Summitt

Chapter Thirty-Six

At dawn a yellow cab slowed and stopped on Broad Street near Market in Philadelphia. Enough light shone from cleaning crews in office buildings and the gray skies to outline the statue of Benjamin Franklin on top of the town’s massively ornate City Hall.

Selby paid and tipped the driver, an amiable black man who wanted to get into the electric garage-door business. He then walked to Chestnut Street and stopped and looked at his watch. The center of the city was quiet and empty until a garbage truck rumbled by.

A red-haired woman on the wooden bench at a bus stop wore boots and purple knickers and a tight suede jacket with fringed wrists. She smiled at Selby and moistened her lips. “How come you’re studying your watch?” Her tone was good-natured, appraising. “Only time means anything is party time. Would you care for some party time, friend?”

“No, no thanks,” Selby said.

“Don’t mention it. Thought I’d ask, that’s all. But party’s the word, big guy, not time. Wouldn’t take long. My van’s parked over on Spruce Street, just a short walk. There’s some records, a bottle of this and that.”

“Thanks again,” Selby said, “but I’m expecting someone.”

“There’s no big, bad pimp to worry about. I’m a good judge of people. Never got messed up with anyone I couldn’t handle.” She glanced at her watch. “I could drop you back here in a half hour.”

“No, it’s not our night,” Selby said, and tried to smile.

“I’m a fool to ask, I suppose,” the red-haired woman said, “but be honest. Are you fuzz, or don’t I turn you on?”

“It’s not that.” Selby looked up and down the empty streets.

“The knickers okay then?”

“They’re fine, they’re really okay,” Selby said.

A car turned off Broad Street and stopped across from them. A slender man with glasses got out and waved to Selby.

The redhead said, “Fuck you, big man.” Collecting her shoulder bag, she stood and moved off into the shadows of the shops around City Hall, the click of her heels fading into the silence.

Sergeant Wilger crossed the street and joined Selby. “Anybody I know?” He stared after the woman. “The hooker made me, right?”

“I guess she did.”

“I look like an unemployed druggist when I see myself in shop windows,” Wilger said. “Everybody else sees cop. It’s probably glandular. You sure you weren’t tailed back there?”

“I don’t think so. After I called you I got on Flight 10 to Memphis. Just before takeoff I told the stewardess I’d forgot something, had to make a phone call. I said I’d try to get back in time but told her not to page me if I didn’t show. I stayed in the men’s room until Flight 10 was airborne. I killed the rest of the time in an all-night movie out on City Line.”

They crossed Chestnut Street and got into Wilger’s car. “I called Petey Komoto twice on my car phone driving over,” the detective told Selby. “He’s not home. Talked to his lady. Her name’s Maria-Encarna. She’s from Tijuana. I got that from Vice here. Petey’s sitting up with a sick friend, she says. Putting splints on busted flushes, I’d say. They live on Pine Street, near Rittenhouse Square. We’ll wait for him.”

Swinging off Chestnut Street, Wilger turned into Broad. They drove through the early light past the Bellevue Stratford and rows of closed shops and bars.

“It worked like you wanted,” Wilger said. “I did what you told me. But there’s something could screw it all up, Harry. Better tell me your end of it first.”

“I’ve got to be right,” Selby said. “Thomson hid the tree in the middle of the forest. Nothing else makes sense.”

“Fine,” Wilger said. “The film could be at Komoto’s. But that’s not the only problem.”

He turned off Broad onto Pine. A newsdealer was opening his corner stand, the bang of the shutters loud in the early morning stillness. An Inquirer truck swung in front of them and a man on the tailgate threw off a wired bundle of newspapers.

After routinely cursing the driver, Wilger said, “What about the bank?”

The preceding afternoon, when Selby left the hospital, Senator Lester’s limousine had been waiting for him in the driveway. So had the senator, in the rear of the big car, holding a phone.

“Get in,” he’d said, and then to the driver, “Clem, drive around for five or ten minutes before you take Mr. Selby out to the airport.”

He’d then explained in detail about his committee’s single undercover contact in Summitt City, Lee Crowley.

“We’ve had Crowley down there less than a year,” the senator told Selby. “He wasn’t in town the weekend after you and Jennifer met with your brother. He got sent up to Wilmington on what seemed a routine business trip. But Crowley was in Summitt a month or so later when Earl Thomson made a quick trip into town. He helped Thomson get a copy of the film he was looking for, arranged lab passes and clearance, ensured him some privacy. Crowley included that incident in his report, but he never actually knew what the film was all about.”

The senator’s limousine drove slowly through the center of the town and then into Society Hill on narrow streets with refurbished old row houses and budding spring trees.

“I can check out half of it.” The senator nodded at the phone in his hand. “I’ve got a call through to Judge Dowd, district court here. A federal court order is required to open Thomson’s safe deposit box under these circumstances, but you’d better be guessing right.”

“The master print has got to be at Summitt to start with,” Selby had said. “Jennifer Easton wasn’t lying. But Thomson showed the copy to Derek Taggart at a porn shop here in Philadelphia, then returned it to the bank. Or let us think he did that.”

“But if you go down to Summitt like some goddamn gunfighter,” the senator said, “you’ll wind up with your jewels in the wringer.”

“Right, Senator, but when I played in the pros we still faked people out with Statue of Liberty plays. If they’re expecting me in Summitt City, and your man, Crowley, plays along, that could nail them in place for a while.”

The senator spoke into the phone. “Yes, it is important, goddammit. Tell Judge Dowd it’s Dixon Lester, ma’am.” He turned and stared at Selby. “But how in hell do you convince Davic and Thomson you’re really on your way to Memphis?”

“Just get me to the airport now, Senator,” Selby said. “I can handle it from there.”

Sergeant Wilger turned out of Rittenhouse Square and parked in a street of renovated four-story homes, their fresh paint and cleanly blasted red brick fronts shining in the early sunlight. Komoto’s house was dark. Wilger turned off the motor.

“One thing, when Komoto shows, he belongs to me. It’s my job, understand?” Wilger looked at Selby. “So what about the bank?”

“I talked to Lester from a phone booth in City Line,” and Selby explained what he had learned then. With a federal court order, the senator had inspected the contents of Earl Thomson’s safety deposit box in the Wilmington bank. No film of any sort was there, only Xeroxed copies of Thomson’s driver’s license, school report cards, personal papers.

“In which case,” Wilger then said, “it looks good, Harry. The tree’s in the forest, like you guessed.”

“What we need is stashed away somewhere at Hell for Leather.” Selby studied the detective’s frowning face. “So what’s bothering you? What went wrong?”

Wilger hesitated, watched a Chrysler LeBaron driving slowly past Komoto’s house. “Okay, you called me at the Division from the airport,” he said when the car turned toward Rittenhouse Square. “You knew your home phone was wired, you didn’t trust Brett’s, but you figured nobody’d dare tap the phone at police headquarters, right? Okay. Brett was in Superior Nine then, Shana was testifying. I made a quick check of Brett’s office, swept it for taps. The bug was under her back desk drawer, a tidy job, probably Eberle’s work, he’s good at that. I didn’t touch it, I left it in place.” Wilger rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, twisting his head to relax the muscles. “After court adjourned I went back up to Brett’s office. Shana was with her. I dropped in on them, like you said to. Told Brett and Shana you were on your way to Memphis. We went downstairs and sent Shana home in a squad car. Brett was excited, told me she finally had something damaging, maybe conclusive to hit Thomson with.” He checked his watch. “Which will be in just a few hours... What happened, Harry, was this. Before I got to Brett’s, Shana had explained to her everything about Thomson’s swastika, just like she told you she wanted to in that note I gave you at the hospital. They were talking right into the bug, probably direct to Slocum’s office.”

“Christ,” Selby said softly.

“That’s about what I thought,” Wilger said, “So I sent a detail of uniforms out to your place for the night, and a squad over to Brett’s. They’re okay—”

“But Brett goes into court with three strikes against her,” Selby said.

Wilger opened the glove compartment and took out a half pint of Old Granddad, unscrewed the top and offered the bottle to Selby. “Davic and Slocum,” he said, “know every goddamn card she’s holding. Brett understands that. I told her about the bug right away. She knows she’s got to stall them until this deal pays off.”

Selby took a sip of whiskey and returned the bottle to Wilger. “Davic’s had all night to come up with a cover story,” Selby said. “Thomson will say he lost the swastika somewhere, and he’ll have friends and cops to prove it.”

“Yeah, Brett knows she’ll be firing blanks,” Wilger said, and tilted the bottle and took a swallow of the whiskey. “Look, friend, it’s rotten, in fact it stinks. But she’ll fight, she told me that. She’ll do anything she can to buy time.” Wilger drank again, his thin, pinched face beginning to redden a bit. “Let me give you some free insight into cops, Selby. We’re thieving bastards or knights on chargers holding back the jungle from civilization — take your pick. I could care less. But some cases have mile-high no-trespassing signs around them. Cops with white canes looking the other way. There are pushers in East Chester I can’t touch. They shove that shit into schools, onto army bases, a river of garbage all over the country. I pick up kids and army recruits, their heads are filthy with it. I can’t do a fucking thing...” Wilger’s voice was high and angry. “A lot of cops feel that way. It hurts, so they take a drink and forget it. But a case like Shana’s, that’s different.” He pounded the rim of the steering wheel. “It should be different. No pressure, no white canes. They shouldn’t try to stop us from dragging a sonofabitch like Thomson in by his heels... The reason for this speech, Selby, is that maybe you think you ought to thank me. Don’t. There’s not a guy in the Division, well, check that, there’s Eberle, but the rest would rather be sitting right here with me. So unless Petey Komoto strikes a blow for justice and cooperates, he’ll wish to fuck he’s stayed in Nippon drinking tea with his shoes off.”

Wilger smiled at Selby then, his face cold and humorless. “Know what else Vice told me? Petey pays off the right people, but his lady, Maria-Encarna, is dripping wet. Know what that means? No papers. She’s a wetback. A word to Immigration and they’d give her a pair of water wings and throw her back into the Rio Grande like a river carp.”

“Let’s hope we get it from Petey. She could be an innocent bystander.”

Wilger looked at him curiously. “You’d make a lousy cop. If she’s standing around a scumbag like Komoto, she’s not innocent.”

A yellow Cadillac Seville stopped in the block. A stocky man in a camel’s hair topcoat got out and walked past the dark houses and put a key into Komoto’s front door. When he went inside, lights flashed behind the windows.

“I’ll talk to him,” Wilger said, and got out of his car. “You sit tight.”

“No way,” Selby said. He opened his door and joined Wilger. “Komoto might have some friends keeping his lady company.”

Wilger judged the stubbornness in Selby’s face, then shrugged and said wearily, “Okay. But listen... I’m nothing special to look at, Selby. I’m a skinny redhead with glasses and dandruff. You know that. So, goddammit, when we’re inside, don’t look at me. Watch them. If the wetback opens a drawer or cupboard unless I tell her to, break her arm. That’s how cops get called brutal pricks, but it’s also how they stay alive sometimes. Shit, I’d rather do this by myself, Harry.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll try not to embarrass you. Let’s go.”

Simon Correll’s quarters at Summitt City included communications equipment and a master suite whose windows opened on the lakes and golf courses. The early morning light gave a glossy sheen to the beige carpeting and brushed suede furniture.

Correll had not been to bed; he still wore a gray silk lounge suit, a creamy white shirt and a maroon tie. His cologne was blended of cedarwood and cinnamon. At the window he stared out at the smooth, dull water, thinking of Jennifer: an informant at the hospital had told them of her death.

Swimming pools sparkled along the fairways. In the hazy sun they stretched like orderly blue beacons, resembling the markers that defined landing strips. A runway would be useful here, Correll thought. It was a detail they’d overlooked. He made a note of this on his desk pad. Near his hand was an enlarged photograph of the postcard his mother had treasured as a young girl in Portugal, a turreted chateau on the river, purple on that distant afternoon the picture had been taken, pointed and leaded windows gleamed in the River Loire’s reflected lights.

His mother had been dead a week now. He did not grieve for her, but he missed her presence at Mount Olivet. Everything ended; that was her ultimate gift to him, a pervasive resignation to that one simple fact.

His car was parked beyond the terrace, a classic blue Bentley, the only nonelectric car allowed in Summitt City. The side panels were painted midnight blue, but the fenders and trim were of a lighter shade of the same color, a combination Jennifer herself had chosen. He already thought of her in the past tense, how she had danced, the pleasure she had taken in rainy weather, and certain physical stimulants.

Correll’s thoughts turned on these poignant and harmless considerations to keep his suspicions at a distance. But he was only partially successful; he knew something had managed to slip through their defenses.

He wasn’t surprised when Sergeant Ledge came in a few minutes later and said, “Sir, we’ve got problems. I’ve been on the phone to Quade. Selby wasn’t on Flight 10 from Philly. Quade waited at the Memphis airport for the next flight, a local that stops over at Nashville and Richmond. He didn’t show on that one either.”

Correll said, “You’re sure of the contact in Philadelphia?”

“Yes, sir. Kiley was outside Miss Easton’s room at the hospital. He knew she’d asked for Selby. He heard the senator tell his aide, that slope who works for him, to make Selby’s reservations to Memphis. A lobby guard at St. Anne’s saw Selby leave in the senator’s limo. Quade is out now looking for the staff on the flight Selby was booked on. Some of them must be laying over in Memphis.”

Watching Correll appraisingly, Ledge added, “That’s all we’ve got, except that the press is interested in why the senator was at the hospital.” After a deliberate pause, he added, “there is one other thing. Kiley informed me an autopsy’s being performed on Miss Easton now. At the hospital morgue.”

Correll let out his breath. “When Quade checks in, patch the call straight through to me. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

After Ledge left, Correll opened his attaché case and glanced through a codex of classified numbers. He noticed automatically the loaded Beretta in a spring release holster, and beside it the Madonna in its globe of glass and glycerine and fairy snowflakes.

It saddened him to study the touch of pink on the Snow Virgin’s cheeks, applied so deftly (but with what pain?) by his mother’s arthritic old hands. Yet his melancholy was paradoxically lightened by the built-in despair that had been her most important gift to him. Human life was transitory, meaningless... it was Correll’s rebellion against that dreadful emptiness that, he felt, had given him the purpose and strength to protect human frailty in havens like Summitt City. To protect people from themselves. Particularly from themselves...

He punched out General Taggart’s number and was patched immediately through to the general’s priority phone at Camp Saliaris.

“General,” he said, “you can tell our people the second installation is ready to go on-line. We’re phasing out here.”

“Damn, I always thought of Summitt as our flagship. You’re sure it’s compromised?”

“Certain enough not to take any chances.”

“I’ve been in touch with the Cape. But what about a mix? Kraager’s people and Van Pelt’s?”

“I’ll leave that up to you.” Correll then mentioned the detail that had occurred to him earlier, the advisability of landing strips and hangars at projected experimental bastions. “Everything muted and coordinated with the general ambiance, of course.”

Taggart agreed it was an excellent idea. “The other installation won’t have the convenience of a nearby Saliaris,” he said. “I’ll secure everything according to your instructions, Mr. Correll, but what have we got to get so windy about? What’s coming loose?”

Correll hesitated, dismayed by his sudden reluctance to trust even the general. “I’m not quite sure yet,” he said. “I’ll be in touch when I have more information...”

Petey Komoto was first and foremost a businessman; everything was relative in his view, pain and pleasure, good and evil, these had varying and negotiable values depending on when and where and under what circumstances they were traded for — just as the price of dollars and francs and yen fluctuated on the boards of an arbitrage firm.

As the city came to life that morning, Petey Komoto let Selby and Wilger into his shop on Arch Street.

“Leave the closed sign in the window,” Wilger told him, “and phone your clerks and tell them not to bother to come in.”

Komoto’s eyes were bland, his complexion the color of dandelion wine. He said, “Yes, but that will cost me money—”

“Bullshit,” Wilger said. He was staring with distaste at a display of thin whips done in pastel leathers with finely ornate ivory handles. “Snap shit, Petey, or your wife will be back entertaining tourists in Tijuana.”

“I will make the calls, of course,” Komoto said. He even bowed slightly to Wilger. “But I don’t understand your resentment of me and my merchandise. I am a businessman. I didn’t create people’s urges and the needs that make them enjoy such little aids or watching group sex acts. I am the grandson of fishermen. Bento Komoto. If I sold gin and whiskey, would you blame me because my customers drink too much?”

Selby said, “Make those calls, Mr. Komoto. I’m not interested in your philosophy. You’re making me impatient.”

“That wasn’t bad,” Wilger nodded approvingly as Komoto hurried into his office. “Kind of gentlemanly shit, but you’re big enough to make it go down.”

The Hell for Leather shop sprawled through four ground-floor rooms of an ancient building that was within walking distance of Wanamaker’s famed department store and the Old Reading Terminal. The two rooms fronting the street were lined with glass shelving and counters which displayed dildoes of various sizes, along with inflated, multicolored condoms stuffed into vases like flowers. Jars and tubes of creams and jellies were heaped in pyramids on shelves, some containing alleged aphrodisiacs, others mingled with properties guaranteed to cause itching or burning or numbing sensations.

“Jesus Christ,” Wilger said, looking at life-sized rubber dolls that stood about like pink, blank-eyed spectators, fully equipped with male and female genitalia.

The rear rooms were walled with shelves of tapes, film and cassette sets. Neatly lettered signs, like something in the public library, Selby thought, were thumbtacked to the shelf edges to identify various categories: Disciplines, Fetishes, Bondage, Group Activities, Aphrodisiacs. In some cases there were subheadings — Corporal Punishment, Girls’ Schools, Gloves, Shoes and Slippers, All-Men, All-Women; Stimulants (Friction, Drugs, Alcohol, etc.).

At the end of the corridor, a half dozen screening rooms were furnished with couches and chairs. All were scruffed and dusty and in need of cleaning. In each screening room was a projector that could be operated from inside the booth, but the activating tokens had to be purchased from Komoto at the main cash register to run the machines for half-hour interludes.

“Otherwise,” Komoto had explained, “the kinks would stay all night.”

On the drive over, he had already told them as much as he knew about Earl Thomson. But Komoto’s information had only outlined the dimensions of the problem; it hadn’t solved it.

Thomson had rented a film cassette from the files titled Knots and Lashes — “very pretty porn, pirate ladies in G-strings, captured, tied to riggings, flogged” — but Earl and his friend, the army officer, hadn’t screened that film because, as Komoto explained, it was new and the seal on it hadn’t been broken.

They’d rented a private booth, paid for one activating token and looked at other footage, a film Earl had brought out of the booth with him later, a cassette with the name of a city on it... Summitt City, Komoto remembered the words stenciled on the brown plastic cover in block capitals.

Komoto returned from his office. “My clerks will take the morning off, but it will cost me a lot, you know.”

“Cheaper than Encarna’s swimming lessons,” Wilger said. He looked at Selby. “You believe this character? Or should we try some of those tickle whips on his yellow ass?”

Selby said, “I told him to name his price for that film. If he knew where it was, he’d be interested. He’s a businessman.”

Komoto smiled gratefully at Selby. “Precisely. It’s buying and selling, nothing more. Would you care for coffee while you look around? It’s a chicory blend. I obtain it cheaply from sailors up from Panama. They keep me supplied.”

“Stuff your coffee,” Wilger said. “Let’s go to work, Harry.”

Earl Thomson, according to Komoto, had asked if he could leave his cassette in the files at Hell for Leather. He’d paid for that, naturally, a storage fee. But Komoto had no idea where Thomson had put it.

“The shop was very crowded, you know that.” He glanced accusingly at Wilger. “You were parked across the street watching. You saw the people, sailors, a florists’ convention was in town, a man tried to take a live chicken into a screening booth. It was that kind of day. Very much business. I don’t know what Mr. Thomson did with it.”

He gestured at the shelves of cassettes. “I can’t help you.” He laughed showing strong, white teeth. “You would have to tear the place apart to find it.”

Wilger removed his coat and folded it neatly over a rack of kid porn magazines. “You said that, Bento, we didn’t.”

Selby said, “You start with A to N. I’ll cover the rest of it.”

“That gives me assholes to nookie. Bento, you wanna help?”

“Most certainly, sir. This is only a business matter. But please handle these items with care. Many of them are irreplaceable.”

Wilger smiled grimly. “I’m very glad to hear that, you kinky little bastard.”

A cool light spread across Summitt City’s blue lake, and the green belts glistened under sprinklers. Miniature rainbows formed brilliant arches within the crystal water cones.

When Correll was informed that directions to the screening room had been left at the north gate for Harry Selby, he drove directly to the theater.

The cameras on the buildings were motionless, their slim barrels fixed on the horizons. The shopping mall was empty and silent, but golfers were already on the course, tiny figures dotting the fairways.

The theater was a stone-colored, windowless structure landscaped with firs and spreading shrubs. Correll parked and went inside.

Wall clocks in the auditorium recorded the time in New York and a dozen world capitals. An electronic island contained projection equipment and a control panel with rheostats, speakers and microphones. Clear light streamed from panels in the acoustically treated ceiling.

A cassette of film had been inserted in the projector. Correll snapped a switch, and twin beams illuminated the large screen. Music sounded and scenes of Summitt City appeared in smooth sequences: children playing baseball, passengers getting off electric buses, homes with colorful gardens, window boxes bright with flowers. The film had been shot in clear fall sunlight, a brilliant day in October. Correll had watched it at Camp Saliaris with Jennifer, surrounded by the world delegates chosen to participate in the Ancilia Four program. On that occasion, General Taggart’s sardonic voice had counterpointed the images on the screen.

Correll stood alone now, watching residents of Summitt City in their plants and shop and recreational areas. A baseball game was featured, then couples in drifting canoes. Sailboats skimmed along the water, dissolving into shots of the shopping arcade. This was what he had created, Correll thought, a prosperous community, with a controlled, industrious and harmless population. But now everything was at risk.

His suspicions had hardened to conviction. From the start he was resigned to some degree of personal failure, but that genetic despair had been flawed by unrealistic hope, an unreasoning optimism that his own inevitable defeats would result in a victory for his species. Until now he was blinded to the betrayal he had intuitively been certain of. A vacuum had always existed... an emptiness, rather, of love, of confidence, of warmth and esteem between himself and the world, himself and Jennifer, and a darkness had rushed in to fill it.

Ledge had been informed by their Philadelphia intelligence that Harry Selby was on his way to Summitt City. A pass from Lee Crowley was waiting for him at the north gate. And in the screening room the crucial record, the film itself, had been inserted in the projector, waiting only for the touch of Selby’s fingers on a switch. The stage was set, the curtain had risen... but where was Harry Selby?

On the big white screen, the film cutting had become sharper and faster but the effect remained harmonious. Ducks bobbing on water, children splashing in a pool. People entering a church, quiet hospital rooms and bright sun porches. An American flag strained splendidly above the administration building.

In the empty theater, General Adam Taggart’s amplified voice sounded from speakers.

“What you will witness,” Taggart had explained to the delegates, “is an experiment in controlled human behavior, disciplines based on scientific conclusions. I stress,” the general’s voice now rumbled through Summitt City’s empty screening room, “that these disciplines are an application of observed scientific principles. Nothing you will see was invented or discovered. A thief doesn’t discover the silverware in a home. Gravity, motion and light weren’t invented or discovered, they’ve existed forever. Men of curiosity and learning have come to understand and put to use their relationships and functions. Progress is usually a matter of replacing one error with another, if you will, but progress is inevitable. Whatever exists on this earth, no matter how cunningly nature has hidden it, will be found and understood and put to use by man, for good or ill, it doesn’t matter one goddamn.”

The streaming flag dissolved into a montage of fresh images. Cameras picked up the baseball game, cutting from batter to pitcher to infielder. Adult spectators lined the diamond, cheering and clapping. The scene dissolved to the lake shore, where a swarm of starlings settled with a rush of wings into tawny trees. A medley of pop tunes sounded distantly from the arcade. Children skipped beside their mothers, a black woman, slim in tailored jeans, bought a snow cone for her daughter.

Simon Correll opened his briefcase and picked up the weighted globe that contained the Snow Virgin. Tipping it sideways, he watched the flakes swirling about the Madonna.

On the screen, the cameras had panned back to the action at the baseball game. The pitcher kicked high, let the ball fly. The umpire’s hand shot up.

“Strike one.”

The batter checked the third base coach, a middle-aged Puerto Rican whose sunglasses had broad, milk-white rims. The coach signaled to his infielders by touching the peak of his cap, kicking the dirt and clapping his hands. The shortstop yelled, “Bunt! Watch for a bunt!”

The first baseman, a black youngster, crept down the line like a cat, eyes fixed on the crouched batter. Spencer Barrow. His brother was named Dookey, Correll remembered. Summitt’s laboratory mice. It was such concepts that had appalled Jennifer. Human lab mice were a reality she couldn’t absorb or come to terms with. They were from Chicago, the Barrow brothers, products of ghettos, juvenile detention halls, foster homes, their records “lost,” their family’s whereabouts unknown and virtually untraceable. Brought to Summitt to visit with an “aunt”...

A phone in the control panel rang. It was Quade, calling from Memphis. “I’ve talked with the stewardess on Flight 10 from Philadelphia, Mr. Correll.” Quade’s voice was light, a surprising contrast to his wide, thick body. “She’s staying at a motel near the airport. Unfortunately she maintains that company policy prohibits any discussion of passengers by flight crews. But I’ll try to make her understand that an exception is necessary — excuse me a moment, sir...”

As Correll held the open phone, General Taggart’s voice sounded around him from the speakers. “Dr. Einstein, near his death, told us nuclear power had changed everything but the way people think. But modifying how people think, well, naturally that’s permitted only in authorized churches and legislatures.”

The camera picked up golfers on a green, children exercising in groups to the beat of drums. General Taggart went on. “It’s an untested article of faith that human nature can’t be changed. Attempts to modify the only thinking element in nature are considered useless. Instead we’ve tried to change the machine that transports us through space. We break open mountains, turn rivers and lakes to hardpan, but nature can’t be changed. We’ve got to change the basic responses of the humans living on nature’s machine. That is the function of Ancilia Four. Some of you may have feelings of outrage about this film. If so, then you don’t understand what we’ve achieved. We are demonstrating to you the indifference of a treated, controlled population to the spectacle of both youth and minorities being brutalized. To prove that those two traditional weaknesses in the average human psyche have been chemically anesthetized. Because laudable as it has been made to seem, in fact, aiding the underdog screws up nature’s plan for survival of the fittest. Chivalry is an infection. We’ve found the antidote for it. The participants in our Ancilia program have no compulsion to become personally and emotionally involved in the inevitable misfortunes and tragedies of life. Live and let live applies only to themselves, the people who count.

“Our treatment turns the stuff of horror into the stuff of dreams—”

Correll turned down the sound, the images on the screen flowed in silence. Quade was speaking again. “Harry Selby got off the plane in Philadelphia, sir. He told the stewardess that he had to make a phone call, but specifically asked her not to page him if he didn’t return. They took off without him.”

“You believe she’s telling the truth?”

“Miss Avery is doing her best to cooperate with us, sir. I think she’s told me everything she knows.”

“Have you checked charter flights, Quade?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve made inquiries of the unscheduled carriers operating out of Philadelphia. I’ve been in touch with private airfields in the Memphis area. It’s extremely unlikely that Selby left Philadelphia.”

“You’d better take the next flight back to New York, Quade. If you don’t hear otherwise from me, have my jet on stand-by at LaGuardia with a direct clearance for Brussels.”

Correll broke the connection and froze the frame on the screen. The flag was locked into rippled immobility, golfers were caught in mid-swing, the shining hair of pretty girls blew out stiff and straight with the gusting winds.

The rear doors of the theater opened and Sergeant Ledge joined Correll, his boots noiseless on the thick carpets, the strong light glazing his sharply cut features.

“I’m telling you straight out. I monitored your call on my car phone,” he told Correll. His smile was tight and ugly. “I like to know what’s going on. That’s how I’ve stayed alive this long.” He had dropped the “sirs.” “We’ve been fucked over good.” Ledge nodded to the projector. “Lee Crowley loaded that film. He checked it out of the lab. Then he left the pass for Selby. In Philadelphia they made a point to let us find out Selby was on his way. Crowley’s gone, his apartment’s cleaned out. Every move they made was to pin us down here. Who sold us out, Correll? You figured that one yet?”

Correll had been nodding thoughtfully. “Not all of it, Sergeant. Not quite.”

With an unhurried move, Ledge drew the .45 from its holster and held it leveled at Correll’s chest. “Step back from that projector.”

“You’re right, of course,” Correll said. “We were set up. But I’d advise you to trust me now—”

Ledge gestured with the automatic. Correll shrugged and stepped aside. The sergeant moved to the control panel and pressed a button to activate the film. The images flowed again, the boats on the lake, the playing fields and brightly striped buses.

“I soldiered with George Thomson,” he said, as if mechanically repeating a litany. “The best time of my life, soldiering with the major in Korea. I shot and killed Jonas Selby. I always hated that stubborn bastard. Thomson watched me. We trusted each other. We were soldiers. We doped Jarrell Selby and got him on the plane back here like we’d been told, good soldiers taking orders.”

Correll studied the sergeant and chose his words carefully. “You deserve every credit. You did exactly what I wanted. Jarrell was a second-generation product. It was essential to keep him close, to study the genetic properties, endowments and liabilities that connected the father and the son...”

On the blazing white screen in front of the two men a stocky figure in a gray twill uniform appeared, Indian features hawklike and vigilant. The image of Ledge.

“That’s what connects me to Jarrell Selby,” Ledge said, nodding at his image on the screen. “And that’s what could hang me.”

Correll said quietly, “You must trust me, Sergeant, the way you trusted the major.”

On the screen, the image of the sergeant drew the .45 from its holster. A pair of golfers pulling carts waved and smiled at him.

“It’s C and A time, Correll,” Ledge said. “Cover Your Ass. Earl Thomson’s never going to serve an hour in prison. He goes free as a bird. So does Lee Crowley. He’ll be south of the border on a government pension with lifetime PX privileges and travel cards. I heard your orders to Quade. He’s split for New York, and your plane is fueling up to wait for you at LaGuardia. It’s a free ride out for everybody but the old sergeant.”

“You’re thinking only of personal survival,” Correll said. “I understand that. But the preoccupation can blind people to intelligent action, Sergeant.”

On the screen, a camera tracked abruptly from the golf course to a stretch of shoreline across the lake. A shadow moved among the trees. Unexpectedly the figure of Jarrell Selby stepped into view, tense as a wild creature, his eyes desperate, dirt and scratches streaking his sensitive face.

Sergeant Ledge pressed a button that froze the frame on the screen. “He’s the danger for me,” Ledge said. “Him and the nigger kids you called your little mice. Don’t bullshit me about survival, Correll. That’s my game, and I play to win, just like you do.”

With a hand on the control panel, Ledge erased the images from the screen. The flat white mat cast a shimmering light through the theater.

“I’m disappointed in you, Sergeant,” Correll said. “You drew your gun from habit. Shooting me would be another mechanical reflex, triggered by panic or fear, which aren’t very reliable impulses.”

Ledge looked steadily at Correll, pressed a flat red button marked ERASE, and listened impassively to the whirring sounds of the film reels as they reversed and irrevocably obliterated and wiped clean every frame of the film shot months earlier in Summitt City.

“I won’t add to my problems by killing you, Correll,” the sergeant said when the erasure was complete. “You and the general have done a fair job of covering ass in Summitt and Saliaris, but I’m not leaving proof around to stretch this stringy neck of mine. I know there’s a copy somewhere, but I’m trusting the major to liberate and destroy it.”

“I’m seriously disappointed in you,” Correll said again. “You’re abandoning the disciplines that made you such a formidable soldier. You’re acting like a green recruit. In the face of the enemy, you’re falling apart. You don’t have the guts to trust and believe in me. You’ve got the mentality of a regular army stiff.” Correll’s voice rose with anger. “You know we’ve been betrayed, but you lack the imagination to try to understand the scope and enormity of that betrayal.”

Correll lifted the Snow Virgin and smashed it violently against the counter supporting the control panel. The globe shattered, shards of glass skittered about and a pool of glycerine spread in a small, thick circle around the broken plastic base. A metal cylinder no thicker than a matchstick lay beside the cracked figure of the Virgin. Another floated on the surface of the fluid seeping from the broken globe. Batteries...

The black plaster base had parted in two sections, as cleanly as if cut by a finely powered saw. The interior of the base contained a tape recorder no larger than a poker chip, with its side angled to fit a beveled receptacle cut in the foundation of the Snow Virgin.

Correll picked up the curved section of the plaster base. The two men studied the hollowed-out section, precisely fitted with reels and fine-spun metal tapes.

In his heart, Correll had expected this. His suspicions had winnowed out every other possibility. It was the only explanation he could conceive of, and yet a protective instinct was still helplessly seeking innocent justifications for these batteries and wires and tape. But all his defenses couldn’t sidestep the inevitable truth. His heart pounded with dangerous, impotent anger. The plastic base was repellent to his touch, as cold and slick as the treachery itself.

Correll placed the broken section on the counter, then watched indifferently as Ledge removed the tape recorders from them and held them in the palm of his big hand.

The day after Jennifer returned from Summitt City she had placed the Snow Virgin on his desk while he’d talked to the dying Senator Rowan. Jennifer had told him about sleeping with Jarrell Selby, about her ambivalent feelings for Jarrell’s brother, and even then the tiny reels had been spinning silently beneath the pious figure of the Virgin. And spinning, spinning, spinning, at his meetings with Thomson, his sessions with General Taggart, his calls to Van Pelt...

The Madonna, whose eyes and cheeks had been painted by his own mother, had been listening.

Ledge was backing away from Correll. The older man seemed barely aware of him now.

As a child, Correll had often puzzled over the riddle of whether the universe was one or many, a flock of birds, for instance, was that one thing, one swooping, darkly cohesive unit, or was it simply a thousand willful creatures soaring and nesting together for a common need and purpose? Was a tree one thing, its leaves another? Jennifer, Fabius, His Excellency, the bishop... Had there been one betrayal or an infinite number and variety of them?

Yet even with this thought, Correll couldn’t bring himself to believe his own mother had been part of the conspiracy, that her dark demons had not been electrocuted in the therapy clinic after all...

Sergeant Ledge had retreated to the main doors of the theater. Holstering his automatic, he put the tape recorder in the inner breast pocket of his twill jacket.

“I told you I’m an expert at survival,” he said. “I’ve been the good soldier, I never questioned orders, sir. But I know where you and General Taggart plan your next move, and I’d even sell that to save this ass of mine.”

“Sergeant, I’m asking you one more time to trust me,” Correll said. “You’re a part of this world we’ve tried to make. You can’t betray all that for a personal reason—”

Ledge shook his head and pushed open the doors of the theater. At the same instant Correll lifted the Beretta from his attaché case and fired two shots which struck Sergeant Ledge in his shoulder and thigh and caused him first to grunt spasmodically and then to turn and fall clumsily through the open doors.

Correll stepped forward and fired a third shot into the sergeant’s struggling body. Doing so was a necessity, nothing more. The shot went cleanly into Ledge’s upper chest and through the pocket of his twill jacket.

The lights clouded in front of the sergeant’s eyes. His .45 was in his hand, a soldier’s reflex, and he managed to fire a shot that went crashing into the ceiling and splintered those dimming lights before the scary darkness he had known on so many battlefields closed around him, finally and forever, just as he had always been afraid it would...

The fenders and grille suffered the most severe damage when the Bentley swerved from the road and crashed into the big tree. Near Correll, on a green belt, Frisbees soared through the air, and children ran after them.

He’d acted hastily with the sergeant, he realized that now. He should have tried to explain how essential it was for both of them to understand and embrace the width and breadth of the betrayal, examine its patterns and significances and, most importantly of all, identify the players and ferret out their varying motives and loyalties. But it was too late for regrets; it was done, the man was dead.

The phone on the dashboard was dead too. He’d tried to raise the operator but it was useless; no hum sounded from the instrument, not a crackle of static. A wire must have snapped or pulled loose when the Bentley went off the road and stopped with a crunch against the huge tree.

His hands were moist and slippery on the leather rim of the steering wheel. He needed the sergeant; there was work to do. Alert his people, put Belgium and London in the picture. But Correll couldn’t do it, he was hurt, he might be dying for all he knew. It’s my own fault, Correll thought. He should have tried to make the sergeant comprehend the enormity of the breach in security, a tape recorder in a ridiculous Madonna, on his desk, in his traveling case, in his goddamn bathroom perhaps, the wires spinning and listening and repeating everything for the monk Fabius at Olivet, and his tedious superior, His Excellency the Bishop Waring. “Is the lap dog an improvement over the Siberian wolf, Mr. Correll...?” Christ! Correll felt an encouraging surge of energy and anger. He should have taken the sergeant into his confidence. Made him understand. Instead he had shot the man, destroyed the tapes in his uniform pocket. But the sergeant’s own last despairing reflex had pulled the trigger of the .45 and the bullet had hissed around the projection room like an angry wasp, recoiling from surface to surface until it found a safe, soft home at last in Correll’s narrow, pulsing chest...

His mother had been disappointed in him when he was a child because she insisted he had no conscience. This had perplexed him. If he had no conscience, why had he been disturbed by the lack of one?

Put London in the picture. Yes! Call the general...

General Taggart knew the Lord Conestain and the Murray clan. Was impressed by their link to the British peerage. Their ancestors had fought one another in various skirmishes and wars, the Taggarts and the Murrays, and wore ribbons and rosettes and medals to celebrate the death of pikemen and lads in the colonies. Drink had done in the boys at Wexford... the general sang that song, and Correll remembered Taggart singing in his loud, cracked voice about someone who’d slain the Earl of Murray, in the highlands and the lowlands, and laid him on the green...

Stepping with great care and difficulty from the damaged car, Correll hailed a foursome of golfers and asked them to phone for a service vehicle. “I’m hurt,” he explained with an apologetic smile.

Their cheerful glances chilled him. They didn’t understand, they didn’t believe. As they walked off, one turned and waved good-naturedly, while the others continued to discuss the advisability of using an iron club to carry the water holes at... Their voices faded away.

Correll looked at the neat hole in his vest where Ledge’s bullet had found him. A stain no larger than a silver dollar surrounded the point of entry. Opening the vest, he studied the blood on his shirt. He tried to analyze it as he would any problem, any endangered sector.

The north gate, his apartment, the main plant? Too far away...

Summoning his reserves of strength, Correll walked at a measured pace toward the shopping mall with its public phone booths and its streams of people. His people, his creations...

They had broken Correll’s security, which could lead them to Van Pelt. But not to England, to Lord Conestain, blood-linked to the Earls of Murray...

Correll stopped a young man carrying a tennis racket. “I need to make a phone call,” he told him. “I need your help. I was shot by a security officer. It was a mistake. I have a phone credit number, but I’ll need coins to...

“Listen,” he shouted then. “I’m telling you the truth. I’m Simon Correll, I need to get to a phone. You’ve got to help me.”

The young athlete looked briefly at Correll’s blood-stained vest and was, Correll realized with dismay, relieved not to take his anguish seriously, not to believe in it. Ancilia Four had reversed his reality signals. Tennis was real. Blood, death were not. With a friendly nod of dismissal, the tennis player hurried on to the courts.

... He must phone Brussels. The bishop would be off to Belgium, he was sure, but Fabius would remain at Olivet to sing Masses for the repose of Ellyvan Correll’s soul.

How had they turned poor Jennifer against him? By giving her something to believe in, to be part of? Or did it matter?

The problem was not the clever nest at the convent, Bittermank’s source, nor was it Jennifer’s defection or the Kraagers or Van Pelts or the Murrays...

The problem was Harry Selby. He realized that with almost violent clarity. Yes, Selby. He must warn George Thomson. Call him now. Tell him that Harry Selby was not in Summitt City. Had never left Philadelphia. The trial would end this morning, the jury set the young man free... Nothing must interfere with—

Some splintered thought reminded him of a noisy tumult in England’s Picadilly Circus, a wrecking ball smashing a building to dust, a blind young girl and her crazed seeing-eye dog... Kipper. That was the dog’s name. Burdened by a responsibility too great for its nervous system, the animal’s discipline and intelligence had been shattered by the roar and violence and destruction of the world around him. He must have welcomed the policeman’s bullet in his poor, wild brain.

Correll could sympathize with that cringing animal now. A thousand thoughts clamored for his own attention and decision, a billion stimuli were beating on his naked, exposed nerves. But he must act, he mustn’t let the wrecker’s ball inside him have its way...

Like a distracted mendicant, Correll went up and down the length of the arcade, controlling his pain and exhaustion with an effort of iron will, stopping to speak to shoppers as calmly and persuasively as he could manage. Cajoling, wheedling and imploring, he importuned them for coins, for assistance, but they were incapable of believing in him, he realized, they were unable to care about the blood on his hands, they were programmed not even to imagine his pain...

He became enraged and anger gave him strength. He shouted at the crowds, cursed their indifference. But at last his steps became slower, his elegantly cut trousers were sodden and heavy with blood. Each dragging footstep told him that.

Correll possessed a respectable flair for irony, although he had never appreciated that mordant cast of mind in others; it had seemed to him a wearisome effect, the epitaph of energy. But he couldn’t escape the irony of this predicament.

He sat heavily on a bench, his back against a window display of scuba gear and fishing tackle. Music was playing, an up-tempoed waltz, and he thought of rain and snow and Jennifer dancing with distant, pink-lipped smiles.

It was coming at last, he realized, not in darkness but in deceptively pleasant shades of gray, opalescent lights which seemed to be trying to filter craftily through his conscious thoughts.

As long as he continued to think and plan, the darkness stayed in the distance like a gathering gray mist... so he concentrated on Mount Olivet and someone he loved dancing, but when he stopped thinking for even an instant of Selby and Thomson and the telephones, the darkness formed swiftly, and he realized then that the painless oblivion he had offered the world was not a condition he would choose for himself, thank you.

No thank you...

A child stopped near him. A girl. Correll felt her presence. Overhead a helicopter circled them, its rotors throbbing noisily.

“Are you all right?” the child asked.

Correll fought the darkness and his thoughts leaped with hope. “Oh, no, no...”

“Then you’re all wrong, aren’t you?” It was her little joke and she laughed with pleasure and ran off.

“Not altogether, I hope,” Simon Correll said, speaking clearly and firmly for the last time in his life.