Ghosts of Columbia (32 page)

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Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Alternate History, #United States, #Literature & Fiction

BOOK: Ghosts of Columbia
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I took the east side steps, the ones that have been restored with marble to replace the shoddy sandstone Washington sold to the first Congress, and I waited in line for fifteen minutes after signing in.
“First we’ll be seeing the old court chambers. Now, stay with the group … The Capitol is very busy when the Congress is in session.”
I lagged behind the group, and, once I was relatively alone in Statuary Hall, I bent down to tie my shoes and changed badges. After straightening, I folded my coat over my arm, adopted the diffident, hurried walk of an overburdened staffer, and marched back toward the Garfield Building.
I nodded politely at Congressman Scheuer, who was almost hobbling now but who refused to give up his seniority in the New Ostend delegation. He just looked blankly at me, wondering if he should know me or not, as I walked by.
The Speaker’s day limousine was usually retired at five, and the smaller and less obvious evening one took him to the Speaker’s House up at the Naval Observatory, or wherever else he went. Since he did little on Mondays, the odds were that the car would be wiped down and locked by five-thirty.
From the basement of the Garfield Building I took two tunnels until I got to the lower level of the garage, then waited in the corner, occasionally walking from one car to another as various staffers reclaimed their vehicles, until I was sure that limousine maintenance was finished.
Really, the only tricky part was easing myself down the half-wall behind the car. The guard in the front booth by the exit arch couldn’t see the rear of the limousine, only the front. I’d figured that out years earlier, even recommended a change to Speaker Michel. That was my last assignment at Spazi headquarters. Michel hadn’t paid any attention, not that he paid much attention to anything but the hauling and machine tool industries, and that might have been why he’d lasted one term as Speaker. No Speaker since had paid any attention to the recommendation, either, and that made things easier.
So I crouched behind the dark blue limousine and stripped off my coat and vest. There are two ways to use plastique, and most amateurs don’t understand that. Instead, they compensate for their lack of knowledge by using enough to destroy a city block, and sometimes don’t even get their target.
If you do it the right way, there’s a surprisingly small radius of destruction, but it’s rather effective. Then there was what I was doing, which was to create the impression of damage without doing much. After all, my purpose wasn’t really to kill anybody—even the Speaker.
Basically it only took a few minutes to turn the vest into a flat sheet of plastique flared around the inside of the rear wheel cover and designed to blow out the wheel and some sheet metal. The gray melded with the undercoat and even covered the timer so that only an expert could tell.
I’d set the timer for about noon on Tuesday, but it wouldn’t really matter one way or the other, so long as the plastique actually exploded. Normally the Speaker’s limousine was parked right outside “his” door at the Capitol, all day long, guarded, of course, just in case he wanted to go somewhere. It didn’t matter to me whether the limousine went anywhere or not. The ostensible point of the explosion was to serve notice on behalf of the Spirit Preservation League that the Speaker was vulnerable if he continued his covert war against ghosts.
The next set of letters to the press would arrive within the day.
After ducking back up to the higher level and wending my way back through one tunnel, I climbed to the main floor of the Garfield Building and exited, lifting my government badge to the bored guard. Nothing ever happens in the Congress; all they ever do is talk. The Speaker really makes the decisions, basically with the help of a few ministers and his personal staff. The guards know most members of Congress have no real power, and it shows.
The guard nodded at me, and I walked out and took a trolley back down Independence.
After walking to the Stanley, I moved it to another side street south of Independence and had an early supper at a Greek bistro I recalled. The memory was better than the food itself, but that’s the way it is with memories sometimes. Of course, the waiters were all different, and I certainly looked different.
Then it was time to walk back to the Stanley and get ready. The first piece of business was to get the uniform out of the trunk and change in the back seat. Even if someone saw, what would they see? An off-duty watch officer struggling into his uniform?
The second piece of business was to mail the next set of press announcements at the main post centre. Even if they didn’t arrive before the explosion, assuming no one detected the plastique, the postmark would show a degree of planning. If the plastique didn’t work, I had more left and would have to cook up something else, probably larger and more deadly, like an explosion somewhere in the Capitol. That I could still manage, although I’d rather not have to try.
Posting the announcements was as simple as driving by the post building next to the shabby Union Station and dropping them in the box. I was becoming ever more glad that I had stocked up on stamps in Styxx before I had left New Bruges. My schedule was getting cramped, to say the least.
After posting the second round of classy announcements, I drove out Newfoundland and parked under a tree about a block from where I could see the approach to vanBecton’s house.
It was dark when a limousine pulled up, the driver opened the door, and vanBecton stepped out and walked to the house. The limousine departed, and so did I, driving only a few blocks to the Dutch colonial that wasn’t a house but a power substation. There all I had to do was send a signal.
The dull thump, the dust, the puff of smoke, and the house lights going out all around me confirmed that the plastique had done its job, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. But no one went running outside. Cities have so many noises that most people don’t notice. Despite the cool evening I was sweating because I had the watch uniform on, except for the hat.
There’s always someplace in the city where a big tree overhangs a power line, for all the effort to put the lines underground in conduits. On the hills several blocks north of Dupont Circle, off California Street, where the old money that’s
gone into government service resides, there are more than a few such trees, like the one I had fixed the night before almost next to vanBecton’s house. I triggered the second detonator from a block away, and the tree limb crashed across an already dead power line and a not-so-dead wireline serving the vanBecton residence.
The question was one of speed, as much as anything else. I twisted the thermal switch under the dash, and the Stanley glimmered from dull mottled gray into a lighter, institutional gray. I pulled up in front of the vanBectons’ in-city mansion, right where the limousine had been, and donned the watch hat. I left the engine on, walked quickly up the perfect marble-paved steps, and used the knocker, ignoring the bell button.
The door opened a crack.
“I am Officer Wendrew Westen. Are you Herr Gillaume vanBecton?”
Flickering candles backlit the young Federal Protective Officer at the door. “No. Can I help you, Officer?”
I looked doubtful, but answered, “Perhaps. It appears that the power failure … There is a large tree … Could you at least come and take a look?”
It was his turn to look doubtful. I just waited.
Finally he stepped back and called inside, “There’s a problem, something to do with a tree and the power failure.”
“Take care of it.”
I managed not to grin at vanBecton’s less than pleased words.
The young FedPro closed the door behind him and stepped onto the marble under the portico. “What’s the problem?”
“It’s right at the corner there.” I turned and began to walk swiftly in the direction I had pointed.
He hurried after me, and I slipped the blackjack from my belt as I passed the Stanley and stepped around the trimmed yew tree and up to the mass of maple branches.
He never even saw the blackjack coming and went down like a steer in a slaughterhouse. He had a separate key in his belt, which I hoped was the house key, and I extracted the ring and dragged him partly under the tree branch, just to get him out of sight.
With a quick step I jogged back to the house and tried the front door. It wasn’t locked. So I opened it and stepped inside. “Hello … hello?” I asked in a reasonable facsimile of a lower-toned and less cultured voice.
“What are you doing here?” VanBecton marched toward me. Behind him I could see a plump, silver-haired woman.
“What is the difficulty, William?”
“Officer Wendrew Westen, sir. The FedPro fellow, he tried to move the tree, sir, and he’s trapped under it. Thought you’d want to wire for help.”
“Wire for help? Isn’t the tree what cut off the wireset?”
“Might be, sir,” I offered helpfully.
“You idiot, how could I wire for help if the tree is what cut off the wireset?”
I frowned. “Do you want to look, sir?”
“No. I don’t want to look. I want you to fix the problem.”
Frau vanBecton stepped into the large hall, a space bigger than my study, though not all that much larger than the foyer and staircase had been in my own old Virginia place. She carried a candle lamp.
“Good evening, madame. Terribly sorry.” I gave a bow that brought me closer to vanBecton.
VanBecton glowered at me as if I were the problem.
“Perhaps I should run down to the station and get some assistance.” I took a step forward and half bowed.
“Dorcas, go check the set again,” snapped vanBecton.
“Dear, I just checked it.”
“Check it again.”
“Yes, dear.” She shuffled out of sight.
“Sir. I think you dropped your wallet.” I stepped forward and pointed.
VanBecton couldn’t help looking down, and I used the blackjack again, right across his temple, almost hard enough to crack his skull and kill him. That was the trouble with political appointees. They still didn’t really know the tricks of the trade. All they could do was talk and order people around, and play games with people’s lives without ever having paid the price themselves. And there was never any proof; so average citizens would think I was a soulless killer. How could they understand? They didn’t want to.
After catching vanBecton and letting him down, I stepped into the parlor next to the briefcase that he had not moved when the power had failed.
“Dear … You’re not William.”
“He told me to wait here. He went upstairs for something.”
She looked blank.
“Does the set work?”
“Not.”
“Are you sure?”
She looked down, and in the dim light I scooped up the case.
“I’m leaving, madame.”
After walking into the hall and hoisting vanBecton’s limp form, I barely staggered out the steps with him before she started screaming. I ignored the screams and stuffed him and the case in the rear seat of the Stanley and threw myself in front. I guided the steamer out of the small circular drive and away before the neighbors decided to investigate.
The drive out to University and the Woodward and Vandervaal car park was uneventful, as I had hoped. The store was closed on Monday evenings, but the lot was open and vacant. VanBecton was stirring by the time I trained the disassociator on him, but a full jolt to the brain dropped him. When he woke he would be a low-class
zombie, and I was effectively a murderer for the fourth time, although the victims all still breathed and talked—if in monosyllables. Until he was ready to walk around, I covered him with the disreputable trench coat and went to work on his briefcase.
Although it took longer, I picked the lock on his case, because I needed the case looking untouched later. I riffled through the papers. Most were useless administrative trivia, not surprisingly since vanBecton would have been far too cautious to put something important on paper, and even if he had, it certainly wouldn’t have been in a case he casually carried home.
Surprisingly, there were two documents I could use—a set of handwritten notes and the summary budget figures, not those with the line items which could obviously have been very embarrassing but those with the general categories. That would tie very nicely to the material I had already prepared.
The notes were mostly trivial except for one line, the one that read in his clear cursive,
“talks on deghosting
—
Holmbek and GH.
”That just might be enough.
I slipped the cuffs around his wrists, just in case, pulled the lap robe from the holder behind the driver’s seat, and threw it across his legs and shoes so that no one could see him. Then I pulled out of the car park and headed out University to the nearest Babbage Copy place.
A dozen copies of the key papers from vanBecton’s case would be more than adequate, especially given the relatively selective distribution I would have to use.
There was only one other car behind the copy place, not surprisingly, since students were the big users and most just didn’t have it together on Monday nights. That certainly hadn’t changed between New Bruges and Maryland.

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