Have to go over this again in detail. Say after lunch in the den. Give the room another sweep for bugs first, naturally. But right now
;t Pressure that had been building up in his bladder since he awoke finally drove Turpin out of bed.
There appeared to be a ritual about Sunday in the Turpin household. Sheklov hoped fervently that he wouldn't have to endure it more than once. But apparently Mrs. Turpin's mother insisted on it. Her name was Gleewood, but that had not been the maiden name of Mrs. Turpin. There had been some divorces-a fact that did not in the least surprise him.
Not wishing to seem discourteous, he accepted Mrs. Gleewood's invitation to join her and her daughter in the living-room and watch Rev. Powell's nationally-networked service at noon-the "lip service," as someone had caustically termed it during last night's party. Peter, looking haggard, came too, several minutes after it started. That triggered off a lecture from his grandmother concerning the disgracefully casual attitude of young people to religion. Then she asked where Lora was, and Peter answered sharply, "Lying on her bed in a drunken stupor-where else?"
Which gave an excuse for another and longer blast. Sheklov sat there wishing the floor would open and swallow him, while Mrs. Turpin-Sophie, as she insisted he call her-simply sat with glacial calmness, sipping a rapid succession of gin atomics brought by Estelle. To reinforce his cover, Sheklov had intended to talk a little with the maid in the family's hearing about their supposedly shared homeland; so far, however, the girl had absolutely refused to be drawn.
It had crossed his mind, very vaguely, that she might not be Canadian herself, but the only reason he could think of for pretending to be was if she was wanted for a criminal offence, and had changed her identity to one that could hot be too closely investigated. The Canadians were efficiently unco-operative when it came to answering inquiries from the States about their citizeas.
Still, that was irrelevant. Right now, his job was to put himself beyond the reach of unwelcome prying.
To start with, he must get Turpin to have this Danty
checked out. Turpin would have an excellent excuse to do so, considering his daughter's connection with the boy. Boy? More like young man. Over twenty, under twentyfive. Hard to be sure owing to his bony leanness.
Had it surprised him to find that a Canadian timbersalesman could quote the Bhagavad-Gita7 He hadn't shown the least hint of it, just given a nod of satisfaction at the aptness of the passage. True, one did find people who adhered to non-Western religions both here and north of the border. But it was so atypical, he shivered imperceptibly whenever he recalled his incredible lapse. He had had to utter those words. It was as though someone else took momentary command of his tongue.
Then there was lunch, at which Turpin appeared with a sort of after-shave advertisement bluffness and a forced air of goodwill towards the world, and-shortly afterLora too, tousle-haired, bleary-eyed, and even more snappish than Peter. Mrs. Gleewood told her what she thought of her behaviour, in particular because she had dared to bring a black into her own home, when everybody knew that all the blacks in America were ready to slip a knife into your ribs the instant they got the chance.
"Don't talk to me about that radiated slug," was Lora's sullen answer, at which Mrs. Gleewood rounded on Turpin.
"You know what this rude little bitch needs?" she rasped. "Six months in a reform camp, that's whatl"
"Hear, head"-loudly from Peter.
Details about reform camps had been included in Sheklov's briefing. He expected Turpin to explode at that. The camps were for incorrigible juvenile delinquents, and the most famous-at Sandstone, Georgia-boasted the highest murder-rate and the highest suicide-rate in the country. But Turpin merely said in a mild tone, "Lora will get over this phase, you know."
"The hell I will," Lora said, and moodily turned to her food.
By the time Turpin suggested he and Sheklov adjourn to the room he called his den, for coffee and liqueurs, it was all the latter could do not to shake his head in inexpressible admiration. Coping with this abominable motherin-law, this near-alcoholic wife, this homosexual son, this promiscuous daughter, and his job at Energetics General
and his role as the best Russian agent ever to be injected into the States-it defied belief l
When Turpin had assured him that the den was clean of bugs and they could talk freely, he tried to say something of what he was feeling. But Turpin, pouring tiny goblets of Tia Maria, stared in apparently genuine incomprehension.
"Don, I don't see what you mean. Sure, the kids are a bit wild, but I meant it when I said they'd settle down. Granted, I'm sort of sorry about Peter, but it's this protracted-adolescence bit, and it's simply the-uh-the in thing to flaunt your defiance of the conventions for a few years before you straighten your head anal cool off. He has girls too, you know, now and then."
"Nonetheless, a family like this must be-"
"My family," Turpin cut in with an air of not wanting to be contradicted, "is my best single cover. Sophie is a first-rate company wife. If it hadn't been for her, I could never have got where I am. I have to endure her mother, of course, but we only see her during the summer; she has a winter place in Florida. I planned the family to be my cover, in fact, so if you have any quarrel with it, you go blame the census department. I have an average number of kids, I give them average allowances, they've had typical educations, typical everything. My only worry has been that sometimes I've wondered whether someone might not figure it was so close to the norm it must be planned."
He hesitated, and then added, "My only worry, that is, until you were wished on me. Are you snaking any progress?" And added with his eyes: 1 hope!
Sheklov reached for the bowl of sugar resting on a low table between them and stirred a generous spoonful into his coffee; he liked it Turkish-style, thick and sweet. Not looking up, he said, "I'm not a miracle-worker, you know. I shall have to feel things out for a good while before I can do anything positive."
Turpin sighed. "I don't see why someone had to be sent specially," he grumbled. "Or why-if it was necessary-it had to be me who was used to cushion you."
"Also," Sheklov said delicately, "you don't like the scope of my brief."
There was a pause. Turpin looked everywhere except at Sheklov while deciding how best to reply- He settled for candour. "No, I don't!"
"If it's any,consolation, it makes me feel awkward, too." Sheklov raised his liqueur goblet. Barely in time he remembered to sip, not toss the contents back. While thinking as Holtzer he made no such errors, he reassured himself; it was trying to straddle his two personalities that-
But that led back to the recollection of how he had exposed himself to Danty.
Maintaining flawless outward calm, however, he said, "In fact, I was going to ask you this anyhow, and now is as good a time as any. How long would it take you to fix me a job with EG-a travelling job?"
Turpin's face went turkey-cock red. He said, "Now just a-!"
"I have the authority to insist," Sheklov murmured.
"The hell you do! Look, they gave me to understand that your timber-salesman cover was fire-proof, that the parent firm has been used before and can prop you up as long as necessaryl"
"As long as necessary for me to devise an alternative," Sheklov answered stonily. "You know as well as I do-I mean better than I do-that even a Canadian isn't allowed stay in this country without impeccable reasons."
Turpin's jowls trembled. "But they told me I only had to cushion your landfall. I took it for granted that you had a closed assignments"
"Nobody said that in so many words," Sheklov pointed out. "In fact my assignment is open-ended, category one. Anyway, why should the idea of finding me a job with EG upset you so much? You must be distributing patronage all the time."
"Patronage!" Turpin echoed, and slapped his thigh with his open palm, like a gun-shot. "This isn't patronage-it's blackmaill Bringing you into EG would be insanely dangerous. I've sweated blood for years, for decades, to make sure there was no one in the entire corporation who had a breath of suspicion against him. I'm damned if I'm going to break a clean record a quarter-century longl"
Eventually Sheklov sighed and turned around in his chair to a more comfortable position.
"Look, Dick," he said, "there's something that d6esn't seem to have registered with you yet. Out near Pluto something has happened that is so big that nothing else matters until it's resolved. Doesn't that get across to you?
Hell, there are alien intelligences! There are portions of the universe that are contraterrene! And because one damned idiot government out of all the damned idiot governments we have on this miserable planet has signed away its responsibility to a bunch of machines, you and I and everybody, communist or capitalist, neutralist or whatever the hell, all of us, could be hurled back to the Stone Age tomorrow-if we're still alive. Think about it, Dick, for pity's sake think!"
It was getting through. He could read it in Turpin's staring eyes. He had finally managed to smash down the mental barriers in the other's head. And by doing so, inevitably, he had brought the whole affair back into focus in his own consciousness with as much force as it had possessed when he first heard of it from Bratcheslavsky in Alma-Ata.
At that moment, though, a phone shrilled. Turpin snatched at it. It was one of the old-fashioned kind that had to be held to the ear: in that case. Sheklov reasoned, it was probably a confidential line. Modern designs were easier to bug.
"Turpin here!"
There was a crackling. He nodded. "Yes, this is my quiet line. You can talk."
The caller talked. Watching, Sheklov saw Turpin's face go pasty-gray; his eyes narrowed. and he closed his empty fist so tight the knuckles glistened white. He looked as though he was about to swing that fist in sheer fury.
"Yes, I'll come at once," he said thickly when the caller was through. He slammed down the phone, leaped from his chair, and towered over Sheklov,
"You turd!" he forced out. "You radiated bastard!"
"What happened?" Sheklov whispered, thinking of Danty.
"That reserved area where you came ashorel They sent a service crew there today. Know what they found? They, found it had been turned oiff in the small hours of the morning you arrived. Turned off l Do you understand what that means?"
Sheklov did. But waited for Turpin to put it into smoking words.
"It means someone else knows you're here," Turpin spat. "And you've put both our necks in a noosel"
• X0V
Around the shoulder of the world. Bratcheslavsky had once said without warning, in the middle of a training session, "Vassily Sheklovl"
To which he had reacted with a surprised cock of his eyebrows.
"Know why you've been picked for this assignment?"
"Welll" Selecting the least arrogant-seeming of a dozen possible answers in the space of less than a heartbeat, and moreover not wanting to appear to cast doubt on the competence of those who had singled him out by adopting a pose of exaggerated modesty. "Well, because out of the range available, I guess I must be the most suitable . . . comrade."
"Your diplomatic turns of phrase do you credit," Bratcheslavsky chuckled, stubbing the latest of the aromatic cigarettes that were certain to kill him before his time. "But I'm not here to have my perspicacity flattered, regardless of what you may safely put over on other people. I guess it hasn't escaped your notice that one of the luxuries America permits itself is an exceptional degree of subtlety in the shades of meaning conveyed by the English language?"
At which: a nod.
"Well, thenl During your long struggle with the various idioms of modern English, you can hardly have failed to run across the image of someone `thinking fast on his feet'-hm?"
"Of course, comrade. A metaphor drawn from boxing, I believe. A term of praise for someone who-"
"Boxing be buggered," Bratcheslavsky retorted. They were speaking English, of course; the entire briefing was conducted in it, the ideal being to drive Russian so far to the fringes of Sheklov's consciousness that he would not be recognised as a Russian-speaker by those who might survey him after his injection into the States. "The idiom is used by people who hate boxing, who wouldn't pay ten cents to get into a boxing-match, who would call up and
complain if a TV company wasted programme-time on an international championship! No, the image is detached from its origins. And what I want to know is this: Do you recognize its applicability to this mission?"
"You mean it was a quality that was taken into consideration when they picked me for it."
"The quality, Vassily. The most important of all. Were it not for your possession of this talent, we might well have given up all hope of injecting another agent as blatantly as we shall have to in your case. Human beings have this peculiar limitation on their thinking, you know: They tend to put up with enormous risks simply because they can't exhaustively analyse the nature of the actions they realise they ought to take to insure themselves. As thinkers, Vassily, we are an amazingly lazy species. It's a wonder we survive from one day to the next. Yesl Let's get on with itl"
All of which sprang back instantly into Sheklov's mind, vivid as a 3-D movie picture.
He said coldly to Turpin, still looming over him as though about to tear him limb from limb, "Shut up and sit down."
..You-1"
"I said shut upl" With an access of unfeigned anger. "I wish you'd use your wits now and thenl You just said someone else must have known I was coming ashore, didn't you? But you didn't take one deep breath and ask yourself whol Put your vanity away, will you?"
