Billie went to the payphone beside the restrooms. Luke sipped his coffee, watching her. As she talked into the phone she smiled and tilted her head, being charming to someone she had woken up. She looked bewitching, and he ached with desire for her.
She returned to the table and said: 'He's going to join us and bring the book.'
Luke checked his watch. It was two a.m. I'll probably go straight to the airport from here. I hope there's an early flight'
Billie frowned. 'Is there a deadline?'
'There might be. I keep asking myself: What could have made me drop everything and rush to Washington? It has to be something to do with the rocket. And what could that be if not a threat to the launch?'
'Sabotage?'
Yes. And if I'm right, I have to prove it before ten-thirty tonight'
'Do you want me to fly to Huntsville with you?'
You have to take care of Larry.'
'I can leave him with Bern.'
Luke shook his head. 'I don't think so ... thanks.'
'You always were an independent son of a gun.'
'It's not that,' he said. He wanted her to understand. 'I'd love you to come with me. That's the trouble - I'd like it too much.'
She reached across the plastic tabletop and took his hand. 'It's okay,' she said.
'This is confusing, you know? I'm married to someone else, but I don't know how I feel about her. What's she like?'
Billie shook her head. 'I can't talk to you about Elspeth. You have to rediscover her yourself.'
'I guess so.'
Billie brought his hand to her lips and kissed it softly.
Luke swallowed. 'Did I always like you so much, or is this new?'
'This is riot new.'
'It seems we get on really well.'
'No. We fight like hell. But we adore one another.'
'You said we were lovers, once - in that hotel suite.' 'Stop it' 'Was it good?'
She looked at him with tears in her eyes. 'The best' 'Then how come I'm not married to you?' She began to cry, soft sobs that shook her small frame. 'Because...' She wiped her face and took a deep breath, then started crying again.' At last she blurted out: 'You got so mad at me, you didn't speak to me for five years.'
.
1945
Anthony's parents had a horse farm near Charlottesville, Virginia, a couple of hours from Washington. It was a big white timber-framed house with rambling wings that contained a dozen bedrooms. There were stables and tennis courts, a lake and a stream, paddocks and woodland. Anthony's mother had inherited it from her father, along with five million dollars.
Luke arrived there on the Friday after Japan surrendered. Mrs. Carroll welcomed him at the door. She was a nervous blonde woman who looked as if she had once been very beautiful. She showed him to a small, spotlessly clean bedroom with a polished board floor and a high old-fashioned bed.
He changed out of his uniform - he now held the rank of major - and put on a black cashmere sport coat and grey flannel pants. As he was tying his tie, Anthony looked in. 'Cocktails in the drawing room whenever you're ready/he said.
'I'll be right there,' Luke said. 'Which room is Billie's?'
A worried frown flickered across Anthony's face. 'The girls are in the other wing, I'm afraid,' he said.
'The Admiral is old-fashioned about that sort of thing.' His rather had spent his life in the navy.
'No problem,' Luke said with a shrug. He had spent the last three years moving around occupied Europe at night he would be able to find his lover's bedroom in, the dark.
When he went downstairs at six o'clock he found all his old friends waiting. As well as Anthony and Billie, there were Elspeth, Bern, and Bern's girlfriend Peg. Luke had spent much of the war with Bern and Anthony, and every leave with Billie, but he -had not seen Elspeth or Peg since 1941.
The Admiral handed him a martini and he took a satisfying gulp. This was a time to celebrate if ever there was one. The conversation was noisy and high-spirited. Anthony's mother looked oh with a vaguely pleased expression, and his father drank cocktails faster than anyone else.
Luke studied them all over dinner, comparing them with the golden youths who had been so worried, four years ago, about being expelled from Harvard. Elspeth was painfully thin after three years on iron rations in wartime London: even her magnificent breasts seemed smaller. Peg, who had been a dowdy girl with a big heart, was now smartly, dressed, but her skillfully made-up face looked hardened and cynical. Bern at twenty-seven looked ten years older. This had been his second war. He had been wounded three times, and he had the gaunt face of a man who has known Coo much suffering, his own and other people's.
Anthony had come through best He had seen some action, but had spent most of the war in Washington. His confidence, his optimism and his offbeat humour had survived intact Billie, too, seemed little changed. She had known hardship and bereavement in childhood, and perhaps that was why the war had not bruised her. She had spent two years undercover in Lisbon, and Luke knew though the others did not - that she had killed a man there, cutting his throat with silent efficiency in the yard behind the cafe where he had been about to sell secrets to the enemy. But she was still a small bundle of radiant energy, gay at one moment and fierce at the next, her constantly changing face a study that Luke never tired of.
It was remarkably lucky that they were all still alive. Most such groups would have lost at least one friend. 'We should drink a toast,' he said, lifting his wine glass. 'To those who survived - and those who did not.'
They all drank, then Bern said: 'I have another- To the men who broke the back of the Nazi war machine 'The Red Army.'
They all drank again, but the Admiral looked displeased and said: 'I think that's enough toasts.'
Bern's communism was still strong, but Luke felt sure he was no longer working for Moscow. They had made a deal, and Luke believed Bern had kept the bargain. Nevertheless, their relationship had never returned to its old warmth. Trusting someone was like holding a little water in your cupped hands - it was so easy to spill the water, and you could never get it back. Luke was sad every time he recalled the comradeship he and Bern had shared, but he felt helpless to regain it.
Coffee was served in the drawing room. Luke handed the cups around. As he offered cream and sugar to Billie, she said in a low voice: 'East wing, second floor, last door on the left'
'Cream?'
She raised an eyebrow.
He smothered a laugh and passed on.
At ten-thirty the Admiral insisted the men move to the billiard room. Hard liquor and Cuban cigars were laid out on a sideboard. Luke refused more booze: he was looking forward to sliding between the sheets next to Billie's warm, eager body, and the last thing he wanted to do then was fall asleep.
The Admiral poured himself a big tumbler of bourbon and took Luke to the far end of the room to show him his guns, standing in a locked display rack on the wall. Luke's family were not hunters, and guns to him were for killing people, not animals, so he took no pleasure in them. He also felt strongly that guns and liquor made a bad combination. However, he feigned interest in order to be polite.
'I know and respect your family, Luke,' the Admiral said as they examined an Enfield rifle. 'Your father is a very great man.'
'Thank you,' Luke said. This sounded like the preamble to a rehearsed speech. His father had spent the war helping to run the Office of Price Administration, but the Admiral probably still thought of him as a banker.
'You'll have to think of your family when you choose a wife, my boy,' the Admiral went on.
Yes, sir, I will.' Luke wondered what was on the old man's mind.
'Whoever becomes Mrs. Lucas will have a place waiting for her in the upper reaches of American society. You must pick a girl who can carry that off.'
Luke began to see where this was going. Annoyed, he abruptly put the rifle back in the rack. 'I'll bear that in
