“And Victoria said, ‘When would you like us to leave Detroit for wherever Fitzy will serve his country? And where, exactly, is that?’
“‘It’s Berlin, actually. And as soon as possible. How soon do you think you can work leaving Detroit into your schedule, Victoria?’
“‘How does thirty minutes fit into your schedule, Bill?’”
—
“And that’s how Victoria and I came to Berlin, Phil,” SSA Caldwell said.
“Fascinating story, sir. May I ask a question?”
“Certainly.”
“How do you get those senior Russian, Hungarian, and other Eastern Bloc officers you mentioned to realize the error of their ways and change sides?”
“In due time, I will tell you, of course, but right now what I want to do is get that EXPLETIVE DELETED!! idiot Brewster out here to retype the Report of Successful Recruitment of NKGB Colonel Vladimir Polshov now that you have uncovered the . . . how many was it?”
“If you’re asking about ambiguities and grammatical errors, sir, I found a total of thirteen of the former and seventeen of the latter, plus six strikeovers.”
“Each EXPLETIVE DELETED!! one of all those EXPLETIVE DELETED!! errors which would have made me look like a horse’s ass to ol’ Bill, now Ralph, of course, had that report landed on his desk. It is painful for a Harvard man, you will understand, to have ambiguities and grammatical errors pointed out to him by a EXPLETIVE DELETED!! Dartmouthian, even if they are old comrades-in-arms.”
“Yes, sir. But, sir, I am a CIC administrator who is supposed to do the typing of reports prepared by people like Special Agent Captain Brewster.”
“Not anymore, Phil. A new day has dawned on the German-American Gospel Tract Foundation. In this bright new world, you will find the errors, and Brewster and his EXPLETIVE DELETED!! ring-knocking buddies will do the typing.”
“Sir, if I may say so, I don’t think Captain Brewster and his fellow West Point alumni are going to like that.”
“Good!” SSA Caldwell said.
[ TWO ]
Over the next several days and weeks, Phil learned SSA Caldwell’s modus operandi—which he knew from his Latin studies meant “mode of operation”—vis-à-vis getting senior Russian and other Eastern Bloc officers to change sides.
As he learned this, he also learned that in the smoke-and-mirrors world of intelligence, things were often not what they appeared to be, including CIC administrators Angus McTavish and G. Lincoln Rutherford.
“What I did, Phil,” SSA Caldwell explained, “when ol’ Bill, who was now Ralph Peters, laid the heavy burden on my broad shoulders of getting these Commie chaps to change sides was do what Caldwell Automobile Fabrics International, Inc., calls Market Research.
“Between you and me, CAFI, Inc., actually did a good deal of the research for me, as I knew all those overpaid EXPLETIVE DELETED!! were doing was hanging around the Detroit Automobile Club soaking up booze on their expense accounts and had the time.
“Anyway, they did it. And giving credit where credit is due, they did a pretty good job. A good bit of what they learned was eye-opening. I confess that I had been taken in by the propaganda that what the Soviet and Eastern Bloc NKGB big shots did for relaxation from their labors in trying to enslave the world was go to the Bolshoi and other places where ballet was offered for cultural enrichment.
“They did—and do—spend a lot of time watching ballet, to be sure, but not for cultural enrichment, unless one considers ogling young women bounding around the stage in very brief costumes culturally enriching.
“Where the NKGB chaps actually went to relax was to the circus. This was true all over the Soviet Union but especially in Hungary. At first we had no explanation for this except to suspect they may have gone to the circus hoping to witness a lion tamer being eaten alive by his lions, or one or more of the high wire trapeze artists falling to their deaths, but whatever the reason, they went to the circus.
“The other interesting fact about these NKGB chaps that the CAFI, Inc., market researchers turned up was that most of them were married to Russian women, and we already knew that with very few exceptions Russian women tended to be built like Green Bay Packer tackles and had one or more stainless steel teeth.
“The exceptions to this rule, we came to conclude, were those attractive daughters of Mother Russia who were ballet dancers and high wire trapeze artists, who both performed their art wearing the very brief costumes I mentioned earlier.
“Once we’d gotten our thinking caps into the problem thus far, especially my thinking cap, things began to take shape.
“Why had previous attempts to get these fellows to change sides by appealing to their senses of decency, and when that failed, offering them lots of money, failed miserably? My predecessors had nabbed the odd NKGB captain, and once a major, but no colonels and no generals.
“Well, the answers seemed to me self-evident. They had no senses of decency, for one thing, and they weren’t very much interested in money. So what were they interested in? Watching lion tamers being mauled and eaten? Was that why they were so circus-oriented? Or was it something else, and if so, what?
“Perhaps, I asked myself, they are interested in the high wire performers, the female high wire trapeze artists, in their abbreviated costumes. And if they were interested in young women in revealing costumes, that would explain their fascination with the ballet.
“That raised the question of how we might get the ballet dancers and the high wire trapeze artists on our side, and the answer to that was simple. They were female. Females will do anything for money; it’s the nature of the beast.
“Instead of offering NKGB colonels, et cetera, money to change sides, I decided it would make much more sense to give ballerinas and high wire artists money to change sides. And once they were this side of Check Point Charlie, that we should offer them even more money to induce the NKGB colonels they had left back in Moscow, or Budapest, or Sofia, to change sides.
“Because I was obviously both too busy and too important to go behind the Iron Curtain myself, I asked Bill/Ralph for some skilled contractor people to help me. You can imagine what would have happened if I sent that EXPLETIVE DELETED!! idiot Brewster to sweet-talk some Bolshoi ballerina into changing sides. The next thing you know he’d be seen on NBC television pirouetting around the Bolshoi stage singing ‘Army Blue’ and wearing nothing but a jockstrap stuffed with handkerchiefs to keep his inadequacy in that area a secret.
“So Bill sent me two contractors, one released from Leavenworth and the other from Saint Elizabeth’s.”
“Sir, I’m sorry, I don’t fully understand. What’s a contractor? And isn’t Leavenworth a federal prison?”
“While the standards aren’t as high in the CIA as they were in the OSS, we still try to keep out as many felons as possible, instead putting them under contract to do the dirty work necessary. Hence, contractors. And yes, Leavenworth is a federal prison. Saint Elizabeth’s is a federal institution for the criminally insane. Rutherford was paroled to me from the latter, and McTavish from the former.”
“Sir, are you referring to CIC Administrator Angus McTavish and CIC Administrator G. Lincoln Rutherford?”
“Yes, of course I am.”
“Sir, you’re not suggesting that they were incarcerated at those places you mentioned, are you?”
“I’m not suggesting anything of the sort, son. I’m telling you. Angus McTavish was doing fifteen to twenty-five in Leavenworth for having sold three elephants, a giraffe, a rhinoceros, a Perdido Key beach mouse, and a San Francisco garter snake that he didn’t own to the Bronx Zoological Gardens. The judge, who was a tree-hugger, really socked it to him because the beach mouse and the garter snake were on the protected species list.”
“And CIC Administrator Rutherford, sir? In a mental hospital for the criminally insane? He’s insane, sir?”
<
br /> “That’s what he was trying to convince them of when ol’ Bill got him out so that he could help me stem the tide of the Red Menace. In an attempt to avoid life behind bars as a recidivist offender, Geronimo was trying to sell the shrinks on the notion that only a crazy person would do what he did, and thus he should be adjudged innocent by reason of insanity. He said a sane person, especially one who was half Native American and had had the honor of being social secretary of the Harvard Law School Alumni Association, Inc., would not have done what he was accused of doing.”
“Which was, sir?”
“Embezzle four point three million dollars from the Chiricahua Apache Tribe’s Geronimo Resort and Casino, Inc., in Arizona and another million and a quarter from the Apache Widows & Orphans Relief Trust, both of which he was serving, pro bono, as legal counsel.”
“But they’re CIC administrators, just like me!”
“Son, now that you have entered the smoke-and-mirrors world of intelligence, you’re going to have to learn to think things through before you open your mouth.”
“I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”
“How does one get into the CIC, Phil?”
“Well, first you have to be in the Army.”
“Right. And how tall do you have to be to get in the Army? And how tall is Angus McTavish? See where we’re headed?”
“Mr. McTavish could not be in the Army because he’s about four feet ten inches tall . . .”
“And a bit overweight, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, sir. But how about Mr. Rutherford? He’s of normal height and weight.”
“How do you think he could undergo a complete background investigation without it being discovered that he is a criminal recidivist, sometimes known as a Three Strikes, You’re Out Loser?”
“I take your point, sir.”
“They are beards, son.”
“Beards, sir?”
“There had to be some reason for me having those two around the German-American Gospel Tract Foundation besides the real one.”
“What is the real one, sir?”
“I break that down into Sales and Logistics, Phil.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Sales is the part where Geronimo Rutherford goes behind the Iron Curtain and seeks out two kinds of people. First are ballet dancers and high wire trapeze artists. Attractive ones. Sweet ones. Gentle ones. Geronimo then sells these young women on the many advantages of immigrating to the West, in other words, how much we’re willing to pay for their services. If you’re ever called upon, Phil, to talk attractive, sweet, gentle young women into swapping their virtue for cold cash, get a Harvard-trained lawyer to do your talking for you.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll make a note of that.”
“The second ethnic group Geronimo seeks out behind the Iron Curtain contains the senior Soviet and Soviet Bloc NKGB officers we’re trying to turn. He arranges to get himself seated beside one of the latter at the Bolshoi or a circus. Then when some attractive blonde is pirouetting around the stage in Swan Lake, or hanging from her knees on a trapeze, he says something like, ‘Boy, I’d really like to hide the old salami in something like that. How about you?’
“One time in three point six times, he gets an affirmative reply. Once that happens, we have our defector. If you ever need to talk some respectable senior officer into betraying everything he holds dear, get yourself a Harvard-trained lawyer to do your talking for you.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll make a note of that.”
“That’s Sales. Logistics is getting the girls and the NKGB this side of Check Point Charley. That’s where Angus McTavish’s circus heritage comes in. Throughout history, Phil, as I’m sure you know, circuses—or is that circi?—have continuously moved across the European Continent much as the Bedouins move across the shifting sands of the Sahara on their camels. That is, without paying any attention at all to international borders and that sort of thing. To put a point on it, to circus people making their historic rounds, the barbed wire, ferocious German shepherds, land mines, et cetera, which close the Iron Curtain to ordinary people, are nothing but a minor bump in the road.
“What many people don’t ask themselves, as they should, when visiting a circus is, ‘Where does the circus get their elephants, hippopotami, and other pachydermi and their tigers, lions, and other panthera?’
“The answer is obvious, unless of course you’re a Socialist and believe the government should have its nose in everything, including providing circuses with their wild animals. There are businesses serving that need. Wild animals are bought, sold, and traded much as used cars are by businessmen hoping to turn an honest, or mostly honest, dollar doing so.
“Putting all these factors together, what I then had ol’ Bill, now Ralph, do was buy a couple of wild-animal cages, a selection of tigers, lions, and other savage animals, and two elephants which were surplus to the needs of Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey. He then prevailed upon the Air Force to airlift them into Berlin. Once they were here, I had the cages modified to suit our needs and repainted appropriately. I was then ready to hook the elephants up to tow the animal cages and send A. McTavish Used Wild Animal Dealer into the sphere of Soviet influence.
“And I did so.
“Soon, Angus was able not only to reestablish relationships with other members of his circus family in circuses all over Eastern Europe and in Russia itself but able to cross back and forth over the border with no more effort and just about as much speed as a Ping-Pong ball being whacked by a Japanese Olympic Ping-Pong Team champion.
“The way it works is that the elephants tow Angus and the cages full of young, healthy savage beasts behind the Iron Curtain. He sells the beasts to circus proprietors, taking as partial payment their savage beasts that are getting a bit long in the tooth. Then the elephants tow Angus and the trade-in savage beasts in their cages back across the border. We then donate these decrepit wild beasts to Kiss A Tiger, Inc., Rhinoceri Are Beautiful, Inc., and other such lunatic do-gooder organizations, and begin looking for younger ones available at a good price.
“So far, the NKGB has not figured out what has happened to all the senior NKGB officers, ballet dancers, and high wire trapeze artists who have gone missing, and as far as we know they don’t have a clue that they have departed Holy Mother Russia, or the Hungarian Republic, et cetera, in elephant-drawn wild-animal cages, comfortably ensconced behind cupboard doors reading, ‘Caution, Wild Animals DO NOT ENTER!’”
“That’s very clever, sir,” Phil said.
“I like to think so,” SSA Caldwell said. “I’ve often been told I’m clever. But right now, I face a conundrum that baffles me.”
“What might that be, sir?”
“Well, because I absolutely need you to find the ambiguities, et cetera, in the reports my semi-literate CIC agents prepare for my signature, you and I are going to be spending a good deal of time together.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, son. But when a man my age, and a man—really, boy—your age spend a lot of time together, a lot of people begin to wonder, often aloud, if there isn’t something a bit odd about the relationship. If you take my meaning?”
“I’m afraid I do, sir.”
“I thought of one beard we could put on you. But, on reflection, it wouldn’t work as no one in his right mind would allow someone of your tender years near a loaded pistol.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Well, if you had, which I am quite sure you couldn’t possibly have, qualified with the ol’ .45 in Basic Training . . .”
“Yes, sir?”
“. . . the beard we could put on you would be that of my bodyguard. I don’t have one now, although ol’ Bill, now Ralph, says I really should, as after I saw my EXPLETIVE DELETED!! phalanx of EXPLETIVE DELETED!! West Pointers trying, and failing miserably, to qual
ify with Ol’ Reliable on the range, I vowed never again to be within a thousand yards of a EXPLETIVE DELETED!! West Pointer with a loaded modern-day equalizer in his hand.”
“I don’t think I follow you, sir.”
“Bodyguards have to carry guns, Phil. That’s not just in Regulations, if you think about it, it actually makes sense.”
“Sir, are you, when you say ‘ol’ .45’ and ‘ol’ Reliable’ and ‘modern-day equalizer’ perchance referring to the U.S. Pistol, Caliber .45 ACP M1911A1?”
“You’ve heard of it, have you, son? They showed you—but didn’t permit you to actually hold—one in Basic Training?”
“With which weapon, sir . . . perhaps you had better sit down . . . I qualified as High Expert on the seven- and twenty-five-yard KD ranges, and on the Pistol Simulated Combat Range. In rapid-fire mode on the latter, I put six of the seven rounds of my magazine into the life-sized human silhouette target’s left eye at fifty yards, sir. I flinched, and one shot went in the target’s nose.”
SSA Caldwell didn’t reply for a long moment, during which he stared intently at Phil.
Finally, he said, “I am ashamed for doubting you as I did, even if only for a long moment until I realized that Saint Malachi Old Boys, even young Old Boys, such as you, never tell whoppers like that one to other Saint Malachi Old Boys unless they’re true.”
He put out his hand, and then went on, “Phil, my bodyguard, from this moment, my life is in your capable hands. Let’s go find you a gun.”
VII
PREPARING FOR THE HUNTING TRIP (PART 3)
[ ONE ]
Muddiebay, Mississippi
Wednesday, September 10, 1975
With the exception of Carol-Anne Crandall, the individual looking most eagerly forward to hanky-panky during what had formally become “The Tuesday Luncheon Club’s European Excursion” was Mary-Louise Frathingham, co-proprietor—with her husband, Amos—of Muddiebay Exotic & Exciting Vacations Travel, Inc.
The Hunting Trip Page 14