J. Bertrand - Nothing to Hide

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I snapped, echoing Magnum’s words to me.

The sergeant stiffened at the unaccustomed rebuke and disappeared.

The next day I took the same route, slowing my pace through the park trail. As I approached the netted picnic table, Magnum appeared. He sat by himself on the tabletop, his soft loafers resting on the seat. He seemed lost in the pages of the fat paperback clutched in his hands, but he saw me as I passed and gestured me over.

“I thought you might drop by,” he said.

I paused, jogging in place.

“No, really. Have a seat. Let’s exchange a few words, Lieutenant.”

He closed the book and thumped it down on the table. Dante’s Inferno .

After what Maj. Shattuck had told me, I should have bolted. But I wouldn’t have come in the first place if I’d intended to do that. Besides, running away would be an unworthy response for an officer. I posted myself a few feet from the table, arms crossed, keeping a wary distance between us, trying to look hostile rather than defensive.

“Suit yourself.” He fixed me with a disarming smile, a smile that lit up his face and said he was my friend and only wanted what was best. “What I’m wondering,” he said, easing the words out, “is whether your commanding officer put you up to this. Don’t try to lie to me, either. I can always tell when I’m being lied to.”

“Nobody ordered me to run,” I said.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not true.”

“What I mean is-”

“Never mind.” The smile broadened. “So if you’re not spying on me, what are you doing here?” He patted the table next to him, inviting me to mount up. I stood my ground. “All right, then. What exactly did you see yesterday? I’m assuming you don’t speak the language?”

“I’m from Texas.”

“So you don’t.”

He chuckled at his joke, then slid off the table. At the edge of the perimeter, he passed a hand through the draped netting and plucked a cattail from the bushes opposite. Then he dug a knife out of his pocket and cut the ends off, making toward me.

“If you’re forcing me to guess, I will. What would I assume if I were you, stumbling onto a scene like that? I know-” He sliced one end of the stalk into a crude spear. “Maybe you figured I was teaching these boys to make punji stakes. Or how to make shoots to stick under people’s fingernails.” He tossed the reed away. “Or maybe I’m just one of those people who likes to whittle things as he talks.”

“I know why you’re here,” I said.

“Do you?” He slipped the knife away. “Or do you just think you do?”

“Everybody on base knows.”

I could hear my voice wavering. Nothing good could come of this conversation and I knew better than to continue. But I was weak. And frankly I was also intrigued. Whatever Crewes thought about the spooks, I’d grown up in the last phases of the Cold War. In college I’d dutifully attended Russian language classes, which in those days were populated almost entirely by ROTC students learning not to appreciate the culture or the literature, but how to interrogate prisoners. I’d grown up watching James Bond, too, and now here I was, in the presence of a real-life secret agent. Anxious as I was, I was excited, too. And Magnum had no trouble picking up on this. He gave me another one of those smiles.

“Let me tell you something,” he said. “Everybody on base may think they know what’s going on, but they have no idea.”

“What are you doing, then?”

“Put it this way: I’m a talent scout. These guys you see me with, they may not seem like much today. They aren’t, and most of them never will be. Some of them will go nowhere, some will end up blindfolded against the wall. Some will end up jumping out of an airplane with no parachute.” He laughed. “Don’t worry, though, not all of them will sink. A couple will swim, and one of them? He might even fly.”

“And when he does,” I said, “you’ll already be his friend.”

“You’re smarter than you look. But no, I won’t be his friend. We will. The United States of America. And right here is where it all will have started. There are names I could mention-powerful men today-who are friends to this country as a result of relationships forged just like this. I’m not looking for quick results here. I take the long view.”

I stood there not knowing whether to be appalled or electrified, whether to judge Magnum’s long view as ruthlessness or just common sense. Despite the Buick and the boxy suits, there was a glamor to the man. While the rest of us were playing soldier, he was fighting the secret war-the real war-and didn’t that lift him above our standards of judgment? Whatever Shattuck might think, I knew why I’d come, and it wasn’t to judge. I was here to be noticed. I was here to make my availability known. Here am I, send me.

“It’s César, isn’t it?” I asked, hoping to impress him. “The one who’s gonna fly?”

“You’re sharp, you know that? I spotted it right off. Like I said, I’m a talent scout. I don’t need much time to get the measure of a man. Now, tell me something. .” He leaned closer. “Can you keep a secret, Lieutenant March?”

I stepped toward him, the hair on the back of my neck standing up.

“Yes,” I said. “I can.”

“Good.” He patted my shoulder for the second time. “Prove it.”

He got up and walked away.

Saturday in the Heights. Johnny Cash on the stereo and steaks on the grill, the neighbor’s automatic sprinklers wick-wick-wicking on the far side of the wooden fence. I’m stationed, spatula in hand, comfortable as a lizard in the sun, trying to tell myself this is the life and I could get used to it. Charlotte, who’s flowering now that she’s practicing law full-time, has lectured me twice already about a man being more than his job description.

I’m trying to take it in stride.

Behind me, Carter Robb is trapped in a conversation with Cavallo’s husband, Dean, who gulps down Shiner like water and has none of the veteran’s stereotypical reticence when it comes to boasting about wartime exploits. Robb slips in the occasional yeah and uh-huh. Most of Dean’s stories seem to involve some combination of exploding goats and friendly fire, and I suspect he plays up the details, testing the young reverend.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, though, being over there,” he says, “it’s that people are more similar than they are different.”

“Uh-huh,” Robb says. He must know, judging by what’s gone before, that there’s more to Dean’s heartwarming pronouncement than meets the eye.

“Take this, for example. The Arabs, they think all the bad stuff that happens to them is the result of some international Zionist conspiracy. The family goat walks into a minefield, and they blame the Jews. Crazy, huh?”

“Yeah,” Robb says.

“Then I come back here, and Terry says we’re going to church. And I meet this old guy there, and when he finds out where I’ve been, he starts in on how the president won’t produce his birth certificate and steel doesn’t melt just because some jet wrecks into it. See what I mean? Different players, same idea. Somebody’s running things behind the curtains. Nothing ever just happens.” Dean chuckles to himself. “Although this guy, he really seemed big on Israel.”