that had to be done first. She put through a call to the electronics man, to tell him that someone seemed to be able to tap into Bureau business. She called Personnel to produce a list of candidates to replace Captain Terman. What she needed, she thought, was a field-grade officer who knew enough about biology and technology to shake up die teams at Camp Smolley-or at least knew enough to know who to requisition as his operations officers. She was studying the personnel files of the first three candidates when Agent Dannerman appeared at her door.
She turned to scowl at him, and he was scowling back at her. 'What's happening with the other one?' he demanded.
She elected not to bother with reprimanding him for walking uninvited into her office. 'He's on a classified mission, out of the country-'
'I know it's a classified mission, and I know it's out of the country. It's in goddam Ukraine, where Rosaleen Artzybachova is.'
'And it's none of your business, Danno. How'd you even know about it?'
'Christ. Hilda, the Pats talk to each other, you know. He took one of them with him!'
She sighed and shook her head. 'It's not your operation, and it's classified.'
'Tell me one thing,' he insisted. 'What's he supposed to do with her when he finds her. Rescue her? Or cut her head off?'
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was the first time Pat Adcock had ever traveled on a passport- actually, on two different passports-that were not her own, and it was certainly the first time she had had to do any of that cloak-and-dagger hsst!-here-are-the- papers! stuff. It made her nervous. On the way to Frankfurt she slept as much as she could. She knew that, with the wig and a lot more makeup than she had ever worn before, she didn't really look a lot like herself; but she didn't want to test it by talking too much to her seatmates. She worried about making her connections, but when she walked into the lobby of the airport hotel there was Dannerman, smoking a large cigar and studying a German paper, just as he was supposed to be. 'Liebchen!' he cried. 'Ma cherie!' And as he flung his arms around her and gave her a surely unnecessarily big kiss-his stiff German beard scratched her cheek, and the son of a bitch tasted horribly of cigar smoke-he whispered in her ear, 'Give me the passport and tickets.'
She did-quite openly, because the Bureau spooks who briefed her had had no confidence in her ability to be surreptitious, and, although she watched carefully, she didn't see what he did with them. All she saw was that he picked up his briefcase from the armchair, tossed his newspaper down, put out his cigar and offered his arm. And as they left the lobby she looked back and saw that, yes, just as had been planned, somebody was casually picking up the paper, along with whatever Dannerman had slipped into it, as though simply to see what the day's soccer results were like.
On the Aeroflot flight to Kiev she hoped to feign sleep again, but Dannerman was having none of it. Probably it was the suppressed actor in the man, she thought irritably. He was playing his part to the hilt. Then it was champagne for the two of them, because the honey-blonde flight attendants were glad to make the flight as comfortable as possible for Herr Doktor Heinrich Sholtz, the statistician from the Gesellschaft fur Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung mbH, who was combining business and honeymooning with his pretty (though surely a bit long in the tooth?) French bride, Yvette; and how charming it was that neither of them spoke the other's language, and so they could converse only in English. The second bottle of champagne (Georgian, of course, but still) came with the compliments of the captain, with his best wishes for the newlyweds. It went well with the pale pink caviar.
It wasn't such an awful assignment after all, Pat conceded to herself. In fact, the whole thing was turning into an adventure. Flushed with the wine, enjoying playing her cloak-and-dagger part, she thought of the three other Pats who had been passed over. She admitted to herself that she had been a little jealous of them. Sure, they had suffered privation and fear and even pain, but they were the ones who had had the excitement, too, had been to places where no other human had ever gone, had met alien creatures-all that-while all she herself had had to talk about was boredom and aggravation in the Bureau's jail. It was only fair that she get some of the thrilling stuff now, while they were condemned to stay at home because the Bureau didn't want to risk-
Didn't want to risk-
Abruptly Pat set the champagne glass down. Dannerman turned solicitously to her. 'Is something wrong, Yvette?'
'Not really, Heinrich,' she managed to say, but it was untrue. What was wrong was that she had suddenly realized what it was that the Bureau didn't want to risk. It was what the other Pats and the other Dannerman knew, those little facts about their captivity somewhere in space that the Bureau was not prepared to share, just yet, with the rest of the world. If these terrorists should capture them, they would surely find ways to make them tell everything they knew.
While if she and Dan were captured, even the most painful interrogation was bound to fail, because there wasn't anything of that sort that those two could tell. But that would not keep the terrorists from trying.
Pat had never been in Eastern Europe before. For that matter, she hadn't been in any part of Europe frequently enough to know it; her overseas traveling had been limited to the usual Grand Tour-Singapore, Japan, the PRC-that had been Uncle Cubby's graduation present, plus an occasional weekend seminar. For the seminars you flew in and you flew out, and there wasn't much sightseeing in between. You spent your time in colloquia and cocktail parties with your astronomical colleagues. If you found an hour or two for a quick peek at whatever the local attraction happened to be in whatever otherwise indistinguishable city that particular meeting chanced to be held in, you counted yourself a lucky tourist.
In Kiev she was a very lucky tourist. As long as she was able to keep the thought of what might happen if they were discovered out of her mind, there was a lot to enjoy. The Great Gate Hotel was surprisingly comfortable (Great Gate, Great Gate-oh, right, she tardily recalled. Mussorgsky. Pictures at an Exhibition. 'The Great Gate at Kiev.' Which explained the continuing low murmur of music in the elevators.) The food was good-well, interesting, at least; there seemed to be more garlic in the borscht than she had expected. The service was uneven, but always friendly, with a lot of, 'What a pity you come in winter! Kiev is so beautiful in spring, the chestnut trees in bloom, everything fresh and lovely.' The only thing that troubled her (not counting that one big worry at the back of her mind) was the bed.
What was wrong with the bed in their room was that there was only one of it. It was a big bed, with a comfortable mattress and a giant-sized duvet to keep them warm. But there was only the one. The Ukrainians evidently felt that a married couple, particularly a honeymooning married couple, had no need of separate-but-equal accommodations.
For a moment Pat had actually tried demanding that Dannerman sleep on the floor, but all that had got her was a warning finger to the lips and being dragged to the bathroom. There, with the shower running full tilt to cover his whispers, he pointed out that Slavs had a notorious habit of bugging foreigners and they were, after all, supposed to be newlyweds.
It wasn't until they were actually retiring that night that it occurred to Pat to wonder just how newlywed they were supposed to act. But he got chastely into his side of the bed, and, decorously pajamaed, she got into hers, and that night, at least, the unseen observers, if any, didn't have anything interesting to watch.
Meanwhile, there was sightseeing.
What they had to do (Dannerman had explained to her) was to wait until they were contacted. By whom? By the 'zek children' who were supposed to be Rosaleen's bodyguards, but who, he explained, might also be members of the Ukrainian nationalist terror group, who were planning to kidnap Dr. Rosaleen Artzybachova for purposes of their own. Meanwhile they were to conduct themselves just as the newlyweds (but combining business with their honeymoon) Herr Doktor and Frau Doktor Heinrich Sholtz would.
And once they were contacted? What were they supposed to do then?
That was where Dannerman's explanations became vague and unsatisfying. Rescue Dr. Artzybachova, of course, he said; but when she asked him why they didn't simply turn the matter over to the local po-t lice all he could say was that some of the police were probably also members of the terrorist group themselves. The two of them would have to thwart the terrorists' plan on their own.
