in this world who can
tell me to do anything--and what's happened to my wife, anyway? Where
is she? And where does she think I am right now?" The old man
hesitated. "She doesn't know where you are. She's in the woman's
division, downstairs. She's been well-treated, of course--"

"Sure. Well-treated." That was when I got really mad. "Sure. Jerk her
out of bed in the middle of the night and throw her in jail and give
her enough to eat and a place to sleep and that's supposed to be good
treatment!"

The generals left without excusing themselves. Evidently they knew
what was coming and wanted no part of it. The old Army game of signing
your name and letting the sergeant hear the howls. I think that was
the only thing that kept me there, as furious as I was, to hear what
the old man had to say. He had been handed the dirty end of the stick,
and he had to get rid of it the best way he could. When they were gone
he circled a bit and then got the range.

* * * * *

Boiled down, it was like this. "As of right now, you no longer exist.
There is no more Peter Ambrose Miller, and maybe there never was. This
I would suggest; your wife, being human, could keep quiet no longer
than any other woman--or man. As far as she is concerned you're no
longer alive. You were killed while escaping arrest."

The sheer brutality, the plain cruelty of that, almost drove me insane
right there on the spot. I don't know what kept my hands off him. Now,
of course, I realize that he was doing that deliberately to focus my
hate on him, to present the bad side of it, to show me what could be
done if I didn't cooperate. But I didn't know that then.

"So if I've got the name I'll have the game! Does it make any
difference if I get shot in report or in fact? How would _your_ wife
like to know that you'd been shot down like a criminal? What would
Helen say to her friends and my friends and her relatives and all the
people we know?"

That was just the reaction he'd been waiting for. "I mentioned that
only as a suggestion. That could be easily arranged another way. Let's
say, for example, that you've been working for the Government ever
since your legal discharge, in an undercover assignment, and you died
in line of duty. It should be quite easy to see that your widow was
awarded some sort of posthumous decoration. Would that help?"

I never thought that I would ever sit quietly and listen to someone
calmly plot the com