The Spy Who Spoke Porpoise

by Philip Wylie

  Tack whirled, instantly understanding. “And a chopper!”

  “Kept out of sight beyond the summit. Yes.”

  An hour later a helicopter, wind-buffeted behind the crenelated rim, set down two men and their cargo. It left, then, to reload, piloted by a onetime Air Force captain who had been trained for the special uses of the sky-hung, clattering machines—Tack Abbott. With burlap and chicken wire, fifty fast-working people in the park garages had fabricated the “cargo.” Now, battering through vegetation, Grove and Benton appeared, coming by car and on foot.

  Even the highest and so, in general, the ablest climbers could not see the points from which the artificial rocks were launched. Their fall, by the time they hurtled in view, was fast enough to be convincing and their actual nature impossible to discern in the split second of passage. Their atypical crash and unusual bounce, when they struck, did not lessen their effectiveness. Those experts who saw them had been fearing what now was plainly occurring. The rest, the vast majority, lacked any experience at all.

  “Rocks coming!” they shouted, and “Avalanche!” The bedlam grew.

  “Ring’s idea,” Tack said later, “was a bit like yelling ‘Fire!’ in the well-known crowded theater. An audience doesn’t need to see flames, after that. And a lot of these people did see an equivalent of smoke, at least. The uproar obscured the fact that our boulders bounced too far and didn’t bang loudly.

  “When I got the second load up, Tim had added a few bushels of chopped-up coconut hulls and some walnuts. Ring and Will were by then shoveling dust overboard, from behind trees. We added dry grass to the new junk. The roar coming up was remarkable; and when I took a peek at the sight below, the cascade looked so real it made me think for a second we were loosening up actual rock. There was plenty of panic; but you couldn’t run, just freeze there. We knew we had them turned when the bullhorns began telling folks to take it easy and yelling out various safe ways down.

  “Most of the able climbers, swapping greed for self-preservation,” he went on, “not only started down but commenced helping stuck and petrified people, as they were trained to do. Still, it was late afternoon before the firemen, cops and all the organized rescue outfits got the place cleared.” He saw the question in the faces of his family auditors, Sapphire and the kids, Edmond, Mack and pretty Layle. “Some were hurt, sure. Legs broken and arms, ankles sprained, cuts, brush burns, bruises. But not a soul crippled that I heard of and nobody dead, which is a miracle.”

  The cadaver was found by a sailor on leave who undertook to hide among the lower, biggest rocks. He saw some bird-marked flat stones in a deep crevice which seemed ideal. The area stank but the sailor was determined until he removed the flat rocks … and gave up his program to report.

  That night the Honolulu police notified Oddie that a “Maribel Dwelling” had been found. Was she by any chance, the police asked, among the federal people under cover in the area? He said not. The (presumed) local CIA head had said the same. It didn’t surprise the Honolulu cops. Plenty of young women with ample funds came to the islands under false names and for many reasons, of which some led to eventual suicide. The fragment of ylang-ylang lei meant nothing to the police and wasn’t even mentioned.

  Oddie did not add what he thought he knew. The killers had had to locate the body when the scattered valuables started an unanticipated treasure hunt. They had not expected it to be found, ever, Oddie surmised. He was not surprised that the plastic cover produced no fingerprints. It amused him, in a way, that the killers had gone to so much trouble to rehide their victim only to be frustrated when they’d originally taken pains to toss her pocketbook from the cliff top too.

  He sent that word on to Axe and heard from him two mornings later. What he heard was what Oddie expected. In Eaper’s opinion, this second killing of a CIA agent, his own, not a bint, meant that the playboys had doubled their effort to divert attention from Limbo Six. It also meant that the CIA people in Hawaii were very careless. Two had now been blown, and “erased” for good measure. Eaper ordered three of Oddie’s group back to Washington for transfer and told Oddie that one more such killing would mean his own dispatch—to a far less pleasant post.

  Oddie could not protest. He had spent a day disguised as a Chinese illegally hunting wild pigs, to set up a watch from a spot on the summit, near the road where the Jaguar had been parked; but he still could not imagine what had brought his female subordinate there. He had a fine view of the sea, the park-institute-Makai layout and the Kalanianaole Highway. He could see the mountainside from Makapuu Point to Waimanalo and beyond. A power line that came over a near crest and swooped down to the road and the park was the only work of man on that near-vertical vastness. Looking seaward, he observed the research vessels, the enormous pier, the barren islands—and water. The din of heavy construction at the Makai Range wafted up on a light breeze.

  He decided “Maribel” had caught onto something. And they’d caught onto her—driven her car away themselves and carried her here, a dead passenger, he hoped, to fling her over. There wasn’t any sign of what she’d been trying to do and the many signs of the false avalanche-markers had been explained in confidence by the police, whom Tack had informed.

  The ylang-ylang flowers were identified by police routine and it was found many garden buffs had ylang-ylang trees and several made a hobby of forcing ylang-ylangs—and dozens of other trees and plants—to bloom out of season. Anybody could swipe enough blossoms to make a lei, or buy enough, probably, or have enough, either now or at any time, for a dozen leis.

  That floral research failed to interest Oddie.

  He decided his colleagues should pull in their horns, for his own sake as well as theirs. He told them to take a break, a vacation; and no one protested. Oddie could handle the routine: there wasn’t anything of much interest at the time. No real meat, Eaper would probably put it, on his plate. Pilford Oddie tended to agree.

  If events demanded it, he would be able to get his subordinates back in an hour or so. Chuck Davies, the FBI second in command (as far as anybody save the few involved were aware), could fill in, with his men. Chuck Davies was, in fact, the head of the FBI for Hawaii. Oddie had several subordinates who were supposedly FBI, too, and these had been FBI, once. Their CIA role was a “family secret,” as, again, Eaper would say. And none of the FBI men who were only that were aware of the cover of others, let alone of any female colleagues.

  Oddie was about to call Chuck when his phone rang and Chuck was put on. “Just heard you were losing some of the help.”

  “Come on over.”

  Chuck Davies was a heavy, rugged man some years older than the FBI-model Pilford Oddie, who was sometimes referred to as “Christ-and-Karate,” or “Saint Oddball,” or the “Judo Jesus,” owing to his compulsive perfectionism. Davies was Welsh and barely tall enough to make the FBI; but nobody thought of him, afterward, as a near miss—he was good—and he was liked by people who merely respected Oddie … when they were not resentful of his holy meticulousness.

  Chuck came in and sat looking at Oddie with brown, questioning eyes. “Anything about the recall I need to know?”

  The CIA man stared slowly around the carpeted, tan-walled, impersonally furnished room, as if he might see something on the floor, in the bookshelves, on a settee, or pasted on the hung photographs of the Founder and others, that Davies would need to be told about. He shook his head. “Axe thinks we lost Maribel Dwelling because some playboys are trying to make us think they are very busy here.”

  “Neptune, still?”

  “Neptune. Haven’t heard the word for a month or more.”

  “You know what I think?” Davies was amused. He tried to light up a pipe while he said what he thought; it interfered so he gave the pipe priority while required. “I bet there never was a Project Neptune.”

  Oddie considered that with full CIA seriousness. “Could be. But news keeps arriving on something either the Soviets—or else the Chinese, or both, in spite of the h
ate act—are doing. You get it from England, Germany—the West, that is, even the French—and you wonder.”

  “I don’t get that word, though,” Davies chuckled. “What the CIA types of foreign countries including our so-called allies learn, that they send you people—or withhold—is a thing the FBI does not often have to deal with, praise God.”

  Oddie faintly frowned at the oath, which was a habit and made those who dared swear, sometimes, just to bug the man. “Axe sends the drift of things over to me. The British, especially, are very able, which a Welshman wouldn’t agree with. They have—” He checked himself. “The number’s in a special classification, sorry—but they have a lot of operatives inside the USSR and some in China, right where they can do the most good.”

  The heavy, square man blew smoke and remained amused. What Oddie knew that Oddie could not tell him was, perhaps, a good deal; but the very fact that a wall existed between his and the other’s agencies seemed silly to him. “So?”

  “Rumors. Bits and pieces.”

  “We’re both in the bits-and-pieces business.” Davies shrugged.

  Oddie was always annoyed by Davies’ attitude toward The Job. He said, with emphasis, “It adds up to the pretty solid information on Neptune. They could have changed the code name but the sum of it is”—Oddie had to think, before he waved his arm in the windowless, air-conditioned office, where the USSR and China lay—“the enemy is apparently up to some big operation, aimed at us. That—to be brief—is the point. Windesmere—you know who he is?”

  “No,” Davies replied. “But let me guess. A top man in M-1 or whatever the milords call it, now.”

  “Near enough. Windesmere, not the earl”—Oddie flushed at the slip—“or whatever his title is—and the man’s real name isn’t Windesmere—thinks the Red world is rigging some sort of—superdevice that would wipe out America. He believes it. Eaper is running almost scared but you can’t really scare the man.” He ignored Davies’ dark-eyed sarcasm. “I’ve scraped the barrel for the two years, going on, since Neptune came my way. And you have—and thanks. But what do I know?”

  Davies answered for him. “That the muzhiks run fishing vessels around the islands to do the same work as our spy ships. As ours try to do, in their waters; and get sunk, one; captured, another. That their nuclear subs tag ours when they leave Pearl Harbor, and other harbors. That the damn fool submariners on both teams occasionally play chicken and sometimes ram, because it would be yellow not to stay on a suicide course longer than the other moron. Which has results the public is not told about. We know the Soviet seamen even fish, occasionally, just for laughs, I guess. And that they anchor offshore for swimming parties and to give their frogmen exercise; but you can’t board ’em. We know that when you got those seemingly innocent beach boys to grab a Russian scuba man he was merely gathering coral specimens and turned out to be a conchologist. You did get onto the little game some of the people at the consulate were playing last year at Pearl—snooping—and several parties went home, fast. Et cetera, et cetera. But have you any harder information to back up this big-scheme rumor? Seems to me that by now it would be all set—which the missiles weren’t quite, when we found ’em in Cuba.”

  Oddie had listened, as those accomplishments and non-accomplishments were summarized. He considered, and made up his mind to talk since he had authority for such decisions. “Well, Chuck, yes. Last month, a freighter in a fleet of Soviet whaling ships got off course and in trouble—fire. The crew took to boats and their pals, as far as we can tell, recovered all of them. But the hulk burned, even though there were explosions, and the Navy found what was left floating about. We’ve had the best people in related branches of science on the retrieved items, ever since. And we haven’t gotten—they haven’t—any clear concept even of their purpose.”

  “No fooling! Where’d it happen?”

  “Philippines. Near them, anyway.”

  “Do they route antarctic whalers and supply ships past the Philippines?”

  Oddie shrugged. “Not usually. But who can say what Reds will do? The unidentified ship maybe carried new gear for a Philippine scanning of some sort. Point is, when the enemy, by accident, leaves you parts of some very complex and, if assembled, probably big gadgets—elements your specialists can’t make sense of—you’re in bad trouble. We know the junk that floated had to do with high-frequency electricity, with communications of some kind, maybe by laser, and it was plainly designed for underwater operation. But the bright boys can’t figure it better than that. The pieces were intriguing and suggestive but we didn’t get enough parts, undamaged, to say more.”

  “On the bottom?”

  “At close to a thousand fathoms? In soft sediments? We—the Navy, I mean—has deep vessels looking. So far, no success.”

  “Sounds either nasty—or smart.”

  “Smart how?” Oddie frowned with scorn.

  “Suppose the whole affair was rigged—and what was found where the hulk sank was meant to be what it is—merely puzzling?”

  Oddie’s response was appropriately curt. “That’s been considered, of course. Would the possibility keep you from trying to make sure?”

  “No.” Davies listened after that while Oddie explained his arranged “vacations” and then said, sympathetically, “Hell of a place to look for some organized—‘un-American,’” he laughed, “‘activity.’ Tourists come through by the million, visit all Hawaii. Groups of every breed alive! Japanese, African, Indian, plus all of Europe and our own folks, too.”

  Oddie agreed. “What does some doom-America operation require, supposing it is real and here, which I doubt? Must take a large number of people, all highly skilled. You can hardly set up anything of such a kind as we keep hearing whispers about—with a few experts, in a few weeks.”

  “Maybe you can—and we just don’t know what that setup might be. The Soviets are technically pretty hot, as we seem never to learn.”

  Oddie disagreed. “What I’d expect would be many people, at or near the site, supposing it exists—and it’s not here, I’m certain—because they’d need a good cover to be able to stick around and communicate or cooperate as required—that, or some group coming and going, with an equally suitable cover.”

  “Would you know,” Davies asked, “if the members of, say, a Tawain Fisheries Convention came back to Honolulu as members of a Conference on Marine Engineering—and later the same guys, or some of the same, appeared as the Free China Moose, if any, or for an Oriental Ivy League Reunion?”

  “We would,” Oddie said. “We have specialists for just that. And several such groups have been looked over. I recently paid attention, for example, to a bunch of Arabs—the party of some oil-rich sheik—who are repeaters—always for a binge. I’ll have to let them go, now. But they checked out safe. Eaper sent me an Arab-speaking—doll—who got herself a job in a dive. Those people patronized the best—” Oddie’s tone showed distaste.

  “Madame Sarah’s? Nice spot! Went there myself with some friends, one night. Line of duty it was not.” He watched Oddie scowl before going on.

  “The girl told us the Arabs spoke the dialect of their sheikdom, or whatever. She never met—dealt with the sheik, himself as a—client”—this embarrassed Oddie—“but she knows all about Arabs. Wasn’t surprised when two or three of them hurt her. They’re like that, it seems. But she made it pretty plain that those so-and-so’s were just having fun, away from their own women. Probably a harem apiece, she said. Desert goons. We got several sets of prints that way. Nothing in our files.”

  “Not the late Miss Dwelling?”

  “No. She worked alone except for specially requested contact with us. Contact by very indirect means. She had a thing about the Soviet ships and subs and scuba divers, though. Surfer, she was.”

  Davies nodded. “So did lots of people outside the trade. I don’t know how many reports we’ve had of alien scuba divers surfacing near the Red ships, and not anywhere near, too. So what? We checked out a few. Mostly
they were kids and men with a handy dinghy the idiot reporters didn’t see. And you can’t hold a Russki who’s sampling the local undersea flora, or just taking a dip, beyond three miles out. The sub and ship business is for Navy Intelligence, after all.”

  There was a short silence. The pair then went into a critical discussion of their long-time and elaborate efforts to find evidence of what might be Neptune—and now might have a new name: efforts without any success, if two killings were regarded as deliberate decoys.

  The first was almost certainly that, since the dead man in Sea Life Park had worn clothes that had come into Soviet possession long ago, which was macabre and so, likely, a gag in the minds of its perpetrators. The second death could be anything.

  The woman known as Mirabel Dwelling might have been the victim of blown cover and killed by her discoverer simply to get rid of an American agent. In that case, the event was not an odd occurrence but an occupational hazard. She might even have been thrown off the mountaintop owing to somebody’s personal motives. A couple of outraged wives, an enraged lover—the possibilities there were endless. For her work had involved relationships with many men and, so far as she had reported, all were “blanks”—that is, not engaged in covert work.

  But they were male and her means of checking them could have led, as that means can in all walks of life, to a fatal result.

  It was past time to shut up shop when they quit. The night crew had arrived in the outer offices. The two bureau heads had combed through scores of dead-end activities. Davies thought Neptune was a mere plant, a rumor kept alive to mislead those who heard it; Oddie was as firmly of the opinion that his area, Limbo Six, Hawaii, was not its locus; he was Oddie and he’d been vigilant.

  The chunky man knocked out his pipe. “Ever checked back again on—what’s-his-name—Grove?”