The Multiple Man

During the fourteenth breakfast food commercial, the General came in. I didn’t hear the door open behind me, but the TV picture winked off. I turned and there he was, leaning over stiffly, one hand still on the control keyboard set into the little table next to the door.

“I’m glad to see that you found something to occupy your mind while you were waiting,” he said as I got up from my chair. He was far from smiling.

“I’m glad to see you didn’t keep me waiting all that long. Time passes slowly in jail.” I decided as the words were coming out that I’d better not let him think he could cow me. Old reporter’s habit: mouth first, then brain. Instinct followed by rationalization.

“Just what in hell are you trying to do, Albano?” The General normally looked annoyed at lesser creatures. Now he looked blazingly angry.

“I’m trying to save your son’s life… and his Presidency. Or doesn’t that matter to you?”

He hadn’t budged an inch from where I’d first seen him. “Get out of here,” he said, his voice low and slightly trembling. “You wise-mouthed son of a bitch… get out of my house!”

“Sure,” I said, taking a couple of steps toward him and the door. “But once I’m outside I’m going to call a press conference and blast this story wide open.”

“Like hell you will.”

“If you’re thinking I won’t make it back to Washington, guess again. An assistant of mine knows all about this, and she’ll take over if anything happens to me.”

He didn’t bat an eye. “If you mean Ms. Clark, forget it. She can be bought off very easily. Or silenced.”

Jesus! “Maybe so,” I bluffed. “But I’ve also spilled the story to a reporter who’ll break it as soon as anything happens to either one of us.”

“And who might that be?”

“You’ll find out if you try to hurt Vickie… or me.”

“Ryan? That young pup from Boston?”

“It doesn’t make any difference. We’ve got this thing fail-safed. You can’t hurt us.”

He stamped into the room, right past me and over to the windows. I could see the cords in his scrawny old neck popping out. His fists clenched.

“Why?” He whirled around to face me again. “Who’s backing you, Albano? Who’s behind you?”

I should have tried eloquence and said, The people of the United States of America. Instead I answered, “Nobody. Except the President.”

“Cut the crap.”

“I mean it! Somebody’s out to get the President—your son. Either to kill him or discredit him so completely that he’ll be forced to resign.”

The General shook his head.

“And whoever’s doing this, he’s operating from right here. I think it’s you, or somebody working for you.”

“You’re dead wrong,” he said quietly, without fire.

“We know about the cloning,” I said. His face went white.

“We know that Dr. Pena did it. And we know that he’s here. That’s who I came to see. I want to find out what he knows about all this. And I want to hear what you’ve got to say. You’ve got at least two murders on your doorstep…”

“Murders?”

“McMurtrie and Dr. Klienerman.”

“That was an accident!”

“The hell it was!”

“It was, dammit!” he shouted. But standing there by the windows, with the fading afternoon sun at his back, he somehow looked weaker, less certain of himself, starting to bend.

I pushed harder. “McMurtrie and Klienerman were killed after they talked with Pena and he sent them here. Two cloned duplicates of the President were killed…”

“No…”

“Goddammit, stop lying to me!” I exploded. “Stop this motherfucking phony shit or I’ll go right out of here and tear your son’s Presidency apart! Is that what you want? Is that what you’re after?”

For a long moment he didn’t answer. Didn’t move. Just stood there with his hands hanging loosely at his sides, looking old and uncertain. He shook his head and mumbled something too low for me to hear. Then he walked slowly to the phone, pressed the ON stud, and said softly:

“Ask Dr. Pena if he feels up to joining us here in the first floor sitting room.”

I let my breath out in a long, slow sigh.

The General looked up from the phone, his face more sad than angry. “Don’t think you’ve won anything, wise mouth. And don’t think you know anything.”

“And don’t think I can be conned,” I replied.

He seemed to regain a little of his strength. “Sit down. I’ll order some drinks. You’ve got a lot to learn, Mr. Press Secretary. A hell of a lot.”

The Oriental brought a tray of decanters and glasses and bowed his way out of the room again, all without making a discernible sound. When I hesitated at accepting anything, the General laughed at me, not without some bitterness.

“Stop playing cloak and dagger. I’m not going to poison you, for Christ’s sake.”

I picked up one of the glasses and poured from the same decanter the General did. Took ice from the same bucket with the same tongs. It was straight rye; not my favorite, but he was drinking it, so I sipped at mine.

He leaned back in one of the deep leather chairs. “You know about the cloning, then.”

“Yes… and the fact that two of the clones have been killed.”

“They’re dead,” he insisted. “That doesn’t mean they were murdered.”

“Pena can prove it, if he wants to.”

“Don’t be too sure.”

At that moment, the door opened again and Dr. Pena wheeled into the room. He did look even more frail and drawn than when I’d seen him ten days ago. His face was sinking in on itself, cheeks hollow and eyes cavernous pits so deep you couldn’t see any spark of life in them. The skin on his hands seemed paper thin, so that every tendon and blood vessel stood out like a drawing in a medical textbook. He was wearing an oversized caftan, although for all I know it might have fitted him perfectly at one time. The robe bulked oddly, showing the outlines of the equipment that was fastened to his body. The General shot me a black look as Dr. Pena wheeled his chair slowly toward us. He was saying,See? You’ve come to persecute a dying man.

God help me, I had just the opposite reaction. I wanted to pump his information out of him before he dropped dead.

“You asked me to join you,” Dr. Pena said to the General. It was a flat statement, neither questioning nor accusatory. His voice was a bare whisper, nothing like the strong baritone he had commanded back in Minnesota.

“Our pesty friend here,” the General waved vaguely in my direction, “has found out about the cloning. Now he thinks I’m responsible for the deaths of Joseph and Jerome… and for Dr. Klienerman and that Secret Service agent.”

Pena turned his head slowly from the General toward me. “That is nonsense.”

“Who killed them, then?” I asked.

His chest rose and fell twice before he answered, still in a breathless whisper, “Why assume… they were… killed? I told you…”

“You told me the two duplicates of the President died of unknown causes.”

“Yes…”

“Does that sound like a natural death? Do people normally just—turn off, stop living? Isn’t there always some cause of death? Heart attack? Stroke? Cancer? Gunshot wound? Something?”

“Usually… but…”

The General broke in. “You don’t understand the situation at all, dammit! Stop browbeating the man.”