"We insist on seeing him!" demanded someone from the outer office, speaking accented English. An exaggerated version of the Queen's English, in fact.
Hunched over his desk, painfully working through another psychological assessment written in the specifically turgid jargon of thatbranch of academia, Miggy Tremelo found himself almost grinding his teeth. It was not the interruption in his train of thought which annoyed him. Truth to tell, that was a relief. Even by academic standards, Miggy found "psychologese" particularly aggravating. It was the inevitable—
His new secretary started booming her response. Professor Tremelo is not to be disturbed; you have no appointment; procedures must be followed—
Miggy did find himself grinding his teeth. If there was a more unlovely sound in the universe than that voice, he couldn't imagine what it might be. His new secretary, shoved upon him by the National Security Council because she apparently had a higher security clearance than God Almighty, reminded him of something out of the Grimm Brothers. A troll, composed of equal parts red tape, officiousness, petty self-satisfaction with the exercise of petty power, and—last but not least—monumental stupidity.
As the row in the outer office continued, Miggy tried to block it out. But the noise was too loud.
Miggy sighed. He almost knew to the last word what the visitor would say next. I'm-not-leaving-this-office-until-I-see-him!
He snorted. Fat chance, lady. This much he granted: at least the troll kept unwanted visitors from bothering him. And Miggy couldn't think of a single person from England that he wanted to see at the moment.
Right on cue the woman made the predicted statement. Upper-class British accent. Shrill.
Suddenly a new voice entered the fray.
"Please, Mevrou," a man said, his voice pleading, gruff and heavily accented. A familiar accent. One Miggy had heard recently, listening to a female marine biologist. "We've come all the way from South Africa."
Miggy was on his feet and at the door in a moment. He yanked the door open, revealing the appointmentless visitors who had managed to get all the way through the security cordon. Actually, he was a bit amazed they had gotten that far. Looking at the big man and the blond, exquisitely coiffured and made-up woman, he realized it was probably easy enough for this couple. What the big guy couldn't simply bull through, she would arrogantly slice apart. The man looked grim, the woman angry.
Miggy smiled reassuringly at them. "Come in. Is your name De Beer? We've asked the South African Consulate to contact you."
The big man had a hat in his hand. A hat, in this day and age. He was twisting it. "Those mamparas, they're too busy worrying about cell phones and BMWs to do any work, Myneer. We tried to contact Liz when we saw the news on CNN. Got the first flight over here when we heard that she'd gone off to be with some of your military. I've come to take my daughter home, Myneer. I lost my son," the big man swallowed, "in our army. My daughter comes home. Get an American to do the job."
Miggy Tremelo took a deep breath. Damn whichever incompetent deskwarmer had let him be the one to break it to them. "I'm afraid, sir, that your daughter is missing."
The big South African went pale under his tan. He sat down abruptly in a chair in the outer office.
His blond wife was unfortunately not similarly affected. Her cultivated English accent did go to hell in a handbasket, though.
"Then you bleddy find her, you dumb American bastard. Trust Elizabet! Silly girl should have stayed at home and got married like I wanted her to." She glared down at her husband. "But no, Jan! You had to let her go to university. You encouraged her. You let her marry that American. This is all your fault, you hear me! Your fault!"
She went on. And on. The big guy just twisted his hat to ruination. His face was almost collapsing, in the way that a man who does not know how to cry wishes he did.
Well, that was no help, Miggy thought bleakly, about an hour later. Between the woman's outrage and the man's grief, neither of them had been able—or even willing, in the mother's case—to tell him anything about their daughter that he didn't already know.
Tremelo stared down at the psychological assessment report in front of him. This one claimed to be an assessment of Lamont Jackson.
"Assessment, my foot," muttered the physicist. "There's nothing here but the shell of a man, carefully constructed to deal with a none-too-friendly world. I need to know him."
Again, he sighed. Now that Mr. and Mrs. De Beer had finally showed up, Miggy had personally interviewed almost all of the close friends and relatives of that largest party of abducted people.
None of it had been very useful.
Jerry Lukacs had no immediate family left. A single child, his parents had died years earlier in an auto accident. He had a number of colleagues, many of whom considered themselves to be (and undoubtedly were) his "friends." But the friendship involved had been so curlicuedwith typical academic one-upsmanship-combined-with-qualifications that their accounts of Lukacs had been more useful as guides to them than he himself.
The young corporal's family had been large and helpful. Helpful, at least, in their attitude. But—nothing. Just a tale of a young farm boy, ambitious in the way that such boys are. A nice kid, it seemed, if perhaps with more in the way of an "attitude" than most. But—nothing, really.
Cruz's family had been even larger, and less helpful. Not because they were hostile, but simply because they were heartbroken. The sergeant's father had died when he was only a boy, and Anibal Cruz had become the man of the family—a position he had apparently fulfilled very well indeed. Miggy winced, remembering a wizened grandmother weeping softly in one of the chairs in his office. Nothing.
Cruz's fellow soldiers had been a bit more informative. Slowly, under persistent questioning, a certain picture of Anibal Cruz had emerged. Miggy began to smile, remembering. The world-renowned physicist, born into a branch of Mexico City's elite and then transplanted to the United States in his infancy, suspected he would have enjoyed the company of another of Mexico's many offspring. Even though Cruz had been born and raised in an environment about as different from that of young Tremelo as could be imagined.
Thinking about Lieutenant Salinas, Miggy's incipient smile vanished. Oh, well, he thought philosophically, such men can be found in every race, color and creed. He snorted. Nobody seemed to have much use for John Salinas. Even his wife had been far more agitated over the fact that the life insurance company was demanding proof of death than her husband's actual fate.
That left only—
Bracing himself, he went back to the door to the outer office and opened it. The troll looked up from her desk.
"Sir?"
"Still no word from Mrs. Jackson?"
The troll's lips grew pinched. Well . . . the thin crevasse where lips were normally to be found on a human face vanished completely. She sniffed. Well . . . she uttered a sound through her nose which reminded Tremelo of—
He shied away from the thought hastily.
"In a matter of speaking, Professor Tremelo. The Jackson woman did call early this morning. But when I informed her that she was required to appear at your office in order to pursue the preliminary psychological assessment—"
Miggy stifled a combined groan and snarl of fury. The struggle was ferocious enough to cause him to miss the next few words.
"—could not believe her insolence. Can you imagine? Those people—!"
Even the troll realized she was treading on thin ice. "Well, in any event. You can be sure I informed her that under no circumstances would the United States government make good her so-called 'lost wages.' And of course when she—"
"She's a waitress, you insufferable creature!"bellowed Tremelo. The fact that the physicist rarely lost his temper was compensated, perhaps, by the volcanic results when he did. "The United States government hiccups that much money for—for—"
He clamped his jaws shut, stymied by his utter inability to think of anything the U.S. government spent so little money on.
The troll was ogling him, as pale as a sheet. Even she, apparently, had been intimidated by the famous Tremelo Tremor.
"She wanted her tips made good, too," squeaked the creature.
Tremelo's fury was instantaneously transformed into almost hysterical laughter.
"Good for her!" he managed to get out. After a moment, when he'd brought himself under control, he stood fully erect and pointed at the telephone. The long finger bore a close resemblance to a wizard's wand of wrath.
"You will call Mrs. Jackson. You will apologize for your rude conduct this morning. You will—"
Abruptly, he shook his head and advanced upon the telephone in question. "Never mind," he growled. "I wouldn't trust you to invite a crocodile to lunch. What is the number?"
The troll's thick fingers fluttered their way through the notes on her desk. Garbled explanations followed. It seemed Mrs. Jackson was rarely at home . . . children being taken care of by the grandmother . . . long hours at work . . . longer than ever, now that her husband had vanished . . .
Miggy sighed and began punching numbers into the telephone. "Information? I need the telephone number of the South Side Cafe, please."
The telephone was answered on the third ring by a harried-sounding voice, rich with the accent of Chicago's south side. "South Side Cafe. Yeah, I'm Marie Jackson."
"Mrs. Jackson," said Miggy evenly, "this is Professor Tremelo. I just discovered that you were treated very rudely this morning. Please accept my sincere apologies."
For perhaps half a minute, Miggy listened to the voice on the other end. And a pungenthalf a minute it was, too. By the time the voice came to a halt, Tremelo was bestowing a wintry smile on the troll.
"I fully sympathize, Mrs. Jackson, and I can assure you that it won't happen again. Moreover, I will be more than glad to make good your lost income. But I really mustspeak to you as soon as possible. Would this afternoon be convenient? I can send someone to pick you up, if you need a ride."
Again, he listened to the voice. This time, for perhaps fifteen seconds.
"Excellent, Mrs. Jackson. I'll have someone there at two o'clock." A few more seconds of the voice. "Oh, you won't be able to miss them, ma'am. Look for some paratroopers in a Humvee."
A few more seconds. Very pungent, those.
Tremelo's smile grew positively arctic. "By all means. Be my guest."
He placed the telephone back on the receiver and walked back to his office. At the door, he paused and turned back upon the troll.
"I do suggest you not place any obstacles in the way of Mrs. Jackson, when she shows up here later today. Really I do."
He managed to keep a straight face. Even a solemn one. "Mrs. Jackson was quite precise. In a colorful sort of way. She says she'll either get the red carpet treatment when she arrives, or she'll make herself one. Ah, the source of the pigment will apparently involve, to use her expression, someone's new asshole."
He turned away. "Not mine."