Frank guided the car through an intersection. “Don’t know him offhand, but I’ll try and find out. If he’s cornin’ by at six-thirty, that looks like dinner, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, I guess so, unless it’s a short visit over a drink.”
Frank devoted himself to his driving for a minute or two. “You know that Chinese restaurant near where you live?”
“Sure, I eat there every now and then.”
“Suppose you go there to eat tonight if he’s with you. If I find out anythin’ in time, I’ll get word to you.”
“You could phone me,” Hewlitt suggested. “Tell me that you may not be able to pick me up in the morning if anything’s wrong. If not, give me any other kind of message.”
“O.K. If I find out anythin’ in time; it’s pretty short and I may not be able to get hold o’ my boss.”
“Do what you can,” Hewlitt said. “I’ll play it cozy in the meanwhile.”
“That’s the word,” Frank said. The news broadcast began, but if there was any significant item on the air, Hewlitt did not recognize it as such. When they pulled up in front of his apartment Frank spoke a formal good night and drove away.
His guest arrived within two minutes of the appointed time. Hewlitt welcomed him and gestured toward his small portable bar. Captain Scott, still in uniform and immaculately so, bent instead over the stereo component equipment installed at one end of the room. “I’m interested in this stuff,” he said. “Could I hear it play?” “Of course.” Before Hewlitt could turn on the set himself Scott did so. The sound came on at once, the Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony in the middle of the second movement. Scott set the volume at a slightly uncomfortably high level, but one which did reveal the system at its best. Then he spoke quietly to Hewlitt. “That’s the best cover that I know for listening devices,” he said. “After what happened to us, I don’t take any chances anywhere.”
“Don’t blame you,” Hewlitt agreed. He made two drinks at his small bar and placed one of them in his guest’s hand. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
Scott sampled his drink and approved of it. “Before that, let me introduce myself a little more. I’m simply an Air Force type a little like Bob Landers was, only not so much so — I’ll never be as good a man as he was.”
Hewlitt’s mnemonic memory functioned and a near-forgotten item came back to him. “I think I know you — aren’t you the officer who claimed Bob’s body and arranged for burial in Arlington?”
“That’s right,” Scott said. “I think they’d have left him there to rot. Anyhow, he rated Arlington as much as anyone, and that’s where he is. It wasn’t a solo operation, though, I had a lot of help from some other guys.”
“I’m glad to buy you a drink,” Hewlitt responded. “How about having dinner wifti me? There’s a little Chinese place near here — not the greatest, but the food’s not bad and there’s quite a bit of privacy. I doubt like hell that it’s bugged.”
“Probably not,” Scott agreed. “Percentagewise, it wouldn’t be worth it. But let it be a dutch treat; I’d like it better that way.”
The symphony paused in midflight as the movement ended and a few seconds of silence followed while the announcer turned over the record. Then the familiar work resumed once more.
“You’re still wearing your uniform,” Hewlitt said. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“Damn right. In the first place, no one’s told me not to, either them or my military superiors. Secondly, we’re in a time of war.” “Technically, the war’s over.” Hewlitt probed carefully.
“Not for me it isn’t. We haven’t officially surrendered, and unless I’m completely off, we’re not going to. Maybe you think that I’m a dreamer, but old Ho Chi Minh, who’s roasting somewhere in hell right now, beat the French and even gave us a hard time in a limited action.”
“Yes, but he had both communist China and Russia behind him at the time.”
“True, but what were his resources otherwise? We’ve got resources, and I’d like to think that we have some people with brains and spirit.”
Hewlitt looked across the room to where a clock rested on the mantel. “How about getting something to eat?” he proposed. “We can talk better sitting down. The place is usually pretty uncrowded at this hour, we ought to be able to be strictly by ourselves.”
“Fine, let’s go. I haven’t had any Chinese food in months.”
Hewlitt lingered for another two or three minutes hoping that his phone would ring, but it remained inert. Then he ushered his guest out and fell in beside him for the short walk to the restaurant. By unexpressed common consent, they kept their conversation entirely neutral.
They were received upon arrival by the same quiet headwaiter who, without being asked, showed them to a booth which offered a maximum of privacy. He put down two menus, wished them a pleasant dinner, and left without further comment.
They were well into their meal before Scott brought up the thing that was on his mind. “Look,” he began, “I’m going on the assumption, and I consider it a damn safe one, that you’re a solid citizen. I have the word that you were tapped by Zalinsky to sit at his right hand, but that you never bent an inch in his direction.”
“I’ve tried not to,” Hewlitt said.
“All right. Now just for the sake of argument, suppose that a bunch of Americans who don’t have any ax to grind apart from the fact that they are loyal to their country and what it used to stand for were to try to organize something. How would you feel about that?”
Hewlitt already knew what he was going to say when that question came. “I’d certainly wish them well; that goes without saying. At the same time I’d have to regard it as a damn dangerous game. Basically we can’t get away from one thing: we had our whole Air Force, plus the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps. With all of this, and our whole industrial capacity completely at our disposal, we took a licking. How can we hope to reverse all that by, say, an underground guerrilla organization?”
Scott was thoughtful. “We weren’t licked, Hew, you know that; we were tricked. The Orberg decision took away the power of the draft while all kinds of people kept telling us that patriotism was out of date and that we were fools to salute when the flag went by. Remember Wattles, the black militant? He eventually went to prison, but not for his basic crime — trying to tear down his own nation. And there was old stonehead — Fitzhugh. Perhaps we had too much freedom — and we abused it. Abused it enough to con ourselves right out of our security; all that they did was to take advantage of our weakness. Granted that they helped it along with their undermining, bugging, and all that.”
“It’s your thought, then, that if an underground were to be organized, it would be able to operate without all of these drawbacks?”
“Of course, but that’s only a small part of it. We’ve got an immense country here and a couple of hundred million people who don’t like the way that things have turned out. They’re bound to do something eventually.”
Hewlitt pushed his plate aside. “I’ve got to agree with that,” he said. “Only I’m afraid that they could get terribly hurt in the process.”
“True,” Scott responded. “Probably a lot of people would be shot as Bob Landers "was, but that’s the price we’re stuck with for having let our guard down.”
He stopped when the waiter approached the booth. The man cleared away the used dishes, wiped the table, and set down a fresh pot of tea. In front of each of them he put a tiny plate with a fortune cookie and then withdrew.
Hewlitt had used the time to think. He had no intention of revealing to Scott even by the vaguest hint that such an organization did, in fact, exist, but he did not know how to break off the conversation without committing himself in one way or another. He poured himself some fresh tea. As Scott did the same he broke open his fortune cookie and extracted the tiny slip of paper which promised to reveal his destiny. In red typewritten characters he read: Do not trust. Believe dangerous. Asher.