Roz started to answer.
"No," Banion interrupted. "Let me figure this out for myself. To manipulate public opinion with respect to UFO's. Gain the readers' confidence, steer them in this or that direction, as the situation requires. It's all about
management,
isn't it?"
"I'm not in a position to talk about it."
"I go down to a UFO conference. And what do you know - there you are. Looking quite the dish. Boy meets girl. And what's the first thing the girl does? Discredits the Russians. Of course."
"Those Russians are frauds."
"'Oh, Mr. Banion, I'm so thrilled to meet you! I can't wait to be abducted myself.'
What a crock."
"I was doing my job."
"Oh, well, fine, never mind. Next thing - surprise! - you show up in Washington after Bitsey and I split, and nature almost takes its course, except that your contract doesn't call for you to sleep with me. But 1 respect that much. Then tonight. Tonight it started to get more interesting. Did they change your orders? Tell me one thing - what escort service did they recruit you from?"
Roz looked at him with wet, angry eyes. "That wasn't part of the assignment."
"I'm flattered."
She went upstairs. A door slammed loudly.
"If there's any storming off to be done," he yelled up at her, "it's going to be done by
me.
This is my house, and I
will storm out of it."
So for the second time
in almost as many months, John O
. Banion stormed out of a house in Georgetown into the night.
He marched down the street and spent a fitful, sleepless night at the Four Seasons Hotel.
When he returned the next morning, she was gone. On the pillow was a note.
Too late for a lecture about poking around in the garbage, but you really do have it wrong. And last night wasn't part of the assignment. Sony it turned out
this way. I really was looking f
orward to dessert.
Love, still R
THIRTEEN
Scrubbs's interest in hanging drywall was rapidly approaching endgame.
When Bradley's back was turned, he ducked out early for his morning coffee break to hazard a phone call to the office. He walked to the nearest Metro station, took the subway halfway across town, and from a pay phone three blocks from the station dialed the number, his only connection to his former life.
"Creative Solutions," came the cheery female voice, "how may 1 direct your call?"
"It's Scrubbs."
"Stand by, please."
A male voice came on, the same one he'd spoken with before, Mr. Majestic. "Nathan?"
"You double-crossing rat bastard." 'Are you all right? We've been worried."
"Don't give me that. And don't bother sending more of your goons. I'm going to hang up in one minute. I just want to tell you that you're a piece of -"
"Calm down. Take a deep breath."
"You tried to kill me!"
"Negative, negative. That was not us."
"Bull!
'
"No. Believe me. Dark forces are at work here. Things are not what they seem."
"You've got forty-five seconds."
"We've been compromised. Another element has become involved." "Speak English."
"Another agency of government, also not chartered by the founding fathers, has become involved. They monitored our phone conversation. They got their people to the island before ours. That was their man you blew up, not ours. By the way, they're very upset with you for doing that."
"They're
upset? They tried to kill me."
"Write a letter to your congressman. Meanwhile, they're looking for you, and they're looking hard. And they think you're still working for us, so now we're in the middle of a shooting war with them. All because of your Banion stunt. It's like a mafia feud. It's embarrassing. We're supposed to be above that. We're the government. Do you have any idea how this could impact our budget request next fiscal year?"
"Screw your budget. I'm out on the street."
"Exactly why we have to bring you in. Stay by that pay phone. I'll have a bagger team there in ten minutes."
"Negative.
I'm hanging up in fifteen seconds. Mail me some money and a passport. You'll never hear from me again. I promise."
"It doesn't work that way, Nathan. We have to bring you in, for your safety, and ours. If this other group gets to you
...
I don't even want to think about it, and you don't either. These are not nice people."
"Stop being mysterious. Who are they?"
"I can't get into that, not over the phone. The situation is very volatile."
"I'm hanging up. Maybe I'll call again, maybe I won't." "Don't -"
Scrubbs hung up.
He rolled his work bandanna down over his forehead, adjusted his dark glasses, looked over his shoulder, and caught the subway back to the job site.
On the train, in a funk, he processed this new information, trying to decide what other government agency could be after him. Or was this a trick on Mr. Majestic's part, to get him to come in, so that they could silence him once and for all? If he was telling the truth and two highly covert government agencies were shooting it out like New York City mob families breaking each other's legs over who got the garbage hauling contracts for the Bronx, with Scrubbs in the middle
...
Oh man, what a mess. The sooner he was out of Washington, the better. But they'd be watching airports, the train station, the bus station. And Bradley wasn't about to hand over the keys to his car.
The woman next to him was reading the paper. He hadn't seen one in days. His eyes strayed to it. There was a photo of Banion standing in front of a bank of microphones.
BANION ALLEGES "SABOTAGE" OF TV SHOW
"Do you
mind!"
the woman said.
"Sorry." Why do people mind your reading over their shoulders? Are you stealing the ink?
He got off the train at his stop and bought his own copy of the
Post.
He read:
UFO talk show host John O
. Banion charged today that the U.S. government "sabotaged" his live TV broadcast last Saturday using a top-secret military satellite, jammed the normal transmission, and substituted pornographic images as part of an effort to discredit him and prevent him from announcing a UFO protest march on Washington.
The article ended with a spokesman from the Pentagon refusing to comment on the existence of a satellite designated
Thruster Six
while emphatically denying that it would ever be used to broadcast dirty movies.
Scrubbs scratched his head. Millennium Man March? Accusing the government of trying to discredit him? The man was like a dog with a bone. He wouldn't let go. As for the government trying to discredit him - if only he knew. They must be freaked out about this march to pull a stunt like jamming him with space porn. He reread the paragraph that quoted some of the more memorable lines of dialogue from the movie:
"Houston, we have an erection!"
Who had done this to Banion? MJ-12? Or this other agency Mr. Majestic was talking about?
He thought, It was smart of Banion to go public with this. Now they can't just make him disappear. The newspaper article said that the Pentagon was being "deluged" with phone calls from outraged UFO believers protesting the government's treatment of him. This thing was not going to go away. And that didn't bode well for Scrubbs. Ultimately this was all his fault, a point sure not to be lost on them. A transfer to a desert facility was probably not what they had in mind for him now. And yet, despite his intimations of doom, he couldn't help but cheer Banion on.
Go for it, pal. Give those bastards hell!
"Where
have you been?" Bradley said. "Coffee break is ten minutes. You been gone an
hour."
"Hadda check in with the people trying to kill me."
"And?"
Scrubbs picked up a trowel, plunged it into a bucket of joint compound, and started smoothing. "They're still trying."
The president of the
United States clicked off the TV
set in the Oval Office. No one said anything. It was, to be sure, an unusual situation. There were no precedents. Finally the president said, "Is he drinking?"
The chief of staff said, "My information is, no."
"He looked sober to me," the press secretary said.
"It's got to be a psychological breakdown of some kind," the chief of staff said. "Delusional paranoia. Burt Galilee says they tried an intervention on him, even had a shrink standing by to take him off to someplace, and he bolted. You almost feel sorry for him."
"I wouldn't go that far."
"How many calls did the Pentagon get from these people?" the president asked. "Thousands." "White House?" "Thousands." "E-mail?"
"Hundreds of thousands. They believe him."
"So what?" the press secretary said. "These people are nuts. They'll believe anything."
'And there's nothing to this satellite business he's talking about?" the president said. "You checked?"
"Spoke with General Tunklebunker personally.
Thruster Six
is highly, highly classified. He didn't even like saying its name out loud."
"These military guys." The press secretary snorted. This drew a sharp look from the president, himself a former military guy.
The chief of staff continued, "The general said he would prefer it if the president did not speak publicly about
Thruster Six.
But he did emphatically deny that it's bei
ng used to show porn movies. He
almost laughed at the idea, except that I don't think the general is a laughing type."
"So Banion is just plain crazy?" the president said.
"Certifiable."
"Is it some manic-depressive thing?"
"I'm not a psychiatrist. If you'd like, I can have someone from Bethesda Naval give us an opinion on that."
"No, no, no. Thank God he's not moderating the debates. Can you
imagine!"
"I'm glad I was able to get that stopped," the press secretary said. "I thought the League of Gay Voters stopped it." "Well, I did talk to -"
"Okay," the chief of staff said, "we really need to decide how we want to handle the
Celeste
launch."
"Flickery's been hitting us hard on it," the campaign manager said. He read from notes. '"Horrendous cost overruns'... 'shameless opportunism' . . . 'debasing the entire space program' . . . 'using billions of taxpayer dollars for cheap political - "'
"1 saw his comments," the president said.
"He's backing us into a corner. If we don't attend the launch, it looks like he scared us off. If we do attend, we look like we orchestrated the whole thing for a photo op one week before the election. I'm lying awake at night waiting for some unnamed source within NASA to be quoted saying, 'We moved up the launch date to accommodate the White House.'"
"That won't happen," the chief of staff said. Just that morning he had had a very discreet heart-to-heart with Hedgepath, chief administrator of NASA, on this very subject: If anyone in your shop tells the press that the White House asked you to move up the launch date, you will find yourself on the street, designing balsa wood gliders.
The president puffed out his cheeks in thought. "Maybe we should give the launch a pass. It's the last week of the campaign. It's a busy time for someone running for president. The people understand."
"Disagree," the campaign manager said. "Strongly. No one is so busy that they don't have time to attend the 'crowning moment of the millennium.' You did call it that. You have to be there."
"Millennium. I'm sick of that word. It's a year with zeros in it. What's the big deal?"
"There were those," the chief of staff said, "who didn't think we should make a big deal out of it."
"Let's move forward." The president said this whenever the chief of staff subtly pointed out that the president had. in fact, created the present predicament.
The campaign manager said, "There are practical considerations. Hambro's people say if you don't go, it will look like you're insulting Florida."
"Oh for God's sake."
"We're seven points down in Florida. Do you want to risk twenty-five electoral votes?"
"What if I have to be somewhere else that day?" "Kissing pigs in Illinois?"
The president's eyes narrowed. "I'm sure my handlers could find something better for me to do."
"I see Sid's point," the chief of staff interjected. "Even if you're addressing the UN General Assembly on world peace, it's still small potatoes next to being there when they're launching the final stage of the space station that's supposed to usher in the new -1 know, I know - millennium."
'All right," the president said, "we'll do the launch."