The Multiple Man

NINE

The next couple of days are just blurs in my mind. I went through the office routine mechanically, numbly, my mind in such a turmoil that it’s a wonder I could find my desk or get my boots on straight. Greta clucked over me and did everything she could, including sending me home with a jar of homemade chicken soup. She thought I was coming down with a virus.

The President seemed calm and unruffled. When I asked him about McMurtrie he turned grim for a few minutes, but as far as I could fathom from him and Wyatt, the investigation was still being kept small, quiet, and ultratight.

Vickie was… well, Vickie. That one night was one night. In the office we were boss and assistant. She was as pleasant and helpful as always. I guess I was polite and reasonable. She didn’t act coy or betrayed. I asked her out to dinner, she accepted, and we ended the night at her door. “Don’t get possessive about me,” she said. I felt relieved and annoyed, both at once.

We drew an almost total blank in our search for information about North Lake Labs and Dr. Peña.

“He’s almost a nonperson,” she complained tiredly, after several days of searching the records. “There’s his file from Princeton, more than forty years ago. There’s a couple of brief mentions of his attending meetings of biochemists and other scientific groups, but nothing at all later than the early seventies. Somebody’s done a very thorough job of keeping him out of sight.”

“Or erasing the records,” I said.

Her eyes went round. “They couldn’t be that thorough, could they?”

I had no real answer. “What about North Lake Labs?”

“Very hush-hush,” Vickie said. “Deep military secrecy. Restricted-access list and all that. We’d have to go through the Secretary of Defense’s office or the Senate Armed Services Committee.”

“And we can’t do that without advertising the fact that we’re snooping,” I said.

“It could be dangerous for you. But maybe not for me. Maybe they don’t realize…”

“Uh-uh.” I wagged a finger at her. “Dangerous for anybody. Stay clear or you’ll wind up in some godforsaken ravine, like McMurtrie and Klienerman.”

Vickie fidgeted unhappily in her chair. “Then what in hell do we do, Meric?”

“Nothing. Not a goddamned thing. We sit and wait. And think.”

“For how long?”

I shrugged. “It’s Friday. I’ve got to talk with Len Ryan on Monday. I’ll make up my mind by then.”

“It’s going to be a long weekend for you,” she said.

“Yeah. Think I’ll drive out into the country. That ought to be the best place to get some thinking done.”

“Out to Camp David?”

“No, I don’t want to be with the President this weekend. I’ll go the other way, maybe down to Virginia Beach.”

“I’ve still got the car,” Vickie said.

I shook my head. “You stay clear of me for the time being. If I make it past Monday, then we can talk.”

She started to argue, but I made noises like a boss and got her to leave the office. I don’t think she was sore, but if anything was going to happen that weekend, I didn’t want her around to get caught by the blast.

It was almost quitting time when the phone call came. Greta had just stuck her head into my office to announce that she was taking off fifteen minutes early to beat the traffic crunch. She did that every Friday, and she always made that announcement, and I always nodded my head.

Phone calls from the President weren’t all that unusual. When he had first taken office, The Man began making spot calls to anyone and everyone, just checking on how things were going down on the working levels, sampling morale, seeing who looked guilty or busy or happy or pissed off. The standard joke was that if your phones beeped out “Ruffles and Flourishes” instead of buzzing, you knew who was calling.

My phone just buzzed. I touched the ON button, and The Man’s face appeared on my desk screen.

“Hello, Meric,” he said pleasantly.

“Mr. President.”

“Do you have any plans for the weekend?” he asked.

It had been an hour or so since my conversation with Vickie. “Nothing special. Why do you ask?”

He smiled. “Laura and I were wondering if you could have dinner with us tomorrow evening. Nothing formal. Just a quiet evening. The three of us.”

“I thought you were going to Maryland for the weekend.”

“That’s canceled. Too much work to do. I’m staying here for the weekend.”

“You might have informed your press secretary about your switch in plans. I’ve got to make sure the press corps—”

“Meric,” he said with a patient grin, “I am informing my press secretary. I just made up my mind about it a few minutes ago. And Laura thought it’d been quite a while since we broke bread together, quietly and informally. Can you make it or not?”

“Yessir, I can make it. Of course.”

“Good. Seven o’clock. Bring an appetite.”

“Right. Thank you.”

I wish I could say that the first thing I did after clicking off the phone was to check my office for electronic bugs or call Vickie and tell her that if anything happened to me she should break the story to the media. I didn’t. I tore madly out of the office and down the hallway to catch Greta before she got into the elevator and away. I needed her to start the machinery of informing the press corps about the President’s change in plans. Otherwise they’d have my hide on the door by morning.

I just missed her. I had to grab a couple of the younger workers and draft them for the emergency. It took more than an hour to make certain that the entire press corps had been informed.

Even before Halliday had turned the White House into his almost totally private preserve, tourists had never been allowed up onto the second floor, where the President and his family had their living quarters. Halliday was obsessive about his privacy, to the point where foreign dignitaries were no longer even occasionally put up in the White House. They stayed at Blair House or some other nearby building. Tourists still plodded through the ground and first floors of the Presidential mansion, but the second floor was sacrosanct, even to Cabinet members and most of the President’s personal staff.

That’s why on Saturday I took my usual route through the underground slideway to the West Wing and came up just outside the Oval Office. Saturday or not, Mrs. Bester was at her desk; the rumor among the staff was that she never budged from her post, and her swivel chair had a potty under it. She was a tough old broad; at least she looked that way. But on the inside, she was even tougher. Which is what the President wanted in his private secretary.

I could hear voices coming from inside the Oval Office.

“Is he in there?” I asked cautiously. Somehow she always intimidated me.

“Yes,” she said. Nothing more. She never volunteered information. She just sat behind her fortress-sized desk, gazing at me through steely eyes.

“He… uh, he’s expecting me.”

Looking as if she’d never believe such a transparent lie, she buzzed on the intercom. I couldn’t hear what the President was saying to her; the receiver was jewel-sized and tucked into her left ear.

“You can go in,” she said at last, still looking as if she were very dubious about the whole arrangement.

The President was looking very grim, sitting ramrod straight in his desk chair, his hands flat on the desk top. Admiral Del Bello, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was sitting equally stiffly in front of the desk. The Admiral was in civvies, but you could still see the gold braid all over him.

“Meric,” the President shot before I could get the door closed, “what would be the public reaction to our sending the Third Fleet into the Persian Gulf?”

I blinked.

“Not just the Third Fleet,” the Admiral said, in a voice like steel cable twanging. “With all our budgetary cutbacks, the Third’s more of a paper fleet than a real one. We’d need—”

The President cut him off with an impatient gesture. “Come on, Meric. I don’t want a computer analysis. Just your gut reaction.”

My gut reaction was to take a deep breath first. Then, “Well, Mr. President, I think you’d get a strong split in public opinion. A lot of people will be dead-set against our getting sucked into the Gulf war again, and a lot of others will think we ought to go in there and grab the oil fields while we can.”

“You see?” Admiral Del Bello crowed. “There would be substantial public support… sir.”

“And considerable casualties,” The Man retorted. “And we’d turn Iran into an enemy once more, Shah off the throne and let the Russians overthrow all our diplomatic successes in the area. The entire Middle East would hate us. Even Israel.”

“But we’d have the oil!” The Admiral said, clenching his fists excitedly. “Mr. President, we’d have the oil fields! We could take the entire Arabian peninsula.”

The President cocked an eye at him. “Like we took Southeast Asia? No, thank you, Admiral.”

Del Bello was not one to surrender gracefully. “Mr. President, I really think you should allow the Joint Chiefs to have their day in court. They’re waiting for you in Camp David.”

He shook his head.

The Admiral’s face reddened. “Mr. President! It is our duty to advise you on military matters. The plan we have worked out—”

“What happens to the Third Fleet if the Saudis use nuclear weapons in the Persian Gulf? You can’t disperse your ships widely enough to keep the casualties down to an acceptable rate, can you? The fleet would be demolished.”

“Mr. President…”

“Well? Isn’t that true? Or am I wrong?”

Shifting in his chair, the Admiral said, “But if we…”

The President leaned forward and jabbed a finger at his top military adviser. “The fleet would be demolished, would it not?”

“There’s always that possibility. Yessir.”

“And what happens if we succeed in taking the Kuwait fields and knocking out the Iranian forces? What will the USSR do? Invade Iran? Attack our men? The Russians won’t allow us to gobble up the Middle East.”

His face red-splotched, the Admiral said, “Sir, I’d rather not discuss such highly classified matters with your press secretary present. There’s more information that I want to present to you, and…”

The President eased back in his chair and smiled at me. “All right. Meric, would you mind letting us finish this in private? Mrs. Halliday is upstairs having a cocktail. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep her company for a few minutes more.”

“Certainly, Mr. President,” I said.

I got as far as the door before he asked, “Oh, Meric. One further question. What would be the public reaction to a Russian ultimatum that we either quit the Persian Gulf or suffer an ICBM attack?”

I turned back. The Admiral’s face had gone purple. The President seemed quite cheerful. “Never mind,” he told me, waving me out the door. “You don’t have to answer that one. I know what the reaction would be.”

Only a cretin could fail to find his way down the West Wing corridor, into the main elevator, and up to the second floor. But I had a security guard escort me all the way. Standard operating procedure. The man was as silent as a well-oiled robot. The guard ushered me through the Yellow Room, with its Dolly Madison furniture, and out onto the Truman porch.

Laura was sitting there alone, stretched out on a recliner in shorts and halter, watching the sunset and listening to the birds getting ready for nightfall. She had a tall drink beside her.

She looked up at me. “Hello again, Meric.”

“Hello,” I said. “The President said he’ll be tied up a few minutes more with Admiral Del Bello.”

With a smile she asked, “The Admiral hasn’t had a stroke yet?”

“He’s getting close to it.” I pulled up the nearest webchair and sat next to her.

“You need a drink,” Laura said. “Tequila and lime, isn’t it?”

“Dry sherry… amontillado, preferably.”

She looked at me, and I tried to stay cool. “You’ve changed,” she said.

“That’s right.”

Laura touched the phone keyboard on the serving table next to her recliner. “You look uptight, Meric.”

“Look,” I blurted, “it’d be a lot easier for all of us if we stopped playing games. I was in love with you. Maybe I still am. Let’s not act like it never happened.”

Her face went serious, almost scared.

“Okay,” I went on. “So what do you want this time? To find out if I’m still loyal to him? If I’m going to keep the lid on this thing?”

“It’s important.”

“It’s cost four lives,” I snapped. “Five. I forgot about the helicopter pilot. McMurtrie was a damned good man—”

“I know that better than you do.”

It was the President. I jumped to my feet as he slowly walked out onto the porch. He looked at Laura.

“You shouldn’t be wearing that. Not here. This isn’t Key West.”

She made a sly smile. “There’s nothing to worry about. Even if some news photographer got close enough to snap a picture, Meric would pull the right wires to keep it from being published. Wouldn’t you, Meric?”

“That’s not what I came here to talk about,” I said.

“You’re here,” the President said, “because I told you to come here.”

I felt a shock inside me. He sounded more like his father than himself. He was blazingly angry, for some reason. Down in the Oval Office, even though he was arguing strongly with Del Bello, he could smile. But now he was radiating anger.

“You were talking about McMurtrie,” the President said to me.

“That’s right. And four other dead men.”

“What about them?”

I’d never seen him this way before. Was he sore about Laura? Maybe it had been her idea to invite me over here and he didn’t like it.

“Mr. President… do you still want me to keep quiet about the attempts on your life?”

He stood straight and rigid in front of me. Not the usual relaxed slouch, not at all. “As far as I know,” he answered stiffly, “there have been no attempts on my life.”

I couldn’t believe I’d heard him right. “No attempts…?”

“Two imposters have been found, both dead of unknown causes. A helicopter accident has killed the chief of my personal security force and my personal physician. No one has fired a shot at me; no one has made any attempt whatsoever on me.”

“And the investigation on those two… imposters? Who’s taking that over, with McMurtrie dead?”

“Robert Wyatt is handling that. We’ll be using selected personnel from the Secret Service and the FBI.”

“And you want me to keep it all under wraps?”

“I expect you to keep everything quiet, until I’m ready to make a public announcement.”

“And when will that be?”

“Maybe never. If we find out who’s responsible for those duplicates, and the story’s sensitive enough, you might never get to tell the press about it.”

About the only thing I could say was, “I see.”

“Now I need to know, Meric,” he went on, deathly cold now, “if I can count on your cooperation and your help. There’s no reason for you to play detective in this. We have enough experts for that. We’ll find out who’s behind these killings. What I need from you is silence. Or your resignation. Which will it be?”

It was like getting punched between the eyes. I bet I staggered backwards a step or two. “My resignation? You’re asking for…”

“I’m asking you to decide. I don’t want you to resign. But I’ve got to have absolute loyalty and cooperation. There’s no third possibility.”

“I see,” I said again.

“You can think it over for a day or so. Sleep on it. Let me know Monday.”

“No need to,” I heard myself say. “I’ll stick. I’ll get the job done.”

“You’re sure?”

For the first time in my life, I was knowingly lying about something important. But I had the feeling that if I resigned, a fatal accident might hit me, too. And moreover, if Halliday was starting to purge his staff of everyone except blindly loyal followers, something ugly was going on.

“I’m sure,” I said. “As long as you have Wyatt keep me informed on the progress of the investigation. I still have to know what I should avoid stepping on in front of the press.”

He nodded once, curtly. “Good. I’ll go in and phone Robert right now. I’ll tell him that you’re still on the team, and he should cooperate with you.”

“Fine. Thank you.”

“Meet me in the dining room,” he said.

My drink arrived as the President left the balcony. Laura excused herself to dress for dinner. I sipped sherry and knew what it felt like to be a politician. I had said one thing and meant something else altogether. One slip-up, though, and he’ll know where you stand, I thought.And when that happens, you won’t be standing for long.

But by the time we’d gathered together in the President’s Dining Room, with its wallpaper depicting wildly inaccurate scenes from the American Revolution, The Man was his old cheerful, relaxed self again. He even joked about how grim-faced I looked.

It wasn’t until the dinner was over and I was sitting in the dark rear seat of a White House limousine on my way back to my apartment that I realized the entire truth of it.He’s in on it. Whatever’s going on, the President is not one of the intended victims of the plot; he’s the chief plotter!