Deceptions

by Michael Weaver

  “You won’t be hurt,” said Gianni. “We’ll leave you in the basement. When we’re out of here, we’ll let the police know where you are.”

  The agent was still staring at Mary Yung. When he spoke, it was directly to her. It was as though Gianni had left the room.

  “Killing me won’t get you your answers,” he said. “Neither will hurting me. I can take as much of that as you’ve got. So that leaves you only one way to get what you want.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Giving me what I want,” said Bentley. “And that’s half an hour in bed with you.”

  Mary Yung’s face showed nothing. “Are you serious?”

  “I’ve never had a chance at a woman as beautiful as you, and probably won’t again. Why wouldn’t I be serious?”

  “Because if I agree and you don’t come through, I’ll kill you.”

  Gianni shook his head. “I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  “Why?” Mary Yung said. “Is it that offensive to you?”

  The artist looked from her to Bentley, as if measuring the distance between them. The centers of his eyes had widened.

  “Listen, Gianni,” she said flatly. “My body’s not sacred. I’m thirty-four years old and I can’t even remember the names of half the men I’ve fucked. What can one man more or less do to me? Especially if it gets us answers that could save our lives.”

  “There are other ways to get answers.”

  “How? By torturing a man half to death? You think that’s better? More moral?”

  Gianni was silent. He was not even close to figuring this woman. For the moment, he had stopped trying. Somehow, he could not help comparing her to Teresa. They were that different. Or was that what fascinated him?

  “All right,” Mary Yung said to Bentley. “It’s a deal.”

  She turned to the artist. “Gianni, you’re going to have to give us a hand with this.”

  It wasn’t that simple a situation. Logistics and security were involved, so it took some figuring. But the end result was at least workable, leaving Bentley on his back in Mary Yung’s bed with both wrists handcuffed to the brass headboard. A man on a sexual cross.

  And Mary Chan Yung?

  To the artist she had a separate set of expressions for each passing scene in her act. It was little different from watching her doze last night. At moments, she seemed to draw cupidity out of the air, a whore’s knowledge that wore the sour look of multiple betrayals and disappointments. Then that ridiculously tiny nose would sniff the same air and all would change, leaving her an uncertain child fearful of getting caught in some dirty act she didn’t really understand.

  Then Gianni’s part in the arrangements was finished and he started to leave the room.

  “Hey, Garetsky,” said Bentley from the bed.

  Gianni turned.

  “Don’t you want to stay and watch?”

  The artist stood there. The windows were closed and the air was full of burgeonings that might have carried their own sly, bright fever. Mary Yung looked at him and her face was quite apart from her now, with that special female look that said everything in sight was hers and if you didn’t like it, too bad.

  He left the room and closed the door behind him.

  Not wanting to go back to what was waiting in the living room, Gianni sat with a cigarette in the study. He tried to keep his head empty and simply stare out the window at the streaks of sun that had just broken through the trees and onto the grass. But he kept thinking of the two dead men lying on the living-room floor, and of what was happening on Mary Yung’s bed.

  Occasional sounds came from the bedroom, and Gianni made a great effort not to listen by thinking about his wife and how it had been when they made love. But he might as well have been thinking of two other people. No. Another species from another planet. Neither of them were there for him anymore. After a while, he just sat smoking.

  He was on his fourth cigarette and the sun had disappeared once more when the shot exploded. A certain feeling settled and he watched himself jump out of his chair, knocking it over.

  Gun in hand, he burst into the bedroom.

  Mary Yung stood naked beside the bed, holding her nickel-plated revolver. Her face was flushed, moist, and without expression.

  Bentley was naked only from the waist down. His wrists were still cuffed to the bars of the brass headboard, and there was a small hole just off-center in his forehead. A fine trickle of blood ran down his face and dripped from his chin. Supported by the spread of his arms, his head drooped only slightly.

  Gianni took a deep breath. “What happened?”

  “It was all so stupid. I got careless and he got his legs around my neck and was choking me. I had no choice.”

  Gianni Garetsky just looked at her. The only thing he felt clear about was that she was lying.

  Mary Yung bent to pick up her clothes. Her bottom glistened. Then moving quickly, she dressed herself where she stood.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  She went straight for the Napoleon and said nothing until she had swallowed a fair amount.

  “Here’s what we’ve got,” she finally said. “The FBI part is real. Though not officially. Bentley called it a code-three operation.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing in writing or on wire. And at their level they never know where the orders come from. It could be CIA, State, Justice, or even the Oval Office. But it’s always from very high up, and always top priority.”

  “All this to pick up a small-time hood?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they know a reason for the hunt?”

  “Not a whisper.”

  “What were their orders on us?”

  “Do anything to get answers. But no killing.”

  “Terrific. That’s everything he told you?”

  She nodded.

  “You think it was the truth?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Then why did you kill him?”

  “I told you.”

  “I know what you told me,” said Gianni.

  Mary Yung looked at him over her brandy. “Why would I lie to you?”

  “That’s what I have to find out.” The artist lit a cigarette. “We’re way over our heads, Mary Yung. Between us, we’ve wasted what now seems to be five feds in three days. We were under the gun for four, so it’s only this last one that bugs me. You made a deal with the guy. He was handcuffed to the bed. Why did you shoot him?”

  This time Mary Yung didn’t even bother explaining. Her words seemed to be stuck inside her head.

  “We’ve got only each other in this,” said Gianni. “But if I can’t trust you, I’m walking out of here this minute. Is that what you want?”

  “No.”

  “Then I want to know why you lied to me.”

  “Because I was afraid to tell you the truth.”

  “And what’s the truth?”

  She needed a moment to collect the words. “I didn’t want him around to tell about my shooting the others. This way I can at least get rid of the bodies. Like you did with your two. Then all they can do is suspect.”

  “You had it planned when you went in there with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you keep it from me?”

  “Because I had the feeling you wouldn’t be happy about it.”

  “And you’re dancing with joy?”

  “I do what I have to do, Gianni.” Her voice was so low her teeth and gums seemed to be in it.

  Gianni was silent. But there was something bad in his face that got through to her.

  “I’m sorry if I disgust you,” she said.

  “I’m not that holy. I just don’t understand you.”

  “How can you understand me? You don’t even know me.”

  At least that much is true, he thought.

  “All you know,” she said, “is what you read in that dumb computer printout. And that was nothing but a pack of lies I made u
p for my press releases.”

  “Then tell me the truth.”

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid you’d leave me flat.”

  “Try me.”

  “I can’t take that chance. Not now. Not with three dead Fibbies hanging around my house.”

  A look of hers went through him.

  All right. So he knew she was a liar and little better than a whore in her thinking. But he also knew there was absolutely no way he was about to leave her.

  9

  HENRY DURNING, A tall, physically imposing man with intense eyes, was delivering a lecture before an overflow crowd at Columbia Law School in New York. It was one of many such talks he gave at regular intervals from some of the country’s most prestigious platforms.

  Durning used these and other forms of public address because they allowed him to be seen and heard as he wished to be seen and heard. He believed every occasion had its propaganda potential. You had an idea, a conviction, a wish, and you disseminated it. If you were good enough, if your words took, those who heard you were influenced to feel the same way.

  In his own case, Durning, the United States attorney general, tried to make it known to thinking audiences everywhere that even the best of laws were all but worthless unless their true spirit was generally understood, accepted, and put into practice.

  And what was Durning telling his audience today? What quick-fix solutions to the country’s statutory ills was he projecting with his usual dynamic thrust?

  No easy solutions. Only his core message that as long as the lawful rights of a single American—male or female; black, white, or yellow; native or foreign born—were threat ened by prejudice, then the rights of every other American were equally threatened.

  Durning’s message.

  Even-toned, clearly enunciated, it sailed across the auditorium on wings of metaphysical logic. Here on this podium he was an authority, the respected head of the United States Department of Justice and onetime war hero, to whom large audiences listened with attention bordering on reverence. Were they and he crazy? At times, Durning believed so. But more often he knew it was the strength to master your own weakness, and do what you had to do daily and without complaint, that made the only true heroes.

  Still, they had hung the Medal of Honor about his neck for a different reason and made another sort of hero out of him. A war hero. Maybe they had even made him a symbol. But a symbol of what, Durning didn’t know. Unless it was the image of him as a onetime intellectual, a professor of law, no less, who could be trained to kill the enemies of his country with exceptional skill.

  The attorney general did not stay long after the lecture. He usually enjoyed the follow-up questioning, the student adulation, the coeds with their nubile heat, all moving flesh and shining eyes, the flattering deference of the faculty. Ego food. Lord, my days are vanity. But today, in his current mood, Henry Durning was not even tempted.

  Instead, he had his driver take him directly to La Guardia, where a plane was waiting to fly him back to Washington.

  Durning was barely aboard and seated when he was handed a two-hour accumulation of telephone messages. He chose two for immediate reply. One was from Arthur Michaels, the White House chief of staff, the other from FBI Director Brian Wayne. Durning called Michaels first.

  “What’s doing, Artie?”

  “I don’t like what’s happening at that cult standoff in West Virginia. There’s been more gunfire, and the head nut is talking mass suicide if the siege isn’t called off by five this afternoon.”

  Durning glanced at his watch. It was 11:46 A.M.

  Michaels said, “Have you spoken to Brian yet?”

  “No. But there’s a message he called. I’ll get to him next.”

  “When you do, calm him down. A couple of his agents were hit in this latest fracas and he sounded edgy as hell. What we don’t need is another Branch Davidian disaster.”

  “Don’t worry,” said the attorney general. “I’ll handle it.”

  There was a short pause. “Hold on a second. The president wants a word.”

  Durning heard a click as the chief executive came on the line.

  “Hank?”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “I know you’re on top of this, but all I keep thinking about are the twenty-seven women and children in that compound.”

  “I’m thinking about them, too, Mr. President. And I promise you. This will not be another Waco, Texas.”

  “What about the five o’clock deadline?”

  “I’m going to fly down there right now. I’ll either have them out before five or call off the siege.”

  “Then we’re taking the mass suicide threat seriously?”

  “After the Branch Davidians, Mr. President, how could we not?”

  When he hung up, the attorney general told the pilot they would be heading for Huntington, West Virginia. Then he called FBI Director Brian Wayne, his oldest and closest friend.

  “It’s me, Bri. I’ve just spoken to Artie and the president, so I know most of it. How bad was this morning’s shooting?”

  “A state trooper and two of my agents took hits. Nothing fatal. But who needed it?”

  “What about the Olympians?”

  “No reported casualties, but they probably took a few, too.” Wayne’s voice was flat, morose.

  “Who fired first?”

  “I’m afraid our people.”

  “Didn’t they have orders not to?”

  “Yeah. But they’ve been out there nine days now. Everyone’s getting impatient.”

  “Impatient for what? To kill or to die?”

  The FBI director was silent.

  “I don’t like the suicide threat,” said Henry Durning. “It’s probably just a copy-cat bluff after what happened at Waco, but we can’t take that chance. So I’m going down right now.”

  “I’ll meet you.”

  “There’s no need for you to go, too.”

  “Yes, there is,” said Wayne.

  The attorney general’s plane landed at 1:00 P.M. at Huntington Municipal Airport, where two state troopers were waiting with a car on the tarmac.

  They drove through curving mountain roads at a steady fifty-five-mile-per-hour clip and arrived at the besieged religious sect’s compound at about 1:40. A sylvan feast gone bad, thought Durning. Slowly, he got out of the car and looked around.

  The Olympian site lay out of rifle range in the middle distance, a sprawl of barns and outbuildings clustered about a large central structure, where an estimated forty-three men, women, and children were barricaded against a small army of county, state, and federal officers. Standing bareheaded in the summer sun, Durning felt himself turn cold.

  How do these things happen ?

  He knew, of course. Knowing was part of his job. Yet no two of these often deadly confrontations were ever entirely alike. In this instance, the trouble began when about fifty agents, troopers, and sheriff’s deputies raided the Olympians’ communal compound to serve a search warrant and arrest their leader, the Reverend Samson Koslow, on weapons charges. In the resulting shootout, two FBI agents and five of the religious cultists were killed and many more were wounded. Since then, until this morning’s violence and the announced suicide deadline, the tension-filled standoff had held for almost nine days.

  The scene along the dirt road where the attorney general’s car had stopped might have been part of an extended country carnival. Colored lights flashed everywhere. Tents were scat tered across the fields. Media vans, ambulances, and fighting vehicles stood in unmoving convoys.

  Durning saw the big, converted recreational vehicle that served as the FBI command post and started toward it. He waved away a growing crowd of reporters and photographers who had recognized him, and they backed out of his path a step at a time. They shot pictures from all sides and shouted questions that were never answered.

  When Durning entered the command post, Brian Wayne was already there, along with some of his top, on-site brass.


  “Give us a few minutes,” the FBI director told his agents, and they left him alone with the attorney general.

  Durning picked up a pair of high-powered binoculars, went to a window, and surveyed the area under siege. None of the Olympians were visible in their compound, but he was able to spot the surrounding network of FBI sharpshooters lying within rifle range of the central building.

  He put down the glasses. “I’m ending this botched-up mess right now. I’m not taking any chances on that crazy deadline.”

  Wayne just looked at him. A lean, spectacled man with a mournful, prematurely lined face, the FBI director knew his friend too well to argue. At least not until he heard more.

  “How do I get this Samson Koslow on the line?” Durning asked. Wayne reached for a phone, hit two buttons, and handed him the receiver. “This is direct.”

  Durning heard two rings. Then a soft voice said, “Yes?”

  “Is this Reverend Samson Koslow?”

  “It is.”

  “This is Attorney General Henry Durning.”

  The only audible response to his name and title was a baby crying in the background.

  “I’d like for us to talk, Reverend.”

  “We have nothing to talk about, Mr. Attorney General. Either remove your unlawful shooters by five o’clock and let us live in peace, or stay right there and watch us die for God.”

  Samson Koslow hung up.

  Durning stood staring off through the window. Then he tried again. This time he counted six rings before Koslow came back on.

  “I’m calling in good faith, Reverend.”

  There was a long silence. Then, “That’s easy enough for you to say. You’re not risking anything.”

  “What do you want me to risk?”

  “What all of us out here are risking. Our lives.”

  Durning was silent. He motioned to Brian Wayne and watched as he picked up a phone and listened in.

  The cult leader said, “What’s happened to your good faith, Mr. Attorney General?”

  “I still have it.”

  “Show me.”

  “How?”

  “By walking out here alone, sitting down, and talking to me across a small wooden table.”

  Durning felt something pleasantly warm enter his chest. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes,” he said and put down the receiver.