It was a brisk ten-minute walk to Monticello Boulevard. I made it without attracting any attention other than a close look by a pair of prowl-car cops who would never know how close they came to a bonus and promotion, and a business offer from a moonlighting Washington secretary holding a lonely vigil at the Tube entry. A wheelcab cruising the outer lane answered my wave, pulled off on the loading strip.
"You licensed for DC?" I asked him.
"Whattaya, blind?" He pointed to a three-inch gold sticker on his canopy. I got in and he gunned off toward the lights of the bridge.
"You know Eisenhower Drive?" I asked him.
"Does a mouse know cheese?" he came back, fast and snappy.
"Number Nine Eighty-five," I said.
"Senator I. Albert Pulster," he said. I saw his eyes in the mirror, watching me. "You know Pulster?"
"My brother-in-law," I said.
"Yeah?" He sounded impressed—like a car salesman getting the lowdown on a ten-year-old trade-in. "Pulster's a big noise in this town these days," he said. "Three years to election and you can't open a pictonews without you get a mug shot of the guy. He's parlayed that committee into a clear shot at the White House."
The control booth was a blaze of garish light across the wet pavement ahead. The white-uniformed CIA man was leaning out, letting me catch the dazzle of the brass on his collar. The cab pulled up and the panel slid down, letting in the cool river air. I handed over the ID and the orders directing me to report to Fort McNair a day earlier. He looked them over, turned, shoved the card into the scope that transmitted the finger-print image to the CBI master file, read off the name that popped onto the four-inch screen. It would be mine—the only risk at this point was that Tarleton had already put a flag out on it. . . .
He hadn't. The guard held out a plain plastic rectangle.
"Right thumb, please," he said in a bored voice. I gave it to him; he pressed it on the sensitive plate, shoved it into the same slot, got the same result. All right so far. If he stopped now, I was in; if he went one step farther and checked out the crystal pattern of the card itself. . . .
"Hey," the driver shot a look at me. "He says he's Pulster's brother-in-law."
"So?"
"I never heard of Pulster having no brother-in-law."
The CIA man gave him a heavy-lidded look. "Let's you leave us do our job, fella; you stick to watching those traffic signs." He handed me my phony papers, pushed the button to raise the barrier, waved us on across. My driver drove fast, shoulders hunched. He didn't talk any more all the way out to Eisenhower.
Number Nine Eighty-five was a big iron gate with twin baby spots mounted up high on an eight-foot fieldstone wall that looked solid enough to withstand a two day mortar bombardment. A graveled drive led back between hundred-year oaks to a lofty three-story façade gleaming a well-tended oyster-white in the faint starlight. There was a porte-cochère high enough to clear the footman on a four-horse carriage, wide enough for three Caddies abreast. There were more windows than I remembered on the west front at Versailles, a door reminiscent of the main entrance to Saint Peter's Basilica, wide steps that were probably scrubbed five times a day by English butlers using toothbrushes. Or maybe not: maybe the servant problem had even penetrated as far as the Pulster residence.
I thumbed a button set in a black iron plate, jumped when a feminine voice immediately said, "Yes, sir?"
"How do you know I'm not a madam?" I snapped back.
"You don't have the build for it, sweetheart," the voice said, sharp now. "You want to tell me what it's all about, or do I just call a couple sets of law to help get you straightened out?"
I squinted, spotted the eye up in the angle of the iron curlicue at the top of the gate.
"I want to see the Senator," I said. "Wake him up if you have to. It's important."
"Would there be a name?"
"Maclamore."
"Uh-huh. Army?"
"Navy. Captain Maclamore. Six-one, one-ninety stripped, brown hair, brown eyes, and a nasty disposition. Hop to it."
"Not even one little old star? Captains we usually take in batches of nine on alternate Wednesdays, and this being Thursday. . . . well, you see how it is."
"You're cute," I told the eye. "With a couple more like you I could start a finishing school for snake charmers. Now run along and tell Albert you're keeping his favorite relative waiting out in the hot sun."
"Like that, huh?" the voice said coolly. "You could have said so. What are you trying to do—lose me my job?"
"It's a thought," I admitted. There was no answer. I took a couple of steps, turned, took two back. The tension was building up now. My small cuts and burns were hurting like big ones; it was time for another load of those nice drugs Purdy's medic had fed me. Instead all I had was the withdrawal symptoms, a letdown of the past few hours' fever-bright energy into a high singing sensation back of the eyes and a tendency to start arguments with disembodied voices. . . .
There was a buzz and a click and the gate rolled back. I went through it, saw a small white-painted wagon rolling along the drive toward me on fat rubber wheels. It stopped and the voice was back.
"If you'll step aboard, sir. . . . ?"
I did and the robocart whisked me up to the steps, past them, along to a ramp that slanted up behind shrubbery to an open entry. I got off and went through it into a wide airy hall full of a melancholy yellow light from wide stained-glass panels above a gallery trimmed in white-painted wrought iron. A waxed and polished girl with a pert brown face, pouty purple lips, and a cast plastic hairdo came out of a carved door, waved toward a chair that looked like a Scottish king might have been crowned in it once.
"If you'll just be seated, Captain—"
"Still mad, huh? Where's his bedroom? I'll overlook it if his hair's not combed—"
"Please, Captain Maclamore." She did a bump and grind, showed me a fine set of big white teeth, came up close, and let me get a load of the hundred-C-an-ounce stuff she wore behind her ears. "The Senator will be with you in just a moment. . . ." Her voice changed tone on the last words; she'd noticed the bruise on my jaw, the patch of singed hair, the small cuts beside my eye where an instrument face had blown out. I worked up a quick smile that probably looked like the preliminary to a death rattle.
"A little accident on the way over," I said. "But it's all right. I got the other fellow's number."
A bell jangled then—or maybe it purred; it just seemed to me like a jangle. The light was too bright, too sour; the tick of an antique spring-driven clock picked at me like a knifepoint. My cheap stiff clothes rasped on my skin—
Feet rattled on the stairway behind me. I turned, and Senator I. Albert Pulster, short, dapper, red-faced, his hair neatly combed, came across the floor, held out a hand worn smooth by shaking.
"Well, Mac—a long time. Not since Edna's funeral, I think. . . ."
I shook the hand. It felt hard and dry, but no harder or dryer than my own.
"I've got to talk to you, Albert," I said. "Fast and private."
He nodded as though he'd been expecting it. "Ah. . . . a personal matter. . . . ?"
"As personal as dying."
He indicated the door the girl had come out of. I followed him in.
Pulster's face looked hollow, as though all the juice had been sucked out of it by a big spider, leaving only a shell like crumpled tissue paper. All that in three minutes.
"Where is he now?" he asked in a voice as thin as his face.
"My guess would be that he's in a closed-door conference with some of his friends from the Hill. Naturally, he'll try to do it the easy way first. Why walk over Congress if he can bring them in with him?"
A little life was showing in Albert's eyes now, a little color was coming back into his cheeks. He leaned forward, clasped his hands together as though he was afraid they'd get away.
"And he doesn't know you're here?" His voice was quick now, emotionless, stripped for action.
"I'd guess he knows by now that I got off the ship. Beyond that—it depends on how good his intelligence apparatus is. He may have three squads with Mark Xs trampling across the lawn right now."
Albert's mouth twitched. "No, he doesn't," he said flatly. He fingered the edge of his desk, pulled out a big drawer, swung it up on spring-balanced slides, pivoted it to face me. It was a regulation battle-display console, the kind usually installed in a two-man interceptor: it showed four stretches of unoccupied lawn with fountains and flowers. Below it was a fire-control panel that would have done credit to a five-thousand-tonner.
"A man needs certain resources in these troubled times," Albert said. "I've never proposed to furnish a sitting target for the first Oswald who might rap at the gate."
I nodded. "That's why I joined the Navy: too dangerous down here." I pushed his toy back to him. "He's counting on putting this over fast and smooth: the public will wake up and it will be all over. The right publicity in the right places—now—will kill him."
Albert was shaking his head, looking shocked. "Publicity—no! Not a word, Mac. Good Lord, man—" He clamped his teeth and breathed through his nose, looking at me, through me; then he focused in, blinked a couple of times.
"Mac, there's no time to waste. What kind of force would it take to neutralize the flagship?" he snapped out. "Assuming the worst: That Tarleton heard of the move, was able to communicate with the vessel, that she was fully alerted."
"A couple of hundred megaton-seconds," I said. "With luck."
"I have no capital ships at my disposal," Albert thought aloud. "I do have over one hundred battle-ready medium recon units attached to National Guard organizations in the Seventeenth District." He looked at me hard. "What do you mean, Mac—'with luck'?"
"Tarleton stripped the ship to make his Roman Holiday. There'll be skeleton crews on all sections. I don't know who he left on the bridge: he brought all his top boys down with him—he'd have to, otherwise he might find himself looking down his own Hellbores. Assuming a fairly competent man, he'll be able to lay down about fifty-percent firepower—and as for maneuverability. . . ."
"We can saturate her," Albert said. "Run her gauntlet, grapple to her, force an entry, and sweep her clean! And then"—Albert stopped, let his expression slide back to the casual—"but we'll worry about that later. Our immediate need—"
But he'd already done the damage. "You said 'after,' " I told him. "Go on."
"Why, then, of course, I'd restore matters to normality as soon as possible." He gave me a sharp look, like a pawnbroker wondering if the customer knows the pearls are real. "I think you could anticipate an appointment to star rank—perhaps even—"
"Forget it, Albert," I said softly. "With fast action and the kind of luck that makes Sweepstakes winners, we might be able to get together enough firepower to hit her once—now—while he's off-balance, before he expects anything—and knock her out. You've got your hundred boats; if you can swing the North American Defense Complex into it, we just might blanket her defenses with one strike—"
"Mac, you're raving," Albert said flatly. "You don't seem to understand—"
"That ship's a juggernaut hanging over all of us. I think a call to Kajevnikoff might bring their South American Net into it too—"
"You're talking like a traitor!" Pulster got to his feet, his face back to its normal shade now.
"I'm taking that ship intact." He tried to get his voice under control. "Be sensible, man! I'm offering you command of the strike force. You needn't expose yourself unnecessarily, of course. In fact, I'd expect you to command from a safe distance, then move in after boarding by my troops—"
"You're wasting time, Pulster," I told him. "Start the ball rolling—now. One word—one hint to Tarleton, and he'll neutralize every resource on the planet before you can say 'dictator.' "
"What do you mean—dictator!"
"One's like another as far as I'm concerned. In fact, between you and Banny, I might even pick him. I came here to stop something, not barter it."
Albert's hand went to his console, stopped self-consciously. He was thinking so hard I could almost smell the wires burning. I took a step toward him, slid a hand inside my coat as though I had something hidden there.
"Get away from the desk, Senator," I said. He backed slowly—toward the window.
"Uh-uh. Over there." I indicated the discreet door to the senatorial john.
"Look here, Mac: this is too big to toss away like an old coat. The man that controls that vessel, controls the planet! It's almost in our hands! You did the right thing, coming here—and I'll never forget it was you who—"
I stepped in, hit him hard under the ribs to double him over, brought a right up under his jaw hard enough to lift his toes off the floor. He went back and down like a shroud full of baseballs, lay on his back with one eye half open. I didn't check to see whether he was breathing; I hooked a finger in his collar, dragged him to the toilet door, half threw him inside, set the latch, closed it. I looked around the room. There was a mirror on one wall with a table with flowers under it. I went over to it and a hollow-eyed bum in a sleazy greenish-black suit and a wilted collar looked out at me as though I'd caught him in the act of murder.
"It's okay, pal," I said aloud, feeing my tongue thick in my mouth. "That was just a warmup, almost an accident, you might say. The rough part's just beginning."
Back out in the big sad empty hall I told the girl that the Senator had suffered a sudden pain in the stomach. "He's in the john," I said bluntly. "Hiding, if you ask me. Pain in the stomach, hah! A great thing when a fellow can't come to his own relations when he's had a little run of bad luck."
The look that she'd varnished up for VIP use melted away like witnesses at a traffic smash. I made it to the door without a guide—no little cart appeared to ride me out to the gate. I walked, wondering how long it would be before she went in—and whether she would know which button to push on the console to sweep the drive with fire.
But nothing happened: nobody yelled, no bells rang, no guns fired. I reached the gate and the big electrolock gave me a buzz like a Bronx cheer as I went through. I looked back at the eye: if it had been a mouth, it would have yawned. There's nothing like a little poverty to make a man invisible.