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A.R.Yngve
PARRY'S PROTOCOL
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Chapter 31
THE VIETNAM MEMORIAL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
OCTOBER 8
The two old men came walking along the paved path with the low sun at their backs.
Their figures, and behind those the distant needle of the Washington Memorial, were reflected in the black marble surface of the V-shaped monument facing them. The flag rippled from the nearby flagpole, and the flag halliard smattered rhythmically in the wind. The tree-crowns were the color of flames, but the ground was yet almost free of dead leaves.
Visitors were putting down flowers by the base of the monument; a few tourists were taking pictures. A cluster of Chinese tourists took a stand around the sculpture "The Three Servicemen", while one of them photographed the group. One of them made the V-sign to the camera.
Abram pulled up the collar of his wool coat; he wore his hat pressed down over his ears. Next to him walked a fat, red-faced man with puffy cheeks; his eyes were hidden by the thick layers of wrinkles around his white eyebrows, and he wore heavy eyeglasses. The man wore a light gray coat and hat; he was visibly older than Abram. Just as they came up to the black name-list slabs, he pulled out a black scarf and swept it around his fat chin and neck. They stood in front of one memorial slab and appeared to read the engraved names of dead American soldiers, without looking at each other.
"Kip," Abram said without turning in the other man's direction, "how long have our families known each other?"
Kip O'Neill answered with a voice made hoarse by a lifetime of speaking: "Ever since the Sixties in Norfolk, when I was a lawyer running for Congress, and you were a radical student, the fiery spirit of my campaign staff... you went around telling everyone that Kip O'Neill would build unity across age, race, and class borders... but you got stern warnings not to mention Vietnam, it was a hot potato."
O'Neill smiled faintly, though it hardly showed under his red cheek-pouches.
Abram filled in: "You remember when I got into a fight with some rednecks who thought I was a hippie? I came to your house in the middle of the night, spilling blood all over your sofa, while your wife bandaged my head... my lumpy nose still reminds me of that."
He drew a gloved finger down the uneven bridge of his nose, sighed lightly, and gazed up at the increasingly cloudy afternoon sky.
Kip frowned, and said: "We haven't seen each other for years, since you lost Cathy."
Abram bent down and picked up a red tulip from the monument's base, held it up to his worried eyes, and rotated it slowly between two fingers.
"I've been doing my two jobs full time, but I'd be happy to come and visit you and Rhoda, now that you're retired and have the time..."
"It's something about the Company, right?" Kip's question was put in a neutral tone, but Abram threw him a quick sideglance.
Kip kept facing forward, waiting.
"Yes, it's the Company. You've never liked my other job, but we've remained friends, n'est-ce pas?"
"If you want to leak something, it's too late for me to do anything now, Abram. I was thrown out of the circle of action in '94."
"Well, I've never been in the circle of action myself, so that makes us equal. I'd like to talk about secrets. Old secrets. Older than your career."
"I'm listening..."
"Suppose -- hypothetically -- that there was a secret so big, so dangerous, that the mere knowledge could shake up the entire nation..."
"Nothing is rotten enough to upset the voters anymore. They all know their rulers are corrupt, that no one could become President without the permission of the mightiest men in America; and there aren't that many people who bother to vote anyway."
Abram said: "I'm not talking about some petty affair with a pinup-girl, or arms-smuggling to some obscure Third World country, or taking bribes from foreigners. Nothing like that. Real secrets. The ones wars get started over. What would you suggest?"
"Well... suppose, as a hypothetical example, that someone found irrefutable evidence of who shot Kennedy. Those things."
"Exactly. What else could you imagine?"
"Or... satellite photos of missile sites in Iran."
"Not quite. Old stuff. World War Two."
"I was in the war, as you know... landed in France on D-day... when we went into Germany, we once liberated survivors from that concentration camp. I'll never forget it; the stench of burned corpses and piles of bodies; little children reduced to just skin and bones, so starved that they got sick when we fed them. The rumor went among the officers that the Allied forces knew what was going on in the camps, but didn't bomb them... that they allowed it to continue."
Kip paused momentarily, then uttered his verdict: "That they protected the butchers to get a hold on them... get them on our side against the Russians."
"You know Stalin did even worse in East Germany," Abram pointed out. The Cold War was going on way back in 1944."
"Wait, I'm getting to it. The point is that everyone -- everyone who was reasonably informed -- knew what a rotten game we were playing. That's the only kind of secrets that work, those that are so big that we simply refuse to see them. Lesser secrets always make headlines."
"I get it."
Tourists and visitors began to disperse; the clouds were flocking in the yellowing sky. Kip started to walk alongside the monument; Abram followed close by.
"But still," Abram went on, "suppose there was a secret since the war, which a few persons in high places knew about, which they were forced to carry with them; perhaps even pass on... how would they do it?"
"Remember the fuss over George Bush and his membership in the student sorority 'Skull And Bones'? Or the 'Friends Of Bill' list? Old friends stick together. So what? Loyalty ties which are made early, like among people who went to the same university, usually follow them a long way into their careers. It's no secret, for instance, that the core of the CIA was made up of people who knew each other. That's the way politics works. Scrub my back and I'll scrub yours. Blood oaths and secret vows ain't necessary."
"Mmm..." Abram tossed the tulip back at the base of the marble slab.
"What's the Company up to these days?" Kip asked, the way one asks if it is raining outside.
"Redefining its role, one might say. Have you ever seen a federal servant suggest that he ought to be fired?"
"Yeah, and pigs can fly. The Company was created to fight the Communists, everyone knows that."
"Do they, now? I was recruited by the Company pretty late, in the Seventies when it seemed to be crumbling under the pressure of a negative opinion. I never became anything but an occasional consultant, who would revitalize the organization with new ideas. After twenty years of writing reports -- nothing. The Russians were suddenly converted and it wasn't thanks to us."
"Does it all seem pointless now?" Kip asked.
Abram stopped in his tracks, and said: "I can't shake the feeling that we've been conned into playacting secret agents. But why? Just so the President could be able to say that we were stalling the Red Menace? But that was the Pentagon's job. While all the time, it was the Bomb that stalled the Reds. Even now."
The last tourist retreated from the memorial site; the first raindrops began to fall. The two old men briskly walked north toward Constitution Avenue in silence. Abram unlocked the car that stood parked by the sidewalk. He let Kip into the front seat, and sat down behind the steering-wheel. Abram turned toward Kip, hesitant. Kip's red, puffy face buried his eyes and revealed nothing.
"Kip, you know I would never leak anything that would hurt the safety of the country. Anyway, I don't know anything yet. Just guesswork. But if my guesses would be the least bit correct, we shouldn't meet again. If anyone would ask about me, tell them I'm depressed over a difficult patient. Tell Rhoda I'm sorry I couldn't see her. Should I drive you home?"
The fat old man sighed, and said out loud: "A friend of mine showed me one of these stereograms... y'know, a kind of jumbled pictures: if you look at them in a precise certain way, you see the hidden image in the pattern. I tried, tried hard to look at the pattern the right way, but I never saw anything. My friend assured me the image was there, I just wasn't looking the right way.
"Then it hit me: there are several ways of looking at this random pattern, so why should one of them be right and the others wrong? If I can't see a pattern someone else claims to be real, I must follow my own judgement -- and say: 'Pal, you're chasing shadows.'"
Kip took out an umbrella from his coat and put it in his lap. He gave Abram a quick stare, his eyes showing a mix of fear and sorrow.
"I can't help you where you're going, Abram. I'm sorry."
The moment he finished his sentence he opened the door, put up his umbrella, and hurried away in the rain.