The Sam Gunn Omnibus

by Ben Bova

  So the four of us met at the hotel’s restaurant after freshening up in our individual rooms. I made certain to follow Sam to his suite, down the corridor from Josella’s, before going to my own.

  “Bodyguarding me?” he asked mischievously.

  “Protecting my interest,” I said. Then I added loftily, “In the integrity of the World Court and the international legal system.”

  Sam gave me a wry smile.

  “I don’t want you tampering with the opposition’s lawyer,” I said.

  “Tamper? Me? The thought never entered my mind.”

  “I know what’s in your mind, Sam. You can’t fool me.”

  “Have I ever tried to?” he asked.

  And I had to admit to myself that he never had. To the rest of the world Sam might be a devious womanizing rogue, a sly underhanded con man, even an extortionist, but he’d always been up-front with me. Damn him!

  The restaurant was crowded, but Sam got us a quiet table in a corner. He and Greg were already there when I arrived. Shortly after me, Josella swept in, looking like an African princess in a long, clinging gold-mesh sheath. Sam’s eyes went wide. He had barely flickered at my Parisian original, but I didn’t have Josella’s figure or long legs.

  Sam sat Josella on one side of him, me on the other. Greg was across the table from him. I think he was enjoying having two women next to him. I only hoped he couldn’t see how jealous I was of Josella.

  Trying to hide that jealousy, I turned to Greg. I was curious about him. Over pre-dinner cocktails, I asked him, “You’re a Catholic, aren’t you? How do you feel about all this?”

  Greg looked down into his drink as he stirred it with his straw. “I am a Catholic, but not the kind you may think. There are many of us in Latin America who recognized ages ago that the bishops and cardinals and all the ‘official’ Church hierarchy were in the service of the big landlords, the government, the tyrants.”

  “Greg was a revolutionary,” Sam said, with a smirk.

  “I still am,” he told us. “But now I work from inside the system. I learned that from Sam. Now I help to create jobs for the poor, to educate them and help them break free of poverty.”

  “And free of the Church?” Josella asked.

  Greg said, “Most of us remain Catholics, but we do not support the hierarchy. We have worker priests among us, men of the people.”

  “Isn’t that what Pope William wants to encourage?” I asked.

  “Perhaps so,” Greg said. “His words sound good. But words are not deeds.”

  “You’re really going to insist on a trial?” I asked Sam.

  He didn’t look happy about it, but he said softly, “Got to. Ecuador National is close to bankruptcy. We need that money.”

  Greg nodded. I believed him, not Sam.

  Dinner was uncomfortable, to say the least. Pope William had gotten to all of us, even Sam.

  But by the time dessert was being served, at least Sam had brightened up a bit. He turned his attention to Josella.

  “Is your last name Dutch?” he asked her.

  She smiled a little. “Actually, its derivation is Greek, I believe.”

  “You don’t look Greek.”

  “Looks can be deceiving, Mr. Gunn.”

  “Call me Sam.”

  Josella seemed to consider the proposition for a few moments, then decided. “All right—Sam.”

  “Did you call your bosses in Hartford, Josie?” he asked her.

  “Did I! Old man Banner himself got on the screen. Is he pissed with you!”

  Sam laughed. “Good. He’s the sonofabitch who shifted the blame to God.”

  “That’s a standard clause in every policy, Sam.”

  “Yeah, but I asked him personally to reconsider in my case and he laughed in my face.”

  “He said if you took this case to trial he’d personally break your neck,” Josella said, very seriously. “He used a lot of adjectives to describe you, your neck, and how much he’d enjoy doing it.”

  “Great!” Sam grinned. “Did you make a copy of the conversation?”

  Josella gave him a slow, delicious smile. “I did not. I even erased the core memory of it in my computer. You won’t be subpoenaing my boss’s heated words, Mr. Gunn.”

  Sam feigned crushing disappointment.

  “This Mr. Banner hates Sam so much?” Greg asked.

  “I think he truly does,” said Josella.

  “Perhaps he is the one who sent the assassins after Sam,” Greg suggested. “At least one set of them.”

  “Mr. Banner?” she looked shocked.

  A thought struck me. “You said the assassins were amateurs, Josella. Have you had much experience with terrorists?”

  “Only what I read in the news media,” she answered smoothly. “It seems to me that real terrorists blow you away as soon as they get the chance. They don’t drag you across the landscape and gloat at you.”

  “Then let’s be glad they were amateurs,” Sam said.

  “Professionals would have killed us all, right there in your office,” Josella said to me. Flatly. As if she knew exactly how it was done.

  “Without worrying about getting caught?” Greg asked.

  “Considering the response time of the Dutch security people,” Josella said, “they could have iced the four of us and made it out of the building with no trouble. If they had been professionals.”

  “Pleasant thought,” Sam said.

  THERE WAS PLENTY of night life in Selene, but as we left the restaurant Sam told us that he was tired and going to his quarters. It sounded completely phony to me.

  Then Josella said she was retiring for the night, too. Greg looked a little surprised.

  “I understand there’s a gaming casino in the hotel,” he said. “I think I’ll try my luck.”

  We said good-night to Greg and headed for the elevator to take us down to the level where our rooms were. On Earth, the higher your floor, the more prestigious and expensive. On the Moon, where the surface is pelted with micrometeors and bathed in hard radiation, prestige and expense increase with your distance downward.

  Sam made a great show of saying good-night to Josella. She even let him kiss her hand before she closed her door. I walked with him as far as the door to my own suite.

  “Want to come in for a nightcap?” I asked.

  Sam shook his head. “I’m really pretty pooped, kid. This business with the Pope’s hit me harder than I thought it would.”

  But his eyes kept sliding toward Josella’s door, down the corridor.

  “Okay, Sam,” I said, trying to make it sound sweet and unsuspecting. “Good-night.”

  He pecked me on the cheek. A brotherly kiss. I hadn’t expected more, but I still wanted something romantic or at least warm.

  I closed my door and leaned against it. Suddenly I felt really weary, tired of the whole mess. Tired of chasing Sam, who was interested in every female in the solar system except me. Tired of this legal tangle with the Vatican. And scared of the effect that Pope William had on me. I wondered if one of the changes he wanted to make in the Church was to allow priests to marry. Wow!

  I honestly tried to sleep. But I just tossed and fussed until I finally admitted that I was wide awake. I told the phone beside the bed to get Sam for me.

  It got his answering routine. “I’m either sleeping or doing something else important. Leave your name and I’ll get back to you, promise.”

  Sleeping or doing something else important. I knew what “something else” was. I pulled on a set of coveralls and tramped down the corridor to Sam’s door. I knocked. No answer. Knocked harder. Still no answer. Pounded on it. He wasn’t there.

  I knew where he was. Steaming with rage, I stomped down the corridor to Josella’s door and banged on it with both fists. I even kicked it.

  “I know you’re in there, Sam!” I shouted, not giving a damn who in the hotel could hear me. “Open up this goddamned door!”

  Josella opened it. She was wearing nothing
but the sheerest of nightgowns. And she had a pistol in her hand.

  “Senator Meyers,” she said, with a sad kind of resignation in her voice. “I had hoped to avoid this.”

  Puzzled, I pushed past her and into her room. Sam was sitting on the bed, buck naked, a sheet wrapped around his middle.

  “Aw, shit, Jill,” he said, frowning. “Now she’s got you, too.”

  It hit me at last. Turning to Josella, I said, ”You’re an assassin!”

  She nodded, her face very serious.

  “She wants to waste me,” Sam said gloomily, not moving from the bed.

  “But why?” I blurted.

  Josella kept the pistol rock-steady in her hand. “Because the ayatollahs are unanimous in their decision that this unbeliever must die.”

  “You’re a Moslem?”

  She smiled tightly. “Not all Moslem women wear veils and chadors, Senator Meyers.”

  “But why would the Moslems want to kill Sam? He’s suing the Pope, not Islam.”

  “He is making a travesty of all religions. He is mocking God. The Church of Rome has yet to see the light of true revelation, but we slaves of Allah can’t allow this blasphemy to continue.”

  “It’s Islam’s contribution to global religious solidarity,” Sam said, disgust dripping from his words.

  “I had wanted to do it cleanly, professionally,” Josella said, “without any complications.”

  “That’s why you let Sam into your room,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “To give the condemned man his last wish. Although Sam didn’t know he was condemned when I granted his wish.”

  “So you made it with her, after all,” I said to Sam, angrily.

  He made a sour face. “She screwed me, all right.”

  “And now what?” I asked Josella. “You kill us both?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “And how do you get away?”

  She shrugged. Inside that sheer nightgown it looked delicious, even to me. “There’s a shuttle leaving for Earth orbit at midnight. Passage on it has already been booked for a young man named Shankar. By the time your bodies are discovered I will be Mr. Shankar, complete with mustache and beard.” “It’ll have to be a damned good disguise,” Sam groused.

  Almost smiling, Josella said, “It will be. Even my fingerprints will be different.”

  “You said you’re a professional,” I stalled for time. “You mean you’ve done this kind of thing before?”

  Josella nodded slowly. “For six years. My job has been to assassinate policy-holders whose estates would go to Islamic causes.”

  “You’ve worked for insurance companies and they never knew?”

  “Of course not.”

  “She’s a lawyer, for chrissake,” Sam snapped. “She’s trained to lie.”

  The phone rang. We heard Josella’s taped voice say sweetly, “I am not able to answer your call right now. Please leave your name and I’ll call you back as soon as I possibly can.”

  “Josella?” I recognized that bombastic voice. It was Frank Banner. “This is Banner. Haven’t been able to sleep for the past two nights. This damned business with Sam Gunn is driving me nuts. He’s actually going ahead with his suit in the World Court, is he? Damned little pissant jerk! We can’t let him drag the Pope through the mud the way he wants to. We just can’t! Tell him we’ll settle with him. Not his damned half-billion, that’s outrageous. But tell him we’ll work out something reasonable if he’ll drop this damned lawsuit.”

  I felt my mouth drop open. I looked at Sam and he was grinning as if he’d been expecting this all along.

  “And tell him that if I ever see him in the same room with me I’ll break every bone in his scrawny goddamned neck! Tell him that, too!”

  The phone connection clicked dead. Sam flopped back on the bed and whooped triumphantly.

  “I knew it!” he yelled. “I knew that Francis Xavier Banner couldn’t let the Pope come to trial. I knew the tightfisted sonofabitch would finally break down and offer to settle my insurance claims!” He laughed wildly, kicking his bare hairy legs in the air and pounding the mattress with his fists.

  I just stood there, dumbfounded. Had this whole complex procedure been nothing more than an elaborate scheme by Sam to get his insurance carrier to accept his accident claims? Yes, I realized. That was Sam Gunn at his wiliest: threaten the Pope to get what he considered he was owed.

  The gun in Josella’s hand wavered, then she let her arm drop to her side.

  “You don’t have to kill Sam now,” I said. “There’s not going to be a court case after all.”

  “No,” she said. “The blasphemer must still die.”

  Sam got to his bare feet, clutching the bed sheet around his middle like a Roman senator who didn’t quite know how to drape his toga properly.

  “You’re a fraud,” Sam said.

  Josella’s dark eyes snapped at him. “Fraud?”

  “You’re about as professional a killer as that fat blonde Daughter.”

  “You think so?” Josella’s voice went hard and cold, like an ice-pick. She still had the gun in her hand.

  “You said professionals do the job without hesitation,” Sam said. “No talk, just boom, you’re dead.”

  Josella nodded.

  “So you’re an amateur,” Sam said, grinning at her. “You did a lot more than talk before you hauled out your gun.”

  “I did that with all the others, too,” Josella said. It was a flat statement, neither a boast nor an excuse. “It’s my trademark. Two of the older men I didn’t even have to kill; they died of natural causes.”

  “Bullshit all the others. You’ve never killed anybody and we both know it.”

  “You’re wrong—”

  “Yeah, sure. I’m going to start believing what a lawyer tells me, at my advanced age.”

  Josella looked confused. I know I was.

  But Sam knew exactly what he was doing. “Put your gun back wherever the hell you were hiding it and get out of here,” he told her. “Get on the midnight shuttle and don’t come back.”

  “I can’t do that,” said Josella. “My mission is to kill you—or die. If I let you go, they’ll kill me.”

  “Oh shit,” Sam muttered.

  “You mean that your own people will murder you if you don’t kill Sam?”

  Josella nodded. “I must succeed or die. That is what I promised them.”

  With a disgusted frown, Sam clutched his bed-sheet a little tighter and reached for the phone with his free hand.

  “Don’t!” Josella warned, raising her gun.

  “I’m not calling security.”

  “Then who ... ?”

  Sam called Pope William. The Pope looked shocked, even on the tiny screen of the Picturephone, and even more surprised when Sam told him what his call was about.

  “Sanctuary,” he said. “This lady here needs your protection.”

  Blinking sleep from his steely eyes, Pope William said, “Maybe you’d better come over here to explain this to me.”

  It was almost comical watching Sam and Josella get dressed while she still tried to keep her pistol on us. Then the three of us trotted down the nearly empty corridors, back to the Pope’s quarters. Two of his own security men, Swiss guards in plain coveralls, were waiting for us.

  They brought us to a kind of sitting room, a bare little cell with four chairs grouped around a coffee table. Nothing else in the room: not a decoration or any refreshments or even a carpet on the stone floor. Josella sat down warily, put her pistol on her lap.

  Pope William entered the room a few moments after we did. He was wearing a white sweatshirt and an old pair of Levis and he still filled the room with a warm brilliance.

  It was long past midnight before Sam got the whole thing explained to the Pope. Josella didn’t help, insisting that she wanted no help from unbelievers.

  “I won’t try to convert you,” William said, smiling at her. “But I can offer you protection and help you creat
e a new persona for yourself.”

  “A kind of witness protection plan,” Sam said, trying to encourage her. “See, we’re bringing the Vatican into the twenty-first century.”

  Me? I was stewing. The two of them were falling all over themselves trying to help Josella and ignoring me altogether.

  Josella was starting to nod, seeing that maybe there was a way out of the blind corner she’d trapped herself in. She took the gun from her lap, popped open its magazine, and laid the pieces on the coffee-table.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll go along with you.”

  “But what about those other killings?” I heard myself blurt out. “She’s admitted to murdering God knows how many men!”

  Sam glowered at me.

  Pope William smiled. “How do we know, Senator Meyers, that this entire episode—Sam’s lawsuit, my coming to the Moon, the various assassination attempts—how do we know that all of this hasn’t been God’s way of bringing this one woman to repentance and salvation?”

  “I won’t convert,” Josella snapped. “I’m a Moslem.”

  “Of course,” said the Pope. “I only want you to change your life, not your religion.”

  “All this,” I heard the disbelief in my own voice, “just for her?”

  “There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who’s redeemed than there is over one of the faithful,” Pope William said.

  Even God was concentrating on Josella, I thought, ashamed of my jealousy but feeling it seething inside me nonetheless.

  Sam grinned at him. “So you think this whole thing has been an act of God, huh?”

  “Everything is an act of God,” said Pope William. “Isn’t that right, Josella?”

  She nodded silently.

  Sam and I left Josella with the Pope. As we walked back along the corridors I tried to stop feeling so damned jealous. But the thought of her with Pope William just plain boiled me. All of a sudden it struck me that Josella might be more of a threat to William than she was to Sam. His soul, that is; not his body.

  I started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Sam asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “It’s just—everything’s turned upside down and inside out.”