The Multiple Man

“What did you want with McMurtrie?” Wyatt asked me.

Good question. What could I answer?I wanted him to hold my hand and tell me everything’s going to be okay. I said, “I want to stay on top of this investigation. I decided to stick with him. This is too big…”

“How did you know he was here?”

“Dr. Pena told me.”

Wyatt’s head actually jerked back a few centimeters. The vein in his forehead pulsed. “You were at North Lake? When?”

“This morning…” Which reminded me. “Robert, I haven’t had anything to eat all damned day. How about a sandwich or something?”

He almost looked as if he were going to say no. Instead, “Wait here. I think the General will want to see you.”

So I waited. I sat at the desk near the door and phoned Vickie, told her where I was. She looked funny; not upset, really, but kind of tense.

“You all right?” I asked her.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said. “It’s you I’m worrying about. Hunter’s getting to enjoy talking with the President and briefing the press corps. He’ll probably want to move into your office by tomorrow morning.”

“Let him,” I said.

“Be serious.” She was. Her elfin face was as close to grimness as it could get. On anyone else it would look like the beginnings of a smile.

“Okay. Serious,” I said. “Get me a rundown on Dr. Alfonso Pena. College degrees, career, the whole curriculum vitae. And a rundown on North Lake Research Laboratories. I want to know where they get their money from.”

“You ended a sentence with a preposition,” she said.

“Arrant nonsense, up with which—”

“—I shall not put,” Vickie quoted with me. We laughed together.

“All right. I’ll be back in the office tomorrow. Have that information ready for me early. And tell Hunter to hold off on moving his office furniture.”

The door to the library opened and Wyatt came in, followed by a self-driven cart loaded with lunch.

“To hear is to obey,” Vickie was saying.

I glanced at the food, then back to the phone screen. “Hey,” I said to her, “you’re supposed to smile when you say that.”

She made a smile, but it didn’t look very convincing.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

“Call me if your plans change, will you?”

“Okay. Will do.”

I clicked off and turned to Wyatt. “The General still sets a good table.”

“There’s beer in the refrigerator section,” he said, “underneath the tablecloth on your side.”

“Terrific.”

We were halfway through our first sandwiches when the General strode into the library.

Morton J. Halliday looked as though he were in uniform even when he was wearing an old cordu-roy shirt and faded chinos, his costume at that moment. He was tall, with an imperious look to his eyes, a haughty nose, and an iron-gray mustache. His hair was clipped short, in time-honored military style, and nearly all white now. He didn’t show the least sign of baldness, something he teased Wyatt about on those rare occasions when he’d had enough to drink to let down his self-control a little.

He had the mien and style of an emperor, and some of his very oldest friends—like Wyatt—could recall when the General had first married and quietly proclaimed to his closest associates that he was going to father a President. He’d done exactly that, even though his wife had died while the son was an infant and he had raised James J. by himself.

Not exactly singlehanded, of course. But the General had never let James J. wander far from this mountain stronghold on Red Peak. Instead, he brought the world to the boy. The best scholars on the planet tutored James. Local gossip had it that there were more Nobel Prize laureates on Red Peak at any given moment during the boy’s schooling years than anywhere else on earth. The General bought the Aspen Institute and gave it to his son as a sixteenth birthday present. And when James did travel, it was with a security team as large and dedicated as the Secret Service guards for the President. It was like a small army traveling. He was born to be President, and he started living like one so far back in his childhood that he had taken to living in the White House as if it were his natural habitat.

There were always those who tried to find the strings that controlled James J. Halliday. The obvious link was from his father to the banking, mineral, and industrial interests that the General was tied to. I have to confess that my own first interest in Governor Halliday, the dark horse candidate for the Presidency, was exactly for that reason. I was going to find his feet of clay. I was going to expose his connections with the oil and banking and God-knows-what other big-money manipulators who were using him as a front man. I was going to knock him down. The son of a bitch had stolen Laura from me.

I never found those links. They just weren’t there. Halliday was his own man, as fiercely independent and tough-minded as his hero father. Despite myself, I liked the man. I wound up working for him, of course. And the relationship between James and his father reminded me of the relationship between the ancient conqueror Alexander the Great and his father, Philip of Macedon: pride, love, competition, maybe envy. Philip had been assassinated, probably on order of his son.

Now the General stood before me, saber-straight and lean. He fixed me with his eyes as I was about to take a bite of my half-finished sandwich. I felt like a very small mouse that had just been spotted by a very hungry cat.

“Just what in hell is going on?” he said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. There was enough iron even in his calmest tones to swing a compass needle around.

A slice of tomato oozed out of my sandwich as I replied, “Good afternoon, General.” Dazzling comeback.

He strode over to our table. Wyatt got up and fetched a chair for him. I got to my feet.

As we all sat down, the General asked me, “Are you supposed to be the President’s press secretary, or some amateur detective out of a lousy TV show?”

I let the rest of my sandwich drop into the plate. “Is that a riddle or do you want a serious answer?”

He glared at Wyatt, as if it were his fault, then returned to me. “Listen, sonny, you’re supposed to be working in Washington. What in the name of hell are you doing running around the country-side to Minnesota and up here?”

“I’m trying to find out what’s going on, and who’s attempting to kill your son.”

“We have the whole mother-thumping FBI and Secret Service available for that. Plus the Army, Navy, and Aerospace Force, if we need ’em. Who the hell gave you a sheriff’s badge?”

I took a deep breath. His bark’s worse than his bite, I told myself, even though I didn’t believe it. “General Halliday… sir. It may come as a shock to you, but I cannot, and will not, try to keep this story away from the news hounds unless I know exactly what the story is. I’m not going to operate in the dark.”

Wyatt smirked. “And how much have you found out by running up to Minnesota?”

“At least I know as much about what killed those duplicates as Dr. Pena does.”

“You met Pena?” the General snapped.

“Yes.”

“And what did he tell you?”

“Not a helluva lot. Said he can’t determine what killed the duplicates. Apparently they just keeled over and died.”

“That’s the same report we got,” Wyatt said. “And the same information you would have gotten, if you’d been in your office this morning.”

“Really?” I asked.