"Oh. Dr. Raymond called, from the labs. He wanted to know if you were back yet. I told him you'd call as soon as you came home."
Harker picked up the phone, yanked down on the long-distance switch, and punched out Raymond's number. He waited, hoping Raymond himself would pick up and not Klaus or Barchet or someone like that.
Raymond did. He looked inquisitively out of the screen and Harker told him exactly what Winstead had said. When he had finished the flat, weary recital, he added, "I'm going to Washington on Monday. But if Thurman gives me the brush-off, we may be in trouble."
Raymond grinned with unconvincing heartiness. "We'll get through somehow, Jim. Have faith."
"I sincerely wish I could," Harker said.
He sipped the drink Chris put in his hand, and after a little of the cold gin had filtered into his bloodstream he felt better. It was a false comfort, he knew, but it was comfort all the same. He went upstairs to the sitting-room, picked out a musictape almost at random, put it on. The selection was a mistake: Handel's Messiah, Part III. He listened to the big alto aria that opened the section:
... I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.
For now is Christ risen from the dead....
After the final notes of the aria had died away came the chorus, slow, grave: