“I’ve thought of that too,” Barbara said.
The restaurant they were headed for appeared too soon, it was there and it could not be ignored. Hewlitt pulled into the parking lot and let the topic die as he turned off the ignition. One thing had been settled anyway: he would be back with Barbara again that night and, the way things stood, he had minimum difficulty adjusting himself to the situation. She was his girl now and that was good enough for him. And it was good enough for her, too, which was the important thing. “Ready?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered and warmed him with a soft smile.
As Frank drove them both to work the following morning Hewlitt once more counted off the days that remained brfore the ultimatum that the First Team had issued would expire and Zalinsky would be expected to give his answer. He could respond at any time, or he might ignore the whole thing. If he did that, then what would come next was still uncertain. One thing was clear: simply giving up was about as far from Zalinsky’s normal behavior pattern as it was possible to get. Something else would have to happen first.
When he had cleared through the White House guards and had been searched as always, he settled himself at his desk to await whatever was to come. Zalinsky knew that he was a member of the underground, that was sure, but it was a minor consideration. He hadn’t done too much so far in that role; perhaps he was destined to make up for lost time.
He phoned Cedric Culp on some routine matters, went through the mail that had been sorted out for his personal attention, and checked the appointment pad. He presumed that Zalinsky was inside, as he invariably was, even though there were no stiffly written notes or directives left for him to heed and obey. He had to give Zalinsky one thing: the man worked from dawn to dusk and sometimes later than that. He was probably a good manager and administrator; his problem was that he was trying to be the President of the United States without any help or willing cooperation from the subjects of his directives. And in a strange country, and through the medium of what was to him a difficult foreign language.
If he had been born an American, Hewlitt thought, and had been raised that way, he could have been a major success in industry: president, perhaps, of some leading corporation. The vision of Bob Landers’ execution would not go away, but against it stood the certainty that Bob at least had been saved from Rostovitch and shipment back across the Atlantic to face torture and whatever else might have awaited him there.
When the summons to the Oval Office came it was not the usual minimum sound of the buzzer; the crispness was replaced by a too-long pressure on the button — a variation that put Hewlitt on his guard immediately. His first thought was that someone else was in the President’s office, but he did not wait to speculate on it; he picked up a pad and pencils and went inside.
Zalinsky was sitting as usual in the President’s chair, but his body was slumped across the desk. His arms were stretched out until they almost reached the farther edge and they were in motion, working like the oversized antennae of some probing insect. He was uttering no sounds, but his body was fighting to find some position which would bring relief from an invisible inner agony. Hewlitt dropped the things he was carrying onto the top of the desk and bending over Zalinsky spoke to him in his own language. “Are you in pain?”
“Yes.” The single word was tight and strained, forced out by a man holding himself under severe restraint. Hewlitt scooped up a phone. “Medical, quick.” Seconds later he had his connection. “This is Hewlitt in the Oval Office. Mr. Zalinsky has been taken acutely ill; send up the doctor immediately.” He hung up and turning once more to Zalinsky began to help him off with his coat.
The phone rang. He picked it up and spoke his name. “The doctor isn’t here, Mr. Hewlitt,” he was told. “The nurse is on her way.”
“That may not be enough; get an ambulance as fast as you can.”
“Yes, sir, right away.”
It was a struggle to get Zalinsky out of his coat; his body was solid and surprisingly heavy. The man himself tried to help, but he was in pain and at the point where he barely had control of his body. Hewlitt managed to free him, using main strength at one point to pull the collar down from his shoulders. As he was finishing the hasty operation the door to the office swung open and two people came in; the middle-aged nurse Hewlitt had seen before and Major Barlov, the head of White House security under the new administration. Hewlitt spoke to him without ceremony. “Help me,” he ordered. “I want to lay him out on the floor.”
The major cut him with one quick suspicious glance, then he called out through the door. That done he came quickly to give Hewlitt a hand; between them they lifted Zalinsky out of his chair and stretched him on his back in the middle of the carpet. As the nurse bent over, Hewlitt loosened Zalinsky’s tie and took off his heavy shoes.
The nurse was on her knees, a tray of limited medical supplies beside her. Zalinsky, fully conscious, ignored her; he closed his arms across his abdomen and began to roll in short jerks from side to side.
“I’m not sure, but I think he could be passing a gallstone,” the nurse said. “That’s terribly painful. About the only thing we can do is to take him to the hospital or else put him into a tub of very hot water. That gives relief sometimes.”
Hewlitt wiped an arm across his forehead. “I’ve called an ambulance. Where the hell is the doctor?”
“He’s down at the clinic, Mr. Hewlitt; he’s helping out because of the doctor shortage. We haven’t needed him here for a long time, not since…”
“Well, we need him now! Did you send for him?”
“No, I didn’t know it was this bad. I brought antiacids — things like that.”
Minutes later one of the enemy guards appeared at the door and spoke rapidly to Barlov. “Two ambulance men are here, shall we search them?”
Barlov beckoned with his arm. “No, there is not time; bring them in at once.”
Hewlitt listened, then spoke to the man on the floor. “Can you hear me, Mr. Zalinsky?”
“Yes.” The same word again, the same filter of severe pain.
“Hang on; the ambulance is here. We’ll have you at the hospital very soon.”
Zalinsky held his eyes tightly shut and said nothing. Hewlitt helped as the two medical attendants lifted Zalinsky onto their folding cart and began to wheel him out of the office. “You stay,” Barlov directed.
“No,” Hewlitt answered him. “He may need an interpreter — and I can describe his symptoms.”
“I will come too.”
“All right.”
They were in the corridor by that time. The ambulance attendants were efficient; within three minutes Zalinsky had been loaded through the back into their vehicle and transferred to the built-in bed. Hewlitt sat down on a jump seat with Barlov beside him. “Walter Reed as fast as you can,” he ordered.
The ambulance took off with the voice of the siren climbing and the red lights on top flashing their message of urgency. In the right front seat one of the attendants picked up a microphone and radioed ahead. On the narrow bed Zalinsky continued to thresh his body, twisting and turning in a strange, unreal silence as though his fierce pride would not allow him to utter a sound for fear that he might cry out. “Can you help him?” Hewlitt asked the attendant in back.
The man shook his head. “Not without a doctor’s order, unless it’s to save his life. We’ll be there pretty quick; he’ll be all right after that.”