'Trig! When did you get here?' It was Crowe and his crowd, now with girls in tow, all leading what seemed to be a kind of electric ripple toward Trig.
And in seconds. Trig was gone, borne away on currents of some sort of celebrity hood that Donny didn't understand.
He turned to a girl standing nearby.
'Hey, excuse me,' he said.
'Who is this Trig?'
She looked at him in astonishment.
'Man, what planet are you from?' she demanded, then ran after Trig, her eyes beaming love.
CHAPTER three.
'HP rig Carter!' Commander Bonson exclaimed.
J.
'Yeah, that was it, I couldn't quite remember the last name,' said Donny, who could remember the name very well but couldn't quite bring himself to say it out loud.
'Seemed like a very nice guy.'
Bonson's office was an undistinguished chamber in a World War II-era tempo still standing in the Washington Navy Yard about a half mile from Eighth and I, where by dim pretext Donny had been sent the next day for his debriefing on his first day as spy hunter.
'You saw Trig Carter and Crowe together. Is that right?'
Why did Donny feel so sleazy about all this? He felt clammy, as if someone were listening. He looked around.
President Nixon glowered down at him from the wall, enjoining him to do his duty for God and Country. A degree from the University of New Hampshire added to the solemnity of the occasion. A few ceremonial photos of Lieutenant Commander Bonson with various dignitaries completed the decor, the room was otherwise completely bereft of personality or even much sense of human occupation.
It was preternaturally neat, even the paper clips in the little plastic box had been stacked, not dumped.
Lieutenant Commander Bonson bent forward, fixing Donny in his dark glare. He was a thin, dark man with a lot of whiskery shadow on his face and a sense of complete focus. There was something pilgrim like about him, he should have been in a pulpit denouncing miniskirts and the Beatles.
'Yes, sir,' Donny finally said.
'The two of them .. .
and about one hundred other people.'
'Where was this again?'
'A party. Uh, on C Street, on the Hill. I didn't get the address.'
'Three-forty-five C, Southeast,' said Ensign Weber.
'Did you check it out, Weber?'
'Yes, sir. It's the home of one James K. Phillips, a clerk to Justice Douglas and a homosexual, according to the FBI.'
'Were most of the people there homosexuals, Fenn?
Was it a homo thing?'
Donny didn't know what to say. It just seemed like a party in Washington, like any party in Washington, with a lot of young people, some grass, some beer, music, and fun and hope in the air.
'I wouldn't know, sir.'
Bonson sat back, considering. The homosexual thing seemed to hang in his mind, clouding it for a time. But then he was back on the track.
'So you saw them together?'
'Well, sir, not together, really. In the same crowd.
They knew each other, that was clear. But it didn't seem anything out of the ordinary.'
'Could Crowe have given him any deployment intelligence?'
Donny almost laughed, but Bonson was so set in his glare that he knew to release the pressure he felt building in his chest would have been a big mistake.
'I don't think so,' he said.
'Not that I saw. I mean, does Crowe have any deployment intelligence? I don't.
How would he?'
But Bonson didn't answer.
He turned to Weber.
'We've got to get closer,' he said.
'We've got to get him inside the cell. Trig Carter. Imagine that.'
