John Ball The First Team

1

When the alarm rang Hewlitt stayed in bed for a minute or two wondering if he should get up at all. The clock had not awakened him; he had been lying for some time with his eyes wide open, staring at the plaster ceiling that hung above his head. He had been a slave of the efficient little electric clock for so long that the idea of being able to ignore it had a certain hypnotic fascination. Then, carefully, he listened. Outside, through the open window of his bedroom, he could hear the familiar traffic noises; they told him that for the moment, at least, people were doing what they had always done.

Still he lay quietly, waiting. Then he caught the faint aroma of fresh bread from the Georgetown bakery close by. That settled it; things were at least normal enough that he would have to get out of bed without any more delay.

As he shaved he attempted to sort things out in his mind and formulate a plan of action for each of the several possibilities which he might have to face within the next two or three hours. Because he did not have enough in the way of hard facts to go on, he ended up with nothing except the awareness that in his line of work being late on the job was normally unthinkable. He wondered if he still had a job at all. Then he reasoned very simply that the only way to find out was to go and see.

The automatic coffee maker that he had turned on showed a glowing red light. He unwrapped a Danish sweet roll, dropped a cube of sugar into an empty cup, and sat down to breakfast. His watch told him that he was substantially on schedule. As he ate he took note of the continuing thumping caused by automobile tires as they ran over the edge of the irregular manhole cover in front of the apartment building. He knew the sound so well it transmitted a certain sense of Satisfaction, like the grasp and feel of a familiar object. He wondered, then, if Frank would be there as usual to drive him to work. He seemed to be finding satisfaction in trivialities; they occupied his mind and kept him from focusing on the bigger things which would confront him all too soon.

When he had finished and was ready to go, he glanced through the window and saw that Frank was waiting for him as always. He was parked at the curb, sitting behind the wheel of his five-year-old taxi, a veteran survivor of the Washington traffic. If Frank were to get a new cab it would disrupt things even more, Hewlitt decided as he made his way out. He climbed in and spoke his usual greeting.

“Where to?” Frank asked.

That was the first break — the first thing that was out of its usual pattern. For more than three years Frank had driven him almost every weekday morning to the same address — and sometimes on weekends too when he had been needed.

Hewlitt’s first reaction was to strengthen his own confidence by snapping back a little tersely, but he thought better of it almost at once. Frank was a pillar of reliability, and clearly he too was concerned. “The same as always,” Hewlitt said, “at least for the time being.”

Frank nodded, then he slipped his cab into gear and began to thread his way into the pattern of the flowing traffic.

As the minutes passed, Hewlitt noted that if there were any other signs of change, they were well hidden. When they paused for a light an electronic parts store had a sign out announcing its annual sale. In the dusty window bare speakers gaped like forlorn souls in some sort of mechanical purgatory, naked and defenseless without mountings to hold them decently enclosed or amplifiers to give them life.

When they moved forward once more Hewlitt noticed one or two shops which were still closed when they should have been open, but they were too few in number to be conclusive. He sat back in the seat and tried once more to set the pattern of his mind so that he would remain calm, but still be prepared for whatever circumstances he might have to face. Then Frank caught his attention. “You still planning to go to your office?” he asked.

Hewlitt leaned forward and matched his own voice to Frank’s. “Why not?”

The driver’s powerful shoulders rose once and then fell. “Things might be different,” he said. “You might just walk right into a lotta trouble.”

“I thought of that,” Hewlitt said, “but what choice have I got?”

Frank waited until they were free of other cars. “This old hack don’t look too good, but it runs just fine,” he began. “I take care of it myself. We could load up with some gas, most of the stations are still open, and plain get the hell outa here. I know a few places.”

“Down south?”

“In the mountains.”

Hewlitt realized what the offer meant. “They could find us,” he warned. “That could be very serious for you — if they thought we were trying to run away.”

Frank became a trifle more urgent. “Don’t worry about that. I can take care o’ myself. If it comes to that, I can always say that you hired me to drive you there. That would put the monkey on you, but don’t sweat it, I’m pretty good in the hills. They couldn’t find us that easy.”

For a moment it was a temptation and Hewlitt rapidly weighed the factors involved. Then he shook his head. “If you’ll feel safer that way, then you go,” he said. “Believe this, I wish that I could go with you and I’d trust you completely if I did. But I’m going to take a chance because it might just work out better that way.”

Frank considered that. “I figure I know what you mean. In a way it makes sense. But if you need some help, you know where to come.”

Hewlitt reached out and for a moment laid his hand on Frank’s shoulder. “I won’t forget. And it goes both ways, you can depend on that.”

The cab turned into Pennsylvania Avenue. For the rest of the ride neither man spoke; they had said all that they had to say to each other. When Frank pulled up in front of the entrance to the West Wing of the White House, Hewlitt climbed out as he always did and then passed over a folded bill. “For tomorrow, too,” he said.

“Gotcha.” Frank pushed the money into his shirt pocket without looking at it and then drove away.

Automatically Hewlitt produced his identification. The men who guarded the entrance knew him well, but the rule had been inflexible for some time — everyone had to produce identification and an authorization card, every time, without any exceptions. The check-in process remained unchanged; his presence was duly noted as he passed inside and went to his small office in the basement, not too far from the communication room. On the way there he was tensely alert for any indications of change in what should have been a charged atmosphere, but things seemed deceptively placid. The few other persons whom he encountered nodded to him and then went on about their own separate businesses; there was no unnecessary communication, no evidence of camaraderie.

In a sense his role here was a minor one, but he had no illusions that he would escape whatever lay ahead. If he had entertained that idea for even a moment, the appearance of his office would have awakened him to the truth. Two things were different, minor things that were significant. First, the usual pile of papers and documents which normally lay on his desk each morning for him to read and translate was not there. And, secondly, the modest, unimportant picture that someone had stuck on his wall a few months previously once more showed its familiar face.

There seemed no work for him to do; he felt like someone returning from a long vacation to find that his desk had been cleaned out and the familiar trappings of his employment removed. The picture told the same story in different language. It was a routine publicity photograph, in color, of the Polar Aircraft Corporation’s latest fighter, the supersonic Ramrod. A press representative had passed out several of the framed prints, one of which had ended up on the wall of Hewlitt’s office. He had let it remain there because the photographer had done an amazingly good job; the sleek dynamic lines of the plane and its almost unbelievably small wings had been captured in a picture which was both the portrait of an aircraft and an abstract composition. Even within the boundaries of the neat black frame the fighter seemed about to leap forward with uncontrolled raw power. Later, when the news tickers began to beat out the relentless facts about its disappointing performance and mechanical problems, he had one day turned the picture face to the wall. Everyone knew, of course, what the picture was and the blank side had been a silent, effective rebuke. Now it was before him once more, the aircraft appearing so full of promise and so invincible in combat. He had been told to look at it, or so it seemed to him, and he did not like it at all.

He decided it would be best to leave the picture as it was and sat down in front of his desk. In the lower left-hand drawer he had a pile of material for review when time would permit. Time permitted now; carefully he removed it and put it in place where the regular morning’s input should have been. From the center drawer he took out a yellow legal-sized, ruled pad and prepared to make notes.

For some reason his mind turned back to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He had never read the book, but he remembered the frequent allusions to Eliza, or whatever her name was, and her escape across the broken ice. That was the way he felt now; he was trying to cross a river without being able to see the far shore. He could only leap from one convenient piece of ice to another, knowing that any chosen foothold could prove false and plunge him into dark wa-

ters. The work before him was an ice cake — something he could utilize for the moment to keep his head above water.

As he began to note down the salient facts he was gleaning from the pile of technical and semitechnical material, he tried to fight down the feeling that much of what he had done in the past had been disregarded, as the radar warning had been before the attack on Pearl Harbor. People did not like to receive unwelcome information and often looked for a way out — such as ignoring it altogether. That was the key word — ignore. They wouldn’t ignore it anymore.

His work was interrupted when a colleague paused in the open doorway to his office. The two men simply looked at each other a moment before Hewlitt spoke. “Is he here?” he asked.

The man in the doorway nodded; after that he was gone. Hewlitt felt a slight flare of anger, then he forced himself to think logically and to banish the danger of emotionalism. The responsibility clearly lay in many different areas, more important ones, and his piece of the puzzle had been at best small and unimportant in comparison with all the others. After he had fixed that idea in his mind, he felt a little better.

The phone on his desk rang. He picked it up with deliberate calm and spoke his name. “Come to the cabinet room at ten fifteen,” he was told by a secretarial voice. “We’re to get some kind of a briefing.”

Hewlitt acknowledged and hung up. Now some of the uncertainty was about to be resolved; for that he was grateful. First of all he wanted information, as much of it as he could get. After that he would decide which cake of ice he would leap to next. He turned back to his work, suppressing the prickling sense of alarm which kept trying to germinate in his mind. If he kept his head, he knew, he couldn’t help but come out better in the end.

At six minutes after ten by his Rolex watch he got to his feet, locked his notes inside his desk, and slipped a small memo pad into his coat pocket. With a strange, almost chilly sense of calm he went up the stairs and headed toward the portico. The short walk in the open air supported him and gave him the feeling that God was still in his heaven no matter how much his human creatures had managed to foul up things on the planet Earth.

By contrast the atmosphere in the cabinet room was tight. In times of crisis this chamber had seen men of high capability, and some of far less than that, gather to confer, but it had always been in an aura of problems shared. Now, Hewlitt sensed, it was a clear case of every man for himself. He counted thirty-two people, all of whom he knew more or less well, including five women who had about them the common look of confidential secretaries who could be trusted to keep classified information inviolate. There was very little movement or conversation; everyone simply stood and waited in an aura of strained and counterfeit patience.

Without preamble or ceremony a man came into the room and immediately froze the air by his presence. He was not an imposing figure; he did not stand more than five feet seven or eight and he was distinctly tubby. The plain blue suit he wore was without any pretensions; it was indifferently cut of very ordinary material and there were flecks of what might have been dandruff on the shoulders. The man’s walk had in it a slight suggestion of a waddle; his body moved visibly from side to side like that of a laborer on his way home after a day of physical toil. His face was broad, a trifle coarse, and expressionless. His nose was flattened in the Slavic manner, but it was entirely overshadowed by his eyes, which were charged with hostility and suspicion. He was a peasant, Hewlitt decided, but it was far too early to know whether that was good or bad.

The man stopped, looked about him, and said, “You will all sit down. If there is not enough numbers of chairs, look for more and bring them in.”

There was no mistaking the tone — it was an order. At the same time it was to a degree reasonable. There were different reactions; all five of the women went out, perhaps because they were used to providing extra chairs when they were needed. Some of the men went with them. Hewlitt did not; he chose a chair conveniently at hand and sat down, aware that he had done what he had been directed to do but that he had not allowed himself to be used as an errand boy. People who sat down in this room were not expected to carry in their own chairs, despite the tradition that retiring cabinet members took their chairs with them when they left. But not in their own hands.

There was an interval of awkwardness as chairs were carried and rolled in through the doorway by people who were not too accustomed to doing this for themselves. During it Hewlitt reflected on the intonation of the words the man had spoken and examined them in the light of his special knowledge. The eastern European accent had been unmistakable and the grammar had been visibly inaccurate, but the fluency had been reasonably good. In all probability the man considered that he spoke English very well. It hit Hewlitt suddenly that perhaps this occasion was a strain on the man also and that his acquired language capability had suffered as a consequence. That reminded him of something he had learned in the translation business — not to read nuances into the words of people who had less than a perfect command of the language they were using. Or expect these same people to grasp subtleties they could not understand. He sat calmly, his legs crossed, waiting for the next move.

The room quieted down as people found their places and settled themselves in uncertain expectation. Hewlitt remained motionless, taking inventory of who was present and who was not. The people who surrounded him were largely GS-ii’s, with a few higher and a scattering lower. It was a meeting of the office staff, those who did the paper work, processed the mail, and kept the business end of the establishment going. None of them was on a policy-making level, which was probably a good sign.

When it was quiet enough, the man was ready to speak once more. He stood at the head of the table, still an unimposing figure, but with the advantage of head height over his listeners. “My name is Zalinsky,” he said. “If it is necessary that we speak, you will address me as ‘Mr. Zalinsky’ only. It is allowed no exceptions.”

He paused for a moment and tipped his head far back to one side as though he were trying to remove some sort of small muscle cramp from his neck. “I am here to do work which has already begun. I know that you ask each one what will happen to you. If you follow the orders you receive, and perform your work as told to you, there will not be too much of change. That is, for you there will not be too much immediate change; otherwise there will be many changes. If you have not already found out, you will soon learn that much which you have been doing in the past was very wrong. It will not be wrong any longer. I will say this to you: the easier you accept what will be done, the more willingly you perform the duties which will be to you given, the easier it will be for you and all of your friends.”

“But!”

With that single word his voice became a bark, a declaration of iron authority without mercy or flexibility.

“If any one of you, in any way at all, attempts to” — he searched for a word and found it —“impede, you will be dealt with immediately and drastically. There will be no playacting; you will accept and obey. If you do this, it is possible that you will also learn. That would be very good for you.”

He stopped deliberately, waiting a long moment to see if anyone present would dare to challenge him. Facing him there were only silent people, sitting very still, waiting for him to go on.

It seemed to Hewlitt that the man was gaining courage from his own words, then he looked again and changed his mind. Zalinsky might be an absurdly out-of-place figure in the White House, but his narrow suspicious eyes gave no hint of softness behind them. In appearance he might look like a Slavic version of a small-time salesman of limited ability, but the man who wore the nondescript suit had a toughness which needed no bolstering by listening to the sound of his own voice. The momentary judgment had been an error; Hewlitt resolved immediately to draw no more such hasty and dangerous conclusions.

“Because you come from a soft society where you have been enjoying ridiculous luxuries at the cruel expense of the masses, you now believe that what has happened to you all is a bad dream, that it will go away in a few days of time.”

Again his voice hardened and the muscles of his jaw became tense. “It will not be gone — ever. Your militarists, your imperialist warmongers dared to challenge us, we who have the force of all the people behind us. We were patient for a long time. We demonstrated what we could accomplish, but you would not heed the warning. You refused to learn. Because you had never been defeated, not until the determined revolutionary people of Vietnam rose up and made you ridiculous before all the world. Even then you tried to pretend that you had not been defeated, that our skillful propaganda had not eaten the heart out of your will to fight. You were reduced to confusion and indecision while we grew stronger because of our unshakable determination.”

It was at that point that Hewlitt sensed that the man before him was delivering a prepared speech, one which had been written for him. The change in grammar was obvious, and so was the way in which he spoke the words. Hewlitt did not alter the expression on his face, but hidden deep within himself he found a minute ray of hope. This man was not infallible, nor were the people who had sent him here.

“There will now be work for all of you to do in rebuilding this country as you will be taught to do. You will follow orders absolutely; there is no other way. If you do not, you know what to expect.”

He is repeating himself, Hewlitt thought.

Zalinsky looked up. “You have here an interpreter who is fluent in my language. Where is the man Hewlitt?”

It was not a question — it was a demand. Hewlitt raised his hand just enough to identify himself, then he put it down again. He was watching his own every move now with meticulous care — what he did, what he might say, even the shape of his secret thoughts. He could not afford even one mistake and he did not intend to commit any.

“You will wait until I send for you in your office,” Zalinsky said. “I will give work*to you. Do you understand?”

Hewlitt had never doubted for a moment that somehow this absurd nightmare would be swept aside, that the United States as he knew it would emerge triumphant, and that this untidy little man would be dealt with one way or another. He saw at that precise moment a minute opportunity to launch the counterattack; without thinking further he took it.

“Yes, sir,” he said, only loudly enough to be heard clearly. He kept the tone of his voice totally respectful.

He looked up to find himself staring into the man’s rigidly hostile eyes. “What did I tell you?” Zalinsky demanded.

Hewlitt swallowed hard. “Yes, Mr. Zalinsky,” he said.

For a second or two there was total silence. Once more Zalinsky stared through Hewlitt, his face clamped in a hard mask. “You will make no more mistakes,” he directed.

There were no more challenges, none whatsoever. Satisfied, Zalinsky pulled down the edges of his coat, waited until he was fully ready, and then said curtly, “You will go.”

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