person who is very smart, educated,
young, self-reliant, healthy, unencumbered, and relatively fearless. Well, a
guy who’s smart, educated, young, self-reliant, healthy, unencumbered, and
fearless is a guy who, chances are, is going to reserve a big place in his
affections for sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. It goes with the territory. And
it’s tolerated. Sure, from time to time there’re cowboys who slip through the
net. . . .”
“Cowboys?”
“You know: flag-wavers and
Bible-thumpers. Trigger-happy patriots. They’re the ones who create the
international incidents, who’re always embarrassing the CIA and the United States and getting innocent people killed. Of course, they
tend to win promotions because basically they’re the same kind of dour-faced,
stiff-minded, suck-butt, kick-butt, buzz-cut, macho dickheads who oversee the
company as political appointees, but anyone who truly understands the art and
science of intelligence and counterintelligence will tell you that the cowboys
mostly just get in the way. The gods dropped ’em in our midst to generate
misery and gum up the works. You’re aware, are you not, Hector, that the gods
are tireless fans of slapstick?”
It was Hector’s turn to smile. “You
have a festive manner of speech, Agent Switter. If you are at all typical, and
if you are not pulling my legs, I think I am going to enjoy very much my
association with this CIA.”
“Atta boy.”
“And so, dinner is complete, yet the
night is still ahead. Tell me, Agent Switter, do you like to dance?”
“Why, yes, I do. Just a couple of
days ago, as a matter of fact, I danced for hours without a break.” He
neglected to mention that he was alone at the time.
Hector Sumac’s drug of choice, at
least for that October evening, was a clean, beige, relatively mild form of Andean
cocaine. Switters wanted no part of it. “Thanks, pal, but I tend to avoid any
substance that makes me feel smarter, stronger, or better looking than I know I
actually am.” There were, in his opinion, drugs that diminished ego and drugs
that engorged ego, which is to say, revelatory drugs and delusory drugs; and on
a psychic level, at least, he favored awe over swagger. Should he ever aspire
to become voluntarily delusional, then good old-fashioned alcohol would do the
job effectively and inexpensively, thank you, and without the dubious bonus of
jaw-clenching jitters.
Nevertheless, Switters sat with
Hector while he snorted a few lines. They sat in Hector’s ‘97 Honda. The
vehicle was still immaculate, but if Lima didn’t hasten to allot a few billion nuevos soles to street repair—the tyranny of maintenance—it wouldn’t be long before Hector’s
proud chariot would be shaken and beaten into a spring-sprung tumbleweed of
automotive nerves. At present, however, it exuded that peachy, creamy, new-car
aroma, and inhaling it, Switters was led to wonder if part of the appeal of
young girls wasn’t the fact that they gave off the organic equivalent, the
biological equivalent—okay, the genital equivalent—of a new-car smell.
When Hector was sufficiently tootered
up, he ejected the Soundgarden cassette to which they’d been listening, and the
two men walked the block and a half to the Club Ambos Mundos, arriving shortly
before eleven
o’clock . Five nights a week,
the Ambos Mundos, like most clubs in Lima , featured live Creole music, but each Monday it was
taken over by a hipster deejay who played the latest rock hits from the U.S. and Great Britain . Blue lights apulse, the place was rocking to Pearl
Jam when they made their entrance.
Switters’s broad, tanned, big-boned face
was at all times abuzz with an activity, a radiance, of randomly spaced scars,
which, though delicate as sand shrimp and variable as snowflakes, created an
impression of hard history; and which, when combined with the intensity in and
around his emerald orbs, caused him to look potentially dangerous. That
impression was offset, however,
young, self-reliant, healthy, unencumbered, and relatively fearless. Well, a
guy who’s smart, educated, young, self-reliant, healthy, unencumbered, and
fearless is a guy who, chances are, is going to reserve a big place in his
affections for sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. It goes with the territory. And
it’s tolerated. Sure, from time to time there’re cowboys who slip through the
net. . . .”
“Cowboys?”
“You know: flag-wavers and
Bible-thumpers. Trigger-happy patriots. They’re the ones who create the
international incidents, who’re always embarrassing the CIA and the United States and getting innocent people killed. Of course, they
tend to win promotions because basically they’re the same kind of dour-faced,
stiff-minded, suck-butt, kick-butt, buzz-cut, macho dickheads who oversee the
company as political appointees, but anyone who truly understands the art and
science of intelligence and counterintelligence will tell you that the cowboys
mostly just get in the way. The gods dropped ’em in our midst to generate
misery and gum up the works. You’re aware, are you not, Hector, that the gods
are tireless fans of slapstick?”
It was Hector’s turn to smile. “You
have a festive manner of speech, Agent Switter. If you are at all typical, and
if you are not pulling my legs, I think I am going to enjoy very much my
association with this CIA.”
“Atta boy.”
“And so, dinner is complete, yet the
night is still ahead. Tell me, Agent Switter, do you like to dance?”
“Why, yes, I do. Just a couple of
days ago, as a matter of fact, I danced for hours without a break.” He
neglected to mention that he was alone at the time.
Hector Sumac’s drug of choice, at
least for that October evening, was a clean, beige, relatively mild form of Andean
cocaine. Switters wanted no part of it. “Thanks, pal, but I tend to avoid any
substance that makes me feel smarter, stronger, or better looking than I know I
actually am.” There were, in his opinion, drugs that diminished ego and drugs
that engorged ego, which is to say, revelatory drugs and delusory drugs; and on
a psychic level, at least, he favored awe over swagger. Should he ever aspire
to become voluntarily delusional, then good old-fashioned alcohol would do the
job effectively and inexpensively, thank you, and without the dubious bonus of
jaw-clenching jitters.
Nevertheless, Switters sat with
Hector while he snorted a few lines. They sat in Hector’s ‘97 Honda. The
vehicle was still immaculate, but if Lima didn’t hasten to allot a few billion nuevos soles to street repair—the tyranny of maintenance—it wouldn’t be long before Hector’s
proud chariot would be shaken and beaten into a spring-sprung tumbleweed of
automotive nerves. At present, however, it exuded that peachy, creamy, new-car
aroma, and inhaling it, Switters was led to wonder if part of the appeal of
young girls wasn’t the fact that they gave off the organic equivalent, the
biological equivalent—okay, the genital equivalent—of a new-car smell.
When Hector was sufficiently tootered
up, he ejected the Soundgarden cassette to which they’d been listening, and the
two men walked the block and a half to the Club Ambos Mundos, arriving shortly
before eleven
o’clock . Five nights a week,
the Ambos Mundos, like most clubs in Lima , featured live Creole music, but each Monday it was
taken over by a hipster deejay who played the latest rock hits from the U.S. and Great Britain . Blue lights apulse, the place was rocking to Pearl
Jam when they made their entrance.
Switters’s broad, tanned, big-boned face
was at all times abuzz with an activity, a radiance, of randomly spaced scars,
which, though delicate as sand shrimp and variable as snowflakes, created an
impression of hard history; and which, when combined with the intensity in and
around his emerald orbs, caused him to look potentially dangerous. That
impression was offset, however,
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