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using false CIA
IDT” “But the message is clear. Lay off.”
    “Precisely. It’s from someone very powerful, someone
who cannot be reached. And that is part of the message.”
    He had the toothpaste on his brush and the brush in
his mouth when it hit him.
    He took the brush out of his mouth and stared at it.
Then he examined the toothpaste tube. Nothing could
be easier than poisoning a tube of toothpaste.
Merely unscrew the cap and stick a syringe in,
then screw the cap back on.
    But they had had no syringe on them. At
Tarkington’s house, anyway. For all he knew
they could have thrown it in the gutter or put it in the
garbage pail out behind the Graftons’ house where it
would be hauled away on Tuesday.
    A knot developed in his stomach.
    He started to put the toothbrush back into his
mouth, but he couldn’t.
    Damn!
    He rinsed out his mouth, then threw the toothbrush
and the toothpaste into the wastebasket under the sink.
    When he and Callie were in bed with the lights out, she
asked, “How do you get yourself into these
messes, anyway?”
    “You make it sound like I’m a juvenile
delinquent.”
    “I’m scared.”
    “That’s what they intended.”
    “They succeeded. I’m frightened.”
    “Me too,” he told her.
    ON MONDA-YOU MORNING AT
SEVEN-THIRT-YOU TOAD TAR-KINGTON opened the
door to the DIA computer facility and signed the
log. “Richard Harper, please,” he said to the
receptionist when she came over to examine his pass.
She had a cup of coffee in her hand and was polishing
off the last of a doughnut.
    “I’m sorry, but he doesn’t work here
anymore.”
    “Say again.”
    She shrugged. “He doesn’t work here now.
He’s gone.”
    “Did he quit or what?”
    “I don’t know. He didn’t come in last
Wednesday. Or maybe Wednesday was his last day.
Anyway, I heard
    him say he transferred to another government
agency. Can someone else help you?”
    Toad Tarkington leaned his elbows on the counter
and gave her a shy grin. “He was in one of our
baseball Pools and won a hundred bucks.”
    “Maybe he’ll call you-was
    “He doesn’t know he won, We don’t roll
for the numbers on the grid until Friday.”
    She smiled and shrugged. “I’m sorry. Maybe
if you call personnel
    “I’ll try that,” Toad said. “In the meantime,
I need a little work done. I need someone to check the
CIA data base.
    “Mabel can help you. Right over there.- She
Pointed.
    Mabel’s terminal was in a corner. Toad
removed a sheet of Paper from a manila envelope
stamped top secret and laid it in front of her.
On it were two names: Paul R. Tanana and
Rodney D. Hicks. “Please see if these
two are on the CIA data base,” Toad
asked.
    Mabel apparently knew her way around a
computer.
    Thirty seconds later she spoke. “No.”
    “Nothing?” Toad asked, “Nada.”
    “Not employees?”
    “Nope.”
    “How about the FBI data base? Can you access
it?”
    “It’ll take a bit,” she murmured as she
whacked keys.
    Toad watched the words and letters on the screen come
and go, come and go. Last week when Harper played with the
computer Toad had other things on his mind, Today he
was interested.
    All this high-tech before it came along you would have just
looked in the telephone directory.
    The telephone book!
    Toad spotted a directory under the desk and
reached for it He should have done this Yesterday.
    “I don’t have any Roger Hicks,” Mabel
told him.
    have a Robert Hicks and a Rose Hicks and
two R. Hicks.”
    Toad flipped pages, “Could You Print out
what you have on the R- Hicks entries?”
    “Sure. And You don’t have to look in the phone
book.
    We have access to the phone company’s files. If
they have an account with the phone company, weeaggI see
it. Maybe if You could tell me what
You’re looking for?”
    “Whatever I can get,” Tarkington said. He
put the book back on the bottom shelf of the desk
phone
    “Check Tanana, then the Virginia Department
Of Motor Vehicles And how about the Visa