by Ben Bova
“They’re sure?”
The General’s voice was stony. “State police helicopter flew over the crash site. Heard a distress call and went to investigate. By the time they got there, there was nothing to see but burning wreckage. No survivors.”
“Jesus-suffering-Christ,” said Wyatt.
I still couldn’t utter a word. But my brain was racing at hyperkinetic speed.McMurtrie was killed. Murdered. Either he or Klienerman had found something, and they were both killed before they could tell anyone. Murdered by somebody here in the General’s household.
EIGHT
It was around midnight when my flight landed at Washington National. Home of the brave, I told myself. It was an effort just to pull myself out of the seat and trudge past the weary stewardesses standing at the plane’s main hatch. Even their conditioned-reflex smiles looked bedraggled. I felt as if that helicopter of the General’s had landed on my back. Utterly tired. Not just physically. The kind of nothing-left feeling when you’ve burned up the last of your adrenalin and the monster you were facing is still there, bigger than ever, breathing fire and reaching out to clutch you.
The airport was just about deserted. They stopped flights into National after midnight. The official reason was the noise; it bothered people living in the area. The real reason was security. Ever since the National Vigilance Society had tried to seize the Government and the city a dozen years ago, the airport had been kept under very tight security guard.
The damned corridor out to the main terminal building seemed endless. It was like a surrealistic nightmare; I was walking alone up this gradually sloping bare white-tiled corridor, scared to look behind me for fear that whoever got McMurtrie would be coming after me, scared to push ahead because I knew there were things in that city out there that I’d rather not face up to.
But as I went past the deserted passenger inspection station, with its X-ray cameras for searching baggage and its magnetic detectors for finding metal on passengers, the whole gloomy airport lit up for me. Vickie was sitting there, reading a magazine.
I was the first of the half-dozen passengers coming out of the plane, and she hadn’t looked up yet to notice anyone approaching. Her golden hair was a touch of sun warmth in the impersonal coldness of the terminal building. She was dressed casually in slacks and sweater, but she looked grand to me.
“You don’t get paid overtime, you know,” I said.
She looked up, startled momentarily, and then grinned. “I happened to be in the neighborhood…” She got up and stuffed the magazine into her shoulder bag.
“How’d you know which flight I’d be on?”
“Checked with Denver.” She looked very pleased with herself. “I may not have started life as a newspaper reporter, but I know how to find things out when I want to.”
“You ended a sentence with a preposition,” I said.
“The hell I did.”
We walked together out past the empty, echoing baggage carousels, mindlessly turning even though there was no luggage on any of them. The traffic rotary outside the terminal, so noisy and bustling all day long, was dark and quiet now. I didn’t see a cab anywhere.
“I’ve got my car,” Vickie said, pointing toward the parking area on the other side of the rotary.
“I didn’t know you had a car.” It was a little chilly in the night air. The sky was clouded over, although a quarter moon glowed through the overcast dimly.
“Well, it’s not really mine. It belongs to a friend. He’s out of town and I’m minding it for him.”
I didn’t reply. We walked straight across the rotary, just like Boston pedestrians, marching across six traffic lanes, a big circle of withered grass, and six more lanes on the other side. The parking area was automated. We got into the car—a thoroughly battered old gas burner that roared and coughed when Vickie started it up—and drove out, stopping only to pay the parking fee at the unattended gate.
“You didn’t walk around here in the dark by yourself,” I said.
“Sure. It’s okay… the place is really deserted. And they’ve got television monitors watching everything. The guards would have come out of the terminal building if anyone had bothered me.”
“Just in time to join the gang bang,” I muttered.
“Worried about my honor?” she asked as she turned onto the bridge that led across the Potomac.
“Worried about your life.”
“I can take care of myself. I’ve never been raped yet.”
“Once is enough, from what I hear.”
She grimaced. “I suppose you’re right.”
By the time we had pulled up in front of my apartment building, she had told me all about the car and its owner. The engine had been converted to hydrogen fuel, which is why the old five-seat sedan was now a two-seater. The rest was fuel tank. Very bulky. And highly flammable.
“But don’tworry,” Vickie assured me. “Ron tells me the tank is very crashworthy.”
“I’m thrilled.”
Ron was a staffer for a Congressman from Kentucky. A very likeable hillbilly with a passion for cars, the way Vickie described him. I could feel my lip curl in contempt, in the darkness of the car. Twanging accent and the brains of a grease monkey, I thought.
“I met him at a car rally in Bethesda last year,” Vickie said. “We go to lots of races and rallies.”
“I didn’t know you were a car freak,” I said.
“There’s a lot about me you don’t know,” she answered as she pulled the stick shift back into parking gear. “Well… here you are. Door-to-door service.”
“Come on up,” I said. “Least I can do is make you a drink. Or some coffee.”
She shook her head slightly. “I can’t leave the car here. They’ll ticket it.”
“So what? I’ll pull rank and get it taken care of. Old Boston tradition.”
“They might tow it.”
“So let them. I’ll get it back before your hill-billy friend returns to town.”
She really looked perplexed. “Meric… I don’t fuck with the boss.”
I guess that was supposed to stop me, or warn me, or turn me off. Instead, I heard myself reply, “Don’t worry about it. The whole apartment’s protected by TV cameras. If I attack you, guards will spring out of the walls and beat my balls off.”
She laughed. A good, hearty, full-throated laugh. “All right, all right. As long as we understand each other.”
“Sure we do.” I was only half lying.
She did take coffee instead of a drink. I poured myself a couple thumbs of Scotch. Vickie sat on the chrome and leather rocker in my living room. I sprawled tiredly on the sofa.
After a sip of the Scotch I asked her, “What made you come out to the airport for me?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. She started to look for a place to put the coffee mug down, settled for the rug. “I guess I was curious to find out what you’ve been up to—what’s bugging you, and what all this interest in that laboratory in Minnesota’s about. I’m usually a late-night person anyway; never get to bed before one or two. So I thought I’d give you a surprise at the airport.”
“It was damned nice of you,” I said. “Nothing lonelier than getting off a late flight with nobody there to greet you.”
“I know,” she said. “You told me that once… in the office.”
“I did?” But instead of continuing that line of conversation, she bent down and took the coffees mug again.
“How’s everything been in the office the past few days?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Mostly routine. Hunter’s doing a good job, and the press is bending over backward to avoid any unusual treatment that might get interpreted as racist. Oh, you got a call from a Mr. Ryan, of the Boston News-Globe. He said you invited him down for an interview.”
“He invited himself.”
“I think Greta set him up with a tentative date next Monday.”
“Okay. That sounds good.”
We chatted
for a few minutes more, and then she got up to leave. I’m not sure how it happened, but I wound up standing in front of the door, holding her hands in mine, and saying, “Don’t go. Stay awhile longer.”
“No, Meric… really…”
“Couple nights ago, on the phone, you said you wished you were with me.”
“That was…” She looked away, then back at me, her eyes the color of a tropical lagoon. “Its not fair to remember what I say when… well, it’s not fair.”
“Vickie… please. I don’t want to be alone.”
“Neither do I.”
“Well, then.”
“I told you,” she said, her voice rising a notch, “I don’t screw around with the boss.”
I didn’t let go of her. “Listen. Tomorrow I’m the boss. Tonight I’m a guy who wants you… who needs you.”
“What are you frightened of?” she asked.
I started to answer, but held it back.
“Something’s pursuing you, Meric. Something’s got you terrified. What is it?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“But maybe I can help…”
I shook my head and let her hands go. “No, Vickie. You don’t want to know. Believe me. You’re better off not knowing.”
She put a hand to my cheek. “My God, Meric. You’re trembling!”
I pulled away from her.
“It’s about Laura Halliday, isn’t it? I wish you could feel that much passion for me.”
“It’s not her,” I snapped. “And it’s not passion it’s fear. Just plain chickenshit cold sweat fear.”
“Fear? Of what?”
I slumped back onto the sofa and she came and sat beside me. “Meric, what’s happening? What are you so frightened of? Don’t I have a right to know?”
“No. You don’t. Dammit, Vick… I’m trying to protect you. As long as you don’t know anything about it, you’re safe.”
“Safe from what?”
“They killed McMurtrie,” I blurted. “Dr. Klienerman, too. Made it look like an accident.”
“They? Who?”
“General Halliday, maybe. Or Wyatt. Or person or persons unknown. I don’t know who! I don’t know why. But I might be on their list, too. And at the top of the goddamned list is the President.”
Her eyes widened.
“I’ve already told you more than it’s safe for you to know,” I said. “Now get out while the getting’s good. Go back to California and become a stock car racer. It’s a helluva lot safer and cleaner than what’s going on around here.”
I would have made a lousy intelligence agent. Vickie got the whole story out of me, bit by bit. The more I swore I wasn’t going to say anymore, the more I warned her that I was looking out for her own safety, the more I blabbered about the whole ugly business. A part of my mind watched the fiasco in disgust, while another part felt immense relief that I had somebody to talk to, somebody to share the whole incredible burden of doubts and fears. And anyway, I rationalized,between the fact that she works for you and you phoned her from General Halliday’s place, and she met you at the airport and drove you home, they probably figure she knows as much as you do.
By the time I’d finished talking, we were both drinking Scotch and looking very sober and scared.
“Then there’s nobody you can go to?” Vickie asked at last.
I shrugged. “McMurtrie was the one guy I trusted. He’s out of it now.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Wish to hell I knew.” I finished my glass, turned and saw that the bottle was empty. “There’s one thing I can do… the only thing I can think of.”
“What’s that?”
“Blow it wide open. Tell the press. Make the whole mess public.”
She thought a moment. Then, slowly, “If you did that…”
“I know. It’d paralyze the whole Government. Bring all of Washington to a standstill. Cripple everything. Maybe shake the whole damned Government apart and send us over the edge, once and for all.”
Vickie said, “I wasn’t thinking of that.”
“What, then?”
“If you tried to make it public, they’d have to try to kill you, too.”
There it was. It wasn’t just me being paranoid. Vickie saw it, too. I could be on their list. Hell, I was on their list. I knew it.
“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Not a goddamned thing. And if they’ve got this apartment bugged, I sure as hell hope they hear that. I’m not going to blow any whistles until I’m convinced that it’d do more good than harm.”
“How will you decide?”
“Damned if I know. Guess I’ll have to talk to The Man and see what his reactions are. From there on, it’s anybody’s ball game.”
She gave me a long, grave look. “You could go away. You could resign and leave the country. Make certain that it’s obvious you’re getting out of the game.”
I thought about it for a moment. “Maybe… except that… hell, I can’t. It wouldn’t do any good. They’d still be after the President, and I’d just be letting them get away with it.”
Vickie said nothing, but I somehow got the feeling that my answer was the one she had wanted to hear.
We ended up in bed together. The Scotch finally took effect, and I don’t remember too much of it, except that it was terrific and she liked to be on top. Which was fine with me. The last real memory I have of that night is of our two sweaty bodies plunging in rhythm, her firm little breasts bobbing above me and her knees clamping my torso tight. We forgot about a lot of things before dawn broke.
NINE
The next couple of days are just blurs in my mind. I went through the office routine mechanically, numbly, my mind in such a turmoil that it’s a wonder I could find my desk or get my boots on straight. Greta clucked over me and did everything she could, including sending me home with a jar of homemade chicken soup. She thought I was coming down with a virus.
The President seemed calm and unruffled. When I asked him about McMurtrie he turned grim for a few minutes, but as far as I could fathom from him and Wyatt, the investigation was still being kept small, quiet, and ultratight.
Vickie was… well, Vickie. That one night was one night. In the office we were boss and assistant. She was as pleasant and helpful as always. I guess I was polite and reasonable. She didn’t act coy or betrayed. I asked her out to dinner, she accepted, and we ended the night at her door. “Don’t get possessive about me,” she said. I felt relieved and annoyed, both at once.
We drew an almost total blank in our search for information about North Lake Labs and Dr. Peña.
“He’s almost a nonperson,” she complained tiredly, after several days of searching the records. “There’s his file from Princeton, more than forty years ago. There’s a couple of brief mentions of his attending meetings of biochemists and other scientific groups, but nothing at all later than the early seventies. Somebody’s done a very thorough job of keeping him out of sight.”
“Or erasing the records,” I said.
Her eyes went round. “They couldn’t be that thorough, could they?”
I had no real answer. “What about North Lake Labs?”
“Very hush-hush,” Vickie said. “Deep military secrecy. Restricted-access list and all that. We’d have to go through the Secretary of Defense’s office or the Senate Armed Services Committee.”
“And we can’t do that without advertising the fact that we’re snooping,” I said.
“It could be dangerous for you. But maybe not for me. Maybe they don’t realize…”
“Uh-uh.” I wagged a finger at her. “Dangerous for anybody. Stay clear or you’ll wind up in some godforsaken ravine, like McMurtrie and Klienerman.”
Vickie fidgeted unhappily in her chair. “Then what in hell do we do, Meric?”
“Nothing. Not a goddamned thing. We sit and wait. And think.”
“For how long?”
I shrugged. “It’s Friday. I’ve got to talk with Len Ryan on Monday. I’ll make up my mind by then.”
“It’s going to be a long weekend for you,” she said.
“Yeah. Think I’ll drive out into the country. That ought to be the best place to get some thinking done.”
“Out to Camp David?”
“No, I don’t want to be with the President this weekend. I’ll go the other way, maybe down to Virginia Beach.”
“I’ve still got the car,” Vickie said.
I shook my head. “You stay clear of me for the time being. If I make it past Monday, then we can talk.”
She started to argue, but I made noises like a boss and got her to leave the office. I don’t think she was sore, but if anything was going to happen that weekend, I didn’t want her around to get caught by the blast.
It was almost quitting time when the phone call came. Greta had just stuck her head into my office to announce that she was taking off fifteen minutes early to beat the traffic crunch. She did that every Friday, and she always made that announcement, and I always nodded my head.
Phone calls from the President weren’t all that unusual. When he had first taken office, The Man began making spot calls to anyone and everyone, just checking on how things were going down on the working levels, sampling morale, seeing who looked guilty or busy or happy or pissed off. The standard joke was that if your phones beeped out “Ruffles and Flourishes” instead of buzzing, you knew who was calling.
My phone just buzzed. I touched the ON button, and The Man’s face appeared on my desk screen.
“Hello, Meric,” he said pleasantly.
“Mr. President.”
“Do you have any plans for the weekend?” he asked.
It had been an hour or so since my conversation with Vickie. “Nothing special. Why do you ask?”
He smiled. “Laura and I were wondering if you could have dinner with us tomorrow evening. Nothing formal. Just a quiet evening. The three of us.”
“I thought you were going to Maryland for the weekend.”
“That’s canceled. Too much work to do. I’m staying here for the weekend.”
