"How's that?" interjected Coppersmith.
"One of them said that the idiot Hayashi mislaid the papers for the Okinawa logistic plans and the other testified that Captain Hayashi made everybody nervous by keeping in touch with a nincompoop Imperial prince they had as chairman for some do-nothing planning board. The regular generals and admirals would get a decent plan made up without the prince having a chance to muddle it, and then Hayashi would tip off the prince and everything would get held up for six months. Nobody could put a finger on Hayashi, because the prince might go off to the palace and tattle. They didn't know that their 'Hayashi' was an American. I'm satisfied with what he did here from Pearl Harbor on…" Landsiedel unconsciously looked out of the window at the half-rebuilt ruins of Tokyo.
"You're defending him," said Coppersmith. "Why are you defending him?"
"I guess I am." Landsiedel smiled wryly. "Some people back in the Pentagon thought that Dugan shouldn't have sat on his — shouldn't have just hung around Tokyo. They said that he should have made a run for China or Russia after getting his hands on everything he could."
"And why didn't he?"
Sarah spoke up, "I don't see that he could have gotten away from Japan. It wouldn't have been easy for a Japanese officer to desert. Did you ever hear of one who did?"
Coppersmith ignored her question and kept his eyes on Landsiedel.
Speaking very deliberately, Landsiedel said, "That wasn't Dugan's way of doing things. He told me that most spies fail because they forget their primary mission—"
Landsiedel hesitated long enough to get their full attention, and then went on, " — which consists of staying alive. He said he could have gotten away from the Japanese but he was not at all sure that he could get through the Russians or the Chinese. They might have shot him. He could do something in Tokyo. He did not know what he would be worth if he started out for Washington and lost two years or lost his life in the process. That brings me to this mission, General. Don't expect him to be orthodox. He'll float where others would sink. He'd rather come back alive and report failure than not come back at all. You can't push Dugan."
"Sounds timid to me," said Coppersmith, with an ironic curl to his lip showing that he did not really mean the remark.
"Timid?" Landsiedel was aghast. "No, no. Nothing like that. But you can't hurry Dugan. When he himself feels like hurrying, the Irish part of him gets to working and he goes through obstructions like a shotgun slug through peanut brittle. But if there's no point in hurrying, he takes his time like his mother's people. I think he could wait a hundred years if he had to."
"I can't wait. Not about Atomsk," said Coppersmith.
"He knows it. He'll go at it, lopsided. He will improvise. He doesn't believe in plans. He says that every day of spying involves thinking about six thousand choices ahead, and that if every man tried to multiply all the six thousand choices to their mathematical aggregate, he'd freeze like a catatonic. Dugan says that the only way to stay alive is to float with the run of things. It's gotten him places nobody else ever reached."
"Such as—?"
"He visited Nazi Germany in 1939 on leave, just before he settled down in Tokyo. He went on his own money and his own time. When he got there he introduced himself as a representative of the Japanese secret police. Right in Gestapo headquarters. The Germans showed him all their engineering designs for the proposed murder camps and Dugan copied out a set. He thought that the White House might want to release them, off the record. Nobody believed him in Washington."
"What's so wonderful about that?" said Coppersmith. "The War Department hadn't told him to do it."
"Don't you see it, sir? You do, don't you, miss?" He waved his arms at them. "He goes into Germany on a regular American passport, without any cover or plans or preparations. He talks his way into Gestapo headquarters, chums around with the whole pack of them, takes his reports to the Japanese ambassador in Berlin, who was a little mystified but who accepted the stuff anyhow — much good it did Japan! — and then walked out of Germany under his own power with the Gestapo congratulating him on his wonderful set of forged American papers. Has anybody else you ever heard of done anything like that, sir?"
"I've heard a lot of things in my time, Colonel. How will he do on Atomsk?"
"He knows Russian pretty well. He can pass for some kind of Soviet Asiatic subject. He speaks Chinese badly but fluently. He knows perfect Japanese, excellent German, and several other assorted languages. He'll get as near as anybody could. It's not a matter of comparing him to anybody else. He has one chance in a hundred. Nobody else has a chance at all."
Sarah couldn't help looking up at Coppersmith. This was so much like what the general himself had been saying to her that she wanted to see how he took it.
Coppersmith stood up. Landsiedel stood up, too. Coppersmith waved him back into his chair with an imperious gesture.
Coppersmith said, "Your man is expendable this time. Tell him I don't want the one-percent chance. I want success. Nothing but success. He can float all he wants to; he can run the show himself. But he must reach Atomsk, study it, let the Russians know that somebody has been there, and come back here. By this coming summer. If he can't do that, he needn't bother."
"Bother? You mean, bother to go? Who else would you send?" Landsiedel tried to rise to protest, but Coppersmith dropped an authoritative hand on the colonel's shoulder. The yellow leonine eyes blazed as Coppersmith said, with judicial and terrible distinctness:
"Tell him not to bother to come back at all. He can die. You would, Colonel, for a job like this. I would, too. He's no better than the rest of us. Atomsk matters more than our whole army in Japan."
Sarah was on her feet, struggling for words to protest.
Coppersmith snapped at her: "Sit down, Sarah. I know what I am doing. I'm going to give these orders to Dugan, myself."
Landsiedel murmured, "Will he take them?"
Coppersmith glared at him, "Take them? He's got to take them."
"Sir," said Landsiedel, "if he gets near Atomsk, who's going to follow him to make him obey? Don't pin him down, General. He'll do better if you give him leeway."
"Colonel Landsiedel," said General Coppersmith, "do you think that you and this girl and I can originate these orders? This is the American nation commanding. Dugan must succeed or fail. If he fails, others will follow. With the same orders. Till we reach Atomsk."
Coppersmith dropped his hand from Landsiedel's shoulder and sat on the edge of the desk. He opened his hands in a gesture of helplessness and finality.
Landsiedel stood up. "Yes, sir," he said.
It was then that they both noticed Captain Lomax. Completely silent, she was weeping. They could see the tears roll down her cheeks and see the effort she was making to regularize her breathing. She broke away from them and ran out of the room.
V. OUTFITTERS TO CATASTROPHE
Captain Lomax was waiting for Dugan when he emerged from General Coppersmith's inner office late the next morning. She had been watching the telltale light in her lamp base, hoping that the general would cut her in, but she had received no signal.
Ignoring the chance that Coppersmith might follow Dugan through the door, she seized Dugan's arm and said:
"Has he given you orders?"
Dugan nodded calmly. "You're an inquisitive person. Yes, he gave me orders."
Sarah cried out, "He told you to succeed or not to come back! He told you to die!"
"Sh-h-h," said Dugan, "that's just his way of talking. I'm no worse off than I was yesterday, or will be tomorrow. Anyhow, my orders are classified. We can't talk about them privately." He grinned at her expression. "You're not being official, are you, Captain?"