As he moved away, I knew it was now or never. The de Gaulles were definitely moving out - they’d reached the smiles and good-bye handshakes stage. Furthermore there was no knowing how complicated the situation would become when Martha reached me. Throwing caution to the winds, I propped my crutch against the mantelpiece where Lincoln could keep an eye on it, stepped smartly to one side for a clear shot at de Gaulle and reached for my gun.
At which point the steel band around my forehead snapped and I realised every woman in the room was stark naked.
Martha was the only one really worth looking at, lithe and soft and sensual as she swayed towards me, but the Mother Superior - who for some reason had retained her wimple, wasn’t at all bad if you ignored her face. She was probably pushing seventy, but she had a body many forty-year-olds would envy, the result, I assumed of all her karate training.
The gun dropped from my nerveless fingers as Martha stepped towards me.
She was absolutely everything I had fantasised, apart from the kinky underwear of course. High, full breasts, jutting nipples, superb legs... I could go on and on, growing more lyrical - or possibly just more randy - with every passing minute.
But despite the utter reality of the vision, somewhere in my heart of hearts I knew the same thing was happening to me now that happened at the Hertz desk in the airport. My sexual frustration had overflowed again, producing another vivid hallucination.
I grabbed my crutch and brushed past Martha. The illusion was so real, her shoulder actually felt naked where I touched it. I was vaguely aware I had dropped my gun and some lunatic portion of my mind was suggesting I might beat de Gaulle to death with my crutch. But in my distracted state, I couldn’t see him now; and besides, my heart wasn’t really in it.
I was surrounded by a sea of naked flesh, most of it belonging to the electric blue dowager, now a mountain of quivering pinkness. No-one else noticed anything amiss, of course, further proof - if proof was needed - that my mind was cracking up. And this time the hallucination wasn’t passing as it had before. The women were nude and staying nude. I needed help, badly.
My bandages were soaked in sweat by the time I reached the door where Gray, still decent - as all the men were - in his Harvard suit, smiled and said, “Are you ready to see the doctor now, General?”
I was. Oh how I was! “Yes,” I croaked. “The doctor. Quickly!”
Gray stood aside politely and I hobbled out in time to see a naked secretary passing in the corridor. I closed my eyes while he closed the door. Jason’s office proved to be only a step or two away, but it was a miracle I made it without falling apart completely. In the corridors of the White House, women seemed to be everywhere - and everywhere naked. Gray pushed open the door and I had a glimpse of a well dressed man standing with his back to us while he stared out through a window. Then three naked brunettes strolled by and I was momentarily distracted.
“General Ivimy will see you now, Doctor,” Gray said; and somehow I was in the office with the door closing behind me as Gray disappeared again.
Then the man by the window turned round, murmuring, “It’s very good of you to see me, General.”
And next thing I knew, I was actually shaking hands with Dr Nicholaas Van Rindt.
Chapter Eighteen
“You!” I hissed, snatching back my hand. Then it occurred to me that my hallucinations might not be confined to naked women. If I was capable of seeing a pink dowager without her clothes, might I not be perfectly capable of seeing a fully-clothed psychiatrist who wasn’t there? “It is Dr Van Rindt, isn’t it?”
He frowned. “Why, yes. I was just -”
I went for my gun, then realised I’d left it lying on the floor of the Oval Office. Perhaps I could mash him with my plaster cast. I started scrabbling at the sling. “You poxy, snidey, double-dealing wife-stealer!” I exclaimed. As always happens at times like this, the sling got tangled up so I couldn’t free my broken arm.
“John?” Van Rindt asked uncertainly. He’d obviously recognised my voice, undisguised now, which he’d listened to for hours on end babbling inanities from his psychiatric couch.
“Damn right it’s John!” I told him, still trying to free my arm, knowing the confirmation would make him cringe away, possibly even beg for mercy and forgiveness.
But in point of fact, his face was swept by what could only be a wave of enormous relief. He actually broke into a smile. “My dear fellow, I’m delighted to have found you - you must have been going through sheer hell!”
I stopped scrabbling at my sling. “What?”
“This is quite incredible,” Van Rindt said. “Perhaps there’s something in the theory of synchronicity after all. Carl Jung, you recall, felt many coincidences were actually meaningful.”
I stared at him. Moments ago I was within a hairsbreadth of slaughtering de Gaulle. Seconds ago I had been watching three hallucinatory nude brunettes. Instants ago I had walked straight into Van Rindt - Van Rindt! - here in Washington, here in the White House. And now we were discussing psychiatric theory. At least he was. “What?” I said again.
Van Rindt shook his head. “I’m sorry, John. It’s just that after searching for you for so long, this was the last place I expected to find you.”
“You were searching for me?” I asked incredulously.
“But of course I was, dear boy. You were still my patient and consequently my responsibility. Once I heard the news, I knew your emotional state was unlikely to survive a complete breakdown. You are a solitary individual, John. Who else could you turn to, if not myself?”
None of it was making sense. “What news?”
“The news of your wife’s departure. And her infidelity, of course. Coming on top of the job loss, it was bound to be an insurmountable trauma.”
Such is the force of habit, I almost found myself falling into my old role of civilised introspection. Almost, but not quite. “Departure, you half-assed twat?” I screamed at him. “Infidelity, you blood-sucking grease ball? You stole her, you two-faced git! You enticed her away with your smarm and your money and those grey wings in your hair!” I hadn’t realised until then I was insanely jealous of his distinguished looks.
“But Van Rindt’s calm facade didn’t even show a crack. “Yes,” he said, “I can understand your aggression, John, which is perfectly natural in the circumstances as you see them. However, your insight is based on a false premise.’’ His manner stopped me as much as his words.
“What false premise?”
“That your wife Seline was having an affair with me and left you for that reason.”
I stared at him through the holes in my bandages. Nobody could be that good an actor. “She wasn’t?”
Van Rindt shook his head. “She wasn’t.”
“She didn’t?”
He shook his head again. “She didn’t.’’
“Her sister told me she ran off with you.”
“Her sister was mistaken. I think if you were to contact her now, she would tell you so.”
There were several chairs in Jason’s office. I picked the one nearest me and sat down on it, heavily. I kept thinking it had been one hell of a day. “Look, Doctor,” I said, “this is - you know, a big thing for me to assimilate. “ Two minutes with Van Rindt and I was already using words like assimilate.
‘I appreciate that, John.” He went over and - I swear to God - actually sat down behind the desk. Jason’s desk, I assume. All it needed was a couch and we were back into one of our analytical sessions.
Only this time, I didn’t plan to do the talking. “Look, you’d better tell me all about this.”
“What would you like to know, John?”
“First off, where the hell were you the night Seline left me?”
He frowned. “I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you that without consulting my diary.
What date was it exactly”
“It was the same day I last saw you - I came in for the emergency session.”
“Ah yes, I remember. On that evening, I was at home.”
A little worm of suspicion reawakened in my breast. “Not when I phoned you, you weren’t.”
“No,” Van Rindt said easily. “My car developed an electrical fault and I was very late getting home. It was one of those things garages can’t trace easily.”
“How did you find out about Seline if she wasn’t with you?”
“Oh, I can assure you she was not. When you phoned my home, you talked to my wife. She is a wonderful woman, but somewhat less than efficient.” He pursed his lips, the nearest he ever came to expressing disapproval. “It took her some days to mention your call - it slipped her mind. Naturally, when she did mention it, I returned it at once. But when I rang your number, I found myself talking to some retired Bishop who claimed to have bought your house and seemed to be upset because he’d found some obscene pictures. I knew from our last session together you were in a disturbed emotional state so I took the liberty of making some discreet inquiries. I found you had indeed sold the house suddenly and apparently left the country. I would probably have left it at that had I not chanced to meet your wife’s sister.”
“Patricia?”
“Mrs Carver.”
“That’s Patricia.”
Van Rindt nodded. “A highly unstable personality in my professional opinion. Aggressively frank to cover basic insecurities and very prone to mistaken judgements.”
“That’s Patricia,” I said again. But great knockers, my mind added irreverently. I wondered if I was still hallucinating. With no women around, it was difficult to tell.
“She mentioned Seline’s departure and also her belief that I was the man with whom she had run off. I was able to show her quite quickly this was nonsense.”
“She ran off with somebody,” I said. “She told me so in the note she left.”
“I’m afraid that was predictable on the basis of her personality profile,” Van Rindt said, without explaining why the hell he hadn’t bothered to predict it when the prediction would have done me some good. “As was the type of man she would run off with,” he added.
Intrigued despite myself I asked, “What sort of man was that?”
Van Rindt shrugged. “Conservative. Secure. Sexually undemanding. Someone totally devoid of imagination, locked in a humdrum job without creative pretensions.”
It sounded about right. “I don’t suppose you know who he actually was, do you?”
“Your bank manager,” Van Rindt said. “I believe his name is Sullivan.”
I stared at him dumbfounded for a moment, then began to chuckle. The sound grew inside my stomach until it bubbled up into an uncontrollable laugh - the sort mad scientists release when they’ve just discovered how to animate dead flesh. Sullivan! No wonder he’d let Seline clean out my account, the sneaky little bastard. But I’d got my own back when I ripped him off for two grand. He was probably still trying to explain that to his inspectors.
“Well,” I said. “Well, well, well.”
“So you see,” said Van Rindt, “once I realised the extent of your trauma, I could hardly wash my hands of it all, especially since I had been personally implicated, however erroneously.”
“So you followed me here?” It was amazing. But then everything that happened to me now seemed to be amazing.
“Not exactly. I discovered you had gone to Paris, then flown on to New York. I made some inquiries by phone, but was unable to trace you after you landed. I assumed you were staying in New York. There was a long-standing offer from the American Psychiatric Association for me to do some research work in Washington. I decided to take it up and spend whatever spare time I had visiting New York to search you out. I was actually there a few days ago.”
“I know,” I said. “I saw you.”
“Did you? Where?”
“In a restaurant. I ran after you as you were going out, but you didn’t hear me.” I thought it better not to mention I’d been trying to kill him with a dessert fork.
“What a shame,” Van Rindt said. He smiled. “However, here we are again together only a short while later.”
And indeed so we were. But where did we go from here? I no longer had any reason to slaughter Van Rindt; nor, by the look of it, very much opportunity to slaughter the de Gaulles. Life felt abruptly empty again. It was as if I had somehow travelled back in time and was sitting in his consulting rooms, the desk between us as of old, about to voice my vague dissatisfactions yet again.
“Why are you bandaged up like that?” Van Rindt asked curiously. “Did you have an accident?”
“No,” I said. “I’m impersonating a General.”
For the first time in our entire relationship he actually looked surprised. “You’re what?”
“Impersonating General Ivimy.”
“General Ivimy? But that’s the man I’m waiting to see.”
“You’re seeing him,” I said. “At least they think I’m him.”
He was a fast thinker for he said almost instantly, “There’s a patient who believes he’s General Ivimy in my ward. He escaped and somehow managed to get into the White House. That’s really why I’m here.”
‘I know,” I said. “The President told me.”
I expected he might be impressed, but he only said thoughtfully, “If you’re impersonating General Ivimy...”
“That’s right,” I nodded. “You’ve got the real one.”
“Good grief,” Van Rindt exclaimed.
My run of ill luck must have ended at last, for we made our way out of the White House without the slightest difficulty. I started to unwrap the bandages in Van Rindt’s car. It was an enormous relief to get them off.
“Aren’t you going to take off the cast?” he asked curiously.
“It’s genuine - a nun broke my arm.”
Van Rindt said nothing.
After we’d driven for a bit I asked, “Where are we going, Doctor?”
“Back to the hospital - I have to see General Ivimy is released. I expect he’ll sue.”
“You?”
“Oh no - I was not the one to admit him.” Which was just as well, otherwise he would have known who signed the General in there in the first place. I had at last learned to keep my mouth shut with Van Rindt, which was progress of a sort.
“Can you drop me off at my motel?” Glancing through the car window, I could see that women walking in the streets were decently dressed. Apparently my hallucination had once more run its course.
“Don’t you want to talk to me?”
“What about, Doctor?”
“Your trauma.”
I shook my head. “No, not really. I think I’ve worked a lot of things out.” Pathological liar that I was.
“I’m glad to hear it, John,” Van Rindt said with every indication of sincerity. It was a nice phrase to remember him by. Since he wasn’t actually passing my motel and seemed anxious to get back to release the General, I had him drop me at a taxi rank. But when the car drove off - the last link with my old life fading rapidly into the distance - I decided I didn’t want to go back to my motel yet a while. I felt (I have to admit it) empty and depressed. My attempt to kill de Gaulle had failed abysmally, but even that now seemed less important than it had an hour ago.
I walked for a long while, trying to think, my steps taking me closer to the motel I didn’t want to go to. The closer I got, the more it seemed to me I was slipping back into my old personality, the personality of a robot who did things not because he wanted to, not even because he had to, but because there really seemed very little else to do. My attempt to assassinate de Gaulle had slipped a peg from unimportant to positively futile, as if, in the ex
citement of the plan, I had somehow missed seeing what I really wanted to do. I knew, from my long analysis with Van Rindt that what I really wanted to do must be fairly obvious - except, of course to myself. I was no nearer seeing it now.
Partly because I was growing hungry, but mainly to avoid the empty motel room, I stepped into a nearby Jewish restaurant, lured by the all-pervading smell of chicken soup.
I was halfway through a plate of rough chopped liver when I was joined by Martin Bormann.
Chapter Nineteen
He was not, thank God, accompanied by his mother.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“I didn’t. You think I don’t have to eat? This was the nearest kosher joint to your motel.”
“How did you find my motel?”
“I traced the phone number.”
“I never gave you my phone number.”
“All right, already,” he said impatiently. “I traced your last call.”
“What on earth did you do that for?”
“Standard practice,” Bormann said. “That liver good?”
“Delicious.”
“I think I’ll try some.” He signalled the waiter and gave his order. As he turned back he said, “I talked to the Doc Van Rindt at the Hilton. That’s the man you’re looking for all right, only he’s checked out now. I don’t know where he went.”
“He came to Washington,” I said.
“How do you know?”
I shrugged. “I’ve just left him a few hours ago.”
“Caught up with him, did you? That’s all right then. I’ll only charge you expenses on that part of the job. Now the broad you were looking for...” Despite my depression I felt a sudden stirring in the loins. “Beth?”
“Yeah - Beth. Once I checked out the Doc, I went to the restaurant you went to and the maitre de knew her. After that, it was only a matter of legwork.”
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