Ben Bova - The Multiple Man

It was like trying to break into Fort Knox with a cheese knife, but finally the old man grudgingly told me what I wanted to know. I had to threaten to resign, just about, to get him to open up.

I called Vickie and told her not to expect me in the office the next day; Hunter would have to play “meet the press” for me again. She looked surprised, even startled. Before she could ask why, or where I was going to be, I clicked off and punched the number for airlines information. Thank God it was computerized. No arguing, no explaining, no back talk. Just tell the computer where you are and where you want to go, and the lovely electronic machine gives you a choice of times and routes. I picked a plane that was leaving for Minneapolis in an hour. The computer assured me that my ticket would be waiting at the gate. I rushed off to throw my dirty laundry into my flight bag and head out to the airport.

It was raining by the time I boarded the plane. We sat at the end of the runway for twenty minutes, exposed in the middle of the flat, open airport, engines whining and wind howling and shaking the plane, while the pilot cheerfully explained that a line of squalls and tornadoes was passing over the area. I couldn’t see anything outside my little oval window except a solid sheet of rain and an almost constant flickering of lightning. The rain drummed on the plane’s fuselage, and the thunder rumbled louder than the engines.

After one really nerve-shattering clap of thunder the pilot told the stewardesses to pass out free drinks. They were just at the row of chairs ahead of mine when he came on the microphone again: “Okay, folks, we just got clearance for take off. Button everything up, ladies.”

And through the rain and slackening wind, we took off. The plane was buffeted terribly until we cleared the cloud deck, and then the golden-red late afternoon sun turned the cloudtops into a horizon-spanning carpet of purple velvet. By the time they started serving drinks again I had dozed off.

It was noticeably chillier in Minneapolis when we landed, and I saw that the Twin Cities Airport runways and ramps were wet and puddled. But in the last dying light of the setting sun, I could see that the clouds were hurrying off eastward and the sky was clearing. Probably get rained on by the same storm again tomorrow, in Washington, I thought.

Nobody at the rent-a-car booth in the airport had ever heard of the North Lake Research Laboratories, the place that Wyatt had touted me onto. The woman who was making out my car rental forms even phoned the University of Minnesota, and drew a blank there. I knew it was just outside the town of Stillwater, though, so she gave me a map and directions for getting there. Even phoned ahead for a reservation at the Stillwater Inn.

Driving up the Interstate on my way to Stillwater, I had more than an hour to size up my situation.

Point number one: I was acting like a damned fool. Okay, but I was doing what I felt I had to do. Maybe it was the old newshawk instinct. More likely just a combination of fear and curiosity about the unknown. All I knew was that I had to see McMurtrie and Klienerman and find out for myself what in hell was going on.

Point number two: Nobody in the whole world knew where I was. Correction. Robert H. H. Wyatt knew. Or did he? His Holiness knew I was trying to get in touch with McMurtrie. I never told him I was coming up here in person. Didn’t even tell Vickie. Wyatt could figure it out soon enough tomorrow, when Hunter called in for the morning press briefing instead of me. But not until tomorrow morning. No reason for him to miss me tonight.

Which led to point number three: Nobody at the North Lake Research Laboratories knew I was going to drop in on them. I decided to use an old newsman’s trick and just show up at their doorstep tomorrow morning, unannounced and unexplained, and demand to see the top man. Hit ’em before they can phony a story together.

I nearly missed the turnoff onto 1-94 as I suddenly realized what my mind was doing. I was counting Wyatt, McMurtrie, Klienerman, and whoever runs North Lake Labs as possible suspects. Potential assassins. Traitors plotting to take over the Presidency.

Which brought me to the logical conclusion of all my logical thinking. I realized there was absolutely no one I could trust. Not McMurtrie or Wyatt or Laura or even the President himself. I was totally alone. I couldn’t even be sure of Vickie.

I glanced at the bare-branched trees whipping by in the twilight. I felt as if I were alone and naked out there, clinging to one of those dead bare branches. It felt lonely, cold, and damned dangerous.

As the moon came up over the wooded hills, I saw that the highway had now swung along the bank of the mighty Mississippi River. I think they call this part of it the St. Croix, locally. It was a magnificent, wide, beautiful river, cutting through the rolling hills that were dotted with the tiny scatterings of lights that marked little communities and, sometimes, individual homes. The river looked much stronger and somehow younger up here, not like the weary old sick stream that meandered sluggishly past St. Louis. And I knew that a thousand miles southward it finally flowed into the Gulf of Mexico. It endures. Despite what we do, the river endures. That old songwriter told it truly.

I found the city of Stillwater at last and, after a couple of wrong turns on its quiet streets, located the Stillwater Inn. It was a lovely, graceful place, kept up as it must have looked in its prime a century ago. As I parked the car in the unattended lot alongside the inn’s white clapboard side wall, I started thinking again.

I hadn’t pulled any rank at the airports, just used my regular personal charge card to get the airline tickets and the rental card. No fanfare, no Washington connection. But no cover-up, either. Wyatt, or somebody else, could track me down easily enough if he wanted to. But so far, I hadn’t called attention to myself.

I checked in at the hotel, paid cash in advance, ate dinner in their Bavarian-styled paneled dining room, had a drink in the coziest little bar I’d ever seen, and then went to my room. Despite all my suspicions and fears, I slept very soundly. I don’t even remember dreaming, although I woke up the next morning at dawn’s first light, soaked with sweat and very shaky.

North Lake Research Laboratories was perched on a bluff overlooking the St. Croix, about a half-hour’s drive above Stillwater. There were no road signs showing the way, and nobody at the hotel had seemed to know anything about the lab. I had to find the local fire station and ask the old man who was washing down the town’s shiny new pumper. Firemen always know what’s where, and the quickest way to get there.

From the highway you could see the lab buildings, low and dun gray, hugging the top of the bluff. Midcentury cement and glass architecture, Saarinen by way of Frank Lloyd Wright. My rented car climbed the switch-backed driveway slowly; battery was running down. There was a riotwire fence around the lab enclosure, with a sturdy-looking gate blocking the driveway and a sturdier-looking guard posted in a little phone booth of a sentry box alongside the gate.

I pulled up and he came out, leaned his face down to my window.

“Yessir, what can I do for you?” Very polite. He had an automatic pistol holstered at his hip.

“I’m here to see Mr. McMurtrie and Dr. Klienerman,” I said.

The names seemed unfamiliar to him. He looked politely puzzled.

“Dr. Klienerman’s from Walter Reed Hospital. Mr. McMurtrie’s from the White House.”

“Oh… yes…”

“My names Albano,” I said, before he could ask. “Meric Albano.” I fished out my ID, the one with the Presidential Seal on it.