“All right,” she said. Then, suddenly doubtful, she said, “You won’t be leaving before then, will you? Before Sunday?”
“What? No. No chance of it, we don’t have a route lined up yet, the preparations are nowhere near ready.” Then, in another abrupt change of mood, he peered at her and smiled and said, “Don’t worry, there’ll be time for Robert to make up his mind. It’ll be a week or two before you’ll have to give me your final answer.”
A week or two. No time at all. “That’s fine,” she said.
ii
On Thursday, Robert drove down to take her to dinner. Neither of them mentioned Bradford — who didn’t appear to say hello to Robert — until they were out of the house, in the yellow Jaguar and moving toward the trees. Then Robert said, “Has there been any change?”
“No. He says he’ll be leaving in a week or two.” She said it quietly, having had three days to get used to the closeness of the deadline. She and Robert had talked together on the phone each of those days but, not knowing who might be listening, neither had said anything about the current situation.
So the time element was brand new to Robert, who gave her a startled glance and said, “So soon? How’s he going to do it?”
“The Chinese are helping him,” she said. “They’re going to send false passports.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes. One for him and one for me.”
Robert shook his head, peering grimly out at the blacktop road. “I keep hoping it’s going to blow over,” he said, “like the running for Congress thing.”
“Not this time,” she said. “I’m sure of it, he won’t change his mind.”
“Particularly if the Chinese are already involved. They’ll keep him fired up.”
“It’s so easy to get into his way of thinking,” she said. She hesitated, waiting while Robert made the turn out of the private road onto 992, and then said, “Sometimes I find myself on his side, thinking that the grand gesture should be made, that only small and timid minds would be against what he wants to do.” She smiled wanly, looking out at the road. “It’s easy to start thinking that way.”
“Yes, I suppose it is. I had the same temptations when he was going to run for Congress. The adventure of it.”
“Harrison’s pipeline,” she said, and turned to look at his profile. “Remember me telling you about that?”
“Of course.”
“That was the same thing. High adventure, the pipeline through the desert.”
“He has a need for drama in his life, I guess.”
“Because of being retired, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know.” He glanced at her, and away. “But I don’t think that’s the important part now. It doesn’t so much matter why he wants to do it, what matters is how are we going to stop him?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I start to think about that, and I just feel helpless. I remember what he told you about the news conference.”
“I know. We can’t let him go, we can’t talk him into changing his mind, we can’t make him stay.” He turned his head for another brief look at her and said, “We can’t do this by ourselves, Evelyn. We need help. We need people who know more than we do.”
“Yes, I know that. And I know who I want to talk to next. Do you remember Dr. Joseph Holt?”
“Your uncle. Yes, of course, I met him at that Congressman lunch.”
“He’s the one I want to talk to. I think he’ll know what to do, if anyone does.”
Robert shook his head. “I wish I could have been more help to you,” he said. “I keep thinking I might have been able to talk him out of it if I’d kept my temper better, but I really don’t believe it.”
“No, he wasn’t going to be talked out of anything,” she said, “I could see that from the very beginning of the conversation.” She put a hand on his arm and said, “Don’t think you haven’t done any good. You’ve done me wonders. Just to know that you were there to talk to.”
He gave her a quick grateful smile. “Thank you. A boy doesn’t like to feel helpless in front of his girl.”
The implications of that distracted her from her line of thought, and she remained silent for a moment, her hand still holding his forearm, feeling the small movements it made as he steered the car. She looked at his profile in the dash lights, feeling both warm and frightened, and finally said what she was thinking: “I hope this isn’t going to spoil things between you and me, all this trouble.”
The smile he flashed her this time was larger, happier. “I keep thinking the same thing,” he said. “Every time we get started, something comes along to goof it up before we find out where we’re going.”
“I know.”
“If this mess is ever over, you and I are going to have to take a nice long illicit weekend together somewhere and get to know one another.”
“I think I’d like that,” she said, answering his smile. But she couldn’t maintain the mood, and she faced front again, saying, “But it isn’t over. Not even close.”
“I know.”
“I’ll talk to Uncle Joe on Sunday,” she said, and explained, “Dr. Holt.”
“Sunday? He’s coming out?”
“No, there’s a wedding, his son’s getting married. Bradford was invited, naturally, but he didn’t want to go. I’m sort of his representative.”
“Good. You’ll have a legitimate excuse to go see the doctor, without Bradford getting suspicious.”
“You can be my escort. Will you come? We can talk to Joe together.”
“Sure,” he said, and grinned at her once more. “Happy to be your escort.”
“It isn’t exactly an illicit weekend,” she said.
“A wedding.” He laughed, and said, “Maybe some of the normality will rub off.”
3
Dr. Joseph Holt stepped through the French doors from dining room to patio and smiled in pleasure at his guests, scattered in bright colors across the lawn.
You couldn’t ask for better weather. Considering that this Sunday was the twenty-first day of October, you really couldn’t even ask for weather this good. The air was cool enough for the women to wear wraps, but the sun shone bright and clear, the air was beautifully fresh, and that slight scent of leaves being burned far away added the perfect final touch.
And where was the happy couple? Greg, finally home from his Navy tour in the Mediterranean, had lost no time signing on for another voyage, this one of hopefully longer duration, and at five minutes past noon today he had exchanged the nuptial vows with Audrey White, his fiancée for the last three years. And now, at three o’clock, with the caterers’ men doing excellent work at the tables set up for food and drink, the reception was in high gear.
As was fairly common in this strata of society, long-threaded familial relationships already existed between the bride and groom, mostly through one or another branch of the Lockridge family. Audrey’s mother was the former Sandra Wellington, niece of that Dinah Wellington who had been Bradford Lockridge’s wife. A cousin of Audrey’s, James White (killed three years ago in an auto accident), had been married to the former Katherine Bloor, niece of Sterling Lockridge’s wife, Elizabeth. A further Bloor, Albert, was Joseph Holt’s brother-in-law, having married his wife’s sister Rosemary. Looking around now at the assembled guests, it seemed to Holt that everybody here was ultimately related somehow to everybody else, and further, that every two people were related in at least two different ways. With Greg and Audrey already distantly related through both the Wellingtons and the Bloors, it almost seemed superfluous for them to marry.