Peter Corris - The January Zone

‘I hope he’s quick.’

She looked up, puzzled, as I switched the razor off. ‘What?’

‘I hope the attache makes a brief case-get it?’

‘Shit,’ she said.

‘You’re the first to hear it. I was hoping to take Washington by storm with my wit.’

January walked in patting his pockets and frowning. ‘You ready, Cliff? Right, let’s go.’

We collected Bolton and rode down in the lift in silence. Trudi and Bolton carried folders and notebooks; January and I were unencumbered, ready to catch bullets in our teeth. We reached the lobby and I let Trudi and Bolton out of the lift first.

‘Have you heard from Mrs Weiner?’ I asked Peter quietly.

‘No. And you’re not doing your job. You should get out of lifts first.’

‘Elevators,’ I said. ‘I’ll do better next time.’

‘Just don’t clown. All this is serious.’

His face was set in a worried frown and the aggressive, bouncy Peter of the press lounge had disappeared. He wasn’t going to impress the bigwigs like this.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said. ‘Bad news…?’

‘Tell you in the car. Trudi and what’s-his-name can get a cab.’

‘Bolton.’

‘Bolton.’

The Minister wasn’t happy. He snapped at Trudi as we got into the waiting car and could barely contain his impatience as we waited for a taxi to collect her and Bolton. When we were moving he leaned back and sighed. ‘It’s having too many things to worry about that does it.’

‘You have heard from Karen.’

‘No, not a fucking word. That’s one thing. And I got a phone call.’

‘Yes?’

‘Man’s voice, educated, told me to ring a certain number in five minutes. I did that from your room-didn’t want to worry Trude.’

‘And?’

‘Different voice-rougher, older. It was a public phone. I could hear the noise in the background.’

‘What did he say, Peter?’

January shivered although the air conditioning in the car made for a comfortable temperature. ‘He got to me. I’ve seen a lot of things, in Vietnam, you know? Not much human mess you didn’t see there at one time or another, but he got to me.’

‘How?’

‘He talked about how embalming fluid works. How it fills the cells of the body and the way it…preserves.’

There was a clinical sound to the words and I was beginning to feel some of the chill myself. I looked out at the long rows of government buildings-the kind that would survive the neutron bomb when all the people in them would die.

January ran his hand exploratively over his smoothly shaven face as if he was feeling a death mask. ‘He said we’d be dead within 48 hours.’

‘We?’

‘His exact words were, “You and the hard-on with the broken nose and the gun.” ‘

I’d never seen so many three-piece suits in all my life. Almost every man around the government building we entered was wearing one. I had on a leather jacket over an open-necked shirt. The jacket was missing a button but in one respect I was right in style-like quite a few of the other men, I had a bulge under my left armpit where my gun was hanging. I comforted myself with the thought that my bulge looked more natural, blended in with my casual style. I’ll swear some of them had two bulges.

Trudi looked suspiciously at January and me as we waited at a desk which looked like a jumbo jet’s control panel. Lights flashed as buttons were pressed.

‘What’s up?’ she said.

I glanced around the steely eyes and blank faces. I would’ve told her but Bolton was within earshot. ‘Trouble,’ I said. ‘I’m glad I had that 30 minute sleep. Now I’m ready for anything.’

‘Ready for what?’ she hissed.

‘Go up to the fifth stage, please,’ the desk attendant said. He was pale as if he never went out in the sun. The way his fingers flashed over the panel suggested he never left the desk. He handed each of us a different coloured plastic tag. ‘You’ll have to check your weapon if you’re going into the conference room, sir.’

‘He isn’t,’ Trudi said. We marched across to the elevators. I flattened myself against the wall like a man on a window ledge 10 storeys up, reached out slowly and pressed the call button.

‘I told you not to clown, Hardy,’ January snapped.

Trudi laughed. She opened her handbag, pulled out two envelopes, and gave them to Bolton and me. ‘Greenbacks,’ she said.

I bowed. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

We went up to the fifth stage along with a selection of the non-security people. These wore trench coats or carried them and they were mostly pale, as if they worked inside all day, seven days a week. Maybe they did. Discreetly lit, heavily carpeted, the fifth stage featured a lot of polished wood veneer. Trudi checked her plastic tag and pointed to the far door which had a red light burning over it.

‘Be here in an hour, Cliff,’ January said.

‘Yessir.’

He strode, as well as a five foot seven and a half man can stride, towards the door with Trudi and Bolton following. She shot me a sympathetic look over her shoulder and I got a flash of what it had been like standing by the window with her. I wondered if we were going to make any progress from there.

An hour wasn’t long enough to do any business with Billy Spinoza. I went out of the building, told the driver he had an hour to wait and went for a walk. It was late afternoon and the clouds and rain had cleared completely. It would have been warm in the bright sunshine except for a breeze that seemed to be there as a reminder that winter would be along as usual.

I was hoping to find a bar to spend a greenback in but there was nothing of the kind around. It was all government buildings and carparks. A large shopping mall suddenly appeared at the end of a concrete path but it specialised in fast food, photocopying, instant printing and dry cleaning. Looked like this was an area where people came to work, and anything else they had to do got done on the run. Not literally on the run; I was almost the only person I saw who walked more than 50 yards. The cars moved along at a steady pace and pulled in and out of the parking bays, and people made short, stabbing rushes to where they were going. Not very aerobic.

From long habit I ran my eyes over the cars parked outside the building where January was having his meeting. Nothing unusual-a red Buick Skylark, several big Japanese jobs, a white Volvo with a red stripe, taxis and limos. Nothing familiar in grey; no freak trucks; no obvious mobile bombs. Our driver was deep in the sports section of a newspaper when I went into the building. He wasn’t worried, why should I be?

I was five minutes early on the fifth stage but January and party were already out and waiting for me. January looked accusingly at me but he didn’t say anything as we went back to the desk and handed in our tags. We all took the one car this time, me in the front. Trudi gave the driver his instructions and nothing more was said. I arranged my face in a broad smile and turned around.

‘How’d it go?’

‘He’s a cretin,’ Peter said.

‘I got a message before we left,’ Trudi said. ‘The dinner’s cancelled. We’ve got two hours between this meeting and the later one.’

‘Thank Christ,’ January said. ‘Trude, see if you can find out a decent place to eat tonight. Martin, you can…’

‘Bolton,’ Bolton said.

‘Yes. You can go back and talk to…’

‘Martin,’ I said.

‘Yes. At the hotel. Get something together for the speech tomorrow, okay?’

‘Sure. After the naval bloke?’

‘Mm. What d’we know about him?’

Trudi flicked some papers. ‘I think he was born on a nuclear warship. Probably got married on one, too.’