The Sam Gunn Omnibus (88 page)

The four of us met ten days before
Christmas in my formal office in the World Court building in The Hague: Sam,
his lawyer Greg Molina, the delectable Ms. Ecks, and my plain old self. I settled
into my desk chair, feeling shabby and miserable in a nubby tweed suit. Josella
sat between the two men; when she crossed her long legs her slitted skirt fell
away, revealing ankle, calf and a lot of thigh. I thought I saw steam spout out
of Sam’s ears.

She didn’t seem to affect Greg that
way, but then Gregory Molina was a married man; married to President de Rivera’s
daughter, no less.

“This pretrial hearing,”. I said,
trying to put my emotions under some semblance of control, “is mandated by the
International Court of Justice for the purpose of trying to come to an amicable
agreement on the matter of
Ecuador v. Vatican
without the expense and publicity of an actual trial.”

“Fine by me,” Sam said breezily,
his eyes still on the young woman sitting beside him. “As long as we can get it
over with by eleven. I’ve gotta catch the midnight Clipper. Gotta be back at
Selene City for the Christmas festivities.”

I
glowered at Sam.
Here the future of Christianity was hanging in the balance and he was worried
about a Christmas party.

Greg was more formal. His brows
knitting very earnestly, he said, “The

nation
of Ecuador would be very much in favor of settling this case out of court.” He
was looking at me, not Josella. “Providing, of course, that we can arrive at a
reasonable settlement.”

Josella smiled as if she knew more
than he did. “Our position is that a reasonable settlement would be to throw
this case in the trash bin, where it belongs.”

Sam sighed as if someone had told
them there is no Santa Claus. “A reasonable settlement would be a half billion
dollars, U.S.”

Josella waggled a finger at him. I saw
that her nails were done in warm pink. “Your suit is without legal basis, Mr.
Gunn.”

“Then why are we here, oh beauteous
one?”

I
resisted the urge
to crown Sam with the meteoric iron paperweight on my desk. He had given it to
me years earlier, and at that particular moment I really wanted to give it back
to him—smack between his leering eyes.

Josella was unimpressed. Quite
coolly she answered, “We are here, Mr. Gunn, because you have entered a
frivolous suit against the Vatican.”

Greg spoke up. “I assure you, Ms.
Ecks, the nation of Ecuador is not frivolous.”

“Perhaps not,” she granted. “But I’m
afraid that you’re being led down the garden path by this unscrupulous little man.”

“Little?” A vein in Sam’s forehead
started to throb. “Was Napoleon little? Was Steinmetz little? Did Neil
Armstrong play basketball in college?”

Laughing, Josella said, “I apologize
for the personal reference, Mr. Gunn. It was unprofessional of me.”

“Sam.”

“Mr. Gunn,” she repeated.

“I still want half a bill,” Sam
growled.

“There isn’t that much money in the
entire Vatican,” she said.

“Baloney. They take in a mint and a
half.” Sam ticked off on his fingers, “Tourists come by the millions. The
Vatican prints its own stamps and currency. They’re into banking and money
exchange, with no internal taxes and no restrictions on importing and exporting
foreign currencies. Nobody knows how much cash flows through the Vatican, but
they must have the highest per capita income in the solar system.”

“And it all goes to funding the
Church and helping the poor.”

“The hell it does! They live like
kings in there,” Sam growled.

“Wait,” I said. “This is getting us
nowhere.”

Ignoring me, Sam went on, “And the
Pope has
absolute
authority over all of
it. He’s got all the executive, legislative and judicial powers in his own
hands. He’s an absolute monarch, responsible to nobody!”

“Except
God,” Greg added.

“Right,”
Sam said. “The same God who owes me half a billion dollars.”

I
repeated, “This is getting us nowhere.”

“Perhaps
I can set us on a useful course,” Greg said. I nodded hopefully at him.

Greg
laid out Sam’s case, chapter and verse. He spent nearly an hour tracing the
history of the Petrine theory that is the basis for the Pope’s claim to be “the
vicar of Christ.” Then he droned on even longer about the logic behind holding
the Pope responsible for so-called acts of God.

“If
we truly believe in a God who is the cause of these acts,” he said, with
implacable logic, “and we accept the Pope’s claim to be the representative of
God on Earth, then we have a firm legal, moral, and ethical basis for this
suit.”

“God
owes me,” Sam muttered.

“The
contract between God and man implied by the Ten Commandments and the
Scriptures,” said Greg, solemnly, “must be regarded as a true contract, binding
on both parties, and holding both parties responsible for their misdeeds.”

“How
do you know they’re misdeeds?” Josella instantly rebutted. “We can’t know as much
as God does. Perhaps these acts of God are part of His plan for our salvation.”

With
an absolutely straight face, Greg said, “Then He must reveal his purposes to
us. Or be held responsible for His acts in a court of law.”

Josella
shook her head slowly. I saw that Sam’s eyes were riveted on her.

She
looked at me, though, and asked, “May I present the defendant’s argument, Your
Honor?”

“Yes,
of course.”

Josella
started a careful and very detailed review of the legal situation, with
emphasis on the absurdity of trying to hold a person or a state responsible for
acts of God.

“Mr.
Gunn is attempting to interpret literally a phrase that was never so meant,”
she said firmly, with a faint smile playing on her lips.

Sam
fidgeted in his chair, huffed and snorted as she went on and on, cool and
logical, marshaling every point or precedent that would help her demolish Sam’s
case.

She
was nowhere near finished when Sam looked at his wristwatch and said, “Look, I’ve
got to get to Selene. Big doings there, and I’m obligated to be present for
them.”

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“Christmas stuff. Parties. We’ve
brought in a ballet troupe from Vancouver to do The Nutcracker.’ Nothing that
has anything to do with this legal crapola.” He turned to Greg. “Why don’t you
two lawyers fight it out and lemme know what you decide, okay?”

Sam had to lean toward Josella to
speak to Greg, but he looked right past her, as if she weren’t there. And he
was leaving Greg to make the decision? That wasn’t like Sam at all. Was he
bored by all these legal technicalities?

He got to his feet. Then a slow
grin crept across his face and he said, “Unless the three of you would like to come
up to Selene with me, as my guests. We could continue the hearing there.”

So that was it. He wanted Josella
to fly with him to the Moon. Greg and I would be excess baggage that he would
dump the first chance he got.

And Josella actually smiled at him and
replied, “I’ve never been to the Moon.”

Sam’s grin went ear-to-ear. “Well,
come on up! This is your big chance.”

“This is a pretrial hearing,” I snapped,
“not a tourist agency.”

Just then the door burst open and
four women in janitorial coveralls pushed into my office. Instead of brooms
they were carrying machine pistols.

“On your feet, all of you, godless
humanists!” shouted their leader, a heavyset blonde. “You are the prisoners of
the Daughters of the Mother!” She spoke in English, with some sort of accent I couldn’t
identify. Not Dutch, and certainly not American.

I
stabbed at the
panic button on my phone console. Direct line to security. The blonde ignored
it and hustled the four of us out into the corridor to the bank of elevators.
The corridor was empty; I realized it was well past quitting time and the court’s
bureaucrats had cleared out precisely at four-thirty.

But security should be here, I thought.
No sign of them. They must have been out Christmas shopping, too. The Daughters
of the Mother pushed us into an elevator and rode up to the roof. It was dark
and cold up there; the wind felt as if it came straight from the North Pole.

A tilt-rotor plane sat on the roof,
its engines swiveled to their vertical position, their big propellers swinging
slowly like giant scythes, making a whooshing sound that gave the keening sea
wind a basso counterpoint.

“Get in, all of you.” The hefty
blonde prodded me with the snout of her pistol.

We
marched toward the plane’s hatch.

“Hey,
wait a minute,” Sam said, pulling his sports jacket tight across his shivering
body. “I’m the guy you want; leave these others out of it. Hell, they’d just as
soon shoot me as you would.”

“I
said all of you!” the blonde shouted.

Where
was security? They couldn’t be so lax as to allow a plane to land on our roof
and kidnap us. They
had
to be coming to our
rescue. But when?

I
decided to slow us down a bit. As we approached the
plane’s hatch, I stumbled and went down.

“Ow!”
I yelled. “My ankle!”

The
big blonde wrapped an arm around my waist, hauled me off the concrete and
tossed me like a sack of potatoes through the open hatch of the plane. I landed
on the floor plates with a painful thump.

Sam
jumped up the two-step ladder and knelt beside me. “You okay? Are you hurt?”

I
sat up and rubbed my backside. “Just my dignity,” I said.

Suddenly
the whole roof was bathed in brilliant light and we heard the powerful
throbbing of helicopter engines.

“YOU
ARE SURROUNDED!” roared a bullhorn voice. “THIS IS THE POLICE. DROP YOUR
WEAPONS AND SURRENDER.”

I
scrambled to the nearest window, Sam pressing close
behind me. I could see two helicopters hovering near the edge of the roof,
armored SWAT policemen pointing assault rifles at us.

“What
fun,” Sam muttered. “With just a little luck, we could be in the middle of a
firefight.”

The
blonde came stumping past us, heading for the cockpit. Greg and Josella were
pushed into the plane by the other three Daughters. The last one slammed the
hatch shut and dogged it down.

“YOU
HAVE THIRTY SECONDS TO THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND SURRENDER!” roared the
police bullhorn.

“WE
HAVE FOUR HOSTAGES ABOARD, INCLUDING JUSTICE MEYERS.” The blonde had a
bullhorn, too. “IF YOU TRY TO STOP US WE WILL SHOOT HER FIRST.”

Sam
patted my head. “Lucky lady.”

They
bellowed threats back and forth for what seemed like an eternity, but finally
the police allowed the plane to take off. With us in it. There were four police
helicopters, and they trailed after us as our plane lifted off the roof,
swiveled its engines to their horizontal position, and then began climbing into
the dark night sky. The plane was much faster than the choppers; their lights
dwindled behind us and then got lost altogether in the clouds.

“The Peacekeepers must be tracking
us by radar,” Sam assured me. “Probably got satellite sensors watching us, too.
Jet fighters out there someplace, I bet.”

And then I realized he was speaking
to Josella, not me.

We rode for hours in that plane,
Sam jabbering across the aisle to Josella while I sat beside him, staring out the
window and fuming. Greg sat on the window seat beside Josella, but as I could
see from their reflections in the glass, Sam and Josella had eyes only for each
other. I went beyond fuming; I would have slugged Sam if we weren’t in so much
trouble already.

Two of the Daughters sat at the
rear of the cabin, guns in their laps. Their leader and the other one sat up
front. Who was in the cockpit I never knew.