Ikon by Graham Masterton Page A

oddballs to let him go off on his own, unprotected. Somebody had already taken two shots at him in Cleveland; and he had been hit on the side of the head in Fort Worth with a can of chick peas. His office received at least a dozen threatening letters a day, including a recurring promise of ‘fiery execution’ from somebody who called himself ‘the Great Blast’.
    ‘Fix me a drink, will you?’ Titus told Joe, as he struggled the shoulder straps off his waders, and unbuttoned his shirt. ‘No, it’s over there, inside that thing that looks like a writing-desk.’
    Joe opened the front of the desk, and found a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label, and lead crystal glasses. He poured out a large splash of whiskey, and carried the glass to where Titus was now wrapping a royal-blue towelling bathrobe tight around his hard, grey-pelted body.
    Titus took his cigar out of his mouth just long enough to swallow a mouthful, and then coughed, ‘Get me Rodney on the phone.’
    Joe opened the black security briefcase which Titus carried with him wherever he went. It contained anti-bug-ging alarms, infra-red detection equipment, and a scrambler telephone which could be plugged straight into the wall socket like a normal telephone. He punched out the 414 number and waited for the call tone to disturb Senator Rodney in his large split-level house in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Senator Rodney was a keen fisherman, too, and most of the time he was able to spend back in his home state he devoted to the lake, and his 23-foot boat Spirit of Southport.
    Titus stood by the window looking out across the hotel driveway. It had been foggy all day, and now that evening was drawing in, it was almost impossible to see down as far as the river. A time of ghosts, he thought to himself. A time for cold visitations, and prophesies to come true. He believed in destiny, particularly the kind of destiny which stalked through castle bedchambers carrying a bloody knife.
    Titus had been a three-star general, Korea and Viet Nam. He had been the last general to leave Saigon; and he had always privately sworn to himself that he would be the first general back in again. At 52, he was fit, muscular, and handsome as an uncarved slab of Mount Rush-more. He exercised every morning, one hundred press-ups, fifty burpees, twenty back stretches. He could punch a hole through an average modern plywood door with his fist, and he had once laid a nuclear disarmament demonstrator out cold. He wasn’t rich. His father had owned a body shop in Peoria, Illinois. But he had been a tough and uncompromising soldier, and he made his way in politics with the help of powerful friends in the Pentagon, and campaign contributions from defence-related industries who were anxious that the tone of America’s foreign policy should remain hotly belligerent.
    Titus had once said, ‘I would rather see America melt
    than fall into Soviet hands.’ Newsweek had dryly remarked that when Israel Zangwill had referred to America as ‘the Great Melting-Pot’, that wasn’t exactly what he had had in mind.
    Joe suddenly said, ‘Senator Rodney? Good evening. Yes, sir. I’m sorry to disturb you at home. It’s Joe Jasper. I have Mr Alexander for you. No, from the Shenandoah Valley.’
    Titus took the phone, wiping it first on his towelling robe as if Joe Jasper might have left some slime on it. ‘Ken? It’s Titus. How are you doing? Yes. Sure. Did you hear the latest on RING?’
    Senator Rodney was suffering from a summer cold, and he wheezed a little. ‘I heard that Marshall is already talking about standing down a third of our cruise missiles. Provided, of course, he gets some reasonable guarantees from Moscow on Afghanistan.’
    ‘Yes, well, that’s partly correct,’ said Titus. He snapped his fingers at Joe to bring him over his drink. ‘He’s expecting some wider Soviet cutbacks in Europe as well; but still nothing that could possibly justify reducing our cruise missile complement by