Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

At dawn on Monday they busted into a condo in Brentwood which contained a darkroom rigged for printing microfilm, a bed with sheets still warm under the blankets, and utterly no evidence of a specific and compelling nature. If they’d raided this place on Saturday instead of the place in St. Charles, or on Sunday instead of four homes and two office buildings in neighboring towns, or if they’d raided it even just one hour earlier, they could easily have hit pay dirt. How were the Indians dodging them? How could the conspiracy be closing down with such infernal timing? How could it be closing down, period, when they were dealing with a woman who for eight whole months hadn’t gotten through a single day without recourse to her agents? It was driving Sam crazy. He shouldn’t ever have listened to Herb. They should have sent every man they had into all the properties in the catalogue at the same hour on Saturday. But it was too late now. They had to keep going.

By Tuesday morning their stock of unhit targets had dwindled to three commercial properties, two in the county and one across the river. The printout listed the first one as undeveloped, but when they got there they saw a two-story warehouse behind a fence off a Mopac spur and some rusty sidings. Gray, cracking sheets of plywood had warped away from the nails fastening them to the building’s doors and windows; on the roof, aluminum and brazen, stood three brand spanking new radio antennas. Herb looked at Sam. Sam looked at Herb. This was the communications center they’d been hunting for.

Buzz Wismer arrived at his headquarters late in the morning and found his employees curiously transformed. He said good morning to the pretty lobby receptionist and she smiled weakly. He said good morning to a pair of voluble custodians who traded glances in sudden silence as if a ghost had passed through the room. In the elevator he tried out a few pleasantries on his friend Ed Smetana, and Ed punched the button for the Accounting floor, where he almost never had business. Buzz said good morning to his secretary, and she dove under her desk, groping around near the Dictaphone pedal. He stopped in his private washroom and inspected his face. Same old Buzz. His nose was a little red from the wet wind outside, but then, it usually tended towards the red. He went into his office. A big blue-and-orange Federal Express envelope was lying on his desk. It held a single sheet of paper.

TO: Edmund C. Wismer, Chairman

FROM: Steven Howard Bennett, et al., Stockholders

Buzz skimmed.

Resolved April 2 extraordinary meeting those present included proxies registered mail March 26 54 % with deep regret long history of service recent pattern of decisions move of headquarters questionable judgment unfeasible fiscally unrealistic without consulting violation Chapter 25 Corporation bylaws relinquish duties Friday April 6 plenum proxies April 16 to select new chairman and officers…

Sinking into his chair, Buzz was young again, skydiving and poor, and he felt the abrupt tug of a golden parachute, the crush of straps across his chest. His secretary was bringing him a glass of water.

The trail was so fresh that the rain hadn’t even blurred the tire tracks or washed away the muddy footprints on the loading dock. Once again, the footprints were feminine. Herb photographed them and spoke into his pocket recorder. “Eleven-fifteen a.m., now twenty-theven hourth thince we thaw a fresh thet of male printh, the loading-dock door wide open but apparently it’th been clothed judging from the concrete. We enter with flashlighth…”

His running commentary was getting on Sam’s nerves. More and more Sam questioned whether he’d hired the best St. Louis had to offer.

Whoever had left the footprints had made sure the warehouse was emptied. In the second-floor office, coaxial antenna cables dangled from the ceiling, pointing obliquely at two flats of Orange Crush cans, yellow junk-food crumbs, a pile of Maxell and Memorex reel-to-reel tape cartons and floppy-disk boxes, a set of foldup aluminum tables, and some tubular lawn chairs.

“I don’t underthtand it.”

Sam aimed a gratuitous kick at the sody cans, scattering them across the room. “Well,” he said. “I suspect if the materiel ain’t here it ain’t anyplace. But we got two more properties to try. See if we can’t still catch us a couple of personnel.”

Jammu was at home in her apartment changing out of her smelly interview clothes. She put on a white linen skirt and a white blouse to match her mood, which was bright. She’d even slept a few hours; Devi Madan was out of the country.

Gopal’s man Suresh had located her on Sunday afternoon. Registered as Barbara Probst, she’d been staying at the Ramada Inn on I-44 near Peerless Park, out by Weiss Airport. She wasn’t in her room when Gopal arrived, so he and Suresh waited in the bathroom for her. Eventually she drove up in a rented car. She entered the motel lobby and then hastened back out. Through the bathroom window Gopal fired at her tires with a silenced automatic, but the angle was wrong and the car was moving. When they followed her, the holiday traffic on I-270 prevented them from forcing her off the road. She reversed her direction on a cloverleaf, drove south ten miles, reversed again, and again, ending up at Lambert just in time to pass through the document checks at the international gate and board a British Airways jet before it took off for London. Under orders to follow her wherever she went, Gopal and Suresh flew to Washington, lucked into a Concorde flight, and reached London just thirty-five minutes after her plane had landed. This morning she was still in England. Gopal and Suresh would kill her when they found her and return directly to Bombay.

The operation was closing like a wound miraculously healed. Of the twenty-one men and women who had followed Jammu’s orders in St. Louis, only Singh and Asha remained, and Asha was staying. For the last three days she and her personal maid had been collecting hardware and printed matter from the houses and relay stations and storage facilities. At this moment they were driving south in a borrowed Pevely milk truck to detonate the operation’s more damaging side effects in an abandoned lead mine in the Ozarks. Asha was accustomed to manual labor; she’d been running guns when Jammu got to know her in Bombay.

Jammu straightened her white cuffs and parted the curtains on her bedroom window. Singh was due here with a carton of financial records, the only written vestiges of the operation not yet in her apartment. All the paper and magnetic tape now fit easily into two four-drawer file cabinets. You threw away the preparations for an overtaken future.

A fat man in sunglasses was toiling up the alley with a soggy cardboard box. Jammu went to the door.

Singh entered her front door glaring at her, panting, dripping. He’d put on three jackets and two pairs of pants, tucking them neatly under a set of overlarge clothes, and it looked like he’d stuffed a pillow under his shirts as well. Dried spit had caked in the corners of his mouth: the suffering man.

Jammu took the box from him and set it on the floor. “You’re going back now to close up that apartment?”

“It’s nearly closed,” he said. “I’ve changed a few things.”

“In the apartment?”

“In the plan as well. I’m no longer psychopathic or Iranian. I couldn’t sustain it.”

“ Now you tell me.” Jammu turned in a full circle on her heel. “How long has this been going on?”

“Quite a while. She thinks I’m straight with her now. She feels an allegiance—”

“An affection, an attraction, a tenderness—”

“She won’t tell Probst the real story when she gets out. She’ll say she’s been living in New York with John Nissing. She’s that proud. And yes, there’s affection.”