g in his mind.

It takes one to catch one. That was his job--telling lies. Writing
stories that weren't true, and making them believable. Making people
think one thing when the truth was something else. It wasn't so strange
that he could detect exactly the same sort of thing when he ran into it.
He thought it through again and again, and every time he came up with
the same answer. There was no doubt.

Reading the newspaper files had accomplished only one thing. He had
spent the afternoon reading a voluminous, neat, smoothly written,
extremely convincing batch of bold-faced lies. Lies about David
Ingersoll. Somewhere, at the bottom of those lies was a shred or two of
truth, a shred hard to analyze, impossible to segregate from the garbage
surrounding it. But somebody had written the lies. That meant that
somebody knew the truths behind them.

Suddenly he galvanized into action. The video blinked protestingly at
his urgent summons, and the Washington visiphone operator answered.
"Somewhere in those listings of yours," Shandor said, "you've got a man
named Frank Mariel. I want his number."

* * * * *

He reached the downtown restaurant half an hour early, and ducked into a
nearby visiphone station to ring Hart. The PIB director's chubby face
materialized on the screen after a moment's confusion, and Shandor said:
"John--what are your plans for releasing the Ingersoll story? The
morning papers left him with a slight head cold, if I remember right--"
Try as he would, he couldn't conceal the edge of sarcasm in his voice.

Hart scowled. "How's the biography coming?"

"The biography's coming along fine. I want to know what kind of
quicksand I'm wading through, that's all."

Hart shrugged and spread his hands. "We can't break the story proper
until you're ready with your buffer story. Current plans say that he
gets pneumonia tomorrow, and goes to Walter Reed tomorrow night. We're
giving it as little emphasis as possible, running the Berlin Conference
stories for right-hand column stuff. That'll give you all day tomorrow
and half the next day for the preliminary stories on his death. Okay?"

"That's not enough time." Shandor's voice was tight.

"It's enough for a buffer-release." Hart scowled at him, his round face
red and annoyed. "Look, Tom, you get that story in, and never mind what
you like or don't like. This is dynamite you're playing with--the
Conference is going to be on the rocks