by James Grady
Ronald Malcolm was supposed to be working on one of those lists that morning, but instead he sat reversed on a wooden chair, his chin resting on the scratched walnut back. It was fourteen minutes until nine o’clock, and he had been sitting there since he climbed the spiral staircase to his second-story office at 8:30, spilling hot coffee and swearing loudly all the way. The coffee was long gone and Malcolm badly wanted a second cup, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off his window.
Barring illness, every morning between 8:40 and 9:00 an incredibly beautiful girl walked up Southeast A, past Malcolm’s window, and into the Library of Congress. And every morning, barring illness or unavoidable work, Malcolm watched her for the brief interval it took her to pass out of view. It became a ritual, one that helped Malcolm rationalize getting out of a perfectly comfortable bed to shave and walk to work. At first lust dominated Malcolm’s attitude, but this had gradually been replaced by a sense of awe that was beyond his definition. In February he gave up even trying to think about it, and now, two months later, he merely waited and watched.
It was the first real day of spring. Early in the year there had been intervals of sunshine scattered through generally rainy days, but no real spring. Today dawned bright and stayed bright. An aroma promising cherry blossoms crept through the morning smog. Out of the corner of his eye Malcolm saw her coming, and he tipped his chair closer to the window.
The girl didn’t walk up the street, she strode, moving with purpose and the pride born of modest yet firm, knowledgeable confidence. Her shiny brown hair lay across her back, sweeping past her broad shoulders to fall halfway to her slender waist. She wore no makeup, and when she wasn’t wearing sunglasses one could see how her eyes, large and well-spaced, perfectly matched her straight nose, her wide mouth, her full face, her square chin. The tight brown sweater hugged her large breasts and even without a bra there was no sag. The plaid skirt revealed full thighs, almost too muscular. Her calves flowed to her ankles. Three more firm steps and she vanished from sight.
Malcolm sighed and settled back in his chair. His typewriter had a half-used sheet of paper in the carriage. He rationalized that this represented an adequate start on his morning’s work. He belched loudly, picked up his empty cup, and left his little red and blue room.
When he got to the stairs, Malcolm paused. There were two coffeepots in the building, one on the main floor in the little kitchen area behind Mrs. Russell’s desk and one on the third floor on the wrapping table at the back of the open stacks. Each pot had its advantages and disadvantages. The first-floor pot was larger and served the most people. Besides Mrs. Russell and ex–drill instructor Walter (“Sergeant Jennings, if you please!”), Dr. Lappe and the new accountant-librarian Heidegger had their offices downstairs, and thus in the great logistical scheme of things used that pot. The coffee was, of course, made by Mrs. Russell, whose many faults did not include poor cooking. There were two disadvantages to the first-floor pot. If Malcolm or Ray Thomas, the other analyst on the second floor, used that pot, they ran the risk of meeting Dr. Lappe. Those meetings were uncomfortable. The other disadvantage was Mrs. Russell and her smell, or, as Ray was wont to call her, Perfume Polly.
Use of the third-floor pot was minimal, as only Harold Martin and Tamatha Reynolds, the other two analysts, were permanently assigned that pot. Sometimes Ray or Malcolm exercised their option. As often as he dared, Walter wandered by for refreshment and a glance at Tamatha’s frail form. Tamatha was a nice girl, but she hadn’t a clue about making coffee. In addition to subjecting himself to a culinary atrocity by using the third-floor pot, Malcolm risked being cornered by Harold Martin and bombarded with the latest statistics, scores, and opinions from the world of sports, followed by nostalgic stories of high-school prowess. He decided to go downstairs.
Mrs. Russell greeted Malcolm with the usual disdainful grunt as he walked by her desk. Sometimes, just to see if she had changed, Malcolm stopped to “chat” with her. She would shuffle papers, and no matter what Malcolm talked about she rambled through a disjointed monologue dealing with how hard she worked, how sick she was, and how little she was appreciated. This morning Malcolm went no further than a sardonic grin and an exaggerated nod.
Malcolm heard the click of an office door opening just as he started back upstairs with his cup of coffee, and braced himself for a lecture from Dr. Lappe.
“Oh, ah, Mr. Malcolm, may I … may I talk to you for a moment?”
Relief. The speaker was Heidegger and not Dr. Lappe. With a smile and a sigh, Malcolm turned to face a slight man so florid that even his bald spot glowed. The inevitable tab-collar white shirt and narrow black tie squeezed the large head from the body.
“Hi, Rich,” said Malcolm, “how are you?”
“I’m fine … Ron. Fine.” Heidegger tittered. Despite six months of total abstinence and hard work, his nerves were still shot. Any inquiry into Heidegger’s condition, however polite, brought back the days when he fearfully sneaked drinks in CIA bathrooms, frantically chewing gum to hide the security risk on his breath. After he “volunteered” for cold turkey, traveled through the hell of withdrawal, and began to pick up pieces of his sanity, the doctors told him he had been turned in by the security section in charge of monitoring the rest rooms. “Would you, I mean, could you come in for a second?”
Any distraction was welcome. “Sure, Rich.”
They entered the small office reserved for the accountant-librarian and sat, Heidegger behind his desk, Malcolm on the old stuffed chair left by the building’s former tenant. For several seconds they sat silent.
Poor little man, thought Malcolm. Scared shitless, still hoping you can work your way back into favor. Still hoping for return of your Top Secret rating so you can move from this dusty green bureaucratic office to another dusty but more Secret office. Maybe, Malcolm thought, if you are lucky, your next office will be one of the other three colors intended to “maximize an efficient office environment,” maybe you’ll get a nice blue room the same soothing shade as three of my walls and hundreds of other government offices.
“Right!” Heidegger’s shout echoed through the room. Suddenly conscious of his volume, he leaned back in his chair and began again. “I … I hate to bother you like this …”
“Oh, no trouble at all.”
“Right. Well, Ron—you don’t mind if I call you Ron, do you? Well, as you know, I’m new to this section. I decided to go over the records for the last few years to acquaint myself with the operation.” He chuckled nervously. “Dr. Lappe’s briefing was, shall we say, less than complete.”
Malcolm joined in his chuckle. Anybody who laughed at Dr. Lappe had something on the ball. Malcolm decided he might like Heidegger after all.
He continued, “Right. Well, you’ve been here two years, haven’t you? Ever since the move from Langley?”
Right, thought Malcolm as he nodded. Two years, two months, and some odd days.
“Right. Well, I’ve found some … discrepancies I think need clearing up, and I thought maybe you could help me.” Heidegger paused and received a willing but questioning shrug from Malcolm. “Well, I found two funny things—or rather, funny things in two areas.
“The first one has to do with accounts, you know, money payed in and out for expenses, salaries, what have you. You probably don’t know anything about that, it’s something I’ll have to figure out. But the other thing has to do with the books, and I’m checking with you and the other research analysts to see if I can find out anything before I go to Dr. Lappe with my written report.” He paused for another encouraging nod. Malcolm didn’t disappoint him.
“Have you ever, well, have you ever noticed any missing books? No, wait,” he said, seeing the confused look on Malcolm’s face, “let me say that again. Do you ever know of an instance where we haven’t got books we ordered or books we should have?”
“No, not that I know of,” said Malcolm, beginning to get bored. “If you could tell me which ones are missing, or might be missi
ng …” He let his sentence trail off, and Heidegger took the cue.
“Well, that’s just it, I don’t really know. I mean, I’m not really sure if any are, and if they are, what they are or even why they are missing. It’s all very confusing.” Silently, Malcolm agreed.
“You see,” Heidegger continued, “sometime in 1968 we received a shipment of books from our Seattle purchasing branch. We received all the volumes they sent, but just by chance I happened to notice that the receiving clerk signed for five crates of books. But the billing order—which, I might add, bears both the check marks and signatures of our agent in Seattle and the trucking firm—says there were seven crates. That means we’re missing two crates of books without really missing any books. Do you understand what I mean?”
Lying slightly, Malcolm said, “Yeah, I understand what you’re saying, though I think it’s probably just a mistake. Somebody, probably the clerk, couldn’t count. Anyway, you say we’re not missing any books. Why not just let it go?”
“You don’t understand!” exclaimed Heidegger, leaning forward and shocking Malcolm with the intensity in his voice. “I’m responsible for these records! When I take over I have to certify I receive everything true and proper. I did that, and this mistake is botching up the records! It looks bad, and if it’s ever found I’ll get the blame. Me!” By the time he finished, he was leaning across the desk and his volume was again causing echoes.
Malcolm was thoroughly bored. The prospect of listening to Heidegger ramble on about inventory discrepancies did not interest him in the least. Malcolm also didn’t like the way Heidegger’s eyes burned behind those thick glasses when he got excited. It was time to leave. He leaned toward Heidegger.
“Look, Rich,” he said, “I know this mess causes problems for you, but I’m afraid I can’t help you out. Maybe one of the other analysts knows something I don’t, but I doubt it. If you want my advice, you’ll forget the whole thing and cover it up. In case you haven’t guessed, that’s what your predecessor Johnson always did. If you want to press things, I suggest you don’t go to Dr. Lappe. He’ll get upset, muddy the whole mess beyond belief, blow it out of proportion, and everybody will be unhappy.”
Malcolm stood up and walked to the door. Looking back, he saw a small, trembling man sitting behind an open ledger and a draftsman’s light.
Malcolm walked as far as Mrs. Russell’s desk before he let out his sigh of relief. He threw what was left of the cold coffee down the sink, and went upstairs to his room, sat down, put his feet up on his desk, farted, and closed his eyes.
When he opened them a minute later he was staring at his Picasso print of Don Quixote. The print appropriately hung on his half-painted red wall. Don Quixote was responsible for Ronald Leonard Malcolm’s exciting position as a Central Intelligence agent. Two years.
In September of 1970, Malcolm took his long delayed Master’s written examination. Everything went beautifully for the first two hours: he wrote a stirring explanation of Plato’s allegory of the cave, analyzed the condition of two of the travelers in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, discussed the significance of rats in Camus’s The Plague, and faked his way through Holden Caulfield’s struggle against homosexuality in Catcher in the Rye. Then he turned to the last page and ran into a brick wall that demanded, “Discuss in depth at least three significant incidents in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, including in the discussion the symbolic meaning of each incident, its relation to the other two incidents and the plot as a whole, and show how Cervantes used these incidents to characterize Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.”
Malcolm had never read Don Quixote. For five precious minutes he stared at the test. Then, very carefully, he opened a fresh examination book and began to write:
“I have never read Don Quixote, but I think he was defeated by a windmill. I am not sure what happened to Sancho Panza.
“The adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, a team generally regarded as seeking justice, can be compared to the adventures of Rex Stout’s two most famous characters, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. For example, in the classic Wolfe adventure The Black Mountain …”
After finishing a lengthy discussion of Nero Wolfe, using The Black Mountain as a focal point, Malcolm turned in his completed examination, went home to his apartment, and contemplated his bare feet.
Two days later he was called to the office of the professor of Spanish Literature. To his surprise, Malcolm was not chastised for his examination answer. Instead, the professor asked Malcolm if he was interested in “murder mysteries.” Startled, Malcolm told the truth: reading such books helped him maintain some semblance of sanity in college. Smiling, the professor asked if he would like to “so maintain your sanity for money?” Naturally, Malcolm said, he would. The professor made a phone call, and that day Malcolm lunched with his first CIA agent.
It is not unusual for college professors, deans, and other academic personnel to act as CIA recruiters. In the early 1950s a Yale coach recruited a student who was later caught infiltrating Red China.
Two months later Malcolm was finally “cleared for limited employment,” as are 17 percent of all CIA applicants. After a special, cursory training period, Malcolm walked up the short flight of iron stairs of the American Literary Historical Society to Mrs. Russell, Dr. Lappe, and his first day as a full-fledged intelligence agent.
Malcolm sighed at the wall, his calculated victory over Dr. Lappe. His third day at work, Malcolm quit wearing a suit and tie. One week of gentle hints passed before Dr. Lappe called him in for a little chat about etiquette. While the good Doctor agreed that bureaucracies tended to be a little stifling, he implied that one really should find a method other than “unconventional” dress for letting in the sun. Malcolm said nothing, but the next day he showed up for work early, properly dressed in suit and tie and carrying a large box. By the time Walter reported to Dr. Lappe at ten, Malcolm had almost finished painting one of his walls fire-engine red. Dr. Lappe sat in stunned silence while Malcolm innocently explained his newest method for letting in the sun. When two other analysts beganto pop into the office to exclaim their approval, the good Doctor quietly stated that perhaps Malcolm had been right to brighten the individual rather than the institution. Malcolm sincerely and quickly agreed. The red paint and painting equipment moved to the third-floor storage room. Malcolm’s suit and tie once more vanished. Dr. Lappe chose individual rebellion rather than inspired collective revolution against government property.
Malcolm sighed to nostalgia before he resumed describing a classic John Dickson Carr method for creating “locked-door” situations.
Meanwhile Heidegger had been busy. He took Malcolm’s advice concerning Dr. Lappe, but he was too frightened to try and hide a mistake from the Company. If they could catch you in the bathroom, no place was safe. He also knew that if he could pull a coup, rectify a malfunctioning situation, or at least show he could responsibly recognize problems, his chances of being reinstated in grace would greatly increase. So through ambition and paranoia (always a bad combination) Richard Heidegger made his fatal mistake.
He wrote a short memo to the chief of mother Department 17. In carefully chosen, obscure, but leading terms, he described what he had told Malcolm. All memos were usually cleared through Dr. Lappe, but exceptions were not unknown. Had Heidegger followed the normal course of procedure, everything would have been fine, for Dr. Lappe knew better than to let a memo critical of his section move up the chain of command. Heidegger guessed this, so he personally put the envelope in the delivery bag.
Twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, two cars of heavily armed men pick up and deliver intra-agency communications from all CIA substations in the Washington area. The communications are driven the eight miles to Langley, where they are sorted for distribution. Rich’s memo went out in the afternoon pickup.
A strange and unorthodox thing happened to Rich’s memo. Like all communications to and from the Society, the memo disappeared from the delivery room befo
re the sorting officially began. The memo appeared on the desk of a wheezing man in a spacious east-wing office. The man read it twice, once quickly, then again, very, very slowly. He left the room and arranged for all files pertaining to the Society to disappear and reappear at a Washington location. He then came back and telephoned to arrange a date at a current art exhibit. Next he reported in sick and caught a bus for the city. Within an hour he was engaged in earnest conversation with a distinguished-looking gentleman who might have been a banker. They talked as they strolled up Pennsylvania Avenue.
That night the distinguished-looking gentleman met yet another man, this time in Clyde’s, a noisy, crowded Georgetown bar frequented by the Capitol Hill crowd. They too took a walk, stopping occasionally to gaze at reflections in the numerous shopwindows. The second man was also distinguished-looking. Striking is a more correct adjective. Something about his eyes told you he definitely was not a banker. He listened while the first man talked.
“I am afraid we have a slight problem.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Weatherby intercepted this today.” He handed the second man Heidegger’s memo.
The second man had to read it only once. “I see what you mean.”
“I knew you would. We really must take care of this, now.”