Revolution Number 9 (17 page)

Levine reddened. “I meant what are you doing here now. I thought you’d gone to the symphony.”

“The theater, in fact. We left during the interval.” Her eyes slid over to Charlie.

“This,” said Levine, “is Deirdre. My wife, as she so rightly points out. Deirdre, meet—”

“Charlie,” Charlie said, just as Levine was about to come to grips with the problem of what to call him; had they developed some sort of teamwork as roommates, ready to reassert itself even now?

“Charlie,” said Deirdre, raising her glass. “One of my very favorite men’s names.”

“I like it too,” Charlie said.

“Well then,” said Levine, “if you’ll excuse us, sweetheart, Charlie and I have some work to get through.”

“Naturally,” said Deirdre, and took a big swallow of her drink. She gave Charlie a little wave good-bye.

Levine had a library at the back of the house. It had a claw-footed desk, oak panels, club chairs, a stone hearth, even books. “You want a drink?” Levine said, going to a wall cabinet. “I sure as hell do.”

“Okay,” Charlie said.

Levine handed him a heavy snifter. “Armagnac,” he said. “Sixty years old.”

“What’s the occasion?”

Levine ignored him. “It’s like cognac, only from another town. One of Deirdre’s little men sends it.”

“Little men?”

“That’s what she calls them. She has little men all over the world, on the lookout for this and that. It’s the way they are, the Brit aristocracy.”

“Is she a founding member?” Charlie asked, telling himself too late to knock it off.

Levine, in midsip, glared at him over the rim of his snifter. “You’re an asshole, you know that? You all are. Fucking assholes. You know absolute bugger-all about real life.”

Charlie could see that despite the anger, despite the new air of authority, Levine was afraid. “Who is we all?” he said.

“You. Malik. Rebecca.”

Did Levine imagine that the three of them were still together? He tasted the Armagnac. Perhaps it was good, better than good, but he found it sickening and put it down.

Levine took another drink. “Just tell me one thing,” he said. “Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Blow up that fucking building, what else?”

“Cambodia,” Charlie said.

“Cambodia? What kind of answer is that?”

A lousy one. Charlie had known that right from the beginning.

A computer on the claw-footed desk made a beeping sound. Levine got up, glanced at the screen, tapped a few keys. Charlie realized Levine could probably use it to summon help. He moved quickly to the desk, looking at the screen over Levine’s shoulder. He saw nothing but columns of numbers, meaningless to him. Levine turned, gazed up at him.

“What’s it going to take?” he asked.

“To do what?”

“To make you go away and stay away.” Levine twisted one of his fingers until the knuckle cracked. “All it would take is one anonymous call, right? ‘Stu Levine made the bomb that killed the little boy in nineteen seventy. But no one connected him to it because he was in the booby hatch at the time.’ That kind of call. Maybe you even have some proof, although I doubt it. You certainly won’t be taking the stand yourself. But you’ve already figured out that none of that will be necessary. With this SDI thing I couldn’t afford even that one phone call. The DOD is paranoid and stupid. I’m paranoid and smart—that’s why I’m so good at dealing with them. So how much will it take?”

“SDI thing?” said Charlie.

Levine waved a hand in dismissal. “Don’t play dumb. It was in all the papers. That’s what gave you the idea to put the bite on me, isn’t it?”

Charlie, understanding nothing, said nothing.

Levine nodded, satisfied. “That contract’s worth a hundred million dollars in the first three years alone. After that, anybody’s guess.”

“What’s it for, exactly?”

“The contract? Software. That’s what I do. And Star Wars is all about software. If there are glitches in the software, we’ve got nothing but a lot of junk floating around up there, maybe exploding at unexpected moments.”

They thought their thoughts about that. Charlie said: “What were those SATs?”

There was no hesitation. “Seven sixty, math; seven twenty, verbal,” Levine said. “Now what do you want?”

“I’m looking for Rebecca.”

Levine blinked. “You mean you’re not with her?”

“Why would I be with her?”

“I just thought … you two.” Levine emptied his glass. His eyes had a faraway look. “Rebecca. If it hadn’t been for her nothing would have happened.”

That was true, Charlie thought, but how did Levine know? Did it mean he had seen her sometime after the bombing? “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Back then. At school.”

“What did you mean nothing would have happened?”

“I never would have built the … thing. If she hadn’t persuaded me.”

“She persuaded you?” Charlie saw what was coming and didn’t like it at all, didn’t like the way Blake Wrightman’s history was being rewritten.

“Hell, yes,” Levine said. “I still get hard thinking about it. She was the first woman I ever balled, as we used to say. A nice crunchy granola word for it, made it so natural and pure—unlike the sex I have now, the semiannual time I have it.”

Charlie wanted to hit him. That was a surprise: it was so long ago, and he was in love with another woman. He backed away, sat down in the club chair, picked up the snifter, drained it. Levine, unaware of Charlie’s reaction, got up too. He went to the cabinet, came back with the Armagnac, refilled their glasses.

“If that’s all you want, information on Rebecca, you could have it,” Levine said. “But I haven’t seen Rebecca since my fa—… since I left the school.” Charlie looked into Levine’s eyes and saw it was true. “Too bad you’re not looking for Malik.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Malik is a different story.”

B
lake didn’t know what to do. Had he not wound electrical tape around the red wire to stop the flow of electricity? Or had he dreamed that or imagined it or been stoned at the time or simply screwed up? He stood frozen in front of the ROTC building, rum rising sour up his throat. He sensed Rebecca nearby, saw her beside him, eyes dark and wild, as though emerging from a bad sleep; lips moving slightly, as though trying to find speech. She didn’t know what to do either.

Malik knew what to do.

Blake felt him tugging at his shirt, saying, “Come on, come on.” He was saying it right into Blake’s ear. Blake heard, but that didn’t help him move.

He said again: “One stick of dynamite did all that?”

No one heard but Malik. Malik slapped him hard across the face. No one saw but Rebecca. “Come on,” Malik repeated, fiercely and through gritted teeth.

Now he could move.

They slipped out of the crowd, Malik first, then Rebecca, half stumbling like the woman in curlers, then Blake, face burning. They left the central quad, moved into the line of oaks, paused.

“Money,” Malik said. He was breathing heavily; they all were, as though they had just done something strenuous.

“Money,” Malik said again.

Rebecca nodded. The word made no sense to Blake.

Malik seemed to understand that. “We’re going to need money,” he explained. He opened his wallet, a fancy leather one, a businessman’s wallet. Blake stared at it, surprised that
Malik would have a wallet like that, but still not understanding. “I’ve got forty-three dollars,” Malik said. “Rebecca?”

She shrugged. “Two or three hundred, maybe. But it’s in the room.” It struck Blake, not for the first time, that Rebecca, who didn’t care about money, always had lots.

“Blake?”

“What?”

“How much have you got?”

“Not much. It’s in the room too.”

They returned to Cullen House, deserted and quiet now, to the room with the fairy-tale bed. Blake had nine dollars. He handed it over. Malik piled all the money on Rebecca’s desk and counted it.

“Three hundred and fifteen dollars.” He began distributing it in three equal parts.

“What’s going on?” Blake asked.

“Preparation,” Malik replied, smoothing his mustache. “Preparation is everything.”

Blake heard the words but made nothing of them. He began: “We—”

They looked at him.

“We just—” For a moment the rest wouldn’t come, and when it did it was incomplete. “We just—and now you’re counting little piles of money. What’s the matter with you?”

Rebecca and Malik exchanged a glance. “Talk to him, Rebecca,” Malik said.

Rebecca touched Blake on the arm. He backed away.

“Blake,” she said.

“What?”

“You’re upset. Upset’s the wrong word—more than upset. So am I. We all are.”

“We wouldn’t be human otherwise,” Malik interrupted.

Rebecca continued: “It was a horrible accident.”

Blake opened his mouth to argue.

She cut him off. “Accident. Accident. Accident. We, none of us, not you, not me, not Andrew, none of us ever intended to harm a single person. We took careful plans to make sure nothing like … that nothing would happen.”

“Besides,” said Malik.

“Besides?”

“Yeah. Compare it with what’s happening this very minute in Vietnam. They’re dying by the thousand, by the tens of thousands—it’ll be millions before it’s all done.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Vietnamese, of course.”

“What’ve the Vietnamese got to do with anything?” Blake said, his voice rising again.

Malik’s voice rose with it. “Don’t be so obtuse. I’m talking about the murder of innocents, the slaughter of the oppressed.”

“But we just murdered an innocent.”

“It was an accident. Totally different from sending armed killers to a foreign land. Can’t you see that? Don’t you get it?”

Blake started to get it, although not in the way Malik intended. He thought of the oppressed, the innocents; and armed killers in a foreign land, thousands, like his father, to be killed themselves. Somehow he had sided with his father’s killers, even done something shameful to his memory. In this moment of realization, Blake threw a punch at Malik’s face. Not well-aimed, it caught Malik on the shoulder, but with enough force to knock him back two or three steps before he recovered his balance. Blake regretted it at once: it was just more of the sickening same.

Malik, rubbing his shoulder, spoke, quietly now, almost like a priest at some intimate ceremony. “You see, Rebecca? Violence is communication. The problem is to aim it in the right direction.”

There was a silence. Sirens broke it, coming from the town. Blake and Malik were both watching Rebecca, waiting for her response to Malik’s latest
pensée
. Rebecca: her face pale after a sleepless night, her eyes reddened but not from tears, her hair a black and wild framework for her crazy beauty. In the end she said nothing, just nodded her assent.

“Now, then,” Malik said, “if we can all keep our composure.” He moved to the desk, picked up the piles of money, pocketed one, handed the second to Rebecca, held out the third to Blake. “From each according to his abilities,” he said. “To each according to his needs.”

Blake kept his hands at his sides. “What’s it for?”

“The future,” Malik said, still offering the money. When Blake still refused to take it, he dropped it on the desk. “You’ve got to think faster, Blake. We don’t have much time.”

“Time for what?” Blake said.

“To get out of here, what else? Do you want to spend the rest of your life in jail for something you didn’t do?”

“Didn’t mean to do,” Rebecca corrected.

Blake knew he wasn’t thinking quickly, was barely thinking at all. His mind was back there with the woman in curlers at the rubble pile, assailed by images: navy jersey, white cleats, black trapper, Stretch McCovey model. He wasn’t ready to accept that life goes on, let alone to plot the manner of its progress.

Rebecca reached out, touched him again. This time he didn’t back away. She came closer, till her face was right in front of his, her eyes the only sight in view, a sight familiar, foreign, fascinating. “Please, Blake.” She had a way of saying please. “This is …”

“Awful,” Malik put in.

“Awful,” Rebecca continued, “no one’s pretending it’s not awful. But we can talk about it later.”

“If we get to later,” Malik said.

Rebecca nodded. “We’ve got to go,” she said.

“Go?” said Blake.

“That’s not the question,” Malik said. “The question is where.”

Blake thought at once of the baseball diamond behind the field house, in the shadow of the hills. That’s where he wanted to go, even if it made no sense. Meanwhile, Malik was finding the answer.

“I’ve given this some thought.” He glanced at Blake to make sure he was following. Blake was, but in his own way. He wondered:
When did you do all this thinking, Andy?

“There’s only one viable course,” Malik continued. “We’re going underground.”

Underground. Blake thought he heard enthusiasm in Malik’s voice then, the enthusiasm of a fly fisherman, say, on his way for the first time to a famous trout stream, gear all packed.

Malik went on: “Mao talks about an ocean of support out there, an ocean in which the guerrilla swims.”

Rebecca’s eyes narrowed. “But where?” she said impatiently. “Where are we going?”

“Berkeley,” Malik replied.

“Berkeley?” said Rebecca. “Isn’t that a little close to home, my home?”

“Berkeley is our biggest, and therefore safest, ocean.”

“But—”

“Rebecca!”

Rebecca and Malik eyed each other. She stopped arguing. “Have we got enough money to get there?”

“We’re not
flying
, Rebecca,” Malik said. He started to laugh. Blake had never heard him laugh before. It was a strange sound, closer to barking than to anything musical. He quickly calmed himself, but a smile lingered on his face. “And we’re not writing checks, or using your American Express card. Going underground means there is no more Rebecca Klein, no more Andrew Malik, no more Blake Wrightman. They disappear this moment, leaving no trace.”

He paused to let it all sink in. Blake watched Rebecca. She bit her lip and said nothing.