John D. MacDonald

Betrayed

It was an Indian summer afternoon in mid-October. Sunday afternoon. Francie had gone back to the lab, five miles from the lakeside cabin, but Cudahy, the Administrator, had shooed her out, saying that he was committing enough perjury on the civil-service hours-of-work reports without having her work Sundays, too.

And so Francie Aintrell had climbed back into her ten-year-old sedan and come rattlety-bang over the potholed highways back to the small cabin. She sat on the miniature porch, her back against a wooden upright, fingers laced around one blue-jeaned knee.

Work, she had learned, was one of the anesthetics. Work and time. They all talked about time and what it would do for you. The healing wonder of time. As though each second could be another tiny layer of insulation between you and Bob. And one day, when enough seconds and minutes and years had gone by, you could look in your mirror and see a face old enough to be the mother of Bob, and his face would remain young and unchanged in memory. But she could look in the wavery mirror in the little camp and touch her cheeks with her finger tips, touch the face that he had loved, see the blue eyes he had loved, the black hair. And, thinking of him, her face would become like one of those putty faces children play with. Something would take it and twist it out of shape, force it to despairing tears.

No, work was better. And then she could forget the classic shape of the little tragedy. West Point, post World War II class. Second Lieutenant Robert Aintrell. One of the expendable ones. And expended, of course, near a reservoir no one had ever heard of before. KIA. A lot of them from that class became KIA on the records.

When he had been sent to Korea she had gone from the West Coast back to the Pentagon and applied for reinstatement. Clerk-stenographer. CAF 6. Assigned to the District Control Section of the Industrial Service Branch of the Office of the Chief of Ordnance. “Mrs. Aintrell. Yes, her husband is in Korea. Regular Army. Tough on the kids, isn’t it, Colonel?”

And all the tired lyrics of the radio songs take on new meanings. As though written for you alone.

They send you a wire and you open it, and the whole world makes a convulsive twist and lands in a new pattern. It can’t happen to you. And to Bob. But it has.

So, after the first hurt, so sharp and wild that it was like a kind of insanity, Francie applied for work outside of Washington, because they had been together in Washington, and that made it a place to escape from.

Everyone had been sweet. Too sweet. Keeping her on the edge of tears. And then there had been the investigation. Very detailed. Very thorough. “Yes, Mrs. Aintrell is a loyal citizen. Class A security risk.”

Promotion to CAF 7. “Report to Mr. Cudahy, please. Vanders, New York. Yes, that’s in the Adirondacks. Near Lake Arthur. Sorry, the only name we have for that organization is Unit 30.”

And three miles from Vanders, five miles from the lake, she had found a new gravel road, a shining wire fence at the end of it, a guard post, a cinder-block building, a power cable marching over the hills on towers, ending at the lab.

She had reported to Cudahy, a fat little mild-eyed man. She could not tell, but she thought he approved of her. “Mrs. Aintrell, you have been approved by Security. There is no need, is there, to tell you not to discuss what we are doing here?”

“No, sir.”

“We are concerned with electronics, with radar. This is a research organization. The terminology will give you difficulty at first. If we accomplish our mission here, Mrs. Aintrell, we will be able to design a nose fuse for interceptor rockets which will make any air attack on this continent... too expensive to contemplate.”

At that, Cudahy hitched in his chair and turned so that he could glance over his shoulder at an enlarged photograph of an illustration Francie remembered seeing in a magazine. It showed the fat, red bloom of the atom god towering over the skyline of Manhattan.

Cudahy turned back and smiled. “That is the threat that goads us on. Now come meet the staff.”

Most of them were young. The names and faces were a blur. Francie didn’t mind. She knew that she would straighten them out soon enough. Ten scientists and engineers. About fifteen technicians. And then the guards and housekeeping personnel. The bachelor staff lived behind the wire. The married staff rented cabins in the vicinity. Cudahy’s administrative assistant was a tall, youngish man with deep-set, quiet eyes, a relaxed manner, a hint of stubbornness in the set of the jaw. His name was Clinton Reese.

After they were introduced, Cudahy said, “I believe Clint has found a place for you.”

“Next best thing to a cave, Mrs. Aintrell,” Clint had said. “But you have lovely neighbors. Mostly bears. You have a car?”

“No, I haven’t,” she replied. His casual banter seemed oddly out of focus when she looked beyond his shoulder and saw that picture on Cudahy’s office wall.

“I’ll take you to the local car mart and we’ll get you one, then.”

Cudahy said, “Thanks, Clint. Show her where she’ll work and give her a run-through on the duties, then take her out to that place you rented... We’ll expect you at nine tomorrow morning, Mrs. Aintrell.”

Clint took her to her desk. He said, “Those crazy people you met are scientists and engineers. They work in teams, attempting different avenues of approach to the same problem. Left to their own devices, they’d keep notes on the backs of match folders. Because even scientists sometimes drop dead, we have to keep progress reports up to date in case somebody else has to take over. There are three teams. You’ll take notes, transcribe them, and keep the program files. Tomorrow I’ll explain the care of madmen. Ready to go?”

They stopped in Vanders and picked up her luggage from the combination general store and bus depot. Clint loaded it into the back of his late-model sedan. He chattered amiably all the way out to the road that bordered the north shore of Lake Arthur. He pulled off into a small clearing just off the road and said, “We’ll leave the stuff here in case it turns out to be a little too primitive.”

The trail leading down the wooded slope toward the lake shore was hard-packed. At the steepest point there was a rustic handrail. When Francie first saw the small cabin, the deep blue of the lake beyond it, her heart seemed to turn over. Bob had talked of just such a place. A porch overlooking the lake. A small wooden dock. And the perfect stillness of the woods in mid-September.

The interior was small. One fair-sized room with a wide built-in bunk. A gray stone fireplace. A tiny kitchen and bath.

Clint Reese said, in the manner of a guide, “You will note that this little nest has modern conveniences. Running water, latest model lanterns for lights. Refrigerator, stove, heater, and hot-water heater all run on bottled gas. We never get more than eight feet of snow, so I’m told, and you’ll have to have a car. The unscrupulous landlord wants forty a month. Like?”

She turned toward him, smiling. “Like very much.”

“Now I’ll claw my way up your hill and bring down your bags. You check the utensils and supplies. I laid in some food, on the gamble that you’d like it here.”

He came down with the bags, making a mock show of exhaustion. He explained the intricacies of the lanterns and the heaters, then said that he’d pick her up in the morning at eight-fifteen.

“You’ve been very kind,” she said.

“Dogs and children go wild about me. See you tomorrow.”

After he had disappeared around the bend of the trail she stood frowning. He was her immediate superior, and he had acted totally unlike any previous superior in the Civil Service hierarchy. Usually they were most reserved, most cautious. He seemed entirely too blithe and carefree to be able to do an administrative job of the type this Unit 30 apparently demanded. He was a puzzle, and she wondered if it could be her recent loss that made his joking manner slightly irritating.

But he had been efficient about the cabin. And so, on a mid-September afternoon, she had unpacked. The first thing she took out of the large suitcase was Bob’s picture. The favorite one. No uniform. A sport shirt open at the throat. The steady gray eyes and the smile. She could imagine him saying, “Baby, how do you know there aren’t any bears in those woods? Fine life for a city gal.”

“I’ll get along, Bob,” she told him. “I promise you I’ll get along.”

It was all part of that next-to-the-last letter, the one that had come a day before the telegram:

“Kindly excuse writing, baby. Blame a pencil stub and frequent stops to warm hands under parka. Look, I don’t want to hex us. Our luck is good. It will stay good. I’ve learned a new trade. They ought to have a course in it at the Point. Ducking IV. But suppose I zig when I ought to zag? Write me something. Write me that, no matter what, you’ll get along. With your head up, and all saucy like I know you. Write me that.”

But there hadn’t been time, of course, to write him that.

And with his picture watching her, she unpacked, and cooked, and ate, and went to bed in the deep bunk, surrounded by the pine smell, the leaf rustle, the lap of water against the small dock.

The work had been very hard at first, mostly because of the technical terms used in the reports, and also because of the backlog of data that had piled up since the illness of the previous girl. During the worst of it Clint found ways to make her smile. He helped her in her purchase of the ten-year-old car. The names and faces straightened out quickly, with Clint’s help. Gray, chubby young Dr. Jonas McKay, with razor-sharp mind. Tom Blajoviak, with Slavic slanting merry eyes, heavy-handed joshing, big shoulders. Dr. Sherra, lost in a private fog of mental mathematics and conjecture.

Francie had pictured laboratories as being gleaming, spotless places, full of stainless steel, sparkling glass, white smocks. Unit 30 was a chaotic jumble of dust and bits of wire and tubing and old technical journals stacked on the floor. Each team captain had a littered plywood office. Most of the men dressed like lumberjacks. For a time Francie thought that the complete disorder was an adequate measuring stick for Clint Reese’s abilities as Administrative Assistant. And one day, during a brief respite, she tried to house-clean a corner of the biggest lab room. The howls of anguish brought Clint to her rescue.

He explained, “Francie, when these men were small boys they kept their rooms full of bugs on pins, pet snakes, stamp collections, chemistry sets, and stuffed birds. They grew up in confusion, and they don’t feel at home unless the conditions are duplicated. So we humor them. When one of them gets completely walled in with junk, he usually fights his way clear, and starts over again.”

She soon caught the hang of their verbal shorthand, learned to put in the reports the complete terms to which they referred. McKay was orderly about summoning her. Tom Blajoviak found so much pleasure in dictating that he kept calling for her when he had nothing at all to report. Dr. Sherra had to be trapped before he would dictate to her. He considered progress reports to be a lot of nonsense.

With increasing knowledge of the personalities of the three team leaders came a new awareness of the strain under which they worked. The strain made them irritable, sometimes childish. Dr. Cudahy supervised and co-ordinated the technical aspects of the lines of research, treading very gently so as not to offend. And it was Clint’s task to take the burden of all other routine matters off Cudahy’s shoulders so that he could function at maximum efficiency at the technical supervision in which he excelled.

It had been a very full month, with little time for relaxation. Francie sat on the porch of the cabin on the October Sunday afternoon, realizing how closely she had identified herself with the work of Unit 30 during the past month. Bob had fought in one way. She was fighting in another. It was a matter of deadly seriousness. The only person who seemed untouched by the critical nature of the work being done was Clint Reese. He did his job, but seemed completely unimpressed by the seriousness of the total effort.

With the Adirondack tourist season over, most of the private camps were empty. There were only a few fishermen about. She heard the shrill keening of the reel long before the boat, following the shore line, came into view through the remaining lurid leaves of autumn. A young girl, her hair pale and blond, rowed the boat very slowly. She wore a heavy cardigan and a wool skirt. A man stood in the boat, casting a black-and-white plug toward the shallows, reeling it in with hopeful twitches of the rod tip. The sun was low, the lake still, the air sharp with the threat of coming winter. It made a very pretty picture. Francie wondered if they’d had any luck.

The boat moved slowly by, passing just ten feet or so from the end of Francie’s dock, not more than thirty feet from the small porch. The girl glanced up and smiled, and Francie instinctively waved. She remembered seeing them in Vanders, in the store.

“Any luck?” Francie called.

“One decent bass,” the man said. He had a pleasant, weather-burned face.

As he made the next cast Francie saw him slip. As the girl cried out he reached wildly at nothingness, and fell full length into the lake, inadvertently pushing the boat away from him. He came up quickly, looked toward the boat, then paddled toward the end of Francie’s dock. Francie ran down just as he climbed up onto the dock.

“That must have been graceful to watch,” the man said ruefully, his teeth chattering.

The girl bumped the end of the dock with the boat. “Are you all right, dear?” she asked nervously.

“Oh, I’m just dandy!” the man said, flapping his arms. “Row me home quick.”

The blond girl looked appealingly at Francie. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I could row home and bring dry clothes here and...”

“Of course!” Francie said. “I was going to suggest that.”

“I don’t want to put you out,” the man said. “Darn’ fool stunt, falling in the lake.”

“Come on in before you freeze solid,” Francie said. The girl rowed quickly down the lake shore. The man followed her in. The fire was all laid. Francie touched a match to the exposed corner of paper, handed him a folded blanket from the foot of the bunk.

She said, “That fireplace works fast. Get those clothes off and wrap yourself up in the blanket. I’ll be on the porch. You holler when you’re ready.”

She sat on the porch and waited. When the man called she went in. She put three fingers of whisky in the bottom of a water tumbler and handed it to him. “Drink your medicine.”

“I ought to fall in the lake oftener... Hey, don’t bother with those clothes!”

“I’ll hang them out.”

She put his shoes on the porch, hung the clothes on the line she had rigged from the porch comer to a small birch. Just as she finished she saw the girl coming, rowing strongly. Francie went down and tied the bow line, took the pile of clothes from the girl so she could get out of the boat more easily.

“How is he?” the girl asked in a worried tone.

“Warm on the inside and the outside, too.”

“He wouldn’t want me to tell you this. He likes to pretend it isn’t so. But he isn’t very well. That’s why I was so worried. You’re being more than kind.”

“When I fall out of a boat near your place I’ll expect the same service.”

“You’ll get it,” the girl said. Francie saw that she was older than she had looked from a distance. There were fine wrinkles near her eyes, a bit of gray in the blond temples. Late twenties, possibly.

The girl took the clothes, put out her free hand. “I’m Betty Jackson,” she said. “And my husband’s name is Stewart.”

“I’m Francie Aintrell. I’m glad you — dropped in.”

Francie waited on the porch again until Betty came out. “He’s dressed now. If we could stay just a little longer...”

“Of course you can! Actually, I was sort of lonesome this afternoon.”

They went in. Francie put another heavy piece of slabwood on the fire. Stewart Jackson said, “I think I’ve stopped shivering. We certainly thank you, Miss Aintrell.”

“It’s Mrs. Aintrell. Francie Aintrell.”

She saw Betty glance toward Bob’s picture. “Is that your husband, Francie?”

“Yes, he... he was killed in Korea.” Never before had she been able to say it so flatly, so factually.

Stewart Jackson looked down at his empty glass. “That’s tough. Sorry I—”

“You couldn’t have known. And sooner or later I’ve got to get used to telling people.” She went on quickly, in an effort to cover the awkwardness, “Are you on vacation? I think I’ve seen you over in town.”

“No, we’re not on vacation,” Betty said. “Stewart sort of semi-retired last year, and we bought a camp up here. It’s — let me see — the seventh one down the shore from you. Stew has always been interested in fishing, and now we’re making lures and trying to get a mail-order business started for them.”

“I design ’em and test ’em and have a little firm down in Utica make up the wooden bodies of the plugs,” Stewart said. “Then we put them together and put on the paint job... Are you working up here or vacationing?”

“I’m working for the Government,” Francie said, “in the new weather station.” That was the cover story which all employees were instructed to use — that Unit 30 was doing meteorological research.

“We’ve heard about that place, of course,” Betty said. “Sounds rather dull to me. Do you like it?”

“It’s a job,” Francie said. “I was working in Washington, and after I heard about my husband I asked for a transfer to some other place.”

Jackson yawned. “Now I’m so comfortable, I’m getting sleepy. We better go.”

“No,” Francie said, meaning it. “Do stay. We’re neighbors. How about hamburgers over the fire?”

She saw Betty and Stewart exchange glances. She liked them. There was something wholesome and comfortable about their relationship. And, because Stewart Jackson was obviously in his mid-forties, they did not give her the constant sense of loss that a younger couple might have caused.

“We’ll stay if I can help,” Betty said, “and if you’ll return the visit. Soon.”

“Signed and sealed,” Francie said.

It was a pleasant evening. The Jack-sons were relaxed, charming. Francie liked the faint wryness of Stew’s humor. And both of them were perceptive enough to keep the conversation far away from any subject that might be related to Bob.

Francie lent them a flashlight for the boat trip back to their camp. She heard the swash of the oars as Betty rowed away, heard the night voices calling, “ ’Night, Francie! Good night!” She guessed that perhaps Stew’s heart might be shaky...

Monday she came back from work too late to make the promised call. She found the flashlight on the porch near the door, along with a note that said, “Any time at all, Francie. And we mean it. Betty and Stew.”

Tuesday was another late night. On Wednesday Clint added up the hours she had worked and sent her home at three in the afternoon, saying, “Do you want us indicted by the Committee Investigating Abuses of Civil Service Secretaries?”

“I’m not abused.”

“Out! Now! Scat!”

At the cabin she changed to jeans and a suede jacket and hiked down the trail by the empty camps to the one the Jack-sons had described. Stew was on their dock, casting with a spinning rod. “Hi! Thought the bears got you. Go on in. I’ll be up soon as I find out why this little wooden monster won’t wiggle like a fish.”

Betty flushed with pleasure when she saw Francie. “It’s nice of you to come. I’ll show you the workshop before Stew does. He gets all wound up and takes hours.”

The large, glass-enclosed porch smelled of paint and glue. There were labels for the little glassine boxes, and rows of gay, shining lures.

“Here, it says in small print, is where we earn a living,” Betty said. “But, actually, it’s going pretty well.” She held up a yellow lure with black spots. “This one,” she said, “is called — believe it or not — the Jackson Higgledy-Piggledy. A pickerel on every cast. It’s our latest achievement. Manufacturing costs twelve cents apiece, if you don’t count labor. Mail-order price, one dollar.”

“It’s pretty,” Francie said dubiously.

“Don’t admire it or Stew will put you to work addressing the new catalogues to our sucker list.”

Stew came in, and said, “I’ll bet if the sun was out it would be over the yardarm.”

“Is a Martini all right with you, Francie?” Betty asked.

Francie nodded, smiling. The Martinis were good. The dinner, much later, was even better. Stew made her an ex-officio director of the Jackson Lure Company, in charge of color schemes on bass plugs. Many times during dinner Francie felt a pang of guilt as she heard her own laughter ring out. Yet it was ridiculous to feel guilty. Bob would have wanted her to learn how to laugh all over again.

She left at eleven, and as she had brought no flashlight, Betty walked home with her, carrying a gasoline lantern. They sat on the edge of Francie’s porch for a time, smoking and watching the moonlight on the lake.

“It’s a pretty good life for us,” Betty said. “Quiet. Stew’s supposed to be quiet, avoid strenuous exercise. And he’s really taking this business seriously. Probably a good thing. Our money won’t last forever.”

“I’m so glad you two people are going to be here all winter, Betty.”

“And you don’t know how glad I am to see you, Francie. I needed some girl-talk. Say, how about a picnic soon?”

“I adore picnics.”

“There’s a place on the east shore where the afternoon sun keeps the rocks warm. But we can’t do it until Sunday. Stew wants to take a run down to New York to wind up some business things. I do the driving. Sunday okay, then?” She stood up.

“If it’s a nice day. I’ll bring a potato salad and the drinks. You bring sandwiches and dessert. Okay?”

It was agreed and Francie stood on the small porch and watched the harsh lantern light bob along the trail until it finally disappeared beyond the trees...

Sunday dawned brisk and clear. It would be pleasant enough in the sun. Francie went down the trail with her basket. When she got to the Jackson camp Betty was loading the boat. She looked cute and young in khaki trousers, a fuzzy white sweater, a peaked ballplayer’s cap.

The girls took turns rowing against the wind as they went across the lake. Stewart trolled with a deep-running plug, without success. He was grumbling about the lack of fish when they reached the far shore. Francie ruefully inspected a fresh blister the size of a dime, and then looked around at the spot Betty had found. Bulging gray rocks, like the timeless backs of prehistoric beasts, poked up through the blanket of dry pine needles. A rocky point extended into the lake.

They unloaded the boat, carrying the food up to a small natural glade beyond the rocks. Stew settled down comfortably, finding a rock that fitted his back. Betty sat on another rock. Francie sprawled on her stomach on the grass, chin on the back of her hand, inspecting the world from an ant’s-eye view.

Stew took a bit of soft pine out of his jacket pocket and a sharp bladed knife. He began to carve carefully. He lifted the piece of pine up and squinted at it. “Francie, if I’m clever enough, I can now carve myself something that a fish will snap at. A lure. A nice, sparkly, dancy little thing that looks edible.”

“With hooks in it,” Francie said.

He smiled down at her benignly. “Precisely. With hooks in it. You stop to think of it, an organization isn’t very much different from a fish. Now, I’m eventually going to catch a fish on this, because it will have precisely the appeal that fish is looking for. Now, you take an organization, you can always find one person in it, if you look hard enough, that can be attracted. But then, it’s always better to use real bait instead of an artificial lure.”

“Sounds cold-blooded,” Francie said sleepily.

“I suppose it is. Now, let’s take, for example, that super-secret organization you work for, Francie.”

She stared at him. “What?”

“That so-called weather research outfit. Suppose we had to find bait to make somebody bite on a hook?”

Francie sat up and tried to smile. “You know, I don’t like the way you’re talking, Stew.”

“You’re among friends, honey. Betty and I are very friendly people.”

Francie, confused, turned and looked at Betty. Her face had lost its usual animation. There was nothing there but a catlike watchfulness.

“What is this, anyway?” Francie said, laughing. But her laughter sounded false.

“We came over here,” Stew said, “because this is a nice, quiet place to settle down and make a deal. Now, don’t be alarmed, Francie. A lot of time and effort has gone into making exactly the right sort of contact with you. Of course, if it hadn’t been you, it would have been somebody else in Unit 30. So this is the stroke of midnight at the fancy-dress ball. Everybody takes off their masks.”

Slowly the incredible meaning behind his words penetrated to Francie’s mind. She looked at them. They had been friends — friends quickly made and yet dear to her. Now suddenly they had become strangers. Stew’s bland, open face seemed to hold all the guilelessness of the face of an evil child. And Betty’s features had sharpened, had become almost feral.

“Is this some sort of a stupid test?” Francie demanded.

“I’ll say it again. We are here to make a business deal. We give you something, you give us something. Everybody is satisfied.” Stewart Jackson smiled at her.

Panic struck Francie. She slipped as she scrambled to her feet. She ran as fast as she could toward the boat, heard the feet drumming behind her. As she bent to shove the boat off, Betty grabbed her, reached around her from behind, and, with astonishing strength, twisted both of Francie’s arms until her hands were pinned between her shoulder blades.

The pain doubled Francie over. “You’re hurting me!” she cried. There was an odd indignity in being hurt by another woman.

“Come on back,” Betty said, her voice flat-calm.

Stew hadn’t moved. He cut a long, paper-thin strip from the piece of pine. Betty shoved Francie toward him and released her.

“Sit down, honey,” Stew said calmly. “No need to get all upset. You read the papers and magazines. I know that you’re a well-informed and intelligent young woman. Please sit down. You make me nervous.”

Francie sat on the grass, hugged her knees. She felt cold all the way through. “I don’t know what you expect me to do, but you might as well know that I’ll never do it. You had better kill me or something, because just as fast as I can get to a phone I’m going to—”

“And please stop sounding like a suspense movie, Francie,” Stewart said patiently. “We don’t go around killing people. Just let me talk for a minute: Maybe you, as an intelligent young woman, have wondered why so many apparently loyal and responsible people have committed acts of treason against their country. To understand that, you have to have an appreciation of the painstaking care with which all trusted people are surveyed. Sooner or later, Mrs. Aintrell, we usually find an avenue of approach to at least one person in each secret setup in which we interest ourselves. And, in the case of Unit 30, the fates seem to have elected you to provide us with complete transcripts of all current progress reports dictated by Dr. Sherra, Dr. McKay, and Mr. Blajoviak.”

Shock made Francie feel dull. She merely stared at him unbelievingly.

Stewart Jackson smiled blandly. “I assure you our cover is perfect. And I believe you have helped us along by casually mentioning your nice neighbors, the Jacksons.”

“Yes, but—”

“We thought at first my boating accident might be too obvious, but then we remembered that there is nothing in your background to spoil your naïveté.”

“You’re very clever and I’ve been stupid, but I assure you that nothing you can say to me will make any difference.”

“Being hasty, isn’t she, Betty?” Stewart said.

With the warm, friendly manner of a man bestowing gifts, he reached into the inside pocket of his heavy tweed jacket and took out an envelope. He took a sheet of paper from the envelope, unfolded it, and handed it to her. It was coarse, pulpy paper. In the top right corner were Chinese ideographs, crudely printed. In the top left corner was a symbol of the hammer and sickle. But it was the scrawled pencil writing that tore her heart in two:

“Baby, they say you will get this. Maybe it’s like their other promises. Anyway, I hope you do get it. This is a crumb-bum outfit. I keep telling them I’m sick, but nobody seems to be interested. The holes healed pretty good, but now they don’t look so hot. Anything you can do to get me out of this, baby, do it. I can’t last too long here, for sure. I love you, baby, and I keep thinking of us in front of a fireplace — it gets cold here — and old Satchmo on the turntable, and you in the green housecoat, and Willy on the mantel.”

She read it again and instinctively held it to her lips, her eyes so misted that Stewart and the rock he leaned against were merged in a gray-brown blur.

Bob was alive! There could be no doubt of it. No one else would know about the green housecoat, about Bob’s delight in the zipper that went from throat to ankles. And they had all been wrong. All of them! Happiness made her feel dizzy, ill.

Jackson’s voice came from remote distances: “...find it pretty interesting, at that. That piece of paper crossed Siberia and Russia and came to Washington in a diplomatic pouch, one that we won’t identify. When we reported your assignment to Unit 30, our Central Intelligence ordered an immediate check of all captive officer personnel. In that first retreat after the Chinese came into it, they picked up quite a lot of wounded American personnel. It was quite a break to find your husband reported as killed in action instead of captured. If he’d been captured they’d never have transferred you to Unit 30, you know. So they told Lieutenant Aintrell the circumstances and he wrote that letter you’re holding. It got to you just as fast as it could be managed.”

“He says he’s sick!” Francie exclaimed indignantly. “Why isn’t he being taken care of?”

“Not many doctors and not much medicine on the Chinese mainland, Francie. They use what they have for their own troops.”

“They’ve got to help him!”

Betty came over, put her arm around Francie’s shoulders. “I guess, Francie, dear, that is going to be up to you.”

Francie twisted away from her. “What do you mean?”

“It’s out of our hands,” Stew said. “You can think of us as just messengers from the boys who make the decisions. They say that when, as an evidence of your good faith, they start to receive copies of Unit 30 progress reports, they will see to it that your husband is made more comfortable. I understand his wounds are not serious. You will get more letters from him, and he’ll tell you in those letters that things are better. When your services are no longer needed they will make arrangements to have him turned over to some impartial agency. Maybe to a Swedish hospital ship. He’ll come home to you, and that will be your reward for services rendered. Now, if you don’t want to play ball, I’m supposed to pass the word along, and they’ll see that he gets transferred from the military prison to a labor camp, where he may last a month or a year. Now, you better take time to think it all over.”

“How can you stand yourselves or each other?” Francie asked. “How can two people like you get mixed up in such a filthy business?”

Stewart Jackson flushed. “You can skip that holier-than-thou attitude, Mrs. Aintrell. You believe in one thing. We believe in something else. If we were Russians working against the USSR in Moscow, you’d call us heroes. Betty and I just happen to believe there’s going to be a good spot for us when this capitalistic dictatorship goes bankrupt and collapses of its own weight.”

She saw some things about them that she should have seen before: the petulance, the chronic dissatisfaction, the intelligence which, though quick, was shallow. A pair of parlor pinks led, through their own dissatisfactions, into the headier world of action rather than talk. And exceedingly dangerous because of that quick intelligence.

Jackson leaned forward with a charming smile. “Come on, Francie. Cheer up. We both like you. And you should know that, as an individual, you certainly are not going to affect the course of world affairs by any decision you make. As a woman, you want your husband and your happiness. And I would like to see you have exactly that, believe me. So would Betty. The odds are that Unit 30 research will get nowhere, anyway. So what harm can you do? And the people I work with are never afraid to show gratitude. Certainly your Bob won’t thank you for selling him out, selling him into a labor camp.”

“There’s more than one way to sell Bob out.”

“Sentimentality masquerading as patriotism, I’m afraid. Think it over. How about the food, Betty? Join us, Francie?”

Francie didn’t answer. She stood up and walked down to the shore of the lake. She sat huddled on a natural step in the rocks. There seemed to be no warmth in the sun. She looked at the letter. In two places the pencil had tom the cheap, coarse paper. His hand had held the pencil. She remembered the marriage vows. To honor and cherish. A sacred promise, made in front of man and God. She felt as though she were being torn in half, slowly, surely. What were nations and boundaries and political theory compared with the ultimate reality of his arms around her? She knew that to violate the loyalty oath she had given would result in a lasting shame — and yet she could not hold an impersonal loyalty over and above her love for her husband. And she could not forget that he was in danger, and frighteningly alone.

From time to time she glanced toward Stewart and Betty. Once she heard them laugh. Francie wondered that their laugh should sound so utterly normal. A nice married laugh. That rapport between them which had seemed so pleasant to Francie now became an evidence of a disconcerting efficiency, a unified force that opposed her. They could work together and share their strength, and it made them too strong to resist.

She walked slowly back to them. “Is that promise any good?” she asked in a voice which was not her own. “Would he really be returned to me?”

“Once a promise is made, Francie, it is kept. I can guarantee that.”

“Like they’ve kept treaties?” Francie asked bitterly.

“The myth of national honor is a part of the folklore of decadent capitalism, Francie,” Betty said. “Don’t be politically immature. This is a promise to an individual and on a different basis entirely.”

Francie looked down at them. At Betty, with hair bright in the sun, with sturdy figure and pretty eyes. At Stewart, with the shaggy tweed jacket and blunt, good-humored face. You grew up thinking of agents as being squat and greasy and shifty-eyed. Not people like the Jacksons, who sat by gray rocks looking like an ad for a camera film, or for green picnic dishes.

Yet Betty had held her arm in a cruel grip, and even as Stewart smiled there was a glassy depthlessness to his eyes.

“Tell me what you want me to do?” she asked.

“We have your pledge of co-operation?” Stewart asked.

“I... yes.” Her mouth held a bitter dryness.

“Before we go into details, my dear Francie, I want you to understand that we appreciate the risk we are taking. Betty and I are not fools. We’ve watched you very carefully. We will continue to do so. If you ever get the urge to be a little tin heroine — at your husband’s expense, of course — please understand that we shall take steps to protect ourselves. We would certainly make it quite impossible for you to testify against us.”

Betty said quickly, “She wouldn’t do that. Stew,” and laughed shallowly.

Stewart picked up the soft pine block again and gently cut a long sliver of wood, paper thin. Such men, with their blunt, good-humored faces, had awakened and kissed their wives, and shaved and joked with the children before donning the uniform with its dread Gestapo emblem. Through history they had been indispensable to those who ordered inquisitions, and purges, and government by fear.

“Now, Francie,” he said softly, “I will tell you what you will do.”...

When they rowed away from her dock they waved a cheerful good-by to her. She went in and closed the door carefully behind her, knowing that doors and bolts and locks had become useless. Then she lay numbly on the bunk and pressed her forehead against the rough pine boards. Until at last the tears came. Tears of shame, tears of thanksgiving, tears of fear. She cried herself out, and when she awakened from deep sleep the night was dark, the cabin cruelly cold.

She awakened to a changed world. The adjustment to Bob’s death had been a precarious structure, moving in each emotional breeze. Now it collapsed utterly. She was again the bride, the Francie of the day before the telegram arrived. And as she moved about, preparing the gasoline lantern, heating water, laying a fire to heat the cabin, she began, in the back of her mind, to stage the scene and learn the lines for the moment of his return, for the moment when his arms would be around her.

She pumped up the lantern and carried it over to the table. She set it down, and then stood very still, looking at the object on the table. She knew it had not been there when she had come back from the picnic to take the long nap that had lasted until midnight. She stood with the breath cool and still in her throat.

There, on the table, was one of the plugs manufactured by the Jacksons. It was a gay red lure, with two gang hooks, with yellow bead eyes.

The doors were still locked. She tried to tell herself it was purposeless melodrama, the sort of thing a small boy might do. But the harsh white light of the lantern slanted against the hooks, and the shadows they made were barbed, distorted. The enameled body was the color of blood...

Monday morning she parked her car behind the lab and walked in and sat at her desk. The smiling guards at the gate had a new look. It made her remember a childhood Saturday of long ago when she had gone downtown with the Jensen girl — Helen, her name was — and Helen had stolen the candy bars from the five-and-ten. She remembered the way her back felt, so rigid, when she walked out with Helen, thinking that dozens of eyes were staring at them, that a uniformed man would be waiting on the sidewalk.

Clint Reese came out and gave her an impersonal good morning, and spun the dial on the locked file for her. She took the current Sherra folder from the drawer back to her desk, found her place, continued the transcription of notes that had been interrupted on Saturday.

They would want a complete report, she told herself. Not just the final three or four pages. No one watched her closely. Ft would be easy to make one additional carbon. She planned how she would do it. Fold the additional carbons and stick them in the blue facial-tissue box. Then take the box with her to the lavatory. There she could fold the sheets smaller and tuck them into her bra. But she would do it with the next report. Not this one, because it was only a portion of a report.

Sherra’s report took twice as long as it should have. She made continual errors. Twice Clint Reese stopped by to pick up the completed report for checking by Cudahy, and each time she told him it would be ready soon. When she took it to him at last she imagined that he gave her an odd look before he went on into Cudahy’s office, the report in his hand.

Big Tom Blajoviak’s note was on her spindle: “Come and get it, sweetheart.” She took her book and went toward the cubicle in the corner where there was barely room for Tom and a desk.

The door was ajar a few inches. He glanced up at her and said, “Enter the place of the common people, Francie. Just because I’m not a doctor, it’s no reason to—”

“Have you really got something this time, Tom? Or is it more repetition?”

“Child, your skepticism is on the uncomplimentary side. Open thy book and aim your little pointed ears in this direction. Hark to the Blajoviak.”

“Honestly?”

His square, strong face altered. The bantering look was gone. “At five o’clock yesterday, Francie, we began to get a little warm. Here we go.” He held his copy of the last report in front of him. “This would be new main subject, Francie. I make it Roman numeral nine. Isolation of margin error in Berkhoff Effect. Sub A. Following the series of tests described in Roman eight above, one additional memory tube was added to circuit C. The re-running of the tests was begun on October twenty-third...”

He dictated rapidly. Francie’s pencil darted along the notebook lines with the automatic ease of long practice. It took nearly an hour for the dictation.

“So that’s it,” he said, leaning back, smiling with a certain pride.

“Not that it means anything to me, you know.”

“It just might, Francie. It just might mean that instead of getting fried into the asphalt, you might look out to sea and say, ‘Ah,’ at the big white lights out there. Fireworks for the kiddies instead of disintegration.”

She glanced down at her whitened knuckles. “Is it that important, Tom?”

“Are you kidding?”

“No. I just don’t understand — all this.”

“There was a longbow, and some citizen comes up with body armor. And then the crossbow, and so they made heavier armor. And then gunpowder, which eventually put guys into tanks. Every time, it sounded like an ultimate weapon, and each time a defense just happened to come along in time. Now our ultimate weapon is the atomic missile. Everybody is naked when that baby comes whining down out of the stratosphere. So we have to stop it up there where it won’t do any damage. We can’t depend on the slow reaction time of a man. We’ve got to have a gizmo. And now, for the first time, I think we’re getting close to the ultimate interceptor. If you-know-who could find out now how close we are, I’ll bet they’d risk everything to try to knock us out before we could get into production on the defensive end. Cudahy wants this one fast as you can get it out, honey.”

She stood up. “All right, Tom. As soon as I can get it out.”

She went to work. She watched her hands add the extra onionskin sheet to the copies required by office routine. At five o’clock Cudahy came out of his office to check on progress. He seemed to be concealing jubilation with great difficulty. He patted her shoulder. “Take a food break at six, Mrs. Aintrell, and then get back to it. I’ll be here, so you won’t have to lock anything up.”

“Yes, sir,” she said in a thin voice. Cudahy had not noticed the extra copy. But she could not risk leaving the extra copy in sight while she went to the mess hall. At five of six she took the tissue box, containing the folded sheets, into the lavatory. She tucked the sheets into her bra, molding the papers into an inconspicuous curve.

She looked at her face in the mirror, ran the finger tips of both hands down her cheeks. Bob had told her she would be lovely when she was seventy.

“The bones are so good,” he said. He had traced, with gentle finger, the line of brow, of jaw, of cheek. “Here and here and here. Good structure.”

She looked into the barren depths of her own eyes and she could hear Bob’s voice. Hear also the voice of Tom Blajoviak: “Fireworks for the kiddies instead of disintegration... knock us out before we could...”

There was another scene to remember. The night of their engagement. Bob, walking away, his back to her, his voice thick: “Don’t say yes until I say something.”

“What do you mean, Bob?”

He hadn’t turned. “Look; you can’t expect a guy who stood three hundred and eleventh in his class to be an intellectual giant.”

“You’re a nice giant.”

“This is not for jokes. This is something I want to say, without the right words for it. Baby, I’m a guy in a brown suit. It has implications.” He had turned then, reaching for her, and then pulled his hand back quickly.

“Implications, darling?”

“Suppose you marry, say, a steeplejack. It drives you nuts, him up on tall buildings. So you chop at him a little and he turns into an insurance salesman. You’re both very happy.”

“You make me sound like a shrew or something.”

“No. I don’t mean that. I mean, when you marry the other guy, you don’t marry steeple-jacking, too. But when you say yes to me, you are also marrying the Army. It has a claim. It trained me. It put me in a brown suit. Along comes a war. I’m there in my brown suit, and you’re marrying that angle, too. I’m a weapon, I suppose. Expendable. You’ve got to know that. I’m in a business where they say, ‘Aintrell, keep your company on that ridge while the rest of the battalion pulls out.’ And I do it. It’s my trade... Do I make any sense?”

“Yes.”

“So figure on jealousy, too, baby. Just remember that when I’m putting my trade ahead of you, I’m also putting my trade ahead of myself. That sounds corny, but the Army comes first, then you, then me. In that order.”

“I won’t be jealous.”

“Don’t kid me, or yourself. There’ll come times when you’ll wish you’d met that insurance salesman.”

“Never!”

“Baby, nobody can fit their mind around dying. It’s too big a thing. Everybody says it never happens to them. A sort of egotism, I guess. The world is all heated up now. Suppose something breaks somewhere. I go. You don’t go. Suppose I get it. So I’m fulfilling an obligation when I make myself as expensive as possible. That’s the way we’re going to take care of things. By everybody making themselves as tough as possible to knock over. Nobody sneaking around, trying to suck up to the opposition. Think they’ll elect me governor?”

“Mayor, at least. Won’t you stop talking and let me say yes?”

“I’ll probably never make more than captain.”

“Didn’t you hear me? Yes!”

His exaggerated sigh. “What can I do?” Fishing a box out of his pocket, “Catch, then.” She caught it, opened the box. He sat beside her, fitted it on her finger, kissed the finger, her lips, her eyes, her lips again. “Crazy woman.”

“Crazy in love.”

“Be happy.”

“Forever and ever.”

So forever and ever lasted exactly sixty-three days, and then it was a very bad time for a lot of young men. And a very bad time for the young women they left behind, who by then had learned enough about the Army to know that any delaying action involving the infantry can become coldly wasteful of all company grade officers.

Bob’s creed had been to sell yourself as dearly as possible. Not just the professional soldiers. Everybody. To be tough in your beliefs, and unswerving in your devotion to them.

And yet... he had appealed to her to help him. Had the letter been dictated? Had he been forced to write it? In a sense, even though the onionskin copy of Tom’s report was concealed on her person, the moment of action did not occur until the copy was handed to the Jacksons. And, remembering that engagement night, each step she took seemed to increase her reluctance to go through with it.

Francie squared her shoulders and walked out of the lavatory. She took her red short-coat from the coat tree.

Clint Reese sat on the corner of a desk, one long leg swinging. He said, “Remind me to put all my black-haired women in red coats.”

She found that she was glad to see him. His lighthearted manner made the lab work seem less important, made her own impending betrayal a more minor affair. And she sensed that during the past month Clint had grown more aware of her. A subtle game of awareness and flirtation would make her forget what she was about to do — or almost forget.

She said, “If you want to see a woman eat like a wolf, come on and join me.”

He put on his plaid wool jacket. “I’ll take care of all the wolflike characteristics around here, lady.”

They walked to the small mess hall. Wind whined around the corner of the building and they leaned into it.

“And after the dogs are gone, we can always boil up the harness,” he said.

She heard the false note in her own laughter. They shut the mess-hall door against the wind, hung up their jackets. They filled their trays, carried them back from the service counter to a table for two by the wall. Clint sat down and shut his eyes for a moment. She saw a weariness in his face that she had not noticed before. He smiled at her. “Now make like a wolf,” he said.

She had thought she was hungry, but found that she couldn’t eat.

“Okay, Francie,” he said. “Let’s have it.”

She gave him a startled look. For once there was no banter in his voice, no humor in his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“As official nursemaid to all personnel, I keep my eyes open. Something has been worrying you all day.”

“Then make some jokes and cheer me up, why don’t you?”

He was grave. “Sometimes I get tired of jokes. Don’t you?”

“Aren’t you a little out of character, Mr. Reese? I thought you were the meringue on the local pie.”

He looked through her and beyond her. “Perhaps I am. Tonight, my girl, I am lonesome and in a hair-taking-down mood. Want to see my tresses fall?”

“Sure,” she said.

He took a sip of his coffee, set his cup down. “Underneath this tattered shirt beats the heart of a missionary.”

“No!”

“And perhaps a fool. I own a tidy little construction business. I was making myself useful, and discovering that I had a certain junior-executive type flair for the commercial world, when the Army put its sticky finger in the back of my collar and yanked me off to the wars. I was flexing my obstacle-course muscles on Okinawa when they dropped those big boomers on the Nipponese. Now get the picture. There I was, as intrigued by those big boomers as a kid at the country club on the night of the Fourth. Siss, boom, ah! A big child at heart. Still thinking I was living in a nice, cozy little world. I was in one of the first units to go to Japan. I wangled a pass and went to Hiroshima. It was unpretty. Very.”

In the depths of his eyes she saw the ghosts that he had seen.

“Francie, you can’t tell another person how it is to grow up in one day. I wandered around in a big daze, and at the end of the day I had made up my mind that this was a desperate world to live in, a frightening world. And it took me another month to decide that the only way I could live with myself was to try to do something about it.

“When they gave me a discharge I turned the management of the company over to my brother and went to school to learn something about nuclear physics. I learned that if I studied hard I’d know something about it by the time I was seventy-three. So I quit. What resource did I have? Just that little flair for administration, the knack of getting along with people and keeping them happy and getting work done. So I decided to be a dog-robber for the professional boys who really know what the score is. By being here I make Cudahy more effective. Cudahy, in turn, makes the teams more effective.

“And now, I understand, we’re beginning to get someplace. Maybe because I’m here we get our solution a month sooner than otherwise. But if it were only twenty minutes sooner, I could say that I have made a contribution to something I believe in.”

Francie felt a stinging in her eyes. She looked away from him, said huskily, “I’m just a little stupid, I guess. You seemed so — casual, sort of.”

He grinned. “With everybody going around grinding their teeth, you’ve got to have some relief. If I landed in a spot full of clowns I’d turn into the grimmest martinet you ever saw. Any administrative guy in a lab setup is a catalyst. So let’s get back to the original question, now that you’ve made me prove my right to ask it. What’s bothering you, Francie?”

She stood up so abruptly that her chair tilted and nearly fell over. She went through the door with her coat in her hand, put it on outside, walked into the night with long strides.

There was a small clump of pines within the compound. She headed blindly toward them. He caught her arm just as she reached them. He turned her around gently.

“Look; I didn’t want to say the wrong thing. If this is just one of those days when you... remember too much, please forgive me, Francie. I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

She held onto his wrist with both hands. “Clint, I’m so... so terribly mixed up. I don’t know what to do.”

“Let me help if I can.”

“Clint, what is the most important thing in the world to any individual? It’s their own happiness, isn’t it? Tell me it is.”

“Of course it is, but you don’t need a definition of terms. Isn’t happiness sort of a compound?”

“How do you mean?”

“Don’t too many people confuse happiness with self-gratification? You can be happy if you have self-respect and also what an old-fashioned uncle of mine used to call the love of God.”

She was crying, soundlessly. “Honor, maybe?”

“That’s a word too. Little dog-eared through misuse, but still respectable.”

“Suppose, Clint, that somebody saved your life and the only way they could do it was by violating all the things that you believe in. Would you be grateful?”

“If someone saved me that way I think I’d begin to hate them, and hate myself, too, Francie. But don’t think I’m a typical case. I’m a little top-heavy in the ethics department, they tell me.”

“I married that sort of man, Clint. I understand.”

“You still haven’t told me how I can help you.”

She turned half away from him, knowing that unless she did it quickly, she would be unable to do it at all. She unbuttoned the red coat, the jacket under it, the blouse under that. She found the folded packet of onionskin sheets and held it out where he could see it.

“You can help me by taking that, Clint. Before I change my mind.”

He took it. “What is it?” he asked.

“A copy of what Tom dictated today,” she said tonelessly.

“Why on earth are you carrying it around?” he demanded sharply.

“To give it to someone. On the outside.”

After a long silence he said, “Holy Jumping Nellie!” His tone was husky.

“I was doing it to save Bob’s life,” she said.

“Your husband? But he’s dead!”

“I found out yesterday that he’s alive, Clint. Alive and in prison.” She laughed, dangerously close to hysteria. “Not that it makes any difference, now. Now he will die.”

He shook her hard but she could not stop laughing. He slapped her sharply, and she was able to stop. He walked her across the compound, unlocked a door, thrust her inside, turned on a light. The small room contained a chair, table, double bed, and bookshelf.

“Please wait here,” he said gently. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with Dr. Cudahy. Handkerchiefs in that top drawer.”

Cudahy and Clint Reese were with her for over an hour. Clint sat beside her on the bed, holding her hand, urging her on with the story when she stumbled. Cudahy paced endlessly back and forth, white-lipped, grim. When he interrupted her now and then to ask a question his voice was harsh.

At last they knew all there was to know. Cudahy stopped in front of her. “And you, Mrs. Aintrell, were planning to give them the—”

“Please shut up, Doctor!” Clint said tiredly.

Cudahy glared at him. “I’ll require some explanation for that comment, Mr. Reese.”

Clint lit two cigarettes and gave Francie one, while Cudahy waited for the explanation. Clint said, “I don’t see how a tongue-lashing is going to help anything, Doctor. Forget your own motivations for a moment and think of hers. As far as this girl knows, she has just killed her husband, just as surely as if she had a gun to his head. I doubt, Dr. Cudahy, whether either you or I, under the same circumstances, would have that same quality of moral courage. I respect her for it. I respect her far too much to listen to you rant at her.”

Cudahy let out a long breath. He turned a chair around and sat down. He gave Clint a sheepish glance and then said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Aintrell. I got carried away with a sense of my own importance.”

Francie said, tonelessly, “Bob told me that they put him in a brown suit and made him expendable. I married him, knowing that. And I guess my life can be as expendable as his. He said we had to be tough. I know they made him write that. He isn’t the kind of man who begs. I almost... did what they wanted me to do. It isn’t courage, I guess. I’m just... all mixed up.”

“Francie,” Clint said, “Dr. Cudahy and I are amateurs in the spy department. This is a job for the experts. But I’m in on this, and I’m going to stay in. I’m going to make it certain that the experts don’t foul up your chance of getting your husband back. The Jack-sons — we’re going to make them believe that you are co-operating. The experts can’t get here until tomorrow. Do you think you can handle it all right when they contact you tonight?”

“I... I think so. I can tell them that I didn’t do any transcription today.”

“Don’t give them any reason to be suspicious.”

“I’ll try not to.”

Clint walked her to her car, stood with the door open after she had slid under the wheel. “Want me to come along?”

“I’m all right now.”

“The best of luck, Francie.”

He shut the door. The guard opened the gates. She drove down the gravel road toward Lake Arthur.

Betty, in ski pants and white cashmere sweater, was sitting on the bunk reading a magazine. The fire was burning. Her jacket was on a nearby chair.

Betty tossed the magazine aside and smiled up at her. “Hope you don’t mind, hon. I nearly froze on the porch, and I only had to make a tiny hole in the screen, just where the catch is.” Francie took off her coat, held her hands toward the flames. “It’s all right.”

“Got a little present for us, dear?”

“I couldn’t manage it today. I took a lot of dictation and then I was put to work filing routine correspondence.”

Betty leaned back, her blond head against the pine wall, fingers laced across her stomach. “Stew was pretty anxious. This might alarm him a little, hon. He might worry about whether you’re cooperating or double-crossing. You know, he told me last night that lots of war widows got so depressed they killed themselves. I’m not threatening you. That’s just the way his mind works sometimes.”

“I dropped J. Edgar Hoover a personal note,” Francie said bitterly. “It’s so much simpler than getting a divorce.”

“You don’t have to be nasty, you know. This isn’t personal with us, dear. We take orders just as you do.”

“Tell your husband, if he is your husband, that I’ll have something for him tomorrow.”

After the woman left, Francie stood and bit at the inside of her lip until she tasted blood. “Forgive me, Bob,” she said silently. “Forgive me.” It had been done. Now nothing could save him.

She found the lure on the shelf over the sink, at eye-level. The body was carved to resemble a frog. After she stopped trembling she forced herself to pick it up and throw it on the fire...

The men arrived in midafternoon. Three of them. A slow-moving, dry-skinned sandy one with a farmer’s cross-hatched neck. He was called Osborne and he was in charge. The names of the other two were not given. They were dark, well-scrubbed young men in gleaming white shirts, dark-toned suits. Cudahy and Clint Reese were present for the conference.

Osborne looked to be half asleep as Francie told her story. He spoke only to bring out a more detailed description of the Jacksons.

“New blood,” he said. “Or some of the reserves. Go on.”

She finished, produced the letter. Osborne fingered it, held it up to the light, then read it. He handed it to the nearest young man, who read it and passed it to the other young man.

Osborne said, “You’re convinced your husband wrote that?”

“Of course!” Francie said wonderingly. “I know his writing. I know the way he says things. And then there are those references — the housecoat, Willy.”

“Who is Willy?”

“We bought him in Kansas. He’s in storage now. A little porcelain figure of an elf. We had him on the mantel. Bob used to say he was our good...”

Suddenly she couldn’t go on. Osborne waited patiently until she had regained control.

“...our good luck,” she said, her voice calm.

“It stinks,” Osborne said.

They all looked at him.

“What do you mean?” Reese demanded.

“Oh, this girl is all right. I don’t mean that. I mean, the whole thing implies an extent of organization that I personally don’t believe they have. I just don’t believe that in a little over thirty days they could fix it so Mrs. Aintrell, here, is balanced on the razor’s edge. Three months, maybe. Not one.”

“But Bob wrote that letter!” Francie said.

“And believing that he wrote it, you opened up for Reese here?”

“I almost didn’t.”

“But you did. That’s the point. You won’t get any medals. There are a lot of people not getting any medals these days.” His smile was an inverted U.

“What are your plans?” Dr. Cudahy demanded.

The office was very still. At last Osborne looked over at Francie. “I’m going to go on the assumption that your husband is alive, Mrs. Aintrell, and that he wrote this letter. At least, until we can prove differently.”

“I know he wrote it!”

“Dr. Cudahy, have you got a file on some line of research that proved to be valueless? A nice, fat file?”

Cudahy frowned. “Things are so interrelated here that even data on unsuccessful experimentation might give a line on the other stuff.”

“Pardon me, sir,” Clint Reese said. “How about that work Sherra was doing? And you couldn’t make him stop. Wasn’t that—?”

Cudahy thumped his palm with a chubby fist. “That should do it! I had to have progress files made to keep him happy. That work bore no relation to our other avenues of approach, Mr. Osborne.”

“And if Mrs. Aintrell gives them Sherra’s work, a bit at a time, as though it were brand-new stuff, it won’t help them, eh? On the other hand, will it make them suspicious?”

“Only,” said Cudahy, “if they know as much about what is going on here as I do.”

“Reese, you turn that file over to Mrs. Aintrell. Mrs. Aintrell, copy enough each day to turn over to Jackson so he won’t get suspicious. Better make six copies or so, and give him the last one. Fold it up as though you smuggled it out of here. Can do?”

“Yes,” Francie said quickly.

“That should keep your husband alive, if he is alive. We have channels of communication into the likely areas where he’d be. It will take nearly two months to get any kind of a check on him, even if we started yesterday. The better way to check is through the Jack-sons.”

“What do you mean by that?” Francie demanded. “You can’t go to him and—”

Osborne held up his hand and gave a rare smile. “Settle down, Mrs. Aintrell. Even if your husband weren’t involved, we’d hardly go plunging through the shrubbery waving our credentials. They use their expendables on this sort of contact work, just the same as we do. We want the jokers who are buried three or four layers of communication back. I want Jackson to be given the dope, because I am anxious to see what he does with it, and who gets it.”

“But—”

“Just trust us, Mrs. Aintrell.”

Francie forced a smile. There was something about Osborne that inspired trust. Yet she had no real confidence that he could match his cleverness with the Jacksons. Both Stewart and Betty seemed so supremely confident.

“I’ll need your letters from your husband, Mrs. Aintrell. Every one of them.”

Francie flushed. The overseas letters, since they had been subject to censorship, were written in a double-talk understandable only to the two of them. But the letters he had sent her that had been mailed inside the country had been full of bold passages that had been meant for her eyes alone.

“Do you have to have them?”

“Please, Mrs. Aintrell. We will have them for a very short time. Just long enough to make photostats for study. When this case is over, our photostats will be burned.”

“But I can’t imagine why—”

He smiled again. “Just call it a hunch. You have them at your cabin, I judge.”

“Yes, I do.”...

Clint followed her home in his car at five-thirty that evening. They walked down the trail together. A fine, misty rain was falling and the rustic guardrail felt sodden under her hand.

Francie unlocked the door and went in. She looked on the porch and turned to Clint. “Nobody here,” she said, relief in her voice.

She took the candy box full of letters out of the bureau drawer and handed it to him. “You’ll be back at nine?”

“Thereabouts,” he said. He slipped the box into his jacket pocket. Then he put both hands on her shoulders. “Take care,” he whispered.

“I will,” she said. She knew he wanted to kiss her, and also knew that he would not, that his sense of rightness would not permit him. He touched his lips lightly to her forehead, turned, and left.

She turned on the gas under the hot-water heater, and when the water was ready she took a shower. While she was under the water she heard someone call her.

“In a minute,” she called back. She dressed in tailored wool slacks, a plaid shirt cut like a man’s. She walked out, unsmiling. Betty sat on the bunk, one heel up, hands laced around her knee.

Francie said, “I brought something this time.”

Betty smiled. “We knew you would. Stew is on his way over now.”

Francie sat down across the room from her. “Did you get Stewart into this sort of thing, or did he get you in?”

“Clinical curiosity? We met while I was in college. We found out that we thought about things the same way. He had contacts and introduced me. After they started to trust me I kept needling Stew until he demanded a chance to do something active. They told us to stay under cover. No meetings. No cells. We did a little during the war, and a little bit last year in Canada. Satisfied?”

Stewart came in the door, shivering. “Going to be a long, long winter.”

“Here’s what you want,” Francie said, taking the folded sheets from the pocket of her slacks.

“Thank you, my dear,” Stew said blandly. He sat down on the bunk beside Betty and they both read through the sheets, skimming them.

“Dr. Sherra’s work, eh?” Stewart said. “Good man, Sherra. I think he was contacted once upon a time. Got stuffy about it, though, and refused to play. He could have lived in Russia like a little tin king.”

Jackson refolded the sheets, put them carefully in his wallet. “Did you have any trouble, Francie, getting these out?”

“Not a bit.”

“Good!” Stewart said. He still held the billfold in his hand. He dipped into it, took out some money, walked over, and dropped it into her lap.

Francie looked uncomprehendingly down at the three twenty-dollar bills. “I’m not doing this for money.”

He shrugged. “Keep it. It isn’t important. Buy something pretty with it.”

Francie fingered the bills. She folded them once, put them in the top left pocket of her plaid shirt.

“That’s better,” Stewart said. “Everybody gets paid for services rendered. Canada and London, Tennessee and Texas.”

Francie remembered her instructions from Osborne. She leaned forward. “Please let them know right away that I’m co-operating. Bob’s letter said he was sick. I want to know that he’s being cared for.” Osborne had said to cry if she could. She found that it was no effort.

Stewart patted her shoulder. “Now, don’t fret, Francie. I was so certain of your co-operation that I already sent word that you’re playing ball with us in every way that you can. I’d say that by the end of this week, no later, Bob ought to be getting all the attention he can use.”

“Thank you,” she said, meaning it completely. “Thank you so much.” Betty stood up, stretched like a plump kitten. “Come on, Stew.... We’ll see you tomorrow night, huh?”

“I’ll have more for you.”

Francie stood up, too. She made herself stand quite still as Jackson patted her shoulder again. There was something about being touched by him that made her stomach turn over.

She stood at the side window and watched their flashlights bob down the trail through the trees. She made herself a light meal. Clint arrived a little after nine. She took the box from him and put it back in the bureau drawer. It was good to have the letters back, even knowing that Osborne’s people had the photostats.

Clint gave an exaggerated sigh. “Osborne’s orders. We got to go to the movies together. That gives me an excuse for coming down here if they happen to be watching you. Ready to follow orders?”

She shivered. “I... I know they’re watching me. I can feel it,” she whispered. “I do want to be out of here for a little while.”

As they went out the door she stumbled on the wet boards. He caught her arm, held it tightly. They stood quite still for a few moments. It was a strange moment of tension between them, and she knew that he was as conscious of it as she. The strain of the past few days, strain they had shared, had heightened an awareness of each other.

“Francie!” he said, his voice deeper than usual.

Shame was a rising red tide. Certainly her loyalty to Bob was sinking to a new low. To take the step that must inevitably lead to his death, and then take a silly pleasure in a strong male hand clasping her arm.

She pulled away, almost too violently, and said, with false gaiety, “But I buy my own ticket, Mister.”

“Sure,” he said, with no lift in his voice.

When they were in the car he said, “I’m always grabbing hold of females. Sort of a reflex. Hope you don’t mind.”

The car lights cut a bright tunnel through the wet night. “I didn’t mind that. It was the sultry tone of voice that got me.”

“Look. Slap me down when I get out of line.”

“Wouldn’t that leave the responsibility up to me, and make you a free agent? You keep yourself in line, Mr. Administrative Assistant.”

“After the movies, to change the subject, we meet Osborne.”

“It frightens me, having those people around. Suppose the Jacksons catch on.”

“To everybody except you and me and Cudahy, they’re new personnel on the project. And they’re careful.”

The movie was a dull musical. The crowd was very slim and no one sat within twenty feet of them.

“I can’t help it, Francie,” he said suddenly, blurting it out like a small boy. “I—”

“Clint. Please listen to me. You told me once that you would never do anything to hurt me. This whole thing has torn me completely in half. I don’t know who I am or where I am. I’m attracted to you, Clint, and I don’t like that. I’m going to ignore it, get over it.”

For a long time he did not answer. When he spoke again, the familiar light note had come back into his voice: “If you will permit me, Madame, I shall finish my statement. Quote: I can’t help it, Francie. I’ve got to have some popcorn. End quote.”

She touched his arm. “Much better.” “What’s better than popcorn?”

The movie ended and they filed out with the others. As they walked toward the car a match flared startlingly close, and the flame-light touched the high, hard cheekbones of the face of Stewart Jackson. Betty was a shadow beside him. Francie caught hard at Clint’s arm, stumbling a little, her breathing suddenly shallow.

“Evening, Francie,” Stewart said, a mild, sly triumph in his tone.

“Hello, Stewart; hello, Betty,” she forced herself to say, proud that her voice did not shake, knowing that the presence of Clint had given her strength.

Once they were in the car and had turned out of the small parking area, she said, “Oh, Clint, they were—”

“They just went to a movie. That’s all. A movie. And found a chance to rattle you.”

Clint turned off the main road onto a narrower one, and turned off lights and motor and waited for a time. No car followed them. He drove slowly up the hill and parked in a graveled space near some picnic tables. He gave Francie a cigarette, and she rolled her window down a few inches to let the smoke out.

When Osborne spoke, directly outside her window, he startled both of them: “Let me in before I freeze, kids.”

She opened the door and slid over close to Clint. Osborne piled in and shut the door. “Let’s have it, Mrs. Aintrell.”

“They seemed pleased. Mr. Jackson told me that he’d already sent word to have Bob looked after, knowing in advance that I’d co-operate. And he gave me sixty dollars. He made me take it. Here it is.”

“Keep it all together. He’ll give you more. Very typical. They love to pay off. They take some poor, idealistic fool who wants to help the Commies because he was nuts about Das Kapital when he was a college sophomore. When the fool finds out what kind of dictatorship he’s dealing with and wants out, they sweetly remind him that he has accepted the money and he thereby established his own motive, and it is going to make him look very, very bad in court. So bad he better keep right on helping. By the way, thanks for the loan of the letters. The boys are tabulating them tonight.”

“What do I—?”

“Keep doing what you’re doing. Feed them dope from the Sherra file.”

“Oh, I forgot. Jackson mentioned that Sherra was contacted once. Is that important?”

“We know about it. Sherra reported it.”

“Can I have that last letter back? The one from the prison camp?”

“You’ll find it in the box with the others. I’ll get a report from the handwriting experts soon.”

“That’s a waste of time. I know Bob wrote it. It sounds like him. Nobody else could sound like him.”

“Take her home, Clint, before she convinces me,” Osborne said, getting out of the car. “ ’Night, people.” The blackness of the night swallowed him at once...

On Wednesday and Thursday she turned more copies of the Sherra file data over to the Jacksons, receiving, each time, an additional twenty-dollar bill, given her with utmost casualness and good cheer by Stew Jackson. On Friday afternoon Francie was called into Dr. Cudahy’s office by Clint. Cudahy was not there. Just Osborne. He looked weary. As Clint paused uncertainly in the doorway Osborne said, “Sit in on this, Reese.”

Clint pulled the door shut and sat down. Osborne was in Cudahy’s chair.

“What have you found out?” Francie demanded.

“How long can you keep playing this little game of ours, Mrs. Aintrell?”

“Forever, if it will help Bob.”

He picked up a report sheet and looked at it, his expression remote. “There’s this. Report of the handwriting. They say it could be his writing, or could be a clever forgery. There are certain changes, but they might be the result of fatigue or illness.”

“I told you he wrote it.”

Osborne studied her in silence. He looked more than ever like a prosperous Midwestern farmer worried about the Chicago grain market.

“Now can you take it on the chin?”

Francie looked down at her locked hands. “I... I guess so.”

He picked up another sheet. “Tabulation report. It has a cross reference of the words in the prison letter to the words in previous letters. We have numbered all his letters chronologically. Letter 4 uses the term ‘crumb-bum.’ In Letter 16 there is a sentence as follows: ‘Put old Satchmo on the turntable, baby, and when he sings Blueberry Hill, make like I’m with you in front of a fireplace.’ Letter 18 has a reference to Willy in it. And Letter 3 mentions... uh... the green housecoat.” Osborne colored a bit, and Francie flushed violently as she remembered the passage to which he referred.

“What are you trying to tell me?” she asked in a low voice.

“There are no new words or phrases or references in that letter Jackson gave you. They can all be isolated in previous letters. We can assume that Jackson had access to those letters during the first few weeks you worked here.”

“I don’t see how that means anything,” Francie said. “Of course, Bob would write as he always writes, and talk about the same things in letters that he always talked about.”

“Could be. But please let us consider it sufficient grounds — that and the handwriting report — to at least question the authenticity of the letter Jackson gave you. Remember, the handwriting report said that it could be a forgery.”

Francie jumped up. “Why are you saying all this to me? I go through every day thinking, every minute, that if you slip up, just a little, Bob is going to die, and die in a horrible way. I’m doing the very best I can to keep him alive. If you keep trying to prove to me that he’s been dead all the time, it takes away my reasons to go through all this — and I just can’t...”

She covered her eyes and sat down, not trying to fight against the harsh sobs.

Osborne said, “I’m telling you this, Mrs. Aintrell, because I want you to do something that may end all this before you crack up under the strain. And I never like to have anybody follow orders without knowing the reason behind the orders.”

Francie uncovered her eyes, but she could not answer.

Osborne leaned forward and pointed a pencil at her. “I want you to reestablish friendly relations with these Jacksons. Talk about your husband. Talk about him all the time. Bore them to death with talk about your husband. Memorize the three items on this little slip of paper and give the slip back to me. I want those three items dropped into the conversation every chance you get.”

Francie reached out and took the slip. There were three short statements on the paper: “Willy wears a green hat.” “Bob broke the Goodman recording of Russian Lullaby accidentally.” “You met in Boston.”

It gave Francie a twisty, Alice-in-Wonderland feeling to read the nonsense phrases. She read them again and then stared wildly at Osborne, half expecting that it would be some monstrous joke. “Are you quite crazy?” she asked.

“Not exactly. All those words appear in the letters. We know you are clever, Mrs. Aintrell. We want you to tell the complete truth to the Jacksons, except for those three statements on that slip of paper. We assume they have a photostat of those letters, too. Nothing in the letters contradicts those three statements. You are not to repeat them so often that the Jacksons will become suspicious. Just often enough to implant them firmly in memory. Then we shall wait for one of those false statements to reappear, either directly or by inference, in the next letter you get from your husband.”

“And if they do — it will mean that—”

“That the Army’s report of your husband’s death was correct. And that the Jacksons have been working one of the nastiest little deals I have ever heard of. Very clever, very brutal, and, except for your courage, Mrs. Aintrell, very effective.”

With forced calmness Francie said, “You make it sound logical, and it might be easier for me if I could believe it. But I know Bob is alive.”

“I merely ask you to keep in mind the possibility that he may not be alive. Otherwise, should that second letter prove to be faked, you may break down in front of them.”

“She won’t break down,” Clint said.

Francie gave him a quick smile. “Thank you.”

“Just be patient,” Osborne said. “Keep turning data over to them. Skip a day now and then to make it look better. We’re trying to find their communication channel. When we find it we’ll want you to demand the next letter from your husband. Maybe we can have you risk threatening to cut off the flow of data unless you get a letter. But get friendly with them now, and work in that information.”

That night she walked down the shore path to the Jackson camp. She saw Stewart through the window in the living-room. He let her in. Betty sat at the other end of the room, knitting.

“A little eager to deliver, this time, aren’t you?” Stewart asked. He shut the door behind her and she gave him the folded packet. He glanced at it casually, “is something on your mind, Francie?”

“May I sit down?”

“Please do,” Betty said.

Francie sat down, sensing their wariness at this deviation from routine.

“This is something I have to talk to you about,” she said. “I... I know I’d never have the nerve to consciously try to report you. But I am afraid of giving Dr. Cudahy or Mr. Reese a clue involuntarily.”

“What do you mean?” Stewart demanded, leaning forward.

“It’s just this: I think about Bob all the time. I think about how he is going to come home to me. It is the sort of thing that a woman — has to talk about. And there is no one to talk to. Sooner or later I may slip, and mention Bob to either Dr. Cudahy or Mr. Reese. On my record it says that Bob is dead. They both know that. You see, I just don’t like this chance I have to take every day, of my tongue slipping.”

“You haven’t made a slip, have you?” Stewart asked.

“No. But today I... I almost—”

Betty came to her quickly, sat on the arm of the chair. “Stew, she’s right. I know how it would be. Hon, could you talk to us, get it off your chest?”

“It might help, but—”

“But you don’t particularly care for our company,” Stewart said.

“It isn’t that, exactly. I don’t like what you stand for. I hate it. But you are the only people I can talk to about Bob.”

“And perhaps get too much into the habit of talking about him? So that you’d be more likely to make a slip?” Stewart asked.

“Oh, no! Just to have someone to listen.”

Stewart stood up. “I want to impress on your mind just what a slip might mean, Francie. Not only would it mean you’d never see Bob again, but you wouldn’t be around long enough to—”

“Leave her alone!” Betty said hotly. “A woman can understand this better than you, Stew. We’ll be a substitute for friends for a while, Francie. You go ahead and talk your head off. Stew, it will be safer this way.”

Stewart shrugged. Francie said, uncertainly, “I may bore you.”

“You won’t bore me,” Betty said.

“I am bursting with talk. Saving it all up. I’ve been wondering what to do when he gets back. He’ll be weak and sick, I suppose. I won’t want to be here. I’ll try to get a transfer back to Washington. I could rent a little apartment and get our things out of storage. I keep thinking of how I’m going to surprise him. Little ways, you know. He used to love our recording of Russian Lullaby. The Benny Goodman one. And then he stepped on it. I could buy another one and have it all ready to play. And after I got the — the telegram, when I packed our things I was sort of shaky. I dropped Willy and chipped his green hat. I saved the piece though, and I can have it glued on. You know, I can’t even remember if I ever told him about saving the flowers. I pressed them, the ones I just happened to be wearing the day we first met, in Boston. White flowers on a dark-blue dress. I can get some flowers just like them. When he comes in the apartment I’ll have the record of Russian Lullaby playing and Willy with his green hat fixed on the mantel and a blue dress and those flowers. Do you think he’d like that, Betty?”

“I’m sure he will, Francie.”

“He isn’t the sort of man who notices little things. I mean, I could get something new for the apartment and I’d always have to point it out to him. He used to...”

She seemed to be two people. One girl was talking on and on, talking in a soft, monotonous, lonely voice, and the other girl, the objective one, stood behind her, listening carefully. But the ice had been broken. Now she could talk about Bob and they would understand just why she had to. The words came in a soft torrent, unbroken...

After that, the days went by, and the constant strain was something she lived with, slept with, woke up with. The Sherra file was exhausted, and after careful consideration of the three team leaders, Cudahy brought Tom Blajoviak into the picture. Tom was enormously shocked at learning what was transpiring, and he was able to go into his personal files to find the basis for a new report on work that would in no way prejudice the current operations. Stewart Jackson, though disappointed at the way the Sherra reports had reached negative conclusions, was pleased to begin to receive the Blajoviak reports.

Francie knew that she was becoming increasingly dependent on Clint Reese. No one else was able to make her smile, make her forget for precious moments. It was a quality of tenderness in him, of compassion, yet jaunty in its clown-face.

He would say, out of the corner of his mouth, “We’re air-dropping three Rumanians into Bolivia tomorrow to check on tinfoil production. Standard velvet cloaks and never-fail daggers. Get them from the stockroom. Two small and one medium.”

And since that one night he never again put any part of his heart into his voice when he spoke to her. She thought that she could not bear it if he did.

During a frigid mid-November week Betty went away on an unexplained trip. Stewart collected the daily portions of the Blajoviak report. He smiled at Francie too much, and made clumsy, obvious passes which she pretended not to notice. Betty left on a Tuesday. She was back Friday night. Saturday morning Osborne talked to Francie alone in Tom Blajoviak’s tiny plywood office. Osborne was having difficulty concealing his jubilation behind a poker face.

“What have you found out?” Francie demanded, her voice rising.

“Nothing about Bob,” he said quickly.

She sagged back into the chair and closed her eyes for a moment.

He went on, “But we’ve gone places in another direction. Can’t tell you too much, of course. But I thought you’d like to know. Evidently, they’ve been under orders to keep contacts at a minimum. I believe that Mrs. Jackson acted as courier for everything accumulated up to date. She has good technical training for the job, but I don’t think she has the feel for it. We put enough people on her so that even if she could push a button and make herself invisible, we’d still stay with her. Her contact is from one of the control groups we’ve been watching. She met him on a subway platform and went through a tired old transfer routine. He gave the stuff to a deluded young lady who works in Washington, taking a one-day vacation in New York. She took an inspirational walk when she got back to Washington. Visited national shrines by night and was picked up by the traditional black diplomatic sedan. By now those no-good reports have cleared Gander, chained to the wrist of a courier from one of the Iron Curtain countries.”

“Why are you telling me all this, Mr. Osborne?”

“It’s time to get impatient. We know all we have to know. It has been a month since the first letter. How has it been going?”

“All right, I think. I don’t think I’ve overworked those three things you told me to say. But it seems so pointless. I’ve been friendly. I help her with those lures they make, enameling them. And we talk a lot.”

“Start tonight. No letter, no more reports. My guess is that they’ll tell you one is on the way.”

“One probably is.”

“Please, Mrs. Aintrell, keep planning on the worst. Then, if I’m wrong, it will be a pleasant surprise. How much weight have you lost this month?”

Francie shrugged. “I don’t know. A few pounds. Four or five.”

“Or twelve.”

She glared at him. “Now tell me about the lines around my eyes. It helps my morale.”

He smiled. “Young lady, you are doing fine, but, remember, give them a bad time tonight.”

Fat, wet flakes of the first November snow were coming down as she walked down the trail toward the Jackson camp. She walked slowly, rehearsing her lines.

She went up on their porch, knocked, and opened the door.

Betty put her knitting aside. “Well, hi!” she said. “Off early today.”

Stew was near the fire, reading. He put his book aside and said, “An afternoon nip to cut the ice?”

Francie stripped off her mittens, shoved them in her pocket. She unbuttoned the red coat, looking at them somberly. She saw the quick look Betty and Stew exchanged.

“I came over to tell you that I didn’t bring you anything today. And I’m not going to bring you anything from now on.”

Stewart Jackson took his time lighting a cigarette. “That’s a pretty flat statement, Francie. What’s behind it?”

“We made a bargain. And I kept my end of it. A month is more than up. As far as I know, Bob may have died in that military prison. When I get the letter you promised me, the letter saying that he’s better, then you get more data.”

“Hon, we can understand your being impatient,” Betty said, in an older-sister tone, “but don’t go off half-cocked.”

“This isn’t just an impulse,” Francie said. “I’ve thought it over. Now I’m doing the bargaining. You must be reporting to somebody. They’re probably pleased with what you’ve done. Well, until I get my letter they can stop being pleased, because you’re going to have to explain to them why there aren’t any more reports.”

“Sit down, Francie,” Stew said. “Let’s be civilized about this.”

Francie shook her head. “I have been civilized long enough. No letter, no reports. I can’t make it any clearer.”

Stewart smiled warmly. “Okay; there’s no need of hiding this from you, Francie. We just didn’t want you to get too excited. A letter is already on the way. I’m surprised we haven’t gotten it already. Now do you see how foolish your attitude is?”

It startled Francie to learn how accurate Osborne’s guess had been. And the rightness of his guess strengthened her determination. She turned from them, took a few steps toward the fire. “No letter, no reports.”

Stewart’s smile grew a bit stiff. “You are being paid for those reports.”

“I thought you’d bring that up. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t care what might happen to me. Here is step two in my ultimatum: Either I get my letter within a week, or I consider it proof that Bob is dead. Then I’m going to go to Dr. Cudahy and tell him about you and what I’ve been doing.”

She took pleasure in Stewart’s look of concern in Betty’s muffled gasp.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Betty said. “You’re bluffing,” Stewart said. “Sit down and we can talk this out.”

Francie pulled her mittens on and turned toward the door.

Stewart barked, “I insist that you act more reasonably, Francie!”

“Look me up when you’ve got mail for me,” Francie said crisply. She slammed the door behind her and walked along the lakeside trail. She felt neither strength nor weakness — just a gray, calm emptiness. When she got home the fire she had lit was blazing nicely. She sat on the floor in front of it, looking for Bob’s face in the flames...

On Monday, after listening to her report, Osborne said, “Now, understand this: You’ll get a letter. If the letter proves, by content, to be a fake, it will be up to my superiors to make a policy decision. Either we take them into custody or we flush them and see which way they run. If the letter doesn’t prove anything, one way or another, then we go on as we are and wait for the report through Formosa. That may take until Christmas. If — and I am recognizing this possibility — the letter shows beyond any doubt that your husband is still alive, we’ll continue to play along and use every resource to try to get him back for you. Just remember one thing: No matter what the letter shows, you are to act as though you have no doubt. Can you do that?”

“I can try.”

“We’ve asked a great deal of you, Francie. Just this little bit more.”...

The Jacksons came over to the cabin on Wednesday, minutes after her arrival from the lab. They stamped the snow off their feet, came in smiling.

“So you doubted me, eh?” Stew said cheerfully. “It came this morning.”

As he fumbled for his pocket, Francie knew that Osborne’s doubts had shaken her more than she knew. She was afraid of the letter. Afraid to read it.

It seemed to take Stewart an impossibly long time to undo myriad buttons to get at the pocket which held the letter. Francie stood, looking beyond him, hand half outstretched, and through the windows she saw the shale of new ice that reached tentatively out from the shore line into the lake. She heard Betty prodding the fire.

“Here you go!” Stewart said, holding out another folded sheet of the familiar cheap-fibered paper. She took it, her finger tips alive to the texture of it. Betty knelt in front of the fire, bulky in her ski suit, head turned, smiling, flame light caught in the silky blond hair. Stew stood in his shaggy winter clothes, beaming at her.

“Well, go on!” Betty said. “You going to just stand and hold it?”

Francie licked her lips. “Could I — read it alone, please? It means so much.”

“Read it now, honey,” Stewart said. “We want to share your pleasure with you. It means a lot to us, too, you know.”

She unfolded the letter. At first the pencil scrawl was blurred. She closed her eyes hard, turned her back to them, opened her eyes again.

“Baby, now I know they weren’t kidding when they said you’d get that other letter. I guess you’re doing all you can for me. Anyway, I seem to be a guest of honor now. Sheets, even. Baby, don’t feel bad about helping them. Maybe it’s for the best. They’ve got something I never understood before. For the first time I’m beginning to see the world the way it really is. And now, darling, that fireplace seems closer than ever. And so do you. You still got those two freckles on the bridge of your nose? When I get my hands on you, baby, we’d better turn Willy’s face to the wall.”

Francie stopped reading for a moment and took a deep breath. A breath of joy and thanksgiving. He had to be alive. Nobody else could sound like that.

“Remember that I love you and keep thinking that we’ll be together again. That’s really all that counts, isn’t it? Figure on me being back in the spring, when all the world is turning as green as Willy’s hat.”

She stared at the last words. How could Bob have made such a grotesque and incredible mistake? The figurine wore no hat! How could he possibly—?

And she read it again and saw the whole letter begin to go subtly false. This new letter and the one before it. False, contrived, artificial. Bob, under the circumstances he described, would never, never have written in such a pseudo-gay way. His other letter had been like that because he had been trying to keep her from worrying about combat wounds or combat death. Now these letters, these fake letters, sounded absurdly lighthearted.

Still looking at the letter, her back turned toward them, she saw how they had taken the most precious part of her life and twisted it to their own ends. Bob was dead. He had died during the retreat. Had any doubt existed they would have labeled it Missing In Action. She had been the gullible fool. The stupid, sentimental fool who clung to any hope, closing her eyes to its improbability.

Involuntarily she closed her hands on the letter, crumpling it, as though it were something evil.

Stewart had walked over to where he could see her face. “Why are you doing that?” he asked, his voice oddly thin.

She fought for control, masking her anger. “I... I don’t know. Excitement, I guess. To think that he’ll be back in the spring and... and we can—” But that was a spring that would never come.

In its own way this letter was far more ruthless than the original telegram. She couldn’t pretend any longer, not with the two of them watching her so carefully.

She looked at them, hating them. Such a charming, civilized couple. Stewart’s face, which had seemed so bland and jolly, was now merely porcine and vicious. Betty, with features sharpening in the moment of strain, looked menacingly cruel.

“Filth!” Francie whispered, careless now of her own safety. “Filth! Both of you.”

Stewart gave a grunt of surprise. “Now, now, after all we’ve done for—”

“Grab her, you fool!” Betty shouted. “It went wrong somewhere. Just look at her face!” Betty jumped to her feet.

Stewart hesitated a moment before lunging toward Francie, his arms outspread. In that moment of hesitation Francie started to move toward the door. His fingers brushed her shoulder, slid down her arm, clamped tightly on her wrist. The meaty touch of his hand on her bare wrist brought back all her fear.

His lunge had put him a bit off balance, and Francie’s body contracted in a spasm of fright that threw her back. Stewart was pulled against the raised hearth of the fireplace. As he tripped, his hand slipped from her wrist, and before she turned she saw him stumble forward, heard the thud his head made striking the edge of the fieldstone fireplace, saw both his hands slide toward the log fire.

As Betty cried out and ran toward Stewart, Francie found the knob and pulled the door open and ran in panic toward the trail. She went up the first slope, reached the handrail, caught it, used it to pull herself along faster. She glanced back, gasping for breath, and saw Betty, face set, strong legs driving her rapidly up the hill. Behind her Stewart stood in the doorway of the cabin, looking up the hill.

Fear gave Francie renewed strength and for a few moments the distance between them remained the same. But soon she was fighting for air, mouth wide, while a sharp pain began to knot her left side.

Now Betty’s feet were so close that she dared not look back. Her shoulder brushed a tree and then Betty’s arms locked around her thighs and they went down together, rolling across the sticky trail into the base of a small spruce.

Betty had a man’s strength. She twisted Francie over onto her back, then sat on Francie’s stomach, knees pinning Francie’s arms. Her eyes were cold and watchful.

Betty slapped her hard, using each hand alternately, slapping until Francie’s ears were full of a hard ringing, until she could taste blood inside her mouth. But she could hear the ugly words with which Betty emphasized each blow.

“Stop!” Francie cried. “Oh, stop!”

The hard slaps ceased, and Francie knew that she had learned a great deal about Betty’s motivations during those brutal moments.

“On your feet,” Betty said.

Francie rolled painfully to her hands and knees. She reached up and grasped a limb of the small spruce to help herself to her feet. The limb she grasped was only a stub, two feet long. It broke off close to the trunk as she pulled herself up. She did not realize that, in effect, she held a club until she saw Betty’s eyes narrow, saw the woman take a half-step backward.

“Drop it, Francie,” Betty said shrilly.

Francie felt her lips stretch in a meaningless smile. She stepped forward and swung the club with all her strength. It would have missed the blond woman entirely, but Betty, attempting to duck, moved directly into the path of the club. It shattered against the pale-gold head. Betty stood for a moment, bent forward from the waist, arms hanging, and then she went down with a boneless limpness. She hit on the slope, and momentum rolled her over onto her back.

Francie, laughing and crying, dropped to her knees beside the woman. She took what remained of the club in both hands and raised it high over her head, willing herself to smash it down against the unprotected face.

For a long moment she held the club high, and then, just as she let it slip out of her hands to fall behind her, Clint Reese came down the wet path, half running, slipping on the snow, hatless, topcoat fanned out behind him. When he saw Francie the tautness went out of his face. He took her arm and pulled her to her feet.

“Get off the path,” he said roughly. “They—”

He pulled her with him, forced her down, and crouched beside her.

She heard the shots then. Two that were thin and bitter. Whipcracks across the snow. Then one heavy-throated shot, and, after an interval, a second one.

She moved, and Clint said, “Stay down! I came along to see if you were getting all the protection Osborne promised.”

“Oh, Clint, they—”

“I know, darling. Hold it. Somebody’s coming.”

It was Osborne, walking alone, coming up from the house. He walked slowly and the lines in his face were deeper. They came out to meet him. Osborne looked down at Betty Jackson. The woman moaned, stirred a little.

One of the young men, a stranger, came down the trail from the road.

Betty sat up. She looked vaguely at Osborne and the young man. Then she scrambled to her feet, her eyes wild.

“Stewart!” she screamed. “Stewart!”

Osborne blocked her as she started forward. “Your partner is dead, lady,” he said. “Quite thoroughly dead.”

Betty pressed the knuckles of both hands against her bared teeth. Instinctively Francie turned to Clint, pressed her face against the rough topcoat texture. She heard Osborne saying, “Get her up to the car, Clint.”...

After giving her a shot the doctor sent Francie to bed in the Cudahy guestroom. As the drug took hold she let herself slip down and down, through endless layers of black velvet that folded over her, one after the other. Somewhere in the depths, in the blackness, Bob was waiting for her...

On the fourth day Clint took her from the Cudahy house back to her cabin. He helped her down the trail and pointed out where Osborne’s men had been, trying to protect her as much as possible without alarming the Jack-sons.

He lit a fire, tucked a blanket around her in the chair. And then he made coffee for them. He lounged on the bunk with coffee and cigarette. “Take tomorrow off,” he said expansively.

“Yes, boss.”

“Remember when I was going to say something in poor taste and you stopped me?”

“I remember.”

“Oh, I’m not going to try to say it again, so don’t look so worried. I’m going to say something else. Lines I memorized last night, in front of my mirror, trying to wear an appealing expression. The trouble is, they still happen to be sort of — well, previous. So I won’t say them, either. But I’ll keep practicing. You see, I’ve got to wait until you give me the go-ahead. Then I’ll say them some day. Old Reese, they always said. A patient guy. Got a master’s degree in waiting, that one has.”

“It is too soon, Clint.”

“Well, I’ll stick around and wait. The way we work it, you show up some morning one of these years with a lobster trap in your left hand and a hollyhock in your teeth, humming Hail to the Chief. That will be our little signal, just yours and mine. I’ll catch on. Then I’ll spout deathless lines you can scribble in your diary.”

He stood up and for a moment his eyes were very grave. “Is it a date?”

“It’s a date, Clint.”

“Thanks, Francie.”

He left with an exaggerated casualness that touched her heart. She pushed the blanket aside and went to the window to watch him go up the trail.

The Jackson affair had done what she had been unable to do with her own resources. It had led her brutally to the final adjustment to the fact of Bob’s death, the final realization that it was true, irrevocable. His death had now become a fact to live with, and maybe, in time, it would cease to feel like a knife being turned in her heart, would become something as distant and sweet and faded and poignant as the petals of flowers between the pages of a book.

Now the Adirondack winter was coming, and during the long months she would watch the frozen lake and let the snow fall gently on her heart. A time of whiteness and peace, and a time of healing. By spring Bob’s death would be a year old, and spring is a time of growth and change.

She recalled the look of gravity and warmth and wanting in Clint’s eyes, the look that denied the casual smile.

Possibly, with strength and luck and sanity, it might come sooner than either of them realized. For this might be the winter in which she could learn to say good-by.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Betrayed