maybe on the way back he would be more talkative.
The other good thing in his future, he thought, was that that night he could go back to the theater. He must have smiled, be-^-cause the guard outside the Swedish embassy gave him a suspicious look before going back to eyeing the vendors and loafers along the crowded sidewalk. Dannerman kept getting nudged as people bumped against him, but if any of them were pickpockets, as they likely were, he had nothing left in his belly bag worth picking.
He felt droplets of cold water hitting the back of his neck and looked up; the meticulous Swedes had permanent crews at work in hoists overhead, to keep the building washed down. Even so, they were just barely keeping ahead of the pollution. As he moved away he felt someone touch his arm. It was a young boy, no more than fifteen. 'Vill herrn vaxla? Vagvisare?' he hissed.
Dannerman shook his head, but the boy persisted. 'Vill ni knulla min syster? Renflicka, mycket vacker. '
Dannerman realized the boy had taken him for a Swedish tourist. 'Asshole,' Dannerman said cheerfully. 'I don't want your sister, and besides I'm an American.'
The boy changed gears without a blink. 'Okay, sport, how about a little American happy time? Sticks, ampoules, mellow patches, I can get you anything you want.'
'No sale.' And then, as Jarvas came toward them, munching on caramel popcorn, he said, 'You can try my buddy there. He might be in the market for some dope.'
It was a light impulse, and he regretted it. The boy took one look at the expression on Jarvas's face, and then dodged across the street to try his luck with the Koreans. And all the way back in the subway Jarvas stood cold and angry beside Dannerman, and wouldn't say a word.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dan
There was one job remaining for Dannerman to do that day. It was a fairly nasty one, and not one he looked forward to, but it was best to get it over with. So at quitting time Dannerman went looking for the Cypriot astronomer, Christo Papathanassiou. The man was standing over the screens in his office, preparing to shut them down for the day. When he saw Dannerman in the doorway he gave him a quick, apprehensive look. 'Sorry to bother you, but I need to talk to you for a minute,' Dannerman said. 'I've got a problem.'
Papathanassiou sat down again, stiffly waiting. 'See, Dr. Papathanassiou, I'm in a little trouble with my cousin, and I don't want to make it worse. When I went down to the lobby to get something for Dr. Chesweiler that man was there and he started up again.'
The astronomer still didn't speak. He didn't look surprised at what Dannerman was saying, only sadly resigned.
'And now,' Dannerman went on, 'I'm really worrying about not telling my cousin about it. You see, what the man says- well, he says you've been mixed up with some bad business. You have a brother-I think he said the name was Aristide? Yes. And this Aristide was implicated in an assassination on Cyprus. A Turkish tax collector, I think he said. Shot in the back as he was opening his own front door.'
Papathanassiou stirred. 'I know of this case, yes. A very sad business. But it was long ago, more than five years, and Aristide is only my half-brother. My father's youngest son, by his third wife. We were never close, so what has that to do with me?'
'Well, Aristide's on Interpol's wanted list, and it seems they have some idea you helped him get away.'
Papathanassiou nodded somberly. 'I was aware they had that idea. I was questioned at the time, of course. That is all. Never since. But how does it happen, Mr. Dannerman, that you know so much about Interpol?'
'Who, me? Oh, I don't know anything about Interpol,' Dannerman said quickly. 'That's just what the man said. But if Pat finds out I knew about this and didn't tell her she'll be even madder.'
'Madder about what?' Papathanassiou inquired.
'Well, that's where I have this problem. She wanted me to get some data for her, and I said I'd already done it. Actually I hadn't. And now I can't remember the specs for what she wanted, and I can't ask her, because I'd have to admit I lied about doing it already, and I can't look them up because they're in her secure file. So what I wanted to ask you, Dr. Papathanassiou-'
The old man held up his hand. 'Permit me to guess,' he said. He didn't seem angry or surprised, only sorrowful. 'I imagine what you want is for me to give you the access code for the secure file. Simply so you can carry out Dr. Adcock's orders, of course. And then, I imagine, you will no longer feel it necessary to tell her about this other matter.'
'Well… yes. That's about it,' Dannerman agreed, and did not enjoy the expression on the astronomer's face.
It was a long subway ride to Coney Island, and at rush hour the trains were packed. It hadn't taken long, after Papathanassiou left-without saying good-bye, Dannerman remembered-to access the secure file and dump it all into a coded transmission for the National Bureau of Investigation office. But it hadn't left time for anything like a leisurely dinner-at least, not if he wanted to get to the theater early. The best Dannerman could do was to pick up some falafel and a juice box, figuring he could stave off starvation on the way, and then there just wasn't enough elbow room in the standing-room-only subway car to eat them. They were at lower Manhattan before he was able to squirm his way to the corner of the car. He managed to eat his dinner there on the long stretch under the East River, doing his best to avoid spilling hummus on the luckier seated passengers around him, but he took no pleasure in it. For one thing, all that congested body heat had caused all the high-tech micropores in the garments of his fellow passengers to open, and the collective odor was not appetizing. More than that, there was the depressing business with Christo Papathanassiou. Dannerman could not help empathizing with what the old man must be feeling. Hilda was right about one thing anyway, Dannerman admitted to himself. He had the bad habit of letting himself feel what his victims went through. In a way, it was an asset for a professional spook. It had certainly made it easier for him to get along with, for instance, Use of the Mad King Ludwigs, not to mention even the Carpezzios. But sometimes it made him feel, well, guilty.
By the time the train had come out of the ground and begun to run on the old elevated tracks, Dannerman even found a seat. He took advantage of the time to run through his messages, none of which mattered to him, and then did what most of his fellow passengers were doing: stared blankly into space, or watched the advertisements as they circled around the display panels just under the ceiling of the car. What caught his eye was a commercial for a soft drink with a mild tetrahydrocannabinol content-the obligatory surgeon general's warning ran in inconspicuous type under the prancing cartoon figures, along with the legend 'Not to be sold to anyone under 14.' The figures, comically struggling with each other for the soda, were the seven aliens: the Sleepy with its red-shot eyes and pursy little three-cornered mouth, the Happy with its ominous shark-toothed grin, the Bashful, the Doc-all of them, in their sanitized and anthropomorphized Disney-like forms. As cartoons, the creatures were funny and not at all threatening. But suppose, Dannerman thought, suppose the real creatures were somewhere not far away, possibly as close as Starcophagus. Suppose the messages from space had in fact been warnings. Suppose the creatures were actually a clear and present danger that the world really needed to be warned about. Dannerman remembered the little song the taxi driver's Grumpy doll had sung-'Hi-ho, hi-ho, to conquer Earth we go, we'll steal your pearls and all your girls, hi-ho, hi-ho.' But it might not be a joking matter.
Dannerman dismissed the notion; it was simply too fanciful, and, besides, he had nearer concerns. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and thought about just what it was that he was going to say to Anita Berman.
There were a million ways of breaking off a relationship. The trouble was that they all started from the same point: you had to want the relationship to be broken off, and Dannerman was a long way from being certain of that. It was the job that mandated the break, not his personal wishes. Although the life of an NBI agent was surely full of interesting incidents, there was a part of Dan Dannerman that sometimes thought wistfully about what it would be like to live a more settled existence. To have, a home of his own, for instance. In something like a four-room apartment somewhere in the outer suburbs, with a regular job that didn't require him to move somewhere else on short no-i ice. A home that he could share with someone else on a more or less permanent basis. With someone,
