“Don’t contact them. Don’t leave your residence. Just wait until our representative comes by. You’ll be instructed how to proceed. And thank you for contacting us, Mr Brady. It was very patriotic.” The man at the other end clicked off.
“I did it,” I said to Rachel; I felt flooded with relief. What I did,” I said, “is I got out of the noose. This apartment would probably have been raided within the next hour. Certainly within the next day.” Now it didn’t matter even if they hit us; I had made the right call. The emergency was over, thanks not to me or any solution of mine but to the sibyl.
“But suppose,” Rachel said frantically, “it turns out it is from the Party?”
“It’s not from the Party. I don’t know anyone in the Party; I’m not even sure there is a Party. If there is, they wouldn’t be writing me, especially in code.”
“It could be a mistake of some kind. They intended to write to someone else.”
“Fuck “em then,” I said. Anyhow, I knew it was the authorities; or rather the sibyl knew. Valis knew. Valis, who had come through at the critical time and saved me.
Rachel said, They’ll think you’re a Communist, from what you told them.”
“No, they won’t. No Communist would have phoned them in the first place, let alone said what I said. They’ll know I am exactly what I am: a patriotic American. Fuck them and fuck the Party; they’re one and the same, as far as I’m concerned. It’s the party that kills its political rivals in purges – Ferris Fremont is the Party, and the Party killed the Kennedys and Dr King and Jim Pike to take power in America. We have one enemy and that’s it. That’s Comrade Ferris Fremont.” My wife stared at me dumbfounded. “Sorry,” I said, “but it’s true. That’s the great secret. That’s what the people aren’t supposed to know. But I know. I was told.”
“Fremont isn’t a Communist,” Rachel said feebly, her face ashen. “He’s a fascist.”
The USSR turned fascist in Stalin’s time,” I said. “Now it’s totally fascistic. America was the last stronghold of freedom and they took us over, internally, under fake names. We go too much on names – labels. Fremont is the first Communist Party president, and I’m going to get him out.”
“Jesus Christ!” Rachel said. “Right,” I said.
“I’ve never seen you display such animosity, Nick.” „That letter today,” I said savagely, “that alleged shoe ad – that’s murder, murder aimed at me. I am going to get the sons-of-bitches for that – for sending that to me -if it’s the last thing I do.”
“But . . . you never showed such hate for the Party before. In Berkeley – “
“They never tried to kill me before,” I said. “Can . . .” She could scarcely talk; trembling, she seated herself on the arm of the couch, by Pinky. The cat still dozed. “Can FAP help you?”
TAP the enemy,” I said. “Finessed back onto itself. I will get it to do all the work; I already have.”
“How many other people do you think know? About President Fremont, I mean?”
“Look at his foreign policy. Trade deals with Russia, grain sales at a loss to us; he gives them what they want. The US is their supplier; it does what they say. If they’re out of grain they get grain; if they’re low on -”
“But our big military establishment.”
“To keep our own people down. Not theirs.”
Rachel said, “You didn’t know this yesterday.”
“I knew it when I saw the shoe ad,” I said. “When I saw the message from the Communist Party that was also from FAP. They are working with the KGB in New York, not against it; how could it operate openly if FAP didn’t let it? There is one intelligence community and one only. And we are all its victims, wherever we live.”
“I need a drink,” Rachel managed to say.
“Take heart,” I said. “The beginning of the change has set in. The turning point has come. They will be exposed; they will stand in court, every one of them, and answer for crimes they have committed.”
“Because of you?” She gazed timidly at me.
“Because of Valis,” I said.
Rachel said, “It’s not you any longer, Nick. You’re not the same person.”
“That is right,” I said.
“Who are you?”
I said, „Their adversary. Who is going to see them hunted down.”
“You can’t do it by-”
“I’ll be given the names of others.”
“Like yourself?”
I nodded.
So that letter,” Rachel said, “that shoe ad – it would never have gotten in the mail without the permission and cooperation of the American authorities.”
That’s right,” I said.
“What about Aramchek?”
I said nothing.
“Is Valis Aramchek?” Rachel asked hesitantly. “Or maybe you shouldn’t tell me; maybe I’m not supposed to know.”
Til tell you – “ I began, but all at once I felt two great invisible hands grip me by the upper arms; they held so tightly that I grunted in pain. Rachel stared at me. I could not speak any further; all I could do was try to withstand the pressure of the invisible hands holding me. Then, at last, they released me. I was free.
“What happened?” Rachel asked.
“Nothing.” I took in deep, unsteady breaths.
“The look on your face – something had hold of you, didn’t it? You started to say something you shouldn’t have.” She patted me gently on the arm. “It’s okay, Nick; you don’t have to say. I don’t want you to say.”
“Maybe some other time,” I said.
Toward the end of the day two FAPers, both of them lean and alert young men, showed up at my door.
Silently, they examined the shoe ad I had received in the mail. I showed them the piece of paper on which I had written the encoded message that I had extracted.
“I am Agent Townsend,” the first FAPer said. “And this is my teammate, Agent Snow. It was very alert of you to report this, Mr Brady.”
I said, truthfully, “I knew it would be coming. I even knew the day.”
“I imagine,” Agent Townsend said, “that the Communists would very much like to control someone in your position. You have power over a large number of recording artists, do you not?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You can sign up and record whomever you wish?”
“I need the approval of two other executives,” I said. “But usually they go along with me.”
“They have come to respect your judgement?”
“Yes,” I said.
“How has the Party contacted you before?” Agent Snow asked.
“They never before – “
“We realize they never turned the screws before. But did they contact you through mutual friends, or by phone, or mail? Or directly, through their agents?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I know the contact, the pressure has been there, but it’s been too devious and subtle up until now to put my finger on.”
“No one person in particular.”
“No,” I said.
Agent Townsend said, “This is the first time they’ve come out overtly, then.”
“Yes,” I said.
“In your case,” Agent Townsend said, “they made a mistake. We have a mail intercept on you, Mr Brady; we rntercepted this document and decoded it ourselves. We knew the hour of its arrival in your mailbox. You were watched as you took it upstairs to this apartment. You were timed as to how long it took you to react to it. And of course we were looking to see your reaction. Frankly, we didn’t expect you to call us. We assumed you’d destroy it.”
“My wife suggested I destroy it,” I said. “But that could have been taken two ways.”
“Oh, yes,” Agent Townsend said. Two ways easily. You read the encoded message and then burned it; that’s a normal process for Party members; they wouldn’t leave something like this lying around after they had assimilated its contents; it’d be incriminating.”
The sibyl had directed me right. Inwardly, without any visible sign, I sighed with relief. Thank God for her, I said to myself; on my own, like Rachel, I most likely would have destroyed it, imagining that was enough. And thus incriminated myself forever.
Destroying it would have proved I had read it. That I knew what it was. One does not carry a harmless shoe ad to the bathroom and set fire to it in the bathtub.
Studying the name and address written on the back of the document, Agent Townsend said to Agent Snow, This looks like . . . you know, that girl’s handwriting.” To me he said, “Your friend Phil Dick knows a girl named Vivian Kaplan. Do you know her?”
“No,” I said, “but he’s mentioned her.”
“You wouldn’t have any samples of her handwriting around?” Agent Townsend asked.
“No,” I said.