“It’s not as if there wasn’t plenty to do, Ronny. Besides ride.”

“I’ve read a dozen books in the library. I’ve looked at movies until I’ve started seeing everything in Technicolor. But I can’t spend the whole day like that. You know what I mean, Dad?”

“I know what you mean.” He heard the car before he saw it; he looked down the long driveway. “Here comes your mother.”

“I wish I’d changed my mind and gone to town with them. At least it would have been a change.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t feel like it,” Ronny said obscurely. They went up to the house and got there by the time Meuth parked it by the kitchen delivery entrance. Mrs. Meuth came out to help unload. Vasquez and Jan came up to the steps. There was stress in Jan’s face.

“Anything wrong?”

“Some trouble at the Gilfillans.”

“Trouble?”

“Your friends are being watched,” Vasquez said. “By a group of improbably clumsy goons.”

“Goons? Pastor’s people?”

Vasquez’s glance slid across Ronny and back to Mathieson. “I shouldn’t be alarmed. It’s almost textbook, really. Probably they’re hoping to reach you through your friends—hoping their harassment of Roger Gilfillan will bring you out of hiding. I find it encouraging, actually—it indicates they’re clutching at straws.”

That wasn’t all it indicated to Mathieson but he held his tongue until Jan and Ronny had gone inside the house. Vasquez returned to the car with the evident intent of putting it away. Mathieson walked around it and got into the passenger seat. “You’re taking it too casually.”

“I didn’t want to alarm your wife unnecessarily. She’s high-strung enough as it is.”

“You see what it means, don’t you? They’ve found out I’m not under federal protection. Otherwise they’d never bother trying to locate us through our friends.”

“That’s true. But it doesn’t really put them any closer to you, does it.”

“It suggests the leak in Washington was never really plugged. And that means Pastor may know we’re going under the name of Baxter.”

“What of it? You haven’t used any names at all in this area.” Vasquez shook his head. “That’s not what troubles me.”

“Then what does?”

As usual Vasquez provided an answer in his own roundabout way; his apparent non sequiturs always led to the point eventually but Mathieson’s patience was goaded. Vasquez said, “Your friend Glenn Bradleigh and his colleagues are professionals. A great many of their regulations are the results of experience. One of their most steadfast rules in the relocation and protection of their charges is the complete break of all past associations—family and friends. Undoubtedly this is the most difficult thing their clients must adjust to. Undoubtedly the government has spent years trying to find alternatives. They have discovered none. Therefore they maintain the rule as an absolute.”

He saw what Vasquez was getting at.

Vasquez said, “When you came to me you were already in touch with the Gilfillans. There was nothing I could do to undo that thread of contact; therefore I wasted no effort in the attempt. But you must recognize now that it was exceedingly unwise.”

“Maybe it was. I had no one else to turn to.”

“You could have turned to me. Directly, without involving your friends.”

“If it hadn’t been for Roger I’m not sure I ever would have made the decision to come to you.”

Vasquez reached for the key and started the car. “All right. It’s useless recriminating.”

He drove it sedately around the loop and up past the paddock toward the barn, talking steadily.

“I suspect Pastor’s men have tapped the Gilfillan phone. Pastor would have no reason to disturb Gilfillan if he didn’t know you were in communication with him. Now if we can assume that Pastor knows you are in contact with Gilfillan, then you are vulnerable.”

Perkins’s tractor was on the far slope dragging a block of rock salt toward the water trough. Vasquez said, “For the moment Pastor may be satisfied to stir things up and wait to see whether the stirring brings you to the surface. When it doesn’t he may decide to use one of the Gilfillans as hostage for the acquisition of Edward Merle. It would not require kidnapping. It would require merely a threat, delivered anonymously and easily to Roger Gilfillan, stating that if Edward Merle were not produced then an unfortunate accident might deprive young Billy Gilfillan of his eyes, or his legs, or his life. The nature of the threat isn’t important; the pattern is clear enough. If Pastor made such a threat and Gilfillan passed it on to you, what would you do?”

Vasquez racked the station wagon beside the other cars in the barn. He switched it off. In the dead silence he inspected Mathieson’s face.

“Don’t be too dismayed. There’s a countermove available to us—the only course of action I’d recommend.” Vasquez opened the door. As he was getting out he said, “We’ll have to persuade the Gilfillans to join us here.”

3

He needed something to do; he insisted on doing the driving. Vasquez rode with him and on the way they rehearsed the scheme.

“We’re assuming their phone is tapped,” Vasquez said. “What does that suggest to you?”

“We’ve got to get them to another phone.”

“Very good. How?”

“Just tell him to go down to the shopping center and use a pay phone. They can’t tap it that fast.”

“That’s fine, Mr. Merle, but how do we tell him what number to call? Or do you happen to know the number of the pay phone offhand?”

“No. I could call him at a friend’s house …”

“And involve another friend in this? Think again.”

“Suppose I ask him to drive over to the studio. I could call him there.”

“It’s a bit clumsy—and you’d be talking through the studio’s switchboard. No, I think the simplest method is to give him a phone number where he can reach us. And do it in such a way that eavesdroppers won’t understand it.”

“How?”

“Do you know anything of the rudiments of codes and ciphers? All it requires is a key.”

Mathieson made the turn into the county road. A hot wind sawed in through the windows. Piercing reflections of sunlight shot back from mica particles in the rocks. Mirages wavered in the road surface, retreating before them.

Vasquez took out a notebook and his pencil. “There must be a fairly close friend the two of you had in common. Pick one whose phone number you remember. Someone whom you can identify to Gilfillan without mentioning a name.”

“All right.”

“What is the friend’s phone number.”

“Well say it’s Charlie Dern. It’s two-seven-five five-three-oh-three.”

“That’s fine. Now all we need do is copy down the number of the public phone in town and do a bit of subtraction.

4

In the booth he wrote down the number of the pay phone immediately above Charlie Dern’s number. Then he made the computation:

714-895-8214

— 213-275-5303

501-620-2911

He dialed Roger’s home and got Billy on the line. “Get your dad on the phone, will you, Billy?”

“Sure, Mr. Mathieson. Just a minute.”

He glanced through the glass doors. Vasquez was standing beside the car alertly watching everything at once.

“Hey, old horse, how’re they hanging?”

“Roger, I want you to do something for me. It’s important and it’s urgent. Get a pencil and paper.”

“What? Hell, hang on a sec … OK, shoot.”

“I want you to write down a number at the top of the sheet. Ready?”

“Go ahead.”

“Five-oh-one, six-two-oh, two-nine-one-one.”

“Got it.”

“Read it back to me, will you?”

“Five-zero-one, six-two-zero, two-nine-one-one. Area code and phone number, right?”

“In a way. Now here’s what you do. Don’t mention a name but we have a friend who has ulcers. You know who I mean.”

“Sure. What about him.”

“Write down his phone number. Including area code. Right beneath the number I just gave you. Don’t repeat the number on this phone.”