Edward Llewellyn - Prelude to Chaos

“Where to? I haven’t had time to decide—”

“I’ve been up since seven and I’ve decided already. We both need ID’s, credit cards, driver’s licenses, money, a place to hole up. And I think I know where I can get some of them.”

“Where’s that?”

“For once, let me surprise you.”

When we had left the Sybarite astern she directed me to the beltway and then to the Alexandria cutoff. “We’re heading for Mercy Hospital,” she explained in answer to my repeated demands. “That pile over there. Drive into the parking lot. Not that lot—it’s strictly Staff. Interlopers towed on sight. Use the patients’ lot. It’s not really full. Give the guy ten bucks and he’ll show you a place.”

“How do you know?” I asked as I parked the car.

“I was a visiting consultant. Nobody’ll recognize me. I didn’t come here often and they think I’m dead.” She led me inside, through a crowded lobby, down an empty corridor, and finished in a room filled with benches on which were sitting men and women in various stages of dissolution.

“Geriatrics and Psychoneurotics,” she announced. “You’re one of the latter. Take a seat and say you’re waiting to see Doctor Randolph if anybody asks. Which is unlikely. Patients often sit here ignored for hours. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.” And she disappeared through a pair of swing doors into the bowels of the building.

I slumped down on a bench and hid behind a discarded newspaper, watching a stream of decrepit or neurotic humanity shuffling in and out, changing seats, or trying to attract the attention of receptionists who seemed expert at ignoring everybody except the occasional visiting intern. If the statistics which pointed to a vanishing birth rate were valid, then within a few years many other places were going to look like this hospital waiting room. I was considering that gloomy prospect when Judith reappeared, but a very different Judith from the one I had known.

She was wearing a white coat with a name tag, “Doctor Margaret Randolph,” pinned to her chest and a stethoscope around her neck. Her return to familiar territory had aged her six years and raised her to the local aristocracy. She radiated confident competence. The sick moved aside for her with the anxious courtesy of poor patients toward a physician. Instinctively I jumped to my feet when she addressed me.

“Are you Mister Jones? Then come with me, please!” She turned and went striding away without looking back, as though it had never occurred to her that any patient might fail to follow when told to do so.

I did follow, trying to mimic an anxious patient to match her performance as an arrogant physician. I followed her through a maze of corridors until we came to a row of doctors’ offices. She pointed to an alcove. “Sit there please!” and disappeared through a door marked “Doctors Only—Strictly Private.”

Presently she emerged from another door, a scarf around her head, a shopping bag in her hand, and a worried look on her face. “Ah—there you are, Sam. The doctor said everything would be fine if I took the pills and got plenty of rest”

She clutched my arm. “Come along now. We’ve still got to get the shopping done.”

“You’re enjoying this playacting!” I muttered as we reached the Auditor.

“You enjoy shooting people!” She pulled the scarf from her hair and shook it so it fell free. “Drive to the Summit Auto Rentals on the corner of Sixth and Pine.”

I turned the car down Pine. “You’re not a boss physician now! You’re a murderess on the run.”

“I’m Doctor Murial Zworken.” She waved a driving license and an ID at me. “A brown-haired, bird-brained dermatologist, at present vacationing in Mexico. She looks enough like me to pass. And she keeps a spare ID and license in her hospital locker because she’s always leaving them at home. Also—” Judith looked out of the window, “She’s a good egg and would give them to me gladly if she knew the mess I’m in.”

“You’re going to rent a car?”

“This one may get hot. Murial’s secretary says she’s not due back for a week. That should give me time for what I have to do before you go off to do your thing. There’s the rental place. A block down. Drop me here and wait. Follow me when I drive out”

Her habit of authority still lingered and I watched her smiling at the rental agent as she got into a black “Superb.” Her smile did more for her than her card. A typical glitterati! After ten blocks she turned toward the Sheraton-Ritz, waved me over to wait, and drove up to the main entrance. The doorman sprang to open her car door, then hurried to activate the hotel doors ahead of her. She disappeared with the nod of thanks that went with the style of car. The procedure was reversed when she emerged, keys in hand.

The doorman indicated how to reach whatever accommodation she had chosen and accepted her tip with the reverence which showed she had given him exactly the right amount. As she circled she stopped abeam of me to hiss, “Chalet seventy-three. Round the back. Surveillance knows you’re arriving in half an hour. The chalet has a private garage. The doors will be open. Drive straight in and they’ll close behind you. As far as the hotel’s concerned you will then cease to exist.”

Something like entering the Pen! I drove round for half an hour, wondering if I should leave Judith to get on with her program. She seemed better equipped to survive in her own world than I was. But I had promised, and she might need me. I rejected the thought that I might need her and turned toward the security gate at the entrance to the Sheraton-Ritz parking lot exactly on time. It lifted for me as promised and I found Chalet seventy-three among other chalets, all surrounded by trees and arranged so that none could observe the arrivals, departures, or doings of neighbors. The garage doors were open, I parked alongside the Superb, and they closed behind me at the same moment that another door opened onto the chalet lounge.

Judith looked up from her study of the Washington phone read-out. “Fix yourself a drink. Even you SS would have a job busting in here.”

“I’m not SS,” I protested, tasting my first bourbon in more than three years. “I was Secret Service in the days when we protected Presidents.” I dropped into an armchair served to match my contours and looked at the luxury around me. “Murial Zworkin’s credit must be good.”

“She’s a dermatologist,” said Judith without looking up and as though that explained everything.

“Better than the accommodation I provided last night.”

“The video programs are more sophisticated. And more evil.” She spat out the “evil” as if she were about to confront it.

“I promised to help you before I went off on my own. So how can I help?”

She wrote down a number from the read-out—a sign of her essential innocence—and studied me. “I’m not sure that I still want your help, Gavin. I’m not planning anything that involves guns.”

So smart! So self-confident! And so godamned ignorant! I couldn’t leave her to walk into some interrogation room with the same confidence that she had walked into Mercy Hospital. “Judy—when you’re running for your life, anything may involve guns. And we’re running for our lives. You and me. The Justice Department may not want to publicize that we’re out of the Pen with our minds intact. But they’ll have every agent they can spare and every Police Chief they can trust trying to grab you and kill me. For Futrell I’m a fused bomb rolling around loose!”

“Gavin!” She looked down at her hands. “It’s not that I don’t want you with me. I just thought you were only staying because you’d promised—” She chewed her lower lip.