In a small office in the Pentagon, Colonel Julius T. Spaulding cradled the telephone on his desk and looked at the Secretary of Defense. "That was the airfield. Poe will be here shortly. We"ll get to the bottom of this pretty quickly."
"I hope so, Julius," the Secretary said heavily. "The president is beginning to think we"re both nuts."
The colonel, a lean, nervous man with dark, bushy eyebrows and a mustache to match, rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling. "I"m beginning to agree with him."
The Defense Secretary scowled at him. "What do you mean?"
"Anybody who takes telepathy seriously is considered a nut," said the colonel.
"True," said the Secretary, "but that doesn"t mean we _are_ nuts."
"Oh, yeah?" The colonel took the cigar out of his mouth a gestured with it. "Anybody who"d do something that convinces all his friends he"s nuts must be nuts."
The Secretary smiled wanly. "I wish you wouldn"t be so logical. You almost convince me."
"Don"t worry," said the colonel. "I"m not ready to have this room measured for sponge-rubber wallpaper just yet. Operation Mapcase has helped a lot in the past few months, and it will help even more."
"All you have to do is get the bugs out of it," said the Secretary.
"If we did that," Colonel Spaulding said flatly, "the whole operation would fold from lack of personnel."
"Just carry on the best you can," the Secretary said gloomily as he got up to leave. "I"ll let you handle it."
"Fine. I"ll call you later."
Twenty minutes after the Defense Secretary had gone, Lenny Poe was shown into Colonel Spaulding"s office. The agent who had brought him in closed the door gently, leaving him alone with the colonel.
"I told you I"d be back this evening. What were you in such a hurry about?"
"You"re supposed to stay in touch," Colonel Spaulding pointed out. "I don"t mind your penchant for ponies particularly, but I"d like to know where to find you if I need you."
"I wouldn"t mind in the least, colonel. I"d phone you every fifteen minutes if that"s what you wanted. Except for one thing."
"What"s that?"
Lenny jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Your linguistically talented flatfeet. Did you ever try to get into a floating c.r.a.p game when you were being followed by a couple of bruisers who look more like cops than cops do?"
"Look, Poe, I can find you plenty of action right here in Washington, if it won"t offend your tender sensibilities to shoot c.r.a.p with a senator or two. Meanwhile, sit down and listen. This is important."
Lenny sat own reluctantly. "O.K. What is it?"
"Dr. Davenport and his crew are unhappy about that last batch of drawings you and I gave "em."
"What"s the matter? Don"t they like the color scheme? I never thought scientists had any artistic taste, anyway."
"It"s got nothing to do with that. The--"
The phone rang. Colonel Spaulding scooped it up and identified himself.
Then: "What? Yeah. All right, send him in."
He hung up and looked back at Lenny. "Davenport. We can get his story firsthand. Just sit there and look important."
Lenny nodded. He knew that Dr. Amadeus Davenport was aware that the source of those drawings was Soviet Russia, but he did not know how they had been obtained. As far as he knew, it was just plain, ordinary spy work.
He came in briskly. He was a tall, intelligent-looking man with a rather craggy face and thoughtful brown eyes. He put a large brief case on the floor, and, after the preliminaries were over, he came right to the point.
"Colonel Spaulding, I spoke to the Secretary of Defense, and he agreed that perhaps this situation might be cleared up if I talked directly with you."
"I hope so," the colonel said. "Just what is it that seems to be bothering you?"
"These drawings," Davenport said, "don"t make any sense. The device they"re supposed to represent couldn"t do anything. Look; I"ll show you."
He took from his brief case photostatic copies of some of the drawings Lenny had made. Five of them were straight blueprint-type drawings; the sixth was a copy of Lenny"s near-photographic paintings of the device itself.
"This component, here," he said, gesturing at the set of drawings, "simply baffles us. We"re of the opinion that your agents are known to the Soviet government and have been handed a set of phony plans."
"What"s it supposed to do?" Lenny asked.
"We don"t know what it"s _supposed_ to do," the scientist said, "but it"s doubtful that it would _actually_ do anything." He selected one of the photocopies. "See that thing? The one shaped like the letter Q with an offset tail? According to the specifications, it is supposed to be painted emerald green, but there"s no indication of what it is."
Lenny Poe reached out, picked up the photocopy and looked at it. It was--or had been--an exact copy of the drawing that was used by Dr. Sonya Malekrinova. But, whereas the original drawing has been labeled entirely in Cyrillic characters, these labels were now in English.
The drawings made no sense to Lenny at all. They hadn"t when he"d made them. His brother was a scientist, but Lenny understood none of it.
"Who translated the Russian into English?" he asked.
"A Mr. Berensky. He"s one of our best experts on the subject. I a.s.sure you the translations are accurate, Dr. Davenport said.
"But if you don"t know what that thing is," the colonel objected, "how can you say the device won"t work? Maybe it would if that Q-shaped thing was--"
"I know what you mean," Davenport interrupted. "But that"s not the only part of the machine that doesn"t make any sense."
He went on to explain other discrepancies he had detected in the drawings, but none of it penetrated to Lenny, although Colonel Spaulding seemed to be able to follow the physicist"s conversation fairly readily.
"Well, what"s you suggestion, doctor?" the colonel asked at last.
"If you agents could get further data," the physicist said carefully, "it might be of some use. At the same time, I"d check up on the possibility that your agents are known to the NKVD."
"I"ll see what can be done," said the colonel. "Would you mind leaving those copies of the drawings with me for a while?"
"Go right ahead," Davenport said. "One other thing. If we a.s.sume this device is genuine, then it must serve some purpose. It might help if we knew what the device is supposed to _do_."
"I"ll see what can be done," Colonel Spaulding repeated.