“Ilya Simonov!” Foster blurted. “What’ve the Commies got to do with this? Is it something the Boss knows about?”
“Haven’t had time to go into it with him,” Larry said. “However, it seems that friend Ilya is here to find out what the Movement is all about. Evidently, the big boys in Peking and Moscow are nervous about any changes that might take place over here. It might upset the applecart, or something. I suggest you have Ilya picked up, Walt.”
Walt Foster said, “All right, I’ll make a note to put some people on it. Maybe the F.B.I. can help.”
Larry flicked off as he saw the red priority light on his phone shining. He pushed it and LaVerne’s face faded in.
She said, “This Franklin Nostrand you wanted to know about. He’s evidently working at the laboratories over in Newport News, Larry. He’ll be on the job until five this afternoon.”
“Fine,” he said. Larry grinned at her. “When are we going to have that date, sweetie? I’ve always wanted to see how you looked in a nightgown, or, better still, out of one.”
She made a face at him. “Ha! Some day when the program involves having fun instead of parading around in the right places, driving the right model car, dressed in exactly the right clothes, and above all associating with the right people.”
It was his turn to grimace. “I’m beginning to think you ought to sign up with Professor Voss and this Movement of his. You’d be right at home with his weirds. You’re a hard lay, LaVerne Polk, and I resent it.”
She stuck her tongue out at him and flicked off, after saying, “I’d only put out for a man—not a status symbol.”
As he made his way to the parking lot for his car, something in their conversation nagged at him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He considered the girl, all over again. She had almost all of the qualities he looked for in a woman. She was attractive, without being overly so. He disliked women who were out of the ordinarily beautiful, it became too much to live up to. She was sharp, but not objectionably so. Not to the point of giving you an inferiority complex.
But, Holy Smokes, she’d never do as a career man’s wife. He could just see the Boss’ ultraconservative wife inviting them out to dinner. It would happen exactly once, never again. And Larry had been buttering up to the Boss’ better half for the better part of a decade now. He had won her over the hard way, and with just those status labels, status symbols, that the Movement was in such revolt against.
He obtained his car, lifted it to one of the higher levels and headed for Newport News. The former naval base and maritime center was shortly to be assimiliated into Greater Washington but hadn’t quite made it yet. It was a half hour trip and he wasn’t particularly expectant of results. The tip Sam Sokolsld had given him wasn’t much to go by. Seemingly, Frank Nostrand was a friend of the Professor’s, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was connected with the Movement, or that he was aware of Professor Voss’ whereabouts.
He might have saved himself the trip.
The bird had flown again. In fact, two birds had flown. Not only was Frank Nostrand not at the Madison Air Laboratories, but he wasn’t at home, either. Larry Woolford, mindful of his departmental chief’s words on the prestige these people carried, and the need to avoid hanky-panky when they were involved, took a full hour in acquiring a search warrant before breaking into the Nostrand home.
Nostrand was supposedly a bachelor, but the auto-bungalow, similar to Larry Woolford’s own, showed signs of double occupancy, and there was little indication that the guest had been a woman.
Disgruntled, Larry Woolford dialed the offices, asked for Walt Foster. It took nearly ten minutes before his colleague faded in.
He said, snappishly, “I’m up to my eyebrows, Larry. What in the hell do you want?”
Larry gave him Frank Nostrand’s address. “This guy has disappeared, Walt.”
“So?”
“He was a close friend of Professor Voss. I got a warrant to search his house. It shows signs he had a guest. Possibly it was the Professor. Do you want to get some of the boys down here to go through the place? Possibly there’s some sort of clue to where they took off for. The Professor’s on the run and he’s no professional at this. If we can pick him up, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion we’ll have the so-called Movement licked. It’s as though you’d picked up Lenin, at the beginnings of the Bolshevik revolution.”
Walt Foster slapped a hand to his face in anguish. “You knew where the Professor was hiding, and you tried to pick him up on your own and let him get away. Why didn’t you discuss this with either the Boss or me? I’m in charge of this operation! I would have had a dozen men down there. You’ve really fouled this one up, Woolford!”
Larry stared at him. Already Walt Foster was making sounds like an enraged superior.
He said mildly, “Sorry, Walt. I came down here on a very meager tip. I didn’t really expect it to pan out. It was one chance in a million.”
“Well, in the future, for crissakes, clear it with either me or the Boss before running off half-cocked into something, Woolford. Yesterday, you had this whole assignment on your own. Today, it’s no longer a minor matter. Our department alone has two hundred people on it, in Greater Washington alone. The F.B.I. must have five times that many and that’s not even counting the Secret Service’s interest. It’s no longer your individual baby.”
“Sorry,” Larry repeated. Then, “I don’t imagine you’ve got hold of Ilya Simonov yet.”
The other was disgusted. “Do you think we’re magicians? We just put out the call for him a few hours ago. He’s no amateur. If he doesn’t want to be picked up, and he obviously doesn’t, he’ll go to ground and we’ll have our work cut out for us finding him. I can’t see that it’s particularly important anyway.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Larry said. “But you never know. He might have learned some things that we’re not up on. See you later, Walt.”
Walter Foster stared at him for a moment as though about to say something, but then tightened his lips and faded off.
Larry looked at the phone screen for a moment. “Did that phony expect me to call him sir? he muttered.
XVI
The next two days dissolved into routine.
Frustrated, Larry Woolford spent most of his time in his office digesting developments, trying to figure out a new line of attack. There had to be something, some manner in which to flush this Movement thing before they came up with their next step in disrupting the country’s socioeconomic system.
For want of something else, he put his new secretary, a brightly efficient girl, as style and status conscious as LaVerne Polk wasn’t, to work typing up the tapes he had cut on Susan Self and the various phone calls he’d had with Hans Distelmayer and Sam Sokolski. From memory, he dictated to her his conversation with Professor Peter Voss.
He carefully read the typed sheets over and over again. He continually had the feeling in this case that there were loose ends dangling around. There must be several important points he should be able to put his finger upon.
On the morning of the third day he dialed Steve Hackett and on seeing the other’s worried, pug-ugly face fade in on the phone screen, decided that if nothing else the Movement was undermining the United States government by dispensing ulcers to its employees.
Steve growled, “What is it, Woolford? I’m as busy as a whirling dervish in a revolving door.”
“This is just the glimmer of an idea, Steve,” Larry told him. “But look, remember that conversation with Susan, when she described her father taking her to headquarters?”
“Yeah, of course. So what? Go on,” Steve said impatiently.