“No, sir,” Jake Grafton said, and paused for a few seconds to gape at the vastness of the great man’s ignorance.
Then he continued: “The fallout zone is huge and extraordinarily hot. Collins will have some numbers in a few hours. We won’t know the exact dimensions of the fallout zone until aerial surveys are conducted. But to return to my question — I guess I didn’t phrase it right. Please excuse me. I’m just curious about how willing the United States government might be to get into a shooting scrape over here if the junta looks like it might be coming out on top.”
“That’s a decision for the president,” Hempstead piped from her ringside seat, her tone suggesting Grafton was a few cards short of a full deck.
Lancaster spoke more slowly. “I seriously doubt if anyone in Washington will be very enthusiastic about a military adventure in Russia, Admiral, even if Yakolev himself personally blew up a dozen reactors and CBS News has a videotape of him pushing the plunger. Speaking hypothetically, of course.”
Jake Grafton wondered what the administration’s reaction would be to medium-range ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads in Iran or Iraq. He didn’t ask the diplomats though. He wanted to talk to Hayden Land before he set Lancaster’s pants on fire.
While Senior Chief Holley was checking the navy’s minuscule office for bugs and rigging the telephone scrambler, Jake went to find Jack Yocke. “I want you to write a story about what you saw today. Get the radiation numbers and isotopes and all that from Collins when he gets back. Write an eyewitness account, just what you saw. Leave out the bit about the transporters and the missiles. And let me see the story before you call it in.”
Jack Yocke had just completed his shower. He was tired and looked longingly at the couch in the small apartment that Grafton and Tarkington shared. Now Grafton was ordering up journalism like a fried-to-order hamburger. Yet he barely paused before he said, “Yessir. I’ll have the story for you in about an hour. When Collins gets back I can just insert a few paragraphs.”
“I’ll be down in the office.”
Back in the office Holley was still looking for electromagnetic fields that shouldn’t be there. “What did Herb Tenney do today?” Jake asked.
“He left the embassy about eleven, sir, and returned in time for dinner.”
The admiral grunted and began to think about what he was going to say to Hayden Land. When Holley pronounced the office clean, Jake punched his code into the scrambler and placed his call. It took seven minutes before the Pentagon operator got them connected.
“Let’s go secure,” Land told him after he heard Jake’s voice.
Jake pushed the proper button and waited while the two encrypters talked to each other with chirps and clicks, then he heard Land’s voice. “Richard Harper is dead.”
“How?”
“Apparent heart attack.”
“Do you have the report?”
“No. The house was ransacked.”
Jake didn’t wait for the effect of that to numb him. He immediately began to report the events of the day.
While Jack Yocke tapped away on his laptop in the small living room, Toad and Rita took a long shower together and then crawled into bed. With the lights out and her head cradled on Toad’s shoulder, Rita said, “On the ride over here from the airport Yocke was telling me some wild tale about some women he met, a Shirley Ross and a Judith Farrell. I listened for about five minutes before it dawned on me that he was talking about Elizabeth Thorn.”
“She had a lot of names.”
“And she’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“You loved her, didn’t you?” Rita whispered.
“Yes.”
“Yocke needed someone to share it with.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He’s a good guy underneath.”
Toad Tarkington didn’t want to talk about Jack Yocke. Judith Farrell was on his mind, and this extraordinary woman beside him. “It wasn’t—” Toad began.
“Hush,” she told him. “I’m not jealous. I know what I mean to you.”
He thought about that, tried to get the round peg into the square hole. Women are really amazing creatures — just when you think you’ve got their brain structure figured out, they stun you by revealing a feature of genetic engineering that you never expected, not in your wildest—
“Still,” she added, “I think you should have told me about her. Oh, you married me and all that, but I didn’t realize that you had all these torrid romances stacked in the closet that I am going to have to keep dealing with.”
It dawned on Toad that the peg wouldn’t fit. “You aren’t the first woman I ever shook hands with.”
“You did a lot more than shake Elizabeth Thorn’s hand, or Judith Farrell, or whatever her name was. Don’t sugarcoat it and don’t deny it.”
“Rita, I’m not denying anything! And I’m not going to lie to you about Judith. She was one hell of a fine woman. I loved her very much. She went her way and I went mine and eventually I met you. And I’m damn sorry she’s dead.”
“Just how many more of these women are out there?”
The ol’ Horny Toad knew the ice was damn thin. He carefully weighed his answer. “You’re the woman I married. You’re the woman I want to spend my life with. Why are you jealous?”
“I am not jealous! Answer the question.”
“What question?”
“How many?”
“I dunno for sure. I didn’t carve notches on the bedstead. Not counting you, let’s see…maybe ten thousand, more or less.”
“Go ahead and count me, Romeo,” she growled. There was acid in her voice.
“Well, I’d have to consult my little black books. All of us Romeos have those. I did ratings, on a one-to-ten scale. I can probably use those records to come up with a fairly accurate count, although of course I didn’t rate casual encounters. As I recall you scored a ten. It’s sorta sad, but there weren’t many tens, not more than one a month. All those books…it’ll be a big job.” He took a deep breath and exhaled audibly, laced his fingers across his chest and stared at the ceiling, apparently contemplating the vast quantities of time and effort that were going to be involved in rooting through his voluminous files.
When she remained silent, he decided to take the offensive. But carefully. “How many of your old boyfriends are you gonna torture me with?”
She thought about that. Finally she began counting on her fingers. At last she said, “One hundred ninety-three. The first was a boy named Freddy that I had a crush on in kindergarten. He had blond hair and dimples and I desperately wanted him for my very own. The second was—”
“I missed you,” Toad told her.
“Oh, Toad, I missed you too.”
And then she sat up and he could see her whole face, her eyes, her nose, her mouth spreading into a smile. “You’re going to be a daddy,” she said softly.
“What?”
“It’s too early to be absolutely sure, but I think so.”
He was horrified. He shoved her out to arm’s length. “You’re pregnant and you flew that jet into that radioactive hell this afternoon? Are you out of your mind?”
One of her eyebrows arched. “Not so loud. Let’s not discuss this with Jack Yocke.”
“Rita,” he hissed, “if you’re pregnant you can’t—”
“I can do what has to be done. Like every kid ever conceived, Toad Junior is going to have to take his parents as they come. Flying is what I do.” She stroked his eyebrows with a fingertip. “Relax. I’ll be careful. I pulled his father out of the fiery furnace today. Someday the Toadlet will understand and thank me.”
Toad needed time to digest it. After a while he said, “Do you think it’s a boy?”