“Damned good,” I said.
“On occasions, as I understand it, you’ve dealt with James Jackson and James Jason — economics and foreign policy. And Jerome — science policy. He’s the one who died in Boston. Johnny had to give Jerome’s science speech for him. If those two cops hadn’t surprised my men in the alley there . . .” His voice trailed off. Might have beens.
“And I thought it was just moodiness, or the pressures of the day,” I said, more to myself than to him. “I never knew the difference from one to the other.”
“Nobody does. Nobody except Robert Wyatt and a dozen of my people who work inside the White House.”
“Which is why security has always been so tight around him.”
“Not security. Privacy.” The General’s mouth curled slightly. “It wouldn’t do to have somebody like you burst into the Oval Office and see three or four Presidents conferring with each other.”
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered.
“So there you are,” said the General. “No plot. No cabal. No attempt to kill the President and slide in a phony look-alike.”
“But two of the clones have died.”
“Three,” said Dr. Peña.
I turned to him. “Three? Besides the one who died in infancy?”
“Yesterday . . . in Washington. When I got the news . . . I must have collapsed.”
The General’s face clouded again. “It was Jason. They’ve shipped the body to North Lake.”
“How . . . how did it happen?” I asked.
“Same as the others,” the General said. “He was working in his office in the subbasement of the White House and they found him collapsed at his desk. The body was still warm.”
Suddenly I was on my feet. “Somebody’s methodically killing each one of them.”
But the General grabbed my wrist and yanked me back down to my chair. “Stop looking for plots under every piece of furniture, dammit!”
“But . . .”
“Look at me,” he commanded. “Do you think for one instant that if I thought somebody was killing my sons, my son, I’d sit here and let the bastards get away with it? Or the President would allow his own brothers to be murdered without finding out who was doing it and nailing him? Do you think this planet’s big enough for such a murderer to hide in? It’s not.”
Finally I was beginning to understand why the President had kept the investigation so small, so tightly secret. It was a family affair, and no outsiders were wanted or needed.
“But what’s killing them?”
“They’re dying of the same thing that killed Jesse, in infancy. Somehow . . . and he looked at Dr. Peña as he spoke, “somehow their immunological systems are breaking down. Their bodies can’t protect them from germs or viruses. Their biochemistry is screwed up and they die from the slightest infection . . . anything, a scratch, a common cold could kill them. Somebody sneezing in the same room.”
A clatter made me turn back to the doctor. He had let the oxygen mask fall to the floor.
“No,” he said, as strongly as he could. It was only a harsh whisper. “That is not true! They are not . . . it cannot be true.”
“Alfonso, nobody’s blaming you . . .”
Dr. Peña shook his head from side to side. “No, my old friend. You do not understand. We have checked. We have performed tests. The immune defenses of the body . . . do not suddenly disappear . . . . They cannot.”
The General went to his side. “Now don’t excite yourself.”
“But . . . you must listen!” Peña could barely get enough breath into him to wheeze out the words. He lifted one frail hand and pointed at me. “He . . . he is more correct . . . than you are. They . . . they are not just dying . . . they are being killed . . . murdered . . .”
“But how?” the General demanded. “You said yourself that there was no sign of violence. No poison. The deaths were from infections . . . they were natural. Natural!”
“No.” The doctor’s voice seemed to be coming from far away. “They . . . are being . . . murdered.”
His head lolled back. His mouth sagged open. His chest stopped heaving. General Halliday looked up at me, and damned if there weren’t tears in his eyes.
FOURTEEN
Only twice in my life have people close to me died. Both times by chance I was out of town when it happened. And I stayed away. I avoided the wakes, the funerals, the sobbing relatives and somber friends. It all seemed so pointless, so futile. Maybe I was scared, deep inside. Maybe I saw myself in the coffin, or was afraid I would.
I stayed for Peña’s funeral. I’m not sure why, but I stayed. The General’s people did it all very swiftly and efficiently. The old man was buried in the woods behind the General’s main house. They had to clear off the thinning layer of snow that was still on the ground to dig the grave. The soil was frozen; the digging was hard work.
It was a very small band of mourners. The General, Robert Wyatt, a few of the General’s hired hands, Peter Thornton from North Lake — trying not to look pleased that he was now in charge of the lab — and me.
And the President.
A local minister said a few hushed words and they lowered Peña’s coffin into the ground. I knew instinctively that there were already three other graves under the snow, with flat little markers that said “J. J. Halliday.” A fourth one would be dug soon.
That night the General, Wyatt, the President, and I ate a quiet dinner together. Thornton had flown back to Minnesota immediately after the burial service. The President turned out to be James Jeffrey, the specialist in defense policy.
I still couldn’t quite get it through my skull that he was one of eight identical clone brothers; one of four remaining brothers. Hell, he was the President! Every bone, every fold of skin, every gesture, every nuance of voice: the President. His eyes, the way his hair flopped over his forehead, the kind of grin he gave me as he kidded me about reading the old Watergate tapes for a lesson in how not to cover up a White House secret. He was the President, the only one I’d known. There couldn’t be another one just like him. My brain and guts and soul refused to accept the idea. He couldn’t be one of a set of eight. Or seven. Or four. We were pretty somber as we sat down to eat in the oak-paneled dining room. But as that same robot-like Oriental butler served us steaks, Jeffrey began telling his father about the arguments he had been having with his brothers over the Iran-Kuwait war.
“We’ve got to be ready to go in there,” he said fervently, “in force. We’ve got to be able to protect our own interests.”
The General nodded agreement. I worked on my steak and kept quiet.
“But do you think Johnny understands that?” Jeffrey grumbled. “He’s more worried about losing a few votes in Congress than losing the whole Middle East.”
“John knows the political infighting,” the General said. “If he doesn’t think . . .”
“I’ve made my own assessment of the politics,” Jeffrey interrupted. “I’ve dealt with the Senate committees. And the House, too. I could swing the Hill, if John would give me a chance to try.”
The General looked up from his plate. “It’s John’s job to make the political decisions. If he thinks the Congress would block you, you’d better go along with his estimate of the situation.” Jeffrey cocked his head slightly to one side. Just like the President. Dummy! I hollered at myself. He is the President. One-eighth of the Presidency, at least.
With that smile I knew so well, the smile that meant he was going to say something unpleasant but didn’t want you to get upset about it, Jeffrey answered his father. “I don’t think John’s qualified to make this decision. He doesn’t understand the details of the military situation as well as I do. Nor the economic situation, for that matter.”
They discussed — or argued, depending on your boil-over threshold — the situation right through dessert. Just a quiet little family debate. Like father and son arguing over who’s going to use the family car tonight. Except that the son was the President of
the United States, the subject was whether or not we will enter the Iran-Kuwait war, and the men he was arguing against were his identical clone brothers who were back in Washington.
My brain was telling me that I had to accept the reality of the situation. But the rest of me still didn’t want to deal with it. You can know something is true, intellectually, and accept it and even deal with the reality as part of your world-view, on which you base your work. But that doesn’t mean you believe it’s true, down at the deepest level of your existence. Inside me, in that special subbasement where I keep all my old Sunday school lessons and nightmare terrors and fantasy desires, down there the real, secret, deepest me hadn’t yet accepted what my brain had already filed away in one of its neat little storage cabinets. I knew the President had been cloned, and there were four identical brothers in the White House. I knew there had been seven, up to a few months ago. I knew it.
But I didn’t believe it.
I flew back to Washington that night in one of the General’s private supersonic jets with the President. We sat side by side in the most luxurious reclining chairs I’d ever flown in, and watched the television screen built into the forward bulkhead of the passenger compartment. The President was delivering a speech, live, from the White House. He was signing the new Economic Incentives Act, and taking the opportunity to coax the Congress for even more action on his domestic programs.
At forty-two thousand feet above the prairie wheat basket of the nation, I sat beside the President and watched the President on TV, live.
“. . . and although this act will go a long way toward turning urban adults into taxpaying, productive citizens rather than welfare recipients, we still have a long way to go on education and day care facilities for the young people of the core cities . . .” Carrot and stick. That patented Halliday smile and the constant urging to do more, go further, dare higher.
“They say the poor are always with us,” the President concluded. “Perhaps that’s because those who are not poor have never put their whole hearts and minds to the task of eradicating poverty. We have the wealth, we have the technology, we have the knowledge to lift the blight of poverty from our cities and countryside. The question is, do we have the heart, the soul, the will to do it? That is a question that not even the President can answer, my fellow citizens. Only you can answer it. Thank you. Good night and God bless you.”
I turned my head as the image faded on the screen and saw the President grinning to (at?) himself. “He’s got style, John has,” Jeffrey told me. “I’ve got to deliver a speech on defense policy next week at West Point. I’ll never be able to put it across the way he does.” He sounded almost wistful.
“Look at it this way,” I suggested. “Nobody’s noticed the difference between you.”
That made him happy. I tried to get him to talk about the deaths of his brothers, whether he felt they were natural or not. He evaded my attempts, finally cranking his chair back and closing his eyes in a convenient nap.
When we landed, I saw how ridiculously easy it is for a man who looks exactly like the President to get through National Airport and into the White House without being detected. The plane merely taxied to a small private hangar, and we stepped from the jet’s hatch to a waiting limousine. The only people in the hangar were the plane’s two-man crew, the chauffeur, and two armed security guards. All of them were General Halliday’s hand-picked employees.
Jeffrey dropped me off at my apartment building before going on to the White House. The limousine had one-way windows, so no one could see into it, and he stayed back in the shadows when I opened the door and quickly hopped out. Barring an automobile accident, there was no way for anyone to see him. The chauffeur drove slowly, and he had Secret Service credentials; the limousine was built like a tank, and its license plate bore the special White House code. They’d have to run over Abraham Lincoln before anyone could pry The Man out of the back seat. And there were unmarked cars gliding along in front and behind us as well. No noise, no sirens. But the limousine was well escorted.
When I finally stumbled into my apartment, I felt suddenly drained, emotionally and physically washed out. I let my flight-weight travel kit clunk to the floor of the living room, made my way to the bathroom for a fast leak, and was already halfway out of my suit when I turned on the bedroom light.
Vickie was in my bed, rubbing her eyes like a kid who’s been awakened by her loutish parents’ party.
“You’re back . . .” she mumbled sleepily.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I’m nothing if not gracious when surprised.
She pulled herself up to a sitting position. She was wearing a nightgown, but it was flinty, transparent.
“I thought this would be a safe place. With you out of town, nobody’d think to look for me here.”
I sat on the bed beside her.
“Besides,” she said, “I wanted to be here when you got back.”
She leaned slightly toward me, and I kissed her. I didn’t feel tired anymore.
“I was worried about you,” she said.
“I called the office every day.”
“But you didn’t talk with me.”
“I thought it’d be better if I didn’t.”
All this while I was holding her, kissing her, and squirming out of my clothes at the same time. If I didn’t wrench my back then, I never will.
Between making love and making talk, bringing her up to date on what had happened at Aspen, it was damned near dawn before we fell asleep. And Vickie hadn’t shut off my radio alarm. It started floating Beethoven at us at 730 sharp.
We showered together, I shaved while she dried her hair, I dressed while she put on makeup, and I flailed the last four eggs in the refrigerator into breakfast while she dressed. For kicks I sliced the butt end of an old pepperoni and tossed it in with the eggs. Start the day with a bang.
After breakfast we grabbed our respective handbags and went to the elevator. Vickie reached for the Lobby button, but I pushed her hand away and punched R, for roof. She started to ask me why, but I put a finger to my lips.
When we got to the roof and stepped out into the fine spring morning, I walked her to the parapet at the edge, as far from the door, and any listening devices, as we could get.
“I want to bring Hank Solomon up to date on what’s happening, but I’ll be damned if I know how to get in touch with him without tipping off whoever’s watching us. They most likely know he’s in with us, but still . . .”
Vickie shaded her eyes from the sun. “Do you think we’re still being bugged?”
I nodded. “This thing isn’t over yet. Far from it. Peña’s death may have been natural, but none of the others was. Maybe it wasn’t the General who did it, but it’s somebody close to him.”
“Wyatt?”
“Could be.”
“Why?’
“If I knew that, I’d know for sure if it was him or not.”
“So what do we do?”
“That’s what I want to ask Hank about. He ought to know more about this kind of thing than we do.”
“He told me he’d find a way to contact you. You shouldn’t try to reach him.”
“You saw him? When?”
Vickie grinned. “Very tricky stuff. I got a letter at the office, addressed to me personally. All that was inside was a clipping from the newspaper, with ads for the movies on it. One theater’s selection was circled in red, and the time of the showing was underlined. The envelope was from the Treasury Department, so I assumed it was from Hank . . . Secret Service is in Treasury.”
“So he met you at the theater.”
“That’s right. For about three minutes. He told me he was keeping a watch on me. And that he’d get in touch with you when you got back.”
I found myself taking a deep breath and half wishing I had stayed in Boston. Not even Beacon Hill politics was as devious as all this.
We drove to the office together, and by the time the elevator had stopped at
our floor, Vickie had put on her office personality. Just a sunny smile and a “Have a good day!” Not that I made a grab for her. I had my office personality on, too. It had been warm and good in bed; it was great to have her there when I got home, rather than an empty apartment. But don’t start to expect it, I warned myself. Or depend on it.
I got a lot of kidding from the press corps at the morning briefing about being a gentleman of leisure. But no undercurrent of worry or rumor that my recent absences might be a symptom of something cooking inside the White House. If a Cabinet officer or a Pentagon official started playing hookey, then there’d be rumbles of interest from the newshawks. But the press secretary? Nobody cared.
As the briefing broke up, His Holiness told me that The Man wanted me in the Oval Office at 5:30. I made a mental note and went back to the Aztec Temple to plow through the accumulated paperwork on my desk.
Hank Solomon was one of the security guards down at the inspection post under the West Wing that afternoon. He winked at me, and I did my best not to make it look as if I knew him as I stepped through the sensor arch that screened me for identification and weapons.
The President was behind his big, curved desk as I stepped into the Oval Office. Wyatt was sitting in my favorite chair, the Scandinavian slingback, so I took his usual standby, the rocker next to the fireplace.
The Man watched me as I sat down. He grinned. “I can see exactly what’s going through your mind,” he said.
“Sir?”
“You’re wondering, Which one is he? Right?”
I grinned back at him. “Yes . . . that’s right.”
“I’m James John, the one whose hand you shook when you agreed to take the job.”
Somehow I felt relieved.
“It’s no use staring at him,” Wyatt groused. “You won’t be able to tell the difference between them. I can’t, for God’s sake, and I’ve known them since childhood.”
“What’re we going to do about this?” I blurted.
The President’s smile faded. “The deaths, you mean.”
“The murders,” I said. “Somebody’s killing you — your brothers, one by one.”
The Multiple Man by Ben Bova Page 15
