Malone’s voice sounded to him as if it were coming from a great distance. He wondered if the strange feeling in his stomach were the pangs of love, or the descent of the plane. Then he realized that he didn’t care. “Well, well,” he said airily. “Well, well, well. Frankly, Lou, I’m inclined to agree with you. Though I’m not sure about the qualification.”
“Fine thing,” she said. “Tell a man he’s wonderful and he just nods his head as if he knew it all along.”
Malone swallowed hard. “Maybe I did,” he said. “And how did you come to this startling conclusion?”
It was Lou who broke the light mood of their speech first. “Look, Ken,” she said seriously, “I’m the daughter of an enemy spy. You know that. You’re an FBI agent.”
“So what?” he said.
“So,” she said, “you don’t treat me like the daughter of a spy. You treat me just like anybody else.”
“I do not,” Malone said instantly.
“All right,” she said, and shrugged. “But I’m sure none of this is in the FBI manual for daughters of convicted spies.”
“Now, you look,” Malone said. “Just what do you think this is? The McCarthy era? Any way I treat you, it has nothing to do with your father. He’s a spy, and we caught him and we sent him back to Moscow. That’s our job. But all this about the sins of the fathers being visited on the heads of the children, even unto the seventh generation—this is just plain silly. You’re you; you’re not your father. You haven’t done anything—why should I treat you as if you have?”
“How do you know I’m not a spy, too?” she said.