Alternities (36 page)

“Touch me,” she whispered.

Heat drove away the wisps of fear, unleashed passions old and new. She chased a cat off the flowered comforter and drew him down with her onto the bed. Guiding his hands, whispering urgent invitations, she did not merely accept his passion, but answered it. She did not merely yield, but welcomed him, closing a circle around them both that shut out all thoughts of past and future.

Her hands coaxed, stroked, teased. His hands explored the lushness of her body, the soft fullness of breast and buttock. He nibbled the soft skin below her ear, she the crinkled nub of his nipple, an unfamiliar but electric sensation. Kneeling facing each other, they traded long, slow kisses and intimate touches, she curling soft fingers around his hardness, he parting slick silky lips with a gentle probing touch. They clung together on a rising spiral of energy, learning the secrets that new lovers give shyly to each other.

And at the peak of the spiral she lay back and pulled him down on top of her, opening to him and guiding him inside, moving with him and against him, her little cries and his grunting moans the orchestration of their wordless oneness.

It was not poetry, it was not romance. It was fire and fury, matter and antimatter. It was sexual hunger, obsession, compulsion, the full surrender of self to sensation. It was soaring, transcendent flight.

And when the gasping, shivery break came—his first, knotted liquid, hers soon after, grasping, gasping—it was not an ending, but only a pause. For the burning had lit a greater fire that could not be quenched in one night or a hundred. Lying in her encircling arms and holding her in his was at once a very old and a very new feeling.

This is the place, he thought, though he could not have whispered it to her without his voice breaking. This is the place that feels like home.

A tenth of a mile from the South Portico to the fence at E Street. A tenth of a mile back. In a heavy coat, with an eager full-grown Gordon setter pulling on its leash to hurry him along, that was enough to clear Daniel Brandenburg’s sinuses and loosen sleep-tightened joints.

The sunlight on the snow-covered south grounds of the White House was brilliant, almost blinding. A circular depression marked the location of the fountain pool. Above the denuded trees of the Ellipse rose the obelisk of the Washington Monument, stark and hard-edged. On the horizon, between a gap in the trees, gleamed the rounded dome and pillars of the Jefferson Memorial.

Halfway to the fence, Brandenburg heard footsteps behind him, and stopped and turned. A stocky man with short oily-black hair was hurrying down the machine-plowed path toward him. As Brandenburg surmised, it was Richard Bayshore, the director of the National Information Agency. Bayshore had called early that morning for a breakfast appointment, and then missed it.

“Sorry I’m late, Mr. President,” the newcomer said. “There was an accident on the Rochambeau Bridge, and I got hung up in traffic.”

“Don’t fret about it, Richard,” said Brandenburg, resuming walking. “I assumed you were late for good cause.”

“I’ll be happy when they finish boring the tunnels,” Bayshore said, alluding to the plans to link major federal buildings with a network of underground rubber-and-rail shuttle lines.

“In the meantime, you could learn how to ski,” Brandenburg said. “What did you want to see me about, Richard?”

“Did you watch the news this morning?”

“I did.”

“Did you happen to catch the item about that ugly business last night in Dayton?”

“The murder?”

“Yes.”

“Grisly business, murdering a man in front of his wife.”

“There’s more to it than that. We’ve joined the investigation, along with the FBI.”

“Oh?” They had reached the farthest point of the U-shaped path, and Brandenburg raised his hand to wave to the several dozen shivering, frost-breathing tourists waiting beyond the fence for a glimpse of him.

“Half of them are probably Secret Service agents,” Bayshore observed.

“Almost certainly,” Brandenburg said. He knelt and released the catch on the dog’s leash, freeing him to dash forward into the deep snow. “Air Force man. Is that why we’re interested?”

“Partly. The victim’s name was Gregory K. O’Neill. He was an Air Force colonel assigned to Wright-Patterson as a logistics officer.”

“Was he involved in anything sensitive?”

“Not particularly. He was a solid, low-profile career officer with nothing out of the mainstream in his jacket or his job.”

“So why are we interested?”

“Because the whole business doesn’t add up. About seven o’clock last night, an hour before O’Neill was due home, a man breaks into the house and takes the colonel’s wife prisoner. He ties Mrs. O’Neill to a chair in the living room, but otherwise doesn’t touch her.”

“Not a rapist.”

“Or even an opportunist. He doesn’t talk to her. He doesn’t search the house, he doesn’t go through her purse. He just sits behind her, out of sight, and waits.”

Brandenburg whistled, and the black-furred setter came bounding back. “For the husband.”

“Yep. O’Neill comes in the side door, calls for his wife, comes into the living room, and our visitor shoots him four times. He then puts a noose around O’Neill’s neck, hangs him from the banister—the living room has a sixteen-foot ceiling and a balcony off the bedrooms. And he writes DEATH TO THE ENEMIES OF PEACE on the wall. I have pictures of all this up at the House, if you need to see it.”

The dog back on its leash, the two men started back toward the White House. “This message—in blood?”

“Nothing so crude. Red ink marker. Brought it with him, took it with him.”

“ ‘Death to the Enemies of Peace.’ I didn’t hear anything about that on the news.”

“Because we have Mrs. O’Neill and the press doesn’t,” said Bayshore.

“Everything that was released came through the Dayton police, who’re helping us. The TV reports were edited to avoid the writing.”

“And then he leaves, with the wife alive.”

“After leaning over her and whispering, ‘This is just the beginning,’ or something to that effect.”

Brandenburg grunted. “I guess I know why we’re interested. Any leads at all on the shooter?”

“No. He was a pro, Mr. President. He didn’t leave forensics anything to play with.”

“He left a witness.”

“Just another puzzle. Like I said, it doesn’t add up. None of the internationalist groups have any history of violence.”

“A solo crazy?”

“Or a new player.” They had reached the portico, and both men stamped snow-coated shoes on the concrete. “I want to put this out to the network,” Bayshore said. “You know I need your approval to activate the Volunteer Watch—the alerts go out over your name.”

“Nationwide?”

“Regions 1 and 3, for now. Everything east of the Mississippi except the Deep South. A top-down alert, very quiet. Nothing on the open media.”

Brandenburg sighed. “You know how I feel about your citizen spies.”

“Yep. It keeps me from asking most of the times I want to.”

With a reluctant nod, Brandenburg said, “All right. Anything else?”

“You might want to give up these walks for a while.”

Brandenburg shook his head. “Richard, the day the President can’t go for a walk in his own backyard, the country’s too far gone to be worth saving.”

The messenger entered only one step, then saluted. “The car is ready, Mr. President.”

“Thank you,” Robinson said, rising from the couch. “Let’s go,” he said to the two men waiting with him.

William Rodman turned from the window, scowling, his hands stuffed into his pants pockets. “Don’t do this, Peter. You’re not going to get anything out of Somerset.”

“There seems to me to be little chance the Prime Minister will change his mind,” Ernest Clifton added, struggling into his coat. “It’s quite possible that protest will simply open a breach between Washington and London.”

Robinson was already at the door. “Open a breach, E.C.? You’re not reading this right. The breach exists. It opened the moment Somerset sat down to write me that letter. Now, come or stay, the both of you—but don’t tell me not to go.”

Frowning, Rodman shook his head. “I’m coming,” he said.

Clifton silently fell in behind, following the others out the South Portico to the idling limousine, which was sandwiched between two armored escort cars. Two Secret Service marksmen armed with M-5 rifles and armored against the night cold occupied the bird’s nest on the lead vehicle.

This is so foolish, Clifton thought as he climbed into the limousine. The others made room for him on the broad back seat. Where is Gregory? He should be here. He could make the President listen. Running to the British embassy at midnight. Betraying weakness through empty anger.

The car started forward. Foolishness. Where is O’Neill? Where is Robinson’s conscience?

As the motorcade growled its way up Massachusetts Avenue toward the embassy, Clifton replayed recent history in his mind, seeking release from his own conscience for what was about to happen.

The seventh government of the Sixth Republic of France had disintegrated three weeks ago, the opening act of a crisis which nearly brought down the republic as well. Pushed to the wall by a struggling economy and governmental deficits, President Louis Ribaud had moved to protect the economic interests whose strength had carried him to office.

Ribaud’s “shock therapy” program imposed 100 percent “temporary” tariffs on all imports from Germany and Italy, France’s two largest trading partners, and selected imports from Belgium, Spain, and Great Britain. He clearly had hoped that the emphasis on “temporary” would stave off retaliation, and as far as the minor trading partners were concerned he succeeded.

But after less than a day’s consideration, Germany and Italy had placed “temporary” 100 percent “equity taxes” on all imports from France, and Ribaud’s program began to unravel. There were general strikes in Paris and Lyon, and in Aude and Bourgogne angry vintners, who depended on exports for their margin of profit, spilled wine casks in the streets in protest.

Ribaud stood firm in public while privately going hat in hand to the German and Italian presidents, pleading for a regional economic summit meeting. Probably at Moscow’s direction, his pleas were refused. That was when the bankers and merchants cut Ribaud loose and began looking for a new champion.

With key supporters of the President conspicuously absent, a motion of censure had been raised in the National Assembly. Ribaud ordered the Assembly to dissolve. To enforce the point, he sent troops to surround the Palais-Bourbon, ostensibly to protect it from rioters. Defying the order and the troops, the Assembly remained in session and passed the motion of censure.

A full-blown constitutional crisis was finally averted when Ribaud, either patriot or realist, stepped aside. Which left Denis Gaschet, the Prime Minister and leader of the Parti Communiste Français, as Acting President. France had “fallen” to the Communists without a shot.

It was exactly the sort of situation Somerset had anticipated. It was exactly the sort of situation which should have prompted him to play his Weasel card. Robinson and his inner circle waited expectantly, then wonderingly, finally impatiently for the announcement. But there was only silence from Somerset until the letter, routed through Ambassador Taskins and relayed to Washington in code.

The key paragraph was brief: “As the French situation has resolved itself without immediate danger, your security guarantees are no longer required. I respectfully request that all personnel on loan be recalled within sixty days.”

Translation: Thanks for the safety net, but you can have your missiles back now.

Robinson had been enraged, the more so after Somerset refused his call. No guarantees of the integrity of communications, London said. Risk of exposure of sensitive information. Confidence only in lines from the embassy. Snubs and insults.

Like dominos falling, click, click, click, from Ribaud’s miscalculation to Somerset’s betrayal. Nothing that could have been done. Nothing to do but admit they’d been skillfully outmaneuvered and walk away. Except that Robinson was a brawler, not a diplomat, and the graceful face-saving retreat was not in his repertoire.

The caravan slowed to make the turn into the embassy drive. Ah, Gregory, Clifton sighed. It doesn’t matter. Enjoy, wherever you are. There’s probably nothing you could have done.

The communications technician wore a British Navy uniform and a supercilious expression. “I should caution you, sir, to be judicious in your language. Although we have considerable confidence in the Maskit coder, there are no guarantees that the Soviets will not intercept your conversation.”

“I hope they do,” Robinson said. “Now, place the goddamned call.”

The technician stiffened, taken aback. “The connection is already made,” he said. “It’s part of the verification process. Just pick up the receiver.”

“Then get the hell out of here.” Robinson waited until the technician completed a huffy departure, then turned to his companions. “No interruptions,” he said. “If you have something to say I’ll hear it afterward.”

Rodman nodded, and Clifton quickly said, “Of course, Mr. President.”

Turning back to the table, Robinson picked up the phone. “This is President Robinson.”

“Yes,” said a voice. “This is David Somerset.”

“I want to know if I’m reading between the lines right,” Robinson said. “Are you asking me to pull the Weasels out?”

“Weren’t you warned about this line, Mr. President?”

“Answer the goddamned question.”

“Very well. Yes, I’m asking you to take the Weasels out. They’re no longer of any use.”

“Christ reborn, the whole reason you asked for more was you were afraid the French would end up on Moscow’s tit. Now they are, and you say they’re of no use? My intelligence people tell me the French military has at least three hundred nuclear warheads. Those are Communist warheads now, twenty miles away from you. And you tell me you’re not worried.”

“I was never afraid of the French,” Somerset said easily. “I have at times been concerned about my own people. But it’s been quieter on the back benches than I feared might be the case. The truth is that the French look rather foolish from here, not at all threatening. The whole matter has been taken rather as a comedy.”