Читать книгу An Affair of State - Pat Frank - Страница 10

The letter from the Department reached him there. His application had been approved. He shortly would be asked to report for the oral examination. "Well," said Stud, who was watching him, "you're in! I can tell by your face. You'll have to do something about that. Diplomats have poker faces."

"Not yet," Jeff said. "Not hardly. Four out of five flunk the oral. It's supposed to be like the Spanish Inquisition in a one-hour capsule."

"You won't flunk it. You teethed on the stuff."

"Then there's the physical, and the final security check."

"Physically," Stud estimated, "you'll be the finest specimen in State. They'll keep you in Washington, and use you once a year to model striped trousers at the English garden party." He was okay physically, Jeff knew, so far as any Army medic could tell. Between the ages of eight and twelve his frame had sprouted out of his clothes every six months, to his father's astonishment and dismay, until in his junior year at Princeton he stretched to two and a half inches over six feet. His weight hadn't kept pace in school and college, but he had filled out in the Army so that now he was a fairly hard hundred and seventy pounds. But there was something about his physical condition--or maybe it was mental--that he never mentioned. It was a souvenir from September, 1944. It was very simple. Sudden, loud noises blacked out his mind and panicked his will and on occasion menaced his dignity as a human being.

"And as to security," Stud went on, "I guess you're secure enough. You don't know any Communists, do you?"

"Sure, I know some Communists," Jeff said, "but they're all Russians." He wasn't certain this was an accurate statement. He had met Russians in Bari and Trieste, and later in Vienna, but he wasn't sure all of them were Communists. Wasn't it said there were only three million in the party? And some of those he knew hadn't seemed particularly happy with the regime. "Stud," he said, "do you remember that girl at the Eaton party?"

"What girl? There were six or seven, or maybe ten or twelve. I don't remember so well."

"The one--you know, Susan something." He knew very well that her name was Susan Pickett, and she lived at the Bay State Apartments, 1701 Massachusetts, and her telephone number was Michigan 8218, and she worked in the office of the Secretary of State, and on the night of the Eaton party she'd come with Frederick Keller, who had some sort of a hush-hush job in the European Division. All this he'd managed to learn, although he'd been alone with her for only a minute or two.

"Oh, you mean Susie Pickett?" said Stud. "Is she a Commie? If she's a Commie I'll be a fellow traveler."

"That's the one." He realized, quite suddenly, that at least once each day since the Eaton party he'd thought of her. She'd said, "I want you to call me," and it had seemed a definite invitation, and not cocktail courtesy. He wondered why he hadn't called before, and decided he had been a little afraid. Of what? Well, he wasn't handsome. He had a half-inch more of nose and chin than is usually allotted, and had always thought of himself as singularly gawky. This hadn't seemed to matter to the girls in Milan or Vienna, or Washington either since he'd been back. So he must have been afraid because she worked in the Secretary's office, and therefore was not common flesh, and approachable, until his application had been approved. He knew this was silly. It was a reflex from his boyhood, when he had been silently aware of the social barrier his father could never pass.

"Well, what about her?" Stud said. "If you're going to celebrate tonight, why experiment with new stuff?"

"She's pretty nice."

"Nice, hell, she's gorgeous. But how do you know she's not shacked with Fred Keller?"

"I don't think so," said Jeff, but at the same time he suspected this might be true. In a city where most of the women seemed as gray and sexless as sheets of mimeograph paper, it wasn't likely Susan Pickett would be unattached.