Free Hard Rain by Peter Abrahams Page A

he’d have to be the one connected to it.
    The thought made her angry. She could feel her heart beating faster, her breathing becoming more labored, her pores starting to open: all grist for the black box, and they hadn’t even begun. This insight reminded her of a dinner party where someone had said that beating the machine was easy. All you had to do was artificially raise the tension level during the control questions—“Bite the insides of your cheeks; squeeze your feet into the floor; simply remember the worst pain you’ve ever felt.”
    â€œWhat about thinking of sex?” someone had asked.
    â€œOnly if it’s adulterous.” A rather witty conversation for Washington, these days, she thought. It must have taken place at the Canadian embassy. What a pass things had come to.
    â€œNow, I’m going to ask you a series of questions,” Brent said. “Please keep your answers simple.” He licked his thumb and turned a page. “What is your name?”
    Something about his gesture made the woman lose perspective, made her see things not as they were—a publicity exercise that would soon be over, to be followed by lunch at Le Pavillon and some shopping—but as they would appear to an uninformed observer or a camera: state functionary, human peeling machine, citizen. What had it been—simply the sight of his thick pink tongue wetting the ball of his thumb? A glimpse of something animal lurking under all the high tech?
    Glancing first at Mr. Brent, who was watching the styluses, the woman bit the inside of her cheek. She discovered that her dinner party informant had never put his ideas into practice: cheek-biting precluded normal speech. Instead she dug a fingernail into her palm and answered, “Alice Frame.”
    The graph paper in the metal box began rolling. The styluses dove down and started scratching. The young man glanced without expression at the four lines appearing on the paper and went on.
    â€œWhere do you reside?”
    â€œWe have a farm near Sweet Briar, Virginia.”
    Styluses scratched. Paper rolled. Brent watched the spidery lines grow. Silence continued until Alice felt compelled to add, “We also have a house in Palm Beach and a ski chalet in New England.”
    â€œWhere in New England?”
    â€œDoes it matter? Near Morgantown, Massachusetts.”
    Brent licked his lips. Then he asked, “Are you married?”
    â€œThat’s the whole point of the exercise, isn’t it?” The styluses did something that made Mr. Brent frown.
    â€œPlease make your answers direct. Are you married?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat is your husband’s name?”
    â€œEdmund.”
    â€œWhat does he do?”
    â€œWhat he likes.”
    Brent frowned. “What is his job?”
    â€œAs you know, he’s a member of the United States Senate.”
    Brent watched the styluses. The frown lines receded on his forehead, but didn’t quite disappear.
    â€œDo you have children?”
    Alice drove her fingernail into her palm, but not to fool the machine. It just happened. “No.”
    â€œCould you speak up a little, please. Children?”
    â€œNo.”
    Brent’s eyes tracked the black lines moving across the paper in the metal box. He frowned again. Then he licked his thumb and turned another page in his notebook.
    â€œHave you ever had an unauthorized meeting with a representative of a foreign power?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHave you ever been the subject of a blackmail attempt?”
    â€œObject,” said Alice.
    â€œExcuse me?”
    Alice sighed. “No. No one has tried to blackmail me.”
    She stopped digging her nail into her palm. She answered the rest of Mr. Brent’s questions as quickly as she could. All she wanted was for it to be over.
    Brent unhooked her. He didn’t thank her or say good-bye. Protocol for these situations hadn’t been developed. The world