Atropos (16 page)

The Agency was glad to have the money. Its official budget had to be hidden among appropriations for a dozen innocent government departments. Obviously, the smaller this official budget was, the easier it was to hide.

And TranSecure, with a little judicious bugging, could gather the odd bit of information from the VIPs who needed to ride in bulletproof comfort. All in all, a tidy little arrangement.

Trotter wished he didn’t need to use it.

He looked across at Regina, who was gorgeous in a black gown with diamonds at her ears and throat. Her hair was drawn back, and there was a pretty display of collarbone and cleavage.

Tonight, she didn’t look like a kid. Tonight, she actually
looked
like the head of one of America’s biggest media conglomerates. Tonight, she might really be in danger.

The Congressman’s call had come while Bash was in the shower. They had just made love. She had been even more responsive and passionate than usual. Trotter realized this was excitement at the prospect of facing an old lover on the arm of a new one, one who had rucked her brains out just a few short hours before.

It wasn’t, Trotter was sure, that she had anything against this Mark Van Horn, who seemed to be as nice as any heir to that much power could be expected to be. It was that centuries of male dominance had led women to develop these little ways of scoring points. They had become ingrained; Regina probably didn’t even realize it herself. It would take more than a few decades of being liberated before new behavior patterns could develop.

His father had told him who was supposed to be at this party, and what that meant.

“Great,” Trotter had said. “I’ve always wanted to lay eyes on him.” It wasn’t until the words were out of his mouth that Trotter realized how much he meant them.

“Yeah, well, I think he’d kind of like to get a look at you, too, son. I’m beginning to think that’s the whole reason for this party. Or at least for your being invited to it.”

“How could they swing that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they told the Senator they’re crazy about the Hudson Group newspapers.”

Trotter laughed.

“Maybe they’re working it through the son. Don’t have any information. Maybe we’ll spot some at the party.”

“We?”

“You heard me.”

“Sure you’re up to it?”

“Joe Albright’s coming as my nurse. I’d go if I had to crawl, son. I want to use my eyes some, too. Make sure it’s who I think it is before I get all excited. But there’s one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“This fellow’s got a pair of eyes, too. He’ll use them on you.”

“He already knows who I am, if he’s not an idiot.”

“He’s no idiot, boy. Don’t you be, either. The thing is, he’s going to see you with that gal. He already knows you’re fixing to marry her. If he gets the idea that this is anything but a move to put the Agency in charge of the Hudson Group, any time he wants to get you, he’ll get you through her.”

The Congressman paused. When he spoke again, he was almost apologetic. “I
told
you this was gonna happen, son.”

“Right, as usual. Okay, it’s my problem, I’ll deal with it.”

“If she wasn’t so damned famous, we could send her away, hide her somewhere—”

“All
right?
Trotter said. “I said I’d deal with it. Anything else?”

“I’ve told Albright to arm himself. It might be a good idea for you, too.”

“Yeah,” Trotter said. He hated guns.

“No tellin’ what these people might be up to. He hasn’t used that name, or left home, since 1946.”

“I’ll consider it. See you later.”

Then he hung up the phone and tried to decide just how he was going to deal with it. What he
wanted
to do was to tell Regina to stay away; that he’d go to the party without her and have some muscle from the Agency watch over her.

He realized as soon as he thought of it that it was a bad idea. He might as well install a neon sign over Regina’s head that blinked
V*A*L*U*A*B*L*E H*O*S*T*A*G*E
in green and red.

To skip the party himself was not an option. Trotter had never been elected by anyone (except Fate), but he felt his responsibility to two hundred million Americans every bit as thoroughly as the President did. Going to this party was definitely part of the job, and it was his job to do.

All right. He couldn’t keep her from going, he couldn’t refrain from going himself. Didn’t he at least owe it to Regina to tell her what he might be letting her in for?

The answer was yes. The only decent and honorable thing to do would be to warn her that they might be walking into danger tonight.

Trotter had not been raised to be decent and honorable. He had been trained from birth to do whatever would work the best toward attaining his objective. Regina had been trained for the executive suite of the newspaper business. She wasn’t an agent; she wasn’t an actress. If Trotter had told her she was going to be in danger, she would show it. And that might give people ideas. People in Trotter’s profession were often like cattle—they could smell fear, and they could catch it. Trotter would just have to handle the deceit for both of them.

A touch brought him out of his brooding. Bash had put her hand in his and squeezed. He looked at her and returned her smile.

The car stopped. “We’re here, Mr. Trotter.”

“Thanks. I’ll call the office when we want to be picked up.”

The driver said that would be very good, then came around and opened doors. Trotter joined Regina on the sidewalk and took her arm. The .32 revolver he had holstered in the small of his back dug into him like an accusing finger.

“Now let’s go meet that old boyfriend,” he said.

S
O THESE, JOE ALBRIGHT
thought, are the movers and shakers. Well, at least they had a well-padded environment to do their moving and shaking in. If they moved too close to a wall, there’d be a big antique chair or a leather sofa to collapse in. If they shook so hard they fell over, they’d simply land on a carpet so deep that, standing in it, Joe could hardly feel his feet.

Senator Van Horn had quite a place, all right. The party was being held in what the man in livery who’d taken his coat and the Congressman’s had said was the “Georgian Room.” This turned out to be a place that lacked only books to be a dead ringer of the old Carnegie library in Joe’s home town. There was a high, vaulted ceiling, held up, it seemed, by fluted columns set halfway into the walls. Grapes and grape leaves and things like that were carved (or molded in plaster—Joe didn’t really know much about this sort of stuff) at the tops of the columns. Everything was bone-white, except for a band of blue outlined by two strips of gold about two-thirds of the way to the ceiling.

“How do you get to be able to afford this?” Joe muttered.

The Congressman’s chuckle told him he’d been all too articulate. “Hank Van Horn did it the hard way—he inherited it.”

“That strikes me as the easy way,” Joe said.

“All depends on how you look at it, Joe. You can do things to try to arrange
your
getting money. How do you arrange for your father or grandfather to have done it already?”

“What?” Joe said. “Oh, yeah. Right. Good point.” What a weird old guy. No wonder Trotter was so nuts. Joe would probably be just like them in three years.

People with big smiles on their faces were coming over to talk to the Congressman, telling him how happy they were to have him back. The Congressman introduced Joe to every single one of them. And there was the same look in the eyes of every single one of them, like the red gleam of an LED when you turn on your calculator. You could almost hear the facts clicking into place.
Young. Black. Have not met previously. Introduced by Congressman. Protégé? Reporter? Not reporter
—
Congressman would have told me. What can I gain from this man? What should I fear? Examine further. Placate in the meantime.

Every one of them, Republican or Democrat, male or female, black or white, in office or trying to be, pumped Joe’s hand vigorously and told him how happy they were to meet him. They did not go so far as to tell him how much they liked Motown music, but in a different era they would have.

Joe was interested to find out if Abweg and Babington, the big boys at this particular do, would be the same. Maybe the rarefied air in the high places near the Presidency removed this when-in-doubt-kiss-ass instinct. Joe hoped so.

But he didn’t get to find out, at least not just then. The Congressman disengaged himself from a guy who was trying very hard to conceal the fact that he would kill his mother if that would get him a high-level job in the State Department, and turned to Joe. “I need to sit down. Bullshit is always exhausting, and my tolerance has dropped through lack of exposure to it. Think you can get me over to that sofa there?”

“Sure. Just hold my arm. Should have brought your walker.”

“Joe, my boy, when a vulture sees a man is weak, it will fly down and peck his eyes out to hasten death.”

“I’ve heard that,” Joe conceded.

“A vulture,” the Congressman said, “is a philanthropist compared to a politician. Never forget that.”

Joe got the old man seated under a portrait of some nineteenth-century Van Horn who scowled at the room from between a really impressive set of side whiskers.

The Congressman matched the scowl. “Where the hell is he?” Joe assumed the old man was talking about the Russian son of a bitch he might have to shoot. “I get off my deathbed to see him, and he’s not here.”

“Maybe he’s in the bathroom,” Joe suggested. “Maybe he didn’t show up yet. Maybe he’s in the kitchen.”

The kitchen?”

“Every time
I
throw a party, everybody winds up in the kitchen.”

The Congressman changed the scowl to a smile. It was remarkable how quickly he could do that. “That’s wholesome, Joe. America is proud of you. Most people your age, it seems all their parties wind up in the bedrooms.”

“That kind of party is a lot smaller, when I throw one.”

“All right, all right, spare me the details. Listen, I’ll be all right here. You go mingle and try to find out where the Russian is.”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“I didn’t bring you here to fuss over me. I’ll be fine. Go. Talk to people. Eat hors d’oeuvres. Bring me back a bourbon and soda.”

“Bourbon?” Joe’s voice was very severe.

“All right, all right, just soda. You’re worse than the damn doctor.”

“That’s better.” Joe nodded. He realized even as he did so that the old man had engineered the whole little bit of business to lend credence to the idea that Joe was indeed a male nurse. If anyone was watching. Of
course
someone was watching. What was it Trotter had told him? “In any public place, always assume someone is watching you and act accordingly. You can Jive a lot longer that way.”

Fine, Joe thought. Someone is watching me. Now what do I want them to see?

“Don’t just stand there,” the Congressman growled. “Go mingle.”

“Yes, sir. Do I go on letting people think I’m somebody?”

“Joe, don’t let Jesse Jackson hear you say that. You—are—
somebody!
Right?”

“Oh, absolutely.” Joe smiled and shook his head. This man, old and feeble and crippled as he was, could carry you along with his personality so easily it was frightening. Joe felt a little sorry for Trotter and Rines, who had apparently had to deal with him at full strength, before he’d had his stroke.

“You just let people think what they want to think. If they ask you any questions, just tell the truth.”

“Right,” Joe said. What the Congressman meant, of course, was the truth as defined by the Agency—i.e., the current cover story.

Joe went to mingle. He took a glass of champagne from a passing tray, and a shrimp the size of a badminton shuttlecock from another. The shrimp was delicious. The champagne was cold and dry, served in fine crystal. The trays had been gold. The people carrying them, one man and one woman, were black.

Joe considered the political ramifications. On the one hand, it was pretty stereotypical. Joe’s father had been a waiter at a country club, and had put Joe through the University of Missouri on tips, so Joe was making no judgments. On the other hand, this was Washington, D.C. Eighty percent black, high unemployment. To find white waiters and bartenders, you’d
really
have to discriminate. On balance, then, Joe figured it was the right move.

Across the room, Joe saw Trotter and Regina Hudson talking to a six-foot-tall blond woman. Trotter caught his eye, then looked away. Joe got the message. It was better not to know each other. He wondered if the Hudson girl was in on all of this. He wondered how well she’d pull it off if they had brought her in on it.

Not his problem. His problem was finding Russians and obtaining a glass of club soda for the Congressman.

As he zeroed in on the bar, someone tugged Joe’s sleeve. He turned around and found himself in a group with two African diplomats and Senator Van Horn himself. One of the Africans wore robes and a fez; the other had on a London-tailored silk suit. The Senator had on his professional smile.

“Excuse me,” said the man in the robes. “I know I am rude.”

“Not at all.”

“I just wished to ask something of a black American.”

“I’m one,” Joe said. The diplomats laughed; the Senator continued to smile. “Joe Albright, pleased to meet you.”

The Senator stepped in and performed introductions, giving the names and countries of the diplomats, and acting as if he had known Joe all his life, when Joe knew for a fact the man had never heard of him before today and almost certainly didn’t remember him.

The man in the suit spoke. It almost shocked him that the man’s voice was thin and reedy. Movies and television had left him with the impression that African diplomats are all supposed to sound like William Marshall or James Earl Jones, and the first man had lived up to the image.

“We have been telling the Senator that we know more of some of his countrymen than he does. Do you not, as a black American, feel
a personal
outrage at the existence of the terrorist state of South Africa? Do you not feel, in a sense, threatened that your nation, in which you are a minority, could countenance such a government?”