Ikon (24 page)

Every major national trend - from student uprisings to EST to jogging to conservative chic - was a part of a carefully-devised socio-psychological scheme to make Americans more uncertain of their future, more critical of their past. Thus, when Ikon considers that the time is right, the new golden age of socialism will be announced. A full detente between America and the Soviet Union will form the basis for a ‘proletarian amalgamation’. In five or ten years’ time, we’ll all be drinking vodka and singing The Red Flag.’

‘But how did they do it? How did they do it without anybody finding out?’ demanded Titus.

‘A great many people did find out. Some have been killed. Others have decided that it is probably safer to keep quiet. Like me. They summoned me up to the Pentagon one September morning and said that they were going to tell me something I wouldn’t much like; but that if I didn’t help them, my sons and daughters and wife would all be murdered. So you can see that I didn’t really have very much choice, did I? I was personally to ensure that all Minutemen missiles were safe, by which they meant that not one of them was to carry a warhead that actually worked. The delivery systems are still functional; and Boeings are still carrying out research on new warheads. But they will never be used against the Soviet Union. If they are ever re-activated and used against anybody at all, it will be the Chinese. We have to be quite clear of this, Titus. Eve’r since Khruschev called up Kennedy and said that there were dozens of long-range nuclear missiles on Cuba, all aimed toward the American heartland, Kennedy didn’t have amy choice. Kennedy surrendered, and then to keep the world on an even political keel he and Khruschev decided between them to make it appear that Khruschev had stood down, and agreed to withdraw the missiles. I guess it was surprising that nobody realized what had actually happened at the time. I suppose we were all too relieved. But that was the only occasion on which Khruschev ever appeared to back down. Backing down just wasn’t in his character. Here,

come into the car, let me show you something. I expect you could use a drink, too.’

The two old friends sat in the back of the Lincoln limousine, and closed the doors. Pierce let down the walnut cocktail table, and poured them each a large glassful of Wild Turkey. Then he produced a brown envelope, with a HIGHLY SECRET label on it, and shook out two or three old but still glossy photographs.

‘These are the pictures we didn’t release to the media, the day that the Russians supposedly started shipping their missiles back to the Soviet Union.’

Titus picked them up, and frowned at them quickly. ‘What am I looking at?’ he wanted to know. ‘They look just the same as any other picture to me. Missile tubes on the decks of Russian freighters.’

‘Ah, but you look here. The airplane taking the picture has flown quite low. Too low, as it turns out. You can see quite clearly that the nearest missile container, on the port side of the deck, is hollow. The sun’s shining through it. You see here, where the sun falls on the bulkhead? These missile tubes are nothing but shams. Cuba is still bristling with strategic nuclear missiles and always will be.’

Titus sipped his whiskey, and then sat back in his seat and looked at Pierce with an expression that was half-defeat, half-resentment.

‘Why didn’t you tell me, Pierce? All these years, and I never even guessed. Jesus, Pierce, I was in charge of most of those weapons. It never once occurred to me that there was anything wrong with them. Blind faith, I suppose. Blind stupidity.’

‘You weren’t to know, Titus. It wasn’t the ordinary kind of sabotage. It was a massive and systematic programme of secret disarmament, carried out by experts who weren’t afraid to use maximum force. I know for a fact that at least a hundred service-men have been killed over the years for trying to disclose secret information to the media. And quite a few of the media people have found themselves being blackmailed or threatened. One reporter who was working on a nuclear disarmament story for the

Reader’s Digest was found in his car at the bottom of Chin-coteague Bay. It’s quite possible that if anyone finds out what I’ve been saying to you, then i`ll be at serious risk, too. But when you called me this morning, I couldn’t very well fob you off. It’s time you knew. I just hope that you’ll be able to face up to the implications of it.’

‘It means I’m a captive,’ said Titus, in a throaty voice. ‘It means I’m not free any more.’

‘You haven’t been free for twenty years.’

‘But, damn it, Pierce, now I know it! Last week I was the happy idiot who didn’t realize that he was locked up in a cage; now I can feel the bars.’

Pierce laid a hand on his arm. ‘I don’t want you to rush off and do anything rash, Titus. You’ll be putting a whole lot of people at risk, including me and my family. Just go home tonight and think about it, and then decide what you’re going to do. That’s if you’re going to do anything at all. Meet me tomorrow if you can around the same time, on the shoreline at Windmill Point.’

Titus finished the rest of his whiskey with one grimacing swallow. Then he climbed out of the Lincoln and walked back towards his Porsche, tugging his fishing hat on to his head as he did so.

‘Remember what Kennedy once said, Pierce called after him. ‘The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.’

Titus stopped, and turned around. ‘That was after the option of a military solution was no longer available to him, he snapped. That was after he had already sold us out.’

Pierce said something in reply, but his voice was drowned by the enormous thunder of another C-5A Galaxy, coming in to land from the west. Its shadow passed over them both like the shadow of history; a history which filled them both with fear, and which neither of them would ever be able to influence again.

Twenty-Nine

Lieutenant Berridge was out jogging with his wife Stella on the banks of the Arizona Canal. It was just six o’clock in the morning; still cool; and the slowly-rippling waters of the Indian-built canal reflected the freshly-risen sun and the overhanging leaves of the willows. They crossed the canal by the bridge which leads into the Biltmore Hotel, and turned west through the groves of orange trees, their professional running-shoes slapping on the blacktop, their Lacoste jogging suits stained down the back with sweat.

‘This kidnap case isn’t doing anything for my running,’ protested Lieutenant Berridge. I’m exhausted.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Stella. Her blonde hair bounced as she ran. ‘That’s two nights straight without any sleep. Can’t you leave it to Mulligan?’

‘Not yet. Not until I find out what the hell it’s all about.’

‘Supposing you never do? They could have taken the girl and killed her and buried her in the desert and who would ever know?’

i would know. Me. I have an instinct for abductions like that. But I think this girl is still alive. What’s more, I think that what’s-his-name - what’s-his-name? - Daniel Korvitz, knows something that we don’t. You know? I think he’s holding something back. Because why else would he fly off to LA with that Kathy Forbes girl from the Flag?’

‘Maybe they’re in love, said Stella.

‘In love? Nobody would fancy that blue-stocking.’

‘Oh, no? I thought she looked quite pretty in her photograph.’

‘She’s average, that’s all.’

Stella dug at his ribs with her elbow. ‘Whenever you say that a girl is “average, that’s all” that means that you fancy her like all hell. Wolf man Berridge is on the prowl again. Thank God she’s gone off to the Coast.’

They had almost reached 24th Street, although they were still screened from the main road by a right-hand curve and a thicket of orange trees. Without any warning, a pale-blue Thunderbird came rolling out of a side-turning and stopped just in front of them, wallowing on its suspension. Lieutenant Berridge broke his jogging rhythm and slowed down, catching at Stella’s arm to slow her down, too. The Thunderbird stayed where it was, right on the corner, its engine running and its driver silhouetted in the shadowy interior.

‘Something wrong?’ Stella asked Lieutenant Berridge.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Lieutenant Berridge cautiously, but slowed right down to a walk. He circled around the front of the Thunderbird and approached the driver’s window. With the whine of a tired electric motor, the window was lowered. The numbered sticker on the car’s windshield informed Lieutenant Berridge at once that this was a rental car; and the first thing he saw as the window opened was the plastic Avis tag on the ignition keys.

The driver was a man in late middle-age, wearing a poisonous brown sport shirt and sunglasses. He smiled at Lieutenant Berridge, and said, ‘Anything I can do?’

‘I’m a police officer. You’re causing a potential obstruction here. Would you mind moving on?’

‘You’re a police officer?’ asked the man, looking Lieutenant Berridge up and down.

‘Even police officers get time off,’ Lieutenant Berridge told him. ‘But I’d appreciate it if you’d move along now, please.’

The man took off his sunglasses. His eyes were as dead as stones, and surrounded by wrinkles. The eyes of a man who has spent years searching distant horizons, years peering through smoky bars, years looking for one thing and one thing only, and has found it - and is enjoying his triumph.

‘You must be Lieutenant Berridge,’ the man said.

Lieutenant Berridge backed off a little and then glanced behind him at Stella. Strangers who called him by name always alarmed him. He had been on the beat with a cop

called O’Manion once, back in his rookie days, and one night on Indian School Road, just as they were climbing into their car, someone had yelled out, ‘O’Manion!’ and a shotgun blast had hit O’Manion full in the back, blood and smoke and tatters of drill-coloured uniform.

‘Don’t be frightened, lieutenant/ the man said. ‘I’m not going to cause any trouble unless I have to. But don’t try to be a hero, either. I’m holding an Ingram machine-gun in my lap, and it’s pointing at you through the door, and one incautious or intemperant move will result in severe damage to this automobile’s bodywork, and you.’

Lieutenant Berridge reached one hand behind him, and tried to wave at Stella to back away. But Stella came a few steps closer, and said, ‘Come on, honey. I’m losing my adrenalin.’

‘Don’t say a word,’ the man cautioned Lieutenant Berridge. ‘I’ve come here to warn you, not to hurt you. You’re dealing with the kidnapping of Susie Korvitz, right? And that little bit of business at Mesa.’

That’s right.’ Lieutenant Berridge’s face was as stiff as the celluloid features on a rag doll. ‘What does that have to do with you?’

‘You don’t need to know. All you have to do is fail to find any useful evidence, decline to follow up any cock-and-bull leads, and eventually let both cases sink with silence and dignity into the files.’

‘And what if I tell you to go fuck yourself?’

Then I’ll kill you. You remember poor Chief Ruse?’

-You killed Chief Ruse?’

That’s right. And I’ll kill you too, if you don’t behave yourself. Well - I have to make threats like that, you understand. They’re part of my orders.’

Lieutenant Berridge said to Stella, in a clear voice, ‘Back away, baby, you understand me?’

Stella said, ‘What? What did you say?’

‘I said back away! I said - take cover

The man in the car suddenly lifted from his lap a small black-painted gun. Lieutenant Berridge recognized it at once and felt a freezing surge of fear. For one chip of one

second he couldn’t decide what to do: but then he ran straight towards the car, straight towards the man with the gun, jumped up and over him, and hurled himself with a clumbering bang on to the Thunderbird’s roof.

His unorthodox action saved him, for as he jumped, the man opened fire, and Lieutenant Berridge heard that brisk and terrifying burp that characterized the Ingram ll’s high-speed fire. One thousand, one hundred rounds per minute, one bullet every five-hundredths of a second, with a velocity of 900 feet per second. The very first burst of thirty bullets took one-and-a-half seconds, and tore into Stella’s legs as she stood in front of the car in total surprise and confusion.

Both her legs were completely severed at mid-thigh, in a horrifying splatter of blood and bone. She had time to look down at her legs with an expression of baffled hurt. She even had time to look up again, her eyes wide, searching for Lieutenant Berridge. Then her body literally fell off her legs, and she hit the ground with a hideous thump, her severed limbs collapsing in different directions. She thrashed her mutilated thighs, splashing blood across the road in an arabesque of scarlet. Her scream was so high-pitched that Lieutenant Berridge could scarcely hear it. It was the kind of scream that could wake dogs at night; the kind of scream that would come to you for year after year to come, in hideous dreams.

The man in the car wrestled to change magazines. Lieutenant Berridge slithered forward across the vinyl roof, and hooked his left arm down into the open window, grappling at the man’s shoulder, and then at his neck. The man struck at him with the machine-gun, chipping flesh from his knuckles, but Lieutenant Berridge hung on to his throat and swung himself down from the car’s roof. Now he could seize the man with both hands; and he did so, directly, and slammed the man’s head forward so that he broke his nose against the car’s window-shelf. There was a vivid splash of blood, and the man gargled and tried to wrench himself away.

‘Out!’ shrieked Lieutenant Berridge, hysterical. ‘Out of

the fucking car!’ He tore open the door and dragged the man on to the road, punching him again and again in the face. The machine-gun clattered on to the blacktop and skidded underneath the car.

The man tried to stand up, but Lieutenant Berridge gave him a karate chop to the side of his throat that snapped one of the bones in Lieutenant Berridge’s right-hand pinkie. Then, as the man collapsed, Lieutenant Berridge delivered a piledriving kick in the balls, and felt a testicle smash. The man dragged himself a few feet towards the side of the road, and then collapsed, whimper-mg arid groaning.