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tray down on the cocktail table, poured a cup for me and one for herself, and gave me mine. Then she settled down in her sofa corner with her feet tucked under her. We’re all supposed to be perfectly equal these days, male and female, but girls’ arms still aren’t hinged quite right to throw a baseball properly, and their legs are still articulated in a manner that allows them to assume strange catlike positions that would have a man screaming in agony in a very few minutes. It makes one wonder what other built-in inequalities women’s lib has overlooked.
    I said, “This Brand female must not be harmed, certainly not by us or by anybody who’s connected to us in any way. You can see why, can’t you? To have the publicity she’s giving us is bad enough, but we can probably live through that; we’ve done it before. But if there’s ever a suggestion that an American government agency or anybody associated with an American government agency—and you’re damned well associated, both by blood and by marriage—would take violent retaliatory action against a respected American lady journalist for something she’d published, then the people who believe as a matter of faith that all spook shops are evil and should be abolished would have a lever handed to them that would probably destroy us.”
    “She killed my husband,” Martha said softly. “Worse, she got me to help her kill him.”
    “Maybe,” I said. “We won’t know that for sure until we learn who the hit man was and who gave him his orders. If we ever do.”
    “Come on, Matt! I hope you’re not trying to convince me that a man with Bob’s background got himself shot down by a casual maniac—right after the publication of an article describing his career and giving his home address almost to the street and number. How coincidental can you get?”
    I said, “Everybody who matters already knew all that. I mean, we’ve got dossiers on practically everybody in the business; and everybody in the business has dossiers on us, at least those of us who’ve been around for a while. Do you think Moscow’s going to waste a good removal agent’s time on an opposition operative with a heart condition who’s obviously settled down harmlessly to spend the rest of his life working in his cactus garden and fishing for trout? Or Peking?”
    “Somebody he injured in the past in the line of . . . of duty, then,” Martha said stubbornly. “Somebody vengeful who’d been looking for him but might never have found him if I hadn’t opened my big mouth and Elly hadn’t printed what I said. Somebody who read that lousy article and knew that the . . . the end of the hunt was at hand.”
    “Again, maybe,” I said. “But there’s not a lot of that going around. We don’t make a practice of carrying on blood feuds, and neither does the other side, or sides. It’s the luck of the game; some live, some die. We do make a note of people outside the undercover community who interfere gratuitously. We make a point of dealing with them if and when it’s convenient. As your father once said, they have to learn not to monkey with the buzz saw when it’s busy cutting wood. But within our tight little profession, no.”
    She shook her head irritably. “Pretty soon you’ll be telling me Bob didn’t die at all, I just imagined the whole thing.” She drew a long, ragged breath. “Anyway, I’m not a member of your lousy professional community; I’m just a wife wanting to get even for something awful that was done to her husband. And to her.” She grimaced. “ ‘Get even.’ It sounds so childish, doesn’t it? How can one ever get even! That would mean setting the clock back; and it doesn’t run backward. But goddamn it, Matt, she can’t go around trading on friendship and hospitality like she did and not have somebody kick her ass up between her ears.”
    I said, “Hell, if all you plan to do is boot her in the tail, be my guest.
    I thought you had something serious