He mentioned a figure.
I shook my head less firmly.
He upped the figure.
I got a sudden kink in my neck; it wouldn’t move from side to side.
He added to it again.
Slowly, Without my willing it, my head moved up and down.
“Then it’s settled.” His mouth spread in what was supposed to be a Smile.
“One question,” I said then. “Just how do I get myself hired as Dickson’s bodyguard?”
“You’ve already been hired,” Putnam told me. “Or, I should say, the man you’re going to become has been hired.”
“The man who was supposed to contact ‘Insecticide,’ ” I guessed. “The agent your goons erased. You want me to impersonate him.”
“That’s right.”
“But how did he manage to get himself hired as Dickson’s bodyguard?”
“He came very highly recommended.” Putnam passed me an envelope. It was unsealed, the flap tucked inside it.
I removed a letter from the envelope. It was a letter of recommendation confirming a previous letter which had evidently already been delivered. It identified the bearer as one Karl Powers. It was addressed to Dickson and signed by Roger Algerpulp16 .
I didn’t need Putnam to tell me that Roger Algerpulp, next to PeePee Rococco, was the nearest thing to a friend that former President Dickson had. Algerpulp had developed and patented a deodorizer that had taken him from a small chemical laboratory in the Bronx to a mansion on the banks of the Hudson River. He was a self-made multimillionaire. An ultra-conservative, he had hired Nick Dickson’s law firm to represent his toilet-and-armpit neutralizing business at a time when Dickson was between government jobs. The two saw eye to eye, and were frequent fishing and golfing companions. A letter from Algerpulp was the very highest recommendation one could have had to Dickson.
“Is Algerpulp mixed up with this ‘Insecticide’ business?” '
“We’re not sure,” Putnam told me. “If the enemy agent we killed really was Karl Powers, then Algerpulp would be implicated. But the Karl Powers he recommended may not have been the same man. The original Karl Powers may have been wasted and the man we wasted may have been an imposter.”
“And now you want me to impersonate the imposter.” My head was spinning. “It all sounds very confusing,” I told Putnam.
“ ‘If my answers sound confusing, I think they are confusing because the questions are confusing, and the situation is confusing, and I’m not in a position to clarify,’ ” Putnam quoted blandly.
I grinned. The quote, which summed up the mess which had resulted in Dickson’s removal from office, was the famous statement by which his press secretary, Don Zigzag17 , had fended off all questions put by newspaper reporters. It was the classic non-answer. “Is that it?” I started to get to my feet.
“Not quite.” Putnam held up a hand. “Do you remember quite a few years back when Dickson was vice-president he took a trip to South America?” he asked me.
“Sure. They threw rocks at him. Spit on him too. Maybe they knew something then that we only found out later.”
“Something else happened to Dickson on that particular trip.”
I looked at Putnam questioningly.
“The president of that particular country was named Alvarez.” Putnam stopped talking, obviously waiting to see if I’d respond.
I looked at him blankly.
“Alvarez had a problem. He was sterile. He was incapable of fathering a child. Someone suggested artificial insemination as a possible answer to his desire to have a son and heir. But Alvarez was a very proud man. He didn’t want just any seed to sprout into his offspring. He wanted a Presidential Seed. Through his ambassador in Washington, he had this request conveyed to the President of the United States. He was offering substantial concessions to mineral rights in his country in exchange for a presidential contribution to his own personal sperm bank. The President at that time, unfortunately, was quite along in years, had health problems of his own, and was unable to fulfill President Alvarez’s request. But he did offer the services of his vice-president-Nicholas Swillhouse Dickson—and, with some cutting back of the mineral rights granted to U.S. companies, the offer was accepted. That was the real reason for Dickson’s trip.”
To make a drop at the sperm bank,” I summed up to show I understood.
“Yes. Only, as perhaps might have been expected of Dickson—who after all had two daughters of his own-—the contract was not quite fulfilled. Fate, or nature, or genetics, or whatever took a hand, and Alvarez’s wife was delivered some nine months later of a baby girl.”
“Alvarez was a male chauvinist pig and he wasn’t happy,” I guessed.
“Right. He was so unhappy that he nationalized all the American companies operating in his country. He was so unhappy that he divorced his luckless wife. He was so unhappy that he exiled her and the female infant from his country.”
“He really was a male chauvinist pig!”
“Quite. The woman, incidentally, was herself the daughter of a wealthy landowner of noble Castilian descent and his wife, an Indian who traced her proud heritage back to the Inca emperors. Inst after Dickson left the White House, the mother was killed in a rockslrde. The daughter, grown now, turned up on Rococco’s island. I gather she may have threatened to tell Dickson’s wife, Natalie, who her father was. Dickson had kept the incident from his wife, you see.
In order to keep the girl quiet, Dickson hired her as a secretary to help Rosalie Forest. Recently the girl took a vacation on Paradise Island. The daughter’s name is Alicia Alvarez.” Once again Putnam stopped talking abruptly and looked at me as if waiting for some reaction.
Once again I returned his look blankly. “So?”
“Alicia. Alvarez,” he informed me, “is the young lady you were in the palm tree with, Mr. Victor.”
So that was why Putnam had sought me out! Why me? Alicia Alvarez! That was why me!
I was in like Flynn18 with the President’s daughter!
Chapter Three
I hadn’t known her name. She hadn't known mine. We had gotten around to making love, but somehow we’d neglected the formalities.
Lucky. If I had told her my name, the next time we met I’d have had to conjure up some fancy explanations. Because Steve Victor wasn’t the name I was going under now. From here on in, I was Karl Powers.
“Karl Powers.” A cautious chipmunk smile appeared below the ski-slope nose of former President of the United States Nicholas Swillhouse Dickson. “Karl. I’ve always found that Americans of German descent make [expletive deleted]19 good subordinates.” It was meant to be a compliment of sorts. “That’s one thing I want to make perfectly clear: my high regard for Americans of German descent as superior [expletive removed] lickers.”
This was the first time in my life I’d ever been this close to an American President — ex or otherwise. Dickson came across every bit as blah in person as he did in the media. It was unfortunate for him. The American public is quick to forgive dishonest politicians if they have charisma. But a politician-thief without charisma is like champagne without bubbles: it doesn’t intoxicate, it just turns your stomach.
Dickson in person was Dickson shrunk—a direction he had ill been able to afford to take. He’d developed a nervous tic in one cheek since leaving office; it flicked regularly like a traffic blinker light. He had a healthy Caribbean tan, but his personality overwhelmed it, turning it beige to match the rest of his image. He was playing with a Yo-Yo, dropping and retrieving it in tempo with his tic.
“However, let me say this—” The ex-President’s tone changed. “You are late, Karl. [Expletive deleted] yes! You were supposed to be here yesterday.” He looked at me, tic working, Yo-Yo bobbing, obviously waiting for some explanation of my tardiness.