“You sound like a press release.”
“Just trying to channel your thinking in the right direction. You are a heroine. Lots of Americans work their way up from nothing—you worked your way up from minus one thousand. You built an important business and did great American things, all the while looking over your shoulder for the KGB.
“And something else, the most important thing from my point of view. You will tell them about the Cronus Project. I’ll back you up with all the documentation we’ve got.”
“How much have you got?” Impossible. It was ridiculously impossible. But there was something about this young man that made you forget you had already reached decisions other than the ones he wanted you to make.
“A decent amount. Enough to make somebody with an open mind think. Enough to make most of the op-ed regulars at certain non-Hudson Group newspapers purple in the face trying to deny it. You’ll hold press conferences. You’ll testify before Congress. You are a very persuasive woman, and it will only help that you’ll be telling the truth. The idea is to let people know, the way you know, what we’re up against. You’ll make them look bad.”
“And what about when someone asks me about letting innocent people die because I didn’t do anything about it? How will that make me look?”
Trotter raised his eyebrows. “Look, Mrs. Hudson, I know you’ve been through a lot here, but you don’t want to lose your journalistic instincts entirely. They won’t ask you.”
“They won’t? Why not?”
“Because Borzov has outsmarted himself, him and his ace assassin. All those deaths were accidents or suicides. All anybody has to do is check the police reports. Sadness over the deaths, and the realization that nobody’s children were safe, even without the KGB in the picture, has given you the courage to make your confession, but implications of anything else are cruel to all concerned.”
Petra Hudson was surprised to hear herself laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Trotter demanded.
“You said it would be easier because I would be telling the truth.”
“You’ll be telling the truth about everything important. The situation you were in, the fear for your children. You’ll be telling the truth about Cronus.”
“If I go along with this—”
“Go along with this? This is Christmas morning for you, Mrs. Hudson.”
“Perhaps I’m ungrateful. It is a better offer than I’ve had from Moscow, and I suspect I have as little choice in the matter. Very well, when I go along with this, of course I’ll tell the truth about Cronus. How I was mad to agree to it; how a man, or a woman without a child, can never know the sheer inhumanity of it. But with everything involved here, why is the exposure of Cronus in particular of so much importance to you?”
He showed her a twisted grin. “If I ever own a newspaper, maybe I’ll go public, too.”
PART SEVEN
Chapter One
SO HERE I AM again, Regina thought. Sitting in Mother’s chair, at Mother’s desk. Where she had been when Cronus had come into her life, bringing in its wake the trip to Washington, and Mr. Allan Trotter, and the KGB, and the bottom of the Kirk River, and a killer called Azrael who left no traces.
And the truth about Mother. Almost a full day later, and Regina still couldn’t formulate a coherent thought about it. Mother wasn’t Mother—well, she was, but she was more—and what that “more” was was a lie—but she’s still the woman who tucked me in at night and taught me ...
The thoughts went round and round, going nowhere, ending only in shudders or tears.
She looked at the beige phone on the desk as though it were a reptile that could bite her. Since she touched it last time, she’d been scrambling desperately for footing on the glare-ice surface of the Cold War. With, she decided, a pronounced lack of success. She kept getting these little shoves. The death of her brother’s fiancée and Mr. Charles. The fact that her own existence was the result of a Russian plot. Falling for Allan Trotter.
Damn him, anyway. Who the hell did he think he was? She thought about that for a second and decided she didn’t care to know the answer. It was more relevant to ask, what the hell was he up to?
Because this was his doing, her being here today. He’d choreographed the whole business, though the public would never hear his name in connection with it. He’d somehow gotten Mother to put herself on display; he’d told Jimmy the news when he’d come home, speaking gently, like a big brother. Nothing like the macho professional act he’d put on for her, slapping her with words after the worst shock she’d ever gotten in her life.
Not that it had done any good. Jimmy had dissolved into instant hysterics, directed at Trotter. He hadn’t made a lot of sense, but Regina had gotten the idea that Jimmy hated Trotter for trying to get him to believe that Hannah, one of the two most wonderful women in the world, was dead because of the actions of his mother, the other one.
Regina, who had been escorted (dragged) from her room by Albright, just so she could be there for the show, envied her brother’s strategy. He latched on to one small part of what they were trying to tell him, refused to believe it, and never even let on he’d heard anything else. Of course, he hadn’t had the disadvantage of hearing it from Mother’s own mouth during a time she had no conceivable reason to be lying.
And that, she thought suddenly, was undoubtedly the reason he’d set. things up that way. So she’d have no choice but to believe it. He’d let Jimmy fool himself, the bastard, but she had to take it right between the eyes. She almost wished Jimmy had killed Trotter when he went for him. He had certainly wanted to, and he ran at the young man from Washington with such rage, Regina had screamed in spite of herself.
And once again, she felt like a fool. Because she should have known that her brother had as much chance against someone like Allan Trotter as he would against a flamethrower. Even less. Because Trotter ducked one fist, and took hold of Jimmy in such a way that he was as helpless as a quadriplegic. Trotter had just held him there until Jimmy had cried all the violence out of himself and collapsed. They got a doctor in for him, then put him to bed.
Jimmy was still in bed, but he was here now, in the family suite on top of Hudson Group headquarters. Mr. Trotter had decided (or had planned all along) to move everyone here for “the duration.” Safer, he said.
Regina had made the mistake of asking him for the duration of what.
He smiled at her and worked whatever sneaky spell it was he had over her, and the next thing she knew, she was sitting at this desk.
This time, she wasn’t just watching the phone. (She looked at it again—it sat there silent and treacherous.) She was, for the next few days at least, the Publisher of Worldwatch magazine. The place was in a quiet frenzy—the magazine was being remade, but only a handful of people knew exactly into what. For instance, Regina had told the Art Department that her mother’s picture would be on the cover, but not why. Makeup was junking articles left and right, making a sixteen-page hole to be filled at the last minute. The special edition of the magazine went to bed tonight, hit the printing plant tomorrow afternoon. What Regina had found herself in charge of was doing almost a whole new issue in one day, an issue that would make the scrutiny she’d received as the daughter of a mere rich and powerful woman seem like indifference by comparison. Trust Allan to put her on a spot like this.
This kind of madness had happened before—disasters, assassination attempts, things like that. The difference was that at those times, everybody knew what the urgency was about. This time they could only guess, wondering at the same time why the place was lousy with polite and helpful, but absolutely taciturn, FBI agents.
The people at Worldwatch were experienced and better than competent. They were getting the job done, but there were still a million decisions the Acting Publisher had to make. The intercom (not the telephone, thank God) had gotten so much use, it was hot to the touch. It was only quiet now because Regina had asked for a moratorium. She had to concentrat
e, she said, on writing the Letter from the Publisher. And what the hell was she supposed to say? Regina thought of changing her name and running away.
And while she couldn’t formulate a comprehensible opinion about her mother, she knew for certain she didn’t envy her at this moment. Petra Hudson had spent hours past, and would spend hours more, spilling her insides for selected employees. The reporters, writers, and researchers were told to treat this like any other story; to scoop up the woman’s guts and serve them up still steaming on the pages of her own creation.
It was all happening too fast. She needed to talk to somebody, but when she tried to think of someone she could talk to, the only one she came up with was Allan. And to hell with him.
All she could do was lose herself in the work. God knew there was enough of it. She cranked a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter. Maybe she’d take a page from Mother’s book and spill her own guts, tell the world how she was feeling.
She took a deep breath and hit the keys. What the hell, she thought as she felt a smile twist her lips. At least we’re going to sell a lot of magazines.
Chapter Two
ELIZABETH JUNE PILUSKI BEGAN to cry when the Reverend Mr. Will Nelson poured the water on her head. Tina Bloyd shushed her gently and stroked the baby’s golden fuzz with one finger of the brown hand that supported her head. Elizabeth June stopped in mid-bleat and started to coo.
Mr. Nelson was saying prayers, and Tina was answering on the baby’s behalf, and grandparents and friends were standing around being proud.
Joe Albright was as proud as any of them. After all her doubts, Tina was terrific. She was a natural with babies. She even seemed happy. Things had been so busy, Joe had been afraid he wouldn’t be able to get away from the Hudson Group in time to keep his promise to be at Tina’s side. Ordinarily, Joe could get so wrapped up in his work, he could forget private-life promises he’d made to anybody. There was, for instance, a famous birthday his mother would never let him hear the end of. But something in him was extremely resistant to the idea of breaking his promise to Tina, and he was glad when Rines and Trotter had let him out of there in time.
Trotter, in fact, had done more than let him go—he had come with him. He was here now, sitting in the back of the church, though God alone knew what he was waiting for. Somehow, Joe doubted he was praying.
It might be, Joe thought, that Trotter was having woman troubles of his own. Rines had told him how Trotter had dressed Regina Hudson down last night; Joe had heard her sobs for himself while he was guarding her room.
Joe had had his suspicions about this one from the beginning. Meeting Miss Hudson yesterday had clinched it. These two were strips of Velcro—get them anywhere near each other and they’d get tangled together so tight it would take a real effort to pull them apart. That they were apart at all came from fear. She was scared shitless of him (for which Joe couldn’t entirely blame her), and he was scared to death he was losing his edge, going soft in some kind of extremely youthful old age.
Joe was sorry for the girl—Trotter was a lot of things, but Joe doubted he’d be much good at spreading happiness—but it was interesting to see Trotter going through this. It proved that he was at least a little bit human.
Joe was a lot more human. Now that (in Trotter’s words) the masks were off, he had been scared about how Tina would react when she found out the Salvage/Reclamation business was not his true calling. He’d told her this morning when he’d come to pick her up.
“The FBI?” she had said. “No kidding?”
He showed her his credentials.
Tina had packed a lot of living into the last few years, and it was easy to forget she wasn’t too far out of her teens. That she’d get bowled over by something like this.
“The FBI,” she said, “wow. I knew you weren’t any junk man.”
It was better than the hostility he’d been expecting, but Joe felt obliged to defend his former work. “Salvage/Reclamation,” he told her. “It’s honest work.”
“Of course it is. I just—you always seemed to me like somebody who’d do something important. What are you—no, I can’t ask you what you’re working on.”
No, Joe thought, you most certainly cannot. Masks might have been off (although he doubted that Trotter’s own mask ever came off, unless he had layers of them, an onion-head of masks that got you no closer to the real him no matter how deep you cut into him), but they weren’t revealing everything. Now that he was more than just an FBI man, it was okay to tell her he was an FBI man. It was definitely not okay to let her know what they’d made him now. He didn’t know the words for it, anyway.
He didn’t want to lie to her. Instead, he told her a misleading truth. “I usually work drug cases.”
“I knew it was important. I suppose when you’re done here, you’ll go back to wherever ...”
“Portland. Oregon, not Maine.” He smiled with delight as he saw the sadness on her face. “But I doubt I’ll be going back there. I think I’m about to be transferred East.” Probably Washington. Now that he knew so much about this goddam Agency, he was sure Rines would keep him close. “I’m a licensed pilot,” he went on. “I’ll be able to get up here whenever I’ve got time off. If you want to see me, that is.”
“Joe,” she said. “You’re smart, but you’re dumb.”
“How’s that?”
“Of course I want to see you. You saved my life. You and Mr. Nelson. When my baby died, I was ready to give up, kill myself, or go back to what I was, which would only be killing myself slowly. Mr. Nelson kept me keeping on long enough for you to show up.”
He started to say something, but she cut him off. “Let me go on, Joe. I’m not putting pressure on you. I’m not dumping responsibility for the whole rest of my life on you. But whatever happens from now on, you came along at the worst time of a not very good life and made me happy. And now that I know that’s possible, I’ll never get so far down again.”
“I’ve been making me happy too,” he told her. He looked at his watch. “Hey, we’d better go get that baby baptized.”
Now the baby was baptized; Mr. Nelson said something about everlasting life, and a bunch of people said amen, and it was over. There were smiles all around, and the mother insisted Tina carry the baby from the church. Good luck or something.
Joe followed, still happy, still proud. Then he saw Trotter, in the last pew. Joe’s first reaction was irritation. What is he still here for, are we Siamese twins, or what? Then he got a good look at Trotter’s face.
It struck Joe that he may have been wrong before. This could be what Trotter looked like under the last mask. It was not pleasant to see. Trotter had the staring eyes and slack jaw of a man who has slipped with a saw and is now looking at pieces of his body on the ground.
He was going to say something, but Trotter pulled himself together enough to give Joe an angry look and shake his head no.
All right, Joe thought. Be that way. He caught up with the woman he loved and her goddaughter and helped them down the steps of the Northside Church.
Chapter Three
TROTTER WAS A MONSTER, conceived in cold blood and dedicated to cold war. He accepted it; he didn’t like it. He knew it was part of what made his father value his services so highly. The Cronus Project, for instance. The idea of recruiting a woman to bear and raise a child as a pawn to be sacrificed was so monstrous, no one but a monster could have figured it out. The fact that he was not alone, that the people who came up with the plan and those who carried it out were monsters, too, was not a comfort.
But if Cronus had been bad, what he’d been thinking of since he’d seen the water hit the brow of Elizabeth June Piluski was a nightmare. After all he’d seen in his life he still had trouble bringing himself to believe it. All but two of them. He could be sure of all but two. Louis Symczyk was uncheckable, but possible. The police reports Trotter had been getting clandestinely had included photographs showing a sink in the garage. But the other one, the baby ...
Trotter crashed the christening party. It was easy enough—people were coming and going all the time, all he had to do was walk through the door with a smile on his face. He didn’t know how he was going to find out what he wanted to know without causing mass hysteria, or even if he needed to know so badly he didn’t care what happened. He just knew he needed that fact. Not for proof. It wouldn’t prove anything. Trotter just wanted something to confirm him in his belief of something he hated believing in.
A man with his tie loose and his shirt sleeves rolled up stood behind a makeshift bar and insisted Trotter have a drink. Trotter took it, got out of the man’s sight, and put it down. He walked around from room to room, smiling, agreeing that the baby, at whom he had yet to get a good look, was the cutest little thing in the world—and looking for Joe Albright.
Or Tina Bloyd. Trotter did not want to spring this on Tina without Joe’s being there, but he had a strong suspicion he’d do it anyway, if he got the chance.
He didn’t have to worry. He was making a second circuit of the ground floor when he saw Albright coming down the stairs. Joe did not look as happy as a man who’d been given a day off in the middle of an important operation usually did.
Trotter caught him at the bottom of the stairs. “What’s the matter, Joe?”
Albright looked at him with equal proportions of irritation and surprise. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Confirmation,” Trotter said.
Albright smiled in spite of himself. “You mean baptism.”
“That too. What say we take a walk?”
“Okay, but not too far. Or if you’re really dragging me off, I’d better tell Tina.”
“A short walk will do it.” They went back out into the early-afternoon chill.
“Which way?” Albright asked.
“Toward the school. At least we’ll have the wind at our backs.”
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