LITMIR.BIZ

      Unbridled Books

      Copyright © 2010 Frederick Reuss

      All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,

      may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Reuss, Frederick, 1960–

      A geography of secrets / Frederick Reuss.

      p. cm.

      ISBN 978-1-60953-000-6

      1. United States. Defense Intelligence Agency—Officials and employees—Fiction.

      2. Cartographers—Fiction. 3. War victims—Fiction. 4. Secrets—Fiction. 5. Psychological

      fiction. I. Title.

      PS3568.E7818G46 2010

      813’.54—dc22

      2010023434

      ISBN 978-1-60953-000-6

      1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

      Book Design by SH • CV

      First Printing

      FOR SOPHIE AND AVA

       part one

      A map is a sustained attempt upon an unattainable goal, the complete comprehension by an individual of a tract of space that will be individualized into a place by that attempt.

      —TIM ROBINSON, “INTERIM REPORTS FROM FOLDING LANDSCAPES”

       Breitenrainplatz

      46°57’30.25”N

      7°27’14.74”E

      Driving into work one day, I found myself in a different city. Geographically, it coincided with Washington, D.C., yet it was a completely new place. It happened as I was crossing the Fourteenth Street bridge. The sky, which was overcast, suddenly became brighter. Everything stood out crisply and distinctly, the way things look after a heavy thunderstorm, but the monuments and landmarks all seemed diminished, mere objects laid down on the landscape. Traffic on the bridge flowed like the surface of the river, emptying onto the flat estuary of the Mall and downtown. I got off at the next exit, parked on Ohio Drive, and sat in the car staring out at the unfamiliar landscape. I didn’t know what to make of it.

      After a while, I got out and walked to the water’s edge. A cement walkway, littered with debris washed up from the river, runs the entire perimeter of East Potomac Park. An elderly black man wearing a desert camouflage cap was fishing over the railing. A veteran, I figured. It was hard not to think he’d always been there. Just beyond him a group of teenagers was listening to hip-hop on a boom box. Farther down, a man in a suit stood smoking a cigarette. A Park Police cruiser pulled up, idled briefly at the curb, then slowly drove on.

      I sat down on a bench and watched the old man work his reel. A large schooner was moored in the middle of Boundary Channel. Behind it were the Maine Avenue waterfront, the Southeast/Southwest Freeway, and the drab brown federal buildings of L’Enfant Plaza. I felt as if I knew exactly what was happening behind every louvered window and ciphered door in every one of those buildings as well as downriver in the generals’ houses at Fort McNair, at the War College, the Anacostia Naval Air Station, Bolling Air Force Base—even in the heart of the old veteran, who didn’t seem bored or frustrated by his poor catch, just tired and lonely. I knew all this, and yet where I was had become unfamiliar.

      It felt good. Not euphoria—that’s not in my nature. Just it’s-all-there-and-I’m-all-here-and-it’s-all-okay good. For the first time, I was looking at the place as it really existed on the landscape, not as a complex of fixed coordinates and bundled meanings. I felt unburdened. A trio of blue air force Hueys came choppering up the channel and passed overhead, rotor wake trembling on the surface of the water. The man glanced up indifferently and began to reel in his line. I wondered if choppers roaring overhead could be felt by the fish, if they scared them away or caused them to bite.

      It’s easy to feel like a stranger in Washington, D.C. Even with a house inside the Beltway, a family and a career, it’s hard not to feel that you’re merely holding down a place until someone else steps in to take over. The White House is the symbol of this permanent flux at the top, but it’s no less so in the middle and at the bottom rungs of government—from General’s Row to highway planning, education programming, nutrition guidelines, or the three—bedroom, two-bath brick colonial up the street that came on the market yesterday. When I was growing up, change came in the form of Allied Van Lines and huge wooden crates stenciled with an APO address. The mystery of where we were going was never made clear until the last minute, when my father’s travel orders were finalized. Until then, there was only guessing. Delhi? Athens? Perhaps. Cairo? Not sure. Ouagadougou? Then came the thrill of arriving in a new place and being a stranger all over again. American? Yes. From Washington. It was added only by way of explanation, not as one would invoke a hometown. People understood right away. As a Foreign Service brat, I grew up with vagueness and a fluidity of identity that made fitting in anywhere easy. I became a real pro. As an adult, separating where I am and where I’m from, what I do from who I am comes naturally, even if the distance between them is never greater than my own self-delusion. I suppose I have my father’s example to thank for that. It’s a gift I plan not to pass on.

      Actually, I wasn’t going to work that day. I wasn’t going anywhere, in fact, but was just driving around aimlessly, looking for distraction. My father had died a few weeks earlier. Long retired, he’d been living in Switzerland with his second wife. We were close but not really intimate. I hadn’t seen him for several years and declined to view the body when I arrived in Bern for the funeral. I didn’t want the sight of his corpse to become the coda of his memory. Waxy skin, blue lips. I’ve never understood why people insist on viewing the dead. I wasn’t even tempted.

      The women had no such qualms. They all went to the morgue for a last look. They left the apartment together, and I couldn’t help seeing some element of sexual revenge in it, a settling of accounts on some high archetypal plane. It was cozy inside the apartment. Outside, it had started to snow. I watched from the window as they waited at the tram stop, bundled against the cold. They returned an hour later, shook their overcoats and stamped their feet in that levity of mood that comes with new-fallen snow. A pot was put on for coffee. A bottle of kirsch appeared on the kitchen table. The doorbell rang, and people began arriving with things to eat.

      The apartment soon filled with friends and neighbors. It was impossible not to feel warmly enveloped. There was little talk of him. I don’t think there was much talk at all beyond who was arriving

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