Early Warning (3 page)

Frank had intended to beg off this time. Arthur's earlier “assignments”
for Frank had been convenient and interesting, and getting to know Jim Upjohn might have been the best thing that had ever happened to him—Jim Upjohn was not only a good friend and a great connection, he was also endlessly eccentric, and fascinating as only a wealthy man at the center of what Aunt Eloise always called “the ruling class” could be. This job—making a very long-distance delivery—had no evident purpose (at least, evident to Frank) and seriously interfered with his day-to-day routine. As usual, the only payoff was giving Arthur what he wanted, and getting Arthur's gratitude in return, and once Arthur got your attention, he could be very compelling.

But Frank's resistance had been momentary. All he had to do was think of spending yet another evening at home with Andy, Janny, and the twins (not yet six months old, but six months felt like an eternity, and twins seemed like quintuplets if you never thought, waking or sleeping, about anything besides feeding, diapers, bathing, burping, crying). Andy was always either tending to one of them or out on the back deck, smoking a cigarette. She had risen to the occasion, no two ways about it—the nurses they'd hired for two months had taught her to order her every moment and the twins' every moment; the boys were thriving, but at the expense of all that was idle or easy. After much hemming and hawing, he and Andy had bought a house in the winter. It was an airy, modern split-level with plenty of windows, contemporary furniture, and wall-to-wall carpet. It felt as bleak in the summer and the spring as it had in January, when they moved in. Doing this job for Arthur felt like playing hooky—returning to his younger, sharper, brighter, and more restless self. If only Andy—the Andy of two years ago—could have come along.

When they stopped to refuel in Sardinia, he wanted to walk around, smell the air. What was her name, that girl, the love of his life? Joan, it was. Joan Fontaine, he had called her. A whore. But it was foolish to daydream about a woman who was lost; instead, he sat quietly and waited for Louis to make a move. When the door opened, Louis stood up and scuttled forward. It was, indeed, Mediterranean light here. Hard to believe that he hadn't been to Italy or France since the war. It was as if he had no idea that Italy would have changed or recovered since he last reconnoitered this cratered city or that blown-up house, looking for Jerries. He had treated stories of postwar
renewal in newspapers as unsubstantiated rumors without even realizing it. The airfield was barren, just a long stretch of concrete with a rudimentary tower at one end, not far from the fuel tanks.

Louis hunched down the steps. Frank went into the toilet and pissed without flushing—flushing would release onto the tarmac. He went back to his seat and ate half of his sandwich. When Louis returned, he brought a couple of Cokes. Frank took one.

Louis sat down and buckled his seat belt. Frank said, “This reminds me of the war.”

“You in the European theater?”

Frank said, “Africa first, then Italy.” Someone closed the hatch. Frank could hear the crew shouting something.

“Pacific for me. Midway. Philippines. Nimitz was a great man.”

“Not so many cats to herd,” said Frank. “At the time, I was a big fan of Devers, and I couldn't figure out why Ike stopped us at Strasbourg, but now I understand a little more about outrunning your fuel supply.”

Louis nodded, then said, “I think you had the prima donnas with you. Montgomery was a fool.”

They sniffed simultaneously. The plane began taxiing down the runway, and Frank turned to stare at the beach and then the ocean, so much paler here. Louis said, “Can't say I'm all that comfortable in this aircraft.”

Frank turned and looked at him. “Why not?”

“That BOAC Calcutta crash.”

“I didn't hear about a Calcutta crash.”

“No? Last May sometime. Everyone killed—crew, passengers, everyone.”

Frank again glanced out the window at the engine.

Louis said, “Here's the creepy part, you ask me. Witnesses say, when the plane went into the Indian Ocean, it was on fire”—Frank couldn't help looking at him now—“and the wings were gone. Just say this: let's hope we don't encounter a hurricane.”

“Let's hope that,” said Frank. They were quiet. And it was odd that they were using an English plane, given the antipathy the Iranians were supposed to feel toward the Brits. On the other hand, it was the fastest plane Frank had ever been in—twice as fast, if you included takeoff and landing, as a DC-6. Frank looked out the window
past the wings this time, and imagined a hundred thousand hundred-dollar bills fluttering in the air.

—

THE SUN WAS GOING
down again—Frank checked his watch. For him it was about nine or ten in the morning, but here, where the Mediterranean ended and Asia began, it was darkening and reddening toward nightfall.

He had dropped off, but it had been a restful if alert sort of doze that not only reminded him of his time in North Africa but made him remember what it felt like to be twenty-one rather than thirty-three. He undid his seat belt and stood up, allowing himself to yawn. He cocked his head to the side and slid toward the bathroom, opened the door, went in. He gave himself a bit of time, but not too long, and then he stood up, flushed, waited another moment. He unlocked the door. Louis was sitting just as he had been most of the trip, rereading his copy of
The Saturday Evening Post.
Frank saw at once that the angle of the folded top of the third bag forward on the right—Frank's side—was slightly different. And the middle of the three clasps had not been twisted as tightly as before. The other clasps were unchanged. This was why Arthur had hired him—to notice things. Frank sat down again. Louis paid no attention to him. Frank had no idea what Louis's self-defense skills were. Frank also had no idea how his own skills might have deteriorated since he was actually twenty-one and could grab some guy's fist almost before the guy decided to pop him one.

The Comet landed in a different kind of dark from American dark—much deeper, no glow of nearby cities or streetlights or even headlights making their way from one empty spot to another. Wherever they landed—it was August 13 here, almost the 14th—Frank knew they were somewhere in Iran, but it was not a base or an oil field. It was a quiet place, dry-smelling. The door opened. Three men came up the stairs and began carrying away the sacks. When the man picked up the last two of the ten sacks, Louis stood up to follow him. Frank stood up to follow Louis. Louis had his jacket on, and when he came to the top of the stairs, he slipped into his coat, but that didn't stop Frank from noting the rectangular outline just barely discernible against Louis's chest.

At the bottom of the stairs, Louis broke into an easy trot. The three men with bags were dim in the dark, almost out of sight. Frank was on Louis in a moment, grabbing his wrist and pinning it high and tight behind his back. Louis grunted. Frank said, “I can break your arm, Louis, easy as pie.” Louis twisted, and Frank lifted the arm even higher. Louis bent over, and Frank reached around with his left hand and slipped it inside Louis's coat and jacket. He felt the stiff rectangle and pulled it out. There was only one. He stepped away from Louis and flipped through the packet. Louis stumbled forward, caught himself, but didn't do anything other than press and rub his right shoulder with his left hand. He said, “You dislocated it.”

“Want me to put it back in?”

“What the fuck do you care, Freeman? It's not your dough.”

Frank smiled. Arthur had rebaptized him yet again.

A car pulled up—something nondescript and old, but heavy. The driver got out and opened the trunk, and the ten bags of money were piled in it. The trunk was closed. The driver then opened the back door on the passenger's side, and Louis got in. The driver closed the door. The driver had a beard. He didn't say anything. The three men who had transferred the bags came over and stood rather close to Frank—as close, say, as New Yorkers would stand, closer than Iowans would stand. He felt mildly uncomfortable. After about two minutes, the passenger door of the car opened again, and Louis got out. The man to Frank's left gestured for him to get in. Frank got in. The door closed with a thud.

The fellow in the car was wearing a U.S. Army uniform, two stars on his collar. He held out his hand, and Frank shook it. “Mr. Freeman. Thanks for your help. Arthur speaks highly of you, and, my Lord, we couldn't do a thing or take a step without Arthur. If this shebang goes over, we have Arthur to thank, once again.” He cleared his throat. “Looking iffy at this point, I must say. Why this had to come to a head in August is a mystery to me. Must be the hidden hand of the Soviet menace. You got anything to report?”

Frank shook his head.

The man stared at him, the hardness of his gaze belying his casual tone. But how long had Frank been telling lies? As long as he could talk. Finally, Frank said, “Routine operation, sir.”

The man nodded. His jacket strained over the pistol in his armpit.
Frank waited for him to hold out his hand for the packet of bills, but he didn't. He rubbed his forehead, as if he had a headache. He said, “Well, then. MacIntosh is staying with me here. I believe you are going back via Majorca. To Cuba? I can't remember. I had some food put on the plane. Good luck to you.”

The man knocked on the ceiling of the car, and the passenger door opened. When Frank got out, he was alone beside the plane. Louis and the three men had been taken away, and now the big car drove off, too. It was dead quiet. Even the air was still. The only movement was the flight of two huge birds, probably some kind of vulture—they landed maybe thirty yards away and picked over a carcass for a minute, then lumbered into the air again. Frank had seen vultures before, but as he watched, something about the air and the light entered him and terrified him. The crew of the plane could easily shoot him and leave him here; he would be bones in a day or two. But that wasn't it, exactly. He looked upward, at the endless stars across the flat sky, and recognized nothing—not the Milky Way or the Big Dipper or even, for a moment, that dishlike sliver that was the moon. For thirty-three years he had thought that the unknown was a friendly thing. Now that idea vanished in a millisecond. He swallowed hard, then ran his hand down the side of his trousers and felt the packet of money in his pocket. His assignment. It was reassuring.

By the time they landed at Stewart, his watch had run down. Arthur was there, as if he had never left, at the bottom of the stairs.

“Nice plane,” said Frank.

“Something borrowed,” said Arthur. Frank took Arthur's right hand and slapped the packet of hundred-dollar bills into it. Arthur barely glanced at them, just put them in his pocket. He said, “You met McClure?”

“Two-star general?”

Arthur nodded. “Tell me everything he said.”

“Well, he thanked me for coming, and—”

“No, I mean his exact words.”

Frank repeated all of what the general had said to him, understanding at once that this was why Arthur had sent him—his eidetic memory. What else any of it meant to the government, he had no idea and knew Arthur wouldn't tell him. Nevertheless, he did ask, “What's the money for?”

Arthur said, “Popular uprising.” Frank thought he saw the ghost of a smile, but only that.

Arthur dropped him outside the split-level just at dawn. He picked up the newspaper, eased in through the lower entrance, then went up to the kitchen. All was quiet for once. On page two, the paper announced that Mossadegh had won the election in Iran. There was no mention of unrest, but as he watched the coup unfold—Mossadegh was out by the end of the week—Frank couldn't stop thinking of that human cipher Louis MacIntosh, who was exactly the sort of person Frank would never have entrusted with buying a gallon of milk at the grocery store.

—

WHEN HE GOT BACK
to Iowa City for the fall semester, Henry Langdon went to a place on Iowa Avenue that sold old things and looked and looked until he found a wooden box with a lock (and a key) for storing his letters from his cousin Rosa (at Berkeley) and carbon copies of his own to her. His were typed, but hers were handwritten. The question of typing had posed a real dilemma—you wanted your personal papers to be handwritten, because they were more, well, personal that way, and also because future literary scholars (the career Henry was preparing himself for) would be able to get a better sense of your personality and character from your handwriting than they would from typing. But it was almost impossible to make a good carbon copy by hand, and it was easy with the typewriter. The box was cheap but roomy. In it, he placed the letters as they had been written—his, hers, his, hers—then, on top of them, that Indian-head gold dollar his father had given him, eleven years ago now. The date on the dollar was 1888. Looking at the dollar, Henry wondered if his joy at being back in Iowa City was some kind of betrayal, especially since here he didn't think of his father or the farm more than once or twice a day. (“And a good thing, for heaven's sake,” his mother would say.) He thought of “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” he thought of the Venerable Bede, he thought of Defoe, he thought of Rosa Rosa Rosa.

He hadn't seen Rosa since his father's funeral in the spring, but they wrote twice a week. He hadn't counted on Rosa's visiting Denby (meaning “village of the Danes”—it gave him a bona-fide sense of
pleasure to know that), or on himself traveling from Iowa to California, so he couldn't say that he was disappointed, exactly, not to have seen her.

The tone of her letters was satirical but good-natured, always affectionate. She now referred to her mother, his aunt Eloise, as “Heloise,” never “Mom,” and “Heloise's” adventures were a source of amusement—“Tuesday, Heloise ran out of gas on the Bay Bridge, and lo and behold, she had left her purse on the kitchen table, so she waited in traffic with a piece of paper in her hand (‘
OUT OF GAS PLEASE HELP
') and who should stop to pick her up but Gary Snyder, who is a poet, maybe our age. He was riding a motorcycle, and Heloise got on the back and rode to the gas station! She told me he was darling. I am guessing she is going to fix me up with him any day now.”