Edward Llewellyn - Prelude to Chaos

She picked up the badge. “Secret Service!” she breathed, then looked at me. “So you’re one of those!”

“I used to be. Until I got killed on duty three years ago. You can read my eulogy in the New York Times. That was before the Service had acquired its present reputation.”

She followed me in silence back across the cemetery and through the gap in the railings. “Gramps still has some things I may want,” I explained as I fitted the loose rail into place.

“What are you going to do with those guns?”

“Kill a man. Perhaps several men.”

“You swore you’d help me before you went off to enjoy yourself!”

“And I will. After I know what you plan to do. But before you go into that I need sleep. You slept from Boston to Baltimore. There’s a Holiday Inn back there by the thruway.”

“Gavin, you can try it. But things have changed in the last three years. They’ll want to see ID’s if we register. And I haven’t got one.” She slipped mine from the plastic pouch in which my papers were stored. “And this is outdated. You’ll be arrested if you use it.”

I started the motor. “Then I’ll show my badge. That’s usually enough.”

“It’ll be more than enough. It’ll send the desk clerk into shock and bring the manager fawning. The US Secret Service now has much the same reputation as that other SS—the Schutzstaffein—once had.”

I cursed, and cursed again when I pulled up outside the office of the Holiday Inn. Not only was the desk clerk checking ID’s, he was comparing photographs with faces. I drove off down a side road, then stopped to think.

“We’d better sleep in the car.”

“Car be damned!” I snarled. “I need a bath as well as a bed. We’ll try one place which used to prefer not to know its guests’ identities. If it’s still operating.”

The “Sybarite” was not only operating, it was booming and renting each room several times a night. I left Judith in the car, and when the desk clerk asked for my ID I showed him the picture of President Truman on a hundred dollar bill. I signed the register as William Miller, a past Secretary of the Treasury, and after paying for the room in advance, left the hundred on the desk. As the clerk palmed it he murmured, “Channel Three’s the popular choice tonight.”

Our room had that smell peculiar to rooms often used but seldom cleaned. Judith sniffed, then stood staring at the ceiling-mirror above the king-size bed. “Interesting!”

“This is supposed to be more interesting.” I switched to Channel Three and went to the john. When I came back she was watching with fascinated disgust a life-size full-color image of two naked women doing things to each other which were novel to me. “You’re a doctor, so that must be old stuff.”

“I’d never even imagined—” She switched channels and ran through a gamut of pornography.

“SM seems to have recovered its popularity while I was away,” I remarked, feeling along a wall panel for a pressure point I remembered. I found it, released the catch, and the panel slid open on a closet the size of a small room. I hung my raincoat on a hanger and began to unzip my jumpsuit. Judith switched her attention from the video to me.

“That’s a hell of a big closet!”

“It’s more than a closet.” I stepped into it and closed the panel.

“Gavin!” I heard her muffled cry, and then her hands on the wall, searching for the catch. She failed to find it after several minutes of searching and complaining. At last she shouted, “Gavin! Please! Don’t leave me!”

I slid the panel open to face first her relief, then her fury. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“Testing!” I said, stepping back into the room. “Making sure nobody could get that open while I was inside.” I peeled off my jumpsuit and put it on a shelf. Then I placed my guns, badge, money and papers on another shelf. “This is the modern equivalent of the seventeenth-century priest’s hole. The place English Catholics hid their priest when the Protestant posse came riding around. If a police posse raids this place the man dives in there to hide with his clothes.”

“And what’s the woman supposed to do? Offer herself to the cops to save the man’s skin?”

“The lady stays watching the pictures. There’s no law against watching dirty movies in the privacy of your motel room.” I crouched down in the closet, feeling around for another catch. “For special clients there’s also a special exit.” A hatch opened and a ladder led down into darkness. “A passage between the walls. Serves double duty. For politicos who wouldn’t like to meet a constituent on their way out. And for clients who like to watch others at work in the flesh.” I smelt the dank air rising from the hatch and snapped it closed. “This place can’t have been raided in years. Or it doesn’t still cater to politicians and voyeurs. But there’s our line of retreat if they corner us. Put your clothes with mine so we can both leave dressed if we have to leave fast. I’m going to take a shower.” And I went into the bathroom, leaving Judith fumbling with her zippers and staring at the video screen.

She was probably regretting her rash promise to let me have her any way I wanted. I suppose neurosurgeons are not experts in sexology and she had not realized there were so many ways I might want. When I came back from my shower both her clothes and mine were neatly folded together in the closet and she was in bed with the sheets up to her chin. I got in beside her, switched out the light, and fell asleep while still counting the ways.

She was shaking me and I was fumbling under the pillow for my Luger. “Your guns are with your clothes,” she said. “Drink your coffee and come to your senses before you start to play with them.”

I sipped the liquid in the styrofoam cup, choked, and complained, “We’ll never again get coffee as good as the Pen’s!” Then I looked around. The sight of myself in the ceiling mirror was revolting. The sun was struggling in through a gap in the drapes. “Christ! It’s after ten. We should be out of here!” “Relax! The cleaning woman is advancing slowly and without enthusiasm. She won’t get to this room before noon.” She produced fresh rolls from a plastic bag. I started on one, then grabbed a copy of the “Post” she had put on the bed, scanning it fast, then checking it column by column.

“I’ve searched it already. Also the news—radio and video. Nothing about us. Not even a hint.”

“They’re not going to admit that their escape-proof prison’s not escape proof.” I felt like a writer searching the papers for reviews of his novel and finding his masterpiece ignored by the critics.

“They won’t give anybody else a chance to confirm it. It’ll be forced mind-wipe for all of them. Did you think about that, when we planned our escape?”

I hadn’t, perhaps because I had never thought we would succeed. And I didn’t want to think of it now. I went to the window and peered past the curtain at the parking lot below. Ours was the only car left. The Sybarite’s overnight guests usually checked out early. “We’d better get moving.” I grabbed for my underpants.

“Here!” She tossed me a pair of plastic-wrapped briefs and undervest “Those are clean. Your others stink. And shave before you dress. I put a razor and cream in the bathroom. I did some shopping while you were dreaming.”

She shouldn’t have taken off alone, but the immense pleasure of being able to shower without a camera lens aimed at me, of putting on non-regulation underwear and a garish but obviously civilian jumpsuit, cancelled my annoyance. “Thanks,” I said as I slipped on a pair of red sneakers.

“Here’s some camouflage.” She pulled a pair of brown coveralls with “Epsteins Electronics” in large letters across the back. “Poor Epstein went bankrupt last month. I got these cheap.” She began to pack our Pen clothes into the overnight bag. “I’ll dump this in the first garbage compactor we pass.” She checked the room. “All clear, so let’s move.”