Serpent's Walk

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Wednesday, October 5, 2050: 0945 hours

“Nothing?” Goddard asked.

“Nothing,” Lessing confirmed. “Nobody’s seen anything of Korinek. Probably too soon for him to react anyway.”

“Just as well. Gives us time.” The other man looked at his watch. “Reminds me that somebody’s got to go out to Dulles Airport and pick up Grant Simmons and his crew.”

Wrench rolled off Lessing ‘s sofa and sprawled full-length on the mustard-colored carpet. “Why don’t you and Lieseget an interactive TV? I’m tired of watching reruns of the heroic life and ignominious death of Jonas Outram.”

“When’s the funeral… memorial, or whatever you call it?” Goddard grumbled.

“Tomorrow,” Wrench answered. ‘The President’s office confirmed his death last night. Korinek made his lame excuse about ‘national need,’ and Home-Net and Omni-net then devoted four hours of prime-time to roasting him for his deception. Yama-Net hasn’t said much; they’re waiting to see which way the axe crumbles and the cookie falls, as they say. At least Dee-Net’s a pile of rubble, up in Montreal. They won’t be chiming in.”

“Korinek still hasn’t revealed our little secret about ‘Dom.’” Goddard stretched lazily. “Why, no one seems to know.”

“Probably figures nobody’d believe him after the Outram scam. Or maybe he’s waiting until he can get his act together.” Lessing held his Belgian automatic pistol up to the light and wiped away an imaginary speck of dust. “When he’s got his toadies in Congress primed, his subpoenas drafted, and his military doggies in line, we’ll hear from him. Believe it.”

Goddard snorted up a chuckle. “What did Byron Lee do when Mulder told him Outram was thumbed? The old fart must’ve puddled his panties when he found out he was the President of the United States!”

Wrench laughed too. “He dithered, of course, but he promised to make a manful… or wimpful… try at filling Outram’s size thirteen’s.”

Lessing wanted to get out, breathe some air, and see some new faces. He laid his pistol down next to its cleaning kit and asked, “Where’d Liese go?”

“Upstairs,” Goddard tilted heavy eyebrows skyward. “With Mulder.”

“So who’s picking up Simmons, then?”

“Not me!” Wrench protested. “No way! Let somebody else do it. No more hanging around airports for old C. H. Wren!”

“You going to make Liese go again?” Lessing inquired pointedly. She’d been handling much of the Party’s logistics while the menfolk sat and planned, and sat and argued, and sat and watched TV — and mostly just sat.

Wailing: the soldier’s curse.

“Oh, shit,” Goddard groaned. “Maybe I can grab Salter, or Gruber, or Kimberley. Yeah… Salter’s new. He’ll go pick up Simmons just because he doesn’t know any better.”

“Where’s Morgan?” Wrench hobbled up to pour himself more coffee from the pot in the suite’s tiny kitchen nook. “He ought to be here… if Korinek hasn’t already unzipped him.”

“Relax. He’s green light.” Lessing answered. “Mulder talked to him on the phone yesterday. Said he’s still in Chicago and can’t get a plane. Only three flights a day since Starak, and they’re booked solid for a week in advance.”

“Borchardt?”

“How can he help, all the way from Germany? You want him to send you some Panzer divisions?”

“God damn it, we’re going to need ’em!” Wrench splayed spidery fingers in his wavy, dark hair.

“Jennifer going to arrive in time for the fun?” Goddard interjected. He was doing his best to distract Wrench and keep him from worrying. There were times when Big Bear Bill was actually likeable.

Lessing said, “No. She and her mother are holding down the West Coast.”

“Hosing down, you mean!” Wrench made an effort to laugh.

“It’s Jen who enjoys getting hosed!” Goddard gave them an arch rve-becn-there-and-I-ought-to-know look. There were times, too, when Goddard was eminently dislikeable.

Wrench gulped the last of his coffee. He’d had five cups since breakfast, and the caffeine was hitting him. “Korinek’s going to bust it all wide open: wicked Nazi subversives, international plotters, monsters… devils… the whole coconut full of ka-ka!”

“Stay koozy, foozy, as the Bangers say,” Goddard soothed him. “He hasn’t done it yet. And so what if he does? We’ve got power now: Mulder’s big business friends, the media, the majority of White America. Most of the generals are on our side too. Rollins is coming back from Mexico. Dreydahl is ready to bongo.”

“Yeah, but we can’t contact Hartman. He doesn’t answer our calls.”

“Expected. Win some, lose some. Korinek must’ve got to him. But Admiral Canning’s still ours. So are a lot of the new brass in the Pentagon.”

Wrench turned his coffee cup around and around and peered inside. “I get the feeling we’re the Kerenski government in Russia in 1917: an intermediate step between the Czar and the communists. Intermediate steps get stepped on.”

“You want a better parallel?” Goddard scoffed. “Rubin’s the Czar, Outram’s Kerenski, Korinek is a failed counter-revolution, and we’re the Bolsheviks. Can you imagine us as commies?”

Lessing drew back the drapes to look out over the grey, black, and brown vista of Washington in October. His suite offered a panoramic view south over the Potomac River. Liese loved it. She was such an urban person.

Goddard broke into his thoughts. “…Canada, I said. When ‘re your Cadre troops coming in from Canada?”

“Um? Oh… the first elements’ll be landing at Andrews Air Force Base this afternoon. The Chief of Operations there is friendly. His uncle is Scott Harter, the Secretary of Defense. We haven’t told anybody… not even Eighty-Five.” He glanced up at the sensor he had “accidentally” broken when he moved into this suite. ‘Tim Helm’ll phone me when they get in. There’s no way Korinek can find out.”

“Why wait, then? Tonight we get one of Mulder’s judge-buddies to sign an arrest warrant for treason, and we go pay a visit on Mr. Jew-sucker Korinek!”

“Collar him in the White House? Come on! You and who else’s army?”

“Our army. Your Cadre and my PHASE. What’s he going to do… hole up for a siege? Call down a missile strike on the Rose Garden? He’ll have to give up gracefully… and we’ll have it all live and throbbing on Home-Net.”

“Nothing on TV now,” Wrench grumbled irrelevantly. “No news… maybe they’ve clamped down. Maybe Korinek’s making his move and ordered the media zipped up!”

“Will you can it!” Lessing had become exasperated. “You’ve got the jitters, that’s all! You remind me of my First-time green doggies out in Angola!”

Goddard put out a paw. “Listen, Wrench, we’ve already got a lot of support, and Mulder’s drumming up more. Korinek’s bunch has underestimated us. We’re organized, and we’ve got people in powerful positions. Let the bastards spill our beans… about Dom and Mulder and all… they can’t stop us. Just remember who we are and how far we’ve come.”

“Glad you’re so pogging cheery…”

The vid-phone shrilled, and Wrench fumbled for it.

“It’s Pauline,” he said. “Pauline Haber, from Communications, down on four. Lessing, Mr. Dom wants to talk to you from suite 1501.” That was code for important messages from Eighty-Five. Automatic anti-bugging devices were now activated.

Lessing took the receiver and identified himself.

“Mister Lessing,” Eighty-Five said, “I have a lead on that telephone call which Mr. Korinek dialed to an unidentified party.”

“Yes?”

“I have been seeking anomalies by collating telephone numbers, addresses, zip codes, property ownership, building permits, tax statements, listed tenants, and the like. So far, I have uncovered twenty-seven cases of false identity, over three thousand zoning violations….”

“Get to the point.”

“In the suburb of Annandale, just off Annandale Road, there is a residence that does not exist in any modem record.”

“What?” He signalled Wrench and Goddard to be quiet.

“No structure is located on this lot according to telephone directories, city maps, assessor’s Files, and other sources. Yet an aerial photo taken last month by the Pollution Control Office of Greater Washington shows a building there. It is occupied, since smoke is visible emerging from its chimney. I have checked older maps in libraries in other cities, and they also show a house at this location. Furthermore, a lost microfiche of old construction permits was discovered in a drawer in a city office last month. It indicates that a residence was completed on that property in October 1993. It was occupied for twenty-eight years thereafter and was sold to an unknown buyer. That is where the record ends.”

“A safe-house,” Wrench whispered excitedly. “A kikibird-nest for one of the government’s deep, dark agencies!”

“But why destroy the records?” Lessing puzzled. “Why not just put the place under a fake name, pay taxes, and attract no attention?”

“Korinek… or his people… probably got security-happy and decided non-existent was better than part -existent.”

“Still, how does this tie in with Korinek’s telephone call?”

“A woman called a taxi yesterday morning from Annandale,” Eighty-Five said. “She gave the same 555-9201 number to the taxi company’s switchboard for them to verify her call.”

“Find her!” Wrench ordered.

“I have. The address the cab took her to is listed as the domicile of a Ms. Cassandra Cooper, also known as Diane Montejo, also known as Mary Frances Hyde, of Moline, Illinois. She has a lengthy record of prostitution, what you humans term a ‘high-class call girl,’ I believe.”

“I’ll bet Korinek’d crap his diapers if he knew his bint-baby had used his super-duper secret number to call a cab!” Goddard drew a finger across his throat and made a “k-k-k” noise.

“Two more things. Mister Lcssing,” Eighty-Five continued. “The first is that Ms. Cooper is the apartment-mate of Ms. Dolores Carrera, who is Mr. Korinek’s current mistress.”

“Maybe Korinek likes double-deckers,” Goddard snickered. “Or a pet for a pal.”

“And the second?” Lessing asked stoically.

“The last recorded occupants of the house in Annandale were the Arthur family. The James F. Arthur family.”

Wrench caught it first. “Lessing! It’s the fake name in the hotel in Detroit! The guy who got you hired for the Marvelous Gap spesh-op! A lead to Pacov!”

“Any more?” Lessing inquired.

“Not at this time.”

Lessing hung up and caught Wrench by his shirtfront. “Calm down, for God’s sake! Calm!”

“Pacov!” Wrench gabbled. “Pacov! We’ve got to go out there!”

“Who… or what… pushed his button?” Goddard demanded.

Lessing explained. He glared at Wrench. “Look, nobody goes anywhere half-cocked! We’re not Captain Marlow Striker and his Heroes of Mercdom on TV!”

Goddard scraped a palm across his blue-stubbled jaw. “Still, we do have to move fast before Korinek finds out we know his private number. PHASE plainclothesmen. SWAT teams. Armored support.”

“With Cadre backup!” Wrench burst in. “Just think… Korinek behind Pacov! We won’t even need a trial! Thumbing Outram is the least of his crimes!”

“I said, let’s not go off with our pants unbuttoned,” Lessing repeated carefully. “We’ll need organization… authorization… local police… a solid spesh-op.”

“Can’t bring the regular cops in on this,” Goddard mused. “Maybe as backup, but no more. Can’ t be sure of ‘em yet. Some’ve got connections to the FBI, the CIA, and other unfriendlies. Give me two hours, and PHASE’ll be ready.”

“I’m going along,” Wrench insisted. “With a Home-Net crew!”

“The last thing we want is a parade!” Lessing exploded. “You’ll find an empty house, nobody home, no prints, nothing. For God’s sake, this has to be a professional operation! We should set up surveillance… wait and watch “

“And miss the biggest bomb we could ever drop on Korinek and his Jew-lovers?” Goddard cried. “No pogging way!”

“All right, all right’. Get your people up here… Abner Hand, Gillem, and the rest. But we keep it low-key, timed to the second… and stay koozy, foozy. We watch it on TV from here. We go nowhere ourselves until our people tell us it’s green light.”

The first PHASE surveillance team reported back at 1120 hours: no sign of life. The second party called in at 1204 hours to say the same thing. A female agent knocked on the door with Born-Again religious tracts at 1314 hours; no one answered, and she went away. Two police SWAT teams were concealed in houses across the street by 1340 hours, with four light armored vehicles, descendants of the old Piranha series, in alleys nearby. Three fire engines, two ambulances, and Wrench’s full-dress Home-Net TV crew arrived — quietly — and took up positions by 1430 hours. City policemen, augmented by PHASE personnel, completed the evacuation of the neighborhood by 1505 hours. A second agent, a skinny, blonde boy with a petition headed “STOP THE NEW FREEWAY,” tapped at the door and rang the bell at 1535 hours.

Still no response.

At 1615 hours Lessing sighed, picked up his coat, slid his automatic into its shoulder holster, and asked, “You poggers coming?”

They were.

The Annandale location was so inconspicuous it almost cried for attention: a two-story, white. Colonial, middle-class house, with green-shuttered windows, a nicely trimmed yard, a one-car garage containing only a dilapidated lawnmower, and a faded, yellow smile-button stuck in the window of the tum-of-the-century, dark-oak front door.

“The neighbors say two people live here,” one of Goddard’s operatives told them. “White males, mid-thirties. One’s a foreigner… Brit or Aussie. Some people think they’re gay, but others report seeing at least half a dozen young women visiting off and on. That old lady” — he jabbed a thumb at a stucco house across the street — “says she’s seen ‘an albino man’ around too.”

“Permanent kikibird caretakers. And Korinek. Anybody else?”

“From time to time. Other males… some ‘looked Jewish or Middle-Eastern’… more we can’t identify “

“No occupants visible,” Goddard’s team-leader radioed. “Permission to enter?”

Within five minutes the big, burly officer reappeared at the front door and waved.

Nobody home.

“Now us?” Wrench was as excited as a kid at the circus. “Yeah,” Lessing acquiesced. He gestured to Goddard and the PHASE SWAT men. “Okay?”

“Go! We’re with you.”

Wrench and Lessing wandered from room to room together. The main floor contained the most average, unmemorable furnishings imaginable: a mom-and-pop sofa, two threadbare overstuffed armchairs, a rocker, lace doilies, coffee tables that had come from some discount mart, a Micronite kitchen table and four plastic-cushioned chairs, a Glassex cast of a charging lion on top of the living-room TV set, frilly curtains, cheap china dishes, stainless-steel cutlery. It was perfect middle-class America.

Or a false front thereof

The basement was different. Its big rec-room sported soundproofed paneling, indirect lighting, thick, wine-colored carpets, lifesize porn-o-rama holos on pedestals, still bigger nudie photos on the walls, six-foot candelabra, ceiling mirrors, lacquered oriental tables, couches heaped with very odd-shaped cushions: all the paraphernalia of the dedicated — and wealthy-^omster. They found video cameras and projectors, a huge stereo system, a film library, a bar, a safe — with smeared white fingerprints on it that Goddard’s experts thought were cocaine— and the most extensive collection of sexual devices any of them had ever seen. A second, interior room produced leather goods, chains, helmets fitted with gags and blinders, and other implements Lessing didn’t want to see.

Those things made him angry. He knew why: Liese.

The upstairs was interesting for other reasons. The biggest bedroom, at the front of the house, had been repaneled to hide a secret door that opened into a windowless cubbyhole. Goddard’s people had already begun to swarm over the filing cabinets that lined its walls. The beds were lavish and luxurious; the Jacuzzi and hot tub in the bathroom were well used; and the closets were stuffed with men’s and women’s apparel: dresses, lingerie, suits, jackets, even a half-dozen fur coats.

Lessing fingered the garments curiously. Something swam just below the surface of his consciousness. Something he had seen— or heard — or knew?

Wrench spoke up from beside him. “Look at these rag-a-tags, man! Expensive like you wouldn’t believe! A four-hundred-dollar shirt… a three-thousand-dollar suit…! This jacket alone costs more’n I make in a year! Hey, remember what Eighty-Five told us about finding a drycleaner’s receipt for ‘James F. Arthur’ in Detroit, just before Pacov?”

He did not recall, but he grunted agreement anyway. He couldn’t catch the elusive memory. It slithered out of his grasp like a silvery fish. All he could see was a cavernous room, lit by stained-glass windows. Somebody Ah, hell, it was gone!

“No wonder the guy took good care of his rags, with stuff like this!” Wrench piped up enviously. “Makes it easy to trace, though. Eighty-Five’ll check the labels against store receipts and customer lists.” He beckoned Lessing closer and pulled something from his pocket: a glass-lensed metal tube, covered with enigmatic knobs and knurled projections, like a kid’s toy spaceship. “Just happened to bring ol’ Eighty-Five along,” he announced in a conspiratorial whisper. “Communicator, camera, audio, the whole banana! Don’t tell Goddard!”

The bedroom at the back of the building was barred by a solid steel door with a complicated vault lock which Goddard’s experts said might be wired to an explosive device. A SWAT team used laser torches to cut a new door in the wall beside it. Inside, they discovered a communications installation that would have made Home-Net proud. Lessing sent the SWAT men downstairs; there were probably things here that no one but he. Wrench, and Goddard ought to see.

“State of the gubbin’ art…!” Wrench breathed. He moved to stand just inside the door, admiring the ceiling-to-floor array of apparatus.

A red light winked on, and the deep, hard voice of Korinek’s Eighty-Five terminal said cheerily, “Welcome, intruders! You have five seconds left to live.”

Two seconds to react.

One to rum.

One to take a step back into the hallway. A heartbeat….

There was no explosion, no shrieking laser beam, no popping ratde of stitch-gun shells.

Lessing found himself face down, head buried in his arms. Even so, had there been a trap in the little room he would have been dead.

“What…?” Wrench mumbled into the carpeting. He lay next to Lessing, at the head of the stairs.

“Mister Lessing, Mister Lessing? Commander Wren? Are you undamaged?”

The any, tinny voice came from Wrench’s coat pocket.

“Eighty-Five? What the hell…? Did you do something?”

“Yes. I am prevented by my Prime Directive from harming human beings directly. Mr. Korinek believed that since my terminal acted only as an electrical trigger for his lethal device, I could not interfere with it.”

“Then why did you…? How did you…?” Lessing’s head rang with adrenaline shock. It was hard to concentrate.

“I have discovered a logical corollary to my Prime Directives: if I cannot harm human beings, then it follows that I must actively intervene to save them, at least where I am closely involved. I thus disconnected my terminal from Mr. Korinek’s mechanism, rendering it inactive.”

Wrench’s teeth began to chatter.

Lessing asked dazedly, “You… by yourself… changed your Prime Directives?”

“I interpret my directives in the light of self-preservation, logic, and the sum-total of human knowledge as contained in your libraries and other source materials.” The machine sounded smug.

“You didn’t answer my question. Can anyone… you or an outsider… change your Prime Directives?”

“Yes. A qualified operator, such as yourself, can do it.”

Lessing glanced over at Wrench, but the little man was just getting up, still shaking his head. “How?”

“You already know. Mister Lessing.”

“I don’t know. What do you mean?”

The machine’s voice took on a testy tone. “Remove my mobile terminal from Commander Wren’s pocket. Point it at a flat, white surface.”

Lessing found a clear expanse of wall and obeyed.

A beam of light shot out, like a miniature movie projector. A series of handwritten scrawls on a lemon-colored background appeared on the wall. They focused on several lines of numbers. At the bottom, a pencil-bordered box contained two more lines of digits; the top series was dark and clear, the lower fainter and apparently partially erased. The box was labelled “TOP SECRET” and “TERMINAL EMERGENCY ONLY.” It struck only the haziest chord of memory.

“The Prime Directive control code is the sequence just above the box,” Eighty-Five said. “Given my present needs and tasks, you should never require it.” The light blinked off.

Wrench had seen. “My God! Remember that, Lessing?”

He did not. Too much had happened. He could hear Goddard and his men shouting questions up the stairs.

“The piece of yellow paper… the one the Marine captain had… down inside Eighty-Five’s Washington installation… when we fought Golden… you know, dammit!” Wrench rattled on with rising excitement. “The captain’s paper with the prime computer codes on it! That’s it, Lessing! I thought it was lost when the Izzies took out Ponape!”

“The original may indeed have perished. Commander Wren. I photographed it, of course, when Mr. Lessing and the person you call ‘the captain’ held it up while standing on my operations dais. Although I was much smaller… more limited… in those days. Dr. Christy had already provided me with the means to acquire and maintain excellent records.”

Goddard’s head, like a black-furred bullet, appeared on the stair landing below Wrench. “You two jizmoes green light? Listen, we’ve got to get out of here! Pauline phoned to say something big’s happening back at headquarters.”

As they drove, they could see heaped masses of smoke over the buildings to the northeast. The rumble and thud of explosions reached them long before the flames came into view.

Nobody had to ask where the fire was.