Although there might be some point in forcing her to come with me. She was a staggeringly attractive woman and as a nun, she might even be a virgin. The thought was beginning to warm me considerably when a voice at my elbow said, “Excusez-moi...”
I turned to find Madame de Gaulle had crept up on me. Were it not for the bandages, my mouth would have dropped open.
“Your voice, Monsieur, it is terribly familiar. Have we not met somewhere before you had your terrible accident?”
Maybe I should shoot her first, then grab the President and shoot her husband second. My hand twitched towards my gun. Then Martha, like an idiot, stepped between us.
“Madame de Gaulle,” she said smoothly, “I am Sister Martha of the Sisters of Mercy. I think perhaps you shouldn’t embarrass this gentleman by drawing too much attention to him. He is one of the President’s secret guards.”
“But I know all my husband’s guards,” Madame de Gaulle protested, obviously forgetting the old duffer had retired.
“The American President,” Sister Martha said.
“Ah, the American President!” Somehow she made it sound like Head Witch doctor of the Baloobas.
“Just doing my job, Ma’am,” I said, falling back briefly on my Milton Trench accent. It was rather pleasant to have Martha taking my part. An old thought reared its head again: was it possible that, virgin nun or not, she fancied me?
“I see,” Madame de Gaulle said. She smiled and before I could stop her, reached out and shook my hand. At which point, Lyndon Johnson arrived with her husband.
“And this, sir,” Johnson said, “is my old friend General George Ivimy. Say, you two didn’t know each other during the war by any chance?”
And de Gaulle, rot his nose, seized my hand the very second his bonne femme let go of it, gripping it emotionally but firmly between both his. “My dear General, how very good to meet one of the gallant American soldiers who helped free my country from the German scourge.” He turned briefly to Johnson, still gripping my hand, and added, “I do not think I have had the pleasure of meeting before with General Ivimy.”
“Listen, Charles,” Johnson said quietly (and I noticed he did not call de Gaulle ‘Charlie’ to his face), “George and I are getting together for a little drink after the rubes go home. Why don’t you pack off Madam somewhere and join us? Have a little man-talk about the war, you know?” My heart leaped at the suggestion. A private audience would be even more ideal for de Gaulle’s assassination. The only real problem would be finding his wife to do her in before I left.
But de Gaulle was shaking his large head. “I fear, Mr President, my schedule would not permit me such a pleasure. We have many preparations for our departure yet to make.”
“Take a rain-check,” Johnson said. He winked at me. “But our date still stands, eh George?”
“Yes, Lyndon,” I croaked.
De Gaulle frowned. “Perhaps we did meet, General - your voice is strangely familiar.”
“That’s what I said,” Madame de Gaulle chipped in, the interfering old baggage. “But this young lady has told me he is a Presidential guard.”
“But I do not have guards now I am retired,” de Gaulle put in mildly, making the same mistake his wife had made earlier. He released my hand at last.
“Ah non, mon cher - the American President, Mr Johnson.”
“He’s with the C.I.A.,” Sister Martha explained.
“George with the C.I.A.?” Lyndon Johnson chortled. He laid a hand on my arm, thus preventing my reaching for my gun. “That’s a good one, eh George? Believe me, Sister, you got it wrong. George is such a hell raiser they wouldn’t let him join the Ku Klux Klan!”
“Ah, I understand!” de Gaulle said suddenly. He took his wife’s arm and drew her away. “We should perhaps say no more of this, my dear.”
“But the young lady told me -”
“It is a matter of security, my dear. The President must pretend this C.I.A. man is someone other than he is.”
“0h - security. I’m sorry, Charles.”
Lyndon Johnson leaned towards me, blocking my shot at de Gaulle’s back. “What’s all this about the C.I.A., George?” Then, before I could answer, he grinned in sudden delight. “You told her you were with them, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I admitted. There didn’t seem much else I could do with Martha standing at my heels ready to contradict every lie I concocted.
Johnson slapped me heartily on the shoulder. “You old devil, George! You haven’t changed a bit! Thought she’d go for a C.I.A. man faster than a clapped-out old General, eh? By God, George, when they bury you, they’ll have to beat your cock to death with a stick! “ He dropped his voice abruptly. “You’ll have trouble getting into that one’s pants - she’s a nun.”
“Is she?” I croaked dully.
“Sure! Didn’t you know? She’s not wearing the habit, but that’s her Mother Superior over there.” He indicated Sister Marie Therese, standing in the background like some wizened totem pole.
“My God!” I croaked. De Gaulle and his wife were moving further and further away. People were drifting between us.
“Listen,” Johnson said. “Don’t let me cramp your style.” He moved off after the de Gaulles, calling back over his shoulder, “Good luck.”
“What was all that about?” Sister Martha asked me, bewildered.
“The President thinks I’m trying to seduce you,” I said flatly. It was all getting too much for me.
Sister Martha looked me in the eye and asked, “And are you?”
Chapter Seventeen
They launched into the presentation ceremony, which I’d almost forgotten was what we were here for. Gray and Gribbin, those intensely smooth aides, formed us into two neat rows, with myself, as a VIP friend of the President, naturally selected for the front rank. With no thought of spiritual standing, both the Mother Superior and Sister Martha were relegated to the second row.
Inside my head, I was having the same trouble with Sister Martha that I’d once had with Beth Philippe. When a woman looks you in the eye and says, and are you? in just that tone, with just that inflection, it can only mean one thing when the subject under discussion is seduction. The one thing it can only mean is that she’s hot for you. The question is a challenge, thrown out to provoke the response, Yes, I am. To which, one way or another, she’ll reply, Then get stuck in buster and cut out the horseshit.
But was such a reply likely from a nun?
That was the great stumbling block. With Beth I thought I’d misread the signs and had eventually been proven wrong. I didn’t want to make that mistake twice, especially where a luscious piece of ass like Martha was concerned. At the same time, I could not conceive a nun would mean what I suspected she meant, even when wearing civvies. I had to be misreading the signs.
But if I was not misreading the signs, what panoramas of the future were opening before me! My mind, which had been kept under remarkably tight rein for the past half hour, began presenting me with some truly delightful scenarios. In them, I reclined on golden cushions while a hidden orchestra played bump and grind music. Before me, demure in the full habit of the Sisters of Mercy, was the delicious Sister Martha. Slowly she drew up the hem of her abba to reveal, inch by delightful inch, one perfect leg lovingly encased in a long, black nylon stocking. (I don’t mean to imply I fantasised that she had only one leg: just that she was only showing one at that particular time.)
Martha languorously adjusted her suspender, then dropped the habit and began, slowly, to dance. As she danced, she began, equally slowly, to undress.
When you get right down to it, a rubber G-string and peek-a-boo leather half-cup bra is not the most likely underwear for a nun, but by this stage, my mind had grown so fevered that the fantasy required little semblance of reality. My eyes glazed as, inside my head, Sister
Martha removed her bra, exposing firm, soft, thrusting breasts. She reached for her rubber G-string and I was scrambling up off the cushions when the phone rang.
This was not, you must appreciate, part of my fantasy. The phone that rang was on the Presidential desk. Cray answered it smoothly as Lyndon Johnson launched into another little speech. The de Gaulles were standing on his right, which meant he was more or less between them and me. Which in turn meant the time had not yet arrived for my next assassination attempt. But at least I knew now it would arrive. Martha was out of the way in the second row. Both de Gaulles thought I was a security man. Lyndon Johnson had me written off as a randy old goat (which apart for the age factor seemed a reasonable enough description the way my mind was now working at full steam.)
“Friends,” Lyndon Johnson was saying, “you all know why I asked you to come here to the White House today. Every one of you, through your work for great and glorious causes, has made a contribution - I might say a striking contribution -”
Nothing, it seemed to me, could possibly go wrong at this stage. Stephen Gribben, strategically located a little behind de Gaulle, was carrying the presentation certificates, each one rolled and sealed to make it look like an old-fashioned scroll. I gathered Johnson and de Gaulle would be giving them out jointly, which meant I would be perfectly placed to shoot de Gaulle and grab Lyndon. And what was there to prevent me this time?
“... Our great country,” Johnson droned on. He stopped, as Gray, who’d hung up the phone by now, whispered something in his ear.
It was a fairly long whisper, so that people began to fidget. Johnson nodded a couple of times, briefly, then turned to stare soberly at me. His eyes narrowed and he strode across, looking for all the world like the hero of High Noon. I had the premonition that my thought about nothing more going wrong had occurred too soon.
“By God,” Lyndon Johnson drawled, “you really thought you’d get away with it, didn’t you?”
He wasn’t really that much bigger than I was, but I felt he was towering above me. The contents of my stomach - half digested hamburger, you will recall - sank into my bowels and turned liquid.
“You thought you’d get away with it,” he said again.
“Get away with it?” I squeaked. Maybe I should just go for my gun and shoot everybody in sight. Every bloody thing that could go wrong was going wrong. Now it even looked as if, somehow, my cover was blown. How much was any self-respecting assassin expected to take before his mind cracked completely? In point of fact, my own mind was feeling distinctly odd, although I put that down as much to my fantasy about Martha as anything else.
To my surprise, President Johnson abruptly exploded into laughter. He punched me affectionately on one bandaged shoulder. “Had you going there, eh George! By God, son, it feels good to put one over on a wily old galoot like you. Know what Chris Gray’s just been telling me?”
“No,” I croaked, honestly enough.
“Guy turned up at the private entrance no more’n ten minutes ago claiming to be you!”
“Me?”
“Bandaged up the way you are, cussing nineteen to the dozen, crutch and all, claiming he was General George Ivimy.”
“No!” I gasped, appalled. It wasn’t entirely acting. How the hell had the old boy talked the shrinks into releasing him so soon? But then it turned out he hadn’t.
“Security checked him out, of course. Found he’d escaped from the laughing academy.” He must have sensed my blank look through the bandages for he added, “Some high-priced asylum where they keep these kooks.” He punched me playfully on the shoulder again. “Now that’s fame, George - real fame. Most nuts think they’re Napoleon or Jesus H. Christ. Get people thinking they’re you and you’ve really made it into the big league, boy. Just had to tell you about it to see your face.” He frowned. “But I can’t with those goddam bandages, can I?”
“No,” I said. I coughed. “What’s happened to this nut?”
“They’re wheeling him back to the funny farm.” He half turned, presumably to get the presentation underway again, then hesitated. “By the way, there’s a headshrinker from the bin waiting to see you in Jason’s office.”
I didn’t know where Jason’s office was, but it seemed more important to ask (in my now familiar scraped-vocal-cord croak): “What’s he want to see me for?”
“Figures you might be able to help him cure the other guy. Chris told him you’d give him five minutes right after the ceremony, if that’s okay with you.”
“Yes,” I croaked.
Johnson winked. “Give us time to let the burbon breathe.”
I sighed a deep but inward sigh as he went back to finish out his speech. The real Ivimy must be well on the way to a genuine breakdown by now. Fancy escaping from the psychiatric hospital only to be sent straight back before he could confront his impostor. I made a mental note to send him the inflatable redhead when this was all over. It was the least I could do.
My sensation of relief was short-lived. Johnson stopped talking and started in on the presentations. The electric blue dowager was first to get her certificate and I watched the sequence carefully to see how it would fit into my plans.
It didn’t fit at all.
What happened was Johnson stepped forward first, getting between her and de Gaulle. After a few words, he shook her hand. Then, as he let go, de Gaulle stepped forward, took her land, and pumped it briefly. And as he let go, Madame de Gaulle handed over the certificate. Not once did she have her right hand free for more than a fraction of a second at a time. With the presentation completed, de Gaulle stepped back and the President moved on to the next in line. But Gribbin, with his armful of certificates, now stepped between the dowager and de Gaulle. All of which meant that had the dowager been trying to murder de Gaulle, she would never have got a straight shot at him. In fact, it was touch and go on whether she’d have been able to reach her gun.
I watched as the party moved along the line, hoping the sequence might vary. It didn’t.
Before I had time to think anything out, they reached me and I got my certificate. Then I was staring at Gribbin’s blasted back and de Gaulle was moving away again like a ship in full sail. I began to wonder if he might not be immortal. The Jackal had missed taking him out and here was I within an ace of missing out too. I felt as if a steel band were tightening around my forehead.
The presentations finished and the formal lines broke up into little groups as Gray and Gribbin circulated with celebration drinks. A couple of miserly cocktails each, I knew, and that would be that. They’d be herding everybody out to allow the President of the United States to continue with his busy schedule, which on this occasion involved getting pissed with me in the guise of his old friend, General George Ivimy.
But by then, de Gaulle would be gone; making his preparations, driving to the airport, taking off for parts unknown while I, his nemesis, was sinking burbon with Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Something would have to be done, and done fast. I began to manoeuvre for a clear shot at de Gaulle, something far from easy the way everybody was milling around admiring their certificates and comparing notes on the small, personal messages the President of the United States had had for each of them. (Mine was “Shit, George, you must be running out of space to store crap like this.”)
A gap appeared in the crowd, giving me a clear line to de Gaulle. I was reaching for my gun when Christopher Gray slid into it. “Excuse me, General,” he said quietly. “I believe you’ll be staying on for a private meeting with the President afterwards?”
“That’s right, son,” I said, wishing he’d get out of the way. My head felt really tight now and I was beginning not to care about getting away afterwards. All I wanted was de Gaulle, closely followed by Madame de Gaulle. If it meant the electric chair, I was prepared to face it. When desperation reaches a certain level, there seem many
worse things than martyrdom.
“The President mentioned a doctor from the hospital was hoping to see you about that poor unfortunate who set out to impersonate you?”
I nodded. “Yes.” I didn’t like the way the de Gaulles were sliding towards the door. It was one of those social movements that transcend all international boundaries. It meant, for a certainty, that they were politely preparing to take their leave.
“I was wondering,” Gray suggested smoothly, “if you would like to meet with him now. It should only take a few minutes and it will mean the President won’t be kept waiting afterwards.”
It was incredible. It was as if some malevolent imp was watching my every move and taking a delight in screwing things up. What the hell was I going to do now? The formalities were over, I wasn’t talking to anybody. What conceivable excuse could I find for turning down such a reasonable suggestion?
Then I saw salvation bearing down on us in the shapely form of Sister Martha, obviously interested in continuing the fascinating conversation we’d begun as the presentations started. Would she still be hot for me after she watched me gun down de Gaulle? The thought that she might not almost convinced me to abandon the mission completely, but I pushed the notion aside as unworthy. Besides, despite my fantasy, I still couldn’t believe a fully-fledged nun would be giving me real come-on signals.
“In just a moment or two, son,” I told Gray firmly. “I want to have a word with Sister Martha.”
He gave me a knowing look, apparently sharing the President’s opinion of General Ivimy’s obsessive sexuality. But hirelings are never in any position to argue, as I’d finally discovered at the BBC, so that he simply nodded. “As you say, General. I’ll wait for you by the door.”
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