"It's much too nice a day to rip off your life, don't you think?"

    Officer Peter Jones had been walking his beat along the path beside Ohio Drive when he noticed the man on the park bench. At first glance, Jones thought Seagram was simply a wine-sodden derelict soaking up the sun. He considered running him in, but dismissed it as a waste of time; a booked bum would be back on the streets inside twenty-four hours. Jones figured it was hardly worth the effort of filling out the endless reports. But then something about the man didn't fit the stereotyped lost soul. Jones moved casually, inconspicuously around a large leafing elm tree and doubled back slightly to the side of the bench. On closer inspection his suspicions were confirmed. True, the reddened unseeing eyes and the vacant look of the alcoholic were there, as was the listless uncaring droop of the shoulders, but so were small bits and pieces that didn't belong. The shoes were shined, the suit expensive and pressed, the face neatly shaven, and the fingernails trimmed. And then there was the gun.

    Seagram slowly looked up into the face of a black police officer. Instead of meeting a determined look of wariness, he found himself gazing into an expression of genuine compassion.

    "Aren't you jumping to conclusions?" Seagram said.

    "Man, if I ever saw a classic case of suicidal depression, you're it." Jones made a sitting gesture. "May I share your bench?"

    "It's city property," Seagram said indifferently.

    Jones carefully sat down an arm's length from Seagram and languidly stretched out his legs and leaned against the backrest, keeping his hands in plain sight and away from his holstered service revolver.

    "Now me, l'd pick November," he said softly. "April is when the flowers pop and the trees go green, but November, that's when the weather turns nasty, the winds chill you to the bone, and the skies are always cloudy and dreary. Yeah, that's the month I'd pick all right to do away with myself."

    Seagram clutched the Colt tighter, eyeing Jones in apprehension, waiting for him to make his move.

    "I take it you consider yourself something of an expert on suicide?"

    "Not really," Jones said. "In fact, you're the first one I ever got to watch in the act. Most of the time I come on the scene long after the main event. Now take drownings; they're the worst. Bodies all bloated up and black, eyeballs mush in their sockets after the fish have nibbled at them. Then there's the jumpers. I saw a fella one time who had leaped off a thirty-story building. Lit on his feet. His shin bones came out his shoulders . . ."

    "I don't need this," Seagram snarled. "I don't need a nigger cop feeding me horror stories."

    Anger flickered in Jones's eyes for an instant, and then quickly passed.

    "Sticks and stones. . ." he said. He took out a handkerchief and leisurely wiped the sweatband of his cap. "Tell me, Mister ah . . ."

    "Seagram. You might as well know. It won't make any difference later."

    "Tell me, Mr. Seagram, how do you intend on doing it. A bullet in the temple, the forehead, or in the mouth?"

    "What does it matter, the results are the same."

    "Not necessarily," Jones said conversationally. "I don't recommend the temple or forehead, at least not with a small-caliber gun. Let's see, what have you got there? Yeah, looks like a thirty-eight. It might do a messy job okay, but I doubt if it would kill you proper. I knew one guy who fired a forty-five into his temple. Scrambled his brains and shoved out his left eye, but he didn't die. Lived for years like a turnip. Can't you picture him lying there, his bowels running all over the sheets, and him begging to be put out of his misery. Yeah, if I was you, I'd stick the barrel in my mouth and blow off the back of the head. That's the safest bet."

    "If you don't shut up," Seagram snapped, pointing the Colt at Jones, "I'll kill you too."

    "Kill me?" Jones said. "You haven't got the balls. You're not a killer, Seagram. It's written all over you."

    "Every man is capable of committing murder."

    "I agree, murder is no big deal. Anybody can do it. But only a psychopath ignores the consequences."

    "Now you're beginning to sound like a philosopher."

    "Us dumb nigger cops oftentimes like to fool white people with our smarts routine."

    "I apologize for my poor choice of words."

    Jones shrugged. "You think you got problems, Mr. Seagram? I'd love to have your problems. Look at yourself; you're white, obviously a man of means, you probably have a family and a nice position in life. How'd you like to trade places with me, change the color of your skin, be a black cop with six kids and a ninety-year-old frame house with a thirty-year mortgage on it? Tell me about it, Seagram. Tell me about how tough your world really is."

    "You could never understand."

    "What's there to understand? Nothing under the sun is worth killing yourself over. Oh sure, your wife will shed a few tears at first; but then she'll give your clothes to the Salvation Army, and six months from now she'll be in bed with another man while you'll be nothing but a picture in a scrapbook. Look around you. It's a beautiful spring day. Hell, think what you'll be missing. Didn't you watch the President on TV?"

    "The President?"

    "He came on at four o'clock and talked about all the great things that were happening. Manned flights to Mars are only three years away; there's been a breakthrough on the control of cancer; and he showed pictures of some old sunken ship the government salvaged from almost three miles below the ocean."

    Seagram stared at Jones with unbelieving eyes. "What was that you said? A ship salvaged? What ship?"

    "I don't remember."

    "The Titanic?" Seagram asked in a whisper. "Was it the Titanic?"

    "Yeah, that was the name. It rammed an iceberg and sank a long time ago. Come to think of it, I remember seeing a movie about the Titanic on television. Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb were in--" Jones broke off at the look of incredulity, then shock, then twisted confusion that showed in Seagram's face.

    Seagram handed his gun to the uncomprehending Jones and leaned back against the bench. Thirty days. Thirty days would be all he'd need once he had the byzanium to test the Sicilian Project's system and then see it through to operational status. It had been a narrow thing. If a wandering cop hadn't intruded when he did, thirty seconds would have been all Seagram had left to see anything ever again, forever.

50

    "I assume you have weighed the staggering consequences of your accusations?"

    Marganin looked at the soft-spoken little man with the cold blue eyes. Admiral Boris Sloyuk seemed more the baker around the corner than the shrewd head of the Soviet Union's second-largest intelligence-gathering network.

    "I fully realize, Comrade Admiral, that I am jeopardizing my naval career and risking a prison sentence, but I place duty to the State above my personal ambitions."

    "Very noble of you, Lieutenant," Sloyuk said without expression. "The charges you have brought are extremely damaging, to say the least; however you have not produced concrete evidence that indicates Captain Prevlov is a traitor to our country, and without it, I cannot condemn a man on his subordinate's word alone."