“Not according to our regulations.”

“Screw regulations, Glenn.”

On the dashboard the temperature idiot-light began to flicker red. The engine idled roughly, skipping a beat now and then, shaking the car.

Finally Bradleigh said, “I’m not just a good German, you know. I don’t just follow every order I get whether I like it or not. But this time I agree with policy. A fair number have turned state’s evidence and then refused our protection. Tough guys. They figured they could hold out on their own. Mostly they get killed. I’m not bragging, Fred. That’s just the way it is.”

“I’m not being a tough guy. I’m not going to stand in one place and dare them to come get me. We’re going to ground and they won’t find us. But a secret’s only a secret as long as nobody else knows it, and this time we don’t want anybody at all to know where we are. Not Caruso, not you, not the President of the United States.”

“You’ve always been a stubborn son of a bitch.”

“Stubbornness got me into this in the first place. If I hadn’t dug in my heels against the well-meaning advice of the whole world I wouldn’t have got into this fix. All right. I haven’t changed. Stubbornness got me in, it’ll get me out.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“It’s all I’ve got to count on.”

Bradleigh stirred in the seat. The red warning light flickered brighter. “I made a stupid mistake. I figured they were looking for you, not for me. It should have occurred to me they’d try to follow me to you. All right, it’s a mistake I’ll never make again. I lost them in Gallup and they haven’t picked me up again. That’s not conjecture. It’s fact. You believe it?”

“Of course.”

“I guess you do. If you didn’t you wouldn’t be sitting here with me.” He crushed the butt out. Mathieson wondered what was going on in his mind: Usually Bradleigh was transparent; now he was struggling with something inside.

Bradleigh said in a different voice, “You know my office number. Call collect. Whenever you want to. If you want money we’ll arrange a postal drop of some kind. Just let me know.” He sounded hoarse and hollow: It was a confession of failure and his accession was a form of penance.

Mathieson had counted on it. It gave him no pleasure; neither did it sadden him. The coldness was something he needed to sustain close inside him for however long it might take to learn to live with the wild rage that these past days had thrown into his life.

Bradleigh leaned across him to open the glove compartment in the dashboard. A box of .38 cartridges rolled out onto the open hinged door. Bradleigh closed his hand around it and then slammed the compartment shut. He pulled his revolver out from inside his shirt and put it with the ammunition on top of the document case in Mathieson’s lap. “You know how to use it, don’t you?”

“Yes. But I don’t want it.”

“You’d better take it, Fred.”

“I’m not a killer. That’s one of the differences between me and them. I doubt I’d shoot even Frank Pastor—even if I had the chance.”

“Your life could depend on it.” Bradleigh’s voice hardened. “Jan’s life. Ronny’s life.”

He saw that it was something that would make a great difference to Bradleigh. “All right,” he conceded.

“I hope you’ll never need it. Just keep a little oil on it.” Bradleigh put the gun and ammunition into the envelope with the documents.

“How do you explain losing your gun?”

“I don’t. It’s personal property. I’ve got two more at home just like it. It’s registered to me, of course. But if you have to use it you know damn well I’ll support you all the way.”

“All the way to my funeral, I expect. If I ever have to use a gun it’ll mean they’ve got too close to us.”

“Just keep it close at hand. Promise me you’ll do that, Fred.”

Mathieson made no answer; he wasn’t going to make promises he didn’t intend keeping and he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life with a gun in his pocket.

Bradleigh’s shoulders drooped a little. “All right. You’ll suit yourself, I guess.”

Mathieson said, “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t try to trace us. I’d appreciate it even more if you’d wipe these new names and ID’s off our records but I don’t suppose you can do that.”

“No. I can’t.”

“All right. We’ll settle for what we can get.”

“I’ll have to tell them you got away from us. I’ll pull Caruso and Cuernavan away tonight at ten o’clock for a short conference. You’ll have about ten minutes to be out and gone.”

“Tell it any way you want. As long as they don’t come looking for us.”

“I’ll do what I can. It’s the least I owe you. Fred—”

“I know. Good luck yourself.”

“Send me a postcard. Or give me a ring. Anything—just let me know you’re all right. Will you do that?”

“Yes,” he said, not sure whether he would do it. He opened the door. “You’re about to boil over, Glenn.” He picked up the heavy envelope and walked across the lot toward Caruso’s car. He didn’t look back.

2

When they drove away from the motel he saw no sign of pursuit but he doubled through the dark back streets anyhow, zigzagging through silent residential areas, avoiding the main arteries and keeping half his attention on the mirrors.

Jan and Ronny were silent with the washed-out enervation of something near hopelessness. He’d made the decisions himself. Jan had neither argued nor offered suggestions.

He avoided the freeway and drove south from Tucson along the highway to Nogales. It was fifty miles to the Mexican border; they were there in less than an hour. The station wagon needed only a few gallons but he made a point of filling the tank at a station within a few blocks of the border gate and he engaged the station’s owner in conversation because he wanted the man to remember them.

At the border he applied for three temporary visitor visas in the Baxter family name. The visas weren’t necessary for entry to the border town itself but they were required if you went more than a few miles deeper into the country. He was laying a false trail; it would buy them a little time.

They drove into the Mexican side of Nogales and ate dinner at the Cavern Restaurant; he’d been there once years before and remembered the turtle soup and it was still as good as it had been but he hardly noticed.

It was midnight when they put it back on the road. He’d studied the map and it looked like a rugged but passable highway; it proved to be a barely graded dirt track filled with chuckholes from the last rains and it took the rest of the night at snail’s pace to cross eastward along the south side of the border, across the Sonora provincial boundary and through the dry hills to the village of Agua Prieta. At eight in the morning they crossed back into the United States. The Mexican guards merely waved them through; the American customs men tossed their luggage cursorily but showed no other interest and only glanced at the Mexican visitors’ permits; he was sure they hadn’t taken down the names and wouldn’t remember faces for more than a day.

The next step was to get rid of the car because Caruso knew it, the year and color and plate number.

Sleeplessness laid a grit on his eyeballs but Jan was too groggy to drive and he made do on three cups of strong road-house coffee and a big breakfast of steak and eggs. It kept him going along the highway north from Douglas to Benson. He kept checking the mirror and found nothing alarming there. The station wagon’s air-conditioner was inadequate against the Arizona desert and they sat three abreast because the cooling didn’t reach into the back. He filled the tank and checked the oil in Benson; they had lunch in a café and went eastward. The Interstate brought them into Willcox in midafternoon and he drove down the exit ramp into the town.

He dropped Jan and the boy with all the luggage at the Trailways depot and checked the wall-posted schedules: There was a four o’clock express to Tucson, Phoenix, El Centro, Riverside and Los Angeles. It gave him forty-five minutes. He drove along one of the main streets until he found a shopping center; he parked the car in a slot near the edge of the big parking lot, left the keys in the ignition and walked to a telephone booth. He looked up the number of the local taxicab company, “Fast Service Radio Dispatched,” and arrived back at the depot with fifteen minutes to spare.