11 Harrowhouse (25 page)

She told him he was absolutely correct.

“So, let's just forget about it and get out of here.” He then proposed Portugal.

“We don't need to get into the vault,” she stated.

“We're going to apport, right?”

“In a way. At least that's what gave me the idea.”

He saw she was serious.

“I haven't got it all worked out yet,” she said. She flipped back to the page of the sketch pad on which she'd made her many Swedish scribbles. “You can make all the suggestions you want, but don't ruin it with too many improvements,” she said, and began translating.…

CHAPTER 16

H
ARRIDGE
W
EAVER
was the black man in black. The only white thing about him was the starched inch of clerical collar showing around his throat. Except for his teeth and eyes, of course.

He was waiting his turn at Immigration, standing there in line, looking patient and serene. He had shaved his beard, moustache, and sideburns, and wore gold wire-rimmed glasses he didn't need. Altogether, his identity coincided unquestionably with the photograph that was officially embossed in the Algerian passport he was carrying, issued February 20, 1969, to the Reverend Gerard Pouteau.

The Immigration officer nodded to Weaver that he was next. Weaver crossed over to the podiumlike desk and presented his papers, which a sign had instructed him to have ready. First the officer ran a check on the name Pouteau, methodically referring to an alphabetically compiled list of undesirables, such as wanted persons and tax delinquents. Then the officer asked the Reverend how long he planned to stay in the United Kingdom, where he would be staying, and the purpose of the Reverend's visit. Weaver answered all three questions routinely with believable lies.

He was passed through Immigration and customs without trouble. This was the only time in four years that he'd put himself on the line, his freedom. At least as much freedom as he had. He didn't trust white law, and therefore couldn't rely on the British law, which stipulated that political prisoners were excluded from the extradition agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States.

Although Weaver considered himself a political fugitive, the FBI and CIA and all the other great white hunters had him differently classified. According to them, he was wanted for murder and flight to avoid prosecution. The murder part wasn't true, but that was how they had labeled him and that was the crime he would have to pay for if he ever went back, or was taken back.

Four years of exile had changed Weaver considerably, had driven his determination in deeper, inside, where it really counted. From his remote vantage across the ocean, he was able to observe the violence of his brothers and see more clearly why such confrontations were necessary and also why they were futile. Weaver would sit in the striking North African sunshine and view more rationally and painfully what he and his brothers had tried to accomplish. Were still trying. But how naïve they'd been at times in the past, so open in their actions, demanding their black rights, taking a position to the far Left, trying to stay just inside the line of the law. Realizing soon enough that the law could be lopsided, could come at them from any direction, and even if they found a loophole it was easy for the whites to plug it up by merely creating another white law.

Early in his exile, Weaver's perspective had not been so objective. He was full of the humiliation of having had to run from his inevitable death. Run to escape white guns or their gas chamber or, at least, one of their cages, in which they would put all of his life.

Earlier Weaver would pace in the punishment of the North African sunshine and see only as far ahead as revenge and only as far in the past as that night in Newark when five thousand rounds of lawful bullets of various calibers and singular intent had torn around him and had blown the heart out of his good brother George. They murdered and then accused Weaver of it, and he knew they could make the charge stick because, as one of his brothers said sardonically, they had all the glue.

Weaver remembered his flight as only a blur. Of being cramped in the hole of an automobile trunk, of being transported like precious black shit, of hunching down in the rear seats of various cars, being transferred from car to car for precaution. Of riding a speedboat south from a small Florida coast town, the unfamiliarity of being on the sea a relief for him all the way to Varadero, Cuba, and on via jeep to Havana, where he stayed a week and was treated well enough.

When he got to Africa, where he would stay, he was grateful for the immunity. However, as much as he appreciated being out of reach of his enemy, he hated his enemy being out of his reach. He suffered through adjustment to his new environment, eased somewhat by many letters, a flow of the Movement's newspapers, and infrequent visits by brothers. The latter usually left him depressed. It was as though they were coming to pay respects to a handicapped veteran of the fight, who would probably never fight again. Whenever he spoke to them about his return, they warned him with their eyes while they patronized him with their words.

What really got him through that bad time was his writing. Despite his new lack of faith in words, he turned to them. He sat in the broad blade of the North African sunshine and sent his voice into the microphone of a cassette recorder. When he played back what he felt, he felt and believed it all the more. Expression opened him, let him see his past errors. Not only the minor ones but also the principal one: the confidence that black would fearlessly, automatically follow black. Weaver believed the theory was still valid and eventually would prove itself, but for the time being it was an unrealistic expectation. Persuasion was necessary, along with dramatic examples. No past revolution could be used as an example. The structure of past revolutions, with their martyrs and swift massive overthrow, were now passe, made ineffective by the intricately organized, scientifically complex manner by which contemporary tyranny fortified itself.

A man with less resolve would have yielded to the circumstances and transferred his energy to making his own life more comfortable. But Weaver accepted the compromise, kept his basic optimism, and more intelligently channeled the force of his hate into his writing. He wrote two books and made contributions to any medium that would voice his beliefs. His spirit was catching and he believed the time would come, perhaps in his lifetime.

Exile had made Weaver a wiser man.

And much more dangerous.

That latter quality was hardly apparent as he got out of a taxi in front of the rectory of St. Edwards Church, Hanover Square. He gave the driver a beneficent smile along with a humble shilling tip, and pretended to be consulting directions that were actually an Air France pamphlet on survival under ditching conditions. Until the taxi pulled away. Then he picked up his luggage and walked across the street and down to where Chesser waited in the car.

Weaver opened the door on the passenger side and threw his luggage into the space behind the seats. No hello. Nothing. His ecclesiastical disguise surprised Chesser, who wasn't immediately sure this was the same man he'd met with in Paris just two days before.

Locating Weaver hadn't been difficult for Chesser. He had put in a call to the Moroccan Ministry of Public Affairs in Algiers and requested Weaver's telephone number. He didn't get it, of course, but the Ministry official was polite and suggested Chesser's call might be returned. Chesser gave his name and London number and two days later Algiers was calling and it was Weaver. Chesser thought Weaver might not remember him, but Weaver did, right off. However, from Weaver's guarded tone, Chesser thought it wise to forgo any old lost buddy routine and got directly to the proposition, outlining the general nature of it without revealing any details. Weaver was cautiously interested. He insisted on an interim meeting in Paris to hear the entire proposition face-to-face on neutral ground, instead of coming directly to London and risking everything.

Chesser and Weaver had hit it off well enough in Paris. Weaver hadn't asked as many questions about the project as Chesser had anticipated, but he'd checked out Chesser and hadn't found a white trap. In the Paris hotel room, while Chesser revealed the scheme, they'd drunk vintage Château LaFitte straight from the bottle. Two separate bottles, actually. About half way through, they'd exchanged bottles, which signified Weaver's acceptance of Chesser's offer. A million dollars.

Now they were suffering through West End traffic. Weaver removed his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and tight shut his eyes a couple of times. He also released his stiff collar, ripped it off and made a sound of relief. “That fucking thing was killing me,” he said. And that was all he said for several blocks of stop and go. He just sat there observing the people on the street, particularly the girls.

Chesser remembered how outgoing Weaver had been back in 'fifty and 'fifty-one. A big, first-string tackle who should have been majoring in law rather than physical education. He had all the prerequisites, except the meaningless ones they demanded on a high-school record.

At that time Chesser was living off campus, and the girl who frequently stayed overnight and caused him to miss morning classes was Jessica, an aggressive, challenging girl out to prove how liberal she was, in mind and body. It was through Jessica that Chesser had met Weaver, when he got in with her radical element, whose big cause then was integration.

Naturally, Chesser was for integration; he'd never felt any prejudice. For him it was as uncomplicated as that. Unlike most of his companions, he didn't feel any guilt demanding active involvement. That was probably the reason he let others make the speeches and didn't show up at many meetings. They needed it; he didn't.

Weaver must have sensed that quality in Chesser and liked it, found it a relief from the tension of being the object of a cause. From the first they found they could relax together. Weaver would drop by Chesser's place anytime, get some law second hand, and borrow books. Conversely, on Saturday afternoons Chesser, from his stadium seat, felt some vicarious satisfaction in the violence he watched Weaver perform.

By the time the football season was over and Weaver had gotten through nearly every law book Chesser's father's money had bought, they were truly comrade opposites. Different colored brothers-in-law is the way they humorously put it, because by then the girl Jessica had really overcome and made the transfer to Weaver's bed.

It was a good winter for Chesser; one of the best in his young life. Weaver was what made it so good. However, when it was over it was definitely over. Weaver didn't come back from spring vacation. He'd stolen a car and filled its trunk with a harvest of marijuana and broken three ribs of the arresting state policeman. Weaver wrote Chesser one letter from prison, a sort of angry apology, not really defending himself. Chesser sent off a long reply immediately but, after that, Weaver was in prison and Chesser was in and out of law school and they were on divergent courses.

Now, nearly twenty years later in London, Chesser told him, “I read your book.”

“When?”

An unexpected question. Chesser had to decide quickly not to lie. “Last night.”

Weaver nodded to himself, confirming a judgment. No doubt related to Chesser's degree of interest in the black versus white supremacy problem. Weaver's book had been on the stands for more than eight months. A highly charged book that exposed the visceral issues in such a blunt and impatient manner that it made even some racists' skin crawl. It had sold well but had not appeared on the bestseller lists. Worse than that, the proceeds from the sales of the book had been impounded, withheld from the exiled Weaver on a technicality enforced by the United States government, Weaver's indicated enemy. Regardless, he had just finished writing another, he told Chesser.

“What's the new one about?” asked Chesser.

“It's a sort of handbook for revolutionaries.”

“Fiction?”

Weaver wasn't amused. They were stopped in traffic. He watched a pale and pretty English girl get into a Lotus Elan. She had to pivot her ass on the low bucket seat to swing her legs up, so the teasing split of her midi skirt exhibited the entire length of her inside thighs. Weaver's view was cut off when she closed the car's white door. He told Chesser, “You haven't changed much.” He intended the remark to be light, but it came out like a criticism.

“You have,” retaliated Chesser.

A grunt from Weaver.

Chesser was ill at ease, as he'd been to some extent when he was with Weaver in Paris, but then the wine had helped and he'd also been able to blame some of it on self-conscious reunion. Now he knew what it was. Weaver was causing it, wordlessly communicating his blackness, making Chesser feel it so much that he couldn't possibly disregard it. Weaver's mere presence generated that force, magnifying their difference. Chesser could have met Weaver blindfolded and still felt it. There had been none of that way back in the other days, and Chesser didn't see why there had to be any now.

Weaver reached around and got his smaller bag. He put it on his lap and unzipped it. He was after cigarettes, although he could have asked Chesser for one.

Chesser caught a glimpse of a gun. A black thirty-eight.

Weaver closed the bag and kept it on his lap. He used the cigarette lighter on the dash panel. “You're not into politics at all, are you?” he asked.

“I won an election bet once.”

“Nixon?” Weaver hated just saying it.

“Miss Rheingold,” replied Chesser.

That brought out some of the Weaver that Chesser remembered, and Chesser was relieved to see it, suspected there was a lot more of the same beneath Weaver's facade.

Weaver brought up his large hand, as though he were stopping something. He was trying not to laugh. “Look, man, all I want is to do the job, collect my bread, and get the fuck back. You dig?”