«With what you just ordered me to do, I’d check the President’s stool before I complied.» Richards picked up his private Red Line, punched four buttons, and moments later winced as he heard the voice of the Secretary of Defense. «Yes, sir, yes, sir. Orders received, sir.» The general hung up the phone, his eyes glazed, and looked at the two intruders. «All Washington’s gone crazy,» he whispered.
«No, Richards, not all Washington, only a very few people in Washington,» said the agent on the right, keeping his voice low. «And everything must be kept max-classified—to the ultimate max. Your orders are to pretend to stand down as of eighteen hundred hours tomorrow—SAC’s command center is for all intents and purposes shut down.»
«For Christ’s sake, why?»
«In real phony deference to a debate over a decision that could make a new law we can’t permit,» replied the agent on the left, his eyes invisible behind the sunglasses.
«What law?» shouted the general.
«Probably Commie-oriented,» answered the other emissary from the nation’s capital. «They’ve got moles in the Supreme Court.»
«Commie …? What the hell are you talking about? There’s no more Soviet Union and the goddamned Court is as far right as the communicator and his understudy could make it!»
«Wishful thinking, soldier boy. Just get one thing through your GI brain. We’re not giving up this base! It’s our nerve center!»
«Give it up to whom?»
«I’ll tell you this much. Code name WOPTACK, that’s all you have to know. Keep it under your sombrero.»
«Wop … attack? The Italian army is invading Omaha?»
«I didn’t say that. We don’t indulge in ethnic slurs.»
«Then what the hell did you say?»
«Maximum-classified, General. You can understand that.»
«Maybe I can and maybe I can’t, but what about my four aircraft that’ll be upstairs?»
«‘Beam ’em down, Scotty,’ then ‘Beam ’em up.’»
«What?» screamed Owen Richards, lunging up from his chair.
«We listen to our superiors, General, and so should you.»
Eleanor Devereaux and Aaron Pinkus, their faces devoid of color, their mouths agape, and their eyes four stationary glass orbs, sat next to each other on Sam Devereaux’s two-seater leather couch in the private off-limits office he had built for himself in the restored Victorian house in Weston, Massachusetts. Neither spoke, for neither was capable of speech; the babbling, moaning, incoherent gurgles that had emanated from Sam’s throat had, in essence, formed contiguous affirmatives to the initial questions both had posed. It did not help matters that Samuel Lansing Devereaux, paralyzed by the assault on his château’s lair, had pinned himself against the wall, both arms outstretched, palms spread, covering as many of the incriminating photographs and newspaper articles as he could manage.
«Samuel, my son,» began the elderly Pinkus, finding his voice, but only to the extent of a hoarse whisper.
«Please don’t say that!» protested Devereaux. «He used to say that.»
«Who said, who?» mumbled the barely cognizant Eleanor.
«Uncle Zio—»
«You don’t have an uncle named See Oh, unless you mean Seymour Devereaux, who married a Cuban and had to move to Miami.»
«I don’t believe that’s who he means, dear Eleanor. If an old man’s memory doesn’t fail him, especially during certain negotiations in Milan, zio is ‘uncle,’ and there were more uncles than this attorney could handle in Milan. Your son is saying, literally, ‘Uncle Uncle,’ do you comprehend?»
«Not for a minute—»
«He is referring to—»
«Don’t say it!» shrieked Lady Devereaux, covering her slim, aristocratic ears.
«Pope Francesco the First,» trailed off the foremost attorney of Boston, Massachusetts, his face now the pallor of a six-week-old corpse without refrigeration. «Sammy … Samuel … Sam. How could you?»
«It’s difficult, Aaron—»
«It’s incredible!» thundered Pinkus, now in full if uncontrollable volume. «You exist in another world!»
«You might say that,» agreed Devereaux, pulling his arms down from the wall and falling to his knees, then knee by knee inching his way to the small oval table in front of the miniature couch. «But you see, I had no choice. I had to do whatever that slugworm told me to do—»
«Including the kidnapping of the Pope!» squeaked Aaron Pinkus, unable once again to find his voice.
«Stop it!» roared Eleanor Devereaux. «I’ll hear no more!»
«I think we’d better, dear Eleanor, and if you’ll pardon my untenable language, please be quiet. Go on, Sammy. I don’t wish to hear it, either, but, by the god of Abraham, who controls the universe and who may now have some explaining to do, how did it happen? And it’s all so obvious that it did happen! The press was right, the media everywhere were right! There were two people—it’s there on your walls! There were two popes and you kidnapped the original!»
«Not exactly,» pleaded Devereaux, each inhaled breath more difficult than the last. «You see, Zio figured it was okay—»
«Okay?» Aaron’s chin came perilously close to the top of the coffee table.
«Well, yes. He wasn’t well and … well, that’s another part of the story, but Zio was smarter than any of us. I mean he was really with it.»
«How did it happen, Sam? It was because of this lunatic General MacKenzie Hawkins, wasn’t it? He’s in all these photographs. He was the one who made you become the most unknown notorious kidnapper in the history of the world! Am I even reasonably accurate?»
«You might say that. Then again you might not.»
«How, Sam? How?» pleaded the elderly attorney, as he picked up a copy of Penthouse from the coffee table and began waving it in front of the comatose face of Eleanor Devereaux.
«There are some excellent articles in that magazine… very academic.»
«Sammy, I beg you, do not do this to me, or to your lovely mother here, who bore you in pain, and at this moment may be in need of ministrations beyond our capabilities. In the name of the Lord God of Hosts, to whom I shall vigorously protest in temple on tomorrow’s Sabbath, what possessed you to be a part of this monstrous act?»
«Well, actually, Aaron, ‘possessed’ is a fairly accurate description of the alleged—I restate, the alleged—criminal enterprise to which you refer.»
«I don’t have to ‘refer,’ Sam, I simply point to these very specific articles of evidence on your walls!»
«Yes, well, actually, Aaron, they’re not entirely conclusive—»
«You want I should subpoena the Pope?»
«Vatican executive privilege wouldn’t permit it.»
«These photographs alone would obviate the rules of evidentiary procedure! I’ve taught you nothing?»