Dugan said nothing, but from the way the general spoke, Sarah guessed that he had nodded. The telephone pressed her ear almost painfully as she strained to catch every sound from the microphone in the next room.
"I want you to spoil the secret of Atomsk."
"Atomsk?"
Coppersmith spelled it out, adding, "It's the Russian atomic center. We want them to know that we know all about it. We want them to guess as to how we know about it. We want to get the information for our own use, but we don't just want to know about it as a bombing target. We want the Russians to suspect us so much that they will not fool themselves. For that, we need a man as a weapon."
"To go in, to get out, and, after he was out, to leave traces?"
"Right. If the Russians think we know about their precious secret, they will be less disposed to take a chance. If we ourselves do know what the secret is, we will be less inclined to wage war against an unknown and therefore exaggerated danger. This is the meanest kind of fight there is, Major. It's a fight to keep the peace."
"There are better ways of doing that, General. Politics. If your Chief and the Republicans…"
The microphone went dead. Sarah felt as though she had been slapped. She set the mock telephone back in its cradle. She patted her hair back into place, lined up the pencils, slipped the notebook to the edge of her blotter. Why had General Coppersmith cut her off?
She already knew about Atomsk.
Atomsk was the biggest secret in the world. But there was still something that he did not want her to hear. She sat immobile at her desk. She found herself almost hating the poised stranger who came in and got the general's innermost confidence in their first interview, who smiled like a nice friendly man, and then turned out to be something not-quite-human — a spy.