The Doomsday Conspiracy (13 page)

"It doesn't seem to be occupying enough of your time."

"I beg your pardon?"

"In case you've forgotten, Commander, the Office of Naval Intelligence is not mandated to investigate American citizens." Robert was watching him, puzzled.

"What are you-?"

"I've been notified by the FBI that you have been trying to obtain information that is completely out of the jurisdiction of this agency." Robert felt a sudden rush of anger. That sonofabitch Traynor had betrayed him. So much for friendship.

"It was a personal matter," Robert said.

"I-"

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"The computers of the FBI are not there for your convenience, nor to help you harass private citizens. Do I make myself clear?"

"Very."

"That's all."

Robert raced back to his office. His fingers trembled as he dialed 202-324-3000. A voice answered, "FBI."

"Al Traynor."

"Just a moment, please."

A minute later, a man's voice came on the line.

"Hello. May I help you?"

"Yes. I'm calling Al Traynor."

"I'm sorry, Agent Traynor is no longer with this office." Robert felt a shock go through him.

"What?"

"Agent Traynor has been transferred."

"Transferred?"

"Yes."

"To where?"

"Boise. But he won't be up there for a while. A long while, I'm afraid."

"What do you mean?"

"He was struck by a hit and run driver last night while jogging in Rock Creek Park. Can you believe it? Some creep must have been drunk out of his mind. He ran his car right up on the jogging path. Traynor's body was thrown more than forty feet. He may not make it." Robert replaced the receiver. His mind was spinning. What the hell was going on? Monte Banks, the blue-eyed all-American boy was being protected. From what? By whom? Jesus, Robert thought, what is Susan getting herself into?

He went to visit her that afternoon.

She was in her new apartment, a beautiful duplex on M Street. He wondered whether Moneybags had paid for it. It had been weeks since he had seen Susa.n, and the sight of her took his breath away.

"Forgive me for barging in like this, Susan. I know I promised not to."

"You said it was something serious."

"It is." Now that he was here, he didn't know how to begin. Page 75

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Susan, I came here to save you? She would laugh in his face.

"What's happened?"

"It's about Monte."

She frowned.

"What about him?"

This was the difficult part. How could he tell her what he himself didn't know? All he knew was that something was terribly wrong. Monte Banks was in the FBI computer all right, with a tickler: No information to be given out without proper authorization. And the inquiry had been kicked right back on ONI. Why?

"I don't think he'~he's not what he seems to be."

"I don't understand."

"Susan-where does he get his money?"

She looked surprised at the question.

"Monte has a very successful import-export business." The oldest cover in the world.

He should have known better than to have come charging in with his hatrbaked theory. He felt like a fool. Susan was waiting for an answer, and he had none.

"Why are you asking?"

"I was-I just wanted to make sure he's right for you," Robert said lamely.

"Oh, Robert." Her voice was filled with disappointment.

"I guess I shouldn't have come." You got that right, buddy.

"I'm sorry."

Susan walked up to him and gave him a hug.

"I understand, "she said softly.

But she didn't understand. She didn't understand that an innocent inquiry about Monte Banks had been stonewalled, referred to the Office of Naval Intelligence, and that the man who had tried to get that information had been transferred to the boondocks. There were other ways of obtaining information, and Robert went about them circumspectly. He telephoned a friend who worked for Forbes magazine.

"Robert! Long time no see. What can I do for you?" Robert told him.

"Monte Banks? Interesting you should mention him. We think he should be on our Forbes Four Hundred wealthiest list, but we Page 76

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can't get any hard information on him. Do you have anything for us?" A zero.

Robert went to the public library and looked up Monte Banks in Who's Who. He was not listed.

He turned to the microfiche and looked up back issues of the Washington Post around the time that Monte Banks had had his plane accident. There was a brief item about the plane crash. It mentioned Banks as an entrepreneur. It all sounded innocent enough. Maybe I'm wrong, Robert thought. Maybe Monte Banks is a guy in a white hat. Our government wouldn't have protected him if he were a spy, a criminal, into drugs.

... The truth is that I'm still trying to hold on to Susan. Being a bachelor again was a loneliness, an emptiness, a round of busy days and sleepless nights. A tide of despair would sweep over him without warning, and he would weep. He wept for himself and for Susan and for everything that they had lost. Susan's presence was everywhere. The apartment was alive with reminders of her. Robert was cursed with total recall, and each room tormented him with memories of Susan's voice, her laughter, her warmth. He remembered the soft hills and valleys of her body as she lay in bed naked, waiting for him, and the ache inside him was unbearable.

His friends were concerned.

"You shouldn't be alone, Robert."

And their rallying cry became "Have I got a girl for you!" They were tall and beautiful, and small and sexy. They were models and secretaries and advertising executives and divorcees and lawyers. But none of them was Susan. He had nothing in common with any of them, and trying to make small talk with strangers in whom he had no interest only made him feel more lonely. Robert had no desire to go to bed with any of them. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to rewind the film back to the beginning, to rewrite the script. With hindsight it was so easy to see his mistakes, to see how the scene with Admiral Whittaker should have played. The CIA has been infi ~d by a man called the Fox. The deputy director has asked for you to track him down. No, Admiral. Sorry. Pm IIaking my wife on a second honeymoon. He wanted to reedit his lile, to give it a happy ending. Too late. Life did not give second chances. He was alone. He did his own shopping, cooked his meals for himself, and went to the neighborhood laundromat once a week when he was home.

It was a lonely, miserable time in Robert's life. But the worst was yet to come. A beautiflil designer he had met in Washington telephoned him several times to invite him to dinner. Robert had been reluctant, but he had finally accepted. She prepared a delicious candlelight dinner for the two of them.

"You're a very good cook," Robert said.

"I'm very good at everything." And there was no mistaking her meaning. She moved closer to him.

"Let me prove it to you." She put her hands on his thighs and ran her tongue around his lips. It's been a long time, Robert thought. Maybe Page 77

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too long. They went to bed, and to Robert's consternation, it was a disaster. For the first time in his life, Robert was impotent. He was humiliated.

"Don't worry, darling," she said.

"It will be all right." She was wrong. Robert went home feeling embarrassed, crippled. He knew that in some crazy, convoluted way, he had felt that making love to another woman was a betrayal of Susan. How stupid can I get?

He tried to make love again several weeks later with a bright secretary at ONI. She had been wildly passionate in bed, stroking his body and taking him inside her hot mouth. But it was no use. He wanted only Susan. After that, he stopped trying. He thought about consulting a doctor, but he was too ashamed. He knew the answer to his problem, and it had nothing to do with medical advice. He poured all his energy into work. Susan called him at least once a week.

"Don't forget to pick up your shirts at the laundry," she would say. Or:

"I'm sending over a maid to clean up the apartment. I'll bet it's a mess." Each call made the loneliness more intolerable. She had called him the night before her wedding.

"Robert, I want you to know I'm getting married tomorrow. It was difficult for him to breathe. He began to hyperventilate.

"Susan-"

"I love Monte," she said, "but I love you, too. I'll love you until the day I die. I don't want you ever to forget that." What was there to say to that? "Robert, are you all right?" Sure. I'm great. Except that I'm a fucking eunuch. Scratch the adjective.

"Robert?"

He could not bear to punish her with his problem.

"I'm fine. Just do me a favor, will you, baby?"

"Anything I can."

"Don't-don't let him take you on your honeymoon to any of the places we went to." He hung up and went out and got drunk again. That had been a year earlier. That was the past. He had been forced to face the reality that Susan now belonged to someone else. He had to live in the present. He had work to do. It was time to have a chat with Leslie Mothershed, the photographer who had the photographs and names of the witnesses Robert had been assigned to track down on what was going to be his last assignment.

eslie Mothershed was in a state beyond euphoria. The moment he had returned to London, clutching his precious film, he had hurried into the small pantry he had converted into a darkroom and checked to make sure he had everything on hand: filmprocessing tank, thermometer, spring-type clothespins, four large beakers, a timer, and developer, stop-bath solutions, and fixer.

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He turned out the light and switched on a small red overhead lamp. His hands were trembling as he opened the cartridges and removed the film. He took deep breaths to control himself. Nothing must go wrong this time, he thought. Nothing. This is for you, Mother. Carefully, he rolled the film into reels. He placed the reels ,~ the tank and filled it with developer, the first of the liquids he would use. It would require a constant temperature of 68xF and periodic agitation. After eleven minutes, he emptied the contents and poured the fixer over the reels.

He was getting nervous again, terrified of making a mistake. He poured off the fixer for the first wash and then let the film sit in a tankful of water for ten minutes. This was followed by two minutes of constant agitation in a hypocleansing agent and twelve more minutes in water. Thirty seconds in photo-flo solution ensured there would be no streaks or flaws in the negatives. Finally, very, very carefully, he removed the film, hung it up with clothespins, and used a squeegee to remove the last drips from the film. He waited impatiently for the negatives to dry. It was time to have a look. Holding his breath, heart pounding, Mothershed picked up the first strip of negatives and held it up to the light. Pe~ct. Absolutely perfect!

Each one was a gem, a picture that any photographer in the world would be proud to have taken. Every detail of the strange spacecraft was outlined, including the bodies of the two alien forms lying inside. Two things he had not noticed before caught Mothershed's eye, and he took a closer look. Where the spaceship had cracked open he could see three narrow couches inside the ship-and yet there were only two aliens. The other thing that was strange was that one of the aliens' hands had been severed. It was nowhere to be seen in the photograph. Maybe the creature had only one hand, Mothershed thought. My God, these pictures are masterpieces! Mother was right. I'm a genius. He looked around the tiny room and thought, The next time I develop my film, it will be in a big, beautiful darkroom in my mansion in Eaton Square. He stood there fingering his treasures like a miser fingering his gold. There wasn't a magazine or newspaper in the world that wouldn't kill to get these pictures. All these years the bastards had rejected his photographs with their insulting little notes.

"Thank you for submitting the photos that we are herewith returning. They do not fit our present needs." And: "Thank you for your submission. They are too similar to pictures we have already printed." Or simply: "We are returning the photographs you sent us." For years he had gone begging to the creeps for jobs, and now they were going to crawl to him, and he was going to make them pay through the nose. He could not wait. He had to start immediately. Since bloody British Telecom had shut off his phone merely because he happened to be a few weeks late making his last quarterly payment, Mothershed had to go outside to find a phone. On an impulse, he decided to go to Langan's, the celebrity hangout, and treat himself to a much-deserved lunch. Langan's was well beyond his means, but if there was ever a time to celebrate, this was it. Wasn't he on the verge of becoming rich and famous?

A maitre d' seated Mothershed at a table in a corner of the restaurant, and there, at a booth not ten feet away, he saw two familiar faces. He suddenly realized who they were, and a little thrill ran through him. Michael Caine and Roger Moore, in person! He wished his mother were still alive so he could tell her about it. She had loved reading about Page 79

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movie stars. The two men were laughing and having a good time, not a care in the world, and Mothershed could not help staring. Their glances moved past him. Smug bastards, Leslie Mothershed thought angrily. I suppose they expect me to come over and ask for their autographs. Well, in a few days they're going to be asking for mine. They'll be falling all over themselves to introduce me to their friends.

"Leslie, I want you to meet Charles and Di, and this is Fergie and Andrew. Leslie, you know, is the chap who took those famous photos of the UFO."

When Mothershed finished his lunch, he walked past the two stars and went upstairs to the phone booth. Director Inquiries gave him the number of the Sun.

"I'd like to speak to your Picture editor." A male voice came on the line.

"Chapman."

"What would it be worth to you to have photographs of a UFO with the bodies of two aliens in it?"