Lime had an ungrammatical talent for picking up foreign tongues and they had used him in the field for fifteen years, mostly in North Africa but once for eighteen months in Finland. Gradually he had begun to detest dealing with his own kind—not only his opposite numbers on the other side but his allies as well. They were warped people playing a meaningless game and the computers had taken the thrill out of everything. What was the point of risking his life?

In the end Lime had used what little influence he had to post himself into an office where nothing was required of him, where sometimes he forgot what the business was all about.

He was a GS-11, he earned fourteen thousand dollars a year or at least collected it, he ran an office which investigated a thousand threats on the President’s life every month and found all but three empty—an office in which lazy irresponsibility could masquerade as duty—and he had retirement to look forward to: a job as chief security officer for a corporation somewhere, with fate presiding over him like an expectant mortician.

It was all he deserved. When you reached the point where it was just a job you could switch off at five o’clock—when you no longer did it believing in it—you had been in it too long. You went through the old motions but it was like saying the same words over and over until they lost all meaning.

The evening gloom was chilly. He walked home, up the sooty row of turreted gingerbread Victorian houses, up the outside stair into his rooms. The steam radiators made a dense heat and the air was close—stale, as if it hadn’t moved for a long time. The blown lamps had reduced the rooms to a grayish half-light and the demons of the place were on the prowl. Abruptly and uneasily he lifted the telephone and dialed.

“Hello?”

“Hi.”

“Caro mio. How is it today?”

“Dreary,” he said “Have you had dinner?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Heavy silence clung to them. She said finally, “I tried to reach you but you didn’t answer.”

“I stopped in for a drink somewhere.”

“You’re not drunk.”

“No.”

“Well come over and I’ll fix you something to eat.”

“Not if you’re feeling that way about it.”

She said, “Don’t be a fool David.”

“I’m not the first and I won’t be the last. I’m in good company.”

“All right, you’re a fool. But come over.” Her voice underwent a thickening humid modulation that evoked his awareness of her sexuality: “Come on, David, I want you to.”

Wondering which of them was the greater fool he went around to get his car. He wished he had thought better of calling her. He wanted to see her but last year there had been a tawdry affair with a banal woman from St. Louis and he didn’t want to get embroiled that way again, not even with Bev; this time it was he who had nothing to offer.

But he drove out of the garage and let the avenue suck him into its flow. It took him north into the Palisades area—fashionable houses, pedigreed dogs, chic thin women and fat children.

Senators and Cabinet members lived around here and normally there would be two or three boiled-shirt dinner parties getting under way. Tonight there were none because of the bombing. But it would not be long before the parties resumed. Everyone would wear mourning black and armbands and everyone would be solemn and judiciously angry, but the dinners would resume quickly because the Government still had to run and a great deal of its work was done at these dinner gatherings.

He passed Dexter Ethridge’s house. The windows were quietly alight; the front window reflected the glow of a color TV within. Lime was gratified to see the signs of normalcy—in a vague distant way he had responsibility toward the Vice-President-elect, having spoken the warning to him on the Capitol steps: it created a kinship, an Oriental sense of obligation.

Bev’s apartment building was an ultramodern tower of glass. She made good money as the Speaker’s adminstrative assistant; she knew how to spend it tastefully. The front room was spacious—off-white walls, Beri Rothschild sketches, solid furniture in solid colors but uncluttered. Lime knocked, let himself in with his key, threw his coat on a chair and called her name.

She didn’t answer. He prowled the apartment; it was empty; he went into the kitchen and mixed two drinks and was taking them into the living room when Bev came in, dressed for the weather, carrying a heavy brown grocery bag.

“Hi.” She had a merry look. When he took the parcel she tipped her face and he tasted her breath in his mouth.

He carried the groceries into the kitchen. Bev was pulling off her gloves with little jerks, drawing her cloak off her shoulders, taking off her scarf and shaking out her hair. It fell straight to her shoulders and curled upward at the bottom.

She espied the drinks and took a long swallow before she came into the kitchen, shoved him imperiously aside and started unloading the paper bag. Lime rested his shoulder against the doorframe. “Leftovers would have done.”

“If I’d had any.” She was on tiptoe putting something into the refrigerator, the long calf muscles tensed, dress stretched tight across ribs and breasts. When she turned and caught him watching her like that she gave him a quick up-from-under look.

“Get out of here,” she said, laughing at him, and he smacked her rump and went back to the couch and picked up his drink.

She clicked and clanged furiously for several minutes; then she appeared bearing place mats and silverware.

“I thought you ate.”

“I’ll have dessert. I’m in a sinful mood.” She was setting the table. “Wienerschnitzel with an egg on it—Holstein. All right?”

“Fine. Fine.”

She came to the coffee table and bent down for him to light her cigarette: he looked down along the curve of her throat to the thrusting dusky separation of her breasts. She was watching him—smiling, eyes half closed, warm and lazy. She straightened up and blew smoke at the ceiling, took her drink to her mouth: ice clinked against her teeth. “Well then.”

He closed his eyes slowly to slits and she took on a sort of surrealistic substance limned in red. When she moved toward the kitchen he closed his eyes and heard the click of the refrigerator door, the rattle of things.

“Come on, Rip Van Winkle.”

He opened his eyes. The room was dim; she had extinguished the lights, she had two candles burning on the table. He grunted and heaved himself upright and she laughed at him with wild abandon; it disturbed him. She took his hand and guided him to the table. “It’s Nineteen forty-seven Warner Brothers, but I just felt like it.”

“The wine?”

“The setting, stupid. The wine’s a Moreau.”

“Chablis with veal?”

“Why not? I’m having sardines.”

“Sardines for dessert.”

“I told you I’m in a wild mood.”

He tasted the veal. “Damn good.”

“Of course. It has to be.”

“You’re dropping clues like size-twelve shoes. What am I supposed to be looking for?”

“Nothing, I’m just teasing you.” She leaned forward with her wine in both hands. Soft warm glow against her eyes and skin. “What’s happened to that wonderful cojones humor of yours? Remember when you filled out the GS transfer papers for DeFord—date of birth June 29, 1930; weight seven pounds two ounces; height twenty-one inches?”

“That was before I knew DeFord.”

“What about those hundreds of introductory-subscription cards you filled out with DeFord’s name and address? He must have started getting two hundred magazines and book-club books in the mail every week.”

“I thought he needed to be better informed.”

“You haven’t done anything like that for a year.”

“I suppose you get tired of it,” he said.

“You’re saying you outgrew it.”

“I just got bored with it.”

“You just got bored.”

“All right.” He pushed his plate away empty and reached for the wine to refill their glasses.