SUCCESS OF A MISSION

The minister of defense stood with his back to the room. He faced a large map on the wall of his office.

"They will attack," the minister said. "If we do not know the locations of their ammunition dumps, supply depots and fuel stores, we cannot stop them."

The minister turned. He was a small man with a round face that would have been kindly except for the hard gray surface of his eyes. These hard gray eyes studied the faces of the other two people in the room the way a scientist would study a specimen on a microscope slide.

"That data would only be at army headquarters in their capital, Minister," the tall infantry captain said.

The minister nodded. "Yes. Our man at their headquarters knows that much, has already located exactly where they are in the building."

"He cannot get the data for us, Minister?" the woman asked.

"No. He cannot get into the building. It would be quite impossible in his disguise, and in any case we need him to remain in his present position. His contacts are too low level, and we have no other reliable agents with the necessary experience at their headquarters for a job of this degree of difficulty, sensitivity and importance. There is no time to place an undercover man in the headquarters now. It will have to be a single swift operation from outside army headquarters. Get in, get the data, bring it back without them being aware that we have it."

The woman paled under her olive complexion. There and gone, the quick fear, but it had been there. She was little more than a girl, despite her officer's uniform. Her face was oval, with a small nose, wide and full lips and soft brown eyes. She had been in the army three years, and had killed four men with a knife in the dead of night, but she paled as the minister described what would have to be done at the headquarters of the enemy's army in the heart of enemy country.

The tall man only nodded. "When do we leave?"

His voice, when he said this, was low, and had a faint trace of an accent different from that of the woman and the minister. There was a long scar on his lean, tanned face. The middle finger of his left hand was missing. His almost-black eyes showed no expression.

"In ten minutes, Captain. All your papers are ready," the minister said. "You, Captain Hareet, will be an American automobile salesman on a long-planned combined vacation and business trip that could not be canceled despite the crisis. We have picked you for this job because of your experience, your colloquial American English and your command of Arabic. With some darkening of the skin, your features will also pass as Arab, if that becomes necessary. You know their army and their city."

Captain Hareet nodded. "Yes, sir. I know both only too well to lose a war to them."

The minister faced the girl. "Lieutenant Frank, you will be his wife. Your home is in Santa Barbara, California. You have lived there, and no special regional accent is required for an educated Californian. Standard American will do. Your Arabic will pass in an emergency, but we hope there will be no need. It is hard for a woman to infiltrate in Arab countries."

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Frank said. The shiver in her voice was so faint no one but a man as trained as the minister, or Captain Hareet, would have caught it, and it disappeared as quickly as it had come. The two men looked at each other, nodded, and then smiled at the woman.

"You are lovers?" the minister asked.

The captain was silent. Lieutenant Frank hesitated for a moment. Then she nodded. "Yes, sir. Paul and I have lived together for over a year. We were lovers before that. We planned to marry soon, but that will have to wait now until after the crisis has passed."

"I am sorry for that, Lieutenant, but it is good that my information is correct."

"Is such information necessary?" Captain Hareet asked.

"All information is necessary," the minister said. "In this case, it might be vital. You will be posing as man and wife under the most careful scrutiny of every foreign national who arrives in their country at this moment. They will expect us to send spies, try to learn what their plans are. Women who are not married tend to act like coy maidens at the wrong moment. They forget. To act like she sleeps regularly with a man, a woman must be sleeping regularly with the man. Men who are not married don't know how to act with a wife at all."

"Yes, sir," Hareet said, and smiled again at the young woman. "I think Greta and I will be able to act the part well enough to pass any inspection."

"Do we parachute?" Greta asked.

"The sky is too clear. They will be alert. You will fly to Rome, and there you will board a normal commercial carrier. You will be Mr. and Mrs. Rogers of Santa Barbara. Harry and Susan, but he calls her Susy. Your papers are in order. The real Mr. and Mrs. Rogers are in Europe on such a trip with a different order of itinerary caused by a sudden change in plans we managed to arrange, and are being watched by our agents. You look enough like them to pass a cursory inspection."

The minister turned again to the large map on the wall. "I wish we could allow you some time to prepare. We can't. You are the only suitable team we have that can act the part on such short notice. I cannot even tell you how to proceed. Only that we must have the data within three days."

The minister turned once more to look at Hareet and Greta with his hard gray eyes. "In three days, they will attack us."

Mr. and Mrs. Harry Rogers of Santa Barbara, California, U.S.A., passed through Rome customs and immigration without any trouble. The Italian officials were most polite, and more than a little appreciative of Mrs. Rogers's dark beauty. She received all the customary whistles and smiles, and one definite pinch. In the taxi that took them to their hotel, they peered out the windows and exclaimed over everything, as American tourists would.

They checked into the hotel they had booked months ago from the States, showered off the grime of their trip, made love in the ornate Italian bed and went out to see the sights of the Eternal City. They ate in one of the best restaurants in Rome, ordered two bottles of good local white wine, went dancing, threw some coins in the proper fountain and visited the others, and generally had a fine tourist evening in the Italian capital.

The next morning they did not rise early, took the time to have their usual big, leisurely breakfast, then caught a taxi back to the airport for the next leg of their journey. On the jet out of Rome, they had seats just behind the wing. Harry Rogers held a guidebook and pointed out the sights below they had missed on the ground the night before.

"Look, dear," Captain Hareet said to Greta, the perfect eager American automobile salesman on his first trip to Europe. "There's St. Peter's, and the Colosseum, and the Via Veneto. We were standing right down there just last night, honey."

"Did you remember to send the postcards to the Phelps and the Temples, Harry?" Greta said, her mind clearly at home with her social obligations where a good wife's mind should be.

"Ouch, I forgot," Mr. Harry Rogers said, the self-centered American husband. "We'll send some from Athens when we get there, okay?"

When they arrived at the airport of their next stop, the capital of the enemy country, there was the loud confusion normal to Arab countries. The present political crisis and impending possibility of war only heightened the clamor and chaos. They were inspected thoroughly at customs. With the mighty United States Seventh Fleet cruising pointedly at this end of the Mediterranean, Americans were not in the best standing in Arab countries at the moment.

"You will do well to remain safely within the city," a customs official told them coldly. "And I suggest you do not enter the less visited and policed areas."