Chapter1

MIDDLEBURG, MARYLAND, POSSESSED A POPULATION of 9300 and one of the finest small airports one descending passenger had ever seen. For a place of its size it had a surprising amount of traffic. There were several daily shuttle flights to Washington and New York, and this plane, the Friday afternoon flight from Washington, had been nearly full.

The passenger in question, a slight, fair-haired man, was the last one off the plane. He stopped at the foot of the ramp and stared across the field, noting the number of private planes and hangars. The field was miniature, but equipped with all the latest gadgetry; it looked like a rich man's toy. The setting was equally perfect. Beyond the strips of concrete and the fences a gently rolling countryside had taken on the rich colors of autumn. The grain fields were stubble now, but much of the land was wooded; the gold of maples and the crimson of oak and sumac made vivid splashes of brightness against the somber green background of firs. A faint haze lay over the land, but the day was fine, almost too warm for October. The visitor reflected that this must be what the natives called Indian summer. He shrugged out of his coat, draped it over his arm, and started off across the field toward the terminal.

It was small, like the airport, and equally perfect; built of fieldstone and timber, it looked more like a private hunting lodge than a public building. The young man joined the group waiting at the luggage counter. Only a handful of the passengers had waited; most of them, carrying briefcases, had gone directly to waiting cars. Weekenders, evidently; and weekenders who could afford two separate wardrobes and homes.

The people waiting for luggage were of the same type, and the young man categorized them with the quick impatience which was one of his many failings. The Rich. Bureaucrats or businessmen or idlers, they were all alike: people with too much money and too much leisure, so that they spent large quantities of the former trying to occupy the latter.

He himself did not fit in with the crowd, though he had a chameleonlike instinct for protective coloring. The business he was presently engaged in required another type of costume. His suit —one of his own, recently retailored to fit his reduced measurements —was old but good. His tie was modest in design, but he wore it with a slightly stifled look, as if he were unused to even that moderate formality. By the standards of the over-forty generation he still needed a haircut. He had considered horn-rimmed glasses, and had abandoned them as being a bit too much, and also as too obviously fraudulent; his vision, like Katherine More's, was twenty-twenty. But the most important part of the disguise was attitude. He had thought himself into his role so thoroughly that when the man standing next to him spoke he came out of an artistic fog with a slight jerk.

"Stupid bastards get slower every week." The man, a stocky individual, had shoulders like a bull's and a belligerent, feet-wide-apart stance. His close-cropped gray hair failed to conceal a skull as hard and round as a cannonball, or soften features which looked like something an inexperienced sculptor had roughed out and then given up as a hopeless job.

"Hmmm? Oh. I haven't been waiting very long."

"Stranger here?" The older man sized him up with a long, appraising stare, and extended a brown hand. "Volz is my name. U.S. Army, retired."

"Peter Stewart. I'm a writer." He let the U.S. Army, retired, wring his hand, and produced a pained smile. "General, were you, sir?"

"How did you know?"

"The… general air," Peter murmured, and grinned modestly when the general gave a short brusque laugh that sounded like a dog barking.

"Very good. The writer's touch, eh? Have I read any of your books?"

"I very much doubt it."

Suitcases began rolling onto the rack and Volz, with an unexpurgated comment, darted forward. Peter followed more slowly. When he had retrieved his battered case he found the general still at his side.

"Going into town?"

"Yes. There are taxis, I suppose?"

"Probably taken by now. I'll give you a lift, if you like."

"That's very good of you." Peter spoke stiffly; then he reminded himself that he was being too suspicious. He knew the automatic if superficial friendliness of Americans. This loudmouthed idiot couldn't possibly know anything about him or his past —or his present intentions. He added more warmly, "I've booked a room at the Inn, but if that's out of your way—"

"No, no, got to go through town anyway. My place is on the other side. This way."

His car was just what Peter had expected: a black, shiny Lincoln with a uniformed chauffeur, who leaped out as his employer came stamping up. The chauffeur was black, six and a half feet tall, with a profile like that of the Apollo on the temple of Olympia. Even the flat crisp curls looked Greek.

Copyright © 1969 by Barbara Michaels