“You don’t have him covered?”
“Of course I have him covered,” the other man said irritably. “That isn’t the point. What you were all saying at that meeting is perfectly true. Having Bradford Lockridge stuffed away in an asylum is almost as bad a public black eye as having him do a Lord Haw Haw in Peking. I don’t want him to pop because I don’t want to have to put him under restraint.”
“Agreed.”
“It’s chancy. But your idea is still worth trying first. If the family can work out a way to contain him without a news leak, fine. If they can’t, I suppose it’s Dr. Holt we’ll have to go to work on.”
“Why him?” Wellington asked.
“Because with Sterling and Howard and the granddaughter in the picture, it’ll have to look one hundred per cent natural. One slight suspicion that it wasn’t natural and all three could blow. For that, you can’t do better than the family doctor.”
“I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” Wellington said.
“We all are.”
“Is there anything else?”
“No. Keep me in touch.”
“I will,” Wellington said, and got heavily to his feet. He started for the door, and the other man called his name. He turned and looked back toward the desk, and the other man said, “I don’t suppose you’ll answer this, but I have a question. For my own information only.”
“I’ll answer it if I can.”
“Did you know the Navy would bug?”
Wellington frowned. “Why should I?”
“That would give another reason for you telling me the situation,” the other man said. “You see the way it works. This way, the Navy has a smeared tape, I have the only existing record, and you have access to me. If you’d kept it a secret, the Navy would have the only record and you wouldn’t be able to affect any of the decisions.”
“Clever of me,” Wellington said.
“Of course, if you claim it, I’ll want to know how you knew about the Navy.”
“Then I don’t claim it,” Wellington said.
The other man frowned at him. “I wish I knew, one way or the other,” he said finally.
“Some things just remain mysterious,” Wellington said.
“I know. I can’t stand that.”
“I know.”
The other man pointed a finger at him. “You’re understanding me again. Don’t do it.”
“Sorry.” Wellington nodded at the portrait beside George Washington. “Has he been informed?”
“Not yet. I have a private briefing with him Friday. I’ll tell him then.”
“Should I come with you?”
“I’ll give your arguments,” the other man said. “And don’t worry about it, in any event. He’ll go along with you. He’ll avoid the alternative as long as he can. Presidents get very nervous when they think about killing other Presidents.”
5
Evelyn looked around the small room — patterned linoleum floor, aged wooden furniture, peach-colored curtains on both windows, three bare light bulbs in the old-fashioned ceiling fixture — and said, “Are you really going to live here?”
“It was the best I could do on short notice,” Robert said. “With any luck I won’t be here long.”
She went over to one of the windows, pushed aside the curtain, and looked out. Three stories down was a weedy and bare-patched back yard, enclosed by three different kinds of fencing: chain link on the left, white picket on the right, tall gray vertical wood slats at the rear. From a tall pole at the rear of the yard clotheslines dipped down and up to pulleys attached to the back of the house, one of them just to the left of this window. To left and right were similar yards, poles, lines. Straight ahead was either a giant block-long mirror or the backs of houses and lots identical to these. A slight odor, something like damp wood, like a long-empty barn, had been in her nostrils since she’d first entered this building.
Robert, coming up behind her, said, “I would have liked to find a place closer to you, but Eustace is just too small a town. I didn’t want to be surrounded by people wondering who I was and what I was doing.”
“Chambersburg isn’t bad,” she said. “You’re only seven miles from Eustace. Remind me to write down the phone number before I leave.” She turned away from the window, smiling at him and saying, “It’s nice to have you so handy, you know, no matter what the reason.”
They were standing close together. He reached out and put his hands on her waist, not to draw her in but merely to hold her there, the touch gentle yet firm against her body, making her feel very slender and light and delicate. It was a soothing touch, and at the same time exciting, and she was surprised to feel the languorous warmth start to build within her. That wasn’t what she’d come here for.
As though he could read her mind — or perhaps her eyes — he smiled at her and said, “I keep telling myself I shouldn’t be thinking about sex now, there must be something wrong with me. There’s serious important things I’m supposed to think about.”
“I know,” she said. Her voice had become more languorous, too, and her eyelids seemed heavy. Her body was heavy and light at the same time, like a white porcelain jar full of honey.
“I must be shallow as hell,” he said. He still had made no move to draw her in.
“You must be,” she said. She knew her smile was lewd, she could feel the lustfulness of her expression, and the awareness only made her smile the more, and the more lewdly.
“Did I ever tell you,” he said, “that the afternoon is my favorite time for sex?”
“You’ll have to get a night job,” she said, and their smiling mouths touched in a kiss that began as gentle but developed a quick urgency. He whispered her name, his lips moving against her lips, and she stroked her palms and fingertips luxuriously down his long back.
He was finished undressing before she was, and strode across the room to be sure the door was locked. He was such a large man, wide but flat, the football player still evident in him, that it always surprised her to see him, when naked, move with grace and agility. Somehow a body that strong looking, that solid looking, should move more slowly, more solemnly.
He came back smiling, his hand outstretched for her hand, to lead her to the bed in mock solemnity. He flipped the spread and blankets down, shook his head at the pale sheet, and said, “You know this thing is going to squeak.”
“Do you care?”
“It worries me terribly,” he said, and pushed her shoulder so that she fell on her side on the bed. She twisted around to lie full length, and he dropped beside her, pulling the top sheet up over them. “Come under here,” he said, ducking his head under the sheet. “I have secrets to tell you.”
The bed didn’t squeak, it rapped, like a loose shutter in a high wind, but more rhythmically. And they played beneath the sheet like children playing hooky, even though this was the day of the big test.
At different moments Evelyn would think of the problems waiting outside this warm white cave, but each time she impatiently pushed the thoughts aside. Later, later. The cave filled with the musk of their possession, of it and of one another, and the shutter rattled faster and faster in the wind, and she made a long wind-murmur of completion and contentment and delight against the warm column of his throat, and stroked the rigid muscles of his back, and the wind subsided, the shutter was silent, the cave collapsed around them in warm white folds of sheet.
He was the first to move, rolling onto his side next to her, but she turned and put one arm over him, murmuring, “Don’t get up yet, don’t go away.”
“Fine,” he said. “Let me pull up the blanket.”
She wriggled upward, and the covers covered her to the nose, and she lay pressed against him, her head supported by the pillow of his shoulder. She could feel the chest movement of his breathing, she could faintly hear his heartbeat, and his near arm was protectively and reassuringly around her.