“A real knock-out!” Kenow rolled his close-set eyes.
“A kid of twelve or so, you bloody dink! Dead as a dodo, and mummified, too, shrunk down to bones with skin stretched over ‘em wrapped in rags.” ‘
“Dead?” Wrench wasn’t sure he had heard her right. “Lessing was carting a dead girl around?”
“Hard t’get a date in these parts,” Kenow observed drily.
“Called her Emily, sometimes Mavis, sometimes Beverly. Sometimes ‘driver-lady.’ You should’ve seen her, poor little thing: dried out, like them pharaohs of Egypt. He wouldn’t part with her. Took persuadin’… three orderlies and a needle full of Narcodine… to pry him loose and get him to the hospital.”
“You knew him right away?”
“I didn’t see him then myself. The watch-sergeant put in a report, but nobody thought much about him. We used to get a dozen of these immunes every week, each weirder than the last. Dyin’ people, crazies too far gone to be helped. There was one, a Russian woman big as a gubbin’ gorilla, stark naked, painted herself all over with crosses, come in shootin’.”
Wrench motioned her to get on with her story. “Ah. When did you recognize Lessing?”
She eyed him cautiously. He sounded more like an interrogator than a man looking for a long-lost friend. “A long time after. We fed him, give him a job in the fields… a lot of the brain-damaged ones could do that much… and let him be until either he croaked or his wits came right. Nearly all of ‘em died, y’know. Most of Pacov’s immunes wasn’t really so. They was just delayed reactions. Ninety per cent went down at once, some lived on for a week or two, and a few lasted six months or more. Them who made it beyond that you could count on your fingers. We was surprised to find Lessing survived Artie Carlson… he’s our census-keeper… thought his records was snookered.”
“You knew Lessing when you saw him?”
“Right. I’d met him a while ago. We was meres together.” She tried to keep the wariness out of her voice. This Cadre-Commander Wren was said to be high up in the hierarchy of America’s ruling party.
“I knew ’im the same way,” Kenow stated self-importantly. “But I was sure fooled. Must’ve seen ’im out there a hunnert times, hoein’ away, pullin’ weeds, ‘n’ I never spotted him. He never said nolhin’ neither. Jes’ worked.”
Wrench played with the buttons on his uniform coat. He hadn’t expected Russia to be so warm in July.
The woman took up the thread again. “One day he stopped by the hospital, asked where his Emily was… the dead girl, he meant. Anyway, Dr. Casimir, on our psych-staff, was curious enough to make him tell his story. Somehow he mentioned Colonel… uh, General… Copley. Named me too. Then the rest come out. Our headquarters is just over the road from the hospital, so they sent for me.”
General Copley turned away from the one window. The view was not prepossessing: squarish, neatly painted, unimaginative Russian architeciurc, broad but uninspired streets, Soviet vehicles repaired over and over to save on the colony’s dwindling reserve of Israeli and American transport.
He addressed Wrench. “Rose called me. I knew Lessing right away. He served in my unit. Good man.” He looked somehow dull and uninterested, as though he wanted to get back to something else.
“Yeah, a good ol’ boy,” Johnny Kenow added earnestly. “Served with ’im in the Baalbek War, back in ’38. Saw ’im again in Guinea just B.P ‘Before Pacov.’ After Pacov hit I grabbed a plane, a load o’ goodies, ‘n’ the Empress Marie Leonore Therese of Guinea, we come here. Pacov got most o’ the Guineans, but me ‘n’ the Empress… she’s French… made it out. Married her.” He displayed nicotine-yellowed teeth proudly. “Now she’s got a bun in the oven… six months pregnant.”
Stories like Kenow’s were routine. General Copley scuffed one immaculate riding boot against the other.
Wrench asked, “Did he… is Lessing recovered? Did he tell you what happened to him?”
“Not much that makes sense,” Rose answered. “About some ship, a sea voyage, naval action, a storm, frogmen. And about Emily and Beverly and Mavis… a whole, bloody platoon of girl friends.” If Wrench’s information were correct, this woman had once had a passion for Lessing — which was probably why she had rescued him from what amounted to open slavery in New Sverdlovsk.
Digging was worth a try. Wrench said, “The last we saw of him, he was managing a resort in the South Pacific. The Izzies raided the place and burned it to the ground. They slaughtered two hundred and seventeen people, including nearly a hundred kids on vacation. Lessing disappeared. We figured either he went up in smoke or else got thumbed on the beach and his body washed out to sea. We never knew what happened to him… till now.”
“And you retaliated by destroying Israel with Pacov,” General Copley rapped. He had a reputation as the kind of mere who did not approve of biological warfare — or anything much longer range than a thrown rock. He preferred hand-to-hand weapons: fists, teeth, and nails if possible.
“Not us. Not true!”
“Serve the gubbin’ Yoodies right!” Kenow cackled. “Folks say they started Pacov in the first place!”
Wrench shook his head. “No truth to that story either, so far as we know.” He grinned. Congeniality was a useful trait; it would likely get him what Mulder had sent him for: Alan Lessing, miraculously alive after more than four years. The Party could use a hero, living testimony to the perfidy of the Vizzies and the Izzies, what with war now brewing in California.
He picked up his peaked officer’s cap and rubbed at its enamelled insignia, a red shield on which a black circle surrounded a white background. The circle was divided into four quarters by a thick, black cross. One day, soon, they’d open the black circle in four places, just before its intersection with each arm of the cross.
The door latch clicked. It was an orderly. He saluted and whispered to Copley.
“Seems Lessing’s got a second visitor,” Copley announced. “Another of your people, Cadre-Commander Wren. A woman.”
“That’ll be AnnelieseMeisinger. She was in Seattle when we got the news Lessing had been found alive here.” Damn it! He had tried to keep Liese from learning too soon. When she thought he was dead — and Emma Delacroix with him — she’d almost done herself in out of grief. Now this shock. Who knew what effect a deranged or brain-dead Lessing would have on her?
Liese entered in a swirl of smoke-grey dimdl skirts. She had never adopted the severe, black-and-white uniform prescribed for female Party members. Beige or pale grey suited her better, usually with black accessories. Today she had added a neckerchief of scarlet silk for emphasis. Women recognized this as a “power wardrobe”; men saw it as elegant and sexy-sophisticated. General Copley was now wide awake and paying attention, Wrench noted, and Johnny Kenow was openly admiring her. Rose Thurley gave her a per-functory nod.
Liese homed in on Wrench. “Lessing?”
“He’s fine, these people say. Some psychological difficulties ” He hadn’t had time to alert Copley and his subordinates
to Liese’s speech problems.
“Crazy as a cat in a barr’l of whiskey,” Kenow chuckled.
Wrench sent the man a warning glare. Insensitive son of a bitch! “Lessing’s still suffering from hallucinations. Wandering alone all
those years, among the ruins and the corpses ” He brightened
deliberately. “Now I have to rewrite the funeral oration I gave for the jizmo on Ponape!”