She did not move.
"What are you waiting for?" Rusty snapped. "You heard the arrangements. This is no time to get girlish."
Still, she did not move.
Emerson's gentle voice came out of the darkness. "Go ahead, Ginger. I'm sorry, baby, but this seems to be one of those times when personal feelings don't count."
She turned to peer at her father; then she sighed and said, "All right. For you."
They clambered into the back of the camper together, closed the door, and after a moment they felt the floor shift under their feet as Emerson edged the unfamiliar vehicle onto the roadway. Then the floor steadied as they picked up speed, and Eddie turned to her. He reached out a tentative hand, but she flinched and pulled away from him, her eyes dark and fearful.
"Look, kid . . ."
"No," she said wearily. "No looking. No talking. No nothing. Just sleep. Me over here, and you over there. That's all."
She dropped heavily onto the portside bunk, slipped off her sandals, and rolled over to lie facing the wall. Eddie shook his head sadly. He stripped down to his undershorts, bracing himself against the roll of the road, and hung away his clothing carefully. Then he stretched himself out on the opposite bunk and stared at the ceiling. Well, I saw it coming he told himself. I saw it in her eyes back at the house. I'm the leper now, the man who kills.
He closed his eyes then and slept five good hours. When he woke he took the wheel, crossing into Tennessee as the sun came up over the rim of the Blue Ridge. Ginger made coffee and toast on the three-burner stove, Rusty and Emerson sank gratefully into sleep, and the pattern of the trip was set. Eddie and Ginger drove by day, and while they drove he tried to justify a lifetime. As they made the long haul south through Tennessee and into Alabama, he told her the tale of his Agency days, leaving out nothing and fighting for her understanding. She no longer flinched from his touch, but the fear of him was still in her eyes, and at night they lay singly on separate bunks.
"You don't really listen to me," he told her on the second morning as they cut through bayou country on Interstate 10, the road a shining ribbon crossing swamp and cove, unwinding before them; and Jimbo and Rusty asleep in the back. "I've told you a dozen times so far. For as long as I worked for the Agency I was never operational, never in the field. My job was to make the gadgets, the UKDs, but other people used them, not me."
"Used them to kill people," said Ginger. Her voice was flat and accusing.
"Of course they did," Eddie said patiently. "That's why they're called UKDs. Unusual Killing Devices. You don't make a gadget like that just for the exercise. You make it do a very specific job."
"A very dirty job."
"It was a job," he said firmly. "Look, how would you feel if I told you that for twenty years I was the chief designer for Remington, or Garand, or one of the other big arms outfits? Would you see anything morally wrong in that?"
She thought for a moment. "I wonder how good the comparison is. Somehow, designing a rifle seems . . . clean . . . compared to what you did."
"Oh? Nobody ever used one of my gadgets to kill a deer, or a whale, or a baby seal."
"Only people. And in the end you killed some yourself."
"They wouldn't let me retire. I wanted out - they said no.
They sent people out to kill me. It was a question of them or me.
"Like the other night?" Her voice wavered. "I suppose I ought to be grateful. You saved my life. You saved us all."
"Gratitude is bullshit," he said. "It had to be done. I did it."
"Da, kanyeshna," said Emerson's voice behind them, softly, almost to himself. They turned. "Yes, of course it had to be done. Funny, how the Russian slipped in there. I haven't spoken Russian in thirty-five years, and now I find the words just crowding in."
He crouched to peer through the windshield. His face was drawn and his eyes looked weary as he stared at the road spinning out before them.
"How long to Houston?" he asked.
"Some time this afternoon. I made a phone call. We can get the papers done overnight and roll south tomorrow."
Emerson put his hand on Eddie's shoulder. "Forgive me, but I couldn't sleep, and I've been listening. I want you to know that I understand. As you said, it was something that had to be done. Thank God you were there to do it."
"Just something that had to be done," said Ginger. She looked up at Emerson, her face pale and her eyes questioning. "I thought I knew my father, and I thought I knew the man I love. Now it turns out that I knew hardly anything."
"Sometimes it's better that way," Emerson said gently. "To love without knowing too much."
"I don't agree with that," she said, and then suspicion hardened her face. "And you, Daddy? Did you ever do it?"
"Do what?" he asked, but he knew.
"Did you ever kill anyone?"
He remembered again, as he had remembered the night they left the house, and he clasped the old Luger in his hand. It was the Luger that had killed the real James Emerson. Radichek had given it to him and told him to say he had taken it from the body of a dead German.
"Only in the war," he said to Ginger, "and that's something no man wants to remember. Or talk about. I must try to sleep," he added, and closed the door.
They drove on through the morning, and for the rest of that day she sat silent and brooding.
The next afternoon they crossed the border at Nuevo Laredo, a party of four: Edward Angelotti, Jack and Rita Coleman, and Miss Pauline Rausch. Half an hour after clearing the internal control point they were booming south on the road to Monterrey, the sun high and hot, shards of rays bouncing off the roadway and breaking on the windshield in glitters. The air-conditioning in the Overlander was turned full on. Next to Eddie, Ginger looked cool and comfortable in a sunback dress of buttercup yellow, her long tan legs folded gracefully. It was then that he noticed that the fear had begun to fade from her eyes.
"I've been thinking," she said.
"Dangerous business."
"I think that what bothers me most about all this is the terrible waste."
"It happens," he said, shrugging.
"I mean the waste in you," she went on. "You're one of the brightest men I've ever met, but you're wasting yourself. What have you been doing with your life? Making gadgets that kill people. Even if I leave the morality of it aside, I can't understand how you ever got into such a business."
"What's a nice guy like me doing in a place like this?"
That brought a fragment of a smile to her face. "Eddie, I'm over the worst of it, and I'm ready to start with basics. Look, I love you. I loved you when I didn't know anything about you, and I love you now that I do. But I just don't understand it. With your talent you could have been anything, done anything you pleased. And you chose . . . this. Why? That's what I want to know. Why?"
He drove on, his eyes on the road, his hands gripping the wheel in the standard ten-to-two position. He pulled out to pass a lumbering truck, whipped the ungainly camper around it, and tucked back into the right-hand lane. He drove on for another mile in silence, thinking. Then he lifted his hands from the wheel and slapped them down again in futile exasperation.
"Every job was like a game to me," he said, "like a puzzle that had to be solved. They'd come to me and they'd say, 'Look, we need a gadget that's got to do such-and-such to so-and-so at a certain time and place, and it's got to look like an accident.' And I'd figure it out. I could do it. I could do it better than anybody else. But you see, you're wrong about me and what I can do. I guess maybe making gadgets is the only thing I've ever been really good at."
"I can't believe that," she murmured.
"That's love talking. You don't want to believe it. You want to believe that I could have been a doctor, or a bank president, or a lawyer like your father, or anything else because that builds up your love, that makes it worth more ..."
"Now, wait a minute. . . ."
"That's all right, I'm not knocking it. I guess I do the same thing some
times when I'm looking at you and I see that absolutely great line of your hip and your thigh and that ass like a pair of apples, and I think to myself, hey, this kid's got it all. She's got a better body than a lot of ones that you see in the movies or even the centerfold of Playboy. She's a beauty, and she's mine. You get that last part? And she's mine. That's the part that means that I'm kidding myself, because deep down I know that you're really not that great."
"Why, thank you," she said archly. "How sweet of you to say it."
"Don't talk cute that way; I'm trying to make a point. I don't have to tell you what you look like. You know that already. What I'm saying is that you're not a superstar. You're a beautiful woman, but you don't have that little extra unique something that would make you different from all the others. Christ, how many women have it? One in a million? Ten million? But most of the time you have it for me, because I want you to have it. Understand? I want you to have it because you're mine. And that's love talking."
He turned to look at her. All the fear was gone from her eyes, and something else was there instead. She said softly, "That's the most blatantly sexist statement I ever heard. It's also the straightest, finest thing that anyone has ever said to me."
She slipped out of her seat, stepped back to the door at the rear of the cab, and knocked on it sharply. After a moment, the door opened and Emerson put his head out.
"Sorry if I disturbed you," Ginger said. "Were you sleeping?"
"No, we're up. Neither one of us is sleeping very well these days."
"In that case," Ginger said brightly, "I wonder if you and Mother would mind switching with us for a while. Just for an hour or so. Eddie and I have some things to discuss."
"Discuss?"
Rusty's head appeared beside her husband's. "Discuss back here?" she asked querulously. "Why can't you talk up there?"
"It wasn't exactly talking that we had in mind. We have ..."
Eddie snapped over his shoulder, "Ginger, cut it out."
". . . a lot of lost time to make up for. "She smiled sweetly at her mother. "I'm sure you understand."
"But I don't," said Rusty, frowning.
"Well, I do." Emerson gave Ginger a wide grin. "Always glad to smooth the path of young love." He tapped Eddie on the shoulder. "Pull off the road-we'll switch."
"Look, this isn't necessary," Eddie said weakly. "I mean, you don't have to . . ."
"Don't argue," Emerson advised him. "Give in gracefully. My daughter is obviously a determined woman."
The camper rolled to a stop on the gravelled verge. Rusty's lips were drawn in a thin line. Ginger grabbed Eddie's hand and pulled him through the door.
Ever since then the fear had been gone from her eyes, and now, three days later, lying beside the swimming pool in back of the house in Atotonilco, he cursed himself for bringing it back, if only for a moment. Then the moment was gone as she breathed deeply and stretched herself in the sun. The stretch turned into a wave as Rusty and Jimbo came out of the house, walking hand in hand along the path that led to the pool. They both waved back, but there was no gaiety to the gesture, no bounce to their step. Their heads were close and they were deep in conversation. Ginger followed them with her eyes.
"They look so . . . different," she said. "I know it's silly; it's only a few days, but they almost seem older."
Eddie nodded his agreement. The Emersons had not changed physically. Jimbo in bathing trunks still looked trim and hard, the model of a middle-aged man. Rusty's lacy bikini showed off a body that, lacking the ripeness of youth, still was glowing and handsome. Despite this, the pressure of the last days had worn them down badly, and it showed in their faces.
"What happens to them now?" Ginger asked.
Eddie wriggled luxuriously in the clean-smelling grass, scrunching his toes in it. "A new life somewhere. They've got the papers and the money for it."
"What money?"
He grinned at her mockingly. "What do you think your old man's been doing all these years? He's been stashing it away in numbered accounts just like I have. I figure they'll want to head further south eventually, maybe Venezuela, or even Brazil. It'll take time to set up. Until then, our house is their house."
The use of the pronoun did not escape her, and she smiled her pleasure.
"Take a look at this," said Emerson, coming up beside them. He had a day-old copy of the English-language Mexico City News. He tossed it to Eddie and threw himself down on the grass. Rusty sank down gracefully beside him.
"Where did you get it?" asked Eddie, delving at once into the sports section.
"Over in San Miguel de Allende," said Rusty.
"I wanted to see how the Orioles were doing," Emerson explained.
"They lost." Eddie looked up from the paper. "The Mets won for a change."
"That's not why I showed it to you. Take a look at the bottom of page four."
It was a short item that could easily have been missed. The headline dealt with a forthcoming pan-American conference in Rio. The subject was interlinked defense systems for North and South America. Almost casually, in the final paragraph, the A.P. dispatch noted that the White House had nominated a special aide in place of Assistant Secretary of Defense James W. Emerson, who was ill and had taken an indefinite leave of absence.
"111!" said Rusty.
"Swan's work," Eddie explained. "He has to account for your not being there. If you wind up in the Soviet Union, even though he thinks that's unlikely, he'll change 'ill' to 'crazy.'"
"I don't like it." Emerson stared at the paper, then crumpled it up and tossed it aside. "I was just beginning to feel safe. Now I see this."
"Take it easy on the sports section." Eddie retrieved the paper and smoothed out the pages. "Look, stop worrying. This story doesn't change anything - it's just a cover."
"Swan wouldn't put out a story like that," Rusty said, "unless he thought he could back it up later."
"Back it up with my body," Emerson said morosely. "Found dead of some nervous disorder."
Ginger said nothing, but the fear was back in her eyes.
"You people break me up," said Eddie. He stood up and glared down at them in mock ferocity, like a drill sergeant. "I didn't bring you all the way to Mexico for this. Look at you . . . you look like the world just stopped turning because of that damn story. Now, I want to see some smiles on those worried little faces! I want to hear some bright and childish laughter! I want you people to relax!"
Rusty said, "But don't you see, it means that..."
Eddie roared, "Goddamn it, woman! You talk too much!"
He took a quick step, bent over, and lifted Rusty up in his arms. He turned and, in the same motion, threw her into the pool. She came up splashing and spluttering, wanting to scream, but speechless.
"That goes for you, too," Eddie said to Ginger, who had been totally silent. He put his foot in the small of her back and pushed. She went into the water with a loud smack, but she came up laughing.
Eddie turned to Emerson. "You're next."
"Think you can do it?" There was a slight smile on his face.
Eddie lunged and grabbed, but Emerson danced out of reach. He lunged again and this time got an arm lock in place. The two men strained against each other, struggling for footholds on the slick grass. Eddie grunted, slipped his hold, and tried for a leg. The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back and looking up at the faultlessly blue Mexican sky.
The man who had once been Yuri Volanov stared down at him gravely and murmured, "As I once said, there are some things that you never forget. Now, if you'll excuse me ..."
He turned, ran to the concrete edge, and entered the water with a flat racing dive. He came up stroking an easy crawl toward the far end of the pool.
Eddie rolled over on his belly and lay on the grass watching the scene happily. Ginger was floating on her back, eyes closed, accepting the sun. Rusty swam in small, contented circles, using an easy dog paddle to keep her head out of the water. Emerson reached the far end of the
pool, did an awkward version of a racing turn, and came thundering back again.
Eddie raised himself up, resting an elbow on the grass, and called out, "That's a lot better. That's what I like to see. Everybody relaxed, everybody having a good time —"
He heard a soft pop, and a bullet dug into the grass a foot to the right of his head.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Vasily Borgneff spent his first day of freedom accumulating supplies at a laboratory in downtown Washington, his second and third days working industriously with a gunsmith at Langley, and on the morning of the fourth day he boarded a flight at Dulles International Airport bound for Mexico City. There he rented a car and drove north for several hours until he reached the outskirts of Atotonilco, where, as one Victor Barnum, he established himself at the inn beside the mineral springs at Taboada. During those four days he was never out of the sight of the two Vietnamese, Chuc and Van, and by the evening of the fourth day he was ready to kill them. Literally.
It was not only because they clearly were evil, rapacious murderers. Vasily himself had done his share of killing, and as for evil, he had been around long enough to know that no sane man ever considers himself truly wicked, but only a misunderstood marcher to a particular drum. Nor was it because the two Vietnamese were so obviously his jailers as well as his associates. He could easily understand Swan's reluctance to let him operate alone, and, in truth, had he been given the opportunity, he might well have taken the twenty thousand dollars and disappeared happily into the night. Nor was it because the constant irritating presence of Chuc and Van had so far prevented him from making any social contact with any desirable female. It was not even because Chuc and Van were swinish boors with the manners of peasants and the pretensions of thugs recently raised to respectability. Over the years he had associated with worse and if the mission called for it, he had learned to accept the dregs of humanity as bosom buddies. No, the fundamental reason why Chuc and Van exasperated him was that they were stupid. Anything else he could have borne . . . wickedness, boorishness, greed ... but not this bovine stupidity, the nadir of which was their use of their language as a private code. They both spoke acceptable French and workable English, but when they wanted their conversation to be beyond his reach, they spoke to each other in Vietnamese.
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