Distraction - Bruce Sterling [96]
“I knew it!” Oscar announced, throwing his napkin on the table. “I knew Huey had people on the inside. See, now the other shoe drops. This is big, this is a major twist.”
“Oh, that’s bad,” Bambakias groaned. He was ashen. “This is the final indignity. The final disgrace. This is the very end.” He swallowed noisily. “I’m going to be sick.”
“Help the Senator,” Oscar commanded, jumping to his feet. “And get Sosik in here, right away.”
Bambakias vanished in a cluster of panicked retainers. The room emptied as suddenly as a Tokyo subway car. Oscar and Greta found themselves suddenly alone.
Oscar watched the screen. One of the American defectors had just appeared on-camera. The man looked very familiar, utterly cynical, and extremely drunk. Oscar recognized him as an acquaintance: he was the public relations officer for the Louisiana air base. He was wearily delivering a prepared statement, with French subtitles. “What a genius move! Huey’s dumped his Trojan horse people into the hands of French spooks. The French will hide those rogue airboys in some bank vault in Paris. We’ll never hear from them again. They’ve sold out their country, and now the crooked sons of bitches will live like kings.”
“What a convenient interruption that was,” Greta told him. She was still eating lunch, pincering her chopsticks with surgical skill. “The Senator had you pinned down and right on the spot. I can’t believe you had the nerve to pull that trick.”
“Actually, I was keeping a weather eye on that screen all along, just in case I needed a nice distracting gambit.”
She sampled the dim sum and smiled skeptically. “No you weren’t. Nobody can do that.”
“Actually, yes, I can do that sort of thing. I do it every day.”
“Well, you’re not distracting me. What was it about this Moira person? It must be something pretty awful. I could tell that much.”
“Moira is not your problem, Greta.”
“Ha! Nobody around here is addressing my problems.” She frowned, then poured a little more soy. “Really good food here, though. Amazing food.”
“I’m going to get to your problems. I haven’t forgotten them. I just had to shelve those issues for a minute while I was getting the poor man to eat.”
“Too bad you couldn’t get him to keep it down.” Greta sighed. “This has certainly been eye-opening. I had no real idea what to expect from your Senator. Somehow, I imagined he’d be just like you.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Oh … a Machiavellian, showboating, ultra-wealthy political hack. But Alcott’s not like that at all! Alcott’s a real idealist. He’s a patriot! It’s a tragedy that he’s clinically depressed.”
“You really think that the Senator is clinically depressed?”
“Of course he is! It’s obvious! He’s crashed from starvation stress. And that myoclonic tremor in his hands—that’s an overdose of neural appetite suppressants.”
“He’s supposed to be long off all those pills.”
“Then he must have been hoarding them, and eating them secretly. Typical behavior in the syndrome. Those repeated presentations about his so-called criminality—those far-fetched guilt obsessions.… He’s very depressed. Then when you tricked him into eating, he turned manic. His affect is all over the map! You need to test him for cognitive deficits.”
“Well … he was just faint from hunger. Normally, he’d see right through a childish gambit like that chowder stunt.”
Greta put down her chopsticks and lowered her voice. “Tell me something. Tell me the truth. Did you ever notice that he’s enormously outspoken and energetic in public, but then he always retreats and cocoons himself? For, say, two or three days?”
Oscar nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“First, he’s very expressive and charming, working twenty-hour days, throwing off a lot of sparks. Then, he’s just gone. He claims he’s thinking things over, or that he needs his privacy—but basically,