Atropos (12 page)

The rectangle was a tape cassette. A cheap one. The label said “Exceptional Tape Company,” which made Mark think it was probably from Hong Kong, or someplace else that hadn’t found out that in the United States, “exceptional” was now a euphemism for “retarded.” Gray plastic, gray-and-white label. Nothing had been written on it. The tape was rewound and ready to go. Mark knew then that the parcel was not making its way back to the safe. Not tonight.

He looked at the note. It read, “Senator—This is one copy. A thousand or more could be made. You will be contacted.” No signature.

Mark closed the safe and spun the dial. He was so eager to get the hell out of there he almost forgot to put the mirror back.

He forced himself to walk calmly back to his room. It was just past 1:00
A.M.
; a servant might still be awake. It wouldn’t do for Mark to be seen sprinting through the house.

He had to dig through a lot of stuff in his closet before he found his old Sony Walkman, one of the first ones. He’d grown tired of his before most people knew they existed. There was several thousand dollars’ worth of stereo equipment in this room, but as it happened, the only earphones were attached to the Walkman. Whatever was on this tape was not going to be let loose to blend with the atmosphere.

Mark cannibalized a couple of batteries from a flash gun, put the headphones on, and got ready to play the tape.

He fumbled the tape into the machine. His hands weren’t exactly shaking. They felt as if they had too much blood in them, as if they were swollen and hard to bend.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to concentrate. He got the tape settled, got the machine closed.

As he listened to the hiss of the leader going through the recording head, he thought,
blackmail.
Blackmail, for God’s sake. It was ridiculous. Van Horns didn’t pay blackmail. It was ridiculous. There was no need. Van Horns brazened it out. That was the advantage of being bold about your vices. Van Horns drank. Van Horns womanized. Van Horns used every bit of financial and political power to help their friends and screw their enemies.

Besides, the Van Horn family had paid with blood and spectacle for long-term kid-gloves treatment from the press.

What could the Senator have possibly done to be blackmailed over? What in the world could there be that Mark’s father was afraid to tell
Ainley Masters,
a man for whom the death of Pina Girolamo had been a public-relations exercise?

Voices came to Mark’s ears.

“Do you want to eat first?” a woman asked.

“After,” the Senator said.

The woman laughed low in her throat.

There was more small talk, then creaking bedsprings and moans and the sticky-valve sound of sex.

Then there was more talking. “I thought you were taking care of that,” the Senator said.

“Hank, darling, nothing works all the time. I’m sorry.”

Talk about an abortion. Talk about blackmail. Then Mark’s father saying, “Bitch,” followed by more creaking bedsprings, this time accompanied by choking noises and gurgles rather than moans.

More talk about abortion.

The asshole doesn’t know he’s killed her,
Mark thought.

“Come on,” the Senator said. “Don’t sulk.” There was silence for a long time. No more talk after that, just movement in the room, followed by a crackling that got louder and louder until it ended in a squeal.

That was the microphone melting,
Mark thought.

Mark hit the rewind button and listened to the tape hum its way back to the beginning. He was amazed at how calm he was.

He listened to it again, then rewound and listened a third time. It didn’t change.

Mark pulled the earphones off and shook his head. He took the cassette from the Walkman and stuffed it down behind the bottom drawer of his dresser. The note he folded up and put in his wallet, reminding himself as he did that he must be very careful not to have his pocket picked or to be hit by a car.

Mark, who had been twelve years old when it happened, but already a true Van Horn, had put the odds at about forty percent that his father had killed that girl. A few years later, he had decided that if he had, he had done it because she’d gotten herself pregnant and was being difficult about it.

But this—this was beyond belief. To choke her by accident in a
bugged room.
He didn’t even want to know who had been bugging the room. Yet.

Mark had always known it was coming. He always knew that someday he’d have to take control of the family. He’d just always figured it would happen after he’d served a few terms in Congress, then made the move up to his father’s Senate seat, as Hank Van Horn was trundled off to one of the more prestigious ambassadorships.

But that wasn’t the way it was working out. If Mark expected there to be anything of the Van Horn name and power left to inherit, he had to take charge
right now.

He’d also have to have a long and not especially pleasant talk with his father, but not now. Not for a while. There were things to do, first. Some facts had to be learned, and some people had to die.

O
NE OF THE TWO
major candidates for the Party’s Presidential nomination lay back on a lumpy bed in a quaint New England inn. It was late afternoon now, and he’d been on the go since before 6:00
A.M.
A campaign breakfast. Pancakes, great slabs of bacon, butter, maple syrup. The candidate usually had nothing but black coffee until he ate a small salad around 2:00
P.M.
, and the meal had been enough to make him gag.

He did not, in fact, gag. He smiled and cleaned his plate. And asked for more when the cameras turned toward him. He’d made four speeches since. Or rather, he’d made The Speech four times, and each time it had taken a greater and greater effort to repress vicious, heartburn-inspired belches. What fun Dan Rather would have had with that.

Finally, he had fought his way through mobs of reporters back to the inn. A lot of reporters, a few New Hampshirites. New Hampshirians. To hell with it. He’d just keep saying “The People of New Hampshire.” The People of New Hampshire had a good thing going, as far as the candidate could tell. They had turned the primary into a major industry, getting suckers to come in and spend millions. In February, for crying out loud, when it was cold enough to freeze your feet to your shoes and your underwear to your groin. Amazing what people would go through to get to be President.

The candidate was running a little behind schedule. Candidates
always
ran behind schedule. This was due to having schedules that made them so exhausted they could no longer move.

Now, for instance, the candidate was supposed to be donning a tuxedo in order to attend a dinner being thrown by the state party chairman. The other candidate would be there, but the understanding was no debating, no overt campaigning. He just hoped the other guy would be as late as he was.

The candidate groaned. Dressing for dinner. He had managed to get as far as shedding his jacket and tie before collapsing on the bed. A little work with his feet, and his shoes were off, too. That was progress. He had better not be there too late. He had lost in Iowa; not a big deal, perhaps, but when you lose in Iowa, you’d damn well better win in New Hampshire.

The thing was, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to be President. He thought he was doing a good job where he was. The people who had put him where he was had no reason to complain.

And they
weren’t
complaining. They were just ambitious. This was the culmination of a glorious plan, and of the candidate’s glorious career. He supposed it wasn’t
that
bad an idea. It was hard to remember when you were tired and cold and faced with a procession of endless days finishing only in November (and then only if you
lost)
that the reason you had gotten involved in the business in the first place was that you had ideals and goals and a vision for the human race.

The money wasn’t bad, either.

With a mighty effort, the candidate sat up on the bed. He sighed. The problem was, they had already practically guaranteed him the nomination and the Presidency. It had all been arranged. He would have had a lot more interest in this if they’d told him it all depended on him.

The candidate was about to collapse back to the bed when someone knocked on the door.

“What is it?” he asked, trying not to sound grumpy.

“Mr. Augustus Pickett is here, sir. He’d like to talk to you, if it’s convenient.”

Gus Pickett. That was good. That was better than good. Gus Pickett was the richest man in the Party. He was into gold and bauxite and gypsum, practically anything that could be found in the ground. He lived in Colorado. If he had come to New Hampshire it had to have something to do with the primary.

The candidate sprang from the bed. He was about to tell his aide to have Pickett wait until he was dressed. Then he thought, no. Here was a chance to be Presidential and human at the same time.

“He can come in right now,” the candidate said. “If he doesn’t mind watching me dress.”

There was a gravelly laugh from outside the room. Pickett liked it. Good. He’d have to see that the press found out about this.

The candidate went over and opened the door and welcomed his visitor. Gus Pickett was a small man, but tough. He had a mop of thick white hair and pale, cold, blue eyes. Everything else about him was brown. The grooved skin, stretched tight over a face that was all planes and angles; the suit, tie, shoes, overcoat.

“You should have let one of the kids take your coat,” the candidate said.

“It’s all right, I won’t be here long. I just wanted to say hello, ask how you’re doing.”

Change jingled as the candidate let his pants fall to the carpet. He started to unbutton his shirt.

“I’m fine,” he said brightly. “Not too much time to rest, but that’s campaigning.”

“Sure,” Gus Pickett said. “Politics ain’t shelling peas.”

The candidate looked at him. Gus Pickett? He stood gaping for a moment, then said, “I thought the expression was ‘Politics ain’t beanbag.’”

Pickett smiled. “Peas, beans, what’s the difference?”

There was no doubt about it, now. Sign, countersign, confirmation. Gus Pickett, it seemed, was not just the richest man in the Party, he was the richest man in the
party.
The room had already been checked for bugs and was clear. Now that the signs had been given, whatever Pickett said next, the candidate was to take as coming directly from Control. From Moscow.

The candidate stood there in his socks and underwear, listening to Gus Pickett tell him how Control was going to place the candidate in the White House.

The plan was brilliant. He couldn’t see how it could fail.

Gus Pickett seemed pretty sanguine about it, too. The grooves of his face rearranged themselves into a bright smile. “See you at the dinner, Mr. President,” he said.

Mr. President. I might as well get used to hearing that, the candidate thought. He was going to be President! He would remove America as a threat to World Peace. He could lead his country the rest of the way into true Socialist justice. He would be one of the great heroes of history.

Then he saw himself in the mirror. The Great Hero of history looked at himself in his underwear, smiled sheepishly, then hastened to get dressed.

T
ROTTER HAD COME BACK
to Kirkester depressed. His little expedition had been a total washout. Worse—he had to have strings pulled to get the police to let him leave Minnesota. It is never good to leave people wondering what’s so important about you.

And though New England was freezing (according to
USA Today’s
weather map), Central New York had just undergone the annual Midwinter Thaw. This meant that the snow that had fallen since late November had melted all at once, which meant in turn that everything that was not paved was mud, and much of what
was
paved was covered with mud.

The only good thing about his return was seeing Regina again.

When the welcome-back kisses were finished, she said, “I’m not pregnant.”

“Ah.” Trotter was strangely sad. He knew he was being stupid but he went on feeling that way. There’d be a lot more chances, and trying to make her pregnant was fun.

Then he realized how she probably knew she wasn’t pregnant. “Does that mean we can’t ... ?”

Regina frowned. “Not for a couple of days, anyway.”

“Doesn’t matter. We’ll have a quiet dinner and snuggle.”

Regina smiled and shook her head. “I have a hard time figuring you out,” she said. “I know what you’ve been trained to do, and I’ve seen you in action. You’re the tough, deadly spy.”

“The spy who loved you,” Trotter said.

“Yeah, exactly. Then when it comes to you and me, not only are you sweet and gentle, you’re almost sappy, like a high school kid.”

“Sappy?”

“I
like
sappy. Ifs just a strange picture, you know?”

“I guess. Maybe it’s because I never had a chance to do any sappy stuff when I was the right age for it. I’m a late bloomer. Maybe I’ll grow out of it. Probably by the time we’re eighty or ninety, I won’t be sappy at all.”

They had their quiet dinner and snuggled, then went to bed. Trotter spent a large part of the night staring at the ceiling wondering about what he’d had in mind when he talked about being eighty or ninety years old. Had he meant it? He hoped not. There had been a time when Trotter had been convinced he wouldn’t live to see thirty. That birthday was safely past, but the one thing someone in his business, even in the administration end, could not allow himself, was the future. The only way you could go on living was to be ready to die at any second. The man who called himself Allan Trotter was beginning to doubt he was.

The next day he decided to go into the office, more because he wanted to be in the same building with Bash than anything else. He went to the basement, where the Kirkester
Chronicle
’s offices were, and made his way to the desk he barely used.