Sidney Sheldon - The Doomsday Conspiracy

He turned to the microfiche, and looked up back issues of the Washington Post around the time that Monte Banks had had his plane accident. There was a brief item about the plane crash. It mentioned Banks as an entrepreneur.

It all sounded innocent enough. Maybe I’m wrong, Robert thought. Maybe Monte Banks is a guy in a white hat. Our government wouldn’t have protected him if he was a spy, a criminal, into drugs … The truth is that I’m still trying to hold onto Susan.

Being a bachelor again was a loneliness, an emptiness, a round of busy days and sleepless nights. A tide of despair would sweep over him without warning, and he would weep. He wept for himself and for Susan and for everything that they had lost. Susan’s presence was everywhere. The apartment was alive with reminders of her. Robert was cursed with total recall, and each room tormented him with memories of Susan’s voice, her laughter, her warmth. He remembered the soft hills and valleys of her body as she lay in bed naked, waiting for him, and the ache inside him was unbearable.

His friends were concerned.

“You shouldn’t be alone, Robert.”

And their rallying cry became, “Have I got a girl for you!”

They were tall and beautiful, and small and sexy. They were models and secretaries and advertising executives and divorcees and lawyers. But none of them was Susan. He had nothing in common with any of them, and trying to make small talk with strangers in whom he had no interest only made him feel more lonely. Robert had no desire to go to bed with any of them. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to rewind the film back to the beginning, to rewrite the script. With hindsight, it was so easy to see his mistakes, to see how the scene with Admiral Whittaker should have played.

The CIA has been infiltrated by a man called The Fox. The Deputy Director has asked for you to track him down.

No, Admiral. Sorry. I’m taking my wife on a second honeymoon.

He wanted to re-edit his life, to give it a happy ending. Too late. Life did not give second chances. He was alone.

He did his own shopping, cooked his meals for himself and went to the neighbourhood laundromat once a week when he was home.

It was a lonely, miserable time in Robert’s life. But the worst was yet to come. A beautiful designer he had met in Washington telephoned him several times to invite him to dinner. Robert had been reluctant, but he had finally accepted. She prepared a delicious candlelight dinner for the two of them.

“You’re a very good cook,” Robert said.

“I’m very good at everything.” And there was no mistaking her meaning. She moved closer to him. “Let me prove it to you.” She put her hands on his thighs and ran her tongue around his lips.

It’s been a long time, Robert thought. Maybe too long.

They went to bed, and to Robert’s consternation, it was a disaster. For the first time in his life, Robert was impotent. He was humiliated.

“Don’t worry, darling,” she said. “It will be all right.”

She was wrong.

Robert went home feeling embarrassed, crippled. He knew that in some crazy, convoluted way, he had felt that making love to another woman was a betrayal of Susan. How stupid can I get?

He tried to make love again, several weeks later, with a bright secretary at ONI. She had been wildly passionate in bed, stroking his body and taking him inside her hot mouth. But it was no use. He wanted only Susan. After that, he stopped trying. He thought of consulting a doctor, but he was too ashamed. He knew the answer to his problem, and there was no solution. He poured all his energy into work.

Susan called him at least once a week. “Don’t forget to pick up your shirts at the laundry,” she would say. Or: “I’m sending over a maid to clean up the apartment. I’ll bet it’s a mess.”

Each call made the loneliness more intolerable.

She had called him the night before her wedding.

“Robert, I want you to know I’m getting married tomorrow.”

It was difficult for him to breathe. He began to hyperventilate.

“Susan …”

“I love Monte,” she said, “but I love you, too. I’ll love you until the day I die. I don’t want you ever to forget that.”

What was there to say to that?

“Robert, are you all right?”

Sure. I’m great. Except that I’m a fucking eunuch. Scratch the adjective.

“Robert?”

He could not bear to punish her with his problem. “I’m fine. Just do me a favour, will you, baby?”

“Anything I can.”

“Don’t … don’t let him take you on your honeymoon to any of the places we went to.”

He hung up and went out and got drunk again.

That had been a year earlier. That was the past. He had been forced to face the reality that Susan now belonged to someone else. He had to live in the present. He had work to do. It was time to have a chat with Leslie Mothershed, the photographer who had the photographs and names of the witnesses Robert had been assigned to track down on what was going to be his last assignment.

Leslie Mothershed was in a state beyond euphoria. The moment he had returned to London, clutching his precious film, he had hurried into the small pantry he had converted into a darkroom and checked to make sure he had everything on hand: film-processing tank, thermometer, spring-type clothes pins, four large beakers, a timer, and developer, stop-bath solutions, and fixer. He turned out the light and switched on a small red overhead lamp. His hands were trembling as he opened the cartridges and removed the film. He took deep breaths to control himself. Nothing must go wrong this time, he thought. Nothing. This is for you, Mother.

Carefully, he rolled the film into reels. He placed the reels in the tank and filled it with developer, the first of the liquids he would use. It would require a constant temperature of 68°F and periodic agitation. After eleven minutes, he emptied the contents and poured the fixer over the reels.

He was getting nervous again, terrified of making a mistake. He poured off the fixer for the first wash and then let the film sit in a tankful of water for ten minutes. This was followed by two minutes of constant agitation in a hypocleansing agent and twelve more minutes in water. Thirty seconds in photo-flo solution ensured there would be no streaks or flaws in the negatives. Finally, very, very carefully, he removed the film, hung it up with clothes pins, and used a squeegee to remove the last drips from the film. He waited impatiently for the negatives to dry.

It was time to examine the negatives. Holding his breath, heart pounding, Mothershed picked up the first strip of negatives and held it up to the light. Perfect. Absolutely perfect!

Each one was a gem, a picture that any photographer in the world would be proud to have taken. Every detail of the strange spacecraft was outlined, including the bodies of the two alien forms lying inside.

Two things he had not noticed before caught Mothershed’s eye, and he took a closer look. Where the spaceship had cracked open he could see three narrow couches inside the ship – and yet there were only two aliens. The other thing that was strange was that one of the alien’s hands had been severed. It was nowhere to be seen in the photograph.

Maybe the creature had only one hand, Mothershed thought. My God, these pictures are masterpieces! Mother was right. I’m a genius. He looked around the tiny room and thought, The next time I develop my films, it will be in a big, beautiful darkroom in my mansion in Eaton Square.

He stood there fingering his treasures like a miser fingering his gold. There wasn’t a magazine or newspaper in the world that wouldn’t kill to get these pictures. All these years the bastards had rejected his photographs, with their insulting little notes. “Thank you for submitting the photos which we are herewith returning. They do not fit our present needs.” And, “Thank you for your submission. They are too similar to pictures we have already printed.” Or simply, “We are returning the photographs you sent us.”