Someone had left behind a copy of the day's Herald Tribune, and he mused over the stories for a while, in particular a statement by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that 'according to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions,' which amounted to about a quarter of the Pentagon budget. A certain Senator Nathan Irwin from Minnesota, breaking party ties, called it 'a damned disgrace.' Not even that could hold his attention, though, and he folded the paper and put it aside.
He wasn't thinking about suicide, but about the Bigger Voice, that thing his mother used to discuss with him during her occasional nocturnal visits in the seventies, when he was a child in North Carolina. 'Look at everyone,' she told him, 'and see what guides them. Little voices-television, politicians, priests, money. Those are the little voices, and they blot out the one big voice we all have.
But listen to me-the little voices mean nothing. All they do is deceive. You understand?'
He'd been too young to understand, and too old to admit his ignorance. Her visits never lasted long enough for her to explain it well enough. He was always tired when she arrived in the middle of the night to rap on his window and carry him out to the nearby park.
'I am your mom, but you won't call me mom. I won't let you be oppressed, and I won't let you oppress me with that word. You won't even call me Ellen-that's my slave name. My liberation name is Elsa. Can you say that?'
'Elsa.'
'Excellent.'
His early childhood was punctuated by these dreams-because that's how they felt to him: dreams of a ghost- mother's visitations with her brief lesson plans. In a year, she might come three or four times; when he was eight, she came nightly for an entire week and focused her lessons on his liberation. She explained that when he was a little older-twelve or thirteen-she would take him away with her, because by then he would be able to understand the doctrine of total war. Against whom? Against the little voices. Though he understood so little, he was excited by the thought of disappearing into the night with her. But he never did. After that intense week, the dreams never returned, and only much later would he learn that she'd died before she could bring him into the fold. In a German prison. By suicide.
Was that the Bigger Voice? The voice that spoke from the stone walls of Stuttgart's Stammheim Prison, convincing her to remove her prison pants, tie one leg to the bars on her door, the other to her neck, and then sit down with all the enthusiasm of a zealot?
He wondered if she could have done that had she kept her real name. Could she have done it if she had still called herself a mother? He wondered if he could have survived these last years, or chosen so casually to end his life, if he had kept hold of his own name.
There he was again, back to thoughts of suicide.
When the restaurant closed at ten, he again checked Ugrimov's front door, then jogged westward, sometimes frustrated by dead ends, until he'd reached the waterside porticos of the Scuola Vecchia della Misericordia. The third door, Grainger had said, so he counted to three, then, despite his stomach again acting up, lay flat on the cobblestones to reach over the edge of the walkway, down toward the rancid-smelling canal.
Unable to see, he had to do it by feel, touching stones until he felt the one that was different from the others. By now, these selected cubbyholes were over fifty years old, having been added to the architecture of postwar Europe by the members of the Pond, a CIA precursor. Remarkable foresight. Many had been discovered, while others had broken open on their own from poor workmanship, but occasionally the surviving ones proved invaluable. He closed his eyes to help his sense of touch. On the bottom edge of the stone was a latch; he pulled it, and the stone separated into his hand. He placed the lid beside himself and reached inside the exposed hole to find a weighty plastic-wrapped object, sealed airtight. He took it out, and in the moonlight ripped it open. Inside lay a Walther P99 with two clips of ammunition, all like new.
He replaced the stone's cover, returned to Barba Fruttariol, and worked his way around the area, circling the palazzo as he wandered dark side streets, always returning at different angles to watch the front door or peer up to the lights along Roman Ugrimov's terrace. Sometimes he spotted figures up there-Ugrimov, his guards, and a young girl with long, straight brown hair. The 'niece.' But only the guards passed through the front door, returning with groceries, bottles of wine and liquor, and, once, a wooden humidor. After midnight he heard music wafting down- opera-and was surprised by the choice.
While the mewing cats ignored him, a total of three drunks tried to become his friend that night. Silence worked on all except the third, who put his arm around Charles's shoulder and talked in four languages, trying to find the one that would make him answer. In a swift and unexpected surge of emotion, Charles thrust his elbow into the man's ribs, cupped a hand over his mouth, and punched him twice, hard, on the back of his head. With the first hit, the man gurgled; with the second, he passed out. Charles held the limp man a few seconds, hating himself, then dragged him down the street, across an arched bridge spanning the Rio dei Santi Apostoli, and hid the drunk in an alley.
Balance-that word returned to him as he crossed the bridge again, trembling. Without balance, a life is no longer worth the effort.
He'd been doing his particular job for six-no, seven-years, floating unmoored from city to city, engaged by transatlantic phone calls from a man he hadn't seen in two years. The phone itself was his master. Weeks sometimes passed without work, and in those periods he slept and drank heavily, but when he was on the job there was no way to stop the brutal forward movement. He had to suck down whatever stimulants would keep him in motion, because the job had never been about keeping Charles Alexander in good health. The job was only about the quiet, anonymous maintenance of the kindly named 'sphere of influence,' Charles Alexander and others like him be damned.
Angela had said, 'There is no other side anymore,' but there was. The other side was multifaceted: Russian mafias, Chinese industrialization, loose nukes, and even the vocal Muslims camped in Afghanistan who were trying to pry Washington 's fingers off the oil-soaked Middle East. As Grainger would put it, anyone who could not be embraced or absorbed by the empire was anathema and had to be dealt with, like barbarians at the gates. That was when Charles Alexander's phone would ring.
He wondered how many bodies padded the murky floor of these canals, and the thought of joining them was, if nothing else, a comfort. It is because of death that death means nothing; it's because of death that life means nothing.
Finish the job, he thought. Don't go out in failure. And then…
No more planes and border guards and customs people; no more looking over your shoulder.
By five, it was decided. The prescient glow before dawn lit the sky, and he dry-swallowed two more Dexedrine. The jitters returned. He remembered his mother and her dreams of a Utopia with only big voices. What would she think of him? He knew: She would want to beat him senseless. He'd spent his entire adult life working for the procurers and manufacturers of those insidious little voices.
When, at nine thirty, the George Michael fan unlocked the osteria again, Charles was surprised to find himself still breathing. He ordered two espressos and waited patiently by the window while the man cooked up a pancetta, egg, garlic, oil, and linguine mix for his clour, sickly customer. It was delicious, but halfway through his plate he stopped, peering out the window.
Three people were approaching the palazzo. The bodyguard he'd seen yesterday-Nikolai-and, close behind, a very pregnant woman with an older man. That older man was Frank Dawdle.
He dialed his cell phone.
'Yeah?' said Angela.
'He's here.'
Charles pocketed the phone and laid down money. The bartender, serving an old couple, looked angry. 'You don't like the breakfast?'
'Leave it out,' Charles said. 'I'll finish it in a minute.'
By the time Angela arrived, her hair damp from an interrupted shower, the visitors had been inside the palazzo for twelve minutes. There were four tourists along the length of the street, and he hoped they would clear out soon. 'You have a gun?' Charles asked as he took out his Walther.
Angela pulled back her jacket to show off a SIG Sauer in a shoulder holster.
'Keep it there. If someone has to get shot, I better do it. I can disappear; you can't.'
'So you're watching out for me.'
'Yeah, Angela. I am watching out for you.'
