But Dulles International Airport did appear beneath the right wing, and the landing was smooth and untroubled, and Evelyn found herself actually smiling. Because this plane had only carried four people — herself, Bradford, pilot, co-pilot — whereas the airliner to France would carry perhaps two hundred, so if an accident were to be arranged surely it would have taken place on the first flight.
There were both advantages and disadvantages to traveling as a VIP. The chief advantage was that one never had to stand on line or go through the sausage-machine processing inflicted on the majority of travelers. The disadvantage was that one couldn’t really strike off on one’s own, but had to accept all the well-meant attention and courtesies and special treatment dished out along the way. Including, this time, a special limousine to take them and their luggage directly across the tarmac to the airliner, which had just started loading, so there was no chance for Evelyn to get to a phone and call Robert, as she suddenly wanted to do.
One top deck section near the front of the plane had been curtained off so they would be able to travel in privacy. Having avoided going through the terminal, and having boarded via the crew’s ramp at the front, they were seen by virtually none of the other passengers.
Bradford showed his pleasure constantly, in the way he moved and the way he looked around and the way he joked with the stewardesses who kept finding reasons to come into this section. Watching him, Evelyn remembered the nervousness and irritability and weariness that had been growing in him more and more during the two weeks when Wellington’s men had been giving him one excuse after another for inaction, and she was both pleased now at how much better he was obviously feeling and at the same time saddened by the knowledge of the lie on which he was basing his hopes.
Dulles, still the only under-utilized major airport on the Eastern Seaboard, almost never had delays, either coming or going. The huge plane lifted exactly on schedule: 8:10 P.M.
The flight was a dream of escape, a black cotton nighttime flight over an impenetrable darkness of ocean below, all of reality narrowed down to this one projectile hurtling eastward. Bradford, perhaps finally feeling that he was a man possessed of a future, was apparently open again to thoughts of the past, and spent much of the trip telling Evelyn anecdotes from his political career, many of which she’d never heard before. Two or three stewardesses frequently swelled his audience, and he grew more and more expansive. He was clearly having the time of his life.
But as the hour grew later, his ebullience lessened, a slight thickness came into his speech, and gradually he came to an end of his stories. The last half hour of the flight he napped, while stewardesses tiptoed by outside the curtain.
As for Evelyn, her apprehensions about the trip had washed away as the plane had lifted into the night sky, and now she found herself wondering if Wellington had any idea of the psychological advantages of this scheme. To get away from the stifling atmosphere of Eustace, the subterfuges, the invisible walls, the feeling of being forever locked in the same small tight maze; it was all rebuilding Evelyn’s spirit just as much as Bradford’s. And it didn’t matter that in reality they were carrying the invisible walls with them, the same subterfuges, the same maze. There was a feeling of escape, and for a little while that feeling would be enough, and when the weight did begin to bear down on her once again, as she knew it would, she’d be refreshed, she’d have had at least a small vacation.
According to her watch it was one in the morning when the plane spiraled down over Paris toward Orly, but in Paris it was already tomorrow, seven o’clock, a cloudy sky graying reluctantly into morning.
The VIP treatment continued here, where once again they by-passed the normal terminal, being taken to a special small lounge to wait for their luggage. Two or three Frenchmen, connected with the airline or the government (Evelyn never got it straight which), stopped in to say a few words and welcome them to France. Or perhaps to Paris. Or perhaps merely to Orly. In any event, Bradford thanked them, and they left, and now they were once more alone.
Bradford was sitting on a strikingly red sofa, against which he looked very tired. “I’m ready for a long soak in a tub,” he said, and folded his hands over his stomach, fingers intertwined. It was a gesture she’d almost never seen him use, only at his most exhausted, and it made him look very old.
A side door opened, and a man in a blue-gray uniform appeared, giving a two-finger salute to his cap. “Mrs. Evelyn Canby?” The French accent was almost nonexistent.
“Yes?”
“You are wanted on the telephone. In here.”
Carrie? No, more likely Edward. “Thank you,” she said, and he stepped to one side to let her through.
This room was smaller, an office dominated by a gray metal desk. She went over to pick up the telephone, and behind her the gray-uniformed man closed the connecting door. She turned in surprise, and he gave her another finger-to-cap salute and went diagonally across the small room and out the corridor door.
She picked up the telephone, frowning at the closed connecting door, troubled at being separated from Bradford even at a time and place like this. She would tell whichever it was, Carrie or Edward, to hold on while she went over and re-opened the door. “Hello?”
“Evelyn?” The voice was Wellington’s, and totally unexpected. “A situation has come up,” he said. “Are you there?”
Still standing, she half-turned toward the desk, holding the receiver to her face with both hands. “Yes, of course. What’s the matter?”
“Eddie, Jr. You know the organization he belongs to?”
“I know he belongs to something or other, but I don’t know—”
“Maoist. The Chinese have gotten to him, he’s told them our plans, he got everything from his father.”
“How could he do such a—”
“The best motives in the world,” Wellington said drily. “All the worst things are done for the best motives, I could tell you a lot about that. The point is, we have to change our plans. Don’t be surprised by the things that happen. Are you still there?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I can’t say too much on the phone. And neither can you, with Bradford right there.”
She turned her head quickly, and looked at the closed door. “Wait,” she said.
“Evelyn!”
“I’ll be back!”
She dropped the receiver to the desk, and ran to the connecting door. She pulled it open, and stepped through, and the room was empty.
ii
She turned back, stunned, not knowing how to say the words to Wellington, and the office door opened and two Chinese men came in. While the one went to the desk, picked up the phone, listened for just a second and then cradled the receiver, the other came toward her, holding up a brown cloth coat and saying, “Mrs. Canby, there is no time to waste.”
Scream? They were coming toward her, their faces impersonal, businesslike. They had taken Bradford away.
She still didn’t know whether or not she would scream — only a few mind-shattering seconds had gone by — when she saw another man in the corridor doorway. This one was Caucasian, elderly, with a thick black moustache and hornrimmed glasses. He wore a black homburg, a shabby black overcoat, and carried a worn brown briefcase of an old-fashioned kind. She was going to say something to him — ask him where Bradford was, or scream for help, or demand an explanation — when he said, with Bradford’s voice, “Come along, Evelyn, take off your coat.”