When she entered Roy’s suite, she found the dear man shuffling around in his walker, getting some exercise. With the attention of the finest specialists and therapists in the world, he had regained full use of his arms. Increasingly, he seemed certain to be able to walk on his own again within a few months — though with a limp.
She gave him a dry kiss on the cheek. He favored her with one even dryer.
“You’re more beautiful every time you visit,” he said.
“Well, men’s heads still turn,” she said, “but not like they used to, not when I have to wear clothes like these.”
A future First Lady of the United States couldn’t dress as would a former Las Vegas showgirl who’d gotten a thrill out of driving men insane. These days she even wore a bra that spread her breasts out and restrained them, to make her appear less amply endowed than she really was.
She had never been a showgirl anyway, and her surname had not been Jammer but Lincoln, as in Abraham. She had attended school in five different states and West Germany, because her father had been a career military man who’d been transferred from base to base. She had graduated from the Sorbonne in Paris and had spent a number of years teaching poor children in the Kingdom of Tonga, in the South Pacific. At least, that was what every data record would reveal to even the most industrious reporter armed with the most powerful computer and the cleverest mind.
She and Roy sat side by side on a settee. Pots of hot tea, an array of pastries, clotted cream, and jam had been provided on a charming little Chippendale table.
While they sipped and munched, she told him about the three hundred million that her father had transferred to her. Roy was so happy for her that tears came to his eyes. He was a dear man.
They talked about the future.
The time when they could be together again, every night, without any subterfuge, seemed depressingly distant. E. Jackson Haynes would assume the office of president on January twentieth, seventeen months hence. He and the vice-president would be assassinated the following year — though Jackson was unaware of that detail. With the approval of constitutional scholars and the advice of the Supreme Court of the United States, both houses of Congress would take the unprecedented step of calling for a special election. Eve Marie Lincoln Haynes, widow of the martyred president, would run for the office, be elected by a landslide, and begin serving her first term.
“A year after
“More than decent. Especially as the public will love you so much and want happiness for you.”
“And then I can marry the heroic FBI agent who tracked down and killed that escaped maniac, Steven Ackblom.”
“Four years until we’re together forever,” Roy said. “Not so long, really. I promise you, Eve, I’ll make you happy and do honor to my position as First Gentleman.”
“I know you will, darling,” she said.
“And by then, anyone who doesn’t like
“—we shall treat with utmost compassion.”
“Exactly.”
“Now let’s not talk anymore about how long we have to wait. Let’s discuss more of your wonderful ideas. Let’s make
For a long time they talked about uniforms for a variety of new federal organizations they wished to create, with a special focus on whether metal snaps and zippers were more exciting than traditional bone buttons.
SIXTEEN
In the broiling sun, hard-bodied young men and legions of strikingly attractive women in the briefest of bikinis soaked up the rays and casually struck poses for one another. Children built sand castles. Retirees sat under umbrellas, wearing straw hats, soaking up the shade. They were all happily oblivious of eyes in the sky and of the possibility that they could be instantaneously vaporized at the whim of politicians of various nationalities — or even by a demented-genius computer hacker, living in a cyberpunk fantasy, in Cleveland or London or Cape Town or Pittsburgh.
As he walked along the shore, near the tide line, with the huge hotels piled one beside the other to his right, he rubbed lightly at his face. His beard itched. He’d had it for six months, and it wasn’t a scruffy-looking beard. On the contrary, it was soft and full, and Ellie insisted that he was even more handsome with it than without it. Nevertheless, on a hot August day in Miami Beach, it itched as if he had fleas, and he longed to be clean- shaven.
Besides, he liked the appearance of his beardless face. During the eighteen months since the night on which Godzilla had attacked the ranch in Vail, a superb plastic surgeon in the private-pay sector of the British medical establishment had performed three separate procedures on the cicatrix. It had been reduced to a hairline scar that was virtually invisible even when he was tanned. Additional work had been done on his nose and chin.
He used scores of names these days, but neither Spencer Grant nor Michael Ackblom was one of them. Among his closest friends in the resistance, he was known as Phil Richards. Ellie had chosen to keep her first name and adopt Richards as her last. Rocky responded as well to “Killer” as he had to his previous name.
Phil turned his back to the ocean, made his way between the ranks of sunbathers, and entered the lushly landscaped grounds of one of the newer hotels. In sandals, white shorts, and a flamboyant Hawaiian shirt, he resembled countless other tourists.
The hotel swimming pool was bigger than a football field and as freeform as any tropical lagoon. Artificial- rock perimeter. Artificial-rock sunning islands in the center. A two-story waterfall spilling into one palm-shaded end.
In a grotto behind the cascading water, the poolside bar could be reached either on foot or by swimmers. It was a Polynesian-style pavilion with plenty of bamboo, dry palm fronds, and conch shells. The cocktail waitresses wore thongs, wraparound skirts made from a bright orchid-patterned fabric, and matching bikini tops; each had a fresh flower pinned in her hair.
The Padrakian family — Bob, Jean, and their eight-year-old son, Mark — were sitting at a small table near the grotto wall. Bob was drinking rum and Coke, Mark was having a root beer, and Jean was nervously shredding a cocktail napkin and chewing on her lower lip.
Phil approached the table and startled Jean — to whom he was a stranger — by loudly saying, “Hey, Sally, you look fabulous,” and by giving her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He ruffled Mark’s hair: “How you doing, Pete? I’m going to take you snorkeling later — what do you think of that?” Vigorously shaking hands with Bob, he said, “Better watch that gut, buddy, or you’re going to wind up looking like Uncle Morty.” Then he sat down with them and quietly said, “Pheasants and dragons.”
A few minutes later, after he had finished a pina colada and surreptitiously studied the other customers in the bar to be sure that none of them was unusually interested in the Padrakians, Phil paid for all their drinks with cash. He walked with them into the hotel, chatting about nonexistent mutual relatives. Through the frigid lobby. Out under the porte cochere, into the stifling heat and humidity. As far as he could tell, no one was trailing or watching them.
The Padrakians had followed telephone instructions well. They were dressed as sun-worshipping tourists from New Jersey, although Bob was pushing the disguise too far by wearing black loafers and black socks with Bermuda shorts.
A sightseeing van with large windows along the sides approached on the hotel entrance drive and stopped at the curb in front of them, under the porte cochere. The current magnetic-mat signs on each of its front doors declared CAPTAIN BLACKBEARD’S WATER ADVENTURES. Under that, above a picture of a grinning pirate, less bold letters explained GUIDED SCUBA TOURS, JET-SKI RENTALS, WATER-SKIING, DEEP-SEA FISHING.
The driver got out and came around the front of the van to open the sliding side door for them. He wore a stylishly wrinkled white linen shirt, lightweight white ducks, and bright pink canvas shoes with green laces. Even
