The Sam Gunn Omnibus (87 page)

I
pushed my chair from the table. Molina and the president
shot to their feet. De Rivera was closer to me; he held my chair while I stood
up.

“Allow
me to escort you to your room,” he said.

“Thank
you so much,” I replied.

Sam,
still seated, gave me a suspicious look. But he didn’t move from his chair. The
president gave me his arm and I placed my hand on it, just like we were
Cinderella and the Prince at the ball. As we walked regally out of the dining
room I glanced back at Sam. He was positively glowering at me.

We
took an intimately small elevator up two flights. There was barely room enough
in it for the two of us. De Rivera wasn’t much taller than
I
, but he kept bobbing up on his toes as the
elevator inched its way up. I wondered if it was some sort of exercises for his
legs, until I realized that he was peeking down the front of my blouse! I had
dressed casually. Modestly. And there wasn’t much for him to see there anyway.
But he kept peeking.

I
took his proffered arm once again as he walked me to
my door. The wide upstairs corridor was lined with portraits, all men, and
furniture that looked antique and probably very valuable.

He
opened the door to my suite, but before he could step inside I maneuvered myself
into the doorway to block him.

“Thank
you so much for the excellent dinner,” I said, smiling my kiss-off smile.

“I
believe you will find an excellent champagne already chilled in your sitting
room,” said the president.

I
gave him the regretful head shake. “It’s much too
late at night for me to start drinking champagne.”

“Ah,
but the night is young, my lovely one.”

Lovely?
Me? I was as plain as a pie pan and I knew it. But
El Presidente
was acting as if I was a ravishing beauty. Did he think he
could win me over to his side by taking me to bed? I’ve heard of tampering with
a judge but this was ridiculous.

“I’m
really very tired, Mr. President.”

“Carlos,”
he whispered.

“I’m
really
very tired, Carlos.”

“Then
it would be best for you to go directly to bed, would it not?”

I
was wondering if I’d have to knee him in the groin
when Sam’s voice bounced cheerfully down the corridor. “Hey Jill, I just
remembered that there was another so-called act of God that cost us ten-twenty
mill or so.”

The
president stiffened and stepped back from me. Sam came strolling down the
corridor with that imp’s grin spread across his round face.

“Lemme
tell you about it,” he said.

“I’m
very tired and I’m going to sleep,” I said firmly. “Goodnight, Sam. And
goodnight, Carlos.”

As
I shut the door I saw Carlos glaring angrily at Sam. Maybe I’ve broken up their
alliance, I thought.

Then
I realized that Sam had come upstairs to rescue me from Carlos. He was jealous!
And he cared enough about me to risk his scheme against the Pope.

Maybe
he did love me after all. At least a little.

WE
TRIED TO settle the mess out of court. And we might have done it, too, if it
hadn’t been for the other side’s lawyer. And the assassins.

All
parties concerned wanted to keep the suit as quiet as possible. Dignity. Good manners.
We were talking about the Pope, for goodness’ sake. Maintain a decent self-control
and don’t go blabbing to the media.

All
the parties agreed to that approach. Except Sam. The instant the World Court
put his suit on its arbitration calendar, Sam went roaring off to the news
people. All of them, from BBC and CNN to the sleaziest tabloids and paparazzi.

Sam
was on global television more than the hourly weather reports.

He
pushed Santa Claus out of the headlines. You couldn’t punch up a news report on
your screen without seeing Sam’s Jack-o’-lantern face grinning at you.

“I think that if God gets blamed
for accidents and natural disasters, the people who claim to represent God
ought to be willing to pay the damages,” Sam said gleefully, over and again. “It’s
only fair.”

The media went into an orgy of
excitement. Interviewers doggedly tracked down priests, ministers, nuns, lamas,
imams, mullahs, gurus of every stripe and sect. Christmas was all but
forgotten; seven “holiday specials” were unceremoniously bumped from the
entertainment networks so they could put on panel discussions of Sam’s suit
against the Pope instead.

Philosophers became as commonplace
on the news as athletes. Professors of religion and ethics got to be regulars
on talk shows all over the world. The Dalai Lama started his own TV series.

It was a bonanza for lawyers. People
everywhere started suing God— or the nearest religious establishment. An
unemployed mechanic in Minnesota sued his local Lutheran Church after he
slipped on the ice while fishing on a frozen lake. An English woman sued the
Archbishop of Canterbury when her cat got itself run over by a delivery truck.
Ford Motor Company sued the Southern Baptists because a ship carrying
electronic parts from Korea sank in a typhoon and stopped Ford’s assembly
operation in Alabama.

Courts either refused to hear the
suits, on the grounds that they lacked jurisdiction over You-Know-Who, or held
them up pending the World Court’s decision. One way or another, Sam was going
to set a global precedent.

The Pope remained stonily silent.
He virtually disappeared from the public eye, except for a few ceremonial masses
at St. Peter’s and his regular Sunday blessing of the crowds that he gave from
his usual balcony. There were even rumors that he wouldn’t say the traditional
Christmas Eve mass at St. Peter’s.

He even stopped giving audiences to
visitors—after the paparazzi and seventeen network reporters infiltrated an
audience that was supposed to be for victims of a flood in the Philippines.
Eleven photographers and seven Filipinos were arrested after the Swiss Guard
broke up the scuffle that the news people started.

The Vatican spokesman was Cardinal
Hagerty, a dour-faced Irishman with the gift of gab, a veteran of the Curia’s
political infighting who stonewalled the media quite effectively by sticking to
three points:

One: Sam’s suit was frivolous. He
never mentioned Ecuador at all; he always pinpointed the notorious Sam Gunn as
the culprit.

Two: This attempt to denigrate God
was sacrilegious and doomed to failure. Cardinal Hagerty never said it in so many
words, but he gave the clear impression that in the good old days the Church
would have taken Sam by the scruff of his atheistic little neck and burned him
at the stake.

Three: The Vatican simply did not
have any money to spend on malicious lawsuits. Every penny in the Vatican treasury
went to running the Church and helping the poor.

The uproar was global. All across
the world people were being treated to “experts” debating the central question
of whether or not God should be—or could be—held responsible for the disasters
that are constantly assailing us.

There were bloody riots in Calcutta
after an earthquake killed several hundred people, with the Hindus blaming
Allah and the Moslems blaming Kali or Rama or any of the other hundreds of
Hindu gods and goddesses. The Japanese parliament solemnly declared that the
Emperor, even though revered as divine, was not to be held responsible for
natural disasters. Dozens of evangelist ministers in the U.S. damned Sam
publicly in their TV broadcasts and as much as said that anyone who could stop
the little bugger would be a hero in the eyes of God.

“What we need,” yowled one TV
evangelist, “is a new Michael the Archangel, who will smite this son of Satan
with a fiery sword!”

In Jerusalem, the chief rabbi and grand
mufti stunned the world by appearing in public side-by-side to castigate Sam
and call upon all good Jews and Moslems to accept whatever God or Allah sends
their way.

“Humility and acceptance are the
hallmarks of the true believers,” they jointly told their flocks.

My sources on the Senate
intelligence committee told me that the chief rabbi added privately, “May He
Who Is Nameless remove this evil man from our sight.”

The Grand Mufti apparently went
further. He promised eternal paradise for anyone who martyred himself
assassinating Sam. In a burst of modernism he added, “Even if the assassin is a
woman, paradise awaits her.” I thought he must have been either pretty damned
furious at Sam or pretty damned desperate.

Officially, the Vatican refused to
defend itself. The Pope would not even recognize the suit, and the Curia—which
had been at odds with the new American Pope—backed him on this issue one
hundred percent.

Even
though they knew that the World Court could hear the suit in their absence and
then send in the Peacekeepers to enforce its decision, they felt certain that
the Court would never send armed troops against the Vatican. It would make a
pretty picture, our tanks and jet bombers against their Swiss Guardsmen.
Heat-seeking missiles against medieval pikes. In St. Peter’s, yet.

But the insurance conglomerate that
carried the policy for Ecuador National Space Systems decided that it would
step forward and represent the Vatican in the pretrial hearing.

“We’ve got to put a cork in this
bottle right away,” said their president to me. “It’s a disgrace, a shameful
disgrace.”

His name was -Frank Banner, and he
normally looked cheerful and friendly, probably from the days when he was a
salesman who made his living from sweet-talking corporate officials into multimillion-dollar
insurance policies. We had known each other for years; Frank had often
testified to Senate committees—and donated generously to campaign funds,
including mine.

But now he looked worried. He had
flown up to Nashua to see me shortly after I returned from Quito. His usual
broad smile and easygoing manner were gone; he was grim, almost angry.

“He’s ruining the Christmas season,”
Frank grumbled.

I
had to admit that
it was hard to work up the usual holiday cheer with this lawsuit hanging over
us.

“Look,” he said, as we sipped hot
toddies in my living room, “I’ve had my run-ins with Sam Gunn in the past, Lord
knows, but this time the little pisser’s gone too goddamned far. He’s not just
attacking the Pope, although that in itself is bad enough. He’s attacking the
very foundation of western civilization! That wise-assed little bastard is
spitting in the eye of every God-fearing man, woman and child in the world!”

I
had never seen
Frank so wound up. He sounded like an old-time politician yelling from a
soapbox. His face got purple and I was afraid he’d hyperventilate. I didn’t
argue with him; I merely snuggled deeper into my armchair and let him rant
until he ran out of steam.

Finally he said, “Well, somebody’s
got to stand up for what’s right and decent.”

“I suppose so,” I murmured.

“I’m assigning one of our young
lawyers to act as an
amicus curiae
in your pretrial hearing.”

“I’m not sure that’s the proper
legal term,” I said.

“Well, whatever!” His face reddened
again.”
Somebody’s
got to protect the Pope’s
ass. Might as well be us.”

I
nodded, thinking
that if Sam somehow did win his suit against the Pope it would turn the entire
insurance industry upside down.
Amicus curiae
indeed.

The moment I laid eyes on the
lawyer that Frank sent I knew we’d have nothing but trouble.

Her name was Josella Ecks, and she
was a tall, slim, gorgeous black woman with a mind as sharp as a laser beam.
Skin the color of milk chocolate. Almond-shaped eyes that I would have killed
for. Long silky legs, and she didn’t mind wearing slitted skirts that showed
them off cunningly.

I
knew Sam would go
ape over her; the little juvenile delinquent always let his hormones overpower
his brain.

Sure enough, Sam took one look at
her and his eyes started spinning like the wheels in a slot machine. I felt myself
turning seventeen shades of green. If Sam had seemed a little jealous of Carlos
de Rivera, I was positively bilious with envy over Josella Ecks.