"What are you going to do, baby?"

"I have to make a phone call. It's kind of confidential, so I'd appreciate it if you-both of you-would go into the other room and close the door."

Moira got up and turned to look at me searchingly. "I said you were a government man. I'll bet you're calling Washington."

She was perfectly right, of course. She usually was. I said, "Go comb your golden tresses like a good girl."

She studied me for a moment longer. Then she moved her shoulders minutely, dismissing whatever it was that had bothered her. I wished I could dismiss what was bothering me so easily.

"The gadget you want is over there," she said. "There are no extensions. Come on, Mrs. Logan, he wants privacy."

I watched them go out of the room together, Beth slender and ladylike and half a head taller. The kid looked small and bouncy beside her. I went to the phone and called the regular Washington number and went through the routine formalities. Then I had Mac on the line. One thing about the guy, he may be a tricky bastard to work for, but he's never off playing golf when you need him.

"Eric here," I said. "I thought you'd like to hear about my vacation, sir."

Mac's voice was dry. "Are you having a wonderful time, Eric? Do you wish I were there-so you could punch my nose?"

"You might have told me my family was involved."

"It seemed better to let you discover it for yourself," he said. "You might have had some inconvenient scruples about visiting them as an agent on official business; you might have felt I was asking you to spy on them."

"Weren't you?"

He laughed and ignored the question. His voice became more businesslike: "I'm acquainted with develop.. ments up to Paul's last report. I also have a medical statement indicating that Paul's injuries were more purposeful than malicious, if you know what I mean. Not that there weren't indications of gratuitous violence, but on the whole it appears that Paul's assailant had a definite aim in mind." Mac cleared his throat. "Did he talk?"

"Paul?" I said. "It would seem so."

"Your evidence?"

"Martell knows all about me, even to my code name. Of course, he might. have learned it elsewhere, but considering the short time I've been back in the service, it seems ~inlike1y." After a moment, guessing what was in Mac's mind, I said, "Anybody can be made to talk, sir."

"True, with reservations. But I wasn't criticizing Paul, only myself for putting him in that position. I.

shouldn't have sent him ahead to operate alone, Eric. I knew he wasn't up to it, not against a man like Martell. I…" There was a little silence. I was a little embarrassed. I mean, you don't want a guy like Mac to turn human on you. It shakes your faith in immutable things like life and death and the movements of the heavenly bodies. I heard him clear his throat again; then he said crisply: "Martell must have taken some action on his information, or you wouldn't know he had it."

"Yes, sir. He tried to get his boss, Fredericks, to dispose of me, at least temporarily. I'm assuming the inspiration came from Martell. He's handicapped to some extent by the fact that he has to maintain his cover as an obedient goon. Fredericks would start asking pointed questions if he caught his hired hand operating independently." After a moment, I said, "Question, sir."

"Yes?"

"We seem to be assuming that Martell's on some mysterious mission in this country, and has been on it for seven years or more. Has anybody considered the possibility that he might be on the up-and-up, in a crooked sort of way?"

"What do you mean, Eric?"

"Well, he could have chased after just one woman too many. Suppose he just got himself kicked off the team. He had to earn a living somehow, poor fellow, so he came over here and got a job carrying a gun for an American racketeer, since that was the kind of work he knew best. When Rizzi went to jail, he simply scouted the employment market and hooked up with the man paying top wages, who happened to be Fredericks."

"On this basis, how do you explain what happened to Paul?"

"Easily, sir. Naturally Martell doesn't want guys like Paul and me snooping around-not because he's conducting some secret operation for the other side, but simply because we threaten his new identity as Jack Fenn. Just like a crook who's gone straight for years wouldn't want a detective with a long memory threatening his newfound respectability."

"Do you believe this, Eric?"

"I don't believe or disbelieve. I just think it's a possibility that ought to be considered."

"It has been," Mac said, "and dismissed from consideration."

"Why?"

"For one thing, the people he worked for, as you must know, have a very permanent way of discharging employees who prove unsatisfactory. Very few of them turn up in the labor market afterwards. But you are right to a certain extent. We've learned that Martell did get himself into disgrace again, presumably some time between fifty-one, when we know he was working for them in Berlin, and fifty-three, when he first came into contact with our police under the name of Fenn."

"How did you learn this, sir?"

"With Martell, how would we learn it except from one of his castoff women. Fortunately, she had a grudge, and we worked on it and got what she knows. Although he's not ordinarily a heavy drinker, he apparently did talk in his cups on a couple of occasions. He felt somebody had given him a raw deal, she said. 'Just one little slip and they send you to Siberia!' was the way he put it

– America being Siberia, in his estimation. He tried to impress her with what a big man he'd been somewhere else, and what a come-down it was for him to be running errands for a punk like Rizzi."

I said, when he paused, "That still doesn't prove-"

"There's more," Mac said. "The girl was scared at hearing him talk that way about a big shot like Rizzi, and showed it. Martell laughed at her and said something about how Rizzi might think he, Martell, Fenn as she knew him, was running Rizzi's errands, but actually it was the other way around… When he sobered up, he beat her up and almost killed her. He said he would kill her if she repeated anything he'd said."

"Martell being what he is, I have no doubt he meant it."

"Neither had she," Mac said. "But the two thousand odd miles between New York and Reno apparently made her feel safe enough, after he'd gone west to join Fredericks recently, to start brooding over her wrongs in various bars, more or less aloud, and somebody picked it up and passed it to us."

I said, "Well, that does put a different light on it. So Martell felt he was using Rizzi in some way. That's interesting."

"Very." After a moment, Mac went on: "I've studied the interrogation tapes carefully, Eric. Reading between the lines, so to speak-there's more that I won't bother to quote-I've come to the conclusion that Mr. Martell's 'one little slip,' actually his third on record, of course, came very close to getting him liquidated. He was saved

– I'm guessing now-because somebody needed a man who could do a good job of impersonating a tough American gangster. Just an ordinary intelligence agent wouldn't do. The man had to be tough enough, and skilled enough with weapons, to maneuver himself into the position of being the trusted lieutenant of a big-shot like Rizzi. So Martell was reprieved, but he was reprimanded, demoted, and sent over here to ponder his sins and spend seven years building a reputation and a police record-for what?"

"Yes," I said. "It's a good question. And from Rizzi, he moves to Fredericks. What's the common denominator, sir, if there is one?"

"There is one," Mac said.

"Yes," I said. "Dope."

"Precisely."

I hesitated, and said, "A friend of mine had an experience on the Mexican border that may fit in with all this. Returning to her native land, she had her car searched very thoroughly, which had never happened before. She has the theory that it was because she happens to be Sally Fredericks' daughter."