Bill did not wait. He grabbed the water glass that had been sitting in front of me; I had handled it several times. “The hell with that! This will do.”
“I’ve told you before, Bill, to mind your language in the presence of ladies. But you may keep the glass.”
“You’re bloody well right I’ll keep it.”
“Very well. Please leave. If not, I’ll be forced to summon the guard.”
He walked out. Nobody said anything. I said, “May I provide fingerprints for any of the rest of you?”
Ackroyd said hastily, “Oh, I’m sure we don’t want them, Mr. Minister.”
“Oh, by all means! If there is a story in this, you’ll want to be covered.” I insisted because it was in character-and in the second and third place, you can’t be a little bit pregnant, or slightly unmasked-and I did not want my friends present to be scooped by Bill; it was the last thing I could do for them.
We did not have to send for formal equipment. Penny had carbon sheets and someone had one of those lifetime memo pads with plastic sheets; they took prints nicely. Then I said good morning and left.
We got as far as Penny’s private office; once inside she fainted dead. I carried her into my office, laid her on the couch, then sat down at my desk and simply shook for several minutes.
Neither one of us was worth much the rest of the day. We carried on as usual except that Penny brushed off all callers, claiming excuses of some sort. I was due to make a speech that night and thought seriously of canceling it. But I left the news turned on all day and there was not a word about the incident of that morning. I realized that they were checking the prints before risking it-after all, I was supposed to be His Imperial Majesty’s first minister; they would want confirmation. So I decided to make the speech since I had already written it and the time was schedtiled. I couldn’t even consult Dak; he was away in Tycho City.
It was the best one I had made. I put into it the same stuff a comic uses to quiet a panic in a burning theater. After the pickup was dead I just sunk my face in my hands and wept, while Penny patted my shoulder. We had not discussed the horrible mess at all.
Rog grounded at twenty hundred Greenwich, about as I finished, and checked in with me as soon as he was back. In a dull monotone I told him the whole dirty story; he listened, chewing on a dead cigar, his face expressionless.
At the end I said almost pleadingly, “I had to give the fingerprints, Rog. You see that, don’t you? To refuse would not have been in character.”
Rog said, “Don’t worry.”
“Huh?”
“I said, ‘Don’t worry.’ When the reports on those prints come back from the Identification Bureau at The Hague, you are in for a small but pleasant surprise-and our ex-friend Bill is in for a much bigger one, but not pleasant. If he has collected any of his blood money in advance, they will probably take it out of his hide. I hope they do.”
I could not mistake what he meant. “Oh! But, Rog-they won’t stop there. There are a dozen other places. Social Security
Uh, lots of places.”
“You think perhaps we were not thorough? Chief, I knew this could happen, one way or another. From the moment Dak sent word to complete Plan Mardi Gras, the necessary cover-up started. Everywhere. But I didn’t think it necessary to tell Bill.” He sucked on his dead cigar, took it out of his mouth, and looked at it. “Poor Bill.”
Penny sighed softly and fainted again.
Chapter 10
Somehow we got to the final day. We did not hear from Bill again; the passenger lists showed that he went Earthside two days after his fiasco. If any news service ran anything I did not hear of it, nor did Quiroga’s speeches hint at it.
Mr. Bonforte steadily improved until it was a safe bet that he could take up his duties after the election. His paralysis continued in part but we even had that covered: he would go on vacation right after election, a routine practice that almost every politician indulges in. The vacation would be in the Tommie, safe from everything. Sometime in the course of the trip I would be transferred and smuggled back-and the Chief would have a mild stroke, brought on by the strain of the campaign.