I murmured something about Washington's being delightful to visit in mid-June, whatever the occasion might be. She ignored this subtlety. "We've needed a rocket engineer in Economic Analysis for some time," she said. "Recent developments have made your employment here imperative."

I lit the cigar slowly. "I'd been led to believe that our work at White Sands was important, too," I said through my smoke.

Von Munger looked as put out as though I'd belched during the invocation at an ambassadorial tea party. She took a deep breath—a pretty process, despite the mannish suit she was wearing—and launched into her sales talk. "Dr. Huguenard, our work here in the Commerce Department's Special Bureau of Economic Analysis is the most important work in the world. If a war is fought, we will win it. If that war is prevented, we will have prevented it."

I'd seen this sort of megalomania displayed by chiefs of paperwork before, but never in a more acute form. I smiled. This little redhead obviously saw herself as a sort of benign Lucrezia Borgia, erecting a fortress of filing-cabinets around the American Way.

"I'm glad you smiled, Dr. Huguenard," she said. "I was afraid that your face was all scar-tissue, and just wouldn't bend."

"You're pretty, too," I snarled. The damp heat had leached the last vestiges of chivalry from my soul. "Get on with your pitch, will you? I want to turn your job down and get back to my air-conditioned lab in New Mexico."

"Give me five minutes to persuade you to stay," she said, making a steeple with her fingertips and resting the steeple against her chin.

I checked my wrist watch.

"The S.B.E.A. is responsible for a special type of strategic intelligence," she said. "We are analyzing the economic processes of the USSR."

"I am familiar with the multiplication table," I said. "Otherwise, I don't see how I can be of use to you. My specialty is rocket-fuel injection systems. I'd dearly love to get back to that."

"You're cutting into my three hundred seconds of grace, Doctor Huguenard," she protested.

I sucked bitterly on the cigar she'd given me. "Okay," I sighed through the smoke. "Continue, Professor."

"Money, to a nation, is like blood to a man," she said. "This is true even 

 Prev. P 2/11 next