Liars and Tyrants and People Who Turn Blue (7 page)

“He wants you to help him persuade Shelby to give up her police work,” Max repeated.

“But I can't do that! That would … it would be downright
immoral
for Shelby to hide her talent! She … there's never been anyone like her, ever before! How could she … and he wants me to … she'd think I … I can't do it, Max!”

“Okay,” he laughed.

“What?”

“I said okay. I think you're right.”

“But you said—”

“I carried a message, Tee, that's all. We're going to have to let Shelby and Eric work it out for themselves.”

“How many times have you consulted her?” asked Kevin Gilbert.

“Oh, nine or ten,” said Lieutenant Nicolosi. “It'd be a lot more if she lived here in Pittsburgh, but we gotta pay air fare as well as her fee every time she comes. I tried to talk her into moving to Pittsburgh once, but she's got a husband who's tied to New York. Some sort of bigwig with the Jets.”

Gilbert knew all about Eric Kent and his job. In fact, he'd learned almost everything there was to know about Shelby. “And she's never been wrong once?” he asked almost desultorily. “Not even once?”

“Not here she hasn't. She's been right on the money every time. Have you talked to the police in New York and Boston?”

“Yes.”
And Philadelphia. And Detroit. And Atlanta. And everyplace else Shelby Kent and her extraordinary ability had added a new dimension to crime-fighting
.

“Anything else you want?” Lieutenant Nicolosi asked.

“No, I guess not,” said Gilbert.

CHAPTER 15

PASTELS ARE CHEAPER

Winner of the Longest Song Title Contest: “Dear Okie, If You See Arkie, Tell Him Tex Has Got a Job for Him Out in Californy, Pickin' Up Prunes, Squeezin' Oil Out of Olives”

“We're all outa Cherries Jubilee,” said the waiter.

“No you're not,” Shelby smiled sweetly.

The waiter looked startled. “You calling me a liar?”

Eric spoke up. “The lady's saying you're mistaken. Cherries Jubilee. Care to try again?”

The waiter muttered something under his breath and trudged off to the kitchen.

“Now why would he lie about that?” asked Tee.

“Too much fuss,” Max said. “Pulling the tray over here, lighting the cognac—extra effort for him.”

“Terrific,” sighed Tee.

“What's the matter, Tee?” Eric asked. “You look down in the dumps.”

“Tchaikovsky,” Tee mumbled.

“Tchaikovsky?”

Max said, “Metropolitan Ballet started rehearsing
The Nutcracker
today. The obligatory Christmas ritual for kids. Tee isn't exactly overjoyed.”

Shelby smiled at her sister in sympathy.

“I sometimes wonder,” Tee said, “whether children enjoy
The Nutcracker
as much as we like to think they do. It really is a boring ballet. Both to listen to and to watch. And I'm not altogether sure it's a wholesome thing for children to see. Here we have this rather peculiar little girl who has sexual fantasies about a, ahem,
nut
-cracker—a nutcracker that's been brought to her by an uncle who seems to be a sort of pander. In addition, the girl feels threatened by
mice!
So her way of coping with all this is to go dancing in the snow wearing nothing but a thin cotton nightgown. This child has problems.”

“Why, Tee,” laughed Shelby, “what a dreadful thing to say!”

“Tee doesn't like Tchaikovsky,” Max explained unnecessarily.

“Hey, we're supposed to be celebrating, remember?” Eric poured more champagne. “To San Diego!”

Shelby lifted her glass dutifully. “Which we'll be calling ‘home' exactly two months from tonight. To San Diego.”

“Where I hope you'll both be very, very happy,” Tee said earnestly.

“We will be,” said Shelby.
Even if it kills us
.

“What are you going to be doing instead of police work?” Max asked Shelby.

Eric answered for her. “Dr. Wedner gave us the name of a man at Cal Tech. Maybe more tests, maybe something else. He'll find something for her to do.”

“Something to keep the little woman busy,” Shelby said.

“Now, Shel, you agreed,” said Eric, annoyed at her tone.

“Yes, yes, I agreed.”

“To sunny California,” said Tee hastily, lifting an empty glass. “Where the skies are blue and the landscape is—”

“Beige,” finished Shelby.

Eric forced a smile. “Ecru?” he said hopefully.

Max laughed. “That reminds me of a technical stage director I worked for once, when I was about nineteen.”
Change the subject
. “Man named Ace, summer theater in Connecticut. Ace was shade blind. Not color blind—he could tell green from yellow and so on. But he couldn't distinguish among close shades of the same color. He couldn't tell beige from ecru, or even sky blue from aquamarine. He was still using the kind of scene paint that comes in powdered form that you mix with size water. Doesn't cost much that way. And Ace was a tight-fisted son of a gun—he never had us mix up any more paint than he thought we'd need. Which meant we often mixed up
less
than we needed, and then had to mix some more. So of course there was always the problem of making sure the shades matched exactly. Ace was always asking one of us if the new batch of paint matched the shade we'd already used. He pretended he was just checking to make sure, but he really couldn't see any difference at all.

“So one day when we'd just finished the flats for some musical we were doing, we were all standing around admiring our handiwork—airy, cheerful flats, all yellows and light greens and even some pinks, I think. Ace stood there for a minute and then said, ‘One thing you have to say for this set, it sure is loud!' And in my usual tactful way I said, ‘But Ace, they're all pastels!' Ace looked at me, and then looked at the flats, then looked at me again, then looked back at the flats. ‘Well,' he said, ‘pastels are cheaper!' And they are—dark shades cost more. But the man was so determined not to admit he couldn't tell the difference between ‘loud' and ‘pastel' that he pretended
economy
was the reason for his choice of colors.”

Eric laughed politely while Tee played with her champagne glass; she'd heard all about Ace and his problems.

“Max,” Shelby said quietly, “why did you tell that story? Something to do with false justification? Finding excuses for our bad choices?”

The table became ominously quiet.

Then: “Jesus Christ!” Eric exploded.

“I thought we were going to let them work it out by themselves,” Tee said to her husband.

“I thought so too,” Max said miserably. “Me and my big mouth.”

“Cherries Jubilee,” snarled the waiter.

CHAPTER 16

$34.50 STILL OWED ON A GRECIAN URN

The basic decisions on our participation in any conflict and our response to any threat
…
will be made by the regularly constituted civilian authorities
.

—John F. Kennedy, in an address to Congress, 28 March 1961

… to bring you this special bulletin
.

Two near-simultaneous explosions have just taken the lives of an estimated three thousand persons in Greece. One or more bombs were detonated in the UN Militia Supply Headquarters building in Athens an hour ago, destroying the building completely and injuring or killing its staff of over five hundred workers as well as an undetermined number of passersby. The headquarters co-ordinated supply movements for UN Militia installations in the entire eastern Mediterranean area
.

Also bombed was a UN garrison outside Delvinakion, a small town near the Greece-Albania border. Fatality estimates range as high as twenty-five hundred. Early unconfirmed reports attribute the bombings to Greek guerrillas
.

Stay tuned to this station for further details as they become available
.

UN Special Commission Formed

To Investigate Terrorism

NEW YORK (AP)—The UN Security Council met in emergency session today to consider the problem of the recent unprovoked attacks on UN Militia installations.

Council members quickly agreed to the formation of a special commission of inquiry. Announcement of the membership of the commission and the extent of its investigatory powers is expected momentarily.

The commission's prime function is to inquire into the two bombings that took place in Greece two days ago. The death toll from those bombings has now reached 3,200.

Rumors about the formation of an investigating commission have been circulating ever since the aborted Honduran uprising in March. Neither the Honduran nor the earlier Burmese rebellion succeeded because the rebels in both countries had been supplied with defective weapons.

Pedro Yglesias, arrested as the supplier of the Honduran weapons, has implicated UN Ambassador Mañuel Aguirrez in a plot to support rebel uprisings.

EYES ONLY

TO: Sir John Dudley

Explosives used in Greek bombings were purchased from Franz Meier, a munitions distributor headquartered in Zürich. Meier's computer tapes of all purchasing records for the past six months have been erased. Meier is being held for further questioning.

No connection between the Greek bombings and Ambassador Mañuel Aguirrez has been uncovered.

But he doesn't know that
, thought Sir John.

… in a bombshell announcement by Sir John Dudley, head of the UN Intelligence Agency. Sir John stated Ambassador Aguirrez has admitted responsibility for supplying Honduran rebels with defective arms but denies responsibility for the Greek bombings
.

Sir John stated that Ambassador Aguirrez has displayed “deep distress” over the slaughter in Greece and is anxious to disclaim all personal responsibility
.

Mr. Aguirrez named two other representatives to the UN as his “partners” in the business of supporting rebel groups in their activities against the UN Militia. The Ambassador says the bombings in Greece were the work of either Li Xijuan of the People's Republic of China or Heinrich Schlimmermann of West Germany
.

The naming of Li Xijuan came as a special surprise. Ambassador Li served as chairwoman of the UN committee that drew up the organizational plans for both the Militia and its intelligence operation
.

Ambassadors Aguirrez, Li, and Schlimmermann have been placed under diplomatic restraints pending the results of the UN special commission's investigation of the bombings in Greece and other rebel activities
.

CHAPTER 17

CITIZEN KANE OR KILLER KANE?

The air had a nip in it; Sir John Dudley walked briskly through the park to get some of the cobwebs out of his head.

Mañuel Aguirrez, Li Xijuan, Heinrich Schlimmermann. The names didn't go together, had never been associated with one another before. They didn't even sound right together. Aguirrez, Li, Schlimmermann. In order of importance: Li, Schlimmermann, Aguirrez.

The real shocker was Li Xijuan. That small, quiet woman who'd shown herself to be a dynamo when it came to getting the Militia authorized, organized, and legalized. She'd led the fight for an international peacekeeping force and then had slave-driven her committee until it hammered out a workable plan. She'd survived criticism and setbacks, media attacks both overt and covert. And she'd triumphed over the worst enemy of all—wishywashyness among her peers. Some of her original supporters in the UN had begun to have second thoughts, and even back home the power structure had given her a bad moment: she was recalled to China. But she'd come back.

She'd come back and finished the job, and in the process had won over the doubting Thomases. Sir John was well acquainted with the power plays behind the formation of the Militia, and he'd marveled more than once at Li Xijuan's instinct for survival. She'd managed to convince the world—well, a sizable part of it—that the need for a strengthened and absolute international peacekeeping force was real and immediate. The growth of a world army was possible only through the diminishing of national armies. And Li Xijuan had made it happen. A remarkable woman.

So what was she doing mixed up with a political also-ran like Mañuel Aguirrez? For she was mixed up with him, no longer any question of that. Kevin Gilbert's staff had uncovered evidence of her attempt to engineer an illegal arms purchase through a dealer in Hong Kong. She'd wanted to buy a manufacturer-rejected batch of faulty laser-guided antitank missiles.

Which meant that Li Xijuan was undoubtedly the one who had arranged to supply the rebels in Burma with defective weapons. Which meant that she and Mañuel Aguirrez were in the rebellion-deflating business together. Which meant that she had sought
him
out—Aguirrez wasn't the type to initiate international intrigue. By his own admission.

The man was a baby. Sir John's interrogators had only to hint strongly that Aguirrez was going to be charged with the massacre in Greece when he broke down and started talking. It was all Li Xijuan's idea, he said. She'd come to him and to Heinrich Schlimmermann with this plan, see, a way to stop rebels from doing any serious damage. It was only for a while, she said, until the Militia could get itself solidly established. He didn't know what had gone wrong in Greece.

Sir John came to an empty park bench and sat down. Every year his legs seemed to tire a little more quickly than the year before—
I am an old man
, he thought. What had gone wrong in Greece, yes. Heinrich Schlimmermann was the only one of the improbable trio to make any sense. Schlimmermann was an aristocratic Aryan caught in an egalitarian society, and he'd risen to his present degree of eminence in part through sheer will, by keeping his arrogant streak beneath the surface, by learning to manipulate people. Heinrich Schlimmermann was used to getting his own way.