by Ben Bova
I reminded her of who I was and showed her my ID again. No go. I went over her head, to the Secret Service man in charge of White House security in McMurtrie’s absence. He was even stonier. Finally I had to get to Wyatt, and that took damned near half an hour.
His Holiness hemmed and grumbled but finally told me McMurtrie had gone out to some laboratory in Minnesota. Something to do with Dr. Klienerman and the investigation.
“What’s the name of the lab?” I asked. “Where in Minnesota?”
It was like trying to break into Fort Knox with a cheese knife, but finally the old man grudgingly told me what I wanted to know. I had to threaten to resign, just about, to get him to open up.
I called Vickie and told her not to expect me in the office the next day; Hunter would have to play “meet the press” for me again. She looked surprised, even startled. Before she could ask why, or where I was going to be, I clicked off and punched the number for airlines information. Thank God it was computerized. No arguing, no explaining, no back talk. Just tell the computer where you are and where you want to go, and the lovely electronic machine gives you a choice of times and routes. I picked a plane that was leaving for Minneapolis in an hour. The computer assured me that my ticket would be waiting at the gate. I rushed off to throw my dirty laundry into my flight bag and head out to the airport.
It was raining by the time I boarded the plane. We sat at the end of the runway for twenty minutes, exposed in the middle of the flat, open airport, engines whining and wind howling and shaking the plane, while the pilot cheerfully explained that a line of squalls and tornadoes was passing over the area. I couldn’t see anything outside my little oval window except a solid sheet of rain and an almost constant flickering of lightning. The rain drummed on the plane’s fuselage, and the thunder rumbled louder than the engines.
After one really nerve-shattering clap of thunder the pilot told the stewardesses to pass out free drinks. They were just at the row of chairs ahead of mine when he came on the microphone again: “Okay, folks, we just got clearance for take off. Button everything up, ladies.”
And through the rain and slackening wind, we took off. The plane was buffeted terribly until we cleared the cloud deck, and then the golden-red late afternoon sun turned the cloudtops into a horizon-spanning carpet of purple velvet. By the time they started serving drinks again I had dozed off.
It was noticeably chillier in Minneapolis when we landed, and I saw that the Twin Cities Airport runways and ramps were wet and puddled. But in the last dying light of the setting sun, I could see that the clouds were hurrying off eastward and the sky was clearing.Probably get rained on by the same storm again tomorrow, in Washington, I thought.
Nobody at the rent-a-car booth in the airport had ever heard of the North Lake Research Laboratories, the place that Wyatt had touted me onto. The woman who was making out my car rental forms even phoned the University of Minnesota, and drew a blank there. I knew it was just outside the town of Stillwater, though, so she gave me a map and directions for getting there. Even phoned ahead for a reservation at the Stillwater Inn.
Driving up the Interstate on my way to Stillwater, I had more than an hour to size up my situation.
Point number one: I was acting like a damned fool. Okay, but I was doing what I felt I had to do. Maybe it was the old newshawk instinct. More likely just a combination of fear and curiosity about the unknown. All I knew was that I had to see McMurtrie and Klienerman and find out for myself what in hell was going on.
Point number two: Nobody in the whole world knew where I was. Correction. Robert H. H. Wyatt knew. Or did he? His Holiness knew I was trying to get in touch with McMurtrie. I never told him I was coming up here in person. Didn’t even tell Vickie. Wyatt could figure it out soon enough tomorrow, when Hunter called in for the morning press briefing instead of me. But not until tomorrow morning. No reason for him to miss me tonight.
Which led to point number three: Nobody at the North Lake Research Laboratories knew I was going to drop in on them. I decided to use an old newsman’s trick and just show up at their doorstep tomorrow morning, unannounced and unexplained, and demand to see the top man. Hit ’em before they can phony a story together.
I nearly missed the turnoff onto 1-94 as I suddenly realized what my mind was doing. I was counting Wyatt, McMurtrie, Klienerman, and whoever runs North Lake Labs as possible suspects. Potential assassins. Traitors plotting to take over the Presidency.
Which brought me to the logical conclusion of all my logical thinking. I realized there was absolutely no one I could trust. Not McMurtrie or Wyatt or Laura or even the President himself. I was totally alone. I couldn’t even be sure of Vickie.
I glanced at the bare-branched trees whipping by in the twilight. I felt as if I were alone and naked out there, clinging to one of those dead bare branches. It felt lonely, cold, and damned dangerous.
As the moon came up over the wooded hills, I saw that the highway had now swung along the bank of the mighty Mississippi River. I think they call this part of it the St. Croix, locally. It was a magnificent, wide, beautiful river, cutting through the rolling hills that were dotted with the tiny scatterings of lights that marked little communities and, sometimes, individual homes. The river looked much stronger and somehow younger up here, not like the weary old sick stream that meandered sluggishly past St. Louis. And I knew that a thousand miles southward it finally flowed into the Gulf of Mexico.It endures. Despite what we do, the river endures. That old songwriter told it truly.
I found the city of Stillwater at last and, after a couple of wrong turns on its quiet streets, located the Stillwater Inn. It was a lovely, graceful place, kept up as it must have looked in its prime a century ago. As I parked the car in the unattended lot alongside the inn’s white clapboard side wall, I started thinking again.
I hadn’t pulled any rank at the airports, just used my regular personal charge card to get the airline tickets and the rental card. No fanfare, no Washington connection. But no cover-up, either. Wyatt, or somebody else, could track me down easily enough if he wanted to. But so far, I hadn’t called attention to myself.
I checked in at the hotel, paid cash in advance, ate dinner in their Bavarian-styled paneled dining room, had a drink in the coziest little bar I’d ever seen, and then went to my room. Despite all my suspicions and fears, I slept very soundly. I don’t even remember dreaming, although I woke up the next morning at dawn’s first light, soaked with sweat and very shaky.
SIX
North Lake Research Laboratories was perched on a bluff overlooking the St. Croix, about a half-hour’s drive above Stillwater. There were no road signs showing the way, and nobody at the hotel had seemed to know anything about the lab. I had to find the local fire station and ask the old man who was washing down the town’s shiny new pumper. Firemen always know what’s where, and the quickest way to get there.
From the highway you could see the lab buildings, low and dun gray, hugging the top of the bluff. Midcentury cement and glass architecture, Saarinen by way of Frank Lloyd Wright. My rented car climbed the switch-backed driveway slowly; battery was running down. There was a riotwire fence around the lab enclosure, with a sturdy-looking gate blocking the driveway and a sturdier-looking guard posted in a little phone booth of a sentry box alongside the gate.
I pulled up and he came out, leaned his face down to my window.
“Yessir, what can I do for you?” Very polite. He had an automatic pistol holstered at his hip.
“I’m here to see Mr. McMurtrie and Dr. Klienerman,” I said.
The names seemed unfamiliar to him. He looked politely puzzled.
“Dr. Klienerman’s from Walter Reed Hospital. Mr. McMurtrie’s from the White House.”
“Oh… yes…”
“My names Albano,” I said, before he could ask. “Meric Albano.” I fished out my ID, the one with the Presidential Seal on it.
He started to whistle, impressed, but caught himself. “Just one moment,
Mr. Albano. I’ll phone the reception lobby.”
He did that, came back still looking puzzled, but opened the gate and waved me on. I drove up another half-mile of blacktop, pulled up on a graveled parking area, and walked from the car to the reception lobby. There were fewer than a dozen cars in the parking lot; either their staff was incredibly small or there was another parking lot for employees tucked off in the back somewhere.Or the employees live here, said something in my head. Nonsense, I thought.
The reception lobby was equally quiet. Nobody there at all. A curved desk with all the paraphernalia of a busy receptionist: phones, picture screens, computer access keyboard, plush little wheeled chair. The lobby was paneled in warm woods, furnished with leather couches and chairs. There were even fresh flowers in vases on both low-slung wood slab tables. But no people.
A door in the wood paneling opened and a smiling, tall, handsomely dressed man came out. About my age, maybe a few years older. The suave public relations type: touch of gray at the temples, precise manner of speech, self-confident stride. A very careful man. The ideal pickpocket.
“Mr. Albano,” he said in a well-modulated voice that was somewhere between a confidential whisper and a throaty tenor. “We are honored.”
My estimation of him went up. Scratch pick-pocket. He was a confidence man.
I let him shake my hand. He had a very firm, manly grip.
“My name is Peter Thornton.I’m Dr. Peña’s assistant—”
“Dr. Peña?”
He almost looked hurt. “The director of this organization. Dr. Alfonso Peña. Surely Dr. Klienerman has explained—”
I cut him off with a nod. He was pumping me, and I decided to be the pumper, not the pumpee.
“Where is Dr. Pena? I’d like to see him. I don’t have much time, you understand.”
“Of course. Of course. But the gate guard said you were asking for Dr. Klienerman and Mr. McMurtrie.”
“That’s right. I’m part of the investigating team. We’ve got to make certain that we can handle the media from a knowledgeable basis.”
“Oh, yes, certainly. That is important, isn’t it?”
“Right.” But we hadn’t moved a centimeter from where I’d been standing all along. The door to the laboratory proper was still behind Thornton, and he was making no effort to take me through.
“This is a very unfortunate business,” he said, lowering his voice even more.
“Yes. Now where’re Klienerman and McMurtrie? And I also—’
“Dr. Klienerman left last night,” Thornton said, giving me a you should have known that look. “He and Mr. McMurtrie went together.”
“Last night?”
“By chartered plane. General Halliday insisted.”
“General Halliday?” The President’s father.
“Yes. They should be in Aspen by now.”
Damn! That was one of the troubles with skulking off on your own. You got out of touch with everybody else. I decided to take the offensive.
“I should have been notified,” I said sternly.
His eyebrows rose in alarm. “We didn’t know. They didn’t inform me—”
I shook my head. “There’s no excuse for this kind of screw-up. I know it isn’t your fault personally, but…”
He made a gesture that was almost like hand-wringing.
“Well,” I said, “as long as I’m here, I want to meet Dr. Peña. And I’ll need to see the bodies, of course. The bodies are still here, aren’t they?”
“Oh, yes! They’ve been subjected to extensive post-mortem examinations, you realize… but they’re here.”
“Let’s get with it, then.”
I had him on the run. He ushered me through the door and into the main building of the laboratory. We walked through miles of corridors, down stairs, through plastic-roofed ramps that connected different buildings. I got completely lost; I couldn’t have found the lobby again without a troop of Boy Scouts to lead me.
We passed a strange conglomeration of sights. At first we were in an office area, obviously administrative. Rugs on the floors, neat little names and titles on the doors. Secretaries’ desks placed in alcoves along the corridors. Then we stepped through one of those rampways into a different building. Here I saw workshops and what looked like chemistry laboratories: lots of glassware and bubblings and people in white smocks. Then a computer complex: more white-smocked people, but younger, mostly, and surrounded by head-high consoles with winking lights and display screens flashing green-glowing numbers and symbols.
Then we passed more offices, but here there were no doors, no names, no titles. The men and women inside these cubbyholes looked like researchers to me. They were scribbling equations on chalkboards or punching computer keyboards or talking animatedly with each other in words that were English but not the English language.
As we were going down a clanging flight of metal stairs, deeper into the basement levels underneath the surface building, it finally hit home in my brain that North Lake Research Laboratories was not a medical institution. It had nothing to do with medicine at all, from the looks of it.
“What’s the major area of research here?” I asked Thornton.
“Em… biomedical,” he said.
“Biomedical?”
“Well… mostly biochemistry. Very advanced, of course.” He produced a chuckle that was supposed to put me off my guard. “I’ll tell you something. I’ve got a doctorate in molecular biochemistry, and I don’t understand half of what these bright young people are doing nowadays.”
‘That far out, eh?”
I was about to ask him who paid for all these bright young people and their far-out research. But we had come to the bottom of the stairwell. There was nothing there except a blank cul-de-sac, about four paces long, with cement walls and an unmarked steel door at its end.
Thornton, looking suddenly grim, fingered the buttons of the combination lock set into the wall next to the door. It swung open and we stepped through.
This area looked medical. A large room, with pastel green walls. No windows, of course, this far underground. Glareless, pitiless overhead lights. Cold. Like a morgue, only colder. Two rollable tables in the center of the room, each bearing a body totally covered with a green sheet. Nineteen dozen different kinds of gadgets arrayed around the bodies: oscilloscopes, trays of surgical instruments, heart-lung pumps, lots of other things I didn’t recognize right off.
I found myself swallowing hard. Despite the cold of the room, the stench of death was here. I went to the tables. Thornton didn’t try to stop me, but I could hear his footsteps on the cold cement floor, right behind me. I stopped at the first table. So did he. I lifted a corner of the sheet.
James J. Halliday stared blankly at me. Christ, it looked exactly like him!
I let the sheet drop from my fingers and went to the other table. This time Thornton stayed where he was. I lifted the second sheet. The same face stared at me. The same sandy hair, the same blue eyes, the same jaw, the lips that could grin so boyishly, the broad forehead, the thin slightly beaked nose.
“I wouldn’t pull the sheet any further back,” Thornton’s voice came from behind me, “unless you’ve had some surgical experience. It… isn’t pretty.”
I placed the sheet gently back on the cold face. Dammit, there were tears in my eyes. It took me a minute before I could turn back and face Thornton again.
“What were the results of the autopsies?” I asked. “What killed them?”
Thornton looked uncomfortable. “I believe Dr. Peña should discuss that with you.”
“All right,” I said. “Where is he?”
“He’s coming down to meet you. He should have been here by now.” Thornton glanced at his wrist watch.
The cold was seeping into me. “Look, couldn’t we—”
“Dr. Peña is a very frail man,” Thornton told me, and for the first time since I’d met him in the lobby, I got the feeling he was saying something that he really meant. “He’s ne
aring ninety years of age. He drives himself much too hard. I hope you won’t… say anything that will upset him.”
I stared at Thornton. The life of the President of the United States was being threatened. Hell—one of those bodies could just as easily be James J. Halliday. And he was worried about his boss’s frailties.
There wasn’t time for me to answer him, though. Through a second door, one set farther back in the room than the one we had used, Dr. Peña came riding in on an electrically powered wheelchair.
He looked older than any human being I had ever seen; even Robert Wyatt would have looked coltish beside him. His face was nothing more than a death mask with incredibly lined skin stretched over the fragile bones. His head was hairless, eyes half-closed. He reminded me of the mummified remains of pharaohs; not a drop of juice left in him. He was wrapped in a heavy robe that bulged and bulked oddly. And then I saw all the cardiac and renal equipment loaded on the back rack of the wheelchair, and realized that below the neck he was probably more machine than flesh. His hands were covered with barely discernible thin plastic surgeon’s gloves. It gave his long, bony fingers and the liver-spotted, tendon-ridged backs of his hands a queer filmy sheen.
His voice surprised me. It was strong, confident, alert; not at all the thin, quavering piping I had expected.
“You’re the President’s press secretary, are you?”
“And you’re Dr. Peña,” I said.
He fingered the control buttons set into the wheelchair’s armrest and rolled up to me fast enough to make me involuntarily step back a pace.
“I’m a busy man, Mr. Albano. As you might suspect from looking at me, time is a very precious commodity to me. Why are you taking up my time?”
I almost grinned at him. Frail old man, my ass. “I’m part of the team investigating…” I was momentarily at a loss for how to phrase it. I gestured toward the shrouded bodies.
He glowered at me. “I’ve already told Klienerman and that Secret Service man everything I’ve found out. Ask them about it.”
