Ikon by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page A

boggy clump of grass, desperately trying to keep his $200 shoes out of the mud. But Titus kept his back to the bank, and puffed at his corncob pipe, even though it had died on him almost twenty minutes ago, and generally tried to look occupied with the current, and the weather, and the fish. He’d often heard that the greatest actors could communicate volumes of Shakespeare through their turned backs, although he wasn’t quite sure how. What he was trying to communicate now was: get the hell out of here, Joe, unless it’s something really good.
    Titus!’ Joe called again. He had a thin voice, like a whippet. Titus, can you hear me?’
    Titus took two or three steps further into the stream. The water-level was uncomfortably close to the top of his waders, but he stayed where he was, deaf as a rock, occasionally turning his head upstream to make it look as
    if his pose were natural, whistling too for a moment but then forgetting to keep it up.
    ‘Mr Secretary, this is absolutely vital!’ Joe yelled. ‘It’s too sensitive to shout out to you; you’ll have to come in to the riverbank and listen close!’
    There was a long pause. The river gurgled and flowed. Titus stayed where he was, his fishing-pole held up numbly, his eyes closed. Of all the instincts that Joe could have appealed to, his curiosity was the most easily aroused. He could stay here, pretending to be inextricably absorbed in the Shenandoah and her fish, chilled to the thighs; or he could admit that he had heard Joe calling, and wade back, and listen to what this sensitive news might be. It was too damned exasperating for words, especially since Joe would say nothing at all about his apparent deafness, but gloat silently, and make him feel angrier than ever.
    He was still trying to make up his mind when he heard water splashing close by. He turned around, and to his complete astonishment, Joe was wading right up to him in his $750 Christian Dior suit, his thin triangular face fixed in the kind of expression you might expect to see on a man who has had an entire bowl of lime Jell-O emptied slowly into his jockey shorts.
    ‘Mr Secretary!’ he gasped.
    Titus was so surprised that he forgot to pretend that he hadn’t heard Joe calling before. ‘Why the hell didn’t you stay on the bank? You gone crazy or something?’
    Titus, Mr Secretary, this is urgent.’
    They stood facing each other, nearly waist-deep in the river. Titus took the corncob pipe out of his mouth, then stuck it back in again, and started to wind in his line.
    ‘I wouldn’t have disturbed you for anything, Titus,’ said Joe. ‘But I think we’ve come up with the answer to the RING problem, accidentally, fortuitously, and I knew you’d want to be the very first to know.’
    ‘How can I be the first to know when you already know?’ growled Titus, reeling in his line as if it were his vacation, prematurely over, wrapped up and wound up
     
    like everything else he tried to do that wasn’t connected with the State Department, or Nadine, or Nadine’s nauseating children.
    ‘What I mean is, you’re the first VIP to know,’ Joe corrected himself. ‘And, well, what we decide to do about it depends entirely on you.’
    ‘Do you realize you’re soaking?’ Titus asked Joe. T mean, do you realize that you’re absolutely fucking soaking wet?’
    ‘Yes, sir,said Joe. Then, more lamely, T have another suit in the car.’
    Titus fastened his hook and then began to make his way slowly back to the bank of the river in deep, rhythmical strides. ‘That’s typical of you, Joe. Do you know that? Heroism without inconvenience. You’re always prepared to get your hands dirty, provided there’s a handy pack of Wet Ones around.’
    Joe sloshed after him. He reached the edge of the river and stood in the mud with water running out of his suit in a noisy cascade. Titus opened up his fishing bag to put away his diptera fly and his hook, and dismantle his expensive carbon-fibre pole. Nadine had