American Subversive (28 page)

He said the word with all the disdain it deserved.

I stepped down into the sunken living room and took Lindsay's vacated seat on the couch. Keith followed me, but opted for a nearby chair. He was wearing a grubby white T-shirt and jeans. His hair was growing out, but not as fast as his beard, which was becoming a straggly, knotted mess. It made his eyes look small.

Tell me what's going on, I said. Who's behind this?

What do you mean?

Oh, come on, Keith. There's only one possible explanation for who sent those e-mails and took my picture. Someone's been dropping bread crumbs that eventually led this guy to our doorstep. Someone who knows what we're up to. Someone on the inside.

There are plenty of other expla—

Stop it!
Just stop talking.

I couldn't look at him anymore so I stood up and began pacing. Then I wheeled around and glared at him. He didn't look away.

Is it you? I asked flatly.

Is what me?

Are you doing this? Is Lindsay?

Of course not. What sense does that make? If
you
get caught,
we
get caught.

Okay, so it's coming from whoever's supporting us. Our so-called patrons.

That's impossible, Keith said.

Really? Do you know what I think would be impossible? To be photographed coming out of Barneys if someone didn't know I was
in
Barneys. Or, for that matter, to know the bomb went off on the wrong floor
before
the
Times
article was published.

You don't think someone could have figured that out? Jesus,
the fucking
Times
figured it out
. Obviously, we weren't going after that ridiculous little fag designer—

Fag?
Nice.

—or maybe your new boyfriend is lying. Have you thought about that? Look, Paige, I don't have every answer. If that's what you want, you're in the wrong business.

You don't have
any
answers.

I'm sorry, you know perfectly well that I can't talk about the Movement—either individual names or the larger structure. It should be enough to know I trust these people completely. I trust them with my life. And Lindsay's life. And
your
life, Paige. They believe in us, and for good reason: look at what we've
done
. What we're
doing
. And who we're doing it to:
Indigo Holdings
. They're a household name, now. Have you seen the press they've been getting since that
Times
piece
ran? Everyone's piling on. It's like Enron. Do you remember that, or were you too young?

I wasn't too young, I said.

But do you know how that happened? An enterprising reporter wrote a magazine article that dared to question the practices of a company everyone else was heralding. That one piece led to a dozen others, then a hundred others, and then the house of cards came down. Enron was a public company, and still it took a year to get to the bottom of things. What we did took a week. We were impolite, but we had to be. It was the only way to make people listen. What I'm saying, Paige, is that our strategy
works
. If we're careful, it works. Tell me what the downside is. Besides the danger. Besides what it's doing to us. If we can just come back together, find a way to move forward, we can . . . oh, you know what we can do.

His eyes were wide again, and affecting. Was this a performance or the real thing? Was there a difference anymore? Had there ever been? Keith was a man who could rally an army if the lighting was right. And, of course, it was right just then, at the end of the day, cicadas starting to sing. I could feel myself backing away from the precipice I'd been edging toward. I'd searched a long time, in different cities and capacities, for . . . what? A sense of purpose and significance, sure, but everyone is casting about for these things. I'd been working to reform a culture and country that changes imperceptibly if it changes at all. A system built on compromise and control, where there's no room for idealism, for grace. Losing Bobby had freed me to step outside my small world, and Keith had allowed me to stay there, on the fringes, and to find a life—the kind I no longer had to turn from, or apologize for. Here was one last chance to embrace that grand idea that things could get better, that they
would
get better, if we set out to make them so. What was the alternative?

The three of us sat down to breakfast the next morning and talked through our options. Continuing in one way or continuing in another. We would have to move. We'd been in the house too long, and if one person had found us, others would be close behind.

So: leave immediately or stay a few days longer. There'd be another
house ready in a week, Keith told us, in a town a few hours south. He'd be done with his work in the garage by then, but was that too long? We all lived with the same uneasy feeling, the sound of passing cars at night. That any one of them could stop. Movement was the only constant in our lives, dropping everything and starting over. We could leave the next day, stay at campsites and motels until the new place was ready. We could find more cars, just as reliable and utterly unmemorable as the two we had.

It was time to go, but we didn't go. In the end, Keith just wasn't ready, and we wouldn't push him. Maybe we feared the unknown or trusted Keith too much. For me, though, it came down to Aidan Cole. I believed his appearance was an isolated incident. And somehow I just knew he wouldn't talk. It was a feeling based on the flimsiest of evidence, and yet I felt it strongly. He wasn't the one I was worried about.

A week, then. Keith began working even harder. Days and nights in the garage. Lindsay gave notice at work so as not to raise eyebrows by simply disappearing. She made dinner most evenings when she got home, buzzing manically around the kitchen like a fly. Like a wasp. She always made a tray for Keith and took it down to the garage.

How's he doing? I finally asked. I hadn't seen him for two days.

Good. Why?

He shouldn't be working like this.

He knows his limits, she said breezily.

He does?

Lindsay didn't respond.

I spent my time online. There had been little talk of the next target, so I got a head start. I made lists of vulnerable government facilities and military installations, but mostly I focused on corporate America—gluttonous oil companies, weapons manufacturers, bailed-out financial firms. The building blocks of a crooked republic. I liked to believe they were becoming our niche, our expertise, these secretive giants. I filled more notebooks with statistics—horrible facts and figures—and for a while it kept me busy. For a while I could ignore what was happening around me. Or what wasn't. Two more days passed without my laying eyes on Keith. Once, in the middle of the night, I heard him climbing the creaking stairs, but I stayed in bed.
It was as if confronting him, or even appearing to care, meant losing whatever silent war was being waged. How had it come to this? In the same way everything terrible happens: slowly, then all at once.

On Saturday night he came in for dinner. It was Labor Day weekend, though no one cared. Keith's beard was even fuller now—like Steve McQueen's in his sad final years. His work shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest. And his hands were filthy. The person in front of me bore no resemblance to the man I'd met in North Carolina. This was more than a disguise. Keith, always meticulous, ever aware, was letting himself go. He opened a beer and sat down at the head of the table. Lindsay served him a large helping of salad, then put the bowl down and took a seat beside him. I looked at the bowl and then at her. She picked it back up and served herself.

Paige showed me some articles about Indigo, Lindsay said. There's a new one almost every day now. Keith took a bite of lettuce, the fork momentarily disappearing into the scruff where his lips had once been. They're raising all these questions about improprieties, she continued. Illegal weapons deals. Secret offshore accounts. Even the
Wall Street Journal
is onto the story. It's exactly what we wanted.

We waited while Keith chewed. He chewed and I assume he swallowed, then he reached for his beer and swallowed some of that, too.

We should talk about the next Action, he said finally.

Okay, Lindsay replied. She turned to me expectantly.

I've been focusing in on a few companies, I said. Let me get my notes and—

Don't, Keith said.

What?

There's no need. I've figured it out.

Figured what out?

Our next move.

But we do these things together, I said.

Lindsay stopped smiling.

The media, Keith announced, stabbing at a tomato. It's time to shoot the messenger.

You're not serious.

Keith put his fork down and leaned toward me. Do I look like I'm not serious?

I'm not sure what you look like anymore, I said.

He laughed, as if to break the tension.

I'm not kidding, I said. You're scaring me.

Paige, said Lindsay.

It's okay, Keith said calmly. If you'll just hear me out.

Not if you're going to suggest blowing up a newsroom somewhere.

No, not a newsroom. A company headquarters. He put his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together. I'm talking about N3.

I looked from Keith to Lindsay. She was already focused on me, as if awaiting my reaction.

Lindsay, do you already know about this?

About what?

The National News Network.

I think Keith mentioned something.

When?

Come on, I thought we'd gotten over all this nonsense, Keith said dismissively.

So did I.

Can I at least explain my thinking? Keith said.

You can do whatever you want, I told him.

Lindsay stood up to clear the plates as Keith began to speak. So, she'd heard this part, too. The part about a fourth estate turned docile, a press catering to demographics and caving to power. Did I want specifics? Keith asked. Because he could give me a lifetime of specifics. But why not start with Iraq—since that's why I was there—and Bush's final press conference before the invasion, the White House correspondents reduced to a state of childlike wonder by the awesome spectacle of it all, the million machinations of an empire readying for war, and the reporters who could speak at all lobbing out softballs about new weapons systems—high-speed tanks and missiles accurate to the meter. They asked how long it would take, hours or days, and who might be next. Shock and awe. Remember that? Rumsfeld, that charlatan, seizing control not of the war but the
tone
of the war, and they lapped it up, every last thin-lipped line. But the best part? Deciding to send
them
over as well. Let's turn those pesky reporters into harmless travel writers by embedding them with the troops. Oh, it was brilliant, and by the time the war went wrong, they were back home, safe and sound,
picking sand out of their teeth between bites of escargots at Café Luxembourg. Or go back further: the
Times
and WMD. Was that the so-called
liberal media
at work? No, it was
a reaction to the charge
is what it was. The fucking media bending over backwards
not
to be liberal. That's how scared they are of criticism. Everything needs two sides now, equal time. Some deranged grade-school principal in Wichita tears a picture of monkeys out of the textbooks, and the next day forty news trucks are parked outside. And no one's saying, Wait a minute, this is insane. No, they're saying, Here's the other side of the story! But there is no other side to evolution. Some things
just are
.

Keith was standing now, arms out like a preacher as he spoke of regression, the new administration moving to the center, the safe ground in an economic tempest, thus insuring the asinine issues Americans had argued over for years—guns and gay marriage, the beginning of life and the end of it, an ongoing refusal to address, hell, to
accept,
global warming—would continue to comprise our national debate. These were things the modern world had moved past. There was no death penalty in Japan. People didn't shoot each other in Canada. Western Europe was moving past religion, and the armies of the world were melting away, to say nothing of the ice caps, and where were we? Half of Congress thinks Darwin may have been wrong, and my God, no one calls them out. No one says, Enough! Instead, the reporters rush back to write the story by deadline. Is that a liberal press? Is that a biased media? If only they
were
liberal. Or independent. Or even just thoughtful; I'd take thoughtful. What happened to the intelligentsia? Our best and brightest have become our pert and prettiest. Suck-ups to power, or even the idea of it. Just watch that repulsive White House Press Dinner sometime. But it's not just D.C. It's Hollywood. It's New York. Who's the most sought-after party guest on the Upper East Side?
Fucking Kissinger!
America's greatest war criminal becomes cuddly old Henry, staring at surgically enhanced socialite cleavage as he offers his bon mots and sips scotch with hands shaking from the blood of half a million men.

Fear,
Keith said. They try to make us scared, keep us scared. The press, the politicians, the left as bad as the right. He quoted Rousseau then, something about opportunity and obligation. He was speaking not of
them
now, but of
us
. What
we
had to do. How we'd take the very
worst offender, the National News Network, and use their strategy of spreading fear against them.
We'd
be the other side of the argument they pretended to hold so dear.

Was there poetry in any of this? Certainly there was truth, but bombing the nation's delivery mechanism, even if it was broken . . . well, it would be like shooting the postman because you were sick of junk mail. Even N3, with its tongue-in-cheek news coverage, its faux patriotism and propagandist talk-show hosts. Keith had been right about Indigo, but did that give him the authority to proceed unchallenged? I stayed quiet as he spoke because this wasn't a discussion. It was a lecture. An explanation for a decision reached in a vacuum. In a garage with a bomb. What he was looking for was not input but agreement, consent, and the only bone he tossed me was logistical. I could help decide when and where. Because it was already going to happen.