Alternities (10 page)

Answering her delighted smile with a grin, he squatted on his heels to receive her. “Give me a knock-down hug,” he called.

She threw herself into his arms, and he toppled backward until he was lying flat on the carpet with Katie on his chest.

“Now a smackeroo,” he urged, and tiny arms pulled her face close to his for a loud kiss on the tip of his nose. He clambered to his feet with Katie still clinging to his neck. “Woof, you’re getting heavy.”

“Can I have a cookie?”

“Well, let’s go see about that,” he said, shifting her to a more stable perch on his arm. “You going to say good-bye to your friend?”

Katie freed one arm to wave. “ ’Bye. Christa.”

“Good-bye, Christa.” Wallace echoed, and turned away, heading for the door. “It’s sure good to see you, my little Katie-cat.”

She giggled, then meowed twice.

“Does that mean you’re glad to see me, too?”

Holding character, she bobbed her head solemnly.

“I’m glad. Let’s go try to find that cookie. Do cats like cookies?”

“I’m going downstairs, Evan,” Endicott called to his house man. “Will you watch for the others?”

“Yes, sir.”

Though hardly a mansion, the place was more house than Endicott really needed, especially with Grace in Ohio. It was a party-giver’s house, with its triple-oven kitchen, huge south-facing brick patio, and manicured grounds. Grace would have filled it with friends and socialites. But Endicott preferred to treat it as a retreat, and there were few invited guests.

It was the basement that had sold Endicott on the purchase. Unlike in so many houses, even pricey ones, the architect had not sacrificed headroom to ductwork and plumbing. The ceilings in the sprawling basement were a generous nine feet high.

The former owner, a du Pont executive, had made full use of it. On the east side, he had had the earth excavated to provide full-length windows and a French-door walkout for a guest room featuring a huge platform bed. He had walled off the northwest corner for a thousand-bottle wine cellar, sealing it off behind a huge vaultlike oaken door taken from a bankrupt French winery. And in between, he had created an L-shaped party room reminiscent of a private club bar, with soft lighting, comfortable chairs, and hardwood paneling.

Endicott had made his own modifications. The wine racks were moved out, a discreet carpenter and a bemused blacksmith called in, and the basement transformed into something more in keeping with Endicott’s particular self-indulgences.

Flipping on the Tiffany lamps in the central lounge, he crossed the room to an antique walnut armoire and opened it. He took a moment to survey the implements arrayed within, making sure that all was in order. Then he moved to the vault door and threw back the locking bolt.

As the door swung open, the girl’s head jerked up. A pair of haunted eyes looked at him.

“Hello, little one,” Endicott said, moving closer to the wall where she was chained. “I hope you’re well rested. There’s going to be a small party here tonight, and you’re the star attraction.”

Her gag precluded any answer, but he was disappointed not to see a stronger reaction in her eyes. It was time to think about replacing her. She had been in the house six weeks, and her spirit was almost broken. All that was left was a spark of hope that someone was looking for her, that the next time the door opened it would be a rescuer. But no one in this world even knew her name.

Endicott crouched before her and reached out to brush the hair back from her cheek. She knew better than to flinch, and endured the unwelcome touch.

Yes, almost finished with you
, he thought with regret as he stood. But there was a certain freedom that went with that knowledge.
It should be an interesting evening.

Ruthann Wallace lay wide-awake in bed beside her sleeping husband, too full of bitterness and despair to sleep. The eighteen inches between them seemed like a hundred miles.

She had spent two days worrying over him, only to have his first words to her be a cruel slap. But instead of rebelling, she had instantly accepted the blame, bathing herself in self-hate for disappointing him, for failing him.

There was nothing she could do about the eyes, red from crying. But in the few minutes he was gone getting Katie, she had brushed desperately at her hair and changed out of her well-worn slacks into a skirt and sandals, a look she knew he liked.

But he had hardly noticed. He spent the first half of the evening on the floor with Katie. When it was time for her to put the child to bed, he stretched out on the sofa in front of the television. By the time she returned from the baby’s room, he was watching
The Nation Tonight
on TV-1 and looking very much like someone who didn’t want to talk.

She left him there and changed again, this time into her one bedroom luxury, a slinky white synthetic robe with a neckline that drew the eye downward and showed her legs off well if she sat just right. She sat where he could see her and waited for the news to end.

“I was worried about you,” she said as he rose to change the channel.

He looked at her curiously—not at all the kind of look she had hoped to elicit from him. “The Guard would tell you if something happened to me.”

“Did it?”

The television had most of his attention. “What?”

“Did something happen to you? Those stitches on your hand—”

He shrugged and retreated to the couch. “I got a few bumps. I’m okay.”

“Where were you?” she blurted out.

“I can’t talk about it, Annie. You know that.”

That was when she had lashed out. “You leave me here all alone—you can’t tell me what you do—you don’t come home and then when you do come home you’re hurt. What am I supposed to do, Rayne? How am I supposed to help you? How can I be a wife to you when I can’t even talk to you?”

But his face had just gone cold. He gave no answer, staring at the television screen. A few minutes later, he got up and grunted something about going to bed. She followed him in, still hopeful. He liked the way she moved in the robe. If only he’d look up and notice her, really notice her—

She saw the bruises when he undressed and wanted to touch him, cried inside at the sight of that beautiful body so shockingly battered. She wanted to know why, but knew better than to ask.

Still hoping, she sat on the edge of the bed while he disappeared behind the toilet screen. When he returned, he asked her to give him a chance to fall asleep before she came to bed.

“It’s hard for me to fall asleep, the way you spin like a top before you get settled,” he had said, the words a knife in her chest.

She left as he asked, because she did not want to show him her tears, to let him know that he had hurt her. When the crying was done, she came back and quietly slipped into bed.

And now she lay there, unable to sleep, listening to his breathing, feeling his warmth in the bed. Wondering why he was angry, and what she could do to make them whole again.

It was drizzling in the capital, a cold rain falling out of sluggish gray clouds. Another six weeks and the same sort of clouds would have Washington residents cursing sloppy wet snow and street-freezing sleet.

As the Oldsmobile limousine coasted to a stop in the West Executive Drive, Tackett ducked out, shrank into his raincoat and hurried up the steps to the north portico. Just inside the West Wing doors, a white-uniformed White House guard waited impassively at the security station.

“Albert Tackett to see the President,” Tackett said, slipping the coat off and folding the damp surface inside.

“Good morning, Mr. Tackett,” the guard said, scanning the appointments list. “If you don’t mind, would you please tell me the date and place of your birth?”

Tackett did not mind. The token check was by now a familiar routine. “October 1, 1920. Wichita Falls, Texas.”

“Thank you, sir. I have a message that the President would like to see you upstairs before the meeting begins. You can go right on back.”

Tackett experienced a momentary flare of annoyance. He knew the way to the family quarters on the second floor well enough, but it was a longish walk, and there were closer entrances he could have used had he known. And though he could leave his coat with the porter, the heavy briefcase had to stay with him.

But he could hardly say no. With a wordless nod of acknowledgment to the guard, he started off down the corridor toward the White House proper, passing the Oval Office on the way. Farther on, a maintenance crew was skimming and scrubbing the pool. There was a sharp smell of chlorine in the connecting breezeways.

By the time he reached the elevator to the family quarters, Tackett’s heart was racing and his breath coming in open-mouthed pants.

Got to get more exercise
, he thought as the elevator doors closed.
Always too much else to do
.

He found Robinson in his dressing room, finishing off a Windsor knot on a navy blue presidential tie.

Nine a.m, conference
, Tackett thought. “Good morning, Mr. President.”

“Hello, Albert,” Robinson said, turning from the mirror and flashing a smile. “Thanks for coming up. Walk with me, will you?”

Groaning silently, Tackett fell in beside the President as they started back the way he had come. “There’s something I wanted to get settled before we sat down with the others,” Robinson began as they boarded the elevator.

“Of course,” Tackett said.

“I’ve been told that you’re considering closing up operations in Alternity Red.”

Tackett responded to the statement with irritation.
How did you hear that? Hell of a secret agency we’ve got—

“There’s a proposal to that effect under review right now,” he said. “We do weighted ratings of the data retrieved from each of our field stations every sixty days. Red has finished last for six months running. It’s not a viable candidate for Rathole. And in terms of cost per unit, it’s easily our most expensive operation.”

“Something has to be, doesn’t it?” Robinson said as they exited the elevator on the ground floor and turned right down the arch-segmented corridor. “I want you to reject that proposal, Albert.”

It’s my proposal, you son of a bitch—

“You’re not running a profit center up there,” Robinson continued. “I don’t want us turning our noses up at any of the resources the Tower makes available to us. You never know what will turn up where.”

Let me do my job, goddammit!

“There are other considerations,” Tackett said. “It’s become extremely dangerous for our agents over there. This week alone we’ve lost two moles to Brat bugs and nearly lost a runner to local security.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Robinson said, pausing in the middle of the west sitting room. “But we don’t close up shop in Moscow or the German Republic when we lose an agent or two. Two kids died in training at Fort Dix the other day. O’Neill isn’t going to come to me and say ‘shut it down, Pete.’ I thought your people were ready to pay that kind of price if they had to.”

“They are. But I thought I had the right to decide whether what we were getting was worth the price.”

“I want Red kept open, Albert.”

“Is it that important to Endicott?”

“Senator E isn’t asking you, Albert. I am. And you still haven’t said yes.”

Tackett nodded reluctantly. “As you wish.”

“Good,” Robinson said, his face thawing around a hundred-watt smile. He clapped Tackett on the shoulder and inclined his head toward the door. “Then let’s go join the roundtable, and you can show us what you’ve got in that mobile file cabinet of yours.”

Wallace was struggling to understand. It seemed as though Ruthann were angry with him, even though he could not think of a reason why she should be.

His first day of medical leave had been a confusion of crossed signals. She had carried on as though he wasn’t there, rising early even though they had a chance to sleep in, taking Katie in the wagon to go shopping in the morning, leaving Katie in the nexus and disappearing downstairs to visit one of her friends in the afternoon.

Yet in the evening, when he shaved and changed before heading out for a few hours at the Lakeview Lounge up on Fellsway West, she accused him of abandoning her and then broke into tears. As if just because Jason was away, he should pass up spending time with his other friends. She knew not to expect him to stay in Thursday nights. Or should have known.

Mason thought he understood. “Tears. That’s how women manipulate us,” he had said over the rim of his beer mug. “She’s trying to tame you, Rayne, make you safe.”