Asterisk (14 page)

Burlingham, finally, had stopped talking. Dilbeck looked around the room. Marvell, of the National Security Agency, sat with his necktie undone and, in his shirtsleeves, had the appearance of a hotshot newspaper reporter hanging on a dramatic deadline. Whorley of Aerospace Defense Command looked his usual alert self. Razor-sharp, Dilbeck thought. You could imagine cutting yourself on Whorley. Nicholson, from the U.S. National Space Board, was gaunt and ghostly. You could see him suddenly fading away around the edges.

“I don't think we've really touched on the
reasons
for Hollander sending a man out there,” Dilbeck heard himself say. He was hoarse now; the smoke was in his throat. “I've heard a great deal of wild speculation—”

Burlingham interrupted: “You're in charge of security, Dilbeck. Let's hear it from you.”

Marvell sarcastically clapped his hands. “What's your feeling, Dilbeck?” he said. “Let's have it.”

Dilbeck closed his eyes. Security, he thought. You tried to sit on something, keep the lid closed: but it was the first law of security that nothing in the world was airtight. This is what the others did not understand. They thought you could create a vacuum, a perfect vacuum.

“Hollander had charge of intelligence, as you all know,” he said. “For personal reasons, as he put it, he quit. Who knows why?”

“Why wasn't there an investigation?” Marvell asked.

“He quit,” Dilbeck said. “The strains of the job, I daresay. His wife found somebody else. Divorce. That kind of thing tells on a man.”

“This is history,” Burlingham said.

“History,” Dilbeck said. Could he ever get Emily married off? he wondered. Fatigue: the most random thoughts came in like birds. “History,” he said again, feeling for threads. “Hollander's history is important here. For one thing, in the course of his job, he might have stumbled across some information. We can speculate further and say that he
must
have. Otherwise, why send a man out to that godforsaken place? Why go to that trouble? So Hollander has some information on Asterisk. How much? And what does he plan to do with it?”

Marvell rolled his shirt sleeves up in the manner of someone who faces a long night ahead. Dilbeck watched him and thought:
No, I want to wrap it up, I want to go home
.

“There's nothing in his background to suggest any association with foreign powers,” Dilbeck said. “His record is exemplary. I wish, in fact, we could find men of his caliber these days. Anyhow, somewhere along the way he discovered something about Asterisk—”

“And who do we blame for that?” General Whorley asked.

“Blame?” Dilbeck said. “Who do we blame for Major General Burckhardt? You people live in dreams. You think something like this is—is easily contained. You can put it in a box and tie it with a ribbon and nobody gets to look inside. But that's a fallacy. Hollander isn't a fool. The man is naturally curious. Some people take orders, don't ask questions, but Hollander—”

He watched Whorley get up and open a window a little way. Security, he thought. What did these people know? A little smoke and Whorley has to open a window. A mindless gesture. They were trying to pin every security breach on him, Dilbeck realized: I won't take the blame because there isn't any blame.

“Hollander,” Nicholson said. “I just don't see any viable alternative in a situation like this.”

Burlingham looked at his papers and nodded. “Nor do I,” he said.

Whorley had returned to his seat. Cold, damp air was dissolving the smoke in the room. “Asterisk is more important than Hollander,” he said. He had a way of saying things with finality, leaving no margins for argument. “And as far as Walter Burckhardt was concerned, I don't think that's my baby. I'm on record, I didn't want him to go any further, I wanted him out—”

“We're not discussing Burckhardt,” Marveil said. “It's Hollander. I think it's a problem we can safely leave to you, Dilbeck.”

Pontius Pilate, Dilbeck thought. He looked around the table. Hollander. He had always liked Ted. But that was the run of things. Death was no more significant than spitting a fishbone from your mouth. Nothing was permitted to get in Asterisk's way. Not even Ted.

Sometimes he felt he was scrambling up an impossible slope or being made, like Sisyphus, to fulfill a horrible task. You could not cover everything, you could not create a blueprint that would account for every single contingency. Poor Ted.

“I think we can assume that Hollander has some vital information on Asterisk,” he said. “I think we can also assume that he means to go public with it eventually.”

“Nobody would print such a thing,” Nicholson, somewhat shocked, said.

“Wrong,” Dilbeck said. “You have an underground press in this country, a fact that may have escaped your attention. You have alternative news media. If Hollander went public, he would find plenty of takers.”

“You're ruling out the Soviets?” Whorley asked.

“In Ted's case, yes.” Dilbeck felt his shoulders sag. He badly needed to be home, in bed, dreaming. Away from all this. Away. This was the moment he hated. “You're all agreed to leave this with me?”

The other faces nodded. Mob rule, he thought. The committee and the donkey. The whole and its parts.

He looked to the opposite end of the table. “Congressman?”

The congressman also nodded. As chairman of the House Science and Astronautics Committee he had some pull with this crew.

“I agree,” he said. “Deal with it as you like, Dilbeck.”

“I will,” Dilbeck said. He turned his face away from the congressman. It had been obvious to him for some time that Leach was a dying man. So are we all, he thought, so are we all dying men.

“Thank you for your confidence,” Dilbeck said in a hollow way, and gathered his papers together. The ball had been already set rolling; and even if they had disagreed he wasn't sure he could have stopped its momentum anyhow.

It made Tarkington sick.
Ted Hollander
, Not Ted Hollander. He had had to ask Sharpe three times if there was some misunderstanding. There was none.
Ted Hollander
. What the fuck was going on? He got out of the Catalina. Lykiard emerged a moment later, having taken a length of nylon rope from the glove compartment. They stood in the rain outside the apartment building. This was no Nazi, Tarkington thought. This was no funny Greek patriotic business, dead of night, blow away a couple of Gestapo babies. This was Ted Hollander.

He stared gloomily through the rain. Christ was not in his heaven tonight. Jesus, he thought. Hollander had stood by him during that whole London business when everyone else was screaming for his head or his resignation, preferably both. Even Lykiard, with the soul of a barracuda, even the Greek had to feel
some
twinge.

Holy fuck
. His stomach was going to turn. He had taken more white crosses and he was jangling, sick and jangling. He beat his fist into the open palm of his hand and watched Lykiard stick the sliver of rope into his coat pocket. The fucking Greek, no feelings, nothing in his heart.

The Greek nodded.

A car had drawn up outside the building. He saw the familiar figure of Hollander get out, slam the door, move toward the entrance-way. According to Sharpe it was apartment number thirty-six. Hollander had some cutie stashed away up there. Which figured, Tarkington thought. The wife was long since gone. It was an emptiness that Tarkington, in a dulled way, understood.

I can't hack this, he thought.

The Greek had already begun to cross the street. The rope in his pocket. Hand over the rope. Lykiard's eagerness was revolting, loathsome.
Oh, shit, Ted, what have you done to bring this on yourself?
He put his fingers inside his jacket to the holster. Pray you don't need to use it. Pray the Greek can do it fast with his nylon doodah.

He followed Lykiard. It was warm inside the building. You climb the stairs, make believe it's a stranger you're going to see.
To eliminate
.

Ted, sweetheart.

They used the stairway, reached the third floor.

“Lykiard, wait,” Tarkington said.

The Greek paused. He turned to Tarkington, who saw nothing in those eyes but hardness. He said nothing. He looked up the stairwell. At the very top there was a black skylight smeared with rain. A night like this, Tarkington thought. Fuck it all. You had to feel sick.

They went along the corridor. Thirty, thirty-two, thirty-four.

Thirty-six.

Yeah, Tarkington thought. To be an insurance salesman right now.
Excuse this late call, my dear fellow, but your policy contains a slight anomaly
.

Your expiration date has been somewhat altered.

Christ on crutches.

“Wait,” he whispered to the Greek. But the Greek wasn't much good at waiting.

She was asleep. Hollander bent over, kissed her lightly. He wondered how many had been here tonight. How many had come and gone? He took off his jacket. He hung it on the back of a chair. She didn't wake. He went into the kitchen. He turned on a light, looked at the messages on the blackboard.
Dave 12:30. Cancel karate. Susie's answering service 342/2050
. At least she didn't walk the streets, it hadn't come to that. What was the phrase they used? An escort service? Lonely businessmen burning with lust at conventions in slick hotels. Out-of-town strangers, carrying a telephone number furtively tucked inside their billfolds all the way from Reno to D.C. It was hardly more than one a night and, on some nights, not even that. What did it matter to him? He would have vanished out of her life soon enough. Time would pass. Things would continue. It didn't matter.

I knew him intimately, I didn't think he was capable of such an act
. They would interview her. She might even make money.
I was a traitor's mistress
. He took off his shoes. He opened the refrigerator and found a half-empty bottle of retsina and he poured himself a small glass. It tasted sour. He would have to get used to vodka, there was nothing else for it.

The right thing, he thought. It was too late for doubt.

Too late for that.

He raised his face. Someone was on the other side of the door. In the corridor. He went quickly and quietly into the bedroom and woke the girl.

“Ted,” she said. She put her arms around his neck. He drew away from her and put a finger to his lips.

“Sshh,” he said.

“I don't understand,” she said.

He put his hand over her mouth.
Say nothing
.

He went into the sitting room and sat in the darkness.

From the pocket of his pants he took out a switchblade knife and released the spring. He waited. He stared at the door. The girl appeared in the bedroom doorway, drawing a nightgown over her shoulders; a flimsy garment. It would flutter hearts in Cedar Rapids.

He motioned her away.

She stood, with the light falling behind her, and looked at him in a puzzled manner.

“Ted—”

He saw the front door handle turn. They were at the lock. He could hear the faint scratch of metal on metal, the tumblers of the lock clicking. He got out of the chair.

“Go back to bed,” he told the girl.

She was staring at the doorknob. “Ted,” she whispered.

The door opened.

He recognized the ropeman, Lykiard, and behind him, moving as slowly as ever, Billy Tarkington. Lykiard had the nylon taut between his two hands, the hands extended. The Greek was strong.

He came forward.

He stepped into darkness.

Grunting, Hollander thrust the blade upward between the ribs, dead into the chest cavity. In the bedroom doorway the girl was retching. The Greek went down on his knees and Hollander reached across the space in the dark and seized the hair and snapped the head backward, pushing Lykiard aside.

“Tarkie,” he said.

Tarkington stood with his hands at his side.

“Ted, look,” Tarkington said.

“Orders,” Hollander said.

“Fucking orders,” Tarkington said.

Hollander saw terror in the fat face.

“What's it going to be, Tarkie?”

Tarkington looked at the Greek. “I didn't want this, Ted.”

“You take orders, that's all you do, Tarkie. Don't ask questions.” Hollander felt a curious stabbing pain in his side, a stitch, he was beyond this kind of exertion. His lungs worked furiously. His eyes, there were dark spots floating before his eyes.

“I didn't ask for this,” Tarkington said.

“No,” Hollander said. “What's it going to be?”

Tarkington glanced at the girl. Hollander's cutie. She had her hand across her lips. He looked down at the Greek who was staining the rug. Old Ted; you had to hand it to him, he still knew the moves, coming up through the darkness before the Greek knew the time of day.

When he spoke his voice was shaky: “Ted, listen—”

“I could kill you,” Hollander said. “Before you had time to reach your holster, I could kill you.”

It was bluff, pure bull, Hollander felt weak, all his strength draining out of him.

“Or you could drag your dead friend out of here, go back, make up some convincing fiction, and give me a little time.”

Tarkington had thoughts of death. The girl in the doorway moved, went out of his vision; he heard water run and a toilet flush. He could, he supposed, do what Hollander wanted. He could do that. It was a problem with Sharpe.

“What do I say to Sharpe?” Tarkington asked.

“That's your business,” Hollander said.

Tarkington looked at the dead man. He was glad it wasn't Hollander.

“Make it up, Tarkie,” Hollander said. “It wouldn't be the first time, would it?”

“No,” Tarkington said. He reached down, felt for the Greek's pulse. Still and silent.

“Take him,” Hollander said.

“Okay.” Tarkington got down on his knees. He wasn't even sure he could drag Lykiard, never mind get him down several flights of stairs.