"Would it make any difference in the long run?"
"It's a start."
"I can't."
"Your damned dedication to duty again," she said, turning away. "Don't you see? Our jobs have torn us apart. We can save ourselves, Gene. We can both resign and go back to teaching. With your Ph.D. in physics and my Ph.D. in archaeology, along with our experience and credentials, we could write our own ticket with any university in the country. We were on the same faculty when we met, remember? Those were our happiest years together."
"Please, Dana, I can't quit. Not now."
"Why?"
"I'm on an important project-"
"Every project for the last five years has been important. Please, Gene, I'm begging you to save our marriage. Only you can make the first move. I'll go along with whatever you decide if we can get out of Washington. This town will kill any hope of salvaging our life together if we wait much longer."
"I need another year."
"Even another month will be too late."
"I am committed to a course that makes no conditions for abandonment."
"When will these ridiculous secret projects ever end? You're nothing but a tool of the White House."
"I don't need that bleeding-heart, liberal crap from you."
"Gene, for God's sake, give it up!"
"It's not for God's sake, Dana, it's for my country's sake. I'm sorry if I can't make you understand."
"Give it up," she repeated, tears forming in her eyes. "No one is indispensable. Let Mel Donner take your place."
He shook his head. "No," he said firmly. "I created this project from nothing. My gray matter was its sperm. I must see it through to completion."
The waiter reappeared and asked if they were ready to order.
Dana shook her head. "I'm not hungry." She rose from the table and looked down at him. "Will you be home for dinner?"
"I'll be working late at the office."
There was no stopping her tears now.
"I hope whatever it is you're doing is worth it," she murmured. "Because it's going to cost you a terrible price."
4
Unlike the Russian intelligence officer so often stereotyped in American motion pictures, Captain Andre Prevlov had neither bull-shoulders nor shaven head. He was a well proportioned handsome man who sported a layered hairstyle and a modishly trimmed mustache. His image, built around an orange Italian sports car and a plushly furnished apartment overlooking the Moscow River, didn't sit too well with his superiors in the Soviet Navy's Department of Foreign Intelligence. Yet, despite Prevlov's irritating leanings, there was little possibility of his being purged from his high position in the department. The reputation he had carefully constructed as the Navy's most brilliant intelligence specialist, and the fact that his father was number twelve man in the Party, combined to make Captain Prevlov untouchable.
With a practiced, casual movement, he lit a Winston and poured himself a shot glass of Bombay gin. Then he sat back and read through the stack of files that his aide, Lieutenant Pavel Marganin had laid on his desk.
"It's a mystery to me, sir," Marganin said softly, "how you can take so easily to Western trash."
Prevlov looked up from a file and gave Marganin a cool, disdainful stare. "Like so many of our comrades, you are ignorant of the world at large. I think like an American, I drink like an Englishman, I drive like an Italian, and I live like a Frenchman. And do you know why, Lieutenant?"
Marganin flushed and mumbled nervously. "No, sir."
"To know the enemy, Marganin. The key is to know your enemy better than he knows you, better than he knows himself. Then do unto him before he has a chance to do unto you."
"Is that a quote from Comrade New Tshetsky?"
Prevlov shrugged in despair. "No, you idiot; I'm bastardizing the Christian Bible." He inhaled and blew a stream of smoke through his nostrils and sipped the gin. "Study the Western ways, my friend. If we do not learn from them, then our cause is lost." He turned back to the files. "Now then, why are these matters sent to our department?"
"No reason other than that the incident took place on or near a seacoast."
"What do we know about this one?" Prevlov snapped open the next file.
"Very little. A soldier on guard patrol at the north island of Novaya Zemlya is missing, along with his dog."
"Hardly grounds for a security panic. Novaya Zemlya is practically barren. An outdated missile station, a guard post, a few fishermen-we have no classified installations within hundreds of miles of it. Damned waste of time to even bother sending a man and a dog out to patrol it."
"The West would no doubt feel the same way about sending an agent there."
Prevlov's fingers drummed the table as he squinted at the ceiling.
Finally, he said, "An agent? Nothing there . . . nothing of military interest . . .yet-" He broke off and flicked a switch on his intercom. "Bring me the National Underwater and Marine Agency's ship placements of the last two days."
Marganin's brows lifted. "They wouldn't dare send an oceanographic expedition near Novaya Zemlya. That's deep within Soviet waters."
"We do not own the Barents Sea," Prevlov said patiently. "It is international waters."
An attractive blond secretary, wearing a trim brown suit, came into the room, handed a folder to Preview, and then left, closing the door softy behind her.
Prevlov shuffled through the papers in the folder until he found what he was looking for. "Here we are. The NUMA vessel First Attempt, last sighted by one of our trawlers three hundred and twenty-five nautical miles southwest of Franz Josef Land."
"That would put her close to Novaya Zemlya," Marganin said.
"Odd," Prevlov muttered. "According to the United States Oceanographic Ship Operating Schedule, the First Attempt should have been conducting plankton studies off North Carolina at the time of this sighting." He downed the remainder of the gin, mashed out the butt of his cigarette, and lit another. "A very interesting concurrence."
"What does it prove?" Marganin asked.
"It proves nothing, but it suggests that the Novaya Zemlya patrol guard was murdered and the agent responsible escaped, most likely rendezvoused with the First Attempt. It suggests that the United States is up to something when a NUMA research ship deviates from her planned schedule without explanation."
"What could they possibly be after?"
"I haven't the foggiest notion." Prevlov leaned back in his chair and smoothed his mustache. "Have the satellite photos enlarged of the immediate area at the time of the event in question."
The evening shadows were darkening the streets outside the office windows when Lieutenant Marganin spread the photo blowups on Prevlov's desk and handed him a high powered magnifying glass.
"Your perceptiveness paid off, sir. We have something interesting here."
Prevlov intently studied the pictures. "I see nothing unusual about the ship; typical research equipment, no military-detection hardware in evidence."
Marganin pointed at a wide-angle photo that barely revealed a ship as a small white mark on the emulsion. "Please note the small shape about two thousand meters from the First Attempt in the upper-right corner."
Prevlov peered through the glass for almost a full half minute. "A helicopter!"
"Yes, sir, that's why I was late with the enlargements. I took the liberty of having the photos analyzed by Section R."
"One of our Army security patrols, I imagine."
"No, sir."
Prevlov's brows raised. "Are you suggesting that it belong to the American vessel?"
"That's their guess, sir." Marganin placed two more pictures in front of Prevlov. "They examined earlier photos from another reconnaissance satellite. As you can see by comparing them, the helicopter is flying on a course away from Novaya Zemlya toward the First Attempt. They judged its altitude at ten feet and its speed at less than fifteen knots."
"Obviously avoiding our radar security," Prevlov said.
"Do we alert our agents in America?" said Marganin.
"No, not yet. I don't want to risk their cover until we are certain what it is the Americans are after."
He straightened the photographs and slipped them neatly into a folder, then looked at his Omega wristwatch. "I've just time for a light supper before the ballet. Do you have anything else, Lieutenant?"
"Only the file on the Lorelei Current Drift Expedition. The American deep-sea submersible was last reported in fifteen thousand feet of water off the coast of Dakar."
Prevlov stood up, took the file and shoved it under his arm. "I'll study it when I get a chance. Probably nothing in it that concerns naval security. Still, it should make good reading. Leave it to the Americans to come up with strange and wonderful projects."
5
"Damn, damn, double damn!" Dana hissed. "Look at the crow's-feet coming in around my eyes." She sat at her dressing table and stared dejectedly at her reflection in the mirror. "Who was it who said old age is a form of leprosy?"
Seagram came up behind her, pulled back her hair, and kissed the soft, exposed neck. "Thirty-one on your last birthday and already you're running for senior citizen of the month."
She stared at him in the mirror, bemused at his rare display of affection. "You're lucky; men don't have this problem."
"Men also suffer from the maladies of age and crow's-feet. "What makes women think we don't crack at the seams, too?"
"The difference is, you don't care."
"We're more prone to accept the inevitable," he said, smiling. "Speaking of the inevitable, when are you going to have a baby?"
"You bastard! You never give up, do you?" She threw a hairbrush on the dressing table, knocking a regiment of evenly spaced bottles of artificial beauty about the glass top. "We've been through all this a thousand times. I won't subject myself to the indignities of pregnancy. I won't swish crap-laden diapers around in a toilet bowl ten times a day. Let someone else populate the earth. I'm not about to split off my soul, like some damned amoeba."
"Those reasons are phony. You don't honestly believe them yourself."
She turned back to the mirror and made no reply.
"A baby could save us, Dana," he said gently.
She dropped her head in her hands. "I won't give up my career any more than you'll give up your precious project."
He stroked her soft golden hair and gazed at her image in the mirror. "Your father was an alcoholic who deserted his family when you were only ten. Your mother worked behind a bar and brought men home to earn extra drinking money. You and your brother were treated like animals until you were both old enough to run away from the garbage bin you called home. He turned crook and started holding up liquor stores and gas stations; a nifty little occupation that netted him a murder conviction and life imprisonment at San Quentin. God knows, I'm proud of how you lifted yourself from the sewer and worked eighteen hours a day to put yourself through college and grad school. Yes, you had a rotten childhood, Dana, and you're afraid of having a baby because of your memories. You've got to understand your nightmare doesn't belong to the future; you can't deny a son or daughter their chance at life."
The stone wall remained unbreached. She shook off his hands and furiously began plucking her brows. The discussion was closed; she had shut him out as conclusively as if she had caused him to vanish from the room.
When Seagram emerged from the shower, Dana was standing in front of a full-length closet mirror. She studied herself as critically as a designer who was seeing a finished creation for the first time. She wore a simple white dress that clung tightly to her torso before falling away to the ankles. The décolletage was loose and offered a more than ample view of her breasts.
"You'd better hurry," she said casually. It was as though the argument had never happened. "We don't want to keep the President waiting."
"There will be over two hundred people there. No one will stick a black star on our attendance chart for being tardy."
"I don't care." She pouted. "We don't receive an invitation to a White House party every night of the week. I'd at least like to create a good impression by arriving on time."
Seagram sighed and went through the ticklish ritual of tying a bow tie and then attaching his cuff links clumsily with one hand. Dressing for formal parties was a chore he detested. Why couldn't Washington's social functions be conducted with comfort in mind? It might be an exciting event to Dana, but to him it was a pain in the rectum.
He finished buffing his shoes and combing his hair and went into the living room. Dana was sitting on the couch, going over reports, her briefcase open on the coffee table. She was so engrossed she didn't look up when he entered the room.
"I'm ready."
"Be with you in a moment," she murmured. "Could you please get my stole?"
"It's the middle of summer. What in hell do you want to sweat in a fur for?"
She removed her horned-rimmed reading glasses and said, "I think one of us should show a little class, don't you?"
He went into the hall, picked up the telephone, and dialed. Mel Donner answered in the middle of the first ring.
"Donner."
"Any word yet?" Seagram asked.
"The First Attempt-"
"Is that the NUMA ship that was supposed to pick up Koplin?"
"Yeah. She bypassed Oslo five days ago."
"My God! Why? Koplin was to jump ship and take a commercial flight stateside from there."
"No way of knowing. The ship is on radio silence, per your instructions."
"It doesn't look good."
"It wasn't in the script, that's for sure."
"I'll be at the President's party till around eleven. If you hear anything, call me."
"You can count on it. Have fun."
Seagram was just hanging up when Dana came out of the living room. She read the thoughtful expression on his face. "Bad news?"
"I'm not sure yet."
She kissed him on the cheek. "A shame we can't live like normal people so you could confide your problems to me."
He squeezed her hand. "If only I could."
"Government secrets. What a colossal bore." She smiled slyly. "Well?"
"Well, what?"
"Aren't you going to be a gentleman?"
"I'm sorry, I forgot." He pulled her stole from the closet and slipped it over her shoulders. "A bad habit of mine, ignoring my wife."
Her lips spread in a playful grin. "For that, you will be shot at dawn."
Christ, he thought miserably, a firing squad might not be too farfetched at that, if Koplin screwed up at Novaya Zemlya.
6
The Seagrams settled behind the crowd gathered at the entrance to the East Room and waited their turn in the receiving line. Dana had been in the White House before, but she was still impressed by it.
The President was standing smartly and devilishly handsome. He was in his early fifties and was definitely a very sexy man. The latter was supported by the fact that standing next to him, greeting every guest with the fervor of discovering a rich relative, was Ashley Fleming, Washington's most elegant and sophisticated divorcee.
"Oh shit!" Dana gasped.
Seagram frowned at her irritably. "Now what's your problem?"
"The broad standing beside the President."
"That happens to be Ashley Fleming."
"I know that," Dana whispered, trying to hide behind Seagram's reassuring bulk. "Look at her gown."
Seagram didn't get it at first, and then it hit him, and it was all he could do to suppress a boisterous laugh. "By God, you're both wearing the same dress!"
"It's not funny," she said grimly.
"Where did you get yours?"
"I borrowed it from Annette Johns."
"That lesbian model across the street?"
"It was given to her by Claude d'Orsini, the fashion designer."
Seagram took her by the hand. "If nothing else, it only goes to prove what good taste my wife has."
&nbs
p; Before she could reply, the line joggled forward and they suddenly found themselves standing awkwardly in front of the President.
"Gene, how nice to see you." The President smiled politely.