“How’d you get in?” Toad asked, still staring.
“Just asked for a key at the desk.”
He got the door closed and latched and sat down on the end of the bed, close to her. The furniture was early Conrad Hilton, and there wasn’t much of it.
He cleared his throat as she stared straight into his eyes.
“I was writing a letter,” she said, her eyes never wavering from his. “To you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I can finish it later.”
“What’s it going to be about?”
“I’m sorry about the scene today in the parking lot. I just wanted — oh, I — let’s forget it, shall we?”
“Sure,” he said. “It was only a little pothole on the hard, righ- teous road.” His gaze was drifting lower and lower. “Not enough to get us sidetracked onto that short, steep road that leads down — . down straight…” Her nipples were visible through the lace of the teddy, ripe, red…
Rita stood in one smooth, fluid motion. “I want to make love to you.” she murmured as she peeled off the teddy, “but I don’t want to be too forward.”
He pursed his Ups and nodded. “Uh-huh.” He reached out and she slid into his arms, her skin all silky and smooth.
“Should we turn off the lights?” she suggested as he caressed her breasts with his lips. “‘
“You’re pretty enough for lights,” he said, and pulled her down on the bed beside him.
“I don’t want you to get the idea that I just want you for sex,” she said tentatively.
His mouth was fall of breast, so the best he could manage was a reassuring noise.
“The sex is great, of course, but I want us to have something else.” She ran her fingers through his hair, then smoothed the stray locks. “You’re a pretty terrific guy, and it’s more than sex. That’s what I was trying to get at this afternoon in the parking lot.”
Toad reluctantly took a last lick at that swollen nipple, then shifted his body until his eyes were inches from hers. “Are you trying to tell me you’re in love with me?”
She frowned. “I suppose. It hasn’t happened quite the way I always dreamed it would. Girls have their fantasies.” She took a tiny little nip on her lower lip. “I hope I’m saying this right. You don’t mind, do you?”
“I’m delighted. I’m falling in love with you and I’m glad you feel the same way.”
“I love you,” Rita Moravia said softly, savoring it, then gently pulled his mouth onto hers.
When she was asleep. Toad eased out of bed and peered through the curtain. He was restless. Why had he said that — that falling-in- love stuff? Only a cretin tells a woman that just before he beds her. He sat in a chair and worried a fingernail. He was getting in over his head again and he had his doubts. Was he just scared? Nah, a little frightened maybe, nervous, but not scared. Why is it all women want to fall in love? He wondered what Samuel Dodgers would say on that subject
Dreyfus laid it on Camacho’s desk and sat down to light his pipe. Camacho knew what it was: his boss had called him. It was a copy of a letter. The original was at the lab.
He opened the folder that the lab technicians used for copies and glanced at it. There was no date. The envelope was postmarked Bakersfield, California, three days ago. The message was in florid longhand, yet quite legible.
Dear Sir,
I think it’s my duty to inform you that my daughter’s hus- band, Petty Officer First Class Terry Franklin USN, is a spy. He works at the Pentagon. Computers, or something like that. I don’t know how long he has been a spy, but he is. My daughter Lucy is sure he is and so am I. He got a funny phone call once that Lucy overheard and he got really really mad when he found out Lucy mentioned her suspicions to a neigh- bor. Lucy is afraid of him and so am I. He is crazy. He is a spy like that Walker fellow.
We are good citizens and pay our taxes and know you will do what has to be done. We are sorry for him but he did this himself. Lucy had absolutely nothing to do with this spy thing, and that’s why I am writing this letter. I wanted her to write it but she said she just couldn’t, even though she knows it has to be this way. Please arrest him and keep Lucy and the kids out of it. Please don’t tell the newspapers he is married. His name is Terry Franklin and he works at the Pentagon and he is a spy. And PLEASE, whatever you do, don’t tell Terry we told on him. He is crazy.
Sincerely, Flora May Southworth
“Can you get a divorce in California if your spouse is a spy?”
Dreyfus snorted. “You can get a divorce in California if your spouse farts in bed.”
“Progressive as hell.”
“Right out front.”
“Better call out there and have an agent go interview them. Tell him to stay all afternoon and take lots of notes.”
“You don’t want them going to the press?”
“Do you know what the committee is going to want to do about this?”
“Well, they sure are gonna have to do something. Now we got the mother-in-law writing us letters. They probably talked to their minister and a lawyer and every neighbor in a five-block radius.”
“Not letters. A letter. One letter with no hard facts and a variety of unsubstantiated allegations. We get two dozen letters like this every month from people out to get even with someone in a sensi- tive job. I repeat, do you know what the committee—“
“No.” He spit it out.
“So we had better do our best to convince Mrs. Southworth we are going like gangbusters on this hot tip. Pledge confidentiality. Better send two agents. Tell them to be thorough. Then two days later go back for a follow- up interview with more questions. New questions, not repeats.”
“A major break like this, maybe you want to send me out there to see that they do it right? I could go by bus, get there in a week or so.”
Camacho ignored him. He picked up the letter and read it again. Then he pulled a legal pad around and began making notes. Drey- fus got the message and left in a swirl of smoke, closing the door behind him.
Camacho threw the legal pad at the door.
14
With its twin engines bellowing a roar that could be heard for several miles, the Intruder departed the earth with a delicate wiggle, a perceptible rocking of the wings that Rita Moravia automatically smoothed with the faintest side pressure on the control stick. She had let the takeoff trim setting rotate the plane’s nose to eight degrees nose-up and had stopped it there with a nudge of forward stick in that delicious moment when the weight of twenty-five tons of machine and fuel was transferred from the main landing gear to the wings. This was the transition to flight, a shimmering, imprecise hesitation as the machine gathered its strength and the wings took a firm bite into the warm morning air.
Now safely airborne, Rita slapped the gear handle up with her left hand. Her right thumb flicked at the coolie-hat button on the top of the stick, trimming the stick pressure to neutral as the twin- engined warplane accelerated.
She checked to make sure the landing gear were up and locked. They were. Temps, RPMs, fuel flow normal. Oil and hydraulic pressure okay. Using her left hand again, she raised the flap handle as she caressed the stick with her right to hold the nose steady through the configuration change. Accelerating nicely. Flaps and slats up and in and the stabilizer shifted, she isolated the flight hydraulic system and continued to trim. At 290 knots indicated she pulled the nose higher into the sky in order to comply with Jake Grafton’s directive not to exceed 300 knots.
Toad had activated the IFF and was talking to Departure. Now he switched to Los Angeles Center. The controller asked him to push the identification button on the IFF—“squawk ident”—and he complied. “Xray Echo 22, radar contact. Come left to a heading of 020. Passing Flight Level 180, proceed on course.”
Rita Moravia dipped the left wing as Toad rogered.
