"Glad to hear it," Madden said and departed without bothering to shake hands.
On his way to the phone booth in the rear of the bar on G Street, Gene Lucas asked for a diabetic beer. Why in tarnation couldn't he just use the phone like other people without feeling obliged to buy something? Every time that same stupid pang of guilt.
The folding door was stiff and he had difficulty in closing it. A moment later he regretted he had. The booth stank of beer and cigarette smoke and vomit, making him catch his breath sharply. While he fumbled for change he saw the barman set up the beer and a glass and turn back to the TV set propped in its corner niche. Four customers, all male, slouched over their drinks. The barmen said something Lucas couldn't hear, but he heard the men's laughter, loud and raucous, through the glass.
Lucas gripped the coins in his sweaty hand while he unfolded the slip of paper. He'd no idea whether this was Lebasse's home number or his office. When he'd called before the unidentified voice had said only that Mr. Lebasse wasn't available and would he call back later? A secret service operative or just a clerk in the Defense Department? It was a shadowy, shifting world that Lucas had encountered only in books and movies.
Indeed, before reading the dossier, he'd thought these precautions rather infantile. Surely to God's sake it wasn't necessary to go through the tiresome rigmarole of calling secret numbers from public pay phones, like a spy in some cheap melodrama?
But the dossier had changed his mind quickly enough. It was the most horrifying document he'd ever read. No wonder Lebasse had gone about it in such a clandestine manner. That there were people who calmly and deliberately could contemplate putting the entire world at risk for some spurious tactical "advantage." Of course, as Lucas saw at once, the plan would achieve no such thing, because once the process was started it couldn't be stopped--and more to the point, it would affect East and West alike in exactly the same way. These madmen thought that oxygen depletion could somehow be confined or that certain areas of the globe could be made immune from its effects. What suicidal nonsense! Every living thing on the planet was at risk-- every man, woman and child, irrespective of their ideological stance.
Lebasse, thank God, had had the sense to seek another opinion before decisions were made and money allocated. A small mercy that it only existed on paper and in the warped minds of a bunch of military psychotics. Such a scheme would take many years of research supported by a multimillion-dollar budget. Which the secretary of defense, with the backing of the president's senior scientific adviser, would never sanction.
Lucas could feel the sweat prickling his scalp. The receiver was slippery in his hand. He fed a quarter into the slot, checked again to make sure of the number, and pressed the sequence on the touch-sensitive digital pad.
Come on, come on, he fretted, listening to the burring tone. Somebody answer. Through the glass he noticed that the four customers were sitting upright, staring at the TV screen. It was one of the old flat-screen models, not 3-D, and from this angle Lucas's view was of an elongated announcer, like somebody out of a Modigliani picture.
His attention zoomed back to the phone as the burring stopped.
"Hello? Hello? I called earlier. I was told to call back. Could I speak to-"
The name stuck in his throat like a peach stone. He found himself staring goggle-eyed at a face on the TV screen, a familiar face even at this sharp angle.
Lucas struggled with the door and forced it open.
. . apparently having fallen from his office window at the Pentagon. In a brief statement released a few minutes ago, an aide is quoted as saying that Defense Secretary Lebasse seemed perfectly all right during the morning, having participated in a full schedule of meetings, and that there was no reason to suppose . . ."
The voice in Lucas's ear said, "Are you there? Hello? Who is this?"
He listened stupidly to the voice and then put the receiver down and came out of the booth and walked the length of the bar to the door.
The barman called to him, and when Lucas didn't respond: "You ordered this beer, fella!"
Lucas walked along G Street in the direction of the White House, massing purple clouds above, oblivious to the large warm spots hitting his face. The threatened thunderstorm was nearly upon them.
His mind kept repeating numbly, Lebasse is dead. I have the dossier. Lebasse is dead. I have the dossier and Lebasse is dead. . . .
And then the thought that made him stop cold in his tracks, the rainwater coursing down his face and over his small compressed mouth with its neat gray moustache.
Holy Mary, Mother of God. What now?
Cheryl was lying full-length on the couch wearing a loose halter-neck dress, her brown arms and shoulders bare. They had eaten a pleasant dinner together. Chase felt warm and relaxed, and now she had to spoil it by badgering him.
"It was you, remember, who told me about the dioxin poisoning," Cheryl said, waving her wine glass at him. "You set the hare running and yet you don't want to do anything about it--" The wine spilled and she tossed back what was left in one gulp.
Chase put his coffee cup down and picked up his brandy glass. "What am I supposed to do about it? I agree that we know--or suspect --that JEG Chemicals is up to something. And you're right, a story like that is just what I'm looking for. After seven weeks all I've got is a hriefcaseful of background material. Worthy but dull. You don't have to convince me." He swirled the brandy and drank.
"So let's do it," Cheryl said, filling her glass.
"How?" Chase said, his expression pained. "You think a chemical company busily manufacturing 2,4,5-T is going to welcome a journalist poking his nose in? 'Oh, I just happened to be in the vicinity and I heard you're supplying a highly dangerous banned chemical to the U.S. Army. Mind if I look around?' "
"You keep telling me you're a science writer, not a journalist," Cheryl said, pointing an accusing finger.
"I am," Chase said with a sigh. "Which still won't get me into the JEG plant. They probably won't let anybody in."
"They might."
"Who, for instance?"
"There are ways."
"What ways? You keep saying that. Don't be so damned infuriat-ing.
Cheryl lay back and gazed at the ceiling, a small smile on her lips. She was enjoying herself. Not just the teasing, but the company, too. Her social life had been nil since Frank had gone, if you discounted Gordon's pestering.
"Suppose you were an accredited member of the staff of the Scripps Marine Life Research Group."
"Well?" said Chase warily.
"You could fix an appointment. Pay a call and say you were interested in purchasing supplies. And then you'd have the chance of looking around the place." She raised her head to see his reaction and his expression made her stop short. "What is it?"
"Banting," Chase said.
"What?"
He'd forgotten Ivor Banting's connection with the JEG Corporation until just this minute. And Banting had been most accommodating to the U.S. military in getting the Russian scientist transferred to McMurdo Station. He told Cheryl about it and she said, "Astakhov, Boris's old colleague?''
Chase nodded. It seemed to him as though invisible strands were slowly tightening, being drawn together to form a noose of conspiracy.
Cheryl was right. The JEG plant at Bakersfield was a loose end, a stray thread that might unravel the tangle and lead to the truth.
He sipped his brandy and said, "I'll cable my editor in the morning. If I'm going to do this I'll need a few more days. How long will it take to set up?"
"Are you sure you want to go through with this?"
"A minute ago you thought it was a great idea."
"It could be risky, that's all." Cheryl lay on the couch looking at him, the lamplight gilding her hair and forming pools of shadow above her collarbones. It was as if the air were filled with an emotional charge. They both felt it humming in the silence.