Kendrick's hat on his head, 'but my roots are in Warsaw! God's holy Warsaw!'
'You were born in Poland, then.'
'Not exactly. In Newark.'
'But you saw Congressman Kendrick?'
'Positively. He was talking to a grey-haired man a couple blocks back outside a bus. Then when I shouted “Commando Kendrick, it's him,” they started running! I know! I got television sets in every room, including the toilet. I never miss anything!'
'When you say a couple of blocks back, sir, you're actually referring to a corner two and a half streets from the Department of State, are you not?'
'You betcha!'
'We're certain,' added the sincerely confidential newscaster looking into the camera, 'that the authorities are checking State to see if any such person as our witness has described could be a part of this extraordinary rendezvous.'
'I chased them!' yelled the witness in baggy pants, removing Evan's hat. 'I got his hat! See, it's the commando's own hat!'
'But what did you hear, Mr. Bolaslawski? Back by the bus?'
'I tell you, things are not always what they seem! You can't be too careful. Before they ran away, the man with grey hair gave Commando Kendrick an order. I think he had a Russian accent, maybe Jewish! The Commies and the Jews—you can't trust 'em, you know what I mean? They never seen the inside of a church! They don't know what the Holy Mass is—'
The television channel abruptly switched to a commercial extolling the virtues of an underarm deodorant.
'I surrender,' said Swann, forcibly taking his drink back from Evan and swallowing it whole. 'Now I'm a mole. A Russian Jew from the KGB who doesn't know what Mass is. Anything else you want to do for me?'
'No, because I believe you. But you can do something for me, and it's in both our interests. I've got to find out who's doing this to me, who's done what you're being blamed for, and why.'
'And if you do find out,' interrupted Swann, leaning forward, 'you'll tell me? That's in my interest, my only interest right now. I've got to get off this hook and put someone else on it.'
'You'll be the first to know.'
'What do you want?'
'A list of everyone who knew I went to Masqat.'
'That's not a list, it's a tight little circle.' Swann shook his head, not so much to be negative as to explain. 'There wouldn't have been that if you hadn't said you might need us if it came down to something you couldn't handle. I made it clear. We couldn't afford to acknowledge you because of the hostages.'
'How tight is the circle?'
'Everything was verbal, you understand.'
'Understood. How tight?'
'Nonoperational was restricted to that unmitigated prick, Herbert Dennison, the ball-breaking White House chief of staff, then to the secretaries of State and Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I was the liaison to all four, and you can rule them out. They all had too much to lose and nothing to gain by your surfacing.' Swann leaned back in the booth, frowning. 'The operational section was on a strict need-to-know basis. There was Lester Crawford at Langley. Les is the CIA's analyst for covert activities in the area, and at the end his station chief in Bahrain—something-or-other Grayson—James Grayson, that's it. He was kicking up a fuss about letting you and Weingrass out of his area, thinking the Company had gone nuts and was ploughing right into one oft hose caught-in-the-act situations. Caught-In-the-Act, CIA, get it?'
'I'd rather not.'
'Then there were four or five on-scene Arabs, the best we and the Company have, each of whom studied your photograph but weren't given your identity. They couldn't tell what they didn't know. The last two did know who you were, one was on the scene, the other here at OHIO-Four-Zero running the computers.'
'The computers?' asked Kendrick.
