"Running Dog" - читать интересную книгу автора (DeLillo Don)

6

Richie Armbrister flashed a look at his laser-beam digital watch. The elevator gate opened with a crash and he followed Lightborne into the gallery. They went directly to the living quarters in the rear, where Lightborne began boiling water for tea.

"So, delay number two. What's going on, Lightborne? I paid money."

"And it's in a safe place. And the lady will get it as soon as she hands over the film can."

"With the film inside it."

"I remain confident, Richie."

"I have things. I have a number of projects."

"I understand," Lightborne said.

"Do you know how long I've been away?"

"Go back to Dallas, Richie."

"I've never been away this long."

"I'll handle it from this end."

The wrist watch, or chronometer, was the sole outward sign of Richie's wealth, excluding his DC-9. He wore heavyweight khaki trousers, scuffed cordovans and a crew-neck sweater with a reindeer design, the wool unraveling at both cuffs.

He appeared younger than twenty-two, looking a little like a teenager with a nervous disability. High forehead, prominent cheekbones, large teeth. He seemed intense, overcommitted to something, his voice keening out of a lean bony face-a face Lightborne could never look at without wondering whether he was dealing with a genius or a half-wit.

Not that Richie's accomplishments were to be questioned. He'd built an empire almost singlehandedly. He'd perfected the technology of smut, opening up channels of distribution and devising ingenious marketing schemes. At the same time he'd managed to remain legally immune, hidden in a maze of paper.

"I leave Odell behind."

"Who?" Lightborne said.

"I leave Odell here. Odell is my technical man for all film projects. You and Odell stay in constant touch, Lightborne. That way I know what's going on."

"I'm all in favor."

"Odell is my cousin."

"I understand, Richie."

"He's one of the few people around me that I would use the word knowledgeable."

"I know how much value you attach to that word."

"What with the people I'm usually surrounded with."

"Plus he's a relative."

"They're imbeciles. They dribble. They have to be told over and over."

"Believe me, Richie, I understand, I'm in sympathy, I empathize completely."

Lightborne poured steaming water over the tea bags. If Richie wanted to live in the barricaded warehouse where his materials were stored, that was fine with Lightborne. He himself, in Richie's position, might have chosen a quiet street in Highland Park.

If Richie elected to surround himself with people he'd known all his life-the bodyguards, the advisers, the relatives, the hangers-on, and the husbands, wives, girlfriends and boyfriends of all of these-Lightborne wasn't inclined to raise trivial objections, although in the same position he would have set up a board of administrators. Men and women skilled in diverse corporate fields. Perhaps an academic presence as well.

"I don't know about staying, Lightborne. Do I have time for a cup of tea?"

"It's your plane, Richie. The plane doesn't leave until you're ready."

"I'm ready. I'm anxious to scram."

"Drink your tea. I have a gift."

"There's an element in this business," Richie said. "They're taking more and more. They're very grabby. And something's been going on. My bodyguard thinks he's been seeing the same face, wherever we go, for the past three days. Not that his expertise is worth two dollars on the open market. But I'm better off home. Where I know where I am."

"You tell Odell I'm standing by."

"I'll be waiting for word. I'll be expecting. This is the big thing today. First-run movies. People want to tone up their fantasies. Feature-length is the right direction. I'll be waiting, Lightborne. I'll be looking forward."

"Finish your tea, Richie."

Earlier in the day, after searching in hardware stores, millinery shops, Fourteenth Street rummage dumps, Lightborne had finally found what he was looking for. He found it in a grocery store on Thompson Street, not far from his building. With Thanksgiving not too far off, the place was well stocked with specialty items. The Danish butter cookies, Lightborne noticed, came in circular metal containers, precisely the kind of thing he was looking for. He chose the super economy size.

"A little something I bought for your trip, to munch on the plane going back."

"What is it, candy?"

"Cookies," Lightborne said.

After displaying the shiny can, he wrapped it tightly in plain brown paper, very tightly, so that anyone watching Richie emerge from the building would have no trouble noting the circular shape. He used gummed tape, masking tape, glue and string to keep the wrapping intact.

"Cookies. Festive cookies. To make the trip go faster."

How much more pleasant it was to talk with Miss Robbins, who arrived about half an hour after Richie left. Not that he disliked Richie. Richie had human qualities. More than once he'd given Lightborne a token of his continuing friendship. String ties. A set of coasters depicting scenes of the Alamo. It was only fitting that Lightborne eventually reciprocate.

He asked Moll Robbins if she'd prefer another chair. She was sitting in the chair with the broken springs and had sunk considerably into it. She waved him off, eager to hear why he'd asked her to drop by.

"I'm still the chief skeptic in this enterprise."

"I remember your saying."

"Do you remember Glen Selvy? The man who was here the night I first mentioned the Berlin film."

"Yes."

"The man bidding on behalf of a certain someone."

"I remember," she said.

"That certain someone's been in direct contact with me."

"Lloyd Percival."

Lightborne sat back, stroking the side of his jaw.

"You've been active."

"On and off," she said.

"I was surprised when you said you hadn't finished the series."

"I got sidetracked."

"But you're back with it."

"It would seem."

"Then I'm glad I called," he said. "It's my feeling that a journalist on the scene tends to advance whatever is meet and just in a given situation."

"Hip hip."

"Of course my own role must be handled circumspectly. This isn't Lightborne the dealer in erotic junk, outgoing and colorful. This is a source close to the situation. This is a wellplaced source. My name mustn't see print."

"I give the usual assurances."

"This footage is arousing mighty appetites. Let me tell you, I've been turning it in my mind. The utterly compelling force of the man. He wasn't impotent, you know, despite earlier claims to that effect."

"Hitler, you mean."

"He had a remarkable impact on women. They sent him love letters, sex poems, underwear. His motorcades, women hurled their bodies at his car. Like a pop hero. Some modern rock 'n' roller. Women threw themselves beneath the wheels."

"Surface affection," Moll said.

"Girls were constantly offering to yield their virginity to him. We see his speeches, where women fell into states of hysteria. We see collective frenzy. He had hypnotic powers over women. I think this is clear."

"You're suggesting there's some basis."

"The rumors have never specified the old boy," he said.

"You're building a case."

"Think of the value such footage would have. And the man with whom I originally discussed this matter, I recall him clearly stating that I wouldn't be disappointed in the identities of those who appear."

"Dead, I recall your saying."

"This matter is fraught with every kind of pressure. I myself have put certain forces to work. I've also taken action to deflect attention. I feel "more secure now, people knowing there's a journalist in the vicinity."

"How do people know?"

"I think they know."

"You feel they have ways of knowing."

"They know. I think they know."

He turned off one of the two lights in the room. Moll decided her chair was in fact uncomfortable and pushed up out of it, moving to a metal folding chair near the bookcase.

"He had youthful fantasies about a blond girl in Linz," Lightborne said. "There were other blonds later who were more than fantasy. He may have had an eye for blonds. Also an eye for actresses. His niece of course. An all-consuming affair. When you get serious with nieces, this is suggestive of a deep fire in the man." Pause. "He made drawings. He sketched her parts. At close range."

"That showed bad taste."

Lightborne made a worldly gesture.

"Before pop art, there was such a thing as bad taste. Now there's kitsch, schlock, camp and porn."

"But wasn't he in terrible shape at the end? Totally spaced on medication."

"My point exactly," Lightborne said. "I've made that point. He was enfeebled. I think it was his right arm, shaking wildly. They were using leeches for his blood pressure. He'd aged shockingly."

"You concede this is evidence against."

"I 'insist on it," he said. "I'm advancing theories largely for my own delectation. I admit. I'm making noises, merely."

"I never thought of him as a lover."

"Not your type."

"In addition to which I have to say I don't really understand why droves of people would pay money to see some gray old staticky footage of a funny-looking man running around naked, even if he was who he was."

"I've made that point. It's a vital question. _Who cares?_ Yet I'm getting vibrations from all over. People with money and power. Forces are collecting around this thing, jumpy footage or not. You look a little bored, Miss Robbins."

"Not at all," she said. "It's just that I don't see what the appeal is. It's a little distasteful, frankly. Not that I'm above such things, Mr. Lightborne. But, really, all this activity for what?"

"Because it's him. Hitler. The name, the face. All the contradictions and inconsistencies. It would take an hour to list them."

"All great men. We know about great men and their public and private selves."

"Very furtive mind. Many doors locked. Hints, whispers of unnatural sexuality. Hush-hush even today. Women associated with Hitler tended to commit suicide or at least to attempt it. After his death, women all over Germany killed themselves. Suicides unnumbered."

"Are you trying to depress me?"

"The bunker was an interesting mix. You had secretaries, orderlies, SS guards, kitchen staff, so on. There were women brought in off the streets by and for the SS men. You had visitors from military units. There was a drunken revel, a sex thing, in the SS rooms. How many people involved I don't know."

"Maybe that's it. The footage."

"They thought he was dead. They were celebrating. But he didn't do it till later. True, maybe that's it. But I'm holding out hope for better."

"The old boy himself."

"We live in curious times," Lightborne said reflectively.

He thanked her for coming and promised to keep her closely informed. They walked through the darkened gallery toward the door. Moll bumped into a table and Lightborne apologized, asking her to remain there while he turned on a light. She noticed he didn't go for the wall switch but instead walked to a corner of the room to turn on a small lamp, the bulb perhaps twenty-five watts.

"It's getting so I don't like well-lighted rooms, or talking on the telephone. I never had a suspicious nature. Old age, I guess. First signs of deterioration."

"You've got a long way to go, Mr. Lightborne, I would judge."

"First signs."

"We're all a little wary."

He nodded, standing in the dimness. She recalled the first night she'd been here, the room getting progressively darker as he went around turning off lights, giving her clues to Selvy's destination that night.

"Go into a bank, you're filmed," he said. "Go into a department store, you're filmed. Increasingly we see this. Try on a dress in the changing room, someone's watching through a one-way glass. Not only customers, mind you. Employees are watched too, spied on with hidden cameras. Drive your car anywhere. Radar, computer traffic scans. They're looking into the uterus, taking pictures. Everywhere. What circles the earth constantly? Spy satellites, weather balloons, U-2 aircraft. What are they doing? Taking pictures. Putting the whole world on film."

"The camera's everywhere."

"It's true."

"Even in the bunker," she said.

"Very definitely."

"Everybody's on camera."

"I believe that, Miss Robbins."

"Even the people in the bunker under the Reich Chancellery in April 1945.

"Very definitely the people in the bunker."

"You believe that, Mr. Lightborne."

"I have the movie," he said.

He'd moved gradually to the end of the room, about twenty feet from the source of light, standing against a blank wall, suddenly disproportionate in shape, an illusion sustained by his own shadow on the wall behind him. His body seemed tiny. He was all head.

"Have you looked at it?"

He moved toward her a step or two, as though to whisper, a strange gesture considering the space between them.

"I haven't even opened the can."

He laughed.

"I'm waiting for technical help."

He laughed again.

"I'm afraid the whole thing will crumble if I open the can the wrong way. It's been in there over thirty years. There's probably a right way and a wrong way to open film cans when the film's been in there so long. There might be a preferred humidity. Safeguards. Recommended procedures."

"Who is your technical help?"

"Odell Armbrister."

This time Moll laughed.

"Richie's cousin," he whispered.

"Who is Richie?"

"Richie Armbrister's cousin. The Dallas smut king. The boy genius. That lives in a warehouse."

"Fascinating," she said.

Lightborne sank into a chair, wearied by these disclosures.

"Fascinating, yes. An interesting word. From the Latin _fascinus_. An amulet shaped like a phallus. A word progressing from the same root as the word 'fascism.'"

He was whispering again.

On a straightaway on U.S. 67, Glen Selvy, both hands on the wheel, decided to close his eyes and count to five. He didn't hurry the count. At five he even paused for half a second before opening his eyes again.

He was going eighty.

PAC/ORD had recruited openly. They needed administrators, clerical people, personnel investigators, career panelists, budget directors. As Selvy progressed through batteries of tests and interviews, he began to realize he was part of an increasingly selective group of candidates. Everybody else filed into Rooms 103, 104 or 105. Selvy's group convened behind an unmarked door.

There were weeks of further culling. Periodic technical interviews, or polygraphs. A progressively clearer picture. At intervals, candidates were asked to state their willingness or unwillingness to continue the program.

Selvy went on salary in a PAC/ORD division called Containment Services, Guidance and Support. For six weeks he checked personnel files and evaluated job candidates. This led to another series of tests, including thorough physicals. At intervals, he was asked to state his willingness or unwillingness to continue the program.

He saw her waving: Nadine Rademacher.

She was standing outside a Howard Johnson's located near a highway interchange. She got into the car smiling and hefted her suitcase over the back of the seat as Selvy drove off.

"Nice seeing Joanie. You could have done worse than show up for a little home cooking. Where to next?"

"Where to next."

"All these ramps and levels. You be sure to pick a good one now."

"I think we ought to just keep going in the same straight line we've been going in ever since New York."

"Have we been going in a straight line?"

"Ever since New York."

"I'm glad to see you, Slim. Were you afraid I wouldn't think you'd show up?"

"We'll have to go through that question point by point some time."

"It's a tricky one."

"Where to next," he said. "Check the glove compartment."

"You're looking kind of tired and glum."

"There's a map."

"Tell you what I don't like. It's this little nip in the air. It's too early and we're too far south."

Her hand came away from the glove compartment holding the small dagger that Selvy had taken from the ranger about a day and a half earlier. She waited for him to notice.

"What's that?" he said.

"Hey, bub."

"I use it for fingernails. A grooming aid."

"Is this what they call an Arkansas toothpick?"

"This is smaller."

"Being we're in Arkansas."

"You thought you'd ask."

"What's it for?" she said. -

"I slash mattresses when I'm depressed."

They sent him to Marathon Mines. Here he attended classes in coding and electronic monitoring. There was extensive weapons training. He took part in small-scale military exercises. He studied foreign currencies, international banking procedures, essentials of tradecraft. For the first time he heard the term "funding mechanism."

His instructors conveyed the impression that he was part of the country's most elite intelligence unit. It was manageably small; it was virtually unknown; there was no drift, no waste, no direct accountability. He heard the words "Radial Matrix."

A great deal of time was spent studying and discussing the paramilitary structure of rebel groups elsewhere in the world.

They analyzed the setup the Vietcong had used. The parttime village guerrilla. The self-contained three-man cell. And _tieu to dac cong_, the special duty unit considered the most dangerous single element in the VC system. Suicide squads. Special acts of sabotage in ARVN-controlled areas. High-risk grenade assaults. Assassination teams.

They studied the Algwian _moussebelines_, or death commandos, groups undertaking extremely hazardous operations independent of local army control. They discussed the action of the FLN bomb network that operated out of the Casbah, maintaining a state of terror for nearly a year despite its limited numbers.

Selvy thought it curious that intelligence officers of a huge industrial power were ready to adopt the techniques of illequipped revolutionaries whose actions, directly or indirectly, were contrary to U.S. interests. The enemy. This curious fact was not discussed or studied. He heard the phrase "internal affairs enforcement."

Groups attached to various agencies, U.S. and foreign, trained at the Mines. From people belonging to some of these groups, Selvy kept hearing about the exploits of the original chief training officer-the man, more than any other, responsible for the techniques and procedures currently employed. Earl Mudger. Said to bse in business these days somewhere in the East.

"Remember chocolate cigarettes?" Nadine said.

Selvy drove along a two-lane road until they found a restaurant. It was a long rroom with a state trooper at one table talking to a waitress in sneakers.

"Miss the lights?" Selvy said.

"Gotta be kidding."

" Times Square."

"Arm, leg, hip, breast,"

"You think that woman might come over and take our order sometime before sundown."

"She's visiting, Glen1,"

"What's he doing?"

"I think he's sniffing."

"That's what I think."

"I think he's getting; ready to kick dirt."

"Call her over," he said.

"What's the rush?"

"Get back to our straight line."

When the food came they ate quietly. A small white worm moved over a lettuce leaf in the center of Selvy's plate. He ate around it.

"I used to work in Sample's Café in Langtry," Nadine said. "I think it's uncanny the straight line goes past my sister, goes past my dad."

"You want to see him, don't you?"

"I don't know," she said. "He was pretty close to being an all-out bastard, no holds barred. It was only my mom made things bearable. When, she died, Joanie took off like a bat. It took me a little longer… I was always slow to notice what was going on. But I see it a little clearer now. The man just isn't very nice."

"Lives alone?"

"You ought to see the house. It's a shack, just about. Half the things in our house my mom made out of old feed sacks. Dish towels, face towels, napkins, even a lot of our clothes. Pillow cases. Feed sack pillow cases. Feed sack dresses and skirts."

"Recycling."

"Poverty," she said.

About half a mile from the main highway they passed an abandoned farm. Selvy eased the car into some weeds. He reached into a carton in the back seat and removed the smaller of his two handguns, the.38. He walked through the front gate to a deep-water well not far from the main house. Holding the gun flat on his upturned palm, he tossed it about two feet into the air and watched it fall into the well. A blunt muffled sound came up to him.

Looking into the setting sun, Nadine squinted at him as he walked back to the car.

"What's this business about a straight line?" she said.

Back in Washington, he realized something was different. A man named Lomax came to his hotel. There was no mention of PAC/ORD or Containment Services. People he'd worked with didn't return his calls. He no longer seemed to be on salary.

Lomax took him for a ride in a black limousine. He said that Radial Matrix had severed all relationships with official agencies of the government. Systems planning would still be done out of headquarters in Fairfax County. All clandestine work would issue from this operation and its spin-offs. There was no other headquarters. There was no table of organization. There was no structure, no infrastructure. Only the haziest lines of command.

Lomax repeated what Selvy had learned at the Mines. Rebel movements drew their strength from the fact that their political and their military functions were one and the same. Here, Lomax told him, business operations and clandestine activity are combined in very much the same way. One doesn't support the other. One _is_ the other.

Selvy traveled in North America, then throughout Europe and parts of Asia. He gathered information on Radial Matrix competitors. He made undercover payments to representatives of prospective Radial Matrix clients. He paid secret commissions to agents of foreign governments. He arranged the disappearance of a trade commissioner on holiday in Greece. He financed the terrorist bombing of a machine-tool plant. Legitimate business expenditures.

Lomax called him back to the States. They needed a reader. Temporary assignment. Selvy's name had popped out of the computer.

Four days a week he went to a white frame house in Alexandria. A woman named Mrs. Steinmetz gave him private lectures, with slides, on art history. She accompanied him on visits to the National Gallery and the Hirshhorn. She showed him reproductions of sexually explicit art and discussed the esthetics involved.

Two days a week he went to a suite in an office building near Union Station. Here a Mr. Dempster explained House and Senate protocol and procedures. He gave Selvy reading matter on the subject. Eventually he provided a résumé- background, education, past employment, so forth. All of it was verifiable, none of it true.

The head of Percival's staff was impressed. He arranged an interview with the Senator. The Senator kept returning to the subject of Selvy's art background. He arranged a luncheon, during which Selvy was hired.

The black limousine turned up again. Lomax told him that until further notice he'd be paid by dead-letter drop. There was a pension scheme in the works.

For a month Selvy did staff work in Percival's office. The Senator arranged a small dinner at his Georgetown house. Selvy remained after the other guests left. They had a few. They talked. They had another. The Senator showed him a room with a spinning wheel and an antique desk. Then he led him through the fireplace to the interior of the house next door.

"This is my true life," he said. "This is what I am."

They came out of the hills into ranch country, unbroken skyline and spare plains. They traveled slowly, stopping when possible along the main road for food and rest. Some days they went only twenty miles. Selvy didn't sleep much. The nights were cool.

On a small rise he spotted a curve in the road up ahead. He closed his eyes and counted to seven, easing the steering wheel left at four, when he'd estimated the car would reach the bend.

Richie Armbrister sat naked in the sauna. The man on the bench facing him was also naked. Through the steamy haze, Richie tried to get a good look at his face, without actually staring. The man was plumpish. Early forties, probably. Some gray at the temples. He seemed perfectly relaxed, which indicated he belonged here, or thought he did.

They exchanged a faint smile through the steam.

Richie got up and put his head out the door. In the passenger compartment a party was going on. People danced in the disco area while others sat around eating snacks and drinking. The co-pilot emerged from the flight deck through a beaded curtain and accepted a sandwich from Richie's bodyguard's girlfriend.

It was this bodyguard whose eye Richie was trying to catch. Daryl Shimmer. A rangy Negro skittering over the dance floor, all ripples and blind staggers. Richie wondered why this passionate concentration, so typical of his entourage, was forever being applied to ends other than his, Richie's, peace of mind.

Failing to attract Daryl's attention, he closed the door, took a pitcher and poured more water on the heated rocks. Then he sat back down.

The man leaned toward him in the fog.

"We want to talk about a can of film."

"We being who?" Richie said.

"You and me."

"I don't want to do any talking about any can of film."

"It's on this plane. I think I speak for both of us."

"You think you speak for both of us when you say what?"

"That's it's on this plane."

"Nothing you mention is on any plane I know of."

"Richie, be a grownup."

"Do we know each other?"

"I'm called Lomax."

"Why are you here?"

"I could tell you I was supposed to meet another party. Aboard a different plane. There was a mixup. I found myself on the wrong plane. That's one version."

"Nobody checked? Nobody asked you?"

"Apparently I'm one of those people who blends well. I'm not noticeable. That's something I've had to learn to live with. Blending well. Failing to stand out."

"They know I'm here. Daryl and those. In case you're wondering."

"There's another version."

"I don't want to hear it."

"You're fully grown, Richie. You're not going to get any bigger. It's only right we treat each other as adults."

"Yeah, but for right now I have to start getting ready because we'll be landing soon."

"Certainly."

"Landing is bad enough with clothes on."

"I understand," Lomax said. "We'll continue later." Richie got dressed and went out to the passenger compartment. He was stopped by a young woman named Pansy. She was Daryl Shimmer's girlfriend and for weeks she'd been trying to prevail upon Richie to get Daryl a dune buggy with chromed exhausts for his birthday. Richie was in no mood.

"Look around," he told her. "All these Vic Tanny imbecues with their goggles, their male jewelry, their sculptured hair. It's like helmets they're wearing. It never moves, short of an earthquake. Get them out of here with their dipping shirtfronts, with their space boots. I want normal for a change. I want ordinary. People with real hair. I want less orgasmics around here. Everybody looks like they're climaxing. I walk into the warehouse, there's live bands, people writhing. I get on the plane, they're still shaking, it never stops. What happened to normal? Where is normal?"

About fifteen minutes later, as the plane approached DFW, Lomax sat in a swivel chair, belted in, munching on roasted nuts. People were still dancing. He glanced over at Richie Armbrister. With the plane descending toward the runway, Richie had assumed a bracing position. His shoes were off. There was a pillow squeezed between the fastened seatbelt and his stomach. Another pillow lay across his knees. He'd bent his upper body well forward, head resting on this second pillow. His bony hands were clasped behind his knees.

Nadine crawled across the motel bed. Reaching over Selvy's body, she pointed one end of the cylindrical reading lamp right at his face.

"What are you?"

"Explain," he said.

"I'm analyzing your features."

"Racially, you mean. As to type and so forth."

"What are you?"

"An Indian."

"You don't look like an Indian."

"I've trained myself to look different. There's exercises you can do. Muscular contractions."

"Those aren't Indian features, Glen. You're not Indian stock."

"You can look different if you train. You start with a good mirror. It's like anything. Quality tells. You get yourself a quality mirror."

"If you're an Indian, that's not your name, what you've been telling people all these years. What's your real name, your Indian name?"

"Running Dog," he said.