Seven Days in May

Wednesday Morning

The night sky began to lighten in the east as Jiggs Casey and Senator Raymond Clark rode through the Virginia countryside. President Lyman's agents were about their business; Casey and Clark were headed for Dulles Airport, which Art Corwin had left only a few hours earlier.

Though they were on their way well before sunrise, they were not the first of the President's little force to start work. About the time Corwin reached home, with the red-clay mud of the Blue Ridge still clinging to his shirt, Paul Girard had flown out over the Atlantic in the after cabin of the big jet transport carrying Vice-President Vincent Gianelli to Rome.

By prearrangement with Casey, Senator Clark was driving his own car to the airport. The two men wanted to be able to talk without worrying about an eavesdropping driver. Clark had beeped gently in front of Casey's Arlington home just after 4 a.m. The colonel, waiting on his front stoop in the dark, climbed into the convertible with the red leather bucket seats and threw his thin dispatch case in the back. He was bound for New York, Clark for El Paso.

"Pretty fancy locomotion, Senator," said Casey.

"Jiggs, if you don't start calling me Ray, I'm going to get Billy Riley to bust you to major."

"Okay, Ray." Casey liked this friendly politician from Georgia. "But it's still a pretty snappy rig."

"Just a widower's consolation, Jiggs. We got to have some fun in life. And what did your wife say about this junket?"

"If you think it's easy to leave home without any explanation, you're crazy," Casey said unhappily. "I couldn't say it was a secret mission because Scott might call. I couldn't say the President sent me. I couldn't say it was duty. Damn it, I couldn't say anything. I just had to stand there and watch those big brown eyes turn green."

"Come off it, Jiggs," Clark said in a mocking tone. "Don't tell me Mrs. Casey has any reason to be suspicious of you."

The merging Virginia suburbs flew past. My God, this guy drives fast, Casey thought. The telephone poles raced by like pickets on a fence.

"Well," said Casey, "she doesn't, no. But if she thought I was going to New York, she would be anyway."

"The gal who works for television?"

"That's right."

"What was that all about, anyway?" asked Clark. "You sounded pretty vague yesterday."

"It was a couple of years ago and it was all over almost before it started." Casey offered nothing more.

"I'm beginning to get a little suspicious myself, Jiggs." Clark's tone was bantering.

"Look," said Casey defensively, "the only reason I know this Segnier dame is because of one weekend in New York two years ago when I was on the UN detail. She's a friend of the girl I met. We ... well, it was short and it was one of those things. Marge got some word of it somehow and there was hell to pay. And there should have been, I guess. I was a damn fool, but you know how-"

"Yeah, I know," Clark said. "Don't start kicking yourself around all over again."

"It isn't that. It's just that the President is almost forcing me back into something that was dead and buried. I mean, the only way I can find out anything about Scott and Millicent Segnier is through Shoo."

"Shoo?"

"Shoo Holbrook. Eleanor Holbrook. You might as well know. You might have to rescue me up there. She writes scripts for TV shows."

Clark drove a moment in silence. "Well, take it easy, Jiggs," he said. "A good wife is worth an awful lot."

"I know."

"Worth more than anything," said Clark, suddenly serious, "except a country."

"What do you really think about my story?" Clark was obviously the President's best friend, and Casey was frankly curious about his reaction.

Clark took his eyes off the road and looked at Casey. "I think it's the most harebrained, farfetched yarn I ever heard." He paused. "And I think it's probably true."

"You do?"

"Well, maybe not all the lurid details that your surmises would add up to. That's what we're trying to find out. But the climate's right for something like this, Jiggs, just as the President said yesterday. I've felt it in my stomach for a long time.

"You know, Girard and I stayed behind with the President last night. He needed us. After all, we were the only two politicians in the room besides him. You and Art and Todd are great guys to have in a thing like this, but it takes a professional to kind of weigh what's possible and what isn't."

"What do you think he can do, the President?" Casey asked. "I take it he won't consider a public showdown."

"That's impossible," Clark answered quickly. "Scott would deny it all and his friends would hint that the President had had a mental breakdown-or worse. They might call him insane. He could be impeached, but even if he wasn't, the real power would pass to Scott, and from then on civilian authority wouldn't be worth a nickel."

"So?"

"So the President gets open-and-shut evidence in his hands and then ..." Clark stopped. Casey looked at him. The Georgian's face had gone hard. "... And then he breaks him fast. Forces him to resign. Anything goes at that point."

Casey lit a cigarette. Clark must have been a pretty tough one himself in combat, for all his easy surface manner.

"And what if he can't make the evidence stick?" he asked.

"I've thought some about that," Clark said, "but I don't think the President has. He's too confident that point will never be reached. He's hoping that it's all a dream. One way, of course, would be to fire Scott out of hand without warning, install some guy like Rutkowski as chairman, call off the alert and order Rutkowski to break up ECOMCON-if it's really there."

"You'd have to do that by Friday night," Casey pointed out, "before they start flying troops all over the country."

"I know, I know. But does Jordie ... does the President know? Jiggs, before we're out of this we may need some professional advice from you. We might reach the point where we'd need to know the exact place to cut the communications and the command chain, so that it belongs to us, not to Scott."

They fell silent. Casey felt small and a bit helpless in the half-light just before sunrise. Six men fumbling with a huge military machine-and no manual to guide them. The great apparatus of the Pentagon stood there, ready to respond automatically to a word from Scott: three million men, guns, ships, planes, missiles. Casey felt as if he'd lost his bearings. Where were the powers of the Presidency, about which he'd heard all his life and for which he himself had jumped on occasion?

"In our system," Clark said, as though reading his thoughts, "a politician without the people isn't much, no matter where he sits."

As they drove into the airport parking lot, Casey copied Mutt Henderson's El Paso phone number out of his address book onto a slip of paper and gave it to Clark.

"Thanks, Jiggs," Clark said, "but I think I better have a look at that base myself. If I don't, we won't be any better off than we are now."

The two men shook hands and parted in the terminal lobby. The sun glowed large and red on the horizon when Casey boarded his shuttle plane to New York. A few minutes later, in the first full daylight, Clark rode the mobile lounge out to the morning jet flight to Dallas and El Paso.

President Lyman's first order of business this morning was an 8:30 call to his wife Doris at their daughter's home in Louisville. Lyman knew that a soft word would keep Doris happy for hours, and he thought wryly that he should be grateful for at least one situation in which a mere expression of approval on his part sufficed to put things right. After chatting with Mrs. Lyman, he called Liz at the hospital, heard her whisper "Grandpa" for the first time and blew her a loud kiss over the phone.

His mood was so cheerful when Secretary Todd telephoned a few minutes later that it earned him a rebuke.

"Good God, Mr. President," Todd said. "The way you sound, Scott must have given up and died."

"No. As a matter of fact, I was just about to call you about that. Can you come over right away?"

By the time Todd arrived from his Treasury office across the street, Lyman had finished two morning papers, informed his protesting press secretary that there would be no formal appointments that day, checked with Esther Townsend to make sure his three emissaries were safely on their way, and finished reading Corwin's notes on his night with Scott.

Todd fingered his watch chain as he read through the Corwin report, handed to him without comment by the President. Lyman removed his glasses, held them lightly in his big hands, and studied them as though inspecting the lenses for flaws.

"I must say that nothing in here tends to undercut Colonel Casey's story," Todd said. "Imagine two grown men sneaking up a freight elevator in the middle of the night to meet with a fringe mental case like MacPherson."

"Incidentally," Lyman said, "we can be pretty sure that it was Prentice's apartment. Esther checked our phone list this morning and Prentice is the only member of Congress of any standing who lives at the Dobney."

"Well, I can understand why Scott would be friendly with Prentice," Todd said. "After all, he's chairman of the Armed Services Committee, even if it was a bit late to call on him. But I can't see him mixing with that MacPherson."

Lyman leaned across his desk. "Look, Chris, if there is something up along the lines Casey suggested, it makes pretty good sense to me. MacPherson has eight or ten million listeners in his audience every night, and they apparently take everything he says as gospel truth. If Scott is planning something, he'll need someone to sell it to the country. And the way MacPherson talks, he'd be willing to do it. What I can't figure out is Prentice's part in this."

Now it was Todd's turn to be slightly patronizing.

"Mr. President, if there's something going on- and I'm still not ready to admit there is-it's quite obvious to me why Senator Prentice might be involved. He has a vested interest in the military not only because of his chairmanship but because of the state he represents. Think of all the defense contracts in California. Almost all our missiles and planes are made there. And it's not just big industry, it's the unions too. You turn on disarmament full steam and there'd be ghost towns all around Los Angeles for a while."

"Prentice is a bigger man than that," Lyman protested. "He throws his weight around, and he fought me on the treaty. But I've always respected him, really."

"I think it could be reflex action, pure and simple. He's no deep thinker. That treaty is a threat to his way of life, that's all." Todd brought the conversation back to specifics. "What about Rutkowski?"

"We talked for about an hour last night," Lyman said. "I found it a little hard to keep my hand hidden. I put it pretty much on the basis of being worried about what the military commanders were doing on the treaty, that kind of thing. Anyhow, Barney agreed to sound out Admiral Palmer this morning."

"Did he-"

The President interrupted. "Yes, there's something else. Barney said he got a call about three weeks ago from Colonel Murdock, asking him to come to Washington for a talk with Scott. Murdock made it plain it wasn't an order, just an invitation to discuss the political situation. Barney told him politics wasn't in his line, but that he'd drop in next time he came here.

Murdock got kind of vague then and said 'Yes, do that,' or something like that."

"I don't think Rutkowski should 'drop in' on Scott now," Todd said. "Scott might suspect something."

"I agree," Lyman said. "But I think I ought to call Scott right now, and tell him I'm going to skip the alert and go to Maine for the weekend instead."

Todd nodded. "We want to try him out, and that ought to get a reaction. And the sooner the better."

The President buzzed for Esther.

"I have a sneaky job for you, dear," he said. "I want you to get General Scott on the line for me, and then take down the conversation."

Todd stared intently at the President throughout the telephone conversation. Occasionally Lyman nodded at him with a humorless smile. When he hung up, five minutes later, his early-morning buoyancy was gone.

Todd started to ask something, but Lyman cut him off with a wave of his hand and buzzed for Esther. "Come in and read it back to us, Esther."

She came in with her shorthand book, sat down, and read:

the president: Good morning, General. This is Jordan Lyman.

general scott: Good morning, Mr. President. I see we're both early birds today.

president: General, to come right to the point, I've been thinking it over and I'm not going to participate in the alert after all. Frankly, I'm tired out. I've decided to go up to my place at Blue Lake and fish for two or three days.

scott: Mr. President, if I may take exception, sir, you really can't do that. You're an integral part of the exercise. Your presence is necessary. In fact, vital.

president: I'm only the last peg on the board, General. You know that. The alert can go through without me.

scott: But you happen to be the Commander in Chief, sir. Certain orders can only be given by you.

president: But those are final orders, and will only be simulated on Saturday anyway.

scott: It's really more than that, Mr. President. Your presence is needed for morale, for the Chiefs and especially for the field commands who'll realize you're watching everything.

president: Don't worry about that. I'll be following things closely at Blue Lake.

scott: If I may say so, sir, I think it would be extremely unwise for you to take a vacation at this stage in our situation with Russia. They won't be very much impressed by an alert which takes place while you go fishing.

president: Suppose you let me be the judge of that, General. I'm afraid my decision is final. I just have to get some time off.

scott: Of course it is up to you, Mr. President, but I must say I can't endorse your decision.

president: Well, I...

scott: When do you expect to go to Blue Lake?

president: I'm probably going to fly up Friday afternoon, late.

scott: Well, I envy you. Good luck with the fish.

president: Good-by, General.

scott: Good-by, Mr. President.

Todd waited until the flush of anger faded from Lyman's face. "Not an easy man to cross," Todd remarked. "I'm glad he's on our side and not the Soviets'."

"Our side, Chris?" Lyman said. "Do you still think so?"

"I must admit my doubts are growing," Todd said.

"You certainly drew a reaction from him. Now, what are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to call Hank up at Blue Lake. If Scott's up to anything, I think he might send someone up there to get a look at it."

It took a minute or two for Esther to get through to Henry Picot, the President's caretaker and fishing guide at his Maine retreat.

"Hank? This is Jordan Lyman. They are, huh? How many? ... You're a liar, Hank. No, I can't come this weekend, but I want you to make it sound as though I am coming. That's right. Drop the word at the store when you go in to get the mail.

"And listen, I expect a few magazine people might turn up there to look the place over. Maybe in the next day or so. Oh, you know, they always want to get pictures. If you see any strangers around the island, be polite to them, but don't let them on the place. Okay? And, Hank, get a good look at them and give me a call as soon as they leave, will you? ...

"No, I'm not sure they're coming. It's just a hunch... . No, no. You know I don't have any enemies- except you and those fish. Okay. Thanks, Hank."

Todd nodded approvingly at Lyman. "If this thing is as bad as it's beginning to look, your man Picot will have visitors before Friday."

"I think so too."

"Look," Todd said, "I think I ought to go back to the office and work out an alternative plan. Suppose, for example, that we become convinced there's something up, but we can't prove it? In that case, you've got to be ready to act fast."

"I wish you would, Chris," Lyman said. "Frankly, my thinking hasn't gone that far."

When Todd left, Lyman went through Corwin's report again. It read like a two-bit thriller. General Garlock he had met only once, and he couldn't really remember him. Obviously, though, Garlock wasn't in on Scott's plans. Lyman felt strangely upset about General Riley. He remembered an uproarious evening last year when he had given a party for the top Marine commanders, one in a series of military stag dinners he put on. Riley had told story after story of World War II days with earthy, trenchant humor. Few men had made so quick or so favorable an impression on Lyman. Could Riley now really have a hand in challenging the system which had given so much to the country, to the Marines-and to Riley himself?

And how could men of the stature of Scott and Riley bring themselves to sneak into a freight elevator like a couple of burglars for a meeting with such a transparent charlatan as MacPherson? Or had he misjudged MacPherson? Or was Corwin dreaming, too?

Esther's buzzer, announcing General Rutkowski, cut Lyman's thoughts short. He was thankful, for they were beginning to wander and the schedule wouldn't allow much of that.

General Bernard Rutkowski wore his Air Force uniform and command pilot's wings like a man born to them. He was stocky, blond, and just a trifle overweight. A bright, tough Chicago slum kid, he had literally forced his way into West Point, harassing three congressmen until one finally appointed him. He wanted to fly. Now he wanted to command fliers and missiles. He had carefully avoided Pentagon duty over the years; the Air Defense Command was his first completely chairborne assignment and he suffered in it.

Lyman waved at a chair and Rutkowski dropped into it, emphatically. The President offered him a cigar from the box he kept for Todd, and within a few seconds Rutkowski was enveloped in blue smoke.

"That's a good cigar. Well, I had a nice talk with Admiral Palmer," the General said. He blew a hole in his smoke cloud and studied Lyman. "I'm not much good on this espionage stuff, Mr. President, especially when I'm still not quite sure what you wanted me to find out,"

Lyman retreated to his veiled language of the night before. I hate doing this to you, Barney, he thought, but that's the way it has to be.

"Really, nothing specific, Barney," he said. "As I told you, I've been a bit worried over the attitude of some of the military commanders since we negotiated the disarmament treaty. I had a feeling there might be some organized resistance from some of your colleagues, and you know that wouldn't be good for the country."

Rutkowski was obviously not satisfied, but he shouldered ahead in his blunt way.

"Anyway," he said, "I told Palmer I had a feeling something was going on here in Washington and as a boy from the sticks I wanted to get the word. I mentioned that call last winter from Daniel at SAC, and then the one a couple of weeks ago from Murdock.

"Palmer fenced awhile, but he isn't much better at it than I am. He likes to get to the point. Finally, he said he felt the same way I did, but he couldn't explain it. He said as far back as last Christmas Scott took him to dinner at the Army-Navy Club one night and talked nothing but politics."

"Did Palmer say what his reaction was?"

"Sure. He's a stand-up guy. He said he didn't like it. He told Scott his job was to run the Navy and help make military strategy in the JCS, and that politics was out of his line."

"Was that the end of it?"

"For about two months. In February Scott had Palmer to dinner over at Quarters Six, with General Riley and General Dieffenbach. This time, Palmer says, all three of them took the same line, very critical of you and your foreign policy."

"Thought I was making a real mess of things?" asked Lyman.

"Well, yes." Rutkowski grinned. "I'm not going to repeat some of the language Palmer used. It got pretty purple."

"Don't bother to spare me," Lyman said, smiling. "That's everyday talk in my business. You should see some of my mail."

"Palmer says he listened but didn't say much, and when the others tried to draw him out, he backed water. That was all for a while, until Palmer denounced the treaty when the Senate Armed Services Committee questioned him on it. He said Scott must have heard about his statement through the grapevine, because he called him that night to congratulate him. That time again Scott wanted to expand into a general political discussion of your administration, but Palmer wouldn't go for it."

"Is that all?"

"No, it isn't. Palmer says he got a call from Murdock not too long ago, just about the time I did, inviting him to talk over the political situation and the 'military responsibility.' Palmer kind of told him off, I gather. He said he'd already said his piece on the treaty, that it was your show now and that was that. "Oh, there was one other thing. Palmer thinks the other chiefs have had some meetings on this subject that he hasn't been in on. He figures they're getting ready to back some kind of citizens' group that will try to get the treaty repealed, or something. He thinks the chiefs will give it all the covert support they can without having their names appear. He says he doesn't believe in playing that way."

"What do you think of the treaty, Barney?" asked Lyman.

Rutkowski shifted his cigar to the corner of his mouth. "You want it straight, Mr. President?"

"It wouldn't be much use any other way."

"Okay. I think the Russkis are playing you for a sucker. I don't think they have any intention of disarming. Oh, they might dismantle some bombs all right on July 1, but how many more will they be stockpiling at some new base in Siberia?"

"You don't trust our intelligence?" asked Lyman.

"Not on that one, Mr. President. Russia is too big a country."

"But you wouldn't join some group, say General Scott's if he has one, to fight the treaty?"

"Nope," Rutkowski said. "You've made the decision. You asked our advice. We gave it. You didn't take it. All right, now it's up to you. God bless you, Mr. President, I hope it works. If it doesn't, we start earning our pay the hard way."

Lyman hoped his smile looked as warm as he felt. "Barney, I wish you'd been in Washington to give me some advice. I like the way you give it. You don't straddle-like some I know."

"If you'll pardon the language, Mr. President," Rutkowski said, "straddling makes my ass tired. So I never got into the habit."

Lyman got up in his angular way and walked around the desk. As they moved toward the door, the President again asked Rutkowski to keep his visit to Palmer and the White House confidential.

"If I need you again in Washington, Barney," Lyman added, "I hope you'll come down and stay awhile."

"As long as the taxpayers let me have that jet," the General replied, "I'm your man in two hours, any time."

When the door closed, Lyman went to the tall window and stood looking out at the rose garden, his hands in his pockets. The sun shone thinly this morning, but even that was a welcome improvement over yesterday's rain. Had there been a similar improvement in his position? Was Palmer right, perhaps, and was Scott merely up to the old military stratagem of quietly sponsoring a civilian organization to say what the generals were not supposed to say for themselves? If that's all it is, Lyman thought, I'll contribute fifty bucks to the pot and lead three cheers for Scott in Garfinckel's window. But what about ECOMCON? Does the chairman need thirty-five hundred trained saboteurs to reinforce public opinion? Is there an ECOMCON, after all? Well, on that one, Ray Clark should know in a few hours.

When Clark stepped out of his plane at El Paso the heat encased his body. It was still early morning in West Texas, but the sun shone with unfamiliar intensity even from its low angle. Clark ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, grimacing at the taste. He had slept since Dallas, but after boarding the plane in Washington he had drained the half-pint bottle of bourbon in his pocket in a couple of gulps.

His face had the grimy feeling of the overnight traveler and he knew stubble stood out on his cheeks. Clark wasn't sure whether he'd like a drink or breakfast. He decided he'd settle for either.

A lunch counter appeared first. He ordered juice, doughnuts, and coffee and asked the waitress for the name of a good nearby motel.

"Try the Sand 'n' Saddle," she said. "But it's a nice place. Maybe you better shave before you check in, mister."

Clark got the cab driver talking-it wasn't much of a task-on the short ride to the motel.

"Say, I'm looking for an old buddy from down home," Clark said. "You know all the Army bases around here?"

"Ain't many, Mac," the driver replied. "They's just big. You're looking for Fort Bliss, maybe?"

"No, that doesn't sound like it."

"Well, they got White Sands just a little ways up the road in New Mexico. And Holloman airbase, out the same way." The driver studied Clark in the rear-view mirror. "Or Biggs field, here. Any of 'em?"

"Nope," Clark said, "this is a new one. Maybe only a couple months old. Damn, I lost the piece of paper he wrote it down on."

"Well, there's some kinda new base around here somewhere, one they keep pretty quiet. Tell you the truth, Mac, I don't know where it is. We never get no business from it and if Uncle Sam don't want me stickin' my nose in his business, I don't stick it in."

"This buddy," Clark said, "he's in the Signal Corps."

"You got me, pal. I never heard of that neither."

The Sand 'n' Saddle sprawled invitingly in a two-story semicircle from the office where Clark alighted. Through the open passageways he could see a swimming pool and deck chairs. The air conditioning in the office lowered the temperature to a painless 80 degrees. The senator registered simply as "R. Clark, Macon, Georgia." A Mexican teen-ager with a fixed smile and expressionless eyes took Clark's overnight case and led him to a room on the upper level.

A steady current of cool air poured from the gray machine in the window. Clark stooped over and held his face close to the source, massaging his temples and cheekbones.

"How soon can you get me a little whisky?" he asked the bellboy.

"Sorry, boss, the package store doesn't open until ten," said the youth. "It's far from here, too."

"Come on, son." Clark handed him a $10 bill. "You must have a private stock for your good customers."

The boy disappeared and came back a few minutes later with a pint of blended whisky. Clark winced at the label, but took the bottle without comment. Alone, he wrenched the cap off and took a long drink. He coughed and rubbed his smarting eyes. Then, self-consciously resolute, he walked into the bathroom, put the bottle in the medicine cabinet and banged the little door shut. He returned to the bedroom and picked up the telephone.

"Call me in an hour, please," he told the operator.

He stripped to his shorts, climbed under a sheet and went to sleep almost at once. When the phone rang an hour later he felt better. He shaved, changed into a short-sleeved shirt and lightweight sports jacket, and then sat on the edge of the bed, gazing at the slip of paper Casey had given him. Finally he made up his mind and asked the operator to get him the number. A woman answered.

"Mrs. Henderson?"

"Yes."

"Ma'am, my name is Ray Clark. I'm a friend of Mutt's and Jiggs Casey's. Jiggs gave me your phone number and told me to call when I got to town. I just missed Mutt in Washington."

"Oh, that's too bad," she said. "Mutt got in late Monday, but he had to go right out to the base. I'm afraid he'll be there through the weekend, too."

"Any way I can reach him?"

She laughed. "If you find out, please tell me. I don't even know where it is."

"You mean you've never even seen it?" Clark pumped his voice full of incredulity.

"Well, he did show me the general direction once when we were driving over to White Sands, so at least I know my husband's not in Alaska."

"Service wives have it rough."

"You're not in the service?" Mrs. Henderson's voice became guarded.

"Oh, sure," Clark lied. "That's how I know how it is. Or, rather, my wife does. They keep me traveling all the time on the hardware gadgets."

"Oh." She sounded relieved. "Well, tell me where you're stopping, and if he does get home, I'll have him call you."

"Sorry." He lied again. "I've got to fly to L.A. this afternoon. Just tell him Ray called. And thanks anyway, Mrs. Henderson."

On his way out the door, Clark hesitated, stepped back toward the bathroom, then turned quickly and went out again, banging the door hard. He walked rapidly down to the office, putting a smile back on his face by the time he reached the desk. He handed his room key to the clerk and asked him to arrange a car rental for him.

"Caddy?" asked the clerk. Clark hadn't realized a shave could do that much for a man's appearance.

"No, Chevy or Ford's okay."

While he waited, Clark leaned on the desk and talked with the thin young man who ran the office.

"What road do I take to go to White Sands?" he asked.

"You're on it. Route 54. Take a left out front and then keep straight on out. It's about sixty miles."

"Say, how do I get to that new Army base out that way? I got a friend in the Signal Corps there."

"Search me." The young man shrugged his shoulders. "I heard of some base out that way some place, but from what I hear, it's supposed to be secret."

"What's between here and White Sands?"

The youth grinned quickly. "Desert."

Several miles northeast of El Paso, driving at an unaccustomed 40 miles per hour, Clark had to agree with the description. To his right, the gray-brown land stretched flat to the far horizon, burnished almost white by the unrelenting sun which now rode well up in the sky. Occasional small boulders, clumps of tumbleweed and scattered barrel cactus offered the only relief from the expanse. On Clark's left rose the Franklin Mountains, gray and barren too except for the greasewood clinging to the lower slopes. More than forty million years ago, an ancient agony beneath the earth's surface had thrown up fire and lava to mold a mighty mountain range. Hundreds of centuries of wind and sun had eroded the peaks, inch by inch, until the limestone hills stood like old men, gaunt, withered, timeless.

Despite the heat, the dryness of the air left Clark feeling better than he thought he had a right to feel. He wiped his brow, but found no perspiration on it; evaporation had turned him into a self-cooling machine. Just over the New Mexico state line, he swung into a service station. From the look of the empty road ahead, it would be the last for many miles.

A man, from his stance of casual authority the proprietor, stood in the doorway. He wore a grease-spotted undershirt and his face was seamed and leathery.

"Coke in there?" Clark asked. The man nodded toward a big red box. Clark dropped in his dime and waited for the bottle to thump out of the recesses of the vending machine. "Have one?"

The man shook his head, but smiled faintly in thanks.

"How far is it to White Sands?" Clark asked.

"About fifty."

"You sure got a hot country here," said Clark, "and I got to make three PX's out that way today."

"Salesman?"

"Yep. Detergents. But this is a new route for me." This evoked no comment. Clark went on: "How many miles to that Army base, you know, the one they just finished up six, seven weeks ago?"

"Figured you wanted information," said the man in the undershirt, scratching his jaw. "By them tags, you rented the car in El Paso, so you didn't need no gas."

Clark laughed. "Okay, but I did offer to spend another dime. Listen, I'll make a deal with you. I'm breaking in on this territory and I want to sell that new base."

"What kind of deal?"

Clark laid a $20 bill on the glass counter by the cash register. The man made no move to pick it up.

"How do I know you're not some kind of spy?" he asked.

Clark pulled out his wallet again and sorted through his stack of cards, looking for his old Army reserve identification card. He thumbed quickly over several credit cards that listed him as a senator and held out the reserve ID card, with his picture and prints of his right and left index fingers on it.

"Georgia, huh? Whereabouts?"

"Macon, but I'm working out of Dallas now," Clark said. "Listen, all I want is a starter. Tell me where the road to that base turns off and the twenty's yours. And from now on, when I come back, I'll buy my gas here."

The man rang the cash register and carefully placed the twenty under a clamp in the bill compartment.

"Honest, friend," he said, "I don't know much about it. All I know is they built some kinda base over yonder." He pointed vaguely to the northwest. "They got a pretty big airfield there, and lots of buildings, from what I hear, but I ain't never seen nobody from the place. Least, nobody who'd admit it. If I was you, I'd watch my speedometer and when I'd gone about thirty miles, no, make it twenty-seven, twenty-eight, I'd look for a blacktop road off to the left, heading up to a little rise."

"Thanks a lot," said Clark. He drained the last of the soft drink.

"If you get in there to sell any soap, they ought to give you the gold watch, friend," said the station proprietor. "I don't think you will."

As Clark drove off, he watched in the rear-view mirror and saw the man squint at the rear of his car, then wet the stub of a pencil and mark the back of his hand. He's either working for somebody up the line, Clark mused, or he's a very cautious citizen.

Clark pressed the gas pedal down until the car was rolling along at 75 miles an hour. He watched the speedometer; when it showed he had traveled about 25 miles from the gas station, he slowed down. Several cars whizzed by him, the drivers glancing back in irritation. Clark kept his eyes to the left. The mountains reached higher now, though they ran farther from the highway, and the land rolled slightly in the foreground.

He slowed, then stopped. A black asphalt strip, obviously a fairly new road, ran off the highway at a right angle. It was unmarked.

Clark turned left onto it and drove slowly along. The pavement was thick. He saw the track of heavy-duty tires printed in faint dust marks on the blacktop. The road ran upward on a gentle grade. The desert stretched away unbroken save for a hill-or rather a domelike swelling of land-several miles off to his right.

Suddenly the road dipped over the rise. About a mile ahead he could see a high wire fence. A wire-mesh gate, closed, blocked the road there and a small hut stood inside. He saw a large sign, but couldn't read it from that distance. He had slowed to less than 20 miles an hour.

"Okay, bud, that's far enough!"

Clark, turning his head toward the source of the shout, saw a soldier coming at him from behind a large rock. He wore khaki shorts and short-sleeved shirt, field shoes and sun helmet, and for an instant Clark recalled the pictures of Montgomery's British desert troops in World War II. But this man carried a modern submachine gun-pointed right at him- and his collar insignia were U.S. government issue.

Clark saw another guard coming from the other side of the road a few yards farther along. He stopped the car.

"Move over, bud." The first soldier opened the door and shoved Clark to the middle of the seat. He tossed his weapon on the back seat. The other GI squeezed against Clark from the right side and also dropped his weapon in back, but he took a pistol from a holster and held it in his right hand. Both men looked like regulars to Clark. They were about thirty years old, he guessed. Their appearance left nothing to guesswork: they were hard.

The one now behind the wheel gunned the car down the road and pulled up with a screech of brakes in front of the gate. Clark still could see nothing beyond the fence but more desert and tumbleweed. The driver unlocked the gate, went into the little shack, picked up a field telephone, and cranked it. Now Clark could read the sign: "U.S. Government Property. Restricted. Positively No Admittance."

"Gimme the O.D.," said the soldier at the telephone. "Major? This is Corporal Steiner on the gate. We got a snooper here with Texas plates."