The Fresco

  “The questionnaires don’t bother you?”

  “No. It makes sense to ask people what they think before you try to make them happier.”

  “I’m told the FBI believes each of the ideograms on people’s hands is unique,” said the FL with a glance at Chad.

  Benita chewed a bit of roast beef, nodding slowly. “That doesn’t surprise me, either.” She held out her hand, palm upward. The mark gleamed like a ruby. When the other three laid their hands down, it was obvious that though the three marks had some similarities, each mark was different, like a very complicated Chinese ideogram.

  “They want to identify us individually,” said the SOS. “Maybe track our movements?”

  Benita took another bite of cold beef and smeared it with horseradish sauce. “I don’t think so. They don’t care what civil people do. But since they found those murderers in a hurry, my guess is they can screen for certain traits if they need to find a murderous militia or someone with a dangerous virus, like Ebola.”

  Chad grinned. “What a system.”

  The SOS frowned. “So you don’t think it’s universal surveillance?”

  Benita shook her head. “Why would they want to listen to millions of people talking about the weather and taxes and how their kids misbehave or how rotten their job is? They said they needed to find out what causes woe. Then they need to stop it. If someone causes no woe, I doubt that person ever gets looked at.”

  “You don’t see it as an infringement on liberty?” the SOS challenged her again, not angrily but demandingly. She wanted an answer.

  Benita felt heat behind her ears, a flush on her cheeks. Wine did that to her.

  “Well, back home, Madam Secretary, my husband had a lot of liberty. He had the liberty to knock me around. He had the liberty to drive drunk, no matter what the judge said. He had the liberty to invade my peace and steal my money and kill innocent people with his car, and the law didn’t stop him or punish him. The judge had liberty. He had the liberty to sentence Bert to house arrest and to sentence me to act as his unpaid jailer, even though I was an innocent bystander and Bert both outweighed me and didn’t mind hurting me.

  “The judge also had the liberty to put me in jail for contempt if I made a fuss about it. He told me so when I spoke up in court to tell him I couldn’t keep Bert at home and off the liquor. He said Bert was a working man and needed to get to work, and he said this even though he knew I was the one who supported the family.”

  “That’s rotten,” said Chad feelingly, his face quite red. He pressed his lips together and looked elsewhere. Benita wondered fleetingly what part of what she had said had upset him so.

  Seeing an attentive audience, she went on, “Now, me, I had a lot less liberty than Bert or the judge. I didn’t have the liberty to live peaceably in my own house. I didn’t have the liberty to keep the fruits of my labors. I didn’t have the liberty to tell the judge in court what I thought of him, and the ACLU didn’t rush to my defense so I could. It hasn’t rushed to the defense of the innocent people Bert may end up killing because the judge wouldn’t jail him and I couldn’t keep him from driving.

  “So if somebody said to me, can we put a mark on you and on your kids that will keep Bert from driving your car, or stealing your daughter’s stereo for drinking money, why, I’d say, mark away!”

  The SOS shook her head and said in a strained voice, “I can understand your point of view, Benita.”

  Benita gave her a hard look, noticing for the first time just how tired and worried both women looked. “You’re upset about something specific. This supper isn’t just a get-together. What is it?”

  They sat for a few moments, not speaking, then the FL said, “The president has been getting strange reports. Chad knows about this. A group of lumbermen disappeared in Oregon, along about the time the envoys came. Three men were killed down in Florida in a totally inexplicable way. Just today, word filtered up that there was another inexplicable death—or disappearance—in New Mexico. There are other, less specific reports…”

  Benita frowned. “When you say a group, how many?”

  “We’re only talking about fifteen fatalities, total, and the last one is presumed, though personal effects were left at the scene. But then, this afternoon someone brought our attention to World News items on CNN. You watch it?”

  “Sometimes,” said Benita.

  “A strange disappearance in Madagascar, similar to the one in Oregon. Disappearances in India, similar to the one in New Mexico. A slaughter in Brazil, just like the one in Florida.”

  Benita swallowed deeply. “Is there any common thread, any indication…”

  The SOS said in a dry voice, “A common thread, yes. They were all in rural or remote areas, all of them unobserved, where people were working in or near jungles or forests. The men in Florida were digging ditches.”

  “And all of it has happened since the envoys arrived,” said the FL flatly. “And the Congress has access to the same information we’re getting.”

  “It couldn’t be Chiddy and Vess,” said Benita. “It’s not what they do.”

  “You can understand that we do need to know,” pressed the FL. “And since you are the intermediary, you’re the only one we can ask to find out.”

  Benita stared at her plate, thinking furiously. “These men who are out to get the president. Do you know who they are?”

  The FL’s lips twisted. “Your senator, Byron Morse, for one.”

  “He’s from my state, but he’s not my senator,” she replied. “Who else?”

  Chad said, “McVane, as you might have suspected. They have a few smart goons working for them, men named Dinklemier, Arthur, and Briess. There’s a whole ring of them over at the Pentagon. There are others buried not very deeply in the Fascist Right, you know, Buchanan’s bunch. There are others, quite a few, CIA or ex-CIA, most of them, and there are several other legislators. McVane and Morse are the ringleaders. Or I should say cabal leaders. It’s definitely a cabal.”

  Benita said, “Then what’s to have stopped these people from committing atrocities in India and Oregon and the other places, just to hurt the president’s credibility? If they’re CIA, they have the resources to do things like that, don’t they?”

  The FL said soothingly, “It’s entirely possible, Benita. But we need to know.”

  “Next time I see them,” she said. “I haven’t seen them for several days.”

  “I hate putting you under pressure this way,” said the FL. “Is there anything we can do for you? You don’t sound terribly happy.”

  Benita laughed. “My son is being harassed by a small man with a ratty mustache who is offering him money to find out where I am…”

  “We know who that is,” muttered Chad.

  “…my husband is evidently also being solicited for his help, though not by the same man. I haven’t spoken to Chiddy or Vess for several days, and now you’re telling me about some more or less indiscriminate slaughter. I hear nothing in all that to make me even slightly happy.”

  “Ratty mustache?” said the FL, looking at Chad.

  “Definitely Briess,” he said, staring at Benita. “Part of the Morse Cabal. Benita, when did you hear he was bothering your kids?”

  “Friday, when I spoke to Angelica on the phone, she said my son had been paid to get caller ID to trace where I am when I call them.”

  “That won’t do them any good, will it?” the First Lady asked Chad.

  “No. Caller ID won’t help him. But if they’ve talked to her son, they might try something more sophisticated from that end, with or without his help.”

  “Can you prevent that?”

  “We can play games. Escalate the complications. No barrier is ever unbreakable, but we can keep them off for a while.”

  “Make them think I’m in Denver,” murmured Benita. “That’s the impression I’ve been giving them.”

  The SOS set down her glass and wiped her lips, making a strange face. “You know, in recent years
I’ve dealt with people who live in very different worlds from the one I’m familiar with. Some cultures are more foreign to me than the Pistach! In Iran or Arabia or Afghanistan, you’d swear there were no women in the society. They are as invisible as ghosts and have approximately the same status as cows. In parts of Latin America, family pride is so delicately balanced you have to watch every word. I try to see their point of view, of course, but the dissonance often gives me a feeling of unreality. Their societies haven’t changed fundamentally for…centuries.

  “During that first Cabinet meeting when the president showed us the cube, I saw it as fiction. It wasn’t until Jerusalem disappeared that I grasped the fact it was reality. The envoys are real. They are going to drag us, kicking and screaming, into a new age.”

  Benita murmured, “I honestly think they want to minimize the kicking and screaming.”

  The FL turned the talk to other things, they chatted for a time, then made their farewells. Chad spirited Benita down the back stairs and out once more, to pick up another car and return home by another route. The trip was a long, twisty one, as he made sure they weren’t followed.

  “Who’s supposed to be following us?” she asked, when they turned at the same corner for the fifth time.

  “The same bunch,” he offered. “The cabal.”

  “Why is there a cabal?”

  “Oh, there are always sore losers who hate the president, any president. It’s a kind of syndrome. They give money or effort to a campaign, their guy gets beaten, they take it personally. They figure they were right to support who they did, so the election must have been fixed or the public was bamboozled, or something. They usually don’t examine the real cause of their hatred. Morse probably hates the president because of his wife.”

  “Morse’s wife?”

  “No. The First Lady. Morse made a rather crude pass at the lady years ago, long before her husband ran for president. Morse was drunk, at a public event, and it’s unlikely he even knew who she was. She let him have it loudly enough that everyone heard it. I think the words ‘lecherous sot’ entered into her commentary. There was a minor furor, and it took him a while to live it down. He’s been heard referring to her as a ‘mouthy bitch.’ With him it’s simple revenge, though that’s not what he says in public.”

  “Who else?”

  “Oh, there are Pentagon guys who wouldn’t mind starting a war if it would keep their budgets up. There are always people over at State who depend on crisis to advance their careers. And we know—but can’t prove—there’s a handful of congressmen and senators who get soft money campaign funds from nameless but probably drug-related sources south of the border. Add to that the handful of old warriors who’ve got their thumbs deep in the traditional values pie.”

  “Meaning what? What are their values?”

  “Oh, guts and glory, defined as unquestioning patriotism. Marital fidelity, defined as discretion in extramarital affairs. ‘Traditional’ gender roles, that is, excusing rape and abuse by blaming the victim.”

  “But they’re hunting for me,” Benita said. “Why would they be interested in me?”

  “Not they, I don’t imagine. Him. Morse. He wants to use you to smear the president. If you turned out to be a mistress, he’d love it. Or a spy. Or a tool of the possibly communist Pistach.” He turned a corner. “You can sit up now. There’s nobody behind us.”

  “Why are we in a different car?”

  “Just in case somebody saw you arrive and bugged that car figuring you’d go home the same way.”

  “If it were me, I’d bug them all,” she said, rearranging herself.

  “We thought of that. This one was with somebody we trust, several blocks away.” He spoke cheerfully, examining her face in the mirror. “What’s wrong?”

  “It isn’t a game,” she cried. “I mean, I’m not a game piece. What do they intend to do with me if they find me?”

  “The putative cabal? I’m not privy to their plans, Benita. Best thing is to keep you from being found.”

  “Do you know what’s happening in Jerusalem? Besides what’s on the news.”

  “The U.S. and NATO are providing aid to international relief organizations that are setting up tent cities for the people who’ve been displaced. Some of them are moving in with families in the suburbs or other cities. Everyone is very surprised that there hasn’t been a wave of violence. The Saudis, by the way, are afraid either Mecca, or the Saudi women, or both may be next. They treat their women almost as badly as the Afghanis do. Women have been leaving Saudi Arabia ever since the ugly plague was reported.”

  “Going where?”

  “About half the population belongs to the royal family, and most of them have other homes in other places. France. The U.S. Switzerland. Britain.”

  “If the envoys decide to make Arabian women ugly, or Iranian ones, it won’t matter where they are,” she said.

  “Shall I quote you?” He laughed.

  “Of course not.”

  “So far as we know, the media aren’t looking for you except by putting Attention: Jane Doe ads in the personals. You haven’t agreed to be on 20/20 have you? Or Dateline?”

  “Is there such an ad?” she asked.

  “There certainly is—are! People from the FBI have had several little chats with the news people,” he said cheerily. “Here’s your door. Let me pull right up beside it.”

  He asked if he could see the job his agency had done on the apartment, and she invited him up. Sasquatch greeted him with a very threatening growl, but when Chad hunkered down, offered his hand and talked with Sasquatch as he scratched him behind the ears, the dog decided he was all right, gave him a good sniffing, and went back to sleep. The two of them had coffee and spent a pleasant quarter of an hour just chatting before he went home. It occurred to Benita that this was the first time in…what?—eighteen, nineteen years?—that she had sat in a room alone with an intelligent man in pleasant conversation. Not counting men she worked for.

  The phone by the bed made her think of Angelica, and after dithering about it for a few minutes, trying to remember if Angel was in the new apartment yet, and what she’d said about moving her phone, she dialed the same number and crossed her fingers.

  Angelica’s phone number hadn’t changed, though her voice had. She answered with a crisp, “Yes.”

  “It’s me, honey.”

  “Oh, Mom. I thought it was Dad again.”

  “Has he been bothering you?”

  “Seems like every five minutes this evening. He got bailed out by that person who wants him to help find you. So now he’s facing a trial and he’s all up in the air. I think the guy who bailed him out may be connected to the guy that was hanging around here. According to Dad, his guy was bigger, taller, with gray hair. He gave Dad a card with the name Prentice Arthur, and there was an even bigger guy with him called Dink.”

  Score two for Chad. Both of them members of the cabal.

  Benita asked, “So, are you moved in to your new place?”

  “As of today. I brought the last stuff up this afternoon, and they just connected the phone an hour ago. The manager was really nice to let me skip on the lease of the other apartment.”

  “I didn’t think it could work, your living with him.”

  “It didn’t, Mom. I think he’s moved in with the girlfriend. He’s got a phone now. You can call him directly.”

  Benita’s lips were pressed so tightly that it took her a moment to respond. “I won’t, Angel. Since I know he’s trying to make money out of doing something that may hurt me, he’s…well, he’s broken the tie. I’ve been thinking about mother bears a lot.”

  “Bears?”

  “Like on the nature shows. Mother bear is very fierce, protecting the cubs. She risks her own life for them. She does everything she can to let them grow up safe, but a time comes when she turns on them and drives them away. She’s done everything she can, and from then on, they’re on their own.

  “The only way I can han
dle this is to be like a mother bear. Let the cub be himself without anything from me, no complaint, no anger, no love, certainly no interference, and that means no nothing. See what he becomes. See what he can be, totally on his own. At best, he’ll turn out great. At worst, he won’t be able to blame me for anything past today.”

  There, she’d said it, realizing as she said it that it was totally true. She was not going to overlook it. He had made his own choices, now he could stand by them.

  “I can’t prove he took money,” Angelica cried.

  “That’s all right, dear. Knowing Carlos, I’m sure he did.”

  “How’s the job?”

  “I love it. Much nicer than my old one.”

  “I’m glad you’re enjoying it. It makes me feel better about things.”

  “Me, too. Goodnight, Angel.”

  34

  bert

  MONDAY

  On Monday morning, Bert Shipton received a phone call. The speaker, who did not identify himself, offered Bert a large sum of money if he would come to Washington, D.C., and introduce the speaker to his wife.

  “Benita?” blurted Bert.

  “She is your wife?”

  “Yeah. But, she’s not in Washington. She’s in Denver.”

  “No, sir. She is pretending to be in Denver, but we believe she is actually in Washington. We would like to be introduced to her, and you can do this for us. We will pay you ten thousand dollars for your time and trouble.”

  Ten thousand dollars! Bert’s mouth began to water. Ten thousand dollars! The best he’d read of in the want ads wouldn’t have netted him ten thousand in a year! Ten thousand would pay off the mortgage arrears. And ten thousand for doing almost nothing was a kick. He could buy into that.

  “What d’you want me to do?”

  “You will have yourself groomed. A barber shop? A shave and haircut? You will buy new clothing. A suit. Shoes. Other garments as needed. Then go to the airport and fly to Washington today. We will meet you there.”