‘Shame about Benazir.’
‘C’est la guerre.’
‘Now they’re back with the army and another Zia stooge.’
‘Still, things have moved. I predict she’ll squeak in again.’
He felt something under his foot, picked a squashed jellybean off his shoe. ‘How come Zia’s still here? Thought you would have topped the bugger.’
‘I’ve got all the warrants except for the one from the UK. Muslim influence on their government. Never thought I’d miss Maggie but I do. Trying to get people to agree on an execution is worse than juggling ferrets.’ She found another bean on the floor, picked it up, shoved it in her mouth. ‘So how’s Albino Luciani?’
‘Amazing.’
‘Is the pope a Catholic?’
‘Good question.’
‘I listened.’ She dragged in nicotine. ‘But, lacking the required supernal insight, found it as intelligible as a lecture on multiplexing systems. I was surprised you didn’t both levitate.’ She reached under her chair and pulled out a third-full bottle of scotch. ‘Oh bother. It’s not sacramental wine. Suppose you’re too pure for hard liquor?’
‘I’ll risk it.’
‘Such condescension. Two glasses under your chair, both dirty. But no doubt your sanctified touch will remedy that.’
He felt around till he found the glasses, held them out. She sloshed spirit into them. ‘I think John’s running this joint. Forty adepts . . . dawn sittings . . .’
He laughed.
‘And you care for him more than me, fickle bastard. Now, if you’re returned from the unmanifest long enough to attend to business . . .’ She swayed forward, legs apart, elbows on her knees. ‘There are these two rich sisters who live in a mansion in the South Island of New Zealand. One has a teenage daughter. And wherever this brat goes, things fly across the room, doors open and close, clocks go mad, lights blow . . .’
‘Ron. The guy who I saw in Queenstown was CIA.’
‘Even so. The sweet doves are leaning on us.’
‘We’re working for the Company?’
She gulped scotch. ‘Funding crisis. Side job. Funds our more important work. Take no notice.’
‘What about our charter? What about PARTISANS ARE PERNICIOUS?’
‘Ray. Please. I’m barely coping here.’ She dragged on her fag. ‘Now, this nymph is to psychic phenomena what Rommel was to the desert campaign. She . . .’
‘Ronnie?’
An exhausted, ‘What?’
‘Why can’t the person running this handle it?’
‘Because, dear heart, it’s Stromlo.’
‘The guy who replaced the pope?’ He was stunned. ‘But he’d be in his sixties now — a prune.’
‘Verily. The Great Stromlo. Sixty-two and rooted.’
‘Shit, I’m working for the CIA — with Stromlo? You’d better bloody fill me in.’
She sucked in smoke, squinted at him for a time, assessing him. ‘It was the first side job we ever did. The Vatican leaned on Wolf through a government I won’t name.’
‘Wolf did a side job?’
‘You see the problem with information? Up to a certain point, knowledge is power. Beyond that it’s disillusionment. Yes, Wolf did a side job for certain people in the Curia. They wanted two folks out of the way. John and one Amos Stern.’
‘Why?’
‘Gianpaolo had to go because he wouldn’t toe the line. Wouldn’t reject Liberation Theology, rattled skeletons in the Vatican bank and didn’t see extending the natural period of infertility from 24 days to 28 as a sin. Then he was about to meet with a committee from the State Department on birth control. The Curia flipped.’
‘Insane. I mean, nature kills human embryos. The endometrium resorbs them.’
‘Ah, but one mustn’t mess with a manufactured doctrine aimed at multiplying the faithful.’
‘So why not the Italian solution? Haven’t they popped popes in the past?’
‘Because they’re hobbled by this dark age of humanist democracy. No, they didn’t want to kill him — just replace him.’
He nodded, frowning.
‘But the switch went wrong.’
‘It’s getting confusing.’
‘Bear with me.’ She finished her drink. ‘Stromlo was the same intake as Wolf and his best friend. God knows why. Stromlo’s a grotesque creature — sensual, well-developed blood-lust and would have been a blast as a surgeon. But Tigon put him in D and streamed him as a priest.’
‘Why?’
‘Why indeed?’ She threw up her hands. ‘Stromlo then spent years warping his inhibitions in Brazil and ended as a full Grade Four. And our man in the Curia.’
‘Then the switch was requested for the pope.’
‘Yes. But Gianpaolo made waves too fast. That meant Stromlo lost his lead time and everything went pear-shaped. You see, the problem with side jobs is how not to let the left hand know the right hand’s cutting it off. In this case, the left hand was the CIA, because Washington’s big on third-world population control.’
‘And now Stromlo’s working for the Company?’
‘With the CIA — and with you.’ She snorted. ‘Cruddy side jobs! Pains in the arse.’
He was still trying to understand it. ‘So if Stromlo made the switch — then where’s the duplicate pope now?’
‘Buried in St Peter’s. Terrible botch. Everything went wrong. Stromlo was sharp enough to scrape through, but it wrecked his nerve. As for Wolf — he’d been used, compromised, forced to go against the charter. And he’d turned his best mate, the Great Stromlo, into a raving, self-dramatising psycho. He topped himself three months later.’
‘So that was why he did it. And what about Stern? What’s he invented? The ultimate contraceptive?’
‘Nothing so innocent. Nice man but he’ll never get a job in pharmaceuticals.’ She stood up with effort and dug at her dress to ease a bra-strap. ‘Now we’re off to Duplications. Time you saw what you’re in for.’
ON ACTIVE SERVICE
Pat’s domain was extensive. It included a TV studio two levels high used for recording duplicates’ postures and expressions during rehearsals. From the control room they gazed down at sandbagged flats arranged into a set. The floor beyond that was marked out in chalk. Rhonda said, ‘It’s a mock-up of the house. It’s too big to do it all here. The sisters are loaded. Their father left them millions. They work but don’t have to.’
He pointed to a workbench. The floor around it was littered with white spatter. ‘What’s that?’
‘One sister has a studio for moulding and casting porcelain dolls. They’re still teaching the duplicate how to do it.’
They left the control room and went to the viewing room where Rhonda slumped on the lounge in front of the monitor and waved at the engineer behind his console. ‘Run it.’
The soundless tape showed the dining room of the actual house. A girl entered the room, perhaps twelve, thirteen. Blonde locks. Up-tilted nose. Tanned lithe body with tight hips, budding breasts, perfect legs — a kiddy-porn starlet and lecher’s wet-dream. But she was sullen, pouting, her movements angry.
As she crossed to the table, she banged her fist down on its top, yelling at someone.
A mirror on the wall behind her cracked, fell to the floor. She turned, still soundlessly yelling. An ornament on a sideboard flew across the room, hovered in the air, then went back to its original position.
Cain said, ‘Is this for real?’
The table in the room began to shake. A metal candlestick lifted off it and stuck to the girl’s cheek. She had trouble pulling it away, then wrenched it free and threw it across the room.
He blurted, ‘Shit.’
Rhonda said, ‘There’s hours of this but that’s probably enough.’ She stood up. ‘Next we meet the duplicates in person.’
They walked past the plastic surgeon’s section, the operating theatre, the dental lab, training rooms, cosmetic workshop, reached Pat’s office and knocked.
The door was open
ed by the same girl he’d seen on the video. Except she had bands on her teeth and a surgical bandage across her nose. She said in her breathy voice, ‘Hi. I’m Nina. Come and meet the family.’
Pat’s office doubled as a casting room. It had a light-stand facing a bare wall, a scattering of plastic chairs, a monitor with video player and a pin-board with a profusion of head-sheets. Pat was sitting on a plastic chair talking to two women. She looked up as they entered and came brightly forward to kiss him. ‘Hello, stranger.’
He returned the kiss, delighted to see her, but surprised at her gaunt appearance. It had only been two years.
She said, ‘So how’s the thousand bucks coming? Remember our psychic phenomena bet? I take Amex.’
‘Not a penny till I see it in person.’
She introduced the two women. ‘Meet Eve and Jane.’ Neither duplicate was finished. The shorter, curvaceous one had two black eyes and face scars from operations. The taller, athletic one had a bandage on both ears, bandaged hands and a livid scar at the hairline.
The shorter one said, ‘Wow, he’s dishy.’
Pat said. ‘Hands off. He’s mine.’
The girl playing the daughter said, ‘What about me?’
Pat said, ‘You’re supposed to be sexually frustrated.’
‘Got it in one.’
‘They wanted to meet you,’ she told him. ‘I know they’re not completed but you’re looking at the last of many operations. It hasn’t been easy for them. All right, you three. You’ve met him now. Back to the voice-matching booth.’
The duplicates blew him kisses as she shooed them out.
When they’d left, she put an arm around him. ‘Taking me to dinner tonight?’
‘Don’t I always?’
‘Bloody wombat. Eats, roots and leaves.’
Rhonda said. ‘Charming. Now if you lovebirds will accompany me to Logistics . . .’
Logistics was a barrel-shaped room adjoining the reference library with a circular central table and screens built into the walls.
The three of them sat around the table. Rhonda threw the jamming switch. Red lights came on above the door. She told Pat, ‘You have the floor.’
‘Okay.’ Pat put on a Play School voice. ‘Once upon a time in a big big house in the backwoods of New Zealand’s brooding volcanic South Island, lived two rich, reclusive half-sisters and a daughter. The sisters slept in big beds and quite often shared boyfriends.’
He blinked.
‘But the daughter slept in a small bed all by herself because she had emotional problems as you can imagine. And on bad days, she had invisible playmates — that flung things around the room.’
‘Weird.’
‘Now in a far, far country,’ Pat simpered on, ‘in a big walled compound called the Kremlin, people heard about the family — people interested in anti-bloody-gravity and psi-effects. Some wanted to visit them. Some wanted to kidnap them.’
‘The whole family? Why not just the girl?’
‘Because,’ Rhonda cut in, ‘if you disturb the situation the manifestations could stop. It could be a form of energy produced by the nervous system. The girl is certainly the focus, but no one knows the conditions causing the effect. It could be the girl alone or the family dynamics. So far, they know it’s not the house because, if the family goes away, the thing follows.’
‘Anyway,’ Pat did a hand sashay for attention, ‘in a big country called America a kind-hearted CIA man said, “Seeing the house isn’t a factor, wouldn’t it be nice to take the family to a cosy lab and study them? But in case that disappoints the people in the Kremlin, we’ll make a duplicate family they can invite or kidnap if they want to.”’
‘Clever.’
‘The problem’s how to do it without upsetting them,’ Rhonda added. ‘A crude switch could affect the phenomena. So we need the family’s cooperation.’
‘You mean — tell them we’re going to replace them?’
‘We have.’
‘Shit. Did they buy it?’
‘No.’
‘Which is where you come in,’ Pat said. ‘Because it’s right up your street. You’re a chick-magnet. Good at bullshit. Able to handle loopy females. Your religious background connects with Stromlo, you’re psychologically strong . . .’
‘And,’ Rhonda added, ‘you’re good at extermination.’
‘Hold it. I’m supposed to kill people?’
She stroked her chins. ‘Stromlo’s an alcoholic, old and shot. Sharp enough to mastermind the switch. But he can’t charm women or knock off storm-troops.’
‘Storm-troops?’
She lowered her head as if looking at him over glasses. ‘This isn’t old home week, dear heart. We’ve just lost our key man in Pretoria. They’ve killed a Grade Two in Bosnia. Last month we lost the team in Yugoslavia — including the surgeons would you believe? And side job or not — you could be next.’
‘So who’s behind it?’ He glared at them both. ‘And if it’s that bad, why aren’t we blown?’
Pat glanced at Rhonda. ‘Do we spill our guts?’
Rhonda picked her ear with a pencil, thinking. ‘No.’ She turned to him. ‘It’s not because we don’t trust you, Ray. But if someone gets to you and grills you . . . All we can say now is that things are changing fast. And you’ll need to be ready for anything. All overseas assignments — even yours — are now Condition Red.’
‘Condition Red? For a doddle with three females and a poltergeist?’
‘Don’t assume it’s a doddle. Now we can’t spare surgeon backup for this number. Vanqua’s pushed for trained people as well, so you’re it. All hands to the pumps. Tu comprends?’
He spent the rest of the day in ops, absorbing detailed briefings, then took the lift to the bistro to meet Pat. Unlike the canteen, the place had candles, fabric tablecloths and its windows overlooked the valley wilderness. Couples mostly ate there, despite the nominal charge.
She was waiting in a corner booth. She’d put on lipstick, done her best, but nothing could disguise her worn-out look. She pointed to the cliff and dusk-smudged trees. ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’
He nodded, sat down, uneasy. Life was rough sailing and reunions definite shoals.
‘So how’s the pet food and tampons trade?’
‘Busy.’
‘Enjoy it?’
‘For a while. Now it feels a bit pointless. It’s such a small tight push. People vanishing up their bums.’
‘I told Rhonda you’d get jack of it.’ There was great tiredness behind her smile. ‘So . . . women?’
‘Just one. No intellectual giant but affectionate. Took a while to get my lies straight. It’s over now. She had a child in Noumea and went back to the father for the kid’s sake. So — how’s life with you?’
‘Ratshit.’ She fiddled with her bread knife. ‘I’ve had a double mastectomy.’
‘Cancer?’
‘I’ve been bald for a while.’
He took her hands. ‘Is it . . . ?’
‘Too bloody right. DEATH IS A FACT OF LIFE. But we’ve still got tonight — if you can stand me.’
He stared at her and tears began.
She said, ‘Don’t. You’ll wet the tablecloth.’
‘Jesus. Why are you still here?’
‘WORLD MAINTENANCE IS MORALITY. I want this outfit back on the rails. And I couldn’t let Ron down. She’s been in-bloody-credible — just plain heroic. You’ve no idea what we’ve been through.’
Their evening was all the more poignant because they didn’t know if they’d ever meet again. She left the bedside light on, took the padded bra off with her back to him, shy about the scars, then turned. ‘I look like a whore’s drawers.’
‘Those who matter don’t mind and those who mind don’t matter.’
He made love to her, surprised at the fierceness of her response. They cried a little, kissed a lot. Later, the peace on her face made him glad.
Sometime during the night they woke and he pressed her hand in the
dark. ‘You two can’t carry this alone. You’re both exhausted. Please let me help.’
‘You’re helping, love. Honestly.’
‘By romancing two sisters in the sticks of New Zealand? Let me stay here and take the bastards out.’
‘It’s not that simple. But we’ve a counter-attack set up and getting you out of mothballs is a part of it.’
‘You mean this job’s a diversion?’
‘Don’t ask. And don’t fret. You’ll get your chance to spill blood.’
‘For God’s sake, Pat, fill me in.’
‘Nup. Ronnie’s right. Too dangerous.’
It often came to this. It was difficult sleeping with head office.
After a while she said, ‘Do you think there’s life after death?’
‘Was there before?’
‘I’ve had a fan-bloody-tastic life. Wouldn’t have missed it for quids. You’ve studied all this stuff. What do you reckon?’
He gave the comforting reply. ‘If there’s not, you won’t have a worry. If there is, it’s a bonus. Either way you’re in good shape.’
It pleased her. ‘Hadn’t thought of it like that.’
Soon he heard soft snores.
He stared for a long time into the dark.
DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN
Rhonda stubbed out the butt on the bed-head and tossed the report on the floor. She rubbed her eyes, switched off the light and forlornly prayed for sleep.
But her mind still churned with the questions that had kept her so often awake. If they wanted to get rid of her, why hadn’t they attacked? If they knew enough to destroy EXIT projects, why hadn’t the place been exposed? She was physically strong but couldn’t take much more.
To soothe herself into drowsiness she thought about past loves. It was 1959. She’d been twenty-two — and Etta a flaxen-haired sixteen.
First love, so strangely sweet. The body that she loved, so fair and lithe. The rapture of a female heart and body responding to her own.
Nothing, nothing, could equal those brief months. She’d felt like an Olympian struck from the sun. But the lifespan in ancient Greece was thirty years. And in this age of medical dexterity and emotional aridity she was two decades beyond that — ugly, fat.
And the beautiful Etta was dust.
Exit Alpha Page 11
