proprietor had given her.
Hana opened and glanced at it, then she laughed in her low, minor-key voice. 'It is a bill. And very neatly itemized, too. Ah, these French. One franc for the telephone call. One franc for your coffee. And an additional one franc fifty—an estimate of the tip you would have left. My goodness, we have made a good bargain! We have the pleasure of your company for only three francs fifty.' She laughed and set the bill aside. Then she reached across and placed her warm, dry hand upon Hannah's arm. 'Young lady? I don't think you realize that you are crying.'
'What?' Hannah put her hand to her cheek. It was wet with tears. My God, how long had she been crying? 'I'm sorry. It's just... This morning my friends were... I
'I know, dear. I know. Now finish your tea. There is something in it to make you rest. Then I will show you up to your room, where you can bathe and sleep. And you will be fresh and beautiful when you meet Nicholai. Just leave your rucksack here. One of the girls will see to it.'
'I should explain—'
But Hana raised her hand. 'You explain things to Nicholai when he comes. And he will tell me what he wants me to know.'
Hannah was still sniffling and feeling like a child as she followed Hana up the wide marble staircase that dominated the entrance hall. But she could feel a delicious peace spreading within her. Whatever was in the tea was softening the crust of her memories and floating them off to a distance. 'You're being very kind to me, Mrs. Hel,' she said sincerely.
Hana laughed softly. 'Do call me Hana. After all, I am not Nicholai's wife. I am his concubine.'
Washington
The elevator door opened silently, and Diamond preceded Miss Swivven into the white workspace of the Sixteenth Floor.
'...and I'll want them available within ten minutes after call: Starr, the Deputy, and that Arab. Do you have that?'
'Yes, sir.' Miss Swivven went immediately to her cubicle to make the necessary arrangements, while the First Assistant rose from his console.
'I have the scan of Asa Stern's first-generation contacts, sir. It's coming in now.' He felt a justifiable pride. There were not ten men alive who had the skill to pull a list based upon amorphous emotional relationships out of Fat Boy.
'Give me a desk RP on it,' Diamond ordered as he sat in his swivel chair at the head of the conference table.
'Coming up. Oops! Just a second, sir. The list is one-hundred-eighty percent inverted. It will only take a moment to flip it.'
It was typical of the computer's systemic inability to distinguish between love and hate, affection and blackmail, friendship and parasitism, that any list organized in terms of such emotional rubrics stood a 50/50 chance of coming in inverted. The First Assistant had foreseen this danger and had seeded the raw list with the names of Maurice Herzog and Heinrich Himmler (both H's). When the printout showed Himmler to be greatly admired by Asa Stern, and Herzog to be detested, the First Assistant dared the assumption that Fat Boy had done a 180.
'It's not just a naked list, is it?' Diamond asked.
'No, sir. I've requested pinhole data. Just the most salient facts attached to each name, so we can make useful identification.'
'You're a goddamned genius, Llewellyn.'
The First Assistant nodded in absentminded agreement as he watched the list crawl up his screen in sans- serif IBM lettering.
STERN, DAVID
RELATIONSHIP EQUALS SON... WHITE CARD...
STUDENT, AMATEUR ATHLETE... KILLED, 1972 sub MUNICH OLYMPICS...
* * *
STERN, JUDITH
RELATIONSHIP EQUALS WIFE... PINK CARD...
SCHOLAR. RESEARCHER...
DEAD, 1956 sub NATURAL CAUSES...
* * *
ROTHMANN, MOISHE
RELATIONSHIP EQUALS FRIEND... WHITE CARD...
PHILOSOPHER, POET... DEAD, 1958 sub NATURAL CAUSES...
* * *
KAUFMANN, S. I.
RELATIONSHIP EQUALS FRIEND... RED CARD...
POLITICAL ACTIVIST... RETIRED...
* * *
HEL, NICHOLAI ALEXANDROVITCH
RELATIONSHIP EQUALS FRIEND...
'Stop!' Diamond ordered. 'Freeze that!' The First Assistant scanned the next fragments of information. 'Oh, my goodness!'
Diamond leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. When CIA screws up, they certainly do it in style! 'Nicholai Hel,' Diamond pronounced, his voice a monotone.
'Sir?' the First Assistant said softly, recalling the ancient practice of executing the messenger who brings bad news. 'This Nicholai Hel is identified with a
'I know... I know.'
'Ah... I suppose you'll want a complete pull and printout on Hel, Nicholai Alexandrovitch?' the First Assistant asked, almost apologetically.
'Yes.' Diamond rose and walked to the big window beyond which the illuminated Washington Monument stood out against the night sky, while double rows of automobile headlights crawled down the long avenue toward the Center—the same automobiles that were always at the same place at this time every evening.
'You'll find the pull surprisingly thin.'
'Thin, sir? On a mauve card?'
'On
Within the color-coding system, mauve punch cards indicated the most elusive and dangerous of men, from the Mother Company's point of view: Those who operated without reference to nationalistic or ideological prejudices, free-lance agents and assassins who could not be controlled through pressure upon governments; those who killed for either side.
Originally, color-coding of punch cards was introduced into Fat Boy for the purpose of making immediately evident certain bold characteristics of a subject's life and work. But from the very first. Fat Boy's systemic inability to deal with abstractions and shadings reduced the value of the system. The problem lay in the fact that Fat Boy was permitted to color-code himself, in terms of certain input principles.
The first of these principles was that only such people as constituted real or potential threats to the Mother Company and the governments She controlled would be represented by color-coded cards, all others being identified by standard white cards. Another principle was that there be a symbolic relationship between the color of the card and the nature of the subject's affiliations. This worked well enough in its simplest forms: Leftist agitators and terrorists were represented by red cards; Rightist politicians and activists received blue cards; sympathizers of the Left had pink cards; abettors of ultra-conservatives had powder blue. (For a brief time, devoted Liberals were assigned yellow cards, in concurrence with British political symbolism, but when the potential for effective action by Liberals was assessed by Fat Boy, they were reassigned white cards indicating political impotence.)
The value of color-coding came under criticism when the system was applied to more intricate problems. For instance, active supporters of the Provisional IRA and of the various Ulster defense organizations were randomly assigned green or orange cards, because Fat Boy's review of the tactics, philosophy, and effectiveness of the two groups made them indistinguishable from one another.
