Brainfire Read online

  “Do you …” He hesitated. He was uneasy now. “Do you want to talk about that night?”

  “Do you know how many goddam times I was asked that same question? ‘We must know, Mrs. Rayner. We must know everything, Mrs. Rayner. Would you please go through it again, Mrs. Rayner?’ Then I stopped believing in what I was saying. What really happened anyway? A man committed suicide.”

  She got up and lit a lamp. In the soft glow of the light she looked sad now. I shouldn’t have come, Rayner thought. I intrude. I bring it all back home. He picked up one of her books and flipped through the pages. He read one sentence absently: “… unlike most people plagued by a poltergeist, Nelya suddenly realized the ‘force’ was coming from her.” He closed the book, wondering why these things spooked him as they did. The force. What force? Exactly what? Visible by X-ray? by brain scan? Could you find it in the course of a postmortem?

  Isobel said, “Keep an open mind, John. Sometimes you’re too much like your brother.”

  Rayner stood up. He wanted to go outside. He reached out and touched Isobel’s hand lightly. Had she seen the incredulity on his face?

  “Want a guided tour of my garden?”

  “I’d love it,” he answered.

  Still holding her hand, he followed her outside to the back of the house. The small walled garden was filled with stakes that had been driven into the ground. Each stake was labeled.

  “I’ll have all kinds of goodies coming up,” she said. She wandered among the stakes as if she were crossing a minefield. “Sweet corn. Runner beans. Beets. And the great secret, John Rayner, is solar power and TLC—tender loving care.”

  Rayner watched her bend to pat the soil. It was a strange, unsettling feeling to find your own brother’s widow attractive; and, in its way, almost unnatural. But there was something in how she moved, in how deeply involved she appeared in her surroundings, that touched him.

  Kneeling, squinting into the sunlight, she was smiling at him. “Come and see these tiny shoots.”

  A dead marriage; living plants. There was an association here that troubled him, a sense of dislocated identity. Who is this Isobel? he wondered. How can she touch me now?

  3.

  “I want you to understand what this is. I want you to understand what these papers are,” the man called Koprow was saying. He was holding several sheets of flimsy paper of different colors toward her—pink, yellow, white.

  She nodded her head: she understood.

  “I want you to understand, Mrs. Blum,” Koprow said. “When I sign these papers, you are free to go to Israel.”

  She watched him. The bald head that so reminded her of an egg, a distorted, misshapen egg.

  “Do you understand, Mrs. Blum? Do you understand how important my signature is?”

  Fools, she thought. A world in which a man can crush a city at the stroke of a pen. Did he really think he mattered? Did he really enjoy the notion that history would enshrine his name? She looked bitterly at him. “I understand,” she said.

  “I want you also to realize that if anything happens to me as a direct consequence of your interference, two things will follow. The first is that you will not be allowed to go to Israel.”

  She waited. Afraid, upset, for she already knew the second threat.

  “The other, Mrs. Blum, is that your family will be killed.” He rose from her bedside, tucking the papers inside his jacket. She watched him cross to the window, hands folded behind his back. Beyond, there was a view of dark-green hills: a cold view. Nobody had troubled to tell her where she was but time after time she had caught the word Pennsylvania; and she thought: America, where else could one go that would take such a long time on a plane? America. A country of fable. An enchanted place. Now she stared at Koprow, wondering at the depths of her own hatred. She wanted to reach out and hurt him, but she was afraid—afraid no longer for herself, for her own future, but because of the children. Little children, she thought. I bring death and destruction, but not to them. Of all people, not to them.

  Koprow turned and smiled at her. In that smile she could already see Israel fading. She could already see her own Palestine vanish, as if it had never existed in the first place. Perhaps that was it; it was all illusion, every aspect of it was illusion—all the way down the line. In that smile she could see all the dying, all the despair.

  He stands there. Smug. Despicable. I could kill him now. She turned on her side, feeling aches in her wasted limbs.

  “We want one more task from you,” he said. “One more. Then you’re free.”

  She twisted her neck, seeing his shape outlined against the window, against the cold black-green hills. “Every task is the last one,” she said. “How can I know that you’ll ever keep your word?”

  “You have to trust me,” Koprow said.

  “Trust?”

  Koprow nodded. “Consider the consequences, Mrs. Blum, if you don’t trust me.”

  Consequences, she thought. His mind was a labyrinth, passages and corridors and locked doors. In this labyrinth there was neither trust nor suspicion because opposites had ceased to exist: words meant only what he needed them to mean. She flinched—there was pain in her arms, legs, pain all across her chest. Wasted, flabby breasts; a heart whose every beat threatened to be the last one of all. I could welcome death, she thought. An old friend, an ancient love that lived in damp familiar chasms—I could welcome it. But the children, she thought. The children. I have to live that long.

  Now she reached for the most recent photographs, the ones Katya had given her in London. There was something about them, a different quality: the faces were sad in the white sunshine, as if the pictures had been taken by force, as if the subjects were unwilling.

  “Remember,” said Koprow, approaching the bed. “One more task. Then I sign your papers. Do you understand me?”

  She reached up, her hands shaking, her fingers trying to grip the lapels of the man’s jacket. “You must promise me,” she said. “Promise me!”

  Koprow gently took her hands in his own. “You have my word.”

  The old woman lay back down, breathing heavily, hard. “Send the woman in. Tell her … tell her I’m in pain. Will you do that?”

  Koprow was smiling as he stepped to the door. “For you, Mrs. Blum, anything. Anything at all.”

  She watched him go out and she lay motionless a long time, her mind empty—her mind empty as a well from which every last particle of water has whirlpooled away.

  4.

  The Lehigh Lodge was a timber construction designed to impersonate a vast log cabin in which, during the fall, amateur hunters might feel that they were roughing it. It was usually filled with men in plaid jackets who carried shotguns and rifles, but now it was occupied entirely by the soccer team of the Soviet Union and a small entourage of curious journalists who perceived themselves as pioneers of a sport that had never quite taken root in American soil. They were, by and large, fatalistic men accustomed to having their copy butchered and condensed by sports editors who needed to make room for the latest in baseball or football.

  In a field behind the lodge they watched the Russian team at practice. The trainer, Charek, occasionally shouted instructions from the sidelines; sometimes a man named Oblinski, seemingly the official interpreter, answered the reporters’ questions in stilted English. When it suited his purpose, he appeared not to understand what was being asked.

  —Why didn’t you win at Wembley?

  —We were robbed by a late penalty goal.

  —Is the American team strong, in your opinion?

  —Extremely so.

  Question and answer. The journalists watched the Soviets practice dead-ball strategies of the kind that had brought them their first goal against the English. The chip across the opposing defense and the accurate running of Kazemayov. But the brilliant Kazemayov wasn’t the only attraction of the morning. The Soviet Ambassador, Leontov, had driven from Washington to watch the players. But Leontov, whether from the inscrutable needs
of protocol or from a basic ignorance of the sport itself, refused to be drawn on any questions. Hustled by his own small entourage, he went inside the lodge—every part of which, with the necessary exception of the bar, was off-limits to the American press. A small man with a goatee, he looked more like an actor playing a diplomat than the real thing. Inside the lodge, he climbed the stairs hurriedly to the first floor and, leaving his entourage in the corridor, entered Koprow’s room. The two men shook hands, and Leontov, unbuttoning his woolen coat, sat down in a wicker chair at the window. For a time, the Ambassador watched the players beneath the window; then he turned to look at Koprow, who was standing with his back to a well-lit coal fire.

  “I would prefer not to talk here,” Leontov said.

  “The room has been vacuumed,” Koprow said.

  “Nevertheless.” Leontov stood up now, fidgeting with the buttons of his coat. Koprow watched him a moment. What did he know? What did this little man, fresh from his world of meaningless parties, glasses of claret, his tiny universe of pomp and circumstance—what did he know?

  “We can walk, if you like.”

  Leontov nodded his head, a sharp little gesture; it was as if he had no time in the world to spare, as if all his experiences were measured in terms of some internal schedule. They left the room together, Leontov indicating to his entourage that they should wait for his return.

  It was chilly outside: a bright Pennsylvania spring morning. Both men walked in the opposite direction to the soccer players and into a small fir wood. Silver bark threw the sunlight back in the fashion of dulled mirrors. Koprow broke open a packet of Life Savers and slid one into his mouth. It tasted rather bland to him.

  When they had gone a little way, Leontov stopped and looked through the skinny trees. “Pretty countryside.”

  “It makes my heart sing,” said Koprow. He spat the candy out: two broken half-moons.

  Leontov looked as if this minuscule act of pollution annoyed him. He gazed at Koprow and said, “I understand that the so-called neutralization process failed in London.”

  Koprow saw a plump bird wing it through the trees. It flew clumsily, with a motion that suggested its first jaunt from the sanctity of nest. “Zubro’s marksman failed, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “Two down. One to go.”

  Leontov appeared surprised. “Are you trying to tell me that this scheme has not been aborted?”

  Koprow, momentarily angry with the diplomat, laughed. “I don’t exactly have to tell you anything, Leontov.”

  “It’s preposterous, Koprow. I want this on record—”

  “Let me adjust my portable tape recorder,” Koprow said, reaching into his coat.

  “I hardly think it’s a matter you can take lightly, my friend—”

  “I hardly think, by the same token, Mr. Ambassador, that the affair should concern you.”

  Leontov sighed, leaning against a tree that had been tilted sideways by the weather. Then, as though he was thinking that he might stain his coat, he stood upright. You little tin soldier, Koprow thought. A diplomat was about as valuable as a fart in the breeze.

  “Koprow, consider this. You have been working on the notion that only three people knew Andreyev’s identity—”

  “Perhaps only two, Leontov. The girl was simply the cashing-in, so to speak, of an insurance policy—”

  “What if there were more? What then?”

  Koprow placed a hand on the small man’s shoulder. “Poor little Leontov. You worry. Look at yourself. All those little lines on your small forehead—”

  The Ambassador stepped away from Koprow’s touch. “Answer my question, Koprow. What if there are more?”

  Koprow shook his head, staring through the trees. From somewhere he could hear the sudden rush of water over stones: a brook, a stream. The same fat bird circled overhead like a flying grapefruit.

  “The game, Leontov, is truly worth the gamble,” he said.

  They walked a few yards farther into the trees. Suddenly they came upon the stream: white froth surging over smooth pebbles, a dark-brown trout basking in the shallows. In silence they watched the trout whip out of the shadows, glimmer dully in the light, then disappear downstream.

  “The young American,” Leontov said, looking at Koprow in a sideways manner. “I understood he was to be neutralized in Munich.”

  “Ah,” Koprow said. “Our American associate reserved a room at the Hotel Ritzi in Munich. Young Rayner was supposed to arrive there to take up the booking—but, for reasons best known to himself, he didn’t make it. In fact, he didn’t go to Germany at all. Pity. We had a man waiting for him there.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Scotland.”

  “Scotland?”

  “And now he’s back in the United States,” Koprow said.

  “Here? Back here? And you’re going ahead with—You must be out of your mind, Koprow. Crazy.”

  “I don’t think so,” Koprow said. “I believe in insurance, as much insurance as I can gather around me. There are more ways than one of neutralizing a person, Mr. Ambassador. For one thing, our American associate has given me certain assurances.”

  “Such as?”

  “You needn’t concern yourself with trivia.” Koprow reached inside his pocket and took out a piece of paper, which he handed to Leontov. “For another thing, you will be good enough to send one of your people to that address. My second line of insurance, you might say.”

  “One of my people?”

  “Don’t tell me, Mr. Ambassador, that you don’t grasp my meaning, please. You have human resources.”

  “You’re asking me to send a man—”

  “You know what I’m asking. Let’s not labor the point.”

  Leontov looked upset. “Is this where Rayner is to be found?”

  “It’s a logical deduction,” Koprow said. “If your man fails, if the Americans fail too, I still wouldn’t worry myself sleepless over Rayner. Imagine, by some slight miracle, he finds out what’s going on—what do you think? Do you think people are going to believe him? That they’ll be falling all over themselves to believe his wild tale?” Koprow laughed. “No, the young American isn’t even a nuisance.” Koprow picked up a pebble and threw it into the stream. It was meant to skim the surface, but it sank at once. He looked at the Ambassador. “Don’t concern yourself, Leontov. Accept my word. Your main responsibility was that of issuing an invitation and of making certain it was accepted. Have you done that?”

  Leontov took off his gloves and scratched his beard. He was shaking his head from side to side, as if to rid himself of an ambassadorial migraine. “The invitation has been issued.”

  “And?”

  “So far as I can tell, it will be accepted.”

  So far as you can tell, Koprow thought. Which isn’t very far at all.

  “I want assurances, Ambassador,” Koprow said. “You can save your twisted diplomatic bullshit for state functions.”

  Leontov studied his leather gloves for a moment; they might have been the open pages of a book written in an inscrutable language. “We do what we can, Koprow—”

  “No,” Koprow said. “We do better than that. Don’t we?”

  5.

  On his second night at Isobel’s it rained—a sweeping rain that fell in wind-driven patterns from Chesapeake Bay all across Tidewater. They had eaten a supper of salad, watching the flow of rain from the window of the kitchen. Now, with a single lamp barely illuminating the kitchen, they were drinking Californian sauterne. Rayner could hear the tide, not as some intermittent rumble crossing the sand but as a constant symphonic thing. Amongst the leftover food there lay a scattered deck of ESP cards; they had been testing each other, lost in the circles and squares and stars of the pack.

  Rayner’s best score had been eight out of twenty-five, after a half-dozen runs through the deck; Isobel had managed ten on her first run, but nothing more than five afterward. Rayner poured more wine, rose, went to the kitchen window, and watched the ra
in run down the glass. He understood he was vaguely drunk, slightly distanced from himself—and yet not absolutely so: some small area of his brain was clear and hard and brilliant. In the distance, by what little moonlight lay behind cloud, he could see the surf rise in broken white walls.

  “But you’ve no idea why she was killed?” Isobel asked.

  Rayner, turning, shrugged. “Not really. Somebody … What the fuck. A jealous lover? A lunatic? I don’t know.”

  Isobel was silent a moment. She picked up the deck and shuffled it slowly, quietly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry.”

  Rayner walked back to the table and sat down, looking at his sister-in-law, thinking of Dubbs, wanting to say something about the death of Dubbs. Security: even this blind wall remained impenetrable in front of him. Talking of Sally was a way of talking about Dubbs too, as if in his mind they had become one corpse.

  “From what you’ve told me, she sounds …” Isobel, smiling, something a little sad in the expression, paused. “She sounds like the kind of person who would have led you a dance, John.”

  “Maybe,” Rayner said. He touched the rim of his wineglass. “Maybe what it comes down to is my pride was hurt. Maybe I thought I was of some importance in her life. Then to find out otherwise … It doesn’t make much sense to talk about it now.”

  “I guess,” Isobel said. She began laying the cards out in random rows—stars and boxes and squiggles and circles and pluses. As if they were a form of tarot deck, she looked at the design for a time. “There’s a kind of woman who is known commonly as a cunt. I think your friend Sally and I had that in common, John.”

  Rayner started to say something, to protest in some feeble way, but she interrupted him. “What kind of life did I give Richard? Did he ever really tell you? I guess he didn’t. I guess he was too discreet, too polite, too well-bred. When we were married, I used to think of my body as a system of rewards. When he was a good boy, he got a shot at it. When he was out of favor—wham, down came the old portcullis. I had more headaches of convenience than there are Bayer aspirin in the world.”