Atropos

by William L. DeAndrea

  The car stopped. “We’re here, Mr. Trotter.”

  “Thanks. I’ll call the office when we want to be picked up.”

  The driver said that would be very good, then came around and opened doors. Trotter joined Regina on the sidewalk and took her arm. The .32 revolver he had holstered in the small of his back dug into him like an accusing finger.

  “Now let’s go meet that old boyfriend,” he said.

  Chapter Nine

  SO THESE, JOE ALBRIGHT thought, are the movers and shakers. Well, at least they had a well-padded environment to do their moving and shaking in. If they moved too close to a wall, there’d be a big antique chair or a leather sofa to collapse in. If they shook so hard they fell over, they’d simply land on a carpet so deep that, standing in it, Joe could hardly feel his feet.

  Senator Van Horn had quite a place, all right. The party was being held in what the man in livery who’d taken his coat and the Congressman’s had said was the “Georgian Room.” This turned out to be a place that lacked only books to be a dead ringer of the old Carnegie library in Joe’s home town. There was a high, vaulted ceiling, held up, it seemed, by fluted columns set halfway into the walls. Grapes and grape leaves and things like that were carved (or molded in plaster—Joe didn’t really know much about this sort of stuff) at the tops of the columns. Everything was bone-white, except for a band of blue outlined by two strips of gold about two-thirds of the way to the ceiling.

  “How do you get to be able to afford this?” Joe muttered.

  The Congressman’s chuckle told him he’d been all too articulate. “Hank Van Horn did it the hard way—he inherited it.”

  “That strikes me as the easy way,” Joe said.

  “All depends on how you look at it, Joe. You can do things to try to arrange your getting money. How do you arrange for your father or grandfather to have done it already?”

  “What?” Joe said. “Oh, yeah. Right. Good point.” What a weird old guy. No wonder Trotter was so nuts. Joe would probably be just like them in three years.

  People with big smiles on their faces were coming over to talk to the Congressman, telling him how happy they were to have him back. The Congressman introduced Joe to every single one of them. And there was the same look in the eyes of every single one of them, like the red gleam of an LED when you turn on your calculator. You could almost hear the facts clicking into place. Young. Black. Have not met previously. Introduced by Congressman. Protégé? Reporter? Not reporter—Congressman would have told me. What can I gain from this man? What should I fear? Examine further. Placate in the meantime.

  Every one of them, Republican or Democrat, male or female, black or white, in office or trying to be, pumped Joe’s hand vigorously and told him how happy they were to meet him. They did not go so far as to tell him how much they liked Motown music, but in a different era they would have.

  Joe was interested to find out if Abweg and Babington, the big boys at this particular do, would be the same. Maybe the rarefied air in the high places near the Presidency removed this when-in-doubt-kiss-ass instinct. Joe hoped so.

  But he didn’t get to find out, at least not just then. The Congressman disengaged himself from a guy who was trying very hard to conceal the fact that he would kill his mother if that would get him a high-level job in the State Department, and turned to Joe. “I need to sit down. Bullshit is always exhausting, and my tolerance has dropped through lack of exposure to it. Think you can get me over to that sofa there?”

  “Sure. Just hold my arm. Should have brought your walker.”

  “Joe, my boy, when a vulture sees a man is weak, it will fly down and peck his eyes out to hasten death.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Joe conceded.

  “A vulture,” the Congressman said, “is a philanthropist compared to a politician. Never forget that.”

  Joe got the old man seated under a portrait of some nineteenth-century Van Horn who scowled at the room from between a really impressive set of side whiskers.

  The Congressman matched the scowl. “Where the hell is he?” Joe assumed the old man was talking about the Russian son of a bitch he might have to shoot. “I get off my deathbed to see him, and he’s not here.”

  “Maybe he’s in the bathroom,” Joe suggested. “Maybe he didn’t show up yet. Maybe he’s in the kitchen.”

  The kitchen?”

  “Every time I throw a party, everybody winds up in the kitchen.”

  The Congressman changed the scowl to a smile. It was remarkable how quickly he could do that. “That’s wholesome, Joe. America is proud of you. Most people your age, it seems all their parties wind up in the bedrooms.”

  “That kind of party is a lot smaller, when I throw one.”

  “All right, all right, spare me the details. Listen, I’ll be all right here. You go mingle and try to find out where the Russian is.”

  “I don’t want to leave you.”

  “I didn’t bring you here to fuss over me. I’ll be fine. Go. Talk to people. Eat hors d’oeuvres. Bring me back a bourbon and soda.”

  “Bourbon?” Joe’s voice was very severe.

  “All right, all right, just soda. You’re worse than the damn doctor.”

  “That’s better.” Joe nodded. He realized even as he did so that the old man had engineered the whole little bit of business to lend credence to the idea that Joe was indeed a male nurse. If anyone was watching. Of course someone was watching. What was it Trotter had told him? “In any public place, always assume someone is watching you and act accordingly. You can Jive a lot longer that way.”

  Fine, Joe thought. Someone is watching me. Now what do I want them to see?

  “Don’t just stand there,” the Congressman growled. “Go mingle.”

  “Yes, sir. Do I go on letting people think I’m somebody?”

  “Joe, don’t let Jesse Jackson hear you say that. You—are—somebody! Right?”

  “Oh, absolutely.” Joe smiled and shook his head. This man, old and feeble and crippled as he was, could carry you along with his personality so easily it was frightening. Joe felt a little sorry for Trotter and Rines, who had apparently had to deal with him at full strength, before he’d had his stroke.

  “You just let people think what they want to think. If they ask you any questions, just tell the truth.”

  “Right,” Joe said. What the Congressman meant, of course, was the truth as defined by the Agency—i.e., the current cover story.

  Joe went to mingle. He took a glass of champagne from a passing tray, and a shrimp the size of a badminton shuttlecock from another. The shrimp was delicious. The champagne was cold and dry, served in fine crystal. The trays had been gold. The people carrying them, one man and one woman, were black.

  Joe considered the political ramifications. On the one hand, it was pretty stereotypical. Joe’s father had been a waiter at a country club, and had put Joe through the University of Missouri on tips, so Joe was making no judgments. On the other hand, this was Washington, D.C. Eighty percent black, high unemployment. To find white waiters and bartenders, you’d really have to discriminate. On balance, then, Joe figured it was the right move.

  Across the room, Joe saw Trotter and Regina Hudson talking to a six-foot-tall blond woman. Trotter caught his eye, then looked away. Joe got the message. It was better not to know each other. He wondered if the Hudson girl was in on all of this. He wondered how well she’d pull it off if they had brought her in on it.

  Not his problem. His problem was finding Russians and obtaining a glass of club soda for the Congressman.

  As he zeroed in on the bar, someone tugged Joe’s sleeve. He turned around and found himself in a group with two African diplomats and Senator Van Horn himself. One of the Africans wore robes and a fez; the other had on a London-tailored silk suit. The Senator had on his professional smile.

  “Excuse me,” said the man in the robes. “I know I am rude.”

  “Not at all.”

  “I just wished to ask som
ething of a black American.”

  “I’m one,” Joe said. The diplomats laughed; the Senator continued to smile. “Joe Albright, pleased to meet you.”

  The Senator stepped in and performed introductions, giving the names and countries of the diplomats, and acting as if he had known Joe all his life, when Joe knew for a fact the man had never heard of him before today and almost certainly didn’t remember him.

  The man in the suit spoke. It almost shocked him that the man’s voice was thin and reedy. Movies and television had left him with the impression that African diplomats are all supposed to sound like William Marshall or James Earl Jones, and the first man had lived up to the image.

  “We have been telling the Senator that we know more of some of his countrymen than he does. Do you not, as a black American, feel a personal outrage at the existence of the terrorist state of South Africa? Do you not feel, in a sense, threatened that your nation, in which you are a minority, could countenance such a government?”

  The Congressman had told him to tell the truth if anyone asked him any questions. He also said, let them think what they want. So Joe answered simply, “Yes. I feel outraged at apartheid. And oppressive governments threaten everybody.”

  The diplomat in the robes turned to the Senator with a contented smile on his face. “You see, Senator, it is as we have told you—”

  “I’ll tell you something else that outrages me just as badly,” Joe said. They turned to him. “The fact that every day, hundreds and thousands of people flee from black African countries into South Africa. Including yours.”

  The two diplomats, and the Senator, too, looked at Joe as if they had suddenly forgotten how to speak English.

  “I mean, how screwed up are you people, that thousands of your citizens would up and leave and choose to live where the very law practically defines them as subhuman? What goes on in your countries that your people see an obscenity like South Africa as an improvement? Talk about frightening.”

  Joe thought, oops, got a little carried away there. What happens now, fisticuffs? I get invited to leave the party? War?

  What happened was nothing. Less than nothing. The two diplomats and Senator Van Horn turned away from him as if he had ceased to exist.

  “Ah,” the Senator said. “General Dudakov.” The backs of three heads receded.

  Joe got a glimpse of a short and stocky figure, an iron-gray crew cut and the gleam of medals before a crowd gathered around and cut him off from view. It was amazing how assiduously these Washington party types went after a man they’d probably never heard of until he’d gotten here three days ago.

  The Congressman would never be able to fight his way through that mob. Joe supposed the old man could wait awhile. He went and got the Congressman his drink.

  The girl’s name was Helen Fraser. Her father was something in the Interior Department. She was here as Mark Van Horn’s date.

  So, Regina thought, he’s jealous of me, after all. Why else would he dig up a blond bombshell to come to the party with? One who asked you what sign you were five minutes after you met her. One who wanted to tell you about her channeler, the one who could let you talk personally with the spirit of Alexander the Great.

  “It’s really opened my mind,” Helen said. She nodded solemnly.

  Allan nodded back. “As soon as we started talking, I said there is someone who has made a lot of space in her mind.”

  Helen said, “Exactly!” Regina suppressed a giggle.

  “Of course, growing up so close to the Interior Department ...” Allan went on.

  “I have a natural affinity for open spaces! My channeler says that, too!”

  “Ah ... How much does this guy charge you?”

  “Do you want to see him, too? He’s very select about his clientele, you know, but I bet he would see you.” She looked at him. She was so tall that when she looked Allan in the eye (as she frequently did; she’d been coming on to him, with Regina standing right there, since she’d first laid eyes on him) all Regina could see of her was the bottom of her chin.

  Helen waited breathlessly (she did everything breathlessly) for Allan’s answer. Regina was pretty interested to hear what he would say, too, but she would never know because just then, Mark Van Horn and Ainley Masters joined them.

  “I see you’ve already met Helen,” Mark said. Introductions were made all around. Ainley said it was so nice to see her again.

  Mark pumped Allan’s hand vigorously. “Trotter. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Well, of course that always raises a question, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh, good things, all good. Our little Regina is quite devoted to you. You’re a lucky man.”

  Our little Regina, Regina thought. I can’t believe it. This is a spite party, at least as far as I’m concerned. Does he really think showing up here with someone tall and blond and thin, while I am short and dark and not thin, is going to bother me? And calling me our little Regina? When I have Allan? The poor dope. All she felt was sorry for him. And a little disappointed. She guessed Van Horns weren’t used to not getting things, even if it was something they manifestly had never wanted.

  “When’s the big day?” Mark asked.

  “We haven’t set the date yet,” Regina said.

  Mark smiled at Allan. “Don’t let her get away.”

  No chance of that, Regina thought.

  There was noise from the room with the bar in it. “That must be either the candidates or the Russians,” Trotter said.

  Mark Van Horn smiled at him. He was smiling so hard it looked as if he might sprain his cheeks, but his eyes were dead, just blue holes in his head for pouring information into his brain. He stared at Allan over the top of that painful smile like a kid watching a magic act. Trotter wondered what Mark expected him to do.

  “I think it’s the Russians,” Mark said. He was working the smile so hard his voice was starting to strain.

  Helen noticed it. “Mark, honey,” she said, “relax.” She put her hand on his arm. “I can feel beta waves all through you.”

  Mark shook her off. “I’m fine,” he snapped. Then he turned to her and said more gently, “I’m fine, really.” He turned to Regina. “Come and meet the General. He’s told my father he wants to meet as many representatives of the press as possible.”

  “He doesn’t want to meet me,” Regina said.

  “Let’s go, Bash,” Trotter said. Using his pet name for her in public was an informal code they’d worked up—when he called her Bash she wasn’t to ask questions, just go along.

  She went. She didn’t take it with a lot of grace, but that didn’t matter. Mark took Regina by the hand and took off through the crowd. He never looked around for Helen, but he made sure he knew where Trotter was every moment.

  As they drew nearer the center of the knot of people, Trotter could feel some beta waves or whatever the hell they were rising in himself. He told himself to calm down, but his subconscious didn’t listen. He knew why.

  This was the man behind the Cronus project. This was the sick mind that sent a hundred women to America, each assigned to become the perfect woman for a soon-to-be influential American, to win him, and to bear him children in case he ever needed hostages. This was Trotter’s other father, and Regina’s. This was the man responsible for Trotter’s own twisted life. And now he was going to see him face to face.

  And he was just an old man.

  You could see him on park benches anywhere in America, at family picnics, in the solaria of nursing homes. A man who had been powerful in youth; who had been rounded and melted by age. A potential mugging victim.

  The Congressman twisted my life, made me a Cold-War monster, to fight him? Trotter brought himself up short. Appearances meant nothing. Trotter’s father was the only man in the world Trotter was afraid of; General Dmitri Borzov, whatever he wanted to call himself, was the only man the Congressman feared. He had to be treated with respect. Age had ravaged the bodies of both men (even now, the General
was stifling a cough) but the minds remained deadly.

  “General Dudakov,” Mark Van Horn said. Td like you to meet Regina Hudson, a very good friend of mine. Miss Hudson is publisher of the Hudson Communications Group.”

  The General smiled. “I am delighted. You are young to hold such an important position.”

  “I have a lot of help,” Regina said.

  Dudakov/Borzov offered a chuckle. “Still, responsibility rests with the leader, does it not? It is not a burden everyone can carry. Your appearance indicates that for you, carrying this heavy load has served you merely as healthful exercise. If I may say so, you seem to be thriving.”

  And how charming of you, you old bastard, Trotter thought. Regina was practically blushing.

  “Why, thank you, Gen—”

  “I knew your mother,” Borzov said.

  Trotter had been trained since childhood to show no emotions except on purpose. Surprise now gave that training its toughest test ever. What the hell was going on here? What happened to the General’s strict incognito as a Kremlin functionary? Had age turned the KGB’s best brain? This was dangerous stuff. Everyone in America who could read knew that Regina’s mother had been sent by the Russians to infiltrate the American press. A lot of people knew Borzov had done the sending. A small number, including Trotter, knew or suspected that Borzov was here right now.

  Maybe, Trotter told himself, he’s going to defect. He suppressed a smile. Maybe he was going to announce that a Russian-backed coup d’état had just taken control of the United States. That was about as likely as the defection would be.

  “How?” Regina said. “How did you know my mother?”

  “Oh, we worked in the same department for a time. Before the intelligence people got hold of her. She was very young. But even then, I could see her strength. Her beauty was apparent to anyone.”

  Borzov started to smile, then went off into a coughing fit. Trotter could see he was serious about it. The skin of the Russian’s face reddened, and it looked as though he’d have trouble staying on his feet. An aide rushed forward to hold him up, but Borzov waved him away. Borzov got a handkerchief from his pocket and brought it to his mouth. Somehow, muffling that jagged, choking cough only made it sound worse.