Marco arrived at Raymond’s apartment at seven o’clock and brought two bottles of cold champagne with him. Unfortunately for the hang-overs the following day, Raymond had also put two quarts of champagne in the refrigerator. They decided they would sidle toward food a little later and settled down in Raymond’s office behind the big window, and with commendable seasonal cooperation it began to snow large goose feathers, a present from the Birthday Boy himself, in lieu of peace on earth.

After two goblets of the golden bubbles, Raymond reached under his chair and, stiffly, handed Marco a large, gift-wrapped package.

“Merry Christmas,” he said. “It has been good to know you.” Raymond, saying those words, sounded more touching than anyone else who could have said them because, while Raymond had been marooned in time and on earth and in all the pit-black darkness of interstellar space, Marco was the only other being, except Jocie, who had acknowledged he was there.

Marco ripped away the elegant gold and blue paper, revealing the three volumes of Fuller’s A Military History of the Western World re-bound in limp morocco leather. Marco held onto the books with one hand and pounded the embarrassed, grinning Raymond with the other. Then he put the books upon the desk and reached into his pocket. “And a merry, merry Christmas to you, too, young man,” he sang out, handing Raymond a long flat envelope. Raymond started to open the envelope, slowly and with wonderment.

“Wait, wait!” Marco said. He hurried to the record-player, shuffled through some albums, and slid out a twelve-inch record of Christmas carols. The machine conferred silvered voices upon them singing “We Three Kings of Orient Are.”

“O.K., proceed,” Marco said.

Raymond opened the envelope and found a gift certificate in the amount of fifty dollars to be drawn on Les Pyramides of middle Broadway, the Gitlitz Delicatessen. The frosty carol swelled around them as Raymond smiled his always touching smile at the gift in his hands.

“We three Rings of Orient are,

Bearing gifts we traverse afar,

Field and fountain, moor and mountain,

Following yonder star.

O, Star of wonder, star of night,

Star with royal beauty bright,

Westward leading, still proceeding,

Guide us to the perfect light.”

Marco thought of their own three kings of Orient: Gomel, Berezovo, and that old, old Chinese who had handed Raymond the gun to kill Bobby Lembeck. Raymond said, “What a wonderful present. I mean, who else in the world but you could even think of such a wonderful present? This—well—well, it’s simply great, that’s what it is.” They sat down again, fulfilled by giving. They watched the snow, listened to the Männergesangsverein, finished the first bottle of wine, and overflowed with Christmas spirit. Raymond was opening the second bottle when he said, steadily, “Jocie’s husband died.”

“Yeah?” Marco sat straight up. “When?”

“Last week.”

“How’d you find out?”

“Mother told me. She had told the embassy to keep an eye on Jocie. They told her.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I saw Senator Jordan. We’re pretty good friends. At first it was hard because Mother had told him I was a pervert and that they would have to save Jocie from me, but, in a way, he had to see me because he’s in politics and I’m a newspaperman. After a while, when we reached an understanding about what a monster my mother is, we were able to get to be pretty good friends. I asked him if I could help in any way. The paper has an office there. He said no. He said the best thing I could do would be to wait and give Jocie a chance to recover; then, if she doesn’t start for home in six months, say, he thinks maybe I should go down there and get her. At least go down there and ask her. You know.”

“I take it your mother isn’t against Jocie any more.”

“No.”

“Some switch.”

“Try not to laugh and so will I, but that is exactly the case. Some switch. Jocie’s father has become very big in his party, particularly in the Senate. Mother saw it coming before anyone else and she’s done everything she can to be fast friends with him, but he isn’t having any, so I guess she decided if she couldn’t get him on their side positively she could cancel him out by marrying me off to his daughter, little knowing that I incite Senator Jordan against her and Johnny more than any other one agency excepting their own lovable personalities.”

“What a doll. If she were my wife, I’d probably be Generalissimo Trujillo by now. At least.”

“At least.”

“So she thinks it might be a good idea for you and Jocie to get married?”

“That is the general feeling I am allowed to get.”

“How did Jocie’s husband die?”

“That is a good morbid question. It just so happens he was struck down by an unknown hand in a flash riot in a town called Tucumán. He was an agronomist.”

“What has that got to do with it?”

“Well, I guess that’s how he happened not to be in Buenos Aires with Jocie.”

“Have you written to her?”

Raymond looked out of the window, at the snow and the night, and shook his head.

“If you think I can, I’d like to help you with the letter.”

“You’ll have to help me,” Raymond said, simply. “I can’t do it. I can’t even get started. I want to write her and tell her things but I have those eight years choking me.”

“It’s all a matter of tone, not so much words,” Marco explained, not having the faintest idea of what he was talking about but knowing he was light-years ahead of Raymond in knowledge of human communication. “Sure, wait. If that feels right. But no six months. I think we should get a letter off fairly soon. You know, a letter of condolence. That would be a natural icebreaker, then after that we’ll slide into the big letter. But don’t wait too long. You’ll have to get it over with so you’ll both know for once and for all.”

“Know what?”

“Whether—well, she should know that you want her and—you have to know whether she wants you.”

“She has to. What would I do if she didn’t?”

“You’ve been managing to get along.”

“No. No, it won’t do, Ben. That is not enough. I may not have much coming to me but I have more coming to me than I’m getting.”

“Listen, kid. If that’s the way it’s going to be, then that’s the way. Now take it easy and, please, figure on one step at a time.”

“Sure. I’m willing.”

“You’ve got to give the thing time.”

“Sure. That’s what Senator Jordan said.”

Major General Francis “Fightin’ Frank” Bollinger, a long-time admirer of John “Big John” Iselin, consented, with a great deal of pleasure, to Raymond’s mother’s suggestion that he head a committee of patriots called Ten Million Americans Mobilizing for Tomorrow. This was at a small dinner, so small that it fed only Johnny, the general, and Mrs. Iselin, at the Iselin residence in Washington in January, 1960. Bollinger pledged, with all of his big heart, that on the morning of the opening of his party’s Presidential nominating convention, to be held at Madison Square Garden in July, he would deliver one million signatures of one million patriots petitioning that John Yerkes Iselin be named the party’s candidate for the Presidency.

General Bollinger had retired from active duty to take up the helm of the largest dog-food company the world had ever known. He had often said, in one of the infrequent jokes he made (it does not matter what the other joke was), which, by reason of the favoritism he felt for it, he repeated not infrequently: “I’d sure as hell like to see the Commies try to match Musclepal, but if they ever did try it they’d probably call it Moscowpal. Get it?” (Laughter.) He had been a patriot, himself, for many years.