The Eighth Dwarf

10

Robert Henry Orr, the man whom the OSS had called Nanny, seldom got out to the Pentagon because he didn’t like the smell of burning ambition, which, he had decided long ago, had an odor all its own.

Ambition, he thought, reeked of sweat; not the jockstrap kind, or that which came from honest toil, but the sweetish-sour kind that is the product of fear, bad nerves, poor digestion, and too much Mum. Orr prided himself on his sensitive nose, and he was sure he could detect a strong trace of ambition’s pungent smell in the office of the man whom he was now waiting to see.

The office was in either the second or the third ring of the Pentagon. Orr wasn’t sure because, despite his many other qualities, he had absolutely no sense of direction. North, south, east, and west remained complete mysteries to him. He knew left from right, but because he was almost ambidextrous, he always had to pause and think about it. He had, of course, become lost in the Pentagon. He always did. Pride, however, had kept him from asking directions, and he had wandered aimlessly about, sniffing the ambition, until luck had guided him to where he wished to go.

Orr was waiting for Milo Stracey, who, Orr felt, was the coldest man he had ever known. Stracey came from somewhere in Idaho, up near the Canadian line, and Orr was almost sure that he had been machined, not born. There were no rough edges on Stracey, none, and Orr was convinced that there never had been.

“If you opened him up,” somebody had once said to Orr, “you know what you’d find? Dry ice, that’s what.”

Stracey’s qualities had been quickly sized up by the man who had run the OSS, Wild Bill Donovan, nick-named by his World War I troops after some obscure baseball player. Donovan had been about as wild as a bridge shark with the rent due. He also had had the coldest blue eyes that Orr had ever seen until the day he met Milo Stracey. Stracey’s were colder, far colder. And it was because of Stracey’s well-iced emotions that Donovan had put him in charge of the Swill.

The Swill had been those occasional OSS missions doomed to failure, but nevertheless dispatched because their failure was part and parcel of some desperate ploy dreamed up by the dreamers in the building at 25th and E, Northwest. Milo Stracey had been the dispatcher; obviously enjoyed his assignment, if ever he enjoyed anything; and consequently had risen quickly in the OSS power structure. He had been much feared, much hated, much avoided, and totally despised by all but Congress, who regarded him as a take-charge, no-nonsense kind of guy who, if but given half a chance, could have straightened out all those OSS pinkos that Donovan had assembled.

Stracey strode into his office, glanced at Orr, sat down at his desk, and by way of greeting, said, “What do you want?”

Orr smiled his most benign smile. “I had a little cold, but I’m almost over it now, thank you.” He took Minor Jackson’s passport out of his breast pocket and tossed it onto Stracey’s desk. “Remember him?”

Stracey opened the passport, glanced at it, and said, “Yeah, I remember. Why?”

Orr laced his hands across his belly, tipped his chair back, and stared up at the ceiling. “I hear you’ve run into a snag up on the Hill.”

A bill was wending its way through Congress, which, if everything went just right, would create the first national intelligence-gathering organization. Recognizing Stracey’s popularity with Congress, the War Department, with no little apprehension, had made him one of its chief lobbyists to make sure that the military didn’t get left out when Congress finally got around to dividing up the intelligence pie. The quid pro quo had been succinctly spelled out to Stracey by a four-star general. “You get us our piece,” the General had said, “and we’ll take care of you. Maybe the number five or number six spot in the new outfit”

Stracey’s reply had been equally succinct. “Number five, and I want it in writing.” The General, after failing to stare Stracey down, had agreed.

To Orr’s observation Stracey replied, “Snag? I don’t know of any snag.”

“No?”

“No.”

“By my troth, Milo, you really are the most obdurate person I’ve ever known.”

“You mean thick.”

“No, not thick, although that will do.”

“Okay. We’ve got a little problem up on the Hill. But nothing that’s going to make us shit our pants. What’s that got to do with him?” Again he tapped Minor Jackson’s passport.

“I’m not sure, really. He wants to go to Germany.”

“Let him.”

“He was in Mexico recently. Guess whom he ran into down there?”

“I never guess.”

“No, you don’t, do you? Well, he ran into Baker-Bates. You were never very keen on him, as I recall, but what ever would Baker-Bates be doing strayed so far from home?”

A mask descended over the mask that was Milo Stracey’s face. His blue eyes seemed to Orr to grow a shade lighter, which made them almost the shade of ice when the light was just right. He had a curiously colorless face — not gray, not pink, but sort of a strangely smudged white. It went with his hair, which was neither gray nor blond but gray trying to be blond, or blond trying to be gray. Orr wasn’t sure. Although he knew that Stracey’s age was forty, he didn’t look it. Nor did he look fifty or thirty, although he could have passed for either. The monochrome man, Orr thought, and became fascinated with how little the lips that formed the line that was Stracey’s mouth moved when they said, “Where in Mexico?”

“Oh, no. Oh, my, no. I never, never give anything away. Of all people, Milo, you should know that by now.”

“Okay, if there’s anything to it, you’re in.”

“All the way, of course.”

Stracey stared at Orr. It was a stare that could shrivel most men, but Orr returned it with the smiling certitude of the Christian holding four aces whom Mark Twain had once observed.

“Sure, Nanny,” Stracey finally said. “All the way.”

“Good. Baker-Bates was in Ensenada. Now, what tinkly bell does that ring?”

“When?”

“Two weeks ago. About that”

Stracey picked up Minor Jackson’s passport, looked inside it again, put it back down on the desk, and said, “The Oppenheimers.”

“Oh, my.”

Stracey tapped Jackson’s passport once more with a shining fingernail, and Orr realized for the first time, with a small, pleasant shock, that the fingernail had been manicured. He filed the information away for future possible use. Still tapping Jackson’s passport, Stracey said, “He’s not that good; he never was.”

“I always thought he was rather good — in a charming, lackadaisical way, of course.”

“Not up against Kurt Oppenheimer.”

“Perhaps he only wants to find him. Perhaps the father and the sister will pay him a little money to do only that.”

“He’s not that good either.”

“He’ll have some help, I believe.”

“Who?”

Now it’s going to become truly delicious, Orr thought. Now he’ll crack, maybe even breathe in and out once or twice. “Who? Why, the dwarf, of course. You remember the dwarf. You should.”

“Ploscaru,” Stracey said, and something might have twitched in his face up near the right eye — or was it the left? Orr had to remember which hand was which before he could be certain. But there was only that one twitch, if that, and afterward the frost came back and covered things up.

“Ploscaru’s dead,” Stracey said.

“Little Nick? You must be thinking of a different Ploscaru.”

“The dwarf. He’s dead. He died outside of Prague in July last year. The Russians got him.”

“You sent him to Prague, didn’t you?”

“I sent him.”

“After using him in Bucharest to find that Iron Guard type and the German, the one who did such a wonderful job with the ack-ack at Ploesti. He found them when nobody else could, and as a reward you sent him to Prague. He didn’t go, you know. Instead, he kept the money — all that gold, you remember — and got one of his Air Corps buddies to smuggle him back to the States — to New York. He was there for about two months and then went to Los Angeles, of all places.”

“You held out on me, Nanny.”

“Certainly.”

“I’ll remember.”

“I very much hope so; otherwise, what would be the point? But back to business. Suppose Jackson and the dwarf were able to turn up the Oppenheimer lad. It would be quite a plum for you — or rather, for us; something you could whisper about Congress, make them feel important, in the know, the very kind of stuff they dote on. It would all leak, of course, and the press would run with it. More accolades, thoughtful editorials about how perhaps after all the country really does need a well-run intelligence outfit. We could have all that — unless, of course, we might find some other use for Oppenheimer’s rather peculiar talents.”

“Such as?”

Orr closed his eyes sleepily, opened them, and stared up at the ceiling. “How many Jewish votes are there in Congress? By that I mean how many hard-core pro-Zionist votes — the kind who devoutly believe every word that Ben Hecht writes?”

Stracey didn’t have to pause to add them up. “Thirteen,” he said. “Three for us, eight against, and two still up for grabs.”

Still staring up at the ceiling, Orr said, “Suppose we found young Oppenheimer, managed to sneak him into Palestine, and then turned him loose to do what he does best.”

“Killing people.”

“Yes, killing people. The right people — at least, as far as the more fervent Zionists are concerned.”

“British types.”

“Yes, I suppose they would have to be British, wouldn’t they?”

Stracey smiled — a chilling, almost terrible smile. “It could swing a few votes — provided we can figure out a way to claim the credit.”

“I’ll leave that to you, Milo.”

Stracey did some rapid mental calculation. “Those hard-core Zionist votes could just put us in business.”

“How nice.”

The two men stared at each other for a long moment. Then Stracey again tapped Minor Jackson’s passport. “We’ll run him — both him and the dwarf.”

“He doesn’t want to be run.”

“Helms is in Germany; we’ll put him onto it.”

Orr sighed. “Not Helms. Jackson and Helms went to school together in Switzerland — at Rolle, I believe. They despise each other.”

“We’re going to have to have our man in on it.”

“Come up with a nobody,” Orr suggested. “A smart nobody, more shepherd than chaperon.”

It was an intelligent suggestion, and Stracey accepted it immediately. It was one of the reasons he had come as far as he had. And it was the primary reason that he would go as far as he did. Although Stracey’s expression didn’t change, Orr was almost positive that he could hear a circular file filled with names ticking over inside the other man’s head.

“Okay,” Stracey said after a pause. “A smart nobody. One LaFollette Meyer. A lieutenant.”

“Dear me,” Orr said. “What part of Wisconsin does our LaFollette hail from?”

“Milwaukee, I think,” Stracey said. “Why?”

Instead of replying, Orr got up to leave. As he turned, Stracey said, “Nanny.”

Orr turned back. “Yes.”

“This conversation we just had never happened, did it?”

Orr smiled. “What conversation?”

It had taken Ploscaru only thirty-six hours to locate the right Russian, the one who was now gazing, fascinated, at the Rembrandt self-portrait that hung in the Mellon Gallery on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Argentine had put him onto the Russian; the Argentine who, before the war, had been a playboy until he ran out of money. He had married a distant, titled cousin of Ploscaru’s, who had since died. Now the Argentine moved about the world as a cultural attaché at various of his country’s embassies. Actually, he was an intelligence agent of sorts and had been in Washington for more than two years and knew everybody. For setting up the contact with the Russian he had charged the dwarf only $250, since Ploscaru was really, after all, some kind of distant relative.

The Russian’s name supposedly was Ikar Kokorev; he was a forty-two-year-old asthmatic who wheezed heavily as he stood transfixed before the Rembrandt.

“He had much heart, that one,” the Russian said.

“I don’t like it,” Ploscaru said, looking around.

“You don’t like him?”

“It’s far too public.”

“Every day at noon I come and spend my lunch time here. Sometimes I talk to people; sometimes I don’t. The federal police are accustomed to my being here. If I should talk to a little man about the master’s great heart, why should they object? You and I shall meet only this once.”

“I understand you want Kurt Oppenheimer.”

The Russian moved slowly to the next Rembrandt, a portrait of a prosperous middle-aged man. “The light,” he said. “See how he forms the light. What rare, sad genius. I must go to Amsterdam before I die. I must see The Night Watch. I simply must. We have heard of you, M. Ploscaru,” he went on in the French that they had been speaking. “We have not liked what we have heard. Most unsavory.”

“How much?” Ploscaru said.

“Did I say we were buying? No. But doubtless you have some price in mind. I paint, you know. Slavish imitations, really. My mind tells my hand what to do. That is my mistake. It must come from here,” he said, wheezing heavily and thumping himself on the chest. “Not the head.”

“One hundred thousand dollars,” Ploscaru said as they moved on to the next painting, of a youngish woman with melancholy eyes.

“This one always makes me want to weep. So sad; so very, very sad. Why is she so sad? She is married to an old man, but she has taken a young lover, and now he has gone away forever. I invent these little stories. I find them amusing. Your price is exorbitant, of course.”

“It could be negotiated.”

“Yes,” the Russian said drily. “I would think that it could. What about delivery?”

“What about it?”

“If we were at all interested, which is most doubtful, it would have to be in Berlin or on the edge of the Zone.”

Ploscaru shrugged. “Agreed.”

“If you are in Frankfurt within the next two weeks, someone may get in touch with you. Then again, they may not.”

“Where?”

“Wherever we might decide,” the Russian said, took one last look at the portrait of the sad young woman, turned, and moved briskly away.