Liars and Tyrants and People Who Turn Blue

by Barbara Paul

  The naming of Li Xijuan came as a special surprise. Ambassador Li served as chairwoman of the UN committee that drew up the organizational plans for both the Militia and its intelligence operation.

  Ambassadors Aguirrez, Li, and Schlimmermann have been placed under diplomatic restraints pending the results of the UN special commission’s investigation of the bombings in Greece and other rebel activities.

  CHAPTER 17

  CITIZEN KANE OR KILLER KANE?

  The air had a nip in it; Sir John Dudley walked briskly through the park to get some of the cobwebs out of his head.

  Mañuel Aguirrez, Li Xijuan, Heinrich Schlimmermann. The names didn’t go together, had never been associated with one another before. They didn’t even sound right together. Aguirrez, Li, Schlimmermann. In order of importance: Li, Schlimmermann, Aguirrez.

  The real shocker was Li Xijuan. That small, quiet woman who’d shown herself to be a dynamo when it came to getting the Militia authorized, organized, and legalized. She’d led the fight for an international peacekeeping force and then had slave-driven her committee until it hammered out a workable plan. She’d survived criticism and setbacks, media attacks both overt and covert. And she’d triumphed over the worst enemy of all—wishywashyness among her peers. Some of her original supporters in the UN had begun to have second thoughts, and even back home the power structure had given her a bad moment: she was recalled to China. But she’d come back.

  She’d come back and finished the job, and in the process had won over the doubting Thomases. Sir John was well acquainted with the power plays behind the formation of the Militia, and he’d marveled more than once at Li Xijuan’s instinct for survival. She’d managed to convince the world—well, a sizable part of it—that the need for a strengthened and absolute international peacekeeping force was real and immediate. The growth of a world army was possible only through the diminishing of national armies. And Li Xijuan had made it happen. A remarkable woman.

  So what was she doing mixed up with a political also-ran like Mañuel Aguirrez? For she was mixed up with him, no longer any question of that. Kevin Gilbert’s staff had uncovered evidence of her attempt to engineer an illegal arms purchase through a dealer in Hong Kong. She’d wanted to buy a manufacturer-rejected batch of faulty laser-guided antitank missiles.

  Which meant that Li Xijuan was undoubtedly the one who had arranged to supply the rebels in Burma with defective weapons. Which meant that she and Mañuel Aguirrez were in the rebellion-deflating business together. Which meant that she had sought him out—Aguirrez wasn’t the type to initiate international intrigue. By his own admission.

  The man was a baby. Sir John’s interrogators had only to hint strongly that Aguirrez was going to be charged with the massacre in Greece when he broke down and started talking. It was all Li Xijuan’s idea, he said. She’d come to him and to Heinrich Schlimmermann with this plan, see, a way to stop rebels from doing any serious damage. It was only for a while, she said, until the Militia could get itself solidly established. He didn’t know what had gone wrong in Greece.

  Sir John came to an empty park bench and sat down. Every year his legs seemed to tire a little more quickly than the year before—I am an old man, he thought. What had gone wrong in Greece, yes. Heinrich Schlimmermann was the only one of the improbable trio to make any sense. Schlimmermann was an aristocratic Aryan caught in an egalitarian society, and he’d risen to his present degree of eminence in part through sheer will, by keeping his arrogant streak beneath the surface, by learning to manipulate people. Heinrich Schlimmermann was used to getting his own way.

  The explosives used in Greece had been obtained through a middleman in Zurich, a distributor whose purchasing records had conveniently been wiped out. That smacked of the much vaunted German efficiency, the near-obsessive desire to see that every little detail was taken care of. Alles in Ordnung. Bullshit, as the Americans would say. Sir John’s years at Bletchley had taught him just how inefficient the Master Race could be.

  But the Germans still liked to think of themselves as the most incontrol people in the world. Like Heinrich Schlimmermann. He had all the requisite qualities: orderliness, aristocratic arrogance, a need to manipulate, a compulsion to power. Sir John strongly suspected that nothing had gone wrong in Greece. He suspected that Heinrich Schlimmermann had done exactly what he’d set out to do.

  The upcoming UN inquiry, Sir John knew, would waste a lot of time on trying to determine motive. Why did you think this was the best way of handling insurrections, why did you do this or that. Let others worry about why; right now Sir John’s responsibility was to determine what. By the time the inquiry officially opened, he would have enough hard evidence for the commission to nail these lethal meddlers in other people’s lives.

  But time was running short. Sir John had never seen a bureaucratic organization move as fast as the Security Council was moving now. The inquiry, fully televised, would begin in a matter of weeks. The membership of the commission was almost complete. The chairman hadn’t yet been determined, but Sir John was betting on the Canadian. The American and Russian delegates were both on the commission, as were a couple of the Arab representatives—but nobody really trusted any of them. The other members of the commission were compromise choices, selected more for the geographical balance they offered than for their political influence. Sir John’s money was on the Canadian.

  He came to with a start. It was beginning to get dark—and here he was, sitting on his London derrière alone on a bench in perilous Central Park. Sir John hurried away as fast as his elderly legs would carry him.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE ONLY REBELLION LEFT

  Shelby increased her pace as she rounded a corner onto Lexington Avenue and ducked into a storefront. There she hid behind a large woman with a shopping bag and pretended to stare intently at a window display of meerschaum pipes, all the while watching the street out of the corner of her eye.

  There he was. The brown man hurried past without seeing her. Shelby slipped back into the stream of pedestrians behind him, determined to find out what he was up to. But she’d taken only a few steps when the man stopped abruptly and turned to look behind him. A big man, with brown hair, brown eyes.

  “Here I am,” Shelby said. “Now who the hell are you and why have you been following me?”

  The man gave a half-laugh. “You’re not supposed to find me out that easily.”

  “Is that meant to be disarming?” Shelby said suspiciously. “I want to know who you are.”

  “You know, you shouldn’t just go up and accost strangers like that,” he scolded. “Call a policeman, let him take care of it.”

  “Stop stalling. Show me some identification.”

  The brown man fished out a small leather folder. “My name’s Gilbert. I’m with UN Intelligence,” the man said, “and I wasn’t following you, Mrs. Kent, so much as I was trying to catch up with you. I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

  “You know my name.”

  “Could we talk? Now?”

  “What’s this all about, Mr. Gilbert? And don’t try to lie to me—I’ll know when you aren’t telling the truth.”

  “I know,” Gilbert sighed. “Oh boy do I know. Look, there’s a fairly respectable-looking bar across the street—let’s have a drink and I can explain everything.”

  The bar was half empty at midafternoon and they took a table in the corner. “Scotch straight up for me,” Gilbert told the waitress, “and a Bourbon for the lady, no water, one ice cube.” The waitress left, and Gilbert turned to find Shelby staring at him, mouth open. “Yes, we’ve been investigating you,” he admitted. “Right down to what you like to drink. It’s an atrocious invasion of privacy and how dare we and yes we’ve got our nerve. All I can say is that it was necessary. Absolutely necessary. We want you to come to work for us.”

  That wasn’t what Shelby was expecting. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything—let me talk. Ordinaril
y you’d be visited at home by a sedate group of two or three distinguished people who would make you a polite offer of employment mixed in with a little muscle if we thought that would help. But I wanted to meet you myself—I’ve learned things in my investigation that I still have trouble believing. When my boss first told me a human lie detector was living right here in New York, I thought the old boy was getting senile. I thought you were either a con woman or a figment of somebody’s overactive imagination. But you’re real, and you’re here, and you’re everything your reputation says you are. An absolutely foolproof detector of lies. Woman, you are worth your weight in gold.”

  “That much I know,” Shelby said blandly. “Go on.”

  Gilbert said, “Li Xijuan, Mañuel Aguirrez, Heinrich Schlimmermann,” and waited.

  Shelby’s eyes widened. “The UN commission of inquiry.”

  Gilbert nodded, and said nothing.

  “You want me to sit in on your interrogation of Li Xijuan and the other two? To get evidence for the inquiry?”

  “We want you to sit in during the inquiry. As part of the inquiry itself.”

  “Oh wow.” Shelby thought a minute. “That’s all going to be televised, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Tell me how it would work.”

  “Well, Dr. Wedner tells me this aura you read can be photographed on specially modified infrared film but can’t be transmitted live through any kind of optic lens—you have to see it in the flesh, isn’t that right? That means we can’t tuck you away in a private room somewhere and let you watch the proceedings over a monitor. You’ll have to be in the chamber where the questioning takes place.”

  “And where the television cameras are set up.”

  “Yes,” he said apologetically, knowing what was bothering her. “You won’t have to speak at all, or identify yourself, or anything like that. We’ll have some sort of electronic device rigged up so you can communicate with the members of the commission.”

  “But I’d still be visible.”

  “You’d still be visible.”

  Shelby shook her head and laughed. “You have a hell of a sense of timing, Mr. Gilbert. Another six weeks and I would have—but that’s not your problem. Something I’m going to have to work out for myself.”

  “You mean the move to San Diego.”

  The waitress put their drinks on the table and left. “Is there anything about me you don’t know?” Shelby asked with a touch of irritation.

  “Very little. I know about the problem with your husband and I know you’re worried about your sister. I know you don’t want to leave New York or give up your police work, but you’ve made up your mind to do both.”

  “Those are private matters,” Shelby said resentfully.

  “I’m sorry. Would it help if I told you every one of us who works for UN Intelligence has been under the same microscope? Even Sir John Dudley himself.”

  “No, it doesn’t help a bit.”

  “Then let me appeal to your sense of adventure. Why settle for nabbing petty crooks when you can go after international criminals? Mrs. Kent, this inquiry is too important for us to leave anything to chance. You’re our ace in the hole. Let me make a suggestion. Simply postpone your move to San Diego. The inquiry won’t last forever. And when it’s over, we’ll try to talk you into staying on and you can tell us all to go to hell if you like. But stay for the inquiry.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Nothing ever is.” Might as well bring it out in the open. “Your husband won’t like it.”

  “He’d never forgive me. He looks upon California as a place where he’d be free of the stigma of being married to a woman who knows every time he lies to her. But if I’m to be part of this inquiry, everybody in the world will know what I do. Eric’ll be no better off in California than he is here. Oh, I know it all seems very petty to you—what’s one marriage compared to what the Li Xijuan gang has been up to? But it’s not petty to me. It’s my life.”

  “I don’t think it’s petty at all.”

  Shelby smiled sadly. “You’re not telling the truth, Mr. Gilbert.”

  Gilbert turned a different shade of red and then laughed. “I can see I’m going to have to be careful around you.”

  Shelby’s smile disappeared. “Yes. Most people find it a terrible burden.”

  And with those simple words, Shelby made Kevin Gilbert see her in a totally new light. My God, yes—what must this woman feel like, knowing that other people regarded her as some kind of freak? Even the police who thought so highly of her ability looked on her as a sort of living machine to be plugged in for their convenience, never to be treated as a normal person. She wasn’t normal—but in only one way. In all other respects she was just a human being, one who must surely be sensitive to the waves of resentment her gift provoked. Maybe that was why she was willing to give up everything for a husband who was giving her only a hard time in return. Maybe Eric Kent was the best she could hope for.

  “I thought I knew so much about you,” Gilbert said. “I’m beginning to think I know nothing at all.”

  Shelby looked at him curiously, wondering what he meant. “When does the inquiry start?”

  “The date hasn’t been announced yet, but it’ll be about two weeks from now. They have to move fast. The Security Council’s trying to put down the fear that some kind of worldwide rebellion is in the works. A lot of folks think these attacks on the Militia are all part of a unified drive by person or persons unknown to take over the world.”

  “And you’re sure they aren’t?” Shelby asked dubiously.

  “Positive. Li Xijuan and Aguirrez and Schlimmermann have simply been exploiting disparate groups of malcontents for their own cloudy purposes. Remember Li and Aguirrez supplied their rebels with guns that wouldn’t shoot and bombs that wouldn’t explode. Schlimmermann broke the pattern when he took it on himself to blow up three thousand people in Greece.”

  “I notice you say rebels instead of revolutionaries. A way of diminishing them?”

  “Yes, it’s deliberate, I admit. Revolution has become so commonplace the word has almost lost its meaning. I went to Honduras, I talked to those people. They don’t want to establish a new social order—they haven’t thought that far. They just want to hit out at something, enlarge themselves at the expense of other people’s lives. And they are the sort of people Li Xijuan and her two partners-in-crime have been seeking out. Excitable people, easily stirred up. What those three have been doing is ugly, ugly as hell, and it has to be aired publicly. And fast. So what I want most in the world is to hear a big, resounding yes from you right now.”

  “But you don’t really expect to hear it, do you?” Shelby grinned.

  “Of course I do,” Gilbert said stoutly, glowing red.

  “Saying yes to you would change my entire life. I’m not sure I want to change my entire life.”

  “Look, Shelby, I don’t want to tell you—oh, I’m sorry. Mrs. Kent.”

  “Shelby’s okay. What’s your first name?”

  “Kevin.”

  “Then fire away, Kevin. Go ahead and don’t tell me what you don’t want to tell me.”

  “I don’t want to tell you how to make personal decisions, but for the life of me I can’t see how you could consider not taking the job! This inquiry may be the event of the century—”

  “More than two world wars, space flight, cloning …”

  “—and here you have the chance to play a vital part in it! I’d jump at the chance, myself. It’s big.” He reached out and took her hand. “Shelby, it’s bigger than both of us.”

  She burst out laughing and withdrew her hand. “You’re very good at your job, Kevin Gilbert. But I can’t make a decision just like that.” She tried to snap her fingers and failed. “I’ll need some time to think about it.”

  She didn’t say no, she said she’d think about it! Let it percolate. “Time you shall have. Meet me here tomorrow at three o’clock and tell me yo
ur decision.”

  “Gee, that’s almost twenty-four hours. Sure you can wait that long?”

  “Actually, no. I’d say I don’t want to rush you, but you’d know I was lying. I do want to rush you. But I can’t force you. If you haven’t reached a decision by tomorrow, you can tell me here and we’ll arrange to meet the next day. How else can I get away with dating a married woman? But I’d rather have you put me off than tell me no. Think about it very carefully.”

  “I will.” Shelby smiled.

  Kevin Gilbert signaled the waitress. “Let’s have another drink and talk about something else. Two more,” to the waitress. “Tell me about your sister’s name.”

  “Tee?”

  “Tee. Her name’s Martita, why don’t you call her Marty?”

  “As far as that goes, why don’t we call her Martita? It’s a perfectly good name.” Shelby shrugged. “I don’t know, she’s always been called Tee. The strong syllable in Martita.”

  “That’s as good a reason as any.” The waitress was back with their refills. “She used to be a pianist, didn’t she?”

  “Lord, what an awful way of putting it. Used to be. Remember the old poser—is a play still a play without an audience? Is a pianist a pianist if nobody hears the music? Tee still plays, hours and hours every day. But she won’t give concerts.”

  “Why not?”

  “Scared. Tee doesn’t have the right personality for coping with hordes of people pushing at her. She doesn’t even like to go out of her apartment any more than she has to. She … she’s a very private person, Kevin. It’s hard to explain. She has this extraordinary talent—really extraordinary. She ought to be out there conquering the world! But putting herself on display is painful to her, a breach of some kind of decorum that’s important to her. Every time she’s performed in public she’s been in agony.”

  “Stage fright?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Tee is a very poised musician, incredibly so … do you know what she did? She won the Three Rivers Piano Competition when she was only sixteen years old—all the other contestants were in their late twenties, thereabouts. And she won with Prokofieff’s First Piano Concerto. Do you know the Prokofieff? You have to have fingers of steel to play that one! And Tee did it. Sixteen years old, and she did it. I was so proud of her I felt I was going to burst. She went on to give concerts and make a few guest appearances with symphony orchestras. She even recorded some Bach on the London label. But then she started finding excuses not to accept this engagement, not to go on that tour. Her public appearances grew farther and farther apart, and eventually stopped altogether. Now she works part time as a rehearsal pianist for some third-rate ballet company, and she wouldn’t even be doing that if it weren’t for Max’s encouraging her to get out and do something. Max is her husband.”