A matter of time

1975

It began to move. Monday morning Cash called his New York friend.

"Come on, Frank. You owe me. Big. The Jackson brothers last fall? I wore out a pair of shoes on your account. Come on, don't try to snow me. What about that bond-skipper? Branson."

Frank seemed to be a one-way favor man. He argued.

"Hey, I know Rochester's out of town. But it ain't in Poland. I ain't got time-or the evidence-to go through channels. And you're my only connection back there. Why don't you get your state police to check it?"

Frank bitched and moaned. Cash remained adamant, going so far as to show a little temper. "Look, One-way, you owe me clear back to the Gallo War. And you're going to want something again someday."

As soon as the man folded, Cash yelled, "Beth, be a darling and see if you can't get ahold of somebody in Immigration who knows their history and record-keeping."

The woman materialized in his doorway. "The Groloch thing again?"

"Yeah. Still. You look sexy this morning."

"Well. You're getting frisky, old folks. Good weekend?"

"I guess. Matthew turned up. We had a barbecue… Yeah. It was okay. Made it to the ballgame too. I think they're going to start winning, they keep playing that good. What'd you do?"

"Cleaned house and watched TV."

"Thought you and Tony would-"

"He had something else come up."

Cash thought her fiance was a first-class prick. The only time he came round was when he couldn't get screwed anywhere else.

"Beth?"

"Uhn?"

"Oh, never mind. I keep my mouth shut, I won't have to taste my dirty sock."

"Oh." She smiled weakly. "You might as well say it, Norm. Everybody else has. My mother… God. Must've spent an hour yesterday trying to get me to move back home. It don't hurt anymore. Much. I know I'm a fool."

One more minute and the tears would start.

"You deserve better."

Beth was extremely shy, and, apparently, subconsciously convinced that whatever happened to her was the result of her own shortcomings. She was extremely vulnerable to the Tony-type of predator, who knew all the right things to do and all the right things to say to snare the shy ones. He was so arrogantly self-certain that girls like Beth surrendered even while aware of what was happening. The man's complete lack of self-doubt was, even more than his lack of concern for the feelings of others, the reason Cash loathed him. Cash envied that certitude.

He had seen Beth get dumped on before. He had been her crying shoulder more than once. In one way she was right. It was her own fault-because she kept letting it happen.

"Norm, I…" She took a tentative step into his office.

He later suspected that she would have said something important and difficult for her had she been allowed the opportunity.

It had taken her four years to feel safe enough to play their everyday game of office banter, a game she engaged in with no one else.

Hank Railsback shattered the fragile crystal moment.

"Norm, I got it."

Beth closed up like a poppy at sunset.

"What?" Cash snapped. Hank was startled. But only momentarily.

"A whole new angle on your damned Groloch case. I think it's the answer."

"Excuse me," said Beth. "I'll start calling."

Bulwarked by anonymity and long distance, she could sometimes be a dragoness. It was too bad she couldn't live her life via the long lines.

"Thanks, Beth. So clue me, Hank."

"I got the idea watching the Bijou on four Friday night. Know something? I can't even remember the name of that turkey now."

"I don't care what it was."

"You don't have to bite. What it was was, there was this private eye who had a problem something like yours. Couldn't get the facts to add up."

"So?"

"So, in the end, it turned out that the cop who supposedly found the body was really the guy who did it."

Cash raised a hand, asking a chance to think.

He grinned. The rattle of his head machinery must be shaking windows throughout the building.

Of course! Hank had to be right. Or on the right track, anyway. Not once had he bothered counterchecking the evidence itself. Nor had he questioned the reporting officers, nor the evidence technicians, nor the man who had done the autopsy. There was plenty of room for error or outright lying…

"Goddamned, Hank! After all these years I've got to admit I was wrong about you. You just keep your genius hidden. Hey! How much pressure can I put on? Could I use a polygraph?"

A phone rang. Beth, with receiver in hand already and another call on hold, said something neither shy nor ladylike.

"I thought I'd dump it on the inspector's office."

"My ass. This's mine, Hank. You start the ball rolling. Soon as Beth finishes what I've got her on now, I'll have her dig up the names and current shift assignments."

Beth called out, "Your wife, Norm."

"Eh?" He went to take the call at Beth's desk.

"Not that one. The other one. I've got Immigration on hold there."

Cash grabbed the receiver. "Yeah?"

"What happened to the twenty thousand?" Annie asked.

"Huh? What twenty thousand?"

"The counterfeit money O'Brien snatched. I think you said it never turned up. I thought maybe he might have left it at Miss Groloch's."

"She would've gotten rid of it…" The wheels were turning again.

"She hung on to that doll. And she probably wouldn't have known it wasn't any good."

"Could be. Could be. I'll talk it over with John."

Harald had been in and out at start of shift almost too fast for "Hello." He was rushing his legwork because they had a court appearance that afternoon. Cash was to meet him in the civil courts building at one o'clock.

Hopefully, jury selection would be complete and they would spend just the one afternoon testifying.

"Beth, be a doll and, when you get a chance, see if you can get me a meeting with Judge Gardner during lunch."

She sighed into the phone she was holding. "More Groloch?"

"Of course."

"You really should let go."

"Noway. Annie?"

"Patiently waiting."

He couldn't think of a thing more to say. Norman Cash would never win prizes as a phone conversationalist. When on he would speak his message, then wait, first nervously, then impatiently, for the other party to end it. He was completely aware of what he was doing even while doing it, yet could never smooth over with small talk. Even with a wife of half a lifetime.

"Anything else?" he asked, knowing she would resent it, yet totally unable to think of any better course.

"No. Bye then." Her tone was disappointed. It always was. Damned, but he wished he knew how to give her more of whatever it was she wanted. Or that she could understand him a little better.

"Bye." He hung up with the inevitable feeling of relief.

Beth still watched with those big brown eyes. They seemed to stare right down inside to those shadowed parts of his soul that were alien even to him. His own gaze slid away.

Another bad habit. How come he had so much trouble meeting a woman's eyes?

Maybe he was the one who should make an appointment with the departmental shrink.

"Uh… I'm going out. To see O'Brien's sister."

Beth merely nodded. Then, as he was moving out the door,

"Norm, I've got to have your LEA paperwork today."

"Aw, shit. Okay. I'll get it when I get back. Oh. Do me another favor. See if you can track down Tommy O'Lochlain. So I can give him a call."

Beth sighed again. Cash went out thinking he should do something special for her. He had been dumping on her a lot this morning.

Sister Mary Joseph was openly hostile this time around. Cash pretended not to notice. Maybe he should do something for her, too.

"Just a couple questions this time," he said. The answers should have been in the Carstairs file. The lieutenant must have carried on a remarkably narrow or uninformed investigation.

"The day your brother vanished he stole twenty thousand dollars from the people he worked for."

He really needed go no further. Her surprise answered his question before he put it into words.

"I wondered if he'd been home that day? If he had a package or briefcase or anything?"

"Yes. He was there. For half an hour. To change and eat. He'd been away for three or four days. I told you that before. But he didn't bring anything home. I don't think. But I remember he was real happy. Excited."

"Tch. Yeah. Pretty much what I expected." He took a deep breath, plunged. "I'm really sorry about all the trouble I've been. Can I do something, a gesture, you know, to make it up? Maybe have you to dinner some night?"

Damn, it was hard making the feelings translate.

She was surprised. Then a ghost of a smile flickered across her lips. "Thank you. I might take you up on that. Just to get even."

"Well, you're welcome. Annie would love having you. Just give me a call at the station when you make up your mind."

"I will." She reached out and touched the back of his hand. He returned to the station feeling good.

"Mr. O'Lochlain is waiting for you to call him at home," Beth told him, handing him a note. "Your friend from New York called back. He's set it up with the state police, and he'll get back to you in a couple days." She handed him a second note. "I told him to ask them to check back a ways, that we have at least one other crime involving our Groloch here."

"Good thinking. Thanks."

"John called too. He says he'll be getting the texts of those classifieds come lunch, and he picked up the historical research from Mrs. Caldwell." She passed him another note, then a fourth. "Judge Gardner will see you in his chambers. Eleven-thirty."

"Ha! It's moving. Beth, we're closing in. I can feel it."

"Crap, Norm. Bet you dinner-you pick the place if you win-that none of this gets you an inch closer."

"You're on," he replied without thinking,, turning toward his office.

"And get on that LEA stuff. You've only got an hour."

"All right. All right. Why don't they hire somebody to take care of that crap?" Then he muttered, "Christ. Starting to think like a bureaucrat." Paying someone to handle LEA paperwork would absorb half the district's grant, making the whole thing just another exercise in governmental futility.

He whipped through in time by faking half his data. Lieutenant Railsback was supposed to double-check and countersign before sending the stuff on for the captain's signature, but Cash knew Hank would never see it. Beth would forge his John Hancock for him, with his blessing.

Someday they were all going to get their tits caught in the wringer.

"On my way out, Beth." He tossed her the papers. "Don't check them too close."

"Who gives a damn, Norm? They just file them. Remember that bet. I mean to collect."

Railsback shoved in the door. "Oh. Sorry, Norm. Well, I got what you wanted. Captain says we can polygraph everybody who had anything to do with the stiff, long as they're willing. Only, you ain't going to like the arrangements. Says we've got to do it on their time, meaning second shift, which is where most of them still are."

"Gah. Annie's going to love that. When can I start?"

"How about tonight? I want this done with. Oh, one other thing. If you start this, the captain says you have to go with it all the way. Meaning you, the kid, Smith, and Tucholski got to take the test too."

"O joy, O joy. All right. I'll show the troops how. Be the first victim. Beth…"

With one of her long-suffering sighs, she replied, "I'll find the people and set it up, Norm. You want me to call your wife?"

"No. I'll handle that. No point you taking the shit for me. Look, Hank, I got to meet Judge Gardner at eleven-thirty."

"Okay. So go."

"Norm," said Beth, "did you call Mr. O'Lochlain yet?"

"What're you doing messing around with that hood again?"

"Damn. I clean forgot. I'll do it from downtown." Cash patted his pockets to make sure he had his keys and Beth's notes.

"I get tired of explaining about O'Lochlain," Railsback grumbled.

"He said he'd only be there till one."

"Okay. Okay. Bye, all." He sailed down the hall with Hank glaring after him.

He had trouble finding a parking place, so was five minutes late. The judge didn't mind. "They've turned half of downtown into a parking lot the last ten years," the man observed, "and still there's no place to park. I have a theory that says building a parking space spontaneously generates two cars to compete for it. Sit down. Tell me about your case. The girl who called was pretty vague."

Good girl, Cash thought. "Probably nerves. She's shy." He began a quick outline while studying Gardner, whom he hadn't seen for ten years.

The man had aged well. He looked and sounded like a fiftyish Everett Dirksen. The most amazing thing about him, in Cash's opinion, was that he refused to use his bench as a springboard to political office.

Only the unicorn is more rare than the lawyer without political aspiration.

Perhaps it was because he was so controversial. He had as many liberal enemies as he had conservative cheerleaders. And there was some sort of fiscal foul-up in his court which, while due only to clumsy administration, didn't look good in the papers.

"Hold it, Sergeant. Seems to me there was another officer here with the same story a while back."

"My partner. And you turned him down. But there's been a new development." He explained about the counterfeit money and outlined his other plans.

"You're coming out of left field and I think you know it. You want me to let you go looking for the money because you hope you'll find something else. You know perfectly well that anything you found would be constitutionally questionable."

"I know. What I'm really after is a gap in the old lady's story. She knows a lot more than she's telling."

"They all do. That's not the point. To be frank, I think you're getting damned near harassment. I can't do anything the way it stands. Suspicion of possession of counterfeit is a federal thing anyway. And I doubt if they'd be interested. First, statute of limitations. Second, you couldn't pass one of the real bills nowadays."

"Well, if you can't, you can't. Thanks for your time." Cash rose.

"Hang on. First run out your other leads: O'Lochlain; these polygraph interviews. If you come up empty, and only if-no, if you get something supportive, too-call me back. I'll see how I feel about it then. I go by intuition sometimes. But you make damned sure you've tracked that money, that you've eliminated all the other possibilities. You'd better check with the Secret Service, too. See what their attitude is."

"Yes sir."

Cash couldn't help whistling as he waited for a down elevator.

He grabbed a quick lunch at a chili joint four blocks east. His stomach didn't know how to take it. It had grown accustomed to an endless progression of Big Macs. After browsing through a bookstore, picking out a couple mysteries as a peace offering to Annie-he had wanted The Dreadful Lemon Sky, but the clerk told him the paperback wasn't due till September-he called home. Annie was more understanding than he had expected, though still irritated.

"Norm, you're scaring me."

"Eh? Why?"

"Because you're getting so involved in this. Almost obsessed."

"Hey. Not to worry, Hon. We're just getting close. Smelling the kill. Anyway, it's a lot more challenging than your usual family murder or gang killing."

"You're making excuses."

He knew it, and had begun worrying a little himself.

He said good-bye with a smile. She seemed to be having a good day. That was encouraging. She had so few anymore.

"Norm! Hey!"

He was stalking back to the courts building when John hailed him. He waited as Harald and the woman slipped through traffic, jay-walking.

"Hi. You're looking good, Teri." She was. She had turned into a damned sexy woman. He envied John. "I appreciate what you're doing for us. How have you been?"

Trying to cover what he suddenly perceived as a tactical error, John interposed himself and began flashing papers. "Mrs. Caldwell's stuff."

"Jesus."

The woman had done a hell of a job, typing everything up and inserting it into an Accopress binder. It ran more than fifty pages.

"She really must be lonely."

It didn't take much sensitivity to feel the scream for notice implicit in so much hard, unnecessary work. He would have to show his appreciation somehow.

"She is. You got to feel sorry for her. But she comes on in a way that makes you look for excuses to get out."

"I know the type. Lot of old people get that way. You know, we're piling up some debts on this one."

"You are. I haven't been making any friends. In fact, I've about run out of angles."

"Yeah?" Cash grinned. "I'm just getting started. Got so much going today that I won't have time for it all. Been driving Beth crazy."

He glanced at his watch. "Fifteen minutes. And I've still got a call to make." He had come near forgetting O'Lochlain again.

"I'll catch you in the courtroom, then. It's twelve, in Kiel."

"Right. Nice to see you again, Teri." He chuckled as John hurried her away before she could strike up a conversation. She began giving him hell before they were out of earshot.

The Fates were conspiring to make him late today. After finally getting change from the blind couple who ran the courts building canteen, he found the phones tied up. He got through to O'Lochlain barely in time.

"Hey, Rookie. I'd given up on you. I'm on my way to the club now."

Couldn't be too bad, being retired, Cash thought. Phone in his car yet. "I won't tie you up long, Tommy. Remember what we talked about last time?"

"O'Brien?"

"Right. I wanted to go over some things again. Especially the twenty thousand. That ever turn up?"

"No."

"Not even one bill?"

"Not a one."

"How much looking did they do?"

"Plenty. They covered every step he took from the train to the girl friend's house. It disappeared when he did."

It seemed to Cash that, for twenty-thousand 1921 dollars, rough riders like Egan's Rats would not have balked at manhandling Miss Groloch. "Anybody talk to the woman?"

There was a long silence.

"I take it they did. Come on, Tommy. What's to worry now?"

"I wasn't in town, so I don't know the details. The bet was that they got the cash and decided to vacation."

"Who?"

"The two guys they finally sent in a couple weeks later. Only, when they never turned up, they sent a couple more to make sure."

"Four men? You mean a whole gang disappeared there?"

"Five-guys if you count O'Brien. It was so spooky that after that they couldn't get nobody to go ask the questions."

"Four more. Jesus. How come you didn't tell me before?"

"You didn't ask. You got to ask, Rookie. Anyway, you was just interested in O'Brien. Look, we're coming to the club. I got to go."

"Do me a favor. Just one more. Drop me a postcard. Just four names on it. Okay?"

"I'll think about it. Watch yourself, Rookie." He hung up before Cash could respond.

Norman first ascribed the disturbance to the chili. Then he remembered a time when his stomach had felt the same with nothing in it at all.

He was sitting in a peasant shack in eastern France on December 17, 1944, supposedly safely behind the lines. He had been in France just two weeks. Somehow, during the night, he had lost his first patrol and himself. Exhausted, he had decided to hole up till morning before trying to find his unit.

The only evidences of war were an abandoned German field telephone and a tiny wood stove the Krauts had made from a fuel can.

A nagging sound from afar wakened him, a growling, metallic cling with overtones of squeak. Twice he tore himself away from the stove to look out across winter at nothing but skeletal, distant woods. The sky was so heavily overcast that nothing was in the air, and few shadows stalked the earth below. The third time he looked he saw the vague shapes of the winter-camouflaged Tigers and Panthers. The Fifth Panzer Army was on the move.

The feeling was terror. Stark, unreasoning terror.

Five men had vanished without a trace. He and John could have gone the same way…

"Hey, buddy, you going to fart around all day?"

He realized he had been staring into nothing for several minutes, reliving the past. He glanced at his watch. "Shit." He was late already and still had two blocks to walk. "I'm really sorry."

"Yeah. Sure."

The assistant prosecuting attorney scowled as Cash slipped into the pewlike courtroom bench next to John. The man was one of the young firebreathers, bound for political glory. The judge, defense attorney, and court staff barely glanced his way. The jury and other witnesses paid him no heed either.

"Anything happened?" he whispered.

"Still making speeches." John handed him a manila envelope. It contained two-dozen Xeroxes of classified pages, Personals. The key item on each had been circled in red magic marker.

Most began with a cryptic, "Thanks to St. John Nepomuk for favors received," and a date, followed by two or three vaguely religious and completely uninformative lines.

Nepomuk? Wasn't that a Czech saint? Cash asked himself. There was a Czech Catholic church at Twelfth and Lafayette dedicated to him. Why would a German, especially one who showed no religious inclinations in her home, be invoking a Czech saint?

Wait. Parts of Czechoslovakia… the Sudetenland, Bohernia. That had been Hitler's excuse for invading Czechoslovakia-to liberate the German minority. People who spoke German, anyway. In fact, Czechoslovakia as a country only went back to the First World War, didn't it?

What was it before that? Part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But the part called Bohemia had been an independent kingdom once. Prague was the capital. Hadn't there been a Mad King Ludwig once? No, he had been king of Bavaria. Hadn't he? Or was that Leopold? No, that was in Belgium…

There were times when he wished he knew more. About everything.

"The dates are important," John whispered.

Teri had gone to the bother of typing up a catalog list. Most of the dates, the earlier ones, were at regular six month intervals. But since March there had been four, at erratic intervals. Cash reread those ads. He couldn't see where they varied significantly from the others, but their publication seemed timed to his encounters with Miss Groloch.

"How'd she put them in?"

John grinned. "Through her accountants. I did a little number on them this morning. Had to stretch the truth a little and hint that we were on a narcotics case. The boss finally admitted that he got his instructions by phone."

"But she doesn't have one."

"There's an outside pay phone at the service station at Russell and Thurman. Only two blocks. She called the man at home, late at night."

Cash laid a hand on John's arm. Both prosecutor and judge were eying them in irritation. "Later."

He began browsing through Mrs. Caldwell's report, which told him almost nothing he really wanted to know. It was thick because the woman had reproduced the entirety of dozens of letters or diary entries which mentioned the Grolochs only in passing.

During the first few decades, when there had been few neighbors, there seemed to have been a great deal of traffic to and from the Groloch house, mainly the coming and going of tradesmen. Letters of the period remarked on the odd bent of the Grolochs' interests. They were believed to be inventors, working with telegraphy, telephonies, or electricity. But Miss Groloch also seemed immensely interested in things medical.

She received dozens of journals, many from Europe.

Was invention the source of their fortune? Cash wondered. Was he going to have to undertake a stalk through patent records?

There had also been the air of mystery still felt today. Perhaps it had been even stronger then. More than one letter mentioned an irrational dread of the foreigners, who were universally admitted to be perfect neighbors.

Only the Fenian, O'Driscol, seemed to have been comfortable in their presence.

Of the Irishman there was little mention. The man seemed to have maintained a low profile, which fit his hypothetical revolutionary and draft-dodger background. His disappearance had caused so little comment that Mrs. Caldwell hadn't been able to pin down the exact year, let alone a specific date. Sometime in the eighties, probably late.

His departure loomed important only in retrospect, in the minds of a handful of people who had still been around at the time of the O'Brien incident.

Cash penned a marginal note: What was happening in Ireland? The man might have gone home to take part in one of the periodic uprisings.

Then he noted, How has Fial been responding to ads? And, Miss Groloch to take lie detector? Ask Hank about her lawyer.

The departure of Fian, also, had slipped by with little notice, though it was better documented. June 14, 1889, aboard an eastbound train from Union Station. Explanation, a death in the old country, an estate that had to be settled.

Cash made another note: Passport issued? Then, U.S. citizenship?

Suppose the Grolochs were illegals?… No, no leverage there. Every ten years or so Congress passed laws exculpating long-term illegals.

There seemed to have been no animosity toward Miss Groloch during the Great War, either because no one knew of her origins or because St. Louis's vast German community had remained completely, demonstratively loyal despite countless family ties in Europe. There had been little trouble.

Cash closed the folder little wiser. Just with more questions. Always there were more questions.

And don't lose the forest for the trees, he cautioned himself.

Jack O'Brien had a crafty way about him. He kept trying to disappear among the distractions. And he, or whomever the dead man might be, was what this case was all about.

He opened Mrs. Caldwell’s report to the page where he had made notes and added, Any other mysterious corpses on record?

Digging into that ought to keep John busy for a while.

Harald poked him. Everyone was rising. Court was recessing without their having been called to testify.

"Damn," John complained as they departed. "There's tomorrow shot all to hell. Christ, it's hot out here. Hope Carrie bought some beer."

Cash told him of his evening plans.

John was furious. But he didn't say a thing.

Cash brought him up to date on the morning's work. John began to get that hungry hunter look again.

"Maybe it is starting to go. Maybe. You'd better let Gardner know about those four hoods. If we could just jam her into the damned lie detector…"

Cash had a sudden thought. "John. That mailman… let's find out if her mail has changed since we've been pushing her. Also, you might ask your friend if there's any chance of tracking down classifieds from the time when she was having trouble with Carstairs."

The look of the hunter faded. "Norm, this's getting to be a pain in the ass."

"You don't like it, get out and drum up some alternate business. Me, I'm determined to nail this one shut."

"That's what Carstairs was going to do, remember? For eight years."

"Yeah. I remember." And he thought about it all the way back to the office.

XVIII. On the Z Axis;

1973-77;

Homecomings

The most striking thing, Thorkelsen scribbled on his notepad, as the former prisoners descended from the transport- and it is the same every time I come out here-is not their gauntness, nor their confusion about the changes that have taken place in their absence, nor even the mechanical way they greet their families and respond to our questions. It is something I cannot quite put my finger on.

He wrote all his notes longhand, laboriously. His handwriting was so bad even he had trouble reading it if he hurried.

He turned to Cameron, who had been sent down by the Sacramento Union. "They're all the same. You see it?"

The second reporter grunted. "Hunh? Nope. What do you mean?" But he wasn't listening when Thorkelsen tried to explain. He was wondering if he would have time to slip into Frisco and catch a hooker before he had to go home to a wife he detested. The girl named Fay knew exactly how to get the damned thing up, and had the patience to do it right.

"Big ones, little ones, black, white, commissioned or enlisted, they all look like the same guy designed them."

Thorkelsen knew only the air was listening. But he persisted. He could order his thoughts by talking, and might get through just enough to stimulate some sort of insight.

This was his fourth planeload met. He was now certain he lingered on the edge of a story. But the damned puzzle pieces wouldn't fall into place.

"It's not looks, though. They look pretty much alike because they've got to meet the same physical requirements and go through the same training. The pilots, anyway. No, it's something else. Something inside."

There were enlisted men on this flight. Just a handful, but only the second group he had seen.

They were the same too.

"Hey, Bob, I'll catch you later." He had noticed a tech sergeant who didn 't have the nameless air.

"Yeah. Sure." Cameron resumed pursuit of his interrupted fantasy. What Fay could do with her dark little hands smothered in soap lather was a certifiable miracle. She ought to be canonized.

The sergeant's nametag read cantrell, A.O.

"Excuse me, Sergeant Cantrell. Nils Thorkelsen, Fresno Bee. Got a minutel"

The man stopped, but did not reply. He stared through Thorkelsen, did not bother dropping his travel bag.

Thorkelsen tried to explain the feeling he had gotten about the returning prisoners of war, and that he had sensed something unique about Cantrell. "Could you tell me why that is?"

"I'm uneducable."

"Eh? Could you try again?"

"I can't be programmed."

Debatable. The man's a zombie, Thorkelsen thought. He stood as still as death, the weight of his bag unnoticed.

"And the others can be?"

"Yes."

"Have they been?"

"Yes."

A fountain of information here. "How? For what? Would you explain?"

"Brainwashing. The best ever. Their mission is to resume positions in the imperialist armed forces and society, assuming positions of control as available, and await orders. Some will enter business or politics. Most are unaware of their status. They will be activated by a post-hypnotic key at the proper time. One thousand Trojan horses."

Cantrell spoke without emotion or inflexion, as if repeating a message he had often rehearsed for this one telling.

"Not that many prisoners are being returned."

"Some must be retained for other employment."

"How can you tell me this? If the others can't?" There had never been a hint of such a thing, though it was clear the Pentagon was covering something. That, it was pretty clear, was simply a prohibition on discussing maltreatment while interned.

"I couldn't be programmed. They couldn't break me."

Debatable, Thorkelsen thought again. Not much of a man remained here.

He had his major story. A story of the decade. A sure prizewinner.

If it could be proven.

Prisoners of war returned as Communist agents… Nobody would believe it. "How come they let you go, if you're beyond control?"

A frown twisted Cantrell's face. "Bureaucratic error. The kind of screw-up that happens whenever people saddle themselves with the idiocy of a government. I didn't set them straight." He began to show a little animation delivering that remark.

"What do you plan to do with this knowledge?"

"Nothing. I've done it." He seemed puzzled by the question. "You ask. I have to tell. They succeeded that much. I talk. I talk. I talk."

"Shouldn't somebody be warned?"

"Why?"

"I don't understand. Why not?"

"Because I don't give a fuck. The Chinese did this to me. But you put me where they could get their hands on me."

The Chinese? "A pox on both our houses?"

"Yes."

Certain he was interviewing a madman, Thorkelsen shifted his questioning to the mundane. "What're your plans now? What're you going to do with all that back pay?"

"Buy me a guitar."

"Eh?"

"Buy me a guitar. They wouldn't let me have a guitar."

"That's all? That's your only ambition?"

"Yes. It's been six years. I'll have to learn all over again."

Thorkelsen was convinced. This pot wasn't just cracked, it was shattered. Maybe the VA could put the man's head back together again.

"Thanks for your time, Sergeant. And good luck." He was so sure it would draw belly laughs he promptly forgot the whole thing.

It didn't come back to him till, three years later, while working for a Los Angeles paper, he noted an AP wire-service story about a navy captain, ex-POW, who was resigning his commission to run for Congress.

"Hey, Mack," he called to his editor. "You see this about this ex-POW running for Congress in the Florida primary?"

"Yeah. Need more like him. 'Bout thirty of those men in the House, we might start getting this country back to what it's supposed to be."

"I don't know…"

"What do you mean? A few real patriots up there…"

"I mean he might not be a patriot."

"What? After what he went through for his country? The camps, the-"

"Exactly. No, wait a minute. Let me tell you. When I was with the Bee they used to send me to Beale every time a planeload of prisoners came in. The third or fourth time I interviewed this army sergeant. A really spooky guy. He was a nut, but he had a good story."

"Such as?"

"Such as the Chicoms brainwashed all our prisoners before the North Viets returned them. Turned them into agents. He claimed most of them wouldn't even know they were agents till they got their orders from Peking. All they would know was they were supposed to get into important positions in the Pentagon, and in government and business. They were sort of, like, hypnotized as well as brainwashed."

Thorkelsen's editor hailed from Orange County, Bircher country, and could believe in seven more outrageous communist plots before the first edition every morning. And his strongly conservative paper was in dire need of something that would catch the imagination of a predominantly liberal market.

When the man's jaw finally rose and his brain had at last finished pursuing the germs of a hundred new conspiracy theories, he asked, "What about MIAs? Did he say anything about them?"

The man was planning a campaign, Thorkelsen saw. Allegations of a plot wouldn't get him the attention he desired. He had made a career of crying wolf. But an apparent break in the MIA question… that would grab national attention. While he had it, his message could be delivered. The nation could be awakened.

"Find that soldier, Nils!" Mack ordered. And he meant it. "Find him and drain him like a spider would. Every detail. His whole story, from the minute he was captured. You get the name of just one MIA, we can hold the whole world by the nose while we pound it with this other thing."

And for the next hour Thorkelsen endured a harangue damning the eastern Jew liberal press and the investigative reporting that had toppled Richard Nixon. Now those self-righteous hypocrites were going to get a shithouseful dumped right back in their laps.

But Cantrell had left no trail. It took Thorkelsen more than a year to identify and trace his man, now the bass guitarist of an obscure British rock group.

Long before Thorkelsen could make contact, before, even, he had located his man, Mack had begun trying to hype circulation with editorials hinting at a forthcoming blockbuster of a story, one that would send the blade of the guillotine plummeting toward the neck of the left-wing clique destroying the country.

Unfortunately, he named and told too much about Cantrell.

A Chinese agent included the articles in his routine reports. The story took months to percolate through the Peking bureaucracies, but it did, and eventually entered the ken of the man called Huang Hua.

An order for executive action went out immediately. Hua had the confidence of Mao's successor, Jua Kuo-feng, who had an even greater interest in the project than had the Chairman.

A race was on.

And Thorkelsen, plodding along in his spare time, drawn on only by drifty visions of a Pulitzer, convinced he was hunting one crackpot at the behest of another, never knew he was running with other horses.

XIX. On the Y Axis;