Liars and Tyrants and People Who Turn Blue Page 7

  “I know.”

  “Oh yes, of course you do, I forgot. Max has turned out to be a real jewel. He knows how to nudge instead of shove, and he’s patience personified. I think Tee would have settled into a hausfrau role long ago if it hadn’t been for Max and why am I telling you all this?” Shelby suddenly looked appalled. “I don’t even know you, and here I am talking about private family matters …”

  Kevin smiled reassuringly. “Happens in Russian novels all the time. Don’t be embarrassed, Shelby—this is a private conversation between you and me. I’m not going to rush back and feed what you’ve said into the computer.”

  “I hope not.” She was embarrassed. “Kevin, you’re a great listener, but I’d like to end the conversation now.”

  “Of course.” He put some money on the table and stood up. As they were about to go out through the door, he touched her arm. “Shelby, all kidding aside, we need you badly. This inquiry is big—and it’s serious. Deadly serious.”

  “I know,” Shelby said with a shudder.

  CHAPTER 19

  DIOGENES REMEMBERED

  He looked like one of those men the Americans were always “retiring” to Sicily, thought Sir John Dudley, but he was on the verge of becoming a symbol for the world’s perennial battle against lawlessness.

  P. J. Martel pushed himself to his feet, a huge mountain of a man, and lumbered toward his visitor with his hand outstretched. “Thank you for coming, Sir John. Take that chair—it’s the most comfortable.”

  The entire office looked comfortable. Sir John murmured something as he shook hands and lowered himself into the indicated chair. This would be their last conference before the inquiry officially opened.

  “One last-minute change,” Martel said. “Originally we’d planned to save Li Xijuan until last, but we’ve decided to sandwich her in between the other two. That means her staff and associates will be under scrutiny a little earlier than we’d planned. That won’t cause your office any difficulty, will it?”

  “No, their dossiers are fairly full right now. We’ll keep looking for evidence, of course, but I’m sure you already have enough there to indict.”

  “Good, good. Whichever way this inquiry goes, it’s going to be a precedent-setter. The old definitions of treason won’t work in a United Nations tribunal. So if we vote to send all three of them before a tribunal, we’d better be damned sure of what we’re doing. It’s going to be a long haul—miles to go before we sleep. But I think we’re ready.”

  Sir John thought so too. And he felt a cautious confidence in this big Canadian’s ability to handle the presentation of evidence properly. P. J. Martel was not a young man, but he had reserves of energy Sir John frankly envied. And Martel was a law-man, in the most literal sense of the word.

  “I met your Mrs. Kent yesterday.” Martel chuckled. “Very direct, isn’t she? I have something to confess, Sir John. I plowed through that mountain of scientific data from Rutgers University, I read all the police reports, I talked at great length with Kevin Gilbert. I had to accept the evidence—Shelby Kent is indeed a woman who can unerringly tell the difference between factual truth and deliberate falsehood.”

  “No question.”

  “But the whole idea of a human lie detector was so strange that I still found a lingering trace of skepticism in myself—in spite of all that evidence. So when she came here yesterday I almost unconsciously started slipping little falsehoods into the conversation—wanting to trip her up, you see. The first couple of times she looked at me oddly but said nothing. The third time, she said, ‘Excuse me, is this some sort of test or am I supposed to ignore all these lies you’re telling?’” The Canadian laughed. “My secretary was shocked.”

  “I’ve never met Mrs. Kent myself,” Sir John said. “Gilbert made the contact.”

  Martel wagged his big head. “I can’t get over our good fortune in having her. Has there ever before been an investigation in which conflicting testimony could be so readily resolved?”

  “We’re fortunate to have her in more ways than one. Her helping us involves some personal sacrifice.” Sir John didn’t elaborate. “We couldn’t force her to co-operate. She could lie to us if she wanted to and we’d have no way of checking up on her. Not until someone else comes along who can read that same aura.”

  Martel was nodding. “Perhaps it’s just as well she has no legal status—forces us to depend solely on external evidence. And that’s as it should be. ‘Advisory capacity only.’ That’s how the publicity releases will read.”

  “About that,” said Sir John. “Could you hold off making any announcement? I understand she wishes to avoid publicity as much as possible.”

  “But of course. However, it’s not going to be possible to conceal her function for long. Sooner or later the newshawks are going to get wind of it.”

  “Then let’s try for later. Give her as much anonymity as you can for as long as you can.”

  “Whatever the lady wants,” Martel said agreeably. “Did I tell you we’ve decided not to call Martinez? The man’s obviously just hired muscle and knows nothing about the conspiracy.”

  “Yes, you’re right there. You are still starting with Aguirrez’s people, aren’t you?”

  “Attack the weak link first, that’s the ticket. Pedro Yglesias will be up first.”

  Sir John permitted a small smile. “You’ll be inundated with slogans, you know.”

  Martel smiled back. “‘Down with the tyrants,’ that sort of thing? One might as well take out an ad in the New York Times saying ‘Be nice.’ These shibboleths never change much, do they? Both vague and inflammatory, a slogan for all seasons.”

  Sir John nodded, remembering other slogans from other times. V for Victory. The Final Solution. Make Love, Not War. In a literal sense, too generalized to mean anything much. But in the context of their origins—repositories of hopes and hatreds and anxieties intense enough to sway millions. Martel was right. Sloganeering never changed much.

  CHAPTER 20

  TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND COUNT TEN

  Shelby Kent sat stiffly in a more-for-show chair, aware of, annoyed by, the occasional furtive glance directed her way. Who she was and why she was there: supposedly a secret. A secret like all other government secrets—carefully leaked to selected sympathetic investigators from the communications media. Whose numbers were legion.

  The antechamber prickled with a perpetual coming and going of people looking busy, some truly busy. Kevin Gilbert stood beside her chair and slightly in front of her, not hiding her but announcing through his posture that Shelby was not accessible to just anyone who cared to stop and chat. He’d been riding shotgun for her ever since she arrived, fending off questioners, showing her quick ways out of the hearing chamber, showing her back exits from the building. But he could do nothing about the glare of camera lights aimed in her direction. Smile?

  Too much authority here. Member A spoke for umpty million people, Member B for umpty-plus. And there were Members C through Z and a couple of alphabets more. The world, thought Shelby, the whole world is right here, passing through this determinedly modern, aesthetically boring antechamber in the UN Building. Today we make history.

  The carefully cultivated image of power and authority was doing its job. Shelby’s hands are all sweaty, Miz Williams—a voice from the past, a smirking classmate exposing Shelby’s weakness to her peers. Grown-up, worldly, experienced Shelby Kent ran her hands down her thighs. Dry, damn you, DRY.

  Kevin Gilbert’s hand (dry) against her arm: Shelby rose and made her way toward the hearing chamber. They had decided to put her back of the main table among Chairman P. J. Martel’s cadre of note-takers, errand-runners, advisers, process-servers, statute-checkers, lookers-up-of-analogies. A crowd easy to get lost in. Kevin pointed to a more-for-comfort chair, and Shelby sat. A lawyer on one side of her, a woman who didn’t speak English on the other. To her immediate right was The Machine.

  A simple machine. One row of twenty-one lights an
d two buttons. Each of the lights was labeled with the name of one of the ambassadors on the commission. If one of them wished Shelby’s judgment, he or she would press a button in an ordinary communications outlet, flashing the corresponding light on The Machine. In answer Shelby would press one of her two buttons—Yes, No.

  The Canadian-born chairman of the commission was making an opening statement alternately in English and French, droning on about integrity and co-operation among all peoples. From where Shelby sat he looked something like a walrus. Gross body, drooping mustaches, three chins, coarse skin. Definitely a walrus. Over seventy, but hair as black as coal. Dyed?

  Red light, camera lens aimed at her. Somewhere in a soundproofed room a well-groomed actor was sitting, reading out facts about her private life that his network’s research staff had dug up. Was Eric watching? Don’t watch, Eric.

  The walrus had finished his statement and there was a brief pause as Pedro Yglesias was led into the hearing chamber. Shelby picked up her earphone and fitted it in place; Yglesias would be questioned in Spanish. Another Untermensch: Yglesias had the same look as the Loser in Pittsburgh, trying to act defiant when he really wanted to cringe.

  The questioning began and immediately Shelby was in trouble. The translator’s voice coming through her earphone was slurred, hard to follow. (Dame Edith Evans’ comment on the then-new generation of actors: “Poor dears, they have no vowels.”) Shelby didn’t have to understand what was being said to tell whether Yglesias was lying or not, but dammit, she wanted to know what was going on! She looked around for Kevin Gilbert and signaled him with her eyes. Immediately he was at her side, and she whispered to him what was wrong. He nodded and left the chamber; fifteen minutes later a new voice spoke in her ear—veddy crisp, veddy British.

  One of the commissioners was taking Yglesias through a step-by-step account of all his munitions-distributing activities. Where he shipped from. Methods of shipment. Receivers of the shipments. Names, places, dates. Shelby glanced at Martel: talking to one of his aides, paying no attention to Yglesias. The Mexican named names all morning until the lunch break was called.

  “Nobody’s signaled me even once,” Shelby complained to Kevin Gilbert over lunch. “Have they forgotten I’m there?”

  “They don’t need to check up on Yglesias,” Kevin explained. “They already have all the answers to the questions they’re asking. This is just nuts-and-bolts stuff for the record, Shelby. All they’re doing now is laying a legal foundation for the real questioning that comes later. Didn’t Martel explain this to you?”

  Shelby shook her head. “From my one interview with him, I got the impression he didn’t want me to know anything. Wants me to go in cold, I suppose.”

  After lunch: more nuts-and-bolts questions, stretching on until four o’clock. Then, when even the most persnickety of the commissioners had been satisfied, the questioning left the arena of Yglesias’s provable activities and ventured into the nebulous world of why.

  “To fight tyranny,” Pedro Yglesias said defiantly.

  “Do you mean the UN Militia is made up of tyrants?” asked the Algerian commissioner.

  “I do not know.”

  “Or perhaps that the Militia is keeping tyrants in power?”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. I do not know.”

  “If you do not know, how can you be sure you are indeed fighting tyranny?”

  “I trust my leader. And,” Yglesias boasted, “I know how to follow orders.”

  Here it was.

  “Who is your leader, Señor Yglesias?”

  “Señor Mañuel Aguirrez, Ambassador to the United Nations from the glorious republic of Mexico.”

  Meh-hee-co. So Aguirrez’s name was in the official records for the first time.

  The questioning then concentrated on contacts between Yglesias and his “leader,” how his instructions were conveyed, what those instructions were. It was half an hour later before Chairman Martel asked, “Did you know the weapons you were shipping were defective?”

  “No, sir, I did not.”

  There it was: a light pink glow, very faint, but definitely there. Shelby glanced at her machine—only one light lit. Martel’s.

  She signaled No.

  The walrus bore in hard on Yglesias, and soon the frightened Mexican was contradicting himself, retracting. The story came out: Yglesias had “borrowed” a handgun from the Harlem warehouse arsenal and later found it wouldn’t fire. He then “borrowed” a second gun and found that one wouldn’t fire either. So he began to suspect there was something funny about the shipment but no sir he didn’t really know they were all defective it wasn’t his job to check them just to ship them sir.

  Every light on Shelby’s machine lit up. Unhesitatingly she hit the Yes button: this time the man was telling the truth.

  Eight count them eight television cameras now pointing at Shelby Kent. She’d been a fool to think she could stay out of the limelight.

  CHAPTER 21

  INVITATION TO SMALLNESS

  Test Your Ability in Syllogistic Reasoning

  MAJOR PREMISE: Hard work is honorable.

  MINOR PREMISE: Stealing refrigerators is hard work.

  CONCLUSION:

  “So much for anonymity,” Eric said sourly.

  “Yes, it was a foolish idea.” She was tired. Only the first day, and already she was tired.

  “What if you don’t go back?”

  “I don’t think they’ll let me not go back.”

  “Bull. We can get on a plane tonight and be on the other side of the country by the time they convene tomorrow morning. What are they going to do, postpone the inquiry until an armed guard can come get you?”

  Shelby smiled and didn’t answer. They’d been through this so many times. In three weeks Eric was scheduled to leave for San Diego, where Shelby would join him as soon as the commission no longer needed her services. And until the inquiry was over, one or the other of them would make the cross-country flight every Friday night; Shelby had convinced her husband that a weekend marriage would be good for both of them for a while.

  “Look, Shel, it was all right at first, when you were just sitting in on police interrogations here in town. That was local, confined—still in the family, so to speak. It was even all right when police agencies outside New York started asking for you,” Eric said, glowing pinkly.

  “Why, thank you,” said Shelby. How generous of you.

  “Don’t be sarcastic, please, Shelby. You know as well as I that this thing has gotten out of hand. Have you looked outside the building?”

  Shelby knew what was out there. Mobile units and cameras and cables and sight-destroying lights and earnest young people talking earnestly into microphones. Price of notoriety.

  Say something soothing. “It’ll pass—the novelty will wear off. Something else will come along to distract them.”

  “You know it’s not just them.” Eric sat down tensely on the edge of a chair. Ready to spring and attack.

  “Buck and Hubbs again?”

  “Everybody. Thank God this is my last week with the Jets—I don’t think I can take much more. People I thought were friends or at least friendly seem to be getting a hell of a kick out of my predicament.”

  “Your predicament!”

  “That’s what I said. ‘Compulsory fidelity,’ one of them called it.”

  “And you accept that standard? That a man is somehow less of a man if he doesn’t cheat on his wife?”

  “Don’t be naïve, Shelby. How far do you think I’m going to get in San Diego if I’m an object of fun to my co-workers out there as well? Can’t you understand what it’s like?”

  “I think I can,” said Shelby, “and I’m truly sorry those clowns you work with are making you feel humiliated. And I’m even sorrier you’re letting them do it.”

  “How can I stop them? You—”

  “No, I mean you should be ashamed of them instead of me.”

  Eric grunted and didn’t answer.

&
nbsp; No lovemaking that night.

  CHAPTER 22

  WARTS AND ALL

  Bored with listening to the same testimony over and over, Shelby turned down the volume of her earphone and just stared at the crowd of actors in this international Perry Mason show. Raised voice and flexed muscle—the UN’s predictable response to any threat to its still new Militia. Like Creon, whose very first edict as king was violated by the young Antigone. Intraglobal hemistichs bounding back and forth throughout the hearing chamber.

  By the end of the week the commission had finished questioning Mañuel Aguirrez’s associates and were ready to start in on Aguirrez himself. Then the commission decided that all three of the about-to-be-accused should be present in the hearing chamber for the rest of the inquiry.

  The Parade of the World-Shapers. Accusees Numbers One, Two, and Three—Teutonic, Latin, Oriental. (Once there were a German, a Mexican, and a Chinaman who had to cross a river in a two-man boat …) All the news media had been quick to point out that the rebels the three had “assisted” lived in sections of the world where nationalistic feelings ran high. The UN openly advocated a policy of “reasonable ethnicity”: keeping some national identity, it was thought, would help mollify those who feared the impersonality of the global government toward which the world was clearly heading. So nationalist groups all over the world met regularly to complain, sing songs, wear uniforms, go home happy. Great unions from little catharses grow.