I still didn’t like what had to be done—but I liked even less the thought of my own death, and that seemed like the only alternative. Neither the President nor Ralston really wanted me around as an embarrassment. So I had to stop being a potential embarrassment, and that meant making a much bigger mess—and making sure my survival benefited them. Or that my demise would hurt them in ways they couldn’t afford to be hurt. It’s about the same thing either way.
After a short time, I drove the steamer around the block and parked down the way on the other side of the street, where the shadows partly cloaked the Stanley but from where I could see the house. I had to turn in the seat to watch because I wasn’t going to drive past the house again when I left.
Although I would have liked to wait until Ralston headed off for the trolley in the morning, I hoped to be well clear of the capital by then. The one thing I knew was that he wasn’t traveling, and that meant he would be home sooner or later, if he weren’t already.
I watched for a time, convinced at last that one of the shadows in the house was his. As usual, I hoped to take advantage of human nature—Ralston’s, of course. The plan was simple.
First I had to wait until the lower-level lights went out. It was almost midnight when that happened, but vanBecton never stirred, just kept breathing. I still had him trussed, just in case.
When the lights went out, I got out the goodies—the file folder, the disassociator, and the kerosene and wadded paper. Using the cover of the shrubbery, especially the ornate boxwood hedge that ran parallel to the front walk, I edged up to the front door and set the disassociator beside the low front stoop, where it would be concealed by the three steps between door and walk. The file folder with both real and phony papers went next to it.
Then I retreated and, with the watch uniform and thin rubber gloves still on, I took the jug of kerosene and crept up through the azaleas to the corner of the empty screened porch. In the darkness I poured it over the railings and the wood, careful to leave a puddle under the bottom of the railing. Then I wadded up the paper and lit it off, retreating quickly and setting the jug under the neighbor’s bushes.
As the flames slowly flicked stronger, I waited between the oak tree and the sidewalk in the shadows. When the fire was going, I ran up to the front door and hammered the knocker. Lights went on upstairs, but nothing happened. I pounded again.
“Who is it?”
“What the devil …”
Muffled steps announced someone’s arrival at the door, and the glow squares cast a faint light across my goateed and uniform-capped face. The door opened. Ralston stood there. I didn’t grin.
“Sir! There’s a fire on the porch!”
A frown crossed his face, but the glow squares hadn’t reached full power and the orange flames from the porch also had caught his eye. He edged forward, his eyes flickering toward the fire.
I caught his temple with the sap, then broke his fall but let him sprawl across the three steps right onto the front walk. It took only a second to lift the disassociator. My stomach turned, but Ralston had threatened everyone I had left—and meant it. After quickly setting it down by the boxwood well into the shadows away from the door, I dashed back to the steps and yelled through the doorway. “Wire the medics! Get the fire department!”
A youth scrambled down the stairs into the foyer.
“Your father saw the fire and fell. He’s hurt. You’d better wire the medics and the fire department.”
His eyes flicked to his right, where he could see the orange and red glow through the French doors of the front parlor, and dashed for the wireset.
I ran out front and looked for a hose, and actually found one. After several minutes I was playing water on the blaze, keeping it from spreading too quickly, while a gray-haired woman wept over Ralston and the young man tried to spray water from a second hose which wouldn’t quite reach.
When the sirens approached, I motioned to the boy. “Take this one.”
He didn’t argue, tight as his expression was, and he took the hose.
“Might I use the wireset, madame?” I asked Ralston’s wife.
“Go ahead. It’s inside the parlor.” She didn’t even look up, for which I was glad.
I dialed the emergency number for the Georgetown watch. “There’s a suspicious fire and an injury at thirty-two thirty-three P Street. Thirty-two thirty-three P Street.”
Then I dialed the number for the Post and gave a similar message.
“This is the watch. There’s a suspicious fire and an injury at thirty-two thirty-three P Street. The injured man is a special assistant to President Armstrong, and there are papers strewn all over the steps.”
“What? Who are you?”
I hung up and walked out the front door. The sirens were still several blocks away. Ralston’s wife cradled her husband, not looking at me for more than a moment. Their son struggled with the hose, not quite able to keep the blaze in check.
When they looked at each other, I stepped into the shadows, recovered the disassociator, and slipped along the hedge and back down the street to the Stanley.
VanBecton was beginning to stir. After untying him, I left him sprawled on the sidewalk, his case in hand, and guided the Stanley away from the curb, a block later passing both a fire truck and an ambulance careening toward Ralston’s.
Then I drove the long way out of the city, circling back to New Bruges and then out to River Road, and eventually onto the Calhoun Parkway with its wrought-iron glow lamps that never shed quite enough light on the pavement.
From where the parkway ended near Damascus and Route Fourteen began, I eased up the Stanley’s speed, heading northwest through Maryland toward Pennsylvania, aiming to angle back slowly toward New Amsterdam, continually searching for news broadcasts on the radio.
At one point, beyond Frederick, I pulled off onto a side road and changed out of the watch uniform and into the now wrinkled cheap wool suit, looking over my shoulder all the time. I didn’t even see any ghosts, but I felt that I ought to be carrying them in my head, with all the mayhem I’d been creating.
Back on the road, I kept changing radio stations and listening, but mostly I got rehashes of how the Colts had mangled the Redskins.
“Some day Elway had … made the Redskins’ fullbacks look like stone statues. Jack, they just haven’t been the same …”
The good news was that what I had done didn’t seem to have made the radio news, at least not yet.
After almost weaving off the road twice in ten miles, I finally stopped in a whistlestop called Gettysburg, and took a room at the Sunnyrest Courts, awakening a bearded man who wanted cash in advance.
“You sales types come in at all hours, leave, and don’t pay.” He put a big fist on the counter and glared.
I was so punchy I wanted to ask if he happened to be a farmer in disguise with a beautiful daughter, but even to me that didn’t seem smart. Instead I asked, “How much?”
“Twenty. Checkout is before ten in the morning.”
I handed him the bill, and he handed me the key to number eleven.
He watched from the door while I drove the Stanley down to the end. There were only eleven units, and it was the last. As I opened the trunk he slammed his door.
I locked the Stanley, picked up the garment bag, and fumbled open the door to the room. The carpet was bright green, and the spread on the bed was a sicker pale green, and I didn’t care.
I bolted the room and struggled out of most of my clothes. I didn’t remember much after that, but just before I feel asleep I thought—almost in wonder—about how much easier it used to be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A pounding headache, punctuated by screeching tires, awakened me from dreams I didn’t quite recall—except that ghosts were chasing me, spouting Shakespeare and bearing guns that fired real bullets that burned when they went through me. Given that I was sweating and shivering simultaneously, I was certain I didn’t want to recall those dreams in any mor
e precise terms. The thin pink blanket and the thinner sick green spread didn’t provide much warmth, not when my breath was steaming.
I stumbled over to the wall heater, shivering even more and wondering why it didn’t work. Nothing works when it’s not turned on. So I punched the button. The wheezing groan as it labored into action, beginning with a jet of even colder air that froze the hair on the back of my forearm, drove me back under the thin covers to regroup. They weren’t much help, and I trundled into the small bathroom, the kind where the mortar between the tiles is that gray that is neither clean nor dark enough to convince you it’s mildew. The hot water was hot, at least. Of course, I forgot that I was still wearing both goatee and mustache and ruined both, at least temporarily.
Some mornings are like that.
I peeled off both goatee and mustache and set them on the edge of the sink that crowded the shower. Still in the shower, with my shivering finally stopped, I shaved, only cutting myself once.
After drying myself thoroughly, I dressed. Then I remembered to put the soaked mustache and goatee in a waxed paper bag meant for other sanitary uses and slipped it into my garment bag. There wasn’t much sense in creating any more of a trail than necessary.
With not much more than a bed, a nightstand, and a lamp, Sunnyrest Courts didn’t boast the luxury of videolink. So I had no way to check to see how the Spazi was publicly reacting to the previous day’s events, but I doubted that there would be much on the air or in print yet.
The bearded character was looking out the window when I drove off, and he came running into the car space, waving his arms. I just let him, since I had left the key in the lock, and I really didn’t want to explain why I was clean-shaven. Besides, he wouldn’t get anywhere tracing a gray Stanley with false Virginia plates, and twenty for freezing half a night in a large closet was more than the actual charges. I was confident he’d keep the change.
As I drove down the short main street, I could see there wasn’t much choice in the way of places to eat in Gettysburg. I finally stopped at a chain outfit called Mom’s Pantry. I’d always avoided chains and places with “Mom” in the name, but I didn’t have many options. It was that or the Greasy Spoon. Talk about a scythe or a millstone!
I spent a dime on the local rag, since copies of the Columbia Post-Dispatch or the Evening Star hadn’t arrived. It did contain the story about John Elway and the incredible number of goals he’d inflicted on the hapless Redskins, but nothing about ghosts or violence in the Federal District. Somehow that said something about the whole country.
A heavyset woman with a faint mustache handed me a tattered pasteboard menu and pointed to a booth. “There.”
I didn’t ask if she were Mom—I didn’t want to know.
The waiter took his time getting to my booth, and he was young and unshaven. “Coffee?”
“Tea or chocolate.”
“They’re extra.”
“Chocolate, then. I’ll have scrambled eggs and flat sausage, with the potato pancake.”
He took the menu and started to pour the coffee.
“Chocolate,” I reminded him.
“You get the coffee anyway.”
I shrugged and left it.
The sausage and toast were fine, but all I got was grape jelly, and the eggs were like rubber. The chocolate was barely lukewarm and tasted like the instant powder hadn’t dissolved. The potato pancake had a vague resemblance to potato—it tasted mostly like soil.
“Is there any other jelly?”
“No, sir. All we have is grape.”
I didn’t leave a tip. But I didn’t feel small about that. How can you leave a tip at Mom’s?
When I finally got on the road north, reflecting that the Greasy Spoon would have been a better choice, I turned the radio back on.
“Yesterday the Eagles got a present from Baltimore when John Elway dismembered the Redskins . .”
I twisted the dial.
“… when the national korfball team meets the Austro-Hungarian team …”
I turned the dial again and got the driving beat of what appeared to be five bass guitars and a bandsaw. So I made another effort.
“At the briefing, Minister Holmbek indicated that the goal is to combine Japanese nuclear technology with the best features of Columbian submersible technology …”
With nothing about current political developments, I kept driving through the morning. I managed to find the Mid-Penn Turnpike and headed east toward New Amsterdam.
It was nearly noon when I stopped to fill the tanks in Unity Springs, just west of New Amsterdam. The place didn’t have the papers yet, so I was still in the dark. I found the local post centre and mailed the last set of Spirit Preservation League announcements, designed mainly to suggest that the invisible spirits would be watching the Speaker and his government. I was sure that copies would get to both the Speaker and Minister Holmbek, one way or another.
About a half hour after I crossed the Henry Hudson Bridge, on the north side of New Amsterdam, the radio finally offered some relevant news.
“The psychic research issue exploded again today with the bombing of Speaker Hartpence’s limousine, just moments after the Speaker had left the car at the Presidential Palace. Although no one was hurt, statements received by the press claim the bombing was the act of the so-called Spirit Preservation League.”
That was it. Was it enough? I didn’t know and kept driving.
Again, just to vary matters, I came up the river route, following the Blauwasser north as it wound through the hills of Nieubremmen, the state that almost wasn’t until the New Ostend delegation had threatened to annex it.
I finally decided I had to find a place to stop in Windsor, north of Haartsford. I was still too tired to push it, and I needed a good dinner and a decent night’s sleep. The road was having a tendency not to stay in place, or at least not where my eyes said it was.
That tendency stopped when I stepped out of the Stanley and was hit with the cold. It might have been early November, but it felt like winter—midwinter. Belatedly I noticed that every one else on the streets, even in their cars, was wearing heavy coats. I hurried into the road hotel office, which was far warmer than outside.
“Little cold out there. See you’re from Virginia. Should have brought a coat.”
“It wasn’t that cold when I left. So I packed it.”
“Better unpack it, friend. They’re talking snow or sleet for tomorrow.”
“Just what I need.”
“You want to pay now or later?”
“Now’s fine.”
“Be twenty-five. Make any wire calls, be extra. Pay them before you leave.”
“I don’t have anyone to wire.” I laughed.
“Must be nice.”
“Just lonely.”
We both laughed for a moment.
The Royal Court was a step up—a short one—from the Sunnyrest, but it did have videolink and a wireset in the rooms, not that I had anyone to wire or anyone that I dared notify. The spread on the double bed was thick and white, and the curtains were lace, clean lace.
Across the street was a small restaurant called Jim’s Place. That sounded more honest than Mom’s Pantry. I had a steak with French fried potatoes—pommes frites, I guess Llysette would have called them—and the steak was actually medium rare, rather than charred or raw. There were white linens on the table, but not white lace in the windows.
The tea was like the Russian Imperial blend in my own kitchen, but you can’t have everything. Most important, no one paid any attention to me, except for my waiter, and his youthful enthusiasm was clearly aimed at a tip. I didn’t disappoint him, but that might have been because I felt I was probably disappointing everyone at that point.
After my early dinner, I walked down the street to Arrow Pharmacy—they’re everywhere in the northeast—and picked up a copy of the local paper, the Courant or some such.
The psychic story was on page one, below the fold, but still on page one. I
skimmed through it.
PSYCHIC RESEARCH EXPLODES
COLUMBIA CITY (RPI)—An unprecedented bombing of Speaker Hartpence’s limousine just moments after he stepped out at the Presidential Palace has put the spotlight directly on the psychic research issue. Speaker Hartpence and his staff were unhurt, and only the rear left corner of the limousine was damaged.
Initial puzzlement turned to anger and then concern when the “Spirit Preservation League” claimed credit in a series of announcements postmarked well before the blast.
“This issue clearly needs the Speaker’s attention,” affirmed Anglican-Baptist Archbishop Clelland, in a speech from the National Cathedral just hours after the bombing …
“We’re not dealing with simple terrorists here,” announced watch specialist Herrick Reid. “The paper used in these announcements is extraordinarily expensive, and the language is cultured and rational. Equally important, these people are professionals. Two sets of announcements were postmarked before the explosion. The explosion itself was also carefully designed to minimize damage.” According to Reid and other specialists, the Spirit Preservation League has delivered a strong message—that it has the money, expertise, and ability to kill the Speaker with impunity if he continues his “covert” war on ghosts.
Acting Deputy Spazi Minister Jerome questioned whether the blast was really a League effort, citing threats by another group, the Order of Jeremiah …
In a related development, Deputy Spazi Minister Gillaume vanBecton remains in a complete zombie state after his kidnapping from his posh upper Bruges home in the federal city. He was found wandering in Georgetown, not far from where presidential aide Ralston McGuiness suffered brain damage from a concussion incurred in fighting a fire at his home. Reportedly, papers found in his case and near McGuiness’s home support the contentions of both extremist groups that the Speaker has committed significant federal resources to his war against ghosts. Neither the Speaker nor President Armstrong had any comments about the alleged documents …
Ghosts of Columbia Page 31
