A docile Major Dugan followed Captain Sarah Lomax into a temporary U.S. Army building out beyond Atsugi airfield. The M.P. at the gate telephoned in before he let them pass. He started to gaze curiously at the pretty WAC captain until Dugan, quite officiously, said to her: "Hurry up, sis. We're going to be late."
While the guard was still adjusting his wits to the rather improbable brother-sister relationship of the two officers, they went on in. Sarah had had two solid days of visits with Dugan, and had gotten accustomed to his casual mystifications, which almost inevitably had the effect of drawing attention away from himself and to the other people who went with him.
At Finance he had signed vouchers providing for his pay to be drawn by General Coppersmith's office and deposited to his account in a Minneapolis bank.
At Weather he had talked for hours, while Sarah got very bored, with a zealous young meteorologist who seemed to know everything about the Siberian cold fronts. Before Dugan was through, it seemed that he should find his way around Asia merely by looking at the clouds.
Then Sarah had taken him over to the Counterintelligence, where a very solemn colonel gave Dugan a lecture on the responsibilities of the investigating officer. The interview was spoiled when an aide put a slip of paper in front of the colonel. Sarah, reading the clean-cut penciled handwriting upside down, saw that the note said, "This is the Dugan." At that the colonel got very red, said they were wasting his time, and told Sarah that Coppersmith ought to brief his own people. As they went out, Dugan apologizing for nothing in particular, the colonel said to him:
"I'd like to talk to you, if you ever talk. But I guess you don't."
"Talk, sir?" said Dugan. "Certainly."
"About yourself," said the colonel.
Dugan laughed. "There's not much to say, Colonel. If I get back here, I'll ask permission." His tone implied he would not ask very hard.
That was all they saw of Counterintelligence. The old colonel looked as though he did not expect to see Dugan again — not in this life, at least. Sarah had tried to make him talk:
"Major, you were here during the war?"
"Uh-huh," said he. "And you weren't. We could have had fun if you'd been here."
"Silly," she said. "They'd have shot me."
"They didn't shoot me," said Dugan. "I was an Imperial Japanese officer. You could have been fixed up as a Czarist Russian. Or else as an Irish girl. Did you realize that Ireland was neutral? The Irish just wanted to be sure to get a chance to fight on all sides, the way they usually do. I got a Legion of Merit for serving against the United States and for passing as a Japanese."
"I don't see how you did it. You don't look Japanese to me. Just sort of Italian or maybe Syrian or just funny Irish."
For answer he put his hands up to his face, pulled his eyelids slantwise, drew his lower lip down. Then he said, "Boo, I'm Hachiman, the Japanese war god." She laughed, but she noticed she had not gotten any personal details out of him.
This trip was to the office of the photo analyst who studied the pictures from the weather plane. The analyst himself came to the door and showed them into a comfortable room, furnished with a Franklin stove, wicker furniture of the kind usually found on hotel porches, photographic drainboards and cubicles, and an impressive number of safes. Among the photographic odors there was a homey sort of smell which Sarah could not place.
The analyst, Dr. Swanson, offered them seats. Dugan sniffed significantly. Dr. Swanson eyed him:
"Anything wrong, Major? I guess our chemicals smell bad to anybody who's just come in from the outside."
"What I smell," said Dugan, "is scarcely chemical. I think that it's McTeague's Highland Cream."
Swanson blushed all the way down to his shirt collar. "One of the boys did have a drink recently. Can I offer you one?"
"You can," said Dugan, "but Captain Lomax has religious scruples and will drink nothing but hot Japanese tea."
When Swanson left to make up highballs, Sarah said, "Thanks for getting me out of that drink. I hate refusing. How did you know I don't drink?"
"I asked the Japanese who keeps your room. Sh-h-h," said Dugan, as Dr. Swanson came back.
Drinks in front of them, Swanson smiled wanly, "Here's to Atom-gorod."
Dugan said something in Russian and Swanson answered in the same language. They both sounded to Sarah as though they had very strong mid-Western accents. Apparently they weren't saying anything important, because Dugan slipped back into English:
"And the Communists have butchered the Russian language, too, along with everything else. It's just like them, to set up a place so secret that they don't dare think about it themselves, and then give it a name like that. The old Russians would have called it Atomnii-gorod and would have had scientific congresses meeting there every six months."
Swanson agreed. "They need more cover. I got a lot out of those photographs, but even without me, the place would have shown up. I suppose General Coppersmith has given you all the evidence."
Dugan turned to Sarah. "Did he?"
Sarah sipped her tea from a Japanese cup and looked up at Dugan through the steam. He did not sound as though he meant the question, so she just said:
"I've given you the basic briefing."
Swanson turned to her. "Did you tell him about the N.K.A.R.?"
Dugan intercepted the question. "She mentioned it, but since she does not speak Russian, she may have missed some of the terms. That's Narodnii Kommisariat Atomnovo Razvitiya—"
"I know that much," said Sarah. "People's Commissariat of Atomic Development."
"But why N.K. when all the other commissariats have been turned into ministries?" asked Dugan. He stretched out his legs, leaned back, looked through his pale amber glass, and acted like a man who was prepared for long scientific discussions. Swanson, too, relaxed and said he supposed that they did not want to change the number of constitutional ministries. By leaving the secret agency with the old-fashioned name, they could publish their formal governmental structure in good faith.
While Dugan was talking, Sarah studied him. He was of middle height. There was a quaint mobility to his face, a quickness of expression which made her suspect that in his early childhood some warm-hearted quickly responsive woman had taught him the rudiments of human relationships. He was acting a role, but it was a role which he enjoyed acting. He was talking, smiling, agreeing, dissenting, frowning, smiling again, all in turn. Who was she to say that this was not the real, the true Dugan? People were not their dead selves but their live selves. Yet in the case of a man like Dugan, there must be alternative selves, other personalities patterned to the occasion and the culture. Dugan-the-Japanese must have been just as believable as Dugan-the-American; Japanese must have liked him because he was Japanese; otherwise he would have been found out and killed. How could she like a man who existed only by virtue of his own command, who played perpetually on a stage of make-believe? What was he, anyway? Dugan was no name for a man with black hair, black eyes, olive skin — or was it? Was he a Turk or a Greek, an Italian or an Egyptian, or (wildest chance of all, this) simply an American?
And how could he like her? She was Coppersmith's assistant. She was valuable to him among friends, just as other people, men, and women too, must have been valuable to him among enemies. He wanted her to like him; it made his work easier. Therefore, the easiest thing for him to do would be to show her that he, for his part, liked her. But did he, truly? How could she know? How could she ever know?
Swanson had just said, "I knew the pilot. They killed him. They had a right to, but I hate them for it just the same."
Sarah supposed he was talking about the photo plane. Dugan responded by closing his face — quite literally shutting out all expression for an instant — so that he looked like a dead man. Or like a Japanese! Sarah saw, with a flash of intuition, that she had caught him betraying himself — for the first distinguishable second in days of their being together. For once, Dugan had gone back to his wartime role and had responded with the manner of a Japanese, the dead formal silence with which Japanese men bore news of disaster. He must have had many friends among the Japanese during his years of wartime spying: and of them, many must have died, so that the expression of quick military sorrow could have become habitual. But before she could catch her breath or say anything, Dugan let his face go doleful in the American manner. He looked Irish again, and American too.
And yet, thought Sarah, he was a Japanese for just that moment, a Japanese like the nisei interpreters and intelligence men in our own Army.
She picked up the thread of the conversation again. Dugan was protesting, "You mustn't hate the Russians. If you do have to fight them, hating them is no use, medically or psychologically. It reduces your own efficiency."
"And you throw your trump away," said Swanson.
"You know it, too?" Dugan asked the question quickly, eagerly.
"You mean," said Swanson, "that liking people is the only way to win wars, or even better, to get out of them? Certainly. Any scientist will tell you that. America will get sick and weak if it hates. That's why I'm sorry I hate the Russians right now. I hope I'll get over it. I've got to. If we have humanness on our side, we can be muddled and mixed up and argumentative, and still come out right. If that's what you mean by knowing it, too, I know it. But the Army doesn't. Just try to tell them they ought to like their enemies." Swanson sounded defiant.
Dugan sighted Swanson over the top of his glass. "We can't change everything, doctor. I'm alive right now, because I liked the Japanese while I was doublecrossing them and making their plans go haywire, as far as I dared." A dry chuckle, very Irish, followed. "I really liked them. Defeating Japan was the best way I knew of helping the Japanese people. I had friends, and I sent some of them to die. But though my Japanese friends and I could not have agreed on the precise reason for it in each case, they and I would have agreed that dying for the sake of Japan was a good thing to do. If I go into Siberia, I'm going in the damndest pro-Russian you ever saw. Do you think I could stand it, otherwise?"
Swanson asked the question which Sarah had not dared to ask, "What are you, Major?"
"American, right now," said Dugan flatly.
Swanson persisted, embarrassed but dogged, "No, I mean racially."
"American," Dugan repeated. "Call me a Cherokee, if you want to explain my looks. Sorry I can't tell you the truth; but I'm a secret." Dugan grinned at Sarah, and went on, "The captain has been trying to figure me out for days. I wish I could help her. The Army won't let me. Anyhow, we're talking too much. Let's get down to Atomsk."
"Right," said Swanson in a disciplined but friendly way. "I'll get the pictures."
He went to one of the safes and twirled the knob, standing so that they could not see the position of the dial. The safe door swung open. Swanson went to his desk, picked up an intercommunication microphone, and said, "Swanson. Safe three. Handsome and ready. Ready?"
A tinny remote voice answered, "Ready, doctor," from the box. Swanson went back to the safe and opened it.
Dugan asked, "Just what would have happened if you hadn't put that call through?"
Swanson jerked his head upward to the nozzles of the fire-extinguisher system. "Gas. We would have all gone out like lamps. Sirens would have gone off. Two armored cars would have come up here lickety-split. Not to mention a radio alarm." He grinned proudly. "Atomsk is just one of the things that we have pictures of. You have no idea what a plane can do with the new infra-red flares."
He spread a thick sheaf of photographs on one of the drafting tables, pushing the table over to Sarah and Dugan with the heel of his palm. It rolled easily on rubber-tired casters. Dugan caught the edge of the table, stopping it. With a pleasant nod, he dragged Sarah's chair closer to his own and held the pictures so that she could see them, too.
They seemed to show the same thing — a series of views of a forested hill country. Two low ranges ran parallel. There was a streak of light which could be water, between them. The pictures showed no sign of human habitation.
"It's simple enough," said Swanson. "He came in low. Two or three minutes in from the coast he started taking pictures. He hoped to make two runs, but by the time he had gotten over once, the whole Siberian sky was full of ack-ack and aircraft. He ran for the Korean border. He went faster than they thought he could, but then a couple of new models showed up on their side and they ran faster than we thought they could. We couldn't have fighter aircraft waiting to escort him in, but we did have some L-5's just accidentally scouting around. We also had a lot of jeeps, both Korean and American, out on a sort of Boy Scout hike.
"But just as he touched the line, one of the Soviet planes stopped in mid-air. At least, it looked like that to the Air Force colonel who told me about it — stopping for a fifth of a second. Must have just about killed the Soviet pilot inside. Something came out of that Russian plane. It overtook our man at top speed—"
"Overtook him?" asked Sarah. "It must have been a guided missile?"
Swanson smashed the fist of his left hand into the palm of his right, "Like that. Tracked him. Overtook him. Killed him. Down came the plane. Two miles our side of the line. But it was near a highway and the Russians' Koreans got there before our people could make it. Close to battalion strength. Border guards, I suppose. It shows that they have good staff work and high readiness. They stood our people off with guns. Fired a few shots."
"Nobody hurt?" said Dugan. "It wasn't in the papers and none of the Japanese I know mentioned it."
"Nobody hurt," said Swanson. His light eyes looked dreadfully earnest. He ran his hand over his forehead; he was half-bald and the gesture made him look like a cartoon of the typical scientist. "I don't know how much longer we can go on trading passes. They didn't want publicity because they didn't know how much we had gotten. Besides, they were invading us. We didn't want publicity because we had these—" He gestured at the photos.
"Why did they leave these pictures?" asked Sarah. "Wasn't there something about a concealed camera?"
Swanson gave her a bleak smile. "I helped design it before he went. Good thing, too. Some Russian officer showed up and stripped the plane. They had the wreckage for two hours before we got enough force and enough brass to move in. Our people didn't even meet a Russian officer. Just some of the Communist Koreans. The body was stripped naked. All the instruments were gone from the plane. All the cameras. Even the pilot's personal papers and dogtags. But they missed one camera. It didn't look like a camera."
"Where was it?" said Sarah.
"It was built to be missed," Swanson declared in warning tone.
Dugan nodded his agreement. Sarah, who knew anyhow, said nothing.
Swanson pulled out a photostat from the bottom of the pile. It was a pale photograph with the overlay of a map printed by hand in glaring white. The map showed a big underground city which ran underneath two or three peaks in the range, depending on what you counted as peaks.
Swanson explained what he had done. For weeks he had gone over the photographs, finding tell-tale lines of color difference in the trees, odd shadows which added up to the modification of natural terrain. Two photographs together showed shadow lines which hinted at camouflaged excavation, damaged trees showing power lines, a thickened brook hinting at water overflow.
The colors of the photographs ranged from pale greens to weird purples. Swanson explained:
"These aren't meant to pick up the actual colors, but to range from infra-red all the way up through the visible spectrum. We figured that the Russians would build their camouflage doctrine on the assumption of black-and-white photography or color perception by the naked eye. They couldn't fool us on the color pattern and the black-and-white pattern, not at the same time. See how this film shows up the differences in foliage tints?"
Dugan and Sarah nodded.
Swanson ran his finger along the patterns which neither of the others could see till he pointed them out; but it was amazing how clear each pattern remained, once it had been pointed out.
A fantastic city lay beneath the leaves. Swanson's voice rang with technical enthusiasm as he explained the enormous care which had gone into the building of Atomsk. Purely by air view, it would never have been detected. A renegade, a panicky Soviet pilot, and a Chinese coolie had had to show the way; otherwise it never would have been found.
Swanson said, very emphatically, "Do you see — they have hidden it from their own people, too? They have thousands of planes and thousands of pilots in this part of the world. They could not post Atomsk as a prohibited area without a million or so people finding out about it. They had to leave it so that even Russian aircraft would find nothing. The best way to keep a secret is to have no secret to keep, in the first place. No lights. No roads. No warnings. Just the empty forest, and on the ground the secret police shunting people this way and that with a thousand prohibited zones. Any one of them could have been Atomsk. But this one is it."
Sarah said, "If there's any question of needing more information, why don't we fly another plane in?"
"And fight?" said Dugan.
"Or have the pilot tried publicly and shot, with ourselves unable to explain it to his mother or his Congressman? Imagine the newsreel pictures. The world couldn't stand it, not the way things are going now."
Dugan stared straight ahead. "If they don't know what we know, but do know that we know a lot, they'll slow down. And if somebody gets in and botches things up for a while, they will know that we know. Their surprise will be gone. You agree, doctor, that they put it close to the Siberian coast so that their raiding aircraft — in the event of war — could throw heavy radioactive trash down on us even if they don't develop a bomb?"
Swanson's eyes lit up. "You figure it that way, too? That was my guess. If they did want to dump bomberloads of isotopes on us, they needed the plant near Vladivostok and the coastal airfields. But not too near. I suppose they have other cities farther back. But this one is the mischief-making place."
Dugan rose. "Can I take the pictures with me?"
"No," said Swanson. "I'll give you a map instead. It won't mean much, but you can always come back and look these over, right here."
"Thank you," said Dugan. "I may."
Swanson called the gate. They said goodbye to him. Sarah watched Dugan. Since his one break, when he had accidentally used the Japanese facial expression for commiseration she had found herself eyeing him protectively, making swift calculations as to how often he dared go off guard, even with herself. As they walked toward the gate she summoned up her courage and said:
"You did something wrong in there, Major."
He looked at her quickly, alert, smiling, not at all angry. With gay formality he asked, "What was it, Captain?"
"You looked Japanese when Swanson said he knew the pilot."
Dugan became serious. "Looked Japanese? How do you mean that?"
Sarah persisted. She felt intolerably shy, trying to tell him his own business, and admitting that she had been watching him so specially and so intently. She squeezed his arm, as if to make her words casually affectionate, and then felt herself more of a fool than ever. Dugan was smiling at her with nothing more than serious attentiveness. Her thoughts went out of focus when she tried to think of how many possible Dugans there were behind that commonplace manner; among them all, there must be one who understood her motives. She stammered and finally said, "I happened to be looking at you. When he said that his friend was killed, you let your face go blank."
"Deadpan," said Dugan flatly. "That's what a Japanese would do. And I did it?"
"Yes, and it even made your features look Asiatic, somehow. You didn't even look like an American."
She felt the muscles of his arm stiffen where her hand touched his sleeve. He kept his voice even, but did not look at her, nor smile, this time: "And do I usually look like an American to you?"
"Of course." She smiled up at him, trying to catch his eye. "A little strange, perhaps, but strange in a nice way." She felt reckless. "I'd even call you handsome. But when you had that one particular expression, it didn't fit. It gave you away."
Dugan stopped as they reached the jeep. He looked straight at her. "I like you, Sarah, and I hope you like me. But don't like me too much. I have things to do that don't leave me much time to be myself. Anyway, thanks for catching me. But you needn't worry. If I hadn't felt at home with you and Swanson, I'd have been on my guard. The expressions fit. I make them fit."
And what, thought Sarah, can I say to that? She was glad to be able to turn her back and to climb into the jeep beside the driver. Dugan clambered into the back seat, and off they went.