“Look, Mrs. Neumann.” He was blond and pleasant, as featureless as Marge in a male way. They might have been dolls. “I don’t want to go into all the consequences, but it’s pretty important that you give us some idea of what you’ve found out of that computer and what the traces led back to. Now. Marge and I are personally opposed to violence of any kind.”
“That’s right,” Marge said.
“But we’re part of a larger group and we have to consider the group good.”
“You’re mad, both of you, completely mad,” Mrs. Neumann said suddenly, the horror clutching at her throat. “Get me out of here. Now.”
“No. Not now. Look, Mrs. N.,” Bill said slowly. “You know we’ve tapped your telephone, you know we know where you live. We’ve been keeping an eye on Leo for the past couple of days, too. Naturally, he’s frantic with worry, but there really isn’t anything to worry about. Really. And we would like you to think about what could happen to him. I mean, some others in the group are just not as reasonable about this.”
“Don’t you threaten me, don’t you dare threaten my husband, you—”
“Now take it easy,” Bill said, smiling vaguely. “Nobody threatens anyone, but we really have to have your cooperation, or else we’re going to have to tell the group that you didn’t go along with us. And, as I said, some of them are really pretty tough about this. I mean, I’m for peace, and I’ve always been for peace. And so is Marge. But look at it our way.” He blinked earnestly. “After all, you’re the one who brought this problem on in the first place, right? If you had just let things go for a couple of more days.”
“But there’s nothing I can do,” Mrs. Neumann said, weakening for the first time. She thought of Leo and she yearned for him in that moment; and then she thought of Marge and Bill staring at her through the opening of the tent. They would kill her in any case, she realized with a sort of intense clarity. They would kill her at the end, but maybe there would be time to save Leo. After they killed her.
She thought of her own death for a moment, staring at them from the cot. She had thought she was dying in the back of the sealed cab; when she had first opened her eyes in the blackness of the tent, listening to the vague music, she had thought she was dead.
She smiled then.
“What’s funny?” Marge asked with that pricklish tone of annoyance again.
“You. Both of you. You’re ludicrous. And you’re mad, both of you.”
“Is that what you have to tell us? Are you forgetting your husband?”
“No. I’m not forgetting him, no. But there’s nothing I can do. Every time you made an entry into the computer, Marge, you didn’t make the handwritten entry into the logbook. Especially when you were entering bogus materials from abroad. Quizon, for example. He had an access code number that also had to match a source code, and then it had to agree with the time of entry and the time of transmission logged in the book.”
“No one would have thought to go back through all that,” Marge said.
“I did. It took me a long time but I did. When they go through Tinkertoy, they’re going to single out the bogus items, and then they’re going to do what I did. Go into the logs. And they’re going to get you.”
“You knew it was me.”
“No. I knew it had to be someone in computer analysis. There are twenty-five of us. I would have found you eventually.”
“So they’re going to change the coding…”
“Of course,” Mrs. Neumann said.
“Damn,” Bill said.
“Bill, I really don’t like that language, it’s not the least bit attractive.”
“Sorry, honey. Well, Mrs. Neumann, what should we do?”
“Let me go. Now. Get away as soon as you can.”
“No. I’m afraid we can’t do that.”
“I know,” Marge said, like a bright student. “If I had your access number, Lydia, I could go into Tinkertoy myself and erase the ‘boges’ before the NSA people connect them.”
Mrs. Neumann stared at her. “But maybe you’re too late,” she said.
“No, I don’t think so. You know how long it’s going to take to even get the setup to purge the computer. Everyone’s in on it — we had people from DIA in today for the first time.”
“I won’t—”
“Please, Mrs. Neumann, don’t be that way.”
“I can’t.”
“Please, Lydia, it would be so much easier,” Marge said. “Think about it for a little while. I’ll come back later and I’ll bring you some coffee. With cream. And then while we’re gone, think about Mr. Neumann. I mean, you’ve got to get your priorities straight.”
“Monsters,” Mrs. Neumann said, but the tent flap closed and she heard the zipper and she was in darkness again. She sat waiting in the darkness and thought she heard them move away from her. In a moment, the air-conditioner compressor hummed again.
And a moment after that, the music began again.
Mantovani, she thought, her eyes open, trying to stare beyond the darkness all around her. Monsters.
25
The president of France rubbed his hands slowly back and forth as he sat in the large leather chair next to the fireplace in his private audience room in the palace.
De Gaulle had used the room for his secret briefings during his war on the OAS in France. Pompidou had used the room to plan his strategy against the terrorists and anarchists who had nearly overthrown the Fifth Republic in 1968. Giscard, who had more secrets than his predecessors, felt he had no need for a secret room and had scarcely used it at all.
The staff at the Elysée Palace informally called it the hidden room, though everyone knew the location of it. During the regimes of de Gaulle, it had been soundproofed and fitted with electronic screens to ward off wiretaps; it had also been fitted with several hidden entrances that provided access and egress without anyone else in the palace knowing the identity of the people who came and went. Thus, in a government ridden with gossip, in which routine secrets were made public, the president of the Republic was able here to conduct affairs of state in absolute secrecy.
The room was decorated in the style of Louis XVI; that is, with highly polished woods and elegant chairs and little desks and banquettes that suggested both intimacy and opulence.
The president rubbed his hands because he had developed a skin disorder in recent years that manifested itself in times of stress. It resembled psoriasis, and his hands would become inflamed and itch. Sometimes, if not treated right away, the skin of his hands dried to blisters that broke and bled.
Across the white rug from where he sat, a woman spoke in low, sure tones. Her report had continued, with only a couple of interruptions for questions, for fifteen minutes. She did not speak from notes. The notes and reports would be written later.
It was nearly as bad as he had feared, but he did not show any emotion. His large eyes were calm, his manner characteristic of a politician who had known great loss over the years, and great pains, and who now, in power, considered the vanity of believing that power could achieve all his goals.
François Mitterand had become the first left-wing president in twenty-three years, and the bureaucracy, an establishment of the Right, conspired against him. And so did the shattered remains of the French Communist Party, which he had taken into his government but which was being strangled in the hug of his moderate embrace.
The woman now finished speaking and waited for him to respond. Her hands rested on her lap. She held herself erect, her light eyes changing color in the glowing half-light of the room, sparkling in the reflection of the fireplace. Though it was June, the room was always too cold for Mitterand, and the perpetual fire was one of the luxuries of office the simple man demanded.