Man Plus

Four Secret Service men participated in the process of searching, frisking, magnetometering and identifying the male guests, though only two of the men physically took part. The other two just stood there, presumably ready to draw and fire at need. Female Secret Service perso

When Roger’s own turn came, he understood some of the cold anger he had seen on his wife’s face. They were being unusually thorough. His armpits were investigated. His belt was loosened and the cleft of his buttocks probed. His testicles were palpated. Everything in his pockets came out; the handkerchief at his breast was shaken open and swiftly refolded, neater than before. His belt buckle and watchband were studied through a loupe.

Everyone had the same treatment, even the director, who gazed around the room with good-natured resignation while fingers combed the kinky hair under his arms. The only exception was Don Kayman, who had worn his cassock in view of the formality of the occasion, and after some whispered discussion, was escorted into another room to take it off. “Sorry, Father,” said the guard, “but you know how it is.”

Don shrugged, left with the man, and came back looking a

Roger’s shrink was black by courtesy, actually a sort of coffee-cream color by complexion. They sat in facing straightbacked chairs, with eighteen inches between their knees. The psychiatrist said, “I’ll make this as short and painless as I can. Are your parents both alive?”

“No, actually neither of them is. My father died two years ago, my mother when I was in college.”

“What sort of work did your father do?”

“Rented fishing boats in Florida.” With half his mind Roger described the old man’s Key Largo boat livery, while with the other half he maintained his twenty-four-hour-a-day surveillance of himself. Was he showing enough a

“I’ve seen your wife,” said the psychiatrist. “A very sexy-looking woman. Do you mind my saying that?”

“Not at all,” said Roger, bristling.

“Some white people would not like to hear that from me. How do you feel about it?”

“I know she’s sexy,” Roger snapped. “That’s what made me want to marry her.”

“Would you mind if I went a step further and asked how the screwing is?”

“No, of course not — well, hell. Yes, I mind,” said Roger savagely. “It’s about like anybody else’s, I guess. After being married a few years.”

The psychiatrist leaned back, looking thoughtfully at Roger. He said, “In your case, Dr. Torraway, this interview is pretty much a formality. You’ve had quarterly checks for the last seven years and profiled well within the normal range every time. There’s nothing violent or unstable in your history. Let me just ask you if you feel uneasy about meeting the President.”

“A little awed, maybe,” said Roger, shifting gears.

“That’s natural enough. Did you vote for Dash?”

“Sure — wait the hell a minute. That’s none of your business!”

“Right, Dr. Torraway. You can go back to the briefing room now.”

They didn’t actually let him go back in the same room, but in one of the smaller conference chambers. Kathleen Doughty joined him almost at once. They had worked together for two and a half years, but she was still formal. “Looks like we’ve passed, Mr. Dr. Colonel Torraway, sir,” she said, her eyes focused as usual on a point over his left shoulder, the cigarette held between her face and him. “Ah, good, a little libation,” she said, and reached out past him.

A livened waiter — no, Roger reminded himself, a Secret Service man wearing a waiter’s uniform — was standing there with a tray of drinks. Roger took a whiskey and soda, the big prosthesiologist accepted a small glass of dry sherry. “Be sure you drink it all,” she whispered to his shoulder. “They put something in it, I think.”

“Something what?”

“To calm you down. If you don’t drink it all, they put an armed guard behind you.”

To humor her Roger drank his whiskey straight down, but he wondered how someone with her delusions and fears had passed the psychiatric clearance so readily. His five minutes with the shrink had reinforced his self-observing stance, and he was busily analyzing with one part of his mind. Why did he feel Uneasy in this woman’s presence? Not just because she was wiggy in her ma

With the other part of his mind, as always, he was alert for his wife. When she finally came in she was angry, and, for her, disheveled. The hair she had spent an hour putting up was now down. It hung waist-length, a fine frothy fall of black that made her look like a Te

Fitz-James Deshatine came gri

When he had finished going around the semicircle, he hopped to the little platform and said, “Well, friends, I came here to look and listen, not to talk. But I do want to thank every one of you for putting up with the nonsense they make you go through to have me around. I’m sorry about that. It isn’t my idea. They just tell me it’s necessary, as long as there are so many wacks around. And as long as the enemies of the Free World are what they are, and we’re the kind of open, trusting people we are.” He gri