Ben Bova - The Multiple Man

I would have made a lousy intelligence agent. Vickie got the whole story out of me, bit by bit. The more I swore I wasn’t going to say anymore, the more I warned her that I was looking out for her own safety, the more I blabbered about the whole ugly business. A part of my mind watched the fiasco in disgust, while another part felt immense relief that I had somebody to talk to, somebody to share the whole incredible burden of doubts and fears. And anyway, I rationalized, between the fact that she works for you and you phoned her from General Halliday’s place, and she met you at the airport and drove you home, they probably figure she knows as much as you do.

By the time I’d finished talking, we were both drinking Scotch and looking very sober and scared.

“Then there’s nobody you can go to?” Vickie asked at last.

I shrugged. “McMurtrie was the one guy I trusted. He’s out of it now.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Wish to hell I knew.” I finished my glass, turned and saw that the bottle was empty. “There’s one thing I can do… the only thing I can think of.”

“What’s that?”

“Blow it wide open. Tell the press. Make the whole mess public.”

She thought a moment. Then, slowly, “If you did that…”

“I know. It’d paralyze the whole Government. Bring all of Washington to a standstill. Cripple everything. Maybe shake the whole damned Government apart and send us over the edge, once and for all.”

Vickie said, “I wasn’t thinking of that.”

“What, then?”

“If you tried to make it public, they’d have to try to kill you, too.”

There it was. It wasn’t just me being paranoid. Vickie saw it, too. I could be on their list. Hell, I was on their list. I knew it.

“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Not a goddamned thing. And if they’ve got this apartment bugged, I sure as hell hope they hear that. I’m not going to blow any whistles until I’m convinced that it’d do more good than harm.”

“How will you decide?”

“Damned if I know. Guess I’ll have to talk to The Man and see what his reactions are. From there on, it’s anybody’s ball game.”

She gave me a long, grave look. “You could go away. You could resign and leave the country. Make certain that it’s obvious you’re getting out of the game.”

I thought about it for a moment. “Maybe… except that… hell, I can’t. It wouldn’t do any good. They’d still be after the President, and I’d just be letting them get away with it.”

Vickie said nothing, but I somehow got the feeling that my answer was the one she had wanted to hear.

We ended up in bed together. The Scotch finally took effect, and I don’t remember too much of it, except that it was terrific and she liked to be on top. Which was fine with me. The last real memory I have of that night is of our two sweaty bodies plunging in rhythm, her firm little breasts bobbing above me and her knees clamping my torso tight. We forgot about a lot of things before dawn broke.

The next couple of days are just blurs in my mind. I went through the office routine mechanically, numbly, my mind in such a turmoil that it’s a wonder I could find my desk or get my boots on straight. Greta clucked over me and did everything she could, including sending me home with a jar of homemade chicken soup. She thought I was coming down with a virus.

The President seemed calm and unruffled. When I asked him about McMurtrie he turned grim for a few minutes, but as far as I could fathom from him and Wyatt, the investigation was still being kept small, quiet, and ultratight.

Vickie was… well, Vickie. That one night was one night. In the office we were boss and assistant. She was as pleasant and helpful as always. I guess I was polite and reasonable. She didn’t act coy or betrayed. I asked her out to dinner, she accepted, and we ended the night at her door. “Don’t get possessive about me,” she said. I felt relieved and annoyed, both at once.

We drew an almost total blank in our search for information about North Lake Labs and Dr. Peña.

“He’s almost a nonperson,” she complained tiredly, after several days of searching the records. “There’s his file from Princeton, more than forty years ago. There’s a couple of brief mentions of his attending meetings of biochemists and other scientific groups, but nothing at all later than the early seventies. Somebody’s done a very thorough job of keeping him out of sight.”

“Or erasing the records,” I said.

Her eyes went round. “They couldn’t be that thorough, could they?”

I had no real answer. “What about North Lake Labs?”

“Very hush-hush,” Vickie said. “Deep military secrecy. Restricted-access list and all that. We’d have to go through the Secretary of Defense’s office or the Senate Armed Services Committee.”

“And we can’t do that without advertising the fact that we’re snooping,” I said.

“It could be dangerous for you. But maybe not for me. Maybe they don’t realize…”

“Uh-uh.” I wagged a finger at her. “Dangerous for anybody. Stay clear or you’ll wind up in some godforsaken ravine, like McMurtrie and Klienerman.”

Vickie fidgeted unhappily in her chair. “Then what in hell do we do, Meric?”

“Nothing. Not a goddamned thing. We sit and wait. And think.”

“For how long?”

I shrugged. “It’s Friday. I’ve got to talk with Len Ryan on Monday. I’ll make up my mind by then.”

“It’s going to be a long weekend for you,” she said.

“Yeah. Think I’ll drive out into the country. That ought to be the best place to get some thinking done.”

“Out to Camp David?”

“No, I don’t want to be with the President this weekend. I’ll go the other way, maybe down to Virginia Beach.”

“I’ve still got the car,” Vickie said.

I shook my head. “You stay clear of me for the time being. If I make it past Monday, then we can talk.”

She started to argue, but I made noises like a boss and got her to leave the office. I don’t think she was sore, but if anything was going to happen that weekend, I didn’t want her around to get caught by the blast.

It was almost quitting time when the phone call came. Greta had just stuck her head into my office to announce that she was taking off fifteen minutes early to beat the traffic crunch. She did that every Friday, and she always made that announcement, and I always nodded my head.

Phone calls from the President weren’t all that unusual. When he had first taken office, The Man began making spot calls to anyone and everyone, just checking on how things were going down on the working levels, sampling morale, seeing who looked guilty or busy or happy or pissed off. The standard joke was that if your phones beeped out “Ruffles and Flourishes” instead of buzzing, you knew who was calling.

My phone just buzzed. I touched the ON button, and The Man’s face appeared on my desk screen.

“Hello, Meric,” he said pleasantly.

“Mr. President.”

“Do you have any plans for the weekend?” he asked.

It had been an hour or so since my conversation with Vickie. “Nothing special. Why do you ask?”

He smiled. “Laura and I were wondering if you could have dinner with us tomorrow evening. Nothing formal. Just a quiet evening. The three of us.”

“I thought you were going to Maryland for the weekend.”

“That’s canceled. Too much work to do. I’m staying here for the weekend.”

“You might have informed your press secretary about your switch in plans. I’ve got to make sure the press corps—”