by James Grady
"The airman thinks he is helping Sheila smuggle marijuana by providing information about the security systems around the missiles. He also quite naturally keeps us informed about anything unusual happening in the area. With you Americans and your strange desire to tell all, that task is easy.
"Parkins' death fascinated us. Of course it is no secret on the base, although I doubt if any of the citizens in the area know about it. Although the airman knew nothing beyond the fact the Air Force is covering up a murder on a missile site, his information prompted us to assume, perhaps optimistically, that Krumin is involved. When the airman told us a 'security officer' had arrived, was given a grand tour, and then left the base for Shelby, we knew your government knew something more than a strange murder was involved.
"The airman made it his business to find out your destination and provide us with such minor details as a photograph he took of you and your vehicle. Through a little work on our own we found you traipsing across the prairie on your lovely cover mission."
"So why the snatch? I don't understand."
Chou smiled. "Your 'snatch' was a calculated risk. My control agreed with me that we needed to know what the Americans knew. It would save us time and effort, for one thing. For another, we need to get to Krumin before you do or at least as you do, or our posture with the Soviets suffers considerably.
"The original plan entailed a 'snatch,' interrogation, then your death, probably in a car wreck. Your death would, of course, rivet your government's attention to this area, but we hoped to be far enough ahead of the game to get to Krumin first and then get out. But I have a better idea."
"Do I get to live in the better idea?" asked Malcolm. Up until Chou's description of the girl and the airman Malcolm had been abstractly fascinated by Chou's narration. Now Malcolm's involvement in the story made him very, very nervous.
"But of course! If you play your role properly."
"And my role is-"
Chou interrupted Malcolm. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. All in good time. The overall important thing in my mission is Krumin's neutralization. I'm not engaged in a mission against the United States or against direct United States interests, although it is of course in your interest that China and the Soviet Union continue at each other's throats. The U.S. and China have recently been more friendly to each other, for mutual gain. A good turn by us to you would be appreciated and probably reciprocated. Such an exchange would also infuriate and intimidate the Soviets. Given all this, why should I kill an American agent who is not bothering me or my country? Especially such an ineffectual, insignificant agent as yourself?
"I am in Canada only temporarily. My cover will never be used again. Shelia's cover is already shaky. When she takes her citizenship test, she will undergo intensive screening. We barely sneaked her by the immigration authorities the first time. A second time is unlikely, and she must appear before them again soon. In any event, she is not reaping what you would call a bountiful harvest of information stationed here.
"After questioning you and learning everything you have to tell us, it became apparent that the original plan should be reconsidered. Given my mission of neutralizing Krumin, the fact that the U.S. is not involved as a belligerent party. in this operation, the status of our two countries, Sheila's and my dubious future in Canada and the possibilities I foresee involved with the Soviet agent your colleagues are tracking across the country, I decided it would be best to let you live. My control agrees with my plan."
"I still don't understand."
"You're about to become a double agent."
Malcolm smiled. "Really?"
Chou returned his smile. "Really. Consider your situation. You are looking for Krumin also. You are trying to solve Parkins' death. And right now, you are trying to figure out a way to avoid being killed by us. Everything I said regarding my country's role toward your country holds true in reverse. In this instance we are not your enemy. We are not your friend, but our interests are similar. You want Krumin. We want Krumin. Why not share him?”
"My proposal is this. I know your instructions, your signs and countersigns, your recognition signals and operating plans at least well enough to know if you are betraying us. I do not propose to hinder you in the ultimate achievement of your mission objectives. All I propose is intervention. Before we turn Krumin over to you, we will interrogate him. and learn all about his Chinese operations. After that he is yours. We will part ways. There is even a chance neither of us will get to Krumin. Perhaps your friend Kevin Powell and his teams will get him first. Quite possibly Krumin is the Soviet agent they are trailing across the country. In that event, we have lost nothing and at least have the satisfaction of knowing Krumin has been neutralized.
"You will, of course, be under our control until the operation is over. One of us will always be with you when you return to Montana. Believe me when I say that we are professionals and that any attempt to . . . renege on your acceptance of our offer will be dealt with effectively and harshly. When the mission is over, you will, of course, report fully to your superiors. No doubt they will be unhappy, but not alarmed or overly annoyed. Of course, we will not inform them, deliberately or accidentally, of our association while we are together."
Malcolm frowned. "What are my options?"
Again Chou smiled. "Option.* You have only one: death We cannot risk working with you unless you are cooperating to at least some degree. If you turn down our offer, it is clear you are definitely not cooperating, so we have no choice."
"I suppose I must make my decision now."
"Oh, no, no. Take some time. We have half an hour to kill before it is necessary for us to cross the line to Montana so you can make your checkin call."
Malcolm smiled while his mind raced. He tried without success to find holes in Chou's story. The Chinese might well be a complete liar. Without a doubt he was lying part of the time. But one thing Malcolm knew for sure: Chou told the truth about killing him. Malcolm saw no other option himself. If he died, any hope that the old man might learn the truth was tenuous, a thought which, added to Malcolm's strong desire to live, made a convincing .argument to accept Chou's arrangement, at least for the time being. There was always the chance that things would change so Malcolm might be in a more favorable position.
Besides, thought Malcolm, the arrangement made sense as far as the mission was concerned. Chou and the girl Sheila could be of great assistance: They were pros who had worked against the Russians before and who knew at, least something of Krumin. Really, thought Malcolm, I have no choice.
"Agreed," he said. "I suppose you knew I would accept."
"Not really," replied Chou. "I wasn't sure how stubborn and 'idealistically patriotic' you were. I'm glad you're a realist. For one thing, it will help you understand what we will do next."
Malcolm raised his eyebrows to ask the question.
"While a certain amount of trust is necessary," Chou said almost apologetically, "it is always nicer if one has guarantees. We are going to use the drugs again to see if you told us the truth about accepting the arrangement."
"What about me? Do I get any guarantees?"
"I'm afraid not," Chou apologized softly. "You will just have to trust us."
"I was afraid of that."
Chou nodded slightly to the girl. She quickly stood and left the kitchen for the upstairs bedroom. Chou also stood and motioned for Malcolm to follow her. "Shall we go to the bedroom? It is so much more comfortable in there."
Malcolm sighed, put down his cup and followed his host's suggestion.
….
Kevin called the old man from Chicago that night. Kevin was tired, very tired. It had been a long, hard day.
"Our Rose left the truck on the South Side, took the elevated train to a transient hotel on the North Side, had a bite to eat at a deli, then went to his room. He's been there ever since. As far as we can tell, he's made no contacts.
"The truck belongs to Fritz Pulaski. He's a small, independent trucker
who runs a five rig operation out of Cicero. No record on him anywhere, but we found a possible tie-in. In 1958 Fritz was stationed in Germany in the Army. He met and married a young Hungarian refugee and brought her back to this country. She got her citizenship papers in sixty-six. Immigration dug out her files. She lists some relatives in the old country. We figure the Russians are using pressure on her to get to Fritz. They've probably had them locked in for some time, maybe paying them a little too, so now they can't really come to us without having to explain their own profiting. The same old system everybody uses. We've got the Pulaskis covered in case Rose goes to them again, but I'm pretty sure they just used the trucker for that one-shot maneuver."
"About that," asked the old man, "does our boy know we're on to him?"
"I don't think so," replied Kevin, "for two reasons. One, that's the kind of operation it would take too long to set up for him to use if he just found out he's blown. Two, we're been too careful. All this dodging he's doing is probably just routine. Admittedly, it's good routine and perhaps a bit extravagant, but we're probably playing a big game. Parkins must have stumbled onto something. Rose just isn't acting like he's playing that big a game and has been blown. He's too natural. I don't smell that he feels something is wrong."
"I thought so," murmured the old man, "I thought so. He's getting closer, Kevin. Don't lose him now. As close as he is, if he shook us, he might be able to do his mission before we could find him again. That makes me very nervous."
"Me too. But we always have Condor and the teams in Montana. How is our Malcolm doing?"
"Oh, as well as can be expected. He's turned up nothing tangible. He checked in tonight with a fairly good idea.
He's going to poke around Canada, quietly, using the pretext of a few days off. He said the county extension agent who is the only local he's been close enough to think anything like that might be fishy-showed no surprise when Malcolm called and told him he had some time off coming. if and when Rose gets close, we will pull our Condor near enough to the net so that he won't get hurt or in the way. I can't envision using him as a fallback-on this operation: Rose is proving far too good for Condor to handle. Is there anything else?"
"No," replied Kevin, "that about does it. All in all, I'd say we're pretty much on top of things."
"I think so, my boy," said the old man, "I think so."
More than a thousand miles away, sitting in the Canadian farmhouse, Chou felt the same about his position as Kevin and the old man felt about theirs, only with a little more reason for confidence.
The girl called Sheila wasn't so sure. They had crossed the border at Coutts, a small port of entry just north of Shelby, Malcolm's base. There had been no trouble, for they walked from the Canadian side in the town of Coutts across an ignored street that straddles the border separating Coutts, Alberta, Canada, from Sweetgrass, Montana, U.S. Malcolm called the county extension agent, his motel and his checkin number from a pay phone outside a dingy bar. Then the three of them walked back across the border, drove to the farm and ate a leisurely dinner. Malcolm was now locked in the windowless upstairs bedroom. The door was reinforced with metal, modified by Chou for just such a contingency.
The Chinese girl had been very silent all evening long, virtually ignoring the almost ceaseless flow of chatter from Chou and the few comments Malcolm made in response. Now she sat in the living room, watching Chou lovingly oil his pistol. She watched Chou caress the shining black metal with the soft pile cloth. The cleaning and oiling were a nightly ritual relished by Chou. It disgusted the girl with its passion directed toward something cold, inanimate and superhumanly efficient. She watched, waiting to speak until after he put the cleaning kit away and, with a last long lingering look, returned the gun to the specially designed shoulder holster. Finally she said, "Suppose he guesses the truth?"
Chou looked at her with mild surprise and slight amusement. "What truth? And how much of it could he guess? And what if he does?"
"Your real mission with Krumin, for one thing. For another, you neglected to mention our control gave only tentative approval to your plan. What if the plan is turned down?"
"In that case," Chou replied tartly, "the control would prove very foolish. All your strange ideologies aside, and don't look at me like that, my dear. I care not if you report me to the political officer. He knows me and knows how absurd I regard your little political charades. He also knows how valuable I am to his, needs. Please don't bother to drearily point out that the situation might change. I am sure you realize I am not stupid. I intend to be well ahead of any changes. The political officer knows this. The little man tries so hard to project my value, to guess exactly when I will become, in his terms, 'counterproductive.' It really is quite a challenge to keep him on his toes. Not an impossible challenge, but an interesting one.
"At any rate, if he or the area director overrules my
control, well, then matters are out of my hands. I made an honest attempt at keeping things moving. I would, of course, follow any official, definitive order."
Sheila nodded her head toward the ceiling. "And what about him?"
Chou deliberately took a long time to answer, although he really didn't need the time to consider his reply. He let a broad grin slowly grow on his face, then said, "My dear he can die tomorrow as easily as he can die today."
10
"And what does it live on?"
"Weak tea with cream in it."
A new difficulty came into Alice's head. "Supposing it couldn't find any?" she suggested.
"Then it would die, of course."
"But that must happen very often," Alice remarked thoughtfully.
"It always happens," said the Gnat.
Malcolm found his door unlocked when he woke the next morning. He stood at the top of the stairs, dressed in only his shorts, frowning while he listened to the movements in the house's lower floors. Go with it, he finally thought, because even if you had a chance of breaking out (which you don't, he told himself), they might prove helpful. At least I have found something, he thought. He sighed, then went to the bathroom to bathe, shave, put in his contacts and in general prepare to meet the day.
The girl, Sheila, didn't turn around when Malcolm came into the kitchen, deliberately, he thought. Either she's trying to show she trusts me or she doesn’t care to register my existence. Malcolm stood awkwardly in the doorway, staring at her back while she fussed with a frying pan on the stove. She wore her shoulder-length black hair in a tight bun. Her yellow faded sweat shirt hung loosely from her shoulders. Malcolm noted her solid build: not overly muscular, but firm, rounded shoulders and a smooth back tapering slightly, then expanding to ample hips held tightly by the blue jeans. Her legs were too muscular to be called slim. She wore white tennis shoes. Malcolm coughed softly, trying to make it a natural sound rather than an announcement.
"I'll be with you in a minute," she said, her voice not overly friendly but not coldly officious either. "I'm scrambling your eggs. There's orange juice poured for you on the table."
"Thank you." Malcolm sat at the table. He drank the orange juice slowly, using the tangy liquid as an excuse for silence. The girl gave him his eggs and toast. They exchanged awkward smiles. She sat across from him, drinking her coffee almost as nervously as he ate his breakfast.
"Well, what a charming scene. How nice to see you two are getting along!" Chou strode into the room. He looked slightly ridiculous in his denim pants, shirt and jacket, thought Malcolm, almost like an Oriental tourist duded up for the West. Only Chou's work boots and the clothes" griminess spoiled that image.
"Did you sleep well?" Chou stared out the kitchen window as he spoke. He didn’t look at the couple seated at the table.
"Fine," replied Malcolm. "With the locked door I felt very secure from monsters and things that go bump in the night."
Chou laughed. "Indeed. An elementary precaution, my friend. Just to be on the safe side. From now on, whenever you sleep here, the door will be unlocked."
/>
"Whenever I sleep here?"
Chou smiled before he answered Malcolm's indirect question. "Yes, whenever. You may be going back to Montana soon. But we'll know more on that later, probably by mid-afternoon."
"What happens then?" asked Malcolm.
Again Chou smiled. "Then you will know what happens then. Why worry now? Sheila, I'm going out. Why don't you show Malcolm around after you clean up here? Bring him by the grove first."
Neither Malcolm nor the girl said a great deal as they cleaned up the breakfast mess. They exchanged meaningless statements about dishes, the weather, household chores. Once again it crossed Malcolm's mind that Sheila was as nervous as he, but he couldn't understand why.
The Japanese immigrants' farm was actually little more than ten acres -in size. Sheila* told him how over the years the old couple had been forced to sell more and more of their land in order to live. The only crops now grown on the remaining land were vegetables Sheila raised and sold to restaurants in Lethbridge, the major Alberta city to the north. A neighboring farmer paid a minimal fee for the privilege of grazing a few cattle, but the "farm" was basically a monetary disaster.
"What keeps it going? I mean, how do you keep your cover? The neighbors must know how bad off the place is."
Sheila shrugged. "I give the impression that when the old people got me, they also got a small inheritance and I'm trying to bring the farm back. Nobody bothers me much about those details or anything else, for that matter. I'm still an immigrant."
Memorize the layout, thought Malcolm as he and the girl left the house. They walked past the garage, away from the dirt road. Slightly rolling fields stretched out in every direction looking much like 4he Montana farms to the south, but there seemed to be a qualitative difference that Malcolm felt but couldn't label. The crisp air carried the same damp, healthy earth smell, the green young plants growing from the brown soil seemed to hold the" same texture and the massive blue sky seemed just as awesome as it did across the border. Yet, with all the similarity, things seemed slightly, intrinsically different. Malcolm wondered if they would seem that way had he not known this was Canada.