“She was lucky a baby was all she took away from the experience.”
“Maybe it wasn’t all,” Horace said. “One of the corpses the French autopsied was HIV positive.”
Julian gasped. “She has the disease?”
“Not so far, and this happened in the early nineties. But you can turn up with it years and years afterward, depending on which mutation of the virus is at work. She may never be sure.”
Julian’s face was contorted by the shock of hearing what Horace had just told him. “I had no idea,” he said. “None.”
“Let’s hope nobody else does, either,” Horace replied. “Hassan Abdallah and his friends are not a let-bygones-be-bygones crowd.” He drank the rough wine in his jelly glass at a swallow, made a face, and changed the subject. “But back to my question. If not you, then who is aiding and abetting Busby in this harebrained plan?”
“I don’t know. I had no idea he was even onto anything like this. When we talked to Busby up in the Berkshires I thought what we all had in mind was a new Vice President with the right point of view, maybe even Buzzer himself, God help me, who could take over from Lockwood and pick up the pieces.”
“I’m glad to hear that, because your friend Hammett is as crazy as a bedbug and that woman he hangs out with is an enemy of mankind,” Horace said.
“That’s harsh.”
“Truth sometimes is. Hammett didn’t just defend those bloody bastards in the courts. He wants them to win.” Julian said nothing. Horace said, “But golly, the irony.”
Julian gave him a comprehending look; “golly” had been the favorite exclamation of the O.G., from whom Horace had learned so much. What was coming next?
Horace uttered a mordant chuckle. “You do see the ultimate irony, don’t you, Julian? If Busby succeeds, what we’ll get for killing Ibn Awad to save the world is Ibn Awad’s double as President of the United States.”
11
In the computer’s main memory Lucy found the phone call to the Morning After Clinic she had made three months before on Susan Grant’s behalf. After that it was a simple matter to identify and check out the woman to whom she had talked about Grant’s appointment and do a rundown on her outgoing calls. The first one she placed, twenty-one seconds after disconnecting from Lucy, went to a cellular telephone in the Connecticut area. The phone was registered to the Hartford offices of Eve & Eve, Attorneys at Law, who had represented the woman at the MAC clinic in her divorce from a husband who had battered and then deserted her. The records showed that the woman, a nurse-midwife from Hartford, had gotten her job on the recommendation of a member of her support group at the Womonkind Coalition. She still worked in the same job, at the same extension.
McGraw said, “One more bean for the Bingo card.”
“More than that,” Zarah said. “It gives us a way to take the initiative.”
“To do what?” McGraw said.
“Bring the assassin into the open.”
“Oh? How would you do that on the basis of this particular bean?”
“I’d do the obvious,” Zarah said. “Lucy makes another call to the MAC clinic and keeps calling until she gets the same woman as before on the line. Then she makes an appointment in my name and, to make sure she understands, tells them Mallory is the father.”
“Then what?”
“Then I show up for the appointment.”
Wiggins said, “And the assassin will be there waiting for you. And we’ll be waiting for the assassin.”
“Wait a minute,” McGraw said. “Zarah, I know you’ve had some experience with types like these, and I know Lucy and Wiggins and their friends are good at what they do and that they’ll cover you. But they were covering Susan Grant, too.”
“They didn’t know what to expect then,” Zarah said. “They weren’t in control of the situation.”
“No, but maybe they thought they were. This is dangerous. These are world-class nutcases but they’re not stupid. The killer always controls the situation. This one will come at it entirely differently the second time around.”
Wiggins liked Zarah’s line of reasoning. “But they have to act within the limits of the situation we create,’ he said. “First of all, they must act within a rigid time frame: the embryo must be recovered seven days after the call to the clinic, no more, no less.”
“So they’ve got seven days to hit her with a rifle on one of her lonely walks.”
“So she makes the appointment and then vanishes until the day of the appointment,” Wiggins said. “The only place she can be at the appointed hour is in front of the MAC clinic. And we’ll be there, too.”
“Just like in the movies,” McGraw said. “But suppose there’s a demonstration in front of the clinic and the assassin is one of the demonstrators and hits Zarah with a KGB surplus poison dart shot from an umbrella tip? Suppose this character is inside the clinic dressed like a doctor and flushes the embryo with cyanide? Or makes an appointment for the same day and uses a knife in the waiting room? This is not sound procedure.”
Lucy had listened in silence to this conversation, eyes never leaving Zarah’s face as she and the others spoke. Now she said, “They’d expect us. Our coverage of Zarah has been blown. Thanks to Zarah.”
“If the assassin is psychotic, none of that matters,” Zarah said. “We have to isolate this person.”
McGraw said, “One on one, you and her?”
“Exactly,” Zarah said. “But on our own ground. I have an idea.” She described it.
When she was done McGraw said, “It could work. It could also get you killed. Why should the killer believe you really are pregnant?”
“Because the killer will want to believe it. As Lucy said, this person is a type—the type who sees what it wants to see,” Zarah said. “We’ll see if your woman calls Eve & Eve again. If she does, the killer will take the next step and so can we. Make the call, Lucy.”
Something like a smile of comprehension came and went in Lucy’s eyes as she listened to these words of Zarah’s. With a brighter smile she said, “Fine.” She dialed the number through the computer, and while she waited for the call to go through, she watched Zarah with a cold and knowing expression, female on female.
She made the appointment, identifying Zarah by name. “You should know,” she said, “that former President Mallory will be taking a close personal interest in this particular recovery. All details should be held in the strictest confidence.”
Forty seconds later the computer detected a call from the MAC clinic to Eve & Eve’s cellular number, registered in the 203 area code, Connecticut, but answered in the 202 area, Washington, D.C.
“So far, so good,” said Lucy. “Amazing, how Zarah can see into the future.”
“Now we hang around and wait,” McGraw said.
“Not for long, I imagine,” Zarah said.
12
In the palmy days of U.S. intelligence, agents who were incompetent enough or unlucky enough to be captured by the opposition were under standing orders to hold out under torture or the threat of it long enough to convince their interrogators that they would rather die than talk, and then abandon bravado and spill their guts. It was thought that this scenario would play well because it confirmed the idea so firmly held by many at home and abroad that Americans are soft, weak, selfish, afraid of pain, and believe in nothing. As long as headquarters knew everything the captive knew, nothing was lost by timely confession because even the briefest show of defiance gave the people back home time to hide the best silverware before the burglars arrived. The problem with this theory was that captured spies are usually questioned by counterspies who are unlikely to believe them even when they are telling the truth.
Horace Hubbard told Alfonso Olmedo all this in the living room of Blackstone’s town house in Bethesda, Maryland, where McGraw had delivered him after their meeting on the Buffalo bridge.
“Meaning what?” Olmedo said. “That you’re trying to avoid torture or hide the best silverware?”
>
“Meaning that I think my best chance of being believed is to be questioned by you. Your knack for pulling the truth out of people whether they want to tell it or not is the bona fides a fellow like me needs.”
“I don’t quite follow you.”
“Let me explain,” Horace said. “My cousin Paul Christopher crash-landed inside Red China during the Cold War and was thrown into prison. His sentence was, I quote, Death with twenty years’ suspension of the execution at solitary hard labor with observation of the result. It meant he had twenty years to rehabilitate himself as a good Maoist and also that his captors could execute him at any moment they decided he wasn’t sincere, or was beyond rehabilitation, or for any other reason. Or shoot him at the end of twenty years no matter what he did.”
“I remember the case,” Olmedo said. “But he did get out in the end, didn’t he?”
“Yes, because, in the end, the Chinese believed him.”
“Your situation is not very similar.”
“Maybe not in every particular, but let me make my point,” Horace said. “It took the Chinese ten years to believe the poor guy when, having told them everything else he knew, he refused under the daily threat of execution to admit that he had spied on China, because he never had. Scrupulously honest man, my cousin Paul; got him into all kinds of trouble all his life. The Chinese had never before encountered a prisoner who would not oblige them by making a false confession. At last they decided he was not hopelessly recalcitrant but a man of principle, so they commuted his sentence. But it was a close thing.”
Olmedo said, “Instructive anecdote. But you realize that I can make this case without you.”
“Oh, yes. But not without leaving Lockwood’s innocence, which is total, in some doubt. You can’t exonerate Lockwood without knowing how and why I did what I did. I don’t see how you can get at the whole truth without me.”
“You know the whole truth?”
“Only the missing parts,” Horace said. “I have in my possession a memory chip on which the entire election-night computer operation is recorded. That is to say, an inventory of every vote that was diverted in New York, Michigan, and California, and the record of what candidate it really belongs to.”
Olmedo said, “How can I know that this record is authentic?”
“You will find that it exactly corroborates the Mallory file, which is obviously based on an intercept by O. N. Laster’s boys and girls. Besides, according to Rose, a computer never forgets, even when lobotomized. Somewhere in its brain all these data are sleeping. The chip will wake them up.” Horace lifted his eyebrows, which were grayer now than Olmedo remembered their having been only a few weeks before. “The Prince Charming chip,” he said, taking it out of his pocket in its little Lucite case and holding it up for Olmedo to see.
Olmedo said, “Do you also happen to have in your pocket a copy of the recording of the entire conversation between Lockwood and Philindros?”
“You know I do. You listened to it in New York.”
“Only parts of it, I think. How did you get it?”
“Jack Philindros wasn’t wearing anything as old-fashioned as a tape recorder. The conversation went through his tie clip and was transmitted through a relay to the satellite, then beamed back to earth and recorded at headquarters. Among other places, including my listening post in Beirut.”
Olmedo said, “Refresh my memory. Does the complete recording corroborate Lockwood’s version of what was said and not said?”
“From what I deduce from your questions to Philindros,” Horace replied, “I would say yes, very likely it does.”
“Why are you approaching me now?”
“Because you did not come to me. And because the situation has changed in ways that I’m confident you will discover while questioning me before the Senate.”
“There must be a reason beyond that. You’ll go to prison.”
“Not such a frightening prospect when a nursing home is the alternative. Besides, Mr. Olmedo, I have engaged in criminal activity on my country’s behalf all my life, and but for the grace of God I might have been locked up years ago under far worse conditions—like poor Paul Christopher.”
“Why didn’t that happen?”
“Because always before I stuck to the principles of tradecraft. I have been in the business of altering reality, but never before did I make the mistake of altering reality for personal reasons. It was a far, far greater mistake than I ever imagined it could be, and at my age I had no excuse for making it. I don’t know if you can understand what I’m saying.”
“I’m trying. Are you coming forward because you wish to make amends?”
“Something of that nature,” Horace said. “Are we on?”
“In my opinion you’ll make an interesting witness,” Olmedo said. “I must leave you now. The trial recommences at twelve-thirty. My colleague Mr. Blackstone will join you in a moment. Please speak as frankly to him as you have spoken to me, because I will be using what you tell him as the basis of my questions to you in three hours’ time.”
“Excellent.”
Olmedo held out his hand. “May I have the memory chips now?”
Horace handed them over to him in their tiny transparent containers. “A pleasure,” he said. “And if I were you, I’d make copies.”
13
Horace gave Blackstone enough information to provide the basis for at least a week of testimony. After hearing the essentials—as Blackstone defined essentials—in an anteroom of the Senate chamber, Olmedo told Horace that he would confine himself to the heart of the matter. “It may be a rough passage,” he said.
“Fire away,” Horace replied. “Just bear in mind what I told you about my cousin.”
Olmedo’s opening question was “Mr. Hubbard, you have just sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Do you intend to do so?”
Horace said, “I do so intend, Mr. Olmedo.”
“You are a professional intelligence operative, Mr. Hubbard, and have been all your adult life. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“There is a widespread belief that spies are to their targets what heartless seducers are to women. They lie as a matter of technique to get what they want. Would you regard that as a fair perception of the reality?”
Horace answered this provocative question as if sensing in it the possibility of a pleasant chat. “A reasonable man must answer yes to that question,” he said. “Although it has always been maintained that there is a difference between lying for your country and just plain lying. Also, good spies do it in the name of something rarer than a lady’s virtue.”
“Which is?”
“The truth.”
“Which makes men free?”
“That is the motto of American intelligence. The reality, as a late director of my former organization once remarked, is that it only makes them angry.”
At this point Patrick Graham, chuckling in spite of himself, defined Horace to the television audience as “an irresistible scoundrel.” The camera captured Olmedo’s scarcely veiled amusement.
Hammett intervened from the bench, saying, “Mr. Hubbard, have your rights been explained to you?”
“I understand them fully, Mr. Chief Justice.”
“Are you represented by counsel?”
“I am not represented by counsel, sir, nor do I wish to be.”
“You understand that you have no immunity here, and that anything you say in this proceeding may subsequently be used against you in criminal or civil proceedings in a court of law, and that you have the right to remain silent and the right to counsel at the expense of the United States?”
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Chief Justice, I understand all of that,” Horace said in his civil, nerveless manner. With a charming smile he said to Olmedo, “I shall go where you lead me, sir.”
Olmedo said, “Mr. Hubbard, during your career as an intelligence officer you achieved the highest possible civil service rank, were decorate
d for your secret achievements on six different occasions, and were the principal officer of the Foreign Intelligence Service in the Middle East at the time of Ibn A wad’s death. All correct?”
“Yes.”
“And did there come a time, almost exactly four years ago today, when you were ordered to carry out an operation to assassinate Ibn A wad?”
“Yes.”
“By whom?”
“By the DFI—that is to say the Director of Foreign Intelligence—in a coded cable for my eyes only.”
“By the DFI you mean Mr. Philindros?”
“Jack Philindros held the office at that time, yes. As he still does.”
Olmedo said, “You were not ordered to assassinate Ibn Awad by the President of the United States himself?”
“No.”
“Are you personally acquainted with President Lockwood?”
“Yes, but only on a casual social basis.”
“Have you ever met the President in an official capacity?”
“No, only in a social setting.”
“Did you discuss the aforesaid order to assassinate Ibn Awad with President Lockwood in any sort of social setting before carrying it out?”
“No.”
“Your half brother, Julian Hubbard, was at that time chief of staff to President Lockwood. Did you discuss the director’s order with your half brother before you carried it out?”
“No.”
“Did you, in fact, carry it out?”
“Yes.”
“With your own hand?”
“No. I activated a nonwitting asset.”
“Please define that term.”
“He didn’t know what I really was or who I really worked for.”
“You are referring to Ibn Awad’s son Prince Talil?”
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