She stood there for a moment in silence, then she flushed and said, “You… you like me?”
His throat felt thick. Steve Hackett had been quite correct when he had accused Larry Woolford of going for the young stuff. He said, “Yes, of course. But what in the world do you think you’re doing, pretending that I’m trying to compromise you?”
Her fingers went to the side of her skirt. She said, her voice embarassed, as though he might reject her offerings, “Don’t you want me to lay for you?”
She stepped out of the skirt, remaining in nothing more than shoes, stocking, garter belt and the flimsiest of bikini type briefs.
He goggled at her. “Lay for me? Aren’t you a little on the young side to be climbing out of your clothes in a bedroom with a man?”
Susan Self stood there, a touch of pride in her highly held head now. She said, “I’ve… I’ve done it ever so many times. If a girl doesn’t put out for a boy these days, she never gets any dates.”
He licked a dry lower lip. “I… well… why not?”
He supposed that he should be feeling like a son of a bitch, but he didn’t. Hell, the girl had asked for it. Asked for it? Hell, she’d grabbed it. He went into the bathroom to clean himself up a bit, and when he returned began to dress.
She was still on the bed, completely nude. She blinked at him as he climbed into his pants. She said, “Didn’t you want to… to do me again?”
He regarded her sceptically. “Now I know you’re telling the truth, that you’ve never been with an older man. But that’s not all of it, Susan. You’d better get dressed and see if you can remake that bed, a bit. It might be awhile until Steve gets back here, but you never know.”
She got up from the bed, a pathetic quality there. She took up her bikini briefs and said wistfully, “You mean… you mean you’re not going to let me go?”
At the room’s dresser he retied his tie, avoiding looking into her face through the mirror. He said reproachfully, “Now Zusanette, you know better than that. I’m in no position to let you go home. There are a good many questions various people will undoubtedly want to ask you.”
“But you said…”
“No I didn’t.”
“But I laid for you and all.” Her voice was broken.
He said disgustedly, “What would Steve Hackett say when he came back, if I let you go?”
She blinked and said, “I could put out for him, too.”
He shook his head and muttered, “What a way to solve all problems.” And then louder. “I doubt it. Steve’s married. He undoubtedly gets all he wants.”
She said, “Some men cheat on their wives. I could let him do me and go on home. And then you two could pretend that you’d never caught me.”
He sighed. “Zusanette, our conversation down at my office was taped. There’s no way of pretending we never caught you.” His voice became something more curt. “You’re involved in one of the biggest counterfeiting romps in history. You don’t buy yourself out of that with a couple of rolls in the hay.”
“You don’t?”
“No, you don’t. Now get your clothes on and remake the bed and come on back into the other room. We’ll order something to eat and drink. Do you drink? God knows, you kids seem to do everything else these days.”
She said lowly, getting into her skirt, “Daddy lets me drink wine with our meals.”
VII
Larry Woolford summed it up for the Boss later after Steve had returned and taken over.
His chief scowled his disbelief, and said, “The child is full of dreams, Lawrence. It comes from seeing an over-abundance of these Tri-Di shows. I have a girl the same age. I don’t know what is happening to the country. They have no sense of reality.”
Larry Woolford said mildly, “Well, she might be full of nonsense but she did have the fifties and she’s our only connection with whoever printed them, whether it’s a movement to overthrow the government, or what.”
The Boss said tolerantly, “Movement indeed. Obviously, her father produced them and she purloined a quantity before he was ready to attempt to pass them. Have you a run down on him as yet?”
“Susan Self says her father, Ernest Self, is an inventor. Steve Hackett is working on locating him.”
“He’s an inventor indeed. Evidently, he has invented a perfect counterfeiting device. However, that is the Secret Service’s headache, not ours. Do you wish to resume that vacation of yours, Lawrence?”
His operative twisted his face in a grimace. “Sure I do, sir, but I’m not happy about this. What happens if there really is an organization, a Movement, like she said? That brings it back under our jurisdiction, anti-subversion.”
The other shook his head tolerantly. “See here, Lawrence, when you begin scheming a social revolution you can’t plan on an organization composed of a small number of persons who keep their existence secret. In spite of what a good many persons seem to believe, revolutions are not accomplished by little groups of conspirators hiding in cellars and eventually overthrowing society by dramatically shooting the President, or King, or Czar, or whoever. Revolutions are precipitated by masses of people. People who have ample cause to be dissatisfied, possibly having been pushed to the brink of starvation, though other things can sometimes be the cause of revolt. Have you ever read Machiavelli?”
Niccolo Machiavelli was currently the thing to read.
Larry said with a certain dignity, “I’ve gone through ‘The Prince,’ the ‘Discourses’ and currently I’m amusing myself with his ‘History of Florence.’
“Anybody who can amuse himself reading Machiavelli,” the Boss said wryly, “has a macabre sense of humor. At any rate what I was alluding to was where he stated that the Prince cannot rule indefinitely in the face of the active opposition of his people. Therefore, the people always get a government that lies within the limits of their tolerance. It may be on one edge or the other of their limits of toleration—but it’s always within their tolerance zone.”
Larry frowned and said, “Well, what’s your point, sir?
The Boss said patiently, “I’m just observing that cultures aren’t overthrown by little handfuls of secret conspirators. You might eliminate a few individuals in that manner, in other words change the personnel of the government, but you aren’t going to alter a socio-economic system. That can’t be done until your people have been pushed outside their limits of tolerance. Very well then. A revolutionary organization must get out and propagandize. It has got to convince the people that they are being pushed beyond endurance. You have got to get the masses to moving. You have got to give speeches, print newspapers, books, pamphlets, you have got to send your organizers out to intensify interest in your program.”
Larry said, “I see what you mean. If this so-called Movement actually existed it couldn’t expect to get anywhere as long as it remained secret.”
The Boss nodded. “That is correct. The leaders of a revolutionary movement might be intellectuals, social scientists, scholars—in fact they usually are—take our own American Revolution with Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Paine. Or the French Revolution with Robespierre, Danton, Marat. For that matter take Marx, Engels, Lenin. All were well educated intellectuals from the middle class. But the revolution itself, once it starts, comes from below, from the masses of people pushed beyond tolerance.”
It came to Lawrence Woolford that his superior had achieved his prominent office not through any fluke. He knew what he was talking about.