I said, “Princess, you look terrible. Who let you out in those pants?”
She said, “Darling, I saved up two days’ washing-allowance to look this good for you, when they said you might be coming. And you might at least have the decency to get a shave before you start criticizing other people’s appearance.”
After a moment she reached up and ran her fingers across the stubble on my jaw; her hand hesitated, and suddenly her arms were around my neck and I was holding her tight—holding her, and kissing her, and holding her again as she cried. This did not last long; in a moment she lifted her wet face to be kissed again. We went into it more thoroughly this time, heedless of the bright lipstick that was getting well distributed over both of us. We were both aware when what had started as an affectionate reunion between two respectable married people began to turn into something considerably more violent and primitive. I felt her stiffen against me. She pushed away, and I let her go.
“Greg—”
I said, “I’m just getting rid of my hat and this damn big coat,” I said, pulling them off and letting them fall.
“But there’s something I have to tell—”
I caught her as she tried to back away, kissed her, and steered her backwards until the cot hit her in the back of the knees. She was trying to resist and to say something; but her resistance wasn’t serious, and I continued to take care of her conversational efforts in the obvious way. I lowered her gently to the blanket. She tried to hold me off, but not as effectively as she might have. At last she twisted her face abruptly aside.
“Greg, there’s something I’ve got to tell you… Darling, stop that and listen!” She caught my wrists. “Don’t, darling, you’ll tear it and I haven’t another damn thing to wear. Will you please, please listen!”
I said, “Princess, this is not the time to unburden your damn little soul. We can discuss your criminal career and what’s to be done about it later. Right now we’ve got more important matters to attend to.”
“But—” She looked up at me seriously; then she grinned, and put her arms around me, drawing me down. “It’s not fair,” she said rather breathlessly. “Well, just remember that I tried. And, Greg—”
“Yes?”
“Just because we’re in a cave you don’t have to act like a bear. The zipper’s in back…” A long time later, she whispered, “It’s too bad there isn’t a more dignified way of doing that. It might get to be quite a popular pastime.”
I kissed her on the ear. I said, “Look who’s talking about dignity with her clothes up around her neck.”
“Darling, do you realize—”
“What?”
“Do you realize we didn’t… do anything about it?”
“Do anything about what… Oh.” I laughed. “Well, we’ll worry about that nine months from now, if we’re still alive.”
“Greg, you shouldn’t have come. I hoped you’d have sense enough not to come.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “I noticed you disapproving vigorously just now.”
“I know. I’m just a selfish bitch, darling. If… if I had any courage at all, none of this would have happened.”
I said, “That’s making you out awfully damn important.”
“But it’s true. At least I could have killed myself before I let them use me to trick you into coming here.”
“That might have made you feel noble for a second or two before you kicked off, but it wouldn’t have done me much good since I wouldn’t have known about it.” I sat up and got out my wallet. “Here’s something you mislaid, Princess. Do you want it back? If you’re planning to keep on commuting to Reno—assuming that we ever get out of here—I might as well hang onto it.”
She looked at the ring, and studied my face; sat up, tossed back her hair and pulled her shirt down for a minimum of decency. She hesitated briefly, then held out her hand, and I slipped the ring onto the proper finger. She looked down at it, and rotated it between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. Presently she spoke without looking up.
“Are you sure you want it this way, Greg? You haven’t heard what I have to say.”
I said, “Did you kill Jack Bates?”
“No, but—”
“Did you sleep with him?”
“No!”
“Did you ever obtain government information from me and sell or give it to communist agents?”
“Of course not!” she said indignantly.
“Then I can’t see what the hell you can have done that’s so terrible.”
She played with the ring for a second or two before she spoke. “What if I’d lied to you?” she asked quietly at last. “From the very beginning, Greg. What if I’d let you believe—”
“Believe what?”
“Let you believe that we met by accident; that it was love at first sight; that I found you so irresistible and fascinating that… that I couldn’t help but say yes when you asked me to marry you? What if all that was just a damn lie, darling? What if I was just acting under orders all that time?”
After a moment I got up from the cot, made myself a little more presentable, wiped the lipstick off my face, and picked up some garments off the floor. I turned and looked at her. She looked kind of cute, sitting there with not much more than a shirt on. I could not help reflecting that a great many of the crises of married life can never be portrayed accurately on the stage or in the movies, because the costumes of the principals generally wind up something less than adequate. I tossed the stuff into her lap, after glancing at it critically.
“You’d think all these great scientific minds could manage to promote enough water for doing a bit of laundry,” I said.
“They’ve drilled a well,” she said. “It goes I don’t know how many hundreds of feet down. Maybe thousands. They’re getting water but it all goes into the emergency reserve tanks except just the minimum they can get by with. Once they have enough stored, there’ll be more to go around. Don’t tease me, Greg.”
“I’m not teasing you. I’m just trying to think. My vanity has suffered a terrible blow; I’m trying to bear up under it.” After a while, I said, “Whose orders, Princess? You mean you belonged to this gang of sentimental nitwits?”
“Maybe I’m kind of a sentimental nitwit myself, Greg.”
I said, “They sicked you on me, sent you to that cocktail party with instructions to latch onto me if I floated within range… Is that right?” She nodded. I asked, “How far did your instructions go? Was matrimony in the orders?”
She said, “It was left up to me. After all, they couldn’t very well come right out and order a girl to make such a desperate sacrifice, could they, darling? Not even for the good of humanity. But they were careful to impress on me what a menace you were to everything we believed in—”
“And precisely what was that?”
“Why,” she said, “peace, and freedom from this terrible fear the whole world is living with these days, the fear of complete annihilation.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “How long did you work for them after we were married?”
“I never did, really. I couldn’t. I mean, catching you was fun. I felt clever and devilish; just a hell of a wicked and fascinating woman. And then I woke up one morning and there we were married and… and I loved you and I was supposed to feed you sly questions with your breakfast coffee and sneak out to make my reports… I couldn’t do it, darling. It wasn’t just you, it was… well, everybody in Albuquerque was taking security so seriously. Before, it had just seemed like a bunch of silly rules. But suddenly I realized that whether I liked it or not, it was the law and… and I guess I just wasn’t cut out to be a criminal, Greg. I’ll break a speed limit, but that’s as far as I’ll go. I got in touch with them just once more, to tell them I was quitting. Of course, they wouldn’t leave it at that; they kept sending various people to try to change my mind, including Jack Bates.”
“Jack was one of them?”
“Only recently. I think he was leavi
ng to come here when he was killed.”
I asked, “How was your marrying me going to change the destiny of the world? How were they planning to use the information you got from me?”
“Why,” she said, “they have to keep track of all the new developments—the new weapons. To make sure they build the proper safeguards into the shelters.”
“That could possibly be the truth,” I said, “but it could also be a gag dreamed up by somebody clever to get a bunch of fuzzy-minded idealists to do some espionage work in the sacred name of peace and humanity. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened… There are more than one of these places?”
“Well, not right now. The first one, back east, became obsolete several years ago with the advent of the hydrogen bomb; it was too close to the big cities, anyway, and too small. They moved headquarters out here; but the second one was barely started when somebody discovered uranium within a few miles of it and the whole area was flooded with prospectors. So that one had to be abandoned. This is the only one in existence right now, as far as I know. Of course, more are planned… People are scared, darling. They see something terrible coming; they feel that they have to do something… something to preserve at least a few remnants of the human race…”
“So they crawl into a hole and pull it in after them,” I said. “Well, that’s one way of meeting the problem. But this outfit does a little more than dig holes in the ground. It operates with guns and knives, too. As I have good reason to know.”
She met my eyes for the first time. “If you can believe I was aware of that, Greg, there isn’t much use in our talking any more about it.” She drew a long breath. “When I joined, it was simply an organization for people who believed that the world we know would be destroyed in a very short time by the stupidity of the politicians and the shortsightedness of the scientists who kept supplying them with ever more horrible and devastating weapons—scientists like you, Greg. We couldn’t do anything to stop it—”
“Somebody seems to think he can. By murder.”
“It was never even suggested when I was working with them three and four years ago,” she said. “We took for granted we couldn’t prevent the catastrophe; but we could provide places of refuge for a few selected people—”
“The new Noah’s Ark,” I said, “half a mile underground.”
“Yes.” After a moment, she said, “When I left you the first time, Greg, it was because I simply couldn’t stand it any more; all the time watching to see if you suspected, waiting for Van Horn to stumble onto something, cringing whenever other married couples started talking about the romantic and accidental way they happened to meet… I guess I wasn’t much fun to have around; I was so jumpy and jittery, waiting for the ax to fall. Sometimes I even hated you for having been so blind. I tried to make myself tell you, but it wasn’t just a matter of getting it off my chest. There was that damned security involved, and you’d have felt obliged to have me tell Van Horn, too; and maybe you’d have got into a lot of trouble because of me. I decided I’d better just get out before something like a baby came along to really complicate the situation.”
She was silent for a second or two. Somebody walked down the corridor outside. The footsteps sounded hard and crisp against the solid rock floor. I was very much aware of being buried in the middle of a mountain. Natalie began to speak again.
“Then I heard you’d been hurt,” she said, “and I just had to come back. Naturally, I wondered if it could possibly have something to do with this, but you were quite certain it was an accident, remember? And I knew I ought to leave you again, but I kept putting it off, telling myself I’d go the minute you were well… And then Jack was killed, and my scarf was found there, and I didn’t think it had anything at all to do with all of this, but I knew I’d never be able to explain without telling everything. And I knew that no matter what I said you’d insist on defending me even if it got you into trouble, no matter how you really felt about it, just because I was your wife. So I tried to get away so if they did arrest me it would be a long way off; besides, I didn’t want to be there when you learned—” Her voice died away. At last she said, “Well, if there’s anything I’ve overlooked in making a complete mess of everything, just let me know and I’ll try to take care of it.”
I said, “About that scarf: Larry DeVry seems to think Ruth put it there. He claims it dropped out of your coat while we were at their house the night Jack was killed.”
Natalie looked up, a little surprised. “That’s what I figured out, and that’s why I think Jack’s death hasn’t anything to do with this. But what on earth made Larry confide in you?”
“It was hardly a confidence,” I said. “There was some friction in the family. He was making like a jealous husband.”
“Well, I guess he had reason, at least where Jack was concerned.”
“Do you know that,” I asked, “or are you just guessing?”
“Jack said so, and I don’t know why he should have lied. He was getting tired of the whole thing. Men always feel very abused when a woman has the bad taste not to fall out of love precisely when they do.”
I said, “If you knew where you’d lost the scarf, why the hell didn’t you tell Van Horn when he sprung it on us?”
She shook her head. “Darling, I’d have been as good as accusing Ruth of murder, wouldn’t I?” she said. “I’d have practically been saying that she’d killed Jack because he was leaving her, and tried to implicate me. And then I’d have had to explain why Ruth DeVry should be insanely jealous of me… She must have seen Jack coming to our house; maybe she followed him some evening. He came over a few times while you were in the hospital. He used the excuse of bringing magazines for me to take up to you; actually he was trying to high-pressure me into coming back to work for the organization.” Natalie glanced at me. “Ruth would give me a horse-laugh if she heard that; and I can’t possibly prove it.”
“Never mind Ruth,” I said.
“Well, it’s a little hard not to mind her,” Natalie said. “She must have thought she was losing Jack to me. No woman’s going to accept the fact that a man’s just getting tired of her if she can possibly blame it on another woman; and Ruth always has hated me, because of you. And, don’t you see, if I’d accused her of stealing my scarf, and if the police had broken her down and made her admit a lot of things, she’d undoubtedly have tried to justify herself by accusing me of stealing her lover. And I’d have had the pretty choice of letting that stand or explaining just why Jack had been coming around secretly to see me…” She moved her shoulders jerkily. “Anything I said was bound to be wrong. I couldn’t see anything to do but just get as far away as possible.” After a moment she said, “Greg, what are you thinking?”
I said, “I’m thinking you’re going to catch cold if you don’t get some pants on.” She got up and started to dress. I spoke to her back. “I came five hundred miles and let nervous characters wave guns at me and crazy men fly me around in airplanes. I was prepared to find a wife who’d committed murder and treason. I don’t say I expected it, but it was certainly a possibility, and I was prepared for it. And I don’t say I’d have helped her get away with it, but I’d certainly have strained the rules in her favor until they screamed for help… After that, do you think I’m going to get worked up over the fact that you made a fool of me once, three years ago? Be your age, Princess.”
“Oh, it isn’t that,” she said without looking around. “I wasn’t afraid of… I knew you’d be nice about it. It’s just that what I did makes… makes everything a lie that came after. Doesn’t it? I mean, we just can’t build anything on a start like that, darling. Can we?”
I said, “Maybe not. But we can always go back to the beginning and start over, Princess. In fact, I’d say we’d made a pretty good imitation of a new start already.”
After a moment she turned quickly to look at me. I took a step forward, all that was necessary in that small room.
TWENTY-FOUR
THER
E WAS, of course, no morning in the place any more than there was any other time of day. People just started to move around out in the hall. Natalie sat up beside me, yawned, and got up to turn on the light that we had turned off. We were both fully dressed; for one thing it had been cold with only the one thin blanket—although as another sign of dawn the ventilators were now blowing warmer air—and for another it had seemed more dignified to be ready if they should decide to come for us. We hadn’t even tried to sleep; it had seemed like a waste of time. We had spent most of the time talking about things of no immediate importance.
Natalie tucked her shirt-tail in and stepped into her loafers, looked at me and laughed. “I can see I’m married to a real New Mexican. He doesn’t even take his boots off to go to bed. If the government had sent us to Texas I suppose I’d have spurs to contend with.” Her smile died. “Greg.”
“Yes?”
“What are you going to do? You must have some plan.”
“Not really,” I said. “But stick as close as they’ll let you and keep your eyes open. You might also carry your jacket instead of putting it on, just in case you see a logical person to throw it at. They’ll be watching for tricks from me, but maybe not from you… I haven’t got a plan, Princess, but I’ve got a theory. With all due respect to your former friends, I can’t help thinking they’re a bunch of creampuffs. They haven’t been able to commit a good straightforward murder so far; I’m gambling they aren’t quite up to dealing with a man who doesn’t mind getting a little blood on his hands. That may sound crude to you, but just remember it could turn out to be a pretty crude situation if something drastic isn’t done. There’s nothing more dangerous, in a clumsy and fumble-witted way, than a bunch of scared idealists… And just one more thing, Princess.”
Assassins Have Starry Eyes Page 18