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"What is this Atlantis Project?" asked Iggy.

"I don't think it should be discussed here, Anya," Matson said.

"Now, Gerald, don't be ridiculous. Iggy is one of the family, and anyway he'd be the last person in the world to mention it. I think it would be much safer to tell Iggy than have men like this Baker know about it, and perhaps even get into it."

"I don't want it discussed!" Matson said. He decanted a thimbleful of brandy into one of his King Alexander glasses.

"Don't you trust me?" the Count asked. "Me, your own brother-in-law--me, a man who is a victim of the Bolsheviks?"

"Gerald, you're so silly," Anya said. She talked on, and before Matson could stop her she had said, "I think it's the most wonderful idea, to build another underground."

"Shut up!" Matson yelled.

"Come, come," said the Count. "No quarreling. I don't wish to know your secrets, Gerald, if you do not trust me." He poured brandy to the rim of his glass. "I drink to the downfall of the Bolsheviks!"

"To their end," Matson said mechanically, and raised his own glass. It had to come sooner or later, and it was his judgment that the sooner it came the better. It should come before the Reds had atom bombs. To the war! The war would end this constant rasping of his nerves, his worry over money and his future in the Department. The war would eliminate the radicals and emasculate the unions and placate his brothers. The war would give jobs to his in-laws, and eventually send them back to their estates in Russia. For Matson, the war would mean peace.