Fellowship of Fear

then leaped suddenly to his feet. The chancellor stopped in mid-exclamation, his eyes riveted on Gideon’s face. The others looked up to see what had cut off the reassuring, familiar flow of words.

Gideon pointed a shaky finger at Dr. Rufus and spoke, his voice choked.

“It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the one.”

Every sound in the room stopped. There was a strained hush, an electric stupefaction. It seemed to Gideon they were all caught in a flash photograph; the only movement was the trembling of his finger, the only noise the pounding in his ears.

“The spy, the mole, whatever they call you,” he said. “The USOC spy. The traitor.”

Outraged noises burst from half the throats in the room. Eric Bozzini jumped up angrily, Janet turned an appalled face toward Gideon. John looked as if someone had hit him on the head with a mallet.

Gideon’s confidence wavered. He shouldn’t have been so impulsive; he should have waited, checked out his ideas, talked to John. His finger was still leveled dramatically at Dr. Rufus’s nose. A little shamefacedly, he dropped his hand to his side.

Dr. Rufus finally found his voice. “Gideon… my dear boy, I know you don’t really mean… I hardly know what to say…” His palms were lifted, his eyebrows raised in astonishment.

Gideon looked at him a little longer. “No, it’s you all right,” he said.

Another hostile roar came from the faculty. Bruce Danzig bobbed up from his chair and rapped his fist delicately on the table. “Damn you, Gideon!” he shouted precisely.

The agent strode to the center of the room. “That’s enough now,” he said. “Everyone sit down.” The authority of sudden death still cloaked him. Everybody sat.

The agent looked at Gideon with dull eyes. “Now,” he said. “Just you.”

Gideon spoke directly to the agent, working hard to keep his voice steady. “It’s Dr. Rufus who’s working for the KGB, who had that information put in my book, who arranged those two—”

It was too much for Danzig. He was on his feet again, his little breast heaving like a bird’s. “You idiot, you don’t know what you’re talking about—”

Gideon cut him off. With his heart in his mouth, he took a gamble. “Bruce, you said there was a rush request on the Weidenreich book. Who was asking for it?”

“Well…” Danzig darted a sudden look at Dr. Rufus.

Gideon pressed him. “It was Dr. Rufus, wasn’t it?”

Danzig spoke carefully. “Well, it was the chancellor’s office. But that happens all the time. His secretary—”

Gideon pushed on. “And before I left for Torrej6n, Dr. Rufus sent me to the library. He said you were holding some books for me. Where’d you get them? Who suggested the titles?”

Danzig stammered wordlessly, but his confused glance at Dr. Rufus was answer enough. He sat down slowly, blinking.

“That’s an awful lot of interest in my books,” Gideon said, talking more to himself than Danzig. “And I remember some thing else. I wasn’t planning on taking any books with me to Sigonella either. But he pressed me— remember, Bruce?—he told me what a fine library you had, how you’d be hurt if I didn’t take any. And he made sure he knew just which books I did take___ ”

He had been dreading looking at Dr. Rufus. Now he turned to him. “… didn’t you?” he asked quietly.

A look at the chancellor drained the belligerence from Gideon as if someone had pulled out a plug. Dr. Rutus was staring at him, trembling all over and blowing his lips in and out like a hooked fish lying on a pier. He looked about as much like a spy as Santa Claus did. Gideon’s heart went out to him. He had liked Dr. Rufus, really liked him. He still did.

“I think we three should have a private little talk,” the agent said without expression. He made a curt hand motion to Dr. Rufus, a wordless “Get up, you.” Better than words, it summarized the sudden, awful role transformation that had come to the chancellor of United States Overseas College. It saddened Gideon to see him obey the rude gesture.

They walked toward a small private room. The agent pointedly waited for Dr. Rufus to precede him, even giving the shambling, red-faced figure a casual, gratuitous nudge.

Gideon followed, his feelings turbulent and paradoxical. He, who had just publicly denounced and humiliated Dr. Rufus, burned with rage at the agent’s supererogatory disrespect. And he, who had been so vilely betrayed; why should he feel like the betrayer?

“So it was the books,” Janet said, looking out the car window at the dark, nearly deserted autobahn.

“Yes,” said Gideon, “both times. They’d pick out some wide-eyed kid and tell him he was serving his country by stealing something from the computer room or the control room and sticking it in one of my books. A patriotic act. Apparently Dr. Rufus was a pretty convincing Times reporter.”

“Yeah, sure,” said John, “with some money thrown in in case the kid wasn’t a true-blue patriot.”

Janet frowned. “But do you mean that Dr. Rufus flew down to Sigonella and Torrejon himself, and then flew right back?”

“Sure,” John said, “no problem there.”

Marti shook her head. “Now wait a minute, you guys. Gideon, what made them think you wouldn’t find it when you read the book?”

“That’s why they had to know the exact books I had with me. They put the information in them on Thursday night both times, after I’d had my final class, and they picked a book I wouldn’t need for my next course, assuming that I wouldn’t be reading it.”