The Whisper of the Axe

by Richard Condon

  June 24 (Washington)/June 25 (Peking) 1976

  The Secretary’s visit to China was announced as a trade mission. The Secretary spent eleven hours with the Chinese Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Ministers for Defense and Air, slowly and grimly revealing his information. He gave dates, training sites, names of trainees, names of training camp and War College officers, the positioning of trainees following their graduation in China, their military, political and guerrilla objectives as specified in the Chinese course of training. Every fragment of fact that Dr. Baum, the three colonels and the other interrogators had been able to extract from the Army’s plant on his return, every scintilla or action/counteraction that the CIA technicians who had designed Enid Simms’s memory had been able to extract from her, had been marshaled before the Secretary in his thick, black looseleaf case books.

  There was no response, because there could be no response, from the Chinese. They did not attempt to bluster or to minimize. They waited for what he had most surely come to tell them.

  He demanded to be told the names and locations of the ringleaders. He demanded to be told the sources of such gigantic financing. He wanted those facts at that meeting, without recess. He wanted the names of the ringleaders above all else and he wanted them instantly while there was still time to act. He wanted the names, ranks and whereabouts of all Chinese, or foreign guerrilla, or Communist or Socialist advisers who had assisted the movement, and he wanted their immediate whereabouts whether they were inside or outside the United States. If they were, any of them, inside China, he wanted them delivered to him for return to the United States for trial and execution.

  The Chinese had been silent for what might have been two hours of the Secretary’s colloquy. It was at that moment that the Chinese Prime Minister made his government’s answer.

  “We regret this disaster which your country faces,” he said. “But we have no such knowledge nor had we any such participation. We are unable to offer you any assistance.”

  The Secretary was dazed and limp with sweat. He stood at the end of the table in his shirtsleeves. “In that case, you are making a terrible mistake,” he said. “If—and I lay this down in front of you as the most prodigious IF history has ever known—IF this guerrilla war begins in those thirty cities of my country—I said IF—then we will systematically destroy China. We will destroy you from north to south, from east to west. Your population of seven hundred and fifty million people with their density of seventy-nine to the square mile will be reduced to ten million mutants when we finish with you. That is the message, and the assurance, from the President of the United States. Think hard.”

  June 28 (Peking)/June 27 (Saskatchewan) 1976

  In the loveliest part of summer, while China was transmitting its instructions over the top of the world to northern Canada for retransmission to southern Quebec by courier, then across the border to a private airport twenty-six miles south of Massena, New York, to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, the 11,300 employees of the National Security Agency had been reorganized and redeployed and were at work in and around the longest unobstructed corridor in the world, 980 feet long, 560 feet wide, working day and night shifts in the total 1,400,000-square-foot area of the agency at Fort George Meade, Maryland, utilizing sixty-three on-line computers, eighteen miles of conveyor belts that moved document trays from sub-station to sub-station at the rate of 100 feet a minute to conduct the “deepest” analyses of the 83,000 individual American citizens and 214,800 aliens whom the CIA had had under surveillance in the past six years in the United States and abroad. The machines and men sought out convicts who had been sentenced for armed robbery to American prisons who had also been enlistees in the U.S. Army or who had been radical organizers in those prisons. They checked out the records, measurements and photographs of tens of thousands of female prisoners serving time for armed robbery over the previous ten years in all states working against the best description their secret agent could offer to the interrogation teams during his de-briefing. Under identical analyses were the attenuated “action/active” and “Hidden Ball” files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation: reports on 883,400 U.S. citizens and 319,000 aliens. The “Secret Only” Movement Reports compiled on 721,932 U.S. citizens and 3,279 aliens by U.S. Army Intelligence were in the trays and under analyses to pull the pictures of the guerrilla Army Corps commanders and mug shots of the Western Action Area commander.

  Every American or alien resident in the United States who had traveled in eastern Asia since 1966 was being sifted out and his travel patterns examined minutely. Those files set aside for further examination were immediately checked against “density” files on the personalities/interests of the people represented. If there was any indication of eccentric Asian travel pattern, political, criminal or “reasonably alarming” information such as real or casual linkage of such a person with any of the known officers of the guerrilla movement, these people were to be arrested on June 28, 1976, in the trans-national roundup beginning at 12:01 A.M., that date. The records of every National Guardsman in present active service were studied for (1) slum origins; (2) narcotics addiction; (3) former or present street gang membership, and all Guardsmen matching those indictments were to be disarmed and arrested.

  The President suspended habeas corpus. As the incriminating files were segregated, excluding the projected arrests of National Guardsmen, the Army was able to make provision for the arrests of 31,641 suspects and their detention for questioning in fifty-eight “camps” around the country beginning on the first minute of morning, June 28. Interrogation teams working with Action Manuals developed by Dr. Lothar Baum, U.S. Army Intelligence, were drawn from the CIA, FBI, NSA, Army and Air Force Intelligence: 917 men and women selected from psychological profiles indicating “non-revulsion to inflicting hardship where necessary.”

  Teel’s name and record was among those segregated for action because she had once traveled to Asia in “an eccentric pattern,” she had political and criminal connections as a trial lawyer, in a most active manner, she showed “reasonably alarming” linkage by being the sister of Jonas Teel, an officer, they thought, of the guerrilla movement. Her file was “further segregated” and stamped boldly FOR EARLIEST ARREST 28 JUNE 1976, which also meant that she would be accorded the “deepest” interrogation and de-briefing.

  The President took the decision to move the army into the cities on the morning of June 28, to guard bridges, tunnels, sewer and electrical mains, hospitals, churches, schools and places of public assembly and to patrol rooftops with/by snipers carrying rifles with telescopic sights. The troops were to go in wearing civilian clothing having luminous armbands and were to be referred to as Youth Corps Volunteers “on urban maneuvers,” with the cooperation of television, press and radio outlets. Until the second of July, excepting rooftop patrols, these troops would be supplied with small arms only. The President and the army leaders were fairly certain that there would not be anything to shoot at even if action began. The guerrilla tactic would be to remain out of sight; striking and mingling. Other than making formal shows to reassure the public when the action began, with armed patrols of two men each, fifteen feet apart, it was not yet certain how the troops should be deployed.

  Ten days remained until the Fourth of July.

  1:37 P.M., June 27, 1976

  The Canadian courier for the Chinese government delivered the pouch to Colonel Pikow at 1:37 P.M. on June 27. When Colonel Pikow read his orders, he began to call Teel at every known contact area. He reached her at 2:41 P.M. at the Tombs Prison where she was visiting a client whose trial for murder would begin on June 29. In their short telephone conversation Colonel Pikow conveyed the three Code Color words, which indicated maximum danger. Teel left the Tombs without returning to the prisoner. She and Chelito took the subway all the way uptown to 155th Street and Eighth Avenue, riding in different parts of the subway car and leaving the car by different exits.

  Teel reached the bunker at 3:27. She ente
red as she always entered, through the adjacent tenement building. Chelito went in through the junkyard, an entrance that had been carefully designed but never used. Colonel Pikow was waiting with a tall, blond Scandinavian-looking man.

  “This is Bo Lundquist,” Colonel Pikow said abruptly. “He has been on sleeper duty in the Greater Holden area of Saskatchewan for four years waiting for the fail-safe message that came in yesterday. There is proof of a traitor. We have had that confirmed to my government.”

  “Who?” Teel was distant and calm.

  “Unknown.”

  “How was this confirmed?”

  “The American Secretary of State who returned today from what they called a trade mission to Peking, revealed to the Chinese government the American government’s knowledge of the most intimate details of our battle plans for the first three weeks of the campaigns.”

  Teel sat down.

  “Where is Chelito?” Colonel Pikow asked.

  “I missed her when I left the Tombs. Will she be in trouble if she goes to my place to wait for me?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I don’t know. The American government will not go into a total alert until after midnight tonight.”

  Teel spoke to Lundquist. “Tell me how you got the Peking message and what the orders were.”

  He was hesitant. “I was in my house. It is in the woods three hundred miles above Indian Head, on Lake William in Greater Holden. I am known as a trapper there. I wait for the midnight signal from Peking which has always come in as a test transmission. The message was in Chinese and in code. It was for Colonel Pikow’s eyes only.”

  Teel turned to Pikow. “What was the message?” she said.

  “The war must be called off.”

  “That is the substance of the message, Peek. What was the message?”

  “The Americans had a plant in Tsinghai from 1971 on.” He was unnaturally tense.

  “What else?”

  “The Secretary of State demanded that the Chinese government immediately persuade the American guerrillas to abandon war plans.”

  “Yes?”

  “My government denied any knowledge of or implication in any war plans by American guerrillas.”

  “And—?”

  “The Secretary of State then made the following statement.” Pikow took a slip of paper out of his outside breast pocket with a pair of eyeglasses which Teel had never seen him wearing before. His hands shook badly as he put on the glasses. He read from the paper, “‘… we will destroy you from north to south, from east to west. Your population of seven hundred and fifty million will be reduced to ten million mutants.… That is the message and the assurance of the President of the United States. Think hard.’”

  The two men stood facing Teel, who sat in an armchair. “I want to be sure,” she said to Pikow. “What is China’s answer?”

  “What is the answer?” Lundquist asked incredulously.

  “The only answer,” Pikow said. “There can be no war of any kind. Not here and not in China.”

  “All right,” Teel said. “I accept that.” Pikow slumped into a chair.

  Teel got up heavily. She looked old just then. “Peek, tell me somethin’. What was in the orders if I told you I wouldn’t call off the war I worked so long and so hard to get?”

  He stared at her longingly and sadly. “Mr. Lundquist would kill you,” he answered simply.

  “Well, anyhow,” Teel replied, “I am glad it wouldn’t have been you who had to do it. And I’m glad it isn’t me. Los dos, Chelito!”

  The long flying knife hit Mr. Lundquist at the center of his chest, its force knocking him backward off his feet where he lay jerking spasmodically. Colonel Pikow stood up slowly and unsteadily, staring blankly at Teel as Chelito came out into the room holding a gun.

  “Do it well, Chelito,” Teel said softly. “Es muy hombre.” Chelito shot once.

  Teel turned away and walked to the telephone at her desk. She dialed a long distance number. “Senator Simms?” she said into the telephone. “This is Agatha Teel. Do you have that name for me?”

  “I have the name,” Simms’s voice said. “I got it forty minutes ago from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

  “What is it?”

  “My sister is dead, Agatha. You hardly knew her, but she was everything I had in life and she killed herself because of a man.”

  “I am deeply sorry to hear that. What terrible news for you. What is the man’s name?”

  “I will tell you his name if you will invite the man who drove my sister to suicide to your house at ten o’clock tonight.”

  “All right.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Who is the man you want at my house?”

  “It will be easy for you. He’s a man we met at one of your parties.”

  “Who?”

  “A man named Chandler Shapiro.”

  “I’ll have him at my house at ten, Senator.” She hung up.

  Teel, Jonas, and Chelito manned telephones in the bunker, not even taking time to dispose of the two bodies, and began to call the guerrilla Army Corps commanders across the United States, to get them into New York and out of danger. As they reached each one, Jonas got on the line and ordered them to reach and warn every National Guard regimental guerrilla unit leader before eleven o’clock that night and to have all of them “change cities” and go underground. The organization would get money to them in three days’ time. He ordered the guerrilla Corps Commanders to New York.

  They were able to reach Anderson, Weems, Gussow, Buckley and Reyes. They could not reach Winn, Dawes, Duloissier or Enid Simms. At 9:25 Teel told Jonas she had to go downtown, but that he had to keep calling the missing, except for Enid, of course.

  “Get them into New York tonight,” she said. “I want them safe in this bunker. Tomorrow morning is going to be worse than hell. Make them charter if they need to. Get them here tonight.”

  “What you gone do, Ag?”

  “Shit, honey—where’s the itch, the government got a right to get hip. So they did. That’s what makes tennis players. You need a good crafty enemy in the other court. Well, they got hip and we cain’t get our war started on the Fourth of July, nineteen hundred and seventy six and maybe not for four more years—but we’re okay. We’re near to bein’ intact so we gone regroup. That’s all. We got the gold an’ we gone regroup.”

  “Then why you goin’ downtown?”

  “Don’t you think we got to settle things with the traitor?”

  He nodded grimly.

  9:50–9:56 P.M., June 27, 1976

  Bart arrived at Teel’s house on 38th Street at 9:50 P.M. Chelito came down to the main door and led him into the elevator. They rode up two floors to the main living room.

  Teel was waiting for him, seated on a long yellow sofa covered with striped silk in the Victorian manner. In the chill of her air conditioning she wore a long dressing gown of white-dyed beaver with deep sleeves. She asked Bart to sit down. He pulled up a chair facing the elevator. Chelito sent the elevator down to the main floor and took a seat in the shadows on the far side of the room.

  “Will he be here?” Simms asked.

  “Any minute now,” Teel said. They heard the sound of the elevator rising.

  Simms said, “Here he comes.” They watched the light of the lift car slowly fill the opaque glass area which was the elevator door. The elevator door opened. Kranak strode into the room with a cocky macho walk, the man who had been invited to bed by popular request. He stopped short as he saw Bart rise out of the chair.

  “I would like to introduce Colonel Lucius Purcell of U.S. Army Intelligence,” Bart said. “He is that agent you had asked about. I hold him responsible for the suicide of my sister.”

  Bart took the single-shot Liberator out of his side pocket as Kranak pulled at his pistol, using his one good arm. They both seemed to fire at once, but Kranak was faster. Kranak’s bullet went through Bart’s left eye and out the back of his head. Ba
rt’s bullet hit Kranak high in the chest, shattering his collar bone.

  Chelito threw the knife at the instant the bullet slammed Kranak around toward her, so that, instead of taking him through the chest, it slammed into the base of his throat causing gobbets of blood to cascade like an obscene fountain as Kranak fired at Chelito, hitting her dead center in the face as she came out of the chair with a pistol.

  As Kranak fired, Teel drew her gun out of her deep sleeve, put out the room lights with her other hand and shot at him as he stood swaying in outline against the back lights of the elevator. She missed him. She was knocked to the floor with the shock of his bullet slamming into her. Kranak turned and lunged into the open elevator, his back to the dark room. Teel fired again. Her bullet passed through his left lung. She could hear the elevator descending sedately.

  Kranak clung to the building wall and made himself move toward the lighted public booth at the corner of Park Avenue, the knife handle protruding from his throat, screaming to himself inside his head that he was a Lipan Apache and that one Lipan could do what would make fifty Navajo quail.

  Admiral Adler picked up on the first ring.

  “Purcell,” Kranak gasped into the phone. “Booth—thirty-eighth—Park.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  Breathing whistled the answer.

  “Did you find the leader? Do you know the leader?”

  At last Kranak revealed the secret of the case he had been trying to build to prove the truth of his knowledge; defying Dr. Baum to prove otherwise. He was a Lipan Apache saving his nation. “Senator Hobart Simms,” he said, then hemorrhaged into death.

  About the Author

  Richard Condon was born in New York City. He worked in the movie business for more than twenty years before beginning to write fiction in his forties. The author of twenty-six books, he is best remembered for The Manchurian Candidate and four novels about the Prizzis, a family of New York gangsters. Condon passed away in 1996.