“Yes.”
“Vishnu?”
“Yes.”
“Krishna?”
“Yes.”
When everyone had voted, the chairman declared, “It is unanimous. We owe a particular vote of thanks to the person who has helped so much to bring this about.” He turned to the American.
“My pleasure,” Mike Slade said.
THE decorations for the Fourth of July party were flown into Bucharest late Saturday afternoon and trucked directly to a United States government warehouse. The cargo consisted of a thousand red, white, and blue balloons packed in flat.boxes, three steel cylinders of helium to blow up the balloons, two hundred and fifty rolls of streamers, party favors, noisemakers, a dozen banners, and six dozen miniature American flags. The cargo.was unloaded in the warehouse at eight p.m. Two hours later a jeep arrived with three oxygen cylinders stamped with U.S. Army markings. The driver placed them inside.
At one a.m., when the warehouse was deserted, Angel appeared. The warehouse door had been left unlocked. Angel went inside, examined the cylinders carefully, and went to work. The first task was to empty the three helium tanks until each was only one-third full. After that, the rest was simple.
AT six o’clock on the evening Of July 4 a U.S. Army truck pulled up to the service entrance of the residence and was stopped. The guard said, “What have you got in there?”
“Goodies for the party tonight.”
“Let’s take a look.” The guard inspected the inside of the truck.
“What’s in the boxes?”
“Some helium and balloons and flags and stuff.”
“Open them.”
Fifteen minutes later the truck was passed through. Inside the compound a marine corporal and two marine guards unloaded the equipment and carried it into a storage room off the ballroom.
As they began to unpack, Eddie Maltz walked in, accompanied by a stranger wearing army fatigues.
One guard said, “Who’s going to blow up all these balloons?”
“Don’t worry,” Eddie Maltz said. “This is the age of technology.” He nodded toward the stranger. “Here’s the one that’s in charge of the balloons. Colonel McKinney’s orders.”
The other guard grinned at the stranger.“‘Better you than me.”
The two guards finished unpacking and left.
“You have an hour,” Eddie Maltz told the stranger. “Better get to work.” Maltz nodded to the corporal and walked out.
The corporal walked over to one of the cylinders. “What’s in these babies?”
“Helium,” the stranger said curtly.
As the corporal stood watching, the stranger picked up a balloon, put the neck to the nozzle of a cylinder for an instant, and, as the balloon filled, tied off the neck. The balloon floated to the ceiling. The whole operation took no more than a second.
“Hey, that’s great.” The corporal smiled.
IN HER Office at the embassy Mary Ashley was finishing UP some action cables. She desperately wished the party could have been called off There were going to be more than two hundred guests. She hoped Mike Slade was caught before the party began.
Tim and Beth were under constant supervision at the residence. How could Mike bear to harm them? He’s not sane, she thought.
Mary rose to put some papers into the shredder, and froze.
Mike Slade was walking into her office through the connecting door. She opened her mouth to scream.
She was terrified. He could kill her before she could call for help, and he could escape the same way he had come in.
“Colonel McKinney’s men are looking for you. You -can kill me,” Mary said defiantly, “but you’ll never escape.”
Angel’s the one who’s trying to kill you,” Mike said.
“You’re a liar. Angel is dead. I saw him shot.”
“Angel is a professional from Argentina. The last thing he would do is walk around with Argentine labels in his clothes. The slob the police killed was an amateur who was set up.”
“I don’t believe a word you’re saying,” Mary said. “You killed Dr. Desforges. You tried to poison me. Do you deny that?”
Mike studied her for a long moment. “No. I don’t deny it, but you’d better hear the story from a friend of mine.” He turned toward the door to his office. “Come in, Bill.”
Colonel McKinney walked into the room. “I think it’s time we all had a chat, Madam Ambassador…
IN the residence storage room the stranger in army fatigues was filling the balloons under the watchful eye of the corporal.
Boy, that’s one ugly customer, the corporal thought. Whewl The corporal could not understand why the white balloons were being filled from one cylinder, the red balloons from a second cylinder, and the blue ones from a third. Why not use each cylinder until it’s empty? he wondered. He was tempted to ask, but he did not want to start a conversation. Not with this one.
“LET’s start at the beginning,” Colonel McKinney said. “On Inauguration Day when the President announced that he wanted to open relations with every iron curtain country, he exploded a bombshell. There’s a faction in our government that’s convinced that if we get too involved with the Eastern bloc, the Communists will destroy us. On the other side of the iron curtain there are Communists who believe that our President’s plan is a trick-a Trojan horse to bring our capitalist spies into their countries. A group of powerful men on both sides had formed a supersecret alliance, called Patriots for Freedom. They decided the only way to destroy the President’s plan was to let him start it, and then to sabotage it in such a dramatic way that it would never be tried again. That’s where you came into the picture.”