Fellowship of Fear

greatest service to your country and to the cause of peace. To yourself, there is very little danger, virtually none.”

“What exactly are you asking me to do?”

“Simply to tell us if anyone, at any of the bases to which you are assigned—anyone —asks you to obtain or transmit sensitive information from that base to himself or to anyone else.”

To his faint surprise, Gideon was disappointed. “You’re not asking me to do anything? Just report back to you?”

“That’s correct. If the occasion arises.” The blue eyes looked steadily at him.

“Well, of course I’ll do that. I’d have done it without your asking.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Are there any further questions I can answer? If not, I’ll leave you in Mr. Marks’s capable hands.” He hopped down from the sill.

“I do have some questions,” Gideon said. “You said there was very little danger to me. Unless I’m missing something, I can’t see any risk at all.”

“You’re quite right. A poor choice of words on my part. My English is far from perfect.” He smiled, revealing stumpy, yellow teeth with gaps between them. His eyes didn’t smile.

“I imagine the details are secret,” said Gideon, “but can you give me some idea of what sort of thing they’re after?”

This time the eyes smiled a little. “Ah, we would tell you if we knew, but the sad fact is that we don’t know.”

“You don’t know what they’re looking for?”

“We do not.”

“Then… how will you know if you’ve kept them from getting it? Or if you haven’t? Or how to try?”

“Ah, we’ll know, Dr. Oliver, but as to how we’ll know, I’m afraid we can’t share that with you.”

“But what about me? I wouldn’t know a sensitive request if one bit me on the nose. I mean, unless someone asked me for a hydrogen bomb formula.”

Marks snickered. Delvaux ignored him. “We’d like very much to know if someone does. But we think… perhaps someone asking you if you happen to have a key to the computer room, or if you can get him the address of one of the officers in your class, or some such thing.”

“But you can’t expect me to run and tell you every time—”

Delvaux’s eyelids flickered. “Dr. Oliver, you are making too much of this. We are not asking you to be some sort of spy or agent. We are merely requesting of you the kindness to notify us if you are approached with a request that strikes you as peculiar and which might in some conceivable way relate to matters of security. Truthfully, we think it extremely unlikely that such an event will occur; we are merely providing for all contingencies. We leave it entirely to your discernment as to whether something is sufficiently extraordinary to notify us.”

He rubbed his hands together. “That, I think, is as much as I am permitted to tell you. Will you help us?”

“Monsieur Delvaux, excuse my ignorance. I don’t know what sort of authority NSD has. Are you asking my help or ordering it?”

Delvaux laughed. Gideon caught a whiff of cheese again: Emmenthaler.

“Dr. Oliver, the Security Directorate is replete with responsibility, but sadly lacking in authority. We are asking, merely asking. What do you say?”

“Ja,” said Marks, “vee are only esking. But uff course ve hef our vays.” He screwed an imaginary monocle into his eye.

Delvaux pretended not to notice him. “What do you say?” he asked again.

It was a time to temporize, Gideon knew. There were some elements here that made no sense, and he knew he wasn’t thinking as clearly as usual. Moreover, he wasn’t the sort of man who went out of his way to find ways of breaking his bones or puncturing his skin. Nevertheless, the proposition stirred his interest. Working with NSD would add a notable dimension of excitement and adventure to the whole European assignment. The probability of real danger—danger that he couldn’t cope with—seemed reassuringly low; not, of course, that he took Delvaux at his word.

“Yes, I’ll do it,” he said.

“Excellent,” said Delvaux. “Wonderful. I must get back to my office, I’m afraid. Mr. Marks will explain the details. Good-bye and thank you.” Before Gideon could rise, he had shaken hands and darted gnomelike out the door.

“Le directeur,” said Marks. He lit a cigarette, went back to his own chair, and leaned back in it, looking out the window. He had returned, Gideon gathered, to his bored and abstracted mode.

“Is he French?” Gideon asked. “The accent wasn’t quite—”

“Belgian. France isn’t a NATO member, as you know.”

“Of course,” Gideon said, but he hadn’t known. Which was ridiculous. He’d have to get his head out of his archaeology texts and see what was going on in the twentieth century; or so he’d been resolving for at least five years now.

“Now,” Marks went on, still looking out the window and languidly smoking. “When you have something to pass on to us from the field—from the base you’re teaching at—you call back to Heidelberg, to the USOC registrar’s office, and say, ”My class roster is incomplete. Could you let me have an updated one?“ Got it?”

“Those exact words?”

“That would be dandy, but words to that effect will do.”