“I’d like to know what this man Reis has done,” Gideon murmured.
“Well, think it over, Dr. Chase. You have a Ph.D., don’t you? Some private college in Massachusetts?”
Gideon nodded.
“There you are. It would be easy. A professorship at Harvard or Princeton could be readily arranged. It would involve very little actual work and would convey a great deal of prestige.”
“What has Reis done?” Gideon spoke to the president, not to John.
“He’s a spy,” the president said, “an’ that’s just for starters. We can’t nab him ’cause we got no evidence. But he travels around. He stops at sensitive spots. He don’t stay long, but soon afterward our sources in — well, never you mind. In a certain foreign country, okay? They tell us certain people there have got holt of somethin’ we were tryin’ to hold close to our vests.”
Gideon shrugged. “Have him killed.”
“Not ’til we find out how he does it.”
John said, “He’s found a flaw in a security system we thought just about flawless — not something he can exploit now and then, but something he can exploit whenever he chooses. We’ve got to know what it is.”
“That he can exploit,” Gideon murmured, “only when he is in close proximity to the facility in which your secret operations are being carried out.”
“He’s a blackmailer, too,” the president said. “We know that.”
“For money?” Gideon’s gaze roved the room.
“Sometimes.” John cleared his throat. “More often for other things. Sexual favors, at times. Introductions and information.”
Gideon said, “You will have considered that he may be blackmailing someone at each of the industrial plants and laboratories he visits. They are plants or laboratories? Most of them? May I assume that?”
“He would have to meet with them, or telephone them at least,” John said.
Gideon looked amused. “E-mail them? Write letters? What about carrier pigeons?”
The president’s hand came down on his desk with a resounding smack. “This ain’t fit for humor.”
“Then you shouldn’t tempt me to it. Neither of you should, and both of you have.” Gideon leaned back in his chair. “You’ll be listening in on telephone calls. Data mining? Isn’t that what you call it? You’d pick it up. You’re certainly tapping the lines of those laboratories or whatever, as well as the telephones of everyone privy to sensitive information. If you prattle about cell phones now, I shall go home. I’m beginning to miss my little apartments already.”
John murmured, “Just assume that we’re already doing everything every ordinary person would think of. Because we are. Assume, too, that it’s not working. If it were, we wouldn’t have called you. We don’t want you to guess what he’s doing. Any such guesses would be pure fantasy. Wild guesses are of no use. We’ve made plenty ourselves, and they haven’t helped.”
The president grinned. “John’s guesses, mostly. Wild as blue quail, every one of ’em. Thought readin’. Talkin’ to ghosts.”
“Neither are impossible.” Gideon sounded pensive. “I have done both in the past, and will doubtless do both in the future. One or both may well explain Ambassador Reis’s success, although I doubt it.”
John began to say something; the president silenced him with a gesture. “Didn’t either one of us call him that.”
Gideon made a small, disgusted sound. “So now you’re wondering whether I’ve been reading your mind. I haven’t been, but you’ll have to take my word for that; I can’t prove it. John wanted to know whether I knew that major contributors are often rewarded with ambassadorships. He also told me that this man Reis had contributed liberally to an earlier president. The inference was obvious. My father was succeeded by a man named Klauser, but Klauser will have been replaced years ago. I surmise that Reis was ambassador to Woldercan during the Ingstrup administration. Is that correct?”
“It is,” John said.
“Good. Is he spying for Woldercan? To the best of your knowledge?”
Speaking simultaneously, the president said, “Yes,” and John, “No.”
Gideon suppressed a smile. “Not proven, I take it.”
There was a pregnant silence while John waited for the president to speak. At last John said, “There are only two ways to communicate with Woldercan.”
The president muttered, “That we know of.”
“Ethermail can be monitored,” John continued. “It’s odd stuff — you probably know. Sometimes a second message gets there before the first one. Sometimes, well...”
“One picks up messages that have not yet been sent,” Gideon said.
“The whole question of time... of — which things are simultaneous and which are not — is... I mean, when you’ve got worlds light-years apart...”
Gideon rescued him. “One the best astrophysicists suggest is insoluble.”
John nodded gratefully. “That’s right, and ethermail won’t solve it. It only introduces more complications. I read once that congratulations from Earth on the birth of his son reached an ambassador on Woldercan before the baby was born. Back here, the State Department had received an ether-mail from him saying his son had been born and even giving the son’s name. I don’t recall what it was — ”
“Gideon.” He turned to the president. “Your advisor doesn’t think this man Reis is spying for Woldercan. You do. Do you have evidence?”
“Evidence that will stand up in court? No, sir. No, I don’t. Only I look at what a man does.” The president aimed an imaginary rifle, squinting at its sights. “Where does he go for chow, huh? When does he do it? Where does he drink, an’ where does he bed down? Know them things an’ you can bag the wiliest old buck that ever corralled him a harem.”
Gideon nodded. “I’ve been known to hunt men the same way. So have you, I’m sure. What does Reis do?”
“It ain’t what he does, it’s what he did. He started in the minute he got home from Woldercan, an’ he’s got tricks I know damned well he didn’t have before he went. They turned him. Think that don’t happen? Think again.” The president’s again was almost agin. “They turned him an’ they taught him, knowin’ I’d want to pull him out an’ replace him with my own man.”
Gideon pursed his lips. “The news I’ve heard and read — I confess I hear and read very little — has given me the impression that Woldercan is behind us.”
“Technologically?” John’s shoulders rose and fell. “We like to think so, but it’s hard to say.”
“Your opinion? I was still a child, you understand, when my family left.”
“Behind us in some areas and ahead in others. Ahead in biology, for example, but behind in physics. Behind us in military science — if it may be so called — but ahead in sociology. There are a number of areas I wouldn’t want to guess about.”
“Optics?” Gideon did not smile, but his voice and eyes hinted at amusement.
“That’s one of them.”
“Then tell me this, please. Where is Reis now?”
John shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“In Washington? Off in the desert at one of your secret sites?”
“I don’t know, Dr. Chase, and I know of no one in government who does.”
“Can you at least guess at the state? Nevada? Utah? Could he be aboard a hopper going back to Woldercan?”
“I told you. I don’t know.”
The president said, “We want you to find out how he does it an’ make him stop doin’ it. That’s what it comes down to. You’ve heard what we’re offerin’. What do you say?”
“That there is a great deal you’re not telling me. You talked about hunting a wily buck, knowing his habits. Surely you’ve had men, able agents, studying Reis.”