As the Chrysler wheeled onto Route 50, heading away from Washington, Corwin switched on his parking lights, started his motor and rolled down the hill to the intersection. He let three cars get between him and Scott before he switched on his headlights and pulled out into the traffic. The highway, three lanes wide, rolled out away from the capital. His tires sang on the wet pavement. Corwin liked this. He fixed his eyes on the top of the Chrysler, letting his peripheral vision take care of the normal problems of the evening traffic. He began to hum a song he'd heard at his first Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, a parody to the tune of "Alice Blue Gown":
... I remember the atom blew down
All the foreign relations in town.
Corwin bore down slightly on the accelerator, as the speed limit increased, to keep his distance behind Scott. With plenty of other cars on the road, it was easy. Where was the General heading?
In the jungle of neon lights and access roads at Seven Corners, Corwin saw Scott bear right onto Route 7, the main road to Leesburg. The two cars moved slowly through Falls Church before the traffic began to thin out and speed up. Corwin dropped farther back. He noted that Scott scrupulously observed the speed limit, holding steady at 55.
As they neared Leesburg, the overcast began to break apart. Corwin caught the outline of a cloud and could pick out one star peeping over its rim. The night began to freshen; he rolled down his window to enjoy the country air. At the fork west of Leesburg, Scott bore right on Route 9, heading toward Charles Town. Now, what gives there, General? wondered Corwin. The night races at Shenandoah Downs?
Tailing became harder work now. There were few cars on the road and Corwin found it difficult to keep more than one automobile between himself and the big Chrysler. With the valleys, hills and turns, he had to stay fairly close. Once or twice he turned out his lights completely, rushed forward at 70, then switched on the headlights again. If Scott was monitoring his rear-view mirror-which he doubted-he would think another car had come onto the road behind him. They began to climb toward the Blue Ridge, the eastern rim of the Shenandoa Valley. The pursuit became a trial on the roller-coaster dips and twists of the road. Once Corwin turned off onto a gravel road, then made a hurried grinding U-turn to get back onto Route 9. Scott's car was disappearing, its taillights winking as he braked around a curve. Luckily, Corwin was able to get behind a second car that had come along. He looked at his watch: 9:15. The two generals had been on the road for an hour and twenty minutes.
West of Hillsboro, where the road crossed the Blue Ridge before dropping into the valley, the left turn indicator of Scott's car blinked on. Corwin slowed to a crawl. Scott turned left. Corwin followed him onto a black macadam road that ran straight south along the spine of the ridge. He could see Scott's taillights bobbing up and down about half a mile up the road.
So that's it, he thought. Because of his White House job, Corwin knew something about this road that few other Americans did. Virginia 120 appeared to be nothing more than a somewhat better-than-average Blue Ridge byway, but it ran past Mount Thunder, where an underground installation provided one of the several bases from which the President could run the nation in the event of a nuclear attack on Washington. Corwin had come this way at least a dozen times before and knew the road. It was just as well, for some of the rises were so abrupt that it would otherwise be difficult to follow at night. Great trees stood along either side of the paved strip, held back behind the old stone fences.
Once Corwin's headlights picked up two glowing dots beside the road as a rabbit scuttled away to safety behind the rocks.
Assuming that Scott was headed for the Mount Thunder station, a few miles farther on, Corwin turned off his headlights again. God, it's dark, he thought. This is getting a little sticky.
Suddenly he saw Scott's brake lights flash ahead. Corwin stopped. Scott turned sharply and slowly to the left and vanished in the trees. Corwin, using his parking lights, drove on at little more than a walking pace until he reached a point about a hundred yards short of where Scott had turned. He found a wide spot on the shoulder and turned his car completely around, parking on the shoulder with his sedan facing back toward the highway. He tried a start. The ground was too muddy; the wheels spun a bit. He inched the car forward until he found firmer footing in a patch of gravel. Satisfied, he turned off the engine, emptied his right pants pocket of loose change, and put his leather key case, with the ignition key outside, into the empty pocket. You never know, he thought, when you might have to leave in a hurry. He dropped the handful of coins into the glove compartment, pulled out his little flashlight and felt in his coat pocket for notebook and pencil.
Corwin walked along the paved road to the place where Scott had left it. A narrow, unpaved drive cut east, down the side of the ridge, through a thick mixed stand of tulip trees, pine and sumac. On a little marker beside the fence corner Corwin, using his flashlight, could make out the word "Garlock."
More of the same, he thought. This little road must lead down to General Garlock's house.
Brigadier General Matthew H. Garlock was the Mount Thunder station commander. Corwin had met him several times. If there's a conference, he thought, I better get down there.
The gravel road dropped steeply down the slope in a series of turns. Corwin walked along its side on a pad of pine needles, stumbling occasionally on a rock thrown out from the roadbed. He knew the overcast had dispersed overhead, but the woods here were so thick that no light at all penetrated. The heavy moisture from the day's rain and mist clung to trees and ground, wetting his face whenever he brushed a branch but muffling his footsteps. In about a quarter of a mile the road took a final turn and came out into a clearing.
Corwin stopped, caught for a moment by the beauty below him. Set back into the side of the mountain stood a low, rambling log house. Beyond the house the ridge fell away to a far valley. Hundreds of scattered lights shone up through the night haze that drifted across the lowlands. The sky was clear now, the stars crowding one another across the wide arc of the night, brighter by far than they ever seemed in the city. The moon, pale and hesitant, hung in the east like a lantern in a watchtower. That biggest cluster of lights in the valley, Corwin decided, must be Middleburg: the smaller one, to the right, would be Upperville. In the distance, dim in the haze, lay the glow of Warrenton.
Nice duty for General Garlock, he thought, living up here where he can look down on the Virginia horse country.
Corwin inspected the house. To the right, in the kitchen, he could see a woman bending over the sink. The middle of the house, apparently several rooms wide, was dark, but on the left, in a big room with a fireplace, Corwin could see Scott and Riley sitting on a settee, facing him. When Scott flourished a cigar, a third man got out of a chair to light it for him, and Corwin saw that he was Garlock.
The Secret Service agent walked, crouching low, across the lawn, and lowered himself over the edge of a terrace-right into a rosebush. He cursed silently as he sucked the scratches left on the back of his hand by the thorns. Then he circled to his right, in the shadow of the darkened central rooms, tiptoed carefully across the gravel driveway, and took up a position below the lighted windows. He could hear plainly , and he knew the three voices, but he was so low that all he could see was the heavy wooden beam in the center of the room's ceiling. He dropped to one knee and used the other to support his notebook. It was awkward to hold both notebook and flashlight in one hand while he took notes with the other, but it seemed the only way. Scott was speaking.