Authors: Ben Bova
We were pretty somber as we sat down to eat in the oak-paneled dining room. But as that same robotlike Oriental butler served us steaks, Jeffrey began telling his father about the arguments he had been having with his brothers over the Iran-Kuwait war.
"We've got to be ready to go in there," he said fervently, "in force. We've got to be able to protect our own interests."
The General nodded agreement. I worked on my steak and kept quiet.
"But do you think Johnny understands that?" Jeffrey grumbled. "He's more worried about losing a few votes in Congress than losing the whole Middle East."
"John knows the political infighting," the General said. "If he doesn't think . . ."
"I've made my own assessment of the politics," Jeffrey interrupted. "I've dealt with the Senate committees. And the House, too. I could swing the Hill, if John would give me a chance to try."
The General looked up from his plate. "It's John's job to make the political decisions. If he thinks the Congress would block you, you'd better go along with his estimate of the situation."
Jeffrey cocked his head slightly to one side. Just like the President.
Dummy!
I hollered at myself.
He
is
the President. One-eighth of the Presidency, at least.
With that smile I knew so well, the smile that meant he was going to say something unpleasant but didn't want you to get upset about it, Jeffrey answered his father. "I don't think John's qualified to make this decision. He doesn't understand the details of the military situation as well as I do. Nor the economic situation, for that matter."
They discussed—or argued, depending on your boil-over threshold—the situation right through dessert. Just a quiet little family debate. Like father and son arguing over who's going to use the family car tonight. Except that the son was the President of the United States, the subject was whether or not we will enter the Iran-Kuwait war, and the men he was arguing against were his identical clone brothers who were back in Washington.
My brain was telling me that I had to accept the reality of the situation. But the rest of me still didn't want to deal with it. You can know something is true, intellectually, and accept it and even deal with the reality as part of your world-view, on which you base your work. But that doesn't mean you
believe
it's true, down at the deepest level of your existence. Inside me, in that special subbasement where I keep all my old Sunday school lessons and nightmare terrors and fantasy desires, down there the real, secret, deepest
me
hadn't yet accepted what my brain had already filed away in one of its neat little storage cabinets. I knew the President had been cloned, and there were four identical brothers in the White House. I knew there had been seven, up to a few months ago. I knew it.
But I didn't believe it.
I flew back to Washington that night in one of the General's private supersonic jets with the President. We sat side by side in the most luxurious reclining chairs I'd ever flown in, and watched the television screen built into the forward bulkhead of the passenger compartment. The President was delivering a speech, live, from the White House. He was signing the new Economic Incentives Act, and taking the opportunity to coax the Congress for even more action on his domestic programs.
At forty-two thousand feet above the prairie wheat basket of the nation, I sat beside the President and watched the President on TV, live.
". . . and although this act will go a long way toward turning urban adults into taxpaying, productive citizens rather than welfare recipients, we still have a long way to go on education and day care facilities for the young people of the core cities . . ." Carrot and stick. That patented Halliday smile and the constant urging to do more, go further, dare higher.
"They say the poor are always with us," the President concluded. "Perhaps that's because those who are not poor have never put their whole hearts and minds to the task of eradicating poverty. We have the wealth, we have the technology, we have the knowledge to lift the blight of poverty from our cities and countryside. The question is, do we have the heart, the soul, the will to do it? That is a question that not even the President can answer, my fellow citizens. Only you can answer it. Thank you. Good night and God bless you."
I turned my head as the image faded on the screen and saw the President grinning to (at?) himself. "He's got style, John has," Jeffrey told me. "I've got to deliver a speech on defense policy next week at West Point. I'll never be able to put it across the way he does." He sounded almost wistful.
"Look at it this way," I suggested. "Nobody's noticed the difference between you."
That made him happy. I tried to get him to talk about the deaths of his brothers, whether he felt they were natural or not. He evaded my attempts, finally cranking his chair back and closing his eyes in a convenient nap.
When we landed, I saw how ridiculously easy it is for a man who looks exactly like the President to get through National Airport and into the White House without being detected. The plane merely taxied to a small private hangar, and we stepped from the jet's hatch to a waiting limousine. The only people in the hangar were the plane's two-man crew, the chauffeur, and two armed security guards. All of them were General Halliday's hand-picked employees.
Jeffrey dropped me off at my apartment building before going on to the White House. The limousine had one-way windows, so no one could see into it, and he stayed back in the shadows when I opened the door and quickly hopped out. Barring an automobile accident, there was no way for anyone to see him. The chauffeur drove slowly, and he had Secret Service credentials; the limousine was built like a tank, and its license plate bore the special White House code. They'd have to run over Abraham Lincoln before anyone could pry The Man out of the back seat. And there were unmarked cars gliding along in front and behind us as well. No noise, no sirens. But the limousine was well escorted.
When I finally stumbled into my apartment, I felt suddenly drained, emotionally and physically washed out. I let my flight-weight travel kit clunk to the floor of the living room, made my way to the bathroom for a fast leak, and was already halfway out of my suit when I turned on the bedroom light.
Vickie was in my bed, rubbing her eyes like a kid who's been awakened by her loutish parents' party.
"You're back . . ." she mumbled sleepily.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I'm nothing if not gracious when surprised.
She pulled herself up to a sitting position. She was wearing a nightgown, but it was flimsy, transparent.
"I thought this would be a safe place. With you out of town, nobody'd think to look for me here."
I sat on the bed beside her.
"Besides," she said, "I wanted to be here when you got back."
She leaned slightly toward me, and I kissed her. I didn't feel tired anymore.
"I was worried about you," she said.
"I called the office every day."
"But you didn't talk with me."
"I thought it'd be better if I didn't."
All this while I was holding her, kissing her, and squirming out of my clothes at the same time. If I didn't wrench my back then, I never will.
Between making love and making talk, bringing her up to date on what had happened at Aspen, it was damned near dawn before we fell asleep. And Vickie hadn't shut off my radio alarm. It started floating Beethoven at us at 7:30 sharp.
We showered together, I shaved while she dried her hair, I dressed while she put on makeup, and I flailed the last four eggs in the refrigerator into breakfast while she dressed. For kicks I sliced the butt end of an old pepperoni and tossed it in with the eggs. Start the day with a bang.
After breakfast we grabbed our respective handbags and went to the elevator. Vickie reached for the Lobby button, but I pushed her hand away and punched R, for roof. She started to ask me why, but I put a finger to my lips.
When we got to the roof and stepped out into the fine spring morning, I walked her to the parapet at the edge, as far from the door, and any listening devices, as we could get.
"I want to bring Hank Solomon up to date on what's happening, but I'll be damned if I know how to get in touch with him without tipping off whoever's watching us. They most likely know he's in with us, but still. . ."
Vickie shaded her eyes from the sun. "Do you think we're still being bugged?"
I nodded. "This thing isn't over yet. Far from it. Peña's death may have been natural, but none of the others was. Maybe it wasn't the General who did it, but it's somebody close to him."
"Wyatt?"
"Could be."
"Why?"
"If I knew that, I'd know for sure if it was him or not."
"So what do we do?"
"That's what I want to ask Hank about. He ought to know more about this kind of thing than we do."
"He told me he'd find a way to contact you. You shouldn't try to reach him."
"You saw him? When?"
Vickie grinned. "Very tricky stuff. I got a letter at the office, addressed to me personally. All that was inside was a clipping from a newspaper, with ads for the movies on it. One theater's selection was circled in red, and the time of the showing was underlined. The envelope was from the Treasury Department, so I assumed it was from Hank . . . Secret Service is in Treasury."
"So he met you at the theater."
"That's right. For about three minutes. He told me he was keeping a watch on me. And that he'd get in touch with you when you got back."
I found myself taking a deep breath and half wishing I had stayed in Boston. Not even Beacon Hill politics was as devious as all this.
We drove to the office together, and by the time the elevator had stopped at our floor, Vickie had put on her office personality. Just a sunny smile and a "Have a good day!" Not that I made a grab for her. I had my office personality on, too. It had been warm and good in bed; it was great to have her there when I got home, rather than an empty apartment.
But don't start to expect it,
I warned myself.
Or depend on it.
I got a lot of kidding from the press corps at the morning briefing about being a gentleman of leisure. But no undercurrent of worry or rumor that my recent absences might be a symptom of something cooking inside the White House. If a Cabinet officer or a Pentagon official started playing hookey, then there'd be rumbles of interest from the newshawks. But the press secretary? Nobody cared.
As the briefing broke up, His Holiness told me that The Man wanted me in the Oval Office at 5:30. I made a mental note and went back to the Aztec Temple to plow through the accumulated paperwork on my desk.
Hank Solomon was one of the security guards down at the inspection post under the West Wing that afternoon. He winked at me, and I did my best not to make it look as if I knew him as I stepped through the sensor arch that screened me for identification and weapons.
The President was behind his big, curved desk as I stepped into the Oval Office. Wyatt was sitting in my favorite chair, the Scandinavian slingback, so I took his usual standby, the rocker next to the fireplace.
The Man watched me as I sat down. He grinned. "I can see exactly what's going through your mind," he said.
"Sir?"
"You're wondering,
Which one is he?
Right?"
I grinned back at him. "Yes . . . that's right."
"I'm James John, the one whose hand you shook when you agreed to take the job."
Somehow I felt relieved.
"It's no use staring at him," Wyatt groused. "You won't be able to tell the difference between them. I can't, for God's sake, and I've known them since childhood."
"What're we going to do about this?" I blurted.
The President's smile faded. "The deaths, you mean."
"The
murders
," I said. "Somebody's killing you—your brothers, one by one."
Wyatt stirred uncomfortably. "That's not . . ."
"Don't give me that 'natural causes' crap again!" My voice was rising. So was my blood pressure. "Maybe the General believes that, but I don't. Peña didn't either. I was there when he tried to convince the General."
"Peña was an old,
old
man," Wyatt said. "I think maybe he went senile, right there at the end. Too many shocks. After all . . ."
"He would know better than anyone else," I insisted.
The President shook his head. "Meric . . . murder has got to have a motivation. If somebody's killing us, who is it? And why?"
I swear the words were out of my mouth before I realized that my mind had come to that conclusion. "It's one of your brothers," I said. "The one who wants to be the
only
President of the United States."
For what seemed like fifteen minutes there was absolute silence in the Oval Office. Wyatt sat like a marble statue, completely unmoving and emotionless. The President looked thoughtful; then his face clouded darkly. And my own brain was telling me,
Yes! That's the answer! Its the only possible answer. One of them is killing the others. One of them wants this office, this power, this nation all for himself. One of them is insane.
Wyatt finally stirred himself. "If you think . . ."
But the President silenced him with the slightest lift of one finger. "Robert, it's the same conclusion I came to weeks ago."
The old man looked truly shocked. "What?"
"I think it's time we brought this all out into the open," the President said. "Time to clear the air."
He pushed his chair back from the desk and got to his feet. We automatically got up, too.
"Come with us, Meric," said The Man.
Wyatt seemed to understand what he was going to do. "Wait up a minute. . . he's not family."
The President smiled sardonically. "He is now. He knows as much about us as anyone. Come on, Meric."
We went out the side door of the office, down to the basement, past the inspection station where Hank still stood on duty, and along the West Wing to the private elevator. Wyatt pushed the button, the doors slid open as if the machine had been waiting all day to be called on, and we followed the President into the tiny, redwood-paneled elevator cab.