The Sam Gunn Omnibus (92 page)

“So
you see,” Pope William said, “we are not so far apart as you thought.”

Sam
shook himself, like a man trying to break loose from a hypnotic spell. “I still
want my half bill,” he said.

Pope
William smiled at him. “We don’t have it, and even if we did, we wouldn’t give
it to you.”

“Then
you’re going to go down the tubes, just like I said.”

“And
the changes I am trying to make within the Vatican will go down the tubes with
me,” Pope William replied.

Sam
thought a moment, then said, “Yeah, I guess they will.”

Leaning
toward Sam, Pope William pleaded, “But don’t you understand? If you press your
case, all the reforms that the Church needs will never be made. Even if you don’t
win, the case will be so infamous that I’ll be blocked at every turn by the
Curia.”

“That’s
your problem,” Sam replied, so low I could barely hear him.

“Why
do you think I came up here?” the Pope continued. “I wanted to make a personal
appeal to you to be reasonable. I need your help!”

Sam
said nothing.

Cardinal
Hagerty recovered his voice. “I thought from the beginning that this trip was a
waste of precious time.”

Pope
William pushed his chair back from the table. “I’m afraid you were right all
along,” he said to the Cardinal.

“So
we’ll have a trial,” Sam said, getting to his feet.

“We
will,” said the Pope. He was nearly six feet tall; he towered over Sam.

“You’ll
lose,” Sam warned.

The
Pope’s smile returned, but it was only a pale imitation of the earlier version.
“You’re forgetting one thing, Mr. Gunn. God is on our side.”

Sam
gave him a rueful grin. “That’s okay. I’m used to working against the big guys.”

SAM AND
I walked slowly along the corridor
that led from the Pope’s quarters to the main living section of Selene. Josella
trudged along on Sam’s other side; Greg was a few steps ahead of us.

“Sam,”
I said, “I’m going to recommend against a trial.”

He
didn’t look surprised.

“You
can’t do this,” I said. “It’s not right.”

Sam
seemed subdued, but he still replied, “You can recommend all you want to, Jill.
The Court will still have to hear the case. The law’s on my side.”

“Then
the law is an ass!”

He
grinned at me. “Old gray-eyes got to you, didn’t he? Sexy guy, for a Pope.”

I
glared at him. There’s nothing so infuriating as a man
who thinks he knows what’s going on inside your head. Especially when he’s
right.

Josella
said, “I’ll have to report this meeting to my superiors back in Hartford.”

“How
about having supper with me?” Sam asked her. Right in front of me.

Josella
glanced at me. “I don’t think so, Sam. It might be seen as a conflict of
interest.”

Sam
laughed. “We’ll bring the judge along. We’ll discuss the case. Hey Greg,” he
called up the corridor, “you wanna have dinner with the rest of us?”

So
the four of us met at the hotel’s restaurant after freshening up in our
individual rooms. I made certain to follow Sam to his suite, down the corridor
from Josella’s, before going to my own.

“Bodyguarding
me?” he asked mischievously.

“Protecting
my interest,” I said. Then I added loftily, “In the integrity of the World
Court and the international legal system.”

Sam
gave me a wry smile.

“I
don’t want you tampering with the opposition’s lawyer,” I said.

“Tamper?
Me? The thought never entered my mind.”

“I
know what’s in your mind, Sam. You can’t fool me.”

“Have
I ever tried to?” he asked.

And
I had to admit to myself that he never had. To the rest of the world Sam might
be a devious womanizing rogue, a sly underhanded con man, even an extortionist,
but he’d always been up-front with me. Damn him!

The
restaurant was crowded, but Sam got us a quiet table in a corner. He and Greg
were already there when I arrived. Shortly after me, Josella swept in, looking
like an African princess in a long, clinging gold-mesh sheath. Sam’s eyes went
wide. He had barely flickered at my Parisian original, but I didn’t have
Josella’s figure or long legs.

Sam
sat Josella on one side of him, me on the other. Greg was across the table from
him. I think he was enjoying having two women next to him. I only hoped he
couldn’t see how jealous I was of Josella.

Trying
to hide that jealousy, I turned to Greg. I was curious about him. Over pre-dinner
cocktails, I asked him, “You’re a Catholic, aren’t you? How do you feel about
all this?”

Greg
looked down into his drink as he stirred it with his straw. “I am a Catholic,
but not the kind you may think. There are many of us in Latin America who
recognized ages ago that the bishops and cardinals and all the ‘official’
Church hierarchy were in the service of the big landlords, the government, the
tyrants.”

“Greg
was a revolutionary,” Sam said, with a smirk.

“I
still am,” he told us. “But now I work from inside the system. I learned that
from Sam. Now I help to create jobs for the poor, to educate them and help them
break free of poverty.”

“And
free of the Church?” Josella asked.

Greg
said, “Most of us remain Catholics, but we do not support the hierarchy. We
have worker priests among us, men of the people.”

“Isn’t
that what Pope William wants to encourage?” I asked.

“Perhaps
so,” Greg said. “His words sound good. But words are not deeds.”

“You’re
really going to insist on a trial?” I asked Sam.

He
didn’t look happy about it, but he said softly, “Got to. Ecuador National is
close to bankruptcy. We need that money.”

Greg
nodded. I believed him, not Sam.

Dinner
was uncomfortable, to say the least. Pope William had gotten to all of us, even
Sam.

But
by the time dessert was being served, at least Sam had brightened up a bit. He
turned his attention to Josella.

“Is
your last name Dutch?” he asked her.

She
smiled a little. “Actually, its derivation is Greek, I believe.”

“You
don’t look Greek.”

“Looks
can be deceiving, Mr. Gunn.”

“Call
me Sam.”

Josella
seemed to consider the proposition for a few moments, then decided. “All
right—Sam.”

“Did
you call your bosses in Hartford, Josie?” he asked her.

“Did
I! Old man Banner himself got on the screen. Is he pissed with you!”

Sam
laughed. “Good. He’s the sonofabitch who shifted the blame to God.”

“That’s
a standard clause in every policy, Sam.”

“Yeah,
but I asked him personally to reconsider in my case and he laughed in my face.”

“He
said if you took this case to trial he’d personally break your neck,” Josella
said, very seriously. “He used a lot of adjectives to describe you, your neck,
and how much he’d enjoy doing it.”

“Great!”
Sam grinned. “Did you make a copy of the conversation?”

Josella
gave him a slow, delicious smile. “I did not. I even erased the core memory of
it in my computer. You won’t be subpoenaing
my
boss’s heated words, Mr. Gunn.”

Sam
feigned crushing disappointment.

“This
Mr. Banner hates Sam so much?” Greg asked.

“I
think he truly does,” said Josella.

“Perhaps
he is the one who sent the assassins after Sam,” Greg suggested. “At least one
set of them.”

“Mr.
Banner?” she looked shocked.

A
thought struck me. “You said the assassins were amateurs, Josella. Have you had
much experience with terrorists?”

“Only
what I read in the news media,” she answered smoothly. “It seems to me that
real
terrorists blow you away as soon as they get the chance. They don’t drag you
across the landscape and gloat at you.”

“Then
let’s be glad they were amateurs,” Sam said.

“Professionals
would have killed us all, right there in your office,” Josella said to me.
Flatly. As if she knew exactly how it was done.

“Without
worrying about getting caught?” Greg asked.

“Considering
the response time of the Dutch security people,” Josella said, “they could have
iced the four of us and made it out of the building with no trouble. If they
had been professionals.”

“Pleasant
thought,” Sam said.

THERE WAS PLENTY
of night life in Selene, but as we
left the restaurant Sam told us that he was tired and going to his quarters. It
sounded completely phony to me.

Then Josella said she was retiring
for the night, too. Greg looked a little surprised.

“I understand there’s a gaming
casino in the hotel,” he said. “I think I’ll try my luck.”

We said good-night to Greg and
headed for the elevator to take us down to the level where our rooms were. On
Earth, the higher your floor, the more prestigious and expensive. On the Moon,
where the surface is pelted with micrometeors and bathed in hard radiation,
prestige and expense increase with your distance downward.

Sam made a great show of saying
good-night to Josella. She even let him kiss her hand before she closed her
door. I walked with him as far as the door to my own suite.

“Want to come in for a nightcap?” I
asked.

Sam shook his head. “I’m really
pretty pooped, kid. This business with the Pope’s hit me harder than I thought
it would.”

But his eyes kept sliding toward
Josella’s door, down the corridor.

“Okay, Sam,” I said, trying to make
it sound sweet and unsuspecting. “Good-night.”

He pecked me on the cheek. A
brotherly kiss. I hadn’t expected more, but I still wanted something romantic
or at least warm.

I
closed my door
and leaned against it. Suddenly I felt really weary, tired of the whole mess.
Tired of chasing Sam, who was interested in every female in the solar system
except me. Tired of this legal tangle with the Vatican. And scared of the
effect that Pope William had on me. I wondered if one of the changes he wanted
to make in the Church was to allow priests to marry. Wow!

I
honestly tried to
sleep. But I just tossed and fussed until I finally admitted that I was wide
awake. I told the phone beside the bed to get Sam for me.

It got his answering routine. “I’m
either sleeping or doing something else important. Leave your name and I’ll get
back to you, promise.”

Sleeping or doing something else
important. I knew what “something else” was. I pulled on a set of coveralls and
tramped down the corridor to Sam’s door. I knocked. No answer. Knocked harder.
Still no answer. Pounded on it. He wasn’t there.

I
knew where he
was. Steaming with rage, I stomped down the corridor to Josella’s door and
banged on it with both fists. I even kicked it.

“I know you’re in there, Sam!” I shouted,
not giving a damn who in the hotel could hear me. “Open up this goddamned door!”

Josella
opened it. She was wearing nothing but the sheerest of nightgowns. And she had
a pistol in her hand.

“Senator
Meyers,” she said, with a sad kind of resignation in her voice. “I had hoped to
avoid this.”

Puzzled,
I pushed past her and into her room. Sam was sitting on the bed, buck naked, a
sheet wrapped around his middle.