The Tomorrow File

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Can we run a communication check? Please.”

  Obediently, I got out of the car. I unlocked the trunk. Roach backed off a few paces and motioned me to him.

  “Say something,” he said. “Please.”

  “ ‘I never saw a purple cow,’ ” I recited. “ ‘I never hope to see one. . . .’ ”

  “How was the voice level?” Roach asked. “Very good. Yes, sir. I’ll tell him. Dr. Flair, Klein wants you to wait here a moment. He’s coming up from the communications van. No smoking. Please.”

  In a few moments Klein appeared, coming out of the brush. I would have recognized that big, square torso and spindly legs anywhere, even brutalized with helmet, faceguard, armor. He was carrying a flechette gun slung over one shoulder.

  “Burton,” I said, gesturing toward his armament, “is all this necessary?”

  “Regulations,” he said. “You’re transmitting loud and clear. You can go ahead.” .

  “Are they here?”

  “Yes. About an hour ago.”

  “Ail of them?”

  “Martha Wiley is missing. You want to wait for her?”

  I thought a moment.

  “No,” I said, “do you?”

  “No,” he said. “Let’s take what we’ve got. Listen. . . .” “Yes?”

  “What’s Mansfield doing in this? He’s not PS.”

  “Just bait,” I said. “We needed someone they couldn’t check. ”

  “I don’t like it. Something smells.”

  “Burton.”—I sighed—“we had to set up a bribery trap.”

  “I should have been handling this. How can a bribery charge stand if he’s not a PS?”

  “Angela said she’d sign him on as a temporary consultant.” “I don’t like it,” he repeated. “She says my Division is infiltrated. That’s a lot of kaka. I trust every one of my ems.” “Burton, will you calm down? Everything is set; let’s get it over with. You know the code?”

  “ ‘That’s everything you wanted.’ ”

  “Right. Then you move in. Come in fast, Burton.”

  “I know my service.”

  “And take plenty of photos, still and tape. All the objects, the love, the restricted material—everything.”

  “I know my service,” he repeated stubbornly.

  I started back to the car, but he put a hand on my arm. I turned. He switched off his throat mike.

  “Flair—”

  “Yes?”

  “How are you going back? After it’s over?”

  “I’ll drive back,” I said, puzzled. “With Mansfield.”

  “Let me come with you. Mansfield can go with my ems.” “Well . . . sure.”

  “Will you wait for me? It may take some time before we get them searched and on their way.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  “I just want to talk to you. Alone.”

  “All right, Burton. I’ll wait.”

  “Thanks. I’ve got to tell someone. I don’t know how to handle it. Go ahead now.”

  I got back in the car and started up. We bumped slowly over the railroad tracks, pulled up at the side of the house. The porch light went on. Henry Hammond came out, peered down at us. I got out of the car, lifted my hand to him.

  “You’re late,” he said. And went back inside.

  Leon Mansfield got out of the car, carrying his soiled raincoat draped over his arm. I went around to the rear trunk, opened it again, unleashed the carton. I left the trunk lid open. Mansfield followed me up the steps, into the house. Hammond switched off the porch light, closed and locked the door behind us. I looked around. Lydia Ferguson. Alice Hammond. Dr. Thomas J. Wiley. Tod and Vernon DeTilly. Henry Hammond.

  I caught their excitement immediately. Eager eyes on the carton of goodies I was carrying. I moved toward the wooden dining table. Lydia cleared it hastily of a bowl of wax fruit and two pewter candlestick holders. I smiled at her, set the box carefully in the middle of the table. I jerked a thumb over my shoulder.

  “Leon Mansfield,” I said.

  They started how-are-yous and nice-to-meet-yous, but Mansfield interrupted roughly.

  “Where’s my love?” he demanded.

  Wiley pointed at a black plastic case on one of the chairs. It looked like an obso doctor’s bag.

  “Right there,” he said, smiling. “But Mr. Mansfield, surely you don’t expect us to hand it over until we have examined what we are buying?”

  “Nothing to do with me,” Mansfield said harshly. “I don’t know what it is and I don’t want to know. I done my job. I want my love.”

  “Of course, of course,” Wiley said smoothly. “But just in case you may, some day, decide you want more than agreed upon, surely you’ll have no objection if we photograph your receiving the love?”

  Mansfield looked slowly about the circle of faces. Pupils contracted in his phlegmy eyes. That thin, pointed face became cruel. I fancied even the tip of the long, prehensile nose quivered. He convinced me.

  “Cute,” he said harshly. “Goddamned cute.”

  Vernon DeTilly moved slowly around until he stood between Mansfield and the door. He put his back against the door, folded his arms.

  “Well, Mr. Mansfield?” Dr. Wiley asked genially. “What is it to be?”

  Mansfield hesitated, apparently pondering. Tod DeTilly helped make up his mind. He went over to the black plastic case, unlatched it, upended it over the couch. The contents spilled out. Packets and packets of new bills in the brilliantly hued abstract designs adopted in 1989.

  Mansfield stared at the spilled love. He actually licked his lips. The em was a natural thespian.

  “Take your lousy pictures,” he said hoarsely.

  They had a camera prepared, threaded with a reel of color Instaroid. They turned the lamps toward Mansfield, switched on the overhead light so he was brightly illuminated. Tod DeTilly photographed him taking a bundle from the hand of Dr. Wiley, counting a sheaf, stacking the packets of bills.

  “Fine, fine.” Wiley chuckled. “That should do nicely, Tod. Now just one more thing: Let’s take a look at the presents Dr. Flair has brought us.”

  We clustered around the table. The carton was unstrapped. I removed the lid, began taking out documents, tapes, reels of film, a box of slides, specimen jars, etc. As I emptied the box, I cautiously probed beneath. But the Electronics Team had done good service; the transmitter was below a false bottom. I tilted the carton to show Wiley it was empty.

  But he and the others were too busy to pay attention. They were eagerly, almost frantically shuffling through the mass of material. Each item bore a red label, restricted, and below, in small type, a warning that unauthorized viewing or disclosure was a capital offense.

  “Excellent,” Dr. Wiley crowed. “Excellent!”

  “That’s everything you wanted,” I said in a loud voice.

  Burton Klein was right: He knew his service.

  It seemed to me I had no sooner spoken than the room, the house, the entire world was bathed in a brilliant, white, almost phosphorescent light.

  “You are surrounded,” a thunderous voice boomed out. “You cannot escape. This is Division of Security, Department of Bliss.

  Open the door. Come out one at a time. Hands on top of your head. You are surrounded. You cannot escape. This is Division of Security, Department of Bliss. If you come out now, one at a time, hands on top of your head, you will. ...”

  The deep, resonant voice thundered on and on, never ending. That tremendous noise and the blinding light had the effect intended: We stood shocked. Trembling. Small, helpless animals shriveled by fear.

  Dr. Thomas J. Wiley recovered first. He realized at once what had happened.

  “You, Dr. Flair?” he shouted. “Your informed judgment?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He turned to the others, tried to smile, didn’t quite make it.

  “All of you,” he yelled, to make himself heard above the thundering voice from outside. “Do as they say. Do not re
sist. There is no hope. God help us all.”

  He went to the front door, unlocked it, swung it open. Then he put his hands atop his head and stepped through. Almost immediately the thundering voice ceased, cut off in mid-sentence. The glaring floodlights dimmed.

  I looked at Lydia Ferguson. Her head was bowed. She was blushing and would not glance at me.

  The behavior of the others was predictable: Alice Hammond, proud, feeling her gravid abdomen. The DeTilley brothers, furious and frustrated, about to follow Wiley out the door. Henry Hammond utterly destroyed, riven by terror.

  I looked through the open door. There was a circle of armored ems. Their pipe-barreled flechette guns were pointed at the house. I saw the burly figure of Burton Klein coming toward the steps. He pushed up his faceguard.

  “Move out,” he shouted. “Make it—”

  Then everything came apart.

  Klein had one foot on the lowest step.

  I heard three sharp cracks from inside the house. Next to me. Three rapid shots.

  Klein’s heavy face disintegrated into red pulp.

  He went down.

  The surrounding ems opened fire. Boom of flechette guns. Whiz of steel darts.

  Dr. Wiley was safe. Tod DeTilly was safe. Both stood, guarded, beyond the firing line.

  Vernon DeTilly was on the porch, hands on top of his head. The fusillade caught him, tore him apart.

  Then I was on the floor, head turned sideways. I could see Lydia Ferguson. She was on the floor, eyes closed.

  Alice Hammond was down too. Spouting blood from a hundred punctures. A sieve. Henry Hammond was behind the couch. I could not see Mansfield.

  I heard a high, cracked voice: “Stop firing! Stop firing! Stop firing!”

  Was that me?

  Silence.

  I raised my head slowly. An armored monster stood braced in the doorway. A black pipe pointed at me.

  “Flair,” I cried. “I’m Flair!”-

  “Who fired?” Art Roach demanded.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see.”

  “Where’s Mansfield?”

  “I don’t—”

  But then we heard the boom of a flechette gun, muted. From down near the river. X-0 Roach turned and ran. I climbed shakily to my feet. Armored ems came crowding through the door.

  It took almost two hours' to get it sorted out.

  Burton Klein was stopped. So was Vernon DeTilly. Alice Hammond was going. She aborted: a stopped ef fetus. But we had Wiley, Tod DeTilly, Lydia Ferguson, Henry Hammond.

  We photographed everything: the living prisoners, the corpora, the scattered love, the restricted material on the table. Roach confiscated the bag of bills. I made him sign a receipt. I repacked the DIVRAD carton, locked it in the trunk of my white sedan.

  Then I went to the river, sliding and slipping down the bank, grabbing at trees to keep from falling. An armored em was guarding the corpus of Leon Mansfield. He had been sliced in two. Literally. At short range, a flechette gun will do that.

  “He came through that tunnel,” the em said excitedly, pointing to the opening a few feet above us. “I waited for him to unlock the gate. He dropped to the beach. I told him to freeze, but he raised a pistol. So I blew him away.”

  “What kind of pistol?” “Rocket. Every slug carries its own power.”

  “I know.”

  “Good penetration at short range,” he said professorially. “Inaccurate at long. I guess he stopped Klein.”

  “I guess so.” I nodded. “You were stationed here? By this tunnel exit?”

  “Sure.”

  “Who ordered you?”

  “Klein did. He said there was an underground tunnel, and they might try to escape. I figured he was right because when he placed me here, we found a boat. Tied up right over there.”

  “A boat?” I said. “Birchbark canoe?”

  “What?” he said. “No, it was a little plastic runabout with an electric kicker. We took it away last night.”

  I turned to go back.

  “Hey, Dr. Flair,” he whispered.

  I stopped. He looked about furtively.

  “See what I found in the pocket of his raincoat,” he said.

  He showed me. Three. Genuine. Indian. Arrowheads.

  “You think I should turn them in?” he asked.

  “No, keep them,” I said. “They’re not important.”

  So I drove back to New York alone. No Leon Mansfield. No Burton Klein. I tried to think of nothing. I tried alpha. I tried self-hypnosis. Failure. So I gave myself over to it. Remembering. Computing. I did not, honestly, believe I could have foreseen from the input.

  Paul Bumford was waiting for me when I drove through the gates of the compound. I didn’t get out of the car. He came over to my window and bent down. His face was ashen.

  “Burton Klein was stopped?” he said.

  “Yes. And Leon Mansfield. And Alice Hammond. And Vernon DeTilly.”

  “My God,” he breathed. “Nick, what happened?”

  I tried to keep my voice as normal as I could:

  “Listen carefully, Paul,” I said. “I want you to go to the pad, requisition a copter, and go over to Ellis. There I want you to check passenger registers for the twenty-four hours preceding and following the stopping of Frank Lawson Harris. Only the hypersonic flights to and from San Francisco.”

  “Nick,” he said, “what am I looking for?” “Goddamn you!” I screamed at him. “Can’t you follow orders? Get moving!”

  He stumbled away, shocked, glancing back nervously over his shoulder.

  I tracked precisely then. I returned the sedan to the motor pool. I got a receipt for it. I returned the restricted material to the NDO’s (Night Duty Officers) of my Genetics, Chimerism, and Neurosurgery Teams. I got receipts. I returned the empty carton and concealed transmitter to the NDO of the Electronics Team. I got a receipt. I was functioning.

  Then I went back to my apartment. I took a hot shower, taped ribs and all, and pulled on a plastisilk robe. Butterflies in flight on a dark-green background. I mixed a large vodka-and-Smack. I turned out all the lights, settled down in the darkness.

  I was on my third drink, almost dozing, when the doorbell chimed. I rose, switched on lights. I opened the door.

  Paul stood there, trembling. I pulled him inside, locked the door behind him, handed him my drink. He drained it, just swallowed it down as fast as he could, then looked about wildly, gasping.

  “N-n-n,” he stammered.

  I got him over to the couch and seated. He bent far over, head down between his knees. That was encouraging; he was beginning to function. I went into the nest to get two phenothiazines from my cabinet. He popped the slugs dry without asking what they were.

  We sat quietly for a while.

  “When did you compute it?” he asked finally.

  “On the trip back.”

  “Do you want to know what I found? Or do you know?"

  ‘ ‘I can guess. I may not have the times exactly right. Angela flew to San Francisco the day before Harris was stopped. On the night he inhaled the fiddled Somnorific, she flew back. She was in New York for two or three hours. Maybe four. Then she turned around and went right back to California.”

  “Close enough.” He groaned. “Nick, what are we going to do?”

  “Do? We’re not going to do anything.”

  “You mean she’s going to get away with it?” *

  “Yes,” I said. “She is.” “But her name is on the passenger register!”

  “So? She came back because she forgot something. Or she had an important meeting with a pol or a supplier that night. Do you really want me to take those passenger lists to the Chief Director and claim they are proof that Angela Teresa Berri committed homicide?”

  “Then she did it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Herself?”

  “Had to be. Harris would let her into his apartment. Gladly. He was on her Headquarters Staff. She had probably used him before. So she
used him again—and left a present. The fiddled Somnorific.”

  “Then she went back for the container?”

  “Oh, no. She was in California by then. Mansfield picked it up. He could get by any lock. He had a talent for it.”

  “But why would he do it?”

  “For love. He had dreams.”

  “What about tonight? How did she fiddle that?”

  “Double, triple, quadruple-cross. At least. She promises Mansfield a lot of love to assassinate Klein. She tells him there’s an escape tunnel Klein doesn’t know about. Then, in her briefing of Klein, she tells him there’s an escape tunnel to the river, and he better guard it. Pretty?”

  “But you were scheduled to brief Klein and Mansfield. Until your mother got worse, and you went on a threeday. What if you had been here to brief them, and told them both about the tunnel, and warned Mansfield it would be guarded?”

  I shrugged.

  “She would have thought of some other way to stop them.” “I can understand her stopping Mansfield. After all, he knew she had stopped Harris. But why Klein?”

  “That’s sad.” I took a deep breath. “He wanted to drive back with me. Said, quote, ‘I’ve got to tell someone. I don’t know how to handle it. ’ Unquote. He probably had evidence that Angela is on the suck.”

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, Paul laughed. It might have been the phenothiazine.

  “But why us?” he asked finally. ‘ ‘ Why did she bring us into this whole thing?”

  “Paul”—I sighed—“you still don’t compute this ef. She doesn’t think the way we do. We see problems. She sees opportunities. That’s very political thinking. We must learn to think that way.”

  “Nick, I’m not tracking.”

  “Let’s imagine we’re Angela,” I said. “Here is her input of, say, a few months ago. One: She’s on the suck and learns that Burton Klein suspects it. Two: She realizes the Satrat is being fiddled. That’s serious; it’s her responsibility. Three—very essential this: She has a hyperactive desire for power. Political power. Up the PS ladder. Become Director of Bliss. Sooo. . . . She assigns Frank Harris to Pub-Op, Inc., to help uncover the Satrat rigging. He comes up with the name of Lydia Ferguson. Beautiful. To you and me—a problem. To Angela—an opportunity. But Harris isn’t moving fast enough. Maybe he has an operative reaction to the ef. It’s possible. I know. And Klein is getting closer. Now Angela has to consider a time factor. How much time has she got before Klein blows the whistle? Or someone in Washington starts wondering why the Satrat is so high while the terrorism rate is increasing?”