“Well? What are you supposed to do about that?” The governor, the former lieutenant governor of New Jersey, was a friendly enough guy, but right at that moment he was clearly in a big hurry. The undercover state trooper who was always nearby was also getting uneasy by the unexpected delay. He was edging in close, just in case this small problem was in fact a setup of some kind. That was not too likely, seeing as this was the governor’s office and security was awfully good. The governor’s impatience and the trooper’s suspicion quickly got Charlie Fagen all squirrelly.
“I guess we got to have some sort of a meetin’ to figure out the flaws in the system. You go on through, Governor.”
“Thanks, Charlie.”
The governor passed through the metal detector without making it buzz. The trooper had his special pass, allowing him to be armed.
Charlie Fagen hoped he hadn’t made a mistake. But how could it be a mistake letting the governor into the offices of the governor? He’d recognized the man with his own two eyes. Right?
Something bothered him, though. What was it?
He wasn’t the smartest man alive, but Chief of Security Charles Fagen did have a near-photographic memory, short-term. He replayed in his head his encounter with the governor. Was there something wrong with that picture?
Had the trooper looked suspicious? How could that be? They were always suspicious looking because they were always suspicious of you. And there was a new guy every few months.
Something wrong with the governor, then? Had he been under duress? No. Just in a hurry. Man like that you expect will be in a hurry sometimes. He had walked through the metal detector like he had a meeting to get to right away.
Oh. Wait The metal detector. With its color-coded height markings. The governor’s head had blotted out the purple mark at five feet nine inches. But every other time before, he had reached just halfway into the orange mark, at five feet eight inches.
He was either wearing lifts in his shoes, or that wasn’t the governor at all.
Fagen snatched the hot-line phone to security central, but then everything went black. Charlie Fagen collapsed, and someone else replaced the hot-line phone in its cradle.
“Got something to say about that?” The man with the gun pointed it at the security pair who monitored the metal detectors. They were ashen faced, having just witnessed the long-distance electrocution of Charlie Fagen. Their screens were blank. When Charlie fried, their electronics fried, too.
Exactly as he was trained to do, the operator on the left pushed the hidden alarm button with his left foot.
“The alarm is out of order,” said the man with the strange firearm. “But you should have known better than to try something behind my back. Now I get to shoot you.”
The operator tried to protest. The gunner, who was in an identical uniform, shot him. The evil-looking prongs slammed into the operator’s chest, pierced his shirt and imbedded in his flesh. The thin cable that connected to the gun had to have carried a hell of a current, because the operator began doing a spastic dance that ended when he flopped to the floor.
“Want to know what I think about nonlethal weaponry?” asked the man in the security guard uniform. “What I think is, why bother? So I juiced up the system a little. Now this nonlethal stun-gun thingy is lethal as dropping a toaster into the bathwater. Don’t believe me? Give him a feel. I bet there’s no pulse pulsing.”
“I believe you,” said the last operator, who was thinking that the attacker had fixed both his prongs. It was a two-barrel device. He should make a run for it….
“I can see it in your eyes.” The killer laughed. “You think I shot my wad.” With that, he depressed a lever where the cocking mechanism would have been on a conventional handgun, and with a whir the cables were withdrawn onto hidden spindles. The needle-tipped prongs were lodged in the firing position on the wide barrel of the gun. “Better think twice.”
‘What do you want me to do?” the operator pleaded.
“Just do your job. Look. He’s Charlie. I think the two of you can handle it.”
The man who ambled down the hall looked, sure enough, like Charlie Fagen—poor, dead Charlie Fagen. A little heavier, his skin a little lighter, his dirty blond hair a little too carefully put together. Still, nobody was going to notice.
“You think you can work well together?” the gunner asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
“That’s fine,” said the fake Charlie Fagen, with just the same weird Alabama-tinged accent Charlie used to speak. The fake Charlie even smiled the same way. The metal detector operator was an intern, without much experience, but he knew professionals when he saw them.
Whatever they were planning to do, it looked as if they would succeed.
