Dugan sat in a big leather easy chair. He wore surprisingly formal clothes — a Palm Beach uniform with battle jacket and matching trousers. His oxfords shone and the major's leaves on his shoulders were completely out-shone by the glittering array of ribbons on his chest. The new one, which the Supreme Commander himself had pinned on him that very morning, hung crisply though a little out of line. Dugan gave Colonel Landsiedel a crooked smile.
"It's a little unusual for me to be myself — uniform and all that… I'm tired. It's funny to sit here and realize that I just have to be me."
"Care for another highball, Major?"
"No more, thanks."
Dugan lit a cigarette. His face looked tired, though he maintained, even in the easy chair, the somewhat stiff posture of a regular Army officer. Landsiedel and he both looked out of the window. The Dai Ichi Building was in the distance. Tokyo looked peaceful but shabby. The air-conditioner purred. Landsiedel stole a glance at Dugan.
The man sat there as though he had dropped into the office with a staff report. When Dugan played the role of American Army officer, he did it exceedingly well. This was a person who was very different from the seedy Japanese confidence man to whom Landsiedel had said goodbye several months ago, before — before Atomsk. Prompted by an unprofessional inquisitiveness, he felt a question poised on the tip of his tongue. Then, though he knew it was unmannerly, he asked it:
"Major?"
"Sir?" Dugan's tired, calm, relaxed black eyes moved slowly in their sockets and Dugan looked the colonel tranquilly in the eye.
"Do you mind a personal question?"
"I don't suppose so, Colonel. What is it?"
"Are you married?"
"No, sir. You could have seen that on my 201 file."
Landsiedel felt rebuffed; of course, he must have seen the file in Washington. But he persisted. "I meant to ask you a personal question, Major — not just a statistic. Have you ever been in love? Do you have a family? Is there anyone you want to go home to?" Stung by Dugan's bland serenity, Colonel Landsiedel blurted out (though he was not in the habit of blurting, on any occasion whatever) his essential question: "What I really mean is, do you ever stop playing a role, underneath all these different characters, Major? Is there a real Dugan underneath…?"
Dugan turned his eyes away from Landsiedel. Not even looking at him, he said, "That's not the way it seems to me. I'm myself, no matter where I go, no matter what I do. I act out those other people. On the outside, it may look as though I really change. Did I impress you that much — that way?"
"You did," said Landsiedel flatly.
There was another uncomfortable silence.
Dugan said, "I've done a lot of writing since I got back. First I had to explain to the Japanese just why I was repatriated. Those new police are efficient. They smelled something wrong and kept me for three days trying to find out who I really was."
"Why didn't you get word to General Coppersmith or to me?"
"Couldn't," said Dugan. "Some of the other returning prisoners might have been converted to Communism. It would have been a mess if they could follow my trail back. As it is, the Russians are going to have an awful time trying to figure out how many people got into Atomsk that night. There won't be anybody here in Japan who could set them straight."
Landsiedel thought that Dugan looked very tired. Dugan seemed to be playing the least possible degree of impersonation — his own legal self. Letting his head rest against the back of the chair, Dugan rolled his eyes toward Landsiedel and said:
"I'll take that second highball, after all."
While Landsiedel was mixing it at the tray on his desk, Dugan said, a little too casually, "When do I have to call on General Coppersmith?"
"Today. Sixteen-fifty hours."
There was a perceptible period of silence. Colonel Landsiedel made a bet with himself. As soon as Dugan spoke, Landsiedel collected the bet within his own mind; he had won. Dugan had said, with incredible casualness:
"Didn't Coppersmith have some kind of a woman assistant?"
"You mean Major Lomax?"
"I thought she was a captain," said Dugan. His eyes went hard when he realized that Landsiedel had caught him; momentarily he tensed as though to fling himself out the window, to kill Landsiedel, or to follow some other desperate improvisation. Then, remembering that he was among friends, he laughed out loud. It was the first uncalculated laugh which Landsiedel had ever heard from Dugan.
Dugan said, "You caught me."
"Sir?" said Landsiedel, with extreme but comical formality.
"Sure. I remember her. I'm scared. What am I going to do, Colonel?"
This was the moment which Landsiedel had awaited for years — the time that Dugan would open up. But a sense of officer-to-officer delicacy kept him from plunging into Dugan's private life. He let the opportunity slip, thinking oddly that a few minutes before he had tried to open Dugan up with frontal questioning and that now he was passing up a chance. With significant gentleness he said, "She's been asking about you. Sometimes twice a day. When she got promoted, she pulled her rank to get into the message room, looking for clues about your progress."
"Nice of her," said Dugan bleakly, "but what can I do? Marry her?"
"Why not?" said Landsiedel.
"Me?" said Dugan. "I'm half Aleut, Colonel."
Landsiedel burst out with, "And who do you think gives a damn, except you?"
Dugan looked at him and then sipped the drink. They both looked out of the window.
"Sorry," said both of them, simultaneously. The coincidence made them laugh. Landsiedel nodded at Dugan, bidding him speak.
The black-Irish mood had passed from Dugan. He was back in the role of major, and playing it handsomely. With a crooked, amused smile he uttered the literal truth, "Nothing around Atomsk was as tough as this. I've got to work this out myself. Can I see Coppersmith without seeing her?"
"No," said Landsiedel.
"No?"
"No." Landsiedel was not joking. "I had to give her a direct order to keep her from coming here. I didn't know what you wanted. You're tired. I wasn't sure you'd have remembered her."
"I did," said Dugan. "Much good it did me. My mind's not made up. How could I go away on a two-year mission if — if I actually had a family?"
"There are other things to do in the Army."
"I hate them," said Dugan. "Sorry, Colonel. This time I said sorry first. You've been very generous and encouraging, sir. But you still want a summary, don't you?"
"Can you do it, Dugan? You must be tired, after all these days of Japanese and then American interrogation. By the way, how did you ever satisfy the Japanese police and get on down to Tokyo?"
"Met a man I'd known here during the B-29 raids. He called me Lieutenant Hayashi. The other Japanese were so busy cussing me out for making myself a colonel that they practically threw me into the country. Can I dictate the draft of a final report? Do you have a safe stenographer?"
"Sergeant Wilson's all right." Landsiedel pressed a button on his desk. A young soldier looked in the door. He was immensely tall but touchingly young.
"Get your book, Wilson," said Landsiedel. Dugan raised an eyebrow.
Landsiedel, glancing toward the open door, said, "Talk as fast as you want to Wilson. He won the Mountain States Gregg contest last year."
The sergeant came in with a notebook and sat down erectly and formally. Dugan closed his eyes and began to dictate:
"Major Michael A. Dugan proceeded to the location indicated in his instructions and confirmed the reported existence of a Soviet installation at the latitude and longitude hitherto provisionally assigned.
"A partial topographical map of the area has been prepared, combining data from the air-photo reconnaissance and the ground visit.
"The extent of scientific development could not be ascertained with any accuracy. However, a large collection of scientific data has been mailed to the post office at Nakhtakhu on the Siberian coast. Nakhtakhu is very near the coast. It possesses inadequate communication with the interior. At about 45°58" N. Lat., it is within easy reach of Japan. Should these papers be desired, they will be found enclosed in a package containing a leather jacket and addressed to a certain Comrade I. Loginov. There is, of course, no definite assurance that the package has arrived in Nakhtakhu or, if arrived, that it has not been seized—"
"You don't have to put all that in," said Landsiedel. "Some Navy people went to get the papers yesterday. We can send the papers right along with the report."
"You didn't tell me," said Dugan.
"No need to bother you." The colonel's face lit up with a triumphant grin.
Dugan frowned. "I hope you don't compromise my trip…"
"Don't you worry about that, Major."
Dugan went on:
"Don't take this down, Wilson. If I were going to get those papers, I would send a fishing boat full of Japanese, get them smelling of sake, have them sack the post office, get them back out to sea, pick the papers up with a submarine, along with non-expendable personnel, and then have the fishing boat run for it."
"You would, would you?" said the colonel.
"I would," said Dugan belligerently.
"You want me to tell you what we did do, don't you?"
With a complete change of manner, Dugan laughed out loud. "I am very inquisitive."
"Find it out for yourself, then, Major. I turned it over to the Navy and I am explicitly prohibited from telling anybody. Even you. It ought to be easy for you to do a little espionage on American personnel for a change."
"Don't think I won't," laughed Dugan.
Even formal young Sergeant Wilson thought that funny, which, in a curious way, it was. Dugan resumed dictating:
"Attached to the full-length report will be the technical papers which happened to fall into American hands. One of them is the Kuznets Syllabus, Section 204, which was stated by scientific personnel at the location to have high operational interest.
"The city is known as Atomsk. Sometimes it is referred to as Atomnii Gorod, or Atom City. German and Russian personnel work together. A German technical expert named Hundeshausen stated that there was only one pile in operation as yet.
"Location of four other Soviet atomic weapons installations was indicated in conversation by the same Hundeshausen. These are indicated on the attached map."
Dugan opened his eyes, sipped his drink, then leaned back in the chair again. He went on:
"The installation appears bombproof for its essential parts. However, human beings are used as experimental material and it is possible that trouble could be caused, in the event of war, by the dropping of a select force of parachutists.
"That's all, I guess."
Landsiedel looked at him "If you're not going to say it, I will—"
"What?"
"About you. How you got there."
Dugan sighed. "One more sentence, Wilson. Major Dugan encountered difficulty in both approach and egress. It is believed certain that Soviet officials are aware a visit has been made. It is not recommended that Atomsk be subjected to further visits until the other locations have been checked. The nature of the forest cover is such that no weapons testing could be performed without total spoilage of the camouflage. It is also suggested that the entire subsoil, down to the water table, may become heavily radioactive in the near future. If that occurs, Soviet personnel will presumably be evacuated and American visitors would be subjected to hazards."
Dugan looked at Landsiedel. "Do you want to spell out the conclusions?"
Landsiedel nodded, "Let me talk it.
"The fact that Atomsk has been penetrated destroys its primary mission — the preparation of radioactive material other than a bomb. It would therefore appear likely that the Russians now have one less weapon than they thought they had. Though they will not be able to trace the interference to the United States, they may suspect the presence of American clandestine operations. This prolongs the period of peace in strictly strategic terms and allows more time for the reasonable political settlement of outstanding international difficulties.
"Experience of the representative who visited Atomsk suggests that the possession of violent weapons is not as great a threat to peace as the possession of secret weapons. The loss of the secrecy of Atomsk, on which such a tremendous effort of human labor was expended, may reduce Soviet military confidence to the point that conciliatory diplomatic gestures would be more welcome than they have been for some time.
"The visit to Atomsk showed that the Russian people are a proud and lovable people. They are kind to one another. Their present political system is extremely tyrannical and oppressive. It is only the good humor and patience of the common people of Russia which permits such a system to survive. A less admirable people would have died under such oppression; a more liberty-minded people would have revolted. It is the personal conclusion of the observer that the freedom of Russia is the hope of the world. If the Russian people escape the deceptive propaganda and police suppression of the Communist dictatorship, they will contribute mightily to the peace and culture of the world. I'll leave that in, Major. I really mean it."
"Thank you," said Dugan, "I want to say that. The government is rotten but the people are wonderful. Czars and Stalins come and go, but the Russian people live on."