They wouldn’t have dared.
Dinner was relaxing, though brief, and afterward I was sent to my room with several volumes on applied psychology, with marked chapters concerning police interrogation methods, psychological manipulation of co-workers, and similar villainies. When Angela, all rested and randy, came scratching at my door a little after midnight the best I could give her was a smile, and even that was weak.
And so it had gone, for the next four days. It was a crash program, in which I was the crash, and incredibly enough it seemed to have some effect. My physical tone improved amazingly, much of what I’d been told about codes and electronics and psychology appeared to. stick with reasonable permanence in my memory, I learned to swim as silent as a gliding lily pad, and I even got pretty good on the parallel bars.
Not that there was a lot of improvement, because there wasn’t. But considering the length of time we’d all been given, the fact of any improvement was pretty astonishing.
By the third night I’d even been able to show Angela a spark of life, which pleased her exceedingly, until twenty to six the next morning when Lynch came striding in, found us both in the same bed, looked down on us with disapproval, and said, “Breaking training. No good for you.”
“Really!” cried Angela, turning red all over.
“Yes, really,” said Lynch, turned on his heel, walked out, and twenty minutes later had me running around the lake as though we were trying to get somewhere.
This was the daily routine; up at five-forty, exercise from six to seven, then breakfast and session after session for the rest of the day and halfway into the night.
Now it was the fifth and last day, opening all cold and drizzly, with Lynch pacing me as usual around the lake. At ten to seven we stopped running and switched to a cross section of push-ups, chin-ups, sit-ups, various kinds of jumps, etc., etc., and at seven I staggered into the main building, took my first shower of the day, and went ravenously to breakfast.
We had a guest this morning: P, all citified and sissy in his suit. I flexed a new muscle at him, drank my orange juice, reached for my steak, and said, “Well, Coach, you just bring on da champ. I’ll knock him outa da ring.”
P smiled bleakly. “I’m glad you feel that way, Q,” he said. “Tonight you re-establish contact.”
The orange juice turned to a cold solid in my stomach. I put down a forkful of steak and said, “We’re ready?”
He tossed a pile of newspapers on the table beside me. “Take a look.”
The top paper was Friday’s Daily News, and the applicable item was on page 4. Beneath a headline reading SOCIETY GIRL VANISHES, the story announced that industrialist Marcellus Ten Eyck had reported to police that morning the disappearance of his daughter, Angela, who had not returned home the night before. Police had information that Miss Ten Eyck had last been seen in the company of one Joseph Rakford (sic), a known extremist termed by the FBI “erratic and dangerous.” Foul play was not ruled out. Accompanying this absurd story was a small grainy photo identified in the caption as Angela, but it looked more like a picture of me.
Uh huh. The second paper was Saturday’s Daily News — it figured the News would give this sort of story the biggest play — and now the story had graduated to page 3, and the accompanying photos were much larger and clearer than before. Yes, photos; one each of Angela and me. DEB DISAPPEARS; SUBVERSIVE SOUGHT ran the headline, and it was followed by essentially the same story as yesterday’s, but with additional exclamation points. A few foul lies about my part in the blowing up of customs shacks had also been inserted.
The Sunday News was next. Still page 3, the same two photos and essentially the same story — this time pegged with the headline ANGELA AND THE BOMBER STILL OUT OF SIGHT — plus a picture in the center fold of the mimeograph machine in my bedroom. “Deserted hideaway of J. Eugene Raxford [they were getting it right by now] reveals no clues to where-abouts of missing society beauty,” etc., etc.
Monday, yesterday, the story had begun to lose steam. Page 5, smaller item, no photos at all, headline POLICE STYMIED IN DEB DISAPPEARANCE. Ah, but this morning, Tuesday, quelle différence! Page 1, black headline covering half the page:
You bet the story was on page 2. A body, partially destroyed by an explosion of dynamite, had been found in a ravine in New Jersey the night before, and had been identified via dental history records as Angela Ten Eyck, missing heiress to — etc, etc. J. Eugene Raxford, bomber and terrorist being sought on other counts by the FBI, was wanted for questioning also in connection with the death — etc., etc. Anyone having any information on the whereabouts of Raxford — etc., etc.
“Well,” I said.
P took the papers back. “Realistic?”
“It’s going to be quite a job later on,” I said. “Unraveling all that.”
“It can be done,” he said calmly. “It’s been done before.”
“What about Angela’s old man? He’s co-operating?”
P’s smile turned to granite. “Reluctantly,” he said. “But fully. Take my word for it.”
“I’m surprised,” I said. “I figured the old guy wouldn’t stand still for it, this kind of publicity in the trash press. And not even true.”
“Mr. Ten Eyck,” P said carefully, “is in the munitions business, a business quite intimately connected with the federal government. The government itself is a prime consumer in that industry, and rigidly regulates the industry’s dealings with any and all other consumers. Believe me, Mr. Ten Eyck does not want the federal government to think of him as uncooperative.”
I smiled, thinking about the old walrus blowing into his mustaches, clasping his hands behind his back, saying several unprintable things, and writing out some new contribution checks to the Republican Party. (Whenever the government infuriated Ten Eyck in some particularly personal way — which was often — he always mailed off a fresh contribution to the Republican Party. He did this even if the Republicans themselves were in power — which was seldom.)
Karp, the administrative head of the site, came along then, saying, “What’s this? Not eating, Q? Best finish your breakfast, you’ve got quite a full day ahead of you.” To P he said, “Perhaps it would be best if we left him alone, sir.”
“Right,” said P. He got to his feet, tucked his bale of newspapers under his arm, and said to me, “I’ll see you later on. We won’t be leaving here till after dark.”
They left me alone. I looked at the food, which I knew I was too nervous to eat, and ate every mouthful of it. When you’ve been running around a lake for an hour before breakfast, it takes more than bad news, alarums, and intimations of mortality to keep you from packing the chow away.
11
Late that afternoon Duff wired me for sound. I walked into his hobby shop and he handed me a glass of water and a black medicinal-looking capsule, and said, “Take this.”