The Wapshot Scandal (25 page)

Coverly took a bath and changed while Betsey transported a high school boy who was going to stay with Binxey. The Brinkleys lived in the neighborhood and they walked there, arm in arm. Now and then Coverly bent his long neck and gave Betsey a kiss. Mrs. Brinkley was a thin, spritely woman, brilliantly made up and loaded down with beads. She kept saying “Crap.” Mr. Brinkley had an uncommonly receding forehead, a lack or infirmity that was accentuated by the fact that his gray, curly hair was arranged in loops over this receding feature like the curtains in some parlor. He seemed gallantly to be combating an air of fatigue and inconsequence by wearing a gold collar pin, a gold tie clip, a large bloodstone ring and a pair of blue-enamel cuff links that flashed like semaphores when he poured the sherry. Sherry was what they drank but they drank it like water. There were two other guests—the Cranstons from the neighboring city of Waterford. “I just had to ask somebody from out of town,” Mrs. Brinkley said, “so we wouldn’t have to listen to all that crap about Talifer.”

“One thing I know, one thing I’ve learned,” Mr. Cranston said, “and that is that you’ve got to have balls. That’s what matters in the end. Balls.” He wore a crimson hunting shirt and had yellow curls and a face that seemed both cherubic and menacing. His gray-haired wife seemed much older and more intelligent than he and in spite of his talk it was easiest to imagine him, not in the bouncing act of love, but in some attitude of bewilderment and despair while his wife stroked his curls and said: “You’ll find another job, honey. Don’t worry. Something better is bound to come along.” Mrs. Brinkley’s youngest child had just returned from a tonsillitis operation at the government hospital and during sherry they all talked about their tonsils and adenoids. Betsey positively shone. Coverly had never had his tonsils or adenoids removed and he was a little out of things until he brought up appendicitis. This carried them to the dinner table, where they then talked about dentistry. The dinner was the usual, washed down with sparkling Burgundy. After dinner Mr. Cranston told a dirty story and then got up to leave. “I hate to rush,” he said, “but you know it takes us an hour and a half to get back and I have to work in the morning.”

“Well, it shouldn’t take you an hour and a half,” Mr. Brinkley said. “How do you go?”

“We take the Speedway,” Mr. Cranston said.

“Well, if you get outside Talifer before you take the Speedway,” Mr. Brinkley said, “you’ll save about fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. You go back to the shopping center and turn right at the second traffic light.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do it that way,” Mrs. Brinkley said. “I’d go straight out past the computation center and take the clover leaf just before you get to the restricted area.”

“Oh, you would, would you,” said Mr. Brinkley. “That way you’d run right into a lot of construction. Just do what I say. Go back to the shopping center and turn right at the second traffic light.”

“If they go back to the shopping center,” Mrs. Brinkley said, “they’ll get stuck in all that traffic at Fermi Circle. If they don’t want to go out by the computation center, they could head straight for the gantries and then turn right at the road block.”

“My God, woman,” Mr. Brinkley said, “will you shut your big damned mouth?”

“Aw, crap,” said Mrs. Brinkley.

“Well, thanks a lot,” said the Cranstons, heading for the door. “I guess we’ll just take the Speedway the way we used to.” They were gone.

“Now you got them all mixed up,” Mr. Brinkley said. “I don’t know what makes you think you can give directions. You can’t even find your way around the house.”

“If they’d gone the way I told them in the beginning,” Mrs. Brinkley said fiercely, “they would have been perfectly all right. There isn’t any construction out by the restricted area. You just made that up.”

“I did not,” Mr. Brinkley said. “I was out there Thursday. That whole place is torn up.”

“You were in bed with a cold on Thursday,” Mrs. Brinkley said. “I had to keep bringing you trays.”

“Well, I guess we’d better go,” Coverly said. “It was awfully nice and thank you very much.”

“If you would just learn to shut your mouth,” Mr. Brinkley shouted at his wife, “the whole world would be very grateful. You shouldn’t be allowed to drive a car, let alone give people directions.”

“Thank you,” said Betsey shyly at the door.

“Who smashed up the car last year?” Mrs. Brinkley screamed. “Who was the one who smashed up the car? Please tell me that.”

They walked home, stopping now and then to exchange a kiss, and that journey ended like any other.

CHAPTER XXI

Coverly had not seen Cameron again. He killed some days at his desk, revising his commencement address about the jewelry of heaven. He was ordered, one morning, to report to security. He guessed that he would be charged with the loss of the briefcase and wondered if he would be arrested. Coverly was one of those men who labor under a preternaturally large sense of guilt that, like some enormous bruise, concealed by his clothing, could be carried painlessly until it was touched; but once it was touched it would threaten to unnerve him with its pain. He was a model of provincial virtues—truthful, punctual, cleanly and courageous—but once he was accused of wrongdoing by some powerful arm of society his self-esteem collapsed in a heap. Yes, yes, he was a sinner. It was he who had butchered the ambassador, hocked the jewelry and sold the blueprints to the enemy. He approached the security offices feeling deeply guilty. There was a long corridor painted buttercup yellow and eight or ten men and women were ahead of him. It seemed like a doctor’s or a dentist’s anteroom, a consular anteroom, a courthouse corridor, an employment office; it seemed, this scene for waiting, to be an astonishingly large part of the world. One by one the other men and women were called by name and let in at a door at the end of the yellow corridor. None of them returned so there must have been another way out but their disappearance seemed to Coverly ominous. Finally his name was called and a pretty secretary, her face composed in a censorious scowl, ushered him into a large office that looked like an old-fashioned courtroom. There was an elevated bench behind which sat a colonel and two men in civilian clothes. A recording clerk sat below the bench. On the left was an American flag in a standard. The flag was heavy silk with a gold fringe and would never have left its stand, not even for a fine parade in auspicious weather.

“Coverly Wapshot?” the colonel asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Could I please have your security card?”

“Yes, sir.” Coverly passed over his security card.

“You know a Miss Honora Wapshot of Boag Street, St. Botolphs?”

“It’s Boat Street, sir.”

“You know this lady?”

“Yes, sir, I’ve known her all my life. She’s my cousin.”

“Why didn’t you report to this office the fact of her criminal indictment?”

“Her what?” What could she have done? Arson? Been caught shoplifting at the five-and-dime? Bought a car and run it into a crowd? “I don’t know anything about her criminal indictment,” Coverly said. “She’s been writing me about a holly tree that grows behind her house. It has some kind of rust and she wants it sprayed. That’s all I know about her. Could you tell me what she was charged with?”

“No. I can tell you that your security clearance has been suspended.”

“But, Colonel, I don’t understand any of this. She’s an old lady and I can’t be held responsible for what she does. Is there any appeal, is there any way I can appeal this?”

“You can appeal through Cameron’s office.”

“But I can’t go anywhere, sir, without a security clearance. I can’t even go to the men’s room.”

The clerk filled out a slip that looked like a fishing license and passed it to Coverly. It was, he read, a limited security clearance with a ten-day expiration. He thanked the clerk and went out a side door as another suspect was let in.

Coverly went at once to Cameron’s office, where the receptionist said that the old man was out of town and would be gone at least two weeks. Coverly then asked to see Brunner, the scientist who had lunched with him in Atlantic City, and the girl cleared him through to Brunner’s office. Brunner wore the cashmere pullover of his caste and sat in front of a colored writing board covered with equations and a note saying: “Buy sneakers.” There was a wax rose in a vase on his desk. Coverly told Brunner his problems and Brunner listened to him sympathetically. “You never see any classified material, do you?” he asked. “It’s the kind of thing the old man likes to fight. Last year they fired a janitor in the computation center because it appears that his mother worked briefly as a prostitute during the Second World War.” He excused himself and returned with another member of the team. Cameron was in Washington and was going from there to New Delhi. The two scientists suggested that Coverly go down to Washington and catch the old man there. “He seems to like you,” Brunner said, “and if you spoke with him, he could at least extend your temporary clearance until he returns. He’s up for a Congressional hearing at ten tomorrow morning. It’s in Room 763.” Brunner wrote the number down and passed it to Coverly. “If you get there early perhaps you could speak to him before he goes on. I don’t think there’ll be many spectators. This is the seventeenth time he’s been grilled this year and there has been a certain loss of interest.”

CHAPTER XXII

Whether or not Cameron would speak to Coverly after their last interview was highly questionable; but it appeared to be Coverly’s only chance and he decided to take it, moved mostly by his indignation at the capriciousness of the security officers who could confuse his old cousin’s eccentricities with national security. He flew to Washington that night and went to Room 763 in the morning. His temporary security clearance served and he had no trouble getting in. There were very few spectators. Cameron came in at another door at quarter after ten and went directly to the witness stand. He was carrying what appeared to be a violin case. The chairman began to question him at once and Coverly admired the quality of his composure and the density of his eyebrows.

“Dr. Cameron?”

“Yes, sir.” His voice was much the best in the room; the most commanding, the most virile.

“Are you familiar with the name Bracciani?”

“I have answered this question before. My answer is on record.”

“The records of previous hearings have nothing to do with us today. I have requested the records of earlier hearings but my colleagues have refused them. Are you familiar with the name Bracciani?”

“I see no reason why I should come to Washington repeatedly to answer the same questions,” the doctor said.

“You are familiar with the name Bracciani?”

“Yes.”

“In what connection?”

“Bracciani was my name. It was changed to Cameron by Judge Southerland in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1932.”

“Bracciani was your father’s name?”

“Yes.”

“Your father was an immigrant?”

“All of this is known to you.”

“I have already told you, Dr. Cameron, that my colleagues have withheld the records of earlier hearings.”

“My father was an immigrant.”

“Was there anything in his past that would have encouraged you to disown his name?”

“My father was an excellent man.”

“If there was nothing embarrassing, disloyal or subversive in your father’s past, why did you feel obliged to disown his name?”

“I changed my name,” the doctor said, “for a variety of reasons. It was difficult to spell, it was difficult to pronounce, it was difficult to identify myself efficiently. I also changed my name because there are some parts of this country and some people who still suspect anything foreign. A foreign name is inefficient. I changed my name as in going from one country to another one changes one’s currency.”

A second senator was recognized; a younger man. “Isn’t it true, Dr. Cameron,” he asked, “that you are opposed to any investigation beyond our own solar system and that you have refused money, cooperation and technical assistance to anyone who has challenged your opinions?”

“I am not interested in interstellar travel,” he said quietly, “if that’s what you meant to ask me. The idea is absurd and my opinion is based on fundamental properties such as time, acceleration, power, mass and energy. However, I would like to make it clear that I do not assume our civilization to be the one intelligent civilization in the universe.” That fleeting smile passed over his face, a jewel of forced and insincere patience, and he leaned forward a little in his chair. “I feel that life and intelligence will have developed at about the same speed as on earth wherever the proper surroundings and the needed time have been provided. Present data—and these are extremely limited—suggest that life may have developed on the planets of about six percent of all stars. I feel myself that the spectrum of light reflected from the dark areas of Mars shows characteristics that prove the presence of plant life. As I’ve said, I think the possibilities of interstellar travel absurd; but interstellar communication is something else again.