The man accepted the hand, threw Max over his shoulder, and pinned him to the ground.
Max looked pained. “44, why did you do that?” he asked.
“Sorry, Max,” 44 replied. “I thought you were Noman posing as Max Smart.”
“Well, I’m not!” Max said, getting up. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d have a little more faith in your own eyes from now on.”
44 saluted. “I’ll try to, sir,” he said.
“All right . . . see you around, 44.”
“See you around, Max,” 44 replied, disappearing into the building.
“Max, you can stop worrying about Noman now,” 99 said. “We’re safe. We’re home.”
“I suppose you’re right, 99,” Max smiled. “This time, Noman has been outSmarted.” He gestured toward the entrance. “Shall we go see the Chief now?”
They entered the building and made their way along the long corridor of steel doors. When they reached the telephone booth that was in reality a trap door—secret entrance to the lower floors, Max said, “I think we’d better take the stairs. I don’t think we’d all fit in that telephone booth.”
“We could try,” Peaches giggled. “It might be romantic.”
“Get your own secret agent to try it with,” 99 snapped.
They descended by way of the stairs, and, a moment later, reached the door of the Chief’s office. Max knocked.
“Who’s there?”
“Chief—aren’t you forgetting the password?”
“That’s it,” a voice answered. “I ask ‘who’s there?’, and you answer with your name. That’s the password for today.”
“Oh. It’s Max, Chief.”
“I don’t know any Max Chief. Any relation to Max Smart?”
“Chief! This is me—Max Smart.”
“Come in, Max.”
Max opened the door and he and 99 and Peaches entered. The Chief got up from his desk and came to meet them. He was plump and looked a lot like a typical Chief.
“I’ll take the Plan, Max,” the Chief said.
Max halted. “Just a minute, Chief. There’s a story that goes with it.”
“You can tell me the story later, Max. Right now, Just give me the Plan.”
“Chief, the story is very important,” Max said. “I insist that you listen to the story first. Otherwise, you won’t know what to do with the Plan.”
The Chief sighed. “All right, Max, what’s the story?”
“Well, I was born in a little log— No, that’s a different story. The way this story begins is . . .”
Max proceeded to tell the Chief exactly what had happened after he and Peaches had left him early that morning. He didn’t leave out a single detail.
“That’s fine, Max,” the Chief said when Max finished. “It was a fascinating story. Now, give me the Plan.”
“Wouldn’t you like to hear the part where Peaches shot the holes in the boat again, Chief?”
“No, Max. Just give me the Plan.”
“What do you intend to do with it, Chief?”
“Why, publicize it, just as you suggested.”
“Good. Here it is, Chief.”
The Chief snatched the Plan from Max’s hand, then headed hurriedly for the door.
“Where are you going, Chief?” Max asked curiously.
“Oh . . . well, I’m going to take the Plan to the publicity department,” the Chief replied. “It’s the publicity department that does all our publicizing, you know.”
“That makes sense,” Max nodded.
The Chief went out the door, then closed it behind him.
“Max . . .” 99 frowned, “. . . I didn’t know we had a publicity department.”
“It’s news to me, too,” Max said.
“If we’re a secret organization, why would we have a publicity department?” 99 asked.
“We’re not that secret,” Max replied. “Everybody knows about us. You can’t keep a thing like a secret organization a secret.”
“Still . . .”
At that moment, the door opened and the Chief came back in.
“Max!” he said. “You’re back!”
Max shook his head. “No, Chief, you’re the one who’s back. I haven’t been anywhere.”
“I don’t doubt that,” the Chief said. “But you tried, didn’t you? New York, Moscow, Peking—remember?”
“Max!” 99 cried.
“Just a minute, 99,” Max said. “Let’s get this other thing straightened out.” He turned back to the Chief. “Chief, you’re the one who apparently doesn’t remember. I explained all that in my story—remember?”
“Your story, Max?”
“Max!” 99 cried again.
“99, please, just a moment.” Once more, he faced toward the Chief. “Surely you remember, Chief. When Peaches shot those holes in the boat? You remember that, don’t you? I just finished telling the story not ten minutes ago.”
“Max!”
“99, please!”
“Max, I’ve been out of my office on a coffee break for over a half-hour,” the Chief said.
Max blinked at him—then turned to 99. “Yes, you were saying?”
“Max!”
“Yes, I know. But what else.”
“Max, that first man you talked to, the one you told the story to, that wasn’t the Chief. That was—”
“Noman!” Peaches shrieked.
“Max, what’s going on here?” the Chief demanded.
“Well, Chief, I hate to admit it, but I think I’ve been outNomaned,” Max replied.
“What happened?” the Chief asked.
Max motioned toward the Chief’s chair. “Have a seat, Chief. This is a long story.”
“Twice as long when you hear it the second time,” Peaches groaned.
Max then proceeded to tell the story again, leaving out not one single detail.
When he had finished, the Chief said, “Then, as I understand it, Noman masqueraded as me, and he now has the Plan.”
“That’s the way I understand it, too,” Max replied.
The Chief smiled. “Well, it could be worse, Max.”
Max stared at him. “How?”
“The Dooms Day Plan could have been a plan for a Dooms Day.”
“It is, Chief! Didn’t you understand? The whole day will be Arthur Dooms’s.”
“No, Max, I mean a real Dooms Day—the end of the world.”
“Oh. Well then, yes, I agree. That would be worse. But, we’ve lost our opportunity to destroy KAOS. That isn’t good, Chief.”
“I’m not so sure about that, Max.”
“Chief! Is that you saying that?”
“Maybe he’s Noman again,” 99 said.
The Chief shook his head. “No, no, 99—I’m the Chief, all right.”
“Then how can you say that you’re not sure that it isn’t good that we’ve lost our opportunity to destroy KAOS, Chief?” Max asked.
“Well, Max, any organization that holds a testimonial dinner for a trusted employee can’t be all bad. I expect the same thing from Control when I retire.”
“Yes, Chief, but—”
“And, Max, I think that, in this day of reality and reason, we ought to encourage sentimentality wherever we find it. There’s little enough of it left in the world.”
“Yes, Chief, but—”
“There’s another reason, too, Max. A more practical reason.”
“Yes, Chief, but— But what is it, Chief?”
“Well, Max, if we eliminated all the bad guys, what would be the eventual result?”
“A perfect world?”
“That’s a little long-range for me, Max. I’m thinking of the short-term aspects. Ask yourself this, Max: In what kind of work are we engaged?”
“Chasing bad guys.”
“And, if there were no more bad guys, Max?”
“A lot of swell good guys would be out of work,” Max replied.
“Exactly.”
“I see your point, Chief.”
“All us good guys out of work, we’d be a burden on the nation’s economy,” the Chief said. “Good guys would be standing in bread lines.”
Max shuddered. “I guess it’s a good thing that Noman escaped with the Plan.”
“All’s well that ends well, Max,” the Chief said. He turned to Peaches. “Miss Twelvetrees,” he said, “needless to say, we are grateful for your assistance.”
“She was no help at all, Chief,” Max said.
“How can you say that, Max?” the Chief replied. “She failed to break the code, didn’t she?”
“Yes, Chief, but—”
“If she had broken the code, Max, and we had discovered that the Dooms Day Plan was a menu for a testimonial dinner, and we had publicized the fact that KAOS was staffed with a bunch of softies, all us good guys would now be on the brink of unemployment.”
“I take back what I said,” Max said to Peaches. “Your services were invaluable.”
“Thank you,” Peaches giggled. “Now, can I ask a favor?”
“Anything,” the Chief replied.
“Could you give me the address of KAOS headquarters?”
“Well . . . yes . . . I suppose,” the Chief said, baffled. “Max,” he said, “will you get that address from the file, please?”
Max went to the file, and came back a moment later with the address written on a slip of paper.
“Would I be too nosy if I asked what you intend to use this for?” Max said, handing Peaches the slip of paper.
“Heavens, no!” she replied. “I’m going to join KAOS.”
“You’re—”
“I’ve been thinking,” she explained. “About that Noman. He could be quite romantic.”
“Noman? That cold-blooded arch-criminal?”
“He may be a cold-blooded arch-you-know-what to you,” Peaches said. “But he’s a fantastic possibility to me.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” the Chief said.
“With that face of his?” Peaches giggled. “He could be a pudgy Cary Grant in the morning, a pudgy Rock Hudson at noon, and a pudgy Tony Curtis at night. You think that ain’t a fantastic possibility?”
“Well, I suppose—the Chief began.
But Peaches could not wait. “Happy landings,” she called, going out the door.
The Chief looked at Max disappointedly. “Max—what happened? When that girl came in here this morning, she was a friend. Now, she’s joining KAOS. From friend to enemy in less than twenty-four hours.”
Max winced. “Sorry about that, Chief,” he said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WILLIAM JOHNSTON (1924-2010), author of many movie and TV tie-in novels was born January 11th, 1924 and passed away October 15th, 2010.
On January 4th, 2010, The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers www://iamtw.org announced it was bestowing The Faust, its Grand Master Award for excellence, to author William Johnston, the writer of over a hundred tie-in novels and the most prolific practitioner of the craft.
(From the January/February 2010 Newsletter - IAMTW)
The Newsletter of the International Association
of Media Tie-in Writers
IAMTW’s GRAND MASTER SCRIBE AWARD,
THE FAUST, GOES TO THE GENRE’S MOST
PROLIFIC PRACTITIONER
By David Spencer
The inarguable preeminent author of tie-ins, with more published tie-in titles to his credit (well more than 100) than any writer in the game before or since—the legendary and until now somewhat elusive William Johnston—will be honored by the IAMTW with a Faust Award, the honor bestowed upon Grand Masters. He is currently residing in San Jose, California, and will turn 86 on January 11th, 2010—a fitting number, as it is his series of novels based on the spy sitcom Get Smart, about Secret Agent 86 for CONTROL, which turned his byline into a virtual tie-in “brand” and thereafter defined the nature of his tie-in (and the largest proportion of his literary) career as the industry’s comedy specialist.
Johnston’s style is paradoxically recognizable, despite seeming matter of fact and transparent, his narration employing little reliance on metaphor, idiosyncratic locution or other literary manipulation. But the ostensible simplicity is utterly deceptive: for in the “serious” books, depth of characterization sneaks up on the reader, dialogue and internalization unusually nuanced, layered and when appropriate even subtle, with a psychological perception very ahead of its time.
Johnston’s humorous novels are a textbook lesson on comic timing in prose, possibly because he had some experience as an actor (a signature of his books is writing phone conversations as play-format dialogue exchanges, woodshedding redundant “he saids” and “she saids”).
He knew the wisdom and the technique of “simply” staying out of the way, and letting the tale be carried by action, dialogue, and an impeccable sense of cadence and rhythm. Plus his own unique brand of whimsy and wordplay.
Johnston’s career started in 1960 with the release of a hardcover comic murder mystery, The Marriage Cage (Lyle Stuart, reissued in paperback by Dell), which earned him a Best First Novel Edgar Award nomination from the Mystery Writers of America. Curiously, this did not lead immediately to more mystery novels (though he would write mystery tie-ins later in his career), but rather to a number of early 60s pulp titles for Monarch Books, which ranged from light comedy (The Power of Positive Loving) to medical romance (the Doctor Starr trilogy) to soft core racy (Save Her for Loving, Teen Age Tramp, Girls on the Wing).
The medical novels in particular either dovetailed with, or led to, his first tie-in commissions, which were for original novels based on medical dramas, such as The Nurses (Bantam), Doctor Kildare (Lancer and Whitman) and Ben Casey. These books, published between 1962 and 1964, were so successful that a cover variant on The Nurses includes a “2nd Big Printing” starburst; and his next (and it would seem last) original medical romance, Two Loves Has Nurse Powell (Neva Paperbacks) trumpets “From the author of Ben Casey. ”
It’s likely that among these books, the Doctor Kildare title written for Whitman’s young audience line was a significant pivot point, because in 1965, Tempo Books (the Young Audience paperback imprint of Grosset & Dunlop) commissioned Johnston to write Get Smart, an original novel based on the spy satire sitcom starring Don Adams, Barbara Feldon, and Edward Platt, created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. The first Get Smart book proved so staggeringly popular, going through multiple printings, that follow ups were immediately commissioned, leading to what would become a series of nine books over the course of the show’s five-season history.
That doesn’t sound like much in new millennium terms, but in the 60s it amounted to a single-author original tie-in grand slam, outdistanced only by the Dark Shadows series authored by Dan (as “Marilyn”) Ross. Indeed, it was the third place holder for TV tie-in series originals in general, with only the 23-book Man from U.N.C.L.E. series—by multiple authors—between it and Dark Shadows. (James Blish’s 12 book Star Trek series for Bantam, which continued into the 70s, did not feature original tales, but was rather comprised exclusively of short stories adapting the show’s teleplays.)
Johnson’s gig as Maxwell Smart’s official novelist in turn led to his becoming the go-to guy for sitcom-based novels in general. Continuing with Tempo Books from the rest of the decade into the mid-70s, he authored a one-shot based on the short-lived Captain Nice (starring William Daniels of 1776 and also created by Buck Henry) and book series based on Room 222, Happy Days, and Welcome Back, Kotter. Concurrently he also authored books based on The Flying Nun for Ace, as well as The Brady Bunch and Nanny and the Professor (Lancer). As if that weren’t plenty, he also did sitcom novels for Whitman, including titles based on The Munsters, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, The Monkees, and F-Troop.
Though the sitcom novels dominated Johnston’s tie-in career, and were the work with which he was reflexively identified, he still did a catalog’s worth of work in just about every other TV tie-in genre except sc
ience fiction and military. He authored one-off mysteries based on My Friend Tony (Lancer), Ironside (Whitman), and the comic strip Dick Tracy (Tempo), a two-book series based on the American Revolution youth historical, The Young Rebels, and an original Western based on The Iron Horse (Popular Library). Under pseudonyms he tackled social drama, with a book based on Rod Serling’s The New People (as “Alex Steele” for Tempo) and two based on Matt Lincoln (as “Ed Garth” for Lancer). His catalog even includes a smattering of juvenilia, with Whitman Big Little books based on Hanna Barbera cartoon characters such as Magilla Gorilla and Snagglepuss, among others. (According to the late Howard Ashman—whose day job, before Little Shop of Horrors made him a musical theatre icon, was assistant editor at Ace/Tempo during Johnston’s most prolific period—Johnston’s services as sitcom specialist were so much in demand that, simply to keep up the pace and meet the deadlines, he would occasionally create detailed outlines which would then be farmed out to anonymous “ghosts” for fleshing out. Since the style remains consistent, one assumes Johnston added the final polish.)
Aside from his TV tie-in originals, Johnston penned many script novelizations, again in multiple genres. He novelized the pilots for the 1930s-era private eye series Banyon (Warner) and the high school drama Sons and Daughters (Ballantine). His feature film novelizations include (and may not be limited to) Alan J. Pakula’s controversial Klute, The Swinger, Echoes of a Summer, Robert Bloch’s Asylum, The New Interns, The April Fools, The Priest’s Wife, Disney’s Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN (written as “Bill Ford”) and Angel, Angel, Down We Go. If you note that The Swinger was published under the Dell imprint and review the publishers named in this release, another astonishing fact emerges: Johnston tie-ins seem to have been issued by every major paperback house of the era, with the exception of Fawcett.
Which is not to say that Fawcett didn’t publish him: during this period he, like a lot of male pulpsmiths, also wrote gothic romances behind a female pseudonym. His were published—by Fawcett—under the name “Susan Claudia.” Johnston’s wholly original work became scarce once he was established as a tie-in machine, but it didn’t altogether disappear. Aside from the Susan Claudia gothics, he also authored The Manipulator (Lancer, 1968, reissued under Magnum), a racy paperback potboiler about an ambitious business executive fighting the odds to get a revolutionary jetliner into the air; and in hardcover, a novel about an overweight, bigoted beat cop called Barney (Random House, 1970, reissued in paperback by Warner).
Get Smart 3 - Get Smart Once Again! Page 13