Donald E. Westlake

The Spy in the Ointment

To Phil and Nedra

I don’t want to offend nobody.

Folk Saying

1

I was trying to fix the damn mimeograph machine when the doorbell rang. It wasn’t the crank this time — usually it’s the crank, falling off or disengaging or whatever — but something in the inking process. (Oh! Did you think I meant the man at the door wasn’t a crank? No no, I meant the machine. People at doors are always cranks. In fact, people everywhere are always cranks, one way and another, if you stop to think about it. Aren’t they?) At any rate, the machine wouldn’t ink. I’d crank and crank, and into the chute would slide an endless stream of blank paper. (Of course, for all the effect I’ve had over the years, I might as well have been rolling out blank paper from the beginning.)

But never mind that, that’s neither here nor there. (The main obstacle to my effectiveness, I’ve always felt, has been this uncontrollable tendency of mine to go off on tangents, stray from the subject, lose — as Christopher Fry puts it — eternity in the passing moment. [Minute? Moment? (There! See what I mean?)]) The point here is the doorbell, and who rang it.

I left my labors on the machine with a kind of angry gratitude, and stomped through the apartment to the front door, which I flung open with no premonition of surprise. My potential visitors were few: a Member, a process server or bill collector, a man from the FBI (or some other government agency), or a cop.

None of which this caller appeared to be. He wasn’t a Member; there are only seventeen of us now, and I know each of my fellow conspirators very well. Nor was he a process server or bill collector, as he lacked the weasel-face endemic to those professions. He was neither as lean as an FBI man nor as flabby as a cop, nor as tall as either. Which made him something altogether different and new.

I gave him the attention that something altogether different and new deserves. I observed that he was of middle age and medium height, quite stocky in a well-fed yet physically fit way, and that he was by far the best-dressed person to have entered this apartment building in half a century. He was, in fact, just a trifle too well dressed; his topcoat was tailored and tapered, and sported a velvet collar. His black shoes gleamed like wet asphalt and featured toes as pointed as the pamphlet I’d been trying to run off. A white silk scarf covered his collar and tie, leaving me for the moment to wonder whether the collar could possibly be anything but wing. In his left hand — from the third finger of which winked at me a large faceted ruby — he held a pair of black suède gloves.

The face above all this Edwardian elegance did not fail to live up to the goods. Round and somewhat fleshy, it bore a glow of sunlight and good health. A neat, discreet, narrow black goatee set off the dark lips, creased now in a somewhat ironic smile which displayed beautifully white teeth. His deep, black, Italianate eyes, set beneath arched black brows and above an aquiline and extremely aristocratic nose, glinted with an intelligence and a humor that even then I sensed to be diabolic. (At least, I think I remember sensing that, and if I didn’t I should have.)

My visitor said to me, in a rich, controlled, radio announcer’s voice, “Mr. Raxford? Mr. J. Eugene Raxford?”

“That’s me,” I said.

“Ah! You yourself!” Surprise and delight animated his features.

“Me myself,” I said. The mimeograph had made me somewhat surly.

“Allow me,” he said ingratiatingly, not at all put off by my manner, and handed me a small white card. I took it, immediately getting ink all over it. (The damnable machine inked me just fine; it was only paper it refused to touch.)

Well. Back. The card read:

MORTIMER EUSTALY

Curios

Import & Export

By appointment

I said, “By appointment of who? Whom.”

“I beg your pardon?”

I showed him the card, which could still be more or less read through the fresh ink. “It says,” I said, “by appointment.” By whose appointment?”

His deep frown was all at once replaced by a deep laugh, full of apparently honest enjoyment. “Oh, I seel You mean, ‘By appointment, purveyors of this and that to His Majesty Thusandso, or Her Serene Highness Hows your uncle.’ But that’s not what that means at all. I’m not a jar of marmalade!”

In a way, that’s exactly what he was, with his velvet collar and pointy shoes and all, but I bit my tongue.

“It means,” Eustaly meantime went on, “quite simply, it means I see my customers by appointment.”

“Oh.” I looked at the card again and said, “But there’s no address or phone number. How do people make appointments?”

“My dear young man,” he said inaccurately, “I really can’t explain in the hall.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, come on in. Excuse the mess.” And I stepped back with an inky flourish and bowed him in.

He gave my living room the glassy smile it deserved, but made no comment. Instead, once I’d closed the door, he returned promptly to the subject. (I wish I could be like that.) “Customers,” he said, “don’t make appointments. The whole thing is—” Then he looked around, as though made wary by a sudden thought, and asked, “Is it safe to talk here?”

“Well, sure,” I said. “Why not?”

“The place isn’t... bugged?”

“Well, we have an exterminator come once a month, but in a neighborhood like this you can’t expect—”

“No no! I mean microphones, listening devices.”

“Oh, those! Oh, sure, we’ve got lots of those. In the light switches, mostly, and here and there. But they don’t work any more.”

“Are you sure? You’ve deactivated every one?”

“Well, most of them, rats ate the wiring. The one in the toilet tank rusted — I think they must have used the wrong kind or something — and I spilled evaporated milk on the one in the refrigerator. Then I used to have two table lamps there, on either side of the couch, and the FBI switched them for two others that looked like them only with microphones inside, and one of the times I was burgled they went, so for about a year and a half now I haven’t been listened to at all. Except on the phone, of course. Why?”

“What I have to say,” he said, “is private, confidential, secret. For your ears only.” He leaned closer to me. “There is no address on that card,” he said, “nor is there a telephone number thereon, because there are no customers. The whole operation is a front, a cover.”

“What whole operation?”

“Those cards.”

“Aaaahhhhhh. A front for what?”

“Mr. Raxford,” he said, “the answer to that is the explanation for my presence here. If you—”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I never asked you to sit down. Do sit down, please. No, not on the sofa; it sheds. This chair’s about the best I have. Would you like a can of beer?”

“No. Thank you.” He seemed just slightly irritated at the interruption. “If,” he said, “we could get on...”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I’ll pay attention now.” I pulled an old kitchen chair over and sat facing the cane basket chair in which I’d placed Mr. Eustaly. “Now,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said, apparently mollified. Then, in deeper tones, he said, “I am speaking to you now not as J. Eugene Raxford, bachelor, thirty-two years of age, average annual income since you were ejected from City College two thousand three hundred twelve dollars per annum, solitary individual in” — he glanced eloquently around the room — “in somewhat reduced circumstances. No! That J. Eugene Raxford has no importance, is nothing and less than nothing.”

Well. I’d thought and voiced and even written exactly the same sentiment myself more than once the last thirteen years, but hearing it spoken directly to my face by a total stranger was something else again. Besides, where did he come off knowing so much about me? He wasn’t the FBI. I said, “Well—”

But he had other plans for the conversation. “The J. Eugene Raxford I am concerned with,” he went grandly on, brooking no interruption, “is National Chairman of the Citizens’ Independence Union! May he prosper, may he persevere, may he see his dreams come true!”

It suddenly occurred to me this bird was a uniform salesman. You get that sort of thing when you run a radical movement: people wanting to sell you uniforms. Army surplus weapons, blank signs. They never believe I’m not rolling in Moscow gold. My reaction, therefore, was somewhat cool to Mr. Eustaly’s rhapsodic mention of the organization. I said, in fact, “What about it?”

“Mr. Raxford,” he said, leaning forward and pointing a tapered clean finger at me, “have you ever heard of the American Sons’ Militia?”

“No.”

“The National Fascist Reclamation Commission?”

“No.”

“The Progressive Proletarian Party?”

“No.”

“The Brotherhood of Christ Defense Fund?”

“No.”

“The Sons of Erin Expeditionary Force?”

“No.”

“The Householders’ Separatist Movement?”

“No.”

“The Pan-Arabian World Freedom Society?”

“No.”

“The Eurasian Relief Corps?”

“No.”

“The Gentile Mothers for Peace?”

“What? No!”

“The True Zion Rescue Mission?”

I shook my head.

He smiled at me. He sat back; the cane chair creaked. He opened his topcoat, flipped his scarf ends to left and right, and displayed a shirt front as gleaming white as Mount Snow on a sunny day. An olive-green bow tie surmounted it all, as though marking timber line. The collar was not at all wing; in fact, it was button-down.

“Mr. Raxford,” he said softly, smiling the while, “your Citizens’ Independence Union has one characteristic in common with each of the organizations I just mentioned to you.” I was a little worried as to what he might say next — ‘They’re all nut groups,’ for instance — but I gave him the straight line anyway. “What’s that?” I asked.

“Method,” he said. His smile broadened. “Each of these eleven organizations — yours and the other ten — has its own separate, and perhaps even contradictory, program and goal. The goals are disparate, and in some cases directly opposed one to the other, but the means of attaining the goal is identical in every case. Each of the groups I have mentioned is a — terrorist organization!”

“Terrorist? Terrorist?”

“Each of these organizations,” he informed me, “believes in direct and dramatic methods. Bombs! Bloodshed! Burning! Destruction! Terror!” As he called out each word, his eyes glittered, his goatee grew sharper, his hands gesticulated.

“Now wait a second,” I said, edging the chair backward, “just a second there, just a second.”

“Violence!” declared Eustaly, relishing the word. “Before the new order can be introduced, the old order must be destroyed! That is the common bond among these eleven organizations!”

“Now wait,” I said, getting to my feet and going around behind the chair, “you’ve got me wrong there, my friend. I don’t want to destroy anything, except maybe that mimeograph ma—”

“Oh, of course, of course!” he cried, laughing, slapping his knees, giving me broad winks. “You can’t be too careful, I realize that. What if I were an FBI agent in disguise, eh? And you made damaging admissions to me. What of that? No, you’re very right to deny everything.”

“Here,” I said. “Wait a minute, just let me get—” I hurried over to the table by the window, riffled through the pamphlets there, and finally came up with a fairly neat-looking copy of the one I wanted: What Is the CIU? I rushed back with this and offered it to him. “Just read this,” I said, “you’ll see we’re not at all—”

He brushed it aside, still twinkling and smirking and winking to beat the band, and said, “Really, Mr. Raxford, this isn’t necessary! Let us just accept your protests as stated, and go on from there. You deny any terrorist motivation, any destructive desire. Excellent. Denial acknowledged. Now, if I may be permitted to continue...”

“Mr. Eustaly, I really don’t think—”

“But it is not at all necessary, I assure you. Please! Allow me to continue.”

I considered. Throw him out? Ignore him? Continue to argue with him? But he hadn’t denied any terrorist motivation or destructive desire. If Mr. Eustaly were, after all, some kind of nut — as it was seeming more and more certain he was — my best move would be to humor him.

Besides, it was a distraction from the mimeograph, than which anything was better, even a nut in a velvet collar. So I sat down again, crossed my legs, laced my fingers, rested my inky hands on my inky trouser knee — oh, I tell you, that mimeograph entertained terrorist motivations of its own — and said, “All right, Mr. Eustaly. I’ll listen.”

His smirk now was knowing. “Of course you will,” he said slyly. “Of course you will.” He raised one finger. “Now,” he said. “I told you these organizations I mentioned had one thing in common, but that statement was more dramatic than true. Actually, you all have many things in common, much more than you might initially suppose. You are, for instance, all relatively small and obscure. You are all short of funds. Each of you is located, either entirely or primarily, in the Greater New York area.”

He paused, but I knew it was only for effect, and though I was prepared to humor him I was not prepared to make unnecessary surprised noises for him, so I sat and swung my inky leg and waited for him to get on with it.

Which, at length, he did. “Now,” he said. “I have pointed out that although the ultimate goals of these eleven organizations vary, their immediate goal is identical. That is, destruction. And I offer you, Mr. Raxford, this suggestion: That these eleven organizations could surely wreak far more havoc were they to co-operate with one another, act in concert and according to an overall plan, than they could possibly do if each continued its own way, separate and alone.” He cocked his head, closed one eye, and said, “N’est-ce pas?”

“Well,” I said, “it certainly does sound sensible, I’ll admit that.”

“Then you’re interested.”

“Well...”

He smiled genially, and fluttered his fingers at me. “Ah, Mr. Raxford, you’re a careful man, I can see that. But I am not asking you to commit yourself now; of course you will have to be sure I really can deliver this, this coalition.” He smiled at the word. “I am,” he went on, “arranging a meeting for this evening at midnight at the Odd Fellows’ Hall, Broadway and 88th Street, here in Manhattan. The full details of the plan will be outlined at that time, and the leaders of the organizations will have an opportunity to become acquainted.”

Guardedly, I said, “What if I don’t show up?”

He smiled at me in a Mediterranean manner. “Then that will tell me you have made your decision. Agreed?”

Anything to get rid of him. “Agreed,” I said.

“Excellent.” He rose, adjusting his scarf and buttoning his topcoat. “The password,” he said, “will be greensleeves.” The Mediterranean smile warmed me again. “It has been most enjoyable meeting you at last, Mr. Raxford. I have followed your career with a good deal of interest.”

“Thank you,” I said, knowing he was an out-and-out liar. If he’d so much as known my name more than two or three days I’d be mightily surprised.

He now offered to shake hands, but I showed him the state of my palm and he gave me a final smile instead and elegantly bowed himself out. “Auf wiedersehen,” he said, as he stepped out to the hall.

“Vaya con Dios,” I suggested, and shut the door.

I still carried the pamphlet, What Is the CIU? now a bit the inkier for wear. If my late visitor had taken the time to open it and read it, he would have learned several things about the Citizens’ Independence Union, first and foremost of which being that we are anything but a terrorist organization. In point of fact, we are a pacifist organization, begun in the early fifties by a group of undergraduates at City College of New York, in protest against the drafting of students for Army duty in the Korean War. The organization had a distinctly pacifist bent to begin with, and when the Korean War ended, bringing to a close the immediate purpose of the group, we militant pacifists within it took over the reins, and general pacifist activity became our sole concern. We join Peace Marches, distribute leaflets, picket visiting dignitaries, write letters of warning to newspapers and magazines, challenge political candidates to debates, etc., etc.

What with one thing and another, our original 1952 strength of some fourteen hundred young men and women of high purpose and unflagging devotion has dwindled over the years to our present membership of seventeen, twelve of whom are on the inactive list. A large body of the membership defected, of course, immediately the Korean War came to a close. Others drifted away upon graduation from college. Internal struggles among varying pacifist persuasions — moral pacifism, ethical pacifism, religious pacifism, political pacifism, sociological pacifism, etc., etc. — further sapped the membership, and the unwelcome attentions of the FBI and other official agencies over the years have helped considerably to dwindle our ranks.

Although, frankly, I’ve always suspected that most of our early members joined us primarily in hopes of finding somebody to have sex with. God knows they all did it incessantly. You couldn’t keep them vertical long enough to march around Washington Square. (Not that I was above a dedicated morsel now and again myself; pacifism and wrinkled sheets, “But tomorrow I may refuse to go overseas.”).

Well. I returned the unread pamphlet to the untidy clutter of the table, put on a fresh pot of coffee for the FBI, and went back to work on the damned machine.

2

They arrived about an hour later, two new ones, tall lean sandy types in the inevitable gray suits, clean jawlines, flat blue eyes and out-of-date hats. “You’re late,” I told them. “Your coffee’s cold.”

(I try to be nice to people from the FBI in the hope that sooner or later they’ll decide to leave me alone again, though I fear the hope is probably vain. The CIU was under surveillance in the middle fifties because that’s what life was like in the middle fifties, but along toward the end of that witch-hunting decade the Feds began to leave me pretty much alone. Then I made my mistake.

(My mistake [We’re continuing the parenthesis, you notice] was in assuming that an organization called Students for Non-Violence and Disarmament was probably a pacifist group. When the secretary of SFNAD called me and asked if our group would march with hers in a protest demonstration against the British Embassy, I naturally agreed; we small groups very frequently band together to give a more impressive appearance.

(Well [The same parenthesis marches on and on], it turned out SFNAD was an excessively left-wing Communist front having something to do with the violent overthrow of a North African nation which was just in the process of no longer being a British colony or protectorate or some such thing. [Are you following this? I never did.] When the dust settled, SFNAD was down on the FBI’s list of Dangerous Organizations We Better Keep an Eye On, and so — guilt by association — was the poor little CIU. The FBI and I had been on rather close terms ever since. [End parenthesis.])

Anyway, new Feds assigned to me had a habit of treating me like I was James Cagney, and these two were no exception. They came in, snicked the door shut, and one of them said severely, “You are J. Eugene Raxford?”

“J. Eugene Raxford,” I said. “Right. Just a minute.”

I started away to get the coffee, but the other one stepped quickly in front of me, saying, “Where do you think you’re going?”

(FBI men never tell you their names, so I’ll have to identify these two simply as A and B. A had asked my name, and B was now standing in front of me, blocking my path.)

To B, I said, “I’m going to the kitchen, get the coffee.”

“What coffee?”

“The coffee I put on for you people.”

B looked at A and made a head motion. A promptly left the room, apparently to search the kitchen, and B turned his attention back to me, giving me the gimlet eye. “How’d you know we were coming?”

“You always do,” I said.

He said, “Who called you?”

I looked at him, astonished. Didn’t he know my phone was tapped? I said, “What? Called me? Nobody called me.”

A came back from the kitchen and shook his head. B grimaced and said to me, “Don’t give me that. You couldn’t have known unless somebody tipped you.”

“Then,” I said, “why don’t you pick up the phone and ask your man in the basement to play you the tape of the call? Maybe you’ll recognize the voice.”

A and B looked at one another. B said, “There’s something wrong with the security here.”

“No, there isn’t,” I said. “You people have me under constant surveillance. Frankly, I think you’re doing a first-rate job.”

A said to B, “We better get on with it.”

“There’s a security leak here,” B answered him. “We ought to find out what’s what.”

“The thing for us to do is report it, and let HQ decide,” A insisted. “Our job is identification.” He turned to me. “Where’s the bedroom?”

“Through the door there,” I said.

They never say thank you. A merely went away to the bedroom, while B pulled a glossy photograph from his jacket pocket, pushed it in front of my face, and barked, “Who is that man?”

I squinted at it. The picture was a blurred and murky series of grays, an unfocused attempt with a telephoto lens. It appeared to be a street scene, and possibly that long dark blob in the middle was a man, though it could just as easily have been a telephone pole.

“Well?” B snapped. “Who is it?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” I said.

“Don’t give me that! You know who he is, and if you’re smart you’ll tell us now and save yourself a trip downtown.”

A came back from the bedroom and shook his head. He had ink on the back of his left hand. (The mimeograph is in the bedroom; I sleep on the sofabed in the living room.)

“Uptown,” I said. “Or maybe crosstown.”

They both stared at me. B said, “What?”

“Foley Square,” I told him, “is both uptown and crosstown from here.”

Squinting like a seagoing parrot, B said, slowly and dangerously, “Foley — Square? — What — about — Foley — Square?”

“It’s your Headquarters. You said I could save myself a trip downtown, but there’s nothing downtown from here except the Manhattan Bridge. You meant I could save myself a trip crosstown, or maybe a trip uptown. But not a trip downtown.”

FBI men tend to look at one another a lot. These two did it again now, and then B whirled on me and snapped, “All right, quit stalling. You won’t identify the man in the photo?”

“Sure,” I said. “Who is he?”

A said, “You’re supposed to tell us.”

B waved the photo under my nose. “Take a good look,” he ordered. “Take a good look.”

“How am I going to take a good look,” I asked him, beginning despite myself to get irritated, “unless you people take a good picture?”

B looked at the photo himself, suspiciously, and said, “It looks all right to me.”

A suddenly said, “Do you deny that individual was in this apartment today?”

I said, “Eustaly? Was that Eustaly? Let’s see that again.”

But they wouldn’t; they were both suddenly scrambling for notebooks. B insisted I spell Eustaly, which I did, and then A said, “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“That picture,” I said (it was now back in B’s pocket), “threw me off. I knew you were coming up here to ask me about Eustaly, but that picture—” I shook my head, unable to go on.

“You knew?” B demanded, leaning in toward me.

A said to him, “Let’s not get off on that again. We’ll just report it to HQ, that’s all.”

“I’ve never seen such a security leak,” B muttered.

A abruptly turned and waggled his fingers in my face. I stepped back, offended, and A said, “Well?”

“Well what? Don’t do that!”

He did it again, waggle-waggle. “I suppose,” he said, looking knowing, “you don’t know what that means.”

I suspected it meant he was dangerously insane, but that’s nothing to tell an FBI man, so I said, “That’s right. I don’t know what that means.”

“That’s sign language,” A told me. “As if you didn’t know. Deaf-and-dumb sign language.”

“Is it?” I was interested. Ever since Johnny Belinda, I’ve had a hankering to learn sign language, but somehow or other there’s never been time for it. “Do some more,” I said.

“That’s how you communicate!” A said triumphantly, pointing a finger at me, which I guess wasn’t sign language but was just pointing a finger. “You never speak in here, you or any of your friends, and that’s how you do it. Sign language!” He turned to B and said, proudly, “I worked that out myself.”

Oh, I thought. These people were under the impression their microphones were still working. Since they never picked up anything, it meant I was doing my communicating with visitors some other way. That must be why they kept sneaking in all the time and emptying my wastebaskets, looking for notes.

Well, I didn’t like this sign-language theory of A’s a bit. If the whole FBI went along with it, they’d stop emptying my wastebaskets. I haven’t emptied a wastebasket in nearly three years, and I’d hate to have to start all over again.

So, knowing something of the FBI mentality, I said, “Sign language, eh? Huh.” And looked even more knowing than A.

A, as I’d guessed, was stricken. His confidence in his theory was shattered, never — I hoped — to be reassembled. (An outright denial, of course, would simply have confirmed A in his convictions. But the sly suggestion of superior knowledge, which is the FBI man’s own major tool of his trade, is also the weapon to which he is the most vulnerable. With one “Huh” I had puffed sign language right out of A’s head into oblivion.)

Gruffly, B took over then, saying, “Let’s get back to this man Eustaly. What did he want?”

“He came here by mistake,” I said.

Which gave them the upper hand again. They both looked knowing in the extreme, and B said, “Oh, yeah? Tell us about it.”

“He really did come here by mistake. What he wanted was terrorist organizations.”

B nearly closed his eyes, he was squinting so hard. “He wanted what?”

“Terrorist organizations. He thought the CIU was a terrorist organization, and he wanted to tell me about some meeting he was setting up with a lot of them, you know, terrorist organizations, and he wanted me to go.”

A said, “I thought your crowd was pacifists, conscientious objectors.”

“That’s right. Eustaly made a mistake.”

“You mean he wanted the World Citizens’ Independence Union?”

I said, “The what?”

But B interrupted saying, “You don’t expect us to believe that, do you?”

“Probably not,” I admitted. “But on the other hand, what would you believe?”

“We’ll ask the questions,” B snapped.

“Ah,” I said, “but I’ll ask the rhetorical questions.”

“Don’t be a wiseguy,” A advised me, meaning he hadn’t understood the word “rhetorical.”

B said, “What did you tell this guy Eustaly?”

“I told him he was making a mistake. He wouldn’t believe me either, he thought I was just being careful.”

B said, “So what did he—” and was interrupted by the doorbell. Immediately he tensed up, and his right hand ducked under his coat tail toward his hip.

“Relax,” I said. “It’s probably a pacifist.”

I went to the door and opened it, while A and B watched me like goldfish eying a new cat, and I’d been right: it was a pacifist. A pacifist near and dear to me, in fact, the pacifist who lately does my laundry and loses my socks, washes my dishes and brings me pastrami sandwiches from the deli, changes my sheets and then helps me use them, my Beatrice, my Thisbe, this year’s love — Angela Ten Eyck.

How beautiful Angela is, and how gorgeously dressed, and how sweet-smelling, and how clean! She is possibly the only girl south of 14th Street who smells primarily of soap, but on the other hand she doesn’t live south of 14th Street, she only visits from time to time. She lives, to be exact, on Central Park South.

Angela is the daughter of Marcellus Ten Eyck, the industrialist and munitions maker best known for his contribution in World War II of the Ten Eyck 10–10 Tank, sometimes called the Triple Ten or the Triple Tee, the tank about which there was a muddled, inconclusive, and abruptly halted Congressional inquiry in 1948. As any psychoanalyst could have told the father, both of his children grew up to oppose him. The son, Tyrone Ten Eyck, disappeared behind the Bamboo Curtain in North Korea in 1954 and, except for an occasional scurrilous radio broadcast, hasn’t been heard from since. The daughter, Angela, had no sooner finished being a debutante, four years ago, than she’d turned her back on affluence and influence — symbolically, at least — and had come downtown to be a pacifist. (There was a widespread belief — perhaps not entirely unfounded — that of the two betrayals, the old man minded that of his daughter the more. Tyrone, at least, wasn’t trying to throw his own father out of work. In fact, one might even say he was out drumming up business.)

Angela always wears clothing such as to make me want to rip it to shreds, the quicker to get it all off her, and this time was no exception. On her feet were boots, black, narrow, high-heeled; they made me think of Marlene Dietrich. Above, black stretch pants, taut and tapering, made me think of ski lodges. Still further above, a bulky fuzzy wool sweater of the brightest canary-yellow in the world made me think of hayrides. And down inside there, I knew, she would smell of this morning’s shower.

The head, with Angela, is always the last to be considered. Not that it isn’t a lovely head, for it is, it’s an extraordinarily beautiful head indeed. Natural blond hair frames a face of smooth symmetry, flawless complexion, just enough cheekbone, and a jawline as delicate as an artist’s brush stroke. Her eyes are blue and amiable and very large, her nose is slightly Irish, her mouth is generous and usually smiling. But, alas, this charming head is hollow. Inside, the winds blow back and forth from ear to ear uninterrupted by more than the smallest nodule of brain. My Angela, though she is rich and beautiful, though she possesses a yellow Mercedes Benz convertible and a license to drive it, though she is a graduate of an exclusive New England girls’ college, though she pays part of my rent and I love her dearly, still I must say it — this Angela is a nitwit.

For instance. In she came, smiling, kissed my inky cheek, looked at the FBI men, and said, “Oh! Company! How nice!” Angela — and only Angela — had failed to see that these were Feds.

B came lumbering forward, notebook at the ready. “What’s your name?”

“Angela,” she said, beaming. “What’s yours?”

“Honey,” I said. “These are—”

“You close your mouth,” A told me.

B said to Angela, “What do you know about a” — he consulted his notebook — “a Mortimer Eustaly?”

Angela looked as alert as a bird on a branch. She said, “Who?”

“Mortimer,” B said slowly, enunciating, “Eustaly.”

Angela continued to look alert. “Eustaly,” she said. She turned her bright smile toward me, saying, “Honey, do I know anybody named Eustaly?”

“Playing dumb,” commented A.

“We’ll see about that,” said B. Poising his notebook threateningly, he said to Angela, “What’s your full name?”

“Angela,” she said, “Eulalia Lydia Ten Eyck.”

“All right, you, don’t be— Did you say Ten Eyck?”

“Well, of course,” said Angela prettily. “That’s my name.”

A and B looked at one another again, and this time I knew why. The FBI had specific instructions about Miss Angela Ten Eyck, though I’m sure they’d never have admitted it. But it’s one thing to practice your counterspy techniques on a bunch of uninfluential pacifists, and it’s quite another thing to get tough with the daughter of Marcellus Ten Eyck.

Angela’s timely arrival, therefore, had considerably shortened what had looked to be a long and tedious interview. (Having told A and B the truth at the outset, I would have had increasingly less to say to them as time went on.) As it was, they looked at one another, apparently decided their best bet was to check with Headquarters before doing anything else, and made preparations to leave. That is, B warned me to stick around in case I should be wanted for further questioning, A gave me the unnecessary information that I would be watched, and, with a rather stiff attempt at a polite nod to Angela, they trooped out.

Angela turned her bright smile on me and said, “They’re cute. Who are they, honey? New members?”

3

Over coffee, I told her the whole story. She listened, saying ooohh and wow and golly at the ends of all the sentences, and despite her, I struggled on until my tale was done. (I have shared my bed and board, such as they are, with bright girls and with rich girls over the years, but never simultaneously, and if there is a God I’d like to ask Him why that should be so. Why can’t I have a bright rich girl — or even a rich bright girl — for a change? If she were both rich and bright, I’d even give up good looks, despite my aesthetic nature.)

Well. When I was finished, Angela said one more golly, and then added, “What are you going to do, Gene?”

“Do? Why should I do anything?”

“Well, this Mr. Eustaly’s going to do something terrible, isn’t he? Maybe blow up the UN Building or something like that.”

“Maybe so,” I said.

“Well, that’s terrible!”

“Granted.”

“Then you ought to do something!”

I said, “What?”

She looked around the kitchen helplessly. “I don’t know, tell somebody, do something, stop him.”

“I told the FBI.” I said.

“You did?”

“I already told you that,” I said. “Remember?”

She looked a little glassy. “You did?”

“Those two guys. The cute ones. We were just talking about that.”

“Oh, them!”

“Them. I told them.”

She said, “Then, what are they going to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe nothing.”

“Nothing! Good heavens, why?”

“Because I don’t think they believed me.”

At that, she got more excited than ever. “Well...well... well—” she sputtered, “—well... well... you’ve got to make them believe you!”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I have trouble enough with the FBI as it is. I’m not going to make them believe I have traffic with a lot of terrorist organizations. If they come around and ask me questions I’ll tell them the absolute truth, just the same as always. If they don’t believe me, that’s their tough luck, not mine.”

“Gene,” she said, “do you know what that is? Do you know what you’re saying, Gene? That’s non-involvement, Gene, do you realize that?”

(You must understand, being accused of non-involvement in my circle is just a little worse than an accusation of non-conformity uptown, or Uncle-Toming in Harlem, or child-molesting in the suburbs. Non-involvement is not necessarily the only sin we know, but it’s the only mortal sin. If a man had accused me of it, only my determined pacifism would have saved him from a punch on the nose.)

As it was, I blanched, I spilled coffee, I said loudly, “Now, just a damn minute here!”

But loud words wouldn’t stop her. “That’s exactly what it is, Gene,” she said, “and you know it. Don’t you?”

“I told the FBI,” I said sulkily.

“Well, that isn’t enough,” she said. “Gene? You know better, Gene.”

I did, damn it, I knew better. But doggone it, I had troubles enough as it was. The mimeograph, for instance. And the fact that Angela and I were the only members of the CIU who weren’t a minimum of two years behind in their dues, for a second instance. And the fact I’d made a clerical error and promised I’d have the group march in two totally different picket lines this coming Sunday, one at the UN Building and the other at an aircraft factory out on Long Island. And the fact—

Oh, the hell with it. The fact that Angela, of all people, should be the one to wake me up to my responsibilities, that’s what really galled, and I might as well admit it.

But I made one last attempt to save face. I said, “Sweetheart, what more can I do? I can’t convince the FBI, me of all people. The more I tell them about Eustaly, the less they’ll believe me.”

“You don’t know until you try,” she said.

Exasperated, I slammed down my coffee cup, got to my feet, waved my arms around, and said, “All right! So what do you want me to do, for God’s sake, run over to Foley Square and picket?”

“You don’t have to be a smart aleck,” she said, miffed.

I opened my mouth to tell her a thing or two, and the doorbell rang. “Now what,” I snarled, grateful for something besides Angela to take out my irritation on, and stormed into the living room to see who it was.

Murray Kesselberg, that’s who it was, standing there in his dark suit and tie, attaché case at his side, pipe in the corner of his mouth, eyes aglint behind his horn-rim spectacles, cheeks round and soft and clean-shaven. No one on earth looks more like a young Jewish New York attorney than Murray Kesselberg, so you know what he is? A young Jewish New York attorney.

“Hi, there, Gene,” he said, around the pipe. “You busy?”

That’s his idea of a joke. The way he looks at things, I’m always busy but on the other hand I’m never really busy. Not busy. Up there on 57th street off Park, in the offices where Murray is a bright young comer in the law firm of which his dad and uncle are partners, that’s where people are busy. Down here in the lunatic fringe we may wave our arms a lot, but that’s hardly busy.

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I was just going to call you. I’ve murdered Angela and buried her in the mimeograph machine. What do I do now?”

He came in, smiling indulgently, and I shut the door. “As long as she’s in there, anyway,” he said, “you might run off one or two Angelas for me.”

“I’ve tried running her off,” I said, “but she keeps coming back.”

He nodded. “Not bad,” he said. Angela came in then, looking distraught, and Murray said, “Ah, there you are! Angela, you’re a beautiful creature.” And he touched her hand and kissed her cheek.

Angela wriggles under Murray’s gallantries like a cat whose back is being scratched. She practically purrs. (I’ve never told Murray this, because of the implications, but she’s usually more responsive in the sofabed after having been around him awhile.) But this time she didn’t have a thought for flattery; her mind was elsewhere. “Oh, Murray,” she said, sounding as distraught as she looked, “we need help.”

“Well, of course you need help, dear,” he said, and smiled upon us both. “That’s what I’m here for.”

It’s sometimes a shock to realize that Murray and I are the same age, but whether he seems years older than me or years younger than me, I’ve never been able to decide. We met when we were both undergraduates at CCNY, even before the CIU was born. Murray never joined the CIU, of course — he was always too smart for that sort of thing — but he did sit in on some of our early sessions, gave advice, helped out behind the scenes, and got his father to represent us a couple of times when we were arrested for picketing without a permit, etc. Murray and I hit it off from the first, mostly I think because each of us is so fabulous to the other, and if opposites attract, it follows that absolute opposites must attract absolutely. Neither of us can begin to comprehend the other, and this total ignorance has been the firm foundation of a close and abiding friendship that has lasted now nearly fifteen years.

Over the years Murray has done a considerable amount of work for the CIU, all totally without fee. We are, in a way, his hobby, his laboratory, his continuing experiment. The FBI started its normal low-key harassment of him because of this association, but Murray’s far too good a lawyer and too tough-minded a bright young man to put up with that sort of nonsense, so one way and another he nipped it in the bud. His dad and uncle look upon Murray’s relationship with the CIU as a sort of youthful excess, a peccadillo, far less expensive and more sanitary than several others he might have chosen, and they are pleasantly indulgent of this last residual trace of the undergraduate in their finely honed young legal razor.

Now he said, “I came here to bring you the papers on that tax matter, Gene. You know, that business with the city, there’s one or two things for you to sign. But now there’s something new?”

“Not really,” I said. “It’s not a legal matter.”

Angela said, “Tell him, Gene. Murray’ll know what to do.”

“I don’t want to take up his time,” I said, meaning I didn’t want to talk about the problem in front of Murray, possibly because he would know what to do. (If anything does ever break up our friendship, it will be this idiot streak of envy I find in myself from time to time. I do try to keep it in check.)

Murray looked at his watch. “I have ten minutes,” he said. “Then I have to get crosstown. Can you tell me in ten minutes?”

“Forget it, Murray,” I said. “It’s a different thing entirely. What do you want me to sign?”

Angela said, “I’ll tell you, Murray. Somebody’s got to tell you.”

“No,” I said. “You’d never get it right. Go make Murray a cup of tea, I’ll tell him.”

“Very good,” said Murray. He sat down in the basket chair, set his briefcase on the floor beside him, put his pipe away in his jacket pocket, crossed his legs, folded his arms, and said, “Tell me.”

I told him. In detail, with gestures. When I was done, Murray sipped the tea Angela had brought him, gazed thoughtfully into the middle distance, and said, “Well.”

“Well?” I said. “Well what?”

“It seems to me,” he said slowly and calmly, “you’re missing one or two points here. For instance, what did Eustaly say when you suggested you might not attend the meeting tonight?”

“I said, ‘What if I don’t show up?’ and he said, ‘Then I’ll know you’ve made your decision’ So what?”

“That’s all he said?”

“Word for word. Or almost.”

“What was his expression when he said it? Did he look angry, stern, what?”

“He smiled,” I said, and thinking back to that Mediterranean smile of Eustaly’s, I began all at once to get an inkling of what Murray was driving at.

Murray said, “He smiled. Was it a cheery smile? What sort of smile, Gene?”

“More Sidney Greenstreet,” I said.

Murray did his own Peter Lorre smile, his yessss-Iy-ssseeee smile, and said, “Did that smile suggest nothing to you?”

“Not at the time,” I admitted. “But it’s beginning to.”

Angela said, “What? Gene? What?”

I told her, “Murray thinks Eustaly might try to kill me.”

“That’s one possibility,” said the lawyer.

Angela said, “Kill Gene? Why?”

Murray explained to her, “If he doesn’t attend tonight’s meeting, he will be an outsider with inside information. Eustaly and his groups being what they apparently are, they’ll assume Gene’s their enemy and dangerous to them. He knows. He might talk.”

Angela said, “He might talk right away, how do they know they won’t be killing him long after he’s already talked?”

Murray said, “It’s unlikely he’d be believed today. After Eustaly’s group starts destroying things, the authorities would be more likely to listen to Gene. Therefore, it would make sense to them to destroy Gene first.”

I said, “Pardon me for butting in, but Gene’s right here. I’m right in the room here. Don’t talk about me like that.”

They both smiled at me indulgently, and Angela said to Murray, “Well, what should he do?”

“Try again to convince the FBI.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll stop back later,” he said. “Say, at five-thirty.” He picked up his attaché case, stuck his pipe in his mouth — I never did see that thing lit, come to think of it — and got to his feet. “Call the FBI,” he told me. “Be at your most convincing, Gene, it’s to your advantage.”

“I know, I know.”

“Don’t lose your temper with them.”

“I never lose my temper,” I said.

He smiled indulgently, the bastard. “That’s right,” he said. “What was the name of the organization the FBI man mentioned? The one with the name like yours.”

“World Citizens’ Independence Union.”

“Right. I’ll look it up if I get the chance. See you about five-thirty.”

“Okay,” I said.

I walked him to the door, where he said, “Be sure and call the FBI.”

“I will, I will.”

“Fine. ’By, Angela.”

“’By, Murray.”

I shut the door and recrossed the living room to the phone. Angela asked me if I was going to call the FBI, and very patiently I said yes, I was. I picked up the phone, dialed one digit in order to get rid of the dial tone, and said, “You there. You in the basement. Can you hear me?”

There wasn’t any answer, but I hadn’t really expected one. In the first place, although I knew the man in the basement (call him C) could listen to every word I said on the phone, I wasn’t at all sure his equipment would let him add to the conversation himself. And even if he could (this is the second place, following the previously mentioned first place), it was doubtful he would, since it would surely be a breach of that security the FBI loves so much.

At any rate, I knew C was there and I knew he could hear me, so I didn’t let the lack of response dishearten me. “I want an FBI man,” I said. “I want to report a terrorist plot. You send one up here.”

C still didn’t answer me. I waited a few seconds, repeated, “Send one up,” and put the phone down. “There,” I said. “That ought to do it.”

Angela said, “Won’t it make them mad, you calling them that way?”

“He’s the handiest FBI man I know,” I said.

“Oh. Okay.” She smiled. “Now,” she said, rubbing her hands together, “about that machine.”

“Worry about it later,” I said. “Forget about it. Ignore it.”

Because, on top of everything else, I didn’t want to be reminded of the infuriating relationship between Angela, myself, and that abominable mimeograph. Angela, it seems, is a natural mechanic, a born fixer of every imaginable kind of machine. She’s forever tinkering under the hood of her Mercedes Benz, she takes radios apart and puts them back together again, and she is the only one on earth who can get my mimeograph to quit fooling around and go to work. How exasperating that can be!

And particularly now, when the whole world seemed to be conspiring to make me feel inadequate. So, in a desperate attempt to distract her, change the subject, I said, “Tell me about your day. What’s your old man been up to?”

But nothing would help. “Later,” she said. “Get my smock,” she said, and pulled her yellow sweater off over her head.

What a girl. Beneath that canary-yellow sweater she was wearing a Chinese-red bra. Now, it is impossible to stay irritated with a girl who, beneath her canary-yellow sweater, would wear a Chinese-red bra. Such a girl can’t be all bad.

I shrugged helplessly, said, “Whatever you say,” and went over to the closet by the front door to get her smock.

Actually, it wasn’t a smock at all. It had started life as a muu-muu, in an orange and pink flower pattern à la Gauguin, but was so spattered with various colors of ink by now that it looked like a pop-art reject. I brought this catastrophe back to Angela, who wriggled into it, which gave me ideas. “Listen,” I said. “Why don’t I open the bed?”

“Later,” she said. “Where’s the tools?”

“In with the machine. Why not do that later? Look, I’ll open the bed.”

“After the FBI man comes,” she said, and went into the bedroom.

“Come out of that bedroom!” I shouted. “I want sex!”

“Later later later,” she said coolly, and tools began to clatter.

Damn girl.

4

He arrived about half an hour later, a young guy who wasn’t really an FBI man yet. There were traces of his former existence still showing; an Adam’s apple, a tendency to smile shyly at beautiful women (Angela), a voice that couldn’t hold a monotone. It looked as though they’d sent me the office boy, which I considered something of an insult.

One thing he did know: don’t give your right name. Call him D.

He came in, at my invitation, and stood there looking uncomfortable. “Well, now,” he said, and stared at me glassily.

I didn’t get it at first, but then I realized he needed my help. He couldn’t admit he’d come here in response to my request for someone, because my request for someone had gone through C, whose existence D could not officially admit. So all he could do was walk into the apartment, smile shyly at Angela, bobble his Adam’s apple at me, and wait for me to break the ice.

If it had been A or B, those hard-noses, I’d have made him stew a while in his own juice, but this poor shnook had troubles enough without me, so I said, “Well, it’s a good thing you happened to drop around.”

With obvious relief he relaxed and said, “It is?”

“It certainly is,” I said, milking my part. “It just so happens I have something to report. Don’t I, Angela?”

“That’s right,” she said seriously, and nodded at D. She was wearing the smock still, with the black stretch pants and black boots showing at the bottom. Her hair was all fluffy around her head and she had a very artistic streak of black ink across her left cheek. Despite the smock, she looked very sexy. I don’t know about D, but I was prepared at that moment to believe anything Angela might want to tell me.

D was enough of an FBI man to have a notebook. Out it came now, plus the ballpoint pen. He said, “Well?”

“This afternoon,” I told him, “I had a visitor, a Mr. Mortimer Eustaly. At least, that’s what he called himself. He’d come here by mistake, thinking the Citizens’ Independence Union, the organization I head, was a terrorist-type group, which we are not. We’re pacifists. Anyway, he told me he was—”

“Mr. Raxford,” said D. He’d stopped writing a sentence or two before. He said, somewhat sadly, “I’m surprised at you, Mr. Raxford.”

I looked at Angela, whose face was unusually blank, then turned back to. D and said, “Surprised at me? What do you mean, surprised at me?”

“The boys at the office,” he said, “told me you were going to be bringing up this Eustaly business again, but I said no. I said I’d read your dossier, and I’d been on assignment to you three or four times, and you just weren’t a practical-joker type. You weren’t one of those smart alecks who writes ‘Screw the FBI’ on a piece of paper, then rips the paper into little pieces and throws it in the wastebasket, knowing how much work you’re going to make us, putting that piece of paper back together again. You’ve never been that type, Mr. Raxford, you’ve always been a gentleman, a serious and earnest citizen, and even if you were a dangerous influence you were never nasty about it, if you know what I mean, so I absolutely refused to believe it was going to be this Eustaly business again. That’s why I came over here, Mr. Raxford, and believe me my face is going to be red when I go back to HQ. You’ve spoiled my illusions, Mr. Raxford.”

I appealed silently to Angela for help, and she said to D, “But it’s true, it really is. This man Mr. Eustaly is a terrorist and he’s going to blow things up.”

D turned disillusioned eyes on her and said, “Did Eustaly tell you so, miss? Did you talk to him yourself, and did he tell you he was a terrorist and he was going to blow things up?”

“Well, gee whiz,” Angela said, “Gene told me.”

“You mean Mr. Raxford, here.”

“Well, yes.”

D sighed. “Some people,” he said, “will go to any lengths for a joke.”

“It isn’t a joke,” I said. “I have reason to believe this man Eustaly plans to murder me. I want you people to stop him and all his groups. I want police protection, that’s what I want.”

D said, “Murder you, Mr. Raxford? Why?”

“Because I know too much.”

“You didn’t mention that this afternoon when you talked to the other two agents.”

“I didn’t realize it then. But I’ve been thinking over my conversation with Eustaly, and it seems—”

“Please stop it, Mr. Raxford,” D asked me. Surprisingly polite for an FBI man. “Don’t carry this thing on any more,” he said. “We questioned Mr. Eustaly, and he told us what he was doing up here.”

“He did?”

“He sells mimeograph equipment, Mr. Raxford. He showed us his card.”

“Card,” I said, and began to look around the room. “I’ll show you a card.”

“He came up here,” D went inexorably on, “to attempt to sell you equipment for your mimeograph machine. From the ink on the young lady here and yourself, Mr. Raxford, I venture to say you have a mimeograph machine, have you not?”

“Well, of course I do,” I said. “Now, where did I put that card?”

Angela said, “Gene? Is it a joke? Did you and Murray dream this up?”

I stared at her. “You, too?”

D said to Angela, “Murray? You mean Mr. Kesselberg?”

“That’s right,” she said. “He was here a little while ago. He was the one who figured out that Gene’s life is in danger.”

“Did he?” said D.

It was hopeless now, and I knew it, but I made one more attempt. “Now listen,” I said. “As soon as I find this card—”

“Mr. Kesselberg,” D said to Angela, “has a long record as a practical joker. While an undergraduate at City College—”

“He hasn’t done that sort of thing,” I snapped, “in twelve years. Don’t you people ever forget?”

D looked stolidly at me. “No, Mr. Raxford,” he said. “We don’t ever forget. Now, I strongly advise you never to do this sort of thing again, Mr. Raxford. Your relationship with the FBI has always been a good one. Don’t get on our wrong side. I mean that, Mr. Raxford. Take it as a friendly warning.”

Angela said, “Gene, you do have a pretty funny sense of humor sometimes.”

“Oh, Christ!” I shouted, and flung my hands into the air.

“Goodbye, Mr. Raxford,” said D. He went to the door and opened it, then turned back and gazed sorrowfully at me. “I’ll never believe a radical again,” he said, and went away.

5

“Well, now,” said Murray judiciously. He sat down in the basket chair, set his attaché case on the floor beside him, put his pipe in his pocket, folded his arms, crossed his legs, and said, “That creates a problem.”

“Well of course it creates a problem,” I said. “I know it creates a problem. What I want to know is what to do about the problem.”

Angela said, “Murray, what if you talked to the FBI?”

“You can forget that,” I said. “As far as they’re concerned, this is a practical joke and Murray and I are in on it together. You heard what that guy said.” To Murray, I said, “They’ve still got you down for that goldfish business at school. And the white paint, and those other things.”

“Lord,” said Murray, “I haven’t thought of them in years.”

“Well, the FBI’s apparently got it all down in a folder somewhere. So if you go tell them it isn’t a gag, they might not entirely believe you.”

“You’re right,” said Murray. “That’s too bad.”

Angela said, “What about the police? I mean the regular police, the city police.”

“The cops know me,” I said. “As soon as I walked in and started talking, they’d call the FBI.”

Murray said, “That would be true no matter what agency you went to, municipal, state, or federal. No, I think there’s no real possibility of getting official assistance at this point. Of course, if there were a bona-fide attempt on your life, and we could demonstrate that the attempt were actual and determined, that might change things.”

“An attempt on my life? An attempt? What kind of a word is that? These are ten different terrorist organizations all combined together to kill me, and you say attempt? It’ll be a hell of a good attempt, if you ask me.”

Angela said, “Murray, what should he do?”

Murray said, “Well, one thing we could do is prepare a letter giving full details of the case and requesting police protection, and send it to FBI Headquarters special delivery, return receipt requested. Then, if there were a successful or partially successful attempt on Gene’s life, we might have grounds for a negligence suit against the federal government. On the other hand—”

“Partially successful?” I said. “What’s a partially successful attempt to kill somebody?”

“If you were wounded,” he said. “Lost an arm, say, or your sight, some such thing. A minor injury probably wouldn’t—”

“Murray,” I said, “will you please stop being a lawyer for a second? What am I going to do?”

“Well, let’s think about it,” he said. “What are the choices open to you? First, you could go on as before, forget Eustaly and the terrorist oiganizations, and hope for the best. Second, you—”

“What do you mean, hope for the best? Take a chance they won’t kill me?”

“Right. Second, you—”

“Murray, are you crazy?”

He said, “No, Gene, I’m not crazy. I’m doing my best to give you the possible alternatives. Now, you don’t like alternative number one, is that it?”

“Don’t like it!”

“Very well,” he said, unperturbed. “Second, you could appear to go on as before, hoping for the best, but you could actually be watching very carefully for the attempt on your life. Forewarned is forearmed. Knowing it’s coming, you’d have a better chance to avoid—”

“Murray,” I said.

“You don’t like alternative number two.”

“You mean be a decoy, Murray? Go out and wait for them to shoot at me, so I can prove to the FBI it isn’t a joke?”

“You don’t like alternative number two,” he said. “Fine. Now, third, you can go to Eustaly’s meeting tonight, see what—”

“Go to the meeting?”

“Gene, please, will you let me finish a sentence? You go there, agree with everyone, learn all you can about their plans, and just possibly come away from the meeting knowing enough to be able to convince the FBI you’re telling the truth. Now, if you—”

“Murray,” I said. “You mean you want me to go sit down in the middle of this... this... this—”

“Gene, all I’m saying—”

“—this volley of terrorists? The fly into the spider’s web, Murray, is that it?”

“If you don’t like alternative number three,” he said, “we’ve got problems, because there isn’t any alternative number four.”

That stopped me. I stood there and looked at Murray and he just sat there and looked back at me. I know Murray, and I trust Murray, and I have great confidence in Murray’s abilities. If Murray now said there was no alternative number four, I was reluctantly willing to admit there was no alternative number four. But alternatives one through three — good Lord!

I said, “Could I have them again, Murray? One more time, the alternatives.”

He counted them off on his fingers. “One, go on as before, hope for the best. Two, guard against an attempt on your life, following which, you can talk again to the FBI. Three, attend the meeting tonight, following which, you may have some proof for the FBI.”

“That’s it, huh?”

He nodded. “That’s it, Gene.”

I went over and sat down on the sofa (which had not as yet today been opened for any reason connected with Angela, I might just mention) and tried to think. Angela herself sat down next to me and watched me with her lovely brow creased in the lines of a worried frown. She’d fixed the mimeograph, of course, and was all cleaned up again now, back in the yellow sweater, the artistic ink smudge gone from her cheek. She and the sofabed and I should have been engaged in activities far more pleasant, far more valuable, far more human than worrying about a bunch of crazy terrorists.

After a minute or two of unproductive thought I said, “Murray, your alternatives one and two are the same thing. In both of them I just go on living my life until some nut shoots me down.”

“Not exactly,” he said. “With alternative number two, you’d be taking precautions. You’d get the rest of the members of the CIU to help. And Angela and me too, of course. We’d keep you under constant surveillance, guard you at all times.”

“The FBI keeps me under constant surveillance now,” I said.

“That’s right,” he said. “But the FBI is watching you. We’d be watching the people around you, waiting for one of them to make a move against you.”

“The thought of a lot of pacifists protecting me from a lot of terrorists,” I said, “just somehow doesn’t fill me with confidence.”

Murray said, “Well, Gene, it’s up to you.”

“I know that. Listen, what about this alternative number three? I’d never get away with it.”

“Why not?” He picked up his attaché case, uncrossed his legs, put the case in his lap, and snapped it open. “I looked up the World Citizens’ Independence Union,” he said. “Quite an interesting organization. They were a group of one-worlders, opposed to all borders, all travel restrictions of any kind. They expressed themselves by blowing up customs shacks at borders, mostly between this country and Canada. A contingent of them attacked and demolished a customs shack on a small road between France and Germany about seven years ago, were chased by German police, took refuge in a farmhouse, murdered the farmer and his family, and fought to the last man. Quite a rowdy group. That one attack seems to have been their only foray off the continent of North America.”

I said, “Oh, fine. That’s the kind of group you want me to go to a meeting with, is it?”

“Well, this particular organization, the WCIU, isn’t extant any more.”

“Extant. Does that mean they’re not around?”

“Right. It seems one of their bombs blew up prematurely, in their headquarters, during a meeting. Wiped them all out.”

“Bombs,” I said.

“Now,” he said, looking at papers in his attaché case, “it does appear that one list published by the Attorney General’s office four or five years ago — yes, here it is — through a printer’s error, left the word ‘World’ out of the entry on the WCIU, which is where, I suppose, your friend Eustaly got the idea you were one of the terrorists he wanted to see. It’s entirely possible you have some sort of suit here in this error, particularly if any sort of injury—”

“Shut up, Murray.”

He looked up. “Eh? Oh, all right, I will. Yes, you’re right, I’m sorry. Back to the issue at hand.”

Angela said, “Gene, I think you ought to go up to that meeting, that’s what I think.”

I said, “Why?”

“Because,” she said, “that way they won’t try to kill you, and you can get the evidence and make the FBI pay attention to you.”

I said, “Murray? What do you think?”

“Gene, it’s your decision.”

“I know it’s my decision, dammit, but what do you think?”

“What do I think? I think Angela’s right. I think you can attend this meeting in perfect safety, and at least learn something of Eustaly’s plans, and not give them any reason to suspect they should do away with you. I’m not saying you’ll definitely find any tangible proof you can turn over to the FBI, but at least you’ll keep Eustaly and the others from planning to kill you.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It sounds better than alternatives one and two, I admit that, but I just don’t know. What if I couldn’t bring it off? What if I just couldn’t act like a terrorist?”

“Apparently Eustaly was convinced this afternoon,” Murray pointed out. “Besides, there’ll be a dozen or more people there. No one will be watching you in particular.”

“Yeah, but going in there alone...”

“I’m going with you, Gene,” Angela said, as though it had all been decided hours ago.

I turned and looked at her. “You’re doing what?”

“I’m going with you. I want to see these people. Besides, if there’s two of us we’ll feel stronger, won’t we, Murray?”

Murray said, doubtfully, “Well...”

I said, “You’re not going.”

“Oh, yes, I am. I can take shorthand, I bet you didn’t know that, and that’s just what I’ll do. I’ll take shorthand notes of everything everybody says.”

“Definitely not,” I said. “I’m going alone. Besides, I was the only one invited. How am I supposed to sneak you in?”

Murray said, “As your secretary. Actually, it’s not a bad idea. If Angela can get a stenographic record of the meeting—”

I said, “Murray, you’re going along with this? You want Angela to get killed?”

“No, I don’t. I don’t want anybody to get killed. And if you two behave with just a little discretion, there’s no reason why tonight’s meeting should be at all dangerous for either of you.”

I said, “Murray, you’ve got—”

“Oh, golly!” said Angela, jumping to her feet. “What time is it?”

Murray looked at his watch. “Almost six-thirty.”

Angela took her own tiny watch off her wrist and shook it. “This darn thing, it’s broken.”

“It won’t tell time?”

“No, it tells time, but it’s supposed to ring. You know, it’s like an alarm clock, it’s supposed to ring when I should take my pills. I should have taken them at six o’clock.” She hurried away toward the kitchen, saying over her shoulder, “I’ll be right back.”

Murray looked at me. “Alarm clock? On her wrist?”

“It’s something her father gave her,” I said. “Sort of an alarm watch. It tinkles.”

“When she should take her pills. What pills? Is she sick?”

“No. They’re diet, birth control, and complexion.”

“Oh, really? All at once? If she isn’t sick, she will be.”

“Not a bit of it,” I said. “Angela’s as healthy as a horse. But better-looking. But not quite as bright.”

“You don’t appreciate that girl, Gene,” he said as that girl came back into the room.

She said, “Well, it’s all decided, right? We’re going up to the meeting tonight, you and I.”

I said, “Murray? You really think it’s safe enough to take Angela?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“In that case,” I said, “it’s probably safe enough for me to go. All right.” I nodded to Angela. “We’ll go,” I said.

“Wonderful,” she said. “I’ve been dying for a chance to practice my shorthand.”

Murray said, “Come on, I’ll buy you dinner.”

I said, “The traditional hearty meal?”

“Your problem,” Murray told me, “is you’re a pessimist.”

“No,” said Angela. “Pacifist.”

“Same thing,” said Murray. “A pacifist is a man who thinks if he does get in a fight he’s sure to lose.”

“That’s what I like about you, Murray,” I said. “You’re such a snot.”

Murray laughed genially, shut his attaché case, and got to his feet. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll eat at Ludlow’s.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. I got a pencil and a piece of paper. I wrote on the piece of paper Screw the FBI. Then I ripped the paper into a lot of little pieces and threw them in the wastebasket.

“There,” I said. “Now I’m ready.”

6

I twisted around in the seat and looked back the way we’d come. “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said.

Angela, at the wheel of her yellow Mercedes Benz convertible, said, “What’s the matter, Gene?”

“Pull over to the curb. They’ve lost us.”

She glanced at the rear-view mirror. “How did they do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Pull over, maybe they’ll find us again.”

The time was quarter to twelve at night, and we’d been heading north on Broadway toward Eustaly’s meeting, having dropped Murray off at his apartment on Third Avenue and 19th Street. Two FBI men (E and F) had followed us from my apartment to the restaurant, where they’d been relieved by two others (G and H), who had followed us ever since in a blue Chevrolet. Except that now they’d disappeared.

Angela stopped the car next to a fire hydrant, and we both watched traffic for a while. The month was April, the weather gusty, rainy, and somewhat cold, and we were traveling with the convertible top up. We were parked between 68th and 69th streets, and a steady stream of cabs rolled by us, heading uptown. But no blue Chevrolet.

Looking hopefully backward, Angela said, “Maybe they got mixed up at Columbus Circle.”

“The idiots,” I said.

“Oh, no,” she said. “It’s easy to get mixed up at Columbus Circle, I do it all the time.”

I looked at her, and decided to refrain. Instead, I said, “Well, they’re supposed to be professionals. They’re supposed to be able to follow people even through Columbus Circle.”

Peering, pointing, Angela said, “Is that them?”

“No, that’s a Pontiac.”

“It is?” Angela watched it go by. “Well, what were they in?”

“A Chevrolet.”

“I can’t tell the difference,” she admitted.

“There isn’t any.”

She looked at me, to see if I was kidding, and said, “Then how do you tell them apart?”

“The hood ornament. All General Motors cars have different hood ornaments. That’s so the salesmen can tell how much to charge.” I looked at the dashboard clock, which worked and which read seven minutes to twelve. “We’re going to be late,” I said.

She verified that with her own little watch, which worked more or less, and said, “We better not wait any more.”

“I was looking forward,” I said, “to having a couple of FBI men handy while we were at that meeting. Just in case.”

“Well,” she said, “we can’t wait, Gene. Maybe they’ll lock the doors exactly at midnight or something, and the important thing is to be there.”

I shrugged, took one last look southward along Broadway, and said, “Oh, the hell with them. All right, let’s go.”

“Okay,” she said, and nosed the Mercedes out into the traffic again.

(Your indulgence, please, for a sexual aside. I have already mentioned the effect on me of viewing Angela in her clothes, and I would like now to state that this effect is doubled or possibly tripled by my seeing Angela in her automobile. The sight of this sleek feminine beauty at the controls of a beautiful motorcar, long lovely legs urging the pedals, long delicate fingers encompassing the wheel, blond and sculptured head uplifted, arouses the satyr in me, cloven hoofs and all. That she is a good driver — though perhaps a bit too cautious, and with a tendency to stop functioning in an emergency — is lagniappe; I would travel with her if she drove blindfolded.)

At any rate, I was pleasantly distracted from my problems for the next twenty blocks, and when she’d slipped the car into a neat little parking space on 88th Street, around the corner from Broadway, I impulsively pulled her over to my side of the car and kissed her a good one. But then she deflated me entirely by blinking and looking confused and saying, “What was that for?”

“Oh, the hell with it,” I said, and got out of the car.

Then she was contrite. She hurried after me on her high-heel boots, took my arm, and said, “It was very nice, Gene, it just surprised me is all.”

“Yeah, well,” I said. “Come on, we’ll be late.”

We walked around the corner to Broadway. I was wearing my suit, out of habit — I always wear my suit when I attend meetings — and over it my scuffy old black raincoat with the ripped pockets. My head was bare, and getting wet.

Angela had insisted on stopping off at home to change, while I waited outside in the car. (Her father had a tendency toward heart seizures at the sight, or even the mention, of me.) She looked now, of course, like something that had immediately to be taken somewhere warm and dry and soft and private, so her clothing could be ripped off in comfort. Her stretch pants were white this time, and her shiny boots were red. She was wearing a kind of car coat, dark green, with a fur-lined hood. She walked along with her face framed by the hood, her hands tucked into high pockets in the coat, and her legs flashing white and red with every step, and obviously the only sensible thing for us to do was find a hayloft immediately.

Instead of which, we went around the corner to the Odd Fellows’ Hall.

The corner itself was occupied by a kosher delicatessen, with a liquor store next to it, and squeezed between these two was a windowed door, and on the glass of this door curving letters that read: ODD FELLOWS. Angela and I entered here, and found ahead of us a long steep flight of stairs leading straight up through semi-darkness to an inadequately lit landing at the top. We went up, and I counted twenty-seven steps.

At the top there was a maroon metal door, bearing two Scotch-taped notices. One said: Thursday Night, South Side Social Club, Members Only. The other said: Knock.

Angela looked at these and said, “But today’s Thursday, Gene.”

“I know.”

“Are you sure this is the right place? It says South Side Social Club.”

“What did you think it was going to say, South Side Terrorists’ Club? This isn’t even the south side, it’s the west side.”

Angela looked at me, her eyes glistening in the light from the fifteen-watt bulb above our heads. “Gene,” she whispered, “I think I’m scared.”

“It’s a fine time to think of it,” I said, and knocked on the door.

It was opened at once, by the Abominable Snowman in a dark blue suit. He must have been six foot eight, and had a face like a bunch of bananas. In a voice as deep as a lost mine he said, “Yuh?”

“Hello, there,” I said. “I’ve come to the meeting.”

He didn’t move, didn’t speak. Slowly, ponderously, he blinked at me. His mouth hung slightly open, and he blocked the doorway the way boulders block entrances to caves.

Angela leaned past my elbow and whispered at him, “You know, the meeting. Mr. Eustaly.”

He raised a huge hand — it looked like a bunch of bananas, too — and waved it back and forth, saying, “Nuh. Wrong.” Then he shut the door.

Angela looked at me. “Gene? Gene, is it a joke? After all this, is it a joke?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said, and knocked on the door again. When it opened, I said to the monster, “I’m Raxford, of the CIU. You go ask Eustaly, he’ll tell you I’m okay.”

“Nuh,” he said, and shut the door again.

Angela said, “Gene, if this is something you and Murray cooked up, I’ll never—”

“Damn!” I shouted. “The password! I forgot the bloody password!” I knocked on the door yet a third time.

This time the monster looked very threatening. He showed me one of his hands, and he said, “Go away.”

“Greensleeves,” I told him. “Okay? Greensleeves.”

It was as though I’d pressed a button on his control panel. The hand dropped, he took two cumbersome paces backward, and he gestured like a steam shovel for me to come in.

We entered a small square windowless room devoid of furniture. Heavy maroon drapes on the right indicated where another door might be, and on the left the door to a small cloakroom stood open.

The monster shut the entrance door behind us and rumbled, “Weapons in there. On the table.”

“In there” meant the cloakroom. I glanced in, and saw a table covered with objects of violence and impetuousness. Pistols, knives, brass knuckles, blackjacks, lengths of pipe, strips of rawhide, loops of wire, bottles containing murky liquids, all lined up in rows, each with its own neat little numbered piece of cardboard next to it.

I swallowed, to be sure my voice would work right, and said, “I don’t have any weapons. We didn’t bring any weapons.”

He stood in front of me. “Frisk you,” he said, and patted me all over, thump, thump, thump, thump. He seemed both surprised and disappointed to find me carrying nothing more lethal than a nail clipper; he considered impounding it, just as a sort of token, and then shrugged and gave it back to me.

When he turned to Angela, I said, “Hold it.”

“Frisk,” he said, like far-off thunder.

Although there was certainly no indication, either in his face or voice, that he anticipated taking any pleasure in the frisking of Angela, I knew I dared not permit him to do so. If I were to stand quietly by while Angela was being thump-thump-thumped, it would be all up with us forever, of that I was certain. And who would fix the mimeograph then? Who would pay the rent? (Not to mention Chinese-red bras.)

I said, “Wait. Hold it a second. Angela, take off your coat.”

She did so, and stood there holding it, wearing now her dark blue sweater and white stretch pants. I said to the monster. “She doesn’t have any weapons. Where’s she going to hide weapons?” To Angela, I said, “Give him the coat, let him check the pockets.”

“Okay,” she said. She was looking a little pale around the cheeks. She handed him the coat, and he went ponderously through the pockets, like an elephant looking for a peanut. He came across the ballpoint pen and the steno pad, but seemed unimpressed by them.

Finding no weapons, he looked at Angela again, thought about things for a few seconds, and then said, “Okay,” and handed her back her coat. He motioned at the maroon drapes and said, “Go in.”

We looked at one another, Angela and I. She reached out and took my hand, and held it tight. I inhaled, held my breath, stepped forward, pushed aside the maroon drapes, and went in.

7

Before us stretched a long room, old-looking but brightly lit by fluorescent ceiling fixtures that must have been a very recent addition. The room was filled with rows of wooden folding chairs, all facing a raised speaker’s platform at the far end. An old wooden desk stood on this platform, and a row of folding chairs lined the wall behind it. An American flag sagged on a pole to the right of the platform, and some sort of yellow and brown flag created symmetry on the other side. The walls were lined with framed and glassed and dusty photographs of groups of people in unlikely uniforms; they looked like so many pictures of the Bolivian Navy.

Although there were seats available for about a hundred people, scarcely a dozen men and women were in the room, all clustered near the platform up front. Hand in hand, Angela and I walked down the central aisle between the folding chairs, and the closer we got the less cheerful looked the people we were moving toward. A certain electric frenzy seemed to cackle bluely in the air around each and every one of them, as though we had inadvertently come upon the organizational meeting of the Mad Scientists’ Geophysical Year, which in a way is exactly what we had.

Mortimer Eustaly popped from this group as we approached it, coming toward us with his most Levantine smile, his well-manicured hand extended as he said, “Raxford, Raxford! So glad you could come. And this very charming lady?” If looks could impregnate, the one Eustaly turned on Angela now would have fought the pill to a draw.

“My secretary,” I said. “Miss Angela Ten—” Whoops! Cursing myself for an idiot, I managed a fairly convincing coughing spell, and said, “Sorry. The rain. Miss Angela Tenn.” To Angela, I added, “This is Mr. Eustaly.”

“Miss Tenn,” he purred, and held her hand in a way he should have been arrested for.

Angela’s smile seemed to me a little forced, and her voice unusually faint, as she said, “How do you do?” And tugged her hand out of his grasp.

Eustaly, with some reluctance, turned his attention back to me. “We’re just waiting for one or two others,” he said, “and then we’ll get right to business.”

“That’s all right,” I said.

A short, thin, vicious-looking Negro woman, in a black dress and a black hat with rhinestones and a long black feather angling upward, joined us at that moment, plucking Eustaly by the sleeve and saying, “Eustaly, you didn’t tell me they was going to be kikes here.” Her voice sounded like a subway with the brakes on, and she herself looked like the mean relation of a character by Dr. Seuss.

Eustaly smiled upon her like an encyclopedia salesman, said, “Oh, we’ll cover that, Mrs. Baba, in the course of the meeting. Now, here’s some people you can have a nice chat with, J. Eugene Raxford and Miss Angela Tenn of the Citizens’ Independence Union.” Turning to us, he said, “May I present Mrs. Elly Baba of the Pan-Arabian World Freedom Society? A charming lady.” To the charming lady he said, “I leave you in good hands,” and slid out of our grasp like mercury, leaving the three of us together.

Mrs. Baba looked at us suspiciously, checking us, I suppose, for Semitic characteristics, and said, “What kind of bunch are you?”

“What’s that? Beg pardon?”

“What’s your pitch?” she explained. “What are you for?”

“Oh. We’re anti-border,” I said. “Unlimited travel, that’s us.” I turned to Angela. “Or is it unrestricted travel?”

“Stinking idealists,” Mrs. Baba commented bitterly. “It’s your kind causes all the trouble, diverts the masses from the real problem.”

I said, “Oh? Is that right?”

“Damn well told,” she said. “Now us, the PAWF, we’re a practical organization, we got a program, we got a solution.”

Once again I said, “Oh? Is that right?” Then I said, “What is the solution?”

“We want,” she said fiercely, “we want Nasser and all the Ay-rabs to throw the kikes out of Israel and turn the country over to the so-called American Negro. It’s the least they can do for us,” she muttered passionately, “the stinking slave traders.”

“The Jews?” I asked. I was interested despite myself.

“No, not the Jews,” she snapped. “The Ay-rabs. They’re the ones ran the slave trade. Don’t you know anything?”

“Very little,” I admitted.

“Idealists,” she cursed, and curled her lip.

Something made a repeated gavel sound — kat kat kat — and Eustaly’s voice rose above the hum of conversation, saying, “People! Be seated, please. We’d like to begin now.”

Mrs. Baba swung on her heel and marched away from us without a goodbye. I looked at Angela, who was looking at me, and we moved closer together for a bit of warmth and sanity.

All around us the mad scientists were settling into the folding chairs, most of them in the first two rows. By common consent, Angela and I chose row number four, on the aisle.

When everyone was seated, Eustaly, standing at the front of the platform and smiling like a sly professor about to spring a surprise examination, said, “Ladies and gentlemen, good evening, and welcome to the organizational meeting of the League for New Beginnings.”

He paused, and beamed at us, and said, “I hope you’ll approve the name I’ve chosen. New beginnings are the ultimate goal of all of us, are they not? New beginnings which cannot come to their ascendancy until the old has been done away with.” Something dangerous gleamed in his face and voice when he said that, and when he added, “We are all of us in this room, I believe, vitally concerned with the doing away of the old.”

That got him a rumble of agreement that made me think of feeding time at the zoo. He stood smiling above us, apparently unafraid of being eaten, and when the rumble died away, he said, “Now, I believe we should introduce ourselves.” He took a piece of paper from the desk. “As I mention your name,” he said, “please rise and tell us a little about the group you represent.” His smile dripping geniality, he added, “No speeches, please, we are a bit pressed for time. Just one or two brief sentences. Now, let’s see.” He consulted his list. “First, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp, Householders’ Separatist Movement, HSM. Mr. and Mrs. Whelp?”

Two kindly-looking middle-aged overweight people in the front row got to their feet and faced us. If you have ever watched daytime television, you have seen Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp. The master of ceremonies carries a microphone up the aisle while the audience laughs at the sight of itself on the monitor screens, and Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp have the aisle seats about midway up on the left. The announcer, knowing these two will never say anything off-color, stops and asks, “And how long have you folks been married?” “Eighteen years,” says Mrs. Whelp, and blushes and smiles. Mr. Whelp smiles, too, and looks very proud.

What was a couple like this doing at an organizational meeting of terrorists? After the monster at the door, and the cloakroom full of weapons, I’d expected an assembly of Boris Karloffs at the very least, not a couple of Saturday Evening Post subscribers. (With the paranoia inherent in every one of us, I suddenly began to suspect it was a gag after all, with me the butt, and so I looked around suspiciously, hoping to find somebody giggling behind his hand. But sober reflection for about an eighth of a second convinced me I was hardly likely to be the butt of a practical joke involving the active assistance of Angela, Murray, the FBI, and about fifteen total strangers. One way or the other, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp had to be legitimate terrorists.)

They were. “I’m Fred Whelp,” Fred Whelp told us in a reedy voice, “and this is the missus. Now, what we of HSM believe is that the whole trouble in the world is because of the big nations like the United States and Russia. Things were better back when all the countries were small, so nobody could figure he could whip the whole world. Now, what we want is for all the states in the United States and all the states in Russia to separate from one another and be separate countries like in Europe and Africa. Now, the first step is for New York City and Long Island to secede from the United States and start our own country, and call it Roosevelt. New York City’s been robbed by those people up in Albany too long, and it’s time somebody did something about it.”

Mrs. Whelp then said, in a voice like blueberry pie on the window sill in June, “We’ll help everyone here any way we can, and what we’d like you all to do to help us is help us blow up the Governor’s Mansion in Albany and maybe the United Nations Building later on, we’re not sure.”

“To publicize our cause,” explained Mr. Whelp. “We know damn well public opinion would be on our side, but the damn newspapers—”

“Thank you, Mr. Whelp,” Eustaly said, smoothly breaking into Fred Whelp’s developing harangue. “Thank you, Mrs. Whelp. And now I’d like you all to meet Mrs. Selma Bodkin of the Gentile Mothers for Peace, GMFP. Mrs. Bodkin?”

Reluctantly, as Mrs. Selma Bodkin got up, the Whelps sat down.

Mrs. Bodkin would also have been in that daytime television audience, but no announcer would be stopping to ask any questions of her. He’d pass right on by, knowing just from looking at her that she was (1) a widow, and (2) opinionated. A hefty woman packed into a black dress, she carried a shiny black purse hanging from her forearm, and her graying hair was in a severe permanent — home-induced — but a little disarrayed.

She told us, without preamble and in a raucous voice, “This country today suffers from its enemies both within and without, and most of these enemies within are Commie-inspired. Don’t you think for a minute there’s anybody but the Communist Party behind the attempted mongrelization of our good old American blood lines. The Commies know their only chance to beat us for world domination is to sap our strength with a lot of inbreeding with inferior races like Catholics and Jews and Negroes. Mongrelization is the—”

But she was drowned out by a sudden rash of shouts and calls from others present, who seemed for some reason to have taken offense at something Mrs. Bodkin had said. Over their cries Mrs. Bodkin could still be heard, roaring something about “... American boys and girls in the back seats of automobiles with...” And so on.

Angela leaned close to me and whispered, “They’re crazy, Gene. They’re all crazy.”

“I know,” I whispered back.

“Catholics aren’t a race,” she whispered.

I looked at her, and I didn’t say anything.

Up front, Eustaly was making that gavel sound again — since nearly everyone was standing now, I couldn’t see whether he actually had a gavel or not — and he was calling for order, which he very gradually obtained. Silence eventually settled on the hall, a silence that quivered like a tuning fork. Nearly everyone was glaring at someone else.

Eustaly, just the slightest bit ruffled, said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please. As I said when I first approached each of you, among you there are wide divergences of opinion, opposing points of view. None of us will get anywhere if we allow ourselves to become emotionally involved in ideological disputes. Let us simply accept the fact that while we do have certain methods in common, otherwise we have nothing in common at all, and let us attempt for the general good to maintain at least a state of truce during the course of our association together in the League for New Beginnings.”

These buttery sentences served to ease the tension in the air, permitting the combatants to relax a bit. When Eustaly paused to see if there was going to be any more trouble, the silence that met him was complete and unchallenging. He smiled, encompassing us all in his good feeling, and said, “Excellent. I knew I could count on your sense and discretion.” He consulted his list and said, “Next, Mr. Eli Zlott of True Zion Rescue Mission, TZRM. Mr. Zlott.”

At first. it seemed that no one had stood up, but then I saw a head moving up there near the platform, and realized that Mr. Eli Zlott must be something under five feet tall. Except that he had a wild and wiry mass of gray-black hair atop his head, I had no idea what he looked like.

What he sounded like, though, was something else again. His voice was as big as his body was small. It boomed out, sharp and rasping and irritating, as though coming to us through a really bad public address system.

“Six million dead!” cried this voice. “That’s what we can thank the goyim for! And what do they do about it? A few Eichmanns they give us, and that’s supposed to make us happy? No! Total destruction of the German race, that is the answer, the only answer, the final solution! That German embassies should exist in New York City, in Washington, D.C., here in the heart of democracy, the greatest nation ever known, that we should get down on our knees and thank God every night, no! A thousand times no! Blow them up, burn them out, every man and woman and child of them, make the world safe for democracy! Is this—”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Zlott,” said Eustaly to this manic head of hair, taking the floor back.

But Zlott wasn’t done. “As to this Mrs. Bodkin, this—”

Zip! Mrs. Bodkin was on her feet again, shaking her fist, shouting this and that. Zlott replied in kind, and here came Mrs. Elly Baba, siding with Mrs. Bodkin against Mr. Zlott. But Mrs. Bodkin would have none of that, and made one or two suggestions to Mrs. Baba, who replied with immediate ferocity.

Others were popping to their feet now, and with every sentence, every curse, every insult, the battle lines were drawn and redrawn and redrawn again, the alliances shifting back and forth like a tennis ball over a net, and above it all stood Eustaly, his expression pained, his hands out in a gesture imploring peace, his mouth working as he tried once again to butter the mob to tractability.

I looked at Angela, but she was staring in fascination, enthralled, like a child watching heavy traffic. I knew there was no point trying to attract her attention now, so I had no one to whom to communicate my growing conviction that our presence at this synod of addlepates was a waste of time, energy, and adrenalin. I was slumming in a boobery, nothing more. This bag of mixed nuts was unlikely to stick together long enough to finish introducing themselves, much less go out in unison to kill innocent bystanders like me.

When I thought how shaken I’d been all evening, how completely I’d accepted Murray’s notion that these goobers might be dangerous enough to kill me, I didn’t know whether to be sheepish or sore. But one thing was certain: at the first opportunity, I’d give Angela the high sign and we’d tiptoe back to what I was almost ready to consider the sane world.

In the meantime, Eustaly was still at work up there on the platform, and I had to admit the man was good. Slowly but inexorably he was calming the birds once more, getting them to sit down, to be quiet, to listen.

Eventually there was silence. The group itself seemed somewhat abashed at the violence it had tapped, and above them Eustaly withdrew a snowy handkerchief, patted his cheeks and forehead, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, really, I am surprised at you.”

No one answered him. They were, I think, surprised at themselves.

“This is not to our best advantage,” Eustaly went on. “We all desire, I know, to run this meeting in as orderly and efficient a manner as possible, so as not to take too much time from our busy schedules. I am sure, then, that you will all approve any attempt to keep order here.”

He looked around, face by face, and got the nods of agreement he was requesting.

“Fine,” he said, and smiled in gratitude. “Excellent. I knew I could count on your good sense.” He raised his head and called, “Lobo!”

Lobo? I turned my head, and here came the monster. Stolid, heavy, implacable, he tromped past us and up onto the platform, where he stood behind Eustaly, facing us, and folded his arms.

Smiling like a tax assessor, Eustaly told us, “Lobo will help us all keep our tempers.” Then he picked up his sheet of paper again and said, “Next, Mr. Sun Kut Fu of the Eurasian Relief Corps, ERC.”

Mr. Sun Kut Fu was in the row directly in front of us. He stood up, a thin young dapper intense Oriental, and bowed briefly and contemptuously at us. He looked like an Ivy League college student, of the brilliant but argumentative type professors hate so much. “ERC,” he said, in a voice that sounded like a pair of scissors, “is the wave of the future. The day of the European is gone, the day of the American is ending, the day of the Asiatic is just beginning, our sun has just risen. Under the glorious leader Mao Tse-tung, having eliminated the Stalinist, Khrushchevist, Cominternist revisionists, the backsliding bourgeois of Russia and Eastern Europe, the world will know such peace and prosperity as has never existed before. Pax China! And where is the enemy? Not the slothful, overfed American, not the decadent European, not the deluded masses of the emerging nations, no. The true enemy is he who uses our ideals to subvert our goals. The so-called Communist Party! Yes, here in New York City there remains a nest of these Kerenskyites, oh, I don’t care what they call themselves, these one-worlders, these—”

“Thank you,” Eustaly said, somewhat forcefully. “Thank you very much. We must move on.”

Mr. Sun Kut Fu seemed to hesitate on the brink of rebellion, but behind Eustaly loomed the impressive figure of Lobo, and after a second Mr. Sun Kut Fu sat down.

Eustaly next introduced Mrs. Elly Baba, who repeated for the edification of the group pretty much what she’d already told me personally, and after that it was my turn.

I heard my name, my organization, my organization’s initials, and I didn’t quite know what to do. I stood up, gazed down at such faces as Gothic cathedrals are decorated with, and for just an instant I was bursting with the desire to tell these people who I really was, and then to tell them who they really were, and then to turn around and march contemptuously out on them.

If it had just been the Bodkins and the Babas, I think I would have done it, but there were also the two on the stage to consider, and the two on the stage were something else again. Eustaly, no matter what odd groups he took it into his head to assemble, did not himself give the appearance of being a harmless nut. As to Lobo, he probably wasn’t the brightest guy in all the world, but on the other hand, brains aren’t everything.

It was for the benefit of Eustaly and Lobo, therefore — not to mention my own benefit — that I said, fast and loud, hoping it would have the ring of sincerity to it, “We of the CIU believe there shouldn’t be any more borders. Unrestricted travel, that’s what we say, and we say if they put up a border we ought to knock it down. So that’s what we do. I thank you.” And I sat down.

Eustaly beamed on me with real pleasure. “Admirably brief, Mr. Raxford,” he said. “Admirable. Let us hope that those who follow you will profit from your example.” He consulted his list and said, “Next is Mr. Hyman Meyerberg of the Progressive Proletarian Party, PPP.”

Hyman Meyerberg, when he stood up, was tall and somewhat heavy, the man of good physique who’s allowed himself to go to seed, so that now he looks as though he’s covered with a layer of dumpling. He also looked like a cabdriver, and had thinning hair, balding badly above the forehead. You could tell he usually wore one of those caps. He said, with heavy sarcasm, “I agree with Mr. Sun Kut Fu, who spoke earlier, about the Communist cause being endangered by revisionists, but what he and his kind don’t seem to realize is he’s just as much a revisionist as the bureaucrats in Moscow. Stalin was the man, developing the doctrines of Lenin, building the true Marxist state, and all these Trotskyite Maoists with their primitive chauvinism have to be wiped—”

Meyerberg was cut off abruptly by a sudden growl, low and menacing, the sort of sound a hibernating bear might make if you poked it with a stick. We all looked at Lobo, who had unfolded his arms and allowed them to hang at his sides, and who was staring fixedly at Meyerberg. Meyerberg cleared his throat, scratched his nose, hitched his trousers, and sat down.

Eustaly, employing the delicate fiction that Meyerberg had sat down of his own accord, said, “Thank you very much, Mr. Meyerberg, I’m glad to see you maintaining the tradition of brevity begun by Mr. Raxford. Now, next we have Mr. Louis Labotski of the American Sons’ Militia, ASM.”

All right. Meyerberg had looked like the guy who drove the cab by day, and now Labotski was the one who drove it by night. Shorter, thinner, sharp-faced, discontented-looking, the kind of man who has a transistor radio in the cab with him and plays nothing but rock ’n’ roll, full volume, hoping he’ll irritate the fares.

He said, “ASM goes along in part with Mrs. Selma Bodkin of Gentile Mothers for Peace, a lady with who I have met at occasions of picket lines and suchlike in the past. We of ASM also believe that mongrelization of the races is the big danger facing the world today, as well as the problem of favored job referral treatment for niggers and forcing them into unions where their smaller brain cavities makes it impossible for them to learn the required skills, and all throwing honest American-born white workingmen out on the streets, what with families to support. All these NAACP and CORE niggers and their sympathizers has got to be shot down, is what, to show them you can’t take the bread out of the mouths of the little children of honest hard-working American workingmen. I thank you.”

He sat down, but immediately popped up again to say, “But it’s just the niggers. Insofar as Jews and Catholics and Italians and Polish and the other minorities, these are all good honest hard-working American workingmen that deserve to be protected from the economic treatment they been getting. I thank you.”

I looked at Angela, struck by a sudden thought, and whispered, “Are you writing this down?”

Her mouth dropped open. “Oh, golly, I forgot all about it!” She scrabbled in her coat pocket for pen and pad.

I thought of telling her never mind, this League for New Blockheads was hardly anything to get excited about or keep notes on, but then I thought again of Eustaly and Lobo, and I remembered the FBI somewhere in the outer brightness, and I decided to let it go.

Meanwhile, Eustaly was introducing the next one, Mr. Lionel R. Stonewright of the Brotherhood of Christ Defense Fund, BOCDF. Lionel R. Stonewright, when he got to his feet, looked exactly like the movies’ idea of a banker: Louis Calhern.

“Mr. Chairman,” said Lionel R. Stonewright formally, “ladies and gentlemen. I do confess some astonishment at having been invited to attend a meeting which appears to be composed primarily, if not entirely, of trade unionists. As president of the Brotherhood of Christ Defense Fund, the oldest continuously existent organization in the United States devoted exclusively to the supplying of strike breakers to industry, I assure you I take some small consolation from the thought that men I have hired have surely given most or all of you a taste of the club or the whip at some time in the past, or will do so at some time in the future.”

Lobo growled, deep in his throat, but Stonewright ignored him, continuing, “Our chairman, Mr. Eustaly, suggested to me that it might be to my advantage, or to the advantage of the Brotherhood of Christ Defense Fund, were I to attend this meeting. How any such advantage could accrue from an alliance with Reds and subversives I cannot possibly imagine, nor do I see any reason why I should remain here another instant.”

Eustaly, when faced with adversity, only smiled the harder. Now he smiled the hardest I’d yet seen from him, and said, “As I have mentioned several times, dear Mr. Stonewright, we in this room represent a broad spectrum of belief. It is not in the furtherance of any specific one of these beliefs that we have thus assembled, but in the hope that together we may increase the efficiency of our communal method.”

“The Brotherhood of Christ Defense Fund,” Stonewright said icily, “doesn’t need any help.” He gave the rest of us a withering sneer. “Particularly,” he said, “from Wobblies.”

“Wobblies!!”

There was a general shouting and commotion once more, as Mrs. Baba, Mr. Zlott, Mrs. Bodkin, and both Whelps all leaped up, demanding to know how Mr. Stonewright could possibly call them Wobblies. I saw Eustaly turn and nod to Lobo, and then step back with a gentle look of understanding and of pity on his face.

Lobo came down off the platform like a gorilla dropping out of a tree. He stepped in front of each of the shouters in turn, placed his huge palm atop the shouter’s head, and pushed downward until he or she had stopped shouting and started sitting. In less than half a minute he was done; there was absolute silence, and only Mr. Stonewright was still on his feet. Lobo looked around, nodded his satisfaction, and returned to the platform.

Stonewright waited till Lobo was safely behind Eustaly again, and then said, “As is usual with leftists of the lower classes, nothing will keep you people in line but brute strength. I would not, let me assure you, consider contaminating my organization through association for even a minute with any one of you.”

Eustaly, smiling and smiling, said, “Such a decision is regrettable, Mr. Stone—”

“And final,” Stonewright snapped, cutting him off. “I would also like to warn you,” he added, “of my intention to inform the proper authorities concerning this subversive and no doubt Communist-inspired plot immediately upon leaving this hall.”

Eustaly’s smile turned pensive as he said, “I would hope you don’t mean that, Mr. Stonewright.”

“I assure you,” Stonewright told him, “that I mean every word of it.”

“Ahh,” said Eustaly. “Too bad.” Smiling sorrowfully and patiently, he sighed and said, “Lobo.”

“Close your eyes,” I whispered to Angela, and promptly closed mine. What was about to happen was, I knew, nothing for a pacifist to watch.

It is, however, impossible to close one’s ears. I heard someone — Stonewright, I suppose — say, “Ulp!” Then I heard feet running; they went right past me, and in fact something brushed my left arm. Then, from behind me, there was a very odd sound: thok.

Followed by: bakumple.

Then: chup-chup-chup.

Finally, after a brief but loud silence, Eustaly’s voice came from the front of the room, saying with fruity solemnity, “So unfortunate, that. I’d rather hoped we could avoid such things.”

I opened my eyes, and looked at Angela, and she was staring at something behind us. I whispered, “Didn’t you close your eyes?”

She swallowed, loudly, and looked at me, and whispered, “Gee whiz, noooo. You should have seen it, Gene!” She was really impressed.

Up front, Eustaly was saying, “Lobo, put him in the checkroom, we’ll take care of him later. Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the disturbance, but of course none of us wanted that man going to the authorities.” He smiled kindly on us. “He knew our names,” he pointed out, “and our organizations. He could have created a good deal of trouble for everyone in this room.”

About half of the audience was facing Eustaly, and the other half was all twisted around, studying something at the rear of the room. I looked at their faces, the ones who were turned this way, and I saw nothing in any of them but serious interest. An event had occurred which related to their specialty, and they took a natural interest in how the matter was handled. Not a one of them seemed surprised, horrified, shaken, or frightened by what had taken place.

Well, and why should they be? They weren’t the spies in their midst. I was.

I glanced at Angela, to see how she was taking it, but she was bent over her notepad, staring at her shorthand notes in a baffled and defeated way, and not at all with the rest of us. I turned all the way around and looked toward the rear of the room, but Lobo had already dragged the late Mr. Stonewright out of sight.

Eustaly had paused to give us all a chance to reorganize ourselves, and now he said, “Next on my list I have Mr. P. J. Mulligan of the Sons of Erin Expeditionary Force, SOEEF. Mr. Mulligan.”

Mr. Mulligan popped up like a jack-in-the-box, a scrawny, scrappy, sprightly fifty-year-old with graying hair, flashing blue eyes, and a bulbous red nose. He also had the most incredible set of gleaming white false teeth, several sizes too big for him, that made him look like the front of an automobile when he talked. (This, of course, was the by-stander who would immediately get into the brawl after a minor street-corner collision between the cabs driven by Hyman Meyerberg and Louis Labotski.)

“The one thing I’d like to say,” Mr. Mulligan began in a piping voice, flashing his teeth, employing the worst brogue ever heard off a stage, “is I’m impressed by the way you handled that Englishman, Stonewright. To tell ye the truth, I’d begun to think this was a namby-pamby organization, full of school-boys and milkmaids. If ye’ll all help us give the bloody English what they deserve, the Sons of Erin’ll guarantee to stand by your side through thick and thin. Now, the English—”

But there I lost track, as an inner volcano suddenly erupted within my head.

Really violent occurrences don’t affect us immediately, you know. They need time to sink in, to be understood and fully comprehended, time for a reaction to develop. My reaction to the dispatching of Lionel R. Stonewright was only just hitting me now.

There but for the grace of God thokked I. How close I’d come to telling these people off, exposing myself as a spy in their midst, and defying Eustaly and Lobo exactly as the former Mr. Stonewright had done!

Not that I’d changed my opinion of the League for New Beginnings. I was still unprepared to believe that the League itself, with such members as Mrs. Selma Bodkin, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp, Mr. Hyman Meyerberg, and the currently-spouting Mr. P. J. Mulligan, would ever be a danger to me or anybody else. Could Mrs. Elly Baba strike terror in the heart of anyone over the age of six? Could any organization — the League for New Beginnings or anybody else — send Mr. Eli Zlott out into the world on a terroristic mission in the expectation that he would actually do it and get it done right? Nonsense. They were a bunch of reject villains from Dick Tracy.

Ah, but Eustaly was something else again. He too was probably a nut — as indicated by his associating with these other nuts by his own choice — but he was hardly harmless. Murray had been very nearly right after all; the League for New Beginnings would be unlikely to have come hunting me down had I neglected to appear here tonight, but Eustaly (or, more likely, Lobo) would definitely have done so, at once, to shut me up just as he’d shut Stonewright.

And would he have succeeded, guarded as I would have been by Murray Kesselberg and Angela Ten Eyck and a dozen non-dues-paying pacifists?

I shudder to think.

I also shuddered when Lobo thudded by me, pounding phlegmatically back from the cloakroom, returning to his place on the platform. He gave one heavy side-glance to Mulligan, still yapping away about the English, who abruptly shut his mouth and popped down out of sight, as though attached to his chair by a spring.

“Thank you, Mr. Mulligan,” Eustaly purred, “for both your brevity and your vote of confidence. And now, last but surely not least, we have Mr. Jack Armstrong of the National Fascist Reclamation Commission, NFRC. Mr. Armstrong.”

Jack Armstrong was, at the most, twenty-three years of age. He was about six foot four, built like a champion swimmer or a running halfback, with the close-cropped blond hair, bull neck and retarded child’s face of the recruits in Marine Corps posters. “We,” he began, in a piping, effeminate, ridiculous voice, “who believe that history will show just how important a contribution to civilization was made by the late great Adolf Hitler, we who believe that the truth of this great man’s crusade has been distorted and maligned by the hired mercenaries of International Jewry, we who believe—”

“Now really! Enough is enough!” shouted a voice, and I saw bobbing up front again the well-known head of hair that was all I’d ever seen of Eli Zlott. “After all the indignity,” he shouted, “all the atrocities we’ve suffered at the hands of—”

“Lobo,” said Eustaly quietly.

It was enough. The voice of Eli Zlott switched immediately off, and the mass of hair submerged.

Eustaly smiled upon Jack Armstrong, who was standing there with his feet spread and his hands on his hips, ready to burst into the Horst Wessel Song as soon as his comrades came back from skiing, and Eustaly said, “Thank you very much, Mr. Armstrong. I believe we all have an adequate picture of your organization now.”

“Heil!” shouted Armstrong, snapped out a Nazi salute that bounced off the walls, and sat down as though he’d been shot.

Even Eustaly seemed a bit taken aback, but he recovered almost immediately, and said, “Thank you all, ladies and gentlemen, for having chosen to join us this evening. I think you can see that you all do have much in common, and that you will be able most productively to work together for the better efficiency of all.” He smiled upon us like a proud father, and went on, “And now I would like to present to you a friend of mine, a brilliant tactician, one of the most versatile and knowledgeable experts in the area of civil disturbance the world has ever known, a man who will explain to you just what we hope to accomplish as a group, and how we intend to make this hope a reality. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Leon Eyck.” And he gestured dramatically toward a door off to the right of the platform.

There was a second of expectancy, and then that door opened and Mr. Leon Eyck stepped out.

All at once, Eustaly himself seemed small and insignificant, and all the rest of us were so many children. Leon Eyck — what an unlikely name for him, and not, of course, his name at all — was tall as an eagle is tall, lean as a wolf is lean, quick as a cheetah is quick. Lupine, saturnine, sure of himself and contemptuous of everything around him, he was dressed, inevitably, in flowing black, as black as his hair, as black as his eyes. His face, sallow and cruel and sardonically handsome, glinted like an evil thought. He strode with the grace of a dancer and the silence of an assassin, and when he stood on the platform and surveyed us, his eyes glittered with knowledge, black humor, and contempt.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, in a voice like torn silk. “Good evening.”

Suddenly Angela was clutching my arm. I turned and frowned at her and saw her, wide-eyed and ashen-faced, cowering low in the seat. I leaned close to her, and when I asked her what was wrong, she whispered, shrill with terror, “It’s Tyrone! It’s my brother, it’s him, it’s Tyrone!”

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.

9

Apparently it was good, so good they had me tell it three times. First, I told I and J on the way downtown. Then, when we got to my apartment and found K going through my dresser drawers, I had to tell it again to him. And finally, after several phone calls by K, Angela and I were taken to an office building on Fifth Avenue near the library, where, in a small office described on its hall door as International Literature Affiliates, I ran through it yet once more, to L, M, N, O, and P. P was the boss, sitting at the desk, while L and M and N and O sat around on various window sills and pieces of furniture.

A very unlikely office, this, for the people in it. Two huge dusty old windows half-covered by ramshackle venetian blinds looked out on one of the oldest airshafts in New York. Within, one wall was lined with olive-green metal shelving on which were stacked rows of forlorn-looking books — mostly fiction, it seemed like — in various languages. Opposite, an ancient cracked leather sofa in a really terrible rust-orange color was flanked by mismatched elderly floor lamps, one with a fringed shade. P’s desk was old, wood, scarred, phlegmatic. An old wooden filing cabinet looked as though it had spent most of its life being thrown on bonfires. The gray carpeting was so old it had trails in it, and the jiggly captain’s chairs in which Angela and I were sitting seemed to be of about the same vintage. All in all, the office looked to have been furnished from the Salvation Army during a clearance sale, and was illuminated mainly by a fluorescent desk lamp reminiscent of a dentist’s drill.

In this setting I once again told my story — rather well by now — with interpolations from Angela, and when I was done I said, “I sure hope somebody took all that down. That’s the third time I’ve told that story, and I really don’t think I could go through it again.” It was by now nearly three-thirty in the morning, and exhaustion was beginning to make itself felt around the edges of my brain.

“Don’t worry,” P told me. “It’s all down on tape.” He was somewhat older than the rest, stockier, shorter; the product of an earlier mold. He chain-smoked cigarettes, and had to pause now while he lit a fresh one from the butt of the old, then said, “Frankly, Raxford, it’s a wild story, and with your reputation my initial tendency would be to ignore you.” He stubbed the old cigarette in an ashtray, while beside me Angela looked indignant, and then went on, “But in this case there are a few factors which do tend to increase your credibility.”

“Thanks,” I said. (Sarcasm is one of the few weapons of which pacifists approve.)

It was also, apparently, a weapon that bothered P not at all. He went on, unruffled, “The names you mentioned, Mrs. Elly Baba and P. J. Mulligan and Eli Zlott and Jack Armstrong and Mrs. Selma Bodkin, all are the names of leaders of actual subversive organizations. Frankly, I’ve never heard of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. They sound right-wing to me, and our files have always been a little more extensive on the left. You can’t quote me on that.”

He leaned back in his swivel chair, and swiveled to and fro while pursing his lips and brooding at his desk top. Ultimately, he said, “Also the business of Miss Ten Eyck’s brother. Information had already come to us from other sources that Tyrone Ten Eyck, under a variety of names, had entered the country for subversive and sabotage activities. His appearance here at this time, with the sort of people you describe, makes an unfortunate kind of sense.”

Once again he fell into a brooding reverie, tapping cigarette ash on his trousers and glooming at his desk, apparently overcome by the thought of Tyrone Ten Eyck with the sort of people I had described. Finally he shook his head, roused himself once more, and said, “As for this man Eustaly, of course he does not deal in mimeograph supplies and equipment, we’ve checked that out very thoroughly. As, if you ask me, the FBI should have done in the first place. If they had, we wouldn’t have these problems facing us now.”

I said, “Aren’t you FBI?”

He gave me a world-weary smile and said, “No, we’re not. Quite another organization entirely.”

I said, “CIA?”

L and M and N and O all chuckled at one another when I said that, and shifted around where they sat, as though I’d asked them if they didn’t belong to the Boy Scouts. P, his world-weary smile showing some world-weary amusement, said, “No, Mr. Raxford, not the CIA either. I very much doubt you would have heard of us.” He cocked an eye at the other four. “Would he, boys?”

“Ho ho,” they said, and “Certainly,” and “Oh, sure.”

They didn’t know it, those guys, but they were Boy Scouts. I could see them now, horsing around the campfire and tying knots. They went to Midwestern colleges, too. And graduated.

“Well,” said P, sobering again, “back to business. The final mark in your favor is this Odd Fellows’ Hall. The place was empty by the time we got there, of course, but it had been rented for tonight by some group calling itself the South Side Social Club, and no such group appears to exist. Also, they paid the rental fee in cash. In addition, some small stains were found in the cloakroom, possibly blood, we should have the lab report on that by morning.”

One of the others — M, I think — said, “And the tails, Chief.”

“Oh, of course,” said P. “Eli Zlott and Mrs. Elly Baba are both under full surveillance these days, and both managed to evade their shadows shortly before midnight tonight.” He smiled somewhat bleakly and said, “Of course, so did you.”

“The hell we did,” I said.

Angela said, “We waited for them. They lost us.”

P scrunched his cheeks up and said, “What?”

“Going through Columbus Circle,” I said. “Somehow or other they lost us. There were two of them, in a blue Chevy. We stopped as soon as we saw they weren’t with us anymore, and waited about five minutes, but they never showed up.”

“We couldn’t wait anymore,” Angela explained. “We didn’t want to be late for the meeting.”

L and M and N and O were all chuckling and shifting again. P, a twinkle in his eye, glanced at them, and said, “Maybe we just better not mention that to the boys over at the Square, eh, fellas?”

“Ho ho,” they said, and “Yuk yuk,” and “Oh, sure.” Rover boys.

I said, “I wanted the FBI around tonight. You think I wanted to go to that meeting alone?”

“I won’t argue with you,” P said, still feeling humorous. “Now,” he said, turning the twinkle off, “about your presence at that meeting in the first place, we’ve talked with this lawyer friend of yours, Murray Kesselberg, and he—”

“Murray? You woke him up?”

“Not exactly.” Twinkle on again, P said to O, “He wasn’t exactly asleep, was he?”

“Oh, no, sir,” said O, twinkling right back. “Not exactly asleep. In bed, all right, but not what you’d call asleep.”

“Murray,” I said, “will kill me.”

Angela reached out and took my hand. “It isn’t your fault, Gene,” she said softly. “Murray will understand.”

“Ho ho,” I said, and “Certainly,” and “Oh, sure.”

P said, “At any rate, Kesselberg verifies your motive in attending the meeting. As I understand it, from what both of you say, you were afraid Eustaly and the others might come to silence you if you did not attend, but that you could possibly get proof of the organization’s existence to turn over to the FBI if you did go.”

“Right,” I said.

Angela said, contritely, “I’m sorry about my notes.”

P smiled at her in a more or less fatherly fashion, saying, “That’s perfectly all right, Miss Ten Eyck. Very few people would be able to take legible shorthand notes under such trying circumstances.” He glanced at the notebook in question, sitting, on his desk, containing several pages of op art. “Perhaps,” he said doubtfully, “a shorthand expert will be able to read at least a part of it.”

“Nobody can ever read my shorthand,” Angela said mournfully. “Not ever.”

I looked at her. “You never told me that before,” I said.

“Well, I try,” she insisted. “I try and try and try, and it just never comes out right.”

I looked at P, and P looked at me, and for one blinding instant that must have been equally startling to both of us, there was a perfect bond of understanding and sympathy between us. Then he cleared his throat, and rattled some papers, and looked down at his desk, and said, “Well, it hasn’t been totally in vain.” He picked up a piece of paper, saying, “You have given us the names of some of the people present, and something of the affiliations of one or two of the others whose names you didn’t remember.” He looked at the list and shook his head. “I must say this shapes up as a rather unusual grouping.”

Angela said, “They kept wanting to fight one another all the time.”

P nodded at her. “I should think so.”

“I’m surprised the meeting lasted as long as it did,” I said.

“Are you?” P shook his head. “We’re not. In fact, Mr. Raxford,” he said, “we’re very concerned about this League for New Beginnings.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “I know you people like to play foreign intrigue, but that crowd? They’re a bunch of cocoanuts.”

P looked at me, flat-eyed, and said, flat-voiced, “Do you think so, Mr. Raxford?”

“Not Eustaly,” I said. “Not Ten Eyck. I’ll grant you those two are probably dangerous. And Lobo, if somebody with brains tells him what to do. But all those other wacks kept reminding me of the kind of guy sits down next to you on a crowded subway and starts talking to little green men.”

P said, “You don’t take them seriously.”

“Not for a minute,” I said.

P motioned to O. “Give Mr. Raxford the essentials,” he said.

O got up from his perch on the radiator, said, “Right, Chief,” and went over to open the top drawer of the filing cabinet.

P said to me, “These are just on the names you remembered. The others present will more than likely be cut from the same cloth.”

“Crazy quilt,” I said.

“Perhaps,” said P, and gestured for O to begin.

O had taken a manila folder from the drawer, shut the drawer, and opened the folder atop the cabinet. He riffled through sheets of paper in the folder, selected one, and said, “Mrs. Elly Baba. Very religious woman. She was a Baptist until 1952, when, while serving a jail sentence for having stabbed her third husband, she was converted by the Black Muslims. The Muslims apparently tapped deep anti-white feelings that her Baptist religion had kept submerged, but didn’t really permit her any specific outlet for those feelings. Between 1954 and 1960 she belonged to a succession of rightist Negro organizations, each of a more violent type than the last, ultimately entering the Pan-Arabian World Freedom Society in 1961, and becoming the group’s leader in 1964. Its present membership is estimated at approximately forty-five. Mrs. Baba is generally considered by students on the subject to be the most violent woman in Harlem, and possibly in the world.”

He chose another sheet of paper. “Patrick Joseph Mulligan,” he said. “Native-born, so we can’t very well deport him. He’s served one term in a federal penitentiary for bank robbery. The Sons of Erin Expeditionary Force has been active for the last thirty-seven years in this country, primarily as an unacknowledged collector of moneys for Irish independence groups both in Ireland and the British Isles. Bank robbery was a favorite fund-raising technique of the IRA in its heyday, which seems to be where the Sons of Erin got the idea. For the last few years they seem to have been relatively inactive, though they have created street disturbances in front of the British Embassy and so on. Mulligan has led the organization for seven years.”

Another sheet. “Eli Zlott,” he said, “is something else again. He apparently wants to be a cold-blooded killer, in fact, a mass murderer, but he always changes his mind at the last minute. He has several times been successful in placing large and extremely dangerous explosive devices in German embassies, hotel suites occupied by visiting German dignitaries, and so on, but invariably, shortly before the bomb is to go off, he telephones, warns whoever answers that a bomb has been planted, and urges everyone to clear the area. In every case so far, a quick search has been made, the bomb has been found, and no explosion has occurred. It is believed that Zlott’s wife, Esther Zlott, has always been the softening influence who has convinced Zlott to make his phone calls. Esther Zlott died three months ago, run down by a hit-and-run driver in a Volkswagen.”

“Oh, dear,” said Angela.

“We believe,” O said quietly, “that Zlott will perhaps be more dangerous now.” He reached for a new sheet.

“Jack Armstrong,” he read, “appears to have been pro-Hitler and pro-Nazi all his life, even though he was only four years old in 1945, when the Third Reich came to an end. The National Fascist Reclamation Commission is a group he started personally while in high school, with a membership of his close friends, fluctuating between seven and twenty-two members. The group does a lot of swastika-painting, pickets civil rights pickets, and may be behind some rifle sniping and synagogue vandalism, though there’s never been convictable proof. Nevertheless, it seems clear that Armstrong is psychotic and at least potentially homicidal.”

Next. “Mrs. Selma Bodkin, widow, fifty-seven years of age. She has been a member of the Gentile Mothers for Peace since its founding in 1947, and its president since 1958. She was jailed just once, for assault. In that case, she had attended a wrestling show at St. Nick’s Arena, in which the main event was between a white wrestler called Captain America and a Negro wrestler called Violent Virgil. When Violent Virgil won the final fall by what Mrs. Bodkin considered unethical methods, she left her seat, climbed into the ring, and beat Violent Virgil with a rolled-up newspaper concealing a length of lead pipe. She was given a suspended sentence, and there was never sufficient proof to indict her for the subsequent bombing of Violent Virgil’s house in St. Albans, Queens. She and her group may have been involved in other bombings, though we can’t be sure, but we do know they’ve made a habit of attacking civil rights pickets with the lead pipes in rolled-up newspapers, they’ve descended en masse on lovers’ lanes in the area, and caused a great deal of damage to a Long Island drive-in theater which refused to turn away automobiles containing inter-racial groupings. Whether Mrs. Bodkin has personally killed anyone yet or not, we don’t know. We do know she wants to.”

O put the papers back in the folder, the folder back in the drawer, and himself back on the radiator.

P said to me, “Well?”

I said, “Well what?”

He said, “Do you still believe these people harmless?”

“Not a bit of it,” I said. “I never thought they were harmless. They’re crazy, and crazy people sometimes do damage. But what you were talking about was this League for New Beginnings, and that’s something else again. You can’t get a bunch of yoyos like that together and get them to do anything. Believe me, I’ve seen these people, this exact same kind of people, and they’re never any good for anything.”

P said, “You’ve seen people like this before?”

“Not violent,” I admitted. “But the same, just the same.”

“I wish you’d explain that,” he said.

I said, “You get a big peace rally, one of the really big ones on something in the headlines, where all the peace groups join in, and you get this kind of nut. All passion and excitement, no brains. You want an orderly march in front of the White House, these kooks want to run in and have a sit-in on the President’s desk. They’ve got no discipline, no head for plans, nothing like that. All they want to do is run, jump, holler, wave signs, make a big noise. These people tonight are the same thing, except they want to hit people, too. But that type is almost impossible to get into any kind of orderly group or plan or anything.”

P said, “Almost impossible, Mr. Raxford?”

“Keeping that kind in line,” I said, “is no picnic, believe me.”

“For Eustaly?” he asked me. “And Ten Eyck? Not to mention Lobo.”

I just shook my head.

P said, “Ten Eyck and Eustaly are no fools, Mr. Raxford, please take my word for that. I will take your word that they have brought together an assembly of fools, but they themselves are anything but foolish. Whatever the membership of the League for New Beginnings may be or think, those who organized it have done so for a specific and logical and realizable purpose.”

“If they can hold that bunch together,” I said.

“Exactly. If they can weld this group into a functioning organization, they’ll have one of the most frightening internal weapons of subversion and sabotage the world has ever seen.”

“If,” I said.

“Will you accept the possibility?” he asked me.

Grudgingly, I nodded. “It’s possible,” I said. “Not probable, but possible.”

He looked hard at me, but hard. “We must stop them, you know,” he said.

I said, “What?” Belatedly, it was occurring to me to wonder why he’d worked so hard to convince me the League might be a menace after all, and now that the horse was gone, I began to look around for a quick way to lock the barn.

“In time of emergency,” he said, still looking at me hard, “it is the duty of every citizen to do his part.”

“I’m a pacifist,” I said. “Let’s not lose sight of that.”

“Under normal circumstances,” he said, “I would have no objection to you or anyone else pursuing the course of the conscientious objector. But this—”

“I’m not a conscientious objector,” I said, “I’m a pacifist There’s a difference. We’re big-endians and they’re little-endians.”

“Little Indians?”

“Oh, never mind,” I said. “The point is, whatever you want me to do I have strong moral, ethical, and personal objections to doing it.”

Beside me, Angela stuck her jaw out and said, “That’s right, Gene. And me, too, that goes for me, too.”

P smiled bleakly. “Mr. Raxford,” he said, “perhaps you haven’t thought this situation through as yet, perhaps there are one or two factors you don’t have a clear sight of.”

“If you think you can force me—”

“Mr. Raxford, co-operation cannot be forced. And even if it could be, I assure you I would not even be tempted to try it.” P’s smile got bleaker and bleaker. “Out there, Mr. Raxford,” he said, with a dramatic gesture toward the airshaft, “is your friend Mortimer Eustaly. Tyrone Ten Eyck is out there, too, Mr. Raxford, and so is Lobo.” He paused for effect, then said, blandly, “And do you know, Mr. Raxford, who they are thinking about right now?”

I said, “Wha? Wha?”

“They’re thinking about you, Mr. Raxford.”

“Now, wait,” I said.

“And do you know,” he continued, despite me, “what they are thinking about you?”

“Uh,” I said.

P smiled with crocodile sadness, shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “Thank you for chatting with us, Mr. Raxford,” he said. “If you have no wish to help us, you may leave now. You’re completely free to go. You won’t be bothered — by us — any more. In fact, the surveillance the FBI has maintained on you will even be lifted. Isn’t that nice?”

“Now, look,” I said.

L came forward, saying, “Any place I can drop you folks?”

I said to P, “You can’t do this, you can’t just send me out there. Eustaly and Ten Eyck, they’ll try to kill me.”

“Mr. Raxford,” he said, “if you think you can force us to protect you...” And he gave me the most obnoxiously smug smile I’ve ever seen in my life.

“Angela,” I said, “cover your ears.”

She touched my arm, saying, “Gene, wait a minute.”

“Cover your ears!”

“No, listen to me. You don’t even know what they want, Gene. Find out what they want first.”

I told her, with barely controlled impatience, “If they wanted anything I’d be willing to go along with, they’d just ask. Doing it this way, it’s got to be something really terrible.”

P said, “Not at all, Mr. Raxford, not at all. We would give you every protection, I assure you.”

I said to Angela, “Hear that? Every protection. You know what that means? They want me to jump off a cliff and carry my own net.”

P said, “We don’t want you to do anything at all. The choice is yours.”

“Some choice,” I said.

“Actually,” he said, “it is a choice. You can choose to meet Eustaly and Ten Eyck again all by yourself, or with us. It’s as simple as that.”

“The question is,” I said, “am I as simple as that.”

P ostentatiously moved papers around on his desk. “I do have other work to get to tonight, Mr. Raxford.”

“I could always hide out,” I said. “Leave New York, disappear until it’s all over.”

“Bon voyage,” he said.

I said to him, “Will you please stop making it so hard for me? Will you just once stop being so smug and happy about yourself, and ask me? You want my help; will you stop black-mailing me for a second and just ask me to help you?”

But he couldn’t do it. A man who’s divided the world into duties and privileges can’t possibly comprehend favors. “In time of emergency,” he started again, “every citizen—”

“What are you?” I asked him. “A recording?”

N came over at that point, leaned on the desk between us, and said to P, “Chief, let me talk to Raxford a second.”

P gestured as though he’d given me up. “Go right ahead.”

N looked at me. “We could use your help, Mr. Raxford,” he said. “The Chief has a lot on his mind, you know; Eustaly and Ten Eyck aren’t the only subversives we’re trying to neutralize. In their case, you could do more to help than anyone else, and you can’t blame the Chief if he doesn’t understand why you wouldn’t want to help, can you?”

“I don’t want to help,” I said, “because I don’t want to be killed. Does that make it any clearer?”

“Then you want our help, too,” N pointed out. “Each of us needs the other, Mr. Raxford. Frankly, I think the Chief understands that more than you do.”

I looked at him, and looked at his bloody Chief, and looked at Angela, and looked at the airshaft, and looked at my left shoe, and gradually got myself used to the idea that I was in a bind. My brave talk about leaving New York, hiding out till this had all blown over, was so much bushwah, and I knew it just as much as they did. Through no fault of my own I was in this mess up to my neck, and no matter how much I disliked P and his cohorts personally, professionally, and philosophically, it remained true that I was more likely to survive with them than without them.

But I wasn’t prepared to give in quite that easily. “Maybe we can talk,” I said. “Maybe we can make a deal.”

P snorted, but N said, “What sort of deal?”

“Your Chief there said something about pulling the FBI surveillance off me,” I reminded him.

Quickly P said, “We’re not the FBI.”

“But you could arrange it,” I said. “Couldn’t you?”

P and N looked at each other, and then N said to me, “On what basis? Give us a reason we can use.”

“You scratch my back,” I said, “I scratch yours.”

N smiled briefly and frostily. “That wouldn’t look good in a memo.”

Angela said, “If Gene helps the government now, doesn’t that prove he isn’t subversive?”

N considered her, smiled a bit more warmly, and said, “That just might do it.” He turned to P, saying, “Eh, Chief? By volunteering his assistance in an emergency, J. Whatchamacallit Raxford demonstrated his—”

“Eugene,” I said.

“Wha? Oh, right. J. Eugene Raxford — I keep thinking it’s J. Edgar — J. Eugene Raxford demonstrated his loyalty beyond question, and we therefore recommend all surveillance of him and his organization cease as of date. What do you think?”

P looked doubtful. “You know how stiff-necked they can be.”

“They’ll go along, Chief,” N assured him.

P looked sternly at me and said, “I guarantee nothing. I’ll do my very best, that’s all I can say.”

“Then it’s on,” I said. “I’m yours. Do your worst.”

N beamed at me, patted my shoulder, and said, “Good man. You won’t regret this.”

“That’s what you think. I’m regretting it already.” I said to P, “What do you want me to do?”

“In a word,” he said, “infiltrate.”

“Infiltrate? What kind of word is that? What do you mean, infiltrate?”

P leaned forward over the desk, so intent it was obvious he had to be the one who’d thought this caper up, and said, “You’re going to be part of the League for New Beginnings, in a position to watch them from the inside and report their activities to us.”

I said, “Don’t look now, but your brains just fell out.”

He smiled thinly — a man with superior knowledge again. “Does there appear to you to be an insoluble problem, Mr. Raxford?”

“You betcha,” I said.

“Such as?”

“Such as the fact they already know I’m a ringer, so how do I infiltrate?”

He shook his head. “No, Mr. Raxford, that’s where you’re wrong. They do not know you are a ringer. They only know Miss Ten Eyck is a ringer, and at the moment they assume you are one as well.”

“Pretty good assumption, if you ask me,” I said.

“But,” said P, raising a hortatory finger, “what if you were to murder Miss Ten Eyck?”

“I’d get the chair.”

“Please, Mr. Raxford, this is serious.”

“You bet it is,” I said.

He said, “Listen to me, now. The afternoon papers tomorrow will report that Miss Ten Eyck has disappeared, and was last seen in the company of the notorious terrorist and subversive, J. Eugene Raxford of the Citizens’ Independence Union. For the next five days the newspapers will continue to report on the exhaustive search being undertaken for both of you, with constant references to your past history as a terrorist, culminating in the report of the discovery of Miss Ten Eyck’s murdered body. Shortly after which, you will contact Eustaly, pre—”

“How do I do that?”

“Through one of the others at the meeting. The Whelps, for instance, or Mrs. Bodkin. Several of these people live quite openly, very easy to find.”

“All right,” I said. “Then what?”

“You explain to Eustaly,” he told me, “that when you ran from the room you were not running away from the group but after Miss Ten Eyck. That you subsequently caught her and murdered her, since it had become obvious she was a spy of some sort of your organization, and have been hiding out ever since.” P spread his hands and said, “Eustaly will have no choice but to believe you.”

“I’d prefer it in writing from him,” I said. “All right, never mind that. In real life, such as it is, where will I be for the next five days?”

“At a site of ours,” he told me, “being prepared for the infiltration. Believe me, Mr. Raxford, we have no more desire to see harm come to you than you have. We will take every possible precaution, including a crash training program for you that will leave you equipped to handle almost any situation that may arise.”

I turned to Angela and said, “See? I carry my own net.”

She smiled encouragingly at me, squeezed my arm, and said, “You’re doing the right thing, Gene. I can feel it.”

“Wonderful.” To P, I said, “What about Angela? Where’s she going to be during all this?”

“We’ll hide her out at one of our sites till it’s all over,” he said.

“Make it the same site as me,” I said.

He lifted an eyebrow. “You two aren’t married, are you?”

“Don’t worry,” I told him, “we’ll sign the register Mr. and Mrs.”

He said, “I’m not sure we could get approval for that sort of thing.”

I turned to N, who seemed to be the nearest thing to a sane human being in the room, and said, “Tell him.”

N understood at once. He nodded at me and said, “Chief, I think in this case we can afford to look the other way. We show Mr. Raxford our willingness to co-operate with him, and then I’m sure he’ll be happy to cooperate with us.”

P considered, pursing his lips, brooding at his desk top, but sooner or later all of us compromise with our morals, allow the end to justify the means, permit our actions to fall short of our ideals, and P was no exception. “Very well,” he said grumpily. “But,” he said, giving me the gimlet eye, “I ask you to be discreet. I don’t want you contaminating my men.”

“Well!” said Angela. “I like that!”

“He meant morally,” I told her.

P cleared his throat, rather noisily, and said, “All right, that seems to be about all. You’ll be taken to the site now, by auto.” He nodded at L and N, who nodded back and got to their feet. P stood also, and put a good face on it as he said, “Allow me to express my appreciation, Mr. Raxford, for your offer of co-operation. Anything that can be done to make your task easier will, I assure you, be done.”

“Thank you,” I said. The occasion seemed to call for it, so I got to my feet, and we faced one another across the desk. P extended his hand, and very solemnly I took it. It was the kind of handshake that follows the awarding of a medal, and P seemed perilously close to kissing me on both cheeks.

Instead, he said, “For the duration of this operation, your code name will be Q. All correspondence concerning you will employ that designation, and the men at the site will know you only by that name. Understood?”

I said, “I’m Q?”

“Yes.”

I looked around. L. M. N. O. P. “Of course,” I said. “I’m Q! Who else?”

P said, “I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing,” Q told him. “It’s a private joke.”

10

Picture, if you will, a rolling countryside green with verdant spring. A small dark-watered lake fills the center of a cupped valley, surrounded by wooded hills, forested with pine and oak and maple. On the eastern shore of the lake there are the only signs of human occupancy: a pier, a small beach, a float, a boathouse. A smooth, undulant, green lawn sweeps up-slope from these to a large sprawling house of gray fieldstone; this could be a private manor, or a rest home, or a small and exclusive resort. There are stables, occupied by real horses, to one side of this building, and a long garage, occupied by real automobiles, to the other. A narrow blacktop road continues up the face of the ridge beyond this building, into the woods, over the top, and down the other side through thick forest to a small state highway not quite three miles away. The country-side all around the lake is beautiful, wild, lush, crisscrossed by narrow trails and enclosed by electrified fencing.

The time is six-forty A.M. Because the month is April, a slow, gentle, chilling drizzle is leaking interminably from heaven, and the temperature is hovering around fifty. Through this beautiful, bleak, half-lit predawn landscape two men in gray sweatsuits are running. They are trotting end-lessly along a path that circles the lake. They are running around the lake, and around the lake, and around the lake. They must be idiots.

One of the two is a burly blocky blond-haired bloke named — or so he says — Lynch. The other, known to Lynch and everyone else around here — you can’t see them; they’re asleep — as Q, is yours truly, J. Eugene Raxford, your correspondent. Lynch, red-faced, as healthy as a moose, is trotting along like a well-oiled wind-up toy. Beside him, I am wheezing, I am puffing, I am panting, I am flailing my arms around and no longer making any attempt to keep my knees as high as Lynch likes them.

This was the morning of my fifth day at this place, which was what P had referred to as “our site.” Judging from the nighttime automobile trip Angela and I had taken here from P’s office, we were somewhere in upstate New York, or possibly in Connecticut or Massachusetts. Although it might also have been in Rhode Island, Vermont, or New Hampshire. Wherever it was, its name was Hell.

In the last five days I had learned something I’d never known before: pacifism makes one flabby. You might think walking on picket lines, marching in demonstrations, cranking mimeograph machines, and running away from mounted policemen are activities that would keep one in relatively good physical shape, but apparently they do not. At any rate, Lynch and his confreres — no letters for these people, they all had names, one monosyllabic name each — were convinced that I was in terrible physical shape, and after they’d run me around the lake a few hundred times, my tendency was to believe them.

The first day had been the worst. It had been after dawn before we’d finally arrived here, and when Angela and I were shown our connecting rooms and left alone, we were both so tired that neither of us so much as checked to see if the linking door was locked. (It was, we later learned, not.) I was awakened at noon, over my strident protests, chivvied downstairs for a breakfast of orange juice, steak, scrambled eggs, milk, coffee, toast and orange marmalade, and introduced to a beefy bunch termed, blithely, “your instructors.” The one who called them that began the introductions by introducing himself: “Karp. I handle the administrative end at the site here.”

And the others: “This is Lynch, who’ll be seeing to your physical condition. Walsh, here, is your code man. And here’s Hanks, your judo instructor. And—”

“I’m a pacifist,” I said. “Maybe they didn’t tell you.”

He looked at me with the expressionless eyes of a philanthropist doing a good deed among the lower orders. “Hanks,” he said, “will instruct you in some of the principles of self-defense.” He looked away, and continued the introductions: “This is Morse, your swimming instructor. Here’s Rowe, fencing and gymnastics—”

I said, “More self-defense?”

Another blank look, and he said, “Quite. And finally. Duff here, your electronics technician.” Turning to me full-face now, he said, “As I understand it, you are a special case, Q, not one of our normal recruits. We have been given just five days to turn you into something with at least a minimum of survival potential, and if we are to get anywhere at all we shall require your full and unstinting co-operation. We shall not, I promise you, waste any of these five days instructing you in anything useless or abstract, so please do not waste time objecting to elements of the course. I take it you would prefer to survive.”

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” I said, “I’d appreciate it very much.”

“It won’t be too much trouble,” he told me. “Walsh, will you take Q along now?”

Walsh was my code man. He took me away for an hour to a small room where he filled me full of codes, passwords, signals, counteractants, emergency over-rides, and I don’t know what all. “Don’t worry if it isn’t all sinking in,” he said at one point. “We’ll have several sessions.”

“Oh, good,” I said.

Lynch had me next. Down to the locker room we went, changed into sweatsuits, and off for the first but not the last time around that bloody lake. For an hour I ran, I did calisthenics, I climbed ropes, I jumped up and down, and I did a lot of loud breathing through my mouth. When at last the hour was done, Lynch looked at me and said, sourly, “They expect miracles, don’t they?”

Duff, my electronics technician, was next. We met in a long low-ceilinged room full of electronic equipment, at which Duff generally waved, saying, “Here is some of the equipment you may be called upon to use. Our purpose is to familiarize you with it.”

Sure.

Next was Rowe, fencing and gymnastics. Rowe handed me a blunt épée, attacked me à la Douglas Fairbanks a few times, and said, “Well, the hell with that. If they come at you with swords you’ll die, that’s all. Let’s go to gymnastics.”

I said, “They don’t come at people with swords very much any more, do they?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “Not often. Swing on those rings over there.”

After Rowe came Morse, my swimming instructor, who said, “Can you swim at all?”

“I can swim very well,” I told him.

“Thank God for small favors,” he said. “I am now going to teach you to swim silently. Get in the water.”

I said, “Do you know it’s cold out here?”

“No, it isn’t,” he said. “Now, in order to swim silently—”

Then came lunch, a welcome respite, and the first time I’d seen Angela that day. The people here didn’t know her name either, but they didn’t call her by a letter, they just called her Miss. She said, “How are you doing?” and I said, “They’re trying to kill me. Nothing to worry about.”

After lunch I saw Duff again, and had another go at the electronic equipment. He also took some of my measurements, for various electronic things he intended to attach to me one way and another, and I went away from there, somewhat bemused, to be thrown around a padded floor for an hour by Hanks, my judo instructor, who couldn’t care less about my pacifism; whether or not I ever used what he taught me was not his concern. Then Walsh the code man again, and some more silent swimming with Morse, and another go at the gymnasium with Rowe, on and on, ultimately ending at ten o’clock at night with an incredible massage from Lynch. “One thing we don’t want,” Lynch said, pummeling me, “is for them muscles to tighten up.”

They wouldn’t have dared.

Dinner was relaxing, though brief, and afterward I was sent to my room with several volumes on applied psychology, with marked chapters concerning police interrogation methods, psychological manipulation of co-workers, and similar villainies. When Angela, all rested and randy, came scratching at my door a little after midnight the best I could give her was a smile, and even that was weak.

And so it had gone, for the next four days. It was a crash program, in which I was the crash, and incredibly enough it seemed to have some effect. My physical tone improved amazingly, much of what I’d been told about codes and electronics and psychology appeared to. stick with reasonable permanence in my memory, I learned to swim as silent as a gliding lily pad, and I even got pretty good on the parallel bars.

Not that there was a lot of improvement, because there wasn’t. But considering the length of time we’d all been given, the fact of any improvement was pretty astonishing.

By the third night I’d even been able to show Angela a spark of life, which pleased her exceedingly, until twenty to six the next morning when Lynch came striding in, found us both in the same bed, looked down on us with disapproval, and said, “Breaking training. No good for you.”

“Really!” cried Angela, turning red all over.

“Yes, really,” said Lynch, turned on his heel, walked out, and twenty minutes later had me running around the lake as though we were trying to get somewhere.

This was the daily routine; up at five-forty, exercise from six to seven, then breakfast and session after session for the rest of the day and halfway into the night.

Now it was the fifth and last day, opening all cold and drizzly, with Lynch pacing me as usual around the lake. At ten to seven we stopped running and switched to a cross section of push-ups, chin-ups, sit-ups, various kinds of jumps, etc., etc., and at seven I staggered into the main building, took my first shower of the day, and went ravenously to breakfast.

We had a guest this morning: P, all citified and sissy in his suit. I flexed a new muscle at him, drank my orange juice, reached for my steak, and said, “Well, Coach, you just bring on da champ. I’ll knock him outa da ring.”

P smiled bleakly. “I’m glad you feel that way, Q,” he said. “Tonight you re-establish contact.”

The orange juice turned to a cold solid in my stomach. I put down a forkful of steak and said, “We’re ready?”

He tossed a pile of newspapers on the table beside me. “Take a look.”

The top paper was Friday’s Daily News, and the applicable item was on page 4. Beneath a headline reading SOCIETY GIRL VANISHES, the story announced that industrialist Marcellus Ten Eyck had reported to police that morning the disappearance of his daughter, Angela, who had not returned home the night before. Police had information that Miss Ten Eyck had last been seen in the company of one Joseph Rakford (sic), a known extremist termed by the FBI “erratic and dangerous.” Foul play was not ruled out. Accompanying this absurd story was a small grainy photo identified in the caption as Angela, but it looked more like a picture of me.

Uh huh. The second paper was Saturday’s Daily News — it figured the News would give this sort of story the biggest play — and now the story had graduated to page 3, and the accompanying photos were much larger and clearer than before. Yes, photos; one each of Angela and me. DEB DISAPPEARS; SUBVERSIVE SOUGHT ran the headline, and it was followed by essentially the same story as yesterday’s, but with additional exclamation points. A few foul lies about my part in the blowing up of customs shacks had also been inserted.

The Sunday News was next. Still page 3, the same two photos and essentially the same story — this time pegged with the headline ANGELA AND THE BOMBER STILL OUT OF SIGHT — plus a picture in the center fold of the mimeograph machine in my bedroom. “Deserted hideaway of J. Eugene Raxford [they were getting it right by now] reveals no clues to where-abouts of missing society beauty,” etc., etc.

Monday, yesterday, the story had begun to lose steam. Page 5, smaller item, no photos at all, headline POLICE STYMIED IN DEB DISAPPEARANCE. Ah, but this morning, Tuesday, quelle différence! Page 1, black headline covering half the page:

ANGELA

DEAD!

story, page 2

You bet the story was on page 2. A body, partially destroyed by an explosion of dynamite, had been found in a ravine in New Jersey the night before, and had been identified via dental history records as Angela Ten Eyck, missing heiress to — etc, etc. J. Eugene Raxford, bomber and terrorist being sought on other counts by the FBI, was wanted for questioning also in connection with the death — etc., etc. Anyone having any information on the whereabouts of Raxford — etc., etc.

“Well,” I said.

P took the papers back. “Realistic?”

“It’s going to be quite a job later on,” I said. “Unraveling all that.”

“It can be done,” he said calmly. “It’s been done before.”

“What about Angela’s old man? He’s co-operating?”

P’s smile turned to granite. “Reluctantly,” he said. “But fully. Take my word for it.”

“I’m surprised,” I said. “I figured the old guy wouldn’t stand still for it, this kind of publicity in the trash press. And not even true.”

“Mr. Ten Eyck,” P said carefully, “is in the munitions business, a business quite intimately connected with the federal government. The government itself is a prime consumer in that industry, and rigidly regulates the industry’s dealings with any and all other consumers. Believe me, Mr. Ten Eyck does not want the federal government to think of him as uncooperative.”

I smiled, thinking about the old walrus blowing into his mustaches, clasping his hands behind his back, saying several unprintable things, and writing out some new contribution checks to the Republican Party. (Whenever the government infuriated Ten Eyck in some particularly personal way — which was often — he always mailed off a fresh contribution to the Republican Party. He did this even if the Republicans themselves were in power — which was seldom.)

Karp, the administrative head of the site, came along then, saying, “What’s this? Not eating, Q? Best finish your breakfast, you’ve got quite a full day ahead of you.” To P he said, “Perhaps it would be best if we left him alone, sir.”

“Right,” said P. He got to his feet, tucked his bale of newspapers under his arm, and said to me, “I’ll see you later on. We won’t be leaving here till after dark.”

They left me alone. I looked at the food, which I knew I was too nervous to eat, and ate every mouthful of it. When you’ve been running around a lake for an hour before breakfast, it takes more than bad news, alarums, and intimations of mortality to keep you from packing the chow away.

11

Late that afternoon Duff wired me for sound. I walked into his hobby shop and he handed me a glass of water and a black medicinal-looking capsule, and said, “Take this.”

I said, “Why?”

“Bottoms up,” he said. “We’ve still got lots to do.”

So I put the capsule in my mouth, downed it with water, gave him the glass back, and said, “Is it all right if I know what that was?”

“Certainly,” he said. “A microphone.”

“A who?”

“You will excrete it,” he said, “in approximately three days. In the interim, you will be able to record and broadcast all conversations held in your presence.”

I said, “You mean I’m bugged? I’ve got a microphone inside me?”

“That’s right,” he said, calm and unperturbed. That was because he didn’t have any microphones inside him. “There are no special instructions in regard to it,” he said, “except that we would prefer you not to eat gassy foods. Now, try this pair of shoes on.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “You’re going too fast. Gassy foods? What do you mean, gassy foods?”

“Beer,” he said. “Baked beans. You know the sort of thing.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Noise.” He made vague motions. “We have trouble picking up external conversations,” he explained, “unless the body itself remains quiet.” And he extended toward me a pair of black shoes with plain squarish toes, the sort of thing Navy men wear all the time, shoes that look mostly like bad drawings of shoes in cartoon strips.

Moving gingerly, because the idea of a microphone in my stomach was still a trifle exotic to me, I sat down, removed my own shoes, and put these Navy clogs on in their place. They fit perfectly. In fact, they had the soft and comfortable fit that new shoes never have, and I looked at them on my feet and wondered how that particular miracle had been managed.

Duff said, “How are they?”

“Fine,” I said. “Are they new?”

“No, they’re not. Now, in the—”

“Wait a second,” I said. “They’re used shoes?”

“That’s right,” he said.

“Why am I wearing somebody else’s shoes?” I asked.

“The previous wearer,” he said, “has no further use for them.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t want to know about that. That sounds ungood, I don’t want to hear any more about it. But what I do want to know about, I want to know why I’m wearing them.”

“They contain,” he explained patiently, “your transmitter and receiver.”

“My transmitter,” I said, “and receiver.”

“Certainly. Information picked up by your microphone is carried via your skeletal frame to your right heel, and thus into your right shoe, which contains your transmitter. The transmitter has a range of not quite two miles, so there will always be at least one recording team within pickup distance.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “And what about my receiver? That’s in my left shoe?”

“Correct,” he said, avoiding an Abbott and Costello routine. “Come on over here.”

I went on over there, where Duff motioned at a table littered with objects. “Choose which one you want to carry,” he said.

I looked at the objects on the table: a pair of hornrimmed glasses, a watch with expansion band, an ostentatious ring with a green jade stone, a set of comedy-tragedy mask cuff links, an identification bracelet, an engineer’s pocket watch with a gold chain, a plain gold wedding band, a money clip shaped like a dollar sign, and a shiny Zippo lighter. I said, “What are these things?”

“Speakers,” he said.

“Oh ho,” I said, beginning to catch on. “In comes news to my left shoe, then up through my bones to one of these things.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“I’ll take the watch,” I said. “I don’t have a watch.”

“Good. Try it on.”

I tried it on, and the expansion band pulled all the hair off my wrist, one blade at a time. “That hurts,” I said.

“It’ll stop. Now, whenever your control wishes to communicate with you, you’ll feel a slight tingling sensation in your wrist. At such time, put the watch to your ear. The sound will be low, but perfectly audible.”

“It will, will it?”

“Now come this way,” he said, and led me past a lot more Flash Gordon stuff to another table littered with apparent innocents, among them a shiny new quarter, which he picked up and handed me, saying, “Keep track of this coin. When placed in water, it signals a strong directional beam, and should only be used if you are in serious difficulty and require rescue.”

I looked closely at the coin and said, “Well, it’s probably the only shiny 1950 quarter I’m liable to have for a while, so I guess I won’t mix it up.” I put it in my pocket.

“Fine,” he said. “Next, this credit card,” and handed me a laminated Diner’s Club card. “Please don’t use it for restaurant bills,” he said, “unless it’s absolute necessary. It isn’t a normal Diner’s Club account.”

“I’ll say,” I said. “It’s got my name on it.”

“It is,” he said, “an explosive, capable of doing approximately as much damage as a World War II hand grenade. If it becomes necessary to use it, use one of your shoelaces as a fuse, they’re specially treated. Wrap the lace once around the card, ignite the further end, and you’ll have approximately twenty seconds to take cover.”

I said, “This thing blows up?”

“As I just said,” he said.

“You expect me,” I said, “to put this card in my wallet, put my wallet in my hip pocket, and sit down someplace. That’s called being hoist by one’s own petard, you know. It isn’t commonly known, by the way, but a petard is a kind of bomb. Not this kind,” I said, holding the credit card carefully but gingerly but carefully. “Some other kind,” I said.

“Fire is required to ignite the bomb,” Duff assured me casually. “You can hit it with a hammer if you like, and nothing will happen.”

“Can I have that in writing?”

Duff smiled, as though I’d made a joke and not a very good one, and returned to his Mr. Wizard table. “Now, this,” he said, picking up an ordinary-looking black leather belt with a silver buckle, “is an antenna, in case you are in an area where transmission and/or reception is difficult. Tie this end to a handy radiator, pipe, some such thing, hold the buckle end in either hand, and your communications system will be augmented sufficiently to overcome most poor reception areas.”

I put the belt on in place of my own, and Duff next handed me a ballpoint pen which would take pictures; a mechanical pencil which would fire a red signal flare; a necktie which, when set fire to, would create a smokescreen; and a handkerchief which, when immersed in water, released a noxious gas into the air that would induce nausea.

I said, “For the record, I’d like to point out one last time that I am an avowed pacifist. I do not perform violent, warlike, or aggressive acts upon others, not even in self-defense. Passive resistance is my only weapon.”

Duff, looking somewhat cynical, nodded and said, “Uh huh. My job is to arm you, Q. Whether you use any of this material or not isn’t my concern. I give you the stuff, I teach you its operation, and then I’m done with you.”

“Are you done with me now?”

“Yes. Good luck to you. I think Karp wants you now, in the front office.”

“Thanks.” Then I felt a little sheepish at having sounded ungrateful for what he’d been trying to do, and I added, “I do want to thank you, Duff, uhh...”

“It’s my job,” he said.

“Well. Thanks, anyway.”

I left there and went walking down the corridor, and very shortly noticed an odd tingling sensation on my left wrist. I looked at it, looked at the new watch sitting there, and wondered if the damn thing was getting set to electrocute me. Then I remembered that Duff had told me the tingling sensation meant somebody wanted to talk to me, and I should put the watch to my ear. I stopped, therefore, in the middle of a long and blank and empty corridor, and raised my left arm to put my watch to my ear.

Whereupon I heard a tiny tinny voice repeating, over and over, “Say something. Say something. Say something.”

“Me?” I said. All alone, in the corridor.

“There you are,” said the tiny tinny voice, which I barely recognized as belonging to Duff. “Took you long enough.”

“Can you really hear me?” I asked. I was alone, in a featureless corridor with green walls and gray carpeting. I was standing there all by myself, holding my left wrist pressed against my ear and talking out loud. I felt like an idiot.

“One, two, three,” said Duff. “One, two, three.”

“What?” I said.

Duff said, “How am I coming through? Can you hear me all right?”

“Sure,” I said.

“All right, fine. End of test.”

Then there was silence. I continued to stand there, holding my wrist to my ear, hearing nothing but the faint ticking of the watch, and after a minute I said, “What do I do now?” And got no answer. Now I really was alone.

Feeling very embarrassed, I put my arm down at my side and walked electronically away.

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.”

13

High on a hill north of Tarrytown, overlooking the majestic Hudson, Marcellus Ten Eyck owns a turreted and gabled country estate of the kind occupied these days mostly by Franciscan monks and Episcopalian girls’ schools. Ten Eyck’s estate was one of the last of the privately owned fiefdoms, and Ten Eyck one of the last of the patroons. At this manse, along about midnight, we left Angela, amid a flurry of kisses from me, while her choleric, grumpy, and altogether constipated old man, cross-armed, looked on.

This had been the ultimate compromise deal between Angela’s father and the Feds. He would keep the secret of Angela’s continued existence, and they would allow him to keep her hidden in his own house upstate. Where, no doubt, he could attempt to fill her head full of vile misstatements about me.

Well, bad cess to him. My Angela was not about to be dissuaded by the sort of crotchety old man who existed in Boccaccio exclusively to be horned. I parted from her at the manor house with a heavy heart, but not because I was afraid for her fidelity. It was my own immediate future that weighed the old pumper down.

P and I were alone in the car now. Once back on the highway, P said, “Now then. Let’s get the story straight.”

“Let’s,” I said.

He said, “Miss Ten Eyck managed to infiltrate your organization without your ever suspecting she might be a spy. In fact, it wasn’t until she ran away from the meeting that you realized she’d tricked you. So you ran after her, followed her, caught up with her, convinced her you wanted to help, took her over to New Jersey, and murdered her.”

“Out of rage,” I suggested.

“Partly,” he said. “Also, your pride was hurt. And, more important, the security of the group Eustaly and Ten Eyck were setting up was endangered as long as she was alive.”

I nodded. “Right. That’s good.”

“After the murder,” he said, “you hid out in New Jersey for five days, afraid to risk entering the city until tonight. But finally you couldn’t wait any more, you returned to New York, and decided your best move was to contact the organization again.”

I said, “You know, the thought occurs to me they might consider me more of a liability than an asset. Wanted by the law and all.”

He shook his head. “You’re the first member of the group, other than its organizers, to have committed a murder for the sake of the group. It would be bad politics and bad for morale if the group rejected you. Ten Eyck and Eustaly will welcome you with open arms and praise you to the skies in front of the other members, just wait and see.”

“I can wait,” I said.

“Once you’ve re-established contact,” he said, “you’ll pretty much have to play it by ear. Whatever details they may ask you for, make up something that sounds sensible. We’ll be listening, and we’ll cover whatever you say, just so it isn’t too implausible.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said.

“And remember,” he said, “you don’t know Tyrone Ten Eyck under his own name. You know him as Leon Eyck.”

“Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten that. Leon Eyck. Leon Eyck. Leon Eyck. I’ll try to remember.”

“It might be better,” he said, “if we were to call him by that name from now on ourselves.”

“Right,” I said. “Leon Eyck. Leon Eyck.”

“I think that’s about it,” he said.

I said, “Listen. I’m supposed to be the head of a terrorist organization. What if Ten — what if Leon Eyck and Eustaly want to see the membership? I can’t show them a bunch of pacifists.”

“Your organization,” he told me, “can be reached in New York City at CHelsea 2-2598. We have twelve men detailed to be your membership if need be.”

I repeated, the phone number to myself several times, and then said, “All right, fine. I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

“You’ll do fine,” he said, but it sounded just a trifle hollow to me.

We rode along in silence for a few minutes, and then it occurred to me to ask, “Which one do I get in touch with?”

“Jack Armstrong,” he said.

I said, “What? The Nazi?”

“They’re none of them peaches,” he said.

“But,” I said, “the Nazi. He’s about the craziest one there. What if I look Jewish to him?”

“He’s the best of the ones you remembered,” P assured me. “He’s in the Queens phone book, so there’s no problem explaining how you found him. Also, he’s not under normal full surveillance, as some of the others are, and I imagine Eustaly and Ten Eyck are aware of that, so he’ll be more likely to have direct access to them.”

“What about Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp? You don’t watch them, do you? And they must be in the phone book.”

“I’m sure they are,” he agreed. “But the Whelps are second-string material, from the point of view of Eustaly and — and Leon Eyck, but Jack Armstrong is plainly varsity, and so is sure to be closer to them.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess you must be right.”

“Of course I am,” he said. “Oh, there’s one thing I ought to mention. The regular police, city and state, really are looking for you. You are wanted for murder.”

I stared at him. “Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not.”

“One thing you ought to mention! For Pete’s sake!”

“I wasn’t sure whether you understood that or not. Obviously, you didn’t.”

“Understood what? Call them off, will you, I’ve got troubles enough!”

He said, patiently, “We can’t do it, Raxford, I’m sorry. If you tell sixty or seventy thousand men and women that it’s all a trap, your security is going to go all to hell. People always tell their wives, or their husbands, or their sweethearts, or their mothers, or somebody. Everyone with a secret tells that secret to one person, that’s one of the least encouraging rules of international intrigue. Besides, we have no guarantee that there isn’t at least one cop who belongs to one of these organizations off-duty. It’s happened before, it’ll happen again.”

“The cops are after me,” I said.

“Only until it’s over,” he said. “Try to relax.”

“Sure. The cops are after me, I’m on my way to join an organization of lunatics and bombers, I’m wired for sound, my necktie turns into a smokescreen, my handkerchief will make you throw up, my Diner’s Club card explodes, I’m the leader of a subversive terrorist organization composed entirely of undercover federal agents, newspapers all over the country are saying I killed my girl, and I’m on my way to meet a twenty-five-year-old Nazi built like Bronco Nagurski. If relaxed means limp, don’t worry about it. I’m relaxed. I’m relaxed all over.”

14

Jack Armstrong was not in the Queens directory as such; but under N there was a listing for the National Fascist Reclamation Commission, with an address on 67th Drive. I took a subway from Grand Central, where P had let me off, and found Armstrong’s home at a little after one in the morning.

This block, in fact this whole neighborhood, was composed of neat, smallish, compact houses, mostly frame, here and there brick, and very occasionally stone. They were two stories high, most of them, and though some had begun life with porches, in almost every case family expansion or some such reason had later forced the enclosure of the porch, leaving odd-looking houses with a lot of windows across their fronts downstairs. The lawns before these houses were invariably small, and almost invariably made even smaller with hedges, bushes, and small trees, plus lawn statuary, rustic signs bearing reflector numerals, other rustic signs saying The Lombardis or The Brenners, and now and again carriage lamps on black poles.

This was a respectable neighborhood, lower-middle-class white workingman, and at one A.M. it was quite respectably and with self-satisfaction asleep. Fairly large trees growing at intervals in the strip of earth between sidewalk and curb minimized illumination from the widely spaced streetlights, leaving great patches of mid-block in almost absolute darkness, but it was a wholesome darkness, a darkness without terrors. None of the evils that hover in city darkness menaced these sidewalks; this was a neighborhood, too gentle, too mild-mannered, too nice for such goings-on.

The address I wanted, world headquarters of the National Fascist Reclamation Commission, was a small one-and-a-half-story yellow clapboard house on a corner plot, flanked on its left by the cross street and on the right by its own blacktop driveway leading to a narrow neat garage. The garage, while hardly bigger than a doghouse, took up most of the backyard. A white sign with rustically serrated edges and reflector letters was mounted on the lawn between a slate walk and this driveway, and read The Armstrongs. The first-floor porch had been enclosed, puffy bushes lined the front of the house, and a rusted basketball ring with weathered backboard was mounted over the garage doors.

I walked on by the house, stopped at the corner, looked in all directions while trying to decide what to. do next, and then noticed faint light at one of the basement windows. I moved down the cross street, angled over the rise of lawn at the side of the house, edged along the wall, squatted down next to the window, and peeked in.

It was a basement like any basement. The cement floor had been painted the dark red favored by owners of clapboard houses, the vertical metal pipes supporting the main I-beam had been painted in barber-pole stripes of red and white, and off to the left a small bar bristling with gadgets, gewgaws, signs, statuary, whatnots, light fixtures, thingummys and colored glasses had been built and promptly abandoned; stacks of old newspapers atop the bar were mute and foolish indicators of the abandonment.

Almost directly below the window through which I was peeking was Jack Armstrong himself. At least, I assumed it was he, because he was wearing the right uniform and had the right terrifying build. But his back was to me as he worked, moving steadily and rhythmically.

How sad: for him, for me, for all of us. He was turning the crank of a mimeograph machine.

For one wild, hopeful, childish, irretrievable second, as I watched him turn and turn, watched the sheets of paper slide one after the other into the tray, it seemed to me that all the dreams, all the ideals, all the perfections I had hoped for and dedicated my life to all these years were all attainable, and quite simply so. What a wealth of common humanity there was between this boy and me! The familiar futile motion of the mimeograph crank was the bond between us, the symbol of our common dedication and our common foolishness. Surely all I had to do was show him, explain to him, point out to him...

On the far wall, beyond Jack Armstrong’s moving back, a large color portrait of Adolf Hitler — head and mustache and shoulders only — glowered at me with the gloomy suspicion that nihilism is self-defeating. Flanking this portrait, tacked flat to the wall, was a pair of very large Nazi flags, the well-remembered red, the white circle within, the innermost black swastika.

Show him? Explain to him? Point out to him?

Reality, the death of all symbol, closed in on me with a crunch. This was hardly the time, hardly the place, hardly the cast with which to make the sudden leap to millennium. So he and I shared an experience: both of us operated mimeograph machines. But I ran a mimeograph because I couldn’t get a printing press, whereas Armstrong no doubt ran a mimeograph because he couldn’t get a submachine gun. A subtle difference, perhaps, but decisive.

All right; back to the plan. Feeling very reluctant, but at the same time in a perverse hurry to have the whole damn thing over with, I closed my left hand into a fist, extended the knuckle of the middle finger, licked that knuckle for luck, and rapped that knuckle against the window.

Armstrong practically climbed into his machine. He was so patently startled out of his wits that I immediately and forever lost all terror of him. He might be the most violent disciple Adolf Hitler ever had, but it made no difference. Everyone else in the group Eustaly and Tyr — Leon Eyck (Leon Eyck, Leon Eyck, Leon Eyck, I must remember that!), everyone else in that group might continue to terrify me, and probably would, but not Jack Armstrong; so far as I was concerned, his fangs had just been pulled.

I rapped at the window again, not to torture the poor boy, but simply because there wasn’t anything else to do. Sooner or later, if I repeated the sound often enough, he would come out of his panic sufficiently to recognize it for what it was, at which point he would look toward this window, I would show him my face, and possibly we could begin to communicate.

Well, rap number two didn’t do it. It goosed him out of the mimeograph again, and off into a dim corner behind the furnace, where I could just see his eyes gleaming.

(I think now that this was yet another example of the fact that everyone is most susceptible to his own favorite weapon. The FBI man, for example — A, I think it was — whose sign-language theory was scuttled by a knowing look. The reports we’ve all seen of advertising men who turn out to be the biggest suckers for advertising gimmicks. And here, a terrorist terrorized by something that went rap in the night.)

I had to find some better way to attract his attention, before I frightened him out of the cellar entirely. I thought about it a few seconds, and then decided to rap out the familiiar rhythm, shave-and-a-haircut — two-bits. That, it seemed to me, would have to strike Armstrong as the work of a friendly rapper.

And so it did. Out from behind the furnace he came, in response to it, still wary but no longer paralyzed. He moved cautiously toward the window, in which I was now showing myself as best I could, and finally unlatched the window and lifted it open just slightly, enough for me to hear him whisper, “Who are you? What you want?”

“Greensleeves,” I said. It had been the password back at the organizational meeting, and maybe it would spur his recollection of me.

It didn’t. He said, more strongly, “What you talking about? Are you drunk?”

“No,” I whispered. “I’m Raxford.”

His eyes widened, and his whisper got shrill: “What are you doin’ here? Are you crazy?”

“I want to get in touch with Eustaly and — Leon Eyck,” I told him. “I want you to send me to them.”

“Why me?”

“You were in the phone book.”

“Listen,” he whispered, “I have enough trouble with my folks as it is. They’re upstairs asleep, and if they find out you been around here—”

“They won’t find out,” I promised. “You just get in touch with Eustaly and Eyck, let them know I’m here.” Then, being a little harsher, I said, “Are you a member of this group or aren’t you?”

“Well, sure I am. Naturally I am.”

“Well, then.”

“Just so my old man doesn’t find out,” he pled. “He’s always threatening to throw all this stuff out anyway. If he found out I was hanging around with guys wanted for murder—”

“I been quiet for five days,” I said, trying to sound menacing. “I know how to be quiet, don’t worry about it.”

“Okay,” he whispered, still reluctant but resigned. “Come on around to the side door, I’ll let you in. And for Christ’s sake be quiet.”

“Right.”

Being very quiet, I walked around the house to the other side, up the blacktop driveway to the inevitable side door, which inevitably squeaked when Armstrong opened it. Wincing in time to the squeak, he whispered, “Go down cellar.”

I went down cellar, where the Hitler portrait looked me over and decided I might as well be liquidated, and Armstrong, nervously aclatter, came after me.

“Just sit down someplace,” he said, still whispering. “I’ll call Eustaly.”

“Good.”

Beside the mimeograph machine was an old desk, and on it a telephone. This, I assumed, was the one listed in the phone book for the NFRC. Upstairs would be Armstrong’s old man’s phone, on which seditious calls were presumably not to be made.

While Armstrong made his low-voiced phone call — a call that took quite a long time — I wandered around the basement, looking at things. I glanced at the sheet he’d been running off in the mimeograph, and it was hardly anything I might have been cranking out, which was so much for what Armstrong and I had in common. I glanced at a small tag on one of the Nazi flags and noted it had been made by a firm in Savannah, Georgia. I sat on a bar stool, glanced casually over the top of the bar, and on the floor behind it was an open-topped wooden box not entirely full of hand grenades.

All at once, I felt very unhappy.

15

Two-twenty A.M. I sat in a booth in an all-night diner on Queens Boulevard, a dozen blocks from Jack Armstrong’s world headquarters, and watched the empty street. Out there, a battery of traffic lights, eight of them at various heights across the boulevard, went through their snail-paced close-order drill: all green, and then in unison both green and red, and then red alone, and finally finishing in perfect symmetry back once more at green, like an incredibly slow-paced Rockettes routine. Very dull.

Inside, employees and customers were tied, two each. One employee, in clothing of dirty white, commanded the counter, behind which he stood now, face contorted as he worked the inside of his mouth with a toothpick. The other employee, much filthier than the first, appeared to be an alcoholic five days from his last drink, and his job was to daub ammonia on the floor around the customers. Customer number one was a stocky fortyish guy in a leather jacket who sat at the counter with coffee and doughnuts, noisily dunking the latter in the former and then more noisily eating both. The other customer, sitting at a booth with yesterday’s coffee and last week’s Danish pastry, was me.

My left wrist tingled. I stared with mingled surprise and irritation at the watch I was wearing there, then put it to my ear and heard a tiny voice say, “What’s happening?”

“Nothing’s happening,” I said, disgusted. The alcoholic with the mop looked at me and blinked several times. I coughed artificially, put my arm down, gazed out the window, and pretended I hadn’t said a word.

What’s happening? they’d wanted to know. What did they suppose was happening? As per the instructions Jack Armstrong had received on the phone and passed on to me, I’d walked the dozen blocks here from his house, positioned myself in this diner booth by two o’clock — a few minutes before two, in fact — and here I’d been sitting ever since. What’s happening indeed!

I was just promising myself that if no one showed up by two-thirty I’d quit and the hell with everybody, when a black General Motors car — as I’d told Angela, they all look alike — pulled to the curb in front of the diner and switched its lights off; on; off; on; off; on. The signal.

I swallowed something lumpier than the Danish pastry. Now that they were here, I was suddenly more than willing to wait. Take your time, take your time, I’m in no hurry.

Nothing for it. Mine not to reason why, etc. I got up from the booth, leaving most of my coffee and Danish, walked through the wet ammonia to the exit, and in the small space between the inner and outer doors, alone except for the cigarette machine, I paused and muttered, “They’re here. I’m going out to the car now.”

Outside, I saw by the grille and the length that the car was a Cadillac, and that it was equipped with black side curtains. The driver was a featureless mound inside there; I made out his movements as he reached over and back, opening the rear door on the curb side. No interior light went on as the door opened.

I slid into the blackness within the car, shut the door behind me, and we moved off at once, making a U-turn beneath the octet of traffic lights and heading down Queens Boulevard toward Manhattan.

I sat forward on the edge of the seat, trying unsuccessfully to get some glimpse of my driver’s features — he was bundled up in hat and topcoat, with upturned collar — and finally I said, “Are you anybody I know?”

There was no answer.

“Don’t you talk?”

Apparently not.

Rebuffed, I sat back in the seat, folded my arms, and waited to see what would happen next.

This was the first time I had ever traveled in a car with curtains over all the windows except at the front, and the sensation was an odd one. Except for the jouncing — Cadillac has a fine suspension system, but Queens Boulevard is shameful — it was not like being in motion at all, but instead as though I sat in a small confined dark room and watched a Cinemascope movie of a wide and empty nighttime street. Or, perhaps, since my own motion was apparent, it was more like hurtling down that nighttime street in an open-ended box. Whatever it was like, we were traveling well above the legal speed limit and I considered pointing out to the driver the extra reasons why I didn’t want us stopped by the police, but kept my thoughts to myself.

We traveled Queens Boulevard to the end, crossed the Queensboro Bridge on the outside lane, circled onto FDR Drive southbound, passed beneath the UN Building, exited far downtown at Houston Street (pronounced, by the way, house-ton, not heus-ton like the place in Texas), turned briefly this way and that, and slowed as we entered a block of the most decrepit tenements, ramshackle festering slum properties, amid which rose up an impressive broad vaguely churchlike building in pink brick with a gilded roof. Before this building we slid silently to a stop; now I could see Asiatic lettering across its façade, above its gilded double doors, and on a large sign mounted on the wall before the broad entrance steps.

I looked from this building to the driver and said, “Is this it? Do I get out here?”

Nothing. He didn’t even move his head.

For the benefit of the microphone in my stomach, I said, “This Chinese church here, or whatever it is, with the gilded doors, this is where I’m supposed to go?”

I still got no answer from the driver, but an answer did arrive from a different source. The gilded doors I’d mentioned now opened, and a flashlight flicked on and off three times.

“Thanks,” I said to the driver, not sure whether I was being sarcastic or not. I climbed out of the car, shut the door, and it immediately drove away and around the corner.

This neighborhood was as different from Jack Armstrong’s as Jack the Ripper from Peter Rabbit. Every battered garbage pail seemed to teem with rats, every under-stairs recess with junkies, every rooftop with rapists, every entranceway with perverts, every shadow with thugs and murderers. I entered this Asiatic church, temple, mosque, whatever it was, because frankly it looked like the least dangerous place on the block.

The entrance steps were slate. No light at all shown within the open gilded doors. I passed through, and the doors shut behind me, and the darkness was complete.

A hand, thin-fingered, spidery, closed on my right wrist. A sibilant whisper, as of Peter Lorre at his most exultantly manic, sounded at my side: “Pleasss, thissss way.” The spidery hand tugged at my wrist.

I followed, crossing a floor that echoed like stone. I was taken forward, and then to the right, and then stopped. The hand left me, and I surreptitiously covered several of what I considered my vital places, and stood blinking in the dark.

A thin crack of light, directly ahead of me, thickened, broadened, became light spilling through an opening doorway. A small thin silhouette, apparently male, motioned me to step through this doorway into the light. I did so, and my guide followed me and shut the door. We were in a small Oriental-looking room with tapestries on the walls and a mosaic figure in the floor. My guide, a small thin Oriental of no particular age, dressed in a loose black tunic and black trousers, barefoot, turned to me and said, “Take off your shoes.”

I said, “What?”

“It is necessary,” he said, and there aren’t s’s enough in the world to record the way he said “necessary.” “This is,” he hissed on, “a holy place.”

“A holy place,” I echoed, while the watch on my left wrist tingled and tingled. Distracted, I raised the offending member to my ear and heard the tiny tinny voice saying, over and over, “Don’t take off your shoes. Don’t take off your shoes. Don’t take off your shoes.”

“Idiots,” I said savagely.

My inscrutable companion, thinking I meant him, bristled scrutably and said, “The shoes must be removed. Forcibly, if necessary. I shall call for assistance.” Spraying s’s like a Flit gun.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll get them back, won’t I?”

“Of course. In the meantime, you may wear these slippers.”

The slippers he extended toward me were straw, cane, wicker; you know the kind of thing I mean. They’re sold at beaches in the summertime.

I exchanged my wonderful electronic shoes for a pair of lousy straw slippers, and saw my new friend put the shoes very carefully and neatly on the floor in a corner of the room, where, he assured me, they would be perfectly safe until my return.

The watch had stopped tingling.

“This way,” my guide told me, opening another door on the far side of the room, and, shuffling in my new slippers, I followed him.

(Did you ever notice how important shoes are in stories of magic? Dorothy, in The Wizard of Oz, for instance, is relatively safe from the Wicked Witch so long as she keeps the red shoes given her by the Good Witch, and similar elements are to be found in children’s stories from all over the world. Much wisdom lies in children’s folk tales, as any scholar will portentously tell you, and I spent the next few minutes considering the warnings of this folk wisdom as relates to magic and/or protective shoes, and the dire results attendant upon not having the good shoes any more.)

But that’s an aside, a tangent, one of the things I’m trying to avoid from now on. Back, back.

My guide, as I said, led me through another door. Beyond it was a long narrow hallway done all in beige and devoid of side doors. After a considerable distance this hall made a right turn, and so did we. Small dim ceiling lights at intervals illuminated our way.

A broad heavy metal firedoor barred our path at the end of the hall. This my guide pushed, with much stern-faced heaving and with labored grating sounds from the door, until it was entirely open, when he motioned me through to another hallway exactly like the first. “You go down there,” he said, pointing, and strained the firedoor shut again, with himself on the other side of it.

Now I was alone. I said, experimentally, “Hello?” and put the watch to my ear. It ticked at me, the moron. I was alone.

There was nothing for it but to press on. I walked down to the end of the hallway, discovered that it turned left and led to a flight of stone stairs going downward. The lighting now was from infrequent bare light bulbs strung along a wire at head-height on the right side, and the walls deteriorated to rough masonry. A slightly bitter, slightly salty scent was in the air, vaguely reminiscent of the ocean.

At the bottom of the stairs a curving corridor led away to the right, crowded between hunching walk of stone. Somewhere, water dripped. The light bulbs were at such a distance from each other now, that some small segments of this bending corridor were totally unlit.

At last another flight of stairs, this of wood and going upward. No more electricity; burning brands in wall-holders lit my way and filled the air with a smell like tar.

At the head of the wooden stairs an arched doorway led to a narrow metal catwalk extending out into and over echoing blackness. At the far end of the catwalk, there was another lit doorway. Cautiously, I moved across the catwalk.

Rusted railings flanked me on both sides. The metal underfoot was slick and damp. I had the impression of a great drop beneath me, but nothing showed in the total darkness down there. A similar impression of a high — arched? domed? — empty expanse above me was equally incapable of being proved.

The next doorway led me into a soft and furry room all enclosed in thick drapery and tapestries of various strong dark colors, and thick rugs scattered about the floor two and three deep. The ceiling was painted black. Small tables, on which candles burned, were the only furnishings and the candles the only light. Large orange and red cushions, pillows, were scattered about.

A multicolored shadow moved, separating itself from its background, and became a voluptuous and beautiful Oriental girl in some sort of complex and all-encompassing traditional garb. She bowed to me, as candlelight glinted in her raven hair and her almond eyes, and motioned silently for me to follow her.

Oh, Lord, would I follow her? With her and Angela, I’d have the complete set...

She led me down a long broad nicely carpeted hall, well lined by doors, all of them closed, some of them releasing various sounds of pleasure: music, laughter, etc., etc. At last she stopped at a door on the left, knocked discreetly, bowed to me, and went back the way she had come.

I looked after her, lusting for her, until the door opened and yet another Oriental face showed itself to me. But this one I immediately remembered; he’d been one of the people at the meeting! I hadn’t remembered him to tell the Feds about, but now that I saw him he came back into my mind at once; some sort of splinter-group Communist organization he led, it seemed to me, but both his name and that of his group were lost.

He promptly supplied both. “I’m Sun Kut Fu,” he said. “Eurasian Relief Corps. Remember me?”

“Of course,” I said politely. “You were at the meeting.”

“Right. Come on in.”

I went in, to an ordinary Occidental office, complete with gray metal desk, gray metal filing cabinet, gray metal wastebasket, and green Kemtone walls. Sun Kut Fu said, “Sit down anywhere. What do you think of the front?”

“Very nice,” I said, and sat down on the brown leather sofa. Except for the swivel chair behind the desk, it was the only place I could sit; so much for his anywhere.

“You can’t beat a religious front,” he said, very pleased with himself, so much so that I guessed he’d thought up the religious front himself. “You can do all sorts of kooky things and the cops never turn a hair.”

“Somehow,” I said, “you don’t sound very Oriental.”

He laughed and said, “You kidding? I was born in Astoria, just over the bridge. My old man ran a laundry. Still does.”

“That’s nice,” I said, because he was still smiling. “About my shoes,” I said.

“That’s the best part of it,” he said beaming away. “Even if the cops are tailing you, it stops back at the temple. As long as your shoes are there, it figures you’re there. You can go all over the world, safe and sound.”

“That’s really wonderful,” I said. “But I’d like them back.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “Nobody’ll cop them. They’ll be right there where you left them no matter how long, even a week.”

“But—” I said.

He waved a cheerful but brisk hand and said, “Somebody’ll be by to pick you up. I got other things to do. Nice seeing you again.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Good work with that rich bitch,” he said. “That’s the kind I can’t stand, you know? They enter the battle even though they got no stake. What the hell, man, this world is theirs!” He shook his head, grinned at me, walked out, and shut the door.

I sat there a long time — longer than I’d waited at the diner — until all at once a section of the wall opened and there, framed by blackness, hulked Lobo. He shambled in, moving like a bear, and rumbled, “Frisk.”

“Right,” I said. I got to my feet and spread my arms out.

Thoroughly, slowly, painstakingly, Lobo frisked me. He found my necktie, my handkerchief, my pen, my mechanical pencil, the wallet containing my credit card, my belt, and my quarter. He gave everything back to me, walked back over to the new black hole in the wall, turned, raised one of those monstrous hands, and beckoned to me.

I was off again.

16

Four A.M. in a small dank windowless black-walled room beneath the city, I stood at last face to face with Tyrone Ten Eyck. Above us swayed a glaring light bulb suspended on a black wire from the dim ceiling. In the middle of the room stood an old wooden table and two unpainted wooden chairs.

I had been led by the silent Lobo through yet another tortuous series of corridors, staircases, empty rooms, and earthen tunnels, ending at last in this room, empty when I arrived. I had entered, seen it was a dead end, and behind me Lobo shut the door and went away.

After a few jittery minutes of waiting, during which I thought of eighty-three separate things that could have gone wrong with our plans, the door opened once again and in strode Tyrone Ten Eyck. (Face to face with him it was impossible to think of him under his pseudonym. “Leon Eyck” was nothing this man could possibly be called. He was what the young Orson Welles had always wanted to be.)

“Greetings, my dear Raxford,” he said, with a glinting smile. “I owe you my thanks for your prompt work upon the former Miss Ten Eyck.”

I cleared my throat. “Thank you,” I said, struggling for his kind of equanimity. “It was nothing.”

“It was, perhaps, more than you know,” he said, with a keen look at me. He had a resonant melodic voice, with something strange in it: the sound of the crushing of baby’s bones. The glinting smile still on his lips, he motioned at the table and chairs. “Be seated. We’ll talk.”

But why that keen look? Why had he said that the murder of Angela was perhaps more than I knew? Something, it seemed to me, was expected of me — but what? (I felt all at once like a man forced into a chess game with a grand master and given a ten-second time limit for each move. How could I possibly work out what my opponent was thinking?)

But then — barely within the time limit — I saw what he was fishing for. Angela and I had been together for some time between our departure from the meeting and my “murder” of her. Had she, in that time, told me who Leon Eyck really was?

Well, why not? I had an explainable justification for knowing Ten Eyck’s real name, why not use it? At the very least it would avoid the possibility of a disastrous slip of the tongue later on.

There was time for no more thought. “Thank you,” I therefore said, “Mr. Ten Eyck.” And reached for the chair.

Everything in the room became suddenly silent. The scrape of the chair as I moved it over the concrete floor was terrifyingly loud, and in the tense silence after it Ten Eyck spoke in a voice I hadn’t heard before, the sound of flint scraped across the beak of a hawk, as he said to me, “What name was that? What name did you call me?”

Had I made a mistake? Had I made the mistake? There was no time to think; I could only carry through. A little hoarsely, I said, “Ten Eyck. I called you Ten Eyck. Aren’t you Tyrone Ten Eyck, that girl Angela’s brother?”

It was the right thing to say. The speckled smile flashed again, the smoother voice returned, and he said, “She told you. I should have anticipated as much.”

“I hope,” I said carefully, “that creates no problems for you.”

His smile shimmered. “I think it will not. Do be seated, Mr. Raxford, we have more than ever to talk about.”

We sat facing one another across the old table. He withdrew from an inner pocket a small, dark, gnarled little Italian cigar, of the kind that looks most like a miniature shillelagh. I got out a cigarette for myself, which I badly needed, and he lit both our smokes from a delicate gold lighter with a gas flame. His cigar smoke, pungent, rich, foreign, soon filled our small room, making the surroundings seem less harsh but no less dangerous.

Watching me with eyes that sparked like live wires, he said, “What else do you know about me, Mr. Raxford?”

“Nothing, really,” I assured him.

A quizzical smile now. “Nothing? My dear departed little sister never told you a thing?”

“Oh,” I said, hurriedly picking over what I knew about him, “that you’d left the country a long time ago. That you were a Communist.”

“A Communist!” He laughed aloud; he seemed to find the suggestion absurdly comical. “That would be her level of comprehension,” he said. “A Communist!”

I said, “You aren’t a Communist?” Oh, if only I had my shoes on, if only P and the others were at this very moment clustered around a receiving set somewhere less than two miles away, hearing all this choice and vital information! Damn Sun Kut Fu and his religious cover!

Tyrone Ten Eyck withdrew the little cigar from the corner of his mouth and said, “I am nothing you can describe from a political Roget, Mr. Raxford. Nor, I suspect, are you.”

Another lightning move, and again I had to make a lightning response. How did I want Ten Eyck to see me — as a crackpot like most of the others at that meeting, or as a clever opportunist like himself? A crackpot he might consider useless, but another rogue male he might consider dangerous.

It was probably egotism more than sense that made me choose the way I did. Whatever prompted it, I replied, “I suppose each of us is most concerned with number one. The only difference is, my number one is spelled Raxford.”

Flint struck steel within his smile. “Naturally,” he said. “Except that the murder of my sister would seem, perhaps, inconsistent.”

Of course it seemed inconsistent! Busily manufacturing as I went, afraid to look either back or down, I said, “I get emotional at times. And that situation was never really in my control.”

He nodded, acceding the point. “True. Also,” and he smiled the knowing smile of insiders confiding in one another, “the Raxford name is perhaps a disposable identity.”

“Possibly,” I said, and tried to smile the way he did it.

He puffed thoughtfully at his cigar, studying the scarred table top. “Now,” he said at last, “we come to the present. You have sought us out. You are here. Why?”

“We can help one another,” I told him. “For a while.”

“Can we?” he said, and glinted humorously at me. “For instance,” he said, “how can I be of help to you?”

“I’m a hunted man now. You have contacts in foreign countries, you can get me out of the States, line me up with people who can use me, pay me for what I can do.”

He nodded agreeably. “I could,” he said. “And how, in return, do you propose to be of help to me?”

“I assumed,” I said, “that was what you came here to tell me.”

“Hah! Well said, Mr. Raxford! We will get on!”

I practiced the glinty smile again. “I had hoped so,” I said.

He suddenly looked more serious, leaned forward, lowered his voice. “One point,” he said, “I wish to make clear. You are one of only three men in the world who know that Tyrone Ten Eyck is anywhere near the United States. I want it kept that way.”

“Of course,” I said. “I’d expect you to do the same for me.”

The briefest of silences fell. We met one another’s eyes, both unblinking, both urbane, both well aware of at least one set of hidden truths. Ten Eyck had use of me, for the moment, but the time would come when he would surely try to kill me, if only because I knew his real name. I knew this, and he knew I knew it, and I knew he knew I knew it, and so on through an infinity of facing mirrors, each of us aware of the receding levels of the other’s knowledge, neither of us with any intention of voicing that knowledge aloud.

If I were actually the man Ten Eyck thought me, what would I do now? It seemed to me I would smile and appear to believe everything he had said, and plan to watch him, get what I could from him, and kill him myself as soon as I knew nothing more could be gained from him. And he of course, must even now be thinking that that was what I would plan.

What a nerve-racking way to live! If I’d never found any other reason to advocate pacifism, this would be it; it is so much easier on the nerves not to perpetually be circling your fellow man, hand warily on the hilt of your knife.

Ten Eyck now leaned back, relaxed, puffed at his twisted little cigar. “Eustaly’s net,” he said, with easy contempt, “dragged in mostly fish. They call themselves terrorists!”

Something cynical was required of me. I shrugged and said, “Every army needs its privates.”

“Of course. But specialists even more. It is for specialists that I had Eustaly cast his net. He produced a few, but in the main they are, or were, as you call them, privates.”

“I take it,” I said, “you have a specific goal in mind.”

“Oh, definitely. The United Nations Building.”

“Yes?”

“We are going to make it full,” he said, smiling slightly. “More than usually full. Full to bursting. And then... we shall blow it up.”

17

I said, “Why?” It wasn’t a clever thing to ask, it wasn’t a question in character, it wasn’t a question I should have expected an answer to; the word merely popped out of me, like a cat out of a bag.

But Ten Eyck didn’t seem to notice that my mask had slipped. He was, for the moment at least, too caught up in the pleasure of thinking about his own schemes to notice a false nuance from his audience. His smile phosphoresced and he said, “Each of us has his own reasons, Mr. Raxford. For some, an ideal. For others, more practical considerations. In your own case, you will be taking part in expectation of the assistance I will be able to give you later on.”

“Of course,” I said. “Naturally.” Thinking back to the meeting, I said, “That’s why you started discussing the United Nations and plastic bombs.”

“Certainly. It is my intention to bring the two together.”

He had made a joke, ha ha. We smiled at one another like brother cobras in a pit. Little did he know he was smiling at a cobra suit worn by a rabbit! The rabbit, settling his cobra suit more securely around himself, said, “There were other things you talked about at the meeting, too. China, and Congress, and the Supreme Court.”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “As to Congress, the Supreme Court, all that, I had originally intended to set a prior bomb in Washington, probably in the Senate, leaving evidence pointing to the Communist Chinese. The United States, it seemed to me, would surely call an extraordinary session of the General Assembly in order to accuse China, filling the UN Building to the brim. Remember, I want it full.”

He was completely out of his skull, of course, but in quite the wrong way. If only he’d chosen to go catatonic, to sit unmoving and unresponsive, staring at a wall, how much simpler life would have been for everybody. But no, not him; Tyrone Ten Eyck had to be actively insane.

I said, “But could you make a frame like that stick?”

Smiling, glimmering, he said, “I have the excellent but expendable Sun Kut Fu for that purpose, he and his Eurasian Relief Corps.”

“Are they Chinese Communists?”

“They think so. The Red Chinese themselves have more sense than to be connected with such lunatic-fringe organizations. Mao and his government severed all relations with the Eurasian Relief Corps over a decade ago, but that won’t make any difference. Let the American Senate be destroyed, let Sun and his friends be found — fuses in hand — amid the wreckage, and the conclusion in the American mind will be inevitable. The dirty Red Chinese did it! Hotheads will demand instant retaliation, atomic attack on Peking, which by the way could use it, if only for slum clearance purposes. A filthy city. However, more rational Americans will urge restraint, will recommend a formal complaint to the United Nations. And so on.” He waved his hand carelessly. “But of course all that’s changed now.”

“You have a new plan,” I suggested.

“A definite improvement,” he said, “from every point of view.” He tapped white ash from his gnarled cigar. Smiling, glinting, he said, “And all because of you. Isn’t that odd?”

“Because of—”

Behind me, the door burst open. Ten Eyck all at once was on his feet, dumping the table in my lap, flinging his chair side-arm at the doorway, leaping to the side wall and producing from within his black cloak a black Luger; all in a second, less than a second. He had lived this nerve-racking life, it seemed, for a long while, and had learned its lessons well.

The table had toppled me off my own chair onto the damp concrete floor. I struggled upward, peered over the table — now lying on its side — and saw in the doorway a terrified and shaking Sun Kut Fu, his hands high in the air. “D-don’t shoot,” he stammered. “It’s me.”

“You idiot.” Ten Eyck’s voice rasped; at what a price had he learned his survival techniques. He called, “Lobo!”

Lobo appeared in the doorway, and that banana-cluster face managed to look sheepish. “He run past me,” he mumbled.

Sun Kut Fu, his hands still high, said, “I had to tell you, Mr. Eyck, I had to tell you. Federal agents! They raided the temple!”

Oh, for Pete’s sake! Not seeing me for a couple of hours, not hearing from me, P and his boys had gone running to the rescue. And I wasn’t even there any more!

Ten Eyck had already slipped his Luger away again. “We’ll go the other way,” he said. “Come on, Raxford.”

“My shoes!”

“You’ll get another pair,” he said. “Come along.”

18

“Put these magic red shoes on,” Billie Burke told me, smiling ever so sweetly, “and no harm can come to you. You will be able to run like the wind, dance the ballet, the jitterbug, the lindy and the frug, walk through air, over water, and past coals of fire. Your toes will never grow weary or painful, and you’ll be able to dance till dawn. But whatever you do, be sure you don’t remove the shoes, and do not let them fall into the hands of Wicked Witch Tyrone.”

“Aw, come on, Billie,” I said. “Do you really believe all that jazz?”

Shocked, her face turned to that of Tyrone Ten Eyck, all metal glitter and glisten. Smiling, he said, “Not for a minute, my friend. I’ll get you no matter what shoes you wear.”

That was enough to wake me up. I sat bolt upright, startled out of uneasy sleep, to find myself sitting in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. But a room ordinary enough: a plain bedroom with double bed, mirrored dresser, night tables with lamps, a chair on which my clothing was more or less neatly hung. A sun-warmed shade was drawn over the sole window, giving the room that orange aquarium look found exclusively in bedrooms in which one has just taken an afternoon nap.

But I’d had much more than a nap. I’d been asleep since... Since when?

I cast back to what I remembered. It had been about four-thirty in the morning when Ten Eyck and I fled that small dank room beneath the city, and dashed away through twisting turning tunnels, sudden rooms, corridors, echoing empty dusty forgotten halls. Ten Eyck went first, all in black, his cloak flapping as he darted forward. I followed, hampered by my slippers — oh, damn slippers! — and Lobo brought up the rear, hulking, thumping, rumbling along in our wake. Sun Kut Fu had scurried in a different direction, to a different destination.

And where had we three gone? We’d emerged at last, incredibly enough, on a subway platform, but dark and grimy with disuse; some aged spurline superseded by later planning. A dirty green door which appeared to be locked was not; we went through, and up concrete stairs, very narrow, and through another door into an alley. At last, in the open again.

An automobile was parked here in the alley, either the Cadillac I had been driven in from Queens or another very like it. We climbed aboard, Ten Eyck took the wheel, and we sliced through a great many mean streets I didn’t recognize before abruptly bursting out onto Canal Street, a mean street I did recognize. Across this we drove, Ten Eyck and I in front, Lobo hulking in back, and into the Holland Tunnel, and through it to New Jersey. (This was a different Cadillac, by the way, no side curtains.)

Something very like dawn edged up on our right as we drove northward through Jersey. The monotony of driving, coupled with the length of time I’d been awake — very nearly twenty-four consecutive hours by now — combined to leave me dopy, somnolent, not entirely aware of my surroundings. I vaguely remembered our stopping — somewhere — and Ten Eyck saying something or other to me in a jovial yet warning tone, and then someone ushered me to this bedroom.

At about six? That seemed a sensible estimate.

And my watch — just a watch now, a speaker alas no more — told me the current time was ten minutes past four. Surrounded by assassins, lunatics, and destroyers, I had slept like a gosling for ten hours!

I promptly jumped out of bed — I was wearing my shorts and T-shirt — hurried to the chair containing the rest of my clothing, and quickly dressed. The only footwear in the room was those same blasted slippers, placed neatly under the foot of the bed. I scuffed into them, checked my pockets for my arsenal, found it intact, and left the room.

I was now in that anomaly of American residential architecture, the thing at the head of the stairs. It is too square to be a hall and too small to be a room, it usually contains either no furniture at all or at most an odd table stuck here instead of being thrown away, and it is surrounded on all sides by doors; every second-floor room opens off this space. The thing at the head of the stairs could be called a hub, I suppose, or a core, but so far as I know it’s never called anything but what I call it: the thing at the head of the stairs.

And here I stood. More than anything else at the moment, I wanted to wash my face and brush my teeth. Feeling like the hero of The Lady or the Tiger, I studied this roulette wheel of doors, trying to guess which one would lead me to the bathroom.

My first guess was unfortunate. In a nearly barren room containing nothing but two tables and several chairs, six Orientals in dark clothing were assembling machine guns from a large wooden crate on the floor. They looked at me as I stood in the doorway. “Heh,” I chuckled weakly, backtracking. “My mistake. Heh.” And shut the door again on all those faces.

My second guess was better. I washed up, brushed my teeth with my finger, left the bathroom, passed through the thing at the head of the stairs with no urge to see what lay behind the rest of those doors, and went downstairs to find Ten Eyck sitting at his ease in the living room, leafing through a large and expensive volume of French Impressionist reproductions. The colors reflected from the pages onto his face, playing there as though a devil’s carnival were under way on the inside. He smiled on seeing me and said, “Ah. The sleeper wakes.”

“First good sleep I’ve had in a week,” I said, trying to sound bitter, gearing myself back into the role of the hunted killer, the clever madman, the desperate adventurer.

“Of course,” he said, his smile glistening with plastic sympathy. “If you’ll go to the kitchen,” he suggested, “I believe the lady of the house will find you something to eat.”

“Good.”

“We’ll talk later,” he said, as I went by. “Got a job for you.”

I may have blanched, I’m not sure, but I managed to make my voice hearty enough as I said, “That’s fine. I hate doing nothing.”

“My sentiments exactly.” He flipped a page; it ripped; he said something guttural and harsh, not in English.

I went out to the kitchen, where the lady of the house turned out to be Mrs. Selma Bodkin, looking pleased as Marjorie Main to have the house full of guests. She suggested pancakes, I nodded dumbly, she had me sit down at the kitchen table, poured me orange juice and coffee for starters, and began producing pancakes.

She made, amazingly enough, excellent pancakes. She also talked, non-stop. I heard only parts now and then of what she was saying, since I spent a lot of my time and attention worrying about what sort of devilish job Ten Eyck had in mind for me to do. Whatever it was, I thought it unlikely I’d be capable of doing it; and what then?

Mrs. Bodkin’s chatter was mostly autobiographical, concerning both herself and this house. It was an old place, a farmhouse which had lost its farm. All around us, screened from view by defiant tall trees, were the developments with the cemetery names: Fair Oaks, Green Hills, Far Vista. Mrs. Bodkin had been brought here as a bride — impossible to imagine! — and had stayed on after the departure of her children and the death of her husband. Meetings of the Gentile Mothers for Peace were often held here, and a Brownie Pack met once a month in the cellar playroom. The house was comfortably, if not stylishly, furnished, and was extremely clean.

I was starting my second stack of pancakes — which Mrs. Bodkin had insisted I accept — when the back door burst open and five burly men in leather jackets thundered in, puffing and swearing, dropping revolvers and money sacks on the table at which till now I had been eating. The reek of hot blood and foul deeds, it seemed to me, blew into the room with them. One of them was P. J. Mulligan, guiding spirit of the Sons of Erin Expeditionary Force, and his four companions could hardly be anything but an Erinesque quartet.

“How was it, boys?” Mrs. Bodkin asked them, as Ten Eyck came in from the living room. “Any trouble?”

“Had to plug a couple customers,” P. J. Mulligan remarked, stripping off his leather jacket, then pulling a Halloween mask from his pocket — a Neanderthal man, it was — and tossing it on the table beside my plate of pancakes. “Killed ’em, I think.”

“Bad,” said Ten Eyck. “I told you to avoid bloodshed.”

“No choice,” Mulligan told him laconically.

“’S right,” agreed another Son of Erin. “They jumped us. Thought they were heroes.”

“Bloody veterans, I think,” said a third. “Tried judo chops and like that.”

“It was plug them,” Mulligan finished, “or not get away.”

“If you had to,” Ten Eyck said doubtfully.

“We had to.” Mulligan glanced at me. “Raxford, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Good work with the spy,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“One thing,” said another Son to Ten Eyck. “We got the cash.”

“Bring it upstairs,” Ten Eyck told them. “Put it in with the rest. Then take it easy awhile, you’d better not leave here till after nightfall.”

They grabbed up their guns, their masks, their loot, and trooped on out of the kitchen. Ten Eyck watched them go, then sat down across the table from me and said, “Too bad about that.”

“Just one of those things,” I said, trying for the casual touch.

“Right.” Thoughtful, he added, “Have to make it seem like an accident somehow. Plant a little of the money on them. Making their getaway they drove too fast, had a fatal accident. Pity.”

“A shame,” I croaked, with belated understanding.

“It’ll keep the police quiet anyway,” he said.

Mrs. Bodkin said to Ten Eyck, “You want a cup of coffee, Leon?”

“No thank you, Selma.” To me he said, “Still, it lasted long enough. We’ve got plenty of cash now.”

I said, “They’ve been robbing banks to finance the group.”

“Naturally.” He smiled. “One of our specialists.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll have to talk to Zlott about fixing their car,” he said.

I said, “Zlott? The little man who hates Germans? He’s a specialist too?”

“Eli Zlott,” Ten Eyck told me, “is one of the most brilliant manufacturers and inventors of explosive devices the world has ever seen. You tell him when you want the explosion, where you want it, how big you want it, what sort of remote control or time mechanism or whatever sort of trigger you want, you give him the materials, and he does the job. Quickly, imaginatively, and with guaranteed success.” Ten Eyck offered his crooked, glinting smile. “I know nations,” he said, “which would pay Eli Zlott a quarter of a million a year merely to be on call. If he weren’t a madman, of course.”

“Of course,” I said.

“The group produced a number of specialists,” he said, with satisfaction. “Take Selma here.” (She beamed with pleasure [she was slicing carrots on the drainboard] at the sound of her name.) “She affords us a headquarters, a respectable cover, a hideout, and some of the finest meals I’ve ever eaten. That’s her specialty.”

Most of this last had been directed more at Mrs. Bodkin than at me, and she practically squirmed with joy at hearing Ten Eyck carry on that way. I hadn’t realized this man, who had always appeared to me to be black undiluted menace, could turn out such easy balderdash, but of course charm had inevitably to be one of the weapons in his arsenal. Blarney charm for someone like Mrs. Bodkin; a more Scotch-and-water charm, I’d imagine, for a younger and more attractive woman.

“What about some of the others?” I said. “What specialty did Mrs. Baba turn out to have, for instance?”

His face closed. “A few of the original members,” he said, speaking more carefully now, “failed to seem to the rest of us useful or productive. Mrs. Baba, for instance.”

I said, “And the Whelps?”

“Yes. And Hyman Meyerberg.”

“Who was he?”

“The Stalinist.”

“Oh, yes, I remember. They’re not with us any more?”

“No.” Then he gestured quickly toward Mrs. Bodkin’s back, and I understood immediately what he was trying to say: I shouldn’t talk any more on this subject, because Hyman Meyerberg and Mrs. Baba and the Whelps were no longer alive, and Mrs. Bodkin didn’t know it. They were no longer alive because on the one hand they were useless and on the other hand they knew too much. And Mrs. Bodkin didn’t know it because sooner or later she too would become useless.

So I changed the subject. “You had work for me, you said.”

“Yes. Mortimer will be — Eustaly, you know. He’ll be coming along a little after dark. You and he and Armstrong will take a little trip up north.”

“We will?”

“We’re buying explosives from some Canadian friends of mine. They’ll get it across the border, but then we have to bring it the rest of the way down.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Actually,” he said, “it doesn’t need more than one man to drive the truck down from the border. We’ll want three of you mostly to keep guard on the money going up. It’s a large amount. A man alone might be hijacked, or might decide to go south instead of north. With two, one might overpower the other. So we need three.”

(Ten Eyck, you understand, judged others by himself. Knowing the baseness of his own motives, he had a deep and abiding suspicion of everyone else. This plan of his and the reasoning behind it were typical of him.)

I said, “Let me get it straight. I’m going with Eustaly and Armstrong, to guard a large shipment of money going to Canada and travel with a large shipment of explosives coming back.”

“Right. Remind me to get you a pistol before you leave.” He got to his feet, saying, “I’d better talk to Zlott now, I don’t know how much time he’ll need on the car.” He tossed a pleasantry at Mrs. Bodkin, who turned all pink, and left.

I sat there, playing the conversation back, listening to it without joy.

“Eat up,” Mrs. Bodkin said to me. “You’re not eating.”

19

So that’s what my specialty was, in Ten Eyck’s eyes; I was a gunman. Maybe the only pacifist gunman in the history of the world.

Eustaly arrived not long after dark; just a few minutes, in fact, after P. J. Mulligan and his merry men drove away toward oblivion. I saw Eli Zlott peeking after them out the living-room window, watching his handiwork go away to happen someplace. I suppose the way he figured it, Celts, Teutons, what’s the difference?

Armstrong was already in the house, and it turned out at least one of his specialties was brawn; when Eustaly drove his two-year-old Mercury around to the back of the house, Armstrong came downstairs lugging two black suitcases neither of which I could do much more than lift and put right back down again. Armstrong stowed the suitcases in the trunk, Eustaly and Ten Eyck had a brief conference in a corner of the living room, Eustaly turned down with thanks Mrs. Bodkin’s offer of mince pie and coffee, and Ten Eyck motioned me to follow him upstairs to the second floor.

We got to the thing at the head of the stairs, turned left, and went into the room where the Orientals had been assembling their machine guns. The assemblers were gone, but their choppers were still there, piled up on a table, lying on their sides, most of them pointing at me.

Ten Eyck slipped a pistol into my hand and said, quietly, “On the way up, don’t worry about Armstrong, he’s a moron and dedicated. But keep an eye on Eustaly. I wouldn’t trust Mortimer any further than I could throw him.”

Pistols are heavier than I’d thought. (Need I say this was the first time in my life I’d ever held one?) The gun sagged from my hand, which sagged from my wrist. I nodded and said, “I’ll watch him. Right” All the while wondering what I’d do if Eustaly did try something.

“It’s just on the way up you’ve got to be careful,” Ten Eyck went on. “When you’re carrying the cash. Plastic explosive isn’t that easy to pawn, so I doubt Mortimer’ll try anything on the way back.”

“Good,” I said. “What about Armstrong? Is he armed?”

“Yes,” he said, and then killed my burgeoning hope by adding, “But don’t count on him, he’s never been in a deal like this before.”

“It’s up to me, then.”

“You’re my right hand in this, Raxford.” He glinted at me, smiling to show his teeth. “We’re the same breed,” he said, patting my shoulder. “We understand each other.”

With that inaccurate thought in mind, I followed him back downstairs, where Mrs. Bodkin approached me with a red-and-black-check hunting jacket, a residue of the late Mr. Bodkin’s, which she insisted I wear. “The nights are still chilly,” she said, “and you don’t have a topcoat.”

Neither had Eustaly, who was stout and dapper in a pearl-gray suit that appeared to reflect the light, but she didn’t push any old horse blankets on him. For some reason she’d taken a liking to me and a dislike to Eustaly; maybe because I ate her pancakes and he wouldn’t eat her mince pie.

In any case, it was impossible for me to refuse the damn coat, so I finally put it on, thanked her for the thought, and went lumbering outside like a combination checkerboard and Smokey the Bear. From the kitchen doorway she called, “You be sure and keep that on, now.”

“I will,” I promised, and past her shoulder I could see Ten Eyck watching it all, smiling to himself. Ten Eyck was a man interested in control, in how it is obtained and how it is lost. In this relatively unimportant situation, the matter of the hunting jacket, I had lost control of the outcome — I was wearing a jacket I obviously didn’t want to wear — and Ten Eyck took a rather clinical enjoyment in watching the process by which I’d been unhorsed and jacketed. (Also, I think, he had a cautious respect for me, thinking me another such as himself, and it pleased him to see me fail in a situation, no matter how unimportant, in which he would not have failed.)

Still promising faithfully to wear the jacket, I’d wear it, I’d wear it, I got into the back seat of the Mercury, which, oddly enough, was the same combination of red and black exterior as the jacket, except that on the car the red was perhaps softer and closer to orange. Eustaly was in the passenger seat up front, and Armstrong was to take the first turn at driving.

The Bodkin driveway connected, near the trees, with a dirt road that went through the trees and led to a blacktop county road on the other side. The county road in turn led to a highway, which led to the Garden State Parkway, which led to the New York State Thruway, which led north.

The three of us were silent as Armstrong steered the car around the house and down the driveway and along the dirt road. As we turned onto the county road, however, Eustaly cautioned him, “Don’t break any traffic laws. We don’t want to get stopped in this car, it’s stolen.”

I closed my eyes.

20

We made good time, all things considered, arriving at the rendezvous point, on Route 9 above Chazy, eight miles from the Canadian border, just as dawn was coming up on our right across Lake Champlain. I had taken the second turn at driving, mostly the Thruway, and Eustaly did the last hundred-odd miles. He got cold and I didn’t, so when we stopped to switch driving chores from me to him I gave him the hunting jacket as well. “Just give it back before we get to the house again,” I said. “I wouldn’t want Mrs. Bodkin to think I’d taken it off.”

“That old crow,” Eustaly said ungraciously, and struggled into the hunting jacket over his pearl-gray suit. On him, even the hunting jacket came close to looking suave; some people have that particular quality, and some others don’t.

Armstrong kept threatening to go to sleep during that final leg, but I’d have none of it. I wanted Eustaly to know he had two wide-awake opponents to contend with, in case he was thinking of starting something. So while Armstrong stretched drowsy and irritable across the back seat, I sat up front next to Eustaly and talked to the two of them — but mostly to Armstrong — about anything that came into my head. It was sheer luck I didn’t at any point drift into a speech on pacifism.

But if Eustaly had made any tentative plans for making away with the suitcases full of money, he gave no sign of it. He devoted his attention to his driving, chuckled politely whenever, in the course of my yammer, I told a joke, and was, all things considered, good as gold.

The rendezvous was a defunct fruit stand on the east side of Route 9, an establishment that had withered away when the former flood of Montreal-bound tourists on this road had been diverted to the new Highway 87, a multi-lane road that by-passed everything in sight.

We arrived at the fruit stand first, pulled the car around behind it, and got out to stretch our legs. “Be sure to wipe fingerprints off,” Eustaly told us, scrubbing away at the steering wheel with a handkerchief. “We’re going to leave this here.” So we wiped our fingerprints off.

The truck arrived about fifteen minutes later, followed closely by a tiny dusty black Sunbeam. The truck looked old and tired and topheavy, one of those wheezing monsters John Garfield and Richard Conte used to drive during the Depression, except those had California plates and this one bore plates from the province of Ontario. (Another small difference; those old trucks usually carried tomatoes, while this one carried enough explosive to take Highway 87 back off the map again.)

A bearded man in a mackinaw got out of the truck, and a weasely man in a black raincoat got out of the Sunbeam. They walked over to us and the weasely man said, “Where is it?”

Armstrong said, “In the trunk. I’ll get it.” He brought the two suitcases over and the bearded man took them, carried them as easily as Armstrong had, and put them into the Sunbeam.

“That’s it,” said the weasely man. “The truck’ll be picked up tonight. You’ve got your jam, we’ve got paid for both jobs.”

Eustaly said, “Both jobs?”

“Right,” said the weasely man. “His nibs called us after you left, said there was some extra in there for a little piece of work he wanted from us.” He grinned, in a weasely way, and took a pistol from his raincoat pocket and fired it at Eustaly three times.

Armstrong and I froze in our tracks. I know I expected to be next, and I’m pretty sure Armstrong had the same pessimistic outlook. My throat became very dry, my fingers began to stretch away from one another as though I were growing webs between them, and for some idiot reason my lower lip got extremely heavy.

But there was no more shooting. Eustaly fell onto the gravel beside the fruit stand, the weasely man put his pistol away again, and the bearded man came over to say to his friend, “Just bravado, that. One would have done it.”

“I felt like a little noise,” said the weasely man, and grinned again.

The bearded man picked Eustaly up and carried him over to the Mercury and propped him behind the wheel. The weasely man, cheerful as a bird in the morning, explained to us, “He’s wanted, see, and the car’s wanted, so there’ll be no questions. The cops around here are a dumb lot anyway.”

The two of them got into their Sunbeam and drove away.

For the first time I noticed Armstrong. He looked very white, almost blue-white, particularly around the eyes. The skin seemed stretched over his face, his eyes seemed larger than usual, and he stood as though balancing an egg on his head.

That may be what helped me get my own balance back, seeing how badly Armstrong was taking it. And when he said, “I think I’m—” and staggered away behind the fruit stand to be sick, I knew I was going to be all right.

I had a chance now to make a getaway. In the truck or without it, either way. Get to the nearest town, even to the nearest phone. There’d be trouble at first, because officially I was wanted for the murder of Angela, but that would be explained away in time, and I could tell P and the others what I’d learned.

But what had I learned? Ten Eyck planned to blow up the UN Building, that’s all I knew for sure. I didn’t know when, I didn’t know why, I didn’t know who had hired him, and I didn’t even know how he planned to do it. Also, there was the business of the bomb in the U.S. Senate. He’d abandoned that idea for another one, but I didn’t know what. I could tell P practically nothing. In fact, since P already knew about Ten Eyck’s discussing, at the organizational meeting, both explosives and the United Nations, even the news about blowing up the UN wouldn’t be entirely fresh and unexpected.

If only I could sneak away long enough to make a quick phone call, and then come back. But with Armstrong around, that was impossible, and I didn’t see any way to get rid of Armstrong temporarily without exciting somebody’s suspicions. Either I had to give up the whole scheme now, or carry it on awhile longer.

Of course, if I left now, Ten Eyck would suddenly learn a lot of things. That Angela wasn’t dead, for instance. That I was a double agent. That his presence here in the United States was known to the authorities. All in all, it seemed to me the only one I could help by taking off now was Tyrone Ten Eyck.

Except me, of course. I was likely to live longer if I left now.

Or was I? With Tyrone Ten Eyck still on the loose? The Feds would never get to the Bodkin place before Ten Eyck had flown the coop, not a chance of it. So Ten Eyck would be free, would know everything, and would be looking for revenge, both on me and on Angela. And the Feds would learn nothing. And I would have done nothing.

I stood there with a pistol weighing down my pants pocket, making my trousers droop on that side, and while my Nazi friend upchucked on the fruit stand, I came to the slow, reluctant, painful but inevitable conclusion that this little fly was going to have to go back into the spider’s parlor.

Armstrong returned, looking paler and yet more alive. “I’m all right now,” he croaked, which was true only relatively speaking.

I said, “Do you want to drive? Or sleep?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said, shocked. “I couldn’t drive either, look at my hands.” He held them out and let me see them shake. They shook.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll drive. You just sit there.”

“I’m not used to this,” he said, apologetically now. “I’m sorry, but I’m not used to it yet, like the rest of you. But I’ll be okay.”

“Sure you will,” I told him, from the height of my greater experience.

You can do anything if you don’t think about it. I was wanted for murder, with all-points bulletins out on me and everything. I was on my way back to a house full of madmen and fiends. I had just seen a man shot down right beside me. I was driving a truck full of high explosives. But I just didn’t think about it. I thought about the scenery, and the nice road, and how surprisingly good the truck’s engine was, and how unsurprisingly bad the truck’s springs were, and how nice it would be not to have the FBI snooping around me all the time, but on the other hand how not nice it would be to have to empty my own wastebaskets again...

... and how those three bullets had been meant for me.

South I drove, along a nice new highway I had mostly to myself. Beside me, Jack Armstrong slumped against the door, asleep after all, his forehead clunking the window from time to time. And I thought about how the weasely man had shot three bullets into the man wearing the red-and-black-check hunting jacket.

Ten Eyck had called after we’d left, the weasely man had said so. He’d told the weasely man there was extra money in the suitcases, for which he was supposed to shoot one of the men coming up to meet him. A man who was wanted by the police. A man who wore a red-and-black-check hunting jacket.

The weasely man hadn’t asked anybody’s names. Neither he nor Eustaly had given any impression of knowing one another from before. The weasely man had had nothing to go by but that jacket, that damn jacket!

Was that why Mrs. Bodkin had insisted I wear it?

No, she wouldn’t be a part of it. Even Eustaly hadn’t been told Ten Eyck’s plan for me. That was Ten Eyck’s way, tell everyone as little as possible. So he’d told the weasely man to kill the one wearing the red and black jacket, and if no one was wearing a red and black jacket, I’d be wearing, etc., telling him the suit I was wearing underneath. It hadn’t occurred to him either of the others might end up wearing that jacket, of course; Armstrong would be too much the physical-culture type, and Eustaly too fastidious.

Well, Eustaly had gotten cold.

Not as cold as he was now, of course.

South I drove, along the nice new highway. I knew Ten Eyck had tried to have me killed. I knew why: because I knew who he really was. What I didn’t know, not yet, was what I was going to do about it.

Except that I was going back there. Oh, you bet. I wouldn’t miss his face for a million dollars.

21

He carried it off well. We arrived in early evening, the return by truck having taken longer than the trip up by automobile, and as I braked to a stop behind the house Ten Eyck came out the back door, glinting a smile of welcome which hardly faltered a bit as I climbed down from the cab. He watched Jack Armstrong get out on the other side, watched us both stretch and move around a little the way you will after a long cramped trip, and then he said, casually, “Where’s Mortimer?”

“Dead,” I said. “Up near the border. In the Mercury. Wearing the Bodkin jacket.”

“Really. I hadn’t thought he’d consider that suitable.”

“He got cold.”

“Ah.” Ten Eyck made a minuscule shrug. “One never knows,” he said.

Armstrong, coming past us, said groggily, “I’m so tired I could drop dead myself.” He stopped in front of Ten Eyck and said, “Raxford said you knew about Eustaly going to be killed. You should of told us. Scared me out of my wits.”

“Next time,” Ten Eyck told him, smiling as one smiles at a retarded child, “I’ll be sure to let you know.”

“Good,” said Armstrong, and went cumbersomely on into the house.

Ten Eyck looked at me with wary interest. (He couldn’t know, of course, that exhaustion had anesthetized me as much as Armstrong. I’d driven slightly more than half the return trip, the first long stretch and then the final brief leg, with uneasy napping in the middle period. I was too doped from lack of sleep myself to be actively afraid of Ten Eyck, or even worried about him, an apparent assured coolness that [I later realized] impressed him very much, and which also made it more possible for me to maintain the manner I’d decided would be best in the circumstances. I’d thought of practically nothing else all the way south but this meeting with Ten Eyck, and what I should say, and how I should behave. Rehearsed and anesthetized to a fare-thee-well, I was prepared to bluff Tyrone Ten Eyck to a draw.)

Now he said, conversationally, “Why did you come back, Raxford?”

“You made a mistake,” I told him. “Anybody can make one mistake. We’ll just forget it happened.”

He arched an eyebrow and said, “What was the mistake, exactly?”

“Thinking I was dangerous to you. I wasn’t. I’m still not. But don’t keep making mistakes.”

He studied me with narrowed eyes. “How do I know you don’t plan to be dangerous to me?”

I gestured at the truck cab, saying, “I could have dropped you from there, when you came out. You were framed in the doorway.”

He turned and looked at the doorway, then back at me. “All right. What about later on?”

“I will have helped you. You will help me. We’ll be even.”

Small lights flared behind his eyes, like artillery fire beyond the night horizon. “But you know my name,” he said. He was being blunt and open with me now; there was no reason for him to be otherwise.

“A small risk,” I told him. “It would be risky to make another mistake with me, too. You’ll have to decide for yourself which risk is greater.”

“Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, I will.”

I took the pistol from my pocket, which startled him unnecessarily at first, until I handed it to him, saying, “I don’t need this any more.”

He looked at the pistol in his hand, and then at me. “You amaze me, Mr. Raxford,” he said.

“I prefer reason to violence,” I told him. Which was the absolute truth; in my groggy state, my true and false personalities had found a basis for merger. (If I had come to Ten Eyck under my true colors and advocated pacifism to him, he might have murdered me merely in rebuttal. But coming to him now in the guise of another panther like himself, advocating the identical pacifism, I seemed to him a dangerous and capable man, an awesome opponent, and he embraced my ideal [in this limited and local application] with pleasure and relief.)

“Reason,” he said, his glinting smile touching me and the pistol in turn, “is always preferable to violence.”

“Certainly,” I said. “If you’ll excuse me...”

“Of course.”

I went inside, where Mrs. Bodkin tried to urge spaghetti on me. When I promised her I would eat six breakfasts in the morning, she reluctantly let me go.

Upstairs, I found my bedroom on the first try. There was a key in the lock on the inside, and when I shut the door I studied the key thoughtfully for a minute, then decided no, it would be more in character to leave the door unlocked, as though challenging the world to catch me off-guard.

When I awoke the next morning, still in one piece, my blood still all in its accustomed veins and arteries, no spare lead or steel in any part of me, that entire homecoming scene from the night before left me shaken in retrospect, but nothing else shook me quite so much as the sight of that unlocked door.

Never underestimate the power of a sleepy idiot.

22

Two days now passed, and the word for their passing — after the rash of activity just preceding — is elephantine. I spent all my time indoors (everyone assured me, each time I tried to go out “for a walk,” that inasmuch as I was a hunted man, it was far too dangerous for me to go outside, though no one had minded me going along on the trip to get the explosives), and not once was I securely and safely and usefully alone. I didn’t dare use the telephone; the house was full of violent people, most of them prowling around. There was just no way to contact the Feds.

Still, I appeared to be in no immediate danger. It was a kind of vacation; I had a bedroom to myself, good food, and nothing to do. Ten Eyck nodded cordially whenever we met, but had nothing further to say to me, and I had nothing at all to say to him. Once I was rested and in full control of my senses, I was incapable of the kind of bland effrontery I’d used so successfully on Ten Eyck immediately after the trip.

Friday afternoon a rested Armstrong and a few of his bully boys drove up in a rent-a-truck truck, which they cheerfully announced they’d stolen on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn that morning. The truck from Canada was long gone, having been picked up while I was asleep Thursday night, the load of explosives now being stored in the sagging barn out behind the house. The stolen truck was now stashed in there, was inspected, and proved to be full of huge cardboard cartons of toilet paper. For the next half hour, as I watched from the kitchen window, the boys of the National Fascist Reclamation Commission unloaded cartons of toilet paper, carried them from the barn to the cellar stairs behind the house, and there turned them over to several white American-born workingman members of the American Sons’ Militia, Louis Labotski’s group. The American Sons stowed the cartons in the no-longer-used coalbin. Mrs. Bodkin was delighted. Toward the end, though, some of the Fascists began to get skittish, laughing and running around the backyard, throwing rolls of toilet paper at one another, the rolls unrolling as they flew like streamers through the air or bounced in lengthening white ribbons across the yard. Mrs. Bodkin had to go out and tell them to stop it; it was unseemly. Chastened, they quieted down, cleaned up, and finished their work in a more sober mood.

(I was imagining the cold fury of Tyrone Ten Eyck, hidden away upstairs, surely watching the backyard from a second floor window. [He never showed himself to the rank and file, only to the leaders who’d attended the first meeting of the League for New Beginnings; he was limiting the number of people who had seen his face and who would therefore have to be dispatched. I’m not sure if that was the result of thought-fulness or merely the desire to avoid an overbusy schedule.] At any rate, he was not particularly humorous, and his reactions to the puppy Nazis must have been something to see. Something I’m glad I didn’t see.)

When the truck was empty, the Fascists and Sons worked together to refill it, this time with explosives, working under the fussy direction of our demolition experts, Eli Zlott and his assistant for the occasion Sun Kut Fu. Before they were done, darkness had fallen, and since there was no light in the barn, it was determined to finish the job the next day.

Once or twice during this time I suggested contacting my own membership and telling them to come join us (the dozen undercover federal agents, remember?), but it had been decided that would be too dangerous; the police, in their continuing search for me, would surely, be watching the members of my organization. Besides, as Mrs. Bodkin accurately pointed out, there were already more people here than could possibly be needed. And I had to admit it was true. The yard between house and barn was crawling with terrorists; at times it looked like the staging area for a bonus march.

Friday evening Mrs. Bodkin and Eli Zlott played Russian Bank at the dining-room table, Tyrone Ten Eyck continued to leaf through Mrs. Bodkin’s library of book-club art books, Sun Kut Fu closeted himself with a lot of wires and miniature electrical components — something or other to do with bombs — which made him seem somehow Japanese rather than Chinese, and I prowled around like a man with a strong case of itchy foot, which was true.

Not just itchy foot, also itchy quarter. From time to time I would take from my pocket the quarter Duff had given me, the one which, when placed in water, would beam a directional signal to bring the federal agents ascurrying, and I would wonder, Should I? But I still knew nothing of value, really. It was true the Feds stood a good chance of arriving here unobserved and thus capturing the whole crew, explosives and all. But on the other hand, there was no assurance that Ten Eyck himself would be caught; his career was rich in narrow escapes, and it seemed to me if anyone would manage to slip through the net, he’d be the one. Each time I held the magic quarter in my hand, therefore, I finally decided to wait yet a while, yet a while.

Saturday, Eli Zlott and Sun closed themselves in the barn and went to work in earnest on turning the truck into one huge traveling bomb. The hordes of terrorists were all gone now, nobody left but us Captains, and Tyrone Ten Eyck moved about freely, puffing one of his tiny twisty cigars, favoring everyone with doses of aromatic blue smoke and that glinting self-confident smile.

Zlott and Sun emerged toward sundown, just in time for dinner. Mrs. Bodkin cooked as though we were an army and had a lot of traveling to do: a huge roast for this particular meal, and corn on the cob, peas, mashed potatoes, hot rolls, and the sort of rich brown gravy which is the Anglo-Saxons one true contribution to the world’s cuisine. Zlott and Sun and Ten Eyck and I were the participants; Mrs. Bodkin maintained the good old American tradition by being in constant fussy flux between dining-room table and kitchen, sitting down at her place only rarely and then merely to pass a bowl to somebody.

There was little talk at the table, until Ten Eyck began to ask our demolition men if everything was in order at the truck. He mentioned something about a “timer,” and Zlott answered in a sudden burst of irritation, “I never got near that. Fu here wanted to do it all himself, wouldn’t let me help a bit.”

“Sun,” said Sun quietly.

“I’ll call you by your first name when I know you better,” Zlott snapped. To Ten Eyck he said, “If that timer’s wrong, don’t blame me. I never got near it.”

“I’m sure everything will work perfectly,” said Ten Eyck, spreading a bit of oil, “just as I’m sure you’re being modest about your own contribution.”

But Zlott was impervious to oil. “Fu wanted to do it all himself,” he insisted, “so I let him. He wants to do the whole thing, go ahead, I don’t care.”

“You’ve done fine work, Mr. Zlott,” Ten Eyck assured him, remaining bland and genial. “I’m sure we’re all grateful for what you’ve done.”

Mrs. Bodkin, coming from the kitchen just then with more rolls, said, “Well, of course we are, Eli, you know that.” Zlott seemed somewhat appeased and went back to work on his roast beef after that, though this expression of sympathy for the head of the True Zion Rescue Mission from the president of the Gentile Mothers for Peace left me a little baffled. In any case, dinner continued peacefully from then on, ending with mince pie and vanilla ice cream and coffee, after which we all staggered into the living room to sit down and enjoy the process of digestion.

Jack Armstrong reappeared about eight-thirty, and was promptly taken into a corner by Ten Eyck for a final briefing. I joined them, uninvited but unchallenged, and stood around trying to look like a man who isn’t hearing anything particularly interesting but who has nothing better to do.

“You keep the truck hidden,” Ten Eyck told Armstrong, “until Tuesday. We’ve got the new plates on it, so it should be safe to travel, but I don’t want it parked out on the street for three days.”

“I’ve got the perfect place for it,” said Armstrong eagerly. “One of my member’s fathers—”

“Just so it’s out of sight,” said Ten Eyck. “Now, remember, timing is all-important here. Labotski will be there at two o’clock on the dot, and that’s when you should be there.”

“Right,” said Armstrong. He was nodding and nodding. “I’ll be there,” he said.

“Trucks aren’t permitted on the Drive,” Ten Eyck told him, “so you’ve got to move fast. There’s an entrance just south of the building; you take that onto the northbound side, drive it under the building, stop it in the right lane, and Labotski will pull in directly in front of you. There’s a new switch on the dashboard, you’ll see it, just to the left of the speedometer. You push that to on, and then you’ve got five minutes, so move fast. Out of the truck, into the car with Labotski, and away from there.”

Armstrong had been nodding and nodding all along, but now he held his head still at last and said, “What if the cops come? They’ll haul it away.”

“No. That same switch activates a small charge that’ll break the front axle. They won’t get it out of there in under five minutes. One more thing, don’t try opening the rear doors, we’ve got them rigged. If the police break the lock and open them, the truck blows up right away.”

Armstrong was nodding again. “Okay,” he said. “I got it.”

Ten Eyck clapped him on the shoulder, saying, with just the sort of male heartiness a Jack Armstrong would understand best, “Good man. We’re counting on you.”

I drifted away at that point, passed through the dining room (where Zlott and Mrs. Bodkin had the cards out again and were back into their Russian Bank tourney), and went into the kitchen in search of privacy and more mince pie. While I stood there, leaning against the drainboard, chewing pie and chewing over what I’d learned, Sun came up from the cellar, gave me a conspiratorial wink I failed to understand, and went away toward the living room.

I spent the next minute or two puzzling over that wink, and then was distracted by the sound of a truck engine starting up. I looked out the kitchen window and saw the truck come out of the barn and drive briskly away, Armstrong at the wheel. (It seemed to me he took the bumps in the dirt road a little too briskly, considering his cargo, but I suppose as a man, with an exploding credit card in his hip pocket, I was in no position to cast the first stone.)

It was by now nine o’clock. An air of lethargy had come over the house, as of any headquarters when the planning is done, the die is cast, and the outcome is in the lap of the gods. Simulating the same lethargy as best I could, I licked mince pie from my fingers, determined that I was unobserved, and headed for the stairs.

It seemed to me I finally knew enough to justify dunking my quarter. I didn’t, it is true, know either why or for whom Tyrone Ten Eyck was planning to blow up the UN Building, but at least I now knew when and how. FDR Drive, the high-speed elevated highway which runs north and south along the eastern shore of Manhattan Island (and which is sometimes [by Republicans, I suppose] called East Side Drive), runs under the UN Building. A whole truckload of high explosive detonated under there could very well break the building’s foundation — chop it off at the ankles, as it were — and cause the whole structure to crumble ignominiously into the East River, all at a time when, according to Ten Eyck, it would be more than usually full.

As to that corollary scheme, a depredation of one sort or another which would cause the UN Building to be full on Tuesday afternoon, I still knew absolutely nothing except the outmoded plan to set off a bomb in the U.S. Senate. But whatever it was, it surely had to happen before Tuesday, which meant we were very nearly fresh out of time. I didn’t dare hang around in hopes of finding out what that annex scheme was; the time to call in the Feds was now.

Accordingly, I sauntered casually upstairs, went into the bathroom, filled the toothbrush glass about halfway with water, and carried that into my bedroom.

Ah, but what to do with it now? I couldn’t just leave a glass half full of water, with a quarter at the bottom, sitting in plain sight on the dresser. If someone came in, the sight might strike him as odd. I looked around, opened the closet door, and decided the best place to hide it was up on the shelf, tucked away behind the wide-brimmed fedoras. I got out the quarter — still shiny and new — plunked it in the glass, put it up on the shelf out of sight, shut the closet door, turned away, and the hall door opened.

It was Sun. He stepped quickly inside and shut the door.

I’m sure I must have looked as guilty as a kid hiding a pack of illegitimate cigarettes, but Sun had other things on his mind and didn’t notice. “Come on,” he whispered urgently. “Time for us to get out of here.”

I said, “What? Why? Where we going?”

“Away.” He looked at his watch and his urgency redoubled. “Come on, Raxford,” he said. “Now.”

There was nothing I could do. Without a backward glance at the closet — within which the shiny quarter was surely by now sending out its useless directional beam — I followed Sun out of the room.

23

Mrs. Bodkin and Zlott, absorbed in their game, never saw us leave. We went out the front way and down the dirt road to the trees, where we found parked a black Cadillac — new or a repeat I couldn’t say — into which we climbed, to find Ten Eyck at the wheel and Lobo in back. Sun rode in back, I joined Ten Eyck up front.

Ten Eyck, low and curt, said, “Time.”

Sun’s watch must have had a luminous dial. “Five after nine,” he said. “No, about seven after.”

“Three minutes. Good.”

The car moved forward, sliding through the night without lights. The road was vaguely paler than the heavy black of the surrounding trees. Lights shone from the Bodkin house behind us, and small pinpoints of light from the development homes were visible through the trees, but we ourselves moved through a broad groove of blackness in the earth.

Ten Eyck switched the headlights on when we reached the county road. He turned right, and at last I said, “Why the change of plans?”

“No change,” he said casually. “Those little people were of no further use to us.”

From the back seat Sun said, “Did you explain the situation to the other two? Armstrong and Labotski?”

“They gave no trouble,” Ten Eyck told him. “They have no conception of actual death. Murder is still an abstract to them.”

All at once I understood why Sun had been down cellar. The League for New Beginnings was having another weeding-out. Or bombing-out.

Why had I been spared this time? Ten Eyck had tried to kill me once, by proxy, but since that failure, had seemed to accept me without question. Also, though Ten Eyck had apparently prepared Armstrong and Labotski for this purging of Zlott and Mrs. Bodkin — and Mulligan before them, and Mrs. Baba and Hyman Meyerberg and the Whelps before him — he’d apparently seen no need to prepare me similarly.

I could think of only one explanation: Ten Eyck had accepted me on an equal footing, considered me a panther like himself, and assumed my actions and responses would invariably be — as they invariably were in him — dictated by cold and all-encompassing self-interest. Better than a fish, better even than a specialist, I was an expendable version of himself! Oh, he’d be keeping me around for quite a while.

Until, that is, judging me by himself, he decided I was ready to be dangerous to him.

I mulled this theory as Ten Eyck drove us through the Jersey outback. After perhaps half an hour we came into Jersey City, where Ten Eyck stopped to let Sun off. “At midnight,” Ten Eyck said in farewell. Sun nodded, and hurried away.

Now that we were to all intents and purposes alone in the car — it was practically impossible to think of Lobo as a person — Ten Eyck grew relaxed and expansive, full of good humor. As we drove northward, he made idle chatter — how incredible it sounded, coming from him! — giving me anecdotes and reminiscences of his childhood, most of it spent either in New York City or at the manor in Tarrytown. (Where Angela now was hidden, until Tyrone should be safely put away.) These reminiscences were full of his cruelty, full of his hatred for his father and contempt for his sister. He mentioned his mother — who separated early from her husband, and of whose recent whereabouts I knew nothing (nor, I think, did Angela) — only once, in regard to a childhood visit he’d been forced to make to her in Switzerland. The several “practical jokes” he had perpetrated there, one of which had broken a maid’s leg, had cut the visit short and assured it would never be repeated, being the two results he’d had in mind from the outset.

We crossed into New York State at Suffern, and shortly beyond that town we stopped at a rural restaurant — one of those expensive country places which usually call themselves The Something Coach or The Coach Something — and all during dinner the childhood reminiscences continued. We sat across from one another, and I made all the right responses to his brutal little tales, and to my left Lobo sat like an articulated mannequin in a store-window display, feeding itself with one repetitive unending up-and-down movement of its right arm.

Toward the end of dinner, this stream of recollection and anecdote began to slow. He had had two whiskeys and soda before dinner, a half bottle of Moselle wine with dinner, and a brandy afterward, but I don’t believe he was getting drunk, or even high. The rush of memory that had been set off in him had merely come to the inevitable souring; he began to speak of his father and Angela in harsher and harsher tones, spoke of all his childhood scenes with hatred and controlled fury: the New York City apartment, the Tarrytown estate, the various boarding schools which had failed to mold him in their image.

Dinner had been leisurely, or at least slow-paced. We were the last diners, and in the background our waitress hovered anxiously, obviously desirous of going home. At ten past eleven, after a low-voiced but vicious description of his father’s one unsuccessful entry into active politics, he suddenly looked at his watch, became immediately brisk and businesslike, said, “Well. Time to be off,” and waved for the check.

Back in the car, I said, “I take it wherever we’re going has something to do with the new plan. The one instead of blowing up the Senate.”

Now he was expansive again, pleased with himself, the glinting smile once more lighting his face. “Something to do,” he echoed, and laughed, and said, “My dear Raxford, it has everything to do, everything!” He glanced at me, his sable eyes full of good humor, and then looked back at the road. “You want me to tell you about it,” he said.

“Yes.”

“It’s time you knew,” he agreed, not knowing that from my point of view it was well past time. At any rate, he said, “We’ll begin with the global and progress to the particular.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Every year,” he said, declaiming, “some one or another of the Eastern Bloc nations puts up Communist China for entry to the United Nations. Every year that entry is blocked, primarily through the efforts of the United States, which has its own useless brother-in-law, Chiang Kai-shek, in the job. This annual minuet is returning to the UN agenda in a very few weeks. Interesting?”

“Not so far,” I said.

He laughed again; he loved me most when I was blunt and irritable. He said, “It will be. This year there’s going to be a difference. This year the Communist Chinese, through their American agent Sun Kut Fu and his Eurasian Relief Corps, are going to kidnap a prominent American and hold him for ransom. That is, they will threaten to kill him unless the United States this year permits the entry of Red China into the United Nations.” His smile struck pale fire. “We can both visualize,” he said, “the sort of Assembly meeting that will cause.”

I said, “No one would believe the Communist Chinese would pull a stunt like that.”

“Of course not. No one but the Americans. Have you ever read the New York Daily News?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“Can any regular reader of that newspaper, and I understand there are millions of them, fail to believe the dirty Chinese Commies would kidnap a prominent American for just that purpose?”

I saw that he was right. I said, “And you’ll leave them Sun Kut Fu.”

“Sun and his entire organization.” He smiled. “And, of course, the murdered kidnap victim.” His smile broadened. “You can guess who that is, can’t you?”

So I’m stupid. I didn’t guess, and I admitted as much.

“My dear Raxford,” he cried, “think a minute! Now that you’ve done away with my dear sister Angela, I am the sole heir to the Ten Eyck millions. The prominent American who is to be kidnapped and, most regrettably, not to be returned is my own blessed father, Marcellus Ten Eyck.” The voice grated over his father’s name. “The old bastard’s at the Tarrytown estate now,” he said. “That’s where we’re going.”

Angela!

24

“With my reputation,” he said, “I never dared finish them off myself. But now you’ve done for Angela, and the old man’s about to be killed by Sun Kut Fu. Nice?”

What a word. I echoed it, in some fashion or other: “Nice.”

Apparently there was something wrong with the way I said it (and why wouldn’t there be?), because he glanced sharply at me and said, “There’s something wrong? What is it?”

“Uh,” I said, trying to think coherently, and then found something to say. “How do you collect?” I asked him. “You said yourself, your reputation. You couldn’t show your face.”

He smiled, glinting and glistening, pleased with himself. Some kind of arrogant emotion had started in him at dinner, as he spoke of his family and childhood, and it was still building now; he was very nearly throwing off sparks. “You ask good questions,” he told me, out of his pleasure and pride and arrogance. “But I have good answers.”

“I’d like to hear them,” I said.

“Of course.” Smiling, watching the road, driving fast but well, he said, “I am living in Mongolia at the present time — at this exact moment, in fact — at Ulan Bator, in a pleasant house beside the Tola. When the news of the twin tragedy reaches me there, I shall return at once to my native land, heedless of my own safety, stunned by what the Reds and radicals have done to my dear sister and beloved father. I shall freely and publicly confess my past sins” — he laughed and gave me a low-voiced aside — “falsely accusing along the way several individuals to whom I owe a reckoning” — he snapped his fingers, to show his enemies being snuffed out — “and I shall co-operate fully with any and all authorities, swearing new and undying allegiance to the country of my birth, land of the free and home of the brave, the greatest little old nation on earth. I shall hire the best legal talent in the country, I shall wait out the inevitable storm of controversy, squelch the old charges, and at last I shall retire, a rich and safe and happy man.”

He glanced at me again. “Well? Is it beautiful?”

It was beautiful the way some snakes are beautiful. But could it really all go as simply as he described? He would have a lot of money to spend on it, and money does grease the ways, but...

But that wasn’t the point. He thought it would work, rightly or wrongly, and because of that belief he was on his way to Tarrytown to discover Angela and unmask me. Was there any way to talk him out of it?

I said, “What if someone finds out you were here in the States all along?”

“No one will,” he said. “A few individuals have seen my face, but none of them will survive past next Tuesday. Except yourself, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And you’ll be out of the country,” he said, “and unlikely to want to make trouble for me. Perhaps,” he added thoughtfully, considering the possibilities, “I’ll send you to my current employers.”

“The ones who want the UN Building blown up,” I said.

“More or less.” He glanced at me again, approvingly, and said, “I’m sure they’ll be pleased with you.”

We had once again skittered past the fact that sooner or later Ten Eyck intended to kill me, and that his current employers were unlikely ever so much as to hear of me, but I didn’t have time to think of that now. What I needed was something that would convince Ten Eyck not to kidnap his father, and so I was grasping at every straw that floated by. “These employers,” I said. “They know you’re here. Are you sure you can trust them?”

“Trust them?” The idea seemed to astonish him. “Of course not,” he said, then looked thoughtful for a minute. “I hadn’t intended,” he said slowly, “to do anything about them; at least, not right away. But perhaps you’re right.”

Within me, hope soared like a bird.

Ten Eyck promptly shot it down. “Perhaps,” he said, “it would be best to take care of them at once, when they pay me.”

I said, “Isn’t it a country that hired you? A government?”

“Ah, no,” he said, smiling. “Have I given that impression? No, there are two individuals...” He tapped his fingernails on the steering wheel. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps.”

“Maybe you should tie up all the loose ends,” I suggested, making one last try, “before you kill your father.”

“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “An opportunity like this won’t come twice. I’ll have time for the rest later.”

So it was hopeless. Which meant, since I couldn’t dissuade Ten Eyck, I’d have to get away from him, sound the alarm. We were on a highway at the moment, driving along at better than fifty miles an hour, far too fast for me to make a leap for it, but sooner or later we’d have to go through a town, be stopped at a traffic light or some such thing, and then I’d be off like the rabbit I was.

In the meantime, there was still one thing more I might accomplish. We were at last talking about Ten Eyck’s employers; maybe I could find out who they were and why they wanted the destruction of the UN Building. I cleared my throat, licked my lips, did a Humphrey Bogart twitch with my right cheek, and said, “One thing I don’t understand. Why do two individuals want to blow up the UN Building?”

“They don’t,” he said. He smiled at me and said, “That was my own idea.”

“But you said—”

“You want to know?” He shrugged. “It can do no harm,” he said. (I knew what he meant by that: snick. I also knew I’d chosen just the right time to ask him questions. He was usually reticent, too damn reticent, but starting at dinner tonight this tension, arrogance, emotion, high nervousness had been building and building in him, and he seemed to use talk to ease the pressure. Why else the anecdotes, this willingness to answer questions? The coming showdown with his father was straining his control.)

“My employers,” he said, “wish the elimination of seven men, but do not dare attract suspicion toward themselves. The seven must either appear to die of natural causes, or to have been murdered for reasons totally unconnected with either my employers or their goals. Seven such natural deaths would, perhaps, be stretching coincidence beyond its tolerance, so murder must be the answer. Murder with misdirected motive.”

“Not easy,” I said, encouraging him.

His smile phosphoresced. “Everything is easy,” he told me, “once the proper method has been found. These seven men have one thing in common: all, from time to time, are to be found at the UN. If the UN Building is demolished, killing several hundred, including men of much more global significance than any of my targets, the death of the particular seven will go almost unnoticed.”

It’s good the interior of the car was dark, because I’m sure my true feelings showed themselves at least briefly on my face. In order to kill seven men cleverly — for pay! — Tyrone Ten Eyck thought nothing of killing several hundred men and women who meant nothing to him for good or ill, for profit or loss, but who were merely extras on the set of his scheming.

He filled my silence, luckily, with more words of his own, saying, “If, besides that, the explosion is obviously the work of a coalition of American lunatic-fringe organizations, suspicion cannot possibly touch my employers.” He smiled in my direction, proud of himself, saying, “Do you like it?”

“It’s — imaginative.”

“Imagination is the key to everything,” he told me, and I could hear the tension buzzing in his voice.

I said, “But you told me you wanted the UN Building full, that’s why you were going to blow up the Senate, why we’re kidnaping your father.”

“Ah, well,” he said. “The problem is, three of my seven targets are not regularly to be found at the UN. Special circumstances are required to bring them there.” He nodded in satisfaction. “We’ll provide the special circumstances,” he said.

I began to chew my knuckles.

25

We went through Tarrytown without being stopped once; there was practically no traffic, and every light turned green in front of us as though a local ordinance had been passed in our favor. How often does something like that happen?

Outside town again, I sat moodily in my corner and chewed myself. If I couldn’t get out of the car — and at even thirty or forty miles an hour, I couldn’t — what was there to do? All I could think of was to hope that Angela wasn’t there any more. I knew how fluttery she was, and how little she got along with her father (not as little as Tyrone, of course), and it seemed to me at least possible that she might be hiding somewhere else by now.

Well, it was possible.

Suddenly we slowed, I had no idea why. We were on the hilly two-lane road north of Tarrytown which led to the Ten Eyck estate, but the turn-off was still a mile or so ahead of us. Yet Ten Eyck was slowing, he was steering off the road, he was stopping.

I had my hand on the door handle, and then I saw the truck, and the group of men standing beside it. We were making our rendezvous with the Eurasian Relief Corps.

As soon as we stopped, Ten Eyck switched off the lights. A few seconds later Sun was at my window, talking past me to Ten Eyck, saying, “Everything’s set.”

Ten Eyck said, “Good. Remember to cut the phone lines when you go in.”

“Right. Are you sure about those armed guards? There’s nobody at the gate.”

“He’s a paranoid,” Ten Eyck said. “He’ll have guards, he always does, but they’ll be in the house, close to him. Half a dozen, maybe more.”

“We’ll take them,” Sun said.

“Good. Flash me when it’s done.”

“Right. See you.”

We started away, lights still off, and I could just make out the Corps members climbing up into the back of the truck. It was a large closed tractor trailer. They could have anything in there, they could almost have a tank in there.

No. They wouldn’t need a tank.

Ten Eyck switched the headlights on as soon as we were on the road again. We drove on in silence — tension now emanated from him like radio signals — and after about half a mile we took a steep and slanting side road uphill to the left. We jounced upward for what seemed quite a while, finally emerging on a barren hilltop or ridge where the road deteriorated to a meandering dirt track. Ten Eyck stopped the car there, switched off the lights, and said, “Come take a look.” His voice was flat, mechanical.

Lobo, apparently, had no interest in what was about to happen. He stayed in the car (I’d practically forgotten him, hulking back there) as Ten Eyck and I walked over to the cliff edge (it wasn’t really a cliff, but a very sharp-angled downward slope, dotted here and there with precarious trees) and he pointed out to me the salient features below. “There’s the Hudson,” he said, in that odd new impersonal voice, “and there’s the house. See the lights?”

“Yes. I see them.”

Far down to our left the Ten Eyck estate was laid out for us like part of a model railroad display. The winding road in from the highway, the winding river on the far side, and the manor — lights in every window — waiting between the two. Along the road crept the headlights of the truck.

Beside me, Tyrone Ten Eyck stood unmoving, stone-still. His eyes glistened like black ice, and that electric tension still hummed within him, but he was like a dynamo on minimum power; he had shut down, closed in, narrowed his attention. Nothing existed for him but that tiny stage setting down there, the house and the truck.

The headlights came closer, close enough to blend with the light spilling from the house, and now I could make out the truck in its entirety, cab and trailer. Several men leaped from the rear of the trailer, were met by two tiny figures emerging from the front door of the house, and there was the faint sound of gunfire. The two tiny figures fell over.

Men swarmed from the truck, deployed left and right, surrounding the house. A few — that must have been Sun himself at their head — dashed in through the front door.

They would find Angela. They wouldn’t kill her, not here, no more than they would kill the old man here, but they would find her, and hold her, and show her to Ten Eyck. And Ten Eyck would cut me down like the sapling I was.

(How near the edge he stood! And his concentration was so complete that surely he had no idea where I stood or what I was doing. It would be so easy, so easy. For one of the few times in his life, Tyrone Ten Eyck was completely off-guard. To stand behind him, to give him a sudden push...)

More gunfire from down below. A shattering of glass; someone had leaped or been thrown from a second-story window, through the glass. He landed atop the trailer, rolled, came up on his feet on the trailer roof. From the flashes, he had a gun in his hand, was shooting toward the window he’d just left. There must have been answering gunfire; he abruptly flipped backward off the trailer top as though swept aside by an invisible hand.

(Not only easy, not merely easy, but also necessary. Destruction moved with Tyrone Ten Eyck, spread out from him in ever-widening circles. As there are people who are carriers of contagious disease, so Tyrone Ten Eyck was a carrier of destruction. He had to be stopped. [The flash of the Bodkin house blowing up suddenly appeared before my mind’s eye.] Now was the chance. Just a push, a small push, an infinitesimal push...)

The gunfire seemed to have ended. Two or three lights had gone out within the house, but otherwise it appeared unchanged. A kind of wounded silence had fallen on it now.

(After the push: I could evade Lobo in the dark, in the woods. He was big and strong, but he was also stupid. I merely had to start. I merely had to put my hands out, palms forward, and step behind him, and push...)

A figure came out the front door, lifted its arm, and light flashed in our direction. A flashlight; on off, on off, on off.

Ten Eyck, a small sheen of perspiration gleaming on his forehead, turned and said, “Now we go down.” His voice was husky, as though he’d run all the way uphill.

I stood there, blinking, suddenly back to reality, paralyzed by what I’d been thinking. Good God! Was it contagious, had I caught it from him? I was a pacifist, a pacifist, and I’d been standing here thinking of murder.

What other word is there for it? None. None.

Ten Eyck, having started toward the car, looked back at me and said, “Raxford? You coming?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

26

As we turned in at the gate, Ten Eyck laughed and said, “Home at last!” He was becoming his old self again.

I wasn’t yet, so I had nothing to say. He didn’t seem to notice.

We arrived at the manor — which had the shocked, open, stupid look of an assault victim — and Ten Eyck stopped beside the truck. All three of us got out and entered the house.

Inside, there was wreckage everywhere. Drapes had been pulled down from the tall windows, chairs and tables had been overturned, carpets bunched against walls, lamps smashed on floors, two legs of the grand piano buckled. One of Sun’s Eurasians lay sprawled head-downward in a swastika shape on the staircase.

Sun himself appeared from a room on the right. He seemed about to salute Ten Eyck, but restrained himself. Instead, he said, “All secure, Mr. Eyck. Had to kill all the guards and two of the servants, but everybody else is still alive.” He had a smear of something on his left sleeve.

I stood there, listening and watching, wondering about Angela, and I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t managed to escape sometime, somewhere, somehow before coming here. The fly was in the spider’s parlor now for sure.

Ten Eyck said, “Where’s my — where’s Ten Eyck?”

(It was hard for me to keep in mind that Ten Eyck was known to all the others by a different name, and that none of them knew his relationship with the owner of this house. Here in the heat of it all it was apparently getting just as hard for Ten Eyck to remember.)

But Sun didn’t notice the near-slip; I suppose he too was distracted by battle. Starting off, he said, “We’ve got him back here.”

Ten Eyck hesitated. “You gave him the injection?”

“Of course,” said Sun. “He’s sleeping like a baby.”

“Good.”

“They both are,” Sun added, and my stomach closed up like a hole in the sand.

Ten Eyck said it for me: “Both?”

“There was another guy with him,” Sun said. (My stomach opened up again.) “Younger one.” He laughed, saying, “Suppose it’s that black-sheep son of his?”

“That would be amusing,” said Ten Eyck, and we all smiled, each for a different reason.

“Well, come on,” said Sun, and started off again.

Ten Eyck followed Sun, I followed Ten Eyck, and Lobo followed me. (I’d tried to motion Lobo ahead of me, hoping I might be able yet to duck away, but Lobo’s stolid insistence on being last thwarted me.)

As we walked, Ten Eyck said, “What were our casualties?”

Sun shrugged apologetically. “Eight,” he said. “Three killed, five wounded.”

Ten Eyck said, “We can’t take wounded. You know that.”

“Of course. They’ve been taken care of.”

“Good.”

We found Marcellus Ten Eyck in a smallish room that badly showed the scars of the recent battle. Only one piece of furniture was still upright and unscratched, a pink chaise longue with golden legs. On this, like a parody of Charles Laughton, old man Ten Eyck sprawled unconscious.

The other one, the putative black-sheep son, also unconscious, was dumped in the corner like a bag of dirty laundry. I went over, wondering who it could be, if it might be someone I knew — though Marcellus Ten Eyck and I hardly had many friends in common — and I looked down at the peacefully sleeping face of Murray Kesselberg, boy attorney.

Now what the hell was he doing here? So far as I knew, he’d never even met Marcellus Ten Eyck.

Then Sun said it: “There was a woman here, too. In the bedroom upstairs.” Said it slyly, with a grin, a knowing eye. “A real nice piece.”

Amusement and surprise showed in Ten Eyck’s face, and for an instant he seemed on the verge of saying why-the-old-rascal, but instead of that he said, “Was there? Show her to me.”

“Right,” said Sun, and came perilously close to saluting again.

“Is she asleep?” Ten Eyck asked him.

“No. We only had two shots. I’ve got her outside here. I’ll be right back.”

Sun left. Ten Eyck, gazing at his unconscious father with the fondness of a carnivore looking at meat, said reflectively, “Eight casualties. That leaves fourteen. Our work is cut out for us, Raxford.”

I said, “It is?”

“We have fourteen to dispose of,” he said. “Not here, of course. Later on, at the hideout.”

“Right,” I said.

He glanced at me, gave me a crooked grin; it looked like a scythe. “We’ll make a good partnership, Raxford,” he said. “A pair of predators.”

“That’s us,” I said, and looked tough.

Then Sun came back, followed by two of his Eurasians, holding between them the girl they’d found here. Let it not be Angela, I prayed.

It was Angela.

Brother and sister stared at one another, both stunned beyond belief. Then Ten Eyck turned, his eyes drilled me, he said, “Raxford?”

“Uh,” I said.

“Raxford,” he said. “What are you?”

I opened my mouth.

I closed my mouth.

I ran.

27

I would like to be able to say that I ran into Angela deliberately, that deliberately I clutched her hand and pulled her with me out of the room, down the hall, up the stairs, over the dead swastika, through half a dozen rooms, into the closet...

... but I can’t. I know the truth about myself, and you might as well know it too. From the time Ten Eyck asked me what I was till the time I came to a stop in that closet, I wasn’t even conscious. Instinct, the subconscious, self-preservation, call it what you will — I was on automatic pilot. When, in that closet I turned my head and saw Angela panting there beside me, I was as astonished as Ten Eyck had been to see her downstairs.

Her surprise was apparently equal to mine. She gaped at me and said, “Gene! You’re supposed to be dead!”

“I am not supposed to be dead,” I said indignantly. “Whose side are you on?”

“You were blown up,” she insisted. “That government man just called a little while ago. He said everybody was blown up at that Mrs. Bodkin’s house.”

“No,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “He said you finally set your directional beam going, whatever that means, and it was cut off before they could get there. But they found the place, and it was that Mrs. Bodkin’s house, and it was blown up.”

“Exactly,” I said.

She nodded vigorously. “That’s what I said. It blew up, and you were in it.”

“Angela,” I said. “I’m here.”

She looked troubled, doubtful, confused; her lovely logic had foundered on a rock of fact.

I said, “Just take my word for it, don’t try to figure it out.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know, Gene,” she admitted.

I said, “What about Murray, that’s what I want to know? What’s he doing here?”

“I asked him to come up.”

“You did what?”

“I know,” she said mournfully. “That government man was mad, too. He made Murray swear oaths and everything.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why did you do it?”

“I didn’t have anybody to talk to or anything,” she said, pouting. “Except Daddy, and he gets to be terrible after a while.”

I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything a new voice intruded, from somewhere outside our little dark closet, saying, “They came up here. Find them!”

I whispered, “They’re looking for us.”

“I hear them,” she whispered.

“We’ve got to hide,” I whispered.

“We are hiding,” she whispered back.

“Not here, they’ll find us right away. Someplace better, someplace they won’t think to look. Come on, Angela, you grew up in this house, where’s a good hiding place?”

She frowned in concentration, then all at once brightened and cried, “The fort!”

“Sssshhhh!” When I was sure no one had heard her little cry, I whispered, “The what?”

“It’s up in the attic. I used to hide there when I was a little girl and Tyrone was being mean. He never did find me there.”

“That’s what we want, then,” I said. “You lead the way.”

“Okay.”

She reached for the door, but I grabbed her hand. “Wait! Let me check, see if the coast is clear.”

“You said I should lead the way.”

“Patience, Angela.”

I opened the door a crack, misjudged my distance and bumped my nose against the door frame in peeking one-eyed through the crack, and saw that the room was at the moment empty. I motioned to Angela to follow me on tippy-toe, and together we did a little ballet rush across the room. I peeked this time around the edge of the hall door, and that too was empty at the moment.

I whispered, “Which way?”

“Down that way,” she whispered, leaning out to point. “All the way to the end, and through the door on the left there, and up the stairs.”

“Right,” I said, and was just about to step out to the hall when three Eurasians toting tommy guns came striding out of one room, across the hall, and into another room. I waited, cleared my throat, hitched my trousers, blinked a few times, took Angela’s hand, and started off again.

It all went well enough, but I wouldn’t like to do that every day. We skipped as light and quick down the hall as three hundred pounds of autumn leaves, flitting past the open-doored room in which the trio was poking its tommy guns into closets and under beds, successfully reached the door to the attic stairs, and went on up. (No matter how we grimaced, how we lifted our knees, how we thought silent, those damned stairs had to crack and creak like a jolly bonfire.)

At the top, Angela motioned the way we were to go. The floor of this unfinished attic was just rough planks, but at least they were quiet. All around us were the trunks, the wardrobes, the stacks of magazines, the cardboard cartons, the mounds of old drapes, all the things endemic to attics in big old houses. There were also the odd corners and crannies and convolutions which, on the outside, gave the house its rooftop look of nineteenth-century New England Grim.

Behind us, the door at the foot of the stairs suddenly slammed open, and a voice cried, “Here’s the attic!”

“Take a look,” shouted another voice. “They might of went on up.”

“Where?” I begged Angela in a desperate whisper. “Where where where?”

“Right over here.”

Over where? There was nothing over there. Beyond an old wooden trunk with metalwork on it there was a curving rough wall, just a corner of the roof, unfinished and naked, with a projecting dormer window to its right. There was no place there to hide.

Still — maddened by fear, I thought at the time — Angela made straight for this barren corner, rushed into the dormer space as though to fling herself out the window, flung herself to the left instead, and disappeared from sight.

I stopped. I opened my mouth. I stopped breathing. (Way across the attic, boots could be heard clumping up the stairs.)

An arm appeared, fingers groping for me. I reached out and took the hand, and was drawn into a crazy triangle of space behind the wall. To the left of the dormer, accessible through it and between two upright two-by-fours, was a narrow area between that curved corner wall and the exterior slant of roof. What architectural nicety this all meant on the outside I couldn’t tell, but on the inside it meant one small area of attic in which the roof had two shells, an outer and an inner, with space enough between them for Angela and me — with luck — to evade Tyrone Ten Eyck and his assassins.

This refuge was small and cramped and damp — the back half contained a brackish puddle, indicating a leak in the roof — but it should be safe. I squatted down next to Angela, who was standing bent over like lumbago sufferers in comic strips — the place was less than five feet high — and I whispered, “This is perfect. Now all we have to do is wait for them to leave.”

“I could stand up in here when I was little,” she said.

I looked at her. “Is that right?” I said.

After that we were quiet, because the sound of searching had come close. The attic seemed to be full of searchers, and they were doing a slow and thorough job of it, opening all the trunks and wardrobes, looking behind the stacks of cartons, looking anywhere and everywhere that even a small and skinny human being might hide himself.

We both began to get stiff and cramped in there, but at the worst, pain is a proof of continued existence — the dead don’t ache (you might want to write that down someplace, or alert Bartlett) — and we suffered our aches in thankful silence.

Until, all at once, something began to tinkle. Ding ding ding ding, in a faint yet somehow pervasive tone, and it kept right on doing it: Ding ding ding ding ding...

It was very close. It was, in fact, right in here with us.

I looked at Angela, and Angela looked at me, both of us wide-eyed and ashen-faced, and then Angela raised her left arm and looked at the watch on her wrist.

It was pill time!

“I fixed it,” whispered my idiot, my imbecile, my mechanical marvel, my mistress of machinery. “I fixed it.”

“You fixed it,” I said. “Oh, boy, you just bet you fixed it.”

That watch hadn’t been working — or at least not dinging — the last time I saw Angela, if you recall. But leave it to her to fix the damn thing. And fix us along with it.

Outside, an instant of electric silence had been followed by a sudden blur of noise: shouts, shoves, scrapes. They were coming for us. They’d find us now, no question.

And just to make sure they would, the watch now wouldn’t turn off. Angela poked it, pried at it, took it off and hit it against the floor, and it just kept dinging away like an after-dinner speaker.

“All right,” I said, having had enough. “All right.”

I took out my handkerchief, sopped it thoroughly in the puddle — it would now, if Duff had known what he was talking about, release a nausea-inducing gas — and flung it around the corner into the attic proper.

I removed my necktie, struck a match to it — smokescreen — and threw that after the handkerchief.

I reached out to the dormer window, put my fist through one of the glass panes, stuck the mechanical pencil out there, pressed the button on its side, and sent a red flare shooting back down through the window and into the floor at my feet.

I took out the ballpoint pen, couldn’t remember in the confusion what it was for, pushed the button anyway, and took my picture.

Then, photographed, blinded by the red flare, nauseated, coughing from the smoke, having loosed my bolt, expended my arsenal, and shot my wad, I staggered out to the waiting arms of Sun Kut Fu and the Eurasian Relief Corps.

28

“Sun! I cried. “Listen to me, Sun!” And all the while hacking, coughing, burping, eyes watering, feet stumbling along as two of Sun’s tong war trainees hustled me across the attic toward the stairs. “Listen to me!” I cried, but in vain.

Angela, being hustled along behind me, was clogging the airwaves with a lot of useless helps and let-me-gos. My throat smarting, my eyes burning, my stomach spinning, I did my best to shout above her: “Sun! Listen to me or you’ll be next!”

That stopped him, right at the head of the stairs. He turned a cold eye on me and said, “Next? What do you mean, next?”

“Everybody’s dead,” I gasped. “From that meeting, everybody’s either dead or set up to die. Bodkin, Baba, Mulligan, the Whelps— There’s two more going up with the UN Building.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You set that timer yourself, you wouldn’t let Zlott near it. When Armstrong pushes that switch Tuesday, there won’t be any five-minute wait and you know it.”

He brushed it aside. “Armstrong and Labotski are amateurs. One job and they’re used up.”

“You, too,” I said. “You’re next.”

“I am no amateur,” he said stiffly; I think his pride was hurt. “Besides, Eyck has no reason to kill me.”

“He’s got two. You’ve seen his face. And your dead body is the evidence, the frameup on Red China.”

Something odd crossed his face then, and he said, “What was that?”

“I didn’t think he’d told you the Red China story,” I said. “Or why he picked Marcellus Ten Eyck to kidnap.”

“We’re kidnaping him for the ransom,” he said, but somehow there was something wrong with the way he said it. And he was glaring at me in a funny way I didn’t understand. “That’s enough now,” he said, and to his henchmen added, “Bring them along.” He turned away.

“Wait! Sun! He’s Tyrone Ten Eyck!”

That stopped him again. He looked back, frowned at me as though seeing me for the first time. “Ridiculous,” he said, but in a thoughtful tone of voice, as though he meant to say “interesting.”

Sun himself must have realized Leon Eyck was an assumed name, but he hadn’t cared. It was enough that Eyck and Eustaly were setting up an organization to do more efficiently and on a grander scale the things Sun wanted to do anyway. (That he’d been willing to overlook the presence in the group of the Stalinist, Meyerberg, was proof enough of his single-mindedness.)

But now, with so much having happened, with a dead girl and an arch-conspirator (that’s me, I mean) suddenly an enemy of some sort (though he couldn’t have any clear understanding why he was looking for me), Sun’s single-mindedness was beginning to crack.

Did he even know who Angela was? There was a chance he didn’t, so I said, “Do you recognize the girl?”

It broke into his thoughts. He said, irritably, “What?” Then glanced at her and away again. “No.”

“Look again,” I said. “You saw her with me once before.”

“I did?” This time he looked more closely, and I saw it hit him. “The meeting!”

“She’s Angela Ten Eyck.”

He stared at both of us. “You killed her,” he said.

“Ask her,” I said. “Ask her who Leon Eyck is.”

Angela volunteered without being asked. “He’s my brother,” she said. “My brother Tyrone.”

Sun started to shake his head, like a man bedeviled by a million little flies.

I said, “He identified her at the meeting.”

“He had seen her before,” Sun said, obviously repeating what Ten Eyck had told him, “knew she was a CIA agent.”

“Are you kidding? She’s Marcellus Ten Eyck’s daughter!”

“That only makes it worse,” he said, but without complete conviction.

“Why did he want Marcellus Ten Eyck doped before he went in,” I asked, and answered my own question: “Because the old man would have taken one look at him and shouted Tyrone!”

“He’s my brother,” said Angela.

“With me dead,” I said, “and with Armstrong and Labotski already set to kill themselves, you’re the last one alive from that meeting. You and your boys are the only ones who’ve seen Leon Eyck’s face. So he’s got two reasons to kill you. To protect himself, and to set up the frame on—”

“That’s enough of that!”

“I just—”

“Shut up!”

Sun looked around, like a man with too many decisions to make all at once. And then I got it.

Every time I tried to talk about Red China he shut me up, but anything else I wanted to talk about he was willing to hear. But the head of the Eurasian Relief Corps ought to be interested most of all in an accusation about somebody trying to frame Red China.

As though we didn’t have confusion enough, Sun was a double agent!

He had to be, it was the only way that made sense. The ransom story might keep the rank and file satisfied, but Sun knew too much about the financing and timing of everything else. He had to know why we were here, or at least that particular reason.

To check out my theory I said, quietly, “How many ways do you cut, Sun,”

“What was that?”

“I won’t spoil the pitch,” I said. “Just remember, Tyrone Ten Eyck thought his sister was dead. All he has to do is frame you for killing the old man, and Tyrone inherits free and clear. But only if there’s nobody around to prove he’s been in the States the last few days.”

He said, “I must talk to him about this.” Then he frowned at me and said, “I’m not sure I understood you before.”

“You understood me,” I said. “And I understand you.” He smiled thinly, saying, “I wonder if you do.” To his troops he said, “We’ll put these two somewhere safe, then we’ll go talk to Mister... Eyck.”

“All together,” I suggested.

“All together,” he agreed.

29

They locked us in a small, barren, windowless room on the second floor, and went away to discuss the situation with Tyrone Ten Eyck.

This was some room. Two fluorescent light fixtures set into the ceiling gave even soft light, which illuminated practically nothing. The walls were covered in a smooth expensive fabric of dark opulent green, the ceiling was a muted cream color, and the floor was a high-gloss dark parquet. But there was no furniture, no closet, no window, no apparent reason for the room to exist at all.

Therefore, I asked Angela about it. I said, “What is this place?”

“Daddy used to have a stamp collection,” she said. “Very valuable stamp collection. He kept it in display cases in here.”

“Then he gave it up?”

“No. One time when Tyrone was little, he took all the stamps and stamp books and burned them up in one of the fireplaces.”

“That’s my Tyrone,” I said. “What happened to the display cases?”

“They’re downstairs,” she said. “He keeps his peace awards in there now.”

“Oh.” (Due to some natural irony implicit in our world, munitions manufacturers seem to receive more peace awards than practically anybody except professional boxers. But maybe I’m just bitter because pacifists never get them at all.)

Angela said, “What are we going to do now, Gene?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “No matter which side wins out there, we’re still in trouble. Sun can’t let us leave here alive any more than your brother can.”

“Won’t Sun win?” she asked. “He’s got so many men with him.”

“About a dozen. And on the other side it’s just Tyrone and Lobo.” I shrugged and said, “Sounds like even money to me.”

She said, “What were you and Sun talking about there, about cutting and pitching and all?”

“He’s a double agent,” I said. I explained to her what had made me think so, and added, “He and Tyrone must have set up the frame together, except Sun thought he’d be a survivor.”

“Well, who’s he really working for?”

“I don’t know. Himself, I suppose. It’s tough to think of Chiang Kai-shek having followers, but maybe Sun’s hipped on Nationalist China. Whether he’s doing it on his own or for somebody else, the point is he’s made the Eurasian Relief Corps operate in a way to make Red China look even worse than she does here anyway. That’s why Red China disavowed them, I suppose.”

Somewhere along the line she must have stopped listening to me, because as soon as I finished talking she said, “Gene, what’s going to happen to Daddy? And Murray?”

“The same as what’s going to happen to us.”

“I mean now. What’s happening to them now.”

“Nothing. Everybody’ll be too busy to worry about sleepers.”

I went over and tried the door, and discovered that Marcellus Ten Eyck had paid top dollar when this room was built. The door was solid oak. The lock was a Yale, impossible for me either to pick or get at. Since the door opened outward, I couldn’t get at the hinges either. I rattled the knob, the way you do when you’re stuck for something sensible to do, and Sun’s boys had gone and locked it. The cheats.

If only we could get through that door, it seemed to me we’d have a pretty good chance. There was no guard outside here, because Sun was bringing all his forces with him when he braced Tyrone Ten Eyck.

A bracing that apparently had just come to order, for I heard very faintly the sound of gunfire from elsewhere in the house.

In a way, Angela and I at the moment were in very nearly the safest place there was. (Unlike her father and Murray, who were lying unconscious and exposed in the middle of the equivalent of no man’s land, a fact I had thought it best to keep from Angela.) We were locked away, but outside this door there was a battleground. On one side, Sun and his dozen sunlets. On the other side, Tyrone Ten Eyck and Lobo. Skirmishing, attacking, retreating. Sun using the advantage of greater numbers, Tyrone Ten Eyck using the advantage of a natural cunning vicious enough to make a fox blanch. The middle of that brushfire war was no place for a pair of dewy young pacifists.

Still, to wait here was to wait, merely, for our turn to be bloodied.

Behind me, Angela said, “Gene?”

I turned away from the door. “What?”

“I’m sorry about the watch,” she said.

“Let’s not talk about it,” I said.

“I thought it was fixed all right,” she said.

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

“I have to take my pills,” she said.

“Pills shmills,” I riposted.

“Don’t say that, Gene,” she said. “You don’t want me to get fat and pimply and pregnant, do you?”

Cruelly, I said, “Why not? Then I’d have an excuse to go to Majorca.”

“Oh, Gene,” she said.

As I knew she intended now to cry — one thing Angela always had was perfect timing — I turned back to the door and rattled the knob again, just for something masculine to do. It was still locked.

Behind me, Angela sniffled. Somewhere the other side of this door, a tommy gun rattled, a pistol replied, a male scream was abruptly cut off.

Angela’s sniffling and the war sounds died down at approximately the same time, a few minutes later. Standing at the door, I listened to two kinds of silence, neither of which I liked very much, and I wondered what would happen next. When nothing at all did for half a minute, I turned and looked at Angela, and she was now — as I’d known she would be — coldly furious.

“Don’t speak to me,” she said.

“Right,” I said. Rich bitch, I thought irrelevantly, a thought which suddenly catapulted that Diner’s Club card into the forefront of my mind. “Hot damn!” I shouted, and snapped my fingers.

Angela, not knowing the subject had been changed, blinked at me in some confusion. “What?” she said. “What?”

I dragged out my wallet, removed the Diner’s Club card from it, tucked the wallet back in my pocket, and said, “Watch this, that’s all. Just watch this.”

Since I no longer had my magic shoes, of course I didn’t have the special shoelace fuse either, but maybe a regular shoelace would work instead. I slipped one out, tied it around the card, left the end trailing, and set it down on the floor by the door, where it looked like a polliwog.

There was no cover in this room, so I could only hope the explosion wouldn’t be overly enthusiastic. “Get into the corner,” I told Angela, “and stay there.”

Angela said, “What are you doing with that card, Gene? Are you crazy? Do you feel all right, Gene?”

“Oh, shut up and get in the corner,” I said, “you mechanical masked marvel.”

She went in the corner and pouted.

I lit the end of the shoelace and it went out. I lit it again and it went out again. Every time I lit it I half-turned to dash away, and then it would go out, and I’d come back and light it again.

I did that half a dozen times, and finally gave up on the idiotic thing. With teeth, fingernails, and brute determination, I ripped off a length of my shirt tail, twisted it into a kind of long thick rope, tied that around the Diner’s Club card — you could barely see the card in there — and lit the end of it.

The shirt burned like mad. Flames came poof, and went scampering across the material toward the card.

This time, of course, I hadn’t started to dash away until I should see how the shirt was burning. When I saw, I said, “Whoops!” and ran like hell for Angela’s corner.

I got there, pushed her down, cowered in front of her — the protective male, who would much rather have put her in front of him — and behind me something went THOPPP.

I was pushed, it seemed, midway through Angela, who must have been pushed midway through the wall. When the last echoes of the explosion died down, I pushed myself away from the wall and Angela and said, “Well.”

Angela stared at me as though she was afraid we were both crazy. “What was that?” she whispered.

“My credit card,” I said. “That shows how bad my credit is.”

(And my jokes.)

I turned around and looked at the door, and it wasn’t there any more. The frame was twisted and sprung, and the door was entirely gone. I went over — I felt very stiff all of a sudden — and the door was lying on the floor in the next room, a kind of study or den or library, lined with bookcases, furnished in mahogany and leather.

“There,” I said. “So much for that.” I turned to Angela, who hadn’t left the corner. “Come on,” I said. “We better hurry.”

She finally did move, blinking and dazed and unbelieving. She came out, looked at the dead door, looked at me, reached out bemusedly and took my hand, and we started for the door across the way.

We got halfway there when it was pushed open and Tyrone Ten Eyck came in, in his hand the Luger I’d seen once before. “Well, well,” he said. “There you are. I was afraid I’d lost you.”

Angela said, “Tyrone, you’re bad!”

“The same sweet simpleton,” Tyrone said pleasantly.

I said, “Where’s Sun?”

“Dead,” he said. “As are his followers. As will you be. As will everyone be, sooner or later.”

“You don’t destroy for money,” I said. “That’s just the excuse. You destroy for its own sake.”

“You mean I’m a nihilist?” His smile glistened like bayonets. “Well,” he said, “it’s better than having no philosophy at all. Wouldn’t you say?”

I said, for no reason other than to try and spread confusion, “Lobo’s been working with me. He’ll be here in a minute to put the cuffs on you.”

“I doubt it,” he said. “Lobo’s dead. Sun killed him.”

Angela cried, “Daddy!”

“His death,” Tyrone Ten Eyck told her savagely, his control beginning once again to slip, “will be the second most enjoyable moment of my life. Your death, sweet sister, will be the first.” He extended his right arm at shoulder-height, the Luger in his fist pointing directly at Angela’s face.

And, once again, I ran.

30

In a way, this book is a kind of confession. I am describing the events leading up to the moment when I violated all my principles, negated all my beliefs, disobeyed every doctrine I’d ever defined in my pamphlets, and generally speaking made a lie of my entire life.

I would like to be able to say that this second time I ran (the first being when I’d inadvertently dragged Angela away from Ten Eyck and the rest) was as blind and unpremeditated and unknowing as the first, but it was not. I knew exactly what I was doing every step of the way.

I ran toward Tyrone Ten Eyck, and I knew I was doing it, and in my heart of hearts I approved my intentions. I ran to him, and I took the Luger out of his amazed fingers, and I threw it away. Then, knowingly and deliberately, I laid violent hands upon him.

(Please excuse me if I don’t describe what I did. I remember it all — only too vividly — but I’d rather not say any of it.)

A long time later, as I was kneeling astraddle Tyrone Ten Eyck, Angela began to pluck at my shoulder and cry, “Stop it, Gene! Stop it!”

Reluctantly (I’m ashamed to say), I stopped it. I looked at what I’d done, and in that moment I felt nothing, only emptiness, as though a cargo I had carried patiently for a long long time had finally been delivered.

I got up and went out of the room, out to the hall. The air reeked of gunpowder. I stood there and devoted myself to formulating the question I may spend the rest of my life answering:

If I’ve been right all my life about who I was, how came I to be where I was?

A minute or so later Angela came out and said, in a hushed voice, “He’s breathing.”

“That’s good,” I said, but only because it was the response I knew was expected of me.

“That was a terrible thing for a pacifist to do, Gene,” she said solemnly.

I said, “Uh huh.” I licked my skinned knuckles.

“We better call the police,” she said.

“Phone lines were cut.”

“Then we better go get them.”

“Right.”

We tied Tyrone up, then went downstairs and almost as far as the front door when I stopped and said, “Hold on a minute, I just remembered something.”

“What?”

“I’m wanted for murder,” I said.

“For murdering me, Gene. It’ll be all right, I’ll be right there with you.”

I could hear the explanation as Angela would do it, and it wound up with me in the electric chair before they got it all straightened out. “I don’t see any police,” I said, “without my lawyer.” I turned and headed toward where I’d last seen Murray.

31

They were both still asleep, Murray smiling and Papa Ten Eyck snoring. Angela rushed to her father and there was a joyful reunion; perhaps a bit livelier on one side than the other. I let it go until she began to pat the old walrus on the cheek and tell him to wake up, and then I said, “Not him. He can sleep till Christmas for all of me. It’s Murray I want. My mouthpiece, my solicitor, my shyster.”

“Shylock,” she said.

“Nonono, that’s a moneylender. Lawyers never lend money, it’s part of their Hippocratic Oath.”

“Are you sure, Gene?”

“Take Murray’s ankles,” I said.

We carried Murray to the kitchen, thumping him into lots of door jambs on the way, and propped him into a more or less sitting position at the kitchen table, and spent a while trying to wake him up. Splashing water in his face, pulling his hair, dribbling coffee into his mouth (and down his chin), slapping his cheeks. He snorted every once in a while, but that was all.

Next we carried him to a bathroom and stripped his outer clothing off, leaving him in his shorts and undershirt. (A clean, neat suit is the lawyer’s basic tool, the way chalk is to a teacher or an airplane to a pilot. Lawyers can’t do a thing unless they’re dressed right, and I figured I’d want Murray to do lots of things for me before this night was over, so I was a lot more careful with his suit than I was with him.) Next we dumped him into the shower stall, turned on the cold water, and five minutes later he was pretty nearly awake. He could even hold a coffee cup, and blink his eyes, and say, “Whuzza? Whuzza?”

Angela by now had gone back to see what she could do with her father. I walked Murray slowly and gingerly back to the kitchen, sat him down at the table again, sat across from him, and kept telling him to drink his coffee. Every time I told him, he raised the cup and took a slurp; he kept reminding me of Lobo.

All at once the dull film over his eyes was replaced by a bright glaze and he said to me, “Gene.”

“Right,” I said.

He put the cup down. He pressed his palms together, as though helping something inside himself snap back into place, and then he turned abruptly brisk and insane. “Well,” he said. “Good to see you. I’m glad you came to me.”

“Murray—”

“You don’t have to tell me you didn’t kill her, Gene. I’m sure you didn’t. But the point is—”

“Murray,” I said.

“Don’t interrupt,” he said. “The point is, they’ll be holding you for first degree murder, which means no bail can be set, even if you do give yourself up, so the prospect—”

“Murray,” I said.

“Let me finish. I believe the claim is you killed her in New York and transported the body to New Jersey, so the trial would be held—”

“Murray,” I said. “If you don’t shut up I’ll put you back to sleep and hire your father.”

He said, “For a man charged with murdering a socially prominent young lady, you—”

“Look around you, Murray.”

“What?”

“Look around,” I told him. “Where are you?”

He looked around. The glaze began to crackle. “Well,” he said. “It seems— I don’t— Of course, if you— On the other hand—”

Angela came in, then, and said, “I can’t get him to wake up, Gene.”

“You’re lucky. This one did and look at him.”

Murray stared open-mouthed at Angela. “You’re alive,” he whispered. “My God, you’re alive!”

“Murray, will you either wake up or go back to sleep? You’re driving me crazy. Of course she’s alive. You’re in her house, you idiot, you already knew she was alive.”

The glaze crackled even more, and then fell off his eyes entirely, leaving them bloodshot and somewhat confused. He looked at me and said, “Gene? What happened? A lot of Chinamen came in, and—”

“That about sums it up,” I told him.

For the next half hour we drank coffee and filled one another in on recent events, while waiting for Murray to feel well enough to perform. When he pronounced himself ready, Angela drove down into town and got the police and brought them back to the house.

So the first thing they did upon arrival was arrest me for the murder of Angela Ten Eyck.

Then, when Angela tried to help me by pointing out that she was Angela Ten Eyck, they arrested her, too, as accessory after the fact.

I guess a lawyer needs more than just a suit. Maybe a briefcase is necessary, too; Murray didn’t have his with him. And Murray was arrest number three, also accessory, for claiming the other accessory was who she said she was.

Then the police wanted to know who all these other bodies were, and it was kind of tough to explain it all in a rush. We were all milling around in the front hall, near the big staircase, when a sudden bellow from above froze us in our confusion. We looked up, and there was Tyrone Ten Eyck, looming and leaning and tottering at the head of the stairs. He’d managed to untie himself, and from somewhere he’d found a new weapon, a huge rusty old sword, which he waved above his head now as he came charging down the stairs at us.

What was it I’d been told at the training site by Rowe, my fencing instructor? “If they come at you with swords you’ll die, that’s all.”

Uh.

The assassin came down like the wolf on the fold... and kept on going. Wild-eyed, roaring, swinging that sword around his head, he charged down onto us and right on through us without so much as slowing down — I don’t believe he even knew we were there — and swooped on out the front door, leaving half a dozen cops and their three prisoners blinking and open-mouthed in his wake.

Abruptly, from outside, we heard a spatter of shooting. Bang bang. Bangity. And then silence.

Angela said, as though someone had been trying to pull her leg, “You can’t shoot a sword.”

We all looked at her, until the front door opened and in came one of the cops who’d stayed outside. He carried a pistol in his right hand and he looked as startled and bewildered as the rest of us. “Well,” he said, as though he’d been talking already for a few sentences, “this big fella came at me all of a sudden with a sword. Well, I didn’t have time to tell him to stop or anything. Well, I had to shoot him. Well, he kept running so I had to keep shooting. Well, he’s laying out there and I guess he must be dead.”

The cop in charge said, “You did what you had to do, Rooney.”

“Well,” said Rooney, with the reasonableness of lunacy, “he come too fast for me to point out to him that I was armed.”

“It’s all right, Rooney,” his leader assured him. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Well,” said Rooney, “he was on me before I knowed it, so I had to shoot him.”

The cop in charge said to one of the other cops, “Take Rooney out to the car.” Then he looked around and said, “We’ll all go out to the car. We’ll straighten this mess out in the morning.”

Angela then demanded something be done about her father, who was still out and didn’t know how lucky he was, and the cop assured her he’d have an ambulance take the old man to the hospital right away. As for the rest of us, it was town for us, and the county jail.

When we got there, I discovered my rights had gone off duty for the night. “Even Benedict Arnold,” I told the phlegmatic desk sergeant, “would get a phone call, one phone call.”

“In the morning,” he said stolidly.

“Wait till the Supreme Court hears about this,” I muttered.

“Who do you want to wake at this time of night?” he asked me.

“The FBI,” I said.

He was unmoved. “Seems to me you’ve got police enough already,” he said.

“I need the FBI,” I told him, “to complete my collection.”

Then they put us all in separate cells, and Murray — the rat — went back to sleep.

32

The rest is fade-out. Federal agents (six of them: U, V, W, X, Y and Z) showed up Sunday morning, explained things to the local cops, and took me aside for a question period that lasted till late Sunday afternoon. When I finally emerged, Murray and Angela were waiting to take me back to the city in a nice new red Ford he’d rented for the occasion. (True New Yorkers like Murray never own automobiles, no matter how rich and decadent they become.)

Later, mostly through newspaper accounts, I learned some more odds and ends. Such as that Tyrone Ten Eyck’s Cadillac had been searched, and in the trunk there was a hundred seventy-five thousand dollars in cash; what was left of the bank robbery loot. Also, that Jack Armstrong and Louis Labotski were picked up Sunday afternoon, and that the truck-bomb was found and rendered harmless.

(In the newspapers, by the way, a fellow named J. Eugene Raxford emerged as a shadowy, baffling, ambivalent, and mysterious figure. No one seemed to know exactly who or what I was, except that I appeared to be some sort of brilliant secret agent, leading a double or perhaps a triple life, the sort of shadow figure one thinks of in terms of Foreign Intrigue, trench coats, silencers, the back alleys of Budapest. One newspaper, in fact, wanted me to write a series on my adventures as a counterspy, and a paperback publisher offered me an astounding amount of money if I would agree to write a series of novels — based on my true-life experiences, of course — about a master spy and double agent. I offered them some of my pamphlets instead — What is the CIU? Pacifism’s Army, The Gandhi Way to World Revolution — but they weren’t interested.)

P showed up at my apartment Monday afternoon. (You remember P. The one who recruited me to be a spy in the first place.) He had with him two new ones who I guess I’ll have to call A Prime and B Prime. P identified them as representatives of the FBI. All three of them spent a while congratulating me for the good work I’d done, and regretting the fact that we would probably never know the identities of either Tyrone’s employers or his intended victims, and then A Prime assured me the FBI would leave me totally alone in the future, not tap my phone or read my mail or bug my apartment or empty my wastebasket or any of that stuff, because by George, I had proved myself to be a loyal citizen and a true.

“I guess,” A Prime said, “from what you’ve been up to lately, all this old nonsense of yours is out of your system now.”

“I guess so,” I said. It was an out-and-out lie, but there was no point starting an argument. I knew the FBI would be back on the job with me by the end of the week. (And so they were, shaking their heads and assuring one another I was an incorrigible nut.)

The fact of the matter is, my activities before all this mess were pale and half-hearted attempts by comparison with my pacifist work thereafter. Since that night with Tyrone Ten Eyck outside Tarrytown, I’ve had something to live down, to pay penance for, to equalize.

It’s only the fool who, because he’s fallen once from grace, believes he should never have tried to be in the state of grace to begin with. I fell, when sorely tempted by Tyrone Ten Eyck, but I stand again, and I hope eventually to have made up for that slip.

And Angela helps me. We discuss it from time to time, as she fixes the mimeograph machine or we drive together in her convertible to peace rallies, and she has admitted to me that when I attacked her brother she was glad, she stood there delighted, urging me on with shouts of encouragement that in the excitement of the moment I never even heard. So we are both struggling back.

Man’s nature is violent, because man is partly animal. But we’ve come into an era in which that violence must be quelled, and if it must be it can be.

Ah, well. Tuesday morning at eleven o’clock the UN Building did not blow up; the truck-bomb was not there. But I was, and so was Angela. The two of us marched back and forth in front of the main entrance, carrying our signs, until the cops came along, took the signs away from us, hustled us into the back of a prowl car, and took us to the precinct for booking on a charge of picketing without a permit.

Our signs? You know what they said.

They said:

BAN THE BOMB

Content

Donald E. Westlake
The Spy in the Ointment

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