Liars and Tyrants and People Who Turn Blue

by Barbara Paul

  “No guerrillas died in those attacks that we know of. All the casualties were Militiamen and UN employees, and some passersby.”

  “I believe that is correct.”

  “A strange way to ‘help’ the Militia.”

  A shrug. “Your opinion.”

  “Over thirty-two hundred people died in Greece. Thirty-two hundred. Do you fully understand, Herr Schlimmermann, that you caused the deaths of thirty-two hundred innocent people?”

  Schlimmermann looked the Indian straight in the eye. “I understand perfectly.”

  “And it means nothing to you?”

  The German’s mouth twitched. “I’d say it means more to me than it does to you. I see it as an accurate gauge of the extent of the difficulties facing us—by us, I mean the UN. In an efficiently run society such extreme corrective measures would not be necessary. You want me to say I’m sorry? Very well, I’m sorry their deaths were necessary. But they were necessary.”

  “Would you do the same thing again?”

  “Without a moment’s hesitation.”

  The Indian’s voice softened. “Ambassador, your cavalier attitude toward human life is totally beyond my comprehension. You come before the eyes of the world and admit to being a mass murderer—and in the service of what? Efficiency?”

  “Mass murderer?” Schlimmermann didn’t laugh, but he looked as if he wanted to. “Yes, you need these little labels, don’t you? To sanction your own feeling of righteousness. I prefer to think of myself as a physician, practicing preventive medicine.”

  “Arrogant goddamned egomaniac,” Shelby muttered under her breath.

  “Hush,” whispered the lawyer next to her.

  The Indian decided on a new tack. “Ambassador Aguirrez has testified that the plan was to supply insurgents with defective weapons, to avoid endangering the lives of the UN peacekeeping forces involved in the action. Yet you supplied the Greek guerrillas with live explosives. Can you explain that?”

  Schlimmermann shrugged. “This business of supplying defective weapons—that’s only playing at rebellion. In order for the plan to work, the threat to the world’s security had to be a real one. Old grenades with faulty firing pins just wouldn’t do the job. Providing that kind of weapon is too tentative, too half-hearted. Even cowardly.”

  “So you disagreed with Ambassador Aguirrez and Ambassador Li as to the best way of staging contained rebellions.”

  “I disagreed from the start. I agreed to the idea of controlling rebellions, but I disagreed as to the most effective method of doing so.”

  Schlimmermann talked on, expounding on his theory for maintaining authority by manipulating those who would rebel against it. Occasionally a light on Shelby’s machine would flash on. Yes, she’d signal; the Ambassador from West Germany wasn’t lying about his motives. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a movement and unconsciously turned her head to see what caused it. What she saw made her gasp.

  Aguirrez—surrounded by a depression-aura that moved. Not the mild pulsations of the red aura of deceit, but blue-black waves rushing away from his body, faster and faster and darker and darker.

  Shelby jumped up from her chair and ran to the walrus’s side. “Aguirrez has gone into a deep depression,” she said in a low voice. “I think he’s suicidal—he might do something desperate unless he gets help right now.”

  Martel didn’t have to be told twice. He muttered instructions to one of his aides. Almost immediately two security guards hurried to Aguirrez and led him gently but firmly from the hearing chamber. The Mexican moved like a sleepwalker—sluggish, oblivious to everything around him. Martel declared a recess.

  “Tell me what it looked like,” he commanded.

  Shelby described the aura the best she could. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she concluded, shaken.

  The walrus looked at her in sudden sympathy. “This isn’t going to be easy for you, is it? This new aura. Has it appeared around Schlimmermann?”

  “No.” All around her, people were gathering up papers, speculating quietly over Aguirrez’s unexpected departure, departing themselves. Shelby started to leave too when she felt eyes burning into the back of her head. She turned to find Heinrich Schlimmermann staring at her.

  With undisguised hatred.

  She’d jumped up and run to the walrus in her concern for Aguirrez, ignoring everything else that was going on in the hearing chamber. She’d caused Martel to take action that disrupted the inquiry, cutting off the German’s metaphysical musings in midsentence. Of course Schlimmermann hated her.

  She’d killed his act.

  CHAPTER 34

  WARNER OLAND OR SIDNEY TOLER?

  FRANCISCO: All my plots

  Turn back upon myself; but I am in,

  And must go on …

  One deadly sin, then, help to cure another.

  —Philip Massinger, The Duke of Milan

  “Catatonic,” Sir John Dudley said. “The man’s withdrawn completely.”

  P. J. Martel blew out air through his thick lips. “Responsibility too much for him. So he just resigned.” Mañuel Aguirrez was in a private clinic in upstate New York—isolated, incommunicado, gone. “He saw the deaths of the Honduran rebels as beneficent—they were the bad guys, no two ways about it, period. But Schlimmermann’s slaughter of three thousand innocent people—that must have brought home to Aguirrez exactly what he was involved in. Even though Aguirrez was a mass murderer himself, he still had more conscience than his two co-conspirators put together. A believer in instant solutions, Señor Aguirrez! Foolish, foolish man. What do the doctors say?”

  “As little as possible. They certainly hold out no hope for a recovery.”

  “Well, that settles one-third of our problem. We can’t vote to indict a catatonic—which means the inquiry will have to be open-ended, in case Aguirrez does manage to pull out of it. The doctors didn’t rule out the possibility altogether, did they?”

  “They just don’t know,” Sir John said. “There’s no way of telling. But the message they were sending was don’t count on it.”

  Martel wagged his big head back and forth. “You reach a point in your life when you think you can’t be shocked any further. Nothing human beings do surprises you any longer. But their motives! Their motives get you every time.”

  The two old men sat quietly a moment, musing. Then Martel continued, “I still don’t know why any of this happened. Aguirrez says he wanted to sabotage insurgents to protect the Militia. Schlimmermann says he wanted to aid the insurgents as a way of dramatizing the Militia’s authority. Li Xijuan says she agrees with Aguirrez, but Shelby Kent says she’s lying. Does that mean Li Xijuan agrees with Schlimmermann after all? Then why send defective weapons to the Burmese? I think we’re going to have to recall Ambassador Li.”

  Sir John nodded. “For the record.”

  Martel glanced at him sharply. “Meaning we won’t learn anything new? Possibly. But I’m interested in finding out how Li Xijuan happened to settle on those two—Aguirrez thinking social ills can be cured with force and Schlimmermann ego-tripping on some private power game in which he’s the only player. Strange choices.”

  “But they did the job, didn’t they?”

  “I’m still not sure what the job was. Protecting the Militia? Attacking it?”

  “Ambassador,” said Sir John, “have you considered the possibility that these attacks on the Militia were not the ultimate end of Li Xijuan’s scheming? That they were, perhaps, the means to a different end?”

  Martel looked dubious. “What end?”

  “I don’t know. But she doesn’t seem overly concerned whether the attacks succeeded or not. Only that they took place. She may have selected Aguirrez and Schlimmermann as her confederates solely because they were willing to co-operate—the fact that the two men disagreed on method may not have been important. We don’t know these two were the only delegates she approached.”

  “Oh, surely not! Any ambassador who had a clue of what
she was intending would have spoken up about it.”

  “Would he have?” Sir John said quietly.

  Martel’s face changed. “Guilt by association, you mean?”

  “Mmm. Say Ambassador Li approaches Ambassador X and drops a hint or two about ‘helping’ the Militia in certain unorthodox ways. What if word of that got back to Ambassador X’s superiors? Might they not begin to wonder what there was in Ambassador X to make Li Xijuan think he might be willing to co-operate in such a venture? Would Ambassador X speak up and denounce Ambassador Li?”

  “Depends on who Ambassador X is,” Martel said heavily. “Some of them probably would want to keep it quiet.”

  “Especially when they’re not quite sure what Li Xijuan was getting at. Her approach would have been oblique, enigmatic. Vague enough that she could deny everything if someone were foolhardy enough to speak up. Oh, she would manage that all right. Li Xijuan is an even more skillful manipulator of people than Schlimmermann. No, Ambassador X wouldn’t know what to do. So he’d end up just keeping his mouth shut.”

  “But why?” Martel slapped the top of his desk in frustration and then looked surprised at himself. “What does she want?”

  “I can’t say what she wants, but I do know what she’s got. Something the rest of us have all been looking on as merely an annoying by-product of this inquiry.”

  “And that is?”

  “Publicity.”

  Martel’s shaggy eyebrows rose. “She’s done all this for publicity?”

  “A possibility,” Sir John cautioned.

  “Personal publicity? I can’t believe that.”

  “Not personal publicity. Li Xijuan is not the ego-driven creature Schlimmermann is. If she is trying to draw attention to something, we don’t know what it is yet.”

  Martel’s big head seemed to sink lower into his shoulders. “Good God in heaven. What are we involved in?”

  Sir John didn’t answer. He wasn’t ready to tell Martel about an investigation he’d just put in motion—nothing might come of it, after all; it was what the Americans called a long shot. Li Xijuan had given most of her adult life to the UN, working her way up from a minor assistant in the Chinese delegation to Ambassador, surviving the changes in the political winds blowing through her homeland. She had made her mark on history with her work in establishing the Militia. But Sir John suspected it wasn’t the UN that held the answer they were all looking for.

  He thought the answer lay in China.

  CHAPTER 35

  HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME

  Music is a habit, like spitting.

  —Percy Grainger, as quoted on the BBC program (me?) My Music

  “Meet Kevin Gilbert,” Shelby said. “Kevin, this is my sister, Tee. My brother-in-law, Max.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Tee, and burst into tears.

  “What? What?” said Shelby.

  “Max says,” Tee snurfled, “Max says he’s going to string me up by my thumbs!”

  “Neater than boiling in oil,” Max said cheerily and stuck out a hand. “Kevin? You’re just in time for round four.”

  “Ah, mumph, yuh,” said Kevin, shaking hands.

  “But what’s it all about?” Shelby demanded.

  “Max has turned into a monster,” Tee said. “That’s all. A monster.”

  “No more Mr. Nice Guy.” Max gave a stage-villain snarl. “Things is a-gunna change round he-ah.”

  Kevin: “Uh, maybe we should come back later.”

  “Nonsense, we need an audience. I’m going to fix us drinks, and we can all have a nice drunken brawl.” Max squinted an eye at Kevin. “Scotch.” It wasn’t a question.

  Kevin grinned. “Have you thought of going into intelligence work?”

  Shelby: “What is going on?”

  “Wait until that monster leaves,” Tee said, “and I’ll tell you.” The monster obligingly went into the kitchen to fix the drinks. “Shelby, remember the Three Rivers Piano Competition?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Well, one of the judges is now the assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony. He’s scheduled to conduct the Prokofieff and his soloist canceled out on him and he remembered I played it in the Competition and—”

  “And he wants you to step in!” Shelby shouted. “Fantastic!”

  “And my monster husband is threatening all sorts of dire things if I don’t—”

  “And he should, he should! My God, Tee, what an opportunity! The Boston Symphony!”

  “Yeah,” Tee shivered. “The Boston Symphony.”

  “Congratulations?” Kevin ventured, not sure this was what was called for.

  “Uh-huh, thanks, I don’t know—”

  “Now, Tee,” said Shelby, her voice rising, “you are not going to say no. It’s the chance of a lifetime!”

  “Yep,” said Max, coming back with the drinks. “Old Steel Fingers here has a chance to show her stuff. And she’s going to do it.”

  “Max, it’s only two months from now,” Tee protested. “I can’t be ready in two months.”

  “You’re ready now,” Max and Shelby said together.

  “You’re bullies,” Tee accused. “Both of you. Bullies.”

  “I’m a monster,” Max reminded her. “Shelby can be the bully.”

  Tee cast around for an adequate expression of her indignation at being bullied and came up with a cliché. “After giving you the best years of my life—”

  “Oh tush, you haven’t even reached your best years yet,” Max said amiably. “Accept it, Tee. This time you’re just not going to get away with copping out.”

  Feeling something like a fifth wheel, Kevin sank down into a leather armchair, winced, and pulled one of Tee’s handgrips from under him.

  “Now I want you to repeat after me,” Max said. “‘I’m going to do it.’ Come on now. ‘I’m going to do it.’ Say it.”

  Tee seemed to be having trouble breathing.

  Max: “‘I’m going to do it.’ You can say it.”

  Tee swallowed three times, fast.

  “Say it, Tee,” Shelby half commanded, half pleaded.

  Max repeated it for her. “‘I’m going to do it.’”

  Tee took a deep breath. “I’m.”

  “That’s the first step!” Max exulted. “Come on, Tee. Say the rest of it.”

  “I’m going to.”

  “You’re going to what?”

  “I’m going to do it!”

  Kevin Gilbert joined in the cheering that greeted this display of determination. What it had cost Tee to commit herself was something he’d never fully understand, but he could recognize a turning point when he saw one.

  “See?” said Shelby. “Didn’t hurt a bit, did it?”

  “I’m going to do it,” Tee repeated wonderingly.

  “Of course you are. And you’re going to do it beautifully.” Shelby hugged her sister and blew a kiss to Max. “That’s a great monster husband you’ve got there, kiddo.”

  Tee turned to Max and smiled. “I’m going to do it.”

  He enfolded her in a bear hug. “Just keep saying it.”

  “What’s the matter?” Kevin asked Shelby.

  “I want to cry,” she said apologetically.

  “Understandable.”

  “No, Tee’s the one who blubbers. I’m the stalwart one.”

  “Oh, I didn’t understand,” he laughed and finished his drink. “Would I be overstepping my role as guest if I fixed us refills?”

  Shelby looked over to where Tee and Max were wrapped up in each other. “I don’t think anyone would even notice.”

  Kevin took her glass and went into the kitchen. Shelby felt suddenly drained—kitten-weak, in fact. And happy. Happier than she’d been in years. She watched the two people who were the most important in the world to her and she felt good.

  “I’m going to do it,” Tee beamed. “I really am.”

  CHAPTER 36

  WOODCOCK TO MINE OWN SPRINGE

  So those who thirst
for glory smother

  Secret weakness and longing, neither

  Weep nor sigh nor listen to the sickness

  In their souls.

  —“The Wanderer,” anonymous eighth-century poem

  P. J. Martel and Li Xijuan were eying each other carefully, cat and mouse. But it wasn’t clear to Shelby which was the cat and which the mouse.

  Martel started it off. “You say you provided faulty weapons to the insurgents for the purpose of protecting the Militia.”

  “That is correct.”

  “And you say that was your only purpose.”

  “That is also correct.”

  No, Shelby signaled once again.

  “Ambassador Li, I suggest you are withholding something. You have some other purpose in mind that you are not telling us.”

  “What purpose could that be?”

  “Suppose you tell us. We know you’re motivated by something other than concern for the welfare of the Militia.”

  “The Militia has long been my primary concern.”

  “And thereby makes a perfect cover,” the walrus said smoothly. “But it’s no good, Ambassador. We know you’ve been lying to us.”

  “You can prove this, of course?”

  Martel grumbled something under his breath. She had him there; by now everyone knew Shelby’s testimony was not admissable in any court of law. But the walrus didn’t give up. “We don’t have to prove it, Ambassador. This is an inquiry, not a trial. If we are convinced you are lying to us, then we must act in accordance with the dictates of our own judgment.”

  “Then I must rely upon your sense of fair play, mustn’t I?” the Chinese woman said calmly.

  The walrus let a silence develop. Then, rapidly: “Did you ask any delegates other than Ambassadors Aguirrez and Schlimmermann to join you in your plan to sabotage rebellions?”

  “No, I did not.”

  Lie.

  Martel flicked his eye at Shelby’s machine and said, “We have information that says you did.”