Plague

He bent down and put his eye to the peep-hole, but whoever was out there must have had his hand across it. Herbert called, 'I can't let you in until I see who you are!'

The hand was removed. Herbert squinted out, and saw a stocky, well-groomed man in a respectable gray mohair suit.

'Well,' said Herbert. 'What do you want?'

The well-groomed man gave a smile. A radiant, politician's smile. 'My name's Jack Gross,' he said. 'I was wondering if you could spare me a few minutes of your time, Mr. Gaines.'

'Do I know you?' asked Herbert irritably. Shouting always made him hoarse, and there was still enough of the actor left in him to worry about protecting his voice.

'You should do. Do you read Time magazine?'

'Sure, for the showbiz section.'

'Well, if you have last week's edition, you'll see something about me in the politics section. Go and look. I can wait.'

Herbert sighed again. 'Look here, Mr — '

'Gross, Jack Gross.'

'This is very early for me, Mr. Gross. At this time of the morning, I am still rescuing myself from the little death. Even if you are who you say you are, I can't help feeling that a few minutes of my time would be a ridiculous waste of yours.'

Jack Gross, seen through the peep-hole in the door, smiled his radiant smile again. 'I'm sure it won't be, Mr. Gaines. All I want to do is make you an interesting offer.'

Herbert Gaines stood up, away from the peep-hole, and rubbed his eyes: Until noon, and until he'd ingested a pint of cold vegetable juice and a large plain gin, his brain never seemed to function at all. But he supposed it was going to be easier to invite this grinning Mr. Gross inside, than go through the complicated hassle of getting him to go away.

'Mr. Gaines?' persisted Mr. Gross.

'Very well,' said Herbert, and opened the security locks. He turned away from the door, haughtily winding himself in his long black kimono, as Jack Gross stepped inside.

Jack Gross respectfully removed his hat, and peered into the stale, unventilated gloom. 'I've never been in Concorde Tower before. Quite a place you have here.'

'It's adequate,' said Herbert. 'I trust you don't mind if I finish preparing my breakfast.'

'Not at all,' said Jack Gross, affably. 'You just go right ahead.'

Herbert Gaines shuffled back into the kitchen and picked up his slicing knife. Jack Gross followed him, peeping as discreetly as he could into bedrooms and down corridors.

Herbert sliced vegetables while Jack Gross perched himself on a kitchen stool, balanced his hat on his knee, and started to talk. Gross spoke directly and fast, but his eyes flickered around the room as he talked, taking in the authentic antiques, the genuine butcher's table and the expensive built-in ovens and ranges. Even the view through the kitchen window, a misty panorama of Gabriels Park and downtown Manhattan, was worth more money than most people ever accumulated in their whole lives.

'Mr. Gaines,' he said, in his brusque, cheerful voice, 'you're still something of a hero to most people.'

Herbert looked at him balefully. 'Do you think I don't know that? Down in Atlanta, people still stand up in the movies and cheer at Captain Dashfoot. A thirty-year-old picture, and they cheer.'

Jack Gross kept smiling. 'We know that. That's why I've come around to see you this morning.'

'Well, fire away, Mr. Gross. I may look as if I'm fixing breakfast, but I assure you that I'm agog.'

Jack Gross said, 'Thank you.' Then he fixed his smile into a serious, sincere expression and continued, 'It's a question of public sympathy, if you see what I mean.'

'No. Spell it out for me.'

'Well, it's like this. A politician and an actor have got more in common that most people would like to think. Look at Ronald Reagan. Look at Shirley Temple Black. They didn't have to go through the hard graft of building themselves a sympathetic image in the public eye because they had it already, through movies. All they had to do was convince the public that they were serious, identify themselves with a clear-cut political line, and they were made.'

Herbert Gaines dropped peppers, tomatoes, celeriac and sliced apple into his blender. 'Are you trying to suggest something, Mr. Gross?'

Jack Gross smiled warmly. 'My people are, Mr. Gaines.'

'And who, exactly, are your people?'

Jack Gross looked almost embarrassed. 'Well, Mr. Gaines, let's say that my people are political realists. They come mainly from the staunch right wing of the Republican party, and also from industry and finance. They're not, though, what you'd call the old guard. I guess the easiest way of describing us would be to say that we are the young, committed right.'

Herbert Gaines raised an eyebrow. 'How right?' he asked. 'Right of Ford?'

'Certainly.'

'In other words,' Herbert said, 'you're the Green Berets of the Grand Old Party?'

Jack Gross grinned. 'You could say that, Mr. Gaines. That's a nice turn of phrase.'

Herbert Gaines left his blender and moved closer to Jack Gross.

'Mr. Gross,' he said steadily, 'I've been a Republican all my voting life. I used to go around with pals of Duke Wayne, and I've come out now and again and said my piece about pinko thinking and moral standards. I have letters of admiration from the Daughters of the American Revolution, and I contribute to veterans' charities and several other conservative causes.'

Jack Gross didn't flinch. 'We know all that, Mr. Gaines. We have a dossier.'

Herbert Gaines stood straight, and nodded. 'I'm sure you do, Mr. Gross. But there is one thing that your dossier obviously omits to mention.'

'What's that, Mr. Gaines?'

'I am not a politician, Mr. Gross, and I never want to be. I have a patriotic duty to my country, but I also have a private and personal duty to my art.'

'Your art?'

Herbert Gaines lifted his gaunt, withered head.

'Yes, Mr. Gross, my art. I am — I was — one of the finest movie actors that ever crossed the screen. I made two pictures and both pictures are classics. Even today, after three decades, people still applaud out loud when they see them. Mr. Gross, I have an abiding duty to those people. It is my task in life to make sure that those magical images I created in my youth stay fresh. If I come out now, like a skeleton out of a closet, and try to whip up political support on the strength of those images, my whole life's achievement would be destroyed. Who could ever look at Captain Dashfoot again, after seeing me, as I am today, talking about busing and housing and economic tariffs?'

Jack Gross still smiled. 'Mr. Gaines,' he said gently, 'we don't want you to talk about anything like that. We want you to talk about plague.'

Herbert Gaines frowned. 'I beg your pardon?'

'Plague, Mr. Gaines. The ancient scourge of nations. The Black Death.'

'I don't understand.'

'Have you heard the news?'

'I haven't had breakfast yet, for God's sake.'

'Well,' Jack Gross explained, 'there's a serious epidemic down in Florida. The government and the press have been keeping it tightly under wraps, saying it's an isolated outbreak of swine flu, but we know better. It's a highly dangerous, highly virulent strain of plague. The whole of Miami is afflicted, and there's talk of razing the whole city to the ground. It's also broken out in Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Brunswick and Charleston.'

'Is this some sort of joke?'

Jack Gross shook his head. 'It's not a joke, Mr. Gaines. It's the most disastrous result of this administration's mismanagement we've ever experienced. The US Disease Control Center have failed to contain the outbreak, and the government is so terrified that they don't know what to do next. They're too frightened even to tell the nation what's really going on.'

'But — '