Читать книгу An Affair of State - Pat Frank - Страница 35

They didn't talk much on the way to the airport. He said the Lincoln Memorial was always beautiful at this time in the morning. She said wasn't it, but she thought the Jefferson Memorial was more graceful. He said he liked the Jefferson Memorial too, particularly when the cherry blossoms were coming out around the Tidal Basin.

They swung down to the Mount Vernon Highway, and she grabbed his arm tightly, on the curve, and clung to him. "That'll be in April," she said.

"What'll be in April?"

"The cherry blossoms. I wonder where you'll be in April, who you'll be with, what you'll be doing?"

"I wish I could be right here," Jeff said.

"But you can't."

"No, I can't."

Then they were at the National Airport, clean and fresh from its pre-dawn scrubbing and yet surprisingly busy for the hour, and the porters had his luggage. They walked to the Pan-American counter, the uniformed ticket agent checked his name on the manifest, and he found himself caught up in the smooth conveyor belt that in twenty minutes weighs and loads exactly fifty-six thousand pounds of passengers, luggage, mail, and freight on a trans-Atlantic plane. He exhibited his ticket, his virgin diplomatic passport, his government immunization register. His next of kin, he was forced to recall, was Aunt Martha, in Chicago, whom he had neglected to write for six months, and who had no idea he was on the way to Europe.

"I suppose you'll carry your dispatch case with you, Mr. Baker," the ticket agent suggested.

"Oh, yes, of course." It had been stupid of him to forget that an FSO never checked his dispatch case along with the other luggage. A dispatch case was part of a man.

The agent brought it out from behind the counter. Its handle felt good in his hand.

Not until then did he realize Susan was no longer at his side. He was searching for her, his eyes sweeping the rows of benches facing the great windows looking out on the runways, when an airline captain touched his arm. "You're Mr. Baker, of the State Department?"

"Yes."

"I'm Bill Judson. I take your flight as far as Shannon. If you get bored, come on up front and I'll show you how our new flying machine works."

Jeff smiled. "Thanks very much. That's awfully good of you." He knew he had received the equivalent of a five-gun salute. He felt good all over.

Over the captain's shoulder he spotted her. Her arms were loaded, and she was looking for him. "You'll excuse me," he told the pilot, and then shouted across the waiting room, "Hey, Susie!" The pilot grinned, and other people turned and stared. But she heard.

She'd shopped the magazine stand. She said she thought he ought to have plenty of magazines--"They'll be welcome in the Mission so don't throw them away." And the new H. Allen Smith book. And cigarettes.

"Five cartons!" he said. "I don't know whether they'll let me carry that many through customs."

She dropped everything on a bench, and then tapped his dispatch case. "That's what this is for. Didn't you know?"

"I'm learning," he said. He sat down beside her, put the dispatch case across his knees, unsnapped the locks, and fitted the cartons inside.

"That's a lovely thing," she said, rubbing her fingers along the perfect grain of the leather. "I hope some day it carries--I'm not sure what. But something thrilling. Something extra wonderful. Something for all of us. Something to wipe our fear away."

"I thought you'd got over it."

"I've rationalized it, some, but I can't get rid of it. Who can? There isn't a person in this country, Jeff, who at least once each day doesn't think of war. It's a permanent hazard, tangible as a fog that never blows away. It colors everything we do. Nobody can make a decision--business or personal--without considering it."

"Susan, what's going to happen to us from here in--I mean you and me?"

She looked at the clock. "There is so much we could talk about--and no time. I don't think we'd better plan--do you, Jeff?"

"No, I guess not. I just want you to sit quiet. I want to memorize you."

She looked down at her fingers, locked together in her lap. "There's something else I have to say."

"Go ahead."

"I just wanted to tell you you don't have to worry."

"Worry? About what?"

"About last night. No remorse. No obligations."

He leaned over, and kissed her hair, and said, "I want obligations, darling," and the loudspeakers began to whine, and somebody coughed into the microphone. Then the loudspeakers said Flight 86 was loading at Gate 3 for Shannon, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest.

They rose and moved together towards the gate, becoming part of a funnel of people, the spout of which ended under a sign saying, "Passengers Only."

They were pushed close together, and she said, "I guess this is the end of the line for me." She kissed him once on the lips, lightly so as not to smear him.

The gate opened, and he was carried through it with the stream of people, and she was left outside.