"If you want to put it that way, yes."
"It's a private joke. But I think I know what they're up to—or why. The Senator's secretary is marooned up here, like me. She was on the train, too."
"You don't say! I got scooped on that one. Which one is she?"
"The redhead. Geneva Jervis. I haven't seen her since last night, come to think of it."
The P-38's screamed over again, this time from west to east. Don counted six planes now and made out the PP markings. People had come out of stores and business buildings and were looking out of upstairs windows at the sky. They were rewarded by a third thundering flypast of the fighter planes. They were higher this time, spread out laterally as if to search maximum terrain.
"Big deal," Clark said. "This show would bring anyone outdoors, but even if they see her what do you suppose they can do about it? There's no place in town flat enough for a Piper Cub to land, let alone a fighter plane."
"How about the golf course?"
"Raleigh? Worst set of links in the whole United States. A helicopter could put down there, but that's about all. What's old Bobby so worked up about, I wonder? Unless there's something to that gossip about this Jervis girl being his mistress and he's showing off for her."
"He'd show off for anybody, they tell me," Don said. Then he remembered that Military Intelligence was listening in. If any pro-Thebold people were among his eavesdroppers, he hoped they respected his private right to be anti-Thebold.
At that moment he and Clark were thrown against the side of the bank building. They clung to each other and Don noticed that the sun had moved a few degrees in the sky.