Last Days of the Condor (37 page)

Gas cans near that wall of wispy blue windows.

She said: “So this is how you look when you're old. I thought you'd keep your hair.”

“Some things gotta go.”

“Some things come back.”

Swing left, swing right, swing full circle and the world swirls past your gun sights and then it's back to her, on her. She hasn't moved. Looks right at you.

Says: “It's just you and me, kid.”

“Nobody's a kid anymore.”

“Have you gone and gotten all responsible on me? All adult? All … sane?”

“More than I was before.”

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“You think so,” said Condor. “That's why you tried to kill me.”

“Be fair: the Op was to put you back someplace where you'd be safe and taken care of and not stressed. The killing you only came after you fucked up the program.

“In all fairness,” she continued, “haven't you ever made a mistake?”

Condor stared at her.

Lowered the .45 from a dead-center aim.

Holstered his weapon.

Felt his heart slamming against his ribs.

She said: “So you didn't come here to kill me.”

“I didn't come here to die.”

“Why did you come here?”

He took one breath, took two before he said: “You knew I was coming.”

“Your data lit up cyberspace.”

“You knew I was coming
before,
” he said. “So you topped out my target index.”

“You showing up here like this, guess I was right.”

“Self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“If you can't fulfill yourself, who'll do it for you.”

Condor frowned. “What I can't figure is, are you full of shit, stoned on power or did you go crazy, too, or did the program just swallow you into what it can do.”

“What do you care.”

“Once upon a time,” he said.

“Once upon a time,” she said.

“Confession,” she said. “You looked good in the surveillance footage. I don't mind bald, but I like you the way you really are.”

She gave him a crimson frown. “The woman Merle: is she my replacement?”

“She was never a
promoted colleague
. A
conflict
. A
co-whatever
all we were.”

“Just a co-conspirator. A collaborator.”

“She's a person who cared—”

“—and couldn't get out of the way of Condor. Is she dead? I haven't looked.”

“There's nothing there for you to see.”

“How about for you?” Oh, that smile that knows you well.

Knew
you well.

Condor drifted to his left—her right, she's right-handed, the dagger or whatever weapon, she'll prefer to use her right hand that's lying flat and empty on the desktop.

“Why didn't you run?” he said. “Ten strokes on a keyboard and you could have vanished into some wealthy widow sunbathing on the shores of a luxury sea.”

“Why go be somewhere when right here I can be everywhere?”

“Time and space are more than an illusion.”

“Depends on your data.

“Besides,” she said, “maybe I was waiting for you.”

“Why?”

“Everybody needs somebody to talk to. Life is call and response.”

“And that's what you want from me. Now.”

“I want what I can get. One way or the other, you're going to give it to me.”

“What about…” He nodded at her desktop portal to the world.

“Whatever I—
we
—get will be a change they can be made fine with.”

“Are people getting nervous? Squeamish about the V? Is that why I suddenly became an imminent threat, because me in that mix
getting sane
…?”

“People are always nervous. That's why they've got me. And you.”

“Together.”

“Again.” She shrugged. “Control was always too complex a job for just one person. We made it work. A new
us
could be fun. And of course, vital.”

“What about all the cans of gas?”

“I'm a careful girl.”

“And if you can't be control, well then…”

“Why wish that on anybody else?”

“Except me.”

She smiled. “Or us.”

“Or maybe just us
for a while
. Keeping your options open. Ready to reboot.”

“My life is purpose, is about what's crucial, what needs to be done.”

“Having that agent crucified on my—”

“He was worse than an incompetent asshole and a drunk. He was selling
sources & methods
intel to a private contractor. Fool thought he was just cashing in on what the private sector was going to get in five years anyhow. Such a terrible agent he didn't realize his buyers were fronts leading back to a terrorist group.”

“So you terminate him and use that to frame me, two birds with one crucifixion. But what about killing that guy Chris? Merle and crashing everything into Faye?”

“They're more than just names.”

“Yeah,” said Condor. “They're people.”

“They're data points of cause and effect. Maybe threat matrix computations and outcomes got a little out of control, but whose fault is that?”

“Whoever made them into
ones
or
zeroes
choices.” Condor shook his head. “Not me.”

“Really? Or were they consequences of something you created, something you did?”

“You took over.”

“When you malfunctioned, I was there. You put me there. Here.

“And what I do,” she said, “what the V does, what you did, you know it's true: if we don't do it, we'll get it done to us. We stop the worst there is before it becomes real.”

She's shifting in her chair, keeping her eyes on you as you move around her desk.

Like a child, she said: “I finally like doing that thing you liked me to do.”

Gas cans, guns, dagger, hidden buttons: what weapon?

“And now you're here,” she said. “But instead of being the
what-if
whacko we both know you are, you're acting like the data indicated and predicted you might. Only this time, looks like you really might have a chance to destroy and deactivate like you failed to last time, back when you went crazy. Are you crazy now?”

“Who knows,” he said. “How about you?”

“Who cares,” she told him. Sighed. “I am lonely.

“But you know about that, too,” she said. “That was why you recruited me.”

“No,” he argued. “You were the best of the Girl Scouts. The best of all those women CIA analysts who got Bin Laden after you came to work with me.”

“Maybe,” she allowed. Nylons crackled as she crossed her legs, their indigo-sheathed slimness slipping out from her skirt
oh God she's wearing the black garter belt
and she said: “It was so … touching how hard you worked to not let my legs matter.”

You're around the end of the desk now. Close enough to lunge. Grab her. Standing to her right side. Her eyes are pointed in front of her, but what she's watching, who she's seeing, is you.

The dagger lay on her plexiglass desktop. He let his fingers float out. Stroke the length of the shiny blade. Her hand resting beside the dagger trembled.

Perfume, she smells of opening flowers and magazine dreams.

“What about now?” he said, walking behind her chair.

Now you're behind her, the smell of her hair, dark roots she has to dye,
what good spy doesn't,
a thin gold strand lies on the V of soft white flesh below her bare throat, the necklace hangs down to where he can't see but you know it holds the amulet given her by a woman trapped & broken in a Darfur refugee camp.

She'd refused to cry when she told you that tale.

We are held together by the songs of our times.

“Now you're here,” she told the man looming behind her.

She didn't look. Let him be where he was like it didn't matter, like that was good.

Condor raked his fingers along the back of the tall black leather chair she sat in at her curved touchscreen desk that was years from being seen by the citizens of the country who'd paid for it. He felt the leather give under his fingers' scratch, wondered if she felt their pressure cross her back, kneading her flesh near her bra strap. If she wore a bra.

Then he was on her heart side.

She glanced up, blue eyes and a soft smile invitation.

Saw him looking at the technological marvel of her desktop.

Knew he was talking about the touchscreen that made minding the universe so simple a sixth grader could do it: “Seems like we're always one upgrade behind.”

“Think how I feel,” she said.

And he did.

“After all,” she said, “I've been around a little longer than you.”

She turned her lean V face toward the man bent over her desk. Slowly—oh so slowly—raised her left hand to brush away the red hair falling across her sky eyes.

Said: “Being older is more interesting. I'm glad you never minded.”

He raised his gun-empty right hand. Held it palm out toward the inclined desktop screen. Said: “Like this?”

He felt the
chi
in her change even as the screen in front of his right palm lit up from the heat of a human. Tension flowed from her as she stretched her head toward heaven to better see over his hand with its remembered stroke of her flesh.

Condor karate-chopped her throat.

Her crimson head bounced off the black leather executive chair.

Grab her skull and chin whirl & twist!

He heard the snap of her spine and let go,
let go,
staggered away from the chair.

And what he'd done. What he hadn't delegated. Done not because it was part of a program. What he had the honest humanity, the guts to choose.

What worked better.

Who but you.

Condor staggered backwards. Hit the wall with his hips, the holstered .45 clunked. His left leg bumped something that vibrated: a five-gallon can of gas.

All over the house. Ferried here in the car he'd parked outside by a warrior, some nameless
wannabe hero
. What was left of dead dinosaurs now waited in war-surplus metal gas cans and ultra-new red plastic jugs to be spilled and sloshed and dumped on this fusion of the smartest we can be.

A roaring fireball of orange flames and black smoke movie in his mind.

Somehow the .45 ended up in his hand.

He lifted it up to consider.

Heard:
Who's left to shoot?

 

32

Into the vacuum of his eyes.

—Bob Dylan, “Like a Rolling Stone”

Faye sat on an American front porch.

She wore a pink hoodie though her sore, scabbed head was bare to the sinking sun.

Gone was the ballistic vest she'd worn for most of the last three days.

Stone-faced handlers had it now. They'd shown up seventeen minutes after cops who'd been radioed to obey
Agent On Scene
and stay out of the 911
dispatched to
residence. Later, inside that house, a sweatsuit medic dressed her wound. Faye didn't bother to wait until he was gone before pulling the white bandage off, he didn't bother to tell her
no
. An innocent-looking moving van showed up, let neighbors watching from their front porches and windows see its crew dolly out a refrigerator box, a washer/dryer box.

Merle …

They took Merle out in a horizontal box labeled
mattress
.

Opened that cardboard as soon as they'd lifted it to hidden deep in the van.

Sure they did.

Faye didn't see the movers get rid of the glass jar of eyeballs in the refrigerator. She didn't want to know about that. She didn't want to be part of that.

But I do. And I am.

Faye listened while a bone-tired woman from Sami's team worked out the cover story to dribble to this cul-de-sac's
looky-loos
and
street ears
and
tattle tongues
and
cell phone snappers
. Faye became
pink hoodie woman
became
real estate agent
shown up to prep for movers, found
squatters,
maybe a meth head cooking, saw a flash of something as the squatters boomed out the back door, over the fence,
gone
who knows where, cops checked the woods. How much of that the neighbors got & bought didn't matter, there was nothing over police scanners to attract an actual journalist who could publish a story.

Faye told the handlers
no
when they asked for her weapon.

Told them
no
when they asked
what happened
.

Told them
no
when they said
okay, time to leave
.

No one told her refusals
no
.

And the 911 cops left.

And the moving van left.

And the stone-faced handlers left.

All except for the bone-tired woman who worked for Sami plus two janitors in blue jeans and T-shirts and medical masks who'd be a long time washing white walls with their sponges and buckets of water & bleach. Well, one janitor was washing walls. The other one seemed only to be watching the bone-tired woman watch Faye.

We've all got a duty.

Faye said: “I'll wait outside.”

Walked out to April's cool afternoon air, sat on the top stoop of the red concrete front porch like a pink hoodie teenager yearning for that better place to go.

She knew a bone-tired woman or a blue-jeaned janitor watched her from inside the house.

Faye watched the neighbors quit their vigils for what waited inside their homes, TV or computer screens or someone who loved you and you loved.