Last Gasp (31 page)

“Gene, good to see you. How’s everything?”

Automatically Lucas extended his hand and it was lightly taken by the slender black one. The president released his hand and said over his shoulder out of the side of his mouth, “What is he, colonel, general, or what?” A low hard voice from the crush answered at once, “Colonel, sir. Cathermore. Purple Heart in El Salvador. Prosthetic hip joint, right side.”

“Mr. President,” Lucas said breathlessly, running alongside, “I have to speak with you. It’s vitally important, a matter of national security. It’s difficult to explain right now, in these circumstances.”

Munro smiled, incredibly handsome, perfect white teeth in a strong, acceptably negroid face. Virile, sensual, powerful, full of character. “I appreciate the problem, Gene, but that’s how it is. Sorry. These people tie me up in so many fucking knots I can’t move.”

The smile came back, dazzling. No wonder television audiences went wild over him. He was better looking than any movie star.

Lucas gritted his teeth and launched in. “Shortly before he died, Mr. President, Secretary of Defense Lebasse gave me a dossier concerning a top-secret project that had been submitted to him for approval. He wanted my opinion—as a scientist—on the advisability of proceeding with this project”—they had covered half the distance already; this was impossible, ludicrous—“and I know that he himself had grave doubts. In view of his death—what I mean is, Mr. President, is that I feel it’s my responsibility as your scientific adviser to urge you most strongly not to grant approval ...”

He was babbling. Did any of this make sense? Physically shaking, trying to keep his voice under control, he said with as much firmness and authority as he could muster, “This project must not be allowed to go ahead, sir. The consequences are truly horrendous.”

They were ten yards away from the flags and the bunting and the group of officers and the squad of soldiers beyond. President Munro halted and the phalanx of aides and secret service agents stopped with him, forming a solid mass enclosing the two men, the tall handsome black one and the small gray-haired white one.

Lucas drew in a quivering breath: He felt dwarfed and lost, yet somehow defiant, a man fighting desperately for a cause in which he believed.

President Munro was looking down at him, two thin creases on either side of his nose, momentarily spoiling those dark beautifully proportioned features.

“What project are you speaking of, Gene?”

Lucas let go a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Gaining confidence by the second, he said rapidly, “It’s code-named DEPARTMENT STORE, sir. It was submitted to the Defense Department by Advanced Strategic Projects of the Pentagon.” At last he was being listened to, and by someone who mattered, who had the power to do something. By God, the evil
could
be stopped and would be!

“That one. Yep.” The president was nodding. “Nothing to worry about, Gene, it’s all taken care of. Approval has been granted on the advice of Mr. Zadikov.”

“Who?” Lucas mumbled, too dazed to be astounded.

“Ralf Zadikov, the newly appointed secretary of defense.” President Munro patted Lucas on the shoulder. “Great to see you again, Gene. Drop by again sometime. Give my best regards to your wife—” somebody muttered in his ear—“Elizabeth.”

He smiled brilliantly and everyone went with him except Gene Lucas, suddenly all alone on the lawn in the mellow evening sunshine, staring emptily after them.

Chase wandered across to the newsstand and looked idly over the racks of magazines and paperbacks. Would the series for
Sentinel
make a book? John Ware had hinted that there was the possibility of a spin-off, though naturally everything depended on how the pieces turned out. What was really needed was precisely what he lacked— that nugget of pure gold that had eluded him. What the hell. Pointless to fret about it now.

A chime rang out and heads turned dutifully as a female voice rhymed off a list of times and destinations.

He thought with pleasure that soon he’d be home with Dan. Back to the ritual of bathtime frolics and bedtime stories. He wondered if Dan had mounted the postcards he’d sent—one from each place he’d been to—in the scrapbook Chase had bought for him. Then there was the large map of the United States on which Dan said he was going to draw lines connecting all the different places with colored crayons. It felt wonderful to have the kid to go back to; alone he was rootless, but together he and Dan made a family. A home.

He tried to picture Cheryl as part of it, making up the triangle. It was still difficult to transpose her mentally from friend to lover, and to imagine a more permanent relationship was at the moment beyond him. Nothing had been decided, nothing had been settled, no promises given or sought... perhaps, as he suspected, she needed time, like him, to find out what absence did to the heart. Had it just been a casual affair, their few days together, fondly remembered because it was so short? Or was there a future for the three of them? In all honesty he had to admit that he didn’t know.

Thinking about her brought back the night before. They had made love as eagerly and as tenderly as the first time. The memory assailed him, so strong that he could smell her perfume, and even before the thought had properly resolved itself he was turning away from the newsstand, wanting to talk to her, and in his unseeing haste almost collided with someone standing close behind. Apologizing without sparing the man a backward glance, he made for the row of pay phones in their colored plastic bubbles.

Due to the time difference it was late afternoon in California and Cheryl was where he expected her to be, at Scripps.

From the tone of her voice he could tell she was both surprised and pleased to hear from him. “Well, I thought I’d milk my credit card for all it’s worth seeing as someone else is footing the bill,” Chase said, in some perverse way feeling he had to underplay the situation. Why this was necessary he didn’t know, unless it was a self-defense mechanism operating on autopilot. He asked her when she was going to visit him in England.

“Would you like me to come?”

“Yes. I’d like you to meet Dan.”

“That sexually precocious son of yours.”

“All six-year-olds are sexually precocious,” Chase said, settling himself more comfortably inside the plastic bubble. Across the lounge a large curved TV screen was showing the evening newscast.

“Maybe next year,” Cheryl said. “But no promises.”

“I’m not holding you to any.” Their words were coded messages. With some women, he thought, you could talk all night and fail to communicate, while with others a world of meaning could be compressed into a sentence. There and then he realized that he was going to miss her. It came as something of a revelation, for he hadn’t felt anything like it in years. “We can’t let it finish.”

“No,” Cheryl said after a pause. The three thousand miles of telephone cable crackled and hummed in his ear.

He said, “I’m going to miss you, Cheryl.”

“I think I feel the same.”

“Only think?”

“I’m an old-fashioned girl; it takes time.”

“I’d have said you were just the opposite,” Chase said lightly, watching without hardly seeing a procession of ramshackle cars and buses on the big screen. Young people with shaven heads and black robes. Sun beating down from a pure blue sky. It might have been a scene from the Far East except for the westernized features and the shepherding highway patrol car. Some religious festival?

“Something odd happened today.”

“What was that?”

“A package arrived in the mail, a few minutes after you left. I haven’t had time to look at it properly, but it’s some kind of government report. There was nothing with it, no letter or anything. But it’s plastered with classified and restricted circulation notices.”

“A report about what?”

“Something called ‘Department Store.’ It looks genuine. I’ll write and tell you more when I’ve read it.”

She broke off and Chase caught a muttered conversation, and then Cheryl came back. “Gavin, I have to go, I’m sorry. One of my experiments is boiling over. Please take care. I mean that. And I am going to miss you, honestly.”

Now that it was time to go Chase found he wanted to say more, but it was too late. Joy and sorrow mingled inside him. He said his good-byes and in the middle of them Cheryl said, “Did he contact you, the guy from the American Press Association? I almost forgot.”

“No, who was it?”

“Pat Bryant of the APA.” Cheryl told him about the call and said, “I think he was going to try to contact you there, at JFK. But he hasn’t?”

“Not so far.” It didn’t strike him as odd until he had hung up and emerged from the plastic bubble into the noisy throng once more. How did the APA know where to find him? No one knew of his movements from day to day, not even John Ware. He debated whether to call the APA to find out what was up and decided against it. Departure time was only an hour away. If the BBC wanted to talk to him they’d have to do it in London. He’d no intention of missing his flight, not for the director general himself.

The briefcase weighed heavily and after dodging and darting he just beat a man in a gray suit and Homburg to a vacant seat. He sank down with relief and five minutes later had drifted into a shallow, uneasy doze. It was like sleeping on the edge of a precipice, the constant threat of falling keeping mind and body in a state of tension. There was continual noise and movement all around, people getting up, sitting down, shuffling past. Dimly he was aware that the person on his left had departed, to be replaced almost in the same instant by someone whose shoulder was edging him nearer and nearer to the frightful drop. He resisted the pressure, knowing another six inches and he’d be gone. In his semidreaming state he was being pushed by a man with a shaven head wearing a Homburg hat and black robe. He was right on the edge now, on the very edge, about to fall over, and Christ, he was over, awful space and emptiness beneath him, falling, falling, falling ...

Chase tightened and jerked upright, eyes blinking wide, finding himself next to a large, fat woman who overflowed her space and was encroaching on his.

“Trying to get forty winks, huh?” she nodded companionably, her mouth a red-lipped wound supported by several chins.

“Trying and failing.” Chase covered a yawn and arched back, hoping to ease the tension in his spine. Opposite him, six feet away, a man wearing a shiny black hat was hunched over, fiddling with a camera in his lap, or rather a camera case.

Chase watched because he had nothing better to do, noticing the heavy gold jewelry on the man’s thick fingers and hairy wrists. Rings, watch, bracelet. His gaze drifted to the rolling tide of faces in the aisle and he sat up straight, not noticing the man opposite making a final adjustment to his camera.

“Good God, I don’t believe it.”

“Beg pardon?” said the fat woman, craning her chins toward him.

Chase grabbed his briefcase and stepped over legs, eyes fixed on the unmistakable apparition of Boris Stanovnik.

His chosen method had been primed and fitted inside the black leather glove when he saw his man move to the newsstand. There Chase lingered, giving Sturges time to make his approach circuitously, unseen. No need to hurry. It was against his instinct anyway. Proceed slowly and calmly and methodically, working out each step in advance.

The black glove hung innocently at his side, the fingers pointing downward. Inside, his finger was curled around the semicircular metal ring, his thumb touching the plunger. The syringe contained systolic fluid. One swift jab and it would infiltrate the arterial system, speeding up the rhythm of the heart until it overloaded and the victim underwent cardiac arrest. The outward signs and the internal symptoms were consistent with a massive coronary.

He engineered his position while browsing through the magazines; slightly behind his man, out of his eyesight, feeling good, unemotional, breathing easy, doing his job.

Two paces away, his hand tensing on the syringe, thumb taut, and Chase turned and almost blundered into him. Taken by surprise, he didn’t have time to react. Then Chase was gone, not even looking at him, muttering an apology.

There was nothing to do but wait. Chase talked on the phone, safe inside the plastic bubble, impossible to get near. So wait.

When Chase had finished on the phone Sturges was still at the newsstand, head bowed as though reading titles, eyes peering from under the brim of his soft black hat. The eyes followed Chase and saw him take a seat. It was the only one vacant; he was surrounded on all sides, so off came the glove and the hypodermic and into the pouch inside the attaché case.

If not close, then at a distance. The camera.

More waiting and watching while Sturges readied himself to claim the first empty seat in a suitable position. When it came he strode across and boldly sat down, directly facing his man. Six, seven feet away. And Chase with his eyes closed, dozing. Perfect.

Sturges unfastened the strap and swung open the front section of the case to reveal a quite ordinary camera. The recessed hole where the lens should have been made a snug silo for the gas-powered dart 2.3 centimeters in length. Cradling the camera in his lap, Sturges bent over it and lined up the crosshairs through the vertical viewfinder, aiming for the dead center of the body area, above the stomach and below the ribcage. The tipped dart would penetrate shirt and skin leaving a minuscule bloodless puncture, the toxin spreading through the arterial network—in two minutes, death.

Holding the camera steady with both hands he sighted and pressed the release button with his thumb. There was a faint
phut
from the compressed gas capsule. Through the viewfinder Sturges found himself looking not at a white shirt but at a scuffed and scarred brown briefcase, and from beneath the hat brim saw the briefcase swing past, embedded in it the tiny metallic end of the dart.

Across from him a fat lady complained to anyone willing to listen: “That’s what you get these days—you know?—for trying to act polite.” She blew out a stomach-shaking sigh of disgust. “I outta save my breath.”