"You're getting brighter. If A equals B and B equals C, then it's a good bet that A equals C. Not a bad rule to go by."
"Now you sound like Harry."
"Thanks for the compliment. Get yourself ready."
Latham packed his suitcase rapidly, which was easy because he had barely unpacked, taking out only his civilian trousers and blazer, an embassy attach's uniform of the day. Now the waiting began, minutes ticked off within his prison walls. Then his telephone rang;
expecting Witkowski, he picked it up.
"Yes, what is it now?"
"What is what? It's Karin, my dear."
"Jesus, where are you?"
"I swore not to tell you-", "Bullshit!"
"No, Drew, it's called protection. The colonel tells me he's moving you-please, I don't care to know where."
"This is getting ridiculous."
"Then you don't know our enemy. I just want you to be careful, very careful."
"You heard about tonight?"
"Reynolds? Yes, Witkowski told me, which is why I'm calling you.
I can't get through to the colonel; his line's busy, which means he's constantly on the phone to the embassy, but something occurred to me only moments ago, and someone other than me should know about it."
"What are you talking about?"
"Alan Reynolds frequently came down to D and R on one pretext or another, usually concerning our maps and transportation information."
"No one thought it was odd?" Latham broke in.
"Not really. It's easier than calling the airlines or track- Ming train schedules, or, even worse, buying road maps in small lettered French. Ours are in legible English."
"But you thought it was strange, right?"
"Only after the colonel told me about tonight, not before, frankly.
Many of our people take weekend trips all over France, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. Especially those whose tours in Paris are limited.
No, Drew, it was something else, and that was strange."
"What was it?"
"On two occasions when I went back to Transport, I saw Reynolds walking out of the last aisle before the Transport door. I suppose I thought something like, "Oh, he has a friend in one of the offices and is arranging a lunch or a dinner," or some such thing."
"And now you're thinking so meting e se?"
"Yes, but I could be quite wrong. All of us in D and R work with degrees of confidential materials, much of it not deserving the designation confidential, but it's common knowledge that those in the last aisle, the farthest from the door, deal solely with maximum classified information."
"A pecking order?" asked Latham.
"From the first to the last aisle degrees of confidentiality?"
"Not at all," replied Karin.
"The offices are simply different.
When one is working on highly secret material, he or she moves into the last aisle, where the computers are far more inclusive and the communications set up for instant contact worldwide. I've worked there three times since I arrived here."
"How many offices in the last aisle?"
"Six on each side of the central corridor."
"Which side did you see Reynolds in?"
"The left side. I turned my head to the left, I remember that."
"Both times?"
"Yes." "What were the days, the dates, you saw him?"
"Good Lord, I don't know. It was over several weeks, going back a month or two."
"Try to think, Karin."
"if I could pinpoint them, I would, Drew. At the time, I simply didn't consider it important."
"It is. He is."
4"Why? ))
"Because your instincts are right. Witkowski says there's another Alan Reynolds at the embassy, another mole, someone very high up and very inside."
"I'll get a calendar and do my best to isolate the weeks, then the days. I'll try like mad to recall what I was working on. "
"Would it help to get into your office at the embassy?"
"That would mean getting into the supercomputer, which is somewhere below our own cellars. It stores everything for five years because our own papers are destroyed."
"It can be arranged."
"Even if it can, I haven't the vaguest idea how to operate it."
"Someone does."
"It's two-thirty in the morning, my darling."
"I don't care if it's half past the third moon! Courtland can order in whoever operates it, and if he can't, Wesley Sorenson can, and if be can't, the goddamn President can!"
"Getting angry won't help, Drew."
"How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not Harry."
"I loved Harry, but he was never you either. Do what you have to do. In you ranger which is probably the only way it can be done."
Latham depressed the lever, disconnecting the call, then immediately dialed the embassy, demanding to speak to Ambassador Courtland.
"I don't care what time it is!" he shouted when the operator objected.