Act of God (10 page)

"Ugo," Fred asked, "do you have any contacts with the UFO cultists? I mean the organized ones."

"Sure," Ciano said. "I get stuff from them all the time. I've even attended a few of their meetings. They assume because my esteemed colleagues consider me kind of a maverick, I must be a sucker for every pseudo-science that comes along. Some of 'em aren't as nutty as you'd think, though. What did you have in mind?"

"Those people probably keep in contact with these tabloids. We might find out who's been supplying these supposed Soviet findings. It might give us a little more evidence that they're up to something."

"I'll make some phone calls," Ciano said. "In fact, let's let them call up the tabs and ask where those stories came from. Save us a little legwork."

"Now you're learning to think like an Intelligence man," Sam commended.

"Why? Letting other people do the work? What do you think professors have been using grad students for since the Middle Ages?"

"I hate to bring this up—" Laine began hesitantly.

"What is it?" Sam asked.

"What if, despite all our work and all the evidence we have been able to assemble, they still don't believe us? Do we just give up?"

"They gotta pay attention to this!" Ugo insisted. "The evidence we have here is overwhelming!"

"Not to a bureaucrat defending his job," Sam said. "You of all people should know that. Remember Billy Mitchell?"

"Who is that?" Laine asked.

"He was the man who more than any other built American air power from the ground up. He ran afoul of some entrenched military interests when he insisted that battleships could be sunk by aerial bombing. He was accused of being a hyperimaginative egomaniac," Sam wiggled his eyebrows at Ugo, "and he demanded a trial. Not far from here, off the Virginia coast, the Navy let him have a try at it. First, they saddled him with a bunch of unreasonable handicaps like having to fly too high and limiting the number of bombs he could use and the amount of time he had to drop them. This was before the Norden bombsight, remember. To top it all off, they gave him the
Ostfriesland
as a target. She was a German battleship, taken as reparations after World War One and believed by most Navy men to be unsinkable. The demonstration was witnessed by the whole Atlantic fleet, along with most of the Navy Department and a slew of foreign observers. Mitchell's bombers sank the
Ostfriesland
in less than twenty-two minutes."

"Then he was vindicated?" Laine asked, wondering what the point was.

"Uh-uh," Ugo said, taking up the story. "They still refused to believe that it could be done, even after it'd been demonstrated right in front of their collective nose. Those people believed in the invincibility of battleships, and they weren't going to let an irrefutable demonstration of their error stand in their way. Later they court-martialed Mitchell for making some off-the-cuff remarks about his superiors on an unrelated matter, something about a dirigible crash. They wanted to shut him up bad. Nearly every one of his predictions about the future of air power was borne out, but the U.S. was the last country to take him seriously. In 1945, he was cleared of all charges and fully vindicated by Congress. They gave him the Medal of Honor and promoted him to major general. He'd been dead for nine years but it was nice of them, anyway."

"Sounds like you're an expert on prophets without honor," Fred said with a big-toothed grin.

"Hey, what can I say?" Ugo shrugged elaborately. "I feel a certain kinship with the guy. But Sam's right: We gotta put together an airtight case, 'cause there's people on the Hill who, if they think it'll improve their careers, will tell you the sun don't shine even if you stake 'em out in the Mojave desert at high noon with their eyelids cut off, which for some of them is just what they deserve."

Laine lit a cigarette. "In an extreme case, should they prove to be as willfully blind as your admirals with Mitchell, what can we do? Suppose we went public? Might we not call a press conference and put our case before the public?"

"We'd have to be awfully quick about it," Sam said, "and it wouldn't be terribly advisable. Fred and I belong to an agency that's notoriously intolerant of operatives who blab to the press. In fact, they'd lock us up before we finished talking to the reporters. I might add that you're in this country through the good graces of that agency. They'd get you deported back to Italy, if not all the way back to Yugoslavia. As for Ugo, he can say anything he wants to anybody he wants."

"One little problem there," Ugo commented.

"Right," Sam said, "anybody who wanted to refute him could line up about a hundred prominent space scientists to testify that Ugo's a notorious crank."

"Some people have no perception of true genius," said Fred as she smiled down at Ugo.

"Are you married?" Ugo asked.

"Not lately," she said.

Sam pointed to the little computer. "The agency sunk a lot of money into that thing. Have you been able to get any use out of it?"

Ugo dragged his attention away from Fred. "You bet. Your buddy Novak came through with a lot of good statistics on the latest Soviet timetables, and he hooked me up with a computer they got monitoring Soviet imports of space-related materials. It's pretty complicated, but what it boils down to is this: Most programs have been curtailed or cancelled. The UV and IR satellites that were gonna be launched this year weren't. They were gonna start collecting material for a big, permanent lunar base this year and have it in near-Earth orbit, ready to go by next year. That program's been set back for four years.

"And, you know the big space station they built a couple of years ago? The one they devoted so much publicity to, that was gonna kick off their peaceful space program? Well, it's up there, fully staffed, and it's doing nothing! A whole staff of cosmonauts are sitting on their thumbs, if you can do that in zero gravity. Only some astronomers have been brought down. That's billions of kopecks down the tubes and what does that tell you?"

"They're going to be put to work on something else, soon," Fred answered.

"Right. Because one thing we know about the Soviets: They get their money's worth out of their space budget."

"It's good, but it's not conclusive," Sam said. "The cutbacks could always be explained by their economic difficulties, like maybe they needed the rubles to buy soybeans or something. Keeping the space station staff on hold is better, but most of our bureaucrats are so used to wasteful, half-assed practices that they won't think it's odd."

"Well, what the hell would it take to convince them?" Ugo cried in exasperation.

"If we could get Nekrasov to come and testify it'd help," Sam said, straightfaced. "But I wouldn't count on it."

"They might say he was lying, anyway," Fred added.

Laine looked from one to the other. "You two sound terribly pessimistic."

"Work for the government long enough," Sam asserted, "and it becomes a self-defense reflex. We're just preparing you for the worst possibility. All we can really do is put together the best case we can and hope for a fair hearing."

Ugo turned his attention to Fred once again. "Fred, what do you do besides shoot people? They sure as hell don't use you for clandestine surveillance."

"Mostly I specialize in guerrilla operations in Central and South America. I'm pretty good with computers, too, and that's about all I'm allowed to tell you."

"That's a real nice cross-section of talents," Ugo assured her. "We got a lot of computer work to do, and with them Bulgarians creeping around, I'm gonna need a bodyguard. I think you better stick pretty close to me from here on in."

"She takes her instructions from me, Ugo," Sam said, sternly. He faced Fred. "Fred, stick close to Ugo."

"Whatever you say,
jefe
."

It was after midnight when Sam drove Laine back to her hotel. The city had largely shut down for the night, and such inhabitants as were still out in the streets were of the exotic, phosphorescent variety that seldom shows itself in the light of day. "I like Fred," Laine said. "I think I am going to enjoy working with her."

"You don't like her anything like the way Ugo likes her," Sam said.

She laughed unrestrainedly. "I think he's in love. What a couple they would make! Do you think he really has a chance?"

"You can never tell. Fred's tastes in men can be peculiar. It's rumored that her first husband was an albino tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers. She divorced him when he decided to turn gay and have a sex-change operation." He eased onto an on-ramp and pulled into the southbound lane.

"You're making that up!" she accused.

"I said it was just a rumor. I'd like to believe it, though." He glanced into the mirror. "No Volvo. They might be using another car, or they might be waiting ahead to pick us up farther on."

"I don't like this," Laine said.

"Don't worry. They may have just gone home for the night. I don't think they'll try anything overt against us. Not here in the States, and not when we're softballing it. I want to keep an eye on them, though. It doesn't pay to take chances."

He pulled into the parking garage of the Wildner and parked as near as he could to the elevator. He scanned the garage as he opened her door and helped her out. "No enemy in sight," he reported.

"It's good to have my own bodyguard. Are you always so protective of your charges?"

"It's a part of the job, ma'am," Sam said, with great gravity.

Going up in the elevator, she felt again the sense of tension between the two of them she had felt on that first day. She wondered what it would lead to. At least, this time she felt far better able to cope with her new life and therefore with her emotions.

At the door to her apartment she searched for her key. "Would you like to come in? I don't have any of Ugo's favorite Wild Turkey, but I may have some Chablis."

This time, he was quick to accept. "Certainly. Besides, I have to check under your bed for Bulgarians." They went inside and, to her surprise, he actually went into her bedroom and looked under the bed. She watched bemusedly as she found the wine and glasses. He went over the whole apartment, checking lamps and paintings, examining potted plants, getting down on his knees to look at the edges of the carpet. Finally, he seemed to be satisfied,

Laine gave him a glass. "I thought you were joking. Do you really think there might be listening devices here?"

"I had to be sure."

She shrugged. "But, I'm not likely to say anything of use to anybody here. Usually, I am alone." Why was he behaving so oddly?

"I know. But I don't want anybody listening to what I'm going to do next."

"And what might that be?" She was very still as he set his glass down, then took hers and set it beside his. He took her face between his hands and kissed her, lingeringly and expertly. She released a long-pent-up sigh of relief and her arms went around him. She closed her eyes and leaned back in his arms and her hands explored his broad back. She had never touched a body so hard.

Reluctantly, she broke away for a moment. "If you found no Bulgarians under the bed, I think that would be a good place to go now."

As they undressed each other she said, "I expected you to do this that first night."

He carefully lifted the turtleneck collar of her blouse over her head to minimize the damage to her coiffure. "I wanted to. You wouldn't believe how much."

"Then why didn't you? I don't think I would have said no." She was having difficulties with his belt buckle and he had to help her with it.

"I didn't want you to think I took advantage of helpless refugees." He removed her final item of clothing and applied himself to her with great intensity.

"Sam!" she said, getting breathless. "You mean you've been a gentleman all this time?" They collapsed onto the bed, thoroughly entwined. After a few moments, she gasped: "Sam, stop being such a gentleman! I'm not that fragile."

Two hours later, she sat up in the bed, the rumpled sheets at her waist, smoking just like the mistress in a French movie. In the dim light of the bedside lamp she examined Sam's body. It would have been an absolutely perfect male body, she thought, if it weren't for the scars.

"I'm glad I checked the place for bugs," he said in an exhausted voice. "They'd have had plenty to listen to. I wish I understood Estonian."

"You'd have been pleased, but not shocked, I'm afraid. Estonian is not as rich as English in those basic, lewd words. I am learning them, but it will be some time before I can use them spontaneously." She ran her fingers along a ridge of scar tissue that slanted from his left hipbone across his abdomen to the base of his rib cage on the opposite side. "Sam, you really must find some other line of work."

"Now who's being protective? That was a machete. He almost had me that time. It was in a filthy jungle and it got infected, that's why the scar's so thick."

"These little round ones are bullet wounds, aren't they?"

"That's right. I've got to do what I'm good at, Laine."

"You can't be all that good if people keep shooting and cutting you," she said, practically.

"Maybe you're right. Anyway, we make a nice contrast this way."

She looked down. He was right. His body was hard, tanned and scarred. Hers was soft, white and smooth. "Still, I think you need to think about the future."

"That's what I'm doing," he insisted.

"And what have you decided?"

"I think that it's time again." She stubbed out her cigarette and, with a contented sigh, rolled into his arms again.

CHAPTER NINE

The light reflected in rainbow colors from the wet road and through the Chevy's windshield as the wipers flicked back and forth across Sam's field of vision. There was a soft sound of snoring from the back where Fred leaned against the seat, her head tilted back and her mouth slightly open. Ciano lay on the seat with his head pillowed in Fred's lap, a contented smile in the middle of his beard.

"I think your Colonel Chambers will be valuable to us," Laine said, somewhat unsteadily. "If he speaks before the Security Council as well as he entertains, in any case. Is that a Texas tradition?"

"Seems to be. If we'd been at his place outside Houston he'd have thrown a whole steer on the fire for us." He slowed for a sharp curve in the narrow road. "Down in those parts they take it as an insult if you go home sober or unstuffed. Every male considers himself to be the world's best barbecue chef, too. I've seen shooting break out over the proper way to cook chili."

"It sounds as if you picked up some of their habits of exaggeration," she said. She leaned towards him and his arm went around her shoulder. She sighed contentedly and found herself drifting toward sleep.

"Like the barbecue sauce," Sam explained, "it adds flavor to what might otherwise be—" She snapped awake as he jerked his arm from behind her shoulders and took the wheel in both hands. "Are you strapped in?" he snapped.

"Yes." She slipped her arm under the chest strap. The car was filled with light from a vehicle coming up fast from behind.

"Fred!" Sam barked.

"Whaa?" Ugo got no farther as he was catapulted to the floor. Fred had twisted around to the rear. Her hand dipped into her capacious purse and she pulled out a large, businesslike automatic. Her thumb rested on the safety as she studied the situation. "Strap in, Ugo," she ordered.

"Who are they?" Ugo demanded as he fumbled with the seat belt.

"Where's that famous intuition, Ugo?" Sam said.

"Shall I open fire?" Fred asked.

"They haven't broken the law yet," Sam said.

The hell they haven't!" Ugo squawked. "They're speeding! Shoot 'em!"

The car behind was coming up from their left rear, pulling out as if to pass, but instead catching their bumper and accelerating. Sam had to accelerate and compensate to keep his rear end from throwing them into a spin. They could see the other vehicle now. It was a four-wheel-drive offroad truck, much larger and heavier than Sam's ancient Chevy. Its bumper was heavily reinforced.

"Christ! They're driving a tank!" Ugo gabbled.

Fred had her window rolled down. "Gimme a clear shot, Sam." Sam jerked the Chevy to the right and braked. The truck came almost even with Fred's window and she triggered three quick shots. Ciano squawked as a hot shell casing went down the back of his collar. The driver of the truck was too experienced to allow the bullet impacts to force him away. He slammed the truck against the side of the Chevy and sparks flew as the lighter vehicle slewed sideways and its righthand hub caps went up onto an embankment. Sam fought it back onto the road and hit the gas, and the responsive old engine yanked the Chevy well ahead of the ORV. Laine closed her eyes and tried to remember the prayers her grandmother had taught her.

"We dead yet?" Ciano asked, face pale and sweating.

"Not yet," Fred reported. "Don't you just love it, Ugo? Just like the movies." She leaned her whole upper body out the window and fired a string of shots. Sparks jumped from the hood of the truck and it swerved slightly, but maintained its course. Fred pulled back in and dropped the empty magazine from her pistol and slammed in a fresh one. "Whoever their driver is, he's good."

"Why aren't they shooting back?" Laine asked, fighting down panic.

"They want this to look like an accident," Sam said. He spoke calmly despite his frantic driving. "Otherwise they could've just taken us out with a sniper. Now listen, everybody: Up ahead of us, there's a series of sharp curves. There's a high bank on the right and a sheer drop on the left. That thing they're driving has a high center of gravity and it can't take the corners as fast as I can. I'm gonna get ahead of them on those curves." His speech was punctuated with four more shots from Fred. "On the last curve, I'm going to stop the car. Everybody jump out and scramble up that bank as fast as you can."

"Will we have time?" Laine asked.

"Plenty of time," Sam assured her. "Four, maybe five seconds." Behind them, Ugo groaned.

The curves loomed ahead. Each time the follower got too close, Fred drove it back with a few calculated shots. Then they were in the curves, their stomachs lurching as Sam whipped the Chevy around each in succession, the ORV falling back, finally dropping out of sight. Fred reloaded her pistol again, then dropped it into her heavy shoulder bag, "Hands on seatbelts, folks," she said.

The tail of the Chevy whipped wildly as Sam decelerated, then the car was stopped, slanted across the road with the tail toward the bank and the nose toward the guardrail. "Everybody out!" Sam barked. There was a simultaneous snapping of seatbelt buckles and the doors on the right slapped open. Laine and Ugo piled out, Sam and Fred a split second later, then all four were scrambling up the embankment.

They were twenty feet up the embankment when the truck came tearing around the last curve. The driver saw the car slanting across the road but it was much too late. He tried to take his chances with the embankment, but never quite made it. His bumper hooked the tail of the Chevy and the truck spun around, smashing the smaller vehicle broadside, throwing both into a ponderous spin, smashing them into the guardrail, the two vehicles hopelessly twisted together. The guardrail crumpled and the mass of metal tilted precariously for a moment, then toppled majestically over the edge. There was a series of diminishing crashes, then silence.

"Jeez!" Ciano half-whispered. "It coulda been us!

Laine began to shake convulsively and Sam put an arm around her as she broke into sobs. Ugo started to stand up, but Fred took his arm and pulled him back down. "Uh-uh," she cautioned, "it's not over yet. They don't travel alone."

They sat in silence for several minutes. A car passed, then another. Except for some scattered pebbles of glass and the gap in the guardrail, there was nothing to signify what had happened. Then another car came by, traveling slowly. As it passed the gap in the guardrail it slowed. They saw its backup lights flare as it reversed and came back to the gap. When it stopped, a man emerged from the passenger side with a long flashlight in his hand but he did not turn it on. Slowly, he crossed the road and shone the beam of the flashlight down the slope.

Fred drew her pistol from her purse and snapped the safety off. She looked at Sam and he nodded. Unwinding her long legs, she stood and brushed mud from the seat of her pants, then she wiped her hand dry on one of the less wet spots on her blouse. Ugo stuck his fingers in his ears. Fred thrust two fingers between her teeth and whistled shrilly. "Hey, Liliev!" The man spun and leaned into a sprint that would have taken him back to the car but before he could set his foot down Fred's shot knocked him back over the cliff.

The car slammed into gear but Sam was standing now, and he held an automatic larger and heavier than Fred's. It roared three times and there were three closely-grouped stars in the windshield of the car on the driver's side. Then there was no sound or motion from the car. Cautiously, Fred descended the slope, pistol at the ready. She peered into the car, put her safety back on and dropped the automatic back into her purse.

"Now all's clear," Sam announced. He helped Laine to her feet and steadied her as they went down to the car. At the car she drew away. "I am all right," she said. Sam left her alone for the nonce. She had just seen a whole pack of hatchetmen at their work, and she didn't like it at all.

Ciano walked around the car, averting his eyes from the figure slumped on the front seat. On the left rear door he saw three ragged holes, the metal twisted outward where Sam's bullets had exited the vehicle. The slugs had slanted through the windshield, the driver, the seat and had still retained enough force to punch their way out through the door. "What kind of cannon you packing, Taggart?" Ciano asked, "A forty-five?"

"Ten millimeter," Sam said, jamming the pistol back into its holster beneath his arm. "It has much more penetration. That's a cut-down forty-five Fred carries." He opened the driver's door and Ugo looked away as he began to go through the corpse's pockets. Fred came up and looked at the dead man, grabbing his hair and tilting his face up for a better look. "Anybody you know?" Sam asked her.

She let the head drop forward. "Never saw him. I have a suspicion the Bulgarian embassy's going to be needing some new staff people, though."

"Hey, folks," Ugo said, "I don't like to complain, but it's past my bedtime and I'm standing out here on a deserted road getting rained on. How we gonna get home?" He thought for a moment, then: "Hey, we got a car here, don't we?"

"No!" Laine protested, vehemently. "I'm not riding in that car!"

"Don't worry," Sam told her. "We're not taking it. We can't leave it here, though." He shoved the corpse to the passenger's side and sat behind the wheel. Leaving the door open he restarted the engine and the others backed away. He drove the car very slowly to the gap in the guardrail and simply stepped out of it just before the car went to join the others.

As the sounds of the crash faded away, Ciano walked to the edge and looked down. "In the movies, they always blow up when they hit the bottom. Howcome—" then he saw the look on Sam's face. "Hell, Sam, I know how you must feel. If I had a hat, I'd take it off. They don't make 'em like that old Chevy no more."

"They'll pay," Sam said grimly.

"Hell, that bunch paid already," Ugo said. "Now, how we gonna get home?"

"We'll hitch a ride," Sam said.

"Sam, I hate to tell you this, but it's past midnight and we look like drowned rats and you ain't as good-looking as the rest of us. Who'd pick us up?"

"Not you and me, Ugo: Laine and Fred."

At sight of the two blondes standing by the road with their thumbs out, the driver of the car hit his brakes so hard the car skidded. The tires spun furiously as the car backed to the two women and the driver flung the passenger door open, unable to believe his luck. "Hop in, ladies! Where you headed?"

Sam leaned into the driver's window. "We need a ride, buddy. Mind if we join you?"

The man slapped the steering wheel disgustedly. "Shit! Every goddamn time! I see a broad hitchik-ing, I stop, and some bastard jumps out of the bushes!" He started to throw the car into gear and Sam thrust a badge into his face, letting his coat fall open to reveal the butt of his pistol. "U.S. government, friend. This is national security and I can toss you out and take your car if I want to."

Ugo chinned himself up to the window. "Yeah, jerk, we gotta go see the President, so don't give us no lip!"

The driver looked down at Ciano. "Who the hell're you? One of them atomic mutants I keep hearing about?"

"Sam, you gonna let him get away with that?"

"Ah, hell," the driver said, "get on in. You two bastards ride in back, though."

Fred slid in next to the driver and gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek. "I knew you'd see your patriotic duty. Just get us to a telephone and I'll light candles to you every time I go to church." Laine remained subdued for the ride into town, slightly amazed at the driver's nonchalance in picking up such a crew in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.

Their reluctant chauffeur dropped them at a roadside diner on the outskirts of town. While the others fortified themselves with hot coffee while waiting for their nerves to calm down, Sam went to the public telephone in the back. He punched the twenty-digit combination that would give him Caldwell's super-secure home phone.

"Yeah?" said the sleep-befuddled voice. "Talk to me, and make it good."

"It's hardball time again, sir," Sam said. Quickly, he outlined the night's events.

"Oh, Christ!" Caldwell said when Sam had finished. "You offed three people who were probably on diplomatic passports?"

"Three for sure," Sam said. "There may've been more than one in the ORV. As for their passports, I wasn't asking for any ID. Just get the D.C. cops to declare it an accident. You know the Bulgarian embassy will go along with it."

"Well, your credibility just went up another notch, Sam. It's been years since they made a try against one of our operatives."

"And you know where that order had to come from, sir," Sam said, pushing his new advantage as hard as he could.

"No kidding. Now we have ammunition to use in front of the NSC."

Sam smiled. Now it's we, eh? he thought. It was good to feel the political winds shifting.

"Look, Sam," Caldwell went on, "give me the exact location of the incident. I'll get a team to go over the wrecks first, then we'll inform the D.C. police. Get your people home and I'll have security people there to protect them. Then get some rest yourself and see me in my office in the morning. And Sam—"

"Sir?"

"Sorry to hear about the Chevy."

Back at the table, Sam explained how things stood. Laine seemed to have regained her composure. She had repaired to the ladies's room and was as presentable as the night's events permitted. Sam noted that she was still a shade pale, though.

"I don't get this," Ugo protested. "Whaddaya mean, you guys hardly ever go after each other? I thought CIA and KGB and all them was shooting it up all the time."

Fred was shaking her head. "Uh-uh. The rough stuff is mostly confined to the agents we both use."

"You mean you two ain't agents? I thought you were all agents."

"Common misconception," Sam said. "Terms like 'secret agent' did that, and it doesn't help that we're called an agency. Actually, Fred and I are operatives. Agents are people, usually foreign nationals, we employ to do work for us."

"And those people are expendable?" Laine said.

"We're all expendable," Sam said, "but some of us get expended a little more readily than others."