“Front line or rear.”
“Right.”
“Aren’t they going to serve dinner on this flight?” she asked.
“Those stewardi are too interested in getting our elders drunk.”
“That’s one of the things I hate about playing this kiddy role,” she whispered. “I can’t ask for a drink.”
“I hate the makeup,” he said. “I’ll bet they don’t feed us before Nebraska.”
“This is a bean-and-cod special,” she said. “They’ll give us fish balls and haricot. Are you still feeling low?”
“Honey, forget some of the things I said last night. I was feeling like the very end.”
“To be strictly accurate, there were two of us in that mood. It’s probably the phase of the moon.”
“I still don’t know a good reason why I was named number two on this case, do you?”
“None I’m sure of.” And almost as an afterthought, “The others are pretty old.”
“All the more reason—I mean, why would they want a younger agent in command?”
“Youth must have its day,” she whispered, and she bent close to nibble his ear. “Knock it off, darling. The old goat right behind me is trying to eavesdrop.”
Janvert knew better than to glance back at once, but he straightened presently and glanced around at the crowded aircraft. The lights were on now and it was dark outside, each window a patch of black with occasional stars. The white-haired old man behind Clovis had his light on and was reading Time magazine while drinking a whiskey over ice. He looked up as Janvert turned around, but immediately went back to his magazine and drink. Janvert could not recall ever having seen the old man before, but you never knew in this business. He could be someone sent to keep tabs on them.
Angrily, Janvert sank back into his seat, bent close to Clovis. “Honey, we’ve got to break away from this racket. We’ve just got to. There must be a country somewhere that would be safe for us. There must be someplace where the Agency can’t reach us.”
“The other side?”
“You know what that’d be—more of the same only in a foreign language. No—we need a nice tidy little foreign country where we can blend into the population without being noticed. It has to exist somewhere on this dirty planet.”
“You’re thinking about DT and Tymiena.”
“I’m thinking about you and me.”
“He’s listening again,” she whispered.
Janvert folded his arms and sank into sullen silence. It was going to be a bitch of a flight all the way to Portland. He resigned himself to it.
Later, when Nick Myerlie came past and bent over them to ask, “You kids getting along okay?” Janvert just growled at him.
Inter-Hive memo: Project 40.
The heat problem remains severe. Our latest model melted before becoming fully operational. Secondary resonance was measurable, however, and it was climbing toward the expected peaks. If the proposed new cooling techniques are successful, we should get our first fully operational tests within the month. The test is sure to cause manifestations that will be noticeable Outside. At the minimum, you can expect a new island to appear in the Pacific Ocean somewhere off Japan.
Peruge caught a late flight out of Dulles and was forced to accept coach, compounding his annoyance over the conference with Merrivale. The Chief had insisted on that meeting, however, and Peruge had seen no good way to avoid it. He had driven over to Operations after preparing the way with a call, and they’d met in Merrivale’s office. The gloves had been off right from the beginning.
Merrivale had glanced up at the intrusion without change of expression as Peruge strode into the office. There was a pinched, frightened took around Merrivale’s eyes, and Peruge thought: He knows he’s been nominated for patsy.
Peruge seated himself across from Merrivale in one of the hokey leather chairs and indicated a folder on the desk. “You’re reviewing the reports, I see. Any holes in them?”
Obviously, Merrivale thought this put him at a disadvantage because he immediately tried to recapture control of the situation. “My reports are precisely fitted to the circumstances for which they were made.”
The pompous bastard!
Peruge was well aware that his presence annoyed Merrivale. It always did. Peruge was such a damned big man. They all said he’d be gross if he ever let himself go to fat. But he possessed a softly sinister grace that never failed to irritate Merrivale.
“The Chief wanted me to ask you why you seconded that little shrimp Janvert,” Peruge said.
“Because he’s long overdue for responsibility.”
“He’s not trustworthy.”
“Nonsense!”
“Why didn’t you delay and let me appoint my own second?”
“No sense in delay. The briefing had to proceed.”
“So you rushed into another mistake,” Peruge said. His voice conveyed a sense of calm, superior knowledge. That mention of the Chief had been telling.
Merrivale could feel his own chances of ever reaching a higher status in the Agency dwindling away to zero. His face darkened.
“Why are you going out to Oregon yourself?”
“It’s indicated by the circumstances,” Peruge said.
“What circumstances?”
“Three of our best people lost.”
Merrivale nodded. “You spoke of something important to discuss with me. What is it?”
“Several things. First, that memo you circulated indicating that we were unsure of our next step in this case. The Chief was rather upset by that.”
Merrivale actually paled. “We—the circumstances—”
Peruge interrupted as though he hadn’t heard Merrivale. “Second, we are concerned about the instructions you gave those three agents. It seems strange to us that—”
“I followed my bloody orders to the letter!” Merrivale said, slamming a hand onto the folder.
The story of his life, Peruge thought. He said, “There are rumors that Tymiena didn’t like this assignment.”
Merrivale sniffed, managed to look unimpressed. “They always object and then talk about it behind my back. What good are rumors?”
“I got enough hints to convince me she may have had a valid objection to the way things were being handled. Did she talk about specific objections?”
“We talked, yes. She thought we should go in openly after Porter, a more official approach.”
“Why?”
“It was just a feeling she had, nothing more.” Merrivale made feeling sound like a peculiar female foible.
“Just a feeling, nothing specific?”
“That’s all it was.”
“That feeling appears to have been accurate. You should have listened to her.”
“She was always having those crazy feelings,” Merrivale objected. “She didn’t like working with Carlos, for one thing.”
“So she did have specific objections. Why did she object to Carlos?”
“I’m only guessing, but I presume he’d made offensive advances to her at some time. At any rate, it wasn’t the kind of quibble we tolerate in the Agency. They know the work they’re called on to do and what it may entail.”
Peruge just stared at him.
Merrivale’s face was an open page, his thoughts written across it for anyone to read: They’re blaming me for these losses. Why are they blaming me? I only did what they told me to do.
Before Merrivale could begin giving voice to these thoughts, Peruge said, “There is pressure from farther up the line and we’re going to have some explaining to do. Your part in this comes in for particular questioning.”
Merrivale could get the whole picture now: pressure from higher up and someone was being prepared as sacrificial goat. That goat was named Joseph Merrivale. The fact that he had protected himself this way on many occasions would not ease the pain of finding himself today’s target.