Уильям Макгиверн - Summitt

Correll studied the sergeant and chose his words carefully. “You deserve every credit. You did exactly what I wanted. Jarrell was a second-generation product. It was essential to keep him close, to study the genetic properties, endowments and liabilities that connected the father and the son...”

On the blazing white screen in front of the two men a stocky figure in a gray twill uniform appeared, Indian features hawklike and vigilant. The image of Ledge.

“ That’s what connects me to Jarrell Selby,” Ledge said, nodding at his image on the screen. “And that’s what could hang me.”

Correll said quietly, “You must trust me, Sergeant, the way you trusted the major.”

On the screen, the image of the sergeant drew the .45 from its holster. A pair of golfers pulling carts waved and smiled at him.

“It’s C and A time, Correll,” Ledge said. “Cover Your Ass. Earl Thomson’s never going to serve an hour in prison. He goes free as a bird. So does Lee Crowley. He’ll be south of the border on a government pension with lifetime PX privileges and travel cards. I heard your orders to Quade. He’s split for New York, and your plane is fueling up to wait for you at LaGuardia. It’s a free ride out for everybody but the old sergeant.”

“You’re thinking only of personal survival,” Correll said. “I understand that. But the preoccupation can blind people to intelligent action, Sergeant.”

On the screen, a camera tracked abruptly from the golf course to a stretch of shoreline across the lake. A shadow moved among the trees. Unexpectedly the figure of Jarrell Selby stepped into view, tense as a wild creature, his eyes desperate, dirt and scratches streaking his sensitive face.

Sergeant Ledge pressed a button that froze the frame on the screen. “ He’s the danger for me,” Ledge said. “Him and the nigger kids you called your little mice. Don’t bullshit me about survival, Correll. That’s my game, and I play to win, just like you do.”

With a hand on the control panel, Ledge erased the images from the screen. The flat white mat cast a shimmering light through the theater.

“I’m disappointed in you, Sergeant,” Correll said. “You drew your gun from habit. Shooting me would be another mechanical reflex, triggered by panic or fear, which aren’t very reliable impulses.”

Ledge looked steadily at Correll, pressed a flat red button marked ERASE, and listened impassively to the whirring sounds of the film reels as they reversed and irrevocably obliterated and wiped clean every frame of the film shot months earlier in Summitt City.

“I won’t add to my problems by killing you, Correll,” the sergeant said when the erasure was complete. “You and the general have done a fair job of covering ass in Summitt and Saliaris, but I’m not leaving proof around to stretch this stringy neck of mine. I know there’s a copy somewhere, but I’m trusting the major to liberate and destroy it.”

“I’m seriously disappointed in you,” Correll said again. “You’re abandoning the disciplines that made you such a formidable soldier. You’re acting like a green recruit. In the face of the enemy, you’re falling apart. You don’t have the guts to trust and believe in me. You’ve got the mentality of a regular army stiff.” Correll’s voice rose with anger. “You know we’ve been betrayed, but you lack the imagination to try to understand the scope and enormity of that betrayal.”

Correll lifted the Snow Virgin and smashed it violently against the counter supporting the control panel. The globe shattered, shards of glass skittered about and a pool of glycerine spread in a small, thick circle around the broken plastic base. A metal cylinder no thicker than a matchstick lay beside the cracked figure of the Virgin. Another floated on the surface of the fluid seeping from the broken globe. Batteries...

The black plaster base had parted in two sections, as cleanly as if cut by a finely powered saw. The interior of the base contained a tape recorder no larger than a poker chip, with its side angled to fit a beveled receptacle cut in the foundation of the Snow Virgin.

Correll picked up the curved section of the plaster base. The two men studied the hollowed-out section, precisely fitted with reels and fine-spun metal tapes.

In his heart, Correll had expected this. His suspicions had winnowed out every other possibility. It was the only explanation he could conceive of, and yet a protective instinct was still helplessly seeking innocent justifications for these batteries and wires and tape. But all his defenses couldn’t sidestep the inevitable truth. His heart pounded with dangerous, impotent anger. The plastic base was repellent to his touch, as cold and slick as the treachery itself.

Correll placed the broken section on the counter, then watched indifferently as Ledge removed the tape recorders from them and held them in the palm of his big hand.

The day after Jennifer returned from Summitt City she had placed the Snow Virgin on his desk while he’d talked to the dying Senator Rowan. Jennifer had told him about sleeping with Jarrell Selby, about her ambivalent feelings for Jarrell’s brother, and even then the tiny reels had been spinning silently beneath the pious figure of the Virgin. And spinning, spinning, spinning, at his meetings with Thomson, his sessions with General Taggart, his calls to Van Pelt...

The Madonna, whose eyes and cheeks had been painted by his own mother, had been listening.

Ledge was backing away from Correll. The older man seemed barely aware of him now.

As a child, Correll had often puzzled over the riddle of whether the universe was one or many, a flock of birds, for instance, was that one thing, one swooping, darkly cohesive unit, or was it simply a thousand willful creatures soaring and nesting together for a common need and purpose? Was a tree one thing, its leaves another? Jennifer, Fabius, His Excellency, the bishop... Had there been one betrayal or an infinite number and variety of them?

Yet even with this thought, Correll couldn’t bring himself to believe his own mother had been part of the conspiracy, that her dark demons had not been electrocuted in the therapy clinic after all...

Sergeant Ledge had retreated to the main doors of the theater. Holstering his automatic, he put the tape recorder in the inner breast pocket of his twill jacket.

“I told you I’m an expert at survival,” he said. “I’ve been the good soldier, I never questioned orders, sir . But I know where you and General Taggart plan your next move, and I’d even sell that to save this ass of mine.”

“Sergeant, I’m asking you one more time to trust me,” Correll said. “You’re a part of this world we’ve tried to make. You can’t betray all that for a personal reason—”

Ledge shook his head and pushed open the doors of the theater. At the same instant Correll lifted the Beretta from his attaché case and fired two shots which struck Sergeant Ledge in his shoulder and thigh and caused him first to grunt spasmodically and then to turn and fall clumsily through the open doors.

Correll stepped forward and fired a third shot into the sergeant’s struggling body. Doing so was a necessity, nothing more. The shot went cleanly into Ledge’s upper chest and through the pocket of his twill jacket.

The lights clouded in front of the sergeant’s eyes. His .45 was in his hand, a soldier’s reflex, and he managed to fire a shot that went crashing into the ceiling and splintered those dimming lights before the scary darkness he had known on so many battlefields closed around him, finally and forever, just as he had always been afraid it would...

The fenders and grille suffered the most severe damage when the Bentley swerved from the road and crashed into the big tree. Near Correll, on a green belt, Frisbees soared through the air, and children ran after them.