Painkiller

5

Traveling light, only a single bag strapped over her shoulder, Julie Laramie came through the sliding glass doors of the United baggage claim at O’Hare trying not to appear as though she were looking for somebody. She wondered how she would look to him; whether she’d look the same, or older, or possibly better. This morning she’d pretended she wasn’t carefully picking out the jeans, the thin V-neck cashmere sweater, the leather jacket to wear over the sweater, the Doc Martens-she liked the boots because they matched the leather jacket and made her legs look thinner than they were. Laramie decided he would think she looked better. Why wouldn’t he? She did.

Coming out onto the sidewalk, it occurred to her that what she was doing was ridiculous. She could have called anybody-pick any historian out of the phone book, or maybe just walk across the street to the nearest Beltway think tank, in order to get her questions answered. But as she’d told herself before dialing up Eddie Rothgeb, she wasn’t permitted to show classified documents to such people. Of course she wasn’t permitted to show them to Eddie Rothgeb either, but to Laramie, Eddie would always qualify as the exception, since she wouldn’t even have her job if it hadn’t been for him. Still, coming here involved other perils, and perhaps she should have considered them.

The maroon BMW jerked to a stop on the other side of the island. He had told her about the car when she called, a maroon 525i-said he’d gone all out. Laramie had laughed over the phone and said something like “pretty sporty,” but she knew it wasn’t a move toward sporty at all. It was a move to a four-door sedan, in as conservative a color as he could find. She hadn’t talked to him in maybe a year, and wasn’t supposed to care, but it still made her mad that he’d bought it.

Rothgeb got out of the car and stood across the hood from her, and Laramie thought that he, at least, looked exactly the same. It wasn’t what she expected-or maybe she’d expected it but hadn’t prepared herself for it. Why would he look any older or any worse? Did three years change any man? Round, wire-rim glasses, beard trimmed short, blue Oxford button-down, red crew neck sweater over the shirt. Worn jeans, ratty Converse high-tops. The ageless professor slumming on a Saturday, exuding wisdom beyond his years. His eyes were the same too-she could see the blue in them twenty yards off. He waited beside the fender until she stepped over the curb and stopped a few feet in front of him.

“Laramie,” he said.

Just like the first time, when she’d come into his gray cubicle during office hours and he’d known her name on sight. He came around to open the door for her, something she remembered he always remembered to do.

“Climb in,” he said, and she tossed her bag into the backseat and watched him come around. When he got in, he fastened his seat belt, started the car, and looked over at her. Laramie was thinking that she hated the way he buckled his seat belt when he said, “Remember a place called Sandbags?”

“Sure,” she said.

“I figured we’d start off with a little food.”

He worked the car out from behind a shuttle bus, using the left-hand blinker as he went. He always signaled when he changed lanes.

“Why not,” Laramie said.

Northwestern University Associate Professor Edwin Rothgeb kept the same little gray room he’d claimed as an office a dozen years ago, and maintained the same office hours he’d kept for a decade running-Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 8 to 10:30 A.M. Something Rothgeb liked to do, though, when it came to more substantive off-line discussions, was to set a meeting on a Saturday, early, when there wasn’t a student or faculty member in sight. For these sessions he held court in one of the big old classrooms in Scott Hall, where nobody would bother him.

Everything had been fine as they caught up on the drive over, Laramie asking Rothgeb about this year’s freshman class and telling him about the rigors of her Agency training program at Camp Peary. They’d kept the conversation going for the walk across the quad; Rothgeb unlocked the faculty entrance and let them into the big lecture hall, and they sat at the table in front of the blackboard and spread out the sandwiches.

Then Laramie asked him how things were going with Heather.

Rothgeb smiled, said that things were fine, took a bite of his Genoa salami sandwich, and didn’t say another word for the rest of the meal. Laramie ate her turkey sub and sipped on a Diet Snapple iced tea, trying in vain to think of something to say. At length, Rothgeb took his last bite, wiped his mouth with one of the brown paper napkins, and smiled the same way he had smiled when she’d asked him about Heather.

“I’m full,” he said, and adjusted his glasses. “Let’s have a look.”

Laramie reached into her bag and came out with two overstuffed manila file folders. When she handed them over, Rothgeb rolled up his wax paper wrapper, cleared everything but his root beer off to one side of the table, and, wordlessly, began reading.

Laramie stood.

“Better let you concentrate,” she said, and slipped out the door.

Remembering it was down by the other stairwell, Laramie found the bathroom. It smelled of ammonia, as though the janitor had scrubbed it the night before. When she emerged from the stall, she thought about the heavy reading Eddie had in store and decided she may as well head upstairs-have a look around.

When she got to the third floor she saw what she knew she’d see: the same bulletin board, the doors, closed this morning, the classrooms closed off behind them. She wandered down the hallway lit only by the natural morning light, the floor both shiny and dull, and came to a door. She stopped in front of it and stood there like a child. After a while she reached out, ran her hand across the strip of wood with his name on it. She felt the letters.

Ed Rothgeb.

Once, she’d gone in there, ostensibly to review some assigned reading, and hadn’t come out for a long while. She’d been in there for a long while many times before, mentor-pupil conversations stretching from minutes to hours, but not so long as during the time that came to mind. Laramie couldn’t remember now what it was that had turned the conversations from academic to personal, but she did remember the feeling those meetings gave her. Thinking the whole time that it probably wasn’t a good idea telling a professor the kind of things she was telling him, but since he always followed with another question, she would keep talking. And she watched his eyes watching her, those piercing blue eyes, the smartest eyes she’d ever seen, cautious behind the wire-rim eyeglasses, but piercing.

At some point he started telling her stories of his own, none of which she heard, all of it merging into one big stream of words, Laramie thinking then that if she could just keep him talking she could hear his voice some more and keep watching his mouth as it spoke. Then that Saturday meeting happened, a morning meeting that became an afternoon meeting. She remembered the way he leaned across the desk to touch her cheeks, to feel the heat in them, and Laramie closed her eyes and imagined his voice and his eyes and his mind wrapping entirely around her, and then she heard a stapler and a pair of books tumble to the floor and she felt his gentle lips on hers, and she opened her eyes and saw them, those piercing blue eyes, looking right back into hers, and the man she had thought about, four feet away but untouchable, touched her, and so she touched him. It took a while to build, Rothgeb being respectful, but when it happened that afternoon it happened on his desk, Laramie supposing because they had both thought of it happening that way.

Eddie Rothgeb was everything Laramie thought she had ever wanted in a man, and she told him so. He had helped her find her calling, helped her out of her shell, given her a sense of comfort and confidence she hadn’t found at home. To Laramie he was everything except courageous, the sensuous Eddie Rothgeb already locked inside his four-door-sedan marriage, Laramie too young and stupid to think about it that way with the temptation of the man before her in his office, feeling like he belonged to her.

Laramie let her fingers drop from his nameplate. She reached down, knowing what would happen but still unable to resist trying. She turned the doorknob.

It was locked.

She thought, Of course it is.

Laramie went back downstairs.

You’ve got something here,” he said, “or at least it’s likely you do. And you’ve conducted an astute analysis. But you didn’t come here to ask me if I think you’ve got something, or whether I think you’re good at what you do.”

Laramie watched him from one of the wooden chairs a couple rows back, the only student attending his lecture. She felt more comfortable now that they were talking about her documents instead of Heather Rothgeb.

“No,” she said. “I didn’t.”

“You came to ask whether you should tell them you’ve got something here.”

“Yes.”

Rothgeb unclasped his hands, removed his eyeglasses, set the glasses on the table, leaned back in the chair, rubbed his face with both hands, and finished the act exactly the way she knew he would-by stroking his neat little beard with his right hand, sliding his thumb along one jawline and his index finger along the other. He retrieved the glasses from the table, placed them back on his face, and reclasped his hands.

“Actually,” he said, “I don’t think you came to ask that question at all.”

Laramie didn’t say anything.

“I know you, Laramie, so I’m aware that you’ve already made your decision. But let’s run through it anyway.

“You’ve shown me satellite photographs of a significant military operation, which appears to be either an ordinary war game, or, as seems more likely from its size, genuine preparations for an imminent invasion. These activities were unpublicized, and successfully executed either during total cloud cover or on a schedule designed to avoid what are supposed to be classified spy satellite schedules-at least they were successfully executed in secret until you decided to look a little closer. Image selections from alternate source satellites yielded a more complete view of the operation. In short, from all appearances, it’s a reasonable bet that an invasion is about to take place, possibly within months.”

Laramie listened, a student hearing her paper read before the class.

“As an analyst who’s done her homework on the region to which she’s assigned, you’ve added some educated suppositions. According to you, the ideological leanings of eight of the eleven members of China’s Standing Committee of the State Council-including the premier-make it likely, almost beyond a reasonable doubt, that the council as a whole would not, in today’s environment, plan or approve such an invasion. You postulate that the fundamentalist vice premier overseeing China’s military, General Deng Jiang, possibly in alliance with the intelligence chair, is planning either to win over the council and gain his comrades’ approval, or to conduct the invasion, as I believe you put it, ‘with or without the council’s authorization.’ Due to the supporting evidence of a regional military draft, you conclude that General Deng, at least, is confident the invasion will actually take place, and we should take measures under the assumption that it will.”

Laramie nodded one short nod.

“The question,” Rothgeb said, “is whether you should tell your deputy director, or whoever it is you report to these days, what he wants to hear, or whether you should tell him what you believe he needs to be told.”

Laramie shrugged. “Correct as usual, your majesty.”

“Well, obviously,” he said, “you should tell him what he wants to hear.”

“Come on.”

“Now don’t get all hot under the collar.”

“Did you or did you not just look at those files? The pictures, my notes-”

“I saw the photographs, I read your notes, and your analysis is excellent. Your report does not, however, conform to Agency protocol and is based almost entirely on speculation.”

“Speculation?”

“This could be something,” Rothgeb said, “or it could not be something. It probably is. But unless you’ve been looking at these satellite shots from under a rock, you know as well as I do the political climate in the nation’s capital in which you are-for the moment at least-gainfully employed.”

“Of course I’m aware-”

“Since the administration is in the process of publicly sanitizing our country’s relationship with the leaders of a nation you’ve now exposed as proactively hostile to our foreign policy on the issue of Taiwan, I shouldn’t need to tell you, Laramie, that you’re sitting on something that might just burn your ass.” Rothgeb drew out the last phrase, enjoying one of his brief forays into off-color language.

Laramie found that virtually everything Eddie Rothgeb said or did annoyed her.

“This is information the administration should have,” she said, “in order to determine appropriate foreign policy. Including which relationships the administration should be sanitizing.”

Rothgeb chuckled.

“You came out to see me today,” he said, “because you know what’s going to happen if you submit a version of the report that includes your speculative conclusions. You do it, and you know full well they’ll say you’ve submitted an inflammatory document displaying little more than bad political judgment. They’ll instruct you to revise your report.”

Laramie could feel it coming, the punch line of the professor’s lecture.

“However,” he said, “if you tell them what they want to hear, you’ll continue to remain a trusted aide to whoever it is that receives your report. With a little guidance and luck, such political savvy will lead you to a long and fruitful career at CIA.” He scratched a temple. “It’s a significant issue these days if you include editorial commentary in an official memorandum. You could still make your point without the editorial-say what you see and let them figure out what it means. Which they will.”

After a moment of nothing but the sickly buzz of the classroom’s fluorescent lighting, Laramie said, “That’s your advice?”

“I’d say it’s my definition of politics,” he said, “more so than my advice.”

Laramie felt a sensation of emptiness. It was not unfamiliar.

“You want to tell me,” Rothgeb said, “what it is you’re not telling me?”

Laramie would have smiled had she not been trying to remember whether Rothgeb had always irked her to this degree. She shrugged instead, and looked away.

“When did you submit it?” Rothgeb asked.

“Yesterday,” she said. “I submitted the report yesterday.”

Chuckling again, Rothgeb took the sandwich wrappers and the brown paper bags and put them into a wastepaper basket under the table. “In your bullheaded way,” he said, “you’ve done exactly what they hired you to do. Your boss, and his boss, and his boss will now know about the issue you’ve unearthed. After lambasting you, my guess is your superiors will either seek a second opinion on your intel, or, more likely, sit on it until the intel becomes more relevant to their own career advancement.”

“They can’t sit on this.”

“Oh, but they can, and will.”

“How?”

“That,” he said, “is how they’ve come to hold positions of influence in our nation’s capital. Or near to it, at any rate.”

“Isn’t your outlook a bit bleak?”

Rothgeb sighed. “You aren’t thinking practically. If you feel your discovery warrants action and you don’t get any from your superiors, you’ll simply need to get their career advancement lined up with your agenda. Or,” he said, “as typically works better in Washington, the converse.”

Laramie leaned forward in her seat. “You buried the lead. You’re recommending that I get them fired if they don’t act?”

“Correct.”

“That’s ambitious.” She shrugged. “Obvious point here, professor, but last time I checked, I work for them.”

“Laramie, you don’t need to be an intelligence analyst to understand to whom your bosses report. In fact, I believe we routinely cover that topic in the standard freshman political science course.”

In those classes, Laramie would always stay right with him, maybe keep a step ahead of his lecture outline. It took concentration, but she figured she ought to be able to handle him even better today.

“You’re saying they work for the president,” she said. “CIA being a part of the executive branch-”

“Nope,” he said. “Follow the money.”

“Oh. Congress. The Select Committee on Intelligence, for instance.”

“Correct.”

He stayed rooted in his seat at the table. Laramie knew Eddie was playing his fishing game; if you were too dense to tell him what he was about to teach you, he wanted to make you ask for the punch line. Out of practice and out of the mood, she declined the challenge, taking the bait like a freshman.

“I guess I’m still not following you,” she said.

“As you know, in addition to authorizing the salaries of your superiors, the congressional committees that hold intelligence oversight responsibilities also hold regular hearings in which your superiors report to them on various issues of significance.”

“Of course.”

“And believe it or not, there may well be a representative on such a committee who would share your opinion of the classified SATINT you’re currently parading around college campuses.”

He stood, reached down, and pushed Laramie’s manila folders across the table.

“You can spare me the next question,” he said. “The answer is, yes, I can probably get you a personal e-mail address or two belonging to members of such committees.”

Laramie remained in her seat for a minute, thinking through what he was recommending. It was not a low-risk scenario.

She stood, came over to the table, and returned the folders to her bag. They walked out of the room together; when they came into the hall, Laramie turned and faced him. A few long seconds passed, Laramie looking up into those piercing eyes, Rothgeb looking a little uncomfortable. Laramie didn’t make any move to turn away.

“I don’t like your car,” she said. “It isn’t sporty at all.”

He didn’t smile, but she could see the warmth in there behind the cool blue surface of his eyes.

“I already knew you didn’t like it,” he said.