The Blackbird

Thirteen

Ken was in Grofield’s room, but Henry was gone. Grofield walked in, shut the door behind him, and said, “Don’t you have a place of your own?”

“I don’t like you, Grofield,” Ken said.

“Then go away.” Grofield yawned and stretched, saying through the yawn, “You know, it’s amazing. I’ve only been out of bed seven hours, and I’m exhausted again.”

“It probably wore you out, worrying about your fellow man.”

Grofield looked at him. “I know a girl you’d get along with great guns,” he said. “Why doesn’t it ever occur to you people that I’m your fellow man?”

“I’m not going to try to make sense out of that,” Ken said. “Did you make contact?”

Acutely aware of all the listening ears, Grofield said, “Well, these things take time.”

“We don’t have time. They’re only going to be here for the weekend. Haven’t you contacted anybody at all?”

“One thing I’ve noticed about counterspy work,” Grofield said. “Nobody asks questions unless they already know the answer. Meaning one of your people undoubtedly watched me meet Miss Kamdela in the lobby, and go for a ride with her.”

“We know you met her,” Ken said drily. “We don’t know if it was business or not.”

“If you knew Miss Kamdela,” Grofield told him, “the question wouldn’t come up. She’s like you, she has no use for people who worry about themselves.”

“I take it you mean it was a business meeting. What was the result?”

“I am to be contacted.”

“By whom?”

“Onum Marba.”

“You haven’t met him yet, eh?”

Grofield waggled a finger at him. “There you go again, trying to be sneaky. If you ask the question, it means you know I’ve seen him.”

“You’re goddamn tiresome, Grofield.”

“I was thinking the same about you, Ken. If you want straight answers, give me straight questions. Quit trying to be tricky.”

“I know it’s unfair of me,” Ken said acidly, “but I just have this persistent feeling of mistrust where you’re concerned.”

“Fire me.”

“At first, you know, you were kind of funny, I enjoyed the different point of view and so on. But you aren’t funny at all any more, Grofield. I’ll give you a straight question, if that’s what you want, and let’s see if you’re capable of a straight answer. What did you and Marba talk about?”

“What was I doing here, and would there be any employment for me. See? When you’re straight I’m straight.”

“Maybe you are. What cover story did you give him?”

“I was in a robbery in the states that went phloo, and I’m hiding out in Canada till the heat’s off.”

“He knows that much about you? About the robberies?”

“Why not?” Grofield yawned again. “Listen,” he said, “this is fun and all, but I’m really falling asleep.”

“You don’t have anything else to report?”

“Nothing.”

“I have one thing,” Ken said. “We checked into the background of Albert Beaudry.”

“Who?”

“The kidnapper that was killed.”

“Oh! The driver, up north. What about him?”

“He was a member of Le Quebecois.”

“Sounds like a hockey team.”

Ken looked at him. “I forgot about you,” he said. “It’s amazing the things you don’t know. Are you aware at all of the Quebec separatist movement?”

“Not at all,” Grofield said. “What’s a Quebec separatist movement?”

“The province of Quebec,” Ken told him, “is the one section of Canada that’s more French than English. In language, customs, history, everything. For the last fifteen years or so, there’s been an upsurge in the movement to get Quebec to secede from Canada and connect itself somehow politically with France. When De Gaulle was over here a few years ago he fanned the flames a little, and now there’s half a dozen organizations devoted to an independent Quebec, ranging from the political through the vandal to the terrorist. Le Quebecois is the most radical of the groups, advocating armed rebellion, so naturally it’s the smallest and least effective.”

“Wait a second. Naturally? What do you mean naturally?”

“Where actual oppression doesn’t exist,” Ken said, “armed revolutionaries have a tough time gaining converts. A lot of youngsters don’t mind smearing paint on the Wolfe side of the Wolfe-Montcalm Monument, but when it comes to taking a rifle and shooting people who speak English, most of them would rather not.”

“I agree with them,” Grofield said. “Wholeheartedly.”

Ken gave a thin smile. “There are so many better reasons to shoot you, Grofield,” he said, “it hardly matters what language you speak.”

“I’m being good,” Grofield reminded him. “Now you be good.”

“I suppose you’re right. Okay, Albert Beaudry belonged to Le Quebecois, the most radical and militant of the Quebec Libre groups.”

“They do shoot people who speak English?”

“No, not generally. They advocate it, but if they actually did it they wouldn’t last long.”

“Then why’d they attack me? And why’d they speak English to each other?”

“They did?”

“In the car, on the way up to that cabin. I told you about that, I was conscious but I couldn’t move.”

“And they spoke English,” Ken said musingly. “Was the other man also French-Canadian?”

“He had a different sort of accent,” Grofield said. “Vaguely German, but not exactly.”

“Dutch?”

“No, not really German at all. Just sort of harsh. German was the only thing I could think of that was like that at all.”

“Hmmmm.” Ken gazed into the middle distance, thinking about things. “That might explain it,” he said.

“What might?”

“We couldn’t understand,” Ken told him, “what Le Quebecois was up to, we couldn’t see any way they’d fit into this at all. But if they spoke English, Beaudry and the doctor, it would mean the doctor didn’t speak French, so English was their only common language. So they might be Maoist somehow. There weren’t any Chinese there, were there?”

“Chinese! Are you pulling my leg?”

“No I’m not. There’s a thin thread of association from France to Red China, which I assume you didn’t know.”

“Go ahead and assume.”

“The countries are very similar,” Ken said. “France holds the same position as opposed to the United States in the Western bloc that China holds as opposed to Russia in the Eastern bloc. They’re both big, stupid, well-armed nations being very shrill to cover their inferiority complexes. They’re the two nuclear powers that are in some ways independent of the global balance of power, and their advocates in other parts of the world tend to be sympathetic to both nations. The Quebec Libre groups in Canada, for instance, have sympathetic ties to the Maoist groups in the black ghettos in the states.”

In amazement Grofield said, “Am I the only one in the world who isn’t involved in some crazy organization somewhere?”

“No, Grofield, you’re one with the complacent majority. Most of these organizations have no more than ten or twenty people, and almost none of them have over a hundred. But they have more ultimate effect on the world than ten thousand people like you sitting in front of the television set letting Walter Cronkite make them informed and aware.”

“There are worlds and worlds,” Grofield said. “Mine has gotten along just fine for years without either you people or Walter Cronkite. All right, never mind the rebuttal. Are you trying to say this Albert Beaudry was being a spy for Communist China?”

“Possibly. Or possibly for France. Or possibly for some nation within the Chinese orbit, like Albania.”

“Albania is within the Chinese orbit?”

Ken looked at him in astonishment. “You didn’t even know that?”

“Good night, Ken,” Grofield said.