It was beyond her capacity to absorb; she drooped in the chair like a loose sack of laundry and sweat trickled down between her breasts. Her face crumpled and collapsed slowly into defeat and she covered it with her hands. She was beyond tears but when Nicole spoke her rigid body jerked galvanically.
“Pull yourself together. We haven’t got time for you to have another breakdown.” Nicole’s voice was gentler than usual. The wizened face turned toward Douglass and when Ronnie looked up she saw on Nicole’s features an expression of black fury. It did not seem personally directed against Douglass: it was simply an unreasoning rage and Ronnie realized in that moment that they were all caught by the knowledge that everything had been ended for them by the whim of a faceless man twenty thousand miles away.
The fact that they were all in the same trap somehow made it possible to bear. She said, “All right. You have instructions for me.”
Douglass and Nicole exchanged glances. Nicole nodded as if thoroughly fatigued.
Douglass said, “We haven’t been told when it’s to take place. I suppose they think it’s none of our business, our job’s just to swing the hammers, we don’t have to know what the building’s going to be. But we’re supposed to isolate the base. It’ll be a very tricky caper and we’re going to have our hands full enough without your Senator crawling all over the base tripping over us. He’s got clearance to go everywhere in the complexes with his hand-picked scientist and his Navajo detective and if any of them spots our preliminary maneuvers it could blow the whole thing open. So that’s your job: distract him, discourage him, pressure him to lay off. He’s got to be kept away until it’s over and done with. I can’t tell you how long that’ll be but they wouldn’t set this up too far in advance; there’d be too much risk of leakage. A week, maybe only a few days.”
“I don’t see how I can do that. He makes his own decisions—I can’t tell him what to do.”
Nicole turned. Her simian face picked up the light from the window and seemed at once bitter and amazed. “Don’t be a fool. Seduce him—drag him away on a white-hot orgy. A woman like you could put everything else out of his mind.”
Color suffused-Ronnie’s cheeks. “I’m not the type. I wouldn’t know how.”
It elicited Nicole’s harsh bark of laughter. “With your looks? Christ if I had your looks I could make the President of the United States forget he ever saw the White House.”
“He knows me too well. I can’t just change overnight into a sex maniac. He’d know something was wrong—he’s not a fool.”
“Every man’s a fool where women are concerned.”
Douglass said, “No, she’s right. If you’d air out your mind once in a while you’d see there are problems sex doesn’t solve.”
“You ought to know about that,” Nicole snapped.
Douglass disregarded her. “Look, Ronnie, you’re his center of communications, you make his appointments and screen his incoming calls and whatnot. You can rearrange his schedule and he’ll never be the wiser.”
“How?”
“He’s at Davis Monthan this morning with his two hired snoops but it’s only a preliminary survey, he’s planning to go back four or five times more, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“We can’t have that. When he comes back to the office today I want you to tell him Colonel Sims called and asked if he’d postpone his next visit till Tuesday or Wednesday because the base has been alerted for a no-notice Operational Readiness Inspection and they’ll be closing the base until the alert’s ended; they’ll be too busy to conduct his party around. Got that?”
“Yes, but what if he calls them to confirm it?”
“He won’t if you’re convincing enough. Now tomorrow you can call Colonel Ryan and tell him the Senator’s been called into an emergency conference—something political—and won’t be able to resume his inspection tour until Tuesday or Wednesday. And if Tuesday comes and we still need to keep him out we’ll think of some other herring. Now you can take care of that, can’t you?”
“I suppose so. But he’s a friend of Colonel Ryan’s—suppose he happens to call him and finds out I lied?”
“Then you’ll just have to bluff your way out of it, won’t you?”
Nicole said, “Just bat your eyelashes and wiggle at him.”
Ronnie said uncertainly, “I don’t—” But the telephone interrupted her and she picked up. “Senator Forrester’s office.”
“Hello, is Mr. Spode there, please?”
“Not at the moment. May I take a message?”
“It’s rather urgent that I reach him.” The man’s voice was calm, filled with authority; she didn’t recognize it.
“Who’s calling, please?”
“My name is John Warren Block. It’s important that I get in touch with Mr. Spode as quickly as possible. Do you have any idea where I might reach him?” There was enough interference on the line to suggest it was a long-distance call.
She said, “Right now he’s out at Davis Monthan Air Force Base with Senator Forrester. You might try there, but I’m not sure they’ll be able to find him right away. Would you care to leave your phone number?”
“He knows the number. John Warren Block. Thank you, I’ll try the base.” Click.
Douglass said, “Who was that?”
“Someone trying to reach Jaime Spode.”
“What was his name?”
“John Warren Block.”
“Ever heard of him?”
“No.”
“Well it’s probably nothing. But did Spode say anything to you about anything that happened last night?”
“No. I only saw him for a few minutes this morning. He and Alan—Senator Forrester—went out together to collect Professor Moskowitz and drive out to the base.”
Douglass nodded. “All right, when you talk to Forrester you’ve got to find out what Spode told him about last night. Particularly about a man he met last night.”
“I don’t understand—what am I supposed to be looking for?”
“Find out if Spode recognized the man and whether he notified any officials about him.”
Nicole said, “What’s this all about?”
“Our man from Moscow had a run-in with Spode last night. We’ve got to find out whether Spode carried it any farther. If Dangerfield’s under suspicion we’ve got to know about it.”
The implications ran rapidly through Ronnie’s mind and Nicole said to Douglass, “She’s very quick—you can see she understands what it could mean.” Nicole came forward to the desk and put her palms flat on its surface, her face close before Ronnie’s eyes. “You’re right, of course. If Spode saw too much and communicated it to the Senator it may be necessary for us to take steps to make sure the information goes no farther. We can’t afford to have the place crawling with FBI. On the other hand we’d be idiots to take any unnecessary action against a United States Senator—think of the furor that would cause. We don’t want to touch him if we can help it, but if he knows too much we’ll have to do something.”
Douglass said, “He might have to suffer a sudden illness and retire to his ranch for a few days accompanied by a doctor and one or two nurses and of course his confidential secretary. You’d have to go with him and handle the phone calls and inquiries from reporters.”
Ronnie said, “He wouldn’t be—”
“Hurt? No. We couldn’t afford that, could we? Besides, once we’re finished here it won’t matter what he tells the authorities. The job will be done and we’ll be gone. In the meantime if he doesn’t know anything we’ll leave him alone. But if he does know something we’ll just have to keep him incommunicado—perhaps under sedation—until we’re ready to leave.”
“As long as he won’t be harmed.”
Nicole said, “We wouldn’t touch a hair on his handsome head. On the other hand nobody’s going to pay much attention if a few Russian professors and nurses and ballerinas happen to be arrested and sent to a torture camp.”