Atropos (7 page)

The Capitol Mall will take all the walking you can do, and then some. Trotter was beginning to get a little tired himself, but he was damned if he was going to complain about it to a man who’d had a stroke. He just wished he had a walker of his own to lean on.

The trouble was, the Capitol was so damn big, down there at the end of the road, and the Mall was so damn straight, everything looked closer than it was, easier to get to. The looming museums of the Smithsonian, lining either side, added to the illusion. Trotter reflected that this might be symbolic of what was wrong with Washington—lots of majesty, but lack of perspective.

Trotter walked alongside his father, taking care not to go too fast and leave the old man behind. He was a little peeved that the emergency summons was an audience with a temporary officeholder and a spell as a physical therapist, but what the hell. The government was paying the plane fare. He could be back in Kirkester tonight.

The walker stopped again, in front of the Air and Space Museum. Trotter waited for the Congressman to speak, but nothing happened. Tourists, sparse in the January cold, paid much more attention to the old man who seemingly slipped into suspended animation than they ever had when he was discussing top-secret projects in a public street. Trotter’s father had taught him that that would be the case. You can talk about anything in public if you keep your voice normal, don’t be too specific, and don’t act too interested.

But if you stop, stand in one spot, and stare straight ahead, you’re going to attract attention.

Trotter figured
one
of them ought to say something. “What is it? Do you want to go inside and touch a moon rock?”

His father came out of his trance and looked at him. He always spoke out of the corner of his mouth these days, but this time, it seemed especially appropriate. He gave his son a one-eyed scowl and said, “You mockin’ the afflicted, boy?”

Then he did a very unusual thing. He laughed. Real, genuine laughter, as though he had actually perceived something as funny. Trotter found it a revelation.

“No, son. I was thinkin’ something over. Let’s get out of the doorway, and I’ll tell you what’s on my mind.”

The Congressman stopped again about twenty yards farther down the Mall. “All right,” he said. “There was another reason for calling you down here.” The Congressman’s Southern accent had dwindled to practically nothing, a sure sign that he was getting down to business.

“Thank you. As somebody said recently, I’m supposed to be the boss.”

“You are, son, you are. People keep secrets from the boss all the time.”

“I’m glad you’re going to tell me. I’d hate to have to fire you.” That raised another chuckle.

“Well, it’s a personal thing, too. I got a call from Jake Feder. He wants to talk to me. I told him you were running the show these days, and he said he knew that, but he wanted to talk to me.”

“You said okay.”

“I said okay. He worked for me for a long time, and he was my friend before he worked for me.”

“I have never noticed,” Trotter said, “that friendship ever cut a whole lot of ice with you.”

“I could never afford it to. And anyway, you know Jake. Doesn’t give a fat hairy damn for anything in the world but circuits and his grandchildren.”

Trotter nodded. He’d gotten a full load of Jake Feder’s grandchildren when Jake had come up to Kirkester to install Trotter’s electronics.

The Congressman continued. “Well, he gives a damn about this.”

“So talk to him.”

“I want you there.”

“He asked for you. This might not even be Agency business.”

“Right,” the old man said. In the old days, he might have spat, but his control over his lips wasn’t what it had been. “What are the odds of that?”

“Slim,” Trotter admitted.

“So I want you there. People like Jake have to know you’re the boss now.”

“I’m the boss
for
now. There’s a difference.”

The old man gave him that half smile. “Whatever you say. Boss.”

For the first forty-plus years of its existence, the Agency had operated like a guerrilla army, disappearing before anyone even started to look. The Congressman had had things arranged so that his headquarters (a couple of secure rooms for privacy, a John, and a linkup with the people who were actually doing the work) could be moved overnight. Things could still be done that way. The Congressman, as Director Emeritus, or on leave of absence, or however he chose to think of it, still had a hideaway in a basement somewhere. It wouldn’t do for him to be seen too much at the new, more permanent headquarters.

Today was an exception. Fenton Rines’s secretary buzzed him to let him know the Congressman and a Mr. Trotter were here. Rines said, “Send them in,” and sat looking at the door, waiting for them.

This door showed him nothing but woodgrain. The one that opened to the eighth-floor corridor outside read simply,
FENTON RINES INVESTIGATIONS
. The door didn’t lie, as far as it went. It just didn’t go very far. The Agency was behind that door, and it was a whole lot more than Fenton Rines. And there was a whole lot more going on than investigation, too. Disinformation, espionage, assassination, and things they didn’t have names for. Rines reflected that he had come a long way from the crew-cut ex-Marine who’d joined the FBI so many years ago.

It had been a Fenton Rines investigation that had gotten him into all this. Rines had been a staunch and loyal Bureau man. Some said that he might have been in line to be Director someday, if Watergate hadn’t happened. Rines didn’t know about that, didn’t care that much. He liked doing what he was doing.

But he chafed under the post-Watergate reforms. It bothered him that the Bureau should be hampered in its work because of some overzealousness in the past. Overzealousness, it should be added, in which Rines took no part. Still, it was annoying. And it was even worse because Rines’s practiced eye could see that
somebody
was doing
something.
Strange operations that looked like nothing a criminal in his right mind would want to do, but too well planned to be the work of a maniac.

When he brought his findings to the Congressional Committee that was supposed to oversee such things, he was patted on the head and sent away. That was when he decided somebody in the government was according somebody privileges that were denied the Bureau.

It all came to a head with the Liz Fane kidnapping. The Congressman had sent Trotter, who was then known as Clifford Driscoll, to straighten things out. Which he proceeded to do in an effective, if unorthodox, fashion. In the process, Rines had learned about the Agency, about the Congressman’s role in it, and the fact that Driscoll—now Trotter—was the old man’s son. The
President
didn’t know that. Jake Feder, who was also supposed to be coming this afternoon, had worked with the Congressman since the War, and
he
didn’t know it.

Trotter had arranged for him to learn all this so he might get out of his father’s clutches. Which he had, until he’d voluntarily walked back into them. Apparently, the Congressman had been right. The spy business was bred into every cell of Trotter’s body. To use the Congressman’s homey phrase, “That boy can no more walk away from this business than a buzzard can walk away from meat.”

But while Trotter had been freed to make up his own mind, Rines had found himself trapped. Since the old man no longer had any secrets from him, he trusted Rines with
everything,
told him things it scared the FBI man to know.

And he’d started
using
him. The Congressman would get messages to him suggesting that he assign a few Special Agents to investigate this building or that person, and let him know what turned up. Before long, Rines was doing more work for the Agency than he was for the Bureau.

Then the old man had had his stroke. It was obvious that Trotter should take over top position. No one else had the training, experience, and brilliantly twisted brain necessary for the job. For a few mad moments, Trotter had tried to duck the job and wish it onto Rines, but the fall that had smashed up his body had apparently also knocked some sense into his head, and he’d taken the job.

But that had meant a restructuring. It was a radical change, but at the same time it was a perfect demonstration of the Agency’s use-everything philosophy. Trotter now had the resources of a huge national and international news-gathering operation to put at the Agency’s disposal. Rines, who because of the decentralization would be needed full-time on Agency business, had “retired” from the Bureau and gotten a Private Investigator’s license. “Investors” (the Agency) had put up money for him to hire a staff and open these sumptuous offices in Alexandria, Virginia, not far from the Pentagon. Nobody who worked in these offices—except Rines, the top computer people, and the communications technicians who sent Trotter and the Congressman their thrice-daily reports—knew whom they were really working for.

This had a few advantages. For one thing, for an outfit like the Agency, recruiting was always a problem. The Congressman had started with men and women he’d known from OSS days, but they were dead now, or too old to cut it in the field. He’d bred one operative; for the rest, he had to depend on recommendations from the few people he trusted. But with the PI business, Rines hired likely candidates (he paid top money to get top prospects) and actually got to see how they did at the work before trusting them with information they might find too heavy a burden.

Fenton Rines Investigations also put all the information gathered from the straight business (and business was excellent) at the disposal of the Agency. It might not be especially gentlemanly, concerning yourself with the extramarital and/or financial peccadillos of the kind of people in the D.C. area who could afford Rines’s rates, but it was of inestimable value in spotting potential security risks, or for putting pressure on when you needed someone to do something.

And the Agency hadn’t lost touch with the Bureau when Rines had retired, either. The Azrael operation had made it necessary for a young Special Agent named Joe Albright to be brought in on some of the Agency’s secrets. That included the big one—that it existed. He’d shown an aptitude for this extra-special kind of Special Agentry that working for the Congressman—for Trotter, rather—required. Albright also had a girlfriend in Kirkester, someone he’d met during the Azrael thing, so it was perfectly natural to use him as a courier whenever they needed to send anything to Trotter.

The door opened. Rines rose to meet the Congressman and his son.

“Where have you got Jake?” the Congressman asked.

“Not here yet,” Rines told him. “How’s the President?”

“Seems like a nice guy. At least he’s a known quantity. Who knows what the next one’s going to be like?”

“Sit down,” Rines said. “Claudette will buzz me when Feder gets here.”

“As long as we’re here, we might as well get a little work done,” Trotter said.

“Sure, you want to go over the afternoon report? I was going to suggest that you do that first even if Feder had been here already.”

“Why’s that?”

“I think it might tell you what he’s got on his mind.”

Norman Jones keyed the door of the next car open and backed in, sweeping the platform behind him as he did so. He wasn’t in any hurry, but he wasn’t dawdling, either. His job was to clean up the Metro cars when they came into the yard every night, and in the morning, when he went home, all the cars would be clean.

He liked it better here, at the downtown yards outside Union Station. He’d built up enough seniority now so his wishes counted for something, and his first big wish was to get transferred from Shady Grove, which was way out in Maryland. There, if he finished doing all his work early, wasn’t anything to do but sit around and twiddle his thumbs. There wasn’t much to do here, either, but Norman liked to walk around and look at the city lights when he had the time. Another thing was, he lived nearby. If an emergency came up, he could run home. From Shady Grove, he’d be lucky if he could send a telegram.

Norman finished the platform, pulled back his broom like a matador with a sword, and turned around.

And there was someone in the car.

“Damn,” Norman said. “Second one this week.”

Some weeks, it happened more than that. Weren’t any conductors on the Metro, see, so when the line shut down each midnight, anybody who slept through the loudspeaker announcement wound up here with Norman.

Norman walked down to him, keeping his broom handy. He didn’t
look
bad, a small old white man with gray hair. He was a white man, even though his skin was darker than Norman’s—he just had one of those tropical tans. Maybe he was a Congressman back from one of those junkets or something.

He didn’t look like one of the dope fiends who sometimes nodded out on the Metro, and sometimes died there. The suburbanites who came into the city and tied one on a little too big usually were a lot younger than this guy. And you never got winos and derelicts on the Metro. The phrase for them now was “the homeless,” but Norman Jones, who had worked very, very hard for the last thirty-nine of his forty-nine years to keep a roof over his head and the rest of the heads he was responsible for, still thought “bum” was the word that said it best. Anyway, whatever you called them, you didn’t get them on the Metro. Not in the cars, anyway. Sometimes in those big barns of stations, but not in the cars. It cost too much. This wasn’t like New York, where one dollar let you ride as long as you wanted. There were fancy computer tickets here, and the longer you rode, the more it cost.

Anyway, this guy didn’t look like any of those, but Norman didn’t take any chances. He walked up the aisle to a distance of about eight feet from the sleeper.

“Yo. Mister, wake up. Hey, wake up.”

No answer. He didn’t even stir.

“Come on, I’ll show you where to get a cab. You’re lucky. You could have wound up way the hell out in Shady Grove.”

Still no answer. Norman prodded him gently with the broom handle.

“Dammit, Mister, I’ve got work to do. If I have to get the guard, you’ll be in no end of trouble, wait till you see the fare they’re gonna hit you with—”