Mine is Simon."

"Elena, if you must know. Four packs, a hundred rounds plus ten in the
chamber now. If we have to shoot them all, we'd better be good. These
aren't magnums, so you have to hit a man just right to put him out of
action."

"Well," shrugged Dalgetty, "we'll just have to lumber along as best we
can. I oak we don't make ashes of ourselves."

"Oh, _no_!" He couldn't tell whether it was appreciation or dismay.
"At a time like this too."

"It doesn't make me very popular," he agreed. "Everybody says to elm
with me. But, as they say in France, ve are alo-o-one now, mon cherry,
and tree's a crowd."

"Don't get ideas," she snapped.

"Oh, I'll get plenty of ideas, though I admit this isn't the place to
carry them out." Dalgetty folded his arms behind his head and blinked
up at the sky. "Man, could I use a nice tall mint julep right now."

Elena frowned. "If you're trying to convince me you're just a simple
American boy you might as well quit," she said thinly. "That sort
of--of emotional control, in a situation like this, only makes you
less human."

Dalgetty swore at himself. She was too damn quick, that was all. And
her intelligence might be enough for her to learn....

_Will I have to kill her?_

He drove the thought from him. He could overcome his own conditioning
about anything, including murder, if he wanted to, but he'd never want
to. No, that was out. "How did you get here?" he asked. "How much does
the FBI know?"

"Why should I tell you?"

"Well, it'd be nice to know if we can expect reinforcements."

"We can't." Her voice was bleak. "I might as well let you know. The
Institute could find out anyway through its government connections--the
damned octopus!" he looked into the sky. Dalgetty's gaze followed the
curve of her high cheekbones. Unusual face--you didn't often see such an
oddly pleasing arrangement. The slight departure from symmetry....

"We've wondered about Bertrand Meade for some time, as every thinking
person has," she began tonelessly. "It's too bad there are so few
thinking people in the country."

"Something the Institute is trying to correct," Dalgetty put in.

Elena ignored him. "It was finally decided to work agents into his
various organizations. I've been with Thomas Bancroft for about two
years now. My background was carefully faked and I'm a useful
assistant. But even so it was only a short while back that I got
sufficiently into his confidence to be given some in