"How," Banion said suspiciously, "do you know all this? Scrubbs says it's all tightly compartmentalized so no one knows too much."
"I made it my business to get close to him."
"You
slept
with that old goat? Disgusting."
"Of course I didn't sleep with him. He's past that, even if he swallowed a whole bottle of Viagra. He just likes to have me around." She looked at him the way she used to. "I have that effect on people, you know."
"Yes," Banion said wistfully. "I remember that part."
TWENTY-ONE
Banion's closing argument was in its fourth day, and His Honor was not pleased. It was an unprecedentedly lengthy close. One commentator proposed that Banion was attempting to put everyone in the courtroom to sleep and then escape.
The nation was fascinated, if not exactly spellbound. He had quoted Catullus, Robespierre, John Lennon, Dickens, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Origen, Suetonius, Merle Haggard, Jefferson, Mencken, Balzac. Gibbon, Dante (three times), the Book of Job, Pliny the Elder, Montaigne, Diderot, Thomas More, Yogi Berra, Dean Acheson, William Dean Howells, and Hoagy Carmichael. He even, apparently unable to resist, quoted himself. "A new height of vanity, perhaps, but let me just read you what I wrote in my column eight years ago when . . ."
His Honor, who had begun scowling openly the second day, had clearly, to judge from his continuous scribbling, begun writing his memoirs. The prosecutor and his team were at pains to conceal their pleasure, for it was plain from the faces of the jurors that they were going to make Banion pay dearly for this last torment he was putting them through. Legal experts were unanimous in pronouncing Banion's filibusterlike performance, for all its occasional true eloquence, a tactical disaster. "It's as if he's saying to the jury: 'The only way you're going to shut me up is with a thousand volts.'"
"Now," said a visibly exhausted Banion, flipping through the multi-volume, 50,000-page trial transcript in front of him, "I would draw your attention to page thirty-six thousand, seven hundred seventy-eight, . . . where Rudolph Fribblemeyer. the
...
solid-fuel engineer. . .
admits
...
in his own words
...
that
...
if you subject fuel to extremes of. . . temperature . . . well, I believe it was Montesquieu, the eminent French philosopher, who said
. . . Ce n’
est que la verite qui blesse . . .
or possibly Rochefoucauld
Spectators began to give up their hard-won seats.
Then, shortly after three o'clock on the fourth - and, His Honor swore, final - day, the television networks interrupted the broadcast.
"I just don't understand," the new president said to the director of the National Reconnaissance Office* in the Oval Office, "why these pictures haven't surfaced until now. And who the hell in your shop leaked them. My God. these are KH-Eleven photos. They're supposed to be top-secret. Why are they on the front page of today's
Washington Post!"
The photos spread out on the president's desk showed an aerial view of the
Celeste
launch. Clearly visible, above the
Celeste,
was an object that looked like a flying saucer. Also visible was a thin beam of light emanating from it. aimed down toward
Celeste.
"Sir, at this point, we're not sure. All we know is that these are in fact Keyhole photos. You can see that from the identifiers there, down in the corner. At this point, we're looking at CIA. They're the ones who had requested Keyhole tracking of a Russian SSN submarine off Florida at the time of the launch, which would explain why Amethyst - that's the code name of this particular satellite - was positioned over Cape Canaveral at the time of the launch. Coincidence that would seem to indicate that this was CIAs photo session. As to why these photos
*
Government directorate tasked with coordinating aerial and satellite intelligence between agencies that hate each other and keep the juiciest parts for themselves.
surfaced now, we're not -I
assure you that we're in an evidence-gathering mode at the present time."
"You don't
know,
in other words." The president snorted. "Well, what do your people say? Is this thing" - he pointed at the flying saucer - "What the hell is it?"
"Sir, we're unable to make an evaluation at this time."
"Well, who
is
?"
The president turned to a general whose chest was a valorous rainbow of ribbons. "What do your people say about it? Was there a radar track?"
"No sir. Nothing at all."
The president studied the photos on the gleaming surface of his desk, once used by President Kennedy. "It
looks
like one. What's this beam coming out of it"
"We don't know, sir."
"Your budget's twenty-seven billio
n dollars a year, and you don't
know?"
"It would be consistent with a high-energy beam, such as a laser. But that's only speculation."
'All right. Everyone out." The president looked at his attorney general, who had been sitting on the sofa, studying one of the photos while puffing on an unlit pipe.
"You
stay."
When the admirals and generals and others had left, the president grumbled, "Experts! Couldn't even tell me Brazil was about to set off a nuclear blast. Now this." He sat down on the sofa. 'All right, what do we do?"
"I don't know what to make of it. It does
look
like a UFO, I have to say, even though I don't believe in UFOs. And, according to NASA, this beam or whatever is aimed at the area of the booster where the self-destruct mechanism was housed."
The president said, "There's got to be some explanation."
"I'd love to hear it."
"Point is, where do we go from here?"
"Your call."
"My call? You're the AG."
The two men stared at each other. The president flicked on the television set. It filled with pictures of swelling crowds outside the jail where Banion was being held. There had been a shift in tone among the banners:
banion savior of humanity! free banion! banion scapegoat!
The attorney general said, "FBI says the Millennium Man people are gearing up for another march."
"Oh
G
od,
not again. Where to this time?"
"White House."
EPILOGUE
The house was a vacation home on the Shenandoah River, a few hours west of Washington, that Renira had rented under another name, to throw off the media. Banion and Scrubbs had done little the last two days other than stuff themselves with non
-
federal prison food and drink pricey French wine.
Around them, scattered like masticated hamster bedding material, newspapers were piled and strewn. One headline read:
BANION FREED AS U.S. DISMISSES CHARGES
WHITE HOUSE VOWS TO CONTINUE INVESTIGATION INTO SAUCER PHOTO
It was dusk. They were sitting on the wooden deck with a clear view of the sky, working on a second bottle of Chateau Latour '82, a celebratory gift from Barrett Prettyman. Jupiter, Venus, and Mars blazed brightly against the crepuscular blue. Hundreds of miles above, a satellite blinked placidly as it made its transit.
"One of yours?" Banion asked. He was half in the bag, and well past caring about the provenance of any blinking lights other than the ones inside his own brain, and, for that matter, he didn't much care about those.
Scrubbs, also feeling no pain, belched.
A rising smallmouth bass pimpled the flat surface of the river. They heard the sound of heels on the wooden deck behind them. "Hello, boys."
Her hair was back to blond, and she was back to dressing sharp. She walked over to the rail and looked up at the stars. "Beautiful evening."
"Where have you been?" Banion asked.
"Had a few details to attend to. Mentallius wanted to have a goodbye lunch."
'After your telling him you had him on tapes implicating himself as the head of MJ-Twelve and were going to mail them to the Justice Department and the media? He still wanted to have lunch?"
"He's an old sweetie at heart."
Banion grunted. "'Old sweetie.' Fucker tried to send my ass to the electric chair."
"You talk differently than you used to, Princeton boy," Roz said. "That's because I've been hanging out with Harvard types. Prison's full of them." He sighed. "What the hell took you so long?" "You might show a little appreciation." "I'll send you a thank-you note."
"Hey - I had to get him on tape, present him with the situation, then fix it with our people to come up with a satellite photo, and get it into the system so it would look like an accidental U.S. intelligence picture. What did you expect? This isn't like ordering take-out pizza."
"You might have told me I was going to have to stall for four days. I thought the judge was going to have the bailiffs strangle me."
Roz said to Scrubbs, "We're history, as of sixteen hundred hours. Majestic is shut down. The message went out to all divisions: 'Mission Complete. All operations terminated immediately. Signed MJ-One.'"
"End of an era," Scrubbs said.
"I actually got kind of choked up," Roz said.
"Spare
me." Banion said. They watched the stars.
"Has it occurred to either of you," Banion asked, "that none of us has a life left?"
"Two days ago," Scrubbs said, "I was wondering if
I
was going to make it through the day without someone shanking me for my morning donut. This is life."
"Doesn't take much to make you happy." Banion snorted. "What are you going to do when the 'eighty-two Bordeaux runs out?"
"Thought I'd take another crack at applying to the CIA. Bet they'd take me now."
"What harm could it possibly do?"
"What are you going to do with your three million followers?" Roz asked. "They think you're God. Not that those of us who know you agree."
Banion looked thoughtfully into his wine. "Yes, an awesome responsibility. Look what happened after I called Jasper Jamm an asshole on
Nightline."
"What's the latest?"
"He's still in hiding in the hills, with his rifle. Barrett had a cell phone call from him this afternoon, offering to cancel the three point whatever million dollars I owe him if I'll issue a public statement instructing the Millennium Marchers that he should be allowed to live."
"That's a tough call." Roz smiled. "Don't know what I'd do, if it was me. What are you going to do?"
"1
thought of adding on punitive charges, for pain and suffering. I suppose I should be magnanimous in victory, but
1
must say I'm tempted to let them tear him limb from limb. It's not a problem I've had up to now, figuring out what to do with three million adoring followers that I don't want anymore."
"There's a rock band called 10,000 Maniacs." Scrubbs said. "You could start one called Three Million Lunatics."
"I was thinking of telling them that I've received new instructions from our friends up there."
"No," Roz said.
"Please."
"That our time is not yet at hand, and that they should go home and not say another
word
about UFO's, to anyone, until they receive further instructions, directly from me. That way, if 1 need them . . . well, you never know when you might need three million devoted followers. Good to know they're there, just in case."
Roz stood. "Well, take care, boys. Don't go starting any new religions without checking with me first."
Her heels left a faint echo on the wooden planks.
Banion caught up with her as she was getting into the car. "Where you headed?"
"Thought I'd spend the night at Swann's Way. Remember, where we stayed that night, on our first date? It's not far from here. Food's good."
"I'll drive you there."
"I can manage," Roz said.
"These are lonely roads at night. There have been reports of alien activity in the area. You might get abducted, and subjected to strange sexual practices. You know,
probing."
He could make out a dimple in the light of the opened door.
"In that case" - Roz laughed - "maybe you better come along."