Brainfire Read online

  The old woman continued to watch him. What was that expression on her face? Loathing? Of course, he had seen it before in one of its various forms—overt, disguised, he knew it intimately. But there was an intensity to the old woman that frightened him suddenly.

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “You haven’t forgotten tomorrow?”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” she said.

  “Then think of Mallory,” he said sharply. “That’s all you have to do now. Think of Mallory. It will be quick. Easy. A moment of pain for him and it will be finished. All over.”

  She watched him a moment longer, then closed her eyes.

  3.

  Mallory saw the American team run out into the rain. They wore a rather colorful uniform of red shirt, blue shorts, and white socks. They lined up in the center of the field, where they were joined by the Russians, dressed entirely in white with small hammer-and-sickle insignia woven on their shirts. Both teams shook hands, then dispersed; and there was a general period of what Mallory assumed was practice, several balls being kicked back and forth around the field.

  “Warming up,” MacMillan explained. “Then the referee will blow his whistle and call the team captains together for the toss.”

  “The toss?” Mallory asked.

  “The coin, Mr. President. The one who chooses correctly can then elect which goal his team will defend in the first half of play.”

  “There’s some advantage in that?”

  MacMillan laughed quietly. “At times, Mr. President. A team may choose to play the first half with the wind behind them, for example, then hope that the wind drops before the second half.”

  Mallory watched the field for a time. “A team should have either a resident meteorologist then or else a witch doctor.”

  “Certain African teams,” said MacMillan, with great seriousness, “make use of witch doctors.”

  What was the response to that one? Mallory clasped his hands together in his lap and watched the black-clad referee move to the center of the field, where he blew a whistle. After a few confusing moments during which the extra practice balls were removed from the field, the teams lined up—haphazardly, to Mallory’s eyes.

  “The greatest danger to our side is if Kazemayov, their number nine, is allowed any freedom,” said MacMillan. “He’ll have to be watched carefully by our defense.”

  “Mmm,” Mallory said, nodding his head. He watched the Russian defense pass the ball from man to man in a somewhat systematic manner. There were several lunges made by American players, who appeared overanxious in the early stages. But the Soviets moved the ball over the center line, where it was picked up by Kazemayov, who began to twist and turn, leaving a couple of stranded American defenders behind him.

  “That’s the one,” said MacMillan, leaning forward with great interest. “Look at the balance. Look at the control.”

  Mallory watched the Russian dash toward the American goal seemingly at will. “Why doesn’t somebody tackle him?” he asked. It bothered him to see a look of triumph on Leontov’s face.

  MacMillan shrugged. “A tackle would be appropriate, sir. But you’ll notice that our defense is falling back to defend the goal. See that?”

  Kazemayov had the ball directly in front of the American goal, where, rather arrogantly, he paused as if he were waiting for somebody to tackle him. Between him and the U.S. goalkeeper there were perhaps four or five defenders. Kazemayov waited, feigned to move in one direction, then shimmied in quite the opposite, leaving the American defense off balance. Mallory heard MacMillan groan as the goalkeeper came rushing out, and Kazemayov, delicately, accurately, and with all the grace of confidence, flicked the ball over the keeper’s head and into the net. Scrambling U.S. defenders, trying to prevent the goal, tangled together clumsily between the goalposts.

  “Well, well,” MacMillan said, and looked at his watch. “I didn’t expect a goal in the first minute.”

  Mallory stared glumly at the American team, some of whose members appeared to be involved in an argument, a series of recriminations with one another.

  “Defense’s fault,” MacMillan said. “They shouldn’t have allowed that fellow so much space because he’s a tricky devil.”

  The ball was kicked toward the center of the field for play to be restarted. The scoreboard flashed the goal, the scorer, and the time of the goal: “1 minute.”

  If it goes on like this, Mallory thought, there will be some kind of massacre.

  4.

  At first she let her mind wander freely as if it were something liberated from a cage; let it roam through a series of pictures of her own making, imagining a sea crashing down on a shore, dreaming of snow, dreaming of peace; but then she began to pick up on the man Koprow had called Mallory, pick up on him with a dreadful ease because he was at the center of some mass of energy and attention: it was the blind instinct of the homing bird, the flight of a random projectile toward the center of gravity. She picked up on it in a sequence of feelings at first, emotions that began in a shadowy way, then became more and more precise until they might have been her own. Boredom, discomfort, a lack of concentration. She might have been eavesdropping outside the open door of a room, hearing everything that went on within—every whisper, every move, from the loudest sound down to the faintest, from the sound of water being poured into a glass to the stirring of a vague breeze through muslin. Fragments, at first indiscernible, became large and clear and unmistakable. But even as she moved toward it she felt a strange hard pain at the center of her chest and, opening her eyes, saw Koprow watching her, Katya standing beyond him—and she had the dislocating experience of being trapped between two worlds, neither of which was remotely real to her.

  She shut her eyes again. She heard Koprow say something, a word she didn’t catch, a feeling she did—impatience, the edge of anger, a sense of suspense. Mallory again—but it was difficult because there was a stubborn quality surrounding him. And then it seemed to her that she was standing alongside him and could make out the contours of his appearance, that she could have touched him if she had wanted to, could have put out her hand and touched him. The young face that was beginning, in middle age, to sag around the chin. The dark hair that was already faintly streaked with gray. She held back; she checked herself, beset again by a sense of disquieting familiarity. That face.

  Exactly where tell me exactly I must know

  Why was there this interference now? She thought she had silenced the child, she thought she had stopped all that a while ago but now it was coming in on her again, weak, weakening. She didn’t want to hurt the child. How could she do that? And then she wondered if it made any difference at all—if, once you had begun to inflict pain and cause death, there was any difference.

  Exactly where

  She opened her eyes again and saw, as if some mist had developed around them, Koprow and the woman, heard them whisper together furtively, the man’s head inclined toward the woman. What are they saying? What are they talking about? Mallory. Now there were voices, conversations, fragments of speech in that place where Mallory was situated. I don’t think it’s likely at this stage. What did that mean? What did that mean? Why wouldn’t they substitute at two goals down? The soccer players, of course. Of course, what else? It’s too soon to bring a new man on, Mr. President.

  Mr. President, she thought.

  Mr. President.

  The President of the United States.

  She had seen that face in a newspaper once, she had seen it somehow, she couldn’t remember where or how, where or how in all the months of her isolation with Andreyev, in all the months of her tests, all the time she had been out of touch with the world, she couldn’t remember—a glance, something on a TV screen, a newspaper picture, she couldn’t recall—Mallory. The President of the United States.

  An old woman. A peasant. You know nothing of world affairs. They don’t touch you. Why should they touch you?

  Koprow was watching her.

  Tell me

&nb
sp; Go away didn’t I stop you before don’t make me hurt you

  I must know where

  That knowledge will kill you

  Koprow turned to look at Katya and they whispered again. There was no reality now. There was nothing vaguely real. Only those photographs in Koprow’s coat. And even they were sad and pathetic.

  They whisper, what are they whispering about?

  Koprow stepped toward her, placing his hands on her shoulders. “What’s happening? You must tell me what’s happening.”

  There was a violence of pain once more in her chest. She lifted a hand to the place and tried to rub it away but it was inside, it was beneath the surface of skin, beneath bone, like a fire around her heart. She closed her eyes. It was a matter of fighting for strength, for life.

  “Is it finished?” Koprow asked. “Have you completed it?”

  Beneath the stadium

  She closed her eyes. Tomorrow, she thought. If you can do this today, then there is tomorrow, the tomorrow you have been promised. They are bringing in a substitute, I see. She focused her mind, as if the mind were a series of loose strands that might be gathered into a single hard ball, something that might be concentrated, steeled, an object no longer diffuse, no longer loose—and then she had to reach, she had to reach for Mallory through a space that wasn’t a space, across a time which no clock could measure. Mallory. Pain. Terrible pain.

  You are beneath the stadium

  I warn you keep away

  5.

  He stepped out of the camper in the parking lot at the stadium, looking up into the cab where Isobel held the girl. He felt helpless all at once. This vast stadium—where was he supposed to start looking? But time was against his own helplessness; you needed to act, you needed to act fast, you needed to go inside the stadium and look even if that was hopeless. He stared across the rows of cars, across the rain, at the edifice of the stadium, at the U.S. flag that fluttered in a drearily damp way.

  Then he gazed back into the cab again. Isobel watched him, and he recognized the wariness in her expression, that guarded look. It was almost like a sense of loss, as if, having come to like him, having come to a point where she thought a relationship inevitable, she had rejected the idea and was left now with only the ruins of possibilities. The kid, turning her head a little, looked at him. She’s trying, goddam, he thought. She’s trying to tell me. The way she’s trying: beyond speech, beyond the communication of eyes, she’s trying her damnedest. He felt the rain soak through the fibers of his clothing, the dampness spreading to his skin.

  The girl faced the stadium now, moving her head with obvious effort.

  “Where, Fiona?” Rayner asked. “Can you tell me where?”

  Nothing. Nothing.

  “It’s a huge fucking place,” he said. “Where do I find this woman? Where, for Christ’s sake?”

  Demented in the rain, he thought. It was fitting.

  She looked downward, her eyes moving slowly; it was as if the merest motion caused her pain. Downward, Rayner thought. What was that supposed to mean? Down, down where?

  “Under the stadium? Is that it?”

  The girl didn’t move. That emptiness, that burnt-out look: it was all his own goddam fault. Under the stadium. Where? The locker rooms. He had nowhere else to look, did he?

  “I’m taking her back to the hospital,” Isobel said.

  Rayner looked toward the stadium, shrugged.

  “I have to,” she said. “If you think your future lies in that place—well, you go ahead and find it. But this kid needs some kind of treatment.”

  Rayner nodded. He watched Isobel’s face. For a moment, for a quick second, he saw her move her face down in his direction as if she intended to kiss him—but she didn’t.

  “Later,” Rayner said.

  “Later.” And she drew the door of the camper shut.

  6.

  After the second Russian goal, a simple affair, simply engineered, the Americans had sent out a substitute. Mallory, waiting for some kind of reaction from MacMillan, who had become taciturn in his obvious disappointment, felt a slight headache somewhere at the back of his skull which he attributed to the weather, the dampness, the general inconvenience of having to sit through a game in which the home team was being systematically demolished. His interest had been roused a little but more, he suspected, for patriotic reasons than through any fondness for the game itself. He wished he had some aspirin.

  He watched an American attack on the Soviet goal come to nothing while he was aware, from the corner of his eye, of Leontov smirking. He raised his hand to his head as though to massage the slight ache away.

  MacMillan leaned toward him and asked quietly, “Are you feeling well, Mr. President?”

  Mallory looked at the other man. Did it show? “I find myself rooting for the losing team,” he said, trying to sound unconcerned. “Apart from that—”

  He stopped. The pain was suddenly blinding, like some acute migraine, and he saw across his path of vision a series of jagged colored lines. There was a peripheral dimness too, as if lights had been switched off in far corners. I must be coming down with something, he thought. Flu? Some virus? He was conscious of sweating, a cold sweat.

  “Can I fetch you some aspirin or something?” MacMillan asked.

  “If it’s no trouble,” Mallory answered. Goddam—there was a tightness in his throat, a constriction of some kind. He tried to relax, to control himself, to overcome the vague panic he was beginning to experience. He saw MacMillan move along the row of seats, politely excusing himself each time he disturbed somebody. Whatever this is, Mallory thought, aspirin isn’t going to do the trick. The pain in his head, growing more intense, had spread across the top of his scalp—a tingling sensation, each small vibration burning like a tiny white-hot needle. President faints, he thought. He could see it in newspapers. They would question his health and by implication his fitness for the job. Jesus Christ, it was burning him now.

  He noticed MacMillan returning with a plastic tumbler of water. MacMillan sat down and opened his palm. Three aspirin and water, the panacea. Mallory swallowed the tablets with a single gulp of water.

  “I hope it helps,” MacMillan said.

  “Thanks,” Mallory said. “I’ll be okay, I’m sure.”

  Leontov turned to look at the President. “Is something wrong? Is there anything I can do?”

  For a moment Mallory felt relief—but then it came back again, a fire, a rage of flame, rushing through his head. You feared the worst: what the hell could it be? Even his eyes were sore now.

  “Is something wrong?” Leontov asked again.

  “My team is losing,” Mallory said.

  “I noticed,” said the Ambassador.

  7.

  Inside the stadium, Rayner noticed how tight the security was—agents conversing through their walkie-talkies, undercover guys trying to look like casual spectators, cops. He could hear the roar of the crowd drift through the rain, a massive echo. Now his only opportunity to get past the security people and into the locker-room area was to show his Embassy pass and hope—hope—that his name hadn’t been marked. U.S. Embassy, London, Special Investigative Section. Sure, sure, he thought, that’s going to take me a long way. Like hell.

  He walked quickly along corridors, passing under white lights, glimpsing through openings the crowd, the rows of seats that rose upward. You could lose your way here, he thought. It would be easy to step inside the maze and never get out again. Which way? Which way now? He continued to rush, clutching in his hand the ticket he had bought at the entrance, wishing it were the gun he had been obliged to jettison along with the car. You’re on your own, he thought. There’s nobody else now—and maybe that was fitting; maybe when you stepped into madness it was a trip you could take only by yourself.

  He saw ahead of him a flight of stairs going down. The problem in negotiating it, he thought, lies in the face of the guy in the navy-blue raincoat standing there by the sign that says: NO ADMITTANCE E
XCEPT FOR AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. Flash your nice little plastic card, Rayner. Your official documentation. What was the guy’s affiliation anyhow? Langley? The FBI? A D.C. cop? Some private security type? Rayner hesitated. A plastic card in a grubby hand—there was an incongruity here that displeased him. Still, there was no way down those stairs without getting past the raincoat and you did what you had to—though not exactly without question.

  He took his card from his wallet and went up to the man. The face, cemented into a kind of middle-aged sourness, as if all of life’s ambitions had distilled themselves into the task of guarding—for God’s sake—a flight of stairs, was neither friendly nor open. Rayner showed his pass and asked, “Is the Russian locker room down there?”

  The man had his hands in the pockets of his raincoat. He gazed at the plastic card. The gaze was one of suspicion, of grim determination that nobody, not even if it were the Second Coming, would get down the stairs.

  Rayner waited. “I have to check, see.”

  Silence.

  “We discovered a visa irregularity—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Therefore I have to talk with the Russians—”

  “Therefore nothing,” the guy said. “I have instructions.”

  “Me too,” Rayner said. “Looks like a conflict of instructions to me.”

  “It’s your conflict, buddy. It’s not mine.”

  “Well, yeah,” Rayner said. He stared along the corridor. There was a man with a walkie-talkie about a hundred yards away. “Who’s your superior?”

  The man stared at Rayner. “To get down these stairs you’d need written permission from God.”

  “That tough, huh?”

  “That tough.”

  “And you don’t know the name of your superior?” Rayner asked.

  “Sure I do,” the guy said.

  “You don’t want to tell me?”

  The man smiled. “It wouldn’t make a goddam bit of difference, friend. And your little card doesn’t altogether impress me. London, huh? You’re way off beam.”

  It was going to resolve itself, Rayner saw, in a sudden rush; even violence—a violence he could hardly afford, a confrontation he didn’t relish. You couldn’t reason with this guy, for sure. He was big, clumsy somehow, as if the parts of his body didn’t match one another. Rayner turned away, looking once more along the corridor. One swing, he thought, one mighty godawful swing. He felt tense, knotted, wondering if he had the capacity for the surprise attack. Do it, he thought. Do it.