In the room he prepared a bath. The sound of the running water was soothing. Daylight seeped in through the window-frames. He turned off the water and went and sat down on the bed. He must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes the light was much brighter and when he went to the bath the water was cold and the bubbles had gone, leaving only a film of murky perspiration on the surface of the water. He opened the windows and let in air, and the murmuring voices quieted down. He lit a cigarette and ran a fresh bath.
Outside the window, towers were reaching for the sky like Babylonian minarets. The bed had been made military-fashion, you could bounce a coin off it if that was your idea of amusement. It wasn’t Joe’s. The bed looked undisturbed. It always did, even though he must have fallen asleep on it. Sleep, for Joe, was merely an absence.
A khaki-brown blanket was folded neatly and precisely over the bed with its edges tucked into the underside of the mattress. Joe looked out of the window again. He had the feeling that outside the window there should have been hover-cars, men in trilby hats and jet packs, spider-webs of passageways spreading out of the distant tops of the towers. There should have been women in silver suits taking in a show at the tri-vids before indulging in a spot of lunch, the kind that came in three-course pills, great big subservient robots trailing behind them. Instead there was a brown man in overalls collecting rubbish with a long stick outside an adult cinema, and the cars were halted, bumper-to-bumper, beside a traffic light that seemed to be stuck permanently on red. There was a siren in the distance. There was the sound of car horns, a door slamming, someone cursing loudly in American English. Joe shut the window and put out the cigarette and stripped, taking off tie and moustache and Victor “Ricky” Laszlo.
The bath water was warm and soapy. He lay with his head resting on the chipped white coating of the bath. His toes poked out of the water like a jagged reef exposed at low tide. With his ears under the line of the water it was very quiet. He thought – I could lie like this forever. He closed his eyes. No thought, no sound, no sight, no taste, no smell, no touch. For a moment there was no one there, just the empty bath, the water cooling at a rate of zero point one five degrees a minute.
Then flavour came back: ashy taste and airplane food and the phantom-taste of coffee, and Joe blinked and rose from the water, the water sliding off his skin like a benediction.
in the pages of a book
——
There were two people, a man and a woman, seated behind the registration desk downstairs. The same man was still in reception, tired eyes looking far away. The Osama Bin Laden cut-out stared at Joe as he walked past. It could have been looking at the same nothingness the man at reception did. Joe approached the registration desk.
‘Here for the convention? Welcome, welcome.’ The man had a beard that covered his face like a mile-a-minute vine in a thick and straggly jungle. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, smiled genially, wore a name badge that said, Hi! My name is Gill. The woman wore a flowered dress and drop earrings that shook when she moved her head. Her name, according to her badge, was Vivian. ‘I would like –’ Joe cleared his throat, which felt raw and disused, ‘yes, I would like to register?’
The woman smiled and pushed a sheet of paper towards him. ‘Just fill this in, dear.’ She had a thin transatlantic accent, a hint of County England diluted with Mid-Western Américain. ‘Very glad to have you.’
‘Am I the first one?’ Joe said.
Gill looked shocked. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘There should be a good turnout.’
‘People are still arriving, you see,’ Vivian said. ‘Most people register in advance –’
‘The Mike Longshott Appreciation Society,’ Gill said, pronouncing the capitals, ‘has over thirty members.’
‘We just love the Vigilante books, don’t we, Gill,’ Vivian said. It wasn’t really a question. Gill nodded. Joe half-expected paratroopers to fall from the quivering brambles of his beard. ‘Love them,’ Gill said.
Something made Joe say, ‘Why do you think that is?’
Vivian smiled. ‘That’s a very good question,’ she said. ‘Which, I think, is covered in the first panel tomorrow morning –’
‘Eight thirty in the conference room,’ Gill said, looking down at what must have been a schedule. ‘But, if you ask me –’Vivian said, as if Gill had never spoken, and smiled and shook her head. ‘It’s escapism.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Gill said, and Vivian said, with a wave of her hand that may have been aimed at Gill, may have been aimed elsewhere, ‘Gill takes it all very seriously. He’s an amateur historian –’
‘It’s just, don’t you think –’ Gill said, then stopped, then smiled and shrugged – Joe decided the two had to be married – ‘the question of what if. Right? What if the Cairo Conference of 1921 went ahead as planned, with Churchill and T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell dividing up the Middle East for the British? What if they chose a Hashemite king to rule Iraq, and would that have led to a revolution in the nineteen fifties? Or, what if the French war in Indochina somehow led to American involvement in Vietnam? Or if the British held on to their colonies in Africa after the Second World War? You see –’ he was in full steam now, his eyes shining like the headlamps of a speeding engine – ‘the Vigilante series is full of this sort of thing. A series of simple decisions made in hotel rooms and offices that led to a completely different world. And also –’
‘And also they’re just good escapist fun,’ Vivian said firmly, and Gill subsided beside her, giving an apologetic smile. ‘To read about these horrible things and know they never happened, and when you’re finished you can put down the book and take a deep breath and get on with your life. To know it’s fiction –’
‘Pulp fiction,’ Gill said, and the two of them smiled at each other, ‘and that’s where all these terrible things should stay –’
‘In the pages of a book.’
‘And aren’t we lucky that they are? That’d be sixty-five dollars.’
Joe handed over the completed form, fished cash out of his pocket. Vivian said, ‘And here’s your name tag.’ Joe pinned it to his chest. Hi! I’m Joe.
‘Will Mike Longshott be here?’ he said. Vivian sighed and shook her head. ‘He is so awfully reclusive,’ she said, lowering her voice as if revealing a great secret. ‘We tried to write to him, didn’t we, Gill –’
‘We did.’
‘But he never answers.’
‘Never answers.’
‘I see,’ Joe said. Behind him, he noticed to his surprise, a small queue had formed. ‘Well, thank you again –’
‘Thank you,’ they both said. Their eyes were already on the next registrant. Joe nodded, once, and went in search of coffee.
what ifs
——
Operation Northwoods did not, officially, exist. The proposal was submitted by L.L. Lemnitzer, then chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, to his colleague the Secretary of Defence.
The subject: Justification for US military intervention in Cuba. The date: 13 March, 1962. The objective: provide a brief but precise description of pretexts for military involvement on the island.
The Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A set out the plan in more detail.
***
A series of well coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.
a. Incidents to establish a credible attack.
1) Start rumours (many). Use clandestine radio.
2) Land friendly Cubans in uniform “over-the-fence” to stage attack on base.
3) Capture Cuban (friendly) saboteurs inside the base.
4) Start riots near the base main gate (friendly Cubans)
5) Blow up ammunition inside the base; start fires.