Magic Terror. Peter Straub

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СКАЧАТЬ behind the Mercedes as it went through a series of right-hand turns on the one-way streets, wishing that his employers permitted the use of cell phones, which they did not. Cell phones were ‘porous’, they were ‘intersectable’, even, in the most delightful of these locutions, ‘capacity risks’. N wished that one day someone would explain the exact meaning of ‘capacity risk’. In order to inform his contact of M. Hubert’s playmate, he would have to drive back to the ‘location usage device’, another charming example of bureaucratese, the pay telephone in Montory. You want to talk capacity risks, how about that?

      The Mercedes rolled beneath a streetlamp at the edge of the town and wheeled left to double back. Wonderful, he was looking for a tail. Probably he had caught sight of the field team while they were busily mismanaging the data flow. N hung back as far as he dared, now and then anticipating the subject’s next move and speeding ahead on an adjacent street. Finally, the Mercedes continued out of Mauléon and turned east on a three-lane highway.

      N followed along, speculating about the woman. In spite of her clothes, she looked like a mistress, but would a man bring his mistress to such a meeting? It was barely possible that she represented the South Americans, possible but even less likely that she worked for the buyers. Maybe they were just a lovely couple going out for dinner. Far ahead, the Mercedes’s taillights swung left off the highway and began winding into the mountains. They had already disappeared by the time he came to the road. N made the turn, went up to the first bend, and turned off his lights. From then on, it was a matter of trying to stay out of the ditches as he crawled along in the dark, glimpsing the other car’s taillights and losing them, seeing the beams of the headlights picking out trees on an upward curve far ahead of him. Some part of what he was doing finally brought back the lost memory.

      From inside the telephone booth, he could see the red neon sign, AUBERGE DE L’ÉTABLE, burning above the walled parking lot.

      ‘Tonto waiting,’ said the contact.

      ‘I would have appreciated a few words about the girlfriend.’

      ‘White man speak with forked tongue.’

      N sighed. ‘I waited across from his building. Hubert seemed to be doing a lot of running up and down the stairs, which was explained when he came out with a stunning young lady in a motorcycle jacket. I have to tell you, I hate surprises.’

      ‘Tell me what happened.’

      ‘He dodged all over the place before he felt safe enough to leave Mauléon. I followed him to an auberge way up in the mountains, trying to work out how to handle things if the meeting was on. All of a sudden, there’s this variable, and the only way I can let you know about it is to turn around and drive all the way back to this phone, excuse me, this location usage device.’

      ‘That would have been a really terrible idea,’ said his contact.

      ‘I waited for them to go into the lot and leave their car, and then I pulled up beside a wall and climbed uphill to a spot where I could watch their table through the glasses. I was trying to figure out how many reports I’d have to file if I included the girl. Remember Singapore? Improvising is no fun anymore.’

      ‘Then what?’

      ‘Then they had dinner. The two of them. Basque soup, roast chicken, salad, no dessert. A bottle of wine. Hubert was trying to jolly her up, but he wasn’t getting anywhere. The place was about half full, mainly with local people. Guys in berets playing cards, two foursomes, one table of Japanese guys in golf jackets. God knows how they found out about the place. When they drove out, I followed them back and waited until all the lights went out. In the midst of all this wild activity, I remembered something.’

      ‘Nice. I understand people your age tend to forget.’

      ‘Let me guess. You knew about the girl.’

      ‘Martine is your background resource.’

      ‘Since when do I need a backup?’ Seconds ticked by in silence while he struggled with his fury. ‘Okay. Fine. I’ll tell you what, that’s dandy. But Martine does all the paperwork.’

      ‘Let me work on that one. In the meantime, try to remember that we’ve been mainstreaming for some time now. Martine has been in field operations for about a year, and we decided to give her a shot at learning from the old master.’

      ‘Right,’ N said. ‘What does Hubert think she is?’

      ‘An expert on raghead psychology. We positioned her so that when he needed someone to help him figure out what these people mean when they say things, there she was. Doctorate in Arab studies from the Sorbonne, two years doing community liaison for an oil company in the Middle East. Hubert was so happy with the way she looks, he put her up in his guest room.’

      ‘And Martine told him that his partners would have him followed.’

      ‘He never laid eyes on you. She’s impressed as hell, Kemo sabe. You’re her hero.’

      ‘Martine should spend a couple of days with me after we’re done,’ N said, almost angry enough to mean it. ‘Let me advance her education.’

      ‘You?’ The contact laughed. ‘Forget it, not that it wouldn’t be educational for both of you. If you could handle encryption programs, you wouldn’t have to use LUDs.’

      It took N a moment to figure out that the word was an acronym.

      ‘I hope you realize how much I envy you,’ the contact said. ‘When you came down the trail, this business was a lot more individual. Guys like you made up the rules on the fly. I was hired because I had an MBA, and I’m grateful to help rationalize our industry, move it into the twenty-first century, but even now, when you have to dot every i and cross every t, fieldwork seems completely romantic to me. The years you’ve been out there, the things you did, you’re like Wyatt Earp. Paleface, I was honored to be assigned your divisional region controller.’

      ‘My what?’

      ‘Your contact person.’

      ‘One of us is in the wrong line of work,’ N said.

      ‘It was a pleasure, riding through the Old West with you.’

      ‘To hell with you, too,’ N said, but the line was already dead.

      Thirty-odd years ago, an old-timer called Sullivan had begun to get a little loose. A long time before that, he had been in the OSS and then the CIA, and he still had that wide-shouldered linebacker look and he still wore a dark suit and a white shirt every day, but his gut drooped over his belt and the booze had softened his face. His real name wasn’t Sullivan and he was of Scandinavian, not Irish, descent, with thick coarse blond hair going gray, an almost lipless mouth, and blue eyes so pale they seemed bleached. N had spent a month in Oslo and another in Stockholm, and in both places he had seen a lot of Sullivans. What he had remembered during the drive into the mountains was what had brought him to the French Pyrenees all that time ago – Sullivan.

      He had been in the trade for almost a year, and his first assignments had gone well. In a makeshift office in a San Fernando Valley strip mall, a nameless man with a taut face and an aggressive crew cut had informed him that he was getting a golden opportunity. He was to fly to Paris, transfer to Bordeaux, meet a legend named Sullivan, and drive to southwest France with him. What Sullivan could teach him in a week would take years to learn on his own. The job, Sullivan’s last, his swan song, СКАЧАТЬ