is.'
'Oh, I've got a name and a position and even a first-rate recommendation.'
'Well?'
'He doesn't exist.'
'What?'
'You heard me.'
'He doesn't exist?' pressed a frustrated Kendrick.
'Well, one of them does, but not the man who came to see me.' Swann finished his first drink.
'I don't believe this—’
'Neither did Ivy, that's my secretary. Ivy the terrible.'
'What are you talking about?' asked Kendrick plaintively.
'Ivy got a call from Senator Allison's office, from a guy she used to date a couple of years ago. He's one of the Senator's top aides now. He asked her to set up an appointment for a staffer doing some confidential work for Allison, so she did. Well, he turns out to be a blond spook with an accent I placed somewhere in middle Europe, but he's for real, he had you down cold. If you've got a scar that only your mother knows about, believe me, he has a close-up of it.'
'That's crazy,' broke in Evan softly. 'I wonder why?'
'So did I. I mean the questions he asked were loaded with PD--'
'I beg your pardon?'
'Prior data on you. He was giving almost as much as he could get from me. He was so pro I was ready to offer him a Euro-job on the spot.'
'But why we?'
'As I said, I wondered, too. So I asked Ivy to check with Allison's office. To begin with, why would a laid-back senator have that kind of SS—’
'What?'
'Not what you think. “Super-spook”. Come to think of it, I suppose there's a connection.'
'Will you please stick to the point!'
'Sure,' said Swann, drinking his second whisky. 'Ivy calls her old boyfriend, and he doesn't know what she's talking about. He never made any call to her and he never heard of any staffer named—whatever his name was.'
'But she had to know who she was talking to, for God's sake! His voice—the small talk, what they said to each other.'
'Her old beau had a strong Southern accent and was suffering from laryngitis when he phoned her, that's what Ivy claimed. But the cracker who really called her knew the places they went—even down to a couple of motels in Maryland that Ivy would rather not have her husband know about.'
'Christ, it's an operation.' Kendrick reached over and took Swann's drink. 'Why?'
'Why did you just take my whisky? I don't have a swimming pool, remember? Or even a house.'
Suddenly the blaring television set above the bar burst forth with the sharply consonanted name of 'Kendrick!'
Both men snapped their heads over to the source, their eyes wide, unbelieving.
'Newsbreak! The story of the hour, perhaps the decade!’ yelled a TV journalist among a crowd of leering faces peering into the camera. 'For the last twelve hours all Washington has been trying to find Congressman Evan Kendrick of Colorado, the hero of Oman, but to no avail. The worst fears, of course, centre around the possibility of Arab retaliation. We're told the government has directed the police, the hospitals and the morgues to be on the alert. Yet only minutes ago he was seen on this very street corner, specifically identified by one Kasimir Bola—Bola… slawski. Where are you from, sir?'
'Jersey City,' replied the wild-eyed man with
