“Are your lads still interested in this and that about the Soviet lads? Spy stuff?”

Amjac jerked his head back toward Marco. “Him?”

“He knows a couple,” she said. They walked back into the living room with Rosie carrying four beer cans at stomach level.

“Can he talk?” Amjac asked.

“He talks beautifully. And, oh Lou, I wish you could smell him!” Amjac grunted and stared hard at Marco who seemed considerably embarrassed. “Just the same I’d like to tell you the story,” Rosie said, “because you are gradually making Major Marco believe that after eleven years of rooming with you at the Academy he has stolen your wife, and as you know the very best in the world that just isn’t the case.”

“So tell!” Amjac snarled.

She told it. From the patrol forward. She went from the Medal of Honor to the nightmares, to Melvin in Wainwright, to the Army hospitals, to Chunjin and Raymond, to Raymond’s mother and Senator Iselin, to Marco’s court-martial project and General Jorgenson’s suicide. They were all quiet after she had finished. Amjac finished his highball in slow sips. “Where’s the notebook?” he asked harshly.

Marco spoke for the first time. “It’s with my gear. At Raymond’s.”

“You think you can remember any of the faces of the men in your dreams?”

“Every man, every face. One woman.”

“And one lieutenant general?”

“With Security service markings.”

“And this Melvin dreamed the same thing?”

“He did. And that man who was sitting beside the lieutenant general is now Raymond Shaw’s house man.”

Amjac stood up. He put his coat on with deliberate movement. “I’ll talk it over with the special agent in charge,” he said. “Where can I reach you?” Marco started to answer but Eugénie Rose interrupted him. “Right here, Louis,” she said brightly. “Any time at all.”

“I live at Raymond Shaw’s,” Marco said quickly, coloring deeply. “Trafalgar eight, eight-eight-eight-one.”

“I cannot believe it,” Amjac said to Rosie. “I simply cannot believe that you could ever turn out to be this kind of hard, cruel girl.” He turned to go. “You never gave a damn about me.”

“Lou!”

He got to the door but he had to turn around. She was staring at him levelly, without much expression.

“You know I cared,” she said. “I know that you know exactly how much I cared.”

He couldn’t hold her stare. He looked away, then looked at the floor.

“With all the girls there are in the world,” she added, “do you think a thirty-nine-year-old bachelor who has been batting around the world most of his life wants to get married? Well, he does, Lou. And so do I. Maybe if you had been able to make up your mind between me and your elbow and your mother, you and I would have been married by now. We’ve been together four years, Lou. Four years. And you can say that I never cared about you and I can only answer that the cold-turkey cure is the only way for you because I have to make sure that you understand that there is only Ben; that it is as clear as daylight that Ben is the only man for me. Someday, if you keep playing the delaying game, and I guess you will, some girl may pay you out on a slow rope, then cast you adrift miles and miles away from shore and you’ll know that my way—this hard, cruel way you called it—is the way that leaves the fewest scars. Now stop sulking and tell me. Are you going to help us or not?”

“I want to help him, Rosie,” Amjac said slowly, “but somebody else has to decide that, so I’ll let you know tomorrow. Good night and good luck.”

“Night, Lou. My best to your mother when she calls later.”

Amjac closed the door behind him.

“You don’t just fool around, do you, Eugénie Rose?” Marco asked reverently.

Amjac was one of the four men in the large room in the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation toward noon the next morning. Another man was a courier who had just come in from Washington. The fourth man was Marco.

The courier had brought one hundred and sixty-eight close-up photographs from one of the Bureau’s special files. The close-ups included shots of male models, Mexican circus performers, Czech research chemists, Indiana oil men, Canadian athletes, Australian outdoor showmen, Japanese criminals, Austrian miners, French head waiters, Turkish wrestlers, pastoral psychiatrists, marine lawyers, English publishers, and various officials of the U.S.S.R., the People’s Republic of China, and the Soviet Army. Some shots were sharp, some were murky. Marco made Mikhail Gomel and Giorgi Berezovo the first time through. No one spoke. The second time through he made Pa Cha, the older Chinese dignitary. He pulled no stiffs, such as North Carolinian literary agents or Basque sheep brokers, because he had done so much studying so well through five years of nights.

The courier and the special agent took the three photographs which Marco had chosen and left the room with them to check their classifications against information on file. Marco and Amjac were left in the room.

“You go ahead,” Marco said to Amjac. “You must have plenty to do. I’ll wait.”

“Ah, shut up,” Amjac suggested.

Marco sat down at the long polished table, unfolded The New York Times and was able to complete two-thirds of the crossword puzzle before the special agent and the courier returned.

“What else do you remember about these men?” the special agent asked right off, before sitting down, which caused Amjac to sit up much straighter and appear as though a dull plastic film had been peeled off his eyes. The courier slid the three photographs, faceup, across the table to Marco. “Take your time,” the special agent said.

Marco didn’t need extra time. He picked up the top photograph, which was Gomel’s. “This one wears stainless-steel false teeth and he smells like a goat. His voice is loud and it grates. He’s about five feet six, I’d figure. Heavy. He wears civilian clothes but his staff is uniformed, ranging from a full colonel to a first lieutenant. They wear political markings.” Marco picked up the shot of the Chinese civilian, Pa Cha. “This one has a comical, high-pitched giggle and killer’s eyes. He had the authority. Made no attempt to conceal his distaste and contempt for the Russians. They deferred to him.” He picked up Berezovo’s picture, a shot that had been taken while the man was in silk pajamas with a glass in his hand and a big, silly grin across his face. “This is the lieutenant general. The staff he carried was in civilian clothes and one of the staff was a woman.” Marco grinned. “They looked like FBI men. He speaks with a bilateral emission lisp and has a very high color like—uh—like Mr. Amjac here.”

A new man came into the room with a note for the special agent who read it and said, “Your friend Mr. Melvin has been cooperating with us in Wainwright, Alaska. He’s made one of these men, Mikhail Gomel, who is a member of the Central Committee.” Marco beamed at Amjac over this development, but Amjac wouldn’t look at him.

“Can you return to Washington today, Colonel? We’ll have a crew of specialists waiting for you.”

“Any time you say, sir. I’m on indefinite leave. But the rank is major.”

“You have been a full colonel since sunrise this morning. They just told me on the phone from Washington.”

“No!” Marco yelled. He leaped to his feet and gripped the table and kept shouting, “No, no, no!” He pounded and pounded on the shining table with rage and frustration. “That filthy, filthy, filthy son-of-a-bitch. He’ll pay us for this! He’ll pay us someday for this! No, no, no!”

Potentially, Marco might have been a hysteroid personality.

Colonel Marco worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and his own unit of Army Intelligence (into which he had been honorably and instantly reinstated upon the recommendation of the FBI’s director and the Plans Board of the Central Intelligence Agency). There was no longer any question of a need for a court-martial to institute a full investigation. A full unit was set up, with headquarters in New York and conference space at the Pentagon, and unaccountable funds from the White House were provided to maintain housing, laboratories, and personnel, including three psychiatrists, the country’s leading Pavlovian practitioner, six espionage technicians (including three librarians), a mnemonicist, an Orientalist, and an expert on Soviet internal affairs. The rest were cops and assistant cops.