Metzger's Dog

18 Chinese Gordon’s bathrobe nearly brushed the floor at Margaret’s feet. It seemed to be wrapped around her twice and cinched tight in the middle, but she still looked like a small child wrapped in a blanket. He knew the next time he put it on he’d be surprised because the sleeves would be rolled up to his elbows.

“Great bathrobe, Chinese,” she said, snatching up as much of the extra cloth as she could and climbing the wooden steps. “But why is everything you own brown? Aren’t you bored?”

“Everything’s not brown.”

“Blue jeans don’t count.”

“Bright colors attract bees. Give me the paper.”

She tossed the thick newspaper on the bed and he picked it up, wrinkling his nose. “Why’s it all wet and slimy?”

“I was trying to teach the dog how to bring it in, but I don’t think he understands it yet.”

“Please don’t say it like that. If you say ‘the dog’ it sounds like it’s our dog. It’s damned well not our dog. Immelmann adopted it, and Kepler is an accessory. It’s—”

“Oh, don’t be so cranky, you baby. Read the funnies.” She disappeared into the bathroom and he heard the shower. Chinese Gordon turned to the classified advertising section and searched.

Business opportunity: Own a restaurant supply business. Easy, convenient terms. Worth ten million, but yours for $619,350.

He smiled as he scanned the pages.

Ultraluxurious condominiums in quiet, secure twelve-million-dollar complex, starting at $619,352.

His favorite was the display for the automobiles:

Overstocked: We’ve got fifteen million dollars in unsold vans! Look at this deal! A custom modified van that’ll blow everything else off the road. License number 619355. The Professor’s Cars. Freeway close, just blocks from ULA.

He sensed another presence in the room behind him and whirled his head to look for the dog, but it was Margaret standing over him, her hair hanging in wet strings that dripped onto his bathrobe.

“That last one is really stupid, Chinese. The others border on the suspicious, but that one is actually childish. Did Immelmann write it?”

Chinese Gordon folded the newspaper and tossed it on the floor. “I wrote it. And it’s not childish, it’s just blatant. You people are all so critical, so eager to deny me my simple pleasures.”

Margaret wrapped the bathrobe around herself more tightly and smirked. “Oh?”

“Not those. I’ve got a strategy, you know. These are not subtle people we’re dealing with. They’re all sitting around a table in Washington or someplace right now taking themselves seriously. It’s my job now to keep them off balance so they don’t decide it would be an acceptable sacrifice to firebomb Los Angeles.”

“Do you honestly think they’ll believe those ads are offers from competitors?”

“Who cares what they think? I’ve got something they want. This is just a way of showing them some price tags.”

“THIS IS ABSURD.” Kearns waved a hand in the direction of the newspaper but made no effort to touch it.

Goldschmidt shrugged. “Of course. But your people haven’t been able to discover who placed the advertisements, have they?”

“It was done by mail—cash, three different post offices all over Los Angeles. The people at the newspaper weren’t suspicious that two of the ads didn’t have addresses or phone numbers. Apparently people do that all the time—just forget. So they assigned each one a box number and expected to hold any inquiries for whoever picked them up.”

“What about the used-car lot?”

“They had no way of knowing it didn’t exist. It could have been new. Hundreds of businesses come and go every year in a city that size, and all most of them can think of to avoid it is put an ad in the paper.”

Porterfield looked around the table. It was the same group as the last time, except this time they had dispensed with the distracting presence of John Knox Morrison. He wished they could have gotten Kearns out of it too. He would add hours to this, and Alice would be waiting at home for the call from Los Angeles.

Pines, the Deputy Director, assumed his earnest expression, his brow furrowed. “As I said at the beginning of this mess, it’s entirely too systematic.”

Kearns snapped, “Actually, I think Goldschmidt said it, and the term wasn’t ‘systematic,’ it was ‘mannered.’”

“Did he? No matter. He was right. These people have rather carefully chosen their adversary. As strange as it seems, they’ve effectively launched a plausible blackmail threat to the Central Intelligence Agency. I’d say that narrows the field to one.”

Goldschmidt shook his head, his eyes wide in a kind of amazement.

Pines held up his hand. “Think about it. The whole operation carried out with such discipline, such planning, but at the same time with excessive and unnecessary firepower. And now there are these ransom messages and bogus bids. As soon as I learned about it a little flag went up, and it said ‘Russians.’”

“Lower the flag,” said Porterfield.

“Not without some evidence. These messages are perfectly in keeping with everything in the Russian psyche—three advertisements instead of one—or none, for that matter. And the way they’re phrased, that whoopee-cushion sense of humor.”

“They’re not Russians,” said Porterfield.

“Why not?” Pines was having difficulty holding his earnest expression, which was not designed for asking questions, so he only looked as though some part of his body hurt.

Goldschmidt answered, “Because if they had the Donahue papers, they’d publish them or read them into the record in the United Nations General Assembly or hand copies of them to every ambassador in Moscow, not try to sell them back for ten or twenty million. All we have to fear from the Russians is that they’ll outbid us.”

“Outbid us? You’re joking.”

“I’m glad you feel that way,” said Goldschmidt. “Now let’s get to work and figure out how to handle the bidding. The main problem—”

“No, that’s not the plan at all. Are you seriously suggesting that the Central Intelligence Agency pay off on a blackmail threat? A threat that the Director feels certain comes directly from the KGB?”

“So that’s it,” Porterfield muttered. “The little flag popped up in the Director’s head, too.”

Pines was in control of his expression again. “We’re not here to consider capitulation. If that’s the impression you gentlemen have, you’re very wrong. We’re here to develop an aggressive strategy that will end this problem.”

Porterfield sighed, but Pines was smiling. “We’ll do what we’ve done for the past thirty years—outmaneuver them. They have something of ours, so we will take something of theirs. The important point is that we must be precise in our response. We must retaliate at exactly the same level as the provocation so that this problem doesn’t escalate. At the end of it we’ll trade evenly. The Director favors the idea of hostages, perhaps three of them. There is a Soviet trade delegation at a computer show in San Francisco that begins next week. Several of the people who have been issued visas are of sufficient rank to be suitable.”

The others sat silent, staring at the table. Porterfield cleared his throat. The others appeared not to notice that it sounded almost like a laugh. Pines ignored it, even when Goldschmidt cleared his throat too.

Porterfield said, “You’ve checked this out with the Eastern Europe desk?”

“Not yet. Of course, we will before anyone does anything. I told you, our response must be delicately tuned to be precisely appropriate to the stimulus.”