“So it would probably be the payday after next,” Dr Godden said. “The first of October. Let me see, that’s a Thursday. Three weeks from yesterday. They probably won’t want to stay around this area much longer than that. That is, if you’re right and they really intend to do it.”
“They’ll do it,” she said, in the tone of voice she might have used to say, everybody dies.
“We have three weeks to find out,” Dr Godden said. “But if it’s still in such early stages, I don’t think you can really be as sure as you are. You know what I think it is?”
“The same old thing,” she said, smiling a bit shyly at the pattern in the carpet, knowing what he was going to say.
“You tell me,” he said, urging her gently.
“It’s the feeling of being undeserving,” she said. “The feeling that I don’t deserve to have anything good, so I won’t get anything good. I’m sure they’ll do it because I’m sure they’ll get caught and then I won’t have Stan. Because I don’t deserve Stan.” She sneaked a quick look at him, saw his sympathetic face, his balding head gleaming in the light. Looking quickly back at the carpet she said, “I know that’s part of it. But that isn’t the whole thing. I mean, Marty did get caught.”
“Once,” Dr Godden said. “And how many times did he commit robberies and not get caught?”
“Oh, lots,” she said. She was no longer amazed at how easily she could talk with Dr Godden about robberies and criminals. It was almost as though he were a priest; different, but sympathetic, never judging, never condemning, never trying to force her to conform to what society might want. How many people could she talk to about Marty, be truthful, tell them her ex-husband was a robber, it was his profession? Most people would be shocked, they’d want to call the police or at least to stop having anything to do with her. But Dr Godden took everything just the same; calm and understanding and without judging. She could talk to him about anything, about sex or Marty or her parents or anything at all and it was never a problem.
Now, calm as ever, Dr Godden was saying, “Then there’s no reason to believe they’ll be caught this time. After all, Stan is the only one among them who isn’t a professional at this sort of thing.”
“But even if they don’t get caught this time,” she said, exploring her fear further now, “it won’t be any good. Stan will want to do it again, he’ll want to become like Marty. Or like the other man, Parker.”
“I see,” Dr Godden said. “You’re afraid Stan will turn out to be your first husband again.”
She nodded rapidly, frowning at the rug.
“That’s a not unusual fear among girls in your situation,” Dr Godden said. “But frankly, from what you’ve told me of Stan I think it more likely one taste of that sort of life will be more than enough for him. Who knows, the experience might be good for him, he might come out of it much more likely husband material than he went in.”
It was wonderful how Dr Godden always found a calmer way to look at things, a more pleasant way. And a lot of the time his way turned out to be right, and all her fears and doubts and premonitions turned out to be nothing but the old insecurity again, the old inadequacy and unworthiness.
“I guess,” she said hesitantly, “I guess the only thing we can do now is wait.”
“That’s all,” agreed Dr Godden.
2
Stan took a shot of the vault, peeled the print out of the back of the camera, saw it had come out as well as the rest, and strolled on back to his desk. He tucked the photo into the envelope in his center drawer with the rest, put the camera back in the side drawer, and was typing away like sixty when Lieutenant Wormley came back in from the head.
“Don’t work so hard,” Wormley said on his way by. “It’s only Saturday.”
“Yes, sir,” said Stan. Wormley was a fuzzy-faced chinless wonder, an ROTC second lieutenant two years younger than Stan. He continued on down the rows of desks now, went into his own glass-enclosed cubicle next to Major Creighton’s office, and buried his face again in Scientific American. Stan had taken all his pictures except the vault shot while Wormley was lost strayed or stolen inside that magazine.
Sergeant Novato had been tougher to work around. A tough, compact little man who’d never expected assignment anywhere that required brainwork, he took the tasks of this office a hell of a lot more seriously than anybody else, and on the Saturdays when he was on duty he got more accomplished than most people did in a full eight-hour weekday. But it was his very busyness that had helped Stan to shoot around him. When Novato was bouncing around the files, in and out of one drawer after another, pulling this file, Putting that file back, Stan got his pictures of the other end of the office. And when Novato was down there, absorbed in arithmetic at his desk, Stan took his pictures in the other direction.
He’d already taken care of the exterior shots and the stair-case on the way in, and the shot of the vault through the window of Major Creighton’s office finished the pictures he wanted from here. So now all he had to do was wait for twelve o’clock—another interminable forty-five minutes away—and then drive around the base a little to get the rest of the pictures Parker wanted. He’d be home by one-thirty at the latest.
It was a good thing Lanz had gone along with the switch. Otherwise it would have been tough to get these pictures for Parker. But Lanz had been happy to switch Saturdays with Stan—just to put off his own duty day—so here he was, and the pictures were done.
Nobody seemed to know why the Saturday morning skeleton staff was required, but then nobody seemed to know why the Air Force wanted almost anything done the way they did. It was just a fact of life, that’s all; on Saturday mornings one officer, one non-com and one airman had to be on duty from eight till noon. It was less trouble on the lower ranks than on the officers and non-coms, since there were more airmen to divvy up the duty among themselves, but it was still an occasional pain in the ass.
Stan’s next duty wasn’t scheduled for another five weeks, but Jerry Lanz had agreed to switch with him, and the two other people on duty this morning had turned out, in their separate ways, to be perfect for what Stan had in mind. He’d done a small amount of typing, a large amount of picture-taking, and all in all he considered the morning, unlike most of these stinking Saturdays, well spent.
Stan was enjoying all of this, the preparation, the talk, the gathering of professionals, the gearing up methodically and matter-of-factly for the one grand profitable moment of high drama. He had felt an affinity with Marty Fusco from the first, despite the difference in their ages, and that feeling was even stronger now with Parker. Parker was a man he would follow. He had seen and understood Parker’s mistrust of him when they’d first met, and had been delighted at the gradual shift in Parker’s attitude, until now he was sure Parker’s acceptance of him was almost complete.
That he should find his place at last at the side of a man like Parker didn’t surprise Stan Devers at all. For as long as he could remember he’d been a swimmer upstream, a rebel for the sake of rebellion, anti rules and anti dullness and anti everything that plain stolid ordinary society was for. He’d been thrown out of two high schools and one college—having already, in college, been thrown out of ROTC—he’d been fired from most of the jobs he’d ever held, and that he was surviving four years of Air Force regimentation without earning himself either a Bad Conduct or Undesirable Discharge sometimes amazed him. His troubles in the past had ranged from insubordination through constant absences to the theft of one high school teacher’s car—for a joyride only—and that he had held his natural tendencies in check for three and a half military years now meant not that he’d reformed but that he’d understood at once that the Air Force was a tougher proposition than any school. Hit a teacher and the worst you could get was thrown out. Hit an officer and they’d put you in jail for five years.