Early Warning Read Free Page B

to thank, once again.” He cleared his throat. “Looking iffy at this point, I must say. Why this had to come to a head in August is a mystery to me. Must be the hidden hand of the Soviet menace. You got anything to report?”
    Frank shook his head.
    The man stared at him, the hardness of his gaze belying his casual tone. But how long had Frank been telling lies? As long as he could talk. Finally, Frank said, “Routine operation, sir.”
    The man nodded. His jacket strained over the pistol in his armpit.Frank waited for him to hold out his hand for the packet of bills, but he didn’t. He rubbed his forehead, as if he had a headache. He said, “Well, then. MacIntosh is staying with me here. I believe you are going back via Majorca. To Cuba? I can’t remember. I had some food put on the plane. Good luck to you.”
    The man knocked on the ceiling of the car, and the passenger door opened. When Frank got out, he was alone beside the plane. Louis and the three men had been taken away, and now the big car drove off, too. It was dead quiet. Even the air was still. The only movement was the flight of two huge birds, probably some kind of vulture—they landed maybe thirty yards away and picked over a carcass for a minute, then lumbered into the air again. Frank had seen vultures before, but as he watched, something about the air and the light entered him and terrified him. The crew of the plane could easily shoot him and leave him here; he would be bones in a day or two. But that wasn’t it, exactly. He looked upward, at the endless stars across the flat sky, and recognized nothing—not the Milky Way or the Big Dipper or even, for a moment, that dishlike sliver that was the moon. For thirty-three years he had thought that the unknown was a friendly thing. Now that idea vanished in a millisecond. He swallowed hard, then ran his hand down the side of his trousers and felt the packet of money in his pocket. His assignment. It was reassuring.
    By the time they landed at Stewart, his watch had run down. Arthur was there, as if he had never left, at the bottom of the stairs.
    “Nice plane,” said Frank.
    “Something borrowed,” said Arthur. Frank took Arthur’s right hand and slapped the packet of hundred-dollar bills into it. Arthur barely glanced at them, just put them in his pocket. He said, “You met McClure?”
    “Two-star general?”
    Arthur nodded. “Tell me everything he said.”
    “Well, he thanked me for coming, and—”
    “No, I mean his exact words.”
    Frank repeated all of what the general had said to him, understanding at once that this was why Arthur had sent him—his eidetic memory. What else any of it meant to the government, he had no idea and knew Arthur wouldn’t tell him. Nevertheless, he did ask, “What’s the money for?”
    Arthur said, “Popular uprising.” Frank thought he saw the ghost of a smile, but only that.
    Arthur dropped him outside the split-level just at dawn. He picked up the newspaper, eased in through the lower entrance, then went up to the kitchen. All was quiet for once. On page two, the paper announced that Mossadegh had won the election in Iran. There was no mention of unrest, but as he watched the coup unfold—Mossadegh was out by the end of the week—Frank couldn’t stop thinking of that human cipher Louis MacIntosh, who was exactly the sort of person Frank would never have entrusted with buying a gallon of milk at the grocery store.
    —
    WHEN HE GOT BACK to Iowa City for the fall semester, Henry Langdon went to a place on Iowa Avenue that sold old things and looked and looked until he found a wooden box with a lock (and a key) for storing his letters from his cousin Rosa (at Berkeley) and carbon copies of his own to her. His were typed, but hers were handwritten. The question of typing had posed a real dilemma—you wanted your personal papers to be handwritten, because they were more, well, personal that way, and also because future literary scholars (the career