The Multiple Man

His Holiness clenched his teeth and said nothing. I turned back to the General. “Why was McMurtrie here? Did he bring Dr. Klienerman with him?”

Now it was the General’s turn to keep his mouth clamped shut. He looked at Wyatt and cocked an eyebrow.

“The first… body,” Wyatt said, his voice chokingly strained, “was found in Denver. McMurtrie figured as long as he was coming that close, he might as well drop in here and tell us what was going on.”

“He knew you were here?” I asked Wyatt.

“We were in constant communication all the time,” he answered.

“What’s Dr. Klienerman have to say about all this?”

“Nothing,” the General snapped. “Not a damned thing.”

“He and Dr. Pena didn’t get along very well,” Wyatt explained. “You know how it is when two prima donnas get under the same roof.”

“What do you mean?”

Wyatt looked even more uncomfortable. “Pena wouldn’t allow Klienerman to see the bodies of the duplicates.”

“What? But he’s the President’s personal physician! If one of those bodies is the President…”

“They’re not,” said the General.

“How can you be certain?”

“Pena’s satisfied…”

“Dr. Pena told me they were exactly alike, for Chrissake!” I knew I was shouting, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. “He can’t tell one from the other, and he can’t tell either one from the President’s medical profile.”

“They are not the President,” the General insisted.

I took a good look at him. Arguing with him on that point would have been like trying to tear down Red Peak with a soggy toothpick. He had made up his mind and that was that.

Wyatt said, “Meric, you really ought to get back to Washington and stay close to your office. We’ll keep you informed.”

“I still want to see McMurtrie,” I said.

“That will be impossible,” the General said.

“Why can’t—”

“McMurtrie’s helicopter crashed between here and Mt. Evans. I got the word just before I came in here.”

I couldn’t move. Not even my mouth would work. It was like being paralyzed.

Wyatt seemed stunned, too. But only for a moment. He asked, “McMurtrie…?”

“Dead. Everybody on board was killed. McMurtrie, Klienerman and the pilot.”

“They’re sure?”

The General’s voice was stony. “State police helicopter flew over the crash site. Heard a distress call and went to investigate. By the time they got there, there was nothing to see but burning wreckage. No survivors.”

“Jesus-suffering-Christ,” said Wyatt.

I still couldn’t utter a word. But my brain was racing at hyperkinetic speed.McMurtrie was killed. Murdered. Either he or Klienerman had found something, and they were both killed before they could tell anyone. Murdered by somebody here in the General’s household.

EIGHT

It was around midnight when my flight landed at Washington National. Home of the brave, I told myself. It was an effort just to pull myself out of the seat and trudge past the weary stewardesses standing at the plane’s main hatch. Even their conditioned-reflex smiles looked bedraggled. I felt as if that helicopter of the General’s had landed on my back. Utterly tired. Not just physically. The kind of nothing-left feeling when you’ve burned up the last of your adrenalin and the monster you were facing is still there, bigger than ever, breathing fire and reaching out to clutch you.

The airport was just about deserted. They stopped flights into National after midnight. The official reason was the noise; it bothered people living in the area. The real reason was security. Ever since the National Vigilance Society had tried to seize the Government and the city a dozen years ago, the airport had been kept under very tight security guard.

The damned corridor out to the main terminal building seemed endless. It was like a surrealistic nightmare; I was walking alone up this gradually sloping bare white-tiled corridor, scared to look behind me for fear that whoever got McMurtrie would be coming after me, scared to push ahead because I knew there were things in that city out there that I’d rather not face up to.

But as I went past the deserted passenger inspection station, with its X-ray cameras for searching baggage and its magnetic detectors for finding metal on passengers, the whole gloomy airport lit up for me. Vickie was sitting there, reading a magazine.

I was the first of the half-dozen passengers coming out of the plane, and she hadn’t looked up yet to notice anyone approaching. Her golden hair was a touch of sun warmth in the impersonal coldness of the terminal building. She was dressed casually in slacks and sweater, but she looked grand to me.

“You don’t get paid overtime, you know,” I said.

She looked up, startled momentarily, and then grinned. “I happened to be in the neighborhood…” She got up and stuffed the magazine into her shoulder bag.

“How’d you know which flight I’d be on?”

“Checked with Denver.” She looked very pleased with herself. “I may not have started life as a newspaper reporter, but I know how to find things out when I want to.”

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

“The hell I did.”

We walked together out past the empty, echoing baggage carousels, mindlessly turning even though there was no luggage on any of them. The traffic rotary outside the terminal, so noisy and bustling all day long, was dark and quiet now. I didn’t see a cab anywhere.

“I’ve got my car,” Vickie said, pointing toward the parking area on the other side of the rotary.

“I didn’t know you had a car.” It was a little chilly in the night air. The sky was clouded over, although a quarter moon glowed through the overcast dimly.

“Well, it’s not really mine. It belongs to a friend. He’s out of town and I’m minding it for him.”

I didn’t reply. We walked straight across the rotary, just like Boston pedestrians, marching across six traffic lanes, a big circle of withered grass, and six more lanes on the other side. The parking area was automated. We got into the car—a thoroughly battered old gas burner that roared and coughed when Vickie started it up—and drove out, stopping only to pay the parking fee at the unattended gate.

“You didn’t walk around here in the dark by yourself,” I said.

“Sure. It’s okay… the place is really deserted. And they’ve got television monitors watching everything. The guards would have come out of the terminal building if anyone had bothered me.”

“Just in time to join the gang bang,” I muttered.

“Worried about my honor?” she asked as she turned onto the bridge that led across the Potomac.

“Worried about your life.”

“I can take care of myself. I’ve never been raped yet.”

“Once is enough, from what I hear.”

She grimaced. “I suppose you’re right.”

By the time we had pulled up in front of my apartment building, she had told me all about the car and its owner. The engine had been converted to hydrogen fuel, which is why the old five-seat sedan was now a two-