in the bedlam that had suddenly engulfed the Becsikapu.

At the last moment, Joe suddenly struck out with his left leg, hooked
with his foot the small table at which the three Sov officers had been
sitting and twisted quickly, throwing it to the side and immediately
into the way of his enraged opponent.

The other swore as his shins banged the side and was thrown slightly
forward, for a moment off balance.

Joe stepped forward quickly, precisely, and his right chopped down and
to the side of the other's prominent jawbone. The Russkie, if Russkie
he was, went suddenly glazed of eye. His doubling forward, originally
but an attempt to regain balance, continued and he fell flat on his
face.

Joe spun around. "Come on, Max, let's get out of here. I doubt if
we're welcome." He didn't want to give the other two time to organize
themselves and decide to attack. Defeat the two, he and Max might be
able to accomplish, but Joe wasn't at all sure where the waiters would
stand in the fray, nor anyone else in the small cabaret, for that
matter.

Max, at the peak of excitement now, yelled, "What'd you think I been
saying? Come on, follow me. There's a rear door next to the rest
room."

Waiters and others were converging on them. Joe Mauser didn't wait to
argue, he took Max's word for it and hurried after that small worthy,
going round and about the intervening tables and chairs like an old
time broken field football player.

XVIII

Joe Mauser had assumed there would be some sort of reverberations as a
result of his run-in with the Sov officers, but hadn't suspected the
magnitude of them.

The next morning he had hardly arrived at the small embassy office
which had been assigned him, before his desk set lit up with General
Armstrong's habitually worried face. He said, without taking time for
customary amenities, "Major Mauser, could you come to my office
immediately?" It wasn't a question.

In General George Armstrong's office, beside the general himself, were
his aide, Lieutenant Anderson who Joe had at long last sorted out from
Lieutenant Dickson, Lieutenant colonel Bela Kossuth and another Sov
officer whom Joe hadn't met before.

Everybody looked very stiff and formal.

The general said to Joe, "Major Mauser, Colonel Kossuth and Captain
Petofi have approached me, as your immediate superior, to request that
your diplomatic immunity be waived so that you might be called upon on
a matter of honor."

Joe didn't get