The aide rose to leave but the President halted him.

"Leave your notes here, please. And don't worry. We're not defenceless."

"Yes sir," said the aide, placing his notes on the President's desk.

When the aide had gone, the President threw the notes into an electric wastebasket by his desk, the basket that assured that no information would leave with the garbage. It ground up the notes with a whir.

Then the President left his office and went to his bedroom. From the top bureau drawer, he removed a red telephone and lifted the receiver.

Before one ring completed itself, the call was answered.

"We're on it," came the voice.

"The California thing?"

"Yes."

"That was fast," the President said.

"It has to be," the voice answered.

"These people, whoever they are, could trigger a disaster," the President said.

"Yes, they could."

"Are you going to use that special person?"

"Is there anything else, Mr. President?"

"Well, I wanted to know if you're going to use him?"

"It wouldn't do you any good, sir, to know. You might be tempted to look for his picture in crowds if the newspapers should have something to photograph out there."

"Suppose you use that person and lose him?" the President asked.

"Then we lose him."

"I see."

"If it would make you feel any better, sir, I think we have a good line on this thing. The perpetrators are dead meat."

"Then you will use him?"

"Good night, Mr. President."

The phone clicked and the President returned the telephone to the bureau drawer. As he covered the phone with one of his shirts, he wondered what that special person's name was.

CHAPTER THREE

His name was Remo and he had not read more than one of the geology books shipped to him at the hotel in St. Thomas. He had not looked at the scale models of California's crust for more than five minutes, and he had paid no attention at all to the tutor who had thought he was explaining faults and earthquakes to a salesman newly hired by a geological instruments' company.