Libra - Don Delillo [37]
“The way we fake our own files, who knows for sure? There’s no clear sign we put him into Russia. That’s all I can tell you except for this. He spent some of his service time at a closed base in Japan. Atsugi. He was a radarman. Had access to data concerning U-2 flights. A nice house-present to give the Soviets when he went over. He married a Russian girl. Decided he wanted to come home. The young marrieds settled in Dallas, met George, spent evenings with the local émigrés, reminiscing. One night about two and a half weeks ago, according to George, our young man fired a shot into the night, aimed at the infamous head of Major General Edwin A. Walker, U.S. Army, resigned.”
A silence. Win listened to the dense rush of air in the earpiece, a city alive, horns blowing, cars streaming across the Potomac bridges.
“Could be a nice find, Larry.”
“Don’t make it sound like a three-room apartment. We could put him together. A far-left type. Work him in. Tie him to Cuban intelligence. Possibly even place him at the scene. If he thinks he’s operating on the left, pro-Castro, pro-Soviet, whatever his special interest, we’ll help him select a fantasy. There’s never a dearth of reasons to shoot at the President.”
“Tell Mackey. Give T-Jay the details. T-Jay will bring him in,”
He always seemed to be going to bed. It was always bedtime. The day came and went and it was time to go to bed again.
He went around turning off lights, checking the front and back doors. He’d seen a U-2 once on a salt flat in Nevada. It looked like a child’s idea of advanced reconnaissance. Freakish wingspan, basic body that looked unfinished, wingtips that folded over. But it had a jet engine under a glider frame and could climb at an angle steeper than forty-five degrees, soar to eighty-five thousand feet, its camera sweeping a path over a hundred miles wide. Dark lady of espionage, the Soviets called it. He checked to see that the oven was off. The last thing downstairs was the oven.
Mary Frances was in bed, waiting. A soft light glowed by the armchair. He felt the air on his body as he undressed. The night was full of new things, earth musk and wet bark and night jasmine, a scented freshness, a turning of the earth after rain. He pressed down slowly. The wind-burnt face and whitish brows. The perfumed tincture of her breasts. He would love her into death, into the secret sleep. Her head rolled on the pillow, eyes shut tight. He hid his face in the curve of her neck. The night was full of water moving, faint wet sounds, rainwater dripping through trees, water falling from eaves, running in downspouts, wet sounds of tires on asphalt, tires on a wet street. He raised up slightly, locked his hands in hers, fingers extended. Each pushed hard against the other. A charged fragrance. Hollow thunder in the distance. Water silent in grassy pools, running down leaf stems, collecting in the webbed centers of leaves, droplets, trembling drams, water on the leaves of the blackjack oak set near the house, a light spatter on the screen when the wind shifts. She was blond and white and pink, rough-textured, broader than he was and stronger-minded now, the stronger by far, and all she wanted for him was something safe and plain. He smelled light sweat, felt spittle reaching to his chin. Their hands pushed against each other, fingers tensed and shaking. He felt a rustling response in the sheets, her ass wagging, moisture in the white down at the sides of her mouth. He said her name and watched her eyes come open to that deep wondering of hers, that trust she placed in the ordinary mysteries. She was in the world as he could never be. She meant the world. He freed a hand and wiped away the spit. She said his name quickly, many times, like some cheerleader’s sideline riff, and that was that was that.
Side by side, listening to the radio.
“I wonder,” she said. “What do other people say to each other?”
“When?”
“Now. I want to know what people say. Maybe there are things we haven’t thought of.” Laughing at herself. “Things we ought to be saying.”
“While having