“Then die, Dickson!”
There was a sudden, overwhelmingly destructive explosion!
Chapter Ten
It blew out the walls of the room. I followed one of those walls, propelled by the blast, literally lifted off my feet and flung through the air. I landed on the grassy lawn beyond the veranda.
By the time I’d recovered enough to get to my feet, what was left of the room I’d been in was in flames. The fire was quickly spreading to the rest of the house. Other people -- Nat, Pisha and Muley Dickson, Hans und Fritz, Rosalie Forest, Marsha Twitchell, and Dotty Whiskers—were on the grounds, presumably fleeing the burning building.
But what about those who had been with me in the room where the explosion had taken place? The first one I spotted was Alicia. She was sitting up on the lawn about fifty feet away from me, staring straight ahead, dazed. I went over to her.
“What happened?” Her eyes were slow to focus on me.
“I’m not sure. There was an explosion -”
“Yes, an explosion. . . .”
“Look, you don’t seem to be hurt,” was my appraisal. “You just sit here and get yourself together. I’m going to see if anybody else got out of there alive.
“All right.” She was docile, still in a state of shock. I started for the burning room where the blast had occurred. Only one of its walls was still standing now, and that one was a sheet of flames. I’d moved only a few feet toward it when I stumbled over a body.
It was lying face down. I knelt beside it. I turned it over. There wasn’t much left of the face; just enough for me to identify the dead man as Rococco’s Irish hood.
Not too far away, I found his Cuban cohort. He was also dead. A piece of window glass had neatly sliced the artery in his throat. From the trail of spurted blood he’d left, he must have bled to death quickly.
The next corpse I found, closer in to the burning building, was that of Heinrich Bussinger himself. The German-American, former U.S. secretary of state, current premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, had cracked open his skull like a coconut on the rock on which he’d landed after the explosion had propelled him from the room. But was I looking at the remains of a great statesman and diplomat, or of a con man and Wheeler-dealer of global scope? The enigma lived after him.
Half sprawled into what was left of the room itself, I found the Bahamian. Black rage was still written on his dead face; once he’d had guts; he had them no longer; now they were spilled out all over his lap.
More than any of the others I’d found so far, the Bahamian seemed to have taken the full force of the explosion head-on. He’d been standing a little in front of PeePee Rococco, between him and Nicholas Swillhouse Dickson. This seemed to confirm my recollection, which was that somehow the explosion had emanated from Dickson. It also turned out that the Bahamian had provided a little bit of a shield for PeePee Bococco.
I found Rococco a few feet to the side and rear of the Bahamian. His back was broken; he was still alive, but barely. I was afraid to try to move him, or even to touch him for fear of making his condition even worse than it obviously was.
Rococco was conscious, but he wasn’t making much sense. He just kept babbling the same words over and over again: “He self-destructed. . . . He self-destructed. . . . He self-destructed. . . .”
After quickly examining Rococco, I stood up and looked around for help. If his life was going to be saved—a doubtful prospect -- he would need expert help quickly. As far as I knew, the nearest hospital would be in Nassau.
Muley Dickson came running up to me. Her sister, Pisha, and her mother, Nat, were close behind her. “My father!” Muley screamed into my face. “Have you seen my father?”
“I’m afraid he’s dead,” I told her as gently as I could. The truth was that there was nothing but a hole in the floor where Nicholas Swillhouse Dickson had been standing. “He was blown up in the explosion.”
“Oh, no!” Nat Dickson wailed. But she pulled herself together. “As he himself once said, ‘Here lies the noblest Roman of them all. . . .’ ”
“Mother, please! He wasn’t even Italian!” Pisha wailed.
“Help me look for a piece of him.” Muley was the practical one. “Any piece of living flesh.”
“What for?” Pisha stared at her sister uncomprehendingly.
“Or, to paraphrase what he said on another occasion, ‘Alas, poor Swillhouse, I knew him well. . . .’ ”
“We can clone him back to life!” Muley told Pisha.
“We can what?”
Suddenly Rococco came out of his fog just long enough to react. “Clone him!” he chortled. “They're going to try to clone Dickson back to life!” He laughed hysterically.
“ ‘Now he belongs to the ages!’ ” Nat Dickson was still quoting.
“Clone him!” Muley explained impatiently. “If we can find just one piece of daddy’s living flesh, it can be cloned so that they can reconstruct the whole per- son from it.”
“You mean we can bring daddy back to life?” Pisha took hope from her sister.
“Yes. Yes. But hurry. Help me look.”
“’His only regret was that he had but one life to give for his country. . . .’ ”
“Mother, stop that and help us look!”
The three women scrambled over the ashes, seeking a still living piece of the flesh of ex-President Nicholas Swillhouse Dickson from which he might be cloned back to life. Pisha was the first to turn up something. “Is this anything,” she asked, holding up what she’d found.
“I don’t think so.” Muley was dubious. “It doesn’t look like much.”
“It is!” Nat Dickson was positive. “It’s a piece of your father!”
“What piece?” Pisha asked.
“His you-know-what.” Nat Dickson blushed.
“It doesn’t look like much,” Muley repeated.
“What did you say, mummy?” Pisha was confused.
“It’s daddy’s you-know-”
“She means it’s his wee-wee wand,” Muley explained.
“Oh!” Pisha’s face lit up with understanding. “You mean his tinkle-maker!”
My God! I couldn’t help thinking as what was left of Nicholas Swillhouse Dickson waved in the air, there’s no end to the shmuck!
It was at this point in time that things began taking on some semblance of order. Hans und Fritz—one or both of them—had put in a call for help. Now it was starting to arrive.
An eminent surgeon who had a private home on a nearby island came by helicopter. Behind him more medical and nursing help flew in on a hospital plane from Nassau. Floodlights were set up. They focused on PeePee Rococco, the one survivor who was truly in bad shape.
The surgeon decided not to move Rococco until he’d had a chance to examine him more thoroughly. His back was definitely broken, and it was a particularly tricky condition. The surgeon wasn’t sure whether it was broken in two or three different places. In addition, there was evidence of serious internal injuries. The surgeon injected him with a local anesthetic -- which would not render Rococco unconscious since the surgeon wanted him aware enough to be able to respond to questions about his pain-—and stood aside to wait for it to take effect.
That was when Muley Dickson pushed her way through to him. “Doctor,” she said breathlessly, “do you know anything about cloning?”
“I’ve written one of the definitive works on the subject,” the surgeon told her.
“My father is President Nicholas Swillhouse Dickson!” Muley announced to him.
“Don’t blame me,” the surgeon answered. “I'm from Massachusetts.”
“Would you play politics with the Hippocratic Oath?” Muley demanded.
“Ordinarily, no. But in Nick Dickson’s case, I might make an exception.”
“Are you, or are you not, going to fulfill your obligation as a physician and help my father?” Muley put it to him squarely.