Note: Thank you to a random translator service whose (hopefully not-so-random) translation I used, my Italian correspondent being incommunicado somewhere in Greece (lucky dog). I forgot to note the URL. Silly me.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Al paced the corridor, staring with unseeing eyes at the portraits of past presidents that lined the walls. His dress whites were unusually constrictive around his neck tonight, and he really wanted to strip down, but he didn't have the nerve. Behind that door… behind that door Elsa was getting ready for bed.

This hadn't been their idea. They had both been pushed into it. Threatened, essentially. Al had been threatened, anyway.

On the whole it hadn't been so bad. The tour of the White House this morning, a couple of cutesy photo-ops in the afternoon. The secret service guys had kept back the press, and the President's aides had been there to field questions. Then dinner. Gerald—somehow it was hard to stay on formal terms with a man who knocked his consommé into your lap and then insisted on accompanying you upstairs so you could change your soiled uniform and he could personally deliver it over to the staff for laundering, apologizing profusely the whole time—was a great guy. Elsa and Mrs. Ford had hit it off famously, talking emphatically about women's rights and other mutually favorite topics. There had been no reporters, unless you counted Ford's son, John, and the only photographer present was the President's daughter, Susan, who had snapped a very cheesy picture of Al and her father each taking one half of the carving set to the abnormally picturesque turkey.

The problem was that the Calaviccis, whom NASA wanted everybody to believe were still the perfect couple, had only been given one bedroom, and if there was one thing Al really didn't want to do it was share a bed with Elsa.

Their marriage was a sham now, a pantomime being played out in infinitesimal detail to the blueprint drawn out by John Yardley. Two days after the fight that had landed Al on the sofa in Jim Taggert's living room, the Commander had been called into the Associate Administrator's office.

"You want to explain this, mister?" Yardley had snapped, slapping down a sheaf of tabloids upon his desk.

"It's a filthy lie, sir," Al said woodenly.

"I know it's a filthy lie, Calavicci. What I want to know is what the hell you were thinking when you put yourself in a position where the press could crank out garbage like this!"

Al's eyes hardened. He had an ally in Yardley, or at least he had thought that he did, and now the man was deliberately raking him over the coals, looking angrier than Al had ever seen him and plenty mad enough to kill. "With all due respect, sir," he said; "I hardly think the National Enquirer and the Weekly World News count as press!"

"Oh, you hardly think, do you?" Yardley snapped. "What if I told you that the New York Times wanted to run these pictures?"

That disarmed Al completely. "What?"

"You heard me. Seems they were taken by a very respected team from one of the big papers in Chicago—we don't know who, but that's the word on the grapevine. Public Relations worked very hard to veto the publication of these snaps by any paper of any importance, and it cost a lot of time, effort and money, Calavicci."

Something wasn't adding up. Al's eyes narrowed. "Why did they do that?" he asked.

Yardley had stared at him for a long minute before answering that one. "Calavicci, this may not have occurred to you, but NASA has a hell of a lot riding on this last moon mission. A lot of people have sunk their reputations into this thing, and you, mister, are the figurehead. Up until now you've performed admirably, but this just about cost us everything. Now, I understand what you were doing, and I admire it, but although private citizens might be free to get into compromising situations like this, public figures aren't. You could have ruined everything, if we hadn't had such a reliable contact at the Times. Do it again, and you're out."

Al's brain was working overtime. There was something up. He had felt it for a long time, but had written it off as paranoia and self-deprecation. He'd been wrong. There really was something strange going on here. "Sir, what do you mean, 'performed'?" he had asked. Then Yardley erupted.

"For crying out loud, Calavicci, isn't it obvious? We've been grooming you for this mission for ages. I told you at our first meeting that everyone wanted you in space, from Congress to Admiral Holloway." Yardley had paced the length of his office wrathfully. "We've been giving you little nudges, a leg up here, a lowered bar there, so that you could make it to the moon, and you've been repaying us in good publicity. There's a public out there waiting with baited breath for you to take those steps up there, and we're not going to let you toss it away with stupid mistakes!"

"Hey, hang on!" Al had snapped. "You didn't nudge me anywhere! I've been pulling my weight, and I've earned my place the same as anybody!"

"Sure, you've worked," Yardley allowed irately. Something had snapped and he no longer seemed to be in control of his tongue. "But haven't you ever wondered how you got accepted to the program in the first place? Let's face it, you're a wreck now, and you were worse then! Twenty pounds below the healthy weight range, forty under minimum poundage here. Lungs full of wasted muscles, more scar tissue than skin, weak ankles, compromised shoulders, a screwed-up digestive tract—and that's just your body, Calavicci! Your mind's worse: claustrophobia, uncontrollable fits of temper, regression into savagery in the cafeteria. You were neither physically nor mentally adequate for the program. We had to tweak your reports so many times that they read like a fantasy novel!"

Al had stared, not quite believing what he was hearing. "You fudged my physicals?" he had asked, his voice low and incredulous.

"Hell, yes, we fudged your physicals! Hollway himself shut down Carpenter's non compos mentis recommendation! Every damned bureaucrat in our organization and yours has been trying to get you to the moon since you opened your repatriated mouth and gave them the idea! My life for the last two goddamned years has been getting you onto that hunk of space rock up there, and I'm not going to watch you chuck that all away by playing estranged lover with your wife!" Yardley had cried.

Then he made himself very, very clear. Move back in with Elsa as if none of this had ever happened, or NASA would drop him like a hot potato and replace him with Simmons.

At first Al had been sickened and humiliated by the revelation that he had been set up like that. Groomed was the word Yardley had used. Al called it being played like a piano. How could he have been so trusting? So naïve and stupid. They had paved the way for him so that he could be their trained monkey, their little actor, putting on a show for the masses. The cute, cuddly wop mascot of the Apollo program.

Then he had come to look at it another way. They had used him, sure, but hadn't he used them right back? Didn't he want to go into space more than he wanted anything? He never would have got this far without their conniving. He had traded his charisma for their cooperation, and if he made it to the moon it would be worth the compromise. He'd already swiped a promotion out of the bargain.

As for moving back in with Elsa, he had obeyed the letter of the law. He'd gone back to the house and set up shop in the den. He didn't talk to her, he didn't eat with her—they hardly even saw each other. They might have been tenants in the same apartment building. She ignored him in private, and in public she was still the dutiful and decorative wife, which was what made him think that he wasn't the only one who had been read the riot act.

This latest publicity stunt had seemed reasonable enough when Yardley had proposed it. A little intimidating—Thanksgiving dinner with the President and his family—but reasonable. That was before Al had realized that they would, of course, have to share a room…

But a Naval man is equal to any challenge, however gruesome, and Al wasn't about to let this lick him. Working up the courage at last, he squared his shoulders and entered the bedroom suite.

Elsa was in bed, lying with her back to the door. Al didn't speak as he closed the door and undressed with brisk efficiency, laying his uniform away with care. He put on his pajamas and went through to the adjoining bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM

Elsa lay still, listening to the sounds of Al's evening toilette—sounds that she hadn't heard for the better part of two months. Theirs was no marriage now. It was a mockery. A travesty. But necessary.

It had been John Yardley who had explained the necessity. Yardley, a man with whom she had never had any dealings until this impossible Italian had insinuated his way into her life. She didn't care about how it looked. She didn't care whether or not Al got to go to the moon. He was a philanderer, a liar and a cheat, and he didn't deserve to go.

She did, however, care about her job. She was the best computer programmer they had. They said when the shuttle went up they would be able to send more people: seven or eight on a mission. Then they would have the luxury of sending specialists, not just pilots with diverse interests. Who knew? Maybe in a few years they would consider sending a woman…

She felt ashamed of sharing Al's dream. It was as stupid as him taking an interest in computers, which the fool had actually tried to do. He was hopeless. All he did was posit stupid theories about computers that could talk and think for themselves, like a bad science fiction writer.

Though compelled to play this stupid game… Elsa's cheeks burned with indignant anger at the thought of the ridiculous demands being placed upon her. If she had been the betrayer they would never have forced Al to stay beneath the same roof with her, tolerating her hated presence on pain of banishment from NASA. Yet because she was a woman her job was threatened if she did not play the fond little bride. Yardley had at least not minced words.

"I don't give a damn if you divorce him," he had said. "You go ahead and hang him out to dry if you want to—I'll even help you find the lawyer to do it—but not until after the fuss dies down."

Elsa had frowned, distrustfully. She thought Yardley was on Al's side and she said so.

This had touched a nerve. Suddenly this almost total stranger was unloading his anger and frustration upon her.

"Damn it, I tried!" he exclaimed. "I tried to like him, and he had me going for a while, but he's nothing but trouble. POWs are always trouble: their heads aren't right, and they don't understand the world! Wouldn't be so bad if he had a better attitude, but damn it! Your godforsaken husband is one big pain in the neck!"

The door to the bathroom opened, and Elsa waited breathlessly, wondering what he would do. She felt the blankets on the other side of the bed being drawn back, and the mattress rippled as he sat.

She whirled, sitting up as she went.

"That is it?" she demanded. "After all this, you just climb into bed as if nothing has happened?"

He looked at her with an obstinate, dogged expression. "I've had worse bedfellows than you," he said levelly. Then he lay down.

With a shriek of rage, her mouth spouting obscenities that would have made her mother blush with shame, Elsa put her palms against his shoulder and her feet against his knee, and pushed him out of bed.

Al landed on the floor with a thump, dragging half of the bedclothes with him. A sharp, ugly oath rang out, and then he sprung to his feet, dark eyes flashing with anger.

"Maledicali, voi strega ungherese!" he snarled.

Elsa tried to gather up the blankets and her dignity, squaring her shoulders and setting her jaw and tilting her chin proudly. Her eyes warred with his for a moment, then he muttered a black imprecation in a language that she recognized only as certainly not Western, and with a flick of his wrist yanked the coverlet off the bed.

"I'll sleep on the floor," he growled blackly, glaring at her briefly before turning his back. He wrapped the coverlet around his shoulders, looping it over his head like a hood, and then threw himself down upon the ground with an air of finality that made her flinch.

Soon the slow, deep sounds of slumber came from the corner. Quivering a little with pent-up emotions and frustration, Elsa turned off the lamp and slowly relaxed into uneasy dreams.

MWMWWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM

You tried not to dream. When you dreamed you left yourself at the mercy of your mind, which was worse than the mercy of the V.C. Not even Quon or his soldiers or his cruel women could devise terrors as complete as the ones your mind could produce. There were nightmares about the next torture session, nightmares so vivid that you didn't know which pains came from your battered body and which from your anguished mind. Then there were the dreams about your death, in silent ignominy somewhere deep in this jungle hell where no one would ever find you… and dreams where some SEAL found your dog tags, wherever they were, and reported you dead, and Beth left you, and remarried, and then you came home, after surviving everything, all the ugliness and the misery and the horror, to find that she was gone… that she'd given up on you just because some lousy Marine kid had croaked… because there had been a bastard of a lawyer there waiting to scoop her up…

Those dreams made you believe, as nothing else could, that the world was the Devil's playground and you were his favorite toy.

That was why Al was glad that they weren't letting him sleep. They had staked him out on the jungle floor, spread-eagled with his wrists and his ankles bound to heavy rods of bamboo driven through the spongy earth and into the heavy clay beneath. Not content with leaving him to the mosquitoes, they had first leaned him back over a log, the bole of what once had been a mighty tree. It was a good seventy inches in circumference, and his back was bent over it so that his abdomen was at the apex of an arch. Hands and feet were bound as far away from the log as possible, on either side, and his limbs pulled taught. His head fell back between tormented shoulders, ill-equipped after years of abuse to handle this stress without agony.

The discomfort after so many hours was incredible. He couldn't feel his feet anymore, which was probably a blessing, but his calves and knees were alive with horrible tingling like the pricking of thousands of tiny needles jabbing outward from the bone. His hamstrings burned and spasms wracked their way through his buttocks and pelvis, and up his unnaturally vaulted spine. Slivers and rough bark dug into his naked back. His shoulders… he couldn't think about his shoulders. Why the hell had God given Man shoulders, anyway?

His head felt heavy and swollen, bloated with blood that his weary heart couldn't pump properly. He had vomited earlier, when the guards had been beating on him with their rubber bludgeons, and every seventh or eighth time he blinked a crusted bit of chyme would work itself into one eye or the other, burning terribly and prompting tears that ran down his forehead and tickled among the roots of his filthy hair.

His arms were the mirror images of his legs, at least as the progression of discomfort went. The one exception was that although his hands were numb, the very tips of his fingers burned with an indescribably cold, as if they were frozen beyond recovery.

And the insects. Not just the mosquitoes feasting on his raw, sunburned flesh and stealing blood he could neither afford to lose nor adequately replenish on a diet consisting of one meager helping of rice almost every day. There were termites in the rotting tree beneath him, and they were crawling into places where they really, really didn't belong. A spider had crept across his face a while back, and there were horrible creeping things of every description wending their way past, around and over him, leaving tickling trails in memory of their passage. His body was drenched in sweat and caked with blood and grime and foulness… and he would never, ever be clean again. No wonder Beth didn't want him, vile and stinking and filthy. Worthless. No wonder she had left him.

She had left him!

Oh, God, she had left him!

He howled with abject anguish that had nothing to do with the torment of his body.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM

Elsa awoke with a start. Something was wrong. For a moment she lay still, her heart pounding. She was in a guest bedroom in the White House, and something was not right.

She got out of bed, her long satin nightgown falling down around her ankles. Moving silently across the lush carpet, she made her way blindly to the corner where Al was sleeping. She knelt in the darkness, feeling for the coverlet. It was there, but Al was not. The blanket was cold, too, as if it had been vacated a long time ago.

Startled, Elsa moved to switch on the light. She had a memory for spaces, which was one of the qualities that made her such an adept programmer. Ninety percent of programming was envisioning the circuits.

The room was empty, but Al's pajama shirt lay in a crumpled heap, almost under the foot of the bed, and his pants had been shucked with equal lack of ceremony near the door to the bathroom.

Now she could hear the water, running through a showerhead. She opened the door to the bathroom, and the darkness was broken by the light spilling in from the bedroom.

Al was on all fours in the tub, the stream of fluid beating down upon his back. His head hung limply between his shoulders, his mouth was open, and he had his eyes screwed shut. Presently a violent retching motion ripped through the lean muscles of his abdomen, shaking his whole body with a seizure of revulsion. He whimpered a little and his eyes pulled more tightly closed. His chest heaved with shallow, painful breaths and his limbs were quivering.

Elsa was frozen for a moment, staring in horror at the image of wretchedness before her. Then her body took control, sweeping her mind blindly along. She turned on the bathroom light and strode forward. With a quick, assertive slap she disengaged the shower. Al flinched at the sound, then subsisted into wretched trembling. He had been running the water as cold as it would go, and as she knelt next to the tub Elsa could see the hideous blue tint of his lips. She put a hand on his shoulder.

"Al?" she murmured softly. "Al, are you awake?"

He pulled away, almost violently. His right hand slipped on the slick porcelain, and he fell. His head cracked against the side of the tub and he landed painfully in its bottom, a harsh noise of startled pain ripping from his lips. Frightened, bewildered brown eyes searched the ceiling and settled on her face.

"G-g-go aw-way," he muttered darkly, his chattering teeth hampering his speech.

He had had another nightmare: that was plain. A nightmare about that purgatory, the hell he had lived for six long years. Elsa felt a wave of pity, and something else that she hadn't expected to feel for this man ever again. A warm, blessed burst of love. What she needed and wanted was suddenly not important. All that mattered was what Al needed.

She raised herself on her knees and reached out for him. "Al," she murmured. "Al, you're safe here…"

He shook his head and tried to shrink away, but he was dazed from the blow to the head and not really fully in the present. She had her hands on his shoulders before he could fight her, and she drew him up into her arms, holding him against the side of the tub. His wounded head fell against her shoulder, and she stroked it.

As if he had been frantically craving such comfort, Al lifted his hands to clutch pathetically at her arms. "Elsa, Elsa," he mumbled. Then a sob shook him. "Elsa, I'm dirty… so dirty…"

He wasn't. His skin was wrinkled from the water, white and immaculately clean. His hair, soaking the shoulder of her nightgown with its frigid runoff, still smelled of its last washing. But she could feel the aura of shame that was clinging to him, the memory of filth and wretchedness.

"I know," she said gently. "I know. I'll help you wash."

"So dirty…" he murmured, screwing his eyes closed again.

Elsa eased him back into the tub, leaning him against the side. He lay limp and complacent as she plugged the drain and turned on the tap, taking care that the temperature was warm and soothing. As the water level rose, slowly creeping up and over his legs and then higher and higher on his abdomen, she lathered her hands with fragrant soap and began to massage his arms and chest. He did not move, passively accepting her ministrations. While she worked she murmured softly, alternating between his tongue and hers as words failed her in each. She said nothing profound or important, but the sound of her wandering voice seemed to comfort him. His face began to relax out of his hard lines, and the spasming muscles in his back and torso ceased their twitching.

She washed his shoulders and his back, his elbows. She worked the lather between his fingers and then lifted his feet out of the water and did the same for his toes. His legs, his knees. Finally she found the bottle of shampoo left out for their use, and massaged a little into his hair. She eased him backwards into the water to rinse it, stroking his cheeks between passes of his head.

Then slowly his eyes opened and fixed upon her. The ghosts were gone—or buried. A wry smile twisted his pale lips.

"Couldn't wait to get me naked again, huh?" he asked.

She laughed at the unexpectedness of the remark, and then suddenly he was sitting up and kissing her. Somehow he got out of the tub and she was rubbing him dry with the thick, luxuriant towel, and then they were backing into the bedroom. She reached to turn off the light, but he stayed her hand.

"Uh-uh, gorgeous," he chided. "We're gonna spend the night, we'll do it properly!"

"You are the Devil," she gasped, writhing with pleasure as he worked her free of her garment.

"Mmph," he grunted softly, easing her backwards onto the bed. "What would Mary Todd Lincoln say about the antics going on under her roof tonight?"