The Devil's Mirror (20 page)

‘Tell me in little words.’

‘Mom transmits an impulse of some kind—don’t ask me what kind because I don’t know—using a secret wavelength. This impulse affects both male sperm and female ova in the human animal...’

‘Mom makes them sterile?’

‘As long as the impulse is transmitted, yes. When it’s turned off, the spermatozoa and ova begin functioning normally again.’

I sat back in my de-activated chair. ‘The range,’ I said. ‘Tell me about that. How far is it effective? How big an area can it cover?’

‘That information is dispensed strictly on a need-to-know basis,’ she said, ‘and only ten people including the President need to know it.’

‘Eleven,’ I said. ‘Gordon W. Popowcer needs to know it, or he doesn’t play ball.’

She sighed. She looked away from me. And then she looked back. Straight into my eyes. ‘The world, Gordon,’ she said. ‘The whole wide world.’

Beautiful, if it really worked. ‘But why am I here, Elinor?’

I asked. ‘What’s the problem, and how can I help solve it?— assuming I
want
to help solve it, after I hear what it is.’

‘You’ll hear what it is, but not from me.’

She poked a few more buttons, and the wall shredded itself into a split-screen effect showing close-ups of three tough customers—an ice-eyed Anglo, a broad-faced Slav, and a Fu Manchu type. Elinor tersely introduced them as John Corrigan of our State Department, Nikolai Borisov of the Soviet, and Lao Zi-Lei of Peking. Smile, I told myself, you’re on Candid Camera.

Corrigan spoke first: ‘Mr Popowcer, the birth control project known as Mom can save the world. But it can also be a terrible weapon. If only one nation possessed it, it could be used to thin the populations of all other countries to nearextinction, while the population of its source nation remained stable or even grew. It can be used selectively, you see.’

I nodded.

Borisov picked up the thread: ‘That, sir, is why your United States of America is not the only nation to possess such a device. My own country has an almost identical one, and so has the country of my Chinese colleague.’

Lao merely nodded in curt confirmation.

‘All three of these devices are currently in operation,’ Corrigan told me, ‘each one covering an effective area of one-third of the earth’s surface, therefore blanketing the world. They have been in operation for eight months.’

‘Which means,’ I said, ‘that in one month, the first results will be seen—no births anywhere in the world.’

‘Correct,’ said Corrigan.

‘And this condition will continue,’ I asked, ‘until the Moms are turned off?’

Corrigan nodded.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t see the problem.’

Lao Zi-Lei spoke for the first time. His voice was a sinister Asian sibilance. ‘The problem, Mr Popowcer, is that
we cannot turn them off
.’

THE RETURN OF POPOWCER

Chapter One

Dial Nine Three Seven

‘Yes,’ he said, and died.

That single word, or sound, that hiss of breath, and he was suddenly the deadest thing I’ve ever seen. Stunned, I let go of the withered corpse. It collapsed backward on to the leather couch.

I stood for a moment, looking at him, swallowing lumps, my heart beating, my eyes glancing quickly but meaninglessly around my office.

I looked at my watch. Dick was late, he should have been here twenty minutes before. Maybe he would know this dead old man. I certainly didn’t. I had never set eyes on him before. For a moment, I debated with myself about waiting for Dick before doing anything.

But I decided against it. I walked over to my desk and dialled the police. My hand was shaking, my voice was not steady. ’My name is Gordon W. Popowcer. Someone’s just died here, I think you should come right over. Suite 804, the Stanton Building.’ I gave our address.

Then I just sat. I thought of trying to call Dick, but he’d be en route by now. Maybe not. Worth a try. I dialled his number, no answer.

That cadaver was the oldest, most ruined piece of humanity I’d even seen—even in the brief moments I had seen him alive. Now, in the handful of minutes after his death, he seemed to have grown even older, more desiccated, caved in. This, I told myself, was an illusion, bat, God, he had lived a long time—at least ninety years.

Why, though, had he chosen my office to die in? Why had he stumbled in, suddenly, unannounced, with such urgency, after closing hours, at nine in the evening?

Come to think of it, how had he gotten into the building?

On second thought, there was nothing in that. All tenants had keys, and I certainly didn’t know every tenant in the building. He had a heart attack, stumbled into the wrong office—they all looked alike—and died in my arms.

But why ‘Yes?’

Why not ‘Help,’ or ‘Please,’ or ‘Doctor,’ or ‘God,’ or nothing at all?

A sharp knock on the door jolted me from my thoughts. ‘Come in.’ Two cops in plain clothes entered.

‘Mr Popowcer?’

‘Yes. I phoned.’

‘I’m Lieutenant Moss, this is Sergeant Duffy. May we see the body?’

‘There he is.’

They examined him briefly, searched his pockets, looked through his wallet, then pulled up chairs and sat down. ‘Would you just tell us how he died, Mr Popowcer?’

I told them. It didn’t take very long.

‘And all he said was “Yes”?’

‘That’s all. I’m not even sure it
was
“Yes”—but it sounded like it.’

‘Why should he say that, Mr Popowcer?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Does that word have some special meaning for you, is it a signal of some kind, a code?’

‘No! Look, I never saw the man before! I don’t know who the hell he is!’

Lieutenant Moss sighed. ‘I see. Mr Popowcer, you have a partner, is that right?’

‘Dick Rufus, yes.’

‘Where is Mr Rufus now?’

‘I wish I knew. He was supposed to be here almost an hour ago.’

‘Is Mr Rufus usually late like this?’

‘No, he’s actually very punctual.’

‘Would you describe him?’

‘Dick’s a man of medium height, I guess you’d say, a few inches shorter than I am; well-built, dark hair, curly; sort of no-colour eyes, blue-green-grey-something.’

‘How old?’

‘Dick’s about my age—thirty-five or six.’

‘Now, try to remember, Mr Popowcer. This old man here on the couch. Maybe you
did
know him? I mean, maybe he’s someone you may have met a few years ago, something like that? Maybe he’s somebody’s father—Mr Rufus’s for example—’

‘Dick’s father is dead, been dead for years.’

‘Can’t you remember
ever
meeting this man before?’

‘No.’

‘A friend of Mr Rufus?’

‘He might be a friend of Dick’s, of course, but I do
not
know who he is.’

‘Does Mr Rufus have any enemies that you know of?’

‘No... why all this emphasis on Dick Rufus?’

Moss sighed again. He seemed very tired. ‘Well, Mr Popowcer, Mr Rufus is an hour late, you said. And he’s a punctual man, you said...’

‘Yes, but there’s nothing ominous in that. I mean, I’m not
worried
or anything. Hell show up.’

‘I hope so. Because the other thing, see, is that this dead old gentleman’s driver’s licence, Social Security Card, all his credit cards...
they all belong to Mr Richard Rufus.
’

Later it was confirmed by the dead man’s fingerprints. He was Dick Rufus, and no mistake, all ninety-odd years of him.

But it wasn’t until the next morning that I found a scrawl in Dick’s handwriting on his desk calendar:
Dial
937. A number that short meant it was right here in the building. I involuntarily glanced at the phone, looked close at the dial, and realised, with an unpleasant flash of fear, that the letters corresponding to the numerals 937 were WXY, DEF, and P R S. In other words, there was another way of dialling 937: Just dial YES.

Which I did. It rang only once, and then I heard a woman’s voice say, ‘Good morning, Mr Popowcer. We’ve been expecting your call.’

The Secret of Popowcer

Chapter One

The Hunchback of the Opera

‘Don’t you mean the Hunchback of Notre Dame?’ I said. ‘Or possibly the
Phantom
of the Opera?’

‘No, Mr Popowcer, I mean the Hunchback of the Opera,’ said Marco del Medico, repeating the phrase he had uttered a moment before. He was quite emphatic, his eyes bright as a bird’s, his bald head gleaming as he nodded with sharp, abrupt movements.

I had learned only recently, to my considerable surprise, that the grand old man was still alive and made his home less than two miles from mine. Never as big a name as, say, Puccini he had been a younger contemporary of his and well spoken of in his time. Of course, his music was rarely played nowadays—he had never had the common touch—but once in a while an adventurous impresario revived one of his all-but-forgotten operas or concertos (much in the same way that Busoni is occasionally resurrected). For decades, he had been living quietly in the suburbs, sustained by his royalties and a small annuity, writing his memoirs, composing special little things for private performances—string quartets and the like.

‘Yes,’ he was saying, ‘the Hunchback of the Opera. That’s what they called him—behind his back. His name was Benedetto Rinaldi.’

‘The great baritone,’ I said.

‘Yes—how did you know? I thought no one nowadays...’

I said quickly, ‘When I was a boy, I used to visit my grandfather. He had an old-fashioned gramophone with an enormous horn. And a pile of scratchy, one-sided records.
Cohen on the Telephone
, also Caruso, Galli-Curci, Lehmann, McCormack, Chaliapin. And Rinaldi. Singing Valentin’s aria from
Faust
.’

‘It was a role he never sang, never could sing, on the stage,’ said Del Medico.

‘Why not?’

‘For the same reason he could not sing Di Luna, Germont, Boccanegra, Amonasro, Escamillo, and a great many others. Those characters are kings, noblemen, warriors, matadors, and so on—imposing figures, requiring a commanding physical presence. And Rinaldi was a pitifully deformed hunchback.’

‘He could have played Rigoletto,’ I pointed out.

‘He did. And Tonio in
Pagliacci.
He played both roles, many times. Beautifully, feelingly. As Rigoletto, the phrase,
Solo, difforme, povero
, became especially poignant on his lips; and as Tonio, his high point was not the flashy Prologue—which he sang superbly—but that little arietta the lovelorn cripple sings to Nedda:
So ben che difforme, contorto son io
. But how many hunchback roles are there, after all?’

‘There’s Alberich in the
Ring
...’

‘Rinaldi was no Wagnerian, and his German was atrocious.’

‘Frustrating,’ I said.

‘Tragic. Poor Rinaldi was a far more pathetic figure than Rigoletto or Tonio. That soaring voice caged in that bent body. And so, since so many roles were denied him, he decided to create a role he would deny others. He would commission an opera with a great role in it for him, and he would allow no other to sing it.

‘The legend is that he went to Puccini—which is chronologically possible because Puccini was still very much alive and active at the time—but I happen to know it was a less illustrious composer he approached: me.

‘I was in Milan. He came to me with a libretto under his arm, a thick thing of many pages, all in longhand, bound with silk cord. He had written it himself, drawing freely upon Victor Hugo.
Il Gobbo
, it was called:
The Hunchback.

‘The twisted little man came straight to the point, speaking in that rich voice that one could actually
feel
vibrating the eardrum. “Name any figure, maestro,” he said, “and it is yours.” I told him I was very busy with other commitments (which was not entirely a lie) and he said, ‘’Promise me only that you will read this. If, after having done so, you can resist it, I will not press the matter further.” His confidence both annoyed and intrigued me, so I made the promise; he left the libretto with me; and, that evening, I read it.

‘It was quite good. Of course, the basic story and characters were all in Hugo’s great novel,
Notre Dame de Paris,
but Rinaldi had done a quite competent job of scaling things down to the limitations of the operatic stage, providing plenty of theatrically effective scenes and situations. All this, mind you, was several years before the same story was filmed for the first time, with Lon Chaney. As for his verses, they were adequate—not great poetry, but
cantabile
: singable. Needless to say, he had written himself a great role in Quasimodo. But it was not merely a one-man show—I would not have been interested in that—it was a very effective drama, with other good roles, Esmeralda, Jehan, Phoebus, Gringoire; and great opportunities for music: the scene in the bell tower, the scene in the torture chamber, the chorus of beggars, Esmeralda’s dance...

‘In short, Rinaldi’s confidence was justified. I could
not
resist it. I got in touch with him the next day and told him I would do it.’

‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘You told him you would do it.’

‘What’s that, Mr Popowcer?’

‘But you did not do it,
signore.
You took that poor cripple’s money—worse, you allowed him to raise his hopes—and then you betrayed him!’

Del Medico’s voice trembled. ‘Wh... who are you?’

I rose slowly from my chair and advanced towards him. ‘Can you not guess?’ I said.

‘No... it’s impossible...
You can’t be!
’

And then
he
told
me
something that stopped me in my tracks, and made the blood seem to jell in my veins.

The Perils of Popowcer

Chapter One

Licked Before You Start

Sonya Gorchenkov laughed triumphantly at my predicament. I was hooked up, buck naked, to a polygraph machine. That’s right—a lie detector, but nobody gave a damn if I lied or levelled or clammed up. The polygraph needle reacted to every fluctuation of my blood pressure, heartbeat, pulse, respiration and perspiration. The slightest excitement of my senses, the merest upsurge of my emotions, and the polygraph would, in turn, activate a syringe that would empty a pint of cyanide into my veins. My only hope was to remain totally calm.