The Monkey Handlers

by G Gordon Liddy

  “All right, Wings,” Stone asked, “what’ve you got to offer?”

  Wings smiled. “Little souvenir from Nam. Chicom AK in good shape. Four loaded magazines. That’s twelve hundred rounds, cousins.”

  “Which, if you treat it like a seven-point-six-two garden hose,” said Pappy, “won’t last long.”

  “That got that little pigsticker triangular folding bayonet?” asked Saul.

  “Right. Type fifty-six-slash-one. Ain’t so little. Near nine inches long.”

  “Man,” said Pappy. “That’s as long as my dick.”

  “Don’t you fuckin’ wish!” said Wings.

  “Anything else? Handgun?” Stone asked.

  “Sorry,” said Wings.

  “I’ve got one,” Arno Bitt offered.

  “What is it?” asked Stone.

  “Ballester-Molina.”

  “What?”

  “Forty-five ACP. It’s an improvement on the Colt government model. Y’know how the forty-five auto has that U-shaped straight-back two-rail trigger? The Ballester has a trigger pivots on a pin. Better trigger pull. Browning himself went to it with the Hi-Power. Even better’s the metal it’s made of. Best steel in the world. Listen.” Arno reached under his shirt and pulled what appeared to the others to be a big Colt .45 auto from his waist. He dropped the magazine and pulled the slide back to clear it, then let the slide slam forward and racked it back and forth again. The clash of metal on metal rang like a bell.

  “Man, what makes it do that?” asked Pappy Saye.

  “You like that, huh?” Arno answered. “Any of you guys ever heard of the Graf Spee?”

  “I did,” said Stone. “She was the state-of-the-art German pocket battleship slipped out into the Atlantic in thirty-nine, just before the start of World War Two. Roamed all over the ocean sinking British shipping left and right until damaged in a terrific battle with three Brit cruisers off South America. Took refuge in the neutral port of Montevideo, but the Uruguayan government forced her to return to sea unfit for battle, so her skipper scuttled her just off the River Plate. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Everything, man, everything,” said Arno. “The Brits got the salvage rights to the Graf Spee. They were after the electronics. When they finished, two brothers, named Ballester, teamed up with a guy named Molina and bought the rights from the Brits. You wanna know why the metal of this piece sings? ’Cause it’s made out of the armor plate of the Graf Spee, that’s why. It’s not only an improved design over the Colt, it’s made of prewar German Kruppstahl armor. The best there ever was.”

  There was a moment of silence while the four other men, all experienced warriors of the highest skill, appreciated what Arno Bitt had just told them of his weapon. Then Stone asked, “How many magazines do you have for it?”

  “Just the one that came with it. But it’s interchangeable with the G.I. Colt. Should be able to pick up more anywhere.”

  “No time for that,” said Stone, “but we’re in luck. My field gun was a Colt government built up for me by Jeff Cooper out at Gunsite in Arizona. I’ve got half a dozen mags upstairs, along with a lot of G.I. hardball ammo for it; boxes of nine mil. and some other gear left over from my misspent youth with guys like you, keeping the country safe for Eddie Berg and assorted other assholes.”

  While Stone was speaking, Arno had handed the Ballester around to the others to let them inspect it. As Pappy Saye handed it back to him, Stone asked, “Anything else?”

  “Just my personal chute.”

  Stone acknowledged that with a nod, and Pappy Saye asked, “What do we do now, boss?”

  “We still don’t know for sure that the Berg kid is in there. I want to wait for Sara’s report. Meantime, Saul’s gotten hold of the plant layout. I’m gonna do some contingency planning. Saul, how many more of those tapes do you have to go through yet?”

  “I dunno. A bunch.”

  “All right, brief the others here on what to look for. Use both televisions. Start with the latest tapes first, the stuff you just brought in, then you go back out there and start monitoring directly for the very latest. Stay in touch by telephone. I’ll let you know what Sara has to say soon as she checks in. Drop in after you get the guys set up before you take off.”

  “Aye, aye,” said Saul as all but Michael Stone rose. “I’ll bring the plans in first.”

  “Do that, please,” said Stone.

  It took Saul Rosen less than a quarter of an hour to set up and brief the others on the TEMPEST tapes and get back to Stone’s office. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “I know you can’t do any good on the encrypted phones, but I don’t want to leave anything uncovered. Intel is everything when you’re planning. How hard is it—how long would it take—to tap the regular phones in and out of that place?”

  “Well, probably a number of trunk lines in a place of that size, but they probably all run together. I spotted the junction box while I was down there. Fortunately, it’s a block away—won’t have to worry about plant security. This time of night I’ll probably be taken for a phone company guy doing emergency work if anyone notices. Gimme half an hour once I get there. Stuff’s all in the van ready to go.”

  “Okay,” said Stone, “go.”

  “What about your aunt?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “All this coming and going. The televisions and everything. She wakes up and all this going on in the middle of the night…”

  Stone smiled. “Don’t worry about it. When I gave her her medication this evening, I slipped a little extra in. Banged her right out. The Second Coming wouldn’t wake her up before tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” said Saul, putting the heels of both palms to his eyes and rubbing them hard to relieve their fatigue. “Let’s not be in any hurry for that.”

  “Huh?”

  “The first coming caused my people enough grief, thank you.”

  Stone grinned. “Get out of here.”

  Saul left, and as the door closed behind him, the smile slipped from Stone’s face, to be replaced by a sober look. The closed door seemed a metaphor for what he had done. He could justify the killing of the German in the Riegar plant as self-defense. Sending Saul in to wiretap was something else, a clear violation of federal and state law. However good his reasons for doing so, he had closed the door on his attempt to live according to the culture of the legal profession. Even were he not discovered—as he sincerely hoped—he had taken a decision akin to Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon. Stephanie would never understand and, even if she did, could never approve. He had committed himself to resolving the Riegar problem within the rules and using the means of the Special Warfare culture. In his heart, the door was truly closed to the practice of law and, quite possibly—no, probably—any future with Stephanie Hannigan. It was the latter loss that distressed him most. So be it, he thought. What was it Caesar had said? Half-aloud, he repeated it: “The die is cast.”

  * * *

  “Naomi, I wish you wouldn’t—”

  Naomi Fine used her free hand, the one not holding the telephone, to wave off Stephanie Hannigan’s objections, then placed it over the mouthpiece as she said, “You hardly know this man. And he’s a foreigner. You can’t be too careful.” Then, uncovering the mouthpiece, she said, “Fine. F-I-N-E, as in dandy. Clerk’s office, Mohawk County. I want to check on the credentials of a man who says he works for you. I—”

  Naomi sighed as she was placed on hold yet again. “Really,” said Stephanie, “this is completely unnecessary. I’ve seen Reuters quoted in New York papers about this Riegar business—”

  “Fine,” Naomi started again, speaking into the telephone, “Naomi Fine from the Mohawk County clerk’s office. A Mr. Brian Sullivan has been representing himself as one of your reporters, and I wanted to check—Sullivan, Brian. Right … yes, I will…” Naomi put her hand over the mouthpiece again and said, “Checking the computer. But I don’t know, none of the people I’ve talked to has an English acce
nt.”

  “It’s the New York office,” Stephanie said. “I don’t think you’d find the Paris Bureau of The New York Times full of Americans, certainly not the telephone operators and personnel department.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Naomi. “What’s a ‘stringer’?” She listened some more, then thanked whoever it was at the other end of the line and hung up.

  “Well?” said Stephanie.

  “Yes and no,” said Naomi. “He works for them, but not as a regular employee—doesn’t get health benefits and a pension. He’s kind of what they call a ‘stringer,’ except a stringer usually sends in stories from just one place on an as-needed basis, or sometimes they’ll just send in something and hope they print it, like a free-lance. Brian Sullivan sends in stuff from all over. Been doing it for several years now, from whatever is the hot spot of the moment. One hand washes the other; he gets Reuters credentials, and, they say, they get good stories, often from where other reporters can’t seem to get access. So I guess it’s all right, but five-thirty in the morning for breakfast.… I dunno. You sure can pick ’em.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “First this local lawyer who’s going nowhere, now a roamer without a steady job who wants you to go on a date while they’re milking the cows.”

  “Oh, Naomi, I don’t feel that way about him at all. It’s not like it was with Mike. It’s just that he’s … interesting.”

  “Remember the old Chinese curse, kid.”

  “What’s that?”

  “May you live in interesting times.”

  * * *

  There was a brief knock on the door of Michael Stone’s office, then Pappy Saye put his head in before Stone could react.

  “Sara Rosen’s back, Mike. Wants to see you right away.”

  “Send her in.”

  Sara started talking as soon as she crossed the threshold: “Four different people said Eddie told them he was going into Riegar—one of them said he was going in sometime today or tonight. I’m worried, Mike. You’ve got to go get him out right now!”

  “Anybody see him actually go in there?”

  “No, but it all adds up. He’s got to be there. Where else could he be? You’re wasting valuable time. God knows—”

  “What is it with you, Sara?” Stone interrupted. “You don’t listen to me when I’m acting as your lawyer, and now you won’t listen when I’m trying to run an op for you. And I know a hell of a lot more about this business than I do about criminal law. Ease off. I’ve got a plan, but I don’t have the equipment to implement it. I mean these guys I’ve talked into helping us out are used to high-speed, low-drag stuff you wouldn’t believe if I could tell you about it, but we’re going to have to make do with what we can go out and buy. And the stores don’t open until tomorrow. And another thing, no way we’re gonna launch until we know Eddie’s in there. Assumptions don’t cut it.”

  The telephone on Stone’s desk rang before Sara had a chance to reply. He picked up the receiver and waved Sara into the big leather armchair. It was Saul Rosen. His speech was guarded. “That new thing you wanted me to do for you is up and running, but there’s no traffic yet. I’ll keep you posted.” Nothing like placing a tap on someone else’s line to remind one of the vulnerability of one’s own telephone conversations, Stone thought, and he was careful himself with his reply. “Good. Thanks. What’s new on television?”

  “Just we’ve got a new network to add to the big three, with a big new star.”

  Stone didn’t have a clue to what Saul was talking about. “You’re gonna have to be less obscure, Saul.”

  “All right.” Saul’s tone was grudging. “When I started on the new job, there were three displays active monitoring primates. Your monkey-handler friends are working late. When I finished and went back to check, there was a fourth screen on. I’m sure it wasn’t there before. I couldn’t have missed it; that was all that was happening. All four of ’em are monitoring primates—they say so—only this last one’s bigger than the others.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Physical description numbers are bigger, at least in length.”

  “What are they?”

  “Length’s one hundred ninety point five centimeters. Weight, seventy-four point five kilos.”

  “What’s that in English?”

  “A kilo’s about two point two pounds. A meter’s not quite a yard. C’mon, Mike, you know this stuff, do your own math.”

  “Okay, Saul, thanks. Call if you get anything at all new.”

  “Will do.”

  Stone hung up the phone. Sara started to speak, but he held up his hand in a decidedly negative gesture as he wrote the figures Saul had just given him down on a desk pad in front of him. “Sorry,” he said as he finished. “Needed to get these figures down before I forgot them.”

  “What figures?” Sara asked.

  “Tell you in a minute when I get it figured out.” Stone reached for his appointment book. In the back, among the figures for air mileage between major cities of the world, time zones, and other data, were metric to British weights and measures conversion tables. He did some simple arithmetic, then frowned.

  “What is it?” Sara demanded.

  Stone sighed. He knew what he had just calculated would set Sara off again. “The Riegar labs just started monitoring a new primate.”

  “So?”

  “It’s six feet three and weighs a hundred and sixty-four pounds.”

  Sara’s shriek brought Pappy, Arno, and Wings into the room.

  “They’re torturing Eddie!” Sara sobbed.

  “We don’t know that,” said Stone. “We don’t know for sure that it’s Eddie, although it sure sounds like it. What we do know is that whoever it is is alive. You can’t monitor a corpse.”

  “So,” Sara confronted him, “what are you doing to do about it?”

  “I’d say we have enough information to justify going in there.”

  “When?”

  “I told you … when I have assembled the gear to equip my men properly. We’re not into suicide missions.”

  “Oh!” Sara stamped her foot and fled the room. Moments later, the front door slammed. Sara Rosen was gone. To his men’s unspoken questions, Stone answered, “Back to work, guys. We go when we’re condition one, not before.” The three men nodded and left the room.

  Some thirty minutes later, Stone’s telephone rang again. Again, it was Saul Rosen. He was agitated, trying to control himself as he said, “Mike, we’ve got big trouble. Sara’s in there.”

  “In where?”

  “Riegar.”

  “Riegar! What … tell me what you know.”

  “I was monitoring the new asset. She called them. Said she knew they had Eddie and what they were doing to him.”

  “What’d they say?”

  “Wrong number, no such person there.”

  “And?”

  “Sara’s no dummy. She knew they wouldn’t admit to having him or talk about it over the phone. She just said, ‘I’m coming to the front gate with the pictures. I’ll swap you for him.’”

  “Did they go for it?”

  “She didn’t give them a chance to say anything, just hung up. I didn’t want to expose the van, so I went over on foot to intercept her—hell, it’s only a couple of blocks. I figured Sara called from the apartment, and I’d have plenty of time. Wrong. She called from the pay phone at the parking lot across the street from the gate. I got there just in time to see them grab her and pull her inside, but I was still too far away to help. Ran back here and called you. We’ve gotta move, Mike, Sara’s forced our hand.”

  “Agreed. Come back here right away.” Stone hung up the phone, stared silently at the blueprints of the Riegar plant on his desk, and said, “Shit,” then he rose to call the others in to his office.

  Pappy Saye was in the kitchen. “I was just gonna make some coffee,” he said.

  “No coffee,” said Stone, “get everybody and assemble in my office.” From the w
ay Stone said it, and from long experience, Pappy knew this was it. “Right,” he said, and, shutting off the stove, went to get Bitt and Harper.

  The three men stood around Stone’s desk.

  “Saul Rosen is on his way back and will be here in a few minutes,” said Stone. “Here’s the situation. Sara Rosen, the girl who was just here, has gotten herself captured. She’s being held, most probably, with Eddie Berg. That would put them here”—Stone pointed to the Riegar plant blueprints—“in the primate lab on the twelfth floor. This’ll be a hostage-rescue op. Unfortunately, we’re short military assets, so we’re going to have to use field expedients—meaning whatever we can scare up around here in a hurry. Anybody got any problems with that?”

  The question was greeted with silence.

  “Good,” said Stone. Then he looked at Arno Bitt. “We’re gonna give you a chance to show how good you are, Arno. Night jump—small, hazardous landing zone with low light conditions. You up for that?”

  Arno didn’t even wait for the details. “Anybody wanna place any bets?”

  There were no takers. “So what do I do after I hit the LZ?” Arno asked. Before Stone could answer, Saul Rosen, who had his own key to the front door, knocked and entered. “Come over here, Saul,” Stone said. As Saul took his place around the desk, Stone said, “Saul cross-trained with us as an Israeli Defense Force officer, then got some practical experience with me in Nam, during the course of which he saved my life.”

  “What’d ya do a dumb thing like that for?” Pappy Saye asked. “Yeah,” said Arno, “I dunno if I want to go on an op with someone with such a record of bad judgment.”

  “Thanks, guys,” said Stone, but he had accomplished his intention of establishing Saul’s credentials with the others for a combat operation and gained their assent. The next was said for Arno’s benefit. “How many hours you got now, Saul?”

  “Little over thirteen hundred.”

  “Think you can handle a Cessna?”