“Freed we will be what?” I asked again. This was something I’d thought about on the mountaintop, watching shadows climb out of the little valley and then fall back. “Smarter? Richer? And, in the end, why do you care what is best for us? Is it your business? Do you really care at all?”
At this the major shook his head. “Apparently, not only is it my business; it is my unhappy fate. To make you happy, all right, I’ll admit it. No, I don’t care what happens to you, because of everything you and your friends have done-or allowed to be done-to this place for the past fifty years. You can all hang as far as I am concerned. I’d spring the trapdoor myself, but I have no choice in the matter. I am here to deliver you into freedom, and that is exactly what I am going to do.”
“I know you were bound for Paris. A pity you didn’t go.”
3
“The game is over, Inspector. It comes down to that. All of the planning and plotting and maneuvering-all done. For some reason, your side has decided the best offense is to give up.” We were back in the major’s office. The night before in the bar, after I had finished my large drink, a man had appeared with a message in a locked black dispatch case. The major had read the message and left in a clatter. “We’ll continue this tomorrow morning, Inspector, in my office,” he said before disappearing.
The driver was waiting in front of my hotel at 5:00 A.M. We were back to the ferret. He told me to get in the rear seat. “We aren’t pals,” he said. “I’m a driver; you’re the passenger. Keep it that way, OK?”
When I walked into Kim’s office, breakfast was already on his desk. He handed me a bowl of soup. It was pumpkin, but I put it to one side.
“I don’t believe you,” I said. I’d mulled it over through the night and decided this would be my opening line. It wasn’t strictly true. I did believe him. What he’d said about surrender at the top was the only explanation possible. All that I lacked was evidence. Not counting Kim himself seated behind the big desk, the neon sign on my hotel, and the low-cut red dress, where was the evidence of such surrender, exactly? The woman with the baseball cap in the market was actually evidence to the contrary. She didn’t sound like someone who was giving up. Besides, from everything I’d seen, there was a lot that hadn’t changed. Buses continued not to run on time, in some cases not to run at all. People walked across the bridges as they always had. A few new buildings stood here and there, and yes, there were all of those extra streetlights, but did that really suggest anything as sweeping as Kim was laying out-wholesale surrender?
“Fortunately for all of us,” Kim picked up his bowl to drain it, “the state of your belief is unimportant.”
This, I could be sure, was untrue. I was of no utility to Kim and his people unless I bought into what he was telling me. He needed me for some reason; that much was clear. That, I knew in my bones, was my leverage. It was not the heavyweight crowbar I would have liked, but it was something. It was more than something; it was all I had.
Kim looked at my bowl. “Are you sure you won’t have any? It’s pumpkin, and it’s pretty good. The cook is one of yours. I’m glad to see your people haven’t forgotten how to cook.”
“I’m always pleased when you’re glad, Major. Nothing for me, though.”
“Well, as I think I mentioned before, it wasn’t my idea to bring you into this. I didn’t even want you in the city. I said you’d be trouble, and it turns out I was right.”
This did not seem to be adding to my leverage.
“But you’re here, and things are moving. You can be useful, as long as you don’t get in the way.”
“I’ve heard the same thing said about doorstops.”
“We have decided that talking of ‘surrender’ is a bad idea. The problem is not simply in use of the term but in the concept as well. Bad idea, bad concept, bad approach-that’s why you won’t hear me talking about it. Surrenders lead to vacuums; things become unstuck; people wander aimlessly and go bump. Some of them get crazy ideas about history and destiny. It makes for a lot of noise.”
“And blood.”
“Yes, that, too. Messy, ugly, painful.”
“Costly.”
He was silent, but I could see I had hit upon the word that swirled up from his cable traffic every morning. Cost. Expense. He needed calm and quiet, he needed to avoid bloodshed, because chaos ran up the budget.
“There we are,” I said. “You do need me. For some reason you need me to save your skin.”
“Never overestimate your place in the universe, any universe. Yes, your skills,” he looked as if the word caused him some pain, “might prove useful. And whether you believe it or not, for a change you will actually be doing something good, in the long run.”
“An interesting place to live-the long run. What do you suppose they’re serving for lunch, in the long run?”
“You mean to tell me that you don’t care about the future?”
“In case you’ve forgotten, Major, at one time you and I were the future. Now, here we sit.”
“Yes, here we sit. And there’s a way yet to go.”
“Not for me.”
“Ah, I keep forgetting. You’re no longer part of the human race. You are some sort of new mountain-dwelling species. I saw something to that effect in your file.”
“I don’t think you’ve seen my file, not the whole file.”
“You’d be surprised, Inspector, what I’ve seen. You’ll be pleased to know that your file and all its annexes have been pulled from the inactive archive and put back into active status.”
“In other words, I’m to be paid.”
“In other words, you take orders.”
“From whom?”
This earned a broad smile, a number one on the chart. “Lucky you.”
4
“For one thing,” the smile fell from the face as if held on with old cello tape, “it’s time to stop playing the angles, stop acting like a rat in the shadows.”
“Rabbit.”
“Another thing, stop contradicting me. I said ‘rat.’ I meant ‘rat.’ ”
“So, I should be more like… what?”
“When you’re sitting here, you’re working for me. Don’t try to figure out how to get around me, or play me off against someone else. There
“You say jump, I jump. Fairly simple.”
“You jump, and you don’t come down…”
“… until you finish your soup. You still expect me to believe you’ve read my file? I’m not by nature a jumper. Everyone says so. There are whole chapters in my file filled with complaints about how I failed to jump.”
