Читать книгу An Affair of State - Pat Frank - Страница 34

They left her apartment at five, at an hour when all else in the city was still, and even the drying August leaves slept silent, waiting for the morning breeze from the river to shake them into life. They walked together without speaking, their footsteps strangely distinct on the empty pavement, her hand under his elbow, her shoulder pressed close to his arm. Jeff's legs felt hollow and numb. They didn't feel like part of him. They moved of themselves.

He thought, this is a dream. I'm going to wake up in a minute and find I've got what's left of the night to toss and want her, and try to bring back this dream. She didn't call me. I didn't possess her all the night. Girls like her don't do things like that for guys like me.

He saw a bus stop ahead, on Dupont Circle, and heard the squeal of its brakes. This was real, all right, but it didn't seem credible that she should be walking at his side now, and in twenty-four hours he would be in Budapest. It was unreal and frightening that he might never have her again. He would not come home for three years, and in that time anything could happen, and something was almost sure to happen. Now that she had overcome her fear, conquered her phobia, she might find someone else. Probably would. Almost certainly would.

"What are you thinking of?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing."

"I was thinking of nothing, too. It's going to be bad, isn't it?"

"It's going to be rough." Her understanding was part of this miracle, this sense of joining, of union, of oneness.

Yet there wasn't any possibility of marriage. The Department disapproved of love, altogether. Love was a force operating beyond the bounds of directives, protocol, rank, regulations, act of Congress, and even the taboos of nationality and race. It was an unpredictable plague that could smite a distinguished Career Minister, as well as a Class VI FSR, cause him to ship his family back home, and set him to doing the rhumba in a third-rate Rio dive. It caused couriers to forget their crossed bags, cryptographers to chatter of their codes, and Division Chiefs to make fools of themselves over Washington debutantes.

The Department took a dim view of marriage. If an FSO wanted to marry a foreign girl he had to submit his resignation, and usually he could count on its being accepted. And in that day there weren't many American girls loose outside their own land, except in Departmental staff. And it was absolutely forbidden that he marry a girl within the Department, a hangover from the Hoover economy years when it was considered a dangerous drain on the Treasury for both husband and wife to draw salaries from the government.

The Department trusted that an FSO would not marry until he was a Class II or III. Then it was hoped that he would go back to his home town and choose a wife who would not only be socially acceptable but who would have an adequate private income. A Class V, completely dependent upon his salary, and still in his probationary period, could not ask a girl to quit a job that paid as well as his own, and join him in a career that marriage would automatically limit and cripple. He wondered whether Susan had thought at all of marriage. He didn't dare ask.

They turned into Riggs Court, and Susan said she'd wait at the Circle and try to stop, and hold, a cab. He said that was fine. He knew that was a delicate way of saying she didn't want to go to his rooms, where Stud Beecham would see her, and know where his roommate had spent the night.

The apartment displayed the relics of a party--overflowing ash trays, glasses with water melted from ice cubes standing in their bottoms, the debris of sandwiches, olive stones. He shook Stud out of sleep. Stud said, "What time is it? Where the hell have you been?"

"It's five-thirty. I've been out."

"I'll say you've been out. We had a party for you. A surprise going-away party. All the old gang. The surprise was you didn't turn up."

"I'm sorry," Jeff said.

"Woman?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, I guess you'll have to be excused. Who was she?"

Jeff was strapping the four-suiter. He grunted.

"If you wait a minute," Stud said, "I'll pull on my clothes and help you out with that stuff and take you to the airport."

"Oh, no. You stay in bed. I can handle it fine."

"She must be waiting downstairs," Stud said.

"Mind your own damn business."

"Why don't you take her with you?"

"You go to hell."

"I'll bet I know who it is," Stud said. "I'll bet I know!" He got out of bed and looked out at the sky. "Going to be good flying weather," he decided. "But I'm glad it's you, and not me. I hate airplanes. Airplanes are strictly for the birds. Man wasn't meant to fly. What are your stops?"

"Gander," Jeff said, "Shannon, Prague, Vienna."

"And sometimes," said Stud, "they stop in the middle of the ocean."

They carried the bags to the bottom of the stairs, and then a taxi driver appeared to help him. "Goodbye, chum," Stud said. "Remember to brush your teeth every day, and mail your laundry home Fridays."

"So long," said Jeff. "See you in three years."

"The lady," said the taxi driver, "says for you to hurry."