Spook Country

68. SNAP

H ollis thought he looked a little like William Burroughs, minus the bohemian substrate (or perhaps the methadone). Like someone who’d be invited quail shooting with the vice-president, though too careful to get himself shot. Thin steel spectacle frames. His remaining hair neatly barbered. Seriously good dark overcoat.

They sat facing one another now in worn metal chairs that might once have done duty in a church hall. His legs were crossed. He wore shoes that made her think of old French priests, bicycling. Black toe-cap oxfords, polished to a dull glow, but thickly soled with black rubber.

“Miss Henry,” he began, then paused, his voice reminding her of an American consular official she’d met in Gibraltar, when she’d been seventeen and had had her passport stolen. “Pardon me. You aren’t married?”

“No.”

“Miss Henry, we find ourselves in an awkward situation.”

“Mr….?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t give you my name. My friend tells me that you’re a musician. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you tell me that you are also a journalist, on assignment from a British magazine.” A gray eyebrow rose, above an arc of polished steel.

“Node. Based in London.”

“And you’d approached Bobby in Los Angeles, regarding your article?”

“I did. Though I can’t say he was pleased with my having done that.” She glanced at Bobby, hunched on the dirty floor, gripping his knees, eyes hidden by his forelock. From another of these chairs, a dark-haired boy of interestingly indeterminate race watched Bobby with what she took to be a combination of fascination and unease.

The other man, the one who’d discovered her in the alley, and so politely but firmly invited her up here, had now opened the long gray case he’d been given by the man she’d surreptitiously watched him meet in the alley. Not quite surreptitiously enough. This lay with its lid up, now, on one of the long tables, but seated here she couldn’t see what it contained.

“I’m sorry for coming here,” she said. “He’s in terrible shape.”

“Bobby’s under stress,” the old man said. “His work.”

“Locative art?”

“Bobby’s been working for me, assisting with a project of mine. It’s nearing closure. The stress Bobby is experiencing has to do with that. You’ve arrived at a most inopportune time, Miss Henry.”

“Hollis.”

“We can’t let you go, Hollis, until we’ve completed what we’ve come here for.”

She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it.

“We aren’t criminals, Hollis.”

“Excuse me, but if you aren’t criminals, or the police, I don’t see why I can’t leave when I want to.”

“Exactly right. The fact is, we are intent, here, on committing a number of criminal offenses, under both Canadian and American law.”

“Then how aren’t you criminals, exactly?”

“Not in your ordinary sense,” he said. “Our motivation is decidedly nonstandard, and what we intend to do, as far as I know, has never been attempted before. I can assure you, though, that we do not anticipate killing anyone, and we hope to harm no one physically.”

“‘Anticipate,’ in that context, isn’t so reassuring. And I don’t suppose you want to tell me what it is you’re up to.”

“We intend to damage a specific piece of property, and its contents. If we’re entirely successful”—and here he smiled briefly—“the damage will go u

“Do you have some optimal reason you’d prefer for me to suppose you’re telling me this? Maybe we could just cut to that. Save time. Otherwise, I see no reason for you to be telling me anything at all.”

He frowned. Uncrossed his legs. With the black priest shoes flat on the floor, he rocked back an inch or so on the chair’s rear legs. “If my associate weren’t so absolutely convinced of your identity, Miss Henry, things would be very different.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Bear with me. There is public history, and there is secret history. I am proposing to make you privy to secret history. Not because you are a journalist, actually, but because you are, to whatever extent, a celebrity.”

“You want to tell me your secrets because I used to be a singer in a band?”

“Yes,” he said, “though not because you used to be a singer in a band, specifically. Because you are, by virtue of having been a popular singer—”

“Never that popular.”

“You already constitute a part of the historical record, however small you might prefer to see it. I’ve just checked the number of your Google hits, and read your Wikipedia entry. By inviting you to witness what we intend to do, I will be using you, in effect, as a sort of time capsule. You will become the fireplace brick behind which I leave an account, though it will be your account, of what we do here.”

She looked at him. “The scary thing is, I think you’re serious.”

“I am. But I want you to understand the price, before you agree.”

“Who says I’m agreeing?”

“If you’re to witness history, Hollis, you necessarily become a part of that which you witness.”

“Am I free to write about what I might see?”

“Of course,” he said, “although by freely agreeing to accompany us, in the eyes of the law you probably become an accessory. More seriously, though, the person we are about to interfere with is powerful, and has every reason to suppress knowledge of what you’d witness. But that will be your business. If you agree to go with us.”

“And if I don’t?”

“We will have someone take you to another location, and keep you there until we’re gone. That will complicate things for us, as it means moving Bobby and his equipment, since you already know about this place, but that should be no concern of yours. Should you choose that option, you won’t be harmed in any way. Blindfolded, but not harmed.”

The man from the alley, she saw, had closed the long case, and had been joined, further down the second long table, by the dark-haired boy. “I don’t see why you have any reason to trust my end of that,” she said. “Why would you trust me not to call the police, as soon as I’m free?”

“I was trained,” he said, “by the government organization of which I was a member, to assess character very quickly. My work involved making crucial perso

“For that matter,” she said, looking up at him, “why should I believe you?”

“You won’t betray our agreement, should we reach one,” he said, “because you simply aren’t the type. By the same token, you’ll trust us. Because, in fact, you already do.”

He turned then, walked over to the man from the alley, and began a quiet conversation.

She heard the scratching of a cigarette lighter, as Bobby, on the floor, fired up a Marlboro.

Where would Bobby sleep, she wondered, without his gridlines? Then noticed, just in front of the old man’s chair, a thin, dusty-blue, perfectly straight line, the kind produced with carpenter’s chalk and a taut string.

Then saw another, crossing the first at right angles.