Sympathy for the Devil (20 page)

Twenty-five minutes later found Nestor Greene seated behind the desk in his study, an icy glass of Stolichnaya Elit sharing space with the envelope from Mary Margaret Doyle. He grasped the envelope at the bottom and tilted it, allowing its contents to slide onto the polished teak surface.

He put the single sheet of instructions off to the side. No sense in spoiling the surprise. Greene enjoyed the challenge of figuring out just who was about to get royally fucked, and in what precise way.

He decided to let the photocopied material wait and picked up the other sheaf of papers, noticing the slightly musty small they gave off. He removed the paper clip and peered at the first page, which was apparently some kind of cover sheet. At the top was typed, in all caps: SHOWDOWN AT CREDIBILITY GAP: PARAMETERS OF DECEPTION IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF LYNDON BAYNES JOHNSON.

Hmmm. Rather clever, in a puerile sort of way
. The words on the page, he saw, were the product of a real typewriter, not a printer from some computer.
How
quaint
. That meant that the document was practically antediluvian.

In the middle of the page, centered, was:

A Senior Thesis

Department of Political Science

Amherst College

In partial fulfillment for the degree

Bachelor of Arts

And down near the bottom was typed:

by

Randall R. Lunsford

May, 1977

Greene frowned. Randall Lunsford was the name of one of the stronger Republican candidates for the presidential nomination this year - but why the hell should anybody, including Nestor Greene, give a rat's ass about his senior thesis, written thirty-some years ago?

Greene checked the number of the last page - Mother Mary, the thing ran to 87 pages. Was he going to have to read all of it? Greene used his thumb to flip through the pages, and that's when something caught his eye. He stopped, and looked closer. Part of page 9 was highlighted with that yellow ink that students use to mark up their textbooks. Unlike the typed words on the page, the yellow stuff seemed fresh, as if applied much more recently. Greene read the passage thus indicated, and found it unremarkable.
Yeah, yeah. LBJ was a lying bastard. Tell me something I don't already know, kid.
He flipped some more pages, and found the yellow markings on two, three, four... seventeen pages, in total.

Greene scratched his cheek. His attention was clearly being directed to certain specific parts of this piece of ancient history, but what this had to do with destroying some politico's career today...

He turned to the collection of photocopies. The top sheet looked like the title page from a book:
Johnson and His Critics: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
by one Adam H. Quiller. The book had been published by some obscure university press in 1975.

I think I'm starting to see where we're going here
, Greene thought.
But is this journey really necessary?

The second page had a paragraph that had been marked by the yellow highlighter.

"'When Johnson ordered the Navy to bomb the North Vietnamese radar installations - the first time the North was targeted for aerial bombardment - in retaliation for the attacks on the
Maddox
and
Turner Joy
by PT boats in the Gulf of Tonkin, he was already aware that the officers commanding the U.S. vessels were expressing doubts that such an attack had ever occurred.'"

Greene was pretty sure he recognized the passage. He went back to the senior thesis and began turning pages rapidly - until he came to page 32.

When Johnson ordered the Navy to bomb the North Vietnamese radar installations...

Green looked for quotation marks around this passage. There were none. He looked for a footnote number. None. He looked for anything that would tell the reader of the senior thesis that these words were anything but the product of the undergraduate brain of one Randall Lunsford. There was nothing.

Greene didn't bother to match up the other marked sections of the two documents. He already knew what he would find.

He sat back in his chair, reached for the glass of vodka, and took a long sip.

Okay, fine. What we have here is conclusive proof that Randy Lunsford, current Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and candidate for the office of President of the United States, had committed blatant plagiarism in writing his senior thesis at Amherst, all those years ago. Since the thesis was certainly a prerequisite for his Bachelor's degree, the degree was probably granted fraudulently, and could even be revoked, if the folks at Amherst are willing to take the chance of making a mortal enemy of their governor who has, I believe, two more years left in his term.

Greene took another pull at his drink, and set the glass down.

Big fucking hairy deal.

This kind of revelation was not unknown in American politics. It was a blow to Lunsford's candidacy, but not necessarily a fatal one. Just off the top of his head, Greene could think of three potential lines of defense: 'I Was Young and Stupid,' 'I Was Young and (Temporarily) Having Emotional Problems,' and 'This Is a Smear Campaign by My Enemies.'

It would be a nine day's wonder that wouldn't even last nine days. The late-night comics would get some good jokes out of it
(Did you hear that Governor Lunsford's campaign has released an advance copy of his newest campaign speech? It begins 'Four score and seven years ago...')
, a few reporters would ask questions and receive carefully-scripted, well-rehearsed answers, and it would all blow over. Probably.

As a political weapon, it sure couldn't compete with photos of a guy sucking cock.

If this was the best Mary Margaret Doyle could come up with to deal with one of Stark's competitors... It occurred to Greene that he ought to read her accompanying memo.

No salutation, of course. Gets right to the point, does our Ms. Doyle.

Compare the video footage of Lunsford's speech announcing his candidacy with a speech by Glenda Jackson (yes, the former actress) given when announcing her decision to run for Parliament in 1992. The similarities between the two are far too numerous to be chance, or even honest paraphrase. It is possible, of course, to overcome this kind of error. Joe Biden was caught in 1987 lifting parts of a speech by Brit M.P. Neil Kinnock, and his career in politics was not over - but he didn't get to be President, either. When Lunsford's lapse is combined with the clear evidence of earlier plagiarism, a pattern would seem to emerge - a pattern of extreme carelessness at best, or of repeated, deliberate deception at worst, etc. You know how to get the story out there. Do it ASAP, and try not to fuck it up.

Nestor Greene muttered several unkind, and anatomically impossible, things about Mary Margaret Doyle. Then he turned on his computer and tried to remember whom he might know at the BBC that could be either bribed, begged, or blackmailed into doing him a favor.

Chapter 19

In order to avoid being summarily returned to Hell for goofing off on the job, Malachi Peters put in a lot of hours doing research on Senator Stark, interrupted only occasionally by brief forays into the Wonderland of Internet porn. He had been doing it that way for three days now, and it must not have pissed Astaroth off, since Peters was still here.

Assassinating Stark was going to be a complex problem. Peters had spent six years in Europe, killing people who had been deemed threats to U.S. national security. But a hit was a hit (although Peters' immediate superior, an enigmatic man known only as Mac, always referred to it as a 'touch'), regardless of where you were, and the relevant factors were always the same: access, termination, and egress. Or as his instructors at The Farm in Virginia liked to call it, "Getting in, getting it done, and getting out."

To Peters, it seemed like the third stage was going to be the hardest. It usually was - for the first two, you had surprise on your side. But by the time you got to egress, if you lived that long, everybody was after your ass.

Peters had every intention of reaching the third phase, and getting away clean. If he were killed, that was probably an express ticket back to Hades; if he got caught, that would mean either execution for murder, or the rest of his life spent in prison, enduring one kind of hell while waiting for the real thing. Or, if captured, he could always just tell the authorities the complete truth about who he was and how he'd gotten here - the result being his incarceration in a high-security mental hospital for life.

And if he
were
locked up somewhere, it would be just like that bastard Astaroth to grant him a long, long life.

Even the first two steps of the assassination sequence were probably more difficult than they used to be. It must be a security nightmare these days - guarding against an assassin who doesn't care if he dies, who even
wants
to die, for the greater glory of Allah.

Welcome to the 21st Century, Mr. Peters. We have good news and bad news. The good: your country's nemesis, the Soviet Union, is no more. Communism there is a thing of the past, and relations between Russia and America are, if not warm, at least cordial.

Now for the bad news...

Peters had known about the 9/11 attacks even before his return to Earth. He'd been near the intake area of Hell on that fateful day, and had been present when the souls of some of the dead from the Twin Towers arrived. They were accompanied by the spirits of the hijackers, and didn't
they
look surprised.

Sorry, boys - no 72 virgins apiece. Virgins are pretty scarce around these parts, anyway, and if anybody's going to spend eternity getting fucked, it's gonna be YOU.

Peters sat back and rubbed his tired eyes. Knowing where Stark was going to be on any given day over the next four months was easy. The primary schedule was online, and Peters had already printed it out.

And there was always the Republican convention, which was being held in New York this time around. Even if Stark didn't get the nomination, he'd almost certainly be there; such things were expected of politicos.

The downside of waiting until then was that security at the convention would be both wide and deep. But there was an upside, too. With that many people, and that much chaos, it might be possible to nail Stark and then disappear into the crowd - which might even panic and stampede when Stark went down, depending on how it was done.

Peters had a New York State driver's license, made current again by the power of Astaroth. The state gun laws hadn't changed much - they were still the toughest in the country. To buy a pistol legally you needed a permit, and New York permits required lots of paperwork, persistence, and patience. He'd also read that the gun dealers were now required to do a background check before they could sell you a handgun. Peters wondered what the clerk at some gun store would say if the background check on him came back marked 'Deceased.'

Rifles and shotguns had always been easier to get, and that hadn't changed. All you needed was proof that you were over eighteen. A long gun might be his best bet, anyway. Getting close enough to nail somebody with a pistol meant giving his bodyguards the chance to nail
you
right back.

He got up from the desk, hearing his vertebrae snap and pop. He'd found that his libido had returned with his memory, and his little 'porn breaks' had only strengthened a need that masturbation couldn't satisfy. It had been a very long time since he'd been with a woman. Peters tried not to think about what passed for sex in Hell.

Feeling nervous and ridiculous in equal measure, Peters cleared his throat and addressed the empty room.

"I don't know if you can hear me, my Lord Astaroth. I'm assuming you can. So, here's the thing: I've done all I can think of to do for you today, and I'm tired."

He paused for a second, then went on. "I'm also horny, and I want to get laid. I'm hoping you won't see that as neglecting my work - but if you do, let me know now, and I won't go through with it. I'd rather not get dragged back to Hell yet, and I expect you'd prefer to have me here doing the job you sent me to do. So, if you've got a problem with me hiring a hooker and doing some sex, please let me know now."

Peters then stood there for a full minute, noticing for the first time the faint hum of traffic five floors below on Pennsylvania Avenue, hearing a faint clanking sound from the hall that he assumed was somebody's room service dinner being wheeled past his door.

Then, with an audible sigh of relief, he went to sit on the bed and picked up the D.C. Yellow Pages. He'd checked yesterday, while still nerving himself up to risk Astaroth's anger, and found that escort services continued to advertise in phone book. Some things, it seemed, didn't change.

He flipped to the 'E' listings. There were eight pages devoted to escort services, with ads ranging in size from a full page to about half the size of a playing card.

With the money and credit he had to work with, Peters figured he didn't need to settle for some gum-chewing teenager with cheap perfume and a nose that was perpetually runny from her coke habit. He could afford the best,

He finally decided on a place in Bethesda that called itself 'Elegant Evenings.' Their ad, at least, looked classy. He'd have to see if their employees came up to the same high standard.

Making note of the number, Peters was just reaching for the phone to order himself some high-class pussy when there was a knock on the door.

The Secret Service detail protecting Senator Howard Stark had brought three cars with them to Bannerman High School Auditorium for the occasion of the Senator's speech. One car had left with the Senator an hour ago, as per procedure. Another was still in the parking lot behind the main school building. Masterson stood in the doorway of the auditorium and watched the third car drive off. One of his agents was giving Joseph Robert Bowles a lift home. Bowles had been released from Secret Service custody a few minutes ago, with apologies and a handshake. Fortunately, he didn't seem inclined to sue anybody over tonight's 'misunderstanding.' Masterson doubted the man would have won in court - the agents had acted in good faith, and for sound reasons - but the nuisance factor of such legal actions was always substantial.