Norman Rush - Mortals

The queue stalled.

“Wait, I need to tell my doctor something. I think I see him in the house. I’ll be back.”

That was fine.

The line had stalled because the frikadellen had run out.

He thought, Liberation is what she wants … I have it … What is it?

Wemberg, it appeared, was missing. The man the present event had been created for was gone. He had evaded his handlers, which was surprising because he had seemed so inert. That must have been an act. This was looking to everyone like an escape. People were reminding one another that the Wembergs had more friends among the Batswana than anyone.

The substrate of confusion under today’s enterprise was starting to show. There was awkwardness everywhere. The ambassador had managed to pack together a little delegation of local clergy, including the bishop Morel had offended, with the idea that they would offer a group condolence to the bereaved. Now Wemberg was nowhere. The ambassador was striving to keep the group of clergy entertained while somebody located Wemberg.

Ray didn’t mind scenes of great confusion, things falling apart, just so long as he bore no responsibility.

In a minute the ambassador would have to release the group he had drawn together. He was deflecting his embarrassment into blasts of staring affability directed almost randomly. His height made him so conspicuous.

Ray had loaded his plate with tomato salad, nothing else.

Iris beckoned to him across the lawn. She was part of a constellation consisting of herself, Morel, and Kerekang that was drifting, each star remaining at a fixed distance from the others, across the lawn, in the direction of a horseshoe pitch in the lee of the main house and receiving some shade from it. This was the group he wanted, excellent! Iris was carrying two plates of tomato salad, one of them probably intended for him. He raised his own plate to show her that he was already eating an abundance of damn tomatoes.

Signs of disorganization continued to multiply. It was deadly bright and hot, and people had packed themselves into the seats under the canopy to eat. One man was standing and eating at the podium. A presentation of flowers, gladioli, had just arrived late and were being set up. A low hiss emanated from the public-address system speakers. Staff people who should have been in evidence were not. Obviously many of them had been hurled into the search for Dwight Wemberg.

Following Iris, Morel, and Kerekang toward the shade were the gleaner children, in a body, moving carefully and attending to the full plates they were carrying. Ray watched them settle in the horseshoe pitch, at Kerekang’s feet. Morel and Kerekang, now lounging against the wall of the main residence, were in mid-conversation. He was going to go over there. Iris was kneeling among the children. The children shifted, moving even nearer to Kerekang. It was vaguely like a scene from the Gospels.

Ray was set up to tape. His wife was beautiful but he wished she were standing. She could be careless about people interested in looking down her front. She had one top with sagging, too generous armholes that he wished she would eliminate from her wardrobe. She was careless.

Going by the gestures in play, Kerekang was engaged in a verbal attack on Morel. This was not Morel’s day. Ray couldn’t imagine what the issue might be. He had to hear this. He tried to call up anything he knew of Tennyson’s beyond what everyone knew from Locksley Hall . Nothing was coming.

Halfway there, he was invisibly deflected. Boyle crossed in front of him and gave a double cough that meant Ray should follow him, mark where he was headed, and then find a discreet way to get there and meet with him. Boyle had studiously not looked at him as he was crossing his path, which was usual. Anyone who had intelligence business with Boyle was to avoid public contact with him on pain of being considered something between an absolute idiot and a walking threat to the continued existence of the Central Intelligence Agency as an institution. Ray wondered if anyone had figured out that a good way to winkle out who was doing Boyle’s work would be to make a list of the people who were always feverishly scuttling out of Boyle’s neighborhood at gatherings like this one.

Ray was furious. He should be with the constellation. Boyle was using a cane today so maybe there was hope somewhere. I curse you, he thought. If Boyle was descending toward immobility there was hope, unless because he was so invaluable he would be kept on even if all he could do was sit in a chair and concoct actions. The agency loved Boyle.

Normally he would feel pity for anyone moving along with such evident difficulty as Boyle. He wished Boyle would fall. That way this mission he had been summoned to the same way a dog is summoned by his master’s whistle would abort, presumably, and he could go where he should be. Boyle was heading for the Portosans.

He had to hurry. He signaled vaguely to Iris, not sure she was getting what he was trying to convey. He handed his plate of tomatoes to the wife of the embassy’s communication officer, who was there making herself useful but who seemed nonplussed at his act.

Boyle led him past the Portosans and around to the back of the residence garage. There was a door in the rear wall and Boyle would have a key. He had keys to everything. He gave Boyle time to let himself in and light up his Santos Dumont. He would be ready for Ray when he could address him from the center of a cloud of smoke. This was going to have to do with Wemberg.

Ray entered the garage. Boyle, in his flowing white linen suit perfect for the temperature but wrong for the memorial service, was there, glimmering and smoking.

It was about Wemberg. It was urgent, supposedly. Boyle handed him a notecard with five license plate numbers scrawled on it. He had nobody else to send on this errand, which was to go three blocks away to a parking area and ascertain which cars with the license plates indicated were not there. Ray could tell that Boyle saw the Wemberg situation as not much above the level of a nuisance, but that since he had been brought into it he was certainly going to clear up the mystery before it got worse.

There was no time to talk because people would be leaving. It had been established that Wemberg was not back at his flat or at any of the other likely locations. Somebody, some group sympathetic to Wemberg’s complaints against the government and the embassy, had given him sanctuary, was Boyle’s guess. The idea was to move fast. If this was an ad hoc thing, the faster they moved the sooner they would find Wemberg and get him on a plane. The ambassador wanted Wemberg on a plane tomorrow, or at least no later than the next day.

I have no interest in this, Ray thought: Let me alone before I miss everything. He had to get back to Iris and Morel. Mine enemy gleams, he thought. He was sounding rather high-romantic to himself and wondered what that was about.

Just as Ray was about to go, Boyle stopped him. He wanted to be certain Ray could read the scrawled license plate numbers, so he took out his penlight and held the beam on the card while Ray read the numbers aloud for him. Ray had been able to make out the letters and numbers perfectly, using available light. It was all a waste of precious time and it was typical of Boyle. Boyle was insane.

Securing the license plate information had taken less time than Ray had anticipated, but locating Boyle once he was back with the information had become nightmarish because stupidly they hadn’t fixed on a rendezvous point in advance. So he had had to find Boyle, who was busy machinating someplace, without showing to anyone the slightest interest in where the man might be. He had found him after a tedious period of wandering through the dissolving event. Finally a crisscross pass had been arranged by the usual winks and nods. When it was done he was tired of life.