Deep Cover (10 page)

Ryan sank his teeth into the remains of his cigar and blew a rancid cloud of smoke. “Now what was the second thing you came for?”

There was no arguing with him, he had the stubbornness of an elephant in heat.

“I want to inspect the missile complex.”

“Why not? That's your privilege—you're on the Military Affairs Committee.”

“This isn't just a junket for the benefit of the press. I want to go through the whole system with a fine-tooth comb.”

“What for?”

“Holes in the system.”

“You won't find any. There's no leaky radioactivity and you won't find any loose buttons lying around where some kook could set them off.”

“I know all about the fail-safe systems. I have a feeling they can be cracked.”

“What do you mean by cracked?”

“Any security system can be breached.”

“Who by? What for?”

“The country's crawling with extremists at both ends of the spectrum. You don't have to look too far to find a crowd of
jokers with wild-eyed notions—how many officers have you got on this base right now who belong to right-wing fanatic groups, the ones who see Communists under every rock? Look at the equipment they've got here at their finger tips.”

“Nuts. If the command doesn't come down from the top the system doesn't fire.”

“Right now it doesn't but I can't believe a security system that tight can be applied to anything as complex as the Phaeton. Rednecked right-wingers or left-wing activists or sheer accident—it doesn't matter what triggers it off. The system's just too unwieldy.”

Ryan shrugged elaborately. “I hope you're wrong. I'll get in touch with Fred Winslow, he's the Deputy ICBM Wing Commander—we'll get passes for you to inspect the setup. When do you want it?”

“As soon as you can. I'll want to bring a couple of people along—one of my staff people and a scientist.”

“They cleared for Top Secret?”

“Yes.”

“Who's the scientist?”

“Moskowitz.”

“He was on the Titan development program, wasn't he? What makes you think he'll play along?”

“I've talked to him.”

“Who's the other one?”

“Jaime Spode.”

Ryan beamed. “Top Spode? He still around?”

“Still around, still the best.”

Ryan nodded. Evidently he had run out of things to say. Forrester got to his feet. “If you like I'll come to your office next time—I didn't mean to upset anything for you and Alice. I know this is awkward.”

“You didn't upset anything that wasn't upset before. Forget it. It's not that you're a Senator, it's that we're none of us the same as we used to be. Which leads me to ask what it is that you expect to get out of this Phaeton fight besides a lot of bruises and an early retirement.”

“Maybe I'm tired of going through the motions—maybe I just feel like making waves for a change.”

“Nuts. I think you want the top spot and you're gambling that this will buy it for you.”

It pulled Forrester's head around: he caught the sudden brightness of Ryan's fierce grin.

“Well? Isn't that it?”

“You're off base by a mile.”

He despised his evasiveness but that was the way the game was played. What could he say to Bill Ryan now—that he thought Alan Forrester would make a good President, that with the radical polarization of strident extremists the only hope was for a calm, decisive, rational, patient middle-of-the-roader to come out of the woodwork before the country splintered altogether into factions and brought a führer to power?

His good-humored denial hung suspended and Bill Ryan's face settled slowly like coffee dregs. Without further comment Ryan said, “Come on inside, getting chilly out here,” and slid the glass door open. Sand scraped in the aluminum track.

When Forrester crossed the weatherstrip he heard a phone begin to ring with shrill demand. “That's for me,” Ryan said and hurried by, leaving him to close the door.

Alice was sitting up straight with careful attention to her balance; when she reached for her glass she took a long time to get her fingers around it, and when she lifted it, it did not follow a straight course toward her lips.

Forrester stopped beside Ronnie's chair. She gave him an upturned questioning smile and he nodded in reply: it was time to go and he did not sit down. Ryan had turned his back to the room and had been speaking inaudibly into the telephone. Now he hung up and came about, and made a face. “I don't know what was so important he had to call at this time of night. Pete Chandler.” He was scowling at Alice.

Alice's smile changed slightly but she did not speak and after a little while Ryan shifted to Forrester. “My chief of security. It seems you've got friends in the young generation. Some university kids had a meeting and there was some talk
about showing support for your anti-Phaeton plank by having a little sit-in on the runway.”

“On
the runway?”

“Yeah. Sometimes these kids don't think ahead too good. I don't suppose you've ever seen what a human body looks like after it's been exposed to a few seconds' worth of jet exhaust. Nothing much left but cinders.”

“I gather they didn't get that far.”

“No. Six or eight of them showed up at the gate and Pete told the guards not to let them in. They sat down on the road outside the gate and he wanted to know whether to call the cops and have them removed. I told him to let them sit there. It's a wide pavement, the cars can steer around them. They'll get tired and hungry after a while and go home. Why make an incident out of it?”

“Smart,” Forrester said. “Not everybody shows that kind of restraint.”

“Pete wanted to call out the cops and beat some heads,” Ryan said. “He's a bit of a flag-waver. I suppose it's a good thing he did call me first.”

Alice said, “The little bastards deserve a few lumps. Who do they think it is that protects them so they can have the freedom to sit down in the middle of the road?”

There was no point in trying to explain to her the contradiction in her statement; she was drunk and belligerent, her eyes had lost focus. Forrester cleared his throat and said it was time to be going. Ryan went with them to the door; Alice didn't get up from her chair. She waved and said something vague and Ryan came outside and said to Ronnie, “I'm sorry about that.”

“We all get under the weather sometimes,” she said politely.

Ryan frowned into space briefly before he remembered his joviality; he put a grin on his face and pumped Forrester's hand. “Bring this little lady back with you next time you come, buddy. She does light up the place.”

“They're nice people, really, but they seem to have made an awful mess of it, don't they?”

He said, “I get the feeling that marriage is all burned out. It's a shame.”

They drove toward the gate and when they turned into the approach road Forrester could see the kids cross-legged on the pavement beyond the guard post. Two helmeted AP's were keeping an eye on them. A white city patrol car with the gold Tucson Police stripe down its sides was parked on the far side but the officers were only sitting inside watching. When Forrester braked at the guard post, he saw the big KARZ-TV mobile news van approaching from Twenty-second Street; he extinguished the speedometer panel lights to reduce the illumination within the car.

Ronnie said, “Aren't you going to talk to them?”

“Who? The television truck or the kids?”

“The kids, of course. They're out here on your account.”

“I can't do that now.” He drove past the kids with his face averted; the KARZ-TV truck was drawing up and the two city cops were getting out of their car, wise enough to know that if the kids intended to make a scene they would most likely do it when they had television coverage.

A block away Forrester began to accelerate. “You think I copped out.”

“Shouldn't you have talked to them?”

“With the TV people hanging on every word?”

“I thought you wanted publicity.”

“Not that kind. What kind of grass-roots support do you think I'd get if I gave the impression I was encouraging the lunatic fringe?”

“Lunatic fringe? They're only good-hearted kids and they're honestly concerned about the issues.”

“In politics realities don't count—you have to work with appearances. You have to disavow the support of the extremist groups whether you happen to agree with them or not. Guilt by association, don't you see? I can't afford to be identified with a bunch of picketing kids unless I know more about them. They're supporting my side of the Phaeton question but for all I know those six or eight kids back there are card-carrying Weathermen or Maoist pamphleteers. Not knowing who they are, I can't afford to associate myself with them. Now
if they're still there tomorrow we can run a check on them and if they turn out to be harmless and well-intentioned I can set something up and go out there and have myself photographed shaking hands with them. But you can't go into that kind of thing blind.”

“I suppose you're right.”

He drove west and north, dog-legging along the boulevards. “If I take you home you'll be stuck without your car. It's not gallant but I think I'll drop myself off at the hotel and let you drive yourself home.”

“Of course. You've had a long day.”

She was sitting back, tired and relaxed; she appeared less tense than she had earlier. He felt a quiet sense of easy intimacy and risked a question: “What about that dinner for two we promised ourselves?”

“When?”

“Tomorrow?”

“I was planning to drive up to the Catalinas tomorrow. Painting. I usually don't get back from my expeditions in time for dinner—I pack sandwiches and a thermos.”

“During the week, then?”

She hesitated. “All right.”

“You're nervous, aren't you? Why?”

They passed a jammed parking lot beside a big low stucco night spot. The neon sign had a few dead letters:
ATOM C BAR & GRIL E—DINE & D NCE—LIVE MUSIC FRI & SAT NITES
. The lettering was outlined by the neon shape of a Titan missile.

Ronnie said, “It sounds childish, I suppose, but I just don't want to let it get to be intense. I don't want to get to a point where I can even suspect I'm leading you on. Right now I don't need any complications in my life.”

“Maybe you're making too much of it. I like your company, Ronnie, but I haven't suggested building a fence around you.”

She laughed. “That's bold enough.”

“Monday night, then. How about it?”

She gave in. “All right, Alan.”

It pleased him absurdly—that she called him by name.

He drove into the city along East Broadway's sputtering fizz
of neon. Low-down-payment car lots, franchise eateries. An Air Force Phantom jet went over at low altitude with a racket like the sound of ripping canvas, and pickup trucks driven by men in cowboy hats waited at the red traffic lights gunning their souped-up mills. University kids crowded into the beer joints eight to a car, hoping their forged age cards would be acceptable to tolerant bartenders.

His father had maintained a permanent suite in the Pioneer and Forrester still kept it. The hotel was busy with a Hollywood crowd, a film crew making a Western on location in the nearby hills. They were on the sidewalk, a pack of them, half drunk and loud. Forrester stood smiling until Ronnie slid across the seat under the wheel and drove away with a casual wave.

Forrester went up to the seventh floor in the elevator and down the long wide corridor with its muffling carpet. In the suite he found the bed turned down and a cut-crystal bottle of whiskey waiting for him with an ice bucket. He had a drink and showered and when he came out of the steamed-up bath room the phone was ringing.

It was Ronnie. “I'm sorry to disturb you.”

“I'm still up. What's the matter?”

She sounded angry. “I just had a call from Frank Shattuck's secretary. She's been trying to reach us all night.”

“To cancel the appointment tomorrow?”

“Three guesses why. It seems he's been taken suddenly busy. Called away to a conference in Los Angeles or some such lie. What'll you bet he's out on the Country Club links big as life tomorrow morning?”

“Never mind, Ronnie. Don't let it get your goat. I'll get to him sometime during the week—it's not urgent.”

“The longer you let it wait, the longer he'll have to sew up his mind tight against you,” she said. “Shattuck Industries swings a strong lobby in Washington, Alan.”

“So do I. Thanks for your concern, Ronnie, but it's not the end of the world.”

“I'd like to strangle the smug fool.”

“It's all right. It'll give me a chance to get out to the ranch for the day. You wouldn't want to come along, would you?
We've got some magnificent scenery up there, fine for painting”

“I know. I was there once or twice during the campaign.”

“How about it, then?”

“Well—all right. Of course. Thanks for inviting me. Shall I pick you up? It'll save you renting a car.”

“Fine. Is seven too early?”

“I usually get away even earlier—I don't like to waste the daylight.”

“Six-thirty, then.”

“Good,” she said. “Good night.”

“Good night, Ronnie. Sleep well.” When he cradled the phone he kept his hand on it, as if to retain the thread of contact with her.

He switched off the light and lay back and grew drowsy with a constraining ennui, the listlessness that followed a day of long travel across time zones. Somewhere in the ensuing run of time, between wakefulness and sleep, a vivid picture came into his mind—Angie in the garden, picking insects off leaves, crushing them between finger and thumb. She had loved the garden in Washington; it had been her place of retreat, her center of revitalization. He remembered the look of her sleeping face on the pillow, the weight of her breasts warm with love; when his thoughts strayed to Ronnie it was with a start of guilt that brought him awake.
Oh, hell
, he thought crankily, chastising himself, and then the phone rang again and it was Top Spode. “I'm at National Airport. Trumble's taking the night plane to Tucson and he's got the goodies in his lap. You going to be in town tomorrow?”