Schey held toward the back of the group, anonymous in the dark, snow-blown morning, until the big buses appeared and pulled up with a hiss of their air brakes.
K-25. The Americans were now pinning their hopes on the gaseous diffusion method. It would work. Everyone was confident.
A fast-moving gray sedan flashed past the Administration building and turned down Schey’s street.
For several pregnant seconds he stared at the car, trying to catalogue exactly what he had seen.
“Come on,” someone behind him complained. He was holding up the line. He stepped aside.
Government plates. There were two men. Hats, overcoats.
Gray car. Some kind of a shield painted on the door … Security!
“Damnit,” Schey said, looking up as the last of the workmen hurried across the street and boarded the bus for K-25. He smiled sheepishly. “I forgot my lunch.”
“You comin’ or not, fella?” the driver said down to him. His right hand was on the door lever.
“Can’t go without my lunch,” Schey said, and he turned and strode down the street toward his house, his pounding heart steadying as he fought for control. Catherine and the baby were innocents. He hadn’t wanted them involved in this.
There were no reasons for him to suspect that security was on its way to his house. On its way to see him. No real reasons. Yet lately Schey had been getting that between-the shoulder-blades feeling that someone was watching him, that someone was dogging his every move. Riley had not been the same toward him ever since the Maine trip. Some of that Schey had put down to his own feelings of paranoia after what had happened up there.
But Riley was different toward him.
It didn’t matter, though, what he suspected or didn’t suspect; he was going to have to find out for sure. If they were after him, he’d have to deal with it. Better here than at the plant.
Already his mind was racing forward to Knoxville and his car.
He’d have to retrieve the radio transmitter, if there was time, and then he’d have to get to Washington, D. C., and his contact. All before the general alarm was sounded and an effective dragnet was begun.
Schey seldom if ever carried a weapon. His instructors at Park Zorgvliet had warned against it: “If you find yourself in a situation where you need a weapon, it will no longer matter what you do, for your cover will have been blown. But if you don’t have a weapon on you, there will always be that element of doubt: Is he a spy or is he innocent? Where there is doubt, there certainly is hope.”
Only at this moment Schey wished he had a gun.
It took less than five minutes for him to make it to the end of his block. His tiny prefab house was on the upper side of the block in a long row of nearly identical structures. His house was lit up. The gray sedan was parked in front of it.
So this was it, after all. Whatever plans he had been making for moving on were now forced upon him. He resented it, almost as much as he was frightened and sad for Catherine and the baby.
There were lights on in a couple of other houses on the block, but everything else was dark and silent, the snow muffling all sounds. From each chimney came a plume of white smoke bent over with the wind. It was very cold.
He had three choices. He could take the bus into Knoxville right now; chances were, no alarm had been sounded. Or he could steal a car if need be. Or if the circumstances warranted it, he could walk; he knew the route through the hills, past the security posts, out of here. That would be the most extreme. But it all depended upon what security knew, why they had come here. If it was merely on some suspicion for one thing or another, he’d be safe for at least a little while. But if they had found his transmitter or if they had somehow connected him with the thing in Maine, he’d have trouble getting out of here. Before he made that decision, he’d have to know.
Keeping to the shadows, he made his way up the block, to a spot across from where the government car was parked. The curtains on all the windows in his house were drawn, so he could not see what was going on inside.
Ducking low, he hurried across the street and looked in the car. The keys were in the ignition. The Americans always had such supreme confidence. He smiled.
There was no one coming. No traffic on the street. No one on the way to work. No one out on a porch or in a window watching what was going on over here. The neighborhood could have been deserted.
Schey hurried around the front of the car, across his snow covered lawn, and around to the backdoor that led into the back hall and kitchen.
He mounted the two steps, scraped the frost off the one small window at eye level, and looked inside. The kitchen door was closed, as he hoped it would be. He opened the back door, stepped inside, and softly closed it.
For several seconds he stood in the darkness, breathing shallowly, listening for sounds from inside. Someone called from upstairs.
Schey couldn’t quite make out the words, but it was a man’s voice. The hairs at the nape of his neck bristled. A man was in his house. An intruder. He felt a sense of righteous indignation.
A door closed somewhere near (a closet?) and he could hear a man’s heavy footfalls on the stairs.
There had been two of them in the car. One of them had called from upstairs. The other had just gone up.
Schey pulled off his coat so that he would have more freedom of movement, hung it on a hook, and eased open the kitchen door.
Catherine, still dressed
