She punched up the computer console on Smith's desk and fed the license plate number into it. The computer was hooked up through interlocking networks with computer systems all over the country. This time Ruby picked the New York State motor vehicle records connection and waited for a return on the owner of the car.
It took two minutes. The computer sent a message onto the small television-type screen on Smith's desk.
"No record of vehicle registration."
"Sheeit," Ruby mumbled. "Goddamn New York can't do nothin' right." Since she had moved to
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Rye to work for Smith, her life had been a continuous series of run-ins with the New York State bureaucracy, typified by her problems in trying to register her white Lincoln Continental in New York. Not only were the state's auto registration fees the highest in the nation but the registration form-which was accomplished in most other states on a single postcard-sized piece of paper-ran to seven separate documents and required a law firm to fill out. Ruby finally surrendered and kept her Virginia plates and if she ever got stopped and got any lip from a state trooper for having an out-of-state registration, she was going to run the sucker down.
She got out the Westchester County telephone book and began rifling through the yellow pages.
She began calling all those service stations listed for Rye, New York.
Ruby had found that people were never suspicious of the stupid, so she turned her accent into deep dripping Alabama.
"Hello. Mah name be Madie Jackson. Ah's tryin' to fahnd me a car ah hits today in a parkin' lot. A red Nova. Ah wanna call the owner and fix up his car for he."
On the twelfth call, she got lucky.
"Yeah, Madie," said a black voice from Cochran's Service. "That be Gruboff's car."
"Who?"
"Igor Gruboff, some funny name like that. He live up on Benjamin Place. He here complainin' all the time. Hey, Madie, what you doin' after you call him?"
"Depends on what ah's offered," Ruby said.
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"Ah closes down at 11. Then it's party time."
"Look for me," Ruby said.
"What you be drivin', Madie?"
"A blue deuce and a quarter," Ruby said.
"All raht," said the gas station man. "Hey, Madie, you gonna go see this Gruboff ?"
"Ah thought ah just call him."
"Don' let him jive you none. He a tight-ass suckah and he be tryin' to con you outa yo' money."
"Thanks, brother. Ah be careful and ah see you at 'leven."
"Ah'll be waiting. You'll know me. Ah be the handsome one."
"Ah can tell," Ruby said and hung up the telephone.
She found Igor Gruboff's address on Benjamin Place in the telephone directory. On a hunch, she punched it into CURE'S computers.
The printout came back that Igor Gruboff, fifty-one, was a communications specialist, working with micro-processing. He and his wife had defected from Russia eighteen years earlier, been granted asylum, and seven years ago had become American citizens. Mrs. Gruboff had died two years earlier. Gruboff was employed at Molly Electronics, which had four government contracts for silicon memory chips used in spacecraft.
Ruby nodded. So much for the defection. Gruboff was still one of them. She remembered the man in the cowboy hat she had seen behind the wheel of the red Nova. Somehow, she doubted that that was Gruboff. She punched in the cow-
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boy-hat description of the man into the computer and called for a correlation check against known Russian agents in the United States.
The machine responded in less than ten seconds.
"Colonel Vassily Karbenko, cultural attache to the Russian Embassy in Washington, B.C. Forty-eight years old. Given to wearing cowboy clothes. Actual rank, colonel in the KGB. Considered a personal protege of the Russian premier. In the field, Russia's highest-ranking spy in the United States."
On a sheet of white paper, Ruby printed in large block letters the name and address of Igor Gruboff. She left it on Smith's desk for whoever might find it. In case finding it became necessary.
The cellar of Igor Gruboff's home had been turned into a recreation room by putting ugly knotty pine panels over ugly cinderblock walls.
Harold Smith was directed to a chair by Vassily Karbenko, who dropped his large Stetson on a table, then stood looking at Smith.
Igor Gruboff stood by the steps leading to the kitchen, his hand inside his jacket pocket, holding a revolver. Smith noticed that like almost all foreigners his trousers were too short.
"Might I ask who you are?" Smith said.
"You don't know?" Karbenko said. He hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and leaned back against the table.
"No, I don't," Smith lied. "I don't go to cowboy movies."
Karbenko smiled. "Good," he said. "Very good.
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But suppose we just leave it at that. That you don't know who I am. What is important is that I know who you are, or, more accurately, who you used to be."
Smith nodded.
"I want to know about Project Omega," Karbenko said.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Doctor Smith, let us clear the air," Karbenko said. "Your name is Harold W. Smith. You run Folcroft Sanitarium. Twenty years ago, while working for the Central Intelligence Agency, you devised a program called Project Omega. It was designed to bring about the assassination of certain Russian officials if the United States should lose a nuclear war. Its alleged purpose was to prevent such a war. It succeeded. Then you retired from the service. Through no fault of yours, Project Omega has been triggered. Three Russian ambassadors have been killed. The Russian premier is on the list for extinction. No one knows how to call off Project Omega. Yet, if it is not stopped before the Russian premier is killed, it might well be the first explosion in World War III. I have no reason to believe that you are not a dedicated American patriot who does not want his country, and the world, ravaged by nuclear war. While I represent the other side, my goal is identical to yours. I find it necessary that we talk now to try to determine if there is any way to head off Omega before its damage becomes irrevocable. That is why I am here."
"I told everything I know to officials of my gov-
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