got sick, they'd say, and they
just took her to the hospital. They wouldn't have to call it an arrest
at all."

"Oh, I see," Her Majesty said. "But now we're not on their home
grounds."

"Not so long as we stay in this plane, we're not," Malone said. "And
we're going to stay here until we take off."

Her Majesty nodded.

"I wish I knew what they thought they were doing, though," Malone
mused. "They certainly couldn't have held us for very long, no matter
how they worked things."

"I know what was on their minds," Her Majesty said. "At least partly.
It was all so confused it was difficult to get anything really
detailed or complete."

"There," Malone said fervently, "I agree with you."

"The whole trouble was," the Queen said, "that nobody knew about
anybody else."

"I'd gathered something like that," Malone said. "But what exactly was
it all about?"

"Well," the Queen said, "Major Petkoff was supposed to tell Lou, in
effect, that if she didn't agree to do espionage work for the Soviet
Union, things would go hard with her father."

"Nice," Malone said. "Very friendly gentleman."

"Well," the Queen continued, "he was supposed to tell her about that
at the bar, when he had her alone. But she got that drugged drink
before he could begin to say anything."

"Then who drugged it?" Malone said. "Lou?"

The Queen shrugged. "Someone else," she said. "Major Petkoff didn't
know anything about the drugged drink."

"A nice surprise for him, anyhow," Malone said.

"It was a surprise for everybody," the Queen said. "You see, the
drugged drink was meant to get her to the hospital, where they'd have
her alone for a long time and could really put some pressure on her."

"And then," Malone said, "there were the men who wanted to arrest me.
And the ones who wanted to take Lou to jail. And the mad Mongol who
just wanted to fight, I guess."

"There were so many different things, all going on at once," the Queen
said.

Malone nodded. "There seems to be quite a lot of confusion in the
Soviet Union, too," he said. "That does not sound to me like an
efficient operation."

"It wasn't, very," the Queen said. "You see, they have Garbitsch now,
but they can't do anything to him because they can't get to Lou. And
it doesn't do them any good to do anything to her father, unless she
knows about it first."

"It sounds," Malone said, "as if the USSR is going along the same
confused road as the good old United States."

The Q