Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 by Q Clearance (v2.0) Page A

separated from the others and dismissed on an obscure
technical ground.
                   Eva came home frightened, chastened,
disillusioned and in debt to her father, to whom she tearfully confessed having
also committed one third-class felony and two misdemeanors for which she had
never been apprehended.
                   Pym let her regain her strength and her
composure and her self-confidence. He fed her, housed her and clothed her as
she worked off her debt—which, of course, indebted her further, at least in her
head, which was as Pym would have wished.
                   He had never told her he was a Russian spy. He
knew that many American leftists had no more affection for the Soviet Union than they had for America . And he wanted her to have no leverage
against him: He wanted all the ammunition, in anticipation of the day he might
want to use it to recruit her. Probably, he would have found the word
"blackmail" infelicitous to describe his plans for his daughter, but
probably, too, he wouldn't have denied it.
                   That day, it appeared, was drawing near.
                   Things were looking up.
                  

FIVE
     
                   The West Gate of the White House was kept
closed, to dissuade loons from driving up to the front door of the mansion, and
it was reinforced with concrete bulwarks, to discourage maniacs from launching
frontal attacks with explosive-packed laundry vans. But there was a
pedestrian-access path beside the guardhouse in which sat, most mornings,
Sergeant Roland Thibaudeaux of the White House detail of the Metropolitan
Police Force. Each morning, Burnham would wave and say, "Morning, Sergeant
T.," and Sergeant Thibaudeaux would wave and say, "Morning, Mr.
B."
                   It was their private ritual joke, their
acknowledgment of eccentricities of language and quirks of human nature. The
first time they had met, Burnham had pronounced the sergeant's name in its
original French form: "Tee-boe-doe."
                   The sergeant had corrected him: "It's
Tibby-doo."
                   "It is?"
                   "Yup. Come from up Norritch [ Norwich ], Connecticut . My father used to say, ' 'Tain't my fault
some frog got into Granny's jammies. We're Americans and that's that.'
                   As he passed by the guardhouse, Burnham waved
and said, "Morning, Sergeant T."
                   "Halt!" The sergeant slid open the
bulletproof window, smiled apologetically and tapped his left breast.
                   "Again?" Burnham chuckled.
"What was it this time?" He reached into his pocket for his White
House pass.
                   Among the scores, the hundred, the countless
symbols of power and privilege in official Washington , one of the most prized, especially to
those young and ambitious and unknown to the public, was the White House pass.
It was a laminated plastic card, printed with a color photograph and the name
of the bearer, and it looked like a driver's license. But it was awarded only
after the bearer had been blessed with an offer of a job in what were called
'*the highest councils of government," a job that, it was determined,
required him to have access to the President of the United States, and had been
sanctified by a Full Field Investigation by the FBI, which included, among
other things, interviews with the candidate's grammar-school classmates about
their recollections and impressions of him as a fifth-grader.
                   Technically, the pass meant that the bearer
could go to work in the morning. Actually, in the eyes of the rest of Washington , it was affirmation of his worth as a human
being. With that pass he could cash checks at strange banks, open charge
accounts at restaurants, do favors for congressmen (taking constituents through
the West Wing of the White House and the private