The Spy Who Spoke Porpoise

by Philip Wylie

  Middleman noted, “Subject eats peanuts. Absent-minded type. Posted paper peanut sack at Ala Moana Shopping Center, in US mailbox. Arranged, Honolulu postmaster, for recovery. Lab exam of bag negative.”

  “Buys books in scores,” Coppler stated in another report. “All sorts. Standing order for all new books about espionage. Likes who-done-its. Info from clerk, taken to lunch, a Miss F. Jones (see expense voucher attached). My identity not revealed. Grove also reader of various technical books.”

  Cooley: “Had four cases canned tomatoes sent to residence. What for? Should we follow up?”

  Oddie read it all. The canned tomatoes he understood: he had looked into the subject of skunks and read that tomatoes were supposed to be best for the removal of skunk odor. With the news about the four cases of tomatoes, he called off his men. And the skunk arrived, dead, packaged tightly, a day later. With it was a note:

  Gentlemen:

  Caught the varmint! Here ’tis. They have more shooting power than you’d believe. Mr. Oddie was wise not to try to get in range of this baby. I did! Hired a professional janitorial service to clean my dump, air it, etc. Come by and chat any time now—we’re pretty de-smelled. Best.

  Grove

  Mult was ordered to dispose of the animal and its container.

  Oddie by then was thoroughly annoyed at the whole thing. He guessed what none of his people ever did: the old boy had played tag with them on the mountains. Had himself a ball—even posting a peanut bag in a mailbox, for Lord’s sake! What had Middleman expected when he got the postmaster to open that mailbox? Plans for the newest warheads on American ICBMs?

  Oddie had not, of course, told his men they were tailing the “subject” to make sure he was not trying to help USA. They’d been free, as a consequence, to imagine Grove as anything they wished: a paid spy for another nation, ally or not. When Oddie called off the effort Middleman summed it up:

  “The old guy is guilty as first suspected: suspected as kinky and now proven nearly certifiable.”

  The mailing of the candy-striped sack for peanuts had been one of Grove’s double jokes. He knew he was being tailed, at irregular times. He found it very easy to spot his shadow. He knew people might be checking his incoming mail and that any letter he or Jenny Oopani posted might be recovered and read, too, even if that involved every letter they mailed or received.

  So, when he posted a paper sack in the Ala Moana Shopping Center, he walked on a few steps and then seemed to realize that he’d done something typical of an absent-minded duffer. He turned around. That, he correctly believed, would force the man he’d already found to be on duty to duck out of sight. It did, and gave Grove his chance to post a real letter.

  However, if that, too, had been observed, and even if all the letters in the box were opened and read, the one he had added would surely be resealed and sent on with the rest. It was addressed to a Master Clyde Williams, at 48 West Winter Street, in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. It bore no return address.

  Such a young man existed but he was in prep school in Connecticut. So Clyde’s father, sorting the morning mail, pocketed the envelope when it arrived. He sent it, registered and in another envelope, with a note for its next recipient, who, when handed it by his secretary, promptly arranged to call a third person for a brief talk.

  Clyde Williams’ father had once been in the OSS and he knew Grove. He now headed a law firm which represented various American interests of French corporations. Grove had long ago arranged with his old friend to forward communications addressed to “Master” Clyde to the French ambassador; and the lawyer had persuaded the ambassador to act as a delivery boy.

  Even if efforts to make sense of the missive had been attempted, they would have failed. The letter was typed, rather poorly, on a worn portable and signed, “Your fond Uncle David.” Its contents were those a boy of fourteen would presumably relish—in the judgment of an “uncle” who would not know that modern kids are unlikely to be much taken by rambling stories of fish, fishing, and of a visit to Sea Life Park, from an aged relative passing through Hawaii on his fourth world tour.

  The person for whom the letter was intended, however, readily interpreted the tales. “Uncle David,” or Grove, who said he had done some sea fishing, reported that sharks were thick in the Hawaiian waters, man-eaters and others. CIA and FBI, that meant. He hadn’t yet seen the one species he had always hoped to all his life, a killer whale. The President of the United States read that as a Soviet or other Red agent. The uncle believed, now, he might get a chance, as the offshore waters abounded in killer whales. His main angling project, to catch a marlin or some other game fish topping a thousand pounds, looked equally good. Local charterboat skippers didn’t realize he was aiming at a fish of that size, though they had asked him to talk of his angling feats in past years.

  There were, with that, anecdotes about fish caught and fish lost and these, with the other matters, brought the President up to date on Grove. Of course, he’d already known about the body found in the Reef Tank; it had been on the front page of all major newspapers, along with the fact that an “R. K. Grove” had first spotted the corpse. He also now knew a multitude of other things about the dead CIA agent and Eaper’s operations. This flood of knowledge came in steadily from Grove’s chosen watcher in the tree. It made the President want, increasingly, to fire Eaper and order a CIA reorganization.

  But as long as Grove had no idea of the nature of Project Neptune (the thousand-pound game fish) and as long as Eaper himself had no hard facts about Neptune—though he still speculated on the matter to his tape recorder—the President let the situation stand. Eaper now seemed fairly sure that there was no such project, and the occasional rumors were planted—to deceive him. If a genuine project existed, Eaper avowed, it would develop at a point far from Hawaii. The Reef Tank business proved that Hawaii was out. It was a macabre jest—but not sophisticated enough to trick him!

  Grove’s narrative about fish and fishing, porpoises and whales, had a further impact on the President. Both the Soviets and the Chinese had, lately, become more arrogant than ever—acting as if they possessed a power not known to the free world. They were threatening the Atlantic Alliance in new ways, hammering on “Imperial America” in the United Nations, and behaving militarily as if they might soon enter West Germany as they had Hungary, Czechoslovakia, South Korea and South Vietnam. If that fresh and menacing position (not completely known to the public) rose from a dire operation called Project Neptune, the location and nature of it must be uncovered.

  The President was very glad he had his “personal” agent in Hawaii. But he was not ready, yet, to take a new step. That might be a fatal error, he feared.

  One man could never be relied on, he realized, to learn and report an unknown, devious plan of the Communists to develop some sort of menacing device.

  What sort? The President smiled oddly and his eyes narrowed as they looked deep into thoughts behind them. Nowadays, the bright boys in science could describe any number of theoretically conceivable doomsday gadgets and blackmail weapons: chemical and bacterial horrors including instruments that might be used before their presence was even suspected.

  He believed the USSR was honest in its effort to cooperate in limiting those possibilities. But he knew there was top-level opposition to that in the Soviet Union. The new leaders in China seemed rational but there were rumors of a hard core “neo-Maoism” group that used them as a front. And Hitler hadn’t invented “the big lie.” It had often been part of Red policy.

  He sighed. But the alternative to Grove was Eaper. That incredible megalomaniac! Who thought he could manage American policy better than the government! Eaper and his minions would be a last resort.

  7

  Doubt

  A warm February night had followed a wet, cool period.

  Grove drove a new station wagon into the park, cut the lights, switched off the motor and stepped down. Jerry, the watchman, was not in sight. An endless flow of the trades whip
ped rigging in the Essex, the more than half-sized replica of the vessel sunk by a sperm whale Melville later called Moby Dick and made albino, without any particular reason. The wind also drew rain sounds from coconut palms. It ruffled the feathers of sleeping boobies in sea grape trees around the turtle pond and produced, in sum, so much and such constant sibilance that the rush of three hundred thousand hourly gallons of clear, unfiltered sea water through the pipes and ducts which supplied this seaside wonderland could hardly be heard, anywhere.

  Grove strolled toward Whaler’s Cove, an artificial salt lake in which, five times a day except Mondays, pretty Polynesian girls paddled little outrigger canoes, whales leaped on command, and porpoises performed close-order drill in mid-air for human throngs with boggled eyes and dropped chins—thousands and thousands of air arrivals, cruise-ship passengers and other sorts of tourists as well as for polyglot locals and maybe, Grove felt, an occasional Russian or Chinese specialist.

  As he approached the amphitheater where so much astonishment was so frequent, Grove paused. A porpoise named Ulu broached, saw Grove, made a birdlike sound and disappeared. Moments later, five porpoises (spinners, or Stenella, their generic name) flung themselves into the air above the lake, twisting round and round as they arced up, over and back in.

  The man came closer.

  The porpoises repeated their vaulting body-twirl. Grove opened a plastic bag and took from it a half dozen smelt, thawed that afternoon. He flung these delicacies into the cove and the porpoises surged to consume them.

  Then Grove looked back. As he had expected, Jerry was now in view on the high road under the talus verge, watching. Grove waved. Jerry pushed his bike forward and mounted. The two men met.

  “Nice night,” the watchman said softly and with a smile. “What you doing? Training ’em?”

  Grove laughed. “Sapphire told me how. Said it was okay.”

  “Oh?” The huge Hawaiian-Chinese was amused.

  “They seem to like to see you show up,” Grove went on, moving toward the Ocean Science Theater and causing Jerry to move too. “They react as if they were lonely—bored, rather—at night, in the empty park. I kind of got thinking about it when I dropped by: the way they’d greet you and put on flips and swim up, sort of grinning and hoping. It would be fun to feed ’em a little, I felt. So I asked Mrs. Abbott. Sapphire. Name fits. She said it was all right. But I feed them special smelt, a change for ’em that costs more than their day to day diet; they appreciate the treat.”

  “Now you get a big hand when you show, eh?”

  “Every time.”

  Jerry nodded, pushed his bike. “I wondered. They’ve lately got to putting on fancier shows when I go by, too, though I never feed ’em.”

  “Don’t have to; not every time. The trick’s called ‘operant conditioning.’ The animal does something unusual, say. You want it to repeat that so you toss it a fish. When it tries some gambit you don’t want—no fish and you walk away. The next time, by chance, it tries the one you want, bingo! you toss it another fish. The porpoise catches on soon, and after that the right trick wins a fish reward. In time, only now and then are fish rewards required for the right trick. Funny! Like computers. Their binary system is a yes-no language, too. I enjoy getting this splashy greeting. So do they. The trainers use a whistle plus fish. A blast means correct, just like a tossed fish. No whistle means—wrong.”

  Jerry nodded. Together, they stopped and stared at the blue, dim-lit water of the Ocean Science Theater. An immense, curving glass wall contained it and faced a semicircle of rising seats so that spectators could see, both under water and above, all the action. That included demonstrations of how porpoises were trained and how they could use echo-location to find small items, even blindfolded; of how they could hunt up and rescue divers in trouble, carry messages bottom to surface, bring and return tools and many other feats the next brightest of living animals can do or learn to do.

  Behind the curved glass front of the main tank and its mini-sea, those performers, in holding pens, were moving and splashing as they heard the men and tried to get attention.

  “Porpoises,” Grove said, looking back toward the still-heaving surface of Whaler’s Cove, “are ham actors.”

  “Clowns,” Jerry amended.

  “Incidentally”—Grove started away—“I’ve arranged with the Abbotts to get a key for the deep freeze so I can store my smelt with the park supply to save bringing along a sack when I come by.”

  Jerry said, “Sure.”

  “If you like, when I don’t make it here, you could give them a few.”

  The watchman at first didn’t understand. Then he grinned. “So the porpoises you trained to greet you won’t be disappointed when it’s only me?”

  Grove said in a rather embarrassed way, “Well—yes, I guess so.” He made a dissembling sound. “I’m chicken-hearted about animals.”

  “I like animals too.” Jerry braced his bike and took a cigarette from a pocket. The bicycle was now exposed by a floodlight and Jerry, Grove noted, had added an item. It was strapped to the frame, leather or perhaps plastic, with a long zipper and it looked like a tool kit. It would not likely be for tools, Grove knew; any number of tools were available in the work sheds behind the park offices. Jerry was wearing his weapon, a .45, as usual. So … what was in the kit?

  Grove lighted a cigar and pondered.

  Jeremiah Akaka Gong would not add anything useless to his bike. This had what use, then? He had been a detective and a soldier in an elite military cadre with an awesome record both in war and in the war on crime. It was as sure … as sure as Grove could allow … the watchman couldn’t be bought by an enemy. He might be blackmailed by some means involving a life more precious to Jerry than his own, perhaps. And he might be tricked into an act by a friend, something that would serve an unsuspected purpose. But Jerry was not easy to fool, not innocent or naïve.

  The corners of Grove’s eyes crinkled in the half-dark, but his smile was rueful: it had been a long, long time since he’d been obliged to mistrust everybody.

  His present situation differed from past ones, also: he had no explicit orders. He was alone, excepting for his old friend Elias Foth, minding the Eaper-tree, who forwarded information by devious and shifting routes.

  It had included occasional details that could be used for curious ends. Grove could now get to Eaper in his deep lair, unhindered. By a swap of current passwords, Grove could buddy up with fifty major agents of the CIA in foreign lands. He could tell the admiral in command of the Pacific various orders not yet received by CINCPAC. But none of it was useful—since Grove’s value depended on the certainty in all covert branches of the federal government that he was an eccentric idler only.

  That, he had managed, or so he had thought, till now. But now, he wondered.

  Did Jerry’s new kit mean his cover was still suspect? Had Pilford Oddie enlisted the watchman without troubling to notify Eaper? Had Eaper arranged to recruit a night watchman in a distant park but felt the matter not worth recording in his diary? It was possible. A new thought changed Grove’s smile—the thought that Jerry could have escalated his equipment on his own, after the finding of the man in the Reef Tank, but not soon, since the case had been added as a result of weeks of indecision, perhaps.

  In that event, the likeliest, Grove felt, he would have to proceed with his present scheme very carefully. He might, indeed, finally have to learn what the tool kit held. A weapon? Radio receiver? Transmitter? Both? Tape recorder? If Jerry was a foe or even a foe’s dupe it would be important to know the nature of the new gear.

  Grove’s present plan was other and urgent. The rumored January meeting by night in Sea Life Park, the news that launched these self-imposed endeavors, had not taken place. Grove had kept a thirty-one-night vigil to make sure. He’d often done so openly, but oftener, without his presence being known to Jerry. He would walk to the Kalan Highway beside the park and slip into the natural cover there.

  In January, how
ever, a murder had taken place and the victim had been found in the Hawaiian Reef building. Grove had made his appearance too late to see what preceded that act. He could guess, however. The deceased and costumed CIA man had been drowned, elsewhere, and in bouillabaisse. That could mean the killers knew that he was, in some way, tagging or suspicious of them; if so, they’d taken considerable time to set up their grisly joke. Before Grove had entered the park that night, and probably when he had left his hiding place to make his presumed first arrival on his motorcycle, “they” had swiftly carried the prepared body to its place in the giant aquarium. “They” might well have been making their exit while he and Jerry chatted and scanned the magnificent, dark surroundings.

  Nothing else of interest to Grove had occurred. If the meeting was to take place, if any such meeting had been and was still intended, it would now occur in February or even later. It might happen somewhere else, too, as the park and institute grounds were now equipped with three times the previous number of floodlamps. Also, since the finding of the corpse, Waimanalo police cruisers made several nightly runs through the area, at irregular intervals.

  Eaper and his disguised minion, Oddie, had lost interest in the park. Grove stuck to it, stubbornly. He had a hunch that there had been a particular reason for selecting the park, granted the available data meant anything. The further fact that no covert watch was maintained by anybody seemed to suggest the Reef Tank business had the purpose of making the CIA and police positive the perpetrators wouldn’t return. Grove saw that, both ways.

  For some time Grove debated talking over the whole affair with Tack Abbott. Young Abbott had dreamed up the Sea Life Park and raised the funds to build it. Next had come the Oceanic Institute adjacent, and then his Brobdingnagian start on the Makai Range. Tack had been an officer in the Air Force and later held a high position on a presidential commission. He was building an empire in the Island State; and his name was a byword, there, with the best connotations. “Tack” was not derived from “sharp as a tack,” which strangers often assumed, but was a shortened form of young Abbott’s most favored cry, in all situations of stress: “Attack!”