He lowered the paper, and looked up at two hefty types in windbreakers and cloth caps. They didn’t look at all cheery or friendly, and he’d never seen either of them before in his life. He said, “I’m sorry, you must be mistaking me for someone else.”
“Murray doesn’t want to order before you get back,” one of them said. “So why don’t we start back now?”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grofield said.
The other one said, “Grofield, you aren’t going to get away from us. But if you want to play hide and seek a while, we’ll go along. You’ve got a little over two hours before plane time. We’ll give you thirty minutes’ head start if you want, and we’ll still pick you up in plenty of time to catch the plane. Now, do you want to run around in the snow for two hours, or do you want to go have dinner with Murray?”
Grofield stared at them. How could they do it? How could they find him so easily? How could they make a challenge like that? Was it a bluff? Somehow he doubted it.
So what now? Run? Fight? Grofield looked at them, at their faces and their hands and their shoulders, and he sighed and folded his paper and got to his feet. “Let’s not keep Murray waiting,” he said.
Five
Murray put down his empty brandy glass and made a lazy smile of contentment. “Now,” he said, “that was delicious. Mr. Grofield, you have made me a very happy man. If only all my assignments could be like this one.”
Grofield had refused an after-dinner drink, and was frowning over his third cup of coffee. He had been sullen throughout the meal, a fact Murray had managed somehow totally to ignore. Murray had told funny stories about New York City, he’d made delighted comments about the food, he’d delivered himself of animated monologues about air travel, and through it all Grofield had frowned and sulked, deep in gloomy thought. But now he looked across the table at Murray and said, “It’s in the clothes.”
Startled, Murray looked down at himself. “I did? Where?”
“It’s somewhere in my clothes,” Grofield said. “I knew there had to be an answer, and that’s it.”
Murray squinted at Grofield’s chest. “I don’t see anything.”
“Some kind of radio transmitter,” Grofield said thoughtfully, and looked off into space, thinking about it.
Murray said, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
Grofield focused on him again. “I wasn’t followed,” he said. “I’m absolutely sure of that. From at least the time I left the cab, I wasn’t followed. Nobody trailed me to Grand Central. So how come I was picked up there, that’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.”
Murray laid a finger beside his nose and winked, a Jewish Santa Claus. “We have our methods,” he said.
“You’re damn right you do,” Grofield agreed. “And one of those storm troopers that picked me up offered me a thirty-minute head start, and he didn’t give me the impression he was kidding. So I’ve been sitting here and I’ve been trying to figure out how you people could keep finding me without tailing me, and now I know how it’s done.”
“Very good!” Murray said. He seemed proud of Grofield’s deductive abilities.
“You’ve put some sort of transmitter in my clothes,” Grofield said. “Everything I’m wearing came from you people, except my shoes. With today’s miniaturization, with printed circuits—”
“Painted circuits,” Murray said.
“Painted?”
“Certainly. Metallic paint can be used in place of wiring, it’s in very common practice.”
“So that’s even smaller,” Grofield said. “Somewhere in a lining, in a seam, somewhere in my clothing there’s a tiny transmitter. All you need is two mobile receivers and you can home in on me anywhere.”
“That’s very interesting,” Murray said. He looked and sounded like an unconcerned spectator considering an interesting theory. “But it wouldn’t have to be in your clothing,” he said.
“Where else could it be?”
“Well, you were in the hospital for a few days, I understand.”
“What?” Grofield stared at him in horror. “Inside my body? A transmitter under my skin?”
Murray grinned impishly. “I’m just teasing,” he said. “We wouldn’t do a thing like that.”
“My God!” Grofield said. He felt physically weak. “What a thing even to think about!”
Murray looked thoughtful. “But, you know,” he said slowly, “that isn’t such a bad idea. You take your known Commie, say, or your incorrigible criminal, like you, for instance, you take whoever it might be you’re interested in, you put the little transmitter in them, then any time you wanted to know what they were up to you’d just triangulate on them, see where they were, go on over and check them out.”
“That’s the most evil thing I ever heard in my life,” Grofield said.
“Why?” Murray seemed honestly puzzled. “We wouldn’t use it on good people,” he said. “Just bad people.” He smiled broadly, delighted with himself. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to put that in the suggestion box back in the office.”
Grofield looked at him. “I keep having the strong feeling,” he said, “that for the sake of generations unborn I ought to strangle you here and now.”
Murray chuckled, not taking him seriously. “Oh, you,” he said. “You’ve just got a vested interest, that’s all. Being a thief and everything.”
Grofield kept looking at him, but just as Murray was beginning to get uncomfortable Grofield shook his head. “It wouldn’t be any use,” he said. “No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.”
Murray was interested. “You think so? That’s a nice phrase.”
“They come to me,” Grofield said. “Should we go get the plane?”
Murray looked at his watch. “Right you are!” he said, and began waving his Diners Club card for the check.
Six
Grofield plucked a dollar bill from his wallet, but it had a man’s face on it so he put it back. He selected another, and it had a woman’s face on it, and he nodded in satisfaction. Also the greens were brighter, the serial number was in red and the design was different. Finally, it said on it in large letters CANADA. That was good enough for Grofield, which meant it was good enough for the bellboy. Grofield gave it to him, the bellboy knuckled his brow and said, “Zheh,” which is French for monsieur, and then he went away, shut the door, left Grofield alone.
Grofield yawned. After a while his jaw began to ache, but the yawn wouldn’t stop. Would the hinge break, would he spend the rest of his life with his jaw dangling down on his chest? How could he deliver lines that way? Grofield reeled around, trying to stop yawning, and at last the pressure eased and his aching mouth slowly closed, like a theater door.
It was five minutes to eight in the morning. The plane from New York hadn’t loaded until nearly 1 A.M., and then hadn’t taken off until after three. Grofield had napped for about half an hour before the plane got into the air, but once aloft sleep had been impossible. God, having died, had apparently been reincarnated as a basketball player and had dribbled the plane all the way to Quebec. Somewhere along the way the snow and clouds and general storminess had faded away, leaving only the frisky wind to play with the plane like a kitten with a crumpled cigarette package, and the stewardesses had spent most of the flight rushing up and down the aisle with air sickness bags, empty in one direction, full in the other.