“Sure,” Burris said. “We know that now, thanks to the confessions, and to Her Majesty. But we can’t prosecute on that sort of evidence. You know what a good defense attorney could do with unsupported confessions—and even if we wanted to take the lid off telepathy for the general public, it would be absolute hell bringing it into court.”
“So,” Malone said, “we can’t put them in prison, even if we want to.”
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” Burris said hastily. “We could probably win, even against a good defense. But they wouldn’t get much time in prison, and we’d only end up deporting them in any case.”
Malone fished for a cigarette, lit it and blew out smoke. “So we’re going to save the taxpayers some money,” he said. “That’ll be nice for a change.”
“That’s right,” Burris said, beaming. “We’re going to save Federal funds by shipping them back to their motherland now. After all, they did take out their naturalization papers under false names, and their declarations are chockfull of false information. So all it takes is a court order to declare their citizenships null and void, and hand all three of them back to the Soviets.”
“A nice, simple housecleaning,” Malone said. “All open and above-board. And the confessions will certainly stand up in a deportation hearing.”
“No question of it,” Burris said. “But the reason I called you here, Malone, is that there’s still one thing bothering me.”
Malone blew out some more smoke, thought wistfully about cigars, and said: “What? Everything seems simple enough to me.”
Burris frowned and leaned back in his chair. “It’s this notion of yours, Malone,” he said.
“Notion?”