Dean Koontz - Dragonfly

The marine opened it.

Two other marines stood in the corridor, and Andrew Rice stood between them. Rice came into the office and the two marines stayed in the hall and the marine already in the room closed the door behind the President's chief advisor.

Rice looked at the doctor and then at McAlister and then around the room. He seemed perplexed. “Where's the President?”

“He couldn't make it,” McAlister said.

“But he called me less than an hour ago!”

“He had some important reading to do.”

“What about the Russian—”

“There is no Russian problem,” McAlister said.

Frowning, Rice waited and said nothing more.

“Don't you want to know what the President is reading?”

“What sort of game is this?” Rice blustered.

McAlister picked up one of Hennings' magazines from the desk and held it out toward Rice.

The fat man just stared at it.

Kirkwood said, “There's also a most interesting article in Friday's Washington Post.”

Rice looked at him.

“Some poor hooker got nearly beat to death,” Kirk-wood said.

At last McAlister had the pleasure of seeing a quick flicker of fear pass through Rice's eyes.

“I haven't any idea what you're talking about,” the fat man said.

McAlister said, “we'll see.”

Chai Po-han got off the train. Slinging his single sack of belongings over his left shoulder, he walked along the concrete platform, past huge pillars bedecked with political posters, up the skeletal steel stairs, and into the public area of the main terminal.

His mother, father, brother, and one of his three sisters were waiting for him. They all wore different expressions. His father was smiling broadly. His brother was quite solemn, as if to say, “What happened to you might as easily have happened to me.” His beloved mother and lovely sister were crying with joy at the sight of him.

It was a very Confucian scene, the kind discouraged by the Party. Love of country must take precedence over love of family.

Chai Po-han began to weep too, although his tears were shed because he knew that once he left China as he planned to do, he would never see any of them again.

At nine o'clock Canning and Lee Ann went up to their rooms, ostensibly to get a few hours' sleep before General Lin Shen-yang came back to them in a rage. But at her door his goodnight kiss metamorphosed into a long, soft, moist battle of lips and teeth and tongues.

“You aren't really sleepy?” she asked.

“Not in the least.”

“Me either.”

She got her suitcase, and they went quietly down the hall to his room.

Inside, she said, “I feel like a high-school girl sneaking off on a forbidden date.”

He held her and kissed her, but that was not enough. His fingers tugged at the buttons of her blouse and slid behind her to unhook her bra. He held her warm breasts in his hands.

She pulled away from him then and said, “I feel all grimy. Let's have a bath together first.”

“In that ugly tub?”

“I'll make it beautiful,” she said unabashedly.

And she did: she made it beautiful.

Later they made love on the four-poster bed while George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln watched.

At the end of it, while he was going limp but was still snug within her, he said, “When we get back to the States — will you come stay with me?”

She smiled. “I think that might be good for me.”

“And wonderful for me.”

“I could have a talk with that son of yours.”

“I don't know,” he said. “I've been thinking about him. Maybe most people in the world should believe in black and white morality. Maybe they shouldn't ever be fully aware of all the animals ready to prey on them. A handful of people like you and me can do the dirty work to keep the balance. If everyone was aware of the nature of the jungle, not many people would be happy.”

“No more talk,” she said.

They stretched out side by side and pulled the covers over themselves.

He thought of Dragonfly…

But then he thought of Lee Ann and knew that he would always have her, knew it in his bones and and blood and muscle, reached out and touched her, and dozed for a while.

McAlister felt malarial — worse, cancerous — as if he belonged in the terminal ward of a hospital. Every one of his joints ached. His head ached. His eyes were grainy and bloodshot. He was sweaty and rumpled; his face itched from his beard stubble. His tongue felt swollen, and his mouth was sour. He wanted someone to give him a pill and a swallow of gingerale; he wanted someone to tuck him in and fluff his pillow and sing him to sleep.

Andrew Rice seemed to be in even worse shape than the director. His puffy face was as white as coconut meat. His lips were bluish. His quick little eyes were still little but no longer as quick as they had been; they were eyes that had seen more than they wanted to see; tears of weariness streamed from them constantly. Rice breathed as if he were inhaling all the air in the room, as if he were causing the walls to expand and contract like a bellows. His stubby-fingered hands were at his sides, palms up, motionless.

Yet the son of a bitch would not break down!

For the first time in his life Bob McAlister really knew the meaning of the word “fanatic.” Not that he had wanted to really know it. But there it was.

Kirkwood said, “You can't put it off any longer.”

Furious, too weak to deal with fury, McAlister got up from the couch and walked over to the armchair from which Rice was actually overflowing. “Damn you, we know! We know so much that you can't win! Why not tell us the rest of it?”

Rice stared at him and said nothing.

Wiping a hand across his face, McAlister said, “Rice, if you won't talk, I'm going to have to use a drug on you. A very nasty drug.”

Rice stared. Said nothing.

“It's that drug I found the agency using when I became director. It's barbaric. I outlawed it. It's the drug your men used on Carl Altmüller when they were trying to establish a list of other federal marshals who wouldn't recognize him. I saw the needle mark on the man's arm, Rice. It was swollen up like a grape. This drug is so hostile to the human system that the point of injection swells up like a fucking goddamned grape!”

Rice was unmoved.

“And now you're forcing me to use it on you.”

Licking his cracked lips, Rice said, “I suppose that offends your delicate liberal conscience.”

McAlister stared at him.

Rice smiled. He looked demonic.

Turning away from the fat man, McAlister said, “Dr. Teffler, please fill the syringe.”

Teffler got up and opened his bag and arranged his instruments on Admiral Bryson's desk. He examined the vial that McAlister gave to him. “What's the proper dosage?”

McAlister told him.

“What is it, Pentothal?”

McAlister snapped at him: “Haven't you been listening? It's a new drug. A damned dangerous drug. Handle it like I tell you!”

Unmoving, his hands still at his sides, Rice watched Teffler apply a rubber tourniquet to his thick arm. He watched his own vein rise through the fat, and he sighed when Teffler swabbed his arm with alcohol-soaked gauze.

McAlister forced himself to watch as the needle stabbed deep and the yellow truth serum squeezed out into Rice's system.

The fat man's eyes rolled back into his head, and almost at once he went into convulsions. He pitched out of the chair and to the floor, where he thrashed helplessly.

Going down on his hands and knees, Kirkwood tried to pin Rice's shoulders. It was all he could do, however, to keep from being thrown like a rodeo rider from a wild mount.