Never mind— What would logically happen now? Heinrich’s task force certainly had had radio contact with its base; ergo, its loss would be noted, if only by silence. Shortly more S.S. troops would come looking for them—were already headed this way if that second car had been chopped off in the middle of an action report. “Miriam—”

“Yes, Boss.”

“I want Mike, Jill, and Anne here at once. Then find Larry—in the shop, probably—and both of you come to the house, lock all doors, and all ground floor windows.”

“More trouble?”

“Get movin’, gal.”

If the S.S. apes showed up again—no, when they showed up—they probably would not have duplicate warrants. If their leader was silly enough to break into a locked house without a warrant, well, he might have to turn Mike loose on them. But this blind warfare of attrition had to be stopped—which meant that Jubal simply had to get through to the Secretary General.

How?

Call the Executive Palace again? Heinrich had probably been telling the simple truth when he said that a renewed attempt would simply be referred to Heinrich—or to whatever S.S. boss was now warming that chair that Heinrich would never need again. Well? It would surely surprise them to have a man they had sent a squad to arrest blandly phoning in, face to face—he might be able to bull his way all the way up to the top, Commandant What’s-his-name, chap with a face like a well-fed ferret, Twitchell. And certainly the commanding officer of the S.S. buckos would have direct access to the boss.

No good. You had to have a feeling for what makes the frog jump. It would be a waste of breath to tell a man who believes in guns that you’ve got something better than guns and that he can’t arrest you and might as well give up trying. Twitchell would keep on throwing men and guns at them till he ran out of both—but he would never admit he couldn’t bring in a man whose location was known.

Well, when you couldn’t use the front door you got yourself slipped in through the back door—elementary politics. Jubal regretted mildly that he had ignored politics the last quarter century or so. Damn it, he needed Ben Caxton—Ben would know who had keys to the back door . . . and Jubal would know somebody who knew one of them.

But Ben’s absence was the whole reason for this silly donkey derby. Since he couldn’t ask Ben, whom did he know who would know?

Hell’s halfwit, he had just been talking to one! Jubal turned back to the phone and tried to raise Tom Mackenzie again, running into only three layers of interference on the way, all of whom knew him and passed him along quickly. While he was doing this, his staff and the Man from Mars came in; Jubal ignored them and they sat down, Miriam first stopping to write on a scratch pad: “Doors and windows locked.”

Jubal nodded to her and wrote below it: “Larry—panic button?” then said to the screen, “Tom, sorry to bother you again.”

“A pleasure, Jubal.”

“Tom, if you wanted to talk to Secretary General Douglas, how would you go about it?”

“Eh? I’d phone his press secretary, Jim Sanforth. Or possibly Jock Dumont, depending on what I wanted. But I wouldn’t talk to the Secretary General at all; Jim would handle it.”

“But suppose you wanted to talk to Douglas himself.”

“Why, I’d tell Jim and let him arrange it. Be quicker just to tell Jim my problem, though; it might be a day or two before he could squeeze me in . . . and even then I might be bumped for something more urgent. Look, Jubal, the network is useful to the administration—and we know it and they know it. But we don’t presume on it unnecessarily.”

“Tom . . . assume that it is necessary. Suppose you just had to speak to Douglas. Right now. Not next week. In the next ten minutes.”

Mackenzie’s eyebrows went up. “Well . . . if I just had to, I would explain to Jim why it was so urgent—”

“No.”

“Be reasonable.”

“No. That’s just what I can’t be. Assume that you had caught Jim Sanforth stealing the spoons, so you couldn’t tell him what the emergency was. But you had to speak to Douglas immediately.”

Mackenzie sighed. “I suppose I would tell Jim that I simply had to talk to the boss . . . and that if I wasn’t put through to him right away, the administration would never get another trace of support from the network. Politely, of course. But make him understand that I meant it. Sanforth is nobody’s fool; he would never serve his own head up on a platter.”

“Okay, Tom, do it.”

“Huh?”

“Leave this call on. Call the Palace on another instrument—and have your boys ready to cut me in instantly. I’ve got to talk to the Secretary General right now!”