Timothy Culver - Power Play

Her voice a monotone, she said, “A Chinese agent got into the car after I left you. While I was stopped at a traffic light. He told me about the Vietnamese taking over from his own people, he told me about the family trying to stop Bradford. He thought I was on Bradford’s side, and he told me you’d been assigned to make love to me just to find out what was going on.”

Robert laughed, and said, “That’s lucky.”

“Yes, it is. He also said the President had authorized Bradford’s murder as a last resort, to keep him from going to China.”

Robert was silent, and then, cautiously, he said, “How could he even know a thing like that? Even if it was true, and I’m sure it isn’t, how could a Chinese agent find out about it? He was just trying to scare you.”

“Why?”

“To keep you in line. I don’t know, to make you think it was more urgent to help Bradford get out of the country.”

“But we are helping him get out of the country.”

“You know what I mean. What’s the matter, Evelyn?”

“He said they’re going to kill him on the trip.”

“Who? Bradford?”

“Yes, of course.”

“But that’s ridiculous!”

“It is not ridiculous. You’ve seen Wellington, you know what he’s like. Can you imagine what his superiors must be like? They would kill him!”

“They couldn’t get away with it,” Robert said. “There’s too many of us involved in this thing, it would have to come out, it would have to be the hugest scandal that ever was.”

“If it looked like an accident? If the plane crashed, or something like that?”

That stopped him for a second, but then he said, “No. It isn’t going to happen. I absolutely promise you, nothing like that is going to happen.”

“How can you promise me? How can you know for sure?”

He said, “Because I’m going to call Wellington. He gave me a number where I can reach him, and I will, and I’ll tell him what happened to you tonight, and I’ll tell him that if any harm comes to you, anything at all, nothing on this earth will save him from me.”

“Robert—”

But his arms had come around her, and he was saying, “Don’t you know how much I love you? Don’t you know the difference you’ve made? You’ve brought me back to life! Nothing is going to happen, I swear it!”

She closed her eyes. She believed him.

When the small plane actually made the trip from Hagerstown to Washington without incident, Evelyn at last began to relax, and to admit to herself that her belief in Robert last night had been only a tentative sketching-in of trust and confidence. Robert could be honest and passionate, but was the decision his as to whether or not Bradford would live or die?

But Dulles International Airport did appear beneath the right wing, and the landing was smooth and untroubled, and Evelyn found herself actually smiling. Because this plane had only carried four people — herself, Bradford, pilot, co-pilot — whereas the airliner to France would carry perhaps two hundred, so if an accident were to be arranged surely it would have taken place on the first flight.

There were both advantages and disadvantages to traveling as a VIP. The chief advantage was that one never had to stand on line or go through the sausage-machine processing inflicted on the majority of travelers. The disadvantage was that one couldn’t really strike off on one’s own, but had to accept all the well-meant attention and courtesies and special treatment dished out along the way. Including, this time, a special limousine to take them and their luggage directly across the tarmac to the airliner, which had just started loading, so there was no chance for Evelyn to get to a phone and call Robert, as she suddenly wanted to do.

One top deck section near the front of the plane had been curtained off so they would be able to travel in privacy. Having avoided going through the terminal, and having boarded via the crew’s ramp at the front, they were seen by virtually none of the other passengers.

Bradford showed his pleasure constantly, in the way he moved and the way he looked around and the way he joked with the stewardesses who kept finding reasons to come into this section. Watching him, Evelyn remembered the nervousness and irritability and weariness that had been growing in him more and more during the two weeks when Wellington’s men had been giving him one excuse after another for inaction, and she was both pleased now at how much better he was obviously feeling and at the same time saddened by the knowledge of the lie on which he was basing his hopes.

Dulles, still the only under-utilized major airport on the Eastern Seaboard, almost never had delays, either coming or going. The huge plane lifted exactly on schedule: 8:10 P.M.

The flight was a dream of escape, a black cotton nighttime flight over an impenetrable darkness of ocean below, all of reality narrowed down to this one projectile hurtling eastward. Bradford, perhaps finally feeling that he was a man possessed of a future, was apparently open again to thoughts of the past, and spent much of the trip telling Evelyn anecdotes from his political career, many of which she’d never heard before. Two or three stewardesses frequently swelled his audience, and he grew more and more expansive. He was clearly having the time of his life.

But as the hour grew later, his ebullience lessened, a slight thickness came into his speech, and gradually he came to an end of his stories. The last half hour of the flight he napped, while stewardesses tiptoed by outside the curtain.

As for Evelyn, her apprehensions about the trip had washed away as the plane had lifted into the night sky, and now she found herself wondering if Wellington had any idea of the psychological advantages of this scheme. To get away from the stifling atmosphere of Eustace, the subterfuges, the invisible walls, the feeling of being forever locked in the same small tight maze; it was all rebuilding Evelyn’s spirit just as much as Bradford’s. And it didn’t matter that in reality they were carrying the invisible walls with them, the same subterfuges, the same maze. There was a feeling of escape, and for a little while that feeling would be enough, and when the weight did begin to bear down on her once again, as she knew it would, she’d be refreshed, she’d have had at least a small vacation.

According to her watch it was one in the morning when the plane spiraled down over Paris toward Orly, but in Paris it was already tomorrow, seven o’clock, a cloudy sky graying reluctantly into morning.

The VIP treatment continued here, where once again they by-passed the normal terminal, being taken to a special small lounge to wait for their luggage. Two or three Frenchmen, connected with the airline or the government (Evelyn never got it straight which), stopped in to say a few words and welcome them to France. Or perhaps to Paris. Or perhaps merely to Orly. In any event, Bradford thanked them, and they left, and now they were once more alone.

Bradford was sitting on a strikingly red sofa, against which he looked very tired. “I’m ready for a long soak in a tub,” he said, and folded his hands over his stomach, fingers intertwined. It was a gesture she’d almost never seen him use, only at his most exhausted, and it made him look very old.

A side door opened, and a man in a blue-gray uniform appeared, giving a two-finger salute to his cap. “Mrs. Evelyn Canby?” The French accent was almost nonexistent.

“Yes?”

“You are wanted on the telephone. In here.”

Carrie? No, more likely Edward. “Thank you,” she said, and he stepped to one side to let her through.

This room was smaller, an office dominated by a gray metal desk. She went over to pick up the telephone, and behind her the gray-uniformed man closed the connecting door. She turned in surprise, and he gave her another finger-to-cap salute and went diagonally across the small room and out the corridor door.