by Philip Wylie
“Marvelous.” Grove made a mental note: Bulganov was dead; and a welcome riddance.
Eaper nodded. “Be a rather dramatic scene in my memoirs. Eh?”
“When you can publish a next volume, you bet! Incidentally, I greatly enjoyed your latest. All three, in fact. By far the most authoritative personal accounts of intelligence work.” To that, Eaper bowed.
Grove’s mission was now complete. He dallied, however, to conceal his sudden and keen interest in learning that Eaper was still keeping his ultra-secret diaries from which, when clearance was feasible, he produced his conceited and abominably written “true tales” of espionage. In them, he was the sole hero. All others were less clever and resourceful. The masterpieces, in sum, were incomplete, and inaccurate.
Eaper had grown restless by the time his visitor rose, apologized, admitted that modern “black” work was too complex for him, and departed—with a souvenir: a replica of an NKVD “death dart,” solid silver, bearing an engraved note stating that the original had been taken from an enemy agent by Arthur Xavier Eaper on August 9, 1944.
Eaper had evidently forgotten it was Grove who’d thrown Arvlov after a furious fight and Grove who’d used his special skills to grab Arvlov’s dart, on that August afternoon in Lvov. Grove it was, too, who’d turned it over to the OSS for study: entrusting it to Eaper, as a matter of fact.
4
Hawaii
Arthur Eaper’s residence was in Virginia, near the Potomac River and not far from George Washington’s birthplace. The house, however, in no way resembled the colonial mansion of that great gentleman and active admirer of females. It was a modern edifice. There were no windows on the first floor. Those on the floor above were large, horizontal and set high. The director’s offices and bedroom would be there, Grove guessed when he carefully surveyed the place from the side of a fairly well traveled road. Eaper liked windows, when they were safe to have. Bulletproof, Grove was certain, of the ones he studied.
Around the building lay a peculiar landscape: lawns that undulated gently and contained several free-form fishponds: Eaper liked fish, too. Was one, nearly, Grove thought. The area of mowed grass and shining ponds was considerable—perhaps twenty acres—giving, of course, a clear field of fire. He could not see any machine guns (and, probably, mortars, gas-shell cannon, etc.) but he could see where they were doubtless mounted, on the roof and beneath certain green hillocks.
It looked difficult, by day.
At night, however, with a fairly powerful telescope, it seemed easier; easier, because Grove chose a Sunday night for his survey—and Sunday night was the time Eaper had routinely used, in the distant past, for dictating his diary. The diary consisted of notes on the major happenings of the prior week, dictated to a tape recorder nowadays, Grove presumed; it had been a dictating machine in the OSS years.
A tree would help, Grove thought, after another night of surveillance. There were thick hardwoods of adequate growth just beyond a picnic area on the main road nearby. Grove selected and climbed the most likely tree. His study of the times when lights went on and off in the very “functional” residence made him certain of the room in which Eaper did his Sunday night recording. The tree, however, wasn’t quite high enough. He could see the far wall of the room where his man apparently worked along with part of some chairs and a collection of framed citations, awards, what not. He was disappointed. He’d be obliged to erect a tower if he wanted to look straight at the Axe.
He mused on ways and means as he perched on the highest crotch steady enough for scrutiny. Then he noticed a slim and slanted reflection of movement, of a person, that reached him from one of the largest framed awards, honorary degrees, or the like.
Some time afterward, a mustached man with a limp was allowed into the administrator’s home. The man had been inspecting neighboring mansions in behalf of the American Fire Underwriters Brotherhood. Eaper’s staff had become aware and reported the fact. The man was to be admitted, they were told, and his study would not be out of bounds: Eaper would prepare it.
The inspector showed his badge in a few days and began an expert room-to-room survey of electrical equipment. A butler, so claiming, accompanied the underwriters’ expert until a ruckus outside took him away. He was sure the man was bona fide, by then; he had made fairly sure by inquiries among neighbors before then.
Several hogs, it now seemed, had escaped from a broken-down truck and were rushing about the baize-smooth Eaper lawn. They had to be rounded up. Two, moreover, were wallowing in a fishpond; acting crazed, so the butler was told. Grove listened to that and nodded vague understanding, absorbed in checking electrical outlets, wiring, circuit breakers and related matters.
The butler hurried out and Grove moved into the study, hoping he hadn’t overdosed the pigs with LSD. And hoping the time-release device on the rear end of the “broken-down truck” wouldn’t be noticed while he was busy in the Eaper house.
He gave the director’s study a general survey and no more. The desk was bare and its drawers were certainly locked. The tape recorder was on a table at its side—without tape. Grove knew that the vault where Eaper’s weekly notes were stored could be found behind a tidy panel opposite the entrance: a good safe, beyond doubt—purchased by the taxpayers (like the house and the landscaping—or its lack). He paid no heed. What concerned him was the arrangement of framed documents on the wall opposite the oddly high windows. The light had been such that, from his tree and with his telescope, he’d been unable to read these treasures of vanity.
He was slightly surprised to find his goal was an engraved, large scroll presented to Eaper by the International Game Fish Association in recognition of the man’s “near miss” of a world-record tarpon catch. He took the thing down and withdrew from an inner-thigh sheath of foam rubber (a hiding place detectable by a stripped search, and only then by trained personnel) a small Aerosol container. Swiftly, he sprayed the glass and then wiped the traces from its frame. He replaced it, after gluing a long strip of wood to the upper, rear edge of the molding, altering the angle at which the trophy hung. The difference was not noticeable. Grove had been relieved to find that the wall awards were not often or perhaps ever changed; the rectangle behind this and associated objects was slightly darker than the beige wall itself.
When the butler returned, the inspector was finishing up his chore in a guest bedroom. The two parted amicably. As he drove off, however, Grove noted in his rear-view mirror that the butler, doubtless a karate expert (and other things), was writing down his license number. That made him glad he’d taken the trouble not only to duplicate one of the underwriters’ Chevys but to borrow the license plates of a real car of the organization, one he located in a Baltimore garage, awaiting repairs.
He now hid the car in a tunnel, long unused, as the railroad tracks formerly above it had been taken away years ago. Next he recovered and drove off the truck that had carried the drugged hogs. Later he replaced the borrowed license plates.
None of these efforts was ever to become known.
For the next several Sunday evenings he climbed his chosen tree. After reaching a perch (modified for comfort) he pulled up a very powerful telescope. That, he fixed to a stable arm already attached to a tree limb. Then he watched. He knew, of course, that in these modern times a man like Eaper would have a device that probably could hear and see all for some part of the distance, nearly a mile, over which he merely peered. But a mile was too sound-loaded for such metal ears and too full of tree and traffic motion for electric eyes.
Grove was satisfied with his obsolete technique of distant survey. He had learned shorthand in high school in Sarasota. Besides which, he was an expert lip reader as all OSS men at his level had once been trained to be.
Through his scope he could clearly see a reflected Eaper. The spray he’d used to treat the glass on the IGFA “award” intensified its mirror-like capability. The wooden prop he’d glued behind the frame made its angle perfect.
Thus, for a ser
ies of Sundays—Eaper missed only one—Grove sat in a tree and copied what he lip-read as Eaper dictated careful notes on his principal acts and those of all major CIA departments. Moreover, Grove could and did, also, transcribe Eaper’s muttered comments on that amazing data, as well as his intruded plans, intentions, comments, oaths and his memos on highly placed persons, usually uncomplimentary.
Even a man as sanguine as Grove would find himself startled by those discoveries. The CIA was engaged in operations that were unknown to the State Department, unheard of in the Pentagon, often contrary to the policies of both, and, of course, completely secret in so far as Congress, the Cabinet, other security bodies and even the President were concerned. Eaper was playing Supreme Ruler.
One matter, especially, bemused Grove. It appeared in the third week of surveillance as a mere trifle, surrounded by Eaper impatience.
“Callubon, in Area Limbo Six, concerned with offshore Soviet fishing vessels, especially in Upper Two.”
The next week, “Callubon” was mentioned again, along with “Upper Two.”
Eaper told his recorder, “Sent Billiger to Upper Two. Think Callubon’s anxiety is deliberately provoked and has nothing to do with Neptune One, save as diversion. Soviets not as foolish as original report implies. Sure that if there’s anything in Neptune One idea, diversive acts will be major. Like the fishing ships—watch C reports. Top One, Middle Eight, Nine and perhaps Seven the only reasonable areas, providing Neptune One is not a rumor—floated also to misdirect us. Me, mainly. I know Solentor. Tricky. Will increase guarded watch in areas noted and wait. If our info real, Neptune One not slated till early days in January of a second year. Ample time. Hawaii—scrub—Upper Two, worst possible site for Nep. One, if a big deal is planned. Pearl Harbor command is vigilant now. Radar tops. Hydryphonic watch at Two in process of planning. Kauai Range operational. No threat of rumored magnitude conceivable, that area. In my view, whole plan only a hazy drift of planted snow from (unreliable—question mark—) Anna Al and Carla TG. Wish Ball’s bints weren’t inherited when I took over. Dangerous. Unstable. Purchasable. Easy marks for false suggestion.”
More came in the following weeks.
There was, for example, another “shaky report” from a “bint” that, sometime in January—a year from the next one—something would “begin” at “park.” A meeting, apparently. Any evening, early in that month.
A few other details set Grove thinking hard. After many tree sessions, Grove acted. He was among the pedestrians who watched the President take his occasional morning stroll—his word. Reporters trotted to keep up. The disguised Grove, as seen in Buffalo, sat on a bench eating an apple.
The President made no sign of recognition.
However, three days later he retrieved a felt hat “somebody” had lost in the White House grounds. He turned it over to nearby Secret Service men, none of whom saw him slip a folded, thin bit of tissue from under the sweat band. “New hat,” he grinned as he handed it over. “Might fit one of you boys.”
The guard who took the hat muttered, “You’re not supposed to pick up things, Mr. President. Might explode. Poison you.”
Everybody laughed: the man was new on the job.
Grove never learned exactly how the President got off the telegram. It came a week after the “lost hat” incident and so a week after the President had read Grove’s summary of his findings, with Grove’s suggestions. They filled three pages, microtyped on tissue, both sides, which the President had read with a magnifying glass, after chemically bringing out the invisible ink. That had been an extreme precaution. But the Secret Service men might have seen the report first and might not have assumed the apparently blank tissue had been used by the hat owner to reduce a size too large for his head. What he’d learned about Eaper made the President wary. Eaper had men in the Secret Service, for one thing.
The wire to Grove said, merely, “Endless thanks. Yes. Go. Do. My blessing.”
Grove soon left for “a year in Europe,” as far as his friends and business associates knew or ever learned. Mail came to them from there—France mostly. He phoned them, now and then, from abroad. At least, a “secretary” with a French accent put him on the line. And he gave interviews to the press, occasionally, in France and twice in London. It was an effort that distressed Grove.
He had flown to Hawaii after getting the President’s signal and bought and rebuilt the house near Sea Life Park. When it was ready he’d done a bit of devious smuggling to complete the furnishing. And he had enjoyed a very pleasant year—save for the actual trips to England, France (and, once, Yugoslavia) where he again gave newspaper interviews and made phone calls. It was a tiring thing, especially the flights back to Honolulu, from Paris via Beirut, Calcutta, Bangkok and Tokyo, a backward route taken to conceal his destination, Hawaii.
Occasionally a special letter came to Grove, handwritten, adroitly posted and not on White House stationery. These missives kept Grove up to date on Eaper’s dictating. Another man, suggested by Grove, was now maintaining the telescopic, lip-reading vigil in the tree. These communications indicated that the President was both enraged, almost cosmically enraged, by Eaper’s activities but, also, far too fascinated to stop Eaper’s ploys … yet. Nothing of much interest had appeared on Project Neptune. However, the President arranged, at Grove’s urging, a system for future communications less liable to interruption than direct mail.
Grove’s year was perfect, save for the essential flights to other lands. He hated every interruption of his Hawaiian idyl, his pleasures in a growing group of friends, his gang of kids, his enjoyment of the halcyon weather and the beauty of the islands. He shared the “aloha spirit” which was very real on his windward side of Oahu though it had become commercialized in the Honolulu area.
Jenny, the huge but graceful, middle-aged but beautiful housekeeper took care of his wants, coming and going six days a week. The ground floor, however, was out of bounds for the Hawaiian lady. Grove had workrooms there but when he was not at work he often forgot the purposes of those rooms, forgot their odd contents, and became unmindful of other matters such as bulletproof glass at one place, and soundproofing, everywhere: soundproofing, to quench various odd noises made by animals, but not by domestic species.
5
Quandaries
It began to rain in Sea Life Park—without a beginning, which often happens in the state of Hawaii. First, it was not raining and the park glittered in the dark under the scattered beads called stars. Then it was pouring and white, pounding cliffs enclosed the little world of everybody caught out, including, at this moment, the park watchman, Jerry Gong, and a park visitor in a great, round building in which a body half floated. Grove looked across the gently murling surface of the Reef Tank and beyond its roof: speculatively, Jerry thought.
Grove turned back and said, “Lucky.”
Deliberately, Jerry allowed faint suspicion to form on his brow: no sense in feigning complete trust of this man, though he was a friend of the Abbotts.
“Lucky for them,” Grove added. “Or him. The killer, I mean. Killers. Rain washes out evidence. If they left any.”
Jerry nodded. He had examined the body as much as was wise. “I’ve got to go call the police. Would you—?”
“Sure.” Grove lightly hoisted himself onto the outer wall of the super-aquarium to sit, Jerry realized, in plain sight while he went out and used the phone. From that act Jerry could be sure that Grove was not going near the body. But Grove could have had the opportunity for that prior to yelling. He wondered why that notion had entered his head. Grove certainly could not have been the killer. Theoretically, yes, Jerry realized; but actually? He was sure … not.
He went quickly to put in three phone calls.
Jonathan Kitrick was first to arrive. He had been on patrol in a prowl car with its blue roof light turned out, creeping along Laumilo, Kalanianaole, several connecting streets and into the labyrinth between the main highway and the pleated mountains. It was a n
ew thing, this police patrol, set up because some few of the local teenagers had commenced to rob the residences along Waimanalo Beach. The policeman received the murder news in coded words, drove the mile and odd to the park, siren searing, roof light a deep cobalt revolving in the skidding rain. He stopped hard, ran to the Reef Tank and recognized Grove.…
“Jerry?” the cop asked.
“Still phoning. Honolulu chief, I believe.”
“Good!” Kitrick had merely glanced at the partly floating figure. “This is a Honolulu matter. Homicide.”
“At least.”
The policeman stared down at Grove, for he was six-seven, thin as wire, as hard, and about as full of love for man as he seemed empty of any quality save an electric tenseness. Kitrick was a displaced Yankee, third generation in Hawaii and the one white cop on Waimanalo’s small force.
“At least?” He was puzzled by that remark.
Grove nodded pensively, looking at the dead figure. “Kind of costume you don’t see around here, isn’t it? Mainland type, just arrived, maybe. FBI, then?”
Kitrick walked over then and peered. Presently he pulled a monstrous flashlight from beneath his dripping slicker, aimed it and moved it about. “Maybe you’re right. What’s the story?”
Grove gave it in six sentences. He could summarize as tersely as any Yankee, first generation or thrice removed. He, too, was a professional but with far more experience in such reports than the local cop’s.
The rain stopped. Both men now could see Jerry, still on the phone. Kitrick said, “Ungunh.” Meaning, Grove interpreted, What the hell. He ventured to explain further.
“After alerting your people, Jerry must have called Honolulu. Next, I’d think, the Abbotts. Maybe. And then, the FBI—if he didn’t tell Honolulu to do that.”
The thin-harsh, deadpan face of the officer suddenly became a smile—one the world generally had felt compelled to share. “Jerry’s quite a boy.”