The bellman had left. Hanno walked back to stand above her. “But you are of retirement age, or nearly,” he said. “Your friends marvel at how you still appear young. They tease you about a fountain of youth. They begin to wonder, though, why you don’t retire. The government does too. Where will you go, Olga?”
She gazed steadily up at him. “Yes, they keep excellent records in Denmark. Where would you suggest that I go? And what is your real name?”
His pulse hammered. “All right,” he said, “no more pussyfooting. I didn’t want to scare you off. However, I believe I can come right out with the truth after all.” He resumed his chair, not to seem threatening or attempting of dominance. One like her would react fiercely to that, he judged. “What I am about to tell you will sound like insanity, or some wild confidence game, unless you are what I’m pretty sure you are. Do not take fright. Listen to me. Go open the door and stand by it if you wish.”
She shook her head. Her breasts rose and fell.
“As close as makes no difference,” Hanno said, “I am three thousand years old. Do you care to tell me— What?”
She had gone wholly white. For a moment she sagged back in her chair. He half rose to help and reassure. She straightened. “Cadoc,” she whispered.
“Huh?”
“Cadoc. You. It comes back to me. The trader in Kiev. Kiyiv, we called it then. When was that? Nearly one thousand years past, I think.”
Memory smote like a sudden look into the sun. “You ... your name—”
“I was Svoboda then. In my heart I always am. But who are you really?”
Of course, he thought in his daze, neither would remember a briefly met mortal for very long, out of an uncountable myriad gone down into dust. But neither had ever quite forgotten, either. He carted to mind now the phantom that had stirred in him at moments strewn through the centuries.
“S-Svoboda, yes,” he stammered. “We rescued you.”
“And the night was golden. We could have had more!”
They left their chairs and stumbled into each other’s arms.
7
Outside, the District of Columbia stewed in its summer. Air conditioning breathed coolness through Moriarty’s office. The heat that he felt was dry, a fire. He slapped the magazine down onto his desk. The noise cracked. “You bastard,” he mumbled. “You evil, malignant—”
The intercom chimed. “Mr. Stoddard to see you, Senator,” announced his receptionist’s voice.
Moriarty caught a breath and gusted it back as a laugh. “Perfect timing!” he exclaimed. “Send him right in.”
The man who entered was short, undistinguished-looking, and coldly competent. Sweat from outdoors glistened on his cheeks. He carried a briefcase. “How do you do, sir,” he greeted. His glance went from face to desk and back again. “You’ve been reading the latest, I see.”
“Of course,” Moriarty snapped. “Sit down. Have you seen it?”
“Not yet.” Stoddard took a chair. “I’ve been busy investigating the person responsible, you know.”
The fleshy man behind the desk picked up the magazine again and placed it under his dashingly styled reading glasses. “Listen to this. The editorial. Deals with my speech in aid of the CCCP. I’m taking a paragraph at random, more or less.” Trained, his voice shed the throb of indignation and recited methodically:
“ ‘The senator was introduced by peace and disarmament activist Dr. Fulvia Bourne. He dealt with the embarrassment in masterly fashion. Rather than refer to her speech at the previous day’s banquet, whether to endorse or disavow such colorful phrases as “the Pentagon, a pentacle crowded with the demons of nuclear madness,” or “the CIA—the Children Immolation Agency,” he made an unspeech of it and simply called her a modern Joan of Arc. That St. Joan took arms in the cause of liberation became an unfact. Thence it was an easy transition to the necessity for statesmanship, for “patience abroad but impatience at home.” Evidently the patience is to be with the likes of Srs. Castro and Ortega. After all, the senator’s esteemed party colleague, the Reverend Nahaliel Young, addresses both these gentlemen as “Dear Comrade.” We are to have no patience whatsoever with, say, South Africa. As for domestic policy, an impatience to complete the destruction of the productive classes in America—’ ”
“Arrh!” erupted. “Why go on? Read it for yourself, if you can stand to.”
“May I ask a question, Senator?” Stoddard murmured.
“”Certainly. I’ve always stood for free and open dialectic.”
Stoddard’s gaze weighed Moriarty. “Why do you let this Tannahill get your goat? He isn’t writing anything that other opponents of yours don’t.”
The broad countenance reddened. “He puts no bounds on his nastiness. Opposition is different from persecution. You know how he tries not just to make trouble nationally, but to drive a wedge between me and my constituency.”
“Oh, he does operate out of New England and make a lot of regional references, but he’s not in your state, Senator. And really, The Chart Room has a small circulation.”
“It only takes a small dose of virus, slipped to the right people, to infect a whole population. Tannahill’s getting attention not just from old-line conservatives and neo-fascists, but on campuses, among the young.” Moriarty sighed. “Oh, yes, the snake has his First Amendment rights, and I admit his gibes at me hurt more than they ought. I should be used to cruelty.”
“If I may say so, you often leave yourself open to the likes of him. I’d have advised you against addressing that rally.”
“In politics you take what allies you can find, and make the best of them.”
“Like South Africa? Sorry.” Stoddard didn’t sound repentant.
Moriarty frowned but continued: “The Committee does include some extremists, but damn it, they’re extremists in a good cause. We need their energy and dedication.” He cleared his throat. “Never mind. Let’s get to business. The business of discovering who this Tannahill is and who’s behind him. What can you tell me?”
“Nothing much, I’m afraid. As far as my investigators have dug, and they’re good at their work, he’s clean. True, they didn’t manage to dig to the very bottom.”
“Oh?” Moriarty leaned forward. “He remains the mystery man on that estate of his?” The remark was irresistible: “He would have settled in New Hampshire, wouldn’t he? ‘Live free or die.’ He may even believe it.”
“He’s not a Howard Hughes-like recluse, if that’s what you mean, Senator,” Stoddard replied. “In fact, what makes him hard to learn about is that he’s seldom at his place. He gets around—everywhere, maybe, though for the most part my men couldn’t find out where he does go. Neither his household servants nor his magazine staff were any help to speak of. They’re two handfuls of hand-picked individuals, long with him, loyal to him, close-mouthed. Not that they keep any shameful secrets.” He chuckled. “No such luck. They simply don’t know what the boss does away from them, and they have an antiquated Yankee notion that it’s nobody’s business.”
Moriarty gave his assistant a sharp glance. Sometimes he wondered whether Stoddard was not aiding him strictly for the pay. However, the fellow performed well enough that one must put up with his occasional impudence. “What have you found?” Moriarty asked. “No matter if you repeat things I already know.”
“I’m afraid that’s what I’ll mainly be doing.” The other man drew a sheet of paper from his briefcase and consulted the notes on it. “Kenneth Alexander Tannahill was born August 25, 1933 in Troy, Vermont, a little town near the Canadian border. His parents moved away shortly afterward. A former neighbor, to whom they wrote a couple of letters, said they’d gone to Minnesota, but he couldn’t remember precisely where. A North Woods hamlet. Everything’s shadowy, nothing on record but the bare minimum of official stuff and a few old stories in an upstate newspaper.”
Excitement tingled in Moriarty. “Do you mean this could be an assumed identity? Suppose the real Tannahills all died, say in an accident. A man with money, who wanted to cover his tracks, could set a detective agency to locating such a deceased family, one that suited his needs.”
“Maybe.” Stoddard sounded skeptical. “Damn hard to prove.”
