“We’ll both find out. God, it’s good to see you!” She squeezed him.

  He squeezed her, too. “It’s good to be seen. Oh, Lordy, is it ever good to be seen.”

  * * *

  Jerry phoned his advisor a little past nine the next morning. As soon as Professor Krikorian realized who was on the line, he said, “Now I know why they really wanted you on the Hughes Glomar Explorer!”

  “Yeah, well, they lived to regret it,” Jerry answered.

  “Did they? If it’s something you can tell me, did you have anything to do with our little adventure with the Russians last week? Has that got anything to do with why you missed your class day before yesterday?”

  Like Anna, Hagop Krikorian could add two and two and come pretty close to four. “The fewer questions you ask me about any of that stuff, the better off we’ll both be,” Jerry said.

  “I think you just told me what I wanted to know.”

  “I didn’t tell you anything.” Jerry snapped his fingers as he thought of something else. “Oh! I may need to give up my TAship for this quarter. It looks like I’ll be going out to the Glomar Explorer again.” He didn’t mention that it wouldn’t be as part of the American team, any more than he had with his father.

  “That’s very good for you. Congratulations! If you are going to give up the assistantship, please do it now, though. I’ll have an easier time finding a replacement close to the start of the quarter than I would four or five weeks in,” Krikorian said.

  The request was reasonable. It annoyed Jerry anyway; it reminded him how grad students were easily replaceable parts in the university’s giant mill. “Uh, I’d guess I’d better,” he said. The Russians didn’t think he was an easily replaceable part: one more thing he didn’t mention.

  “All right. I’ll get the paperwork started.” The professor hesitated, then asked, “You are still planning to finish your thesis?”

  “Yeah. I am,” Jerry answered without enthusiasm. Becoming an expert on centaurowls instead seemed a lot more interesting. So did making a go of it as a writer, if he could swing that. So did almost anything that didn’t involve faculty meetings.

  So before very long he’d need to go up to UCLA and deal with whatever forms he had to fill out and sign because he was leaving the TAship. He didn’t know what they were, but he was sure Professor Krikorian or somebody in the department offices or at Murphy Hall would be able to tell him in great detail. He was also sure he wasn’t going up there today. After driving back and forth across the country, he was damned if he wanted to hop on the San Diego Freeway again.

  He played with the King of Siam. Then he lay down on the couch to read. The cat hopped up on his stomach and purred and shed hair on his shirt while he scratched it. They both fell asleep, the King of Siam curled into a croissant just north of Jerry’s belly button. He felt better after the nap, but he needed to use the john. The King of Siam’s hooded blue stare said he did not approve of being ousted from his nice, warm cat mattress.

  After Jerry did the dinner dishes that evening, he called Tim Ishihara. “Hey, I’m back in town,” he said when his friend picked up the phone.

  “Yeah, I buzzed you last week. Anna said you were up north—something to do with your cousins,” Tim said. “Everything work out okay, I hope?”

  “Pretty much. Feel like hitting some fungoes Saturday morning?”

  Tim laughed. “That’s what I called you about then, only for last Saturday. Sure, let’s do it. Show the Dodgers and the Angels what they’re missing.”

  “What we’re missing, you mean—talent.”

  “I got good looks. What more do I need?” Tim said. “Pick you up at eight thirty?”

  “See you then.”

  * * *

  Jerry stood on the sidewalk in front of the apartment building with ball, bat, and glove. Tim pulled up right on time. “Holy crap, man!” he exclaimed when he took a look at Jerry. “You got trimmed!”

  “Protective coloration,” Jerry more or less explained.

  They headed for the park off El Segundo where they pretended to be better than they were. Jerry was going to warn Tim if his friend asked any questions about what he’d been up to. He didn’t know if the CIA could plant a mike and a radio transmitter in a car; he also didn’t know if they couldn’t. Better to take no chances.

  But Tim, after a “How ya doin’?” when Jerry got in, said very little till they got to the park. Working in aerospace, he was trained to think about security, where Jerry’d had to learn on the fly. Then, as they started to play catch to loosen up, Jerry’s friend asked, “So how’d you like doing the I-5 all the way up? I haven’t been much past Sacramento myself.”

  “I didn’t drive up the coast,” Jerry said.

  “Yeah?” Tim sounded altogether unsurprised. He broke off a better curveball than either one of them usually managed. “You were sure goin’ somewhere last time I saw you. Had to do with that goddamn envelope, huh?”

  “You got it.” Jerry tried a curve of his own. It didn’t do much. His elbow asked him what the hell he thought he was up to. “Anyway, I headed east instead. Wound up in DC.”

  “Did you?” Tim held up a hand before Jerry could answer. “Don’t tell me what was in the envelope. I don’t wanna know. As long as I don’t know, I don’t break any oaths by lying if they ask me about it. I may even pass a polygraph, ’cause I’ll be sure I’m telling the truth when I play dumb.”

  “Gotcha,” Jerry said, and caught another pretty decent breaking ball. He sent a not-too-fast fastball back. His elbow liked that better.

  They hit fungoes for a while. Jerry made one over-the-shoulder catch he was proud of and dropped a towering pop a seven-year-old should have caught in his sleep: about par for the course. Tim was just as erratic with the ones Jerry hit. Then Tim asked, “Where in DC did you wind up?”

  “The Russian embassy,” Jerry answered, and waited for the sky to fall.

  But all Tim said was, “Did you?” He eyed Jerry, very visibly thinking. “You have something to do with all the fun and games between the Russians and Kissinger? And with Ford’s speech and all that?”

  “Oh, maybe a little,” Jerry said.

  Tim knew how he talked. They’d hung around together since they were seven or eight; Tim was the brother Jerry didn’t have. “I wondered. I kinda thought so, to tell you the truth. I knew you were out on that ship. And if you were out there, you were there to work on the waddayacallit.”

  “The Midlothian object,” Jerry supplied. “Yeah. Only after we saw it for real and not just in photos, we called it Humpty Dumpty.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Tim laughed. “That’s pretty good, from the pictures I’ve seen. Did you … see the aliens, too?”

  “Uh-huh. Steve Dole and I, we were the first two people into the spaceship.”

  “Were you? That’s … something, man.” Tim thought some more. “Steve Dole? I know that name from somewhere.”

  “Habitable Planets for Man,” Jerry said. Like a lot of aerospace people, his friend thought about what humanity might get up to if its reach ever stretched beyond the solar system.

  “There you go! Must have been something, working with a guy with that kind of firepower,” Tim said. “What’s he like for real?”

  “He’s, like, dead.” Jerry’s voice went hard and flat. “He got killed in a ‘robbery’ the night before I came to get the envelope from you. I didn’t park the car under the building when I went back to my place to grab some stuff before I took off.”

  Tim Ishihara studied him. “You aren’t kidding?” Jerry shook his head. Tim asked, “Who bumped him off? The KGB?”

  “Three letters, but those aren’t the right three. Word about the Glomar Explorer and the Russian sub and even the spaceship was starting to leak out. Even the reporters who heard that didn’t believe it, but guys who ran things got scared somebody from the other side would. So…”

  “Huh,” Tim said. “Is that why you talked with the Russians, then?”

  “Partly. I figured it was the best chance, maybe the only chance, to save my own ass. But c’mon, Tim! A spaceship! A starship! Aliens, for God’s sake! I thought that was too important to, well, everybody for us to get greedy about it. And we were.” Jerry waited anxiously. Along with Anna’s and perhaps his father’s, Tim’s good opinion mattered more to him than anyone else’s.

  His friend didn’t say anything for close to half a minute. Then his head went up and down, once, twice. “Yeah, I don’t see how you had much choice. If they’re after you like that, you do whatever you’ve gotta do.” He made as if to point a camera at Jerry. “Who’s gonna play you when they make the flick?”

  “Fuck that shit!” Jerry exclaimed in sincere horror. Tim laughed his head off. Jerry didn’t think it was funny, not even a little bit. But he did a little thinking of his own. Things being as they were, the CIA might not do anything to him if he didn’t send the manuscript of the story of his time with Project Azorian to Schenectady before he tried to sell it. Didn’t contemplating murder render a nondisclosure agreement null and void?

  People would want to read a story like that. They’d want to know how Humpty Dumpty got discovered, how the Glomar Explorer raised it to the surface, and how humans made contact with the centaurowls … if humans could do that without killing the two survivors and without letting them retake control of their ship. If he wrote the book, he thought he could sell it. If it did well, somebody might play him in a movie after all.

  “Hey, I’ve got another question for you,” Tim said.

  “Shoot.”

  “How come nobody stopped your car when you were driving east? They knew your license number and everything.”

  Jerry told him how he’d acquired the Corvair after he lost his long hair and beard. Tim cracked up again. Jerry finished, “The Rambler’s still there, too, or it was when I checked it coming back into town.”

  “You wanna go pick it up? You can leave the Corvair there instead. If you told a bunch of lies on the change-of-ownership form, they may never even trace it back to you.”

  “I’m not sure the old car’ll start. It’ll have been there more than two weeks.”

  “I’ve still got the jumper cables in the trunk. We can throw ’em in the Corvair, and we’ll use ’em on the Rambler if we need to.”

  “Let’s do it,” Jerry said.

  Tim drove back to Jerry’s apartment. “There’s the Ralph Nader special,” he said, seeing it on the street, so he remembered Unsafe at Any Speed, too. He parked behind the Corvair. They made the necessary transfers. When Jerry started the car, his friend made a face. “Noisy bastard.”

  “I know. Air-cooled engine.”

  “That’s right. I forgot. What kind of performance does it have?”

  “About like the Rambler: zero to sixty in twenty minutes. Maybe eighteen if I’m going downhill.”

  Sarcasm aside, forty minutes later they were in East L.A. Jerry turned off Atlantic and on to the side street where he’d left his car. “There it is,” Tim said. “Nobody else wants it.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Jerry took the Rambler’s plates out of the Corvair’s trunk and put them back on. Then he got in and turned the key. He could tell right away the battery was low. But he thought it might start. It might … It did. Blue-gray smoke farted from the exhaust.

  Tim banged on the window. He was holding the jumper cables. Jerry rolled down the glass. “Sometimes you’d rather be lucky than good,” Tim said.

  “Better believe it. You wanna pace me on the way back in case I have trouble?”

  “I was gonna,” his friend replied.

  “Good deal. Thanks, man,” Jerry said. Tim waved that away and went back to his own car. They both turned onto Atlantic and headed back to the San Bernardino Freeway.

  On the San Bernardino and on the southbound Harbor, Jerry worried that the cops would pull him over because of whatever bullshit story the CIA had given them. But a CHP cruiser and one from the LAPD zoomed by without paying any attention to the Rambler. Had the CIA pulled the APB? Had there never been one at all? He didn’t believe that, any more than Tim had.

  Things around the building were slow on Saturday. He put the Rambler by the curb where the Corvair had parked. Tim pulled in behind him. Jerry got out and walked back to the Corvair. “You’re a lifesaver. All kinds of ways,” he said, from the bottom of his heart.

  “Aaah, no big deal. Listen, I’m going home. I’ve been gone so long, Cheryl’ll think the Dodgers signed me and sent me to Double-A.” Tim started for his own set of wheels.

  “She may be crazy—I mean, she puts up with you—but no way she’s dumb enough to believe that,” Jerry said.

  Tim flipped him off. They both laughed. His friend drove south, toward Rosecrans. Jerry watched him go for a few seconds, then turned and walked into the apartment building.

  * * *

  Monday morning, Jerry went up to UCLA to finish the paperwork for pulling out of his TAship. As Professor Krikorian gave him the forms to sign, the oceanographer said, “I wish you the best of luck with what you’re doing. It would be a shame to lose you, though. You’re one of the best students I ever had.”

  “Uh, thanks,” Jerry mumbled. Why the hell didn’t you ever say anything like that till I was bailing out? he wondered. Maybe his advisor had almost as much trouble making like an ordinary human being as he did himself.

  He delivered the papers to Murphy Hall. The academic affairs secretary there took them without the slightest sign she cared whether he stayed or went, lived or died. Sometimes UCLA was a wonderful place. Sometimes it was a frozen desert. Jerry kept an eye peeled for police as he drove home. Otherwise, he was glad to be leaving.

  He was washing the dishes after dinner when the phone rang. “I got it,” Anna said, and went back into the bedroom. She came out again a moment later, a slightly sandbagged expression on her face. “It’s for you. It’s Anatoly Dobrynin.”

  “Jesus!” Jerry turned off the water and dried his hands on a dish towel. Then he ran for the bedroom. He almost sat on the King of Siam, who lay near the edge of the bed. Grabbing the phone, he said, “Hello? Mister Ambassador?”

  “Good evening, Mister Stieglitz.” Yes, that was Dobrynin, not some practical joker. “I hope you are well? I am afraid I startled your wife.”

  “It’s okay, sir. Yes, I’m fine, thanks. What can I do for you?”

  “You told Major Bronstein you would be willing to be part of the Soviet research team going to the Hughes Glomar Explorer to help investigate the so-called Midlothian object. This is still true?”

  “It sure is,” Jerry said.

  “Khorosho. Ochen khorosho.” Dobrynin chuckled. “‘Excellent,’ I should say, but you know some of my speech, so you will understand. This team will land in Los Angeles Wednesday. They fly on to Hawaii on Hawaiian Airlines flight 286, leaving Los Angeles International Airport at nine forty-five p.m. that day. You can be on that flight with them?”

  “Yes, I can do that. I will do that.” Jerry repeated the flight information back and wrote it down.

  “Very good. A ticket on that flight will be reserved in your name,” Dobrynin said. He coughed once or twice. “The major did not discuss this with you, but we of course will pay you to work on this project. Tell me what the CIA gave you.”

  “Two thousand nine hundred and thirty-three dollars a month,” Jerry answered automatically. He guessed he’d remember that figure as long as he lived.

  “This is also what I understood before,” the ambassador said, and Jerry realized he’d passed an honesty test. Dobrynin went on, “We will raise this by fifty dollars. We want no one in the world to accuse us of being tightfisted. And you live in a capitalist society. Money is to you more important than in a socialist society of workers and peasants.”

  “Uh, thank you very much.” Jerry had the bad feeling he’d be making six or eight times as much as his fellow Soviet team members. He hoped to God they never found out about that. Socialist society of workers and peasants or not, they’d hate his guts. In their shoes, he would hate somebody like him, too.

  “It is a pleasure to be of service to someone who has been of service to all mankind,” Anatoly Dobrynin said. Again, he didn’t mention the USSR: not overtly, anyhow. “May your investigations bear fruit for the whole human race. Good luck go with you. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” Jerry managed. The ambassador hung up. So did he.

  Anna came in. She still looked astonished. “What was that all about?” she asked. Jerry told her. “Wednesday?” she said. “Damn! I was just starting to get used to having you around.”

  “I was just starting to get used to being around,” Jerry said. “The cat’ll forget who I am again by the time I get back.”

  “The cat? What about me?” Anna said.

  He hoped she was kidding. When he reached for her in an experimental way, he found she was. That was nice, even if the King of Siam got insulted when they chased him off the bed. Didn’t they understand they were there to do what he wanted? Not well enough, not right then.

  The next two days went by in a blur. He drove to the Bank of America on Gardena Boulevard and then to the Sumitomo Bank on Redondo Beach Boulevard, moving the money he’d got from the Summa Corporation out of his older personal account and into the one Anna and he shared now. And he took his father his W-2’s, his wife’s, and the 1099s from his writing.

  “Figure out where we are with this stuff, please,” he said. “If we owe money, let Anna know so she can write a check. I bet she can forge my signature on the return, too.”

  His dad laughed. “That happens with a lot of the couples I do taxes for. As long as there’s no hanky-panky in the numbers, you don’t need to worry.”

  “Pretty much what I thought,” Jerry said. “Oh—charge us whatever you would for anybody else with the same return.”

  His father shook his head. “Blood is thicker than money, even if not everybody thinks so. And, thank God, I don’t need it that bad. On the house.”