabbard. She doesn’t want to be forced to use the gun, but if she must, she will. The men seeking her are not the kind to whom you can turn the other cheek without exciting in them the desire to answer your submission with a bullet in the head.
Although her eyes are not fully acclimated to the dark, she leads John into the row of wind-clattered and graceless trees along the south flank of the alley. Past that rampart of dead wood, they come to another east-west harvesters’ passage and hurry across it, into more trees, as if they know where safety lies, though they do not.
THE PAIN OF LIVING AND THE DRUG OF DREAMS
When Calaphas and Santana arrive in the fifth-floor apartment, Carter Woodbine and Delman Harris are facing each other across the kitchen island, silent and solemn, as if that granite slab is an altar on which someone will be sacrificed at midnight if not sooner. The attorney is dressed in Dior Homme—black suit, white shirt, striped tie—at a cost of maybe six thousand dollars, projecting the image of a reliable traditionalist. Harris’s zippered Hermès jacket in a bold abstract pattern of green and gray and black costs nearly as much as a Toyota; he wears it over a black T-shirt, with black slacks by Berluti and Converse sneakers, four or five colorful Montecarlo silver-and-alutex bracelets on his right wrist, a Cartier Drive watch on his left. He is obviously convinced that he’s above the law, considering that any cop who’s ever worked the narcotics division would, on sight, ID him as a major player in the drug trade. These two look as if they attired themselves out of the same issue of GQ, neither of them having noticed the pages that most appealed to the other. They are united by their beverage, Macallan Scotch served neat, and by the offense they have taken at Calaphas’s lack of punctuality, which they express not with words, but with tight lips and stares as sharp as ice picks.
Calaphas offers no apology for his tardiness. He doesn’t even acknowledge it. He’s got his own agenda, as he always does. “You have a picture of Mace?”
Printed on glossy photographic paper, it lies facedown on the island. Without a word, Woodbine turns it over. Calaphas doesn’t find anything impressive about Michael Mace’s appearance. The guy looks like a TV game-show host whose smile and pleasant banter with contestants help the lonely, the unemployed, and the homebound get through the pain of living.
“Julian Grantworth might already have told you that we’re after this man. The photo will help.”
Woodbine says, “What did Mace do that has you on his trail?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“I’m not an average citizen, Mr. Calaphas.”
“Yes, I am aware of that.”
“Your agency and I have mutual interests.”
“But this,” Calaphas says, “is a matter of national security.”
Woodbine nods and considers his Scotch without bringing it to his lips. “National security. So let’s speak in private.”
“It’ll still be national security in another room.”
“Come with me,” Woodbine insists.
Calaphas remembers what Grantworth said at the restaurant. Woodbine has something else he wants to discuss with you, something he’s not keen to share with just everyone, not even with me.
Leaving Santana and Harris without a target for their bitter incensement, Calaphas follows the attorney through the glamorously furnished apartment to the gym. The room measures perhaps twenty feet by twenty feet. It contains no exercise equipment.
“It used to be lined with circuit-training machines,” Woodbine says, “but I’m of an age when all that bores me. I had it removed.”
The exercise equipment has been replaced by one item, a chaise longue upholstered in a fabric with a leopard-skin pattern.
As Calaphas ponders the furniture, Woodbine feels the need to explain. “It’s a meditation room now.”
The walls are paneled in floor-to-ceiling mirrors, as is the door by which they entered. If a window exists, it’s been concealed by a mirror. One reflection repeats another, making a multitude of this two-man meeting, and the ceiling reflects everything below it.
Although curious about the nature of the attorney’s meditation sessions, Calaphas restrains himself from asking, because he doesn’t wish to have his excellent dinner turn sour in his stomach.
Woodbine says, “This Mace character, the crazy things he can do—I realize that’s a national security matter. You can’t tell me, and I don’t want to know. However, I have a mutual opportunity to discuss with you.”
They lock eyes.
Woodbine must see something that he needs to see, because he continues. “For some of us, there’s going to be more opportunity in the new America than you ever dreamed.”
“That’s why I’m aboard for it.”
“You’re aware that your agency and I are business partners.”
“It was suggested, yes.”
“It’s a lucrative business, enough profits to go around, plus the agency and I share certain ideological goals.”
“The New Truth,” says Calaphas.
“If you did a bit of business with me, it would be no different from your director, Katherine Ormond-Wattley, or deputy director doing business with me, which they do. It’s all in the family.”
After a silence in which he seems to be reflecting on a series of profound personal losses, Calaphas says, “The agency is the only family I have now.”
The attorney conjures a courtroom expression of sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Calaphas shrugs. “It suits me.”
The attorney places a hand over his mouth as though deciding whether he dares to say what he wishes to say, and he gazes at the mirrored ceiling, where he looks down on his upturned face, an uncertain soul who is his own and only god. He decides to proceed. “I didn’t tell Grantworth, but Mace drove away in my Bentley.”
“Some car.”
“I want it back.”
“Why didn’t you tell Grantworth?”
“I had the Bentley customized.”
“I assume you didn’t just add tail fins.”
“I can switch off the transponder when I’m not using the navigation system.”
“So you can’t be tracked. That’s not illegal. Not yet.”
“The customizer also built in a secret compartment. Not for drugs. It contains an unregistered AR-15 and three million in cash.”
“Run-for-it money,” Calaphas surmises.
“I’m not likely to need it, but I sleep better knowing it’s packed and ready. I’d rather the ISA doesn’t know I made such . . . preparations. It looks like the agency doesn’t have my full trust, and that’s not really the case.”
They consider each other indirectly. Woodbine turns his head to his right, and Calaphas turns his head to his right, which is the attorney’s left, so that they are looking at opposite mirrored walls in which their reflections curve away to infinity.
“So what’s this opportunity you mentioned?”
“If you find the Bentley, you can take the three million for yourself and bring the car to me, and we’re square.”