Ben Bova - The Multiple Man

“And who might that be?”

“You’ll find out if you try to hurt Vickie… or me.”

“Ryan? That young pup from Boston?”

“It doesn’t make any difference. We’ve got this thing fail-safed. You can’t hurt us.”

He stamped into the room, right past me and over to the windows. I could see the cords in his scrawny old neck popping out. His fists clenched.

“Why?” He whirled around to face me again. “Who’s backing you, Albano? Who’s behind you?”

I should have tried eloquence and said, The people of the United States of America. Instead I answered, “Nobody. Except the President.”

“Cut the crap.”

“I mean it! Somebody’s out to get the President—your son. Either to kill him or discredit him so completely that he’ll be forced to resign.”

The General shook his head.

“And whoever’s doing this, he’s operating from right here. I think it’s you, or somebody working for you.”

“You’re dead wrong,” he said quietly, without fire.

“We know about the cloning,” I said. His face went white.

“We know that Dr. Peña did it. And we know that he’s here. That’s who I came to see. I want to find out what he knows about all this. And I want to hear what you’ve got to say. You’ve got at least two murders on your doorstep…”

“Murders?”

“McMurtrie and Dr. Klienerman.”

“That was an accident!”

“The hell it was!”

“It was, dammit!” he shouted. But standing there by the windows, with the fading afternoon sun at his back, he somehow looked weaker, less certain of himself, starting to bend.

I pushed harder. “McMurtrie and Klienerman were killed after they talked with Peña and he sent them here. Two cloned duplicates of the President were killed…”

“No…”

“Goddammit, stop lying to me!” I exploded. “Stop this motherfucking phony shit or I’ll go right out of here and tear your son’s Presidency apart! Is that what you want? Is that what you’re after?”

For a long moment he didn’t answer. Didn’t move. Just stood there with his hands hanging loosely at his sides, looking old and uncertain. He shook his head and mumbled something too low for me to hear. Then he walked slowly to the phone, pressed the ON stud, and said softly:

“Ask Dr. Peña if he feels up to joining us here in the first floor sitting room.”

I let my breath out in a long, slow sigh.

The General looked up from the phone, his face more sad than angry. “Don’t think you’ve won anything, wise mouth. And don’t think you know anything.”

“And don’t think I can be conned,” I replied.

He seemed to regain a little of his strength. “Sit down. I’ll order some drinks. You’ve got a lot to learn, Mr. Press Secretary. A hell of a lot.”

The Oriental brought a tray of decanters and glasses and bowed his way out of the room again, all without making a discernible sound. When I hesitated at accepting anything, the General laughed at me, not without some bitterness.

“Stop playing cloak and dagger. I’m not going to poison you, for Christ’s sake.”

I picked up one of the glasses and poured from the same decanter the General did. Took ice from the same bucket with the same tongs. It was straight rye; not my favorite, but he was drinking it, so I sipped at mine.

He leaned back in one of the deep leather chairs. “You know about the cloning, then.”

“Yes… and the fact that two of the clones have been killed.”

“They’re dead,” he insisted. “That doesn’t mean they were murdered.”

“Peña can prove it, if he wants to.”

“Don’t be too sure.”

At that moment, the door opened again and Dr. Peña wheeled into the room. He did look even more frail and drawn than when I’d seen him ten days ago. His face was sinking in on itself, cheeks hollow and eyes cavernous pits so deep you couldn’t see any spark of life in them. The skin on his hands seemed paper thin, so that every tendon and blood vessel stood out like a drawing in a medical textbook. He was wearing an oversized caftan, although for all I know it might have fitted him perfectly at one time. The robe bulked oddly, showing the outlines of the equipment that was fastened to his body. The General shot me a black look as Dr. Peña wheeled his chair slowly toward us. He was saying, See? You’ve come to persecute a dying man.

God help me, I had just the opposite reaction. I wanted to pump his information out of him before he dropped dead.

“You asked me to join you,” Dr. Peña said to the General. It was a flat statement, neither questioning nor accusatory. His voice was a bare whisper, nothing like the strong baritone he had commanded back in Minnesota.

“Our pesty friend here,” the General waved vaguely in my direction, “has found out about the cloning. Now he thinks I’m responsible for the deaths of Joseph and Jerome… and for Dr. Klienerman and that Secret Service agent.”

Peña turned his head slowly from the General toward me. “That is nonsense.”

“Who killed them, then?” I asked.

His chest rose and fell twice before he answered, still in a breathless whisper, “Why assume… they were… killed? I told you…”

“You told me the two duplicates of the President died of unknown causes.”

“Yes…”

“Does that sound like a natural death? Do people normally just—turn off, stop living? Isn’t there always some cause of death? Heart attack? Stroke? Cancer? Gunshot wound? Something?”

“Usually… but…”

The General broke in. “You don’t understand the situation at all, dammit! Stop browbeating the man.”

“Then you explain it. You tell me what the situation is.”

He glowered at me. “I still want to know just what in the hell is pushing you, Albano. What’s in this for you? What do you want?”

For an instant I got a mental picture of retiring in luxury to some South Pacific atoll. And the next instant I saw myself in the lagoon with cement boots and a delegation of sharks coming to destroy the evidence.

“This may sound kind of hokey to you,” I said, “but I shook hands with the President of the United States and agreed to do the best I could to help him be the best damned President he could be. Somebody’s trying to kill him, or replace him, or fuck up his name so thoroughly that he’ll have to step down. I want to prevent that from happening. That’s what’s pushing me.”

“And you think I want to kill my own son? Or hurt him in any way?”

“You tell me.”

Dr. Peña fumbled under his caftan and pulled out a face mask. He clamped it over his nose and mouth. Oxygen. He waved feebly with his free hand, telling us to continue.

“You were saying that I don’t understand the situation,” I said to the General. “So explain it to me.”

He gave Peña a worried glance, then hunched forward in his chair and stared hard at me. “You know how I acquired control of North Lake Labs, I suppose.”

“We figured it out.”

“Nothing really illegal about it, you realize, although I suppose some purists might rant about conflict of interest.”

“You weren’t the first Pentagon officer who made himself rich.” Oh, goodness, was I being tough.

He grunted. “Do you know why I bought North Lake?”

“To get rich quick.”

A sardonic smile this time. “Sure. And do you know why I wanted to get rich?”

I shrugged.

“To help make my son President.”

“Oh. That.”

“Yes,” he said. “That. Every man wants his son to be President, right? It’s the great American fantasy. But I knew how to make it happen. I knew! I needed three things: money, and lots of it; a laboratory facility that I could control absolutely; and this wonderful old man here. Alfonso Peña.”