The Multiple Man

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“What time was this taken?”

“Saturday… around six-thirty, seven o’clock.”

This time I felt as if I were dropping down a chute. “I had dinner with the President at seven Saturday evening. In the White House,” I said as evenly as I could. “He couldn’t have been at Camp David when you took this photo.”He couldn’t have been. But another double could. A double who was meeting with a lot of military brass, secretly, while the President argued with Admiral Del Bello.

Ryan grinned at me skeptically. “Okay. Go ahead and cover for your boss. It’s part of the game. I expect it.”

“Let’s drop the subject,” I said. “I’m telling you the truth and you don’t believe it, so let’s just drop it here and now.”

“Okay by me,” he answered. But the smug smile remained. It was a smile that said,See, I’m still pure and holy, but you’ve sold out to the Establishment, and now you tell us lies.

The thing that really pissed me off was that he was right, but in a way he didn’t understand. I realized that I couldn’t tell him what I knew, couldn’t break the story to him. He probably wouldn’t believe it. But he’d report it quickly enough. Oh sure, he’d report it. And inside of ten minutes I’d be wrapped in a plastic cocoon and on my way to the most remote funny farm in the land. And Ryan would be laughing about how guys crack up when they go to work for the Establishment.

I couldn’t break this story with nothing to go on but my unsupported word. It would never get off the ground. Even if it got into the headlines, there’d be an official investigation, a whitewash, and the guy who originally spilled the story would quietly drop out of sight. I’d end up in an alcoholic ward somewhere, or maybe dead of an overdose of truth.

Not for me. Not yet, anyway. Not until I learned just what in hell was really going on.

So Ryan and I fenced our way through an interview, pinking each other here and there about the need for honesty from the President and his staff, and the need for responsibility from the news reporters. By the time he left, I was sore at him, more scared than ever, and even angrier at myself for whatI had to do next.

I called Johnny Harrison in Boston and told him about Ryan’s photograph.

“The kid’s a little overeager, isn’t he?” Harrison smiled slyly at me.

I grinned back into the phone screen. “He could get himself into trouble pulling stunts like that. Those laser-directed intruder alarms don’t recognize press passes.”

“Martyred reporters are good copy,” Johnny said.

What about martyred editors? Iwanted to ask. Instead, I said, “When you see that photograph, give me a call and tell me what you think of it.”

“I’ve already seen it,” he said. “Len sent a wire copy of it to me Saturday night. Interrupted my dinner with it.”

“Well? What do you think?”

He shrugged. “Tempest in a teapot. I can’t swear that it’s the President in that picture, and neither can he. You say The Man was in the White House. Ryan says he’s sneaking around with generals. Maybe. But that picture doesn’t prove anything.”

“There’s nothing to prove,” I insisted.

“Sure.” But his face did a Groucho Marx version of, If I believed that, I’d be as dumb as Harpo.

“Well,” I said weakly, “I just wanted to know what you planned to do.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Don’t worry about that photo. But, ahhh, I am going to keep Ryan down in Washington for a while. Beef up our Washington bureau. And keep him out of my hair.”

“Thanks a helluva lot,” I said.

“All in a day’s work,” he answered cheerfully.

* * *

I damn near decided not to go to Hogate’s that afternoon. I couldn’t decide whether my elevator rendezvous was a joke, a serious attempt to recruit me for something secret, or a step in setting me up for the same kind of treatment McMurtrie had got.

But I went. Cursing myself for a damned fool, I went without telling anybody a word about it.

Hogate’s had been a landmark in Washington for more than a century. The restaurant had gone through several incarnations, including being burned to the ground by insurgents once, during the battles of the nineties. The newest Hogate’s showed nothing more aboveground than a fair-sized plastic bubble. It was built down at the foot of Eleventh Street, right by the river. Most of the restaurant was subsurface. Not underground, but underwater: very fitting for a seafood restaurant.

It was like going to have a drink with Captain Nemo. You walked down a long, dank, tubular corridor, guided by faintly fluorescent patches of color arranged to look like moss or algae. The air was spiced with a salt tang, and a faint murmur of distant surf. A live mermaid with a plastic tail smiled at you through a heavy-looking hatch and you stepped into an aquarium. You’re on the inside; the fish are on the outside, all around you. Fantastic effect with the shimmering light from the water and big toothy sharks sliding by six inches from your nose.

The main dining area was actually built like the interior of Nemo’s Victorian submarine, complete with bookcases, pipe organ, and portholes that looked out on the ever-present fish.

I stood blinking in the dim light, trying to locate my taciturn contact man. I didn’t remember much of what he looked like, and I didn’t see anyone who seemed to be searching for me. So I sat at the bar and ordered a synthetic rum collins. The synthetics were pretty good; they tasted right and even got you high, but without the after-effects. The FDA was investigating claims that they were addictive and carcinogenic. Considering what was boiling in my mind, I couldn’t have cared less.

I was just coming to the conclusion that it was all a false alarm, when a lanky young man with longish sandy hair and a sad hound’s face pulled up the stool next to mine.

“Mr. Albano,” he said, without even looking at me.

“That’s my name. What’s yours?”

“Hank Solomon.”

“Hank …Solomon?”

“Don’t especially care for people callin’ me Sol. Or Henry.” His voice had the dry drawl of the Southwest: Texas or Oklahoma.

The bartender was dressed like an old-time tar, with striped T-shirt and buttoned pants. Solomon ordered a straight bourbon and said nothing until the computer-operated mixing machine produced his drink and the bartender placed it in front of him.

“Good t’meet yew, Mr. Albano,” said Hank Solomon.

“Thanks.” I raised my glass to him.

“McMurtrie said yew were one of th’ good people around th’ President.”

I felt my eyebrows hike up. “You knew McMurtrie?”

“Worked for him. I was one o’ his outside boys. Naw, yew never saw me. I was always up ahead, makin’ sure the President’s path was cleared.”

Inodded.

“Got a problem,” he said. He was talking to me, but his eyes kept searching the room, going from the fairly well lit area of the bar out toward the dimmer sections of the restaurant and back again, ceaselessly.

“Something I can help you with?”

“Hope so.” Solomon took a small, flat black box from his inside jacket pocket. It nestled easily in the palm of his hand. “Put this in yore shirt pocket and press this li’l button on top.”

I did. Nothing happened.

Solomon glanced around the bar again, then added, “Now reach down alongside th’ button and feel th’ catch…” It was like a tiny metal hook. I could feel it with my fingernail. “Pull it loose and unreel th’ earphone.”

Now I got it. I gripped the tiny earphone between my forefinger and thumb and brought it up to my ear. It was a plug that fitted into my ear snugly.