Swanson had just said, "I knew the pilot. They killed him. They had a right to, but I hate them for it just the same."
Sarah supposed he was talking about the photo plane. Dugan responded by closing his face — quite literally shutting out all expression for an instant — so that he looked like a dead man. Or like a Japanese! Sarah saw, with a flash of intuition, that she had caught him betraying himself — for the first distinguishable second in days of their being together. For once, Dugan had gone back to his wartime role and had responded with the manner of a Japanese, the dead formal silence with which Japanese men bore news of disaster. He must have had many friends among the Japanese during his years of wartime spying: and of them, many must have died, so that the expression of quick military sorrow could have become habitual. But before she could catch her breath or say anything, Dugan let his face go doleful in the American manner. He looked Irish again, and American too.
And yet, thought Sarah, he was a Japanese for just that moment, a Japanese like the nisei interpreters and intelligence men in our own Army.
She picked up the thread of the conversation again. Dugan was protesting, "You mustn't hate the Russians. If you do have to fight them, hating them is no use, medically or psychologically. It reduces your own efficiency."
"And you throw your trump away," said Swanson.
"You know it, too?" Dugan asked the question quickly, eagerly.
"You mean," said Swanson, "that liking people is the only way to win wars, or even better, to get out of them? Certainly. Any scientist will tell you that. America will get sick and weak if it hates. That's why I'm sorry I hate the Russians right now. I hope I'll get over it. I've got to. If we have humanness on our side, we can be muddled and mixed up and argumentative, and still come out right. If that's what you mean by knowing it, too, I know it. But the Army doesn't. Just try to tell them they ought to like their enemies." Swanson sounded defiant.
Dugan sighted Swanson over the top of his glass. "We can't change everything, doctor. I'm alive right now, because I liked the Japanese while I was doublecrossing them and making their plans go haywire, as far as I dared." A dry chuckle, very Irish, followed. "I really liked them. Defeating Japan was the best way I knew of helping the Japanese people. I had friends, and I sent some of them to die. But though my Japanese friends and I could not have agreed on the precise reason for it in each case, they and I would have agreed that dying for the sake of Japan was a good thing to do. If I go into Siberia, I'm going in the damndest pro-Russian you ever saw. Do you think I could stand it, otherwise?"
Swanson asked the question which Sarah had not dared to ask, "What are you, Major?"
"American, right now," said Dugan flatly.
Swanson persisted, embarrassed but dogged, "No, I mean racially."
"American," Dugan repeated. "Call me a Cherokee, if you want to explain my looks. Sorry I can't tell you the truth; but I'm a secret." Dugan grinned at Sarah, and went on, "The captain has been trying to figure me out for days. I wish I could help her. The Army won't let me. Anyhow, we're talking too much. Let's get down to Atomsk."
"Right," said Swanson in a disciplined but friendly way. "I'll get the pictures."
He went to one of the safes and twirled the knob, standing so that they could not see the position of the dial. The safe door swung open. Swanson went to his desk, picked up an intercommunication microphone, and said, "Swanson. Safe three. Handsome and ready. Ready?"
A tinny remote voice answered, "Ready, doctor," from the box. Swanson went back to the safe and opened it.
Dugan asked, "Just what would have happened if you hadn't put that call through?"
Swanson jerked his head upward to the nozzles of the fire-extinguisher system. "Gas. We would have all gone out like lamps. Sirens would have gone off. Two armored cars would have come up here lickety-split. Not to mention a radio alarm." He grinned proudly. "Atomsk is just one of the things that we have pictures of. You have no idea what a plane can do with the new infra-red flares."
He spread a thick sheaf of photographs on one of the drafting tables, pushing the table over to Sarah and Dugan with the heel of his palm. It rolled easily on rubber-tired casters. Dugan caught the edge of the table, stopping it. With a pleasant nod, he dragged Sarah's chair closer to his own and held the pictures so that she could see them, too.
They seemed to show the same thing — a series of views of a forested hill country. Two low ranges ran parallel. There was a streak of light which could be water, between them. The pictures showed no sign of human habitation.
"It's simple enough," said Swanson. "He came in low. Two or three minutes in from the coast he started taking pictures. He hoped to make two runs, but by the time he had gotten over once, the whole Siberian sky was full of ack-ack and aircraft. He ran for the Korean border. He went faster than they thought he could, but then a couple of new models showed up on their side and they ran faster than we thought they could. We couldn't have fighter aircraft waiting to escort him in, but we did have some L-5's just accidentally scouting around. We also had a lot of jeeps, both Korean and American, out on a sort of Boy Scout hike.
"But just as he touched the line, one of the Soviet planes stopped in mid-air. At least, it looked like that to the Air Force colonel who told me about it — stopping for a fifth of a second. Must have just about killed the Soviet pilot inside. Something came out of that Russian plane. It overtook our man at top speed—"
"Overtook him?" asked Sarah. "It must have been a guided missile?"
Swanson smashed the fist of his left hand into the palm of his right, "Like that. Tracked him. Overtook him. Killed him. Down came the plane. Two miles our side of the line. But it was near a highway and the Russians' Koreans got there before our people could make it. Close to battalion strength. Border guards, I suppose. It shows that they have good staff work and high readiness. They stood our people off with guns. Fired a few shots."
"Nobody hurt?" said Dugan. "It wasn't in the papers and none of the Japanese I know mentioned it."
"Nobody hurt," said Swanson. His light eyes looked dreadfully earnest. He ran his hand over his forehead; he was half-bald and the gesture made him look like a cartoon of the typical scientist. "I don't know how much longer we can go on trading passes. They didn't want publicity because they didn't know how much we had gotten. Besides, they were invading us. We didn't want publicity because we had these—" He gestured at the photos.
"Why did they leave these pictures?" asked Sarah. "Wasn't there something about a concealed camera?"
Swanson gave her a bleak smile. "I helped design it before he went. Good thing, too. Some Russian officer showed up and stripped the plane. They had the wreckage for two hours before we got enough force and enough brass to move in. Our people didn't even meet a Russian officer. Just some of the Communist Koreans. The body was stripped naked. All the instruments were gone from the plane. All the cameras. Even the pilot's personal papers and dogtags. But they missed one camera. It didn't look like a camera."
"Where was it?" said Sarah.
"It was built to be missed," Swanson declared in warning tone.
Dugan nodded his agreement. Sarah, who knew anyhow, said nothing.
Swanson pulled out a photostat from the bottom of the pile. It was a pale photograph with the overlay of a map printed by hand in glaring white. The map showed a big underground city which ran underneath two or three peaks in the range, depending on what you counted as peaks.