Little Green Men (22 page)

*
Neologism derived from the surname of a wife batterer whose Latin spouse settled the score by severing his penis with a kitchen knife. The penis was famously reattached, providing its owner with gainful, if undignified, employment as a celebrity penis reattachee.

transfer him after a decent interval. After all, Banion
had
been promoting interest in UFO's. What a mess.

The woods were lonely, dark, and deep, but there was sufficient light to find the spot where he'd buried his laptop, fifteen or so feet from the stone tablet engraved with manly exhortations from the twenty-sixth president. He got down on his knees and began to claw at the damp, leafy earth, grumbling over his lack of a shovel, feeling distinctly unlike James Bond. For one thing, Bond would have managed to make it out of the Hotel Majestic without getting himself arrested. In his moment of
extremis,
Scrubbs finally came to terms with his rejection by the CIA: it was probably the one thing the agency
had
gotten right.

A few minutes of digging with blackened fingernails, and the laptop, wrapped in plastic, revealed itself like a treasure chest. Almost there.

He was about to lift it out of the hole when he heard something to his left. He looked.

He saw three shadows approaching. This was not part of Mr. Majestic's program. They didn't look like bums or bagmen, unless the bagmen who inhabited Theodore Roosevelt kept themselves well groomed and in athletic trim, in deference to TR.

What the hell?

They must have been dispatched by MJ-12 to ensure the safety of the valued object. Then why weren't they greeting him with cheery hellos and a grande latte? Could they have some murkier agenda?

"Hello?" Scrubbs tried. No answer. Not especially reassuring. Th
ere was something inherently un
reassuring about a trio of crew-cut trolls pretending to be pine trees, unless this was some local amateur theatrical troupe rehearsing the final act
of
Macbeth.

"Hello?"

Something definitely unwell here. His brain shouted, Abort abort abort.

Scrubbs saw a hand appear from behind a thick tree twenty feet away. There was something in the hand, something small and metallic, with a tiny rubberized antenna. A walkie-talkie? Then why was he aiming it directly at Scrubbs, and why was a thumb closing down on a button?

What would Bond do?

Scrubbs picked the laptop from its hole and heaved it through the air in the direction of the hand.

The blast knocked him back several feet and rolled him over. When he had cleared his head, he tasted earth in his mouth, and his ears felt like Quasimodo was inside ringing every bell. Gradually he made out other sounds: men shouting. Angry men shouting. Extremely angry men.

The voices apparent belonged to the remaining two, both of them staggering like drunks, weaving into tree trunks, holding their ears, while their shredded clothing smoldered. Their partner, the one who had been holding the remote detonation device, seemed to have disappeared, in the way people do when bombs have gone off in proximity.

Scrubbs lurched to his feet. Quasimodo ringing in Easter Sunday. He stumbled into a tree trunk, hurting his shoulder. He was eager for this wretched day to be over, and it had just begun.

The two smoldering goons had now produced what looked like -
yes, those were definitely guns, and they were pointing them in Scrubbs's direction, if unsteadily. It was time to be away from this unhappy bower.

New explosive sounds filled the woods, puny by contrast with the previous big bang, but argument enough to get the adrenals pumping.

Scrubbs began to run, briskly, in the direction of the Potomac River.

"Do you have to go back to Chicago right away?" Banion asked moonily over his untouched panfried trout and hash browns. Nearby, the finch chirped sweetly in its Victorian bamboo cage. Through the open door to the garden came the trickling of water. For someone who had spent the night on a couch in a state of advanced sexual frustration, he felt oddly relaxed and happy.

Roz looked back at him through eyeglasses over the rim of her coffee cup and smiled. "Not right away."

"Do you have to go back at all?"

"How's that?"

"Why don't you stay here in Washington?" "Woo.
That's
sudden." "I'm serious."

"What would I do in Washington?" "Work for me."

Roz frowned. "You want me to give up the editorship of the leading abductee magazine to get you coffee and do your filing and give you blow jobs in the office?"

An older couple nearby stared. Banion blushed.

"I already have someone who takes care of that."

"Sure you do."

"Renira would probably bite it off." He took her hand. "I'm serious."

"I worked very hard to get where I am."

"I know you did. And I respect that. It's a terrific magazine. Your last cover article on whether Short Uglies make better lovers was the best of its kind I've read. But you've done that. Take on a challenge. The new show's taking off like a rocket. This is exciting. Come on."

"I don't know." "There's something else." "Yeah?"

"I think I, well, love you. I'm not very good at this sort of thing." "Falling in love?"

"
I
don't have a baseline on which to make any definitive assessment, or. . ."

"I love it when you talk about me like I'm a Fiscal outlay." Roz put a forkful of trout in his mouth. "You're married."

"It's nothing six months of expensive lawyers screaming at each other can't fix."

She was smiling. Yes! She was so beautiful! He loved her!

"What would my title be?"

"Executive Assistant."

"Please."

"Executive Director?"

"I was thinking Chief Executive Officer."

"Whatever."

"I'll think about it."

"Oh come on," Banion said. "Say yes. It's the most beautiful word in the English language. West Saxon, originally."

"How does it pay?"

"Oh,
very
well."

"Benefits?"

"Many."

"Medical?"

"Major."

"Vacations?"

"Frequent."

"So." She smiled, taking his hand. "Do I apply for this position in person?"

"Urn. You do have to pass a physical exam first."

"What sort of physical?"

"Pretty rigorous, from what I hear."

"I'll. . . think about it."

Submerged up to his crotch in the frigid Potomac River, Scrubbs hid behind a large rock on the eastern bank of the island, directly across from the Kennedy Center. Early-morning commuters were driving in to work. He was hiding from assassins. Another day, another dollar.

They were getting closer. Soon, he guessed, the police helicopter would appear. An amplified voice would bark at him to put his hands in the air. The rest was predictable. He would be taken into custody. In the car he would feel the jab of a hypodermic needle. Or perhaps they'd use sevoflurane on him, straight, without the ammonia and cinnamon flavoring. He would fall into a deep, untroubled sleep for, oh, ever.

He peered over the top of the rock. They were a hundred feet away and closing on him, sweeping the bank, guns at the ready.

The river was cold and dirty, but it beat getting shot. Scrubbs slipped in, gasping, up to his neck, and pushed out until he felt the current start to carry him downriver. It was swift.

As he was passing the southern tip of Theodore Roosevelt Island, moving swiftly now toward God knew where, he saw a fishing boat, about fifteen feet long, anchored in the lee of the island. A number of fishing rods were deployed in holders. A man was sitting in the boat, leaning back. He appeared to be asleep. Scrubbs began to drift toward the lines. He tried to kick away, but the current was drawing him in.

Fifty feet past the boat, he felt a sharp pain in his leg.

In the distance, he heard the distinctive and normally cheering
zzzzzzzzzzz
of unspooling fishing line.

The pain in his leg
–
ahh!
He thrashed against the current, trying to reach the boat. The fisherman was now standing, holding his rod.

With enormous effort, Scrubbs reached the boat. He grabbed the transom, spat water. "Morning," he said.

The fisherman was a black man in his early sixties, roly-poly in the belly, with a finely trimmed mustache. At the moment, however, his most prominent feature was his mouth, which was hanging open.

Scrubbs coughed up more Potomac water. "Sorry to disturb you, but your line hooked my leg."

"What,"
the man said, "are you
doing
in the water?"

Scrubbs was too tired for invention. "There are some men with guns on the island trying to kill me."

"Police?"

"Sort of. Not really." "Well, which is it?"

"They're with the government." Scrubbs gasped from the exertion required to hold on.
"They want to kill me because
I
know about flying saucers."

Well, there - the ball was now squarely in the man's court. "Mister, are you
drunk!"

"No. They're going to see us any minute. Do you suppose you could pull in your anchor so maybe we could drift out of their range while we talk?"

"Oh,
man
..."

Scrubbs sympathized. Here you come out on the river for a nice, peaceful early-morning bit of fishing, and you catch a man who tells you he's on the run from the UFO police. What
would
you
do?

The man was shaking his head, as if trying to make Scrubbs vanish mentally. Just then the first shots zipped into the water a yard away.

"Sweet Jesus!" the man said. Quick as a flash he sliced the anchor line clean with a razor-sharp fillet knife and ducked under the gunwales. More shots were fired. Scrubbs heard one connect with the side of the boat, eliciting a "Damn!" from the crouching fisherman.

But the boat, borne by the current, was drifting rapidly away from the island, and in minutes they were under the Memorial Bridge and out of range.

"Thank you," Scrubbs spluttered. "Appreciate it." He was exhausted, frozen, and bleeding. He began to slip under. As his head went in, he felt arms pulling him into the boat.

Next thing he knew he was lying in the bottom of the boat, smelling gasoline and fish. Above him, he saw a 727 landing at Reagan National Airport.

The fisherman started the outboard. The boat buzzed south.

"Scrubbs," he said, wincing as he tried to pull the hook out of his thigh. "Nathan."

"Did I
ask
to know that? Do I
want
to know that?"

"You can drop me near the airport if you want."

The man shook his head again.

"Look at you," said the fisherman with a mixture of disgust and concern. "You're wet, stuck full of hooks. I've seen better looking
road-kill.
You're gonna get far."

"Ow!"

'And now you just sat on another of my seventy-nine-cent triple hooks. I'm going to have to ruin that hook to get it out of you. Plus you're sitting on
my
f
ish.
Nothin' much going right for you today. Now what's this you telling me, about UFO's?"

"The government is afraid of what I know about UFO's." No sense in hitting him with the entire history of MJ-12 at this hour of the morning.

"Hm." The man snorted. "You from Saint Lizbeth's?"

"No. I know this must sound strange."

"It
does."

"I'm too tired to lie."

"Hm." But it was a gentler
hm.

"I
seen a UFO once. In the Chesapeake Bay.
Three
of 'em. One red, one blue, one sorta yellow. Crisscrossing like fireflies, except they weren't no bugs. I could see that. Know what I'm saying?"

"1
do."

"1
told my wife about it, and she said, 'You been
drinking.'
1
said the only
drinking
that was going on was in those UFO's, from the way they were driving. Never seen such a thing. Never have since."

He was warming to the subject. "What I don't
get
is - if they so damn intelligent to come
all
the way here from wherever it is, how come they don't just set down on the president's lawn over there like they do in the movies and say, 'Okay, we're here.
Deal
with the situation.' Know what I'm saying? Make a hell of lot more sense than drunk drivin' over the Chesapeake. What is
that
supposed to prove? That they're
intelligent!
If that's all they got to do, they aren't no more
intelligent
than humans." He stared at Scrubbs. "But they may be one up
on you."