The Sweetman Curve

by Graham Masterton

  ‘This is a curve for Anthony Seiden, the movie director, and it shows that his political influence on the movie-going population of the United States will be sufficient over the next three years to sway the voting result in the 1980 Presidential election by 0.02 percent.’ John stared at the chart. ‘You’re going to kill Anthony Seiden?’

  Professor Sweetman nodded. ‘It’s planned for tonight. It’s a very special case, you know, because he’s usually inaccessible. He has bodyguards night and day, a bulletproof limousine, very tight security. I know that as soon as his name came up on the curve, one of Chapman’s men tracked him for three weeks, and didn’t even catch a glimpse of him.’

  ‘So what makes tonight different?’ Mel asked.

  ‘Well, tonight there’s a party in Seiden’s honour at Palm Springs. It’s being given by Adele Corliss – you know, the old movie actress. I don’t know exactly what Senator Chapman has planned to do, but he seemed very confident about it. Very confident indeed.’

  There was a long, cold silence. Then John said, ‘Pass me that phone. If you’re damned lucky, we might catch Seiden in time. If you’re not, I’ll personally stand up in any witness box anywhere and tell them just what a sick, weak bastard you are.’

  Eighteen

  It was 5:05 by T.F.’s digital watch. Up in Ken Irwin’s bedroom in Palm Springs, T.F. sat astride a small gilt chair by the open window, his M-14 resting on the sill, and smoked a cigarette. The bedroom was decorated in golds and greens, with paintings of old San Francisco all around. T.F. had pinned back the drapes a little so that he could see down into the courtyard at the front of the E-shaped house, and so that he could angle his rifle across to the opposite wing of the E, the target area.

  There was a downstairs window there, patterned with diamond-shaped leaded lights. At the moment, it was closed, and any attempt to shoot through it would have been too risky. The bullet could be deflected by the angle of the window and by striking the glass, and might even hit one of the lead glazing bars.

  At the moment of firing, though, the window was going to be open. Even when it was thrown back wide, it wouldn’t offer T.F. more than two-and-a-half to three inches to shoot through, and at a distance of maybe two hundred feet that was a narrow shot. But T.F. was confident he could do it.

  He raised his rifle and squinted through the telescopic sight. Dimly, through the closed window, he could see the small side table and the chair where his target would be sitting. He could see the telephone, too – the telephone which was going to ring at 11:01 precisely and summon his target to the killing-ground.

  On the bed, his wrists lashed to the brass headboard, Mark the chauffeur coughed and moaned. T.F. turned towards him, his cigarette sloping out of the corner of his mouth, and watched him try to get comfortable. Mark’s face was caked with dried blood.

  From the back of the house, carried on the warm wind, T.F. could hear the servants setting out buffet tables on the pool deck, and the three-piece Spanish rock band testing out the sound system. There would be sudden blurts of electric guitar, and spasmodic rattles on the bongos. T.F. grinned. He hoped the band could play funeral marches.

  There was a rap at the door. T.F. pinched out his cigarette-end, and tossed it out of the window. Then he hauled himself up from the chair, and walked over to the door. He opened it a couple of inches, poking the muzzle of his rifle out first.

  It was Adele Corliss. She was dressed in a white lace bathrobe and her face was smeared with cream.

  ‘How is he? Can I take a look at him?’ she asked. T.F. shook his head. ‘When it’s all over, you can take him in your loving arms and cuddle him like a baby, Ms. Corliss. Right now, just go get yourself ready and act like everything’s normal.’

  ‘How can I?’ she said, almost hysterically. ‘You’re holding my chauffeur hostage and you’re threatening to kill one of my guests. How can I act normal?’

  T.F. tapped the muzzle of the rifle against the doorjamb, a steady tap-tap-tap. He said softly, ‘You’re an actress, aren’t you? So act.’

  Then he closed the bedroom door and left her standing alone in the corridor.

  Nineteen

  At her home in the Hollywood hills, a stark architect-designed chalet with a sharply-sloping roof and a wide balcony that overlooked the reservoir, Hilary Nestor Hunter was stalking about in a temper. The deep blue culottes she was going to wear to the party tonight hadn’t yet arrived from the couture house. She smoked furiously, waving her long cigarette-holder in exasperated gestures as she went from room to room, dressed in nothing but a man’s denim shirt, see-through French panties with daisies hand-embroidered on them, and high-heeled boots from Chelsea Cobbler of London.

  The girls of her entourage sat in the living room, on the Chinese-style settee or the white shag-pile rug, and did what they always did when Hilary was in a tantrum. They kept their mouths closed and their eyes averted, and waited patiently until it was all over.

  It was twenty after five, by the antique railroad clock on Hilary’s wall. The November sun was already beginning to sink into the brown smog over Los Angeles, and the reservoir had turned to bright but rusty chrome. Hilary came out of her bedroom and snapped to one of the girls, ‘Fix me a collins. And get on to that damned fashion house and tell them if they’re not here in five minutes I’m going to sue them for everything they’ve got and everything they haven’t got.’

  There was a chime at the door, the first few notes of Ravel’s Bolero. There had been a time when Hilary had been fascinated by the Bolero, and its decadent monotony, and she had danced solo to it at dinner parties, while her guests sat nursing their drinks and wishing they were some place else. Hilary snapped her fingers, and the black-haired girl wrapped herself tighter in her Korean silk robe and went across to the living room to answer it.

  There were a few moments of muffled conversation at the door, while Hilary continued to posture and fume, and then the girl came back into the room, followed by a tall hawkish-looking man in a light grey suit. It was Henry Ullerstam.

  ‘Hallo, my pet,’ he said to Hilary. ‘I finished early at Dutch Oil, so I came on up.’

  Hilary’s frown faded. She held out her arms in a dramatic gesture of welcome, and said, ‘Henry, it’s so beautiful to see you. I thought you weren’t coming till nine. Girls, say hello to Henry.’

  The girls smiled and gave little waves. Only one or two of them realised who Henry was, but they were all relieved and pleased that he was here, because he’d broken Hilary’s sour-tempered mood.

  ‘How long can you stay?’ asked Hilary. ‘Have a drink, why don’t you? Are you coming to the party?’

  ‘I have to leave by seven, I regret,’ said Henry. ‘There’s an OPEC meeting in Iran just now, and I’m going to have to make some policy responses over the weekend. Just boring old business, I’m afraid.’

  Hilary sat down on the settee, shooing the girls away. They lingered around for a while, and then they sulkily went through to the bedroom, and closed the door.

  ‘They’re an ungracious collection,’ Henry said.

  ‘I love them,’ smiled Hilary. ‘What’s the use of having people around who do everything willingly? It’s no test of one’s power at all.’ She patted the cushion beside her, and said, ‘Sit down. You’re looking so well. You look more like Basil Rathbone every day.’

  Henry carefully pulled up the knees of his pants, and sat beside her. Although Hilary was scantily dressed, he was unruffled and unperturbed, and treated her as blandly as if she had been wearing a knitted twin-set. They had, for one night only, been lovers, but at sunrise they had affectionately and tacitly come to the conclusion that Henry’s polished athleticism and her need for savagery and sadism were incompatible, and they had never tried again. Instead, they nourished their relationship on the two urges that they did share: the urge for wealth and the urge for power.

  ‘Tonight’s the big night, then,’ said Henry. ‘Is Carl taking his wife?’

  ‘Yes. He was hopi
ng she wouldn’t show. Believe me, I’m glad she did. To be pawed by a man is one thing. To be pawed by a human cuttlefish is quite another.’

  ‘Has he made all the necessary arrangements, do you know? I mean, it’s going to go off smoothly?’

  Hilary shrugged. ‘As far as I know. He never tells me the finer details. But he planted a cuckoo in the house about a week ago, and the cuckoo’s gotten the hit man inside.’

  Henry Ullerstam sat back on the settee and crossed his ankles. One of the girls came through from the kitchen and gave him a martini, which he accepted with an urbane nod of his head.

  ‘They’re very pretty, some of your young ladies,’ he remarked, as the girl went back to join the others in the bedroom. ‘Even if they are sullen.’

  Hilary smiled, ‘Pretty, sullen, but sapphic, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I always thought lesbians had gruff voices and muscles.’

  Hilary laughed. ‘I always thought men did.’

  Henry speared his olive with his cocktail stick, and popped it into his mouth. ‘Poor Carl,’ he said in a thoughtful voice. ‘I really feel quite sorry for him.’

  ‘Do you want to drink to that?’ asked Hilary. ‘To pity?’

  Henry shook his head. ‘I never drink toasts to pity. Or to stupidity. Only to success.’

  Hilary called to one of her girls, ‘Bring me my robe, will you, Etta? And freshen up this drink.’

  The girl went off to do as she was told, and then Hilary leaned confidentially towards Henry, and said, ‘Have you spoken to Cault?’

  Henry nodded.

  ‘Is he pleased?’

  ‘So far. It’s early days yet, of course, and the whole situation could change. But if our friend Professor Sweetman is anything to go by, the future is as predictable as a railroad track.’

  ‘Did Cault say anything?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Henry. ‘But for somebody to bring him the head of the next president on a chafing-dish, that’s what Cault considers to be nirvana.’

  ‘He agreed to everything you wanted?’

  Henry beamed. ‘More than everything.’

  Hilary’s girl came out with her robe, and Hilary unselfconsciously took off her shirt, baring for a moment her small brown-nippled breasts, and then wound herself in Paisley-patterned silk. She sat down again, drawing her legs up under her, and her clear blue eyes looked at Henry Ullerstam with a warmth and an openness that would have galled Carl Chapman, if he could have seen her, to the bottom of his gut.

  ‘Cault’s been champing at the bit to do a number on Angelo for two years,’ said Henry. ‘You can’t imagine how frustrated he’s been by presidential foreign policy up until now. He told me that he sometimes seriously wonders whose side the last three presidents have been on.’

  Hilary tasted her drink. She said, ‘Cault’s very hardline CIA, though, isn’t he?’

  ‘Well, it’s hardly surprising,’ said Henry. ‘The CIA is a highly competent, highly professional, highly talented organisation. It has its finger on the pulse of everything that happens overseas, and it’s capable of responding to coups and take-overs and revolutions in a matter of minutes, not to mention concocting its own. No wonder men like Cault turn into hard-liners, when they have to deal with presidents who don’t know Mozambique from Memphis, and who constantly block any action the CIA wants to take, just because the CIA is publicly unpopular, and because the presidents themselves don’t understand what the hell is going on.’ Henry stood up. Outside, dusk was drawing in, and there was a faint twittering of birds. A cool draught blew off the surface of the reservoir.

  ‘Cault reckons he has all the resources he needs, and all the contacts he needs, and he believes he can recruit the men,’ he went on. ‘He’s been trying to keep the CIA in control of Angola for years and years, but Nixon didn’t want to know, not after Viet Nam, and neither, of course, did anyone else. Oh, they were prepared to contain the spread of Communism within certain limits, and be vaguely supportive, but they weren’t going to sanction a damned great bloodbath, which was what Cault and the CIA wanted.’

  ‘Will Carl, when he’s elected?’ Hilary asked.

  ‘Of course Carl will sanction it,’ Henry said smoothly. ‘Carl is going to be our little dancing man. If we say “sanction, Carl,” then Carl will sanction.’

  He paused for a moment, and then he said, ‘I couldn’t have imagined any politician more suited for all this than Carl. It happens from time to time, that a naive mind has an epic idea, but not very often. Carl’s idea of how to apply the Sweetman Curve to politics was truly momentous. To conceive of wiping out enough people to sway the course of the next presidential election – and it really doesn’t take very many – well, that wouldn’t have entered my mind. An epic idea.’

  Henry pulled a wry face. ‘He set it all up quite well. A pretty good network of hit men, nationwide. Some of them seem to be less reliable than others, sure. But, mostly, they do their work undetected, and that’s all one could really ask of them.’

  He looked at Hilary with an expression of satisfied amusement.

  ‘Unfortunately, poor Carl is careless as well as ruthless, and he’s sentimental as well as cruel. He believes that he can inflict what he likes on others, and still be loved. He’s forgotten, in his heady campaign to be president at any price, that he owes a lot of people a lot of favours, and that a lot of people have a lot of old scores to settle.’

  Henry sat down again, and picked up his drink. ‘He’s got plans to cover his tracks, once he’s elected. Some way of disposing of his hired killers, I don’t quite know how. But he’s forgotten that once he’s sitting in that Oval Office, he’s going to have to deal with some old enemies like Cault at the CIA, and Stepanski at the FBI, and all those people at the Pentagon who were left with egg on their face when he pulled off that arms deal with the Senegalese. He hasn’t been courting people. He hasn’t made them any promises. That’s why they’ve all been so helpful to me. Carl Chapman doesn’t know how to woo.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ remarked Hilary, disgustedly.

  Henry grinned. ‘He’s a true political primitive. He’s wily and cunning, and he knows how to survive. But this time, he’s out of his league. It’s all been so easy that it almost brings tears to my eyes to think about it.’

  ‘Did Cault mention the oil?’ she asked him, trying to sound offhand.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, Don’t keep me in suspense.’

  ‘Well, he’s worked out a little scheme,’ said Henry. ‘It’s based very largely on a suggestion of my own, but Cault’s done a lot to improve on it. I always bow to other people’s greater generosity, not to mention their greed.’

  He roughly drew an outline of the coast of Angola on the settee.

  ‘After the coup is successfully over,’ he said, ‘the new Angolan regime is going to announce its intention to seek the financial help of Western countries. One of the ways in which it will do this is to parcel up certain areas of arid and non-agri cultural land, and lease them to foreign corporations to put up office blocks and factories. The leases, of course, will be wonderfully cheap.’

  He smiled. ‘One of these parcels of land will be leased to a corporation called Pan-African Insurance. Oddly enough, Pan-African Insurance is owned by a holding company called Ullerstam Securities (Jersey) Ltd. And even odder, when Pan-African Insurance starts to excavate the foundations of their new Angolan headquarters, they will discover to their amazement that the ground is rich with traces of oil.

  ‘The mineral rights, with a percentage backhander to the new regime, are included in the lease. So Pan-African Insurance will be quite within their rights when they set up oil rigs and pipelines, and start to exploit their find.’

  Henry looked serious for a moment. ‘I haven’t told you this, because I’ve been waiting for confirmation. But when we first discovered that field, eight years ago, we suspected that it was probably the largest oil well outside of the United States. At a rough guess, I’d
say we could ultimately take one hundred million barrels out of Angola, and that’s as big as Potrero de Llano No. 4 well, which was one of the greatest gushers of all time. That field stretches right under the sea, and it’s just bursting to have itself liberated.’

  ‘Liberated?’ asked Hilary, mock-offended.

  Henry sipped his martini, and then looked up at her. ‘An oil well is like a beautiful woman, my pet. They’re both valuable natural resources, and they both deserve to be set free.’

  ‘As long as they’re both set free for your profit and enjoyment,’ retorted Hilary.

  Henry looked at her keenly, and then saw that she was needling him.

  He said calmly, ‘Even money has its price, you know. In fact, it has a higher price than most things, with the possible exception of power.’

  Hilary closed her eyes. ‘Poor Carl,’ she said in a soft sibilant voice. ‘Poor, unfortunate Carl.’

  The clock on the wall struck live-thirty.

  Twenty

  John sat at Professor Sweetman’s desk, sweating and tense, as the clock on the office wall crept up to 5:45. He had tried to get through to Anthony Seiden by calling the studio, but Seiden’s secretary had gone home, and nobody else was prepared to give him Seiden’s home telephone number. He tried to find Adele Corliss’s number in Palm Springs, but it was unlisted.

  ‘Why don’t you call Detective Morello?’ Mel suggested. ‘If you tell the cops what’s happening, they’ll have to check it out, at least.’

  John nodded, and dialled the number that Detective Morello had given him, and waited while it rang. Across the room, her face shadowed by the slowly sinking sun, Perri watched him anxiously. Professor Sweetman was silently staring out of the window, while Dennis seemed to have resigned himself to his capture, and was sitting in a chair smoking a small plastic-tipped cigar.

  After a long wait, the telephone was answered. A tired voice said, ‘Detective Morello’s office.’