the Third Twin (1996)

He darted around a corner and found a staircase. He ran down the steps to the next floor. He had the names that could clear him of the rape charge; he was not going to let anyone stop him getting out of here with the information, not even the U.S. Army.

To leave the building he needed to get to ring E, the outermost. He hurried along a spoke corridor, passing ring C. A golf cart loaded with cleaning materials went by in the opposite direction. When he was halfway to ring D he heard Lieutenant Gambol’s voice again. “Mr. Logan!” She was still following him. She shouted down the long, wide corridor. “The general wishes to speak with you!” A man in an air force uniform glanced curiously through an office door. Fortunately there were relatively few people around on a Saturday evening. Steve found a staircase and went up. That ought to slow the pudgy lieutenant.

On the next floor he hurried along the corridor to ring D, followed the ring around two corners, then went down again. There was no further sign of Lieutenant Gambol. He had shaken her off, he thought with relief.

He was pretty sure he was on the exit level. He went clockwise around ring D to the next corridor. It looked familiar: this was the way he had come in. He followed the corridor outward and came to the security checkpoint where he had entered. He was almost free.

Then he saw Lieutenant Gambol.

She was standing at the checkpoint with the guard, flushed and breathless.

Steve cursed. He had not shaken her off after all. She had simply got to the exit ahead of him. He decided to brazen it out.

He walked up to the guard and took off his visitor’s badge.

“You can keep that on,” Lieutenant Gambol said. “The general would like to speak with you.”

Steve put the badge down on the counter. Masking his fear with a show of confidence, he said: “I’m afraid I don’t have time. Good-bye, Lieutenant, and thank you for your cooperation.”

“I must insist,” she said.

Steve pretended to be impatient. “You’re not in a position to insist,” he said. “I’m a civilian; you can’t command me. I’ve done nothing wrong, so you can’t arrest me. I’m not carrying any military property, as you can see.” He hoped the floppy disk in his back pocket was not visible. “It would be illegal of you to attempt to detain me.”

She spoke to the guard, a man of about thirty who was three or four inches shorter than Steve. “Don’t let him leave,” she said.

Steve smiled at the guard. “If you touch me, soldier, it will be assault. I’ll be justified in punching you out, and believe me, I’ll do it.”

Lieutenant Gambol looked around for reinforcements, but the only people in sight were two cleaners and an electrician working on a light fixture.

Steve walked toward the entrance.

Lieutenant Gambol cried: “Stop him!”

Behind him he heard the guard shout: “Stop, or I’ll shoot!”

Steve turned. The guard had drawn a pistol and was pointing it at him.

The cleaners and the electrician froze, watching.

The guard’s hands were shaking as he pointed the gun at Steve.

Steve felt his muscles seize up as he stared down the barrel. With an effort he shook off his paralysis. A Pentagon guard would not fire at an unarmed civilian, he was sure. “You won’t shoot me,” he said. “It would be murder.”

He turned and walked to the door.

It was the longest walk of his life. The distance was only three or four yards, but it felt as if it took years. The skin on his back seemed to burn with anticipation.

As he put his hand on the door, a shot rang out.

Someone screamed.

The thought flashed through Steve’s mind He fired over my head, but he did not look back. He flew through the door and ran down the long flight of steps. Night had fallen while he was inside, and the parking lot was lit by street lamps. He heard shouting behind him, then another shot. He reached the bottom of the stairway and veered off the footpath into the bushes.

He emerged onto a road and kept running. He came to a row of bus stops. He slowed to a walk. A bus was pulling up at one of the stops. Two soldiers got off and a woman civilian got on. Steve boarded right behind her.

The bus pulled away.

The bus drove out of the parking lot and onto the expressway, leaving the Pentagon behind.

51

IN A COUPLE OF HOURS JEANNIE HAD COME TO LIKE LORRAINE Logan enormously.

She was much heavier than she seemed in the photograph that appeared at the top of her lonelyhearts column in the newspapers. She smiled a lot, causing her chubby face to crease up. To take Jeannie’s mind and her own off their worries, she talked of the problems people wrote to her about: domineering in-laws, violent husbands, impotent boyfriends, bosses with wandering hands, daughters who took drugs. Whatever the subject, Lorraine managed to say something that made Jeannie think, Of course—how come I never saw it that way before?

They sat on the patio as the day cooled, waiting anxiously for Steve and his father to return. Jeannie told Lorraine about the rape of Lisa. “She’ll try for as long as she can to act as if it never happened,” Lorraine said.

“Yes, that’s exactly how she is now.”

“That phase can last six months. But sooner or later she’ll realize she has to stop denying what happened and come to terms with it. That stage often begins when the woman tries to resume normal sex and finds she doesn’t feel the way she used to. That’s when they write to me.”

“What do you advise?”

“Counseling. There isn’t an easy solution. Rape damages a woman’s soul, and it has to be mended.”

“The detective recommended counseling.”

Lorraine raised her eyebrows. “He’s a pretty smart cop.”

Jeannie smiled. “She.”

Lorraine laughed. “We reprove men for making sexist assumptions. I beg you, don’t tell anyone what I just did.”

“I promise.”

There was a short silence, then Lorraine said: “Steve loves you.”

Jeannie nodded. “Yeah, I think he really does.”

“A mother can tell.”

“So he’s been in love before.”

“You don’t miss a trick, do you?” Lorraine smiled. “Yes, he has. But only once.”

“Tell me about her—if you think he wouldn’t mind.”

“Okay. Her name was Fanny Gallaher. She had green eyes and wavy dark red hair. She was vivacious and careless and she was the only girl in high school who wasn’t interested in Steve. He pursued her, and she resisted him, for months. But he won her in the end, and they dated for about a year.”

“Do you think they slept together?”

“I know they did. They used to spend nights together here. I don’t believe in forcing kids to make out in parking lots.”

“What about her parents?”

“I talked to Fanny’s mother. She felt the same way about it.”

“I lost my virginity in the alley behind a punk rock club at the age of fourteen. It was such a depressing experience that I didn’t have sexual intercourse again until I was twenty-one. I wish my mother had been more like you.”

“I don’t think it really matters whether parents are strict or lenient, as long as they’re consistent. Kids can live with more or less any set of rules so long as they know what they are. It’s arbitrary tyranny that gets them