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Keller seemed more interested than the others. "What class at Princeton?" he asked.

"Thirty-nine."

"I was twenty-nine myself. Any athletics?"

"No. I went out for freshmen football. Didn't make it. I was on the Pricetonian staff in my last two years."

"I didn't go in much for the literary side myself," Keller said, "but that sort of training is always useful."

Then the questions began, really. Richards wanted to know whether he could explain the functions of the Far Eastern Commission and the Allied Council for Japan. He could, in a general way. Did he know what parallel separated the American and Russian zones in Korea? Jeff recalled it was the thirty-eighth. What was the agrarian policy of the Kuomintang? He stumbled badly on that one.

The Secretary said, "This is like 'Information Please' in reverse. Five men ask one man questions."

Matson took over. What sixteen nations participated in the ERP conferences? Jeff thought he remembered them all. Outline the importance of the Danube to European economy. That was easy. He knew the Danube. He remembered watching the river in brown flood all one day in Vienna in '46, and seeing not one ship pass. He talked of the Danube as a vital artery now strangled by tourniquets of international red tape. He mentioned the Bulgarian fishing fleet, which for three years had been rotting up the Danube, seven hundred miles from its home ports. He noticed that he had captured the Secretary's attention, and that the Secretary made a note on the cover of his cable file.