Without remorse - Tom Clancy [234]
'You know, if they made these things with little holes in them for ventilation, they'd be a lot more comfortable to wear.'
'I've said that myself,' Captain Yegorov agreed, heading off to his car. Fifteen minutes later he pulled into a Howard Johnson's. The blue Plymouth took a spot along the west side of the building, and as he got out, a patron inside finished off his coffee and left his spot at the counter, along with a quarter tip to thrill the waitress. The restaurant had a double set of doors to save on the air-conditioning bill, and when the two men met there, just the two of them, moving, with the glass of the doors interfering with anyone who might be observing them, the film was passed. Yegorov/Wilson continued inside, and a 'legal' KGB major named Ishchenko went his way. Relieved of his burden for the day, Marvin Wilson sat at the counter and ordered orange juice to start. There were so many good things to eat in America.
'I'm eating too much.' It was probably true, but it didn't stop Doris from attacking the pile of hotcakes.
Sarah didn't understand the Americans' love for emaciation. 'You lost plenty in the last two weeks. It won't hurt you to put a little back,' Sarah Rosen told her graduating patient.
Sarah's Buick was parked outside, and today would see them in Pittsburgh. Sandy had worked on Doris's hair a little more, and made one more trip to get clothes that befitted the day, a beige silk blouse and a burgundy skirt that ended just above the knee. The prodigal son could return home in rags, but the daughter had to arrive with some pride.
'I don't know what to say,' Doris Brown told them, standing to collect the dishes.
'You just keep getting better,' Sarah replied. They went out to the car, and Doris got in the back. If nothing else, Kelly had taught them caution. Dr Sarah Rosen headed out quickly, turning north on Loch Raven, getting on the Baltimore Beltway and heading west to Interstate 70. The posted limit on the new highway was seventy miles per hour, and Sarah exceeded it, pushing her heavy Buick northwest toward the Catoctin Mountains, every mile between them and the city an additional safety factor, and by the time they passed Hagerstown she relaxed and started enjoying the ride. What were the chances, after all, of being spotted in a moving car?
It was a surprisingly quiet ride. They'd talked themselves out in the previous few days as Doris had returned to a condition approximating normality. She still needed drug counseling, and seriously needed psychiatric help, but Sarah had already taken care of that with a colleague at the University of Pittsburgh's excellent medical school, a sixtyish woman who knew not to report things to the local police, assured that that part of the matter was already in hand. In the silence of the car Sandy and Sarah could feel the tension build. It was something they'd talked about. Doris was returning to a home and a father she'd left for a life that had nearly become a death. For many months the principal component of her new life would be guilt, part earned, part not. On the whole she was a very lucky young lady, something Doris had yet to grasp. She was, first of all, alive. With her confidence and self-esteem restored she might in two or three years be able to continue her life on a course so normal that no one would ever suspect her past or notice the fading scars. Restored health would change this girl, returning her not only to her father but also to the world of real people.
Perhaps she might even become stronger, Sarah hoped, if the psychiatrist brought her along slowly and carefully. Dr Michelle Bryant had a stellar reputation, a correct one, she hoped. For Dr Rosen, still racing west slightly over the legal limit, this was one of the hard parts of medicine. She had to let the patient go with the job not yet complete. Her clinical work with drug abusers had prepared her for it, but those jobs, like this one, were never really finished. It was just that there came