Brother Termite (14 page)

More footsteps pounding. A breathless voice. “Confirmed fifteen minutes ago.”

“Shit.” The man turning, fists raised impotently.

Reen could not see; but he did. He saw Jeff’s blood on the floor. He could not hear; but he heard Jeff laughing in the Green Room, talking about history.

Suddenly Oomal and Thural were at either side of Reen, claws digging into his sleeves so hastily that they left stinging scratches. “Come away, Reen-ja,” Thural said, tugging.

Reen felt his feet trip over each other, felt himself falling. Thural sucked in a breath as they collided, and for an instant both touched the oblivion of Communal Mind.

Thural struggled to get away, but Reen seized him around the waist, tumbling him to the floor where dim light and purposeful dark waited, where the young were in their nests and Brothers crawled unthinking through the smooth, cool tunnels of childhood.

“Reen!” Oomal was dragging him back. Thural was scrabbling across the carpet to escape Reen’s grasping hands. The humans were staring.

Jeff was staring, his sightless eyes still fixed on the ceiling as his cunning, wry mind leaked across the floor.

Reen lay on the carpet. Thural crouched before him, the gaping hole of the pistol’s muzzle a few feet away. One of Jeff’s buttons lay near Reen’s outstretched fingers.

He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, and Oomal stepped back.

Quieter footsteps this time, hesitant footsteps. Men entered the room with a stretcher and a long green plastic bag. They looked curiously at the Cousins and somberly at the dead President.

The doctor, still kneeling, looked up at the men with the stretcher. “A suicide,” he said.

REEN WENT
down to the ground floor and sat in the Vermeil Room, his Cousin and Brother sitting silently by him but not too close lest he touch them again.

The ambulance left, lights winking, siren off. Thural walked to the kitchen and brought back a late lunch.

“You may return to Michigan if you wish, Brother,” Reen offered finally, looking at his untouched food.

Oomal pushed his empty plate away. “I’ll stay awhile, Reen-ja.”

When dusk was settling across the lawn, Reen, without a word to the other two Cousins, left and made his way up the two flights of stairs.

Jeff’s office was a yellow hearth of light kindled against the icy evening. A wall-to-wall strip of carpet had been pulled up, exposing the dun pad underneath. In the fireplace was a humped grave of smoldering ash. Jeff’s rocking chair was gone.

Reen walked to the bar and stared at the half-bottle of Wild Turkey lying on the counter, the used glass beside it.

Jeff, eyes twinkling over the rim, telling him of Harding’s mistress; of Brezhnev’s scantily clad masseuse; of broken treaties and purposeless wars.

Jeff, too, had become part of history.

Among the row of books on the shelves above the dry bar, Sandburg’s
Lincoln
and Kennedy’s
Profiles in Courage
were upside down.

Someone had been searching the room.

Behind Reen came the sound of a drawer slamming shut. He pivoted. The door to Jeff’s bedroom was slightly open. Quietly he went to the crack and heard the sound of shoes on carpet.

“I still can’t believe the Senate confirmed him,” a voice said.

There was a click, like a small box closing. A feminine sigh and a familiar voice, “Last night Womack telephoned all one hundred senators, He traded the signing of the tariff bill, and the vote passed by acclamation. You always underestimated him. I didn’t. Womack was a devious son of a bitch.”

The quick triple-pump of Reen’s heart was so forceful, so loud, that he was certain the people on the other side of the door could hear it. He crept backward, bumping into a small table and catching a vase before it could fall.

Marian Cole was searching for Jeff Womack’s evidence.

Reen tiptoed down the hall, down the stairs. He had known Jeff better than anyone, and he knew that if Jeff wanted to hide something, he would have been cleverer than to hide it upstairs.

He would have hidden it where he thought no one would look.

Reen passed the pantry and the Secret Service room at the end of the corridor. The colonnade was silent except for the gurgle and lap of the pool. Reen stole into the West Wing like a small gray wraith and turned left to the Oval Office.

The reception desk was vacant, with a single lamp left burning. The door of the dark office gaped like a mouth. Reen walked in, flicked on a light, and began his search.

It was behind the portrait of Millard Fillmore that he found it, taped to the canvas with black electrician’s tape: a fat manila envelope. He tore it from its hiding place and spilled its contents on the desk.

Enough photos to fill an album. Neatly typed memoranda. Notes crumpled by nervous, sweaty hands. And a folded slip of paper with a blue karma ticket stapled to the top. Reen picked that up and opened it. The paper was dry and old, and made a sound like dead leaves when he pulled the edges apart.

Under the blue ticket was the Xeroxed typewritten suggestion:

WRITE YOUR SIN BELOW.

Under that was a Cousin’s scrawled and difficult handwriting.

May God forgive us for killing you

–Jonis

Reen’s fingers began to tremble. Paperclipped to the karma ticket was a typed note:

Jonis now an asset.

–Bernie

Poor, deluded Jonis, whom guilt could not release. Reen traced his Cousin’s painful scribbles with a numb finger. No wonder Jonis had avoided Thural. It was so hard for a Brother to hide truth from a Brother. And treason was so alien a concept that not even Thural would have understood.

Reen’s eye lit on a slender manila folder marked
TERMINATION PLAN
. Inside, just under the heading
CARBONATED DRINK
, was a large cheerful yellow Post-it Note:

Eliminating Reen too precipitous. And too much bad karma involved. Advise first step putting Gerber out of business. See historical references re Tylenol Scare.

–J.W.

J.W. Jeff Womack. So the President had known all along what the Cousin plans were, knew that Reen had deceived him. And he evidently was aware of the doomsday virus.

Setting the folder down, Reen forced himself to sort through more evidence. A photo this time. A happy group of scruffy people around a barbecue pit. The karma sellers at a picnic. Bernard Martinez smiled into the camera. His arm was around a huge man with a beard, knit cap, and smooth brown skin. To the photo was paperclipped a note:

To J.W
. Bernard M. frightened. Claims mole in organization. No proof this is true. Essential Martinez not flee from D.C. Advise funnel more money through Jonis to keep karma sellers fat and happy.

–Agent Miller

Bernard Martinez, a grin on his face, terror in his eyes, his arm around the disguised Lieutenant Rushing. Reen let his breath out in a long sigh.

Quickly he leafed through the rest of the papers. An autopsy report and three postmortem pictures, photos so ghastly that Reen nearly flung them away. Then, above the bloodied, shattered jaw Reen recognized the corpse’s eyes. Le Doux. Gentle, quick-witted Le Doux, easy to laugh, eager to please. A month earlier the Secret Service agent abruptly left White House security. Reassigned, Reen had been told when he asked about his absence.

The soles of Le Doux’ s feet were burned black. Welts lay in a houndstooth pattern across his legs, his chest. On the autopsy report the grim notation:

Burns caused by application of electrical current. Cause of death: gunshot wound. Bullet entered medulla

and exited center of mandible.

The letters blurred, an order from Reen’s mind not to read further. An autonomic demand of blind love.

With the autopsy report was a Post-it Note:

Landis compromised. Fingered Le Doux. If they shot Le Doux, he talked.

Reen laid the autopsy report down and waited until his vision cleared. Humans were a mix of cold murder and warm laughter. Cousins walked a tepid middle path. It was Reen’s own fault that he had underestimated them. Human violence had always seemed newspaper-story distant, television-drama unreal. Now he knew how sheltered the walls of the White House had been and how brittle and breakable they could become.

He forced himself back into the search. More photos. Grainy black-and-white photos taken by security cameras. Photos of Hopkins and Tali. Tali and Loving Helpers entering the Secret Service office at the end of the White House’s cross hall.

The pictures halted Reen, his mind balking before the insurmountable barrier of Tali’s own treason. Then he was searching hurriedly again, picking up memos, discarding them, their messages barely registering.

Joint Chiefs at Langley 1/17, 1/19, 1/28, 1/30.

–Miller

Jonis scared to death. Afraid Tali has caught on.

–Bernie

Don’t you people understand? Look what you let happen to Jonis. Someone’s following me. The last time I slept was in the Greyhound bus station three nights ago. I have to get out of town NOW. Get me some money or I’ll go to Hopkins. I’ll tell him everything. I’m not kidding.

–Bernie

On the third page lay a wrinkled, unattached piece of paper. Reen opened it carefully. It was even more fragile and brittle than Jonis’s petition had been. In Jeff Womack’s slanted handwriting, a cryptic series of numbers: 7039713991.

Folding the page carefully, Reen gazed around the oval room. The logs had burned themselves out, and the fireplace seemed to be sucking warmth from the air.

He put the papers back into their envelope, hopped up on a chair, and taped the envelope again to the back of the portrait. Then he walked down the hushed corridor and the quiet stairs to the office of White House security.

He twisted the knob and pushed. The hinges creaked. The room, which should have been manned, was dark. Patting the wall to his right, he found the light switch and flicked it on.

On the worn carpet by the file cabinet Reen found three dime-sized drops of dried blood and four bloody parallel grooves in the beige paint–grooves that human fingernails must have scratched.
Landis compromised. Fingered Le Doux.
But before he gave in to the Loving Helpers, Security Chief Landis had fought.

“You found it, didn’t you?” a voice said.

Reen turned and saw Pearson. Pearson who knew karate, who with a nine millimeter could put out a candle at thirty yards.

“The documentation, I mean.” Pearson’s dark eyes were somber, his voice shorn of its cheerful lilt. “Where is it?” Pearson oozed around the door and shut it behind him.

Reen stepped back.

Pearson’s eyes tracked him. “What did you find out?”

Reen forced his dry lips apart. “Are you going to kill me?”

As though surprised, Pearson lifted his eyebrows. He seemed to be gauging how much force he would need to wrest the truth from Reen. How much torture it would take.

Reen said, “Do something, Mr. Pearson. Either kill me or let me go.”

The dark eyes shifted in indecision. Then the agent stood away from the exit. Reen rushed past him and out the door, up the stairs, and into the dark, haunted colonnade, where the tingling smell of chlorine seeped from the open doorway of the pool.

In the Vermeil Room, Oomal and Thural still waited, talking in low tones. When Reen entered, they stood.

“What is it, Cousin Brother?” Oomal asked, seeing the look in Reen’s eyes.

“Get a Taskmaster and three Loving Helpers,” Reen told them. “Bring them here now.”

WHEN REEN
pushed Jeff’s bedroom door open, the light from the study revealed the figure of Marian Cole and the large hulking form of Lieutenant Rushing. The pair froze.

“Reen,” Marian said, pressing a hand to her neck. “You scared me.”

The half-light was kind to her face. She didn’t look much older than she did at the time of her first rebellion, when she had run away to marry.

“Bring them,” Reen said. Behind him was the patter of the Loving Helpers’ soft boots, the heavier tread of the Taskmaster. When Marian saw the Helpers, she shrank back against a dresser, hitting her shoulder with a bruising thud.

“Don’t, Reen. Just listen for a minute. Jeff was murdered.” She eyed the Helpers who had drifted like ghosts into the room. “That was no suicide. The nitrate test on his hand came up negative. The autopsy showed two bruises on his jaw where someone held his head, and two chipped teeth where the gun was shoved in his mouth.”

Jeff, his laughter ringing out from the Green Room, a sound as unforgettable as the clap of his death.

“I found Jeff’s evidence, Marian,” Reen said. “And I read it.”

Her face, burdened by the weight of the inescapable, sagged. “What did it say?”

“That Detective Rushing murdered Bernard Martinez. That you knew all the time that Jeff was using the Secret Service and the karma sellers to spy on you and the FBI. Is that why you killed him?”

Rushing edged toward a window. “We didn’t kill Womack. Hopkins did. Hopkins was behind it all: Jonis, the attempt on your life, all of it.”

In a lockstep that was very much like the lockstep of their minds, the Helpers walked toward Marian.

She held her hands palms out, as though she might find the strength to push them away. “Reen! Please! Hopkins made plans with Tali. He traded your murder for the assassination of Womack. Hopkins figured once Womack was out of the way, Speaker Platt would become president. He squeezed Platt with one hand, Tali with the other.”

The Loving Helpers stepped forward. Marian slid to the floor, hysteria constricting her throat. Her cry was that of a naughty little girl who has caught a glimpse of her father’s punishing belt. “No! Listen! Hopkins snatched Jonis, and he wanted to take Bernard Martinez, too. Jonis wouldn’t have talked, but he worshiped Martinez. He would have told Hopkins everything to save Bernie. I had to order Martinez killed before he gave himself up to the FBI. I
had
to.”

“Don’t let those things touch her,” Rushing said. “Jesus Christ! Can’t you see how scared she is? Can’t you see that?”

The Helpers stepped forward again.

Rushing reached under his jacket. He drew his gun and pointed it at Reen’s chest. His hands shook. “Order them back!”

Reen’s heart galloped for an instant before going numb and still.

“No!” Marian rose to her feet with a scream. “No, Kyle! Don’t shoot him!”

The gun barrel wavered. “How can you let him do this to you, Marian? You know how he hurt you. How he–”

“Goddamn it!” Her face was tight with anger. She was breathing hard. “What happened between the two of us is none of your business. Put the gun away
now!”

With a brusque gesture Reen ordered the Taskmaster and his trio of Helpers back.

Rushing slowly holstered his pistol. His voice was a low growl. “She could have had you killed a hundred times, but she didn’t. Tali and even the Secret Service wanted to get rid of you. She stopped them. Didn’t you know that? Don’t you know how she feels about you? Goddamn. And haven’t you hurt her enough?”

Marian slumped to a sitting position on the floor. Reen knelt beside her, so close that he could feel the heat from her body. “Do you know where Jonis is?” he asked.

Her knees were drawn to her chest, her skirt a waterfall around her legs. “Buried at Camp David.”

Reen reeled back.

“I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me.” Her words stumbled over each other. “I told you: Billy did it. We found out where they took the body. I got to one of his agents.”

Her eyes met his. He wondered how he had ever thought they had depth. The irises were as blank as blue paper cutouts.

“Oh, God, Reen,” she moaned. “Didn’t I tell you that your Brother knew? Didn’t I tell you we had to find Jonis?”

“Did they torture him?”

Her breath was moist and close against his skin, like an exhalation from a greenhouse. “Hopkins couldn’t get Jonis to talk. He was getting sick, and Hopkins got so scared that he made a move to snatch Martinez. That’s why Rushing had to terminate Martinez. Hopkins didn’t understand Cousins. When Martinez was killed, he thought torture was his last chance. It confused Hopkins when Jonis died.”

Reen stood. “We will get his body.”

At his feet, Marian looked up. “My people are already there. We were going to find him and hide him again, hide him better. I was afraid the other Cousins would find out. Hopkins is stupid,” she said bitterly. “He thought Tali had told him everything. He didn’t know about the doomsday virus. Poor Martinez. He was harmless, really. I didn’t want him killed. But he should never have converted Jonis; and the President shouldn’t have tried to play detective. Womack was getting too close to the truth.”

“And Tali?” Reen asked, gazing down at the top of Marian’s blond, disheveled head.

“Your Brother knows about Jonis,” Rushing answered. “Hopkins told him. Tali might have gone to the other Cousins for help, but he found out the FBI could prove that the Loving Helpers had subverted the Secret Service and that Tali helped plot your murder. Tali didn’t dare turn the Loving Helpers against Hopkins. Too many in the FBI knew. Still, Hopkins was scared shitless when Jonis died. He went to Tali and confessed. Your Brother promised he’d protect him. See? He knew who got to Jonis and why, and he just didn’t care. To Tali, man, once Jonis had converted, he was just another human. And your Brother, he doesn’t like humans worth crap.”

Reen straightened, gazed at the misty cobalt square of window to Rushing’s right. “Let’s go to Camp David,” he said.

Rushing nodded. “We’ll drive you.”

“You drive,” Reen told him with a heartsick sigh. “We’ll go in the ship.” He looked down at the crouched and terrified Marian. “And we’ll take the Loving Helpers with us.”