The Spy in the Ointment

8

Tyrone ten eyck! Angela’s black-sheep brother, the one who had disappeared behind the Bamboo Curtain into Communist China over a decade ago, who had been given up for dead or worse, whom no one had ever expected to see again anywhere in the Western world. And yet here he was, standing tall in a long low room at Broadway and 88th Street, New York City, United States of America, while his sister cowered in the audience in front of him, hidden behind an unreconstructed Stalinist named Hyman Meyerberg.

I picked Angela’s rigid fingers off my arm one by one, leaned next to her ear, and whispered, “He can’t see you, he won’t notice you, relax. Put your coat on, put your hood up. And take down what he says. Whatever you do, take down what he says.”

“Oh, Gene,” she whispered back, while up front her brother was thanking us for having attended tonight’s meeting, “you don’t know him, you just don’t know! He used to stick pins in me, and set fire to cats, and try to knock the servants downstairs.”

“He won’t notice you,” I whispered, beginning to get a little shrill myself. “Just put your coat on, will you? And write down what he says.”

“Oh, Gene!”

Up front, Tyrone Ten Eyck had finished his introductory remarks and had now turned to Lobo, saying, “Get the charts, please.”

Lobo lumbered away into the room from which Tyrone Ten Eyck had just emerged, while I somewhat frantically helped Angela into her coat and she kept dropping her pad, her pen, her pad, her pen, and each time insisting on bending down and picking it up again. While everyone else in the room was still and silent and attentive, we two were carrying on like a couple in a roller coaster, but so far neither Tyrone Ten Eyck nor anyone else seemed to have noticed.

Lobo re-emerged, carrying a large easel, which he set up on the platform, and an armful of big poster cards, which he set up on the easel.

Tyrone Ten Eyck stepped back next to the easel, saying, “Thank you, Lobo. And now, I think it would be best if you were to return to your post at the door. To be sure we won’t be disturbed.”

Lobo rumbled away, and Tyrone Ten Eyck smiled at us. Where Eustaly’s smile had been butter, Tyrone Ten Eyck’s smile was fire. Where Eustaly’s smile had been distant, Tyrone Ten Eyck’s smile was ice. “Your attention, please,” he said, and, assured of our attention — all except Angela, who was trying to get her head inside the hood while picking up her pen while picking up her pad while cowering behind Hyman Meyerberg while writing shorthand while having a nervous breakdown — he turned to the easel, removed the first card, and said:

“This is the structure of American government. As you can see, a snarl of bureaucracy at the bottom is all directed from only three centers at the top: the administrative, the legislative, the judicial. Those who would destroy this government quite often make the mistake of contenting themselves with the assassination of the administrative head, the President, which leaves the other two centers still functioning and intact. These are, as you can see, the Congress and the Supreme Court.” He turned his glinting face to us, and said, “We shall consider this thought a little later. For the moment, we move on.”

He removed the card — it was simply one of those box-and-line affairs, such as high school civics textbooks are full of, and he was right in that it showed all the boxes dependent upon the three major boxes at the top, but so far so what — and said, “Now, let us consider another aspect. Where will we find the pool of talent for the future? Where are the cream of the national crops, the bright young statesmen, economists, sociologists, political scientists of tomorrow?”

He patted the new card — which simply showed a list of country names, with some numbers after each name, none of it quite large enough to read from where we sat — and said, “Here. At the United Nations. Special assistants, under secretaries, aides, the bright young men from practically all the nations in the world, all gathered together in one glass cereal box on the East River. Another thought for us to consider a little later.”

He turned and flashed a smile at us, then removed the UN card, and beneath it was a large photograph of a demolished building. “Ten pounds of a recently developed plastic explosive,” he said, gazing with some brooding pleasure on the photo, “did this much damage. This new explosive is malleable, almost like the toy substance called Silly Putty, and can therefore be hidden in unexpected ways. An electric charge is the detonating force.”

Beneath that card was another line-and-box chart. “Only one nation of any great size, population, or importance is not represented at the United Nations, and that of course is China. China’s bright young men of the future, cut off from their counterparts in other nations, are inevitably developing as chauvinistic, provincial, uncultured, suspicious, and essentially incapable of true conceptualization.”

Tyrone Ten Eyck faced us again, put his hands behind his back, studied us with some amusement, and said, “I see you are all watching me with a good deal of attention and very little comprehension. I do appreciate your forbearance in asking any questions, and I promise that eventually I will connect all of these elements together in an overall plan which will, I assure you, gladden the hearts of each and every one of you.” He turned back to the easel, reached for the card. “And now—”

All this time, you understand, Angela had still been struggling into her coat. The left sleeve was on by now, the hood was more or less on, some of it did appear to be buttoned, but the right sleeve still flapped empty behind her. In a sudden paroxysm of panic and haste, lashing about in a frenzied attempt to get the right arm into the right sleeve, Angela now crashed her right elbow into the empty folding chair next to her, which promptly fell over backward and clattered — as only wooden folding chairs can clatter — to the floor.

Ah, but that was nothing. That was only the beginning. In tipping over, this chair had unbalanced the chair next to it, and the chair next to that, and the chair next to that, and now, by the ripples, the whole damn row went clattering over, with a sound like a troop of cavalry on a tin roof.

By now, everyone was looking at us. At us. And it wasn’t done yet, not by a long shot.

As Angela and I stared at one another, horrified, paralyzed, the toppling row of chairs collided with the row of chain behind us, and that row went down. And the next row. And the next row. And the next row. Like dominoes, every chair on our side of the aisle between us and the rear wall went crashing and clattering and banging and toppling and shattering to the floor.

The silence, after all that, was one of the loudest noises I’ve ever heard.

In that loud silence, one voice spoke. It was Tyrone Ten Eyck’s voice, and it said, “Angela?”

I looked at him. He was looking at her. He had taken a step forward, and he was staring with great intensity at his sister.

Beside me, Angela half-whispered and half-moaned, “Ohhh, Geeene!”

With sudden conviction, Tyrone Ten Eyck roared, “Angela! You little pacifist bitch!”

“Run,” I suggested, took Angela’s hand, knocked over several more chairs, and headed for the exit.

Lobo came through the drapes down there, looming between us and freedom, us and safety. And behind us Tyrone Ten Eyck shouted, above the rising hubbub of the baby terrorists, “Stop them! Lobo! Stop them!”

It was probably the pronoun that saved us. If he’d shouted stop him, Lobo would have scooped me up like a ground ball. If the shout had been stop her, it was Angela who would not have made it to the door. But having been given the order to stop them, with no clear directive as to how to do it or which of us to stop first, Lobo was immobilized.

“Bread and butter!” I called to Angela, hoping she would understand me, and gave her a push to the left at the same time as I angled away to the right. And so we flanked Lobo on both sides, as he held his arms out and looked baffled, and we ran through the drapes, out to the staircase, and down the stairs.

The street was still windy, cold, and rainy, and now was deserted as well. This part of Broadway was strong on movie houses, but by now — about twenty to one — all of them were closed for the night. So were the delis, the liquor stores, the shoe stores, drug stores, clothing stores, candy stores that lined the street on both sides for block after block. A few cabs went by, their vacancy lights lit, but other than that we were alone.

But probably not for long. Still holding Angela’s hand, I headed full tilt around the corner to where we’d left the convertible. If the top had been down, I think I just would have dived over the side, but the top was up and I had to do it the slower way, opening the curb-side door, shoving Angela in ahead of me, and sliding in after her, saying, “Get it started! Get it started!”

I slammed the door, Angela stuck the key in the ignition, and a voice from behind us said, “So here you are.”

We turned our heads, and there were two guys sitting in the back seat.

Angela shrieked, and tried to get out of the car again by climbing over me, or around me, or if necessary through me. I fought her off, saying, “Cut it out, cut it out, they’re FBI men!” Until finally she subsided, took another quick squint at the two guys back there, and whispered, “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” I said, and motioned at them (I and J). “See how lean they are. See the gray suits, the lack of Adam’s apple, the out-of-date hats, the firm jawline.”

“Very funny,” said I, and J snorted.

I said to him, “She hasn’t been at this business as long as I have.”

“The question,” I said to me (is this getting confusing?), “is where have you two been the last hour?”

“The answer to that,” I told him, “will fascinate you. Guaranteed.” I said to Angela, “Drive downtown, honey, while I tell these two the story.”

“It better be good,” I told me.