Free The Multiple Man by Ben Bova Page A

room's TV, if I'd add twenty to her fee.
    At least she didn't talk with her mouth full.

    I got through the interviews the next day with a buzzing head and a rasping conscience. While I was sitting there pontificating on freedom of the press and being congratulated for my forthrightness by the interviewers (Why are they all so alike? Movie idol faces, leather jackets and flowered shirts that were "mod" years ago, fag-English accents) the inside of my head was shouting at me that I was just as big a hypocrite as anybody in the game. The President was in danger and I was playing it quiet.
    The last interview that afternoon was conducted by a boy-girl team. It was a typical TV studio: one corner cluttered with the benches and phony ship's deck of a kiddies' show; across the way, the podium, clocks, maps for the evening news show. We were sitting under the lights on a comfortable pile of cushions arranged to look like a conversation pit in a Persian palace. Sure enough, the "boy" half of the interview team wore a rust suede jacket and a gold silk shirt. At least the "girl"—a sharp-eyed woman in her thirties—had the brains to wear a slacks and vest outfit, the kind that lots of women were wearing back on the East Coast.
    Halfway through the interview she impatiently interrupted her teammate to ask me, "But what's the President really like? I mean, in person? When the doors are closed and the cameras are off?"
    I shifted mental gears and launched into my standard paean of praise about James J. Halliday, the man. Sure, we had worked out this spiel in the office, but most of it was from the heart. We didn't have to labor very long or hard to come up with a good three minutes' worth of glowing description about The Man. We all liked him.
    But while my mouth was going through its motions, my brain decided that if I liked The Man so goddamned much I shouldn't be sitting on these nonallergenic cushions talking about him. I ought to be helping him to find out who, or what, was trying to kill him.
    I put in a call to McMurtrie right there in the studio as soon as the interview was over. It was late afternoon, nearly 4:00p.m.
    The White House operator told me that Mr. McMurtrie was out of town on a special assignment.
    "Where?" I asked.
    She looked like a chicken. Beady eyes, hooked little nose, pinched pasty-skinned face. She clucked impatiently once and answered, "We are not permitted to reveal that information."
    I reminded her of who I was and showed her my ID again. No go. I went over her head, to the Secret Service man in charge of White House security in McMurtrie's absence. He was even stonier. Finally I had to get to Wyatt, and that took damned near half an hour.
    His Holiness hemmed and grumbled but finally told me McMurtrie had gone out to some laboratory in Minnesota. Something to do with Dr. Klienerman and the investigation.
    "What's the name of the lab?" I asked. "Where in Minnesota?"
    It was like trying to break into Fort Knox with a cheese knife, but finally the old man grudgingly told me what I wanted to know. I had to threaten to resign, just about, to get him to open up.
    I called Vickie and told her not to expect me in the office the next day; Hunter would have to play "meet the press" for me again. She looked surprised, even startled. Before she could ask why, or where I was going to be, I clicked off and punched the number for airlines information. Thank God it was computerized. No arguing, no explaining, no back talk. Just tell the computer where you are and where you want to go, and the lovely electronic machine gives you a choice of times and routes. I picked a plane that was leaving for Minneapolis in an hour. The computer assured me that my ticket would be waiting at the gate. I rushed off to throw my dirty laundry into my flight bag and head out to the airport.
    It was raining by the time I boarded the plane. We sat at the end of the runway for twenty minutes, exposed in the middle of the flat, open airport,