Ben Bova - The Multiple Man

I really didn’t know, but as usual my mouth worked faster than my brain. “It just isn’t going to be enough. The steps you’re taking… they won’t tell you a goddamned thing. Not until it’s too late. The murderer can wipe out all three of you overnight, if he wants to, while you’re still futzing around checking records at North Lake or consulting with the General.”

Jackson started to say something, but John hushed him.

“What do you suggest?” John asked.

“No suggestion. Action. I’m going to call a press conference in forty-eight hours. Two days from now. And I’m going to spill my guts to whoever’ll listen. Unless you’ve got the murderer before then.”

“You can’t do that!” Jackson snapped.

“Try and stop me.”

“The murderer will try,” John said almost sadly. “I think, Meric, for your own safety’s sake, you’d better reconsider.”

I could see differences in their faces now. Joshua looked scared. Jackson was blazingly angry. Jeffrey was angry, too, but the smoldering kind that builds slowly and waits its chance for revenge. John looked sad, and something more—relieved? Glad that the end was in sight?

I shook my head. “No. There’s no other way. Either you flush him out or I break the story. Otherwise he’ll have the rest of you dead and sit down in that Oval Office all by himself. And that’s what I’m really afraid of.”

“He’ll have to kill me, too” Wyatt said.

“What makes you think he wouldn’t?” Jackson answered. The old man sagged back in his chair. But I had a different thought. I could see Wyatt serving the last remaining James J. Halliday, right there in the Oval Office, burying the fact that the President was a multi-murderer under a ton of justifications about family duty and the nation’s needs.

John took a couple of steps toward me. Quietly, he said, “Meric, if we can’t talk you out of this, the least I can do is give you a Secret Service security guard. If you’re going to set yourself up as a target, we might as well try to protect you.”

“All right,” I said. “How about Hank Solomon? He and I get along pretty well.”

He looked at me quizzically. If I’d been really sharp, instead of just dazzled by all the high drama going on, I would have realized that mentioning Hank’s name removed any doubt from the murderer’s mind about who the third member of my pitiful little gang was.

But right at that moment I wasn’t thinking about that at all. As I mentioned Hank’s name, somehow it popped into my mind that there was one person involved in this affair that not even one of Halliday’s brothers had mentioned. Neither Wyatt nor the General had ever brought up her name.

Laura. The First Lady. What did she know about all this? And whose wife was she?

I deliberately avoided calling Vickie when I got out of the White House. My mind was in turmoil. Too much had happened too quickly. If I was going to be a murderer’s target, okay, there wasn’t much I could do about it. But no need to set her up as the next clay pigeon.

Besides, it would be too easy to get damned romantic about the danger of it all, and start acting like some asinine shiny-armored knight and make a real idiot of myself. Vickie was an adult; she didn’t need me in her life. I’d bring her nothing but grief.

Okay, she was good to be with; she brightened up a room and brought warmth to my life. She was fine in bed. And keep thinking with your gonads instead of your brains, I warned myself, and you’ll both end up on the next cold-storage shipment to Minnesota.

As I thought about it, in the cab on my way back to my apartment, I doubted that the murderer would use the same technique on me that he had on his brothers. But he didn’t have to, of course. Hell, he was the President! He could get rid of me in a thousand ways, from a fatal accident to a nuclear strike. Even if I wanted to bow out gracefully and exile myself in Afghanistan, he’d never believe it. He’d send someone looking for me—a clean-cut, reliable, terribly loyal assassin.

So it was a nasty shock when I opened the door to my apartment and found Hank Solomon sitting there, reading a magazine.

“Jesus Suffering Christ!” I swung the door shut behind me. As I calmed down from the shock of fear at seeing a potential assassin waiting for me, I griped, “Does everybody in creation have the combination to my front door?”

“Only us friendly helpers and bodyguards,” Hank said easily.

“You got here pretty damned fast,” I said, not yet ready to forgive him for scaring me.

“When the President his own self calls yew, yew move your butt, buddy. Yew got friends in high places.”

“And enemies.”

“Yep. Guess that’s so. What’s been happenin’?”

I hesitated and he told me the room was clear of bugs. How he knew was beyond me; he couldn’t have had more than a few minutes alone in the room before I came in. But my faith in modern electronics was strong enough to take him at his word. So I told him what had happened in the Lincoln Sitting Room.

Hank listened without emitting so much as a grunt until I was finished. Then he said, “Well, ol’ buddy, yew kinda put me right there on the spot alongside yew, dintcha?”

I admitted that I had. He grinned and said, “Okay, least yew can do is take me out t’dinner. And we can stop in a post office along th’ way.”

“Post office?”

He had already unfolded himself out of the seat and gone to the door. “Yep. Make a tape recording of everything yew just tole me and mail itto a few trustable friends with orders nott’ open it ’til Christmas… or your untimely demise, whichever comes first.”

“You’ve got a helluva way of cheering up a guy.”

But the idea made sense. I thought about Len Ryan, then decided that Johnny Harrison, back in Boston, would be less tempted to ignore my instructions and listen to the tape prematurely. And I knew a couple of good men overseas in London and Kyoto.

It wasn’t difficult to get to see Laura. The next morning, as soon as I got into the office, I went over the assignments involving her. She was addressing a special meeting of delegates from Working Office Women who were joining in the big Neo-Luddite rally at the Capitol Building to protest the loss of jobs to automation.

I called the kid who was assigned to handle the meeting’s press relations and told her that I was coming along. She got the impression that I had my eye on her, and there was a promotion in the air. I didn’t disillusion her.

The next thing I did was call Vickie in to set up my press conference for the following afternoon.

“You?” she asked, surprised. “A personal press conference?”

“That’s right. Make certain that all the wire services and the international reps get the word.”

“We’ll have to tell them the subject.”

“No.” I shook my head. “Just tell them it’s the most important story of their lives, and it’s too hot to even name the subject beforehand.”

She leaned back in her chair. “You’re going to tell them about the President.”

“Either that or get thrown out of town for canceling the conference at the last minute.”

“Or get killed,” Vickie said, very matter-of-factly. No histrionics.

“If that happens,” I said, trying to stay equally controlled, “the story will break right away. Last night I sent tapes of the whole thing to a few trusted newsmen, with instructions to do nothing unless I die or disappear.”

“And tomorrow’s press conference…”

“Either they nail the murderer by tomorrow afternoon, or I blow the whistle.”

“They’ll kill you,” Vickie said. “They’ll kill all of us.”