She sobbed. She looked at Trafford, anguish in her haunted eyes. “I–I just freeze up every time he comes near me. Nothing seems to matter anymore. We used to be so close. Now we can't seem to — to communicate at all… Sometimes I even blame him for the baby's death. For weeks he'd promised to hang that mobile, and he never got around to it. Why couldn't he have been there? We needed him so desperately. He — he didn't even have to be away. It was just something he wanted to do with his friends.” She looked down at her lap. “I–I don't even know if I do want him back. I—”
She stopped, horrified at her own words. She looked up quickly. She sobbed. “Oh, God! I don't mean that. I do love him. I do… But now — I don't even think I can be of any help. Up here… I saw him. I called to him. And he didn't answer. Didn't react at all… And the night before his crash, he—”
She stopped.
“He what, Randi?”
“He wanted me… and I—”
“How long has it been?”
“Seven months,” she whispered.
He nodded.
“But — he's been… very gentle. All the time. He never tried to — to force anything.” She bit her lip. “And look what I've done to him.”
“All right, Randi, let's take a look,” Trafford said. He spoke calmly, reasonably. “Tom had an accident. What went wrong up there wasn't your fault. It was beyond your control. And what happened between you is in no way to blame for Tom's condition. His injury is. Exactly how, we still don't know. There's a lot we don't know, Randi. A man's mind is still a wilderness. A seven-inch wilderness.” He looked closely at her. “But I can tell you this: what happened between you and Tom certainly won't lessen your importance in being able to reach him. You can help.”
“I want very much to believe that,” Randi said earnestly. She was finding new strength. She knew she would never be able to forget her loss. She knew she would have to learn not to assign blame. Either to Tom or to herself. She would have to learn to cope. Could she? Not without a scar. What deep wound ever closed without a scar? she thought. A remembered stanza. Byron, it was. From her high-school days. Funny she should think of that now… There'd always be a scar. But a scar is a sign of healing.
She looked at Trafford, new determination on her face. “We must find him,” she said.
“We will.” Trafford patted her arm. “He needs you,
Randi. And when he's back home — you and I will have a talk. Agreed?”
Randi nodded. “Agreed.”
She gave him a sidelong glance.
“I guess — Tom and I — we're both a little lost.”
He pulled off the road and came to a stop on the gravelly shoulder near a sign that identified the mountain highway as California State 190.
For a moment he sat staring out over the vast, pale and desolate expanse shimmering with heat below him. It was his first view of Death Valley.
Shit!
He had the feeling his assignment would not exactly include all the comforts of home.
He'd anticipated a good, long, quiet time as a sleeper in place, after receiving his engineering degree back East and being transferred to the Coast and given a new identity. Then, dammit, out of the blue, he'd been activated and given a mission. Highly technical. In the Sierra Mountains.
And then, without explanation, someone'd done some button-pushing, and he'd been pulled off what had promised to be an exciting cat-and-mouse search with minimal risks involved — to hightail it to this crappy place. Mission: Locate and abduct a downed USAF pilot. He could make no sense of it. But he'd do the job. If he could find the bastard. Of course, he would have help on that score.
Political kidnapping was nothing new. He'd been involved in a case once before. But — in a godforsaken place like Death Valley, for crissake!
He was not impressed with the piece of useless information he'd picked up — that the valley was seventy million years old. It had just had that much more time to become real uncomfortable.
He hawked. Better get himself in the right frame of mind for his new job.
He finished the can of forty-weight he'd been drinking on the road. Coors. His favorite. He threw it out of the car.
He started off again and went rubberbanding it down the highway. The road quickly began to wind and he slowed down. Might as well keep the shiny side up and the greasy side down — and get there in one piece.
Even if the stinking place was the pits.
And he did have a job to do…
5
Colonel Gerhardt Scharff did not feel at ease. Things were not progressing the way he'd wanted them to — in fact, had anticipated they would. The situation made no sense. For the tenth time he went over the last transcribed report from L.A. He found it difficult to make head or tail of it. But it was certainly not optimistic. It made him acutely uneasy.
Suddenly the door to his office opened. He'd heard no knock, certainly had not acknowledged any, and he felt instantly annoyed. With a sharp remark on his lips he looked up — and at once sprang to his feet.
“Comrade Minister!” he exclaimed. “I–I didn't—”
The man who strode into the office was small of stature and wore old-fashioned, steel-rimmed pince-nez spectacles. Scharff knew he had a habit of adjusting them at crucial moments, a gesture that was chillingly ominous.
“Sit down, Scharff,” the man interrupted sharply. He himself took a chair opposite Scharff without waiting to be asked. Coldly he contemplated the apprehensive intelligence officer.
“I want some facts, Scharff,” he said, his voice deceptively calm. “Not conjectures. Not possibilities. Facts!”
“Of course, Comrade Minister.”
The man waved his hand impatiently. “First. That device of Dr. Marcus’. It is destroyed?”
Scharff nodded soberly. “Yes,” he said. “Totally destroyed. It is of no possible use to anyone. Even the Americans. We—”
“Do they know what went wrong?” the Minister interrupted.
“No. My information is that they do not know the cause of the malfunction. They have no idea why the crash occurred.”
“Your information is reliable?”
Scharff nodded. “We have two agents,” he said. “both in place. And active. At this moment the pilot is their target. They are both top men. They—”
Again the Minister interrupted. “What is your communications set-up?”
“Reports every four hours — and on an urgency basis,” Scharff explained. “The agents in the field have a contact schedule to be maintained with the L.A. control through the telephone system, using only public telephones that cannot be tapped. Orders and information are relayed to them and to us.”
“Adequate.” The Minister nodded curtly.
“Information and instructions can be exchanged within half an hour, Comrade Minister.”
The man gave him a cold look. “The pilot?”
Scharff's face grew cloudy. “Developments are — confusing. You are already aware of the — eh, extraordinary situation reported to us. I — we — eh—” He stopped his stammering. He could feel the sweat of acute discomfort itchy on his skin. He knew that his face would soon begin to glisten with it. He resisted the urge to wipe it. He did not want the supercilious bastard sitting across from him to have the satisfaction.
“It would now seem,” he continued, “that it is most doubtful if the pilot will fall into our hands. Alive. Developing circumstances are very much against us. There is—”