the filtration unit and Cheryl wound the window down to breathe in relatively fresh cool air.
'I really admire you, Sherry,' Gordon said, playing the same old tune. 'You never stop battering at those doors.'
'Thanks, Gordon.'
'No, I mean it! Really I do. Your father's work is vitally important, crucial I'd say. I truly believe that.'
'If the people in Washington, New York, and Chicago had your faith there'd be no problem. Well, there would be a problem,' she qualified, 'but at least we'd be pulling together and finding ways to overcome it.' Why hadn't she said 'solve it'? Because she didn't believe there was a solution?
'You get them to listen. That's got to be important,' Gordon said seriously. He frowned through the windshield. 'But action by just one country, one government, isn't enough; it's got to be a concerted effort.'
'That's what I keep telling them,' Cheryl said, watching the dark ocean. 'With a really staggering and spectacular lack of success. I'm just one more eco-nut.'
'There you go again! Stop running yourself down like that. You've got guts, that's something 1 really admire.'
'You mean it isn't just my body after all?'
'Come on, Sherry, you're an intelligent woman. I've always had the greatest respect for you as a person.' He glanced across at her. 'Women with both looks and brains are pretty rare.'
Time hadn't changed him one whit, Cheryl thought, not knowing whether to be annoyed or amused. Over the years he'd merely retrenched his position as male chauvinist pig first class. She decided she didn't mind. It was the same old Gordy and she felt safe with him; she knew precisely which keys to press to elicit the desired response.
'Gordon, dear, you say the nicest things to a girl.'
But even such blatant mockery sailed past Gordon's head and vanished in the slipstream--as she was quick to realize when he reached for her hand and said soulfully, 'You know damn well how I feel about you, Sherry. Always have, ever since we were on the
Cheryl extricated her hand from his heated grasp. 'Yes, Gordon, vividly. But in those days we were single. With ro kids.'
'You're single,' he said, as if pointing out a salient fact that had somehow escaped her.
'Yes, I am. You're not.'
'Would it make a difference if I weren't married?'
'I like you, Gordon, and I appreciate your driving all the way to the airport. But let's leave it on those terms, shall we? As friends?'
He stopped outside the single-story wooden house on Borrego Avenue that she had once shared with her father. Now she lived here alone, since Frank, her live-in lover, had departed for Colorado--possibly the reason why Gordon was showing such concern for her welfare.
He tried again before she could get out of the car, clumsily gripping her elbow and sliding his other arm around her shoulders in an awkward embrace. 'I want us to be more than friends. You like me, don't you?'
'I think I just said so.'
'You need someone. You're all alone. If only you'd let--'
'Leave it be, Gordon, please.'
'Sherry, I'm crazy about you. You need me.' His face was near hers, his bony fingers on her neck. 'Come on, Sherry, you do, admit it.' He touched her ample breast.
Cheryl had to quell a rising sickness. Her body felt weak and she couldn't find the strength. His groping became more intimate and anger came to her rescue.
'Get your fucking hands off me this instant, Gordon, and go home to your wife and family.' She struggled free, yanked her attache case from the back seat, almost crowning him with it, and opened the door with such force that the hinges groaned. She got out of the car. 'Understand this. Liking isn't loving. Thanks for the ride.' She slammed the door on his blank hurt face.
Once inside the silent empty house her anger dissolved like instant coffee granules into some other murkier emotion.
She scooped up the mail from the mat and left it on the hall table without looking at it, and went straight into the kitchen, switching on the radio to drown the silence. There was no lingering regret at Frank's departure. That particular episode had played itself to a standstill months before he got the job in Boulder with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Still, it had been two years and a few months of her life. She hadn't even missed the sex much, which had been the only department where they saw, in a manner of speaking, eye to eye.
Cheryl made lemon tea, trying to decide whether or not she was hungry, and carried the glass in its plastic holder into the living room and flicked on the TV for company. Clint Eastwood was killing somebody with a Magnum .45. Had someone killed Theo not with a gun but with a car? For five years she had lived with that unanswered question. The police had filed it away under 'Hit and Run.' Just another fatality to add to the road accident statistics. Cheryl had no contradictory proof, except the inadmissible kind of doubts, fears, suspicions.
Why did she remain unconvinced? It could have been an accident. Yes, it could have been but wasn't. Because Theo had been a pain in the ass to the authorities, that's why. Because he kept plugging away with articles and lectures and letters to journals and newspapers, telling everyone and anyone who'd listen. Because he knew what was corning and certain people knew it was coming and didn't want others to know.
Her mind was a muddle and she was tired. She'd taken on her father's crusade, and as with him it had become an obsession. It had also become her reason for living, her entire life.
She finished her tea and went through the hall to the bedroom, collecting her attache case on the way but leaving the mail untouched and therefore not seeing the envelope with the Russian postmark, which was third in the pile.
The mail would still be there in the morning, and tomorrow, thank God, was another day.
'Everyone needs a label,' John Ware said. 'That's why I'd like you to do this series for us. You've established a reputation and the public trusts you.'
He might have been taken more for a city stockbroker than the editor of a monthly political and current affairs magazine. Pinstripe suit. Old school tie. Well-fed face and plump pink hands resting on the starched white tablecloth. And accent to match. 'What was that thing you did for the BBC?'
' 'Personal Crusade,' ' said Chase.
'Good stuff, pitched at just the right level. Intelligent without being abstruse. I spoke to several people and they were most impressed.'
'I'm glad several people watched it.'
'What I'm after is hard-hitting factual stuff, fully documented. None of that 'a spokesman said' or 'a highly placed source informed me' crap. Opinions like that are two-a-penny. Or at any rate the price of a phone call. You get the idea.'
Chase did, though he wondered at John Ware's motives. Most likely the editor wanted a big topical theme to boost his AB readership. A chance remark in a Fleet Street pub had sparked off the idea to hire Gavin Chase to research and write a series of pieces on environmental problems worldwide, so here he was, being given the full expense-account treatment and lashings of bonhomie in the Unicorn Press Club at ten-past-three on a dismal Tuesday afternoon.
'Now, as to timing,' John Ware said, with the briskness of a stockbroker closing a deal. 'How soon could you leave for the States?'
'Three weeks,' Chase said, having already thought about it. He'd need that length of time to make arrangements.
'What about your bits for TV? Contractual obligations?'
'I'm not under contract. They just call me in on a free-lance basis whenever they need an 'expert's' viewpoint.' Chase spoke casually, with a hint of irony. 'As you say, John, everyone has to have a label.'
'No personal ax-grinding though,' the editor warned him. 'Keep it hard and factual and to the point.' He raised his brandy glass. 'Here's to a successful trip and a terrific series.'
Chase acknowledged the toast and drank. Obviously John Ware, editor in chief of the glossy
Chase took a chance that the tube was running and walked up Chancery Lane to Holborn Station. You could
