The Spy in the Ointment

12

Karp was waiting for me in his office, as Duff had promised, and was not alone. P was with him, as were three other tough-looking men of P’s generation. As they didn’t identify themselves, and as I was already Q, they had to be R and S and T.

Karp invited me to sit down, which I did, and then, as the others studied me critically, he said to the room at large, “Frankly, we’re rather pleased with our accomplishments in this case. Given an individual with no training or apparent aptitude in this line, without even military experience or training behind him, and with the psychological block of a belief in some sort of religious pacifism—”

“Ethical pacifism,” I said. “Sorry to interrupt, but that’s a different group. You see, the difference—”

“Thank you,” he said. “Perhaps some other time we’ll have an opportunity to discuss the differences. Gentlemen, I think Q himself has just given an ample demonstration of the difficulties we encountered in his case.”

R, a basso profundo, grumbled, “We know it was a tough job, Karp. The question is, did you do it?”

“To an extent,” Karp told him carefully. “To, I believe, a greater extent than anyone could have predicted.” He picked up and ruffled a bunch of papers, saying, “I have here our instructors’ reports, and may I say to begin with that they are unanimous in praising Q’s intelligence, adaptibility, and willingness to co-operate.” He gave me a tiny bow, and the least wintry smile he’d yet bestowed on me, and I felt myself go warm all over. It was like getting that CCNY sheepskin after all, and my pleasure at Karp’s compliment was marred only by the knowledge that I had to be some sort of buffoon to be taking pleasure from such a compliment in such circumstances.

Karp went on, “The instructors, by the way, are also all agreed that they can hardly wait to get back to their normal duties with regular professional volunteer trainees. So much for that. Specifically, our code instructor gives Q highest marks in all areas of cryptography and cryptology, and expresses his belief that Q, unaided, could break any code up to Class Three within one day, and that, with sufficient incentive and training, he could become a full expert in the field. Since philosophy and cryptology are closely related arts, and since Q would appear to have some bent or interest in philosophical theorems, this aptitude is not necessarily to be considered surprising.”

There were about twelve things in those last few sentences I wanted to dispute, and loudly, but I was rather keenly aware that this was neither the time nor the place for it. Instead of speaking out, therefore, I settled more deeply into my chair, set my mouth in grim lines, and began to compose in my head the most vitriolic pamphlet I had written since The Sissy and the Arms Race back in 1957.

While I prepared this polemic, Karp continued unknowingly onward. “Our physical education instructor,” he said, “rates Q fairly above median in physical condition and stamina, and estimates Q’s survival quotient in a crisis situation at approximately seven hours. This, while far below the thirty-eight-hour minimum required for our normal graduates, is well above the thirty-seven-minute average of the man on the street or the slightly under two-hour SQ that Q arrived here with. On a related subject, our judo instructor tells me Q could overcome almost any sort of unarmed attack from up to five ordinary civilians, but of course would be rapidly defeated by any well-trained professional. A five-day miracle is beyond us.”

R, the rumbler, rumbled, “We know that. We don’t ask you people to do the impossible.”

Karp’s rewinterized smile suggested without words his disagreement, while he said, “Our electronics man has staged Q for transmission, reception, and various simple kinds of self-defense, and declares himself satisfied with Q’s understanding of the use and manipulation of the material given him. Our swimming instructor is equally satisfied with Q’s abilities to survive in the water. Q’s only total failure was in fencing, at which he showed so little aptitude that no real attempt was made to train him, but his progress in general gymnastics was, according to his instructor, encouraging.” Karp aligned his papers by rapping them edgewise on the desk top. “And that,” he said, “is just about that. Now, I expect you gentlemen wish to be alone for a while.”

“Thank you,” rumbled R.

Karp got to his feet, nodded efficiently to all of us, and left. R, immediately establishing who was now in command, moved over and sat behind Karp’s desk. He looked broodingly at me and said, “Raxford, I’ve been reading your dossier.”

“I’d like to some time,” I said.

“Frankly,” he rumbled, ignoring my insert, “I’m surprised that a man with your record and tendencies would agree to co-operate on any matter of national security or national defense. But I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. You’re here, you’ve demonstrated your willingness to co-operate over the past five days, and I here and now guarantee you every bit of assistance and co-operation this department can give.”

I said, “Excuse me, but I feel I have to make a speech.”

R, abruptly wary, glanced from me to P and back again. “What sort of speech?” he asked.

“I’m not backing out,” I assured him, “but once and for all I want to get straight with you people just what a pacifist is, or at least what this particular pacifist is, so you can maybe get over being astonished. The way I see it, a pacifist is someone who believes that the ultimate weapón in any and all disputes, from the personal to the international, is reason. Thought, negotiation, good will, and compromise are all words that sound nasty and probably Communist to the tough guys who want another war because their lives are too banal to be borne in peacetime, but these are the words we use and the concepts we believe in. We don’t believe in taking up arms and killing people, and this is an extension of our basic initial belief in the power of reason. You can’t reason with a dead man, which is why we would prefer to keep our enemies alive, and devote ourselves to peaceful attempts to resolve the differences between us. By a further extension of the same series of ideas, we feel very strongly about being ourselves killed, because we can’t reason when we’re dead either. A perversion of this aspect has been popularized as better Red than dead, which I would agree with only if there were no other alternatives. But there is a strong philosophic gulf between the passive resistance of a Mahatma Gandhi and the suicide of a Buddhist monk. I can’t think of any circumstances under which I’d set fire to myself, including this one. I was given the choice of assisting in an investigation of lawbreakers or of being abandoned to be gunned down by them, and better Fed than dead is what I chose. With the understanding that I won’t kill any of them any more than I will willingly be killed myself, I’m your man for the duration.”

R had been listening to this with the disgruntled face of a Lee J. Cobb, and when I was done, he said, “In other words, you’ll be sensible for a little while.”

“No. I’m always sensible, that’s the part you people won’t understand. My friends and I think it’s more sensible to talk with people than shoot them, which means we don’t think war is sensible. You do think war is sensible. That, in essence, is our only difference of opinion.”

R said, “One thing I’ll say for you, you can talk it too. You sound just like one of your pamphlets.”

“You’ve read my pamphlets?”

“Every one.”

“And they’ve had no effect on you?”

R chuckled, a sound like forest thunder. “I’m not ready to join up,” he said, “if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s very depressing,” I said.

P said, gently, “It’s getting a little late.”

“Right,” said R, suddenly firming up, putting his palms flat on the desk, being very businesslike. “All right, Raxford,” he said, “here’s the situation. We’ve been aware for some time that Tyrone Ten Eyck was on the move again, that he was probably on his way to this country. We want to know what his plans are, who his confederates are, which country he’s working for. The little you heard from him last week, China and Congress and the Supreme Court and the UN, doesn’t really help us much. What we want to know are his specific plans, and how all these elements work together.” He looked at the others. “Gentlemen?”

S said, “And the timetable, Chief.”

Well, well. P had been the Chief the last time, and if R was P’s Chief, as seemed likely, I was well up among the muckamucks here.

R said, “Right. We not only need to know what they plan to do, but when. Also, if possible, the locations of any arms caches, information on Ten Eyck’s method of entering the country, and so on. You getting this, Raxford?”

“You want to know what he’s doing,” I said.

“In essence,” he admitted. “What we’re trying to get across is that we want it in as much detail as possible.”

I nodded. This, I assumed, was what was normally called a briefing, and so far it could have been a hell of a lot briefer, if you ask me. R hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know.

But now, at R’s instruction, T took over, saying, “In order to operate at optimum efficiency, Raxford, you should know as much as possible about the people with whom you will be dealing. Tyrone Ten Eyck, I believe you already know something about.”

“He’s my girl’s brother,” I said. “According to her, he was something of a sadist when they were kids. Also, he’s about eight years older than her, and ten years ago he deserted from the Army in Korea and went over to the Communist Chinese.”

T nodded, saying, “So much is fairly common knowledge, or at least obtainable from newspaper files. Also the fact that Ten Eyck has a genius IQ, was with the Psychological Warfare section of the Army, and has changed his national allegiance several times in the last decade.”

“I didn’t know about that,” I said. “About his switching allegiances.”

“I consulted a notebook, said, “In 1957 he first left China, lived for several months in Tibet, joined and eventually took charge of a small bandit force operating along the China-Tibet border, and finally betrayed this group into the hands of the Red Chinese for a cash payment. He then entered India, associated himself with the construction of a dam being built with Russian assistance, and in 1959 moved to Russia. Later the same year the Russians ousted him as a Chinese spy, though of course both he and the Chinese denied everything. He then went to Egypt, opened a training school for terrorists who were to be smuggled into Israel, and shortly thereafter blew up both the school and its largest graduating class, possibly as a result of an Israeli bribe. Denials all around once again. After a short stop in Jordan, another brief stay in India, an even briefer stay in Cambodia, and six months running arms to Indonesia from a base in New Zealand, Ten Eyck returned to China, stayed there two years, disappeared entirely from view for a while, and popped up in Algeria in 1963, where he organized and commanded a white terrorist anti-Arab group, much more virulent than the OAS, somewhat similar to our own Ku Klux Klan. Various betrayals within the organization — apparently not from Ten Eyck this time — decimated the group, and Ten Eyck barely got out with a whole skin. In fact, there was widespread belief for some time that he was dead. But now he’s turned up again, in New York City.”

“And that’s the guy you want me to spy on,” I said, remembering Tyrone Ten Eyck’s looks, his air of evil and assurance and power back there in the Odd Fellows’ Hall.

T said, calmly, “That’s one of them. As for Mortimer Eustaly, we believe he is the same man we have in our files under the name of Dimitrios Rembla, a general smuggler and gun-runner with no particular political ties. A businessman type, for sale to anyone, and not normally a killer, though he will kill when cornered.”

“I’m not sure,” I said, “I ought to know all this.”

R said, “One of the most vital parts of any defense is a full knowledge of the enemy.”

“If you say so,” I said.

“The man called Lobo,” T went on, “would appear to be one Soldo Campione, for seventeen years the personal bodyguard of a Latin American dictator who was successfully assassinated in 1961. The dictator’s family, blaming Campione — or Lobo, as you know him — kidnaped him, spirited him away, and tortured him for five months. By the time he was rescued, there had been permanent brain damage, both physical and psychological. For the last few years he has been a general muscleman-for-hire in the Caribbean area and Central America. He obeys orders implicitly, has the intelligence of a three-year-old child, and should under no circumstances be challenged to physical combat.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” I said.

“You have already been briefed on the backgrounds of the others present,” T said, “with the exception of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp. Would you prefer the other backgrounds to be repeated, to refresh your memory?”

“Thanks,” I said, “but no thanks.”

“Very well.” Flip, flip: the notebook pages. “Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp. Until you mentioned them, they were virtually unknown to us. It is entirely possible that several boxes of poisoned candy mailed to the Governor’s Mansion in Albany came from the Whelps; at least, we don’t know who else might have done it. Recent investigation discloses that Mr. Whelp worked for twenty-seven years in a factory on Long Island which has recently gone almost completely over to automation. In accordance with labor-management agreements, Mr. Whelp was laid off three years ago, has been receiving eighty percent pay ever since, and will continue to receive eighty percent pay until the age of sixty, at which time he will switch to the company retirement pension plan, which is sixty percent pay. Mr. Whelp is fifty-one, healthy, with all his faculties and all his limbs, and appears to have absolutely nothing to do with himself, which leads us to believe he is probably capable of doing almost anything.”

T flipped his notebook shut and said to R, “That’s it.”

R nodded. “Good. Thank you.” He turned to me. “All right, Raxford,” he said, “very soon now you’ll be on your own. One or another of us — or possibly some other agents — will be in contact with you at all times. Should an emergency arise, or should your cover be broken, just let us know, and we’ll move in at once and get you out of there.”

“That sounds fine,” I said.

“I hope,” he said, “your philosophy, religion, whatever-it-is, won’t keep you from using the self-defense devices you’ve been given.”

“Not a bit of it. Smokescreens and directional beams and red signal flares sound perfectly sensible to me, and even though you refuse to believe it I’ll say it once more: I am a sensible man.”

“Raxford,” R said, “spare me the commercial. The point is, we’ll do everything in our power to keep you safe, and we expect you to co-operate. We don’t like losing operatives, it’s messy and wasteful, bad for morale and gives the Other Side a swelled head. So be careful.”

“That’s a very good idea,” I said. “Be careful. I’ll try that. Thank you very much.”

R looked at P. “He’s all yours,” he said wearily.

P said, “Right, Chief,” and got to his feet, saying, “Come on along, Raxford.”

Outside in the hallway, he said, “What was the point of being a smart aleck with the Chief?”

“He told me to be careful,” I said. “Stupidity makes my hackles rise.”

“I guess the Chief didn’t realize you had the corner on brains around here,” P said. “You ready to leave now?”

“No,” I said. “I want to say goodbye to Angela. At great length.”

“You’ll have about four hours,” he told me. “She’s coming with us as far as Tarrytown.”