7.
In Kit’s mailbox at the dormitory when she returned to the University there was a small envelope that had been waiting there for her return, stamped in gold with the address of the dean of students. It contained a small folded note.
Dear Miss Malone:
Welcome back! I hope you had a wonderful summer.
A matter of importance has come to our attention and I would like to talk with you about it. Will you please come to my office on this Thursday afternoon at 1 o’clock.
A kind of dread descended on Kit like a cold breastplate from her shoulders to her thighs. It seemed to her that every instrument of news, every sign of sudden revelation, could make her feel this now, and she wondered how long it would go on. Around her the students came and went and greeted and called out to one another. The day was Thursday; by the big clock above the mailboxes it was almost noon.
The office was in an older building in the campus center, high-ceilinged corridors and floors of worn stone. Dean of Students. Office of Student Affairs. The tall door was dark, and opened to a secretary’s office cluttered and cheerful.
“Oh yes,” the secretary said brightly. “Oh yes.” She pressed a button on her intercom with one hand while she pointed to a farther door with the other; but it was opened before Kit reached it, and the dean, smiling, stood aside to admit her.
“Thanks so much for coming!” she said, the same alarming brightness. She was Kit’s mother’s age, and carefully made up too as her mother always was. A face to meet the faces that I meet, Marion used to say. “You’ve met Mr. Bluhdorn, I think.”
He was there, in a broad side chair. She hadn’t seen him at first, the light of the windows making deep shadows in the room’s corners. He lifted himself to his feet with a sort of effortful wiggle, smiling his smile. Kit hadn’t moved from the carpet’s edge where she had come to a stop seeing him.
“Christa Malone,” he said. “Known as Kit. That’s right, isn’t it? Kit.” He tapped his temple with a forefinger, smart guy.
The dean took Kit’s arm and brought her within the room. Kit understood now that this story, whatever it was, had taken her up and was going to keep on till it was done. Her heart beat so hard she could hear its little cries in her ears.
“Sit, sit,” said the dean. “Would you like something, a cup of coffee?”
Kit shook her head.
“You know, I’m very glad to have the chance to meet you. You came here with some very impressive achievements. And you’ve taken a couple of advanced courses and done very well. Very very well.”
Milton Bluhdorn smiled more broadly, beamed even, as though he too were proud, or as though some credit were due him. Then he sat again and joined his hands across his belt.
“Now,” said the dean. “I don’t know how much Mr. Bluhdorn has told you about himself.” She still stood, leaning back against her wide glossy desk. “I think I can say that he’s here now as the representative of a joint committee of several government agencies concerned with our national security. I think…” She glanced at Milton Bluhdorn, and saw something in his smile or his face that made her stop. “Well. Mr. Bluhdorn asked me to invite you here to talk about a certain matter of importance, to you and to us and to our country, and I’d like you to listen carefully.”
Milton Bluhdorn opened his hands in an oh-gosh sort of gesture, waved them a little as though to dissipate the gravity of the dean’s remarks; he even chortled, deep in his throat. “No no,” he said. “Listen. Kit. First of all thanks for coming, and thanks for the help you gave the last time we met. You know. Now. What I’m doing here is just sort of a follow-up. Say, I see you aced that Russian course. That’s the stuff.”
She was to respond to that, she knew, and the dean was nodding at her, but before she could nod back or smile or speak she realized that he must have been allowed to see her grades, and what else had he learned about her?
“So,” he went on. “Follow-up. You have probably figured out that this all might have something to do with our friend Mr. Falin, and you’re right, it does.” He crossed his oddly small feet at the ankles; his socks were argyle ones in many colors. “You probably don’t realize it, Kit, but your country went to a great deal of trouble, a lot of real risk too in a lot of places, for Mr. Falin. Making it possible for him to come out and into the free world. And in some ways that job isn’t done, and it isn’t ever going to be done. Because this is a very dangerous world we live in, a world where it’s very hard to know who to trust. And Kit that’s why we’ve asked you here, to see if you can help us.”
Kit looked from him to the dean; the dean’s smile was gone, her eyes lidded, a weary old huntress.
“Your father was in the war, is that right?” Milton Bluhdorn asked. “And your brother was in the armed forces as well?”
She nodded.
“Well there is a world war going on right now too, though it might not seem like it. It’s being fought all the time, all over the world, and maybe we see only the tip of the iceberg; when we do learn about incidents in this war we don’t always recognize them for what they are.” He leaned forward as though to come closer to her. “In this world you have to make choices,” he said. “The President said so. If you’re not pushing you’re pulling. And everybody can push.”
If she thought of Ben now, if she let him into her thought, they would get him, she would lose him again and forever. She didn’t move.
“I see that you’re interested in the security or intelligence services of this country as a career,” Milton Bluhdorn said. “Maybe the CIA?”
She shrugged, or shrank: lifted her shoulders for a moment.
“Well that’s good, that’s commendable,” he said. “Now. Here’s what we’d like to ask you, and really it is not anything at all. We would like you to go about your business and your schoolwork and your friendships just as before. Only for the next little while, the next few months or so, we’d like you to keep a little mental record for us of what you see, I mean in relation to Mr. Falin. What you see and hear.”
A case clock ticking in the corner of the office now whirred as though awaking, and struck: One. Two.
“Okay,” Kit said.
“Well don’t just say ‘okay,’” he said, grinning. “Let’s think this through. I mean I’m sure you’re a stand-up girl, a real smart girl. But let’s think what we’re asking. We’re not asking that you do anything you wouldn’t otherwise do. We’re not asking that you, you know, spy on anybody or take any measures at all. Mr. Falin is an acquaintance of yours, a mentor perhaps in some sort of way, and all we’re asking is that now and then you just let us know what’s been happening there with him at his place, the kinds of things that come up in conversations, whether he’s had visitors, whether he’s gone out of town, that kind of thing.”
“Okay.”
“Because it’s so much easier for you than say for me. Less intrusive.” He smiled the little scimitar smile. “What I’m saying Kit is this. We do need a commitment. We would like to know just how much of a friend to this country this guy is. I guess that’s how you might put it.” When she said nothing more for a long time, he stood. She stood too, looking only at him, and folded her arms before her. “Okay. Now as to the details of this, we’ll be getting in touch with you from time to time. I mean not often. You’re not to worry about it. Okay?”
She nodded.
“You might be interested to know that you aren’t the only person on campus who’s helping out in this way. Helping the dean here and the school. Not the only student.”