"That should hold them long enough," Chase said, climbing in. He put the jeep into gear and looked at the man. "Here's where we part company."
The man opened his mouth to say something but never got the chance. Even Chase was taken aback at the savagery with which Ruth thrust the barrel hard into the man's groin. He shrieked and clutched himself, falling doubled-up onto the road and moaning.
They didn't speak for a long time, eyes fixed on the road ahead, as if words might break the spell of flight. When at last Chase looked at her, Ruth was slumped in her seat, ashen-faced, her lower lip visibly trembling, still clutching the rifle with hands that might have been locked in rigor mortis.
"It's all right, we're safe," he reassured her. "They won't get past that for at least an hour. We're safe." When she didn't respond, he said with genuine admiration, "You were fantastic. You really had me believing that you'd have killed him."
Ruth cleared her throat as if she'd swallowed a ton of sawdust. "I would have, I mean I
"You mean," Chase said staring through the windshield, "it wasn't loaded?"
He gripped the wheel and his shoulders began to shake. He could hardly see where he was going because of the tears filling his eyes. They rolled down his cheeks.
Ruth gazed at him dumbly, and her stomach started to tremble, and then she too was afflicted by helpless hysterical laughter. For the next ten miles they were like two giddy kids.
24
General Madden listened to the slurping sounds of lovemaking. When the man began to speak in a low, barely audible voice the rage boiled up inside him. His jaws ached from the pressure of his clamped teeth.
Col. Travis Murch, senior security officer, pressed the tab, stilling the taped voice. "1 have a transcript you can look at. They met on a number of occasions"--Murch glanced down at the open file--"eleven that we know of for certain. But I'd say this was the first time he'd passed sensitive information, in my opinion."
"You didn't tape all the meetings. How can you be sure?" Madden asked stolidly.
"I'm not," Murch admitted. "But how does it sound to you? He was briefing her from zero. Then when she says, '1 can't believe this is happening, not here, not on the island,' doesn't that suggest she was hearing it for the first time? I'd say so."
"She could have been faking."
"Possibly," Murch nodded, thumbing tobacco into his ceramic pipe. "The important thing, however, is that we
"What's the woman's name?"
"Natassya Pavlovitch. Biochemist according to her accreditation. We've had her under surveillance since the day she arrived. The Soviets are so simpleminded it's unbelievable. They send this knockout dame to penetrate our security--and she is
"Amateurs or not, they succeeded," Madden said coldly. He was infuriated and yet strangely aroused. He would deal with this personally; there were several intriguing possibilities. "You haven't broken this to Skrote, of course."
Murch shook his head. "I embargoed further action till you arrived."
"Can we be sure she hasn't already passed on what she knows?"
"All channels are intercepted at source. There's been nothing."
"Code?"
Murch shook his head again, this time with a faint smile.
"We could infect Skrote or the woman with the virus," Madden said suddenly. "It would be transferred during their sexual activity and they could watch each other decay." He'd like to witness that himself. The woman's breasts turning into bloated pus-filled sacs, the ugly slit of her sex distended until it resembled a porpoise's mouth. And Skrote. His scrotum shriveling to the size of a wrinkled black pea and dropping off. Skote's diseased scrotum. That was funny. He laughed, the noise unnaturally shrill, like a screech.
Colonel Murch looked away. He cleared his throat and said, "Wouldn't that be dangerous, allowing TCDD outside the clinical area? It might spread, and if that were to happen . . ."
"Yes," Madden said absently. "Too risky." His eyes were blank, his head teeming with serpentine schemes.
"We could use the woman to pass on spurious information," Murch suggested, thinking like an intelligence officer. "Wipe out what she already knows and chemically implant something else." He cast around. "Something unconnected with genetics. Psychic weaponry, contact with aliens, something like that."
"Except I don't want to lose her."
"What use is she otherwise?"
"We'll find a use for her," Madden said.
"Skrote? Do we pick him up?"
"No." Madden had thought of something. "For the moment we do nothing." It excited him. "I want the lovers to be together one last time."
