Ikon

by Graham Masterton

  Ronald suggested, ‘How about another beer? Especially if you’re buying,

  Daniel bit at his thumbnail. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘How about a quick ride down to the base, just to make sure he’s not there?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘I’m just worried, that’s all. Willy positively and definitely said that he was going to be working in the armoury

  for most of the day, and that he was going to be round here at ten.’

  Ronald leaned back in his chair in exasperation. ‘You know what this is, don’t you? A cheap way of getting me out of here, so that I won’t be able to impress your girlfriend any more with my obviously superior intelligence and clearly superior looks/

  ‘You’re nuts,’ said Daniel. ‘Do you want to take me down there or not?’

  ‘Okay,’ agreed Ronald, reluctantly. ‘I guess I wanted to try out my new tune job anyway.’

  ‘And what am I supposed to do, while you’re speeding like the Seventh Cavalry to Williams Air Force Base?’ Cara demanded.

  Daniel leaned over and kissed her cheek. ‘You can go back to the diner and tell Mrs Koperwas that she can go home and give Mr Koperwas his Hungry Man dinner. And if Susie’s still awake, you can switch off her television and paddle her fanny.’

  ‘Isn’t it true about history?’ said Cara, finishing her pina colada. ‘The men get the fun and the women get to sit around and wait for them to come home.’

  But outside the bar, in the darkness, as Ronald went to get his motorcycle, Cara slid her arm around Daniel’s waist, and pressed her breasts against him, and kissed him once, twice, three times, with a passion he wouldn’t easily forget. ‘You won’t be long, will you?’ she breathed in his ear. ‘I’ll be waiting for you, when you come back. And I mean, waiting.’

  Daniel kissed her back and cupped the firm rounded cheeks of her bottom in his hands. ‘You know something,’ he whispered back at her. ‘You have the finest ass since the Sabine women.’

  ‘All right, cut the groping,’ said Ronald, wheeling up his shiny black Nighthawk. ‘If there’s one thing I dislike more than petty meanness, like not buying me a second beer, it’s smugness, like feeling up this delicious redheaded young lady right in front of me.’

  ‘You’ve got your bike to love, what more do you want?’ asked Daniel.

  Ronald shrugged. ‘It’s okay, I guess. It’s just that it leaves oil on the sheets.’

  Cara blew Daniel a last kiss, and then walked back along the side of the highway to the diner. Under the fluorescent lights, she cast four shadows, one to each point of the compass. That’s some girl/ said Ronald, straddling his motorcycle and fastening his helmet. ‘Just your type, too. Travel-stained, worldly-wise, with a used but pretty face and huge but shapely knockers.’

  Daniel climbed on to the high black-leather pillion seat and grasped Ronald tightly around the waist. ‘Did anyone ever tell you that Indians were only supposed to grunt, and yodel, and refer to everyone they met as “kemo sabay”?’

  Ronald turned around and frowned at him. “Kemo sabay”? What’s that? Some kind of wine?’

  ‘Just move your ass,’ said Daniel, impatiently.

  Ronald kicked the Nighthawk into life. It blared and burbled as Ronald revved it up; and then they were away, bouncing across the dusty roadside, overtaking Cara and giving her a last berrp-berrp on the horn before roaring away westwards on Route 60 towards Mesa.

  As far as Ronald was concerned, there were only two speeds on a motorcycle: flat-out and Geronimo. Daniel clung desperately on to his leather jacket as Ronald hurtled into the darkness, insects pattering on his helmet like soft shrapnel. The motorcycle weaved and angled from one side of the road to the other, overtaking trucks, cars, and a vast tractor-trailer carrying livestock. Tomorrow’s cheeseburgers!’ shouted Ronald, as he accelerated past the tractor and topped 110 mph. Daniel closed his eyes and tried not to think what would happen if they hit a stone or a stray animal or an unlit truck.

  They made a left on South Lindsay and Ronald opened up the throttle again as they headed southwards towards the community of Gilbert, and Williams Air Force Base. A Hercules transport plane was landing from the south—

  east, its lights winking as it descended over the desert like a huge black Roc. They touched 100 mph between Southern Avenue and Base Line Road and Ronald let out a wild Indian whoop as they streaked across the intersection without stopping.

  At last they were slowing down and turning into the main gates of Williams Air Force Base, with Ronald repeatedly bipping the engine. An Air Force sentry came forward and said, ‘Identification, please?’ His face under his white steel helmet was as bland as a bowlful of hominy, but there was a tensile twang in his voice which made it clear that nobody was going to get past here without all the proper passes, especially an Indian in black leather and a skinny guy with a face as white as Stan Laurel’s from the 100 mph wind.

  ‘I came to see Major William Monahan,’ said Daniel. ‘He told me this morning he was going to be working in the armoury. Maybe you could call him up and tell him I’m here.’

  The sentry said, ‘What’s your name please? Do you have any identification?’

  Daniel reached into his back pants pocket and handed the sentry his Social Security card. The sentry peered at it from beneath his helmet, and said, ‘Daniel F. Korvitz?’

  That’s right.’

  ‘Okay, then, hold on for just one moment.’ The sentry went back to his brightly-lit office and picked up the telephone. He seemed to be talking to someone for almost five minutes, and meanwhile Daniel and Ronald waited for him, still astride the motorcycle, under the dazzling floods which illuminated the air base gates.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you something,’ said Daniel, as they waited.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Who’s this Ah-jon-jon? The guy you’ve got on your T-shirt?’

  ‘You never heard of Ah-jon-jon? He was an Assinboin Indian who went to Washington and met President Andrew Jackson. He was so impressed by the white man’s

  ways that he abandoned his buckskins and his feathers and dressed himself up like a dandy. Then one day he beat another Indian with his cane because this other Indian doubted his word. It was the kind of thing that he had seen white men doing. The only trouble was, the Indian came back, quite unlike a white man, and shot him dead.’

  There’s a moral in that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Be yourself, that could be it. Or, don’t try to play the game if nobody else knows the rules.’

  Daniel cleared his throat. That’s worth wearing a special T-shirt for?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  The sentry finally put down the telephone, and came back out. He handed Daniel back his Social Security card, and stood looking at him as if he couldn’t quite decide what to say.

  ‘Well?’ asked Daniel. ‘Is Major Monahan there or isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s there, sir, but he’s not.’

  ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

  The sentry lowered his head so that all Daniel could see below the curved rim of his helmet was his pale-lipped mouth. His mouth said, ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you sir that Major Monahan is dead.’

  Daniel felt as if he touched a bare electric wire. A freezing, tingling sensation, not quite real. ‘Dead? What are you talking about? I saw him this morning. They told me on the phone that he hadn’t been around the base all day.’

  ‘Well, sir, I’m sorry, but there must have been a misunderstanding. He has been here all day. But shortly after 1430 hours, there was an accident, involving Major Monahan and a Hughes helicopter.’

  ‘He was flying?’

  ‘No, sir, it was a ground accident. But I’m afraid that’s all I’ve been authorized to tell you. If you leave me your address, somebody from the base will write to you and give you the full details in due course/

  Daniel climbed off the motorcycle. He could hardly stand up. Ronald said to him, ‘Daniel, moksois, easy
now.’

  ‘Easy? This guy’s just telling me that Willy’s dead. For Christ’s sake, what happened?’

  The bloodless mouth below the rim of the helmet said, ‘I regret that I haven’t been authorized to tell you that, sir. But if you leave me your address -‘

  ‘Fuck my address, what happened?’

  There was a long and terrible silence - almost too long, as if it had been written into a bad, Monday afternoon soap opera. A moth whirred and shone in the air between them, and somewhere on the airbase a jet engine suddenly rumbled into life and then died away again.

  The sentry said, in a dry voice, ‘He didn’t see it. He backed into it. The rotors took off his head.’

  Daniel stared at the man without saying a word. Then he turned to Ronald and whispered, ‘You’d better take me home.’

  Ronald’s face was strained. His eyes glittered with sudden tears - tears of shock and frustration and sadness. He said, softly, ‘Okay.’

  They rode back slowly through the night. Even when they reached Apache Junction, they said nothing; but after Daniel had dismounted he took hold of Ronald’s wrist and squeezed it tight.

  ‘Remember Ah-jon-jon,’ he said, so quietly that Ronald could hardly hear him. ‘Don’t try to play the game if nobody else knows the rules.’

  ‘You’re talking about Willy?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Daniel. He had to purse his mouth together with grief, and the lump in his throat was so constricting that he couldn’t answer at first. I`ll talk to you tomorrow, okay? Thanks for the ride.’

  Ronald stayed on his motorcycle and watched Daniel walk across to the diner, fish out his keys, and open the doors. Upstairs, in Daniel’s apartment, a light went on.

  Seven

  Chief Ruse was sitting in front of his giant-sized colonial-style television set, his trousers comfortably open, the clips on his red suspenders unfastened, his boots propped up on a stool. He was watching a late-night movie called They Saved Hitler’s Brain and drinking warm milk from a mug with Pig-in-Chief printed on it. In spite of the rattling air-conditioning unit under the window, the living room was still oppressively hot, and now and again Chief Ruse tugged out a handkerchief the size of a small bedsheet and dabbed at his sweating face.

  His wife Ingrid was upstairs in front of her taffeta-frilled dressing-table, wearing an oatmeal face-pack, her hair tightly wrapped in rollers. His daughter Maisie-Ann was lying on her pink quilted bedspread in her pink quilted bathrobe eating a large bag of M & Ms and reading The 3-Day Diet Book.

  The door chimes played The Bluebells of Scotland. Ingrid’s grandfather had been a Scottish engineer on the Union railroad, and she always liked to think that she had true Scottish blood in her. Chief Ruse tolerated her plaid rugs and her plaid tablecloths, just to humour her, but he had drawn the line at wearing a kilt for her. ‘I’m not wearing a dress for anybody,’ he had told his deputy. ‘I don’t know what kind of weird behaviour goes on in Scotland, but it ain’t going to spread to Arizona. Not through me.’

  ‘Maisie-Ann, you want to get that door?’ he yelled out.

  There was no reply, but the door chimed again.

  ‘Maisie-Ann!’

  Ingrid called, ‘She’s dressed for bed already! You go!’

  Chief Ruse exasperatedly hauled himself out of his armchair, buttoned up his fly, and shambled out to the hallway. ‘Women,’ he grumbled under his breath. The door chimes rang again, and he shouted, ‘I’m coming, for Christ’s sake!’

  He opened the door. Outside, under the moth-clustered light, stood a thin tall man in a pale-blue suit, and a silver-tipped bolus necktie. His face was hidden by the brim of his Western hat. ‘Chief Ruse?’ he asked. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you so late. My name’s Skellett.’

  ‘What’s your business, Mr Skellett? Isn’t it something that could wait until the morning?’

  ‘It won’t take very long, Chief Ruse.’ The man reached into his suit and produced a black leather wallet, which he handed over without any explanation at all. Chief Ruse flipped it open and read, ‘James T Skellett, National Security Agency.’

  Chief Ruse dragged out his handkerchief again and patted the sweat on the back of his neck. ‘National Security Agency? You want to tell me what’s wrong?’

  Skellett took his wallet back, and tucked it into his pocket. ‘I’d prefer it if I could come in. This isn’t something I want to discuss on the doorstep.’

  ‘All right, then, step inside,’ said Chief Ruse, and stood back against the wall whilst Skellett squeezed past his stomach. ‘I just hope it ain’t nothing too complicated. I’ve had a day of it, I can tell you. Appropriations committee all morning, the highways department all afternoon, and one pretty damned hair-raising homicide for most of the evening. Came home and my dinner was all dried up. Not that I had too much taste for it.’

  They went into the chintzy living-room. Chief Ruse switched off the sound on the television, and then offered Skellett a chair. ‘You want a beer?’ he asked.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Skellett. 1 don’t want to take up too much of your time. The fact is, it’s that same hair-raising homicide that I’ve come to talk to you about. The Schneider case.’

  Chief Ruse sat down, and heaved one fat leg over the other. ‘Oh, yes?’ he said, looking at Skellett narrowly. ‘What about it? You know something that we don’t?’

  Skellett took off his hat. He had thin, wavy blond hair, combed across from one side of his narrow skull to the other to cover his widening bald spot. ‘You’ll be gratified

  to know that the FBI discovered the whereabouts of Mrs Schneider’s killer, at a little after one this afternoon.’

  ‘Nobody told me that. Why didn’t anybody tell me that?’

  ‘Nobody told you because until now it had to be kept under total wraps. But I’m authorized to brief you now because you have a right to know, and also because you have a duty to take all the appropriate action to make sure that it remains confidential.’

  Chief Ruse said, ‘You want to explain yourself, Mr Skellett?’

  From upstairs, Ingrid called, ‘Who is it, dear? It’s not Mr Weller, is it?’

  ‘It’s business!’ Chief Ruse shouted back.

  ‘If it’s Mr Weller, tell him to come back tomorrow! He can’t expect to come around in the middle of the night to mend washing-machines! Tell him that!’

  ‘Women, breathed Chief Ruse.

  Skellett leaned forward, and said in a conspiratorial murmur, ‘The fact of the matter is that Mrs Schneider was involved in a little business involving Air Force security. Passing information to folks who had no right to have that information. You get my drift? But - it appears that she failed to do what these folks to whom she was passing this information instructed her to do, or else she passed them some bum information, but in any case they decided to do away with her. You understand? They took off her head because they didn’t want anybody to recognize that she was actually a Communist agent called Olga Voroshilov, who came to this country in 1948 with the express intention of meeting and marrying an Air Force officer. She was what we call a ‘sleeper’. You’ve heard of that? An agent who stays dormant for ten, maybe twenty years, building up a respectable background. Then, when they’re given the signal, they start passing information.’

  ‘I’ve heard of that,’ said Chief Ruse. ‘And she was one of those?’

  That’s what she was, nodded Skellett. ‘And that’s why you have to keep so much of this secret. Olga Voroshilov was part of a whole ring of Communist spies, many of whom are still in business, and if we make too much of a fuss about her death, they’re all going to get nervous, all of these Communist spies, and go under cover. Instead - we want to track them down, and bring them to justice.’

  ‘You say the FBI got the guy who killed her?’

  Skellett smirked. They didn’t get him. They found him. He was down at the bottom of a ravine in Deming, New Mexico, in a burned-out pick-up truck. Looks like he probably fell asleep while he was drivi
ng.’

  ‘How did they know it was him? I mean, how could they be sure?’

  They found a flexible saw in the truck. She was murdered with a flexible saw, wasn’t she? And they also found her head.’

  They found the head?’

  Skellett nodded, almost smugly. ‘Roasted right down to the bone, but there was no mistake.’

  ‘Well, can I get to see it?’ asked Chief Ruse. ‘I’d sure like my medical examiners to make a check on it, make sure that it’s the right head.’

  ‘Chief Ruse,’ said Skellett, ‘how many men do you think were within driving distance of Phoenix today with a flexible saw and a severed human head in their vehicles?’

  ‘No more than one, I’m sure,’ Chief Ruse agreed. ‘But I still want to have my ME check it out.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s going to be possible, Chief. In fact, I have a warrant from the National Security Agency for the handing-over of Margot Schneider’s body. We’ll have a meatwagon around to collect it first thing in the morning.’

  Chief Ruse sniffed, and shifted heavily in his armchair. ‘You just hold on a minute, Mr Skellett. This was a prima facie homicide within the city limits of Phoenix, and as such it’s under my jurisdiction, in my territory. Before that cadaver leaves my turf, I’m going to have to be satisfied that it’s been properly examined and identified by my medical people, and that all the required paperwork

  is in order. You got me? This woman didn’t just lose her purse, she lost her head, and I’m not leaving anyone any openings for saying that I didn’t follow the correct and proper procedure. Not with a case like this one, no sir.’

  ‘Chief Ruse,’ said Mr Skellett, testy now. ‘You have to understand that you’re being outgunned here. This is a matter of national security. Far more important than any local investigation.’

  ‘Mr Skellett, I can’t ignore proper procedure.’

  The National Security Council warrant will cover your

  ass.

  ‘I have a big ass, Mr Skellett.’

  ‘It’s a powerful warrant.’