“You could call, no? Bluff them into giving you information?”
“Here, no sweat. In any big city in America, no sweat. You can social engineer the shit out of these boys. But out there: they hear a brother in a place where there ain’t no brothers, I think you got problems. I don’t want to risk blowing your caper, man. What I’m telling you, it’s the best way, it really is. You’ll see; you be chilling in no time.”
Solaratov nodded grimly.
“You can do it, man. It ain’t a problem.”
“No problem,” Solaratov said.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
n the graduate degree ceremony at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 132 men and women were awarded their Ph.D’s in assorted academic and scientific specialties. But only one received the Ball Prize as the Institute Scholar, for only one was the ranking member of the class.
He was a tall young man, prematurely bald, of surprising gravity and focus. He took his degree — “Certain Theories of Solar Generation As Applied to Celestial Navigation” was his dissertation — in quantum physics from the dean and was asked to speak some words, and when he assumed the podium, his remarks were short.
“I want to thank you,” he said, “for the chance you have given me. I have been a scholarship student since my undergraduate years and even before that. I came from a poor family; my mother worked hard, but there was never enough. But institutions such as this one — and Yale University and Harvard University and Madison High School — were kind to me and doors were opened. Without your generosity I could not be here and I am honored by that, and by your faith in me. I only wish my parents could be here to share this moment. They were good people, both of them. Thank you very much.”
He stepped down to polite applause and went back to his place in line as the ceremony — interminable to an uninvested outsider — went on hour after hour. It was a hot day and cloudless in Boston. The Charles River was smooth as blackened, ancient ivory; a thin veil of clouds filtered the sun, but did nothing to help the heat. The Orioles were in town, to play the Red Sox in a four-game series; the president had just announced a new attempt to curb welfare growth; the international news was grave — the Russian election had the pundits worried, with everybody’s favorite bad guy leading by a seemingly unassailable margin — and the stock market was up four points. None of this meant anything to the tall man in the khaki suit who sat in the last row of the graduation ceremony.
He waited impassively as the minutes churned by until at last the crowd broke up and families rejoined, old friends embraced, the whole litany of human joy was re-enacted. He walked through the milling people toward the podium and at last he spotted his quarry, the young man who was the Ball Prize winner.
He watched him; the young man accepted the attentions he had earned somewhat passively and seemed not to respond to them with a great deal of enthusiasm. He accepted the embraces of colleagues and professors and administrators, but after a while — surprisingly quickly, as a matter of fact — he was alone. He took off his cap and hung his gown over his-arm to reveal a nondescript, almost shabby suit, and began to leave. He had, in fact, the look of a loner, the boy who’s ever so rarely at the center but prefers to blur through the margins of any situation, is uncomfortable with eye contact or attempts at intimacy, and will lose himself readily enough in the arcane, be it quantum physics, Dungeons & Dragons or sniper warfare. It was a quality of melancholy. Bob intercepted him.
“Say there,” he said, “just wanted to tell you that was a damned nice little talk you gave there.”
The boy was not so mature that he didn’t appreciate a compliment, so an unguarded smile crossed his face.
“Thanks,” he said.
“What’s next for you?”
“Oh, the prize thing is an automatic year at Oxford as a research fellow. I leave for England tomorrow. Very exciting. They have a good department, lots of provocative people. I’m looking forward to it. Say — excuse me, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Swagger,” Bob said.
“Oh, well, it’s nice to talk to you, Mr. Swagger. I’ve, uh, got to be going now. Thanks again, I—”
“Actually, it’s not just coincidence, me running into you. It took some digging to find you.”
The young man’s eyes narrowed with hostility.
“I don’t give interviews if this is some press thing. I have nothing to say.”
“Well, see, the funny thing is, I ain’t here about you. I’m here about your dad.”
The boy nodded, swallowed involuntarily.
“My father’s been dead since 1971.”
“I know that,” said Bob.
“What is this? Are you a cop or anything?”
“Not at all.”
“A writer? Listen, I’m sorry, the last two times I gave interviews to writers, they didn’t even use the stuff, so why should I waste my—”
“No, I ain’t a writer. Fact is, I pretty much hate writers. They always get it wrong. I never encountered a profession that got more wrong than being a writer. Anyhow, I’m just a former Marine. And your dad’s death is mixed up in some business that just won’t go away.”
“More on the great Trig Carter, eh? The great Trig Carter, hero of the left, who sacrificed his life to stop the war in Vietnam? Everybody remembers him. There’ll probably be a movie one of these days. This fucking country, how can they worship a prick like him? He was a killer. He blew my father to little pieces, and crushed him under a hundred tons of rubble. And nobody gives a fuck. They think Trig is the big hero, the victim, the martyr, because he came from a long line of Protestant swine and sold out to anybody that would have him.”
But then his bitterness vanished.
“Look, this isn’t doing any good. I never knew my father;
I was less than a year old when he was killed. What difference does it make?”
“Well,” said Swagger, “maybe it still makes a little. See, I was struck by the same thing as I looked into this. There ain’t nothing about your father nowhere. Excuse my grammar, I never had a fancy education.”
“Overrated, believe me.”
“I do believe you on that one. Anyhow, he’s the mystery man in this affair. Nobody wants to know, nobody’s interested.”
“Why is this of interest to you? Who cares?”
“I care. Maybe your father wasn’t the poor guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, like everybody says. Maybe he was more important than people think. That’s a possibility I’m looking at. And maybe the folks who pulled the strings are still around. And maybe I’m interested in looking into this and maybe I’m the only man who cares about your dad—”
“My mother was a saint, by the way. She taught, tutored, worked like hell to give me the chances I had. She died my freshman year at Harvard.”
“I’m very sorry. You were a lucky young man, though, who had parents who cared and sacrificed.”
“Yes, I was. So you think — you have some conspiracy theory about my father? Do you have a radio show or something?”
“No, sir. I’m not in this for the money. I’m just a Marine trying to get some old business straightened out. Believe it or not, it connects with the death of still another member of that generation, a boy who died in Vietnam. That was another great loss for his family and our country.”
“Who are you?”
“I was with that boy when he died. May seventh, 1972. He bled out in my arms. This is something I been working on a long time.”
“Urn,” said the boy.
“Look, I know you’re busy. You must be. But I was hoping you’d have a cup of coffee with me. I’d like to talk about your dad. I want to know about him.”