“I HATE THIS TOP-SECRET stuff,” Regina said. “I’ve been camped in that waiting room two weeks.”
Trotter smiled at her. It was one of the few movements he could make that didn’t hurt. “I’ve been under anesthesia most of the time,” he told her. “I never realized you could break so many bones just by falling thirty feet.”
She took hold of the hand that had fingertips sticking out of the cast. She touched the fingers gently. “You were a mess. I heard the ambulance guys talking when they took you away. They ought to call you Bash. And then they get you stabilized, they immediately jet you down here. We have excellent hospitals in Kirkester, and your credit was good.”
“Top-secret stuff. I didn’t have much to say about it.”
“The secrets are safe. I’ve got an excuse to be in Washington, keeping my mother company while she testifies before Congress.”
“I screwed up Worldwatch that week, didn’t I?”
“Boy, you have been out of it. The issue shipped, only a day late. Time and Newsweek let us use plants of theirs.”
“Journalism lives.”
“Especially when you give them a big enough story. It’s been amazing. Five prominent women my mother’s age have committed suicide since the story broke. Even the big-city liberal papers haven’t been able to explain it away, and Mother is keeping the heat on.”
“Give them time, they’ll think of something. Your mother is a brave woman.”
“I guess so. Jimmy’s getting treatment, too. It shook him up. I did what Rines asked and sat on the story about Mr. Nelson. We concentrated on Mel Famey—his name was in the stuff they found in Smolinski’s place and sort of implied he killed Nelson. I liked Mel Famey. I still have trouble believing—”
“He made his choice a long time ago. Anyway, Albright will love you for it.”
She nodded. “He called me an angel.” They thought about that one for a second. Then Regina said, “Allan?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You expected to die, didn’t you?”
“I expect everybody to die.”
“That’s not what I meant. Stop laughing.”
“It hurts, anyway.”
“Did you mean what you said? About loving me?”
He sighed. “Yes, I did.”
“Well, don’t sound so miserable about it. I want you to help me run the paper when you get well. Not the day-to-day stuff. Write editorials or something. I—I need you. Mother is going to sort of retire—lecture, do a book, things like that. Everything you suggested.”
“I’ll think about it, Bash. I—I’m glad you’re here. I never said this to anybody before, but I need you, too.”
“You’re always going to need me. When you get out of traction, I’m going to give you an orgasm that will make you blind. Then I will lead you around.”
“You can be a wise mouth with me all tied up like this.”
A nurse came in and made a hand signal. Trotter lowered and raised his eyelids in acknowledgment. “When can you come back, Bash?”
“Is that a subtle way of telling me I have to go? I can be back whenever. I’ll come back tonight about eight, is that okay?”
“It will give me something to dream about during my nap.”
“I love you,” she said, and kissed him on the forehead.
“I love you, too.” He watched her go.
Trotter did not go to sleep, at least not immediately. He had another visitor. A tough-looking man pushed the wheelchair in; the shrunken figure in it waved a hand and sent him from the room.
The Congressman worked his mouth. He worked it hard, forcing the living half to do all the work. The Congressman was very good at getting work from the reluctant—the speech was slow and a little slurred, but it was perfectly comprehensible, and undeniably the Congressman.
“You look like hell,” he told his son.
Trotter laughed, winced, laughed again. “Whereas you, on the other hand, look great.”
“Should have seen me before.”
“We did it, Congressman. Saved the Hudson Group, pulled the plug on Cronus.”
“You did it.”
“I had a lot of help.”
“You. Key man. You have to run the Agency.”
“All right.”
The good side of the Congressman’s face froze. For a moment, Trotter was afraid he’d given the old man another stroke.
“You heard me,” he told his father. “I’ll do it until you get well. All my life I’ve been running from this rotten job, but I don’t think I’ll be doing much running anymore. Have you seen the X rays of my legs? Don’t bother. So you’ve caught me. Someone’s got to do the job.”
“Rines isn’t up to it.”
“He’s up to it. My being alive gets in his way, that’s all.”
“You tried to kill yourself.”
“I was ready to die. There’s a difference. You trained me. If I’d tried to kill myself, I would be dead.”
The old man made a half smile.
“Anyway,” Trotter went on, “for the first time ever I think I really want to live. So I’ll run your goddam Agency for you. But not from Washington. Good cover jobs are hard to come by, and I’m damned if I’m going to run for Congress. We’ll keep Rines on the case down here, and I’ll help Regina run the Hudson Group. I’ll have Albright with me, and things will be golden. I might even get married.”
“Bad idea.”
“Maybe so. But if I think it’s a good idea, then I’ll do it. Got that? If I’m running things, I’ll make the decisions.”
The Congressman showed him another half smile. “Good luck, son,” he said. He pressed a button on the side of the wheelchair, and the tough-looking man came and got him.
Trotter let his eyes droop shut. He thought about the long recuperation ahead of him; he thought about Regina and her happy threat to blind him; he thought about the job ahead. The rotten, corrupting, had-to-be-done job of fighting the rot and corruption or the Russians. He thought about the constant struggle he’d have to fight to keep himself from turning the Hudson Group, whose freedom he’d smashed himself up defending, into another branch of the Agency, without, of course, letting its enormous resources go to waste. He’d think of something. Bash would help, if only by yelling at him.
He settled back against the pillows. For a man whose long-dreaded destiny had caught up with him at last, he didn’t feel too bad.
It was deep winter, now, but Borzov had ways to keep warm. His shower had been fixed (at last), and he had begun to let the young yellow-haired Sergeant Maria Malnikova warm his bed and whatever portions of his ancient anatomy happened to get cold.
And when he really wanted heat, he could allow himself to reflect that the Hudson Group failure was the third consecutive time the Congressman had done him down.
The damage was not irreparable. The advantage of a cold war over a hot one was that the damage was never irreparable. When the battleground was the mind of an uncontrolled citizen, and the weapons were history and news, each defeat could become the basis for a new success.
Let the Americans revel in the anti-Soviet feeling this operation had caused. Let them trumpet their triumph and stir up hatred. Borzov would use it, as he would have used the Hudson Group. His plan would continue, and the next American election would tell.
But he owed the Congressman something personal, too, after three reversals, and that account, Borzov knew, would be paid. He might even break the precedent of a lifetime and cross the ocean to see it paid in person. But come another November, Borzov’s old American comrade, and this young man who was so like him, would watch their country fulfill the destiny Borzov had designed for it so many years ago, and then they would die.
If Borzov had to tell them himself, they would know who had beaten them.
Because that was something else about a war such as this. As the aggressor, Borzov had all the advantages. The Americans would never know how badly they were losing until long after they had already lost.