That statement rocked even Hoddy. Even though he was probably no more than one of Natalenko's little men, he still couldn't help knowing how thoroughly we were screened, indoctrinated, and--let's face it--mind-conditioned. A traitor among us was unthinkable because we just couldn't think that way. The silence, the sorrow, were palpable. Then I remembered, told them, Hickock himself had been a Department man. Stonehenge gripped his head between his hands and squeezed as if trying to bring out an idea. "All right, Mr. Ambassador, where are we now? Nobody who knew could have told the Bonney boys where Mr. Cumshaw would be at 1030, yet the three men were there waiting for him. You take it from there. I'm just a simple military man and I'm ready to go back to the simple military life as soon as possible." I turned to Gomez. "There could be an obvious explanation. Bring us the official telescreen log. Let's see what calls were made. Maybe Mr. Cumshaw himself said something to someone that gave his destination away." "That won't be necessary," Thrombley told me. "None of the junior clerks were on duty, and I took the only three calls that came in, myself. First, there was the call from Colonel Hickock. Then, the call about the wrist watch. And then, a couple of hours later, the call from the Hickock ranch, about Mr. Cumshaw's death." "What was the call about the wrist watch?" I asked. "Oh, that was from the z'Srauff Embassy," Thrombley said. "For some time, Mr. Cumshaw had been trying to get one of the very precise watches which the z'Srauff manufacture on their home planet. The z'Srauff Ambassador called, that day, to tell him that they had one for him and wanted to know when it was to be delivered. I told them the Ambassador was out, and they wanted to know where they could call him and I--" I had never seen a man look more horror-stricken. "Oh, my God! I'm the one who told them!" What could I say? Not much, but I tried. "How could you know, Mr. Thrombley? You did the natural, the normal, the proper thing, on a call from one Ambassador to another." I turned to the others, who, like me, preferred not to look at Thrombley. "They must have had a spy outside who told them the Ambassador had left the Embassy. Alone, right? And that was just what they'd been waiting for. "But what's this about the watch, though. There's more to this than a simple favor from one Ambassador to another." "My turn, Mr. Ambassador," Stonehenge interrupted. "Mr. Cumshaw had been trying to get one of the things at my insistence. Naval Intelligence is very much interested in them and we want a sample. The z'Srauff watches are very peculiar--they're operated by radium decay, which, of course is a universal constant. They're uniform to a tenth second and they're all synchronized with the official time at the capital city of the principal z'Srauff planet. The time used by the z'Srauff Navy."