Or the World Will Die

VI

My train was late getting into Washington. I took a cab out to one of the tourist homes that line the streets near Walter Reed Hospital. I finally aroused an indignant woman who was willing to rent me a room.

I got up in the morning and took a streetcar downtown, went to a newspaper office and paid to have a personal put in the evening paper, reading, “Karl — At zero for Daisy in front of our place with Kelly tonight — Red.”

I was taking a chance on it, but knowing Karl’s habits, not a large chance. Karl Zetwicz and I had agreed that if I ever wanted to get hold of him quietly, I could do it through the personal column of a specific Washington paper. The agreement was three years old, but, knowing Karl, I was confident that if he was in town, he would see it.

Seeing it, he would be able to interpret it. Operation Daisy was the code for our jump mission into Poland in 1944. We jumped at ten o’clock. I knew that he’d never forget the time. “Our place,” was the restaurant we found together in 1942 when we both had to spend a month in Washington. Kelly was the code name for Alice Christoph on the mission to Norway that site went on alone. Karl helped plan the mission. Red was my code name on the Poland mission.

From the newspaper office I walked until I found a place that rented cars. I was unable to produce a license, bur, for the consideration of double the usual deposit, plus a five dollar bribe, plus driving once around the block with the attendant, he let me have the car, a sedate elderly black Plymouth with a new motor. I had no desire to hang around the streets of Washington, due to the chance of running into who would know me. I dropped the Korby cards down a sewer drain and had more printed, which said:

Smithson was the name under which I had rented the car.

I drove back out to my room and, except for an early dinner at a nearby cafeteria, didn’t stir out of it until nearly nine thirty.

A rain so light as to be almost a mist was falling. The street lights made confusing patterns on the wet asphalt and the windshield wipers clicked monotonously. The restaurant is called the New Orleans Inn, and prides itself on a shrimp sauce which is supposed to compare favorably with Arnaud’s. Fake French Quarter grill work has been added to the front of the restaurant building, and there is a canopy in faded green and white striped canvas which extends out to the curb. A Negro in resplendent uniform stood under the canvas out of the reach of the light rain.

I drove by and parked a block and a half away, walked back through the rain. Except for a couple who held each other tightly, arms around waists, the sidewalk was empty. I walked under the canopy, past the restaurant. At the next corner Karl was waiting.

He stepped out and said, “Nica girl, sahr? My seestair.”

The nearby streetlight shone across his good, square honest face. Karl Zetwicz is one of those remarkable men who are completely dependable, thoroughly generous and selfless, and yet, somehow, escape being dull. He has the square features and pale, colorless hair of a Pole. His cheeks are deeply pitted with the acne scars of his adolescence. He is one of the most powerful men I know.

“Where’s our girl?”

“On the next corner, Tony. You look as fatuous as usual. Alice is sore as hell. She had a date with one of those gents with the red sash across the middle.”

I told him to join Alice and I would drive by and pick them up. She climbed in first and sat between us, bringing into the car the fresh scent of her perfume, clasping the back of my hand tightly and saying, “Hello, Tony.”

She is, in all ways, a remarkable woman. Born in the U.S., educated in France and Switzerland. She was caught with her mother in Norway when the Reich took over. Her stepfather, a citizen of Norway, was executed in a reprisal. Her mother died. I got Alice out of Norway and made the decision to send her back for information she needed. She got it. She killed a very minor Quisling in the process. We got her out.

She is almost my height, tall for a woman, with coarse black hair that is a blue shade in the right light. Her grey eyes are set wide and her mouth is rich. She can make a cheap dress look like an original model. She always seems to be playing some sort of a part. You can never get close to her. Always she seems to be laughing at you. Once upon a time I thought my life depended on keeping her by my side. She told me that domesticity would bore her, and very probably bore me. She was very blunt on that occasion. I licked my wounds and didn’t leave myself open to receive any more.

I headed for Chevy Chase. We lit cigarettes from the dash lighter. I said, “She’s lost her accent, Karl.”

“Almost gone now,” he agreed. “She’s been practising with Washington’s available young men.”

“How has the arboreal life been, Tony?” she asked.

“Wonderful! I’m giving an imitation of the landed gentry, complete with manservant and fine liquors.”

“And how is James taking it?” Karl asked.

“Sneeringly, as usual. I left him with a garden project.”

“We got the word on Quinn,” Karl said. “Did he get to see you first?”

“Yes, and I gave him a big no. Let’s save it for a minute until I can find a quiet street where we can stop and talk.”

I drove among the innumerable brick houses of Chevy Chase and stopped on a dead end street half way between two widely separated lamp posts. I cut the motor. Karl got out and climbed into the back seat. Alice backed over against the door and I turned with my left arm on top of the wheel. We were once again the same tight little triangle that we had been during the strange latter years of the war.

They listened carefully while I told them exactly what had happened. Alice shuddered when I gave the description of Holmes Quinn. I finished by saying, “Now, I’m in this thing because... well, hell, it’s important. I can play it either way — on my own, or officially, providing the offer Quinn made is still open. I want your advice on that and I also want to know what you know so that I can begin to fill in the blanks.”

Alice said, “It had better be on your own, Tony.”

“Yeah,” Karl said, “you wouldn’t like the way things are. There are five of us who are supposed to be working with Security Control on this thing. They call us operatives. Capital O. Alice and I are the only ones with any experience. The other three have made big careers out of tiptoeing from desk to desk in Washington. The whole setup is sickening. Can’t do this. Can’t do that. Timidity and bureaucracy. Right now Alice and I are working on a big fat report. Security recommendations for the Washington office. Great stuff.

“And I don’t think that offer is open any longer. Holmes Quinn wasn’t too bad, but he was afraid to do anything out of line. Going to get you was the smartest thing he ever did on the job. You saw where it got him.”

“Who went up there to investigate it?”

Alice said tightly, “No one. No one at all. They took the word of the superb local police force. Karl suggested to our new boss that he be sent up to look things over. No deal. The new boss is Fenton Hope, a fervent friend of Civil Service. That’s the stuff which says that the ‘degree of supervision’ determines the rate of pay you got. In other words, the more people you have working for you, the higher your pay. Fenton, the dear, is so busy pushing through a requisition for ten more people in the office that he has no time to fiddle with a silly little affair like finding out who has manager to block the Lessault Device. The current approved defense against the new era of atomic warfare is to place the forefingers firmly in the ears and shut the eyes.”

“Have you tried to make Mr. Hope see the light?”

“I did,” Karl said gently. “I talked for three hours, going over and over the known facts and pointed out how dangerous it was for us to fiddle around with security reports when every man should be put on the job of tracking down Lessault’s daughter, the man who shot Brinker, the truck that smashed Hurz, the body of Wing and the man who killed Quinn. He fiddled with the papers on his desk and told me that melodrama was probably an occupational disease in my line of work. He spoke of an unfortunate but unrelated series of accidents. He told me that he was a ‘new broom’. He told me there was no place for an alarmist in the new organization and that he hoped I’d settle down and live up to the promise of my past performance. During the war Mr. Hope handled the Far East Desk for the outfit that had eighty people working on the proper pronunciation of place names figuring in the news. You ought to hear him say Myitkyina. It’s superb!”

“Is he actually that stupid?” I exclaimed.

“He’s the natural product of his environment. He makes me glad that I never married and had kids that he could arrange to have blown up while he was whittling out new organization charts.”

“Let’s get to what you know about the case,” I said.

Alice giggled and Karl gave an embarrassed cough. “Tony,” he said, “I know more right now than I’ve known so far. I haven’t stirred out of Washington in eight months and it’s been even longer since Alice got out of town.”

“You have absolutely nothing to add!”

“Even less than that,” Alice said.

“And you recommend that I work on my own?”

“Either that or go back to your bucolic pleasures,” she said.

I lit another cigarette and looked at the rain spotting the windshield.

“I read your books,” Alice said. “They stink.”

“Thanks.”

“How about showing me how to write one. I need the money,” Karl said.

“It would take too long to teach you. A couple of hours. Leave us skip the literary criticism for a minute. How much leave have you two got coming?”

Alice counted on her fingers. “Thirty days on the nose plus another thirty sick leave. No. Only twenty-four sick leave. Fifty-four all together if I can get a doctor to lie for me.”

Karl said, “Twenty-two annual leave and thirty sick leave. Fifty-two all together if I can locate the same doctor.”

“And you agree with me how important this all is?”

They didn’t answer. That in itself was the strongest answer they could make.

“How much do I have to pay you guys to take all your leave and work for me?”

“Expenses,” Karl said quickly.

“Same here,” Alice snapped.

“A deal. How soon can we start?”

“Day after tomorrow,” they said, almost in unison.

“I love you both dearly,” I said. “Where is the great Lessault?”

Karl said, “He’s still living at the Project area, even though he isn’t working. That’s on a place called Queen Ranch in the Hill Country of Texas, about ten miles northwest of a place called Junction. The workshops are all camouflaged so that they can’t be seen from the air. Some of the labs are underground. All well guarded with a new type fence. The first fence is electrified. Keeps the cattle out. The second fence is sensitive enough to pick up the radiations of body heat from a person six feet from it. They grabbed the daughter when she drove to a town of five thousand named Kerrville to shop.”

“Where was Wing living when he disappeared?”

“New Orleans. Stopping at the Beaumont Hotel.”

“Have you both got cars?”

“Yes,” Alice said.

“Which is the best one?”

“Hers,” Karl said, “a Buick coupe.”

I said, “The focal point would seem to be Lessault. He’s the only one well enough to do the work whose whereabouts we know. The other situations are static. We’ll plan to meet there and pick up what we can on our way. See what you think of this. Karl, you run on up to Chicago, taking all the precautions, and see what you can dig up about the murder of Brinker. Be careful. Then head on down to Kerrville. Establish yourself somewhere near Kerrville and write to me at the Kerrville Post Office, Lewis Smithson, General Delivery. Alice and I will drive down to Kerrville by way of New Orleans and pick up what we can about Wing while we’re there. We’ll find a place and get hold of you through the letter you’ll leave for me there. Then, together, we’ll tackle Lessault after we’ve compared notes and made our guesses.”

“My mother told me never to take a long trip with a man,” Alice said.

“I don’t qualify,” I said. “I’m not a man. I write books.”

“Then it ought to be all right,” she said.

Karl said, “Do you feel the same way about this thing that I do? I feel like all the people we see are walking in their sleep and we’re the only ones awake. It scares me. In the war we had backing. Now we’re on our own, and something tells me this is a little more important than anything we did in the war.”

“If I was a praying woman...” Alice said.

“If we miss, if it isn’t too late already,” I said, “you will very probably become a praying woman. Or a very dead one.”