Forbidden Area

Seven

WHEN SMITH awoke Saturday morning he yawned, stretched, and saw that Phil Cusack was sitting on the other bed, watching him. Cusack was dressed in his best blues, and was wearing his peaked cap. Smith guessed that Cusack had been sitting there for some time, hoping he would awaken. “Say, Stan,” Cusack said, “you know I got cleaned in that game last night.”

“Told you to get out when you were ahead. Table stakes is for men, not boys.”

“How much did you win, Stan?”

“I don’t know. Forty-fifty maybe.”

“How about lending me a couple of bucks? I’ve got my twenty-four-hour pass for Orlando.”

“How much do you owe me now?”

“Twenty-five.”

Smith sat up. “Okay, I’ll let you have another ten. Hand me my wallet. There, on that table.”

Cusack brought the wallet. “Stan,” he said, “I borrowed one of your ties.”

“That’s okay.”

“Stan, do you know you’ve got five coffee jars stacked up in your closet? I thought you ought to…” Cusack stopped. Stan’s face suddenly was like gray stone. “I thought you ought…”

“What about those thermos bottles?”

“Nothing. Except last night Ciocci was beefing. Says he’s shy five thermos bottles because they got lost with them aircraft and now he doesn’t have enough. Maybe I ought…”

“Shut up!”

“I was only going to say maybe I ought to take them back to the kitchen for you.”

“Oh.” Smith forced himself to relax. “You don’t have to worry about it, Phil,” he said. “I’ll take ’em back when I go to work tonight. Only thing is, I don’t like anybody messing around in my closet. You know that, don’t you?”

“Sure, I know it. I was just borrowing that tie.”

Smith opened his wallet and brought out two tens, and handed them to Cusack. “Here’s a little extra dough,” he said. “You’ll need it.”

“Thanks, Stan,” Cusack said, grinning. “Say, you know any girls in Orlando?”

“A few. Why?” He wished Cusack would hurry up and get out.

“I just wondered whether maybe one of your girls wouldn’t know a girl?”

Smith realized that the situation had to be handled. It was necessary that Cusack get off the base, and necessary that he forget all about those thermos bottles in the closet. The way to make him forget was get him a girl. There was only Betty Jo, and Betty Jo wouldn’t go for Cusack. But Betty Jo would know plenty of other girls, and maybe she could find one of about Cusack’s age. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Phil. I’ll give you a note to my girl. Name’s Betty Jo Atkins. Works at the Sea Trout. She’ll get you fixed up.”

Smith got out of bed, found a pad of Air Force stationery, sat down at the table, and wrote the note: “Dear Betty Jo—This will introduce my roommate, Phil Cusack. He’s a good kid. Wants a date. Take care of him, will you? Love, Stan.”

He slipped the note into an envelope, wrote her name across the face of it, and handed it to Cusack. “She gets off work at five. You know where the Sea Trout is, don’t you?”

“Sure. Thanks a million, Stan.” While Cusack was trotting down the steps of Barracks 37, whistling, he unfolded the two tens. They were new bills, but Stan’s fist had crushed them into a moist, twisted knot. Stan was a wonderful guy, all right, but about some things he sure was funny. 2

Clint Hume was back in time for a late breakfast, as he had promised. He showed up at the Gresham house with Red Gresham, his aircraft commander, shortly before eleven. The long-range search had been back since nine, but de-briefing had required almost two hours. It had been difficult to determine what the electronic eyes of the B-99’s had seen, if anything.

Katharine and Jesse and Margaret Gresham were waiting, sipping orange juice and listening to the radio in the kitchen. Jesse was contemplating, aloud, a peculiar facet of American manners. In times of tension and crisis people kept their radios going all day and most of the night, to the neglect of television. He rarely had been out of earshot of a radio for the whole week. People knew, instinctively, that a radio program could and would be interrupted for a news flash. It was different with television, which might be showing a film at the moment, or be engrossed with an expensive and complex dramatic production or situation comedy which on no account must be blighted by a news bulletin.

Clint Hume and Gresham, heavy-eyed and unshaven, sat down at the table and Gresham nodded at the radio and said, “What’s the news?”

Jesse laughed. It was easy for a man to lose his perspective in their business. He said, “Red, if there’s any really important news in the world it’s probably right in your head.”

“Not mine,” Gresham said. “Clint’s. Unless he had spots in front of his eyes. He can’t seem to make up his mind.”

Clint Hume said, “We’d been more than halfway to Europe, and were coming back when I picked up what looked like a whole fleet of ships on my screen. Fringe area. Just when the pips came into the hundred mile circle, they disappeared. Just faded away. Never saw anything like it before.”

“How many pips?” asked Jess.

“Oh, more than a dozen. About nine hundred miles due east of New York. I don’t know whether it was some freak reflection, or what. That’s what I can’t make up my mind about.”

“Anybody else see them?”

“No. We had the northeast quadrant and they all seemed to be in our sector. That’s the trouble. Anyway, we sent on the sighting to Washington, followed by a question mark.”

The music on the radio faded away, and an announcer’s voice said: “We interrupt this program for an important news bulletin. Radio Ankara has just announced that it has learned, from a reliable diplomatic source, that two well-known marshals of the Red Army and an admiral of the Red Navy have been executed. Marshals Jullnick and Kuznoff, and Admiral Zubarov were arrested on November fifteenth, secretly tried as enemies of the state, and shot in Lubianka Prison, according to the official Turkish radio. There has been no confirmation of this report from Moscow. The Associated Press and United Press have received no dispatches from their correspondents in Moscow for the past twenty-four hours, indicating that a most rigid censorship has been imposed. For further developments, keep tuned…”

Margaret Gresham turned down the radio’s volume and asked, “What’s it mean?”

Red Gresham smiled and said, “Sounds like everything’s S.O.P. in Russia.”

Katharine Hume frowned, wondering how a military purge fitted into the Soviet puzzle, and traced watery circles on the yellow plastic tabletop with the tips of her fingers.

Jesse Price said what he was thinking, “Wish Clark Simmons were here to tell us.” 3

Clark Simmons believed he knew what was going on, and theoretically he was in the spot where his knowledge could do the most good, except that it was a Saturday, with only one more shopping day until Christmas. Simmons was one of eight men around a conference table in the office of the Under Secretary of State in Washington. The conference was considering two cables just decoded. One, from the embassy at Ankara, gave the source of the report of the purge. An economic advisor in the Russian consulate-general in Istanbul, enamored of a Turkish girl, had refused to return to Moscow when ordered. He had sought and received the protection of the Turkish government, and in return told what secrets he knew. The other cable came from Moscow. The Russian government would not discuss the purported death of Marshals Jullnick and Kuznoff, and Admiral Zubarov. It was true that the men had not been seen in Moscow for two months, nor had their names been mentioned in the press.

Clark Simmons had not yet attempted to voice his opinion. Since his judgment, at the moment, was being questioned in the Department, he was hoping that one of the others would broach what he had in mind. It would be best if he supported a theory, rather than advanced one. But nobody was seeing it his way, and finally he knew he must speak. “All of you seem to believe that this shows further weakness in the regime,” he said. “I disagree. I have had some dealings with Jullnick and Zubarov. Kuznoff I never met. Jullnick and Zubarov, on the whole, struck me as moderate men. At a time when Stalin and Molotov were hostile without any reservations, they were as friendly as they dared be. When the great thaw came, they supported our efforts towards full inspection of atomic armaments. It is my opinion that some momentous decision, of which we know nothing, was taken around the middle of November. These three men were not politically ambitious. They had no connection with the conduct of international affairs on the highest level. They were concerned strictly with military matters. So their disagreement must have concerned military action.”

Walter McCabe, the Special Assistant for Eastern Europe, challenged him. “Simmons, we’re all aware of your belief that war is imminent. You’re just twisting the facts to fit your theories. Look at the record. The Soviet Union is always least aggressive after some internal eruption like this. Look what happened after Stalin’s big Army purge. He appeased Hitler. What happened after Stalin died, after Beria was executed, after Malenkov was deposed? Periods of sweetness and light. Takes ’em time to shake down after one of these purges. I think we can rest easy for a while.”

“Rest easy?” Simmons asked. “May I quote a bit of Lenin. The soundest strategy in war is to postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy makes the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and easy.’”

McCabe leaned across the table, angry. “I’m not morally disintegrated!”

“When you rest easy you are,” Simmons said. “And what about SAC? How do you think the morale is in SAC today?”

“I think you’re in over your head,” McCabe said.

The under secretary looked at his watch. He was already late for another conference, and he had promised his wife, whom he hardly remembered having seen all during the week, that he would take the afternoon off and help with the last-minute shopping. How could she be expected to select presents for some of his government friends whom she didn’t even know? The under secretary said, “Well, it’s an enigma. We’ll just have to wait and see.” He was usually an optimistic man, but at this moment he felt disturbed, inwardly. Every conference on Russia seemed to end with him calling it an enigma. This was hardly an original description, but what else was there to say?

“And another thing,” said Simmons, with a desperation apparent to all of them. “Why have they stopped all outgoing press messages—stopped them completely? That sort of thing hasn’t happened for many, many years. It’s something new, and to me very ominous.”

He looked around the table. The others were rising. McCabe had already drifted away. The under secretary said, “Sorry Simmons,” and turned his back. There was always so much to do, in the Department, and always so little time, particularly on Saturdays, and the worst Saturday of all was the Saturday before Christmas. 4

The matter of time concerned Jesse Price also. He wasn’t seeing Katy Hume often, and when he did see her someone else was always present. What did a man do when he loved a woman, and she him, and both believed their personal world might very well end in less than forty-eight hours? The only sensible thing was to take her away to the safest possible place and enjoy what hours remained. Habit would not permit this. When a department store is bankrupt or a newspaper suspends, the clerks remain at their counters and the reporters at their typewriters until the last bell rings, or the last edition is off the press, although they know their presence is of no possible use to anyone. It is simpler and more comforting that way, for it is habit, even though it enjoys the loftier name of duty. So Jesse Price, when breakfast was done, drove Clint Hume back to the BOQ and then returned to the administration building to see whether Buddy Conklin had any odd jobs for him to do.

Conklin was back at his old desk in the commanding general’s office, and the whole wing of the building seemed subtly different. The atmosphere of high command, with its tensions, was missing. The only star on the base rode Conklin’s shoulder. Conklin called, “Major Price.” Jesse walked over to his desk.

“You never checked out in multi-engined jets, did you, Jess?” Conklin asked.

“I’ve never even flown a jet trainer.”

“Too bad. We could use even one-eyed pilots for ferry duty today.”

“What’s up? Where’s all the brass?”

“Two more Nine-Nines blew out of Texas this morning. By tomorrow night we’re scheduled to bring in reserve aircraft from Arizona and New Mexico.”

“The General’s grounded the Nine-Nines?”

“No. Not yet. He’s on the way to Washington to fight it out. I think he’s beginning to believe in your theory that grounding the Nine-Nine is what the enemy wants. Can’t say that I do. Those two in Texas today—after tearing apart every aircraft in SAC, after all the security. I’ll tell you, Jess, I’m shook. I’ve lost five aircrews out of my division already. That’s enough for me. I hope I never have to ask another man to climb into a Nine-Nine. Not until I know what’s wrong.”

Momentarily, Jesse Price felt a sense of failure, but this was displaced and overwhelmed by the realization of what his intervention with Keatton—others would call it meddling—had accomplished. As certainly as if he had lined them up against a wall and shot them, he was responsible for the death of fourteen airmen that morning. Had it not been for him, the two aircrews out of Texas, had they been up at all, would have been flying in the proved 47’s and 52’s. “If I’ve been wrong—” he whispered, not to Buddy Conklin, but to himself.

Conklin read what he was thinking, accurately. “Don’t ride it, Jess. That pressure bomb idea sounded like the answer to me when I heard it. Just didn’t pan out. Anybody can look good by keeping his mouth shut. Now snap out of it!”

Jesse turned away. It was going to be tough, living with himself, living by himself. If he had been wrong, he no longer would be welcome in this Air Force, or perhaps anywhere.

“Major Price!”

Jesse straightened and faced the desk. “Yes, sir.”

Conklin’s face was bleak, the freckles standing out like orange stains on blank white paper. “Major, you have been assigned to temporary duty on this base and by God I’ve got plenty of duty to do, without time off for mental flagellation or self-pity. My exec is a pilot. I need him on the ferry run. You will relieve him for the time being. Find me some more ferry pilots. Get ’em out of spare crews, wing staffs, anywhere. Arrange for their transportation west. And now.”

“Yes, sir,” Jesse said, his mind working again. Work was what he needed, lots of work. And he knew he still had at least one friend on the base—the commanding general. 5

Phil Cusack waited until after the lunch-hour rush was over before he entered the Sea Trout Restaurant. Five or six waitresses were trotting around, all dressed in sea-green uniforms and hats. He tried to guess which one was Stan Smith’s girl. He couldn’t. To Phil, a shy boy who had never been successful with girls, they all seemed equally pretty, voluptuous, and unattainable. There was an older woman behind the cashier’s counter. He waited for a moment when she was unbusy, and then approached the counter and said, “Is Betty Jo Atkins here?”

The cashier nodded towards the rear. “Last three tables.”

Cusack walked back there, picking out the last girl, admiring her wide hips and heavy, round breasts. In his part of West Virginia, she was the type of girl that men fought over. He caught her attention and said, “Are you Betty Jo?”

“Yes.” She appraised him. He was probably the boy who had left his suitcase in the car. If so, he was lucky. Stan had forgotten to take the suitcase back to the base with him and so she had put it in the luggage compartment of the car, thinking that if Stan didn’t come for it she would take it out to Hibiscus. He had never allowed her to drive him out to the base. He claimed the Air Force didn’t like it. She had never seen the base, and the suitcase might be a good excuse for her to go out there.

“I’m Stan’s roommate. I’ve got a note for you.”

She accepted the envelope eagerly. Probably Stan had got off somehow, or changed his duty hours again, and would be in to see her tonight. It would be awfully lonely, the whole weekend without him. She read the note, her face showing disappointment.

“Gee, I hope it’s not too much trouble,” Cusack said.

She glanced at him again. He was no dream boat. His face was blemished and he had cut himself shaving. He wasn’t old enough to have rank, money, or experience. She would bet he didn’t even have a car. She looked around the room. Two other girls, moving in the short, skipping steps a waitress uses to skirt tables and maintain balance, were watching her, and appraising the boy. “You know this is Saturday night,” she said. “Most of the girls are all dated up Saturdays. They’ve all got steadies.”

“Oh,” he said. That was all, really, he had expected.

“Tell you what,” she said, thinking that she ought to make some effort or it might displease Stan. “I’ll ask around. I’m off at five. You come back here then and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Sure,” Cusack said. “Thanks a lot. I’ll be back here at five.” He left the restaurant and walked slowly towards the center of town. Christmas decorations were strung over the streets. People were fighting their way into the stores like stuff was being given away. Women hurtled into him, and jostled him, and jammed packages into his ribs. He felt lonely, an outsider. He hadn’t bought any Christmas presents for anyone, and he was sure nobody back home had bought any for him. But there’d be quite a Christmas at the base, with a tree in the gym. It’d be the biggest Christmas he had ever seen. He found refuge in the first movie he saw, chewed licorice, and waited for the hours to pass. Since it was Saturday the theater was full of kids, and was showing a Western and a comedy. Phil, hunched back, watched the screen, but he really didn’t absorb what was going on, nor was he disturbed by the kids around him, their holiday excitement bursting out in horseplay and giggling. He was dreaming of a girl, a waitress in a sea-green dress—any one of them would do.

When Betty Jo Atkins left the Sea Trout at five, Phil was waiting for her on the pavement outside. She said, “I’m sorry, but all the other girls are busy tonight.”

“Thanks for trying,” he said. He felt awful. Somehow, he had built up the idea that she surely was going to get him one of the girls.

Betty Jo was surprised by the impact of her words. He looked pathetic. She really ought to do something for him, it being just before Christmas and everything. She could ask him to her house. There wasn’t anything wrong in that, was there? Stan couldn’t very well get sore. Besides, this boy’s company was better than no company at all. Saturday nights were for fun. “Phil,” she said, “how would you like to come out to my house for dinner?”

“I’d like to,” he said.

“Car’s parked around the corner. Can you drive?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, let’s go.” She took his arm. He was somebody to talk to, anyway. He could be worse. 6

After the lodge was in order, Raoul Walback checked what he now called the “survival list” with his mother. He had been able to convince her of the necessity of leaving for Front Royal largely, he felt, because she was a compulsive shopper. Henrietta went on buying sprees the way some people went on alcoholic binges, and often for the same reason, boredom. Her closets were filled with dresses she had never worn, and she collected shoes the way a lifelong philatelist buys stamps. She was a devotee of auctions, and fancied herself an expert on Oriental rugs and English bone china. As a result, the house on Massachusetts Avenue, except for Raoul’s bedroom and study, was slowly but inexorably solidifying, like the dreary interior of a museum.

Flight to Front Royal gave Henrietta a valid excuse for wholesale buying, far beyond the necessities Raoul had contemplated. While she didn’t really believe it was necessary to leave Washington, it was an exciting game. She said nothing to her friends, except to cancel her engagements. She maintained this extraordinary silence only because she didn’t wish to expose herself, and Raoul, to ridicule. She embarked upon the game with the same enthusiasm as when planning a large dinner party. On Thursday she had sent a preliminary load to Front Royal with the chauffeur, thereby salvaging the family plate, a magnificent service of flat silver, and objets d’art which she judged would have value, no matter what the future. She raided an expensive Connecticut Avenue food store, buying tinned hams, imported cheeses, chutney, olive oil, dates, English toffee, and teas and Bovril by the case.

Henrietta was sorry about the Hume girl. Raoul had told her that Katharine had decided, at the last minute, that her place was with her brother in this time of danger, and so the Hume girl had not come to Front Royal, but gone to Florida. Henrietta didn’t believe Raoul had told her all the truth. But if the Hume girl was too stupid to appreciate Raoul’s offer of their safe haven in the mountains, then she was too stupid to be Raoul’s wife.

Now, in Front Royal, Henrietta discovered discrepancies in Raoul’s list of staples. He had forgotten, of all things, soap powder and detergents. How on earth could he expect her to have the laundry done unless she had soap powder? Neither had he considered a reserve supply of dust clothes, dish towels, furniture and silver polish, and roach powder. She detested bugs and she knew the old lodge. It would be overrun. And somehow she simply had to find a maid.

So on Saturday afternoon Raoul had driven to Winchester, where there were larger markets, to supplement their purchases. While he was loading the grocery cart with soap powder, he noticed a man whose face was familiar plucking jars of condiments from the fancy food shelves. The man was buying enough pepper, relish, mustard pickles, and horseradish to last a family for a year. Raoul was sure he knew this man, knew him from Washington, had chatted with him at diplomatic parties. The man bent over to inspect a lower shelf, and his posture stimulated Raoul’s memory. It was Svirski, First Secretary at the Polish embassy. Svirski, he remembered owned a summer cottage near Riverton. But this was not summer, not the season for the diplomatic colony to be stocking its country house larders. Svirski had remained eight years in his post in Washington despite the periodic purges within the Polish government. After Raoul had paid for his purchases and a boy had carried them to his car, Raoul considered Svirski’s presence and his actions. Then Raoul went back into the market and bought an extra supply of salt and pepper. It was going to be a long winter. Svirski was no fool, and neither was he. 7

Stephen Batt usually spent his Saturday afternoons in the garden of his house on the Severn. The house was old-fashioned, with frame wings and extensions tacked on to the central brick nucleus which had been built by his grandfather, the Admiral. Steve himself had converted the cellar into a game room and home workshop. On this Saturday, instead of rooting in the garden, he worked in the cellar.

From the sounds that came from down there, you would think he was tearing the house apart. Before dinner, Laura, his wife, decided to go down cellar to see what he was doing. Her first impression was that he was tearing the house apart, or at least he was digging at its foundations. Batt was wearing old suntan trousers, souvenirs of the South Pacific, now grimy to the hips. He had been wielding a pick and shovel. In the center of the game room rose a pryamid of stones and dirt. In the game room wall was a dark hole, or tunnel. Her husband obviously had just crawled out this hole. Laura asked, “Have you gone mad?”

“It’ll hold four of us,” Steve said, rubbing his arm across his face.

“It’ll hold four of what?”

“People. You, me, and the boys.” The Batts had two sons, four and seven.

“Why should it hold us? What are you planning to do, bury us all alive?” Laura was not actually alarmed. Steve was the most sensible of men. Still, it was most unusual that he should be tunnelling under the house without telling her about it first.

“Now just a minute, dear,” Steve said. “Let me explain.” She had been in Crabtown, on a last-minute Christmas shopping expedition, when he returned from Washington at one o’clock. He had immediately gone down cellar and started digging, and had become so engrossed in the excavation that he had forgotten both the time and Laura, and hadn’t heard her re-enter the house. “You’ve heard about the Civil Defense recommendations, haven’t you?” he asked. If he put it on that basis she might not get too excited.

“What’s Civil Defense got to do with you ripping out that lovely panelling?”

“You know. Civil Defense recommends that every home have a shelter with three feet of solid earth over it. Protection against fallout. I thought that with just a little effort I could dig us a real shelter.”

She said, “I think you really are mad! A few years ago when things were critical, before all the conferences and everything, you never paid any attention to Civil Defense. I was the one who talked about a shelter then. Now, all of a sudden, you’re behaving like a mole. What is it, Steve?”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

She walked across the room and put her hand on his arm and said, “Steve, what are you driving at?”

“I thought we’d better have a shelter, that’s all. Isn’t safe, being so close to Washington and Baltimore. With a north wind we’d even get fallout from New York and Philly.”

She examined his face to see what he was thinking. He never could hide his feelings from her. Then she asked the question, hating it: “Steve, you think there’s going to be a war, don’t you? Real soon.”

It was necessary that he tell her. Secrecy be damned. Her life, and the lives of their sons, depended on her knowing, preparing. “In my best judgment,” he said, “I believe there will be war. However, I hope I am wrong. My best judgment does not coincide with that of my superiors.” There had been serious conferences in the Navy’s corridors in the Pentagon that morning. The Navy admitted it was worried. It was worried about the dozen pips that had appeared, and then vanished, on the radarscope of one of the Air Force bombers dispatched on long-range search the night before. The Navy was concerned about the Marine private’s story of a landing on the coast, and by the unmistakable sighting of a submarine in the Gulf.

Yet for all these things there could be logical and innocuous explanations, the Navy had recognized. SAC’s radarmen were trained to seek out enemy cities, not identify submarines from the bright pips on their screens. It could have been malfunction of the radar set, or freak skip waves called the Heaviside Bounce, which sometimes causes a radarman to see an object two thousand miles distant as if it were right under his nose. And these so-called submarines had vanished immediately. Batt had pointed out that a flotilla of submarines, cruising at night on the surface, would have its radar operating, and would instantly dive at the approach of aircraft believed hostile, or merely inquisitive. Still, the Navy was skeptical. The international situation had often been more critical, and there had just been another purge in the Soviet high command. As to the Marine’s story, it was just too fantastic. It was the opinion of elderly admirals that this young Marine had found himself in an awkward position with the girl’s family, and that he and his girl had concocted the tale to appease an angry father. True, the story had been accepted by a senior captain at Mayport, but nothing ever happened at Mayport, and unconsciously, perhaps, the captain welcomed a little attention and excitement.

The Navy had agreed, however, to delay the sailing of Coral Sea to the Mediterranean. A change in the carrier’s loading was ordered. A group of fighter planes, just taken aboard, was ordered back to Mainside. It was being replaced by subhunting helicopters and dive bombers. By nightfall the Coral Sea would sortie, steam northeast, and receive additional orders at sea. In addition the hunter-killer task force, scattered over a tremendous area in the Gulf, was ordered to rendezvous near Key West. These concessions Steve Batt, backed by Admiral Blakeney of the Eastern Sea Frontier, had won.

“But you do believe it, don’t you?” Laura insisted, watching his eyes.

“Yes, I do.”

“All right, Steve,” she said. “You keep right on digging. I’ll start clearing away this mess.”

She went to work with shovel, bucket, and broom. He went back into his tunnel. He was thinking ahead, telling himself he would have to accumulate much new lore within the next forty-eight hours. Who would determine the amount of radioactivity sustained in Annapolis, the power and type of bombs used? What would be safe to eat and drink? If radioactive debris fell on the car, would it be safe to drive it afterwards? What would they do if the bombs had a U-238 casing? Or cobalt? Who would know? Who would tell them? Who would be left? Steve Batt, so aware of dangers to the national entity, had forgotten to learn the rules for personal survival. No one, he suspected, could truthfully say that the Civil Defense rules would be of any real use, but at least it would be best to know them. Such rules were like an untested parachute. The parachute might not work, but if you had to jump, it was the only chance you had. 8

All that Saturday morning, and most of the afternoon, Felix Fromburg had been pounding questions at Robert Gumol in a hotel room in Havana. Now, at last, he reckoned that Gumol was weakening. As was inevitable in any lengthy interrogation of a man concealing truth, Gumol had contradicted himself, become flustered, and finally admitted lying. It was true, he confessed, that he had undertaken certain commissions for the Soviet government. Harmless ones, of course, all many years before. He talked for a long time about the financial problems of the U.S.S.R. prior to recognition by the United States in 1933.

Fromburg pressed him. Yes, Gumol said, he had received certain fees from the Russian embassy since that period. Very small, really, in comparison with his total income, and all reported in his tax statements. Perhaps he had forgotten to list the source, but the fees were there. Fromburg should remember that Russia had been an ally. Was it not correct to accept commissions from an ally?

Fromburg demanded details. What kind of services had Gumol performed? Was he paid in cash or by check? When he said the fees were small, did that mean in hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands? And, finally, was Gumol registered as an agent of a foreign power, as the law required?

Gumol said, “I don’t think I want to discuss such a question without advice from my attorney.”

Felix knew, then, that Gumol had succeeded in hanging himself. He stood up, and lifted his tired arms, and stretched. “Mr. Gumol,” he said, “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to ask Lieutenant González to hold you on an open charge until I can have you extradited for violation of federal statutes requiring registration of those receiving pay from a foreign power. But that isn’t quite all. Then I’m going to trot over to the Associated Press office. I know one of their correspondents here. I’m going to tell him what I’m doing, and tell him how you were rolled for three hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars. It’ll be pretty big news in Philadelphia, and in Washington too, and maybe in Moscow.”

Gumol’s face, which during the day had grown progressively grayer and more unhealthy, now became veined and brick red. He gripped the arms of his chair, leaned forward, and shouted, “You can’t do that!”

“I can, and I will. There’s no question that you’ve violated a federal law. Maybe several.”

“You don’t know what this would mean to me!”

“I think I do. It’d insure quite a reception committee, wouldn’t it? Led by your wife. Of course, once you’re back in Pennsylvania no doubt you can get out on bond. Then what’ll happen to you, Mr. Gumol?”

Gumol’s heavy shoulders weaved. His mouth hung open but he seemed unable to speak. Once Fromburg had witnessed a bullfight in Mexico City, and when the bull was all in, its legs spread, horn-heavy, bleeding, beat, ready for the moment of truth, the bull had looked something like Gumol.

“You won’t last long, will you, Mr. Gumol? They’ll kill you quick.”

Gumol held out his hands. They were clammy as soft clay, and shaking. “Listen, mister, all I want to do is save my life.”

“You know how you can do it, don’t you?”

Gumol’s lips moved, but no words came out.

Felix said, “That was Russian money, wasn’t it? You stole it, didn’t you? Probably had it in a box in your bank, right? Did you leave any, Gumol? It won’t be hard to check, you know.”

Gumol coughed and held his hand to his neck, and when he spoke his voice sounded half-strangled, as if he had swallowed a drink and fluid had gone into his windpipe. “Yes, it was Russian money, but you don’t understand, mister. This thing is big. I guess I’m in deep. If you’ll just promise me—”

Felix was a man of much inner calm, a characteristic which had advanced him in his profession, but for the first time in years he lost control of himself, and the situation. For the first time in his life he felt impelled to kill. He stretched out his hands close to Gumol’s throat. “You son of a bitch, you tub of rancid lard,” he said, “what did you do to rate that much money?”

“I didn’t do anything. I swear it. It wasn’t me.”

“Then who was it? And what did they do?”

Gumol’s chin fell on his chest, his head wavered, but he could not seem to speak.

Felix had to say it, his voice like an icicle held at the man’s throat. “Mr. Gumol, I think you know something that is going to happen. If anything does happen, if it happens before you come clean, I can promise you this—I don’t know where the first shot will be fired, but the second one will be right into your fat gut.”

Gumol’s face changed color again. From brick red it faded to gray, and then to chalk white and when he spoke he strangled again, and he had difficulty speaking, as if he breathed off the top of his chest and had little breath for words. “All right… . I’ll tell you about it. Remember it was me who told you… they’re blowing up the bombers… . There are four of them in this country… I mean the United States. I met one… his name… his name is—” Gumol’s hands lifted and crept up across his stomach as if to hold in pain. “Smith—” He gasped. “The others are…” Gumol’s chin fell again. He seemed, indeed, to be looking down at his stomach, open-mouthed in astonishment. But he kept on leaning forward until he rolled off the chair onto the floor. He choked, his hands clawed at his throat, saliva appeared at the corners of his mouth, his legs kicked with unexpected force. He relaxed, still. Long before the doctor reached the room, Fromburg knew that Gumol was dead.

To the doctor, a North American, it was very simple. “Classic coronary type,” he said. “They come to Havana to live it up. They live about two years in two days and kick off. What’s he been up to for the last two days?”

“Nothing,” Felix said. “He hasn’t even been talking very much.”

“Well,” said the doctor, “it’s a wonder he lived as long as he did. Should’ve been dead a couple of years ago.”

It wasn’t that simple for Fromburg. He had everything—and he had nothing. Perhaps Gumol had left some useful documents or records at the bank, but he doubted it. And why did the man’s name have to be Smith? What Smith? Where? There were no scrambler lines out of Havana, so Felix was forced to telephone, in clear, from his own room. Since it was Saturday afternoon, only a few people, and none in authority, were on duty in counter-espionage. They promised to relay his information to someone who knew more about this Gumol matter, and send special agents from the Philadelphia office over to the bank. It seemed far-fetched that a suburban banker would know anything about sabotage of the B-99 bombers, but the Air Force would be alerted nevertheless. It was a shame that Fromburg’s information was not more specific.

Felix called at Havana police headquarters, and at the embassy, which would have the duty of notifying Gumol’s family, and arranging for shipment of the body back to Upper Hyannis. He returned to the hotel and packed his bag. Perhaps he had failed. Perhaps he should have been more observant of the man’s condition, and been easier on him. Yet on the whole he felt he had done all he could. Late that night he boarded a plane back to Washington. At least he would be with his family before Christmas, and with them face what was to come. He had called Sarah, and told her to load up the car, and be ready to leave when he got home. 9

Phil Cusack thought that Betty Jo Atkins’ house was really something, much nicer than the house of any girl he had known in Morgantown, and infinitely cleaner and more luxurious than his own family’s unpainted two-story frame packing-case, with its torn green shades, uncarpeted, gritty flowers, junk furniture, and primitive bathroom. Betty Jo’s living room was furnished in modern, just like the quarters of the married officers on the base. Betty Jo had a fascinating lamp, shaped like a black leopard standing on its haunches, and the shade was painted like a tiger’s skin. She had a combination television set and record-player. She had everything. Stan Smith was a lucky man to have her.

She could cook, too. She cooked a Hungarian goulash better than any he had ever tasted at a hunyak table in West Virginia. They ate on the glass-topped, wrought-iron coffee table in the living room. Then she brought in ice cream and beer.

They drank a second beer and sat side by side on the soft, white rug and watched a comedy hour. Then the “Hit Parade” came on and she shook off her shoes and pulled him to his feet and said, “Let’s dance.”

He wasn’t much of a dancer anyway, and it was embarrassing, trying to dance on that deep rug. She said, “You’ll do better if you hold me a little closer.” She pressed close against him.

Phil didn’t do any better. Much as he tried to concentrate on dancing, he found that his feet were hardly moving at all. He was scared of what was happening, but he couldn’t control himself. He said, taking his arm from her waist, “I think I ought to go back to the base.”

Her hips and shoulders were still weaving. She said, “I thought you said you were on twenty-four-hour pass? You don’t have to be back until tomorrow morning, do you?”

“That’s right. But the last bus leaves at twelve. After that there isn’t another bus for the base until eight, maybe eight-thirty in the morning.”

“Aw, don’t worry about it. We’ve got a car. I can drive you back any time.”

“That’s real nice of you, Betty Jo, but I don’t want to put you out, cause you any trouble or anything.”

“It’s no trouble,” she said. “I want you to have a big time tonight. Tell you what you do. I’m out of beer. Take the car and get another six cans. Lots of places open on the Trail. Then when you come back we’ll talk it over.”

Phil said, “Okay.” He thought of Stan, and felt guilty, but what else could he say?

She found the car keys in her pocketbook and juggled them for a moment in her hand, thinking about the car. Again that day, she had forgotten to get the tail light fixed. The garages were open late, Saturday nights, but they’d all be closed Sunday morning, and Stan had said he might be in to see her tomorrow. If she didn’t have that light fixed when he came in again, Stan would be real sore. He was a bug about little things like that. “Tell you what you do, Phil,” she said. “My left tail light is busted. Drive on in to town and get it fixed for me, will you? Then pick up the beer and come on back. Here’s some money.”

He refused the bills. “I’ve got plenty,” he said. “I’ll catch it.” It made him feel better to be able to pay. It made him feel like an older man. 10

Lieutenant Hans Fischer, of the Air Police, had his own theory about the airman receiving a suitcase from a boat up the coast. It was Fischer’s theory that no submarine was involved, and that the airman wasn’t an enemy agent at all, but was engaged in smuggling dope. You will find young punks in the Air Force, as elsewhere, and Fischer had just succeeded in turning up two nineteen-year-old addicts. But he hadn’t laid hands on the pusher who sold them the heroin, and, until all Air Police at Hibiscus were placed on anti-sabotage alert, it had been his assignment to find this pusher, and he had not forgotten it. It was also Fischer’s belief that the smuggler’s car and suitcase would not turn up at Hibiscus, if it turned up at all, but in Orlando. If the smuggler had a new car it indicated he was newly affluent. The pusher would not want to attract attention to himself by driving it on the base.

Fischer had been on duty almost all Friday night, and until noon Saturday. He had been told to take Saturday night off. Instead, he had come to Orlando and stationed himself within sight of the terminal for Air Force busses. If there was any dope pushing going on, it would likely be near this center of activity, and Saturday night was the time to spot it. He watched for a new green-and-white Chewy hardtop with an airman at the wheel. He saw six or seven cars that came close to answering the description, but they were all driven by civilians. Then he saw it.

A green-and-white Chewy, driven by an airman, turned into the big all-night garage and filling station just down the street. Excited, but walking at an even pace and pretending that his attention was elsewhere, so as not to alarm his man, Fischer strolled down the sidewalk. As he was crossing the concrete ramp, studded with gas pumps, Fischer saw the driver get out of the car. The airman was talking to one of the filling station attendants, and they were examining a broken tail light, when Fischer put his hand on his shoulder. “This your car?” Fischer said.

The airman looked up. He was a pimply-faced scrub of about the same age as the two addicts Fischer had nailed. He said, “No.” His eyes took in Fischer’s rank and the A.P. brassard on his arm and he added, “sir, Lieutenant.”

“Who’s it belong to?”

“Belongs to a girl.” Again, belatedly, he added, “sir.” Cusack couldn’t imagine what crime he had committed. The lieutenant was probably looking for somebody else.

“Let’s see your pass, ID card, and driver’s license.”

Cusack reached into his pocket and brought out his wallet, with his pass and ID card. The lieutenant, very tall, lean, and seeming somehow hard and faceless, although little older than the airman, said, “Where’s your license?”

“Sir, I don’t have a driver’s license. I don’t have a car, and this girl she asked me to come down here and get her tail light fixed.”

“She wanted you to get her tail light fixed at this hour?”

“Yes, sir, at this hour.”

Fischer told himself that this could be the right man. A fishy story and no driver’s license. Probably the punk had just bought the car with the heroin profits. “What’ve you got in the trunk?” he demanded.

“In the trunk? Nothing. I don’t know what’s in the trunk.”

Fischer said, “Open it up.”

The garage attendant, who had been listening, interested, moved away. If there was going to be trouble he didn’t want to get involved.

Cusack took the keys from the ignition. Fischer noticed how shaky he was, and how scared. Cusack opened the trunk. In the trunk was a new, brown leather suitcase, short and thick, more like a sample case, with a clear plastic cover. “Bring it out and open it up,” Fischer commanded.

Cusack did as he was told. There was nothing in the suitcase except five thermos bottles, fitted into niches of a felt-covered wooden rack, and held firmly in place by straps. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Cusack said. He was thinking of the five thermos bottles he had seen in Stan Smith’s closet, and had come to a quick conclusion. He’d bet that his roommate’s money came from stealing and selling mess hall equipment.

Fischer took one of the thermos bottles from the trunk. “Pretty slick way to carry your junk,” he said.

“My junk?”

“You’re a junkie, aren’t you?” Fischer unscrewed the top, drew out the cork, and held the bottle up so he could look inside. Empty. He smelled it. It smelled new. He said, puzzled, “Where’d you get these?”

“I didn’t get them, Lieutenant. I don’t know anything about them. Like I told you, a girl just asked me to drive her car downtown and get her tail light fixed. Now if you want to check with her…”

“We’ll check with her later. Right now, we’re taking this car and bag to the base.”

“Sir, I can’t take this car. It doesn’t belong to me.”

Lieutenant Fischer returned the bottle to its place, snapped the case shut, and returned it to the luggage compartment. The kid might be completely clear. Now that he’d talked with him, Lieutenant Fischer didn’t believe he was the slippery, lying, hophead type. But he wasn’t the type who would possess a girl with a new car, either. He seemed just a country kid, one who would have an awful lot of explaining to do, when you considered the FBI and police lookout, and the description of the car and suitcase. Fischer said, “Come on, get in the car. We’re going back to the base. I’ll drive.”

Cusack climbed into the front seat and handed the keys to the lieutenant. Suddenly he put his hands to his face and said, “Oh, Lord!” He could imagine what Stan Smith would say when Stan found out about all this. He knew pretty well what Stan would do to him if he got Stan into trouble. He decided he’d better not mention Stan at all, not to the Air Police.