Aftermath a-1

by Charles Sheffield

  Sarah Mander inhaled steam and blinked as the spiked augment hit her. “Five. In the morning. Are you always like this?” And even before his nod, “I hope to God I never wake up next to you. Not that there’s much chance of that. I’m sure you’re thinking the same thing.”

  “Sarah, my dear, I would never be so ungracious as to refuse any invitation from the House Minority Leader.”

  “Sure.” Sarah placed the plastic cup on the window-sill. “Save the oil for your boyfriends, Nick, and let’s get down to business. Why not give me your general impressions, and I’ll do this when I disagree.” She waved a languid hand. “I probably have enough strength for that. I’ll talk more as I wake up. Ready when you are.”

  Lopez bounced to his feet and began to pace, his footsteps loud on the mosaic of marble tiles. “To say it in one sentence, we are recovering faster than anybody thought possible. All our submarine forces were untouched, and they have as much firepower as they ever had. We have a few working fighter planes — modern ones — in a couple of the western underground facilities. The fix-ups for older ones, fighters and bombers, go faster every day. The supply of chips from deep warehouses is bigger than expected—”

  “Old chips.”

  “Sure. But they work, and the main differences are in memory. The toughest problem is making sure that the chips go where they’re most needed.”

  “Do you think Steinmetz is doing a bad job on that?”

  “No. His performance is first-rate. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is in deep shit. They’re killing each other around the Golden Ring, and they’re eating each other in South America. God only knows what survivors in Australia are doing. It doesn’t really matter, because I don’t think there are many of them. The case for a global Pax Americana grows stronger every day. All we need is for the President to lead it—”

  “Which he will never do.”

  “ — or get out of the way. I’m not sure you’re right about Steinmetz. He’s a bleeding heart, but he’s also a pragmatist. And he’s no fool. There may be ways to persuade him — or get others to.”

  “That I want to hear. What do you have?”

  “Mixed news. First, I struck out completely with the Secretary of Defense. I don’t know if General Beneker mishandled it at Admiral Watanabe’s memorial service, but Grace Mackay blew him off. She seems rock-solid loyal to Saul Steinmetz.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard. And I got nowhere with Lucas Munce. We can forget about the Secretary for the Aging.”

  “I thought you had his great-niece in your pocket.”

  “I did — I probably still do. But I’ve lost faith in her. Athene Willis told me the old man has lost it, that he’s become senile and had no idea what she was talking about. I’m damn sure he knew exactly what she was getting at. I heard him testify to a House subcommittee a couple of weeks ago on the special problems that Supernova Alpha presents to the elderly. He spoke without notes, and he poured out facts and figures like a twenty-year-old. Highly impressive. He manipulated her.”

  “I thought you didn’t like him.”

  “I don’t. He’s still a nigger. He just happens to be a smart nigger. The worst kind.” She stared around her. “This place better not be bugged.”

  “It seems a little late to worry about that.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Nick. If we recruited Lucas Munce, I’d work with him as willingly and as cheerfully as I work with you.”

  “I’m sure you would. I’ll take that remark in the honest spirit with which I assume it was intended. But it’s no, so far as Lucas Munce is concerned.”

  “And it’s no for Grace Mackay. Mixed news, you said. What’s the good part?”

  “I decided that since we were having no luck with intermediaries, I would become directly involved. I now have a pipeline right into the heart of the White House.”

  “Really? I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me who and how?”

  “Sarah, you know I would trust you with my life.”

  “Can it, Nick.”

  “All right. The person is Auden Travis, that delightful young man who serves as the President’s secretary and close personal aide.”

  “Ah. I should have guessed. That’s someone I could never have delivered — though I question whether your pipeline runs into his heart. Isn’t he loyal to Steinmetz? Everything I’ve heard about him suggests that.”

  “He is. Auden is principled and honorable, and he sees his duty to the President as a sacred trust. But lovers have a special relationship. I serve on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In any investigation, pillow talk is assumed — no matter how sensitive the issue. Auden pours out to me his dreams, his hopes, his fears, his daily concerns.”

  “And receives in return?”

  “My unstinted and eternal devotion. What else? But Auden is deeply troubled at the moment. He is worried that the President is being led astray by unscrupulous women.”

  “I’m sure you agreed with that. Did Auden Travis name names?”

  “Of course — after a little innocent coaxing on my part. The person most under Auden’s skin is another aide, Yasmin Silvers. She’s actually a relative of mine, a second cousin’s child. Do you know her?”

  “Enough to talk to. Not well.”

  “Auden doesn’t know that I gave Yasmin the referral to help her get her job at the White House, and I don’t want him to. I sense a personal jealousy there. He’s convinced that Steinmetz wants to fuck her.”

  “The delectable Yasmin. Who wouldn’t?”

  “I wouldn’t, to name one. Auden wouldn’t, to name another. But the woman Auden is more worried about is Tricia Goldsmith. Which means that it’s your ball. Did you talk to her?”

  “Of course. We had lunch together, the night after she dined with the President.”

  “How did that go?”

  “For the first half hour, very proper and sedate. Anyone at the next table would have seen a social lunch between two old friends. You have to understand Tricia as well as I do before you can have any idea how much she longs to be First Lady. She missed it once, because of some wrong information she was given. I told her that if she plays along with us, she’ll get what she wants this time. Guaranteed? she asked. Guaranteed, I said. You should have seen her face. I thought she was having an orgasm on the spot. She said that the dinner with Saul ’couldn’t have gone better.’ Reading between the lines, she had him drooling and panting and climbing up the curtains. He’s as hot for her as ever.”

  “Excellent.” Lopez paused in his pacing. “Then they had sex?”

  “No. He was ready, she could see it and feel it. But she thought she ought to hold out until he made her some sort of commitment. Keep him on the boil. She told him that she was a married woman, even though Joseph Goldsmith has apparently gone off to La-la-land.” She saw Lopez’s face. “You don’t like that, do you?”

  “I do not.” Lopez towered over her, a frown on his broad brown face. “Now you have me worried. In my experience it doesn’t work like that. Tricia should have snagged him when she had the chance. She ought to be having sex with him as often as he can manage it. Keeping him drained, it’s the only safe way. Believe me, Sarah, I know.”

  He went to the window and stared toward a White House hidden by federal buildings. The upper level of the Capitol vibrated to a harder gust of wind.

  “I don’t like this.” With no one but Sarah to see him, he made no effort to hide his intelligence. “How do we know who else is chasing Steinmetz? How do we know that Yasmin Silvers isn’t in his office right this minute, offering him a piece of her hot young ass?”

  Nick Lopez was half right. As he was speaking, Yasmin was indeed in the President’s office. But Saul was not present. And although Yasmin was breathing fast, it was from nervousness, not sexual arousal.

  She told herself that what she was doing was legitimate, that she had permission directly from Saul himself. Back at Indian Head he had agreed that she could try to fin
d out why Tricia Goldsmith had walked out on him before the election. He had also agreed — reluctantly — that she could tell people that the investigation was being done for the White House.

  Did it matter that she would be using a telcom line from within Saul’s private office? He would be out until about eleven, and so would Auden Travis. The response times here were so much faster.

  She had entered Saul’s office only ten minutes earlier, but she had been up and working for many hours. Awakened at two in the morning by the sounds of the storm, she had gone to her office rather than lying grieving for Raymond. With the vastly diminished telcom service, she had waited endlessly — often futilely — for data base connections to go through. Many denied her access. Even so, she had exhausted the obvious possible connections between Saul Steinmetz and Tricia Goldsmith. It was time for the more subtle connections.

  The President’s office, she knew, could key into every national data base. Why settle for anything less?

  She examined her scattered notes. It was like a version of an old game. Pick a person, A. Pick another person, B. Now can you name another person, C, who provides a direct link between A and B? In the case of Yasmin and Saul Steinmetz, for example, there had been a connection before she came to the White House: her lying, rapist relative, Senator Lopez. The thought of him, and of poor Raymond, made her feel sick.

  She went back to gnaw on the problem. In the case of Tricia Goldsmith and Saul Steinmetz, a particular time and place were involved. The connection had to exist two and a half years ago, and logically it was on the West Coast. Saul said he had been in Oregon, meeting with his advisers. Tricia had been in California, meeting with — whom?

  There was no information. Just what Saul had told her, that Tricia had been staying with people who were old friends from the time of her first marriage, when she had been Patsy Leighton.

  Yasmin dug into the data bases using the limited query systems and cursed the inadequacies of both. A month ago this exercise would have been easy, everything in the world cross-referenced. Today she was poking and hopping and hoping.

  Tricia Goldsmith = Patsy Leighton, wife of software czar Rumford Leighton. Here it came, a spreading family tree of the Leightons by birth and marriage. The display was inadequate to show the full array. The results had to be printed, agonizingly slowly. Yasmin collected a dozen output sheets and scanned them for familiar names.

  Nothing.

  Try the other end. Saul Steinmetz’s political supporters. They were, judging from their printed descriptions, a rich and powerful group. A careful inspection revealed no overlap with the Leighton clan. Leightons were Dexter supporters, not Centrists. Try again. Here were the guests at political rallies and dinners that Saul had attended during the relevant time period. The records were spotty. Again they told Yasmin nothing.

  The handlers, then, those specialists who commissioned Saul’s opinion polls and interpreted the results. What about them? Another half-dozen sheets, more confusing than ever. Yasmin was tired, and even the names of the polling research companies began to sound unreal. There were scores of them. Almost every one of them seemed to have done something connected with the Steinmetz presidential campaign. She scanned them, intrigued by the company names. Brybottle and Marchpane, Gluff and Aspinall, Quip Research — jokes a specialty? Crossley and Himmelfarb, Lamb and Love.

  Thomas, Jacko, and Nelly, the retired vaudeville team. Male and Middle.

  Yasmin paused. Something was nagging at the edge of her attention, but she couldn’t bring it into focus. She went on, printing lists of campaign contributors for the relevant time period, but her mind was no longer on what she was doing. What was it, what had she missed?

  The buzzer by her right hand sounded, so loudly that she jumped and knocked half her papers to the ground. She thought that no one knew she was here.

  She pressed the access pad.

  “Yes?”

  “I need to speak with the President. It’s urgent.”

  “He’s not here at the moment.”

  She waited for the question: “So what are you doing in his private office?” But the woman at the other end said only, “This is Moira Suomita, the State Department Acting Director of International Space Activities. To whom am I speaking?”

  “This is Yasmin Silvers. I am an aide to President Steinmetz.” It still gave her a thrill to say those final words.

  “I see.” The woman sounded more starchy than impressed. “I was told that this line gave direct access to the President’s office. I will call back.”

  She was gone, and Yasmin was not sorry. There were more important things to do. Instead of retrieving the papers from the floor, she took the rest of them from the desk and sank to her hands and knees. She laid the convoluted Leighton family tree on the floor, with the campaign pollsters next to it. It took a while, but eventually she saw it. George Crossley, married at one time to Rumford Leighton’s sister Anita Leighton, now divorced. Crossley and Himmelfarb, pollsters. Location, Palo Alto. When Saul was up in Oregon, Tricia was in San Francisco. Palo Alto was no more than twenty or thirty miles away.

  Coincidence? No way to tell. Crossley and Himmelfarb listed no first names.

  She queried the corporate and association listings.

  Crossley and Himmelfarb, the name was there, but the footnote showed that it had ceased operations more than a year ago.

  Tax records? George Jarvis Crossley and Michaela Scarlatti Himmelfarb, principals. No outstanding tax obligations. No current address, but IDs for both people. Presumably George Crossley = George Jarvis Crossley.

  Yasmin looked at the clock. The morning was speeding away. Less than an hour, and Saul Steinmetz would be here. By then she needed a lot more than this to justify her invasion of the President’s office.

  Ten-fifteen, so it was seven-fifteen on the West Coast. Early, but not too early. She moved the printer out of the way, tagged George Jarvis Crossley’s ID, and made the call.

  It buzzed and buzzed. Just when she was ready to give up, a woman’s voice came on the line.

  “Mm?” She sounded barely awake.

  “This is Yasmin Silvers. I’m calling from President Steinmetz’s office.”

  “What?”

  “President Steinmetz’s office. The White House. Our ID should be on your telcom unit. I would like to speak with George Jarvis Crossley.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  Yasmin had to wait a good deal longer than that. She could hear muttered argument in the background, and finally a new and uneasy voice.

  “This is George Crossley.”

  “Of Crossley and Himmelfarb, the poll research group?”

  “That organization no longer exists. It was dissolved more than a year ago.”

  Was Yasmin imagining the guarded tone in Crossley’s voice? And why didn’t he ask what she wanted? Calls didn’t come from the White House every day.

  “I realize that the company is no longer in business. I wanted to ask about a survey conducted a couple of years ago. Do you remember a poll in connection with the election campaign of President Steinmetz?”

  “We performed several such polls.”

  “This would have been on or about” — Yasmin consulted the calendar of events that she had constructed — “August 10, 2023.”

  “That’s a long time ago. I don’t recall any specific poll.”

  Maybe he had a bad memory. Maybe he was always so reserved and noncommittal. It was time to risk a long shot. “I fully understand, Mr. Crossley. It’s hard to think in terms of dates rather than events. But this poll was completed just a few days before you had dinner in San Francisco with some of the Leighton family members.”

  There was silence. Yasmin could almost see the thinking going on at the other end. Why this call? What is the White House after? What do they already know?

  “I do recall it. Vaguely.”

  “That’s good. This particular poll concerned the election chances of then-candidate Steinmetz under cer
tain operating assumptions regarding his marital status. Do you recall discussing the results of that poll with anyone in the Leighton group?”

  “Professional ethics would never allow me to discuss the results of any poll we conducted with anyone other than the sponsor.” The reply came with the speed and flat intonation of a standard response.

  “This particular poll showed that candidate Steinmetz’s chances of being elected were negligible. It preceded another poll making different assumptions and showing a quite different result. Was Tricia Chartrain/ Leighton at the dinner party in question? And did you speak with her?”

  “I don’t remember. You say there was another poll?”

  “Not performed by your group. This was done by Quip Research, of Denver.”

  “I didn’t hear about that.” Some surprise in the voice. Then, again, “Professional ethics would never allow me to discuss the results of any poll we conducted with anyone other than the sponsor. I must go.” Yasmin was listening to a dead line.

  He had spoken to Tricia, no doubt about it. He had told her that Saul was going to lose. Tricia wanted to keep going up the social ladder, she had no time for losers.

  But how could you prove that? Crossley had hung up once, try again and he wouldn’t even talk.

  Ten thirty-five. Time for desperate measures.

  While the call went through to Michaela Himmelfarb’s ID, Yasmin wondered what she was going to say to her.

  “Hello.” A light, lively voice. “This is Michaela. Is that caller ID a joke?”

  “No. This is the White House. I’m Yasmin Silvers, and I’m an aide to President Steinmetz. I have a question for you that may sound odd. Before I ask it, I want to assure you that your answer won’t get you into trouble, no matter what you say.”

  “You’re saying, trust me? Now where have I heard that line before? But go on.”

  “When you and George Crossley ran Crossley and Himmelfarb, do you remember that you did a poll asking about the chances of Saul Steinmetz being elected? One that concluded he didn’t have a chance.”

  “Of course I remember. Look, if you’re saying we screwed up in our analysis because he was elected, that’s not true. The poll we did made certain assumptions that didn’t apply in the actual campaign.”