time: even when he wasn’t stoned, he had a slightly unfocused and ingenuous
manner. The two men did not bond right away: it was hard to imagine two souls
less alike. Still, Cooper finally appreciated that his visitor from the U.S.
government tried neither to ingratiate himself nor to make threats. He looked
like a jarhead but he didn’t come on like one. Oddly low-key in his approach, he
played it straight. When Cooper diverted the conversation to the inequities of
the West, Janson, as a trained political scientist, was happy to follow him.
Rather than jeering at his politics, Janson was happy to concede that there was
much to criticize in the Western democracies—but then rejected the dehumanizing
simplifications of the terrorists in direct, hard-hitting language. Our society
betrays humanity whenever it doesn’t live up to its own expressed ideals. And
the world your friends wish to create? It betrays humanity whenever it does live
up to its expressed ideals. Was the choice so hard?
That’s deep, Barry Cooper had said, sincerely. That’s deep: the reflexive
rejoinder of the shallow. But if Cooper were shallow, his very shallowness had
saved him from the worst temptations of the revolutionary left. And his
information proved to be the undoing of dozens of violent cells. Their safe
houses were shut down, their leaders imprisoned, their sources of funding
identified and rooted out. The pothead in the funky blue houseboat had helped to
do that. In that respect, the posturing, hard-hearted spokesmen of the
revolutionary vanguards had it right: sometimes a small man can make a big
difference.
In return, the State Department quietly desisted in its attempts to seek
extradition.
Now Janson sipped hot coffee from a mug that still bore smudges of acrylic
paint.
“I know you’re here just to hang,” Cooper said. “I know you don’t, like, want
something from me.” It was banter that survived from their first interviews, a
quarter century ago.
“Hey,” Janson said. “OK if I crash here for a while?”
“Mi casa es su casa, amigo,” Cooper replied. He raised the small marijuana
cigarette to his lips; Janson was never sure whether it still really affected
Cooper or whether the maintenance dose just returned him to what passed as
normal. The smoke made his voice pebbly. “I could use the company, tell you the
truth. Doris left me, I ever tell you that?”
“You never told me Doris joined you,” Janson said. “Barry, I have no idea who
you’re talking about.”
“Oh,” Cooper said, and his forehead knit in a moment or two of furious
concentration. He was visibly searching for consequence: And therefore … and
therefore … and therefore. The engine of reason was turning over but not
catching. Finally, he raised an index finger. “Then … never mind.” He had
obviously worked out that someone he hadn’t seen in eight years might have
little interest in the recent end of a six-week relationship. Cooper was so
pleased to have come up with an appropriate response that were inappropriate to
the situation he now confronted. He needed to think differently.
Demarest’s words of counsel—echoing from another age—came to him j now: Can’t
see a way out? Take the time to see things differently. See the two white swans
instead of the one black one. See the slice of pie instead of the pie with the
slice missing. Flip the Necker cube outward instead of inward. Master the
gestalt. It will make you free.
He closed his eyes for a few seconds. He had to think as they had. Exposure and
publicity, they saw, could be the most effective shields of clandestinity—which
was a logic that Janson himself would have to embrace. A stealthy entrance was
what they were anticipating, what they would be well protected from. He would
not arrive stealthily, then. He would arrive as conspicuously as possible, and
at the front door. This operation called not for discretion but for brazenness.
Janson surveyed the balled-up papers on the floor near the pastels. “Got a
newspaper?”
Cooper padded over to the corner and triumphantly returned with a copy of the
latest De Volksrant. The front page was smeared with paints and pastels.
“Anything English-language?”
“Dutch papers are in Dutch, man,” he answered in a cannabis croak. “They’re
fucked-up that way.”
“I see,” Janson replied. He scanned the headlines, and his knowledge of English
and German cognates allowed him to get the gist of most. He turned the page, and
a small article caught his eye.
“Here,” Janson said, tapping it with a forefinger. “Could you translate this one
for me?”
“No sweat, man.” Cooper looked up for a moment, gathering his powers of
concentration. “Not the jukebox selection I’d have gone for. Now wait a
minute—didn’t you tell me your mother’s Czech?”
“Was. She’s dead.”
“Put my foot in it, didn’t I? That’s awful. Was it, like, a sudden thing?”
“She died when I was fifteen, Barry. I’ve had some time to adjust.”
Cooper paused for a moment, digesting the fact. “That’s cool,” he said. “My mom
passed last year. Couldn’t even go to the goddamn funeral. Tore me up. They’d
clap irons on me in customs, so, like, what would be the point? Tore me up,
though.”
“I’m sorry,” Janson said.
Cooper began to read the article, laboriously translating the Dutch into English
for Janson’s benefit. It was not, on the face of it, a remarkable story. The
Czech foreign minister, having been in The Hague to meet with members of the
government, was visiting Amsterdam. There he would meet members of the stock
exchange and leading figures of its financial community, to discuss Dutch-Czech
cooperative ventures. Another inconsequential trip, by someone whose job it was
to make such trips, hoping to raise the level of foreign investment in a country
that was pining for it. Holland was rich; the Czech Republic was not. It was the
same sort of trip that might have taken place a century ago, or two centuries
ago, or three, and probably had. It would, one could safely hazard, solve no
problems for the Czech Republic. But it just might solve a problem for Janson.
“Let’s go shopping,” Janson said, standing up.
Cooper was not taken aback by the sudden change of topic; his cannabis haze made
the world as aleatory as a roll of the dice. “Cool,” he said. “Munchies?”
“Clothes shopping. Fancy stuff. Top of the line.”
“Oh,” he said, disappointed. “Well, there’s a place I never go, but I know it’s
real expensive. On Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, just off the Dam, a few blocks away.
“Excellent,” Janson said. “Why don’t you come along? I might need a translator.”
More to the point, if anybody was keeping an eye out for him, they would not be
expecting him to be traveling with a companion.
“Happy to,” Cooper said. “But everybody understands ‘MasterCard.’ ”
The building that housed the Magna Plaza was erected a hundred years ago as a
post office, though, with its ornate stonework, vaulted ceilings, pilasters,
string courses, and little round-arched galleries, it seemed overdressed for the
purpose. Only after it was converted into a shopping mall did its excesses come
to seem appropriate. Now forty stores lined its gallery walkway. At an upscale
men’s clothing store, Janson tried on a suit, a size 53. It was Ungaro, and its
price tag came to the equivalent of two thousand dollars. The regularity of
Janson’s frame meant that off-the-rack clothing tended to look bespoke on him.
This suit did.
A salesman with a stiffly gelled comb-over glided across the floor and attached
himself like a remora to his American customer.
“If I may say, the fit is excellent,” the salesman said. He was smarmy and
solicitous, as no doubt he always was around price tags with commas. “And the
fabric is superb on you. It’s a beautiful suit. Very elegant. Dashing yet
understated.” Like many Dutch, he spoke English with only a trace of an accent.
Janson turned to Cooper. His bloodshot, unfocused eyes suggested that his mental
fog had not entirely dispersed. “He’s saying he thinks it looks good on you,”
Cooper said.
“When they’re talking in English, Barry, you actually don’t need to translate,”
Janson said. He turned to the salesman. “I assume you take cash. If you can do
up the cuffs right now, you’ve got a sale. If not, not.”
“Well, we have a fitter here. But the tailoring is normally done elsewhere. I
could have it sent by courier to you tomorrow … ”
“Sorry,” Janson said, and turned to leave.
“Wait,” the salesman said, seeing his commission on a substantial sale
evaporate. “We can do it. Just let me have a talk with the fitter, and give us
ten minutes. If I have to walk it across the street, I’ll see that it’s done.
Because, how do you say it in the States, the customer is always right.”
“Words to gladden a Yank’s heart,” Janson said.
“Indeed, we know this about you Americans,” the salesman said carefully.