Alternities (11 page)

“I
am
safe.”

“Nonsense. None of us are, and all of them know it. She doesn’t know what goes on up here. Probably afraid you’re fucking the bargirls.”

Wallace had cast a lazy glance across the room at Jean, the thick-thighed baby-cheeked waitress who seemed to be on duty seven days a week at the Lakeview. “No danger of that. Besides, she used to hang out at the same clubs down in Randolph before we were married. She knows I’m no good at grab-and-go.”

“No killer instinct.”

“Something.”

It had been a slow night at the Lakeview, with the television broken and only Mason and one other of the Thursday regulars there. He had lost five straight dollar-a-game eight-ball contests to Mason, then come back to the Block early, before eleven.

But Ruthann was already asleep, curled on her side on the far edge of the bed, her back to him, the edge of the sheet drawn up to her neck and held fast in a tangle of knotted fingers. He had sat Indian-style on the floor beside the bed for several minutes, hoping that she would sense his presence and awaken. Finally, he gently brushed a lock of hair back from her cheek, kissed her on the newly bared skin, and retreated to his own side of the bed.

His confusion notwithstanding, morning offered a second chance to mend fences. He had awakened before she did, a rare event. Now, at the first sound from Katie, he slipped carefully out of bed, filled a bowl with cereal for her, and parked her in front of the television with the sound on low. Then he returned to bed and Annie, eager to erase the distance between them the best way he knew how.

She was lying on her back now, the sheet down around her waist, revealing part of a cotton nightdress covered with pale blue flowers. Bending over the bed, he teased the sheet down by increments until it was no longer an obstacle. As though responding to the exposure, she turned sleepily on her side and curled up, her back to him.

Still careful not to wake her, Rayne slipped into bed beside his wife, drawing close enough for wayward strands of her hair to tickle his face. Propping his head on one hand so he could watch her, he boldly rested his other hand, on her rounded hip, feeling the warmth of her body through the thin cotton fabric.

With a light touch, fingertips just grazing the nightdress, he explored the roller-coaster undulations from waist to mid-thigh. She shivered slightly and squirmed down into her pillow, turning her buttocks upward.

He accepted the silent invitation and caressed the pleasantly full roundness there, traced the crease between the cheeks. He tried to tug the hem of the nightdress upward seeking bare skin, but the garment was held too firmly beneath her.

Edging closer, he kissed a bare shoulder. His free arm snaked around her waist and found the buttons at the bodice. Patient fingers released one, two, three buttons, and then sought her right breast, cupping its softness, teasing the nipple to crinkly firmness. He hoped she was dreaming, hoped that she would awaken from pleasant fantasy to even more pleasant reality. She had once given him that experience, his mind soaring through trancelike erotic vignettes as her mouth and hands pleasured him.

With her eyes still closed and a drugged slowness to her movements, she snuggled back against him until his erection was pressed flat against her buttocks, the nightdress still intervening between his skin and hers. He planted nibbling kisses along a line from her shoulder to her neck, gently blew a tangle of hair away, and continued the kisses up to her earlobe.

A hint of a smile appeared on her lips, and she turned lazily onto her back, consciously or unconsciously allowing him freer access to her body. He seized the collar of the nightdress in his teeth and pulled it back, baring her right breast. His mouth sought her nipple. He nibbled it tantalizingly with his bared teeth, teased it with his dancing tongue.

His hand moved down slowly across her belly until it rested lightly above the apex of her thighs. Fingers walked the fabric of the nightdress upward, upward, until the hem reached her hips, repealing her thighs and silken mound. He touched her there and her legs parted for him, her wetness betraying her desire. She made a happy cooing noise deep in her throat as his fingertips found the swollen bud of her clitoris.

Then she seemed to come fully awake, and everything changed. She had been moving easily with his touch, creating an intimate rhythm together. Then she seemed to go rigid, not with pleasure but with resistance. She pushed his hand away and pulled him atop of her, guiding his hardness between her thighs and deep inside her.

But her motive seemed not to be desire, but impatience. When she moved, there was something false about it, as though she were trying to hurry him to his orgasm. Half-asleep, she had been there with him, sharing, the distance between them zero. Awake, the chasm opened again. She was submitting to him, enduring rather than enjoying. He was doing to, instead of doing with.

The change of tenor robbed Wallace of much of his own desire, though pride would not let him acknowledge it. He moved against her dutifully at first, then with increasing anger, as though anger could replace the urgency lost with the disappearance of passion. Fighting to maintain his erection, Wallace simplified his thoughts, chasing away demons of doubt, trying to call down the memories of other couplings, of fantasies yet untested.

Suddenly there was a thump and a cry from beyond the bedroom door. “It’s Katie,” Ruthann said, pushing him roughly away and rolling out of bed. The nightdress fell back to its normal below-knee length as she moved toward the door. It seemed to Wallace an exclamation mark on her declaration of indifference, a visual denial that she had been locked in a sexual embrace with him.

He waited, wondering if she would come back, wondering if he wanted her to. Experience had taught them to treat Katie’s interruptions as a game, a challenge to desire rather than an obstacle. They hid under the covers when she came uninvited into their bedroom, giggled together and started again when she was gone.

But this was different. And before long, the sound of running water and dishes clanging in the kitchen sink made it clear she wasn’t coming back. Wallace decided in the moment of realization that he was glad. And as he showered, the good intentions of the morning, abraded by the frustrating encounter, hardened over into a callus.

He saw what was happening. She accepted his caresses without answering them, absorbed the energy he focused on her without returning any of her own, and in doing so somehow managed to make him feel as though he were the one being unfair. More of it would only make him feel worse, not better.

It would be up to her to initiate from now on; he would not volunteer for such treatment again.

Tackett wished Robinson had chosen another room. This was a meeting better suited to dark alleys, candle-lit catacombs, the back seats of black cars with tinted windows. The West Wing was too public, the Cabinet Room too proper. From above the fireplace mantelpiece, Thomas Jefferson stared down at them. At the other end of the room, American and presidential flags kept each other company.

They had met here instead of the Oval Office because of the contents of his briefcase, because they would need the conference table’s several square yards of leatherette and fine wood. But the table was
too
large. There were fourteen places along its racetrack perimeter, fourteen leather-covered armchairs with brass plates on the back denoting their “owners.” The empty seats made Tackett pointedly aware of who was not there.

The Vice-President was conspicuous by his absence. Tackett did not wonder at that; Jessie Barstow had been forced on Robinson by the party, and he had repaid the party by making Barstow an outsider, a smiling ribbon-cutter so far separated from the real power that not even Barstow himself could pretend he mattered.

But there was no one from the congressional leadership, not even from Robinson’s own party. No one from NSA. No one from the Justice Department, not even the Attorney General. Only two of ten Cabinet members. Closely held indeed. Everyone would take their own notes today.

The five men who were at the table constituted Alpha Prime. Robinson’s new inner circle. Endicott, the NRC’s diligent friend on the hill, there because he knew too much. O’Neill, who knew everything about the threat and nothing about the promise. The Secretary of State and the CIA director, both largely in the dark. And Rodman, Robinson’s loyal lieutenant, a brooding man who made a point of knowing everything.

Five men, and two of them already on the inside.

They had gathered at the far end of the table, ignoring the nameplates, oblivious to Jefferson’s stare. “Hello, gentlemen.” Robinson called out to them, angling for an empty chair. “Hope you all have your thinking caps on today.”

While further pleasantries were exchanged, Tackett took a seat across the table from the President, pushing aside the ashtray and pad of paper to make room for his briefcase. By the time he ran the combination and checked the contents, Robinson was looking expectantly in his direction.

“I’m ready whenever,” Tackett said.

Robinson nodded. “Fine.” He shifted in his seat so that he faced the others. “I asked each of you here individually, without telling you who else would be here or why I wanted to see you. And now that you know the who, you may still be wondering about the why.

“Well, if you look around this table, you’ll see the six men that I trust the most. Of all those who serve or claim to serve this country, you are the six men whose loyalty I know I need not question. And you are the men I’m counting on the most to help put things right, to restore this country to its proper place on the world stage.

“I won’t give you a lecture in balance-of-power politics. I don’t need to. You know all the mistakes of the fifties, from the Korean sell-out to the surrender of Berlin. I want to focus on where we are now.”

Robinson was rolling now, and Tackett had to smile to himself. Was there ever a President who worked an audience better, who mixed praise, patriotism, and old-fashioned town-hall persuasion with such irresistible effect? Watching it was like watching a master stage magician perform.

“I don’t like saying it, but I’ve got to be honest. The Soviets have so little fear of us that their submarine commanders feel safe playing tag with freighters inside our territorial waters. No wonder that countries that once were our allies have so little confidence in us. It’s a miracle that Canada and Mexico have held as firm as they have.

“We’re under siege, gentlemen, and the kids now in high school can’t remember it ever being different. We saved the free world in the forties, and then turned our backs on it. A penny-pinching isolationist government—yes, a Republican one, more to our shame—and a public who just couldn’t see the point to American boys dying in Seoul or Manila. That’s what cost us the chance to shape a world to our liking.

“It’s gotten a little better these last five years. We’ve made a difference. But not enough. My father was a plain speaker, and I know how he’d have said it: We’re still up shit creek. We’ve been there so long the color of the water’s starting to look good to us.

“But by God, we’ve finally got us a paddle. And we didn’t have to break up the boat to make it.” He gestured toward Tackett. “You all know Albert. You know that the National Resource Center has been a big part of the recovery we’re seeing domestically. But most of you are still in the dark about what’s really going on up there in Boston, and just how much it means to us.

“At least, I hope you are. Because what’s really going on up there makes the Manhattan Project look like… like a bunch of Boy Scouts building crystal radios.”

His tone became less convivial. “You’re going to hear some things today that would be hard to credit if you heard them anywhere other than here or from anyone other than Albert and me. I expect you to deal with your doubts and get past them without a lot of hand-holding.”

He looked hard into their eyes for confirmation of their understanding. Finding it, he turned to Tackett. “Albert?”

Tackett nodded and leaned forward. “Santa and his elves,” he said with no trace of a smile. “I know that’s what you call us. The question is, where do the toys come from? I can guess what you think—that we’ve got a bunch of pampered geniuses up there turning out ideas as fast as hens lay eggs.”

There were chuckles from Robinson and Endicott, and an uncertain smile on the face of Dennis Madison, the CIA director.

“I hate to shatter illusions,” Tackett said. “But the truth is, we don’t make our toys. We steal them.”

Ignoring the explosion of puzzled expressions, Tackett reached into the briefcase and retrieved an oversized hardback book with a familiar burgundy-colored binding. Keeping the spine turned away from the group, he reached out and dropped it in the middle of the table with a thump.

“When I was a kid and I wanted to know something, I’d walk down to the little branch library above the five-and-dime and look it up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica,” Tackett continued, retrieving a sheaf of paper from his briefcase. “It represented absolute authority as far as I was concerned. I bought one for my kids years before they could read well enough to use it.”

“I thought I was the only one who’d done that,” O’Neill said with a friendly smile.

Tackett dealt them each a single piece of paper from the top of his stack. “That’s a copy of a page from the Chronology section of a 1976 Britannica yearbook, specifically November—”

Secretary of State Ernest Clifton had been the first to receive the paper. As he scanned it, he abruptly started laughing.

“Problem?”

“What is this, Albert? ‘In the closest popular vote in American history, National party candidate Daniel Brandenburg narrowly defeated Republican incumbent Roland Maxwell,’ ” he read. “Shoot, even I wouldn’t vote for Rollie. But who the hell is Brandenburg?”

Robinson sat back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. “As the paper says, he’s President of the United States.”

Grinning stupidly, the Secretary of State looked to Robinson. “You mean you’re not?”