“Yes, that was a mistake on my part. You have to understand how remote this all is from my usual type of activity. A family situation is naturally more open and—I don’t know how to say it—less professional than what I’m used to. But I tell you what. That man will apologize to you, and as soon as—”
“I don’t want him to apologize to me,” she said, beginning to feel slightly foolish. And honesty made her add, “He already did.”
“Then,” Wellington said, not picking that up and adding to her discomfort, for which she was grateful, “as soon as the site is finished, I’ll take you on a sort of tour of it myself. All right?”
“I don’t want that either,” she said. “I just want to know what’s going on, I want you to start telling us things.”
“But not on the phone,” he said.
“I don’t care how you tell me, just stop acting as though you were the only one involved!”
“Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry, it just never occurred to me you would go riding up in that area at this time of year. And I didn’t think you would be interested in a simple change of site.”
Everything he said was so reasonable; she felt the solid ground slipping out from under her, and she struggled to retain it. “I saw a light last night,” she said. “In the woods. So I went investigating this morning.”
“Without saying anything to me?”
Baffled, she said nothing for a few seconds, then: “What?”
“You knew I had people in that general area. If you’d asked me about the light, if you’d told me about your plan to investigate, I would naturally have told you about the construction right away.”
She didn’t believe that, but she let it go, saying instead, “Why build anything anyway? We’re going to Paris.”
“Not permanently,” he said. “Besides, it was started before that decision was made. It was begun last Friday, actually, while you and Bradford were away at Elizabeth’s funeral. That was when the demolition was done.”
“Demolition?”
“The easiest way to dig a hole,” he said, “is with explosive. We took advantage of Bradford’s absence to do it the easy way.”
The thought entered her mind that Wellington was making a profit somewhere. It suddenly seemed to her that he was doing a lot of unnecessary fancy-work around the fringes of this thing, and why would he do it unless there was some way he was fudging money out of the government? Took advantage of Bradford’s absence, did he? And maybe he was taking advantage of the whole situation. Disliking Wellington as much as she did, it was easy to attribute that kind of motivation to him. Building a complicated underground base of operations at the same time the man they’re supposed to be watching is going to leave in five days.
“Thank you, Wellington,” she said coldly. “Thank you for the explanation.” And hung up.
iv
THE ONLY TIMES SHE felt real these days were when she was naked in Robert’s apartment. It was strange, that difference in her, strange and delightful. Though she’d never been exactly a prude with Fred, it was true that the intervals she’d spent wearing absolutely nothing during their marriage had been almost nil. She’d worn nightgowns to bed, and though she might sometimes have been nude during sex, she had always put on either the nightgown again or a robe immediately afterward.
But now it was different, astonishingly so. She loved going without clothes in Robert’s apartment, padding around the room or standing at the kitchen-closet to make coffee or just lying on the bed. Sex was a large part of it, of course, her avidity for his body was still getting stronger all the time, was enough now to make her smile suddenly and at odd moments when they were miles apart, was enough to make her much less inhibited and more inventive in bed than she’d ever been before—they had done together so far two things she had previously never done with anyone—but that wasn’t all the reason. There was also a feeling of freedom that came with stripping away her clothing, as though the garments were symbols of the morass of responsibility in which she was mired; without them, she could pretend for a while to be nothing but a female body, desirable and desiring, and that she was someone for whom it was all right to think only of pleasure.
That moment, late at night, when it was necessary for her to get ready for the ten-minute drive back to Eustace, back to the place that was no longer home, was always a bad one, and it seemed at times she was just as bothered by the necessity to get dressed, to blanket herself in weighted layers of cloth, as she was by the prospect of leaving Robert, though of course the two regrets were so entwined it was impossible to tell them apart.
As for Robert, as the week went by leading to the Paris trip, he grew more and more silent, more and more withdrawn. And yet it wasn’t as though he didn’t care about her; he was, if anything, more tender and passionate than before, but he seemed to have to struggle to push those emotions to the surface, as though he was suffering an emotional weariness against which he had to fight at all times. But she could understand that; she would be able to understand any reaction to their situation by now, five weeks since Bradford had first told her his plan to go to Red China. She took what warmth she could from Robert, and didn’t blame him that it wasn’t more.
Sunday night was very bad. The next morning, she and Bradford would drive to Hagerstown, would fly from there to Dulles International Airport in Washington, and from there would take a commercial flight to Paris. How long they would be gone she didn’t know, nor how long till she would see Robert again, nor where she and Bradford would travel from Paris, nor where or when their voyaging could ever finish. She needed Robert more tonight than she’d ever needed him before, and yet tonight he was at his most withdrawn. He didn’t want to talk, it almost seemed as though he couldn’t talk, that he was only capable of holding her, his arms tight around her as though in a wordless attempt to keep her from leaving. She needed words tonight, needed reassurance, but had to settle for this passionate aching silence.
She left at two in the morning, weighed down by her coat and all the clothing beneath it, Robert’s silence still nagging in her ears, and when she got into her car out front she wanted to turn it the opposite way from Eustace and just drive and drive until she passed through some force or field or barrier and became someone entirely different, someone who didn’t have all of this responsibility. Instead of which, she started the engine and set out on the well-worn track toward home.
There were two traffic lights along her route through Chambersburg, and tonight she caught the second one red. Just as it was about to turn green again, the passenger door of the Mustang opened and a man slipped into the seat beside her.
For a second she was too stunned to know what to do, and she was just reacting to the fact that he was Oriental when he said, in slightly British-accented English, “Drive on, please. Don’t be alarmed, I’m on your side.” And he gave her a smile he no doubt meant to be reassuring.
Which, in an odd way, it was. He was a slightly stocky man, middle-aged, his coarse black hair worn straight and long. He was wearing a black topcoat, and under it she could glimpse a dark suit, white shirt and narrow dark tie. The mildness of his manner and the civilized discretion of his clothing were also reassuring, but the most reassuring was his having said, “I’m on your side.” So he was one of Wellington’s men. She nodded, faced front, and pressed the accelerator. The Mustang traveled under the green light and on down the empty street.
There were now automobile headlights in the rearview mirror, about a block back. There had been none before.
The man said, “I have a message for your grandfather. It is very important. He trusts you, so we trust you.”
Fortunately, the physical tasks of driving the car helped to obscure her reaction when she understood the implications of what he’d said. He was not one of Wellington’s men!
She didn’t look at him. She kept facing front, kept driving. The headlights stayed a block back.
The man said, “The people your grandfather has be
en in contact with for almost three weeks are not from the People’s Republic. Certain members of your family, highly placed in government, have learned of your grandfather’s intention to visit the People’s Republic, and they are determined at all costs to stop him.”
Afraid of the trembling she heard in her voice, Evelyn said, “Are you sure?” She still faced front.
“Our people were murdered,” the man said. “The ones who were in contact with your grandfather. Renegade Vietnamese have taken their place. And now I must tell you something I regret the need to say. The man you are visiting, Robert Pratt, is not true to you. He is actually in the pay of the people who are determined to thwart your grandfather. They have hired him to make love to you and gain your confidence, in order to learn your grandfather’s plans through you.”
Now she did risk a quick glance at him, saw that he was showing the mild concern natural to a man bringing a stranger bad news, and faced front again. They had decided she was the family’s dupe, it hadn’t occurred to them she would be on the family’s side.
But how should she react to this news about Robert? If she were a dupe, wouldn’t she have to deny it? She said, “That isn’t true. Robert and I are in love.”
“It may be,” the man said gently, “that he truly believes he is acting in your best interests. Whatever the case, we have proof he is in league with those who would stop at nothing to keep your grandfather from visiting the People’s Republic. You must believe me, your grandfather’s very life may hang in the balance.”
When she looked at him now, the agitation she showed was genuine. “His life? What do you mean?”
“I mean that the President of the United States has approved the assassination of your grandfather as a last resort, rather than permit him to embarrass your nation by visiting mine.”
“But they wouldn’t—”
“They have. Please communicate this message to your grandfather, and let him decide for himself whether or not to trust it. This plan to travel to Paris is very dangerous. There is strong reason to believe they intend to murder your grandfather in the course of the journey.”
Could that be true? Wellington’s face, closed and inaccessible, appeared before her. She touched the brakes without thinking, and turned a pleading look on the man beside her. “Is that true? Are you just trying to scare us, or is it true?”
“I am sorry to say it is true,” he said. “And now I had best depart from you. If you will stop along the road here—”
She thought for a flickering instant of accelerating, driving him to some police station, or back to Robert, somewhere, and have men force him to tell whether or not it was the truth. But it was impossible—the headlights still swam in the rearview mirror—so she braked to a stop, and the man smilingly wished her good night before stepping out of the car.
v
SITTING IN THE CAR, well back in darkness, Evelyn gnawed the knuckle of her left thumb and watched the brightly-lit phone booth in front of the closed gas station across the way. All around her, the town of McConnellsburg, twenty-two miles west of Chambersburg, was dark and silent.
She had continued to drive toward Eustace after the Chinese had gotten out, but when she was sure she wasn’t being followed she’d gone on through Eustace to Metal and had then taken the back roads down to McConnellsburg, where she’d finally found a phone booth. She’d called Robert and told him where she was, and he’d promised to be there in twenty minutes.
It was twenty-five minutes before she saw the headlights coming from the right. She pressed back against the seat, and at the same time reached out her right hand to the ignition key, ready to start the engine and get out of here if anything had gone wrong.
She recognized the Jaguar when it pulled to a stop beside the phone booth, recognized the shape of Robert when he climbed from the car. He was alone, and he didn’t seem to have been followed. Nevertheless, she waited. It no longer seemed possible to trust anyone, and she waited.
Robert walked around the phone booth, looking this way and that, and then just stood there, obviously baffled. Evelyn watched him, no one else appeared, and finally she flicked her headlights on and off, just once. His head turned at the flash of light, and after a second he came across the road toward her, moving cautiously and looking constantly to left and right. So he, too, was mistrustful.
He was almost on top of the car before he recognized her through the windshield, and then he came quickly around and slid into the passenger seat, the interior lights clicking on when he opened the door and then off when he’d shut it again.
In darkness, he said, “What is it? What’s the matter?”
Her voice a monotone, she said, “A Chinese agent got into the car after I left you. While I was stopped at a traffic light. He told me about the Vietnamese taking over from his own people, he told me about the family trying to stop Bradford. He thought I was on Bradford’s side, and he told me you’d been assigned to make love to me just to find out what was going on.”
Robert laughed, and said, “That’s lucky.”
“Yes, it is. He also said the President had authorized Bradford’s murder as a last resort, to keep him from going to China.”
Robert was silent, and then, cautiously, he said, “How could he even know a thing like that? Even if it was true, and I’m sure it isn’t, how could a Chinese agent find out about it? He was just trying to scare you.”
“Why?”
“To keep you in line. I don’t know, to make you think it was more urgent to help Bradford get out of the country.”
“But we are helping him get out of the country.”
“You know what I mean. What’s the matter, Evelyn?”
“He said they’re going to kill him on the trip.”
“Who? Bradford?”
“Yes, of course.”
“But that’s ridiculous!”
“It is not ridiculous. You’ve seen Wellington, you know what he’s like. Can you imagine what his superiors must be like? They would kill him!”
“They couldn’t get away with it,” Robert said. “There’s too many of us involved in this thing, it would have to come out, it would have to be the hugest scandal that ever was.”
“If it looked like an accident? If the plane crashed, or something like that?”
That stopped him for a second, but then he said, “No. It isn’t going to happen. I absolutely promise you, nothing like that is going to happen.”
“How can you promise me? How can you know for sure?”
He said, “Because I’m going to call Wellington. He gave me a number where I can reach him, and I will, and I’ll tell him what happened to you tonight, and I’ll tell him that if any harm comes to you, anything at all, nothing on this earth will save him from me.”
“Robert—”
But his arms had come around her, and he was saying, “Don’t you know how much I love you? Don’t you know the difference you’ve made? You’ve brought me back to life! Nothing is going to happen, I swear it!”
She closed her eyes. She believed him.
ii
WHEN THE SMALL PLANE actually made the trip from Hagerstown to Washington without incident, Evelyn at last began to relax, and to admit to herself that her belief in Robert last night had been only a tentative sketching-in of trust and confidence. Robert could be honest and passionate, but was the decision his as to whether or not Bradford would live or die?
But Dulles International Airport did appear beneath the right wing, and the landing was smooth and untroubled, and Evelyn found herself actually smiling. Because this plane had only carried four people—herself, Bradford, pilot, co-pilot—whereas the airliner to France would carry perhaps two hundred, so if an accident were to be arranged surely it would have taken place on the first flight.
There were both advantages and disadvantages to traveling as a VIP. The chief advantage was that one never had to stand on line or go through the sausage-machine processing inflicted on the majority of travelers.
The disadvantage was that one couldn’t really strike off on one’s own, but had to accept all the well-meant attention and courtesies and special treatment dished out along the way. Including, this time, a special limousine to take them and their luggage directly across the tarmac to the airliner, which had just started loading, so there was no chance for Evelyn to get to a phone and call Robert, as she suddenly wanted to do.
One top deck section near the front of the plane had been curtained off so they would be able to travel in privacy. Having avoided going through the terminal, and having boarded via the crew’s ramp at the front, they were seen by virtually none of the other passengers.
Bradford showed his pleasure constantly, in the way he moved and the way he looked around and the way he joked with the stewardesses who kept finding reasons to come into this section. Watching him, Evelyn remembered the nervousness and irritability and weariness that had been growing in him more and more during the two weeks when Wellington’s men had been giving him one excuse after another for inaction, and she was both pleased now at how much better he was obviously feeling and at the same time saddened by the knowledge of the lie on which he was basing his hopes.
Dulles, still the only under-utilized major airport on the Eastern Seaboard, almost never had delays, either coming or going. The huge plane lifted exactly on schedule: 8:10 P.M.
The flight was a dream of escape, a black cotton nighttime flight over an impenetrable darkness of ocean below, all of reality narrowed down to this one projectile hurtling eastward. Bradford, perhaps finally feeling that he was a man possessed of a future, was apparently open again to thoughts of the past, and spent much of the trip telling Evelyn anecdotes from his political career, many of which she’d never heard before. Two or three stewardesses frequently swelled his audience, and he grew more and more expansive. He was clearly having the time of his life.
Ex Officio Page 46
