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"Do you have a timetable for the raid?"
Kleist had a pained expression. "We prefer to call it a covert operation."
"Sorry, I've never read your bureaucratic manual on semantics."
"In answer to your question, the landing is set for 0200 four days from now."
"Four days may be too late to save my friends."
Kleist looked genuinely concerned. "We're already working on short notice and cutting our practice exercises razor thin. We need time to cover every uncertainty, every freak event. The plan has to be as airtight as our computer's tactical programs can make it."
"And if there's a human flaw in your plan?"
Any expression of friendly warmth left Kleist's face and was replaced with a cold, hard look. "If there is a human flaw, Mr. Pitt, it is you. Barring divine intervention, the success or failure of this mission will rest heaviest on your shoulders,"
The CIA people were thorough. Pitt was shuffled from office to office, interview to interview, with stopwatch precision. The plans to neutralize Cayo Santa Maria progressed with prairie-fire swiftness. His briefing by Colonel Kleist took place less than three hours after he was interrogated by Martin Brogan.
He came to realize there were thousands of contingency plans to invade every island in the Caribbean and every nation in Central and South America. Computerized war games created a series of options. All the covert-operation experts had to do was select the program that came closest to fitting the objective, and then refine it.
Pitt endured a thorough physical examination before he was allowed lunch. The physician pronounced him fit, pumped him full of high-potency vitamins, and prescribed an early bedtime before Pitt's drowsy mind turned to mush.
A tall, high-cheekboned woman with braided hair was assigned as his nursemaid, escorting him to the proper room at the proper time. She introduced herself as Alice, no surname, no title. She wore a soft tan suit over a lace blouse. Pitt thought her rather pretty and found himself wondering what she would look like curled up on satin sheets.
"Mr. Brogan has arranged for you to eat in the executive dining room," she said in perfect tour-guide fashion. "We'll take the elevator."
Pitt suddenly remembered something. "I'd like the use of a telephone."
"Sorry, not possible."
"Mind if I ask why?"
"Have you forgotten you're supposed to be dead?" Alice asked matter-of-factly. "One phone call to a friend or a lover and you could blow the entire operation."
"Yes, `The slip of a lip may sink a ship,' " Pitt said cynically. "Look, I need some information from a total stranger. I'll hand him a phony name.
"Sorry, not possible."
A scratched phonograph record came to Pitt's mind. "Give me a phone or I'll do something nasty"
She looked at him quizzically. "Like what?"
"Go hom
e," he said simply.
"Mr. Brogan's orders. You're not to leave the building until your flight to our camp in San Salvador.
He'd have you in a straitjacket before you reached the front door."
Pitt hung back as they walked down a hallway. Then he suddenly turned and entered an anteroom whose door was unmarked. He calmly walked past a startled secretary and entered the inner office. A short man with cropped white hair, a cigarette dangling from his lips, and making strange markings on a graph, looked up in amused surprise.
Pitt flashed his best politician's smile and said, "I beg your pardon, may I borrow your phone?"
"If you work here, you know that using an unauthorized phone is against agency regulations."
"Then I'm safe," said Pitt. "I don't work here."
"You'll never get an outside line," said old White Hair.
