The Key to Midnight

diminish.'
        'No,' Chelgrin said adamantly. 'She wouldn't be able to adapt. We'll have to put her somewhere else. That's final.'
        Peterson was delighted with Chelgrin's bravado - perhaps because he knew that it was hollow, merely the tremulous defiance of a child crossing a graveyard at night - and he giggled almost girlishly. The giggle swiftly became a full-fledged laugh. He gripped the senator's leg just above the knee and squeezed affectionately. Edgy, Chelgrin misinterpreted the action, detected a threat where none existed, and jerked away. The overreaction tickled the fat man. Peterson laughed and chortled and cackled, spraying spittle and expelling clouds of butter-rum fumes, until he had to gasp for breath.
        'I wish I knew what was so funny,' Chelgrin said.
        At last Peterson got control of himself. He mopped his big moon face with his handkerchief.
        'Dear Tom, why don't you just admit it? You don't want Lisa to go home to Mother Russia because you don't believe in what either of the major power blocs wants to do there. You lost faith in Marx and communism a long time ago, while we still ruled. And you don't like the crowd of socialists and thugs who're contesting for power these days. You still work for us because you have no choice, but you hate yourself for it. The good life here diverted you, dear Tom. Diverted, subverted, and thoroughly converted you. If you could get away with it, you'd make a clean break with us, cast us out of your life after all we've done for you. But you can't do that, because we've acted like wise capitalists in the way we've handled you over the years. We repossessed your daughter. We have a mortgage on your political career. Your fortune is built on credit we've extended to you. And we have a substantial - actually, enormous - lien against your soul.'
        Though Peterson now appeared willing to accept a relationship without pretense, Chelgrin remained wary about admitting to his true convictions. 'I don't know where you get these ideas. I'm committed to the proletarian revolution and the people's state every bit as much as I was thirty years ago.'
        That statement elicited another spate of giggling from the fat man. 'Dear Tom, be frank with me. We've known about the changes in you for twenty years, maybe even before you yourself were aware of them. We know the capitalist facade isn't just a facade any longer. But it doesn't matter. We aren't going to give you the axe merely because you've had a change of heart. There'll be no garroting, no bullets in the night, no poison in the wine, dear Tom. You're still an extremely valuable property. You help us enormously - though in a different way and for much different reasons now than when we all started on this little adventure.'
        For many years, as a congressman and then a senator, Chelgrin had passed military secrets to the Soviet regime. Since the fall of the Soviet, he'd been instrumental in arranging for tens of billions of dollars in loans to the new elected government of Russia, aware that none of it would ever be repaid. A large portion of those loans were misappropriated by the still Byzantine bureaucracy, going not to help the Russian people but to line the pockets of the same thugs who had ruled under the Soviet banner and to maintain a war chest for their indefatigable campaign to return to the pinnacle of power.
        'All right. Honesty,' said Chelgrin. 'Every day of my life, I pray to God that the help I give you will never be enough to ensure your success, never enough to harm this big, bustling, freewheeling, wonderful country. I want you all to fail and rot in Hell.'
        'Good. Very good,' said Peterson. 'Refreshing to be open and direct for a change, isn't it?'
        'All I care about now is my daughter.'
        'Would you like to see the other photographs?' Peterson asked.
        Chelgrin switched on the flashlight and took the stack of eight-by-ten glossies from the fat man.
        Rain drummed relentlessly on the roof of the car. The spinning tires sang sibilantly on the wet macadam.
        After a while the senator said, 'What'll happen to Lisa?'
        'We didn't actually expect you to be enthusiastic about sending her home,' Peterson acknowledged. 'So we've worked out something else. We'll turn her over to Dr. Rotenhausen-'
        'The one-armed wonder.'
        '-and he'll treat her at the clinic again.'
        'He gives me the