The First Team

10

“I wish a report,” Zalinsky said, “on your speaking with Senator Fitzhugh. You were successful?”

“I was successful,” Hewlitt answered.

“He now has the understanding which was wished?”

“He does.” He did not elaborate.

Zalinsky leaned back a little and surveyed Hewlitt with slightly closed eyes. “In what style did he behave?” he asked.

“On the whole, the senator took it very well; he knows how to control himself. It was a blow, of course, because he apparently had thought very highly of your premier.”

“Aha, so now we are becoming clever.” Zalinsky came up in his chair and leaned forward once more. “You are making the propaganda to me.”

Hewlitt shook his head. “I stated a fact,” he said, “and I answered your question. The senator was disillusioned.”

“I do not know this word.”

“It means that his eyes were opened, like waking up from a dream. Something he had believed in was shown to be no longer true.”

Zalinsky worked his lips. “This I can accept,” he said. “Is it now that you think he will go home?”

“I doubt it,” Hewlitt answered him. “As far as he is concerned he is still a United States senator and on the job.”

“Why not you told him also that is not true?”

“I didn’t tell him that for two reasons. First, it was none of my business. Secondly, I don’t believe it myself.”

“You still think that you have a government, then?”

“Of course. And if you admit it, Mr. Zalinsky, so do you.”

Zalinsky tightened and Hewlitt saw it, but he was unafraid. He knew the man better now; to cross him directly would be an invitation to disaster, but he liked to talk and discuss so long as things remained on that plane.

“Explain to me,” Zalinsky said.

"All right. This is a very big and complicated country, very different from your own and run under a different system. Our people are different, our ways of doing things, even our recreations. You and your people would take years to learn the mechanism. It is like a vast machine that you have not built and have not been taught to operate. We have machines in this country that take months just to learn to run. You can’t do it without the United States government; the whole thing would fall down around your ears.”

Zalinsky fitted the tips of his fingers together. “You do not think that I have enough smartness, then.”

“You would have to be at least a hundred thousand men to try it alone,” Hewlitt said. “You don’t have enough trained people to run your government and ours too. You have simply taken much more food on your plate than you are able to eat.”

“You have given me to think,” Zalinsky said. “Because it is the food that I must eat.” He paused and glanced down at himself. “And already I am too fat.”

“What did you do before you came here, Mr. Zalinsky?” Hewlitt asked. “I have read a great deal of your political material for many years and I never saw your name.”

Zalinsky seemed to welcome the opportunity to reminisce for a moment. “I was first a factory manager,” he said. “At a small factory where they made for women sweaters. It was not working well, there were not enough sweaters and they were of worse quality. So I was sent to see if I could fix.”

“Did you?”

“First I investigated to find what was wrong — the equipment, the workers, or the materials. Also the designs, the planning, and the management. I found that something was wrong with the workers.”

“Let me guess,” Hewlitt interjected. “They were being given too much political indoctrination along with their jobs. It interfered with their production.”

Zalinsky stared hard at him, not in animosity, but in frank curiosity. “Where you learn this?” he asked.

Hewlitt denied it with a shake of his head. “I didn’t, I just guessed. I know quite a bit about your country even though I’ve never been there.”

“You have accuracy,” Zalinsky admitted. “I stopped the lectures and made a closer watch of the machine operations. In a few weeks we had more and much better sweaters. I was told to start the lectures once more. To this I said that I would obey if they wished this more than sweaters. After that it was not furthermore a problem.”

“Go on,” Hewlitt invited.

“After a few months I am sent to one of our biggest steel mills. It will not work properly. This time I find that the machines are all mistaken — they are not in the right places. So I stop production and we move the machines with much work. For this I have terrible criticism, but in time the plant begins once more to work and we make steel. Before four months we have make more steel than if we had not made a stop.”

“Mr. Zalinsky,” Hewlitt said, “politics aside, the next time that you take over a plant, let me know. I’ll buy some stock in it.”

“So, you wish to exploit the workers!”

Hewlitt refused to take the bait. “When you buy stock, Mr. Zalinsky, you’re not exploiting the workers, you’re betting on them.”

Zalinsky’s mood changed, he leaned forward and unconsciously dropped his voice to a lower tone. “I become aware that in politics you have talent,” he said. “I give you warning — listen! Talk not out of this office, anywhere. Colonel Rostovitch, he is tougher than the steel I made. He is the planner that we are here. He listens, he knows. Himself he is now here and each day come more of his people. If he shoot you, I have no one to speak my own language.”

“I’ll be careful,” Hewlitt promised. “Thank you for the warning.”

He was thinking of Bob Landers as he walked out of the office; he was far from trusting Zalinsky, who was his immediate concern. The formidable Colonel Rostovitch could wait.

Marc Orberg leaned far back on the sybaritic davenport in his penthouse apartment, propped on his elbows, and ground his teeth in a combination of harsh frustration and mounting rage. His life, with which he had been so richly satisfied, was falling to pieces and he was unable to endure the humiliation.

He was not getting any publicity at all, and that was more essential to him than sex itself. The wild days of the Orberg decision against the draft were long past, so were the riots he had led against the police, the campus disorders, the bombings he had helped plan. He had accomplished all this, and now he was being ignored!

That was not the worst of the injustice that was being done to him. He had composed a new song that was a sure million-copy seller, as all of his songs were since he had become world famous, but the song had not sold a million copies because the bastards who were running things now had yanked it off the market because it was obscene. What the hell did they expect from him anyway, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm? It was a clever song, clever as hell; it could have been an even bigger hit than “Pigpen,” the one the cops hated so much. But they had killed it just because it was about a naked woman who gets laid at the finish. Nat Friedman had warned him, but Nat was always warning him because he was a scared little runt and too cautious.

After that had happened he had decided to give a concert; he wanted to look again at an auditorium jammed with screaming, adoring faces; faces that loved him and hung on his every word, every gesture that he made. They would wait for him by the hundreds outside and there would be the business of the paper slips and a bunch of new girls to screw anytime he liked. Nat had booked the concert all right, after advising that they should lay low for a while. That had been like Nat, always timid, always afraid.

He had gotten all dressed up in his trademark costume, let them wait an extra twenty minutes for kicks, and then had come on stage, Marc Orberg in person, to look out at the vast emptiness before him with only a few hundred people gathered down front to hear him sing. They had made a fuss when he had appeared, of course, but the silent mockery of the thousands of empty seats in the big sports arena had been more than he could endure. They couldn’t treat him like that; they had found that out when he had stalked off in a blinding rage.

Nat had calmed him down, had told him to go out and sing so that they wouldn’t have to give all of the money back, particularly on the performance bond that would run into real dough. Just to make Nat happy he had gone back on stage and had sung two songs; if more of them couldn’t come, then that was all that they deserved. The applause hadn’t been loud enough, the screams of delight hadn’t been there, so he had walked out again, this time for good. He had performed; so no one got any money back and that was that. But it hadn’t died there, because the humiliation of it had galled him every hour of every day afterward.

Not one damn girl had been there after the show, not a one to share his six-thousand-dollar bed and there wasn’t another like it in the world.

He smashed a fist into the simulated fur upholstery as he realized once more that he hadn’t been to bed with any kind of a female for days. He wanted a woman, even another of the timid little virgins out for the thrill of a lifetime, and getting it.

And when he had had Nat phone that clown Zalinsky in Washington, because it was high time that Marc Orberg was recognized and rewarded for what he had done, the self-centered fool had had the nerve to refuse to see him.

If he had had anything that he could have smashed, he would have seized it and beaten it against the wall.

Then a forgotten memory flashed into his brain. He had promised, long before any of the invaders had set foot on American soil, that he would be the first to welcome them. Since then, he knew, thousands of them had come and he hadn’t met a one of them.

All right, it was something to do. He would make a big deal out of it somehow, and get some publicity. Pictures on the front page of him shaking hands with the commander, if there was one. All he had to do was to find the right time and place and then have Nat let the press know.

Going to meet a plane at an airport would be no good, flights had been coming in all the time for weeks.

Then he had an idea: there had been something in the papers about clearing a stretch of the Maryland east shore. Enemy amphibious forces were coming in and they were going to hit the beach in classic style. There would be a lot of action during the exercise, thousands of men and a major commander of one kind or another, and he, Marc Orberg, would welcome them! The news media would all be there and millions of Americans would hate the very idea of the unopposed enemy landing. He could ride into town in the commander’s vehicle and shove it right down their throats.

He liked that, he liked it a lot. The idea grew and expanded in his mind until it gave birth to another. When that happened he found release at last from his blinding frustration and the acid anger that was consuming him. With his fame and prestige they would be damn glad to get him — as an active partner in the new government!

Hewlitt could hardly contain himself as Frank pulled his cab away from the West Entrance to the White House and entered the flow of home-going traffic. He sat silently, knowing that he had to, and waited to see if the enforced restraint of the past two days was to continue, but impatience burned within him.

“Did your girl friend put out yet?” Frank asked.

Relief flooded through Hewlitt. “If she doesn’t pretty quick I’m going to get a new girl friend,” he answered. “Have they had you wired?”

“I think so; I picked up some fellows following me and I didn’t like the looks of it. Davy went over the car and found something. He didn’t tell me the details. Anyhow, I think you’re under investigation.”

“How about yourself?”

Frank waited until he had emerged from closely packed traffic. “All right, I think. This morning the thing was gone from the car, so I’m thinkin’ that it was sort of routine, general snooping around.”

“Davy was sure?”

“You better believe it, and he’s a good boy. I told you that.”

“I believe it; right now I’m trusting my neck to him. Frank, I’ve got something: you were right about Captain Scott, I think I can prove it.”

“Let’s have it.”

“When Bob Landers was shot Scott saw Zalinsky and got permission to bury the body — remember?”

“That’s right.”

“I didn’t wake up to it until you slipped me that note in a fortune cookie, but normally Zalinsky doesn’t see anybody; he turned down Fitzhugh and a lot of others who are pretty important. But Scott walked right in, and he’s only a captain. And he got a concession on the first try. It doesn’t add up.”

“Now there you really got somethin’, my boss will like that! He tol’ me that Scott might be all right, but maybe not. I’ll get this to him right away before anybody else can get trapped. Anything more?”

“Yes, Fitzhugh wrote Zalinsky’s boss — the premier himself — and offered to negotiate as peacemaker for this country. I haven’t seen the letter, but I don’t need to. Zalinsky sent me to tell Fitzhugh to forget it and to pick up his marbles. The senator took it hard; he thought that he was going to emerge as the savior of the country.”

“Not likely, not him.”

“The Brown hearings are off, which isn’t too surprising. Brown himself is claiming that the Ravirod was O.K. and that the Air Force didn’t know how to fly it.”

“Horseshit,” Frank said. “Now listen, this is important — you ready?”

“Shoot.”

“We’re goin’ to start movin’, you included. I get the word that somethin’ big is shaping up.”

“I’m damn glad to hear it.”

Frank stopped for a light and the conversation remained suspended until they were in motion once more. “I don’t know anythin’ about what it is, but it ought to be pretty good. Now this is orders: you tell Barbara that she’s to move into Davy’s house. An’ she’s to tell Mary to do the same thing. Just as soon as they can work it to make it look right.”

“Frank, how can that look right? They’re both pretty high-class government girls. They just wouldn’t do that!”

“That’ll be taken care of, you just pass on the orders. Remember that I tol’ you we were going to make Davy’s place into a real nice whorehouse. Not for real, of course, but it’s goin’ to look that way.” “I still can’t buy it.”

“You will, when you see how it works out. Has Cedric Culp been playing up to Mary like I said?”

“Yes, but not too much. He’s married, remember.”

“I know, but he could be playing around a little. It’s been known to happen.”

“Hell, yes.”

“Now we’re goin’ to be showing some stag movies at the house tonight and you’re to come, got it?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll pick you up about eight-thirty. You’ll find out more after you get there.”

As Hewlitt let himself into his apartment he reflected that the stag movies were a good gag — it would account for his presence in a questionable neighborhood and his associating with a cab driver if that fact ever came to light. And because of the prudishness of his own country, Zalinsky would believe it. Whether the invisible but deadly Colonel Rostovitch would was another question.

A few minutes after eight Hewlitt put on a turtle-necked sweater, a pair of dark slacks, and the most inconspicuous jacket that he owned. He exchanged the leather shoes he had worn all day for a softer suede pair with rubber soles and then slipped a few extra dollars into his wallet. He did not know what lay ahead for the evening, but he knew that he was not going to be wasting time watching stag films.

When he went outside at eight-twenty-five Frank was just pulling up. Hewlitt got in without making the mistake of looking around first.

As soon as they were under way Frank inquired about his girl friend and then provided some news. “You’re goin’ to meet my boss tonight. He was mighty pleased with that idea of yours about Scott. He wants to talk to you directly. He is a sharp boy; you’ll find that out.”

“Has he a code name?”

“Yes, it’s Percival — not Percy; remember that.”

“And you absolutely vouch for him.”

“Hew, if he ain’t straight, you can forget about the whole thing.”

“Have you any idea what’s on the program for tonight?”

“Not too much. I think it has to do with Scott, but I don’t know for sure. Anyhow, there’s more goin’ on now and maybe Percival will have some things to tell you.”

A half hour latej, Frank pulled the cab into an unpaved driveway next to the house. A battered service truck parked at the end carried a legend for Jones’ TV Service. Frank pulled up behind it and pointed toward a side door which badly needed painting. When they opened it to go inside, Hewlitt noticed that despite its weatherbeaten appearance it swung silently on its hinges.

There was a smaller group in the living room this time although the same volunteer bartender was on duty. “How about a drink?” Frank asked.

“I could go for a bourbon and water.”

When Frank came back from the bar with two drinks Hewlitt looked around and asked, “Do you know who that Chinese fellow is?”

“You oughta know him,” Frank answered. “He works in the restaurant where you ate with Scott.”

Memory focused then and he recognized the quiet-mannered headwaiter. “I figured that you’d tumble to that,” Frank continued, “when you got that fixed-up fortune cookie.”

He hadn’t tumbled and it bit into his confidence. “Is he your boss?” he asked.

“No, but he’s a real good man. He thought up the fortune cookie trick and fixed the slip. And he got a good tape of your talk with Scott.”

Hewlitt looked at him. “That place is bugged?”

Frank tasted his drink. “Sure, but this time we’re doing it. Like I told you, this is no kid setup.”

As he was speaking the bartender set up a small table and then loaded it with an eight-millimeter projector and five rolls of film. As someone else set up a screen he threaded the machine and adjusted the focus. “O.K., you guys?” he asked.

For answer the man nearest the door turned off the light switch. A hazy cone of light crossed the room from the projector to the screen and a not too clear image appeared. In what was obviously a motel room a man and a girl began to embrace while they were seated on a small davenport.

“All right, let’s go,” Frank said. He opened the rear door of the room and waited until Hewlitt had followed him into the narrow corridor. “Sorry you’ll have to miss the show,” he added, “but you know the plot anyway.”

He led the way upstairs and then back to a rear room where he paused and knocked.

The man who opened the door was an even six feet tall, of narrow athletic build, and had on a suit which was trimly cut to his figure. He wore his hair in a near crew cut which suggested at once a military officer or a highly skilled technician accustomed to an active life. “Come in, gentlemen,” he invited.

Frank performed the introduction. “This is Raleigh Hewlitt. Hew, this is Percival.”

The man called Percival offered Hewlitt a hand that had steel in its fingers, then motioned toward two chairs which helped to fill what was essentially a sparse office. He sat down himself behind a simple desk with the manner of a man who knows precisely what he is about. Hewlitt estimated his age as between thirty-five and forty, but sensed at the same time that he could be wrong in either direction. Also he noted that there were no distinguishing characteristics in the man’s features, they were normal and regular and that was all.

“Hew, I hope that you’ll excuse me if I don’t give you my name at this point,” he said. “That isn’t because of any lack of confidence in you; it’s the way we have things set up.”

“That’s all right,” Hewlitt answered.

“I’ve been authorized to give you some information,” Percival continued. “I believe that Bob Landers told you that this organization was set up quite a while before we got into the late war; the President read the handwriting on the wall and prepared for what might happen. And did. You know which President I mean.”

“Yes, sir.”

Percival pulled out a drawer and stretched his legs across the top, tipping back in his chair as he did so. “Contrary to some press reports you might have seen, we had, and still have, a pretty competent intelligence organization going for us. Through it we got some very clear indications about what was coming, but the temper of the times — the public mood all across the country — made things difficult. The Orberg decision didn’t help us, and there were other problems.”

“Fitzhugh, for example.”

“Exactly. He didn’t consciously try to wreck things the way that Orberg and Wattles did, among others, but he’s been a damn nuisance.”

“Do you want me to leave you two guys alone?” Frank interrupted.

Percival gave him a half gesture. “I’d rather you’d stay; some of this may concern you.”

Frank nodded his compliance and lapsed back into silence.

“By the way,” Percival said. “I understand that you had a meeting with Fitzhugh the other day.”

“I did. He thought he was going to negotiate for us and save the country.”

“A little late for that, as far as he’s concerned.” He laid his arms on the desk. “Getting back to cases, we’ve been keeping a file on you for some time, largely because of your language capability. We thought of using you to translate intercepted messages and other material that we might get our hands on. All of the reports that we have had on you have been good, particularly as regards your ability to keep your mouth shut.”

“There isn’t any choice about that,” Hewlitt said.

Percival nodded his approval. “Glad that you see it that way. We had thought of pulling you into our headquarters, but as things have worked out, we want to leave you where you are for the time being. You seem to have established a certain rapport with Zalinsky that could be vitally important at the right time.”

“That’s all right with me,” Hewlitt said once more, “but in a way, I’m disappointed. I’d like a little more action if that’s possible.” Percival looked at him quite sharply for a moment, as though he were making a re-evaluation. “Before this is all over, I suspect that you’ll get all the action you want. We have certain operations planned which you will know about quite soon.”

Hewlitt leaned forward. “Where do I fit in?” he asked.

Percival rested his arms on the top of the desk and became thoroughly practical. “You know Captain Scott of the Air Force. We’ve had a tip-off that, for reasons unknown, he may be the person who betrayed Bob Landers — but it isn’t definite. We’ve been watching him very closely. Frank here knows about that. When you came up with the fact that Zalinsky saw him on short notice, that was an important piece of information that we had missed. We want to move fast on this before he can do any more damage, if he is the person we want. I listened to the tape of your dinner conversation with him; there is no doubt that he was probing you for a possible entrance into the underground.”

“He had me believing him,” Hewlitt said.

“Remember — he may still be absolutely O.K.”

“I hope that he is,” Hewlitt admitted. “But if he is our man, then why did he blow the whistle on Bob Landers so fast? That couldn’t help but hurt him in what he was trying to do.”

Percival raised one forearm and pointed upward as though he were addressing a classroom. “Suppose it was the other way around. It is very possible that Bob got onto him. In that case, if Scott detected it, he would want to get rid of Bob posthaste in order to protect himself. And he could get cooperation from Zalinsky.” Hewlitt thought. “It’s entirely possible, but very hard to believe. Scott seems to be so much a totally right kind of person. Also, what reason would he have to betray his country?”

Percival did not comment on that. “To get the answers to some of these questions, I had it in mind to use you — that is, if you want to come to the party. We can keep you pretty well covered and, if you’re really interested, it would be a chance to get a little field experience. But there is a very real element of risk and in your case it could be accentuated — you can see why.”

“What do you want me to do?” Hewlitt asked.

Percival studied him for a moment before he spoke. “We are up against a man who calls himself Colonel Rostovitch; he’s a modern-day Beria who heads up the enemy secret police. That’s a good old Balkan term for any kind of a suppressive force. Rostovitch is a terror, and he’s here now — ostensibly headquartered at what used to be their embassy. But he has other operating bases; one of them is a house something like this one which they have had for some time; we only got on to it a short while ago.

“If Scott is on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, we think that he will try to get in touch with you again. If he does, then you are to tell him that you have heard that there is an organization such as ours and imply — no more than that — that you might be able to put him in touch. This will be sticking your own neck out, of course. If he takes the bait, we believe that he will waste no time in going to that house to report. If he attempts to do that, then he will be dealt with.”

“It sounds grim.”

“It is; you were there when Bob Landers died.”

“Then Scott…”

Percival nodded. “Yes.”

“On the other hand,” Hewlitt reasoned aloud, “if he is all right, then there is no harm done. We could probably use him.”

“We considered that too.”

Hewlitt thought of Bob Landers. “All right,” he said, “I’m your man. When do you think that this will happen?”

Percival stood up. “If you’re ready to go,” he said, “we have it set up for tonight.”