“If you would,” she said, folding a fresh bra, selecting a pair of medium-heeled wedgies, remembering her hand calculator almost too late. T-shirt, two pairs of L’Eggs, a skirt that didn’t show wrinkles, and a blouse that did, but whatthehell… “Do you know how long I’ll be gone? This is going to play absolute havoc with my schedule, Mr. Smith.”
“Just a day or two, I think,” said Smith, closing the refrigerator door. “It’s only a precaution, Miss Leigh. I’m sure you’ll be laughing about it by Monday. You might bring a book. I’m not the world’s greatest conversationalist.”
“I suppose you do this all the time,” she said, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.
“Not often,” he admitted, watching her zip the bag over Roark’s book on stress and strain, checking the expensive watch on his wrist. “Ready?”
“I hope so.” She hefted the little bag.
“Where’s your phone?” His smile was easy. “I need to set someone at ease about you.”
Blushing, she hauled a small pile of dirty laundry off the windowseat to reveal the Princess phone with its long curl of cord. “You never would’ve found it,” she said.
He grinned back, lifted the receiver, began to punch at buttons. But when he put the receiver to his ear, something shifted in his expression. He held the receiver out. “Is your phone bill current?”
“Of course,” she said in irritation.
He tried the operator, but had no joy. “Then we could have a problem,” he muttered. “There’s a back entrance from here, I believe.” He reached out toward her stereo, and Kitaro faded with the set’s power light.
Petra snatched the receiver, heard nothing, not even a dial tone, and felt the blood draining from her face. “What does it mean?”
“Probably nothing,” he shrugged, not very convincingly, and now a little charcoal-black automatic was in his right hand as he stood near the window. He spoke slowly and distinctly. “See that black Ford? Wait until I drive it away from the curb and to the alley. Then you go out the back way to the car, and don’t stop for anything or anybody. Is that clear?”
The gravel in that voice was now sharpened flint. It prodded, and you obeyed. She nodded, her mouth suddenly dry.
He copied her nod, reseated the handgun in his left armpit, and headed for the front entrance. Petra heard the door slam and punched nine-one-one, the first number that came to mind, into the phone. She might as well have been holding a hunk of broccoli to her ear.
Petra checked the inside lock, wishing she had time for a note to Bev, seeing John Smith through the window as he sauntered to the black Tempo. Like he hadn’t a care in the world, she thought, but that just means he’s good at what he does. I wonder if he checked the upstairs hall. She looked quickly into the hall, then saw the black sedan pull away outside and, with what she hoped was perfect timing, felt the deadbolt snap as she backed into the hall. An instant later she was pelting out the back, down wooden steps, and through a back lawn that had once known tender care, leaping over someone’s rusted hibachi, the TWA bag overbalancing her so that she almost fell before reaching the back gate.
The Ford was waiting in the alley. The man’s only comment as she dropped her rump into the seat was, “Buckle up,” and she did, letting her head fall back against the headrest, trying to take long breaths because that was supposed to help when you felt like fainting or, worse, blowing chunks of Cheez-Whiz and broccoli into your lap in a back alley in Providence, Rhode Island.
He said nothing more until they were on the turnpike, attending to his rearviews, driving wonderfully well with a fine sense of what traffic ahead was doing, or about to do. Then, “It’s a no-sweat run now, Miss Leigh. We’ll pick up Route Ninety at Worcester. Relax. Listen to the radio; read a book.”
She shook her head, aware that his peripheral vision was so practiced he could study her while looking straight down the turnpike. “I’m too wired, Mr. Smith. You are Mr. John Smith,” she said with exaggerated coolness.
“Yes and no; why kid you? Call me John. Johnny if you like it better.”
“Then you’ll have to call me Petra, if that’s allowed.”
For the first time he laughed, and that was unsettling because, dammit, now she knew the man was familiar. “Sure,” he said, “so long as we remember you’re my boss’s boss’s boss, once removed.”
It began to seem as if the Cheez-Whiz would stay down, after all. “Is there anything about this that you can tell me?”
“Not a lot, MPetra. There are several ways to zap a phone line. I’m surprised they didn’t just monitor it; that’s what I would’ve done.”
Unable to keep the edge from her voice: “How many times have you tapped my telephone, John Smith?”
“I never havebut if I had, I’d have to lie about it.”
“That’s no answer.”
“Bingo,” he said, and pointed to a sign: Worcester 12 mi.
Petra rummaged in her bag, but left the Roark book where it was. There was simply no chance that she could concentrate on engineering stress when her own internal stresses remained so high. You’ve always thought intelligence work must be wonderful and exciting, idiot. Nobody ever told you a simple ride in a car could turn your knees to silly putty and your stomach into a butterchurn. But the ride couldn’t be all that simple. She had been in dangermight yet be in danger. Petra sighed and closed her eyes, reclining in the seat a bit, willing herself to breathe regularly, think and act regularly.
After ten minutes or so, her eyes snapped open. “Why don’t you just call on your radio and tell someone about my telephone? Don’t you guys carry some scrambler gadget?”
“When we have a transmitter,” Smith agreed. “I’m not carrying one. Nobody backing me up, so it’d be pointless.”
“We could stop and phone.”
“Affirmative, we could phone, if we could stop, but negative, we can’t stop. Orders,” he shrugged.
“Stopping must be a high-stress point,” she guessed.
“You could put it that way. It’s a window of very high vulnerability, is how we’d put it.”
Petra chuckled. “That must make life interesting when you have to go to the bathroom.”
“Life is always interesting. And yes, we’ll make a rest stop in Albany.”
“And after that?”
“I’ll call from there and find out,” he said, and saw her head jerk in surprise. “Hey, they don’t tell me everything either.” He yawned, a deep inhalation that pushed his chest and belly against the restraint belts. “Can’t afford much of that,” he said, and fumbled into the footwell behind her seat for a moment, bringing out a cheap plastic thermos canister which he thrust between his knees to unscrew its cap one-handed. “You a coffee drinker?”
“Show me an engineer who isn’t,” she snorted.
“I’ve got this down to a science,” he said, “but you might hold the cup for me.”
She did, watching him pour a half cupful. Then he put the thermos between his knees again. “Some of those packets of sweetener in the glove box, I think,” he said. Holding the cup of hot coffee in one hand, Petra began to poke with the other into the little storage compartment.
She did not see what he was doing with his left hand at the lip of the thermos, but when she turned back to him, he was turning onto Route Ninety. “You must’ve used it all,” she said.
“Oh, well.” He took the cup from her and sipped, squinting into the late afternoon sun as the Ford’s nose turned westward. “Gaah. I’ve tasted better,” he said, but went on sipping.
With the last sip, he stifled another yawn in his teeth and handed her the cup. “You’d best have some too,” he said, “in case you have to drive awhile. I haven’t had much sleep,” he added.