“Don’t let us interrupt you,” he called. “It’s Lieutenant March, right?”
I nodded. A couple of weeks had passed since our first meeting, and in that time I’d mostly forgotten about Magnum and the so-called cabana boys. I’d even wondered whether Crewes had made all the cloak-and-dagger stuff up, having fun at the expense of a credulous officer. Now I knew better.
He held a long whippy reed in one hand and an open lockblade knife in the other, and he looked to be carving as he spoke. He held the reed at eye level, appraising the beveled end. Probably wondering if it was thin enough yet to slide under a fingernail.
At the table I noticed César, the man who’d been leaning against Magnum’s Buick. Once again he was smoking a panetella, and once again he gave an ironic salute. Up close, his courtly smile reminded me of young Omar Sharif. There was a dark mole on his cheek. While his fatigues, like all the others, bore no insignias of rank, his manner combined with the deferential way the others hedged around him backed up Crewes’s idea that he was the boss man. I held his gaze a moment before looking away.
Magnum glanced over his shoulder to see what was attracting my interest. Then he turned and gestured with the knife. “I’m sure you have somewhere to be.”
I nodded again, then got going.
I had some speed back then. For a couple of years in high school I’d gone out for track. The 440 was my race, and though I was never good enough to compete seriously, for a while I fancied myself quite a runner. Thanks to that conditioning I had aced my PT requirements, making it clear throughout ROTC and OCS that I could lead from the front.
Unfortunately a good officer needs more than physical courage. He must be someone that other men can look up to and follow. Having grown up a loner, I always had trouble with that part. The Army figured this out long before I did, sorting me to one side for staff and administrative work, tasks that didn’t require too much personal charisma. After my assignment to the battalion, where my duties consisted mainly of office work, I began to worry that I was getting soft. Which is why, every other morning, I’d drive in early to jog around the base before showering and reporting.
Brief as it was, my encounter with Magnum stirred something in me. By the time I reached my office I was half an hour late, still wrapped up in my own head. Crewes appeared at the door looking stern.
“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.