California Fire and Life (21 page)

Once again, they all travel down the tube and separate.

The trick is in the methyl silicone in the second column.

It’s been doped.

Doped with chemicals that produce completely different separation criteria from the methyl silicone in the first column.

(“There are three chemical separation mechanisms,” Dinesh will tell a floundering jury. “Volatility, polarity and shape. Volatility is how much vapor pressure a substance puts out at a certain temperature—its boiling point, put simply. Polarity refers to the electric property of molecules. Shape is simple—it’s the shape of the molecule, whether it’s, say, shaped like a chain, or perhaps a closed loop.

“Now, the first GC column only separates by volatility. So two chemicals that have the same volatility will come out of the first column together—unseparated—even though they have different polarities and/or different shapes. But when they hit the doped methyl silicone in the second column, they encounter a chemical mechanism that they haven’t seen before, and they separate.

“So: polarity is an electrical property of molecules. Electrostatically, the positive attracts the negative and vice versa. The molecules tend to hug each other. They can maintain this mutual affection through the first GC column, but when they hit the second … well, love does not conquer methyl silicone doped with chemicals that have electric charges on their surfaces, and they separate. Same with shape. Two very differently shaped molecules that have the same polarity but different shapes can travel down the first column disguised in happy unity as one. But when they hit the second column they will have a different reaction
to the stationary phase—to the doped methyl silicone—and they’ll separate.

“The performance then of one GC multiplies the other. They don’t
add
, they multiply. So if the first can separate one hundred peaks and the second can separate thirty, then in combination they can separate not one hundred and thirty, but three thousand.”)

The net result is that the chromatograms look like stalagmites rising up off a floor, instead of shark fins coming up off lines.

It’s the difference between a graph and a kaleidoscope. Between a coloring book and a Matisse. Between, as Dinesh likes to think, the “Beer Barrel Polka” and a Charlie Parker solo. The GC × GC delivers a beautiful multicolored pattern, which will always be exactly the same—every time—for a given mixture. Every time you set the kaleidoscope at the setting marked “Kerosene,” you’ll get the same beautiful, complex pattern.

Like a signature in 3-D.

Like a fingerprint in Technicolor.

Only better.

And that’s what Dinesh sees when he finishes running the first sample through the GC × GC. A two-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle that portrays one image and one image only.

Kerosene.

Six hours later he and his crew have run all the samples.

The kaleidoscope is always the same.

Kerosene.

He calls Jack with the results.

Maybe the best view on the south coast is the one from the patio bar at Las Brisas, with its view of Laguna Bay and Laguna town stretched out beneath you like some old Mediterranean city with its white buildings and terra-cotta-tiled roofs. Especially at sunset, with the sky turning from blue to lavender and the red summer sun starting to kiss the ocean horizon.

“Thanks for coming,” Nicky says. He tilts his vodka collins in a salute to Jack.

“Thanks for the drink,” says Jack, raising his beer bottle.

Nicky says, “Well, I wanted to thank you for intervening in that ugly situation in the church the other day.”

“No,” Jack says, “you wanted to find out what Letitia del Rio told me.”

Nicky smiles. “That, too.”

“She told me some disturbing things.”

“No doubt she did,” Nicky says. “I am sure that she concocted some wild and wonderful tales for you. I imagine at times she even believes them herself. Letty is a sick woman.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, they came from the same dysfunctional family, didn’t they.”

“Letty says that Pam went to rehab.”

“Yes.” Nicky laughs. “Would you like to see
those
bills?”

“And?”

“She stayed sober for about two weeks afterwards, I think,” Nicky says. “
Not
a bargain.”

They sit and drink and watch the progress of the sunset, a spectacular Southern Californian light show gone from lavender to purple as the sky turns into a violent red.

“This might be Paradise,” Nicky sighs. Then he says, “Think about this, Jack. The next beneficiary on the life insurance policy after me is Letty, in trust for the children, of course. It would be in her interest to make up stories, wouldn’t it?”

Jack watches the bottom of the sun melt into the ocean.

“You know what I think?” Jack asks. He takes a long belt of his beer.

“I wouldn’t presume to guess, Jack.”

Easy, relaxed, maximum cool.

“What I think,” Jack says, “I think that you killed your wife and burned the house down around her. That’s what I think.”

Grinning at Nicky, who turns pale.

Nicky stares at him for a long moment, then forces his face into a condescending smile. Looks Jack square in the eyes.

Says, “Prove it.”

Jack says, “I will.”

Behind Nicky the sun, the sky and the ocean are on fire.

This beautiful inferno, Jack thinks.

This drop-dead gorgeous hell.

Here’s the story on Nicky Vale.

Daziatnik Valeshin grows up in Leningrad, his father a minor apparatchik, his mother a teacher at the state gymnasium. She feels that she has fallen in the world—both her parents were professors and she did brilliantly at university. Were it not for one foolish, unguarded night she would doubtless have become a professor as well. But then, she had a child to raise—alone—as Daz’s father splits early, a divorce while young Daz is still in the crawling phase.

Mother he sees.

Constantly, oppressively.

She’s raising him to be something, most decidedly
not
a minor apparatchik. They go meatless for weeks to afford ballet tickets, the soup is thinned yet again for a Tchaikovsky recording. At a precocious age he reads his Tolstoy, of course, and Pushkin and Turgenev, and at bedtime she sits and reads Flaubert to him—in French. Not that he understands French, but it is Mother’s firm belief that he will somehow absorb the meaning through the rhythm and tone.

Mother teaches him to appreciate the finer things—art, music, sculpture, architecture and design. She teaches him manners—at the table, in conversation, with a woman. They sit and practice an evening out at a fine restaurant—sitting at the fold-up table in their cramped kitchen, she takes him through the various courses and scolds him into making conversation as if she were the young lady and he were the suitor.

She’s as brutal about his grades as she is his manners. Nothing but a “first” will do. The moment he comes home she sits him down in front of his books, then has him review his work for her.

It must be perfect.

Otherwise, she tells him, you will end up like the rest of the proletariat, like your father. Stupid, unhappy, bored and with no future but to be stupid, unhappy and bored.

When he gets to the age where he’s interested in girls, she chooses them for him. Or more often chooses against them for him. This one is too silly, that one too fat, this one too clever, that one a slut.

Daz knows that her standards are high because she herself is so
beautiful. Her face is perfectly formed porcelain, her hair a black-satin sculpture, her neck so long and elegant and white, her manners refined, her intelligence sparkling … How Father could leave her he cannot understand.

And he obeys her. He is first in most of his classes. He wins the prize in English, in history, in literature, in math. Not only that, he’s a sneaky, mean, underhanded, intimidating little bastard, so he catches the attention of the local talent spotters from the old state security bureau.

And the bit about Afghanistan is true, except Daz doesn’t go as some slog-ass foot soldier, a reluctant warrior in someone else’s war. Daz goes as a KGB officer attached to a military intelligence unit, his job to interrogate the villagers to find where the
mujahedin
are hiding.

For the first few weeks Daz goes about this job in a civilized way, even though that gets him nowhere. However, after he has found out about the third Russian soldier lying naked, skinned alive with his genitals stuffed in his mouth, Daz takes a different approach. His best routine is to have three villagers trussed up like hogs, cut two of their throats and then offer the blood-spattered survivor a cup of tea and a chance for meaningful conversation. If his hospitality is spurned, Daz usually orders an enlisted man to douse the holy warrior with petrol. Then when Daz is done with his tea he lights a cigarette and tosses the match and warms his hands on the blazing fire. Then he has his unit torch the whole village.

Waits a day or so for word of the incident to filter to the next village and then goes
there
to ask questions. Usually gets some answers.

All the time, Mother is frantic, sick with worry that her son will be killed in this stupid, futile war. She writes him every day and he writes back, but the Soviet mail system being what it is, there are brutal, endless days of no mail when she is convinced that he is dead. The next day’s mail brings a letter, and with it, a torrent of tears of relief.

Daz finishes his tour.

Spends his leave with Mother in a state dacha on the Black Sea, his reward for a good war. There they go out for an evening to a fine restaurant on the shore. A table on the veranda, and the moon sparkles on the water. They have an eight-course meal and the conversation sparkles like the water.

Back in the dacha that night she tutors him how to be with a woman.

He needs an assignment and the KGB has one for him.

Back in Moscow his handler, a KGB colonel named Karpotsov, takes him on a stroll through Gorky Park. Karpotsov is quite a number, with a
broad Slavic face, silver hair greased straight back on his head, an easy way with the vodka and an easier way with women. A real charmer, Karpotsov is, a word painter, and he works his brush on Daz.

Karpotsov knows talent when he sees it and he sees it in young Valeshin. Valeshin is a ruthless, sociopathic,
smart
little wiseass who would probably torch his own mother, if that’s what it took, and that’s just the kind of sociopath Karpotsov’s looking for. So he walks Daz around the park for a while, looking at women and talking about nothing of any great importance, and then Karpotsov buys two ice creams and sits Daz down on a bench.

And says, “How would you like to go to America?”

He sticks out his broad tongue and takes a lick of the ice cream that is almost obscene. Smiles a Mephistophelian smile.

“I think I would like that very much,” Daz says.

Having just been offered a chance at heaven.

“The United States,” Karpotsov says—he continues the lecture between licks of ice cream—“is waging economic warfare against the Soviet Union. Reagan knows—and we know—that we can’t compete. We can’t continue to build missiles and submarines at this pace and still maintain the economy required for a workers’ paradise. The ugly truth, Daz, is that they can win the cold war simply by outspending us.”

He stops and stares off at the park as if at any moment it is going to disappear along with the Soviet way of life.

He collects himself and continues, “We need cash—hard currency—and the Soviet economy is incapable of generating any. It is simply not to be found here.”

“Then where?”

“America,” Karpotsov says. “Our expatriate Russian criminals in New York and California are sucking dollars out of the American system like milk from a cow. These are gangsters, mind you, and we have to believe that if common criminals can do this, well …”

What could a cadre of KGB-trained agents do?

“It’s a brilliant idea, really,” Karpotsov says. And it should be—he thought of it. “It has a double benefit—it takes from them and gives to us. Every dollar we make is a dollar they lose. Where better to attack a capitalist system than at its capital?”

“So my assignment would be in the realm of economic sabotage.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Karpotsov says. “Another would be to say that your assignment is to steal. And steal, and steal.”

Daz cannot believe his ears. He’s frozen his ass off in that Afghanistan
moonscape, and winter is coming so he’ll be freezing his ass off in a Soviet Union that is clearly headed down the drain and the
best
he can hope for is sharing a one-bedroom with Mother forever, and maybe one week a summer at a dacha on the Black Sea, and part of him knows,
I must get away from her and this is my chance
, and the other part screams, This is my chance to give her the life she deserves, and now they offer him a transfer to America for the expressed purpose of making a fortune.

So what’s the catch?

“Of course you’ll have to become a Jew,” Karpotsov says.

“A Jew?” Daz asks. “Why a Jew?”

“How else can we get you in?” Karpotsov asks. “Christ, the Americans are always screaming at us—‘Release some Jews, release some Jews.’ Fine, we’ll release some Jews, along with them a few of our agents trained in—how did you put it—economic sabotage.”

“But to become a Jew …”

“It’s a sacrifice, I understand,” Karpotsov says. “Perhaps too great a sacrifice to ask …”

“No, no, no, no,” Daz says quickly. For a heart-stopping second he sees his chance slipping away. “No, of course I accept the assignment.”

Karpotsov finishes his ice cream and grins.

“Mazel tov,”
he says.

So Daz goes to “Jew school.”

This is a little course the KGB sets up where Jewish prisoners teach the Torah, the Diaspora, the Holocaust and the whole catalog of Russian outrages against the Jews. Daz studies Zionist history, the history of Israel, Jewish culture and tradition. Jewish artists, writers, composers.

For graduation they do a Passover seder.