Ikon (28 page)

Titus, please. I’m trying to help.’

‘How can you help?’ Titus shouted at her. ‘How can you possibly help? My entire life was flushed down some sneaky historical toilet when I wasn’t looking, and for twenty years I’ve been marching forward with my head in the air and my pants round my goddammed ankles. How the hell can you help?’

‘Titus - ‘

‘Leave me alone, Nadine, for the love of God. I’ve got a bottle of brandy to finish.’

‘Titus, please.’

Titus shook his head, again and again and again, until his jowls wobbled. Then he stamped both feet on the floor and roared, ‘No! No! No! No! No!’

Nadine put down her drink, stood up quietly, and left him. On the way out, the security guard said, ‘Everything all right, Mrs Alexander?’

‘Everything’s fine, thank you. Oh - and could you do something for me? Could you arrange for Mr Alexander’s car to be waiting outside for us at ten o’clock tomorrow morning? We have an appointment on Pennsylvania Avenue.’

The security guard glanced into the library where Titus was glowering at the floor as if he could make the rug catch fire by the heat of his vision alone. ‘Sure thing, Mrs Alexander/ he said, in a cautious voice. ‘Ten o’clock sharp.’

Thirty-Three

Two other incidents occurred at midnight that night, although in Las Vegas, Nevada, in the Pacific Time Zone, midnight came three hours later. A chambermaid from the Las Vegas Futura Hotel left the hotel’s service entrance and walked north-eastwards along the alleyway which led out on to Bonanza Road, where she intended to catch a cab to take her home. Her cleaning shift had finished at 11:15 p.m., but she had spent three-quarters of an hour in the hotel kitchen, talking to a friend who had recently divorced her husband and eating a supper of cold ham, cheese, and salad.

She was halfway along the alleyway when a voice called out, ‘Anna!’ She turned around to say, T’m not Anna,’ when there was a deafening shotgun blast, then another. The shots were fired at such close range that she was completely eviscerated, and she died before she fell to the ground. The Chinese night-chef, who had heard the shots, came running out to the alleyway to find it plastered spectacularly in blood. But there was no sign of the chambermaid’s killer; only an inquisitive cat which had jumped away when the gun first went off, and had now returned to sniff the warm scent of death.

At home, on the scrubby edge of the Nevada desert, the chambermaid’s husband lay awake, waiting for the familiar sound of the cab bringing his wife back from town. The radio beside his bed was turned down low, so that it wouldn’t wake up the children. It played Stand By Your Man, by Tammy Wynette, and he whistled along i it, under his breath.

He had never known that two years ago his wife had caught a glimpse of Senator Marshall Roberts leaving Room 1198 of the Futura Hotel with a high-class hooker known as Rheta Haze. He never would know. But, in about twenty minutes’ time, he would hear the warble-idibble-warble of a police siren as a patrol-car sped out

along the desert road to bring him the news that his wife was dead. He would see the red light flashing across his bedroom ceiling and know, before they told him, that something had gone terribly wrong.

Also at midnight, the President of the United States Marshall Roberts was undressing for bed when there was a ring on his private telephone. He called to his wife, ‘It’s all right, dear, I’ll get it,’ and walked across the white-carpeted bedroom, unbuttoning his cuffs as he went. He picked up the Louis Quinze-style telephone, and said, ‘Marshall Roberts.’

‘Good evening, Mr President,’ said a thick voice. “This is Nikolai. Please forgive me for calling you so late.’

‘Not at all,said Marshall, although without much patience. ‘What can I do for you, Nikolai?’

‘I couldn’t sleep, Mr President.’

‘Is that unusual?’

‘Well, I have my tablets. But it is not the pain … I have a feeling of fear, Mr President. I feel like Caesar before the Ides of March.’

‘Is it Kama you’re worried about?’

‘I’m not sure. I’ve never felt like this before, not in my entire career. Mr President, do you think perhaps that tonight is the night when I am going to die?’

‘Don’t talk nonsense. You’re probably over-tired.’

‘Perhaps.’ There was a breathy pause. Then Ikon said, ‘You know that the RING talks may now proceed. All opposition has been completely eliminated.’

The chambermaid?’

‘Later tonight. But there won’t be any slip-ups.’

‘I see. Well, I’ll start drafting the announcement tomorrow.’

There was another, longer pause. Marshall Roberts said, ‘Is that all, Nikolai? I’m quite tired. I’d like to get some sleep now.’

‘I’m afraid, Mr President. Don’t you think that’s strange?’

‘Not in your position, not at your time of life.’

‘But I’m afraid.’

‘Have a drink. Some of that cherry vodka of yours. Then count sheep. Or blessings.’

‘What blessings do , have, Mr President?’

‘You’re still alive, Nikolai. That’s a blessing. And the world hasn’t yet been incinerated by nuclear weapons. That’s another blessing. And, if you like, I’ll stop by at Pennsylvania Avenue tomorrow afternoon and share a drink with you.’

‘Very well, said Ikon, with audible uncertainty. Then, ‘Very well, I will try to sleep. But this feeling I have … of death. It makes me cold!’

Try an electric blanket, suggested Marshall Roberts, and hung up.

Thirty-Four

That night, as Daniel lay in bed, he heard the door creak open. He froze, and reached across for the three-foot long section of angle-iron which he had left beside his bedhead. The room was utterly dark, except for a single yellow wedge of light, the size of a piece of cheese, on the opposite side of the ceiling.

Who’s there?’ Daniel whispered. His nose had been feeling slightly blocked up, which was one reason he had been finding it difficult to sleep; but now his sinuses emptied instantly. His balls tightened, and there was a flicker of nerves in his stomach.

‘It’s me,’ came the whispered reply. ‘Kathy. Can I come in?’

Daniel let out a breath, and relaxed. ‘For God’s sake, I could have killed you. What do you want?’

She tiptoed across the room and leaned over him. He saw dimly the shape of her breasts, and realized that she was naked. She smelled of Cie. ‘I can’t get to sleep in that room, right next to the bathroom. Skellett keeps banging his head against the wall and making terrible groaning noises.’

‘Well, jump in here, then.’

She lifted the cover and bounced in beside him, taking him immediately into her arms. She was warm and rounded and soft, but her nipples were as stiff and sweet and wrinkled as California dried plums. She thrust one leg in between Daniel’s legs, so that she was straddling his thigh; and the message of that move was obvious when he felt the night-cooled stickiness of her pubic hair against his bare skin. He said, ‘Kathy?’ But questions were unnecessary. His cock rose against her stomach until it was pushing against her navel; and he took her face in her hands and kissed her, deeply and urgently.

‘Don’t let’s wait,’ she gasped. ‘Please don’t let’s wait.’

He twisted around in the bedsheets, and climbed on top of her. She reached down and held his erection in her hand, and guided it up between her legs. He hesitated for a second, and then pushed slowly forward so that he slid deep into her slippery warmth, until it was impossible for him to push any deeper.

‘Fuck me, she demanded, digging her fingernails into the muscles at the small of his back. ‘I don’t want to think, I don’t want to do anything. I just want to fuck.’

They made love for nearly an hour, strenuously and sometimes furiously. She cursed him and cooed at him, stroked him and bit him. She forced her hips up against him whenever he began to falter, and coaxed him into one erection after another. Then the moment came when she was straddling him, pushing herself up and down on him so quickly that with each upward stroke she almost lost the tip of his penis. And in that moment she seemed to collapse like a convolvulus flower, like a dark warm wind drawing in on itself, and she trembled and shook and cried out to him, ‘Daniel, save me! Daniel!’

They lay for a long time side by side in silence. It had

all happened so quickly that they had to turn it over in their minds, from the moment when Kathy had first opened the door, and Daniel had reached for his homemade billy-club. Kathy said, after a while, ‘You’re thinking what a whore I am.’

‘A whore? No? Exactly the opposite. Whores do it for money. You did it because you wanted to.’

‘And you?’

I did it because I like you, and because I think you’re very pretty, and very attractive, and because you’re exactly my type.’

‘I thought country-and-western heroines were your type.’

‘Isn’t a man allowed to change his type?’

‘A man’s allowed to do anything he wants to. But then so is a woman.’

Daniel reached across her and switched on the bedside lamp. ‘Do you want a drink or anything? I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep tonight. I keep thinking about Ikon.’

She kissed his shoulder. ‘You know something …

when I went out to report on Margot Schneider’s murder

I never dreamed it would lead to anything like this.’

‘Neither did Willy Monahan. God, if only he’d known.’

‘Poor Willy.’

‘Yes,’ said Daniel. ‘Poor Willy.’

Kathy stroked the inside of his upraised arm. ‘You know something?’ she said, ‘I liked the look of you the moment I first met you. Did anyone tell you how attractive you are, as a man? You have this beautiful face. You look sensitive, but you look strong, too.’

He leaned forward and kissed her. ‘I’m not always strong. I haven’t been particularly strong over the past few years.’

‘But why not? You have a charm about you, did you know that? A real sexual grace. And yet you don’t have the confidence that ought to go with it.’

‘Well, I guess it’s partly because Candii walked out on me. She was kind of my dream girl. That was before I changed my type, I hasten to add.’

Kathy laughed. ‘You don’t have to change your type, just for me.’

The way you raped me just then, I think it’s the least I can do.’

‘I raped you? I didn’t notice you protesting.’

‘I was afraid you might hurt me if I did.’

Kathy held herself close to him, her breasts pressed against his chest, her hand proprietorially cupping his soft penis. She said, very quietly, ‘I can hear your heart beating. That frightens me, sometimes, to hear somebody’s heart beating. I keep thinking that it’s going to stop.’

Daniel said nothing, but stroked her hair. In spite of Kathy’s company, in spite of her closeness, he felt peculiarly lonesome. Perhaps it was the cold knowledge that America was no longer free, and that the future was no longer certain. How long before the Soviets would openly reveal their ownership of the United States, and begin to suppress free speech? How long before nobody would be allowed to say or write anything against the State and even the everyday grumbles at the Downhome Diner would be censored by fear? How long before the late-night television news would report nothing more than official party information, and all the silliness and eccentricity and childish greed of American television was lost forever? He thought of the Joni Mitchell song which had warned ‘you don’t miss what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone,’ and already, in Kathy’s arms, he began to miss America.

Kathy said, ‘I don’t know what to think about Kennedy any more. I used to adore him. He was my hero, when I was fourteen years old. And Jackie!’

It probably wasn’t his fault,’ said Daniel. ‘God Almighty - what would you have done, if somebody had told you that fifty 10-megaton missiles were aimed at New York, and St Louis, and Chicago, and Denver, and that they were so close that you had no possible chance of stopping them? Do you know how long it would take a

missile to get from Cuba to Houston? Well, I don’t know either, but it can’t be more than a couple of minutes. Willy would have known.’

Kathy didn’t answer. She was completely at a loss to judge what Kennedy had done; how right or wrong it might have been that he had sold America short to the Soviet Union. She didn’t know what threats he had faced, or what military and historical pressures had weighed against him. What was more, everything she had learned about the United States in the past twenty years had been part of an elaborate worldwide confidence trick, a global sham; and so every single political point-of-view which she had formed over the past twenty years - every single opinion on which she might have been able to base an assessment of Kennedy - was distorted, simply a conditioned reaction to a bogus situation. She felt duped and confused and stateless, and that was part of the reason she had made her way into Daniel’s bedroom and made love to him. Daniel at least was Daniel. He had a daughter and a diner and a place to go. He was a Jew, too, and that meant he had Israel, as well^as America. He had some roots, some sureness, something to tell him what he was and what opinions he ought to hold. She felt herself as if someone had suddenly told her that she was an orphan, and that the people she had thought were her parents had been only actors, paid to convince her that she was a normal child.

I`ll have that drink now, she told Daniel, gently. ‘A vodka, if there’s any left. I guess I might as well get used to drinking the stuff.’

Daniel climbed over her, and out of bed. He bent over and kissed her, and said, ‘You don’t want a midnight hamburger, do you? I’m beginning to feel like cooking again. There’s plenty of ground beef in the icebox, and onions.’

‘What are you trying to do, turn me into a San Francisco sideshow? The Fattest Female Reporter in the Westr

I’m beginning to miss cooking, that’s all.’

‘Well, don’t start taking your culinary obsessions out on me.’

Daniel raised both of his hands in surrender. ‘Okay, I promise I won’t cook you a hamburger. But don’t start complaining when you see mine.’

‘Daniel, she said, as he put his hand on the doorhandle.

He looked at her, his smile only just beginning to fade. Sitting up in bed, she looked pretty and short-sighted, vulnerable and almost childish. One breast was bare, soft and curved and pink-nippled.