“Now, here,” said Stupewitz, “are all your papers back.” And he gave him the birth certificate, diploma and grades. Heller put them in his pocket.

Maulin got up and hauled an old, tattered Octopus Oil Company road map out of a cluttered desk drawer. He sat back down.

“All right,” said Maulin, opening the map and putting his phone notes on it. “Mr. Bury wanted to be sure you had money and I said you did. Mr. Bury says you will probably be tired — he’s quite concerned for your welfare. So you are to go to Howard Johnson’s Motel in Silver Spring, Maryland. You leave here, go up Sixteenth Avenue, over the District line and the motel is right here. See it?”

Heller was studying the map. And I suddenly knew the why of the delay. It was not the FBI. It was Mr. Bury. Somewhere up that route, he had arranged a hit! I tried frantically to figure out how he would do it.

Heller had it. Actually, he probably had every road and byway on the east coast now.

“Good,” said Maulin. “Now, he said some reporters had gotten wind of your refusing to come home this summer. Some crazy tale that you wanted to live your own life. Maybe join a baseball team or something. So he said that under no circumstances were you to register in a motel or hotel under your right name as he wanted no news release until you were reconciled with your family and you had talked with your father who is out of the country now. Got it?”

“Don’t use my own name,” said Heller. “Got it.”

Oh, that Bury. He knew (bleeped) well there was no Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior! He was going to avoid any crazy newspaper stories by simply murdering the imposter. Rockecenter certainly had the resources and was not slow to use them. But how was he going to do it? And where?

“All right,” said Maulin. “Now, tomorrow morning, you drive up to U.S. 495, the circle highway around D.C., and you turn off to the left onto U.S. 95. You go on that highway straight across Maryland, then across Delaware to this point where you go to the right on U.S. 295 across the Delaware River and then you’re on the New Jersey Turnpike. You just follow along — actually you can’t get off it. Now, you see here, just north of Newark, the turnpike splits? Well, there’s a Howard Johnson’s Motel right here,” and he put an X on the map. “You’re supposed to be there by about 4:30 in the afternoon. It’s only a four-hour trip. No speeding! Don’t register. Just go in the dining room, sit down and have an early supper. An old family retainer will be waiting there for you and will guide you home. Got that?”

Heller said he had.

“Now, Mr. Bury said to tell you you were in no danger whatever, so not to do anything silly. In fact, he said to tell you that Slinkerton will be tailing you all the way so you won’t get scared.”

“Slinkerton?” said Heller.

“That’s the Slinkerton Detective Agency, the one your dad uses. They’re the biggest in the country,” said Maulin. “You won’t see them but they’ll be there.” He laughed suddenly. “I think he’s making sure you won’t run off again, no matter how many hookers you meet!”

Stupewitz said, “Shall we go down to the car now?”

They went down to the FBI garage and there was the car. Heller checked the trunk: his gear was undisturbed. He glanced at the new D.C. plates, front and back. Then he got in.

Stupewitz said, “So it’s good-bye, Junior.”

“Thank you,” said Heller (was that an emotional tremor in his voice?), “for making it possible for me to go straight.”

Maulin laughed, “Save your thanks until you get your hands on your old man’s money, Junior.”

The agents both laughed and then, the way Americans do — talking in front of children as though the child isn’t there — Stupewitz said to Maulin, “He’s a good kid, Maulin. A little wild but okay.”

“Yeah,” said Maulin, “you can see his family’s stuff in him. But all these kids is tamer than we used to be.”

They both guffawed and waved to Heller as he drove off.

I didn’t wait to watch Heller wrestle with the evening rush hour of Washington. I went plunging down the side tunnel that led to Faht’s office. It’s a long way and I was totally out of breath when I burst through the secret side door.

“I’ve got to contact Terb!” I shouted.

Faht opened a drawer and handed me a report. It was their daily radio transmission. It had come through at the rate of five thousand words a second, using hyper-band. It contained, however, no five thousand words. It was very terse. Heller had gotten his birth certificate, beaten up two cops, was found by Terb again through bugs in Lynchburg, had gone to Washington, been arrested by the FBI and now was safely in their hands, probably about to be imprisoned as intended.

The Hells he was! I knew a lot more than Terb or Raht!

“I’ve got to contact our people!” I blared at Faht.

Heller was going to be killed! Within the next day or two. And I didn’t have the platen! I had to get word to Terb to get into those motel rooms quick and ransack that baggage!

Faht shrugged. “They don’t have a receiver-typer.

They’re bulky and you didn’t order them to take one.”

Oh, my Gods! I slumped in a chair. The worst of it was, I couldn’t even talk to Faht or anybody. They must not know how I knew or they could get in on the lines and maybe do something wild!

“I might get word to them in New York,” said Faht helpfully. “They’ll probably report in there at the end of the week if they’re out of money.”

They weren’t ever out of money. They had it by the bucket load!

I only knew three things for sure. One: Bury was going to have Heller killed, whatever else Bury was up to. Two: Soltan Gris was going to be executed if Heller was. Three: Earth population was going to be slaughtered if they interrupted Heller’s communication line and I, right now, was part of that population!

I started to ask Faht if there was a good mortuary in Afyon. At least I could have a decent funeral. But I didn’t even dare say that.

I slogged through the long, long tunnel to my room. My future looked even darker than the tunnel, and no room at the end of it — just a tomb, even an “unknown grave.”

Without hope, I watched my viewscreen as Heller entered the Silver Spring, Maryland, Howard Johnson Motel. I should have been relieved, for it meant that, with luck, I myself could end, for a few hours, the marathon of sleepless vigil he had been putting me through.

He wasn’t looking behind him as he should have. He didn’t scan the desk or waiting area for suspicious figures. He was taking no precautions any normal agent would take.

He simply clickety-clacked up to the desk, told them he wanted a room for the night, laid down thirty bucks and wrote his new car license number, plain as day, on the registration form — he didn’t falsify it or even make it illegible. And then he spurred me into near fury.

With a flourish, he signed the register, “JOHN DILLINGER!” He even put the exclamation point on it! A fat lot he’d learned at FBI headquarters: John Dillinger was one of the most famous gangsters of the 1930s. Pure sacrilege!

He threw his bags carelessly in his room as though he hadn’t a care in the world. He washed up and soon clickety-clacked outside — not even looking into the many shadows — walked around the building and came into their restaurant.

Heller sat down. An elderly waitress promptly came over and told him he was in the wrong seat. She made him move to another booth in the corner with a flat white wall behind him. She fiddled with the lights until he was totally illuminated. And he didn’t even register that she was putting the finger on him! He just busily puzzled away at the menu. And a Howard Johnson menu has nothing on it to puzzle about: they’re all the same, numbers and pictures, from coast to coast!