warmth. Blues and golds dominated, with natural wood tones gleaming here and there. The place was jammed with the Massachusetts research and development intelligentsia. Scientists from MIT and Harvard, engineers from the once-magical Route 128 “electronic highway,” the survivors of booms and busts that had staggered the R D industry and the nation’s economy with the regularity of a major league slugger taking batting practice.
I didn’t have anything to do with his speech. Robinson and the other speechwriters put it to-gether, although The Man always put a lot of pure Halliday into everything he said. And he tied the speech into the afternoon press conference’s questions about the Iranian war in an ad-lib way that no speechwriter can prepare ahead of time:
“… the real issue is very clear. The basic question is survival. Survival for the way of life we have worked so hard to achieve. Survival for the democratic institutions that have made us a great and prosperous people. Survival for our children and our children’s children.
“We can no longer allow ourselves to be dependent on dwindling natural resources for the primary needs of our people. Nor need we be so dependent, when we have within our grasp—thanks to the dedication and perseverance of our nation’s scientists and engineers—new sources of energy that will eliminate forever the twin dangers that haunt us: resource depletion and pollution of the environment.
“It is my intention, and I am sure the Congress will agree, to push ahead for the development of new energy systems, such as the orbiting solar network and the laser-fusion generators, with all the vigor that we can command.”
They loved it. For the first time in their memories a President was treating them like an important national resource. It meant huge dollops of Federal money for the brainboys, sure. But more important to that audience on that night was the fact that the President, The Man himself, was saying to them, “We need you, we want you, we admire you.” They would have followed him anywhere, just as their fathers had followed Kennedy to the moon.
But he seemed stiff to me. Uncomfortable. He was
Laura was sitting on the stage, just to the right of the podium, looking more beautiful than ever. The limelight of attention and public homage seemed to be making her more self-assured, more pleased with herself and the world around her. She was a goddess whose worshipers were a nation. They knew it and she knew it. So she sat there, smiling, beautiful, adored, and remote. From me.
I pulled my attention away from her and let my eyes wander across the rapt audience. I wondered what Sam Adams and his roughnecks would have to say about this crowd. How many of these well-dressed heavily educated people would daub red clay on their faces and dress in Indian feathers to go out and defy the laws of the Government? A few, I guessed. Damned few. And I wasn’t certain I could count myself among them.
The whole stage, up where the President and his group were, was protected by an invisible laser-actuated shield. And there were other, redundant, shields around the podium and the body of the President. If anyone tried to fire a shot from the audience, the scanning lasers would pick up the bullet in flight and zap it into vapor with a microsecond burst of energy. Sonic janglers would paralyze everyone in the auditorium, and McMurtrie’s men could pick up the would-be assassin at their leisure. Foolproof quantum-electronic security. All done with the speed of light. The President could appear to be standing alone and in the open, naked to his enemies, when he was actually protected so well that no major assassinations had been successful in years.
Which is why I was more startled than annoyed when McMurtrie grabbed my shoulder and whispered, subtle as a horse, “Follow me.”
I didn’t have much choice. He had already half-lifted me out of my seat in the press section. Len Ryan glanced at me quizzically. It must have looked like I was being hauled off on a drug bust.
“I’ll be right back,” I mouthed at him as McMurtrie practically dragged me to the nearest exit.
He waited for the big metal door to close fully before he said, “We’ve got troubles, and you’ve got to keep the news hounds out ofit.”
Framed by the bare-walled exit tunnel that led to the alley, lit from above by a single unshielded bulb, McMurtrie looked troubled indeed. His big beefy face was a map of worry and brooding belligerence.
“What’s happened?” I asked. “What’s the matter…”
He shook his head and grabbed my arm. Leading me down the tunnel toward the outside door, which opened onto the alley behind the Hall, he said only, “Don’t ask questions. Just keep the news people off our backs. We can’t have a word leak out about this. Understand? Not word number one.”
And his grip on my arm was squeezing so hard that my hand started to go numb.
“It would help if…”
He barged through the outside fire door and we were out in the alley. It was cold. The wind was cutting and there were even a few flakes of snow swirling in the light cast by the bulb over the door. I wished for my topcoat, silently, because McMurtrie was dragging me up the alley, away from the street and into the deeper shadows, and he wasn’t going to give me a chance to even ask for the damned coat.
The alley angled right, and as we turned the bend I saw a huddle of people bending over something. Two of them wore Boston police uniforms. The other half-dozen were in civvies. They had that Secret Service no nonsense look to them.
McMurtrie didn’t have to push through them. They parted as he approached. What they were bending over was a blanket. Lying there on the pavement of this dirt-encrusted alley. A blanket with a body under it. I could see a pair of shoes poking out from the blanket’s edge.
“The doctor here yet?” McMurtrie asked gruffly. One of the Secret Service agents answered, “On his way, sir.”
“Both ends of this alley sealed?”
“Yessir. Four men at each end.Ambulance…”
“No ambulance.No noise. Get one of our cars. Call Klienerman; tell him to meet us at Mass General.”
“He’s still in Washington, isn’t…?”
“Get him up here on an Air Force jet.” McMurtrie turned to another security man. “You get to Mass General and clear out the cryonics facility. Screen the place yourself. Take as many men as you need from the local FBI office.
The agent scampered like a scared freshman.
I was still staring at the shoes.
McMurtrie had turned to the two Boston cops. “Would you mind securing the fire door, up the alley? No one in or out until we get this cleared away.” He barely gestured toward the body.
The cops nodded. They were both young and looked scared.
Then McMurtrie fixed me with a gunmetal stare. “You’d better go back inside the way you came out. Make sure the press people stay in there to the end of the President’s speech. Do not let any of them out here.”
“How can I keep…”
He laid a stubby finger against my chest. It felt as if it weighed half a ton. “I don’t care how you do it. Just do it. Then meet us at the Mass General cryonics facility after the speech. Alone. No reporters.”
He was dead serious. And the man under the blanket was dead. My brain began to whirl. It couldn’t be an assassination attempt. One well-shod character staggers into an alley to have a heart attack and McMurtrie acts as if we’re being invaded by Martians.
But I didn’t argue. I went back to the fire door, a couple of steps behind the two cops. Maybe McMurtrie was just overreacting. Or maybe, crafty son of a bitch that he was, he was using this accident as an opportunity to test his troops’ capabilities.
One look at the faces of those two Boston patrolmen drove all the levity out of me. They were
