“Well, I feel fine, but if you think it’s necessary-”
“I do.”
“Then I’ll go to the doctor for a check-up. I’ll attend to it just as soon as I get settled. In the next day or two.”
“I’m afraid we can’t wait, Mr. Victor. Also, I would prefer to have one of our medical staff examine you. If what I suspect is true, it’s going to be difficult enough to keep it quiet.”
“All right. Set up an appointment. Any time you say.”
“Right now would be best, Mr. Victor.” Putnam’s manner was grave.
“The hell you say!” I was thinking of Victoria waiting for me back at her hotel. “I have plans for tonight.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Victor, but I must insist. For your own sake, I must insist.”
I tried to argue, but he stood firm. And so, an hour later I was closeted with three doctors who’d been hand-picked by Putnam from those working with the CIA. They asked a lot of questions before they got down to their examination.
“Have you been experiencing any nausea, Mr. Victor?”
“Some. I probably picked up a little fever in the jungle.”
“Is there any particular time of day when you feel it?”
“Just after waking up. That’s when I’m weakest, I guess. Jungle fever usually hits like that.”
“How is your appetite generally?”
“Damn good. So would yours be if you’d been living off jungle berries.”
“Do you have any unusual preferences?”
“Well, yeah, now that you mention it. I’ve been getting a yen for spicy stuff and I’ve developed a sweet tooth. Sometimes I feel like I’d just like to glom the damnedest stuff all together and gulp it down. But I suppose that’s because it’s been so long since I’ve had any really decent food ”
They had a lot more zany questions, and they kept shooting them at me for what seemed a long time. I answered as best I could and wished they’d get done with it. Finally they stopped the yakking and began the examination. They were damned thorough, and it was the middle of the night before they were finished.
“If you will come back at three p.m. tomorrow, Mr. Victor, we will have the results of the tests we have taken,” the head medicine man told me. “We’ll know more about your condition then.”
I said good-bye to them, and Putnam saw me to the door. He patted me on the shoulder as I left. That kind of gesture was damn unusual for him. It was as if he was trying to express sympathy.
But sympathy for what? What was wrong with me? What had Von Koerner’s Weapon done to me?
Well, I’d find out. And until I did, I wasn’t going to waste time worrying. Make hay while the moon shines, I told myself. And late as it was, I decided to attend to the matter of Victoria Winters.
It took some doing, but I rounded up some flowers and a couple of bottles of champagne. I took a room in her hotel and washed up quickly. Then, with the flowers under one arm and the champagne under the other, I went down to her room. The door wasn’t locked, so I didn’t stop to knock. I just let myself in very quietly.
It was very dark inside. I more or less guessed at the location of the bed and groped my way over to it. I set the champagne down on the floor beside it, and my hand kept groping until I felt the pillow. I trailed my fingers across it lightly until they encountered a strand of Victoria’s hair.
My fingers followed the hair up to her cheek. Then I bent over and kissed her softly on the lips. “Darling,” she murmured in her sleep. Her lips parted for another kiss.
I granted it, more insistently this time. My hand slid down from her face to her shoulder, and then to her breast. It was very warm, very soft. “Victoria, I’m here,” I whispered. “Your man from O R.G.Y. is here and very ready.”
“Not just now, darling.” She was still three-quarters asleep. “I’m so-o-o tired. Let’s wait until morning.”
“But I’ve waited so long already,” I protested, still whispering. I stroked her breast until the tip grew rigid against my fingers. “Come on, darling, wake up.”
I sensed her eyes opening and trying to adjust to the darkness.
“Hello, Vickie sweetheart.”
“Steve!” she exclaimed loudly. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was very surprised, almost alarmed.
“That’s just exactly what the hell I’d like to know!”
The voice came out of the darkness beyond her, from the other side of the bed. It was immediately followed by the turning on of the bedlamp.
The light blinded me for a moment. But even before I saw him, the familiarity of the voice had registered with me. And now, as my eyes adjusted, I saw Alan Foster’s angry face looking up at me from the pillows “Just what the hell’s the big idea, Victor?” he wanted to know.
I dropped Vickie’s breast like a hot potato and took a step backward with my mouth hanging open. The whole situation had an awfully familiar feel to it. Yes, this was exactly what had happened before, in Tokyo. There too I’d crept into Vickie’s room in the middle of the night only to find that Foster had beaten me to it. But I was even more flustered now because Vickie had led me to believe she was going to give Foster the gate for me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I guess I read the signals wrong.” I started to back out of the room.
Foster was still angry, but Vickie was looking at me sympathetically. “Steve, wait,” she said.
“What the hell for?”
“I want to talk to you.” She turned to Foster. “Alan, please. You know the sacrifice he made. Please go back to your room so I can talk to Steve alone. I really do owe him an explanation.”
I’ll be damned if Foster wasn’t looking at me sympathetically now, too. “Okay,” he agreed without even a token protest. “I’ll see you in the morning.” He hopped out of bed, covered his nakedness with a bathrobe, and then he was gone.
“Well, Vickie?” I asked bitterly. “Want to tell me how come you changed your mind?”
“I didn’t exactly change it. It was changed for me. By circumstance.” She was obviously floundering. “I mean, you were tied up with Putnam and—”
“And you couldn’t wait. So you didn’t waste any time hopping into bed with friend Foster.”
“I could have waited, Steve. But what for? When I realized your condition, I just knew I couldn’t go through with letting you make love to me. I was crying when Alan took me back to the hotel. Crying about you. And that’s really how it happened. He comforted me.”
“By hopping between the sheets with you! Well, that figures. After all, it isn’t the first time. It’s just that I don’t understand why you led me on. Why did you make me believe you wanted me to make love to you if you still want Foster?”
“Because I did. I meant all of it. Only your condition—”
“What condition? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Didn’t Putnam tell you?” She stared at me.
“Tell me what?”
“About what Von Koerner’s weapon did to you?”
“I don’t think he’s sure it did anything yet. He had me examined by a bunch of doctors. They’ll have the results tomorrow. Why? What is it that’s supposed to have been done to me?”
“Then maybe there’s a chance it missed. Oh! But it’s such an outside chance! Poor Steve! I can’t tell you. At least you’ll have one more night before you know. But I can’t make love to you either—-not knowing what I do. Maybe just because I’m a woman with a woman’s feelings, but I can’t do it. You’ll know why tomorrow, after you see Putnam. And if I’m wrong, if the weapon missed you or something, then there’ll be time enough for us to go to bed together.”
But Vickie wasn’t wrong. And when I finally learned what she was talking about, I couldn’t blame her for refusing to let me make love to her. I couldn’t even blame her for seeking solace in Foster’s arms. But she wouldn’t tell me anything more that night. And it wasn’t until the next day that I learned the truth about the effect Von Koerner’s weapon had on me.