Bud and I looked at each other in dismay. Then the door opened and in walked McGee.

  For an instant I had a crazy notion that he was an Intelligence man, an agent provocateur. That didn’t make sense, of course, and anyhow McGee was grinning. He must have just dropped by our shack on his way to the mess hall.

  “Funny man,” I said.

  “I didn’t do that just for a laugh,” he explained apologetically. “I wanted to put the fear of God and the Army into you. Such remarks as you’ve been making are guaranteed to cause unhappiness if overheard by the wrong parties, and you’d do well to keep it in mind. Might I suggest the radio be turned on?”

  While I was trying to tune in something besides double-talk pop songs. Bud asked him, “How long you been listening?”

  “Not long, but long enough.”

  I said, “And what do you think?”

  McGee answered, very seriously, “I think our friend Harper may have something there.” I looked up quickly: McGee’s opinions naturally carried more weight with me than Bud’s. As for what to do about it—that is a stickler. If you could get evidence on the colonel, or whoever it is—which of course you can’t—you might tattle to the top brass. If the government knew what an atomic bomb was—which of course it doesn’t—it might be even more effective to give the dope to the Washington boys. But you’re licked before you start. As I say, Hiroshima didn’t even make a dent in the Congressional consciousness, and it made the wrong kind of dent in the military consciousness. The most you could do by accusing Jennings would be to get him in trouble; the basic problem would remain.”

  “Always the pessimist,” I murmured.

  The discussion didn’t go much further, I wanted to get to the mess hall before it closed. After supper I calmly sat down and began to write Kathryn.

  After I’d finished half a page I sat up and cursed myself for an absent-minded fool. I crumpled the paper to toss it in the wastebasket, then thought better of it and burned it in the ashtray.

  It was natural enough I shoud start spouting Bud’s story to her. Her letters always had a lot of political dope and a lot of hero-worship of her boss. Senator Richardson, to all of which I never had much answer to make except a gentle debunking of Richardson, a milder version of McGee’s attacks on legislators in general. Her replies would make Richardson out to be the alert and altruistic intellectual giant one wishes all senators were.

  The altercation was getting a little bit stale, and what was more natural than that I, searching for something to say and in a rather abstracted state of mind, should hit on Harper’s spy-thriller fantasy?

  Yes, I thought, what could be more natural. Pass the thing on to Kathryn, and dollars to doughnuts the senator gets wind of it. It might turn the trick. What was it McGee had said? It might make that “dent in the Congressional consciousness.’ ’

  And was it all a spy-thriller fantasy?

  I told Kathryn I loved her, addressed and sealed the envelope, and read a detective novel until time to turn in.

  Saturday we knocked off work at noon. I quit early, rolled up my drawings and put them in the safe, picked up a Redcliff Herald, and went over to Communications to catch Jerry before he got off. I didn’t admit even to myself that I was going on Bud’s suggestion, h wasn’t too tough an idea, asking Jerry to fly down to Colorado Springs with me: it was a beautiful day, the weather man had no baleful warnings, and Colorado Springs was always better than the town of Redcliff in proportion as it was farther away from the camp.

  It wasn’t at all on account of Bud that I was going up to see Jerry. Naturally, though, I wasn’t going to keep my eyes closed while I was in the teletype room—or the code room.

  Pure chance. Nobody was around Communications. Someone was going to be reported for that, but I wasn’t kicking about my luck. I wasn’t stretching it either. ’’Jerry,” I called. No answer.

  The code room would surely be locked. Keeping my act good m case anyone should walk in, I tried the door. It opened.

  Sitting down just inside the door and making like I was waiting for the duty comm officer to show up, I took my bearings. I’d never been in here before, but it wasn’t hard to recognize the coding machines. The desk with tire fluorescent light suspended above it. The basket for secret and confidential waste. The papers lying on the desk beside the basket.

  Jerry had really been careless. A trap? If so, who set it?

  I crossed to the desk. My hands were in my pockets, negligent-like, but I didn’t waste any time. A few yards from the desk I stopped, pulled out my cigarettes and lighter, and began fumbling the job of giving myself a light. But all the time I was really staring at those papers. After I read the first sentences I had to keep reading. Never before had I taken so long to light a cigarette.

  I felt myself get cold and tingling all over. I hadn’t believed Bud before! But this outdid Bud. In spite of its guarded language and obscure references, it was one hundred percent more explicit than he’d been. Even named the foreign power against which war was planned. Better, the colonel’s signature should be on it somewhere, or at least Jerry’s. This was evidence!

  When I’d finished the top page I suddenly got my butt lit, turned in the other direction, and stood there puffing, hands in my pockets, still keeping up the act.

  A lot of things went through my mind. It didn’t take long, though; the few weeks I’d spent at the from before V-E Day had given me a habit of acting fast when I acted. About a quarter of an inch of my cigarette was gone when I strode over to the desk, scooped up the papers, tucked them inside the newspaper I still had under my arm. I got out of there fast. Nobody’d seen me.

  Getting to the airport was the next thing. I could have taken the regular bus that ran into town at 1205, but suppose someone on the bus should want to read Alley Oop and should ask to borrow my paper? A better idea occurred to me, and I bummed a ride to town with the garbage truck. It left before the bus, so it wouldn’t look funny for me to be taking it.

  The sentry at the gate to the restricted area saw me, saluted. I waved acknowledgment with the newspaper, which was now clutched in my right hand. I don’t believe i made it very casual.

  Once in town, I headed for the bank to get some money. “How much?” I asked myself as I joined the line in front of a teller’s window. Not the whole account. As much as possible without raising any eyebrows, and in bills of twenty dollars or smaller. I’m afraid I was rather nervous by the time I reached the teller, my withdrawal slip made out. He made some comment which I don’t remember, I doubt if I even heard it. I shrugged, took my money, and left.

  As I stood by the side of the highway trying to burn a ride to the airport, with the hot sun beating down on me, all feeling for the high-adventure aspect of the thing deserted me completely. It was, for a while, just like the time I’d taken a jaunt from OCS beyond the prescribed fifty-mile limit. Then, I’d had to gain a week end with Kathryn, and not much to lose if I was caught. Now I had everything to lose and still more to gain. But it felt the same. I was breaking regulations and doing my best to get away with it.

  When I was in the air and headed for Colorado Springs, I allowed myself—finally—a little time for what you might call reconnaissance. It wasn’t too late to give the project up. If I cruised around a while and then turned back. I’d probably get a chance, soon enough, to return the stolen dispatch to some unlikely place in the code room, in which case there’d be no skin off my arm and very little or none off Jerry’s. My decision was still unforced.

  Before I made it. I’d better take a closer look at what I’d taken. Adjusting the trim so the plane would fly with a minimum of attention, I slipped the dispatch out from die camouflaging Redcliff Herald and read it through at my leisure. Sure enough, a discussion of policy, along the lines of the section I’d read this morning. Sure enough, the colonel’s signature, illegible to one not familiar with Jennings’ scrawl, but, to me, unmistakable.

  I remembered what McGee had said: “The wiping out of civilization—*’ I remembered, also, what Bud had said—now everything was confirmed, and my decision made. I’d head for Washington, traveling by plane as far as possible and after that traveling on guts. Il should be possible to get the evidence to Kathryn before I was caught, and for her to pass it on. From there cm in it’d be up to Senator Richardson. The almost unknown quantity. Perhaps the weak link in the whole audacious plan.

  The decision was made. Crumple the Herald into a ball and chuck it out. Write a note to Kathryn—don’t include her name—and fasten it to the dispatch in case it has to be handed over in a hurry with no time for explanations. Then fold it, put it in your inside breast pocket, and devote full attention to your piloting.

  There isn’t much to tell about the plane ride. The flying was almost automatic, and time went faster than you’d think. I stopped a couple of times to rest, eat, and gas up, telling the fellows at each airport that I’d come from Salt Lake City, yes. I’d had a pretty hard pull over the Rockies, I was heading for New York, figuring on making about eight hundred miles a day if the weather held good. Actually I made over a thousand.

  At a little municipal airport in southern Indiana I paid for my gas, strolled into the office and picked up a Louisville paper from a chair. Ii was Sunday afternoon, and time to begin looking at every newspaper I could find. Not to look for baseball scores or bode reviews, either, but for my name. I’d only been gone a day, I wasn’t even over leave yet, and there was no reason for the authorities to have missed me unless they’d connected me with the loss of the dispatch. If they had—look out!

  Apparently they had. The item was small, obviously cut from the Army’s release, and probably wouldn’t have been printed were this not a king-size Sunday edition. But it had the dope.

  You had to admit the Army could work fast when it had a mind. There was my name—“First lieutenant Coleman Weiss, deserter,” from now on—a description of my plane, the statement that I was believed to be traveling east, and enough gingerbread to make the story newsworthy. Declared a deserter in less than a day! Either I’d been seen entering or leaving the comm office, or Colonel Jennings was playing long shots in his attempt to keep that dispatch out of circulation.

  It was quite a shock. I’d had pretty good hopes of reaching the east coast by plane, arriving some time Monday. I’d been banking on my not being immediately connected with the theft, and on a possible reluctance on the colonel’s part to hunt me by standard methods, for fear my cargo might fall into the hands of the General Staff. Both had fallen through.

  Several things were clear. First, no one here had seen the telltale news item. Second, that might not be the case the next place I landed. Third, the plane, in spite of its speed, was dangerously slower than telegraph wires, and had ceased to be exactly a desirable means of transportation.

  I didn’t land at Cincinnati, but I didn’t keep on to eastward either. I circled, put what seemed a reasonable distance between the city and me, and simulated a forced landing, some distance from any visible dwellings.

  The landing went O.K., so I deliberately saw to it that it didn’t go O.K. Before the ship had lost too much speed. I gritted my teeth and forced it over on its nose. A few sharp shocks—then I got out of it, fast. In spite of the fair quantity of gas remaining in its tanks, it didn’t burn. So I burned it.

  That wasn’t so smart; the flames might have attracted people too soon. I had some idea of making the plane harder to identify as mine. The loss of the ship meant nothing to me. I was in this up to my neck, with high enough stakes that twenty-five hundred dollars more or less was insignificant; and the ship’s sentiment value was strictly a negative quantity at this point.

  There was a panicked moment when I thought I’d left the all-important dispatch in the burning plane. This was quickly proven false, and I fingered with vast relief the thin sheaf of papers that could easily bring me a long prison term.

  The night was far gone before I hit Cincinnati, and I cursed my foolishness in having landed so far from the city. Distances are deceptive from the air, and very long when you’re on foot! The long wait in the railroad station which followed didn’t help my nerves any either. The station was big, and seemed bigger. There were a lot of people, and there seemed to be more, all looking at me. I dozed sometimes, not enough to get any rest but just enough to have bizarre, unpleasant dreams.

  On the train it was better. I awoke feeling fine, in spite of having missed breakfast. There was a fresh pack of cigarettes in the overnight bad I’d bought—for appearance—in Cincinnati, and I relaxed more completely than I had since I left. It was easy to relax—there was nothing left to lose. The almost carefree life at Redcliff was gone. I’d given that up two days before, the minute I crumpled up that Herald and tossed it out the window of the plane. With that clear in my mind, my mission once more seemed better than a mere negative flight from justice. It was a positive battle for justice.

  My state of mind was a lot better when, bag in my hand and papers in my pocket, I left the train at Washington. I was fully prepared mentally for the possibility that I might be awaited at Union Station. And I was.

  Whether he was an Intelligence man or a G-man I don’t know, but he saw me as I left the concourse. I had one of those flashes of intuition that tell you you’re being watched; I turned and met his eyes across the length of the waiting room. He wore a blue short-sleeved shirt and no hat. We both looked away again, neither of us giving any sign. I turned right toward the taxi stand, and gave another look back just as I left the station. It was easy to spot the man in the blue shirt; he was right where I’d seen him My suspicions had been correct. He was talking to another man, who wore a visible badge on his lapel, and pointing at me. Our eyes met again.

  As soon as I was out of their sight I ran headlong away from the taxi stand and caught a D-2 bus that was just pulling out. That saved me. To get a cab would have meant a long search for one that was bound out Connecticut Avenue; the District was still short on cabs and drivers still liked to get a full load. Besides, the G-men’s search would now be diverted. They’d naturally assume that I’d at least tried to get a cab.

  Still, the bus was slow. It was rush hour, and there were lengthy stops for passengers at the most implausible places.

  I’d been recognized. How long would it take before the District police had a description of me?

  Downtown, I left the overnight bag under the seat and changed to a streetcar which I thought went out Wisconsin Avenue. It wasn’t the car I wanted, but it was headed northwest and there were no free cabs around. At Pennsylvania and Twentieth, still having failed to spot a taxi, I got off. After walking some way up Twentieth at no mean speed I was overtaken by a Connecticut Avenue bus, which I boarded with relief. Now if everything went well—

  Everything didn’t. The bus was a limited and went only as far as Albemarle, leaving me several blocks to walk. Walk I did. Every policeman in Washington might be looking for me by now, but if I were just another Army officer strolling down Connecticut I’d hardly be an object of suspicion. I steeled myself and kept up the act even when a squad car passed me. I got an impression one of the cops was turning to scrutinize my face. Still I walked on. No use letting them flush me that easily.

  Two blocks down the avenue the squad car started up its siren, made a U-tum, and headed my way.

  I was at a cross-street, and I turned into it on the double. ‘The masquerade is over, Weiss old boy,” I told myself. There was a driveway running parallel to Connecticut, behind a row of apartment buildings. I cut down it and got out of sight behind an ell as the squad car screamed down the side street I’d just left. Close, but no cigar.

  Kathryn lived on the next block. That meant one more street and a series of back yards still to cross. I looked both ways—plenty carefully, believe me—before I crossed that street.

  Kathryn’s place was in sight. I prayed she was still in the same first-floor room I remembered. I could hear the siren again, in back of me. Two sirens. It was a matter of time now. How much time? In my favor was the fact that the police weren’t in a hurry and didn’t know I was.

  I grabbed the sill of what I thought was Kathryn’s window and chinned myself on it. There she was! Just home from work, must have taken the next bus ahead of me. I butted the pane to attract her attention. She fumed, recognized me, and stood stock-still with amazement. I tried to motion to her to open the window, but my hands were occupied and the gyrations of my head must have made me look completely mad. It was several long seconds before she was supporting me by one hand while I fished in my pocket with the other. (The sirens had stopped outside. The police would be searching now, on foot. Yet I dared not come into her room—)

  She started to speak. “No time,” I said. “Here, take this. Give it to Richardson, he’ll know what to do. But read it yourself first. Don’t get caught with it.” Heck, ail that was in the note I’d written! In my overwhelming haste I was wasting time myself. I cut it short. “It’s all explained in that note.” She took the papers, winked, and slammed the window down on my knuckles, bard! I understood: she was taking no chances. Someone had probably seen me there. Right now she was no doubt calling the police to report that a lieutenant had tried to break into her room. What a girl!

  I got as far away from there as I could before I ducked into the basement where they finally found me.

  This is being written in a guardhouse cell, where I’m awaiting trial by general court-martial. I’d expected a general all along, of course. When they officially notified me of my right to have counsel, I played a long shot and named Senator Richardson. Hie local brass must really have been surprised when he agreed to take the case.

  He’s been in to see me a couple of times, and I’ve got the word from him on several things. I’m more or less of a political prisoner now, since Jennings’ story came out. If Jennings is cleared. I’ll get a prison term, even if Richardson gets me out of the desertion and treason charges. If Jennings isn’t cleared, I’ll be let off easy with a “discharge for incompetence”—essentially, a Dishonorable Discharge without the stigma attached to an ordinary DD.