"To go in, to get out, and, after he was out, to leave traces?"
"Right. If the Russians think we know about their precious secret, they will be less disposed to take a chance. If we ourselves do know what the secret is, we will be less inclined to wage war against an unknown and therefore exaggerated danger. This is the meanest kind of fight there is, Major. It's a fight to keep the peace."
"There are better ways of doing that, General. Politics. If your Chief and the Republicans…"
The microphone went dead. Sarah felt as though she had been slapped. She set the mock telephone back in its cradle. She patted her hair back into place, lined up the pencils, slipped the notebook to the edge of her blotter. Why had General Coppersmith cut her off?
She already knew about Atomsk.
Atomsk was the biggest secret in the world. But there was still something that he did not want her to hear. She sat immobile at her desk. She found herself almost hating the poised stranger who came in and got the general's innermost confidence in their first interview, who smiled like a nice friendly man, and then turned out to be something not-quite-human — a spy.
The door opened. Dugan stood in the doorway, inches shorter than General Coppersmith. Sarah thought, for a moment, that he looked like an image of the Buddha. There was an unearthly Oriental calm on his face. Coppersmith, usually a model of dignity, looked positively flustered beside him.
"Put it out of your mind, Major. We do the military end. They do the political. Come back in an hour. I'll have Dr. Swanson and Captain Lomax — you've met her, here, haven't you? — brief you on what we do know."
"Yes, sir," said Dugan to the general, but his eyes were on Sarah when he said it. She could not tell how his expression changed but she got the idea he was twinkling at her. Coppersmith gave the major and herself a bleak nod and closed his door.
Dugan looked down at her. "You didn't miss much. I just tried to give your general a lecture on politics and he wouldn't take it."
Sarah stood up. She didn't know what else to do. "Miss much? Miss what? I don't know what you mean…"
"Your pencils. Two of them are blunt. Your hair, right above your left ear — it's a little disarranged. You must have been taking our conversation down, probably from one of those phones. I saw the general working some kind of a switch with his knee and I thought he had somebody listening in, just in case I tried to compromise him."
Sarah tried to get indignant, but it didn't work; she could feel a smile pushing its way up and breaking irresistibly upon the corners of her mouth.
Major Dugan was grinning very frankly now. She wondered how she could ever have thought — two minutes before — that he looked like an Oriental. He looked like the friendly and amusing kind of Irishman — the kind who will make jokes out of troubles even if it's raining sudden death. Dugan changed his tone. With sympathetic friendliness he said:
"You didn't miss anything, Captain. I'll tell you sometime. And we'll keep his secret for him, won't we?"
Sarah didn't dare deny anything or admit anything. Feeling herself a fool, she could only say, "What secret?"
"Atomic Siberia. The weapons place." He had to lean very close to her to whisper the final word: "Atomsk."
She should have told him off, but she nodded like a nitwit. Dugan took her arm and gave it a light, friendly, almost impersonal squeeze.
"Don't mind me, Captain Lomax. I'm on your team. You know, like the old-fashioned vaudeville magicians. I'm showing off and playing tricks on you, when I have no reason to do it. I suppose it's that I guess we're going to have to work together, and I want you to like me. I promise you I won't be a nuisance long." He stood back and laughed drily. "Not if you ship me off to Atomsk."
"I–I—I—" She felt herself blushing. She still couldn't say anything, conceding that she had listened in on the telephone. At last she got it out, "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," said Dugan, slipping deftly out the door.
Don't be what? she wondered. Sorry? Standoffish? Formal? She wished he would come back.
As she sat down at her desk the realization flooded into her mind. This was supposed to be the solution to Atomsk — Atomsk, the very name of what had haunted her for weeks. This one man was all they were going to use. One friendly, comical young major against all the mystery and poison of the radioactive hills… She began to wish they hadn't picked this particular man. And she wished, too, that she knew more about him. Or else that she hadn't, somehow, felt his presence so.
II. THE CITY UNDER THE LEAVES
The little light went on, went off, went on again, and stayed on.
Captain Lomax went into General Coppersmith's office. He sat at his desk, his back to the light. As was her privilege, she sidestepped the visitor's chair which faced the window and took the inconspicuous straight chair by the edge of the window. Thus she sat at the general's right. He had taken no notice of her entrance. His fingertips touching, he held his hands a few inches above the desk and revolved his wrists so as to produce meaningless geometric effects.
Sarah waited for him to speak.
While waiting, she admired him. He looked definite where Dugan had seemed friendly and blurred. Coppersmith was imperturbable, elegant, deadly — so profoundly self-assured that he had no need for arrogance. For three hundred years the Coppersmiths had run their county along the Hudson; with his family, authority had become a cultural trait. Yet Coppersmith, faced by Atomsk, was powerless to meet the problem himself. He might go in some day with a gun, but he could never go in unnoticed. Sarah found something surprising in the realization that Dugan could do something which Coppersmith, despite all his wealth and power and military authority, could not possibly do for himself.
Dugan had the power to come and go.
Dugan had the capacity to stay alive when other men babbled or shuddered at the wrong time, and died for their first mistakes.
Dugan was his own weapon. She was annoyed at herself for liking him, for being pleased by his showoff trickery, for being piqued by his challenge to her as a person. But she suspected that if Dugan were — no, not the best spy in the world, but merely one of the best hundred spies, her annoyance was known to him just as much as her liking. The thought almost gave her gooseflesh. It was uncomfortable, having somebody around who could see right into your mind.
Coppersmith must have been thinking the same thing. Without looking at her, he asked, "Do you trust him?"
She wanted to say that she couldn't tell, that she didn't know, that she really didn't trust Dugan; but the smiling, kindly, teasing face came to the surface of her mind and she blurted out, "Why — ah — yes, I do."
General Coppersmith sounded disgusted. "I trust him, too," said he. "He's guaranteed enough by other people. But I like to make my own independent judgment on a man — when it comes to a job like this. And I can't. I started to pin him down and he reached out for the one thing that would make me wince."
"You cut me off," said Sarah.
Coppersmith stared at her. This time there was no reproach in his expression, only puzzlement. "Politics. He knew I couldn't talk politics about the Old Man. So he talked it. He got away from me like a figure in a dream." Coppersmith sighed. "If he can treat other people the way he has treated us, he'll do for the job. Tell him to come back. Leave word with Colonel Landsiedel that I want Dugan. And I want Landsiedel himself. Go ahead and brief Dugan on Atomsk."