by Max Grant
“No surprise those mugs can’t stay unified, given their lovely personality traits. I guess in Russia they just thin the herd until everyone’s of the same mind. Say, where’re you getting’ this stuff from anyway?”
“Always from Lupe. She’s learned a lot about this stuff, as I’ve told you, and she’s been sharing more with me since I relayed to her how we stopped the attempted recruitment of Miss Lane.
“To hear her tell it, the Russian Bolsheviks have been thinning their ranks since Day One. Still are, no doubt. I guess here we just have to put up with an incredible amount of stupid noise ‘cause the silly buggers can’t get away with killing each other on our soil.”
“Yet,” I intoned.
A new little light glinted in her eye. “You got a plan, boss?”
“Sounds like these geniuses don’t operate too well without a strong-arm leader. So…”
“A little frame is in order?”
“That should do it. Get one to knock off the other. Set ‘em both up. Get ‘em in trouble with the mob. Whatever. That’ll set the clowns back to what they do best, navel gazing and squabbling’ amongst themselves. What do ya think?”
“Good luck. Hey, it sounds like something Manny would go in for, though.”
“You’re suggesting I need a consultant? You’re right. Manny’s an idea man if ever there was one. Say, did Lupe ever have anything specific to tell you about what kind of dreg hitches up with these outfits?”
“Oh, the usual borderline types: the angry, stupid, pathetic, incompetent; petty criminals; the mentally ill; mama’s boys. You name it. They take all types. My understanding is the leadership prefers these kinds ‘cause they are easily manipulated, intimidated, slapped around, kept in line. Unions are their happy hunting grounds. Lunkheads and gorillas. People with experience shafting their family and friends. Universities too. Lots of phonies, frauds and deadbeats to be found there.”
“Wait a minute. Some of my best buddies are in the union. They knew which side they were on in the war.”
“I’m sure most of them still do. A lot of them are patriots and give these socialist loudmouths and criminal types a wide berth. Really, it’s the leadership for the most part. Many of them flat out are Soviet moles. The rank and file, whether they’re in or out, have little idea exactly what’s going on.
“I’m sure there is a fairly large loser contingent as well. Little punks that could never stand on their own two feet.”
“Sounds like what got tossed back from the Recruiting Center.”
“Rejects about sums it up I guess. Guys that were mistreated by their mama. Or maybe guys that slept with their mama.”
“Jesus, Yuki!”
“Hey boss! It happens.”
I suppose she had a point there. It wasn’t something I’d ever dwelled on before though. “What about the women?”
“From what Lupe says, they’re a little less obvious. Bitter, probably. Been banged around once too often by somebody somewhere. Vicious too, no doubt. I’ve seen plenty of that. Probably just an assortment of deep and fundamental character flaws. They’d be harder to spot in a crowd.”
“Well, it sounds like most of them are sufficiently lacking in ambition to appear in any of the mug books downtown. Bet the government has a good take on the leadership, though. Manny might have a line into something like that. Maybe I should also talk to this Lupe.”
“I don’t think so, boss. She’s got a bad thing going about men. Maybe her wires are crossed or something. Just let me handle it.”
“All right, but you be careful of her then.”
“Naw, it’s nothing like that. She’s really a nice kid. But she’s as serious as a crypt. She’s got some story to tell that I haven’t heard yet, a pretty nasty one no doubt. I suspect there’re more reasons than her father’s demise that she’s this interested in those creeps. I’ll get it out of her maybe, sometime, but I’m not going to push, at least as long as she’s giving us the help.”
“Up for dinner? Let’s see what Manny’s doing.”
We rang over and Manny asked us join the family for dinner, so we motored on down to San Pedro in the evening rush. Veda put out a lovely spread of chicken and cheese enchiladas, with all the trimmings, and we lingered a long time over the food.
This was Yuki and Veda’s first time meeting so they retired to the kitchen to talk over girl things. Veda had evidently taken a liking to the youngster and I hoped that the two would find a lot to gain from each other’s company.
Manny and I lounged back in the family room and spent the evening discussing tactics and methods, operational security, and contingency plans. By the time we all called it a night, it was evident that Manny and I were on the same page and back in action again.
* * *
In the office the next morning Yuki continued relaying her thoughts from the week’s research. “Their ultimate goal, of course, is to overthrow the government and establish a strong-arm dictatorship,” she summarized.
“Not much chance of that happening here in the land of plenty, especially not after we just fought a war to keep most of the civilized world free from overbearing despots.”
“You’re forgetting that the Soviets easily grabbed half of Europe, had it handed to them more or less, and all of China and half its neighbors are in play right now.”
“So how is this little gang of home-grown misfits going to overthrow this great land?”
“Lupe seems to know how they operate and she has given it a lot of thought. She’s spent a lot of time speculating on the outcome. I guess she has been so close to it all her life that it frightens her.
“Anyway, she said that they recognize their limitations with recruitment, but follow a divide-and-conquer strategy. They want to destroy our unity by dividing the country by race, by social status, any way they can. Set women against men, young against old, Jews against Christians, whatever works. She called them ‘identity groups.’ We call it bigotry.
“The commies believe they can achieve their goals by appealing to the baser instincts of man while at the same time having them believe that they possess higher ideals. The focus on men’s inate evil is the main reason they deny God and forcibly disbanded all worship behind the Iron Curtain. Like those labor union guys, they don’t want any competition.”
“It sounds like some kind of big mind game.”
“Well it does all hinge on what Goebbels called the ‘Big Lie.’ Lupe agrees that at bottom it’s psychological, a pathology. She thinks both the leaders and the followers are angry, maladjusted whole or partial misfits projecting their self-hatred onto their country and community.
“The head shrinkers call if transference, or projection, or something like that. The sick party mistakes his hatred for certain people, or himself, for some overrated slight on the part of an enemy. I don’t know. It’s a little complicated.”
“Makes some sense,” I reflected. “Just another in a long list of character flaws, I reckon. If these people were normal we’d never hear about ‘em.”
“In any event, these kinds offer no appeal to healthy, self-adjusted people, particularly those of us who are self-reliant, so they make us the target of all the focused hate from the “victim” groups. The leadership wants to use their recruits, as well as people outside the organization, ‘fellow travelers’ if you will, what Lenin referred to as ‘useful idiots,’ to destabilize the country to the point of breakdown. Or to where it has lost the will to defend itself.”
“Think a gaggle of whining losers are gonna take us down?” I scoffed.
“No, but it could take another Civil War to put these subversives out of their misery. Scratch a leftist and you’ll find a thug or a traitor waiting to get out.”
“Well, Yuki, I’ll just have to start checking under my bed for Lupe’s demons.”
“Go ahead and laugh, big guy. You make a hell of a lot bigger target than me.”
“Maybe so, but I doubt they’re much different than any other crim
e boss out there recruiting fresh meat for his racket. They go for the dummies and crybabies, and walk around people like you and me.”
“That may be true. They’ll get some of us, but they won’t get the ones that matter. Truly they haven’t got a prayer against this country. The only sad part is they are ruining a lot of lives, and will ruin even more. The weak gravitate to them like bugs to a light. But their little cockroach army won’t be much of a threat to us free people. Besides, we’re all armed and know what to do about it.”
“What?! Are you packing these days?”
“Always have. It’s a Vest Pocket revolver, .32 S&W short, nickel plate with a pearl handle.”
I missed stifling a snort.
“I know,” she sniffed. “A poodle-shooter, but it carries real well. I don’t need Lupe to tell me there are a lot of sickos ranging around out there picking off strays. I’ve only had to pull it once so far.
“I sure missed it while I was camping. Monica kept it warm for me.”
“Well, well, well. So where do you stash that thing?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know!”
“Good on you, little girl. Keep your secrets.”
This was an interesting development I hadn’t ruminated on before. My little secretary was rodded up.
“So would you use that thing?” I asked her.
“Sure. If I had to.”
“How would you use it?”
“What do you mean?”
“How would you take down an attacker?”
“I don’t know,” she said. I never really gave that much thought. In the heart?”
“Close. The preferred method is three shots: two to the chest and one to the head. In other words, two to the center mass and one between the eyes.”
“That sounds like it would work. What’s the theory behind it?”
“Well you shoot for center mass to guarantee success in even hitting the target. The point there is to slow down the attack.
“And the point of the head shot?”
“To cancel any further bad intentions.”
“Ha! Cancel sounds like the right word.”
“If you shoot straight, that’s supposed to be the best way. And if you miss the head, just empty the gun into center mass and chances are the perp will forget whatever he had in his overtaxed mind anyway. It should have the same net effect, maybe just not as quick. And if you really hate the son of a bitch, gut shoot him and laugh as you walk away.”
I was wondering how proficient she might be with the little revolver. If she was any decent I might just have to get her a proper carry weapon for those special occasions in a girl’s life.
I carried an old hog’s leg myself, when I carried at all. It was a .357 S&W with a 6-inch barrel, bustled up in a quick-draw shoulder rig under my left arm. I kept my service .45 in the desk and another at home.
“Got a permit for that thing?”
“Nope. I didn’t expect a Jap could get one right after the war. Besides, I’m not inclined to consider government permission to arm to be any kind of reasonable request.”
“Yeah, I hear you there. I got a few rods on permit that I use for the business, but they don’t know about any of my personal stuff.”
“Oh, yeah. Like what?”
“I brought a few things back from the war. I picked a nice Nambu pistol off a Jap officer. I picked up a couple more Type 94s just lying around but since sold them. I got my Tommy over here a couple of weeks before I thought I was coming back. Made up some story about losing it. But I ended up transferring to the occupation so Manny kept it for me. Some nice .22 revolvers.
“I’ll slide some permitted iron for you to keep in your desk. It wouldn’t do to have an unlicensed pistol show up on anything related to this agency. But by all means feel free to carry one for your own use.”
“So what’s the selection?”
“I’ve got two Colt Police Positives in .38 that are good for everyday carry. You can keep one of those in your desk. Also got a pair of matched 1911s, but I don’t think you want to be handling a hand cannon like that. They’re a pair of GI issue automatics. And that’s it for licensed iron.”
“I’ll take the two .38s. I’ll keep one here and one at home.”
“Good plan. I know where I can get a specially made carry bag that’ll look like a regular purse. So can I take you and your zip gun out to dinner? How’s about that yaki-niku you’ve been talking at me about? I could eat half a Holstein ‘bout now.”
“You’re on, Boss. I’ll take the other half! Maybe you can drop me off at the El Capitan when we’re down to the bones. Or maybe we’ll have time to tip one at the Bamboo Room after chow. I have a date with Monica for the 8:30 show. We’re seeing Marsha Hunt in Carnegie Hall.”
October 1947
Yuki and I took a day off and spent it at a dry lake in the high desert out beyond the wind-blown hamlet of Little Rock. I’d fabricated a shooting bench and some targets out of some old lumber laying around in Manny’s back yard. We worked our way through a few fins worth of ammo in a variety of firearms until she was squeezing them off the military way, and without flinching. It was also a good place to teach her the finer points of driving the Merc.
The workload stayed light and the only news on the work front was some information Yuki had picked up at the library. Lupe had learned through her network that just this month the communist parties of Europe and the USSR and established the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) as a means of purging opposition and seizing absolute power in the European satellites. The Cominform Manifesto had demanded unified opposition to domestic socialist parties as well as several policies of the US and its allies. The new orthodoxy was used to justify the immediate arrest or elimination of all remaining non-party members of the various governments. The communist parties of the satellites and their secret police organs had achieved in days what had taken months and a civil war in the USSR.
Perusing the paper one afternoon Yuki said, “Hey, Boss, look here. It says this guy, Richard Krebs, just got US citizenship.”
“Wasn’t he the defector who wrote Out of the Night under the pen name Jan Valtin? I read that.”
“Yeah, that’s him. I read his story too when it came out in ’41. He was a red-diaper baby, German-born, ended up working for the Soviets organizing sleeper cells in the maritime unions. He got in trouble with them and ended up spying in Nazi Germany. The Nazis caught him and he got away, but they kept his wife and kid. He got in trouble with the GRU again and escaped to the US when they tried to kidnap him for a one-way ride home. The Soviets got their revenge by getting the CPUSA to publicize his story in the Daily Worker and the Nazis got wind of it and murdered his wife.”
“What a story,” I sighed. “A die-hard communist agitator betrayed by his Soviet bosses as well as their American tools and fools. Guess he had enough of them and he’s on our side now.”
“Bet that’s happened more than once.”
“Walter Krivitsky comes to mind,” I remembered. “Only they croaked him real quick.”
“Yeah, Lupe has a file on the NKVD’s SMERSH assassination squad. They murdered Krivitsky in his DC hotel room but it was covered up as a suicide. Another one murdered by SMERSH was Juliet Poyntz. As far as the authorities know she simply vanished, but Lupe says she was strangled and buried in the woods near FDR’s estate outside New York City.
“And Whittaker Chambers also,” I recalled.
“Yes. His story is that he was a faithful Commie spy until the Soviets demanded he abort his first-born and he refused. And now he is a respected journalist.”
* * *
Yuki and I spent the better part of the ensuing weeks getting enough firearms practice in to the point where I was confident she could take care of herself. She learned the preferred method of taking down an assailant. I taught her to accurately point and shoot double-ought buck and deer slugs from a 20-gauge coach gun held at the waist; also to point and shoot the slow slugs from her smoky
.32 revolver from various hand holds and positions.
Not long after I got the bright idea to get us a membership in the Calabasas Rod and Gun Club up in the hills of the west Valley. Through the Civilian Marksmanship Program out of Veterans Hall, Yuki was quickly able to qualify for a surplus M-1 carbine.
She even wangled an invite out of the armory to go down and handpick one for herself. I figured someone must have liked how she sounded over the phone.
She was good with the rifle so over the course of the month I picked her up a slightly more accurate old Swedish Mauser carbine, in 7 millimeter. For practice, she preferred the accuracy of the ancient Mauser, and I used a surplus Garand in 30.06 that I’d picked up from the armory.
Manny had found us a pair of folding stocks used on the old Paratrooper carbines, and we retrofitted our M-1s and kept one each for defensive use at home.
* * *
At the conclusion of one day’s shoot she turned to me and said, “I hadn’t really thought about it before.”
“What’s that?”
“How important it is to keep and bear arms. Where I come from there is no history of private ownership of firearms. Hell, they wouldn’t let us common Japanese people use a wheeled cart until the Meiji restoration.”
“Yeah, from what I heard from Sachiko, the entire history of that place was pretty much a bloodbath for any party who got crosswise with the top man and his samurai, whichever one it happened to be at the time. There’s a good reason we’re enjoying the domestic peace and prosperity of the longest continuous democracy in the history of the world.”
“Good point. Those Samurai guys didn’t need firearms anyway to do their job. They managed to get done whatever they needed to with blades. You know the main function of the obi on the woman’s kimono was to conceal a dagger? There was always a slim chance she could get a drop on her tormenter and cancel him out before he got around to doing it to her. Mostly though they just died on their knees with their heads meekly bowed. Not a great place to be a woman. They even used crucifixion on women back in the old days. ”