Armageddon Crazy

EIGHT

Mansard

Charlie Mansard lay flat on his back on the king-size bed, staring at Lynette working out on the La La

His single consolation was that Lynette probably did not mind. Apart from anything else, Lynette was paid very well not to mind. Right at that moment, he was using her as a piece of living pornography, and he was not even able to give her his full attention. Still, she did not complain. Over the years they had maintained their strange relationship, he had given Lynette a great deal of money to tolerate his foibles and mood shifts. There were times when he felt almost paternal toward her. Back in the old days, before Faithful and his jackals had grabbed power, she probably would have been a lawyer, perhaps an actress, at least a corporate executive. Now all those options, with the exception of that of the actress, had gone. She had to settle for being the plaything of an alcoholic but highly paid sky designer. The worse condemnation of the times was that a woman in New York, alone and without money, could have done a great deal worse. He paid for her apartment; and he gave her ample pocket money. At the very least, she had time to read, to listen to music; she even had time to think, something that made him very envious now and then.

He had also given her one other thing that also explained why Lynette complained so little about what he did. He had had her fitted with illegal DNI plugs and set her up with a co

He had to admit that the sight of her bare buttocks, making frenzied coital movements as she half-consciously interacted with the machine, was close to arousing the beast in him. However, each time he was almost ready to get up and make a move, he became distracted. The last couple of days had produced more than enough to distract him.

Ron Cableman had turned out to be a smooth, third-generation Washington sharpie. He belonged in the Faithful White House. His daddy had survived the plot and counterplot of the last days of the Reagan administration, and his grandaddy had played poker with Richard Nixon. They had started drinking at the Skylounge, had a late lunch at 21, and from there they had gone downtown to Ruskin's. Cableman had matched Mansard drink for drink. As the happy hour had started to grow maudlin, Cableman had offered to call a couple of girls that he knew. Man-said had declined. He was fairly faithful to Lynette, although he did spend the rest of the evening wondering what if. Along the way, it had transpired that Larry Faithful was pla

"Plus we want you to do the other figures from Revelations – the Beast, the Whore of Babylon, and Jesus himself, the Lamb of God. Storming up the river and terrifying the hell out of the si

Mansard had put down his scotch and looked at Ron Cableman in blank amazement. "It's impossible. There's no way that my people could pull something like that together in the time."

Cableman had smiled blandly. "It'll be a rush job, but all of the country's resources will be at your disposal."

Mansard had firmly shaken his head. "That's the trouble, Ron. The country doesn't have the resources. The skywalker we put up last Sunday used state-of-the-art Japanese hardware that's subject to the full prohibitions of the embargo. The projectors themselves are close to impossible. I think we had all that there are on this side of the Pacific. And don't ask me how we got them. You wouldn't like the answer."

Cableman had laughed. "Listen, Charles, I'm pretty sure that the U.S. Government is quite capable of getting you a bunch of Sony DL-70s. I don't think we'd need to go through Chile, either."

Mansard had looked at him with considerably more respect. Ron Cableman had done his homework.

"Could you get me thirty of them?"

"I expect so."

"In two weeks?"

"If necessary."

"Then it might just be possible, if the money was right and everything else fell into place. I'm not saying I'll do it, but in theory…"

Cableman had raised an amused eyebrow. "This is the government, the price is always right."

"I'd also need a lot of trained, experienced riggers."

"We could get them from the military."

"I want good people."

"Believe it or not, there are people in the military who know what they're doing."

Mansard continued to put up objections, but he knew in his heart that he was going to try for the job. Cableman knew it, too. Another part of his homework had told him that Mansard had the kind of ego that would not be able to turn down a challenge of this size.

The program on the La La

He stepped over a pile of foreign newspapers and magazines, mostly ba