The Year of the Hydra Read online

  “You’re from Savannah,” I interrupt.

  Scribner nods appreciatively. “Very, very good. I am from Charlestown, fifty miles from Savannah.”

  “Why would Hydrangea Labs want to talk to me?” I ask, sweat stinging both my eyes. “More to the point, why would I want to talk to them?”

  “Mr. Mancer, if you would just sit for a moment—” Scribner says irritably, trying to avoid the sight of a certain parsnip.

  Reluctantly I take a seat beside Jerry Scribner. The last time a man with a briefcase invited me to sit, I came away with the blue copy and the pink copy and he with three-quarters of my portfolio—something to do with my then-wife and the narrowest possible interpretation of our wedding vows.

  “Thank you,” says Scribner, extracting a cell phone from his briefcase and pressing a button. He holds the phone out to me.

  I hear one ring, then: “Hello? Mr. Mancer? Are you on the line?”

  Sighing, I accept the phone. “This is Julian Mancer.”

  “Thank God,” says a reedy voice. “Mr. Mancer, we have turned over heaven and hell to find you. I do hope you’re well this eve—uh, morning.”

  “It’s late afternoon. May I ask who I’m speaking to?”

  “I am Edgar Spears, a research fellow at the University of Chicago. We haven’t met but I do look forward to meeting you at the earliest possible moment. Would you like me to come directly to the point?”

  “I would appreciate that.”

  “Mr. Mancer, we are at a very crucial crossroads in a research project of some importance, and it would be incredibly, incredibly helpful if you and your sister, Lillian—”

  “Dr. Spears,” I cut in, “surely you know where my sister and I are, geographically?”

  “I do.”

  “And that we have moved on to other things professionally?”

  “Yes, yes,” says the voice on the phone. “We are very sensitive to that, I assure you.”

  Wiping my eyes, I ask, “What happened to the Sullivan twins? Isn’t Hydrangea working with Edna and Elsa Sullivan?”

  “Not for some time,” comes the answer. “But even if that were the case—”

  “What about Nelga and Helga Olszewski? Have you called them?”

  “I’m sorry. We have no interest at all in the Olszewskis.”

  “Kyung-Ho and Gung-Ho Seok?”

  “No, no.”

  “Flossie and Freddie Bobbsey?”

  “Mr. Mancer. There is no one except yourself and your sister, no one whatsoever, who can take us where we must now go.”

  I close my eyes. I want to be angry with this man but I can’t quite find it. Finally I say, “You came to the point for me, Doctor. I’ll do the same for you. My sister and I do not want to work for Hydrangea, nor Gardenia, nor Creeping Myrtle, nor any other zone-nine ornamental. In fact, we’re very busy people these days, so—”

  “You still manage to find Dr. Fenwick’s lab from time to time,” says Spears. “I should congratulate you. The Mancer twins are putting parapsychology on the map just as you once did for polar-body genetics.”

  “Lillian and I have retired,” I say carefully. “Our work with Beth Fenwick is highly sporadic, completely voluntary and absolutely tax-deductible, so—”

  The voice on the phone changes. “Mr. Mancer, the gentleman who gave you the phone has an envelope. Ask him for it.”

  “An envelope? For me? How thoughtful.”

  On cue, the South Carolina lawyer produces a damp letter-sized envelope.

  Spears almost whispers, “I think you will find this project extremely well-funded. We are prepared to fly you and Lillian, first class, all expenses—”

  “Have you heard of Mancer’s law?” I ask, ignoring the envelope.

  “Uh, no, I don’t think so.”

  “The higher the funding, the lower the ethics. Those are Lillian’s words, but I like to say them. And I really should be going now. Only thirteen minutes of happy left.”

  Spears says, “Mr. Mancer, I understand you’re experiencing some personal financial issues. Why not let us help you with that?”

  “Look, you people totally blew it with my sister, okay? When it comes to listening devices in the toaster oven, Lillian’s limit is one. By the way, what happened to me on the street yesterday?”

  “Happened to you?” says Spears.

  “It’s your duty? Keeps the wife and parents smiling? Pleases Wax Mao?”

  “Julian. Listen to me. Come home. Complete your work. There’s only so much I can tell you on the phone.”

  “Well, I’m not coming to Chicago to hear it,” I say. “And if you even think about contacting my sister, you are going to meet our attorney, and he does get naked. Good morning—uh, night. Uh, bye.”

  I punch End Call and offer the phone to the unsmiling attorney.

  “Sorry about that last part,” I say.

  Chapter Three

  Reading alone in the tea room is Ralph O’Malley. On the table before him is half a Heineken and an untouched pack of Kools. At my approach, he breaks into a boyish grin.

  “So how was it?” he asks, turning his paperback novel face-down. It’s The Loins of a Princess by Lowell P. Nightsong.

  I stop to give him a stare. “How was what? I had less than two minutes of happy. Who told you to bring me here?”

  The grin disappears, and Ralpho looks away. “It’s your first time. Place grows on you.”

  I take a seat across from him. “Ralpho, who told you to bring me here?”

  Pushing his glasses higher on his nose, Ralpho says, “Look, I’m sorry if it didn’t work out. It’s got nothing to do with me, okay? Let me buy you a good German beer.”

  “Ralpho, who told—”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” he fires back. “This is a big town, okay? I don’t know what happened in there, and I don’t want to know. Come on, forget about it.”

  “What exactly happened to me on the street yesterday?”

  “I got no fucking idea what you’re talking about,” says Ralpho.

  “On the street,” I say slowly, my voice rising. “Yesterday. Something happened. What was it?”

  Ralpho takes an unhurried inhalation and lets it out. “Know what I just did? I counted to ten. Know why? You’re shouting at me. When people shout at me, my blood pressure goes up and I make bad decisions.” He picks up his paperback novel. “I don’t even know who the fuck you are.”

  I sit back in my chair and try to arrange my robe so that it covers a third of me. It’s a scary thought, but Ralph O’Malley could be the closest thing to a reliable source of information I currently have.

  “I’ll take the beer,” I say.

  Three and a half Heinekens later, Ralpho knows all about the singing condom machine, or what little I know to tell. Here I am walking along the street when I hear this god-awful screeching that roughly approximates the human voice. I turn to discover a condom-vending machine attached to a masonry wall, just crooning its little hiney off. Since I’m putting something together for October, I quite naturally stop to jot a note in my journal. Suddenly this very pale Westerner in a red Ohio State tee is grabbing me around the shoulders and saying, “Hey, guy, let’s go have a beer!” Now he’s hauling me along the sidewalk and whispering, “Keep walking. Don’t turn around. You’re about to be arrested.”

  Naturally I did turn around, and walking straight toward me were three well-starched military uniforms. Mr. Buckeye stepped in front of a cab and we dove inside. “You picked a bad place to jot notes,” I was told as the cab sped away. “You were standing in front of a military installation. Something important must be going down there. Those guys were definitely going to grab you.” All the while, the stranger was throwing blue-eyed glances through the rear window of the cab. Adrenaline-charged. Completely calm. Neck like a sycamore. Not exactly my picture of a Fulbright scholar, which was the story he gave me. Oh, and his name. His name was John.

  John, the Fulbright scholar.

/>   The taxi dropped me at Tiananmen Square and disappeared. I haven’t seen Mr. Buckeye since. End of story, or so I hope.

  Ralpho frowns. “So, what are you saying? You think this guy’s a spook?”

  “I don’t know. What do you know about spooks?”

  He shrugs. “Probably is a spook. Beijing’s full of them. But that doesn’t explain why he’d want to grab you off the sidewalk like that.”

  “His adrenaline fix of the day?” I say. “Maybe he just goes around doing good deeds. Maybe he’s Agent Double-O Nice.”

  “Maybe he was following you,” says Ralpho. “You know any reason why someone would be following you?”

  “I could come up with a number of reasons, none of them particularly rational.”

  “Then he probably wasn’t. Maybe he was on his way to lunch. Spooks eat lunch. He saw the bad guys coming and decided to save your ass. I would’ve done the same thing.”

  I try to picture Ralph O’Malley saving someone’s ass.

  “Or,” he continues, “he might have been surveilling the army base and you just happened along. Either way, it’s not about you.”

  “Why,” I ask, “would you surveil something in Beijing in a red Ohio State tee and skin the approximate color of copy paper?”

  Ralpho adjusts his glasses. “I didn’t say he was smart.”

  “And why would he blow his cover like that, assuming the poor man had any to begin with?”

  “I used to drink beer with a couple of spooks when I was in the service,” Ralpho says with a touch of swagger. “They’re just guys. They can screw up.”

  “This guy didn’t impress me as a screw-up.”

  Ralpho shifts in his chair. “Okay, let’s look at it from another perspective. You’re a writer. Maybe you’re looking into something the US government’s a little nervous about.”

  “I’m not that kind of writer.”

  “Nobody has a file on you? Think about it. Have you ever picketed? Signed a petition? It’s not that hard to get on a list.”

  “In that case,” I argue, “the list would be too long to mean anything. Your grandmother would be on it.”

  My sister’s on it, if anyone is. Lillian has herself arrested at various political protests as frequently as her schedule permits. The Memphis police love hauling her in. They call her Long Tall.

  Lil also has a sizable pro bono law practice related to a personal mission to assist immigrant Honduran women with multiple personality disorder.

  “Maybe they’re worried you’ll be approached by one of the dissident groups here,” suggests Ralpho, lighting a fresh cigarette. He’s starting to enjoy this.

  I grimace. “I’m probably not on the short list of many dissident groups.”

  “Could you have some kind of information? Is there anything we wouldn’t want the Chinese to get their hands on?”

  “No,” I answer quickly, but my blood chills a half degree.

  “You sure?” asks Ralpho.

  “Why do you ask me if I’m sure?”

  “I don’t know,” he replies. “You just looked like you weren’t sure.”

  “You want another one of those high-class beers?” I ask.

  “I can drink another one.”

  As I look around for the waiter, I ask myself what just happened. It was almost too subtle to notice, yet somewhere inside me a circuit closed, a single piece of information flowed, and my response was fear.

  Lillian and I go out of our way to not think about it. Who wants to imagine that your names are tucked into file folders in gun-metal–grey cabinets in every capital of the world. Ralpho’s right about one thing. It’s not that hard to get your name on a list. What’s hard is getting it off again.

  The beers arrive. After the waiter goes, I clear my throat. “Uh, there may be one other possibility. It’s probably nothing. In fact, I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  Ralpho waits.

  “From time to time, my sister and I work as research subjects. We have a reputation of sorts.”

  “Are you identical twins?” asks Ralpho.

  I look at him disappointedly. “Identicals are same-sex. Lillian and I are polar-body twins. Identical genetic material from the mother, different from the father.”

  “Is that pretty rare?” asks Ralpho.

  I nod. The odds against having twins of any description are thirty-three to one. Against having identicals, it’s two hundred eighty-five to one. The odds against polar-body twins, say nothing of a mixed pair—well, let me put it this way. Lillian and I have met all the other such pairs known to exist. Both of them.

  “What kind of research do you do?” asks Ralpho.

  “Remote viewing, remote influencing, that sort of thing.”

  Ralpho’s head jerks up. “Are you talking about psychic research? Jesus, are you serious?”

  “It’s not that big a deal.”

  “Don’t you read?” he asks. “Don’t you know how big the CIA is into all that shit? No wonder they’re crawling all over you.”

  Ralpho looks over both his shoulders. “Listen, the Russians have been into psychic research forever, and we’re busting our ass to catch up with them. I’ll bet the CIA funded every dime of those research projects.”

  I stare at my German beer. More likely NSA than CIA, if that makes a difference.

  For a moment I consider asking Ralpho what he knows about a certain pharmaceutical consortium beginning with H and ending with –ydrangea. My mouth can’t quite form the words.

  “We’re retired,” I tell Ralpho. “When Lil and I work now, it’s for a little university lab about three blocks from my apartment. They have no money at all. They can’t buy paper clips.”

  “That’s even worse,” says Ralpho. Raking book, cigarettes, and ashtray to one side, he leans toward me. “Listen, Mancer, if the Russians are doing it and we’re doing it, you can bet your ass the Chinese are doing it. So here’s the question. How do we know you aren’t here to fucking defect?”

  I think for a moment. “Americans can defect?”

  “You just told me you aren’t making any money,” says Ralpho. “So maybe you and your sister are shopping yourselves around. Think about it.”

  I close my eyes wearily. “Look, maybe I gave you the wrong idea. We aren’t that well known.”

  “It doesn’t even matter how good you are,” says Ralpho. “All that matters is the perception. If the Americans have the perception that the Chinese have the perception—”

  Two white-robed men walk very near our table, and Ralpho stops himself. I take a tiny sip of beer. There’s a knot in my stomach the size of a fist. Lil and I put all that Hydrangea crap behind us for a very good reason. It was creeping us out.

  “If there’s even the perception,” continues Ralpho, “that the Chinese might be interested, agents are going to be climbing hand-over-hand up your ass, okay? Look what happened yesterday. It looked like the Chinese were going to grab you, so we grabbed you.”

  “Stop,” I tell him.

  “And you know the Russians are watching,” he goes on. “And the Brits. And the fucking North Koreans.”

  “Ralpho, stop.”

  “It becomes a circus, I’m telling you.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Ralpho’s face slams shut. “I can’t tell you.”

  “That’s probably best,” I say weakly.

  He leans a little closer. “Look, why didn’t you just read that guy’s mind? That John guy? I mean, you could read it right now, couldn’t you?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “All I can tell you is,” says Ralpho, stubbing out his cigarette, “it’s going to be weird the whole time you’re over here. If I were you, I’d take care of business and get the hell out of China.”

  “And one more thing,” he adds, his pale blue eyes sharpening. “That Arnie guy you were hanging with this morning? I don’t think I’d tell him what you just told me.”

  “Arnie? Arnie’s just a teacher in Lil’s
group.”

  I watch Ralpho munch a bit of moustache. I should never have brought this up. Sighing, I rise from the table.

  “Gimme a call sometime,” says Ralpho. “We’ll talk some more.”

  “I don’t do phones.”

  “Buy yourself a phone,” he says flatly. “Keep it with you. Weird shit happens in this country.”

  I turn away. Once all the squirrels are dead, the Chinese are fond of saying, the dogs that tracked them will be cooked. I’m not sure why that comes to me just now. They also say it’s bad luck to walk beneath a pair of trousers, but I think that depends on who’s wearing them.

  Outside, evening has become night. The prevailing aroma seems to be one part honeysuckle, two parts bus exhaust, and three parts inscrutable Chinese sewage. Overhead is the searing roar of jet engines, but when I look up I see only the usual Beijing sheetrock. I’ve been in this town for four days and I’ve yet to see either the sun or a bird.

  Take care of business, said Ralpho, and get out of China. I ask myself just how much credence to give a man who blogs about moon bases. I’d love to hear his theories on Bat Boy. And how exactly did Ralpho know I spent the morning with Arnie? I don’t remember saying a word.

  Frowning, I pass a row of bicycle shops, their greasy overflow of tools and spare parts half-covering the sidewalk. In each shop is a little shelf with a Taoist altar with blinking red lights. One features a rearing horse cut from paper. The Year of the Horse. Shocking new developments. Rapid advancement. Unexplained cravings for oats.

  Hitchcock said there has to be a MacGuffin. It doesn’t matter what the MacGuffin is, as long as everyone wants it. Or maybe, it occurs, nobody wants it but only imagines that everyone else does.

  Nearby, an old man pauses to hock up a lung, repeating his extended shhhhree-eee-aughk until everyone in East Rutherford knows all about it. Beyond him, an eight-stories-tall Yao Ming enjoys a Pepsi. I find myself once more searching the sky. I never knew that I liked the sight and sound of birds. When the Chinese go to the park, they bring their own, hanging their cages in the trees. I suppose it reminds them a little of the world.

  I cast about for a taxi, and of course there is none. Stuffing my hands into my pockets, I encounter something and pull out the fax from Hydrangea Laboratories. Exactly four words: Please call Chicago immediately. Listed are four phone numbers. I especially like the please.