Ordinarily, Patrick Flinn would have used the morning ride over Washington's broad avenues to good advantage—this was his first visit to the nation's capital—but his mind was too filled with the preceding day's revelations to permit anything save minimal sightseeing.
"I hate to keep repeating myself," Wilmer was saying, "but I must be certain you understand what's at stake here."
"I know," Flinn answered with some impatience. "I'm not to reveal, under any circumstances, the fact that I have telepathic powers."
"Correct." The physicist sat in the seat beside Flinn, and Hayes was in front beside the driver. "Your job is to find out just how much this man can do. We'd like to know the way he does it, too, but that's secondary."
"It strikes me," Flinn mused, "that anyone who can influence a fusion bomb can do anything."
"That's what we're afraid of." Wilmer looked soberly at the parapsychologist. "I think I can understand what's going on in your mind. This is your special love and you're finding it difficult to divorce yourself from pure clinical investigation. You want, really, to talk to Dobbs as one scientist to another. But I must warn you that this is impossible. If he gets the least inkling that you're a special mind, something disastrous may result. As long as he gets what he wants, fine, but rub him the wrong way and—"
"And yet you have him a virtual prisoner and he doesn't object?"
"Well, at least not strenuously," Wilmer said. "I don't profess to understand a warped mind, but apparently Dobbs realizes that his confinement is mostly protective custody. It's to his own advantage. After all, he doesn't have to stand up at a public forum and shout threats. All he has to do is contact the few to reach the many. And if he has the powers he says he has, full use of them would result in his own destruction. And he doesn't want that. He's too interested, right now, in satisfying his own animal appetites. But faced with losing everything—"
"Our biggest immediate worry," Hayes said from the front seat, "is keeping all this from the public. That's why we put Dobbs out of sight in a hurry. There have been some leaks already, but so far most people consider the papers' theories as just so much wild speculation. And thank God for that. You can understand why all recognizable public figures are keeping as far away from Dobbs as possible."