"Say now, cousin," said Clark, putting on his Georgia drawl, "y'all ain't so hospitable to strangers out west heah. Now, down home we'd break out the catfish and hushpuppies and treat a feller like he was kinfolk."
"You're wasting your time," Broderick said brusquely, "and mine too. Your committee knows all it needs to about this base already."
"I wouldn't want to call you a liar, Broderick," said Clark, "but nobody on Armed Services ever heard of this base."
"Well, Senator, why don't we just call Senator Prentice in Washington and ask him?"
Clark tried to hide his surprise. "That would be just fine, Colonel. It'll be a distinct pleasure to talk to someone in the outside world."
Broderick picked up the phone. "Sergeant," he said, "get me Senator Prentice in Washington. Try his office first, then his home." Broderick wore the abused expression of a floorwalker trying to handle an unreasonable customer.
Apparently talking to Prentice is a routine thing around here, Clark thought. I wonder how the sergeant makes connections? Maybe that phone line runs to a switchboard terminal in Washington.
"Senator? Hello," said Broderick into the phone. "This is Colonel Broderick. I have a friend of yours here, Senator Raymond Clark. Yes, that's right, Senator Clark of Georgia. He thinks there's something irregular about our base. Yes, sir, I will."
Broderick handed the phone to Clark with an I-told-you-so smile.
"Ray?" It was Prentice's heavy voice. "What are you doing in that hothouse, son?"
"Fred," said Clark, "what the hell's going on? Broderick insists the committee knows all about this place. I never heard of it before."
Prentice chuckled. "I warned you that you'd miss some important meetings if you went back to Georgia so often this spring. The committee had a long briefing on Site Y when you were away."
"It's damn strange nobody ever mentioned it to me," said Clark. "Especially you, Fred. And General Scott didn't say anything about it yesterday. It seems to me if the committee knew all about it he might at least have referred to it when I asked him about communications."
There was a pause at the other end. Oh-oh, Clark thought, I'm not supposed to know this has anything to do with communications. He forced himself not to look at Broderick.
"Now, simmer down, Ray," said Prentice soothingly. "Nothing to get all worked up about. You let Broderick show you all over the place and then you can give the committee a personal report after the recess. Say, put Broderick back on a minute."
The colonel took the phone and listened. "Yes, sir. Of course." He listened some more, nodding. "Yes, Senator. I understand perfectly. Right. Good-by, sir."
"Well, I hope that satisfied you, Senator," he said to Clark. "You just make yourself at home. I've got a few things to attend to, and I'll be back in an hour or so to show you our base. We're mighty proud of it."
"We'll take that tour right now if you don't mind," said Clark.
"That won't be possible, Senator, that won't be possible. I'll see you later. We'll look around when it's cooler, and then we can have dinner."
Broderick unplugged the phone from the wall and tucked it under his arm.
"What the hell gives here?" Clark spluttered.
Broderick merely winked, stepped out and slammed the door. Clark tried to open it. It was locked. When he lifted the Venetian blind a few minutes later, there was a sentry walking back and forth. Well, for Christ's sweet sake, he thought, they've locked me up.
A half hour later there was a rap on the door and a corporal let himself into the room with a key. He set a brown paper sack on the floor.
"Compliments of the colonel, sir," the corporal said. "He says to make yourself at home. We'll bring dinner over at 1745."
"Look, son," Clark said, "I don't intend to stay cooped up in this room. I'll walk back with you."
"Sorry, sir." The door had shut again, and the corporal was outside.
Clark lifted the two bottles from the paper bag. One was soda water. The other was Old Benjamin, his favorite brand of bourbon. He set the quart of soda and the fifth of whisky on the writing table, then went over to the bed and sat down. He stared at the bottles for perhaps ten minutes. Then he went to the table, drew the cork from the whisky and sniffed it. Old Benjamin, all right.
Clark walked slowly to the bathroom with the bottle. He upended it over the toilet bowl and watched the liquor splash into the water. When the pouring ceased, he shook the bottle. Several last drops ran out. He flushed the toilet. Then, finally, he ran a finger around the inside of the bottle neck and licked the finger.
"Bastards!" he growled. He slammed the bottle to the floor, but it failed to break. He picked it up and started to throw it again, but stopped himself and set it in the corner of the shower stall.
I don't know about Scott, Clark thought, but I'm going to get even with Prentice and Broderick if I never do anything else.
The minutes dragged by interminably. There was no book, no magazine, nothing to read in the room. He found a pamphlet in his coat pocket, a what-to-do-in-El Paso folder that he must have picked up at the motel, and read its sixteen small pages so many times he could almost recite them. He sat in the armchair. He lay on the bed. He tried the floor. He lifted the blind and banged on the window. That merely drew a rebuke from the sentry.
After several hours he began making notes on the back of an envelope. He raised one corner of a slat in the blind and tried to fix each object he could see in his memory. There wasn't much in his line of vision, although he could see the end of the runway and a wind sock far to his right.
At 5:45, as promised, the corporal brought dinner on a tray. A folded newspaper lay alongside the food. Clark again started to argue about leaving, but this time the soldier refused to talk at all. He also kept himself between Clark and the door, watching the senator as he set the tray on the table and backed out. The lock clicked behind him.
The food, at least, was good. After steak, peas, a baked potato, two rolls, peach pie, and coffee-he realized he had eaten nothing since breakfast-Clark felt reasonably at ease for the moment. He stretched out on the bed to read the paper. It turned out to be a day old, however, and except for local items he could find nothing that he hadn't known when he left Washington. Gianelli would depart for Italy. Labor refused to heed the President's plea to end the missile strikes. The West Virginia Rhododendron Queen had been unable to see Lyman, but had been kissed by the Secretary of the Interior instead. A wirephoto of the President talking on the phone in his bedroom, a wide smile on his face, was printed over a bulletin telling of the birth of his first grandchild in Kentucky.
The night seemed almost as long to Clark as those on the line in Korea. Every half hour, he lifted a slat to peek out at the silent base. Once he tried to knock a hole in the tiny frosted window in the bathroom, but it was too thick. He thumped on the walls from floor to ceiling and finally decided that without a sledge hammer or a crowbar there was no way to get out of the hut.
Just as he finally stripped to his shorts to try to get some sleep, he heard the growing roar of an approaching airplane. Through the blind, he watched a big jet, apparently a transport or cargo plane, drop onto the runway and flash out of sight. Other planes of the same type landed at intervals of three minutes; he counted a full dozen. By his watch he noted that the last one touched down at 2:26 a.m. When the whine of taxiing jets died away, he lay down and at last dropped off to sleep.
In the morning Clark had to reach under the cot for the paper to remind himself what day it was. It seemed as though he had been in this room for a month, but this must be Thursday. Yes. This was a Tuesday evening paper. He had arrived in El Paso Wednesday morning, and only one night had passed. Then he saw it.