by Howard Fast
“Still, it could be a hoax,” I said.
“You answered that, Clancy. When we find Horton, we’ll know whether it’s a hoax or not. And we have to find him and quickly. He is a sick man, and he may be a dying man. He underwent a remission of his illness, but he isn’t cured.”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“In a moment. First, understand what we are up against, because you will be up against the same thing. When we question people, we can go so far—no further. The cat stays in the bag.”
“Yes, sir. I think I understand that.”
“We are putting a lot of our hopes on you. On you, Clancy. You are going into Knickerbocker University as a replacement for Alexander Horton. You are going to teach physics.”
“What? It’s fifteen years since I left physics.”
“You never left. It’s all there, somewhere. Bone up.”
“In forty days?”
“In one week, Clancy. One week. For one week, you will eat, sleep, and dream physics. Then you report to Dean Edward Gorland at Knickerbocker. He’s not in on this, but he is prepared in terms of top-secret necessity. That is all he knows, and it’s enough. We have prepared a suitable background for you, which accounts for the years since the war.”
“I can’t move into a college physics department with five days of preparation.”
“You can and you will. Gorland will work with you. Don’t sleep for seven days. Men have done that and survived. But you’re going in there on time and you’re going to pass as the real thing! Because if you don’t, so help me God, Clancy, I’ll make you wish you were never born!”
“I wish it,” I said.
“You’re going in there, Clancy, and you’re going to find some lead to Horton. We trained you as a cop, and you’re supposed to be a smart cop.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“The hell with that, and the hell with the clever talk! You just do what you’re supposed to do, Clancy! There’s a woman teaching in the same department. Her name is Phyllis Goldmark, and on and off during the past two years, she has spent some time with Horton. There was no romance, as I understand it, but she was the only real friend he had. You will receive a complete dossier on Miss Goldmark, and you are going to know her, and you are going to win her affection, her respect, and her trust—”
“No,” I said. “No, sir. I will not.”
Then there was silence—a long painful silence, while they all watched me. Jackson, the intelligence man, started to say something, but Comaday told him to shut up. Then there was silence again. Then Jerome Greene, the Mayor, said to me in a surprisingly gentle voice,
“I don’t sleep any more, Clancy. I’m very tired. I’m as afraid of dying as the next man, but I think I would die without much protest if I could find the answers to this. I can’t find them. God help me, I can’t find them.”
“Don’t think we haven’t tried,” said Fredericks. “We’ve questioned the woman. We know what she knows. She’s not consciously holding back. We want to know what she doesn’t even realize she knows.”
“We have to know,” Greene whispered.
“I’m a small figure,” I whispered. “I’m nobody in a room full of brass. I’m just a cop from Homicide who can say his piece because you want more from me than I’ll ever want from you. So I can talk to the Police Commissioner and the Mayor and a U.S. senator and a G man and a cloak-and-dagger man—and I don’t give two damns about being pushed out to Staten Island in a uniform. But why don’t you ask me how I feel? I was lucky enough to love one woman the way a man can and she died of leukemia! Leukemia! I saw Hiroshima with my own eyes and I married a woman who died of leukemia! That’s why I became a cop! I hate physics! I hate your rotten, stinking bomb! I hate it as much as Horton does!”
Fredericks waited. No one else spoke. Then Fredericks said, almost lazily, “I don’t think Horton hates the bomb at all. Commissioner Comaday referred to him as a man of conscience. All right. I didn’t argue the point, because I think it helps in a sort of descriptive manner. I reserved my opinion. You want it, Clancy? All right. Man of conscience hell! You hate the bomb, Clancy? Are you sure you hate it more than I do, more than Mayor Greene does, more than the Commissioner does? I don’t see you building any fancy bedroom bombs. But Horton is drooling over a big fat bomb, somewhere here in New York. Oh yes, he’s going to save mankind! He’s willing to send ten million of us to kingdom come—just to save mankind. To hell with that kind of savior, Clancy!”
“Only there’s one thing you’ve forgotten,” I said.
“Yes?” Comaday asked, watching me narrowly.
“We could have a pact and outlaw the bomb.”
“I’m just a cop,” Comaday nodded. “Just a cop, Clancy. I rank you, but I’m a cop. I don’t make treaties. Let Washington and Moscow worry about a damned treaty. I’m all for that. But I also know this—whether or not they make a treaty, nothing is changed. Horton still sits in his room with his bomb, and my job remains—to find him! Maybe he is a man of conscience and maybe he isn’t; whatever else he is, he’s sick, mentally and physically. Even if he dies wherever he is, this city will be untenable until we find that cursed bomb.”
I had no more arguments left then. I said I would do it.
Now, sitting alone in my apartment fifteen days later, smoking a cigarette, drinking my black coffee, I accepted the fact that secrets are for girls’ schools and cloak-and-dagger boys. Our secret was no longer a secret by at least two, Jackie, the all-American boy, and Mr. Brown, with the AngloSaxon name and the Latin accent. They knew all about our secret, and they were willing to pay in advance, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars—or their backers were—and never even ask for a receipt. All they wanted was a bomb, conveniently placed in New York City—when I knew the proper address. They were even willing to wait. But they would not wait forever; and I very much doubted that they would wait out the eighteen days that remained.
I did my thinking, but it was the kind of thinking that goes around in circles and then settles like a sickness in the pit of your stomach. Then I tried to sleep, but I was late sleeping and early waking, and I dressed as the sun rose—full dress, so to speak, with a little snub-nosed gun strapped under my arm, a pathetic reassurance for a man who hated guns and what guns did. I held out one hand to see whether it trembled noticeably, but a steady hand is a poor indication of what goes on inside.
I had my coffee at home and then went up to the University; and when I got there, I was ravenously hungry suddenly and I went into the cafeteria for some bacon and eggs and more coffee. Phyllis was there, alone at a table, and I brought my pile of food to join her orange juice and toast.
“Good morning,” she smiled at me. “Do you always eat such a nourishing breakfast?”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t. I guess I was up too early, and that gave me an appetite.”
“I was thinking about yesterday afternoon,” she said. “I think it was one of the nicest afternoons I ever spent.”
“I’m glad.”
“I think you are,” she nodded. “You really enjoy making other people feel good, don’t you, Mr. Clancy?”
“I don’t know. I never looked at it that way.”
“Your eggs are going to get cold if you don’t eat, Mr.—” She took a deep breath, then finished her orange juice and put sugar into her coffee. “Why is it so hard for me to call you Tom? You asked me to, didn’t you?”
“I asked you to.”
“I had such a nice time yesterday—and afterwards I argued with myself that you wouldn’t be so nice to me unless you enjoyed being with me and wanted to be with me.”
“That figures, doesn’t it?”
“You’re just amused at me. About the eggs—I mean my mother gives me no peace when I let food get cold on my plate, and I suppose I got the habit from her. Won’t you please eat? You said you were hungry.”
“Then I’ll eat,” I smiled. “If it makes you feel good.”
“You’re a very nice person, Tom.”
“Yes? Well, as such things go—maybe. I don’t know. I try. We’re both lonely. Would you have dinner with me again tonight?”
“Oh——”
“I know it’s two nights in a row.”
“Why are you asking me?”
“I think because I would enjoy having dinner with you again. That’s probably the whole reason. Do you have a date?”
She nodded.
“Well then——”
“Not a real date,” she said. “I’m invited to my cousin’s house for dinner. They live in Great Neck.”
“Do you have a car?”
“No. No, I can’t afford a car, Tom. I don’t even drive.”
“I have a car. I’ll drive you out and drive you back—if you will bring me.”
“That would be so nice,” she sighed. “I hate the railroad. That would be nice. But I couldn’t—I couldn’t impose on you that way. It wouldn’t be right.”
“What would not be right? My driving you there or you inviting me there?”
“I don’t mean that. I mean you wouldn’t like these people.”
“If you do, why shouldn’t I?”
“I’m not sure that I do, Tom,” she said. “It’s someplace to go. You’re asked someplace instead of sitting at home. I’m a teacher, twenty-nine years old, and not married and not terribly attractive. I’m not giving away secrets. You must realize this.”
“Do I sound that way when I feel sorry for myself?” I asked softly.
It was like striking her. She turned white and stared at the table. She must have remained that way for a minute or two, and then, not looking up, she whispered,
“You don’t feel sorry for yourself.”
“Then neither do you,” I said.
“Do you really want to go with me tonight?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then. But I’ll have to call her. She won’t say no, because I’m bringing a date. Sometimes they make me miserable because I don’t have dates. I’ll call her and I’ll meet you at your office at five o’clock.”
“Thank you, Phyllis.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, and began to stir her coffee again, still not looking up at me.
part three DMITRI GRISCHOV
IT WAS NOT until I was at the door of the house on Park Avenue that I spotted the tail, and by then it was too late. I saw him quickly out of the corner of my eye, standing across the side street and downtown from me, still wearing the gray worsted coat, the black shoes, and the black gloves. I felt like a damn fool and a bad cop; but I had felt like a fool sufficient times before not to be too thrown by the feeling, and it had never occurred to me that I was a model policeman in any category. I went into the house, which was the only thing I could do.
Maybe you have seen the house on Park Avenue, which is the diplomatic stronghold of the Soviet Union in New York City. It is a very fine and elegant house, a corner affair, built out of red brick in the Georgian style or in some sort of turn-of-the-century rearrangement of the Georgian style. I have heard it told that the man who sold it to the Russians needled them about their desire to have one of the best houses in New York in the best neighborhood in New York; but I think that’s a short view. If you run a country, no matter what kind of a country, you put your best foot forward or you borrow a best foot to put forward.
I went inside through a door that was opened for me by a somber, square-cut gentleman in a dark Suit. His face was square, his body was square, and he was in no mood for smiles or cordial welcomes. He raised his brows at me but said nothing aloud, and I said to him that I was there to see Dmitri Grischov.
“Who is Dmitri Grischov?” he wanted to know.
He had an accent which I will not attempt to reproduce. He was my first Russian, in terms of the Soviet Union type of Russian, and the marble floor of the mansion’s foyer was my first excursion onto Russian soil. It was cold and aloof and unencouraging; and when I informed him that he should know better than I who Dmitri Grischov was, his face relapsed into its original square, blank expression. I stood there and he stood there, and the seconds ticked by until a young lady at the far back of the entranceway, sitting behind a desk and doing whatever she was supposed to do, realized that an impasse had been reached and came forward to help. She was a very presentable young lady, not overweight, nicely dressed; and after looking me over carefully, she essayed a sort of a half smile.
I had already gathered that while this place might be jovial on other occasions, its tendency toward mirth would be suppressed in my presence. The young lady asked me what she could do for me, and I repeated to her my desire to see Dmitri Grischov. She considered my request thoughtfully aad then she said something in Russian to the large, square man who had originally intercepted me. He answered in Russian but carefully did not permit any expression upon his face. Then she turned to me and, with the other half of her original smile, informed me that there was no Dmitri Grischov at this address.
A broad flight of handsome marble stairs led up to the second floor of the building. Now a third party came down the stairs and joined us. He was slim, dressed in a suit of dark clothes, and unsmiling. With the other two, he shared an expression of wary emptiness that I had already come to associate with the diplomatic front of the Soviet delegation. His accent was barely noticeable as he asked me what he could do for me.
“I made an appointment with Mr. Grischov,” I replied to him. “One hour ago I took my telephone, dialed the number of this building, spoke to Mr. Grischov, and agreed to meet him here. After that I attended to one or two matters and then put on my hat and coat, got a taxicab and came over here. Upon my arrival here, both this gentleman on my right and this lady on my left assure me that there is no Dmitri Grischov.”
The thin man smiled—he gave me a full smile without reserving any part of it. “Dmitri Grischov,” he said, after bis smile had completed itself.
“Dmitri Grischov,” I repeated.
He spoke in Russian to the young lady, she spoke in Russian to the square-set gentleman. He replied to both of them in Russian. The slim man then said something—also in Russian—and next a reply to that from the young lady. Then the Russian language was laid aside for the time being and the slim man asked me who I was.
“My name is Thomas Clancy,” I told him. “I’m a professor of physics at Knickerbocker University. I’m thirty-seven years old, and I live in New York.”
The slim man nodded and looked at me thoughtfully. Then he said in a thoughtful and reserved manner, as if he were contemplating carefully each word he spoke,
“You may be all that, Mr. Clancy. There is another fact of some importance that you failed to mention. You are carrying a gun.”
His observation was not a question but a matter of fact. I asked him how he knew.
“My friend here,” nodding at the square gentleman, “has been trained to observe such matters.”
“I didn’t think it showed.”
“Not perhaps to anyone who isn’t trained to look for such things. I myself, you must understand, am not trained in that direction. Perhaps it’s in the way you stand, the way you hold your arm, I’m sure I don’t know. But if he says you’re carrying a gun, I have no doubt but that you are carrying a gun. You must understand, Mr. Clancy, that this is not any building, this is a special sort of building. This is the house of the Soviet Delegation to the United Nations. We have an understandable reason to be cautious and even somewhat suspicious of anyone who comes in here carrying a gun and informs us that he is a college professor. This being the case, I think it would be better for you if you left.”
I shook my head. “Not until I see Mr. Grischov.”
“You have been told that there is no Grischov here.”
“I have an appointment with Mr. Grischov. I intend to see Mr. Grischov.”
The slim man was now more thoughtful than ever. Then he smiled and asked whether I would object to leaving my gun wher
e it would be taken care of.
“I have no objections,” I said.
“Then please don’t move, Mr. Clancy. Just stand as you are with your hands at your side. My friend here will remove the gun.”
I stood as I was and the large square man reached inside my coat, removed my gun, glanced at it quickly, and then dropped it into his jacket pocket. Then there was a brief exchange in Russian, after which the slim man suggested that I sit down and wait a few minutes. After that, he and the girl both disappeared. I sat on a straight-backed chair and the man whose business it was to know who carried a gun and who did not stood across the hallway from me and observed me with professional curiosity. A few minutes passed and then the girl reappeared, smiled a full smile at me and told me that she would take me to Mr. Grischov. I followed her up the stairs, through a large square reception room that was marble-floored and hung with heavy red plush drapes, into a sitting-room library—a large, handsome room with oak paneled walls, oak floors, and the massive, proto-Renaissance furniture that must have been added to the mansion at the time it was built.
The young lady left me at the door of this room and Grischov came forward to greet me. He shook hands with a strong and brisk grip, said he was delighted to see me—this with only a suggestion of a Russian accent—and asked me what I would have to drink.
“Nothing,” I assured him.
“But surely some refreshment—a brandy, an apéritif, a glass of fruit juice.”
“Nothing, thank you,” I said.
He was a tightly knit, well-dressed man of about forty-two. His gray flannel suit might have come from Brooks Brothers. He wore a white suit and a black knit tie. His cuffs showed good gold cuff links. He was blond, blue-eyed, alert, and moved with ease and decision. He offered me a chair and then sat down facing me, his hands on his knees, and an expression of pleased surprise upon his face—as if he had measured me and weighed me and decided that I was precisely the type to do the work I had to do.