“You didn’t give me my MAGIC clearance, Fleming, and I don’t think you have the authority to take it away. I can’t believe you’re letting your personal feelings cloud your professional judgment.”
“I have the authority, Ellen.”
“Well,” she said, for the first time losing control, “we’ll see what General Willoughby has to say about that.”
And then control came back. She smiled at him and wet her lips with her tongue.
“Fleming, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to go back outside. While I’m gone, you will send your aide someplace; and when I come back, we’ll start this all over again. We both have said things we really don’t mean.”
“Ellen…”
“I wept when you left for Guadalcanal,” she said. “I had finally found a man I really admired, and we… we had only that one time together.”
“That shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
“It did. Fleming, are you afraid I want more from you than you’re in a position to give? I’m satisfied with the crumbs…. I know you would never leave your wife…. She would never find out about us, I swear on my life.”
Was there an implied threat in there?
“That’s enough, Ellen. Now shut up and listen to me.”
She found his eyes. With an effort, he forced himself to meet hers.
“You have two options, Ellen. You will become the briefer for MacArthur and Willoughby. You will not have access to any MAGIC material except that which Pluto gives you; you are no longer authorized access to the dungeon in any way.”
“Or?”
“You will be on the next plane to the States, under sedation. On your arrival in the United States, you will be taken to a federal mental hospital, and you will spend the war there.”
“You have to be kidding!”
“General Willoughby will be made privy to the rather extensive report the Army’s Counterintelligence Corps has compiled on you. He will understand why this was necessary.”
“What CIC report?” she snapped.
Pickering went to his briefcase, unlocked it, and took from it a thick stack of paper. This was held together with metal clips and covered by a sheet of folder paper imprinted with diagonal stripes and the words TOP SECRET, top and bottom.
“This one,” he said, handing it to her. “They are remarkably thorough, you’ll see.”
She snatched the report from his hand and glanced through it… but long enough to take in what it contained.
“You’d let this garbage out? After what we’ve meant to each other?”
“The only reason I’m not doing it is that it would ruin the careers of Colonel Jasper and the others. They don’t deserve that.”
“Your name is in this filthy file! Have you considered that?”
“You still don’t understand, do you?” Pickering said. “We’re not talking about you, or me, we’re talking about the security of MAGIC. You have proved that you can’t be trusted with that….”
“Don’t be absurd. That’s absolutely untrue.”
“Oh? By a conscious act, you did nothing when they were going to send Moore to Guadalcanal. You knew he wasn’t supposed to go. No one with access to MAGIC is supposed to be placed in any threat of capture by the enemy.”
“You went to Guadalcanal,” she said.
Yeah, I did. And I was wrong.
“You allowed Moore to be sent to Guadalcanal because he posed a potential threat to your reputation, and MAGIC be damned.”
“Flem, you were gone. I was lonely. He was persistent. It happened. I was trying to stop it. I knew it was wrong. All I was trying to do-”
“Was save your skin. And MAGIC be damned,” Pickering interrupted her.
“Why don’t you just have me shot, then?”
“I considered it. Banning would almost certainly see that as the best solution. It is still an option.”
She looked at him, and he met her eyes. And after a moment he saw in them that she believed him. But he saw too, in her eyes, that she wasn’t going to grant the point.
“We’re both saying things we don’t mean again, aren’t we?”
“I have said nothing I don’t mean. I’m getting tired of this, Ellen. You either accept the option of becoming our briefer, and thus saving Pluto’s and Moore’s time, as well as the careers of the people you’ve been sleeping with…”