The captain looked at the doctor and gave him a significant smile.
The doctor returned the smile, even more significantly. "Not only the Americans, perhaps…" he said.
The blind man was led into the room.
The captain began a set speech. "The Soviet Union," said he, "is returning Japanese prisoners as fast as possible. You have been selected. Have you anything to say?"
The blind Japanese began to weep with joy.
XVI. STAFF REPORT
Dugan sat in a big leather easy chair. He wore surprisingly formal clothes — a Palm Beach uniform with battle jacket and matching trousers. His oxfords shone and the major's leaves on his shoulders were completely out-shone by the glittering array of ribbons on his chest. The new one, which the Supreme Commander himself had pinned on him that very morning, hung crisply though a little out of line. Dugan gave Colonel Landsiedel a crooked smile.
"It's a little unusual for me to be myself — uniform and all that… I'm tired. It's funny to sit here and realize that I just have to be me."
"Care for another highball, Major?"
"No more, thanks."
Dugan lit a cigarette. His face looked tired, though he maintained, even in the easy chair, the somewhat stiff posture of a regular Army officer. Landsiedel and he both looked out of the window. The Dai Ichi Building was in the distance. Tokyo looked peaceful but shabby. The air-conditioner purred. Landsiedel stole a glance at Dugan.
The man sat there as though he had dropped into the office with a staff report. When Dugan played the role of American Army officer, he did it exceedingly well. This was a person who was very different from the seedy Japanese confidence man to whom Landsiedel had said goodbye several months ago, before — before Atomsk. Prompted by an unprofessional inquisitiveness, he felt a question poised on the tip of his tongue. Then, though he knew it was unmannerly, he asked it:
"Major?"
"Sir?" Dugan's tired, calm, relaxed black eyes moved slowly in their sockets and Dugan looked the colonel tranquilly in the eye.
"Do you mind a personal question?"
"I don't suppose so, Colonel. What is it?"
"Are you married?"
"No, sir. You could have seen that on my 201 file."
Landsiedel felt rebuffed; of course, he must have seen the file in Washington. But he persisted. "I meant to ask you a personal question, Major — not just a statistic. Have you ever been in love? Do you have a family? Is there anyone you want to go home to?" Stung by Dugan's bland serenity, Colonel Landsiedel blurted out (though he was not in the habit of blurting, on any occasion whatever) his essential question: "What I really mean is, do you ever stop playing a role, underneath all these different characters, Major? Is there a real Dugan underneath…?"
Dugan turned his eyes away from Landsiedel. Not even looking at him, he said, "That's not the way it seems to me. I'm myself, no matter where I go, no matter what I do. I act out those other people. On the outside, it may look as though I really change. Did I impress you that much — that way?"
"You did," said Landsiedel flatly.
There was another uncomfortable silence.
Dugan said, "I've done a lot of writing since I got back. First I had to explain to the Japanese just why I was repatriated. Those new police are efficient. They smelled something wrong and kept me for three days trying to find out who I really was."
"Why didn't you get word to General Coppersmith or to me?"
"Couldn't," said Dugan. "Some of the other returning prisoners might have been converted to Communism. It would have been a mess if they could follow my trail back. As it is, the Russians are going to have an awful time trying to figure out how many people got into Atomsk that night. There won't be anybody here in Japan who could set them straight."
Landsiedel thought that Dugan looked very tired. Dugan seemed to be playing the least possible degree of impersonation — his own legal self. Letting his head rest against the back of the chair, Dugan rolled his eyes toward Landsiedel and said:
"I'll take that second highball, after all."
While Landsiedel was mixing it at the tray on his desk, Dugan said, a little too casually, "When do I have to call on General Coppersmith?"
"Today. Sixteen-fifty hours."
There was a perceptible period of silence. Colonel Landsiedel made a bet with himself. As soon as Dugan spoke, Landsiedel collected the bet within his own mind; he had won. Dugan had said, with incredible casualness:
"Didn't Coppersmith have some kind of a woman assistant?"
"You mean Major Lomax?"
"I thought she was a captain," said Dugan. His eyes went hard when he realized that Landsiedel had caught him; momentarily he tensed as though to fling himself out the window, to kill Landsiedel, or to follow some other desperate improvisation. Then, remembering that he was among friends, he laughed out loud. It was the first uncalculated laugh which Landsiedel had ever heard from Dugan.
Dugan said, "You caught me."
"Sir?" said Landsiedel, with extreme but comical formality.
"Sure. I remember her. I'm scared. What am I going to do, Colonel?"
This was the moment which Landsiedel had awaited for years — the time that Dugan would open up. But a sense of officer-to-officer delicacy kept him from plunging into Dugan's private life. He let the opportunity slip, thinking oddly that a few minutes before he had tried to open Dugan up with frontal questioning and that now he was passing up a chance. With significant gentleness he said, "She's been asking about you. Sometimes twice a day. When she got promoted, she pulled her rank to get into the message room, looking for clues about your progress."
"Nice of her," said Dugan bleakly, "but what can I do? Marry her?"
"Why not?" said Landsiedel.
"Me?" said Dugan. "I'm half Aleut, Colonel."
Landsiedel burst out with, "And who do you think gives a damn, except you?"
Dugan looked at him and then sipped the drink. They both looked out of the window.
"Sorry," said both of them, simultaneously. The coincidence made them laugh. Landsiedel nodded at Dugan, bidding him speak.
The black-Irish mood had passed from Dugan. He was back in the role of major, and playing it handsomely. With a crooked, amused smile he uttered the literal truth, "Nothing around Atomsk was as tough as this. I've got to work this out myself. Can I see Coppersmith without seeing her?"
"No," said Landsiedel.
"No?"
"No." Landsiedel was not joking. "I had to give her a direct order to keep her from coming here. I didn't know what you wanted. You're tired. I wasn't sure you'd have remembered her."
"I did," said Dugan. "Much good it did me. My mind's not made up. How could I go away on a two-year mission if — if I actually had a family?"
"There are other things to do in the Army."
"I hate them," said Dugan. "Sorry, Colonel. This time I said sorry first. You've been very generous and encouraging, sir. But you still want a summary, don't you?"
"Can you do it, Dugan? You must be tired, after all these days of Japanese and then American interrogation. By the way, how did you ever satisfy the Japanese police and get on down to Tokyo?"
"Met a man I'd known here during the B-29 raids. He called me Lieutenant Hayashi. The other Japanese were so busy cussing me out for making myself a colonel that they practically threw me into the country. Can I dictate the draft of a final report? Do you have a safe stenographer?"
"Sergeant Wilson's all right." Landsiedel pressed a button on his desk. A young soldier looked in the door. He was immensely tall but touchingly young.
"Get your book, Wilson," said Landsiedel. Dugan raised an eyebrow.
Landsiedel, glancing toward the open door, said, "Talk as fast as you want to Wilson. He won the Mountain States Gregg contest last year."