by The Cool War
“But I’m still on the first level! I’m a minister!”
“What rot,” she said scornfully. “And next you’re going to tell me you went to the Team headquarters just to get a diet cola?”
“Well,” he said uncomfortably, and stopped.
“You see? No answer! You can’t even make up a decent lie! Very bad briefing they gave you!”
Hake had to agree that he couldn’t give her an answer— not any answer at all, not after Curmudgeon’s very explicit orders. But he agreed silently. It was a pity no one had explained to him what to do in a case like this. Where were the poison capsules in the false teeth, or the secret radio that would alert Headquarters and bring a hundred agents slinking in to save him?
The girl was waiting for a response. He said desperately, “All I can tell you is the truth. The papers you have tell it the way it is. I’m a Unitarian minister. Period.”
“No, Hake,” she said angrily, “not period. What would a minister be doing where we picked you up?”
“Ah, well,” he said guardedly, “yes, I was asked to come there.”
“To talk about toys for Russia!”
“No! Nobody said a word about toys!”
“Then why were you there?”
“My God, don’t you think I wish I knew? All they said was they wanted somebody with a Near East background who wouldn’t be missed if anything went—” Belatedly he clamped his lips together.
His captors were looking at each other. “Near East?”
“It isn’t the first time that source got it wrong.”
“You think—?”
“So maybe this one isn’t the toy man,” said the man with the.32.
The girl nodded slowly. “So maybe we’re into something entirely different.”
“So maybe it’s time for Phase Two,” said the gunman.
“Yeah. Tell you what, Hake,” she said, turning back to him. “That sort of changes things, doesn’t it? I guess we’ve made some kind of mistake. Here, have some coffee while we figure out what to do next.”
He accepted the cup morosely. The four of them withdrew to the other room and whispered together, glancing through the doorway at him from time to time. He could not hear what they were saying. It did not seem to matter. Let them conspire; there was nothing he could do about it, except to let it happen. Even the coffee was not very good, though not as bad as his precarious situation. These people did not seem like very expert kidnappers or spies or whatever they were; but how much expertise did you need to pull the trigger on a gun? He took another sip of the coffee—
As he was lifting the cup for a third sip, it belatedly occurred to him that it might not be wise to drink something just because it said “Drink Me.” Poison, truth serum, knockout drops— But that was two sips too late. The cup dropped out of his hand, and his head dropped to meet the typewriter case on the table.
When he woke up the typewriter was in his lap, and none of them were anywhere in sight.
He was back on the Metroliner, heading back to Newark. Across the aisle two tiny, elderly ladies were staring at him. “He’s sobering up,” said one loudly.
Equally loudly the other one replied, “Disgusting! If I were his wife I wouldn’t have helped him on the bus, I’d’ve just let him rot there. And serve him right”
III
The next morning the sermon went beautifully—“So fresh and enlightening,” said the president of the congregation, wringing his hand. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that she had heard him give the same sermon, word for word, two years before. He didn’t have the head for it, either, because the only head he had was throbbing violently. Whatever had been in the coffee had given him the finest hangover he had ever owned, and without even a night’s drinking to justify it. Had to have been truth drug, he decided. They wouldn’t have let him go until they were quite sure he had nothing worth telling to tell them. When you came down to it, he hadn’t.
The coffee hour after the service was pure pain, but there was no way out of it. He didn’t always hear what was said to him. But reflexes took over:
“You’ve given me a lot to think about, Horny.”
“So glad you liked it”
And meanwhile his mind, between thuds of pain, was considering the world about him in a new light. The game the Team was asking him to join—was it being played aft around him? That raft of water lilies that floated in every river: was that just a freak of nature, or were other nations playing that game against his own?
“Horny, the methane-burner’s acting up again.”
“I’m so pleased you liked it.”
He thought of all the power blackouts that had hit in the past few years. Defective switches, overstressed transformers? Or somebody helping the accidents along? He recalled the dozen petty pandemics of coughs and trots, the strikes, the walkouts. The incredibly detailed rumors of corruption in high places, and perverse orgies of the powerful, that had turned half the country off to its elected officials. All of them! How many were thrown up by chance? How many were calculated strategies devised in Moscow or Beijing, or even Ottawa?
“Horny, I want to thank you for all of us. We’ve decided to give the marriage another chance.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed—oh, Alys! Yes. What did you say?”
“I said you’ve made us want to try again, Horny.”
“That’s really fine. Yes.” As she started to move off he detained her; she was one of the brightest of the parishioners, with a doctoral degree, he remembered, in history. “Alys,” he said, “how would you go about researching some recent events?”
“What kind of recent events, Horny?”
“Well—I don’t know exactly how to describe them.” He pondered for a moment, and then offered: “It seems to me that everything has got kind of, you know, crappy over the last few years. Like the lilies that are clogging up the water intakes for all those cities in the north. Where did they come from?”
“I think they were first reported in Yugoslavia,” she said helpfully. “Or was it Ireland?”
“Well, that sort of thing. If I made up a list of say thirty things that are going on that, uh, that seem to damage the quality of life, how would I go about seeing where they started, and what sort of correlations there are, and so on?”
She pursed her lips, fending off a couple of other parishioners pressing toward them. “I suppose you’re researching a sermon?”
“Something like that,” he lied.
“I thought so.” She nodded. “Well, for openers, there’s the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. And Current Topics. Then you might want to look at the New York Times microfilms, with the subject index. I’m afraid you’d have to go to New York for some of the stuff. Unless—” She looked carefully at his face. “Unless you’d like me to help you with it?”
“Would you? I’d really appreciate that.”
“Why, certainly, Horny,” she said, impulsively pressing his arm. “I’ll come around tomorrow to talk to you about it. You’ve been so good to all of us, why, I couldn’t deny you anything at all!” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek before she turned away.
It almost seemed that the headache was less, Hake thought gratefully. He did not think Curmudgeon would approve, but he decided to know what was going on. And with a trained researcher to help him, maybe he could find out.
On the steps of the church, a gray-haired man whose name he could not quite place stopped him and said: “Reverend Hake, may I have a word with you?”
“I’m so glad you enjoyed the sermon.”
“Well, uh, yes, I did. But that wasn’t what I was going to ask you. You see, I’m with International Pets and Flowers. We’re expanding our operations here in New Jersey. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of it, but we’ve acquired the old Fort Monmouth tract in Eatontown, and we like to have responsible local representation on our district Board of Directors in a thing like this. Could you accept a directorship?”
“Dire
ctorship? I’m sorry, Mr.—”
“Haversford, Reverend Hake. Allen T. Haversford.”
“Well, I appreciate the offer, Mr. Haversford. Did you say pets and flowers? I’m afraid I don’t know very much about pets and flowers. And my time—”
“No special knowledge is needed, Reverend Hake. It’s a question of community welfare. We want your inputs on the way we can help carry our share of the load.”
“Yes, I see that, but I’m very—”
“I know your time is at a premium, but it is quite a useful service you could do. And there’s a tiny honorarium, of course. Ten thousand dollars. But the important thing is that I’m sure you could be of great help to us, and we to your church. Please say yes.”
‘Ten thousand dollars a yearl”
“Oh, no. The honorarium is ten thousand dollars per meeting. There’s one regular meeting each quarter—sometimes special ones, of course, when some decision is needed quickly, but they are usually quite brief. You’ll do it? Thank you so much, Reverend. The other members of the Board will be very pleased.”
Horny stared after Haversford, his head forgetting to ache. Forty thousand dollars a year, plus. And a community service too! As he turned toward the rectory he was thinking of what he could do with an extra forty thousand dollars a year; and then he caught sight of the Brant-Sturgis family. Walter Sturgis was turning the crank of the compressor of their charcoal-burner van, while the two women sat stiffly inside, red-eyed or brightly and sadistically cheerful, according to their private ways of expressing stress. Ted Brant was standing at the curb, glowering at him.
That almost brought the headache back. For the moment Hake had forgotten how jealous Ted was.
Horny had made it Rule Number One to avoid sexual entanglements within his congregation, or with other people with whom he associated in his professional capacity.
Considering that Hake’s twenty-four-hour days allowed six hours of sleep and eighteen hours in contact with some member or another of his congregation—or some person who was off-limits for equally valid reasons, like the wife of another minister in the Regional Confraternity or his fellow members of the Right to Abort Committee—that meant he avoided sexual entanglements just about completely. It wasn’t that he wanted it that way. Sometimes he didn’t even think he could stand it that way. But he knew what happened to other ministers when they departed from that golden rule. He was the only bachelor in Monmouth County who never missed a meeting of the Interfaith Singles Club—and who never failed to go home alone from them, usually after everyone else had left because he stacked the chairs and emptied the ashtrays to ready the room for its next use. His vacation weeks gave him the only romantic interludes of his life. And there weren’t many of them. Weren’t nearly enough.
But the last thing he was willing to accept was any share in the probable collapse of the precarious Brant-Sturgis marriage. Before he went to sleep that night he had typed out a careful list of subjects for Alys to look up for him, and left the envelope on Jessie Tunman’s desk clipped to a scrap of paper that said only “Gv. to A.—DWS.” Jessie was not terribly smart or efficient, and she did talk a lot. But she knew what he meant by Give to Alys—Don’t Want to See, and would abide by it.
As it happened, in the morning he almost forgot that Alys Brant existed. He had gone to sleep with the power still off in the rectory, and what woke him was a sudden glare of light in his eyes and the creaking hum of his bedside electric heater going on. When he went down to the basement to investigate, the man from the electric company was working over the meter box. “Putting a new fuse in?” Hake asked.
The man looked up and grinned enviously. “Hell, no, Reverend—excuse me. I’m taking the fuse out. Didn’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“Why, you’re off fusing from now on. Seems you’ve got your own generator coming in, and we’ll be buying from you part of the time, so you’re no longer subject to rationing.”
“My what?” -
“Your new generator. It’s a wind generator, go on top of your house. Should be coming in today, I guess—anyway we got a priority-rush order this morning. So you can draw up to full capacity, which is rated at six hundred amps, according to your specs plate here.”
“I don’t know anything about a wind-power generator!” “Yeah, well, that’s the way it goes,” the man sympathized. “Your wife said she had some letter about it.”
Hake repressed the urge to explain that Jessie Tunman wasn’t his wife, and went to find the letter. It was on the stationery of something called The Fund for Clerical Fellowship, and it said:
Dear Reverend Hake:
We are pleased to inform you that our Board has granted your Church a beneficence for the purpose of installing generating facilities for your rectory.
Accordingly, we have ordered a Model (x)A-40 Win-Tility unit, with necessary mounts and electrical connections, and have secured the services of William S. Murfree & Co., Belmar, to effect the installation.
If there is any further way in which we can serve your Church, please advise us.
It was signed by a scribble, but Hake didn’t need the name to know who it came from. He was being well taken care of, just as promised.
A thought struck him. A generator. They wanted him to have dependable power. So he spent the next half hour snooping around his office and bedroom, looking for bugs. He didn’t find any.
That set him back in his thinking. It was a letdown, almost a disappointment, because if they were bugging him they were automatically providing him with a means of communication. He wanted one. That wasn’t the same as saying that he had made up his mind to use it. He was still thinking about that, but he wanted the option. The thought was nagging at him that he should somehow report his kidnapping. If he had been able to find a bug he could have just said it out loud; “Hey, Curmudgeon! I got kidnapped. Somebody’s broken my cover. Give me a call when you get a chance, why don’t you, and we’ll talk about it over lunch.”
But he hadn’t found a bug, and that was confusing. If the Team was not supplying him with power just so they could be sure of monitoring everything he did, then maybe his whole attitude was wrong. Maybe they were really kindly and protective, and simply providing fringe benefits for a new recruit. Maybe his negative feelings were not to be trusted.
Now that he had plenty of heat the weather had turned mild. When he took his morning run, a mile down the beach to the pier and a mile back, he was panting and pouring sweat, and as he came up over the boardwalk he saw Alys Brant’s three-wheeled van sitting crookedly outside the rectory. He skulked behind the rail for five minutes until she came out and drove away, and by then he was chilled and sodden.
Still—what was the use of having privileges if you didn’t use them? He stripped off the suit and flung it carelessly in the washer-dryer, hoping that it still remembered how to work, and treated himself to a long, hot shower. No doubt about it. Power-piggery could make you feel good. He hit the morning’s mail joyously, disposed of it in half an hour, got his expense account up to date, wrote a marriage ceremony for two young members of his congregation (“I, Arthur, take thee, James, as long as love shall endure—-“), telephoned every sick parishioner and promised to visit two of them, and even had time for twenty minutes with the barbells before his pre-lunch run. His sweatsuit was crisp and dry, but he didn’t need it; he pulled on shorts and a tee-shirt marked To Love Me Is to Love God and started off down the beach.
And on the way back, there was Alys’s van again, picking its way around the construction toward his house. “Hell,” said Hake. He didn’t think she had seen him, so he changed course and jogged up the wide streets to his church. On weekdays the trustees had established a nursery school to maximize use of the church facilities, and the parking lot, which doubled as a playground, was full of three-foot-high human beings and taller, tenser teachers, doing the Alley Cat to music from a battery-powered cassette recorder. “Hello, hello,” called Hake, dodging past
them and into the building.
As he had expected, no one had set up the chairs for that evening’s MUSL-WUSL meeting. Most days that would have been an annoyance, but today it was a good way to use up twenty minutes or so while Alys made up her mind he wasn’t going to be at the rectory and went away.
He pushed the chairs into a circle meditatively. Counseling didn’t go as well as it used to. Or went in a different way. When he had been in the wheelchair the women who came to him told him all sorts of things—censused their orgasms, clinicked their preferences. They still did. But they sat straighter and smiled more often when they did. There was a kind of receptivity in the air that had not been there before with the women. And sometimes now the men seemed, well, fidgety. Like Ted Brant. Perhaps the ministry was a mistake. Perhaps the operation that had taken him out of the wheelchair had been a mistake, for that matter. It did seem to interfere with counseling. But he couldn’t undo the operation, and how could he undo the ministry? At thirty-nine you didn’t make a career change lightly—
Except that maybe he war making one. Clergyman to spy. It was not what he had ever intended. He had certainly not sought it. But he couldn’t deny that there was something about playing cloak-and-dagger games that seemed like fun…
The kids were coming back from their lunch recess, which meant the church would no longer be habitable for the next couple of hours. Hake straightened the last of the chairs and started out. On the way he paused at the suggestion box, trying to remember. Had he opened it after the service yesterday? Not that there was ever much in it. He took out his key and unlocked it; yes, there was something. A paper clip. A pledge envelope—why couldn’t people remember they were supposed to hand them in to the ushers? A note scribbled on the corner of the service program: “Can’t we have some guitar music any more?” And an envelope marked:
Rev. H. Hornswell Hake From his friends at the Maryland phone company.