“The missing guy is one of Orozco’s private operatives—the one Trumble was trying to reach when he called Orozco’s office, remember? Sawed-off guy called Craig. He had some hook-up with Trumble and now he’s missing too and possibly dead. Whatever it is, it’s big, and we’re in it, you and me. Belsky traced back as far as Miller and if he was scared enough to kill Miller then he’s scared enough to kill both of us if he gets a chance at us; he knows I can identify him, and he’s got to assume I’ve told you all this since I work for you. He’s got no way of knowing Miller was an Agency man—he’ll assume Miller was just a pal with a darkroom who developed my pictures for me. So he may figure if he knocks off the two of us fast enough he’s safe.”

“I see.” Forrester was pawing his big jaw; things were going by very fast and he was trying to keep focus. It was as if they had leaped back more than twenty years to Korea: military counterintelligence, all the training and the months of experience in the lines, drifted through his mind in flashes and he sorted out the useless questions and narrowed his attention like a cone toward the significances. In the end he said, “Then the question is why this man Belsky came here and killed Ross Trumble. I assume the Agency must be in high gear by now looking for him.”

“Sure. Not that they’ve got much chance of finding him. He’d checked into a motel under the name of Meldon Kemp and they’ve got a man on the place but there’s no chance at all he’ll show up back there. Nobody even knows where to start looking because nobody knows what he’s after. If he only came here to kill Trumble then he’d be halfway back to Moscow by now, but I don’t think that was it. If they’d wanted an assassin they wouldn’t have had to use a man as important as Belsky. Anyhow if it was hit-and-run why’d he go out of his way to trace his gun back to Miller and kill him? He’d have run for it instead. No, Belsky’s still around here and he’s still worrying about me. And you.”

“It’s hard to grasp, Top.”

“It might be easier to understand if it made any sense.” Spode looked at his watch. “They’ve put tracers on Ross Trumble to see if they can come up with something at that end. Right now we can’t see any connection between him and Belsky outside of the Phaeton thing, and why the hell should Belsky kill him over that?”

Forrester shook his head.

Spode reached for the key. “They told me I could call back and find out if they’ve dug up anything that helps. I may as well try.”

When Spode came back to the car from the telephone kiosk his eyes were busy—like an animal that knew it was being stalked. He started the car and headed into the back streets. “The Agency sent a man to cover my place in case Belsky showed up looking for me but it looks like Belsky beat them to it. The place has been searched—quick but thorough. Maybe looking to see if he could find any indications whether I’m still working for the Agency. He’s got to be hoping like mad I’m free-lancing now and didn’t call in the troops.”

This Belsky was a professional but that wouldn’t make him immune to the seductiveness of hope. He would tend to believe what he wanted to believe—that Spode was independent and that Washington wasn’t onto him. It would make Belsky a little less careful but it would put Spode’s life in jeopardy and Forrester found himself worrying about that at the expense of wider concerns. He was a man to whom friendships had always been as sparse and infrequent as they were profound. He had nothing much in common with Top Spode other than shared experiences that went back twenty-odd years but Top was one of the finest men he had ever known and in a personal sense Top’s individual safety was of more importance to him than a truckload of state secrets.

Spode found a place to park where there was nothing in sight but a few houses and two sleepy mongrels on a lawn. “A few developments. I left voice-activated bugs at Trumble’s house and the Agency retrieved the tapes a while ago when the cops were taking the body away. There were a couple of voices, just fragments, one guy calling another guy ‘Sarge’ and telling him to take it easy with the knife. My ex-boss figures they must have killed Trumble somewhere else and snuck the body back into the house, and one of them had to cut him to pour some blood over the floor and make it look like Trumble killed himself in the bathroom. Incidentally the local cops aren’t in on this; they bought it as a suicide.”

“But that’s not the main point,” Forrester said. His brain was beginning to work. “The main point is, Belsky isn’t alone.”

“Aeah. He’s got at least two guys working for him.”

“One of whom may be Police or Air Force. ‘Sarge’—Sergeant.”

“It could be a nickname too. But anyhow he’s got local help.” Spode locked his fists around the steering-wheel rim and stared at them. “Damn it I hate working blind. We’re peeling back corners but we don’t even know what to look for.”

“What did they find out about Trumble?”

“They’re still working on it. So far most of what they got checks out with what we know about him. County Attorney’s staff, FBI stint, lobbyist for Shattuck, running for Congress—nothing new there. But the records on Trumble only go back about twenty years. Before that it’s zero. Trumble had an Army discharge certificate but the military-records people in St. Louis have no record he was ever in the service. He had a bachelor’s and a law diploma from Northwestern but Northwestern’s never heard of him. He came to Arizona in fifty-five with an Illinois driver’s license but the Illinois highway department doesn’t show any license was ever issued to him. He had a birth certificate too and a lot of other documentation and so far none of it seems to check out.”

Forrester stared at him. “That’s insane.”

“It doesn’t prove anything about who he was but it proves who he wasn’t. He wasn’t Ross Trumble. There never was a Ross Trumble.”

In the end Spode said, “I’m not holding out on you. That’s all I know. You know the choices as well as I do and it’s up to you.”

“You never like to make decisions, do you, Top?”

“That’s neither here nor there. It’s your choice, not mine—I take your bread, I sing your songs.”

“The Agency wants you to make a target out of yourself to draw Belsky into the open, is that it?”

“Aeah.”

If Belsky had running dogs then he might not do it himself but that didn’t matter in principle: if you could draw the running dogs into a trap it was the same as drawing Belsky into the trap since the running dogs would lead you back to him if you knew how to handle it.

“If you’re going to be the bait in the Agency’s trap you don’t want to be too obvious about it, Top. If they think you’re advertising for attention they’ll pull back.”

“Quit talking about me. Talk about you. I see the way you’re thinking but this an’t Korea and it ain’t 1953. You’re a United States Senator, you’ve got no business playing cops and robbers. Belsky’s got two goons we know about and he may have more—it could be a big organization for all we know.”

“I’ve never subscribed to the conspiracy theory of history. I can’t believe the Russians have recruited very many people here.”

“Christ, you can hire thugs by the dozen for pay—all they care about is the money, they don’t need to know who’s giving the orders or why.”

When Forrester made no immediate answer Spode turned to look at him. The dark strong face was troubled—a very personal concern. “It’s getting too hairy. Not for me, maybe, but for you. I think you ought to dig a hole.”

“Hide out?”

“Just until they run Belsky down.”

“He can’t hire very many thugs who’d be willing to risk harming a United States Senator.”

“Nuts. All the thugs have to do is find you for him. Belsky can take care of the messy details himself.”