Edward Llewellyn

by Prelude to Chaos

  “Not luck—light! The Light’s guided us, tested us, and we’ve passed the test. For some purpose, Gavin. Remember that! And I doubt it was to pay our respects to your grandfather!” She bent to read the inscription. “Robert MacDonald, 1919-2011, ‘In the Arms of the Lord.’ What does that mean?”

  “Remembering Gramps, it means that God is probably female.”

  “A graveyard’s no place for blasphemy!” She glanced away into the shadows.

  “God help us all if He hasn’t got a sense of humor.” I ran my hand over the headstone. “My father was a Minister— Presbyterian, of course. His father was a soldier—of the free-lance variety. My father had me educated. But it was Gramps who taught me how to survive. ‘War’s like clap. It’s mostly the amateurs who catch it!’ Good advice for a healthy youngster with a yen for excitement.”

  “You’ve brought me in here to listen to that kind of nonsense?”

  “I’ve come to get help from Gramps.”

  “What? More bad advice from his ghost?”

  “Better than advice.” The main gates were about fifty me-lers away and securely locked. The dusk was deepening and there was nobody in sight. I knelt on the grass.

  “I’ll throw up if you start to pray!”

  I tested the blocks around the grave, felt one loosen, and eased it out. “I endowed this plot in perpetuity to keep Gramp’s memory green. And to give myself an emergency cache.” I reached into the space behind the block and pulled out a 7mm Luger, wrapped in preserving plastic.

  “A gun!” Judith jumped back as though I had produced a devil’s hoof.

  “Two guns!” I extracted a Jeta. “One with slugs; one with darts.” I felt around in the cavity. “Spare magazines for both. Also money, ID’s et cetera, and a badge.” I laid my collection on the edge of the grave, then slid the stone carefully back into place.

  She picked up the badge. “Secret Service!” she breathed9 then looked at me. “So you’re one of those!”

  “I used to be. Until I got killed on duty three years ago. You can read my eulogy in the New York Times. That was before the Service had acquired its present reputation.”

  She followed me in silence back across the cemetery and through the gap in the railings. “Gramps still has some things I may want,” I explained as I fitted the loose rail into place.

  “What are you going to do with those guns?”

  “Kill a man. Perhaps several men.”

  “You swore you’d help me before you went off to enjoy yourself!”

  “And I will. After I know what you plan to do. But before you go into that I need sleep. You slept from Boston to Baltimore. There’s a Holiday Inn back there by the thruway.”

  “Gavin, you can try it. But things have changed in the last three years. They’ll want to see ID’s if we register. And I haven’t got one.” She slipped mine from the plastic pouch in which my papers were stored. “And this is outdated. You’l be arrested if you use it.”

  I started the motor. “Then I’ll show my badge. That’s usually enough.”

  “It’ll be more than enough. It’ll send the desk clerk into shock and bring the manager fawning. The US Secret Service now has much the same reputation as that other SS—the Schutzstaffein—once had.”

  I cursed, and cursed again when I pulled up outside the office of the Holiday Inn. Not only was the desk clerk checking ID’s, he was comparing photographs with faces. I drove off down a side road, then stopped to think.

  “We’d better sleep in the car.”

  “Car be damned!” I snarled. “I need a bath as well as a bed. We’ll try one place which used to prefer not to know its guests’ identities. If it’s still operating.”

  The “Sybarite” was not only operating, it was booming and renting each room several times a night. I left Judith in the car, and when the desk clerk asked for my ID I showed him the picture of President Truman on a hundred dollar bill. I signed the register as William Miller, a past Secretary of the Treasury, and after paying for the room in advance, left the hundred on the desk. As the clerk palmed it he murmured, “Channel Three’s the popular choice tonight.”

  Our room had that smell peculiar to rooms often used but seldom cleaned. Judith sniffed, then stood staring at the ceil-ing-mirror above the king-size bed. “Interesting!”

  “This is supposed to be more interesting.” I switched to Channel Three and went to the john. When I came back she was watching with fascinated disgust a life-size full-color image of two naked women doing things to each other which were novel to me. “You’re a doctor, so that must be old stuff.”

  “I’d never even imagined—” She switched channels and ran through a gamut of pornography.

  “SM seems to have recovered its popularity while I was away,” I remarked, feeling along a wall panel for a pressure point I remembered. I found it, released the catch, and the panel slid open on a closet the size of a small room. I hung my raincoat on a hanger and began to unzip my jumpsuit. Judith switched her attention from the video to me.

  “That’s a hell of a big closet!”

  “It’s more than a closet.” I stepped into it and closed the panel.

  “Gavin!” I heard her muffled cry, and then her hands on the wall, searching for the catch. She failed to find it after several minutes of searching and complaining. At last she shouted, “Gavin! Please! Don’t leave me!”

  I slid the panel open to face first her relief, then her fury. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  “Testing!” I said, stepping back into the room. “Making sure nobody could get that open while I was inside.” I peeled off my jumpsuit and put it on a shelf. Then I placed my guns, badge, money and papers on another shelf. “This is the modern equivalent of the seventeenth-century priest’s hole. The place English Catholics hid their priest when the Protestant posse came riding around. If a police posse raids this place the man dives in there to hide with his clothes.”

  “And what’s the woman supposed to do? Offer herself to the cops to save the man’s skin?”

  “The lady stays watching the pictures. There’s no law against watching dirty movies in the privacy of your motel room.” I crouched down in the closet, feeling around for another catch. “For special clients there’s also a special exit.” A hatch opened and a ladder led down into darkness. “A passage between the walls. Serves double duty. For politicos who wouldn’t like to meet a constituent on their way out. And for clients who like to watch others at work in the flesh.” I smelt the dank air rising from the hatch and snapped it closed. “This place can’t have been raided in years. Or it doesn’t still cater to politicians and voyeurs. But there’s our line of retreat if they corner us. Put your clothes with mine so we can both leave dressed if we have to leave fast. I’m going to take a shower.” And I went into the bathroom, leaving Judith fumbling with her zippers and staring at the video screen.

  She was probably regretting her rash promise to let me have her any way I wanted. I suppose neurosurgeons are not experts in sexology and she had not realized there were so many ways I might want. When I came back from my shower both her clothes and mine were neatly folded together in the closet and she was in bed with the sheets up to her chin. I got in beside her, switched out the light, and fell asleep while still counting the ways.

  She was shaking me and I was fumbling under the pillow for my Luger. “Your guns are with your clothes,” she said. “Drink your coffee and come to your senses before you start to play with them.”

  I sipped the liquid in the styrofoam cup, choked, and complained, “We’ll never again get coffee as good as the Pen’s!” Then I looked around. The sight of myself in the ceiling mirror was revolting. The sun was struggling in through a gap in the drapes. “Christ! It’s after ten. We should be out of here!” “Relax! The cleaning woman is advancing slowly and without enthusiasm. She won’t get to this room before noon.” She produced fresh rolls from a plastic bag. I started on one, then grabbed a copy of the “Post�
�� she had put on the bed, scanning it fast, then checking it column by column.

  “I’ve searched it already. Also the news—radio and video. Nothing about us. Not even a hint.”

  “They’re not going to admit that their escape-proof prison’s not escape proof.” I felt like a writer searching the papers for reviews of his novel and finding his masterpiece ignored by the critics.

  “They won’t give anybody else a chance to confirm it. It’ll be forced mind-wipe for all of them. Did you think about that, when we planned our escape?”

  I hadn’t, perhaps because I had never thought we would succeed. And I didn’t want to think of it now. I went to the window and peered past the curtain at the parking lot below. Ours was the only car left. The Sybarite’s overnight guests usually checked out early. “We’d better get moving.” I grabbed for my underpants.

  “Here!” She tossed me a pair of plastic-wrapped briefs and undervest “Those are clean. Your others stink. And shave before you dress. I put a razor and cream in the bathroom. I did some shopping while you were dreaming.”

  She shouldn’t have taken off alone, but the immense pleasure of being able to shower without a camera lens aimed at me, of putting on non-regulation underwear and a garish but obviously civilian jumpsuit, cancelled my annoyance. “Thanks,” I said as I slipped on a pair of red sneakers.

  “Here’s some camouflage.” She pulled a pair of brown coveralls with “Epsteins Electronics” in large letters across the back. “Poor Epstein went bankrupt last month. I got these cheap.” She began to pack our Pen clothes into the overnight bag. “I’ll dump this in the first garbage compactor we pass.” She checked the room. “All clear, so let’s move.”

  “Where to? I haven’t had time to decide—”

  “I’ve been up since seven and I’ve decided already. We both need ID’s, credit cards, driver’s licenses, money, a place to hole up. And I think I know where I can get some of them.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “For once, let me surprise you.”

  When we had left the Sybarite astern she directed me to the beltway and then to the Alexandria cutoff. “We’re heading for Mercy Hospital,” she explained in answer to my repeated demands. “That pile over there. Drive into the parking lot. Not that lot—it’s strictly Staff. Interlopers towed on sight. Use the patients’ lot. It’s not really fulL Give the guy ten bucks and he’ll show you a place.”

  “How do you know?” I asked as I parked the car.

  “I was a visiting consultant. Nobody’ll recognize me. I didn’t come here often and they think I’m dead.” She led me inside, through a crowded lobby, down an empty corridor, and finished in a room filled with benches on which were sitting men and women in various stages of dissolution.

  “Geriatrics and Psychoneurotics,” she announced. “You’re one of the latter. Take a seat and say you’re waiting to see Doctor Randolph if anybody asks. Which is unlikely. Patients often sit here ignored for hours. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.” And she disappeared through a pair of swing doors into the bowels of the building.

  I slumped down on a bench and hid behind a discarded newspaper, watching a stream of decrepit or neurotic humanity shuffling in and out, changing seats, or trying to attract the attention of receptionists who seemed expert at ignoring everybody except the occasional visiting intern. If the statistics which pointed to a vanishing birth rate were valid, then within a few years many other places were going to look like this hospital waiting room. I was considering that gloomy prospect when Judith reappeared, but a very different Judith from the one I had known.

  She was wearing a white coat with a name tag, “Doctor Margaret Randolph,” pinned to her chest and a stethoscope around her neck. Her return to familiar territory had aged her six years and raised her to the local aristocracy. She radiated confident competence. The sick moved aside for her with the anxious courtesy of poor patients toward a physician. Instinctively I jumped to my feet when she addressed me.

  “Are you Mister Jones? Then come with me, please!” She turned and went striding away without looking back, as though it had never occurred to her that any patient might fail to follow when told to do so.

  I did follow, trying to mimic an anxious patient to match her performance as an arrogant physician. I followed her through a maze of corridors until we came to a row of doctors’ offices. She pointed to an alcove. “Sit there please!” and disappeared through a door marked “Doctors Only—Strictly Private.”

  Presently she emerged from another door, a scarf around her head, a shopping bag in her hand, and a worried look on her face. “Ah—there you are, Sam. The doctor said everything would be fine if I took the pills and got plenty of rest”

  She clutched my arm. “Come along now. We’ve still got to get the shopping done.”

  “You’re enjoying this playacting!” I muttered as we reached the Auditor.

  “You enjoy shooting people!” She pulled the scarf from her hair and shook it so it fell free. “Drive to the Summit Auto Rentals on the corner of Sixth and Pine.”

  I turned the car down Pine. “You’re not a boss physician now! You’re a murderess on the run.”

  “I’m Doctor Murial Zworken.” She waved a driving license and an ID at me. “A brown-haired, bird-brained dermatologist, at present vacationing in Mexico. She looks enough like me to pass. And she keeps a spare ID and license in her hospital locker because she’s always leaving them at home. Also—” Judith looked out of the window, “She’s a good egg and would give them to me gladly if she knew the mess I’m in.”

  “You’re going to rent a car?”

  “This one may get hot. Murial’s secretary says she’s not due back for a week. That should give me time for what I have to do before you go off to do your thing. There’s the rental place. A block down. Drop me here and wait. Follow me when I drive out”

  Her habit of authority still lingered and I watched her smiling at the rental agent as she got into a black “Superb.” Her smile did more for her than her card. A typical glitterati! After ten blocks she turned toward the Sheraton-Ritz, waved me over to wait, and drove up to the main entrance. The doorman sprang to open her car door, then hurried to activate the hotel doors ahead of her. She disappeared with the nod of thanks that went with the style of car. The procedure was reversed when she emerged, keys in hand.

  The doorman indicated how to reach whatever accommodation she had chosen and accepted her tip with the reverence which showed she had given him exactly the right amount. As she circled she stopped abeam of me to hiss, “Chalet seventy-three. Round the back. Surveillance knows you’re arriving in half an hour. The chalet has a private garage. The doors will be open. Drive straight in and they’ll close behind you. As far as the hotel’s concerned you will then cease to exist.”

  Something like entering the Pen! I drove round for half an hour, wondering if I should leave Judith to get on with her program. She seemed better equipped to survive in her own world than I was. But I had promised, and she might need me. I rejected the thought that I might need her and turned toward the security gate at the entrance to the Sheraton-Ritz parking lot exactly on time. It lifted for me as promised and I found Chalet seventy-three among other chalets, all surrounded by trees and arranged so that none could observe the arrivals, departures, or doings of neighbors. The garage doors were open, I parked alongside the Superb, and they closed behind me at the same moment that another door opened onto the chalet lounge.

  Judith looked up from her study of the Washington phone read-out. “Fix yourself a drink. Even you SS would have a job busting in here.”

  “I’m not SS,” I protested, tasting my first bourbon in more than three years. “I was Secret Service in the days when we protected Presidents.” I dropped into an armchair served to match my contours and looked at the luxury around me. “Murial Zworkin’s credit must be good.”

  “She’s a dermatologist,” said Judith without looking up and as though that explained everyt
hing.

  “Better than the accommodation I provided last night.”

  “The video programs are more sophisticated. And more evil.” She spat out the “evil” as if she were about to confront it.

  “I promised to help you before I went off on my own. So how can I help?”

  She wrote down a number from the read-out—a sign of her essential innocence—and studied me. “I’m not sure that I still want your help, Gavin. I’m not planning anything that involves guns.”

  So smart! So self-confident! And so godamned ignorant! I couldn’t leave her to walk into some interrogation room with the same confidence that she had walked into Mercy Hospital. “Judy—when you’re running for your life, anything may involve guns. And we’re running for our lives. You and me. The Justice Department may not want to publicize that we’re out of the Pen with our minds intact. But they’ll have every agent they can spare and every Police Chief they can trust trying to grab you and kill me. For Futrell I’m a fused bomb rolling around loose!”

  “Gavin!” She looked down at her hands. “It’s not that I don’t want you with me. I just thought you were only staying because you’d promised—” She chewed her lower lip.

  “I’ve got to stay with you. For now at any rate. First, because I want to be with you. Second, because if I leave you they’ll catch you, sure as hell. And when they catch you they’ll have you squealing within the hour. Telling them where I was and what I was doing when last seen.”

  “I’d never—” She stopped and paled. “If that’s what you think—then stayl”

  “It’s what you think, too. It’s why you were glad you were put in the Pen before the police got you. Isn’t that right?”

  She nodded, then looked up and smiled. “Anyway, my mother used to be fond of telling me how nice it would be to have a man around.”

  “Okay—so I’m staying around. What are you planning to do?”

  “First, I’m going to call Doctor Drummond and arrange a meeting.” She reached for the phone.

  I jumped over and caught her hand. “Drummond? The guy who sold you down river?”