Atropos (31 page)

Regina Hudson was standing in the lobby of the hotel, losing her temper by inches. The Senator’s endorsement and Babington’s appreciation of it had been over for twenty minutes now. Mark was supposed to meet her
immediately
after. She did not like being stood up, even by a Van Horn.

But it was more than that, more than who Mark was or what he and Regina had been to each other (whatever that was). Most of her anger was directed at herself. She had agreed to this. She was
supposed
to be the publisher of the nation’s most powerful newspapers, and here she was, waiting in a hotel lobby like a blind date. Or at best, a cub reporter.

To hell with it, she decided.
Worldwatch
will live without the interview. I’ll get to a pay phone, she thought, I saw one just outside the ladies’ room while the Senator was making his speech, find out where Allan is, and spend the night with him the way I spent the afternoon. I’m an executive. I hire competent people. Let them get on with it.

She’d taken two steps in the direction of the ladies’ room when the elevator opened, and Mark Van Horn stepped out. Dammit, she thought.

“Regina,” Mark said. He was a little breathless, and he seemed to be walking strangely, but he appeared ridiculously happy to see her. He wore no tie, and was carrying his jacket over his arm. “I’m sorry I’m late. I ran into some people.”

Regina sighed. “Oh, it’s all right. Nice speech.”

“What?”

“Your father made a nice speech.”

“He always does. He’s good at it. I suppose you want the family angle.”

Regina smiled in spite of herself. The Van Horns probably had a gene for knowing what the press wanted and giving it to them. “Where do you want to eat? We’ll go as soon as Sean Murphy gets here. He went to check our coverage of the party. There’s a pretty good steak house down the street, I understand.”

“Do you have a car with you?”

“Well, yes, I do. But I don’t really want to drive anywhere, Mark—”

“Yes, you do.”

“—I mean we’re right in the middle of town, there must be a dozen places that ... What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Yes, you do.’”

Regina felt something poke her in the ribs. She looked down. Mark lifted the jacket over his arm enough to show her the gun.

“Yes, you do,” he said again.

Mark looked at Regina as she drove. Her chin was firm; she kept her eyes on the road. The little bitch had guts. If she’d been less inhibited in her love life, they could have done great things together.

“Take the ramp for the highway,” Mark told her. A little bit of pink tongue flicked across her upper lip. “Oh,” Mark went on. “If you’re thinking of flooring it and threatening to crack us up if I don’t get rid of the gun, go ahead and do it. You won’t live past seventy-five miles per hour. Right now, Regina, I’m a man with nothing to lose. The police and the KGB and God knows what else is after me. You are alive only because I’m betting that not even the KGB would want to monkey with the American press. Got it?”

Mark wondered how much of that he meant. He was sure the KGB would be on his ass—all the reasons he’d postulated for their keeping him alive went out the window once you bought the idea that the Russians’ plan had been to deliver Dad to the wrong candidate, then destroy them both. And Mark did buy it. It was beautiful, it was safe, and it was nasty. It was exactly the kind of thing he might have thought of himself.

Then why hadn’t he?

He told himself to shut up. He couldn’t think of every goddam thing, could he? The thing he had to think of was what he was going to do now.

“What are you going to do now?” Regina asked. The bitch had been reading his mind.

“Shut up and drive.”

“I mean, you’re obviously in trouble, Mark. But you can’t be in worse trouble than my mother was. Allan Trotter helped her; maybe he could help you.”

Mark had to laugh. “I doubt it,” he said. “Trotter’s dead.”

Regina gave a little gasp at that. She said nothing more, but her chin was trembling now. Mark derived an obscure satisfaction from watching it.

But what am I going to do?
Well, Ainley had probably gotten tired of waiting for the police by now. He was undoubtedly telling them that Trotter had killed the Senator in an attempt to get Mark. He would tell them that there might be reason to believe something bad had befallen Regina Hudson, too. And what had happened to Mark? Could Trotter have had an accomplice?

It might not have been the best idea to plant all that for Ainley to recite—for one thing, it would make him and Regina the subject of a police search. Still, it was a good story for later.

And all Mark could do now would be to do his best to make it stand up. He had to tie off loose ends—the girl, Albright, Jeff and Ed—then convince the cops the three men had been Trotter’s accomplices and that they’d killed Regina. If the fact that Jeff and Ed worked for Gus Pickett tainted that old bastard, too, Mark wouldn’t cry about it.

After that, he’d show up at the police station like a good boy, yet another Van Horn hero. That would take care of the police.

Then he’d gather up Ainley Masters and go back to the home state, to the home compound, triple the security, and stay there as many months or as many years as it took to get the KGB off his tail.

He’d do it. The Van Horn brains, skill, and luck might have skipped his father, the poor dumb bastard, but Mark had them in full measure. Trotter had thought he was finished, but Trotter was wrong.

Mark was beginning to realize that for Mark Van Horn, there were no defeats, only temporary setbacks.
Whatever we do, it must be right.

D
ON’T MOAN, DAMMIT! WHATEVER
you do, don’t moan.

Trotter kept telling that to himself, shouting,
screaming
it over and over silently in his mind. Lying there on the floor of that godforsaken dressing room without moaning was the second-hardest thing he’d ever done.

The hardest was not reacting when Mark Van Horn casually suggested that Ainley Masters put another bullet or two into him. That wouldn’t have been a moan—it would have been a cry of rage, or a whimper.

Sooner or later, he would have to make some kind of noise—it was inevitable. When he did, he’d also have to make a move, because Ainley Masters was still there, about three feet away from him, still holding the gun.

Trotter couldn’t see him. He’d blacked out temporarily when the third slug hit, and landed with his eyes closed. He didn’t dare open them—what if Masters was looking at him when he did? He could feel his back muscles tighten at the idea of the bullet that would crash his spine and finish the job.

He forced himself to relax; to take shallow, almost imperceptible breaths through his nose. You’ve been trained for this, he told himself. You’ve been trained for everything. Use it.

All right. All right.

For starters, he was alive. That alone put him ahead of the game. Three slugs at that range, even with a little popgun like Masters’s .25, could very easily have been lethal. Mark Van Horn had been positive that they were—that branded him an amateur. All Mark’s shooting had been done with heavier guns.

Trotter was in a lot of pain, but there was no blood in his mouth or nose.

That meant that the bullets had missed his lungs. His right arm was killing him, he doubted if it would be any good at all; his chest felt as if he were lying face-down on rocks.

Trotter had to make his move soon. Now. He didn’t like what he’d heard them saying about Regina. Not at all. Van Horn could use her to—

Trotter made himself stop. He couldn’t afford to worry about that until he got out of there. He couldn’t get out of there without thinking.

It was easy to see what was working against him—unarmed, wounded, possibly unable to move at all—either or both of the bullets that hit his torso could be lodged in his spine, in which case this entire train of thought became academic. So forget about that, too. Either he could move, or he couldn’t. He’d find out soon enough.

All right. Assuming he
could
move, what did he have going
for
him? Two things. Surprise, for one. If Trotter could do anything at all, it was a lot more than Ainley Masters would be expecting from a dead man.

Trotter’s other advantage was experience, or rather Ainley Masters’s lack of experience. If Masters had any idea of what he was doing, he would have sat down in that chair in front of the dressing table so that he’d be able to sight a straight line past Trotter’s (and the Senator’s) body to the hall. That way, he could correct Trotter’s condition if he showed unwelcome signs of life, and he could make sure that anybody who wanted to enter the room was a friend.

Instead, Masters was pacing back and forth, muttering little prayers asking that the police get there soon, that Mark should hurry up, that he didn’t like this, and what was the press going to say?

Every third or fourth trip past Trotter, Masters would open the door and look out, then walk back toward the makeup table. That was the time. He came within three feet of Trotter, he was facing away from him, and he had his mind on other things.

Trotter listened. Step, step, step, step. Door opens. Masters’s curses. Door closes. Step, step, step, step, step.

Now.

Trotter opened his eyes to gauge the range, then, with a sudden effort, whipped his legs around as hard as he could. The effort made him scream—a high, almost voiceless scream that sounded inhuman to him even through the pain that had caused it.

But the maneuver had worked. Trotter’s shins caught Masters just above the ankles and tore his legs out from under him. The gun went flying as Masters hit the ground.

Pushing with his legs and his good left arm, Trotter half-crawled, half-sprang on top of Masters. He pinned the smaller man with his weight and smashed his face with his left fist until Masters lost consciousness.

Then Trotter collapsed on top of him. He heard Masters’s breath rasping in his ear, and was vaguely glad he hadn’t killed him.

Now, Trotter could moan. And whimper, and scream. Which he did until he decided that not only wasn’t it getting him anywhere, it didn’t even seem to reduce the pain much.

Well,
he thought,
at least I’m not paralyzed.
Then he laughed, but that hurt, too.

Trotter took a deep breath. I have to stand up, now, he thought. He thought it five times before he actually tried it. In a way, it was worse than jumping Masters. He’d
had
to do that. This was a matter of choice.

He struggled to his feet, staggered, then almost went down again as a wave of nausea washed over him. There was a small sink in a corner of the dressing room; Trotter made it in time to throw up. He stood there retching long after his stomach was empty. He felt as if he were being torn in half.

Finally, it stopped. “Jesus,” he said. He looked into the sink. No blood in the vomit. My lucky day, he thought. Shot twice in the chest, didn’t get shot in the heart, lungs or stomach. If he could get these holes in him covered up, he could live for hours yet before he bled to death, or died of gangrene or peritonitis. Hours would probably be enough. By tomorrow, expert help would be there, and he could take it easy in the hospital.

There were towels on a shelf above the sink. Half of them looked clean enough; the other half, though folded, had smears of stage makeup on them.

Trotter turned on the cold water, took off his glasses and splashed his face over and over. He soaked his jacket and shirt in the process, but he was going to lose them, anyway.

He put his glasses back on and struggled out of the wet clothes. He assessed the damage in the mirror.

There were two holes in his arm. That meant the bullet had passed right through. That wound could be ignored, except for the fact that it hurt like a son of a bitch. There was a hole just to the right side of his sternum, and a bluish lump under his skin halfway between the hole and his armpit. That was the third bullet, the one that had hit him as he was going down. Thank God for luck and small-caliber weapons, Trotter thought. The bullet had hit a rib and skidded along it under the skin, not piercing the chest cavity at all. It had also fucked up any motion of his right arm that the first bullet might have left him, but you can’t have everything.

The second bullet was the joker. That one had entered just below the rib cage, and was still in there, somewhere. Blood oozed from the wound freely, and when he moved it opened and closed like a tiny mouth. Trotter was almost sick again, looking at it. Instead, he covered the two holes in his chest with a clean, folded towel, tying it in place with strips cut off another towel with his pocketknife. He had to lean against the edge of the sink to get his arm to bend enough to get his right hand into play, an effort that brought tears to his eyes, but he got it done. Then he cut a wider strip, and with his left hand and teeth tied it around his arm. He picked up the .25, closed his eyes, swallowed twice, and left the room.

The air was cold on his bare chest. That was bad; a sign of loss of blood. Couldn’t stop to worry about it. What he needed now was clothes. Ainley Masters’s were hopeless, the man was much too small. The Senator’s shirt and jacket would be no improvement over his own bloody and bullet-riddled stuff. That left the security guard.

The man was moaning when Trotter got to him; Trotter put him back under, hoping as he did that he wasn’t giving the poor bastard brain damage. Trotter rolled him out of his jacket and shirt and struggled into them. They were a bit tight, especially with the improvised bandage underneath them, but they’d do. Trotter kept the jacket buttoned in the hallway to hide the blood that was even now soaking its way through the towel.

He took the elevator to the lobby. A phone, he thought. Got to get to a phone. As he crossed the lobby, he supposed he was walking all right. Certainly no worse than a man who’d had a few drinks. He was glad now for all the exercises he’d done to strengthen his legs.

A voice behind him said, “Trotter!”

Trotter almost drilled him with the automatic. His left hand was on its way out of the jacket pocket with the gun when he recognized the voice as that of Sean Murphy.