The Last Supper (52 page)

“Sure, this thing’ll land anywhere. But you can’t see anything from the ground.”

Gus landed the Super Cub on a tiny patch of rough ground, littered with sharp stones, among huge rocks. The two men walked together to the intaglio. Gus crouched down, a long-shanked figure in
his jeans and boots, and turned over a stone.

“See?” he said. “Black on the bottom, light on the top. This is the guy with the testicles. The Indians who made these—if it was the Indians—never did get to see
‘em. You’ve got to be at least five hundred feet above the deck.”

Gus replaced the stone carefully, in the exact spot from which he had taken it, and stood up. It was full daylight now. The wind took Gus’s hat; he caught it deftly in midair.

Christopher told him who he was.

“No shit?” Gus said. “The guy who was in China all that time?”

“Yes.”

“Glad you made it back. How long ago did they get you?”

“Ten years ago last January. You were in Saigon about that time, weren’t you?”

Gus nodded and pulled his hat down tighter on his forehead. The wind was growing stronger. Gus shot an anxious glance at his plane, which was rocking in the wind only a few feet from the edge of
the mesa.

“That was a bad year for me,” he said. “It started out bad. I got the shit beat out of me in Saigon on New Year’s Eve. Busted my face, ruptured my guts, I was a
mess.”

“You were in the hospital?”

“For a solid month. They had to take out my spleen and I had this fucking cast on from my neck to my knees.”

“Bad luck.”

“It was only the beginning. While I was in the hospital, some son of a bitch stole my airplane. A brand-new Piper Apache.”

“Did you get it back?”

Gus shook his head. “No, that mother was long gone. I had another plane for a while, but shit, I got tired of that scene out there and came on back after about a year.”

Gus’s eyes were on his Super Cub. Holding on to his hat, he started to walk fast over the carpet of stones in the direction of the parked machine. Christopher followed him.

“Did you see the fellows who beat you up?” Christopher asked.

“No, I don’t know who the fuck they were. I walked out of Rosie’s—that’s where it happened—turned right, and got cold-conked. D’you ever hit
Rosie’s? They had a girl in there who smoked cigarettes with her pussy.”

“I was there once.”

“I imagine the Communists closed it down. I wonder what Rosie’s doing for a living.”

“Was it a fight you were in, or what?” Christopher asked.

“It wasn’t much of a fight. Some son of a bitch popped me on the back of the neck. He damn near killed me; separated vertebrae and I don’t know what all. He must have kicked
the shit out of me while I was out, lying on the ground. Took everything, my watch, five hundred dollars, my stash—I used a little dope out there, like everybody. Gave it up when I got home,
though: the love of a good woman.”

Gus hurried toward the plane. Light as a kite, it rocked in the wind that swept like a draft in a chimney up the sheer face of the mesa.

“Did you ever meet a Chinese pilot out there?” Christopher asked. “Little fellow, spoke with a cockney accent?”

Gus seized a strut and put his weight on it, to anchor the plane.

“A Chink pilot with a cockney accent? No. All the pilots I knew out there were cowboys. Help me turn this sucker around.”

They turned the plane into the wind. Gus started the engine and took off, flying off the edge of the mesa. The plane dropped, then soared above the intaglios.

“Christ knows there
could
have been a Chink like the one you’re talking about,” Gus shouted above the stammer of the engine. “They had everything in
Nam.”

— 2 —

In Christopher’s absence, another episode of “The Patrick Graham Show” went on the air. This time, Graham told his audience about the Sewer.

“You and Wolkowicz were the stars again,” Patchen said to Christopher. “Deep beneath Vienna, Graham showed us the actual spot where you crouched with your machine gun, mowing
down the Red dogs. He knew all about the code machines, all about Wolkowicz’s medal.”

“He seems to know everything.”

“Not quite everything. There was no mention of Darby, no mention of Ilse Wolkowicz. Graham’s source is being very selective; he’s not giving him everything. You’d think
that would make Wolkowicz happy—he comes off as a hero every time. But no.”

They were walking, in a light mist, down the familiar path through the Georgetown campus. Patchen took off his glasses and wiped them: economically, one lens only. There was no need to polish
the glass that covered his blind eye.

“You’ve seen Barney?” Christopher asked.

“We talked on the telephone. He won’t show himself at all. Even Graham can’t find him.”

“He’s disturbed?”

“You could say that. He wants me to turn the Outfit inside out, find Graham’s source, cut off his dingus.”

Patchen, swinging his bad leg, took a dozen steps before he spoke again.

“To be honest with you,” he said, “I’m not so sure that the Outfit is the right place to look for Graham’s man.”

Patchen’s tone was even and controlled, as if he had always been perfectly willing to talk to Christopher on this subject.

“You think an outsider could have access to this kind of information?”

“I didn’t say an outsider. For example, Darby is still alive. So far, everything Graham has learned is something Darby knew. And there’s been no mention of Darby on the air.
Why?”

“Has Graham been to Moscow, to interview Darby?”

“I don’t think so, but of course we don’t have him under surveillance. Anyway, it doesn’t have to be Moscow. For that matter, it doesn’t have to be Darby. Others
are also alive.”

“It could be me,” Christopher said.

Patchen stopped and his dog came bounding back to him, its wet coat opalescent under the sodium lights.

“Yes, it could be you,” Patchen said. “It could be anyone. It could be Wolkowicz, or me, or somebody with a multiple personality.”

He set off down the path, walking rapidly again. Christopher kept pace in silence.

“I don’t think Wolkowicz is pointing in the right direction,” Patchen said. “All this material of Graham’s is old. It all has something to do with you. The
timing—right after the Chinese let you out. . . .” Patchen slowed down again. “You don’t think
that’s
strange?”

Patchen sighed, a deep, exasperated sound. The Doberman froze, confused by this unfamiliar signal from his master.

“You think you know, don’t you?” he said.

“Not all the details, not yet. I think I understand the reason.”

“
Tout comprendre est tout pardonner
,” Patchen said in his dreadful French. He rubbed his face, as if after all these years he could wake up the feeling in it. “Or is
it?” he said.

He spun around and set off in the opposite direction, leaving Christopher alone on the path.

— 3 —

“Patchen wants to believe it’s an outsider?” Wolkowicz said. “Sure he does. They always want to believe that. The Outfit has never been penetrated,
right? It’s fucking unthinkable. They all went to the Fool Factory together and sang ‘The Whiffenpoof Song.’
They
wouldn’t let themselves be recruited by some peasant
of a Russian in a J. C. Penney suit.”

“That’s not really what I wanted to talk to you about,” Christopher said.

A cold wind filled with rain whipped down the low canyon formed by the buildings in the zoo. They hurried around the elephant house to the entrance; it was too wintry for the animals to be
outside. Wolkowicz wore no topcoat, not even an undershirt; the curly black hair on his chest was visible beneath the transparent fabric of his soaked drip-dry shirt. Inside, he didn’t bother
to wipe the water from his hair and face. The keepers were cleaning the cages. The atmosphere smelled strongly of ammonia. Wolkowicz inhaled. His mind leaped to another subject.

“When I was a little kid in Youngstown, Ohio,” he said, “my father always used to get me out of bed in the middle of the night to see the circus load and unload. He was a
circus freak. One night, about two o’clock in the morning, as I’m sitting up on my old man’s shoulders, watching them put the animals on board, along comes this Barnum &
Bailey midget. The midget is drunk. He’s all dressed up in a suit with a checked vest and a watch chain and he’s wearing a derby hat. He’s with his buddy, the Strong Man, also
drunk; they’re singing dirty songs. There’s a cop on duty and he walks up to the midget, swinging his nightstick, and gives him a dirty look. ‘Better get on the train, pal,’
the cop says. ‘We don’t want no drunk midgets in Youngstown, Ohio.’ The crowd is with the cop, local pride is aroused. ‘Yeah,’ says the crowd,
‘
yeah
.’ ‘Hold my hat,’ says the midget to the Strong Man, handing him his derby. The midget walks up to the cop. ‘There are those among us,’ says the
midget to the cop, ‘that have rubbed the likes of you plumb into the elephant shit.’ ”

Wolkowicz got out his peanuts and fed the elephants. His voice reverberated against the bare walls of the concrete building. He didn’t seem to care if the keepers heard what he had to say
next.

“If fucking Patchen had left me alone,” he said, “Graham would be rubbed into the elephant shit by now. I’d have it on film, I’d have it on tape, there’d be
no mystery. Just remember that. You were there when he pulled me off Graham. You saw him, kissing the fucking Constitution.”

Wolkowicz turned his back on the elephants and grinned as their trunks searched for the fresh bag of peanuts in his pocket. He had heard what Christopher had said to him five minutes before. Now
he was willing to acknowledge that fact.

“You said you wanted to ask me something,” he said. “What?”

“I wanted to ask you about Gus Kimber. I went out to see him in California.”

“You still think it was him who flew you into China?”

“No, but it may have been his plane. He says it was stolen.”

Wolkowicz frowned in concentration. It took him only seconds to remember.

“That’s right,” he said. “Gus got busted up in a fight, too. I had to sneak him into the army hospital under fake ID; he was just a contract type, like all the fliers.
The Outfit would never give those guys medical benefits; they were too low-class.”

“Was the stolen plane ever found?”

“Are you kidding? It’s probably hauling opium out of Laos right now. If Gus wasn’t your pilot, who was?”

“Whoever stole his plane. When I went into China, did anybody run a check on the pilots in Saigon?”

Wolkowicz watched the keepers for a moment. Their shovels rang against the concrete floor.

He said, “Patchen polygraphed them all.”

“Himself?”

“I don’t know. It happened after I left Saigon.”

“What were his conclusions?”

Wolkowicz let another moment pass before he answered. “Patchen wouldn’t say,” he said. “He wouldn’t let anybody near your case.”

“Not even you?”

“Especially not me. I thought we should go in after you. We had all those helicopters. We could have got you if we’d have gone right in, while you were still on Hainan
Island.”

“Is that where I was?”

“Two hours from Da Nang, right? Where did you think you were? Patchen thought my plan was incautious. He always thinks I’m incautious. He handled every little thing, right from the
start. I imagine
he
was very cautious. He went out himself to talk to the Chinks after you were sentenced. He went out to get you on the airplane when you got out.”

Wolkowicz bared his false teeth.

“Just a perfect friendship,” he said.

— 1—

In his London club, Sir Richard Shaw-Condon smiled in genuine pleasure.

“It’s marvelous to meet you at last, my dear fellow,” he said. “I can’t think why it’s taken so long. I knew your father well, you know. And we have masses of
friends in common. Of course, you’ve been away, haven’t you?”

Christopher smiled in return. Sir Richard sipped Riesling from a green-stemmed glass.

“You ought to have some of this hock,” he said. “We’re rather proud of it. It’s a ’71, best year of the century, they say; tastes of hyacinths and honey.
That’s from your father’s poem about German wine. Do you know if your father actually ate hyacinths, ha-ha?”

Sir Richard had been delighted to hear from Christopher; he had fond memories of Hubbard.

“At my age,” he had shouted into the phone when Christopher called him from America the day before, “one lives rather in the past. Very glad to see ghosts—even the sons
of ghosts, ha-ha.”

Across the table from Christopher, Sir Richard ate smoked salmon, using two forks; he had been raised to believe that it was a sign of low birth to cut fish with a knife. Sir Richard, now
retired, had never quite reached the top in his intelligence service, but he had become very senior. Every day of his life, he had taken two hot baths and at the age of seventy he had the pink soft
skin of an infant. He still had his mirthful schoolboy face. His flaxen eyebrows and mustache had turned snow-white. Beneath his coat he wore his school cricket sweater, with the rampant lion of
Worksop College stitched in blue on the breast.