The Multiple Man by Ben Bova

river looked much stronger and somehow younger up here, not like the weary old sick stream that meandered sluggishly past St. Louis. And I knew that a thousand miles southward it finally flowed into the Gulf of Mexico. It endures. Despite what we do, the river endures. That old songwriter told it truly.
    I found the city of Stillwater at last and, after a couple of wrong turns on its quiet streets, located the Stillwater Inn. It was a lovely, graceful place, kept up as it must have looked in its prime a century ago. As I parked the car in the unattended lot alongside the inn's white clapboard side wall, I started thinking again.
    I hadn't pulled any rank at the airports, just used my regular personal charge card to get the airline tickets and the rental card. No fanfare, no Washington connection. But no cover-up, either. Wyatt, or somebody else, could track me down easily enough if he wanted to. But so far, I hadn't called attention to myself.
    I checked in at the hotel, paid cash in advance, ate dinner in their Bavarian-styled paneled dining room, had a drink in the coziest little bar I'd ever seen, and then went to my room. Despite all my suspicions and fears, I slept very soundly. I don't even remember dreaming, although I woke up the next morning at dawn's first light, soaked with sweat and very shaky.

CHAPTER SIX

    North Lake Research Laboratories was perched on a bluff overlooking the St. Croix, about a half-hour's drive above Stillwater. There were no road signs showing the way, and nobody at the hotel had seemed to know anything about the lab. I had to find the local fire station and ask the old man who was washing down the town's shiny new pumper. Firemen always know what's where, and the quickest way to get there.
    From the highway you could see the lab buildings, low and dun gray, hugging the top of the bluff. Midcentury cement and glass architecture, Saarinen by way of Frank Lloyd Wright. My rented car climbed the switch-backed driveway slowly; battery was running down. There was a riotwire fence around the lab enclosure, with a sturdy-looking gate blocking the driveway and a sturdier-looking guard posted in a little phone booth of a sentry box alongside the gate.
    I pulled up and he came out, leaned his face down to my window.
    "Yessir, what can I do for you?" Very polite. He had an automatic pistol holstered at his hip.
    "I'm here to see Mr. McMurtrie and Dr. Klienerman," I said.
    The names seemed unfamiliar to him. He looked politely puzzled.
    "Dr. Klienerman's from Walter Reed Hospital. Mr. McMurtrie's from the White House."
    "Oh . . . yes . . ."
    "My name's Albano," I said, before he could ask. "Meric Albano." I fished out my ID, the one with the Presidential Seal on it.
    He started to whistle, impressed, but caught himself. "Just one moment, Mr. Albano. I'll phone the reception lobby."
    He did that, came back still looking puzzled, but opened the gate and waved me on. I drove up another half-mile of blacktop, pulled up on a graveled parking area, and walked from the car to the reception lobby. There were fewer than a dozen cars in the parking lot; either their staff was incredibly small or there was another parking lot for employees tucked off in the back somewhere. Or the employees live here, said something in my head. Nonsense, I thought.
    The reception lobby was equally quiet. Nobody there at all. A curved desk with all the paraphernalia of a busy receptionist: phones, picture screens, computer access keyboard, plush little wheeled chair. The lobby was paneled in warm woods, furnished with leather couches and chairs. There were even fresh flowers in vases on both low-slung wood slab tables. But no people.
    A door in the wood paneling opened and a smiling, tall, handsomely dressed man came out. About my age, maybe a few years older. The suave public relations type: touch of gray at the temples, precise manner of speech, self-confident stride. A very careful man. The ideal pickpocket.
    "Mr. Albano," he said