Cold Allies (16 page)

When the Cessna banked, he took a book from his valise, pushed back the seat, and poured himself a drink. The sharp scent of the whiskey reminded him of the owl and the American. Smiling, he turned the book over and studied the author’s picture. A silly-looking old woman. Her white hair stood up in curls, and her eyes were a bit too close together, like those of a toy poodle.

He turned to Chapter One and started to read.

NEAR CALHAN, COLORADO

The silly policeman didn’t want to listen to a thing Mrs. Parisi was telling him. Besides being obtuse, he really looked awful in those short pants. His knees were knobby, his calves too thin. Colorado should examine their officers closely, she thought, before they put them into short pants.

“You have to have a letter, ma’am,” he was saying, handing back her driver’s license. “A letter from someone in Colorado saying they’re responsible for you.”

“I have
fans
who are
expecting
me,” she snapped. The hot breeze off the desert was making her mascara run. She was anxious to roll the window up, surround herself with air-conditioning, and get back on the road. “Very, very important people who will be quite disappointed that you did not let me through.”

“I’d suggest you go home,” he said.

It was so frustrating. Of course Mrs. Parisi couldn’t go home, but she couldn’t tell the dimwitted policeman that.

“Ask your superior,” she told him haughtily. “Where is your superior, young man? I’m sure he will want to speak with me.”

The absurd officer in the Bermudas sighed and ran a hand across his sweaty forehead. “He’ll be here tonight around eight. You can talk to him then. In the meantime,” he told her, pointing at the unsightly sprawl of tents beside the highway, “park it. And stay out of trouble.”

Temporarily giving up the argument, Mrs. Parisi jammed the van into petulant reverse and sent it rocking off the side of the road into the desert.

The camp was simply awful. Really, she couldn’t understand how anyone would want to live in such squalor; but she supposed that some people did, the K-Mart shoppers, the less educated. She rolled off as far from the reeking camp as she could, toward a small ravine that smelled of the sort of sweetish barbecue one might buy at a Polynesian restaurant.

As soon as she was parked, a contingent of unsanitary admirers walked over. She put on her best smile; but they weren’t smiling back. To her alarm, one brute of a man wrenched the van door open and pulled her out, roughly.

“I am a writer,” she told him.

He must have been illiterate, too, because he shoved her toward the fender, nearly knocking her down. In an instant, like ants to a picnic, the mob was all over the van.

“I will inform the police,” she told them. “They are just down the road, you know.”

They emptied the van. Someone had even made off with her tires. She stood staring at the crippled van a moment and then kicked it in the door.

“Ma’am?” A soft voice.

She spun around. A young boy was standing there, his arms full of items. Her items.

“I saved some things for you,” he said.

“Well, you didn’t save much.”

He nodded, his greasy blond hair spilling into his eyes.

It was simply awful how young people let themselves go, without a thought for tomorrow or the least idea of decorum.

“I know,” he said, properly abashed. “I’m sorry about them stealing your things and all.” And he put the items back into the van.

Probably she should pay him something, she decided with irritation. Some suitably small reward.

“Here,” she said, rummaging in her purse and bringing out her book. The paperback, not the hardcover. When she handed it to him, she saw his eyes light up.

“Yes,” she said. “I am the author.”

He ran his hands over the gaudy cover Tad had ordered, so impressed, so excited, that he was breathing through his mouth. “You ...” he said. “You seen these things?”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Of course.”

His eyes were an odd shade of green; quite intense. “I seen ’em, too,” he whispered.

Mrs. Parisi felt her smile sink, and she fought to keep it afloat. “Of course you have,” she murmured.

“I seen one last night. And it talked to me.”

She nodded. “How completely fascinating,” she said.

“And—and I know it’s crazy and all, but it seems like ever since the sun started going down, they’s calling to me again with them clattering voices.” His green eyes were wide in his sunburned face.

“How thrilling for you,” she said, getting back into her van. “And I do so hope you enjoy the book.”

He finally went away, even though Mrs. Parisi could tell he had wanted to linger. Lying down on the carpet in the back, she felt the exhaustion of travel hit, and she began to nod off.

Banging on her door awakened her. She opened her eyes and saw the sun had gone down.

The police supervisor,
she thought with satisfaction. But her watch said that it was only seven.

“Ma’am?” a young voice called.

That horrid boy had returned. “Yes?” she asked sleepily.

To her dismay, he opened the back and crawled into the van with her. She sat up like a shot.

“Ma’am, they’re coming,” he said.

The mob? But whatever for? That grimy throng had taken nearly everything.

“Them Eridanians are coming. I can hear ’em. Cain’t you?”

She didn’t hear Eridanians, but she could certainly smell the boy. In the confines of the van, his stench was overpowering.

“Come with me.” Urgently he took her hand.

She tried to jerk away, but the boy was too strong.

“The rain,” he said, making no sense at all. “It’s the rain. You don’t want to miss it.”

He pulled her out. And there Mrs. Parisi stood, the boy’s dirty hand in hers, facing the desert.

“Come on,” he said, leading her.

She had no choice but to stumble behind. Certainly she couldn’t scream for help and expect the ruffians in the camp to come to her aid.

“I really must get back by eight to talk to the supervisor,” she told him.

“Yeah. I’ll get you back. They’re coming now, and we don’t want to miss them.”

He helped her down into a ravine and then pulled her up the other side. “The sanitation men killed sick people today and threw them into the pit,” he said in a hushed tone. “And then they burned their bodies. I saw it.”

The barbecue smell was stronger. Mrs. Parisi finally understood the sweetish odor of the smoke.

“How disagreeable,” she replied. Her stomach felt slightly queasy. How inconsiderate of the sanitation people to have a cremation so close to where people might be eating. “Are we almost there?”

A sliver of moon hung above. The desert floor, though, was dark. The boy pulled her along so quickly, she had no chance to watch her step.

“Just a little further,” he said. “You know? Them Eridanians come over me, and I felt their cool soak down into my skin. They was interested in me, like I was somebody important, like I was wanted and all.”

Mrs. Parisi crashed through a bush. “How very charming.”

“I never been wanted like that before, not by my Pa, not by anyone.”

“Do you think there might be spiders around here?”

“Look!” he cried.

The boy’s hand slipped from hers. Something approached over the dark desert floor. A blue light. It floated toward the boy like a child’s balloon that has been lost and is now coming home.

Good Lord,
Mrs. Parisi thought in astonishment. She couldn’t be seeing what she was seeing. Perhaps it was swamp gas. Yes. It was swamp gas the boy was running pell-mell toward.

The gas was now so close to the boy that it was washing him in cool blue. They stood that way for a moment, the blue light and the boy. His face filled with rapture, and his eyes closed as if holding his ecstasy in, afraid some jarring motion or stray thought would let it escape.

Then the light pounced. The next instant both boy and light vanished.

Heavens,
Mrs. Parisi thought.
How utterly strange.
But she supposed swamp gas could do that, envelop the body and burn it to invisible ash.

Of course, that was what happened. The stupid boy had gone and got himself evaporated or something, leaving her to make her way back in the dark.

Muttering to herself, she began to walk. She was approaching the ravine when someone rudely shone a spotlight in her eyes.

“Do you mind?” she snapped.

“Mrs. Parisi?” a voice asked. The spotlight lowered, and now she could see two Colorado State troopers in their inane Bermuda shorts.

“Mrs. Linda Parisi?”

Obviously the supervisor was ready to see her now. “Yes?”

The officer said: “There are some men here from military intelligence. And they want to talk to you bad.”

THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW

As Baranyk strode down the marble ball, he tried to straighten his uniform. At the door to the Presidential office, a small knot of people were waiting. The general picked out Fyodorov at once.

He
had
grown fat, though not as much as Baranyk had expected.

“Valentin Sergeyevich!” Fyodorov cried, throwing his arms around the general and kissing him wetly on both cheeks.

Baranyk kissed him dutifully, then held him at arm’s length. “You’ve eaten too many sausages, my friend,” he said with a chuckle, glancing down at Fyodorov’s potbelly.

Fyodorov grinned and slapped the back of his hand against Baranyk’s belly. “And you were always stout. The age does not show so much.”

An aide in an expensive French-cut suit leaned forward and said, “The President will see you now.”

Two soldiers in smart uniforms stepped forward and swung back the massive doors. Baranyk gave them a dark glance.
Too clean, too stylish,
he thought,
to be real warriors.
His own battle-hardened group looked like bandits.

Fyodorov grasped his arm and propelled him forward into the Presidential suite. Behind an immense, intricately carved desk, Pankov stood to greet them.

The Russians had relearned opulence, Baranyk saw. The office was large as a ballroom and furnished with fussy nineteenth-century antiques.

“Good to see you again, general,” Pankov said, coming around his aircraft carrier of a desk and holding out a glad hand. Evidently Pankov had given up the Russian greeting for the less intimate American one.

Baranyk took the offered hand. The palm was talcum-powder dry. The President smelled of woodsy after-shave, and his luxurious white hair was a shade too brilliant, as though he used a rinse.

“I met you—oh, let’s see—” Pankov’s generous brow furrowed in thought. “I believe it was just after the Berlin Wall came down.” He smiled. The reflected light from his perfect teeth seemed to brighten the room. “You were a captain, I believe, and I was a minor apparatchik sent to liaise our troops from Europe. The West Germans fed us that year, remember? I developed a taste for bratwurst I have never been able to conquer.”

Pankov laughed and stroked his flat belly. Stroked it as though it were a favorite pet.

The President’s memory amazed Baranyk. The ‘general didn’t recall meeting Pankov at all. Then he realized Pankov must have been coached, and his estimation of the man fell again.

A television star,
Baranyk thought sourly.
That’s all Pankov
is. The hair, the teeth, would look good on the screen. The smile, too, with its counterfeit warmth.

“Sit down.” Pankov returned to the tall chair behind his desk. “The senator tells me you saved his life in Afghanistan.” And the smile dimmed, disconcertingly. Baranyk guessed that Pankov’s smile, like his after-shave, underpants, and virgin wool suit, was something he put on each morning.

“A dark and tragic episode in our history,” the President said.

Baranyk glanced at Fyodorov and saw the senator grinning, an inane, stupid grin, like a mouse who has fallen into a vat of cheese. Fyodorov wasn’t listening to Pankov, the general realized. It was enough that he was seated in the office with him.

So Vassily Petrovich was not as important as he made out. In fact he was so small a man that even reflected glory warmed him.

“When I was an officer there,” Baranyk said evenly, “I believed I was doing the right thing.”

“Of course.” Pankov’s agreement was too facile, a whore’s compliment. “We all thought we were at the ‘ time.”

“I believed!”
Baranyk said, aiming a finger at the center of Pankov’s face. The President’s smile died, heart-shot. “I believed in it all. In the Soviet Union and her right to defend her borders. I believed in the justice of Communism. Should I feel ashamed for my patriotism? We were once bound together by law. By more than law: by history ... is the past no more than shit to you?”

A silence filled the room like a stench. Pankov looked at Fyodorov. “Why, no,” he said. “We once shared a bond, of course. There’s no denying that. It is just that in Afghanistan both our Russia and your Ukraine lost many young men.”

The President steepled his hands and leaned back in his chair, smiling again.

“Wars are ugly,” Baranyk said.

“Yes, they are. I agree.” Suddenly Pankov turned to Fyodorov. “You must make certain the general tours Moscow. He hasn’t been here since—what? ’91? So much has changed. He will want to visit some restaurants. That one on Tversky Prospekt ...”

“Yes,” Fyodorov said brightly. “I know the one. A wonderful chef they have, and the blini—”

Abruptly, Pankov rose. “Yes, yes. Well, general, it was good seeing you.”

Again he came around the desk, his hand held out in farewell. Baranyk popped, up from his chair, grasped Pankov’s hand and didn’t let go
.
“I need fuel, Mr. President.”

“I do not want -a war,” Pankov said, blandly returning Baranyk’s stare. Then he pulled his hand free. “Afghanistan ruined us.” He turned and walked back behind his desk.

“Khrushchev and his search for world power raped us. Brezhnev and his paranoia impoverished us. And Gorbachev presided over the liquidation sale.”

He took a seat, carefully aligning the crease in his trousers. “The military ran us bankrupt,” he said. “Billions of rubles buried in missile silos, billions of rubles, general, while the people were starving. Should we not learn a lesson from this? Of course Russia and Ukraine were brothers once. But children grow up. And brothers must learn to fend for themselves. How do you think the Russian people would feel if I put them in jeopardy?”

Baranyk slapped both hands on the desk and leaned over toward Pankov. “Forget morality, then. Listen to practicality. The Arabs will murder the Allies and then they will come after you.”

At last, Baranyk saw, he had annoyed the man. Pankov waved a hand sharply in the air and turned to the window, the gilded dome of St. Basil and the gray Moscow sky beyond. “We have an understanding with the Arabs.”

“You have
shit!”
Baranyk shouted.

Pankov spun, glared at him. All pretense of civility was gone. “The people do not want war. I’ve had pollsters research it. This is a democracy. What would you have me do?”

Baranyk turned to Fyodorov and saw that the senator was regarding the banded Russian flag which hung limply behind the President’s chair. “He is afraid, Vassily Petrovich,” Baranyk said softly. “He is afraid of losing the next election, and because of that fear the rest of Europe will fall.”

Neither Russian spoke. Fyodorov studied his manicured nails. Pankov riffled absently through a stack of papers.

Baranyk went on. “One man decides the world’s fate, and he is a coward. In a matter of months the Arabs will move north like a migration of birds, too fast, too numerous, to stop.”

Pankov’s television-star face was set in hard, un-photogenic lines. “When they get to the Rhine valley, they will settle there. They will become fat and complacent, General Baranyk. Feed your enemies, you see, and they lose the hunger for battle. It is just that the people of Russia are saying, ‘Let Ukraine feed them, let Poland and Romania feed them. Let France feed them. Not us.’”

The battle was over, Baranyk realized. He was doomed, flanked like his army at Kiev. Only this time the murderers used words, not shells, and they smelled of soap and after-shave. Holy Father. How would he explain this to his men?

Wait,
he thought.
There
is
still one surprise.
It would be a wild bluff, but Pankov had no way of seeing Baranyk’s cards.

The general leaned forward. “We have been sighting alien ships. Extraterrestrial little blue lights.”

Pankov gave Fyodorov a revealing, worried glance. “There is an American general who thinks he can talk with them, bring the aliens into the war,” Baranyk said. “It may be difficult for the aliens to understand combat. It may be impossible for them to understand neutrality.”

The point hit home. Baranyk saw Pankov’s composure crack, saw the uncertainty beneath.

“Look up at the sky, Pankov. Keep looking at the sky and ask yourself if there is something more lethal riding there than your aging ICBMs.”

IN THE LIGHT

Down the gentle slope of moist St. Augustine, at the end of the pier over the lake, Jerry Casey’s Pa was squatted, tying a fishing lure. Taking a breath of the rain-freshened air, Jerry walked down to him, his feet bouncing on the weathered boards of the pier.

“Hello, Pa,” he said.

His Pa glanced up and smiled. The eyes, the nose, the mouth wavered a little, as though seen through wet glass.

“Sit down,” his Pa told him.

Jerry squatted, too, and stared into the lake. In the clear water the fish hung suspended, like sleek helicopters in air. A few yards away, reeds clattered in the breeze. A landing mallard splashed down near them, making the fish dart. “Nice here,” Jerry said. There were ferns growing near the dock, maidenhair ferns with chartreuse coin leaves.

“Yes,” his Pa told him, grinning a strange, loose grin. “I like it a lot. You want to go out on the boat, Jerry? Would you like that, you think?”

“Sure,” he said, so surprised by his Pa’s question, he nearly forgot to breathe. His Pa’d never called him Jerry before. He’d always called him “boy,” as though he could never remember his name.

“Get in the boat, Jerry.”

The reeds were clattering so hard, it sounded like rain. Glancing behind him, Jerry saw a little rowboat bobbing in the water.

Then they were in the boat in the middle of the lake, by the reeds. “Go ahead, Jerry. Jump right in.”

Cool water rippled into Jerry’s shirt, ran its calm hand through his hair. He thought he remembered dust and heat and people dying, but the memory was faint. He pushed his face underwater and watched the gold and red fish glide around the mossy rocks.

“Come on!” his Pa was calling, standing up in the boat moored yards away.

Jerry was in the boat, and his Pa was grinning that strange, fluttery smile from ear to incomplete ear. It was as though all those years with Pa he’d spent living with a stranger. This was the man he knew. Pa was like someone out of a television family on afternoon reruns, as familiar as Cosby or Beaver Cleaver’s dad.

“Would you like to tell me about America?” his Pa asked in a television dad’s voice.

“Maybe later, Pa, if you don’t mind, that is.”

Pa’s smile broadened, grew wobbly around the edges.

“No, Jerry. I don’t mind that at all. Say, would you like a sandwich?” He opened the top of a cooler.

Jerry froze in horror. Now it would all be spoiled, the pretty day, the lake, his Pa’s good mood. Jerry expected his Pa to pull a beer out of the ice. Instead he handed Jerry a Coke.

“Here,” his Pa said. “You like that, don’t you?”

“Yeah. “ Jerry pulled the pop-top off and drank. The Coke fizzed and burned down his throat.

“Have a sandwich,” his Pa said, handing him a foil-covered packet. “I know growing boys get hungry.”

Jerry took a bite. Ham and swiss with pickles on it, his favorite. The taste awakened a beast in him; he pushed his face into the sandwich and grunted like a starving dog. When he looked up from the empty foil, crumbs dropping from his face, he saw his Pa watching him.

They were in the cabin. A fire crackled in the hearth. Outside, rain was falling, tapping against the panes.

“Here,” his Pa said, pushing a plate across the scarred wood of the kitchen table.

Chicken-fried steak with gravy. Nuggets of okra, crisp just the way he liked. A mound of mashed potatoes, a big slab of pumpkin pie.

“Go ahead, Jerry,” his Pa said, sounding now like the man in
Father Knows Best.
“Go ahead and eat.”

Jerry ate until his sides ached. He ate until he had to loosen his belt. When he was finished, he sat back from the table and watched his Pa watch him.

“Let’s go outside,” his Pa suggested. “Would you like to do that, Jerry? Would you like to go outside, son?”

They were standing on the porch, and Jerry saw that the rain had lightened to a fine mist. The tag ends of the shower were dripping off the roof, pattering on the stair boards. The air was aromatic with pine.

Jerry was surprised to see someone else there with them.

Down the slope near a tumble-down, corrugated metal boathouse stood a man in a flight suit. A lost look on his face, he turned and walked up to the trees.

“Would you like to meet that pilot, Jerry?” his Pa asked.

“No, Pa. Not right now.” Truth was, Jerry didn’t want to share his new Pa with anyone. Not anyone. He wanted to hoard his Pa’s love like something expensive and special, put it in a cotton-filled box and store it away.

“All right,” his Pa said. “Not today. You don’t have to meet him today. But I want you to meet him sometime. It’s important, or I wouldn’t ask.”

“Okay, Pa.” Jerry saw the pilot looking at them. Then the man turned and disappeared into the dark forest.

Resentment emptied out of Jerry like sand through a funnel. Cool, moist happiness filled the space. He found himself grinning for no real reason.