Deep Cover (16 page)

He hung up and walked past Conrad into the corridor. “We appear to have a dinner guest.”

“Bon appétit.”

“Ramsey Douglass.”

Conrad lifted his eyebrows and scratched his angular nose. “I hope it's just social.”

Winslow sensed anger in the Wing Commander's office when he entered. Colonel Bill Ryan, the base commander, sat rumpled in a steel-and-plastic armchair and only waved wearily by way of greeting. Major Pete Chandler, big and crew-cut and hiding behind enormous mirrored sunglasses, was on his feet at one side of the room and only grunted at Winslow. Pete Chandler was chief Security Officer for the complex.

Wing Commander Colonel Clarence “Bud” Sims was behind his desk with both elbows on the blotter, his glasses perched on top of his head. They had left dents on the sides of his nose and he was rubbing it wearily with thumb and forefinger. Sims was heavy-handed, direct, unsophisticated, painfully sincere. He said, “Thanks for dropping by, Fred. We'll only keep you a minute. Colonel Ryan's got a problem.”

“I wouldn't call it a problem,” Ryan said quickly, and Winslow noticed the way Pete Chandler's face turned with an irritable snap.

Bill Ryan added, “I didn't mean to make waves—it appears Major Chandler doesn't like this but we're going to have to arrange a guided tour of the complex for a VIP party and I'd like you to handle it.”

“We've done it plenty of times. Why not?”

Pete Chandler growled, “Because this time it's Senator Forrester.”

Winslow kept looking at Ryan. “I see.”

Ryan didn't look comfortable at all. “Look, he's being frank about this, he's looking for ammunition against us—he thinks he can find holes in our security and naturally Major Chandler resents that. But we can't turn Senator Forrester away at the gate.”

Wing Commander Sims said, “He's got every right to inspect the installation. He's a member of the Committee, and he's cleared for Top Secret. We've got no choice. Besides we wouldn't be doing ourselves any good by giving him the idea we're reluctant to have him here. We've got to give him the idea we welcome his inspection, because if he can find any gaps in our security we want to be the first ones to know about it.”

Chandler made an exasperated sound. “He won't find any gaps. We all know that and Forrester knows it too—he's just grandstanding and I don't see why we should be accomplices in it.” The motorcycle glasses had slipped down on his nose and he thumbed them back. “With all due respect, sir, Colonel Ryan's a friend of the Senator's and maybe we're getting wires crossed here. There's no—”

“That'll be enough of that, Major,” Bill Ryan said. “Let's keep personalities out of it.”

“Yes, sir. Permission to finish, sir?” Chandler was full of acid and Fred Winslow moved off a bit to the side to get out of the crossfire.

“Go on,” Ryan said and flapped his hand vaguely.

Pete Chandler said, “Security's my responsibility, Colonel.” He was facing a point somewhere between Sims and Ryan, and since they were both colonels it was hard to tell whom he was addressing; his eyes were invisible behind the
dark lenses. “He's welcome to have a tour of the usual operational systems but if we let him zero in on our security arrangements he'll have access to information that not even our ranking officers have. We've got eighteen thousand men in uniform around here and outside of this room there aren't a dozen of them who know the whole security setup. And those dozen are men we can control. We've got no way of keeping the lid on a United States Senator once he gets hold of the information. For all we know he'll publish the whole thing in
The New York Times
and the Soviet attaché in New York will airmail a copy direct to the Kremlin—then where'll we be?”

Ryan snapped, “Give him a little more credit for brains than that, Pete. Whatever ax you may think he's grinding, the Senator's not about to give away the whole show out of spite. Besides, Title Eighteen's just as binding on him as it is on you and me.”

“He wants to bring two other people along with him, doesn't he? A scientist and a spook of some kind? Suppose one of them decides he's willing to sacrifice a few years of his time in Leavenworth on the Senator's behalf?”

Ryan said, “You're clutching at straws.” He turned to the Wing Commander. “He's your subordinate, Bud, not mine, but if I have to I'll request you make it a direct order in writing.”

Sims was embarrassed. “Major Chandler, your exception has been noted. Anything you want to add?”

“I guess not.”

“Then let's get on with it—unless you want to lodge a formal protest.”

Chandler remained mute and the Wing Commander leaned back wearily in his tilt chair. “We don't need to have it on paper, do we? You'll show the Senator's party anything they want to see.”

“Yes, sir. Do I have to volunteer things, or confine it to what they ask for specifically?”

Sims glanced at Ryan and Ryan shrugged. “Stick to what they ask for.”

If Chandler was mollified he gave no sign of it.

The Wing Commander said to Fred Winslow, “All right then, Fred. They'll be here Friday morning at eight. Colonel Ryan will meet them at his headquarters and turn them over to you. From there on it's up to you.”

Major Chandler said, “I'd like to keep them company.”

Ryan looked at him. “As long as you keep a civil tongue in your head, Pete.”

Chandler showed his teeth. “I'll mind my manners.”

“Fine. I'm sorry if I jumped at you.”

“Forget it, Colonel.” Chandler turned toward the door. “Fred? You and I will have to map out some kind of itinerary.”

Winslow nodded and looked questioningly at the Wing Commander and Sims sat up and felt the knot of his tie. “I guess that's all, Fred. Thanks for dropping by.”

Winslow left the office. The floor vibrated gently with the thrumming of machinery. Pete Chandler walked along with him and when they were out of earshot of the Wing Commander's office Chandler said, “Christ.”

“They won't find anything, Pete.”

“May be.” Chandler turned and buttonholed him. “We did, didn't we? If we could find it, why can't somebody else?”

“It took us years. What can they find in one day?”

“I just don't like it.”

“Sure. Look, if it comes to the worst and they find the holes we'll just have to plug them and look for other holes. We did it before, we can do it again.”

When Winslow got in the car he rubbed his paunch absently and felt the sweat begin under his uniform. He drove through the main gate and saw the little group of long-haired kids camped off to one side with their peace posters and
NO PHAETON!
picket signs; he drove slowly and looked for Alec's face among them, but his son wasn't there and Winslow felt remotely relieved.

Along Alvernon going north the traffic was clotted and slow. It took him three lights to make the left turn at Fifth and when he had executed the maneuver he heard the raucous
hoot of a car horn; he looked around in irritation to find Nicole Lawrence beside him in her little foreign car, gesticulating with imperious jerks of her head. Winslow made a face and pulled off into the Eicon shopping-center lot.

The dying sun struck painful flashes off the rooftops of a thousand cars. Nicole pulled in a few slots away and Winslow walked over to her car. “What's the matter?”

“Come sit in the car.”

He went around the back of it and got in. Nicole had a caustic look. She was tiny, she had a neat trim figure and good bones but some unhappy trick of genetic fate had kneaded and creased the skin of her face until at forty-five she looked as if she must have slept with her face pressed against a rabbit-wire screen.

The windshield of her car had a sign in it,
PRESS
—
KARZ-TV.
He looked at his watch and Nicole made the inevitable sour remark: “She's timing you now.”

“We've got company for dinner.”

“You sound ecstatic.”

“Ramsey Douglass.”

It made her grin fiercely. “Then I'm just a prelim bout to warm you up for him. Be a dear, Fred, open the glove compartment and hand me the tiger sweat.”

It was eight-year-old bourbon, a flat pint. She drank from the bottle and said, “I'm glad I saw you going by—I was going to call you tonight. I need to know when Senator Forrester's going to visit the base.”

“Where'd you hear that?”

“When he stepped off the plane last Saturday he told us at the press conference he meant to get to the bottom of things. Reading between the lines that means a junket to Davis Mon-than AFB.”

“And you want to collar him at the gate with a microphone and a TV camera.”

“In the movies they call it a scoop,” she said dryly. “Give.”

“Why should I?”

“Friendship. Auld lang syne. Birds of a feather.”

“I'll think about it.”

“This could turn out to be important, Fred.”

“If it does I'll let you know.”

“What's come over you? You never talk back to me, Fred. You always try to make me feel as if I'm persecuting you. Now all of a sudden you're making with flip remarks.”

“It's the moon. I'm having my period. Why all the sudden interest in the Senator?”

“He's news, isn't he?” She tossed her head back to drink from the pint and after a while she said, “Look at those billboards. Constant appeal to envy and fear and greed—a whole population dedicated to making the world safe for time-release antiperspirants. It's about time we started tearing the whole thing down so we can build something decent, isn't it?”

“You sound like my son.”

“Then you've got a bright son.”

“Alec? Clever sometimes; not bright. I had hopes for him once, but he had endless sieges of asthma and mononucleosis—he's twenty-two and he's only a sophomore; you can hardly call that bright.”

“Will you all now turn to page seventy-two in the hymnal.”

“I'm sorry. You got me off on it.”

“You're upset, aren't you? What's on your mind, Fred? Lie down on the couch and tell me all about it.”

He looked at her. “It's a stinking trap we're in, isn't it?”

“I hope this is just a mood, Fred. Just a stage.”

“Why?”

“Because it's a little late for you to think about going back and changing anything.”

“Did I say I wanted to?”

“The signs are showing. You're having second thoughts. Male menopause. I don't suppose you've mentioned it to Celia.”

“No.”

“Naturally. If you had she'd have rammed something up your ass to stiffen your backbone. Celia can get more militant than that hairy son of yours.”

He thought of Alec, hands always in his pockets, his unbreakable
facial apathy, his scorn for the adult world which he somehow intended to reject and enter all at the same time.

She said, “It's my job, Fred, you know that. I'm obliged to remind you of certain things whenever I see signs of—uncertainty—among us. I've been entrusted with this duty and that means I can't let any of you spoil things because it would reflect on me if you did. Now you've got Celia and you've got Alec and Barbara and somewhere a long way from here you've got a mother and two sisters and three brothers, and all of them can be reached.”

“You don't have to shout warnings at me, Nicole.”

“You can go now, Fred. If anybody saw us together and happens to ask, tell them I asked you about Forrester's tour of inspection. Incidentally, you never did tell me when he's coming.”

“I didn't, did I?” He got out of her car and walked over to his own.

He drove west into a tired old residential district. Big trees, leafless, arched the street and threw patterns of spindly shade that fell long and surreal in the late-afternoon sunlight, and the stately old houses clung to a decaying dignity.

The houses on Stewart were small and the lawns parched. Celia had the lawn sprinklers going and Alec's bright yellow car squatted at the curb on its bald tires. Winslow drove into the dirt alley behind the house and parked in the open because they had converted the garage into a party room last year.

He found Celia cold-creaming her skin against the dry air. She glanced in the mirror and said, “I do look a fright.”

“You look fine.” He kissed her cheek and picked up the glass of whiskey and ice that stood beaded on the dressing table. “You look gorgeous.” He took a sip and went into the bathroom stripping off his uniform as he went, showered and shaved and lay on the bed in his underwear, waiting for the after-shower sweat to dry.

“Should I wear this dress?”

“Why not?”

“Fred, you haven't even looked at it.”

She stood by the open closet holding a loosely pleated yellow dress on a hanger, spreading it out over her forearm and giving it the uncertain appraisal of a shopper in a department store. She had always been lean and she had become a little bony the past few years—there was folded flesh at her elbows—but her posture was very good, she didn't have the caved-in slump of underweight middle age. She was in her bra and slip and her breasts looked full and round in the thin pink hammocks. Her face was chiseled and lovely but strong rather than warm. She had the power to attract men's second looks, and she did not look like the mother of a twenty-two-year-old son. Winslow said, “The dress is fine. Come here.”

“No. You'd muss my hair, I'd leak all night, and anyway we haven't time.”

“So damned practical.” He rolled his feet to the floor and started to dress. “I saw the yellow car outside. Alec in his room?”

“He's writing a paper for one of his courses.” She pushed the straight brown hair back from her eyes and gave him a smile that was distant and distracted; she presented her back to him and he zipped her up and she waited without moving until he gave her rump the ritual hand pat.