"Do we alert our agents in America?" said Marganin.

    "No, not yet. I don't want to risk their cover until we are certain what it is the Americans are after."

    He straightened the photographs and slipped them neatly into a folder, then looked at his Omega wristwatch. "I've just time for a light supper before the ballet. Do you have anything else, Lieutenant?"

    "Only the file on the Lorelei Current Drift Expedition. The American deep-sea submersible was last reported in fifteen thousand feet of water off the coast of Dakar."

    Prevlov stood up, took the file and shoved it under his arm. "I'll study it when I get a chance. Probably nothing in it that concerns naval security. Still, it should make good reading. Leave it to the Americans to come up with strange and wonderful projects."

5

    "Damn, damn, double damn!" Dana hissed. "Look at the crow's-feet coming in around my eyes." She sat at her dressing table and stared dejectedly at her reflection in the mirror. "Who was it who said old age is a form of leprosy?"

    Seagram came up behind her, pulled back her hair, and kissed the soft, exposed neck. "Thirty-one on your last birthday and already you're running for senior citizen of the month."

    She stared at him in the mirror, bemused at his rare display of affection. "You're lucky; men don't have this problem."

    "Men also suffer from the maladies of age and crow's-feet. "What makes women think we don't crack at the seams, too?"

    "The difference is, you don't care."

    "We're more prone to accept the inevitable," he said, smiling. "Speaking of the inevitable, when are you going to have a baby?"

    "You bastard! You never give up, do you?" She threw a hairbrush on the dressing table, knocking a regiment of evenly spaced bottles of artificial beauty about the glass top. "We've been through all this a thousand times. I won't subject myself to the indignities of pregnancy. I won't swish crap-laden diapers around in a toilet bowl ten times a day. Let someone else populate the earth. I'm not about to split off my soul, like some damned amoeba."

    "Those reasons are phony. You don't honestly believe them yourself."

    She turned back to the mirror and made no reply.

    "A baby could save us, Dana," he said gently.

    She dropped her head in her hands. "I won't give up my career any more than you'll give up your precious project."

    He stroked her soft golden hair and gazed at her image in the mirror. "Your father was an alcoholic who deserted his family when you were only ten. Your mother worked behind a bar and brought men home to earn extra drinking money. You and your brother were treated like animals until you were both old enough to run away from the garbage bin you called home. He turned crook and started holding up liquor stores and gas stations; a nifty little occupation that netted him a murder conviction and life imprisonment at San Quentin. God knows, I'm proud of how you lifted yourself from the sewer and worked eighteen hours a day to put yourself through college and grad school. Yes, you had a rotten childhood, Dana, and you're afraid of having a baby because of your memories. You've got to understand your nightmare doesn't belong to the future; you can't deny a son or daughter their chance at life."

    The stone wall remained unbreached. She shook off his hands and furiously began plucking her brows. The discussion was closed; she had shut him out as conclusively as if she had caused him to vanish from the room.

    When Seagram emerged from the shower, Dana was standing in front of a full-length closet mirror. She studied herself as critically as a designer who was seeing a finished creation for the first time. She wore a simple white dress that clung tightly to her torso before falling away to the ankles. The décolletage was loose and offered a more than ample view of her breasts.

    "You'd better hurry," she said casually. It was as though the argument had never happened. "We don't want to keep the President waiting."

    "There will be over two hundred people there. No one will stick a black star on our attendance chart for being tardy."

    "I don't care." She pouted. "We don't receive an invitation to a White House party every night of the week. I'd at least like to create a good impression by arriving on time."

    Seagram sighed and went through the ticklish ritual of tying a bow tie and then attaching his cuff links clumsily with one hand. Dressing for formal parties was a chore he detested. Why couldn't Washington's social functions be conducted with comfort in mind? It might be an exciting event to Dana, but to him it was a pain in the rectum.

    He finished buffing his shoes and combing his hair and went into the living room. Dana was sitting on the couch, going over reports, her briefcase open on the coffee table. She was so engrossed she didn't look up when he entered the room.

    "I'm ready."

    "Be with you in a moment," she murmured. "Could you please get my stole?"

    "It's the middle of summer. What in hell do you want to sweat in a fur for?"

    She removed her horned-rimmed reading glasses and said, "I think one of us should show a little class, don't you?"

    He went into the hall, picked up the telephone, and dialed. Mel Donner answered in the middle of the first ring.

    "Donner."

    "Any word yet?" Seagram asked.

    "The First Attempt-"

    "Is that the NUMA ship that was supposed to pick up Koplin?"

    "Yeah. She bypassed Oslo five days ago."

    "My God! Why? Koplin was to jump ship and take a commercial flight stateside from there."

    "No way of knowing. The ship is on radio silence, per your instructions."

    "It doesn't look good."

    "It wasn't in the script, that's for sure."

    "I'll be at the President's party till around eleven. If you hear anything, call me."

    "You can count on it. Have fun."

    Seagram was just hanging up when Dana came out of the living room. She read the thoughtful expression on his face. "Bad news?"

    "I'm not sure yet."

    She kissed him on the cheek. "A shame we can't live like normal people so you could confide your problems to me."

    He squeezed her hand. "If only I could."

    "Government secrets. What a colossal bore." She smiled slyly. "Well?"

    "Well, what?"

    "Aren't you going to be a gentleman?"

    "I'm sorry, I forgot." He pulled her stole from the closet and slipped it over her shoulders. "A bad habit of mine, ignoring my wife."

    Her lips spread in a playful grin. "For that, you will be shot at dawn."

    Christ, he thought miserably, a firing squad might not be too farfetched at that, if Koplin screwed up at Novaya Zemlya.

6

    The Seagrams settled behind the crowd gathered at the entrance to the East Room and waited their turn in the receiving line. Dana had been in the White House before, but she was still impressed by it.

    The President was standing smartly and devilishly handsome. He was in his early fifties and was definitely a very sexy man. The latter was supported by the fact that standing next to him, greeting every guest with the fervor of discovering a rich relative, was Ashley Fleming, Washington's most elegant and sophisticated divorcee.