The Switch, page 18
Finally, he picked up the gym bag. He peered around the plywood panel and saw no shapes, no shadows moving. He sidled out from behind it, walked slowly across the gravel, trying to keep the crunch underfoot to a minimum.
And still he heard no footsteps.
He walked up the gravel slope, returning to the pavement of the public area of the stadium. When he reached the high-voltage room, he stood still, the buzzing loud in his ears. He realized that the sound, this close, made it impossible to hear most other sounds. So he was at a disadvantage.
He peered around the high-voltage room and saw nobody. Slowly, quietly, he walked through the shadows of the stadium, parallel to the street. When he came to the next arched gateway, he was able to see out to the street. The Suburban was gone.
What did that mean?
Would it be waiting for him at the next street exit out of the athletic complex?
Or was it gone—and the driver had given up?
Tanner was hyperaware of how visible he now was, walking past the stadium, past the parking lot turnstile. He passed a couple of empty side lots.
No Suburban passing by.
He kept walking. A car shooshed by and kept going.
He came to a low chain-link fence, maybe three or four feet high, protecting a running track that surrounded a soccer field. Try to vault it? He scrambled over the fence, lifted himself, swung his feet. Crossed the track and field. Scrambled over the next fence, and walked, didn’t run, to the outside fence, also chain-link, around the whole complex. On the other side was Western Avenue, a few cars passing by in either direction.
Slinging the gym bag over his shoulder onto his back, he climbed the chain-link fence, maybe seven feet high here, went up and over, and landed softly on the sidewalk.
• • •
After walking for about twenty minutes, Tanner was able to hail a cab, which took him the rest of the way there. Pale sunlight glimmered on the horizon by the time he reached Brimmer Street in Chestnut Hill and the Georgian mansion where he was going to sleep for a night or two. He began to follow the same procedure as before, punching in the code to release the padlock on the front door, when he realized that the padlock was already unlocked, its hasp open.
Strange, he thought. Maybe a real estate agent forgot to lock it.
Was that possible?
Possible.
The other possibility was that someone was inside, waiting for him.
But he was overreacting, he told himself, letting the fear sink its hooks into him. He slowly opened the door, the foyer pitch-dark.
It smelled different here. He couldn’t explain it to himself, couldn’t say for sure what was different, but it was. Something besides the fresh paint and the apple cider.
He wondered if that meant that someone was inside the house. Or that someone had been in the house since he’d last been here. But it was too early for a showing, right? Or whether he was just picking up on a scent he hadn’t noticed earlier. Because he felt the prickle of fear, of paranoia, and maybe that was distorting his perception.
He stood still a moment and listened, and he heard nothing.
Leaving the lights off, he climbed the staircase. The master bedroom was at the end of the dark hall, after a series of smaller rooms and a bathroom. He knew this from his prior exploration.
As he rounded a turn, he saw light spilling out of the master bedroom, its door open. He approached slowly, quietly, his tread silent on the wall-to-wall carpeting. All he could hear was his heart pounding. He could smell that familiar note more strongly here.
He entered the bedroom.
And at the same moment he remembered what that smell was, he saw a pair of familiar jeans-clad legs and stockinged feet sticking out of the side of an overstuffed chair.
She turned, and now Tanner could see she’d been reading a book—Ragtime, by E. L. Doctorow.
“What happened to your face?” Sarah said.
47
My face?”
Tanner set down his bag and felt the left side of his face, which in fact felt a little warm. His fingers came away sticky. Blood. It must have happened when he crashed the Fiat through the gates of Harvard Stadium, when he was thrown forward.
“Did you get attacked or something?” Sarah said.
He shook his head. “I went back to the office to get some stuff.”
“You risked that?”
“Not a good decision, as it turned out.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Some guys followed me when I was driving. Damage to your car might have resulted.”
“They hit your car?”
“No. I hit a fixed object and got kicked around a very little bit. I’m fine.”
“Do I dare ask about my car?”
“That’s a complicated story. But I think it may be time for a new one.”
“Tanner! You know I don’t have any money.”
“I’ll take care of everything.” Not that he had any money either. But he was going to have to buy her a brand-new Fiat somehow.
She shook her head disapprovingly, but a tiny smile crawled across her face. “That’s so you. You’ll take care of everything.”
“Why are you here? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see you, but—”
“One of the brokers had a late showing, and they changed the code on the padlock. So I came here to meet you last night, and it was cold, and I decided to come inside and wait. And then I thought I’d just take a nap, and— Tanner, I need to talk to you.”
“Is it about my face?”
• • •
They went down to the kitchen to make coffee. Sarah fired up the Nespresso machine on the kitchen counter.
Tanner grimaced. “Fancy instant coffee.”
“It’s pretty good, actually, Tanner. Give it a chance.”
Tanner agreed to a demitasse of Dharkan—not bad at all—and Sarah had one too, and she said, “Look, I haven’t been sleeping at night. I’m basically scared shitless about what’s happening to you.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Tanner said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Sarah looked at him. Their eyes met. She took a sip of espresso. “I always know when you’re lying to me.”
“It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Except you can’t go home, you can’t go to work, and you were just almost killed.”
“Not even close to being killed. Please stop worrying.”
Sarah took another sip. “Do you remember that time when we were driving in the Adirondacks, going to Uncle Johnny’s cabin, and we got stuck in that blizzard?”
“Sure do.”
“And we were driving that crappy old Jetta, the Rustmobile as you called it, and we got stuck in the snowdrift?”
Tanner chuckled. He remembered a near-death experience and Sarah close to freaking out, and only now could he laugh. They’d been together for a couple of years by then, and he was learning to navigate the complex topography of this beautiful woman’s personality.
“And the tires are spinning in place and we’re getting spattered through the rust holes in the floor, and the car’s not moving, and all of a sudden this huge tractor-trailer in the other lane loses control, it’s jackknifing on the black ice, and it’s coming at us, this eighty-thousand-pound truck?”
He nodded. He remembered wondering if this was their last few seconds on earth. Wondering whether they should scramble out of the car into the snow, whether they had time to do that, deciding to stay put. He remembered her screaming, terrified, and him not wanting her to see he was just as frightened.
“And I’m basically losing it, and you just grab my hands—you’re perfectly calm—and you say, ‘We’re going to be okay, don’t worry about it, we’ll be fine.’”
“Yeah?”
“You must have been just as terrified as I was; we’re just trapped in that tin can and this gigantic truck is about to squish us like bugs. But you stayed calm; you had to stay strong for me. All you cared about was how scared I was.”
“I told you we’d be fine.” He remembered going into that calm place, a peaceful acceptance of the fact that they had no control over what was about to happen to them. And that weird calmness somehow looked like bravery.
“You’re doing it again now. Only this time the tractor-trailer’s not going to miss us.”
“This is not about us. This is just about me. And I’ll be okay.”
“How long do you think you can hide from—from whoever these people are? You, one person, against who knows how many, the whole goddamned government!”
“First of all, the US government doesn’t kill American citizens—”
“Oh, that is so not true. The president has the right to kill Americans on American soil.”
“Honey, this is all going to blow over soon. I’m sure of it.” He put down his espresso cup.
“You know this because you have a plan?”
“Yes. I mean, not yet. But I will.”
“Tanner!” she said. She was crying, tears pooling in her eyes, her face red. “I can’t lose you.”
“Hey,” he said very softly, and he put his arms around her. She drew herself into him. The room was cold, and he could feel the warmth of her body.
“I can’t lose you,” she said again, and she put her mouth on his. He could feel the hot tears on her face.
48
A minute?” Will said.
Senator Susan Robbins was sitting in her office, meeting with their legislative director. Her office door was open, which meant she was doing routine work she didn’t care if everyone knew about.
Today’s suit color was amethyst, which he’d learned was not the same thing as purple. It also meant she was trying to cheer herself up on Dull Committee Work Day. All of her suits were Elie Tahari, or Tahari-style, but this was one of the older ones in the rotation, a few frays here and there.
She looked up from a sheaf of papers she was holding in both hands. Her death stare over her Benjamin Franklin reading glasses. “Urgent?”
He thought: Do you really think I’d interrupt you if it wasn’t something urgent? He nodded. “I’d say, yeah.”
“Samantha,” Susan said, “can we pick this up a little later on? All right, Will, come on in. Sam, could you close the door behind you?”
On the left of her desk was the big American flag, furled, and on the right was the Illinois flag, also furled. Between the two flags was a painting of the Chicago skyline by some renowned Chicago painter, done in a sort of pointillist, Georges Seurat manner. No family photos on display—which was a subject of disagreement between the two. She insisted that women politicians should always downplay the family thing.
As soon as the door closed, Will said, “Have they interviewed you yet?”
“Who?”
“OSS.”
“The . . . OSS? The old spy agency?”
“Office of Senate Security.”
“What’s this . . . ?”
“They haven’t yet. Good.” He didn’t think she’d been interviewed yet. She’d have come to him first.
“Interview? What’s this about?”
He inhaled slowly. “The documents.”
“The laptop? This is about the goddamned laptop? They know?”
“No, they don’t know about the laptop. Not as far as I know, anyway.”
“Then what the hell are they interviewing for?”
“They believe that classified information was downloaded.”
He could see the tension, the worry, crease her face. She shook her head, which seemed to mean I don’t understand.
“A reporter called around asking about some NSA program.”
“CHRYSALIS?”
“Probably.”
“How is this going to lead to me?”
“It won’t.”
“But what happens when the guy in Boston gives my laptop to WikiLeaks or one of those websites, you know—”
“That won’t happen.”
She lowered her voice to an urgent whisper. “But you don’t have the laptop! Where is it?”
“I’m working on something that you don’t need to know about.”
“And what’s my strategy when they interview me? Just deny, deny, deny?”
“You don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“But don’t they have some computer way of finding out who used the computer at a certain time? A log or whatever?”
“I’m not sure what they know. But here’s the thing: if they knew it was me, they wouldn’t have let me off as easily as they did. They wouldn’t have let me go.”
“So you think they have no idea who did it?”
“Someone on the committee; that’s all they know.”
“But Gary doesn’t know, does he?”
“I would never tell him.”
“You . . . trust him?”
And then Will had an idea. “I’m not sure, actually. Maybe . . . it might be worth mentioning his name in your interview.”
“Gary’s?”
He nodded. “It’s not far-fetched that he might have done it.”
“But there’s no grounds for the accusation—”
“You’re just wondering. That’s all. Vague speculation. Coming from you, they’ll take it seriously.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Interesting.”
“It might deflect suspicion. Send them barking up the wrong tree. While I get the laptop back.”
There was a long moment of silence. Will didn’t want to break the silence. He knew she was thinking, considering the idea. Let her mull it over.
“That’s an interesting idea,” she said.
He smiled and nodded. He knew what that meant. He didn’t want to push too hard. She was on board.
• • •
It was, Will knew, a game of chess. You sacrificed pieces to avoid checkmate. You always had to take the long view. That was a lesson Will had learned the year he first became Senator Robbins’s chief of staff.
He’d made a trip back home to Greenville to visit his ailing mom. While he was there he got a call from an old friend of his mother’s, Mrs. Karabell. She wanted his help.
She told him that the town was using its powers of eminent domain to take away her flower farm and transfer the property to the Carmichael Corporation, the chemical giant.
Will was outraged and told Mrs. Karabell he’d take care of it.
When he was in grade school, he was a sort of latchkey child—both his parents worked, and his mom sold houses on the side—and he used to hang out a lot at Mrs. Karabell’s house. He didn’t have a lot of friends. Mrs. Karabell was like his second mom. He always did his homework on her kitchen table. There was always a slice of chocolate cake waiting for him, with a glass of cold milk, when he got there. In the winter she made the best hot chocolate Will had ever tasted. He loved Mrs. Karabell.
So when he got back to Washington, he walked into the boss’s office and told her he needed a favor. He needed her to help out Mrs. Karabell’s flower farm.
He would never forget her reply.
Susan Robbins said, “You’re right. I could make a call and save those four acres of petunias. But let me give you the bigger picture. Everything is connected, Will. When I make that call to your town, I’ll save the flowers and earn Mrs. Karabell’s vote—and also the everlasting enmity of the Carmichael Corporation. And you know what’s going to happen?”
Will shook his head, nearly hypnotized by the senator’s direct gaze, her deep blue eyes.
“My next primary, I’m suddenly going to discover that I have a surprisingly impressive, well-funded opponent. Now, I’ll probably defeat him, or her, but then another well-funded opponent will pop up in the general. And who knows if I keep my seat. Maybe I do. My coffers will be depleted, and I’ll be like a bird with a broken wing. A target for all sorts of political opportunists.”
“Okay,” Will said, but the boss was not yet done.
“In two years I’m up for reelection. And I want you to think about all the great things we want to get done, every legislative achievement that we could realize that’s never going to happen because I did a good deed—and then I want you to think about Mrs. Karabell’s four acres of petunias. Do you really want me to make that call, Will?”
The next time Will went back to Greenville, he went to see Mrs. Karabell. Wonderful Mrs. Karabell, with her walker and her breast cancer, who was now ruined. She said, “I don’t understand.”
And Will looked straight at her, unconsciously aping Senator Robbins’s direct gaze. And he lied. He spun some fable. And he felt like crap.
He knew he’d done the right thing. But that didn’t make the shitty feeling go away.
That was the stink of power. Sometimes doing the right thing could make you feel lousy.
49
Sarah woke him, shaking him by the shoulder.
“Sorry, Tanner, but you have to get up.” He must have dozed off, caffeine notwithstanding. She was naked and had something in her other hand. He could smell coffee.
“What time is it?” He glanced at his watch but his eyes were too unfocused to make out the watch face.
“Six thirty. There’s a seven-thirty showing.”
“Who looks at houses at seven thirty?”
“Extremely serious buyers, I bet.” She handed him an espresso. Her breasts were small and shapely, with light pink areolas, small raised mounds. He remembered a novelist once describing a woman’s breasts as two scoops of the smoothest vanilla and thought that aptly described Sarah’s. “Most of my showings are on weekends.”
