The War in 2020

Epilogue

Clifton Reynard Bouquette sat on the edge of the bed in his boxer shorts. Behind him, the woman breathed regularly and deeply, with her plain face half buried in the pillow. She had had too much to drink, and he could smell the decaying alcohol in her body. He did not find it offensive. Had she stopped drinking at a reasonable hour, she would not have allowed him back into her bed.

The draperies were closed, but enough light filtered through to give the air the color of gray flannel. He listened to the rain. He did not need to look outside to register the appearance of the world. Northern Virginia was drearily predictable on a wet winter morning. Anyway, he did not want to admit that the morning had come. Traditionally, New Year's Day was a time of family parties with old friends, with the morning reserved for taking stock of his achievements in the year past and his prospects for the year ahead. While the rest of the family slept, he would drink black coffee with a side of cognac in his study and treat himself to a triumphal mental procession featuring Clifton Reynard Bouquette of Newport and Georgetown. But this year there would be no victory parade, and he simply wanted the morning to be over. Much better to have slept through it. Only the old trouble in his kidneys had roused him from his hiding place in the woman's bed.

It had ended as a very bad year. Against all odds, Maddox had won the election, riding the triumph of American arms abroad. And the cracker in the overly tailored suit had demoted him. Had he been fired, the situation would have been bearable. It might have been represented as the result of an important policy disagreement. In Washington important men were fired all the time. But he had not been deemed of sufficient importance to fire. Maddox had simply condemned him to a smaller office and fewer perks.

Then that little bitch from Smith had given him a Christmas present. She had come down from school with his daughter for a holiday visit, and Bouquette had merely made a few suggestions to her of the sort that had often brought a fair return in the past. The little tart had passed on the details to his daughter, who in turn shared them with her mother. Bouquette's wife had filed for divorce the day after Christmas.

Money wasn't a problem, of course. Thank God for that. But money was not really an important consideration to him, since he had always had plenty and knew he would always have enough. What mattered was the respect of men and the admiration — preferably active — of women. But he was under a cloud, both up on the Hill and between the sheets. Oh, the trend had been noticeable for some time. But he had refused to admit it. When his wife filed the papers, he had smiled, poured himself a drink, and picked up the phone. He had left messages on a vast archipelago of answering machines. But the plain, drunken girl in bed beside him was the only one who had bothered to return his call.

He had not seen her for over a month. She had quit her job at the Agency, against all logic. She was unemployed, and she drank. It couldn't go on, of course. One could not live within a reasonable commute of the District without a decent job. For a girl from her class background, the position would be financially untenable. He could help her out a bit there, of course, but he did not think he would. A part of him wished she would move to distant parts without leaving a forwarding address.

The woman moaned, as though all the alcohol was hurting her at last. She rolled to the side and the bedclothes tightened under Bouquette's shorts. In her drunken vigor she had torn at his back and called him "George." The slip had rather spoiled things.

She was inconsolable. It wounded him deeply. Perhaps he was not all that he once had been — his hair was thinning just a bit, though the effect was not undistinguished. But I while his stamina had diminished ever so slightly, he believed he made up for it in art. He was rich and accomplished. He could offer a woman everything she might reasonably desire. He could not begin to fathom how the woman had talked herself into the notion of loving a man with whom no discriminating female would be seen in public.

No. He was being dishonest. He rested uncertain hands on his horseman's thighs. The woman had genuinely loved. She had loved with a depth of feeling that shamed Bouquette, for he recognized that he had never inspired such uncalculated love in another, not even in his wife, when they had both been young and utterly perfect. His loss would not have shaken the life of anyone the way her lover's death had broken this woman. He wondered what magic his competitor could have possessed. Bouquette had known something of a genius for bedding the right girls, and not a few deliciously wrong ones. Yet he had never filled another's life so fully that his loss would have left such distress in its wake. Certainly, he had left regiments of women in tears — but their expressions of grief, by and large, had been matters of style. He had made love to many, but he had reached no one as that shabby colonel had managed to reach this woman. He wondered how it was done.

Then again, it might be nothing but affectation on her part. He had been deceived before. After all, she had not bothered to attend the memorial service at Arlington, and I when he tried to pass her a few off-the-record details that had not appeared in the media, she cut him off sharply. Perhaps no one loved with such literary perfection, after all. Except for the emotionally unbalanced, of course.

Bouquette stood up, rising gently so that he would not wake the woman. She began to snore. He stepped over the litter of their clothing and went back into the bathroom, turning on the light to examine his face in the mirror, trying to understand how things had managed to turn out so badly.

Lieutenant Colonel Meredith sat beside the hospital bed, listening to the hideously cheerful music piped into the ward. This was one of several wards in the Veteran's Administration hospital serving the victims of the Scramblers and, during the day, radio programs, recorded books, and the General Accounting Office's notion of appropriate music sounded nonstop over cheap speakers. The men in the beds remained as helpless as infants. They could not keep their eyes on a television screen. But they could hear, and preliminary studies indicated that they could process audible information as well as any healthy man. They simply could not act on it.

Meredith recognized many of the faces in the ward, and he had made a brief stop at each bed, offering the men the encouragement he had struggled to assemble during his drive to the hospital. Then he settled into the gray chair beside Heifetz, scooting it around so that he could look at the expressionless mask of the man's features. Christmas decorations drooped above Heifetz's bed, and a string of garland framed the little plaque of medals that hung over the headboard. Meredith had been on the verge of pointing out to the duty nurse that Christmas decorations were not quite appropriate in Heifetz's case, but the woman looked exhausted, and she had not stopped moving since Meredith entered the ward. It was a bad day to be on duty, and a very bad ward.

Meredith would have liked the hospital to be cleaner. He would have liked the treatment of his comrades, and especially of Heifetz, to be a bit handsomer, and he would have liked the hungover clerk at the information desk to show a little more respect when giving directions. But, most of all, he would have liked an excuse not to come. He already knew he would avoid coming back for as long as his conscience would let him.

The odd thing was that Heifetz looked younger, less troubled. When they had served together, the operations officer's features had been permanently clenched, the eyes lined with tension and the chin set hard. Now Lucky Dave appeared beatifically calm. The tufts of flesh were smooth around the wandering eyes, and the mouth lay partway open in a mock smile.

Meredith reached for words. It had been hard enough with the succession of passingly familiar faces on the other pillows in the ward. But what could you say to Lucky Dave?

"I'm a lieutenant colonel now," Meredith began. "Just like you, goddamnit. Presidential promotion too." He tried to call up a manly smile. "Hell, just about everybody got one. The chief of personnel went through the roof. He said there hadn't been so many presidential promotions since the Civil War. So I'm a lieutenant colonel now. And I'll be damned if I'm going to call you 'sir.' Unless you want to get up out of that bed and whip my ass."

Meredith stared at the uninterested planes of his comrade's face. Wondering how much Heifetz could really hear and understand. The doctors said it might be a hundred percent. But the face remained that of an infant who grasped nothing.

"You know," Meredith went on, "the old man's in for a posthumous Medal of Honor. He's going to get it too. Just takes Congress a while to go through the formalities. They're already getting together a display about him out at the Cavalry Museum at Riley. You're going to be in it, and Manny. All of us. But mostly the old man."

Meredith looked at the living death of Heifetz's eyes, then looked away. "You remember that old rag of a guidon he used to carry? The one he brought out of Africa? I passed it on to them for the museum. They're going to put it with his Medal of Honor, when that goes through." Meredith let his eyes wander over the blanket, the bed-frame, the floor. "The old man didn't have any family. No wife or anything. So I'm making sure that all his effects go to the museum, where they belong. Where he'll be remembered properly." He suddenly looked up, hoping Heifetz would offer some sign of agreement. "With nothing that could have embarrassed him."

Meredith realigned himself in the chair and smiled. "Those sonsofbitches," he said. "You know how they get all hepped up on appearances. They're going to use a picture of the old man from back when he was a captain. Before his face got screwed up. But… what can you do?"

To his surprise, Meredith took Heifetz's hand. It was soft and warm, yet utterly without human character. The fingers gave way as Meredith pressured them.

Meredith's smile widened into a terrible grin. "And that sonofabitch Reno. He's got the regiment now. Got his colonelcy out of the operation. Under the hand of the President, and all that. Of course, he's all sweetness and light for the press. He and the old man were best buddies, to hear him tell it. But the first duty day we had back at Riley, he assembles everybody in the post theater. And he comes out on the stage like a little Patton. And you know what the first words are out of his mouth, Dave? He puffs himself all up and says, 'We're going to make some big changes around here, men.' He told me to my face he intends to reshape the regiment in his own image." Meredith laughed. "The chairman of the Joint Chiefs loves him.

"Then the goddamned Russians. They sold us out, Dave. Plain as day. But nobody wants to hear that now. The war's over. And the Russians are our best buddies."

Meredith tightened his grip on his comrade's hand. He wanted a response. Anything.

"I'm bailing out," he said. "You know how the old man was. He would have told me to stay in the regiment and tough it out, to do what I could to control the damage Reno does. But I just can't, Dave. I know you understand. The old man just expected too much sometimes." The hand seemed to cower under Meredith's grip. He suddenly relaxed the pressure, afraid he was hurting Heifetz. But there was no response. It was all in his own head. "Anyway, I'm leaving the Seventh. Tucker Williams is going down to Huachuca with a mandate to try to clean up the intel school, and I'm going to be his XO. Who knows?

Maybe we'll get it right this time. If they don't close the place down again. Christ, the peace treaty hasn't even been signed, and Congress is already looking for big cuts in the defense budget."

Meredith released the other man's hand altogether. Down the ward one of the patients made a violent gargling noise, then his body began to contort like a fish tossed onto a boat deck. The duty nurse darted from behind her medicine trolley and manhandled the patient over onto his belly, burping him as if he were a baby.

"Dave? I've got to go. I've got a hell of a drive ahead of me, and I'm on a tight schedule. Tucker Williams wanted me out there yesterday. You know how it is. I want to make Knoxville tonight."

Meredith stood up. He had imagined that something dramatic might happen, that Heifetz might begin to weep or to otherwise acknowledge his presence. But the eyes just continued to flick haphazardly from right to left, up and down, and the mouth hung slackly, poised forever on the verge of speech. It was hard to believe that Heifetz understood a word.

The tinny loudspeaker broadcast a pop song about the joy of being in love.

"I've left Maureen, you know," Meredith said suddenly. "I can't explain it. I just couldn't go back." He smiled down at Heifetz. "You know, the old man was plain fucking crazy sometimes. I remember, oh, it was years ago now, the old bastard gave me a copy of Huckleberry Finn and told me to read it. He said it was his favorite book. I never could quite see myself in the Nigger Jim role. But I don't think that's what the old man had in mind. Anyhow, I feel a little like Huck at the end of the book. Only in a really shitty grown-up sort of way." He sat back down and hung his head. He began to cry.

"I don't know what to do, Dave," he said. "I just don't know what to do."

Snow was falling in Moscow, and Valya told herself she really had to get dressed and go to the park. It would be beautiful for a little while. But she made no move to rise from the couch. On the television, a silver-haired man read an economic report.

The Americans were gone. She had been reinstated in her teaching post, and the other members of the faculty simply pretended nothing had happened. She heard nothing further from the state security officers since the departure of the Americans. But she still imagined that they were out there, watching her.

She had gone out a few times with Tanya, and once with Naritsky. But it had not been satisfactory. For the past week, she had taken to declining all invitations, and when she was not teaching or standing in line for foodstuffs, she stayed in her apartment. She considered getting a cat, but she did not much like the idea of trying to housebreak it.

She looked into the future and saw nothing. She looked into the mirror and felt cold breath on the back of her neck. And she had not had her period since November. Soon she would have to go back to the clinic. She had flirted briefly with the idea of having this baby, but the notion lost its appeal the moment she began to consider the practicalities involved. Really, she would be far better off with a cat. And she did not want to lose her figure. While there was still any hope at all.

They did not need to put her in prison. She was already a prisoner in her life, her city, her country. She glanced from the television screen to the window again. The snow continued to fall as the day waned. For a while it would be beautiful in the park. Then the crowd would make it dirty again.

The doorbell rang. Valya surveyed the wreckage of her room in distress. She decided that she really needed to develop more regular cleaning habits. Then she shrugged and rose from her nest on the sofa. It was probably only Tanya, after all.

Running a comb of fingers through her hair, she opened the door. It took her a moment to recognize the man. There were so many men in the world. After a few awkward seconds, the quality of his clothing spurred her memory. It was the American who had bought her dinner, the pleasant-enough boy with whom she had shared a single night. He stood before her now with flowers and a brightly wrapped package in his hands, and he looked nervously happy. He held out the flowers and began his stammering speech.

"Valya," Ryder said, "will you marry me?"

Garmisch, West Germany 4 April 1990