“The face, Al,” Nick reminded him.
“Oh, yeah, the face,” said Fisher. “Like I told you, Hawk’s medics are giving him a going-over. But me, when I looked at him close-up, I saw a face that had been lifted. Tiny little scars near mouth and eyes, on the cheeks, and under the chin. Maybe surgery for an old face injury, I wouldn’t know. But they were there.”
Pauling gave a sudden bark of something that was not quite laughter.
“Hughes, with a face-lift!” he snorted. “What do you know! Why, I’ve seen the man around for years, and I never even suspected. None of us did.”
“Why should we?” the president said shortly. “It was his private business, I suppose.” His eyes narrowed suddenly and he turned a penetrating glance at Nick. “Or perhaps it shouldn’t have been.”
“Perhaps it shouldn’t,” Nick agreed. “Now let’s break this up and get what rest we can. You sure you want die first shift, Parry?”
The Chief of Security looked exhausted to the point of dropping, but he nodded vigorously.
“My responsibility,” he said crisply. “And I’ll have two men with me all the time. Three hours more isn’t going to kill me. Then you can take over. Take all your men down with you, if you like.”
“Thank you, but I’d rather have them at the exits,” Nick replied. “I take it you’ll give me a couple of standby men as well?”
“Sure will,” said Parry. “You’ll get a fresh pair when I go off.” He gave a short laugh totally lacking in mirth. “I hope they can be trusted. Still, I’m pairing them off as best I can and one man can watch the other. Same when Pauling comes On duty. And that should take care of the night. I’m off now. See you down below at two.”
He left the president’s luxurious office and headed for the power-control room. It was here, the joint session had decided, that further trouble was likely to occur if anything at all was going to happen. For the grim thought of sabotage was in the air.
The meeting broke up rapidly. Pauling and the president were to doss down on the couches in their respective offices, Julia was to sleep on a cot in the women’s First Aid Room and Nick would take a catnap in one of the “relaxation areas.”
Only it didn’t work out quite that way. The sofa in the big room with the color TV set was big enough for two, and two were using it. One small light burned dimly in the corner of the room.
“This is a helluva time to make love,” Julia said drowsily. “One large Russian dignitary still missing, one sinister stranger lurking darkly about the plant with God knows what evil thoughts in mind. And you —”
“And I have my own evil thoughts,” Nick murmured, feeling the softness of her lithe, bronzed body and loving her returning touch. “As long as we have time, let’s use it sensibly. I know our Valentina well, and she wouldn’t mind.” His deft hand removed a flimsy strap and Julia lay bare and beautiful.
“I don’t mind myself,” she whispered, helping him with a shirt button, “but shouldn’t we be doing something?”
“We are doing something,” Nick said softly. “And don’t you give a thought to mysterious strangers, Iuv. There aren’t any. It’s just a question of paying out a little rope — and waiting for the hanging.”
“Ah, so romantic,” she murmured ironically. “If that’s all you can talk about, don’t talk…
Neither of them talked, except to mouth the small, soft words of love and to speak each other’s name as if the name itself were a caress. They sought and touched and found what they were seeking, and then their bodies flowed together like a turbulent river.
“My love, my love,” Julia breathed softly, and her body melted under his. His hands slid over her and traced the velvety contours of her fluid beauty and his lips were fire against hers. There was a tension in them both that cried out for release and soon the slowly rocking movements and the tender touches became a frantic, unbearably delicious rhythm. He made it last, for both of them. He knew how; they had been there together more than once or twice before, and each knew how to thrill the other to the point of wild explosion.
Her dark hair was loose over her shoulders and her eyes were shining and with the sort of rapture that always made him want to give her the ultimate in pleasure, that always made his senses reel and all his nerve ends twang as though she was stroking each one of them with her electric touch. As now she was… but she was doing more than stroking and he was past the point of merely tingling. He was on fire, so was she; and they fused together in a long moment of soaring, burning happiness. And then they plunged, still joined, into a pillow-soft pool of release and floated languorously as if on a warm, receding summer tide.
They lay clasped together for a while in a silence broken only by their uneven breathing and the pounding of their hearts.
Neither of them had forgotten how they happened to be there, nor that there was a disappearance and several deaths still to be accounted for, but both of them were used to living on the edge of hell and taking their happiness when they could find it.
At last, Nick sighed and stretched.
“Not enough,” he murmured. “Not enough. A day and a night on some warm, sandy beach, that’s what we need. Or a couple of days in a meadow, rolling in the grass. Or a week or so in some nice, soft haystack…”
“It all sounds very public to me,” Julia said practically. “Also a little scratchy. I thought you liked beds?”
“I do, I do,” Nick said warmly, and trailed his lips over the softness of her breasts. “See how I like beds, and what comes with them.” He kissed her full on the lips and lingered there until his pulses began to quicken too energetically, and then he forced himself to roll aside.
“Ah, well, strange things are happening,” he said, “and I’d better go do something about them.”
He rose with one fluid movement of his whipcord body and began to dress.
“But you’re not on shift yet,” Julia said, watching him.
“That’s right,” he agreed. “And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we were seen coming here together and I’m not expected to emerge until it’s time for me to take over from Parry. So I leave here well ahead of time and I do my own little bit of snooping.”
Julia started to pull her own clothes on. “What did you mean — there aren’t any mysterious strangers?” she asked, her slightly slanting, catlike eyes gazing at him through the dimness. “We agree there’s an accomplice in the building, right? And certainly there’s still something damn peculiar going on. Someone’s causing it.”
“Right, on all counts,” Nick agreed. “But not a stranger. Don’t forget that Valentina recognized someone who was with us. And kick this around in your lovely head, sweetheart — don’t you think that Valentina-abducting and sabotage are a little too much for one day’s work? Why should the inside man, the accomplice, want to blow the power — hours after Valentina had been snatched? Seems pointless. There wasn’t much damage, and nothing significant happened during the blackout. What was it for? And I can’t buy coincidence. So I’m telling myself that the two things are directly connected. And I mean directly. I think we can definitely accept the idea of an accomplice who is still with us. Let’s not give Hughes too much credit for swiftness and resourcefulness and all that kind of thing. Let us assume a man who used a gas mask on himself, who manipulated the cages from below after Hughes had done his shooting on the roof and taken off, and who turned the gas off when the “copter had gotten a good head start. Because, you know, if Hughes had turned it off, we would have come around a whole lot sooner than we did. Okay, assume a man like that, and I think you must assume more than an accomplice. Certainly you have a man who’s no stranger to this place.”