Program for a Puppet

by Roland Perry

  The Australian looked around and noticed someone at an opposite table looking at him. It was the man he had seen on the platform and had later exchanged glances with from the couchette.

  Graham was nervous. His first instincts were to leave the dining car. But before he had made up his mind to go, a waiter was asking him for his order. He asked for a sandwich and a beer. His English drew glances from several people, including the man opposite. The waiter had stood in a line between the man at the bar and Graham. After the waiter had taken the order and moved away, the man at the bar went out of the dining car.

  Half an hour later Graham had almost finished his meal when the couple next to him left the table, leaving him with the girl. The Australian wanted to stay in the dining car as long as possible. He felt a little more secure there with so many people about. The man opposite him had almost finished his meal and was drinking coffee.

  “Going to Paris?” Graham asked the girl sitting in front of him, mustering as much charm as possible.

  “Oui,” she replied, surprised at being spoken to.

  “You are French?”

  “Yes.” The girl smiled faintly. Graham was relieved. She didn’t appear to mind making conversation.

  “Have you been on holiday in Vienna?”

  “Holiday and business.”

  “You are a model?” Graham said, keeping up the small talk by asking the obvious. The girl was tall, beautifully dressed and groomed, with a lavish amount of make-up which accentuated the hollow, angular structure of her face.

  She nodded. The conversation continued with the girl opening up a little to Graham about her rich Austrian boyfriend in Vienna who had put her up for the past week at the opulent Hotel Sasher and shown her the sights.

  The dining car crowd began to thin out. Still the man opposite the Australian lingered, ordering a second cup of coffee and a cognac. Graham decided to stay there as long as he could. He ordered an expensive wine and two glasses, and pretended to turn more of his attention to the girl.

  As midnight approached the bar began to close down and the man opposite moved off. Graham walked the girl to her couchette, trying to keep the conversation going at her door while lightning flashed from a violent storm that had hit Austria and promised to be with the train most of the night journey to France. He began to think it would be safer to stay the night with her, but it became obvious that she was not prepared to let him in.

  “Will you be staying in Paris?” she asked, sliding the couchette door across.

  “Possibly.”

  She fumbled for a card in her handbag. “If you do, please phone me,” she said, handing him a card. They shook hands.

  As Graham moved off, he heard the click of the couchette door lock behind him.

  Two carriages away the Skull waited.

  After Graham had failed to turn up at the airport, Bromovitch had left his other man there in case the Australian should try to get on any later flight. Then he drove back to the city with the Skull and ordered him to check the trains. Bromovitch went back to the hotel where Graham had been staying.

  The Skull had arrived twenty minutes before the Paris train was due to leave and had waited for Graham on the platform. He had not seen the Australian get on, but caught the train just in case he had missed him.

  After arranging a couchette with the porter, the Skull had sidled down to the dining car, and had sat with his back to the diners, watching them in the mirror.

  When Graham came in, the Skull was alerted. He fitted the description better than the Italian at the airport. His suspicions were confirmed when he overheard Graham speaking in English to the waiter.

  The Skull left the dining car and made his way to the porter’s cabin.

  “Good evening,” he said in German to the porter, who was writing down the numbers of the passports he had collected in the first hour of the journey. “I was wondering if you could tell me the couchette number of a friend. We have missed each other.”

  “His name?”

  “Edwin Graham. He is Australian.”

  The porter spent some time sifting through passports until he came to one with a dark blue cover and Kangaroo and Emu emblem. “Number ninety,” he said.

  Graham felt a real sensation of fear as he made his way along the carriages to his couchette. If anything happened there was no place to run and hide. He felt claustrophobic.

  The Australian entered his couchette cautiously and was pleased to find it still empty. He drew the blinds, switched on the light, and then sat back on his bunk to calm himself. The second-class shared couchettes could not be locked. If someone on the train was after him he could force his way in. He had to do something.

  Pulling all the spare blankets and pillows off other bunks, Graham arranged them on the bottom left bunk to make them look like someone sleeping. He switched off the light, hoisted himself onto the top bunk and slid around into the luggage rack above the door. Making do with a remaining pillow and blanket, he made himself as comfortable as possible in the tight space.

  From his elevated position Graham could see through a window along the length of the carriage corridor. He was determined to keep vigil until dawn.

  At 2:30 A.M. the train began to slow down for the first stop of the journey. At the stop Graham could hear doors slamming and he strained hard to see anyone getting into his carriage. Few people seemed to have embarked.

  Minutes later he noticed a man standing at the end of the corridor. He didn’t move for five minutes. Then he walked slowly up to the couchette next to Graham’s. The Australian froze. It was too late to run.

  The man seemed to stand there for an eternity. After about twenty minutes he took a pace forward. Graham could feel his heart pound as he watched the man move up to his couchette. He desperately wanted something to defend himself with. His hand touched the bronze buckle of his belt. He unbuckled it. He could see the figure standing there, rigidly, a foot away from the door.

  Graham tugged at the belt. It was tight within his trouser loops. Because of his awkward position it couldn’t come out easily. The man began to slide the door across. It was the tall overcoated figure of the Skull. He trained a gun on what looked like a body on the bottom bunk just as Graham freed his belt completely. The man stepped right into the couchette and pulled back the covering on the bunk. Before he could act on the deception Graham had looped the belt through the buckle to form a large noose. In one swift movement he leaned out from the luggage rack and dropped the noose around the intruder’s head and neck, whipping it tight. The Skull fell back against the half-open door and pulled against the force of the belt. His gun fell to the floor. Graham was lurched half out of the luggage rack, but hung onto the belt with all his strength. The Skull jerked his body in every direction as he clawed at the belt. Graham was hauled from the rack. He landed on his feet and still gripped the belt as he slipped behind the Skull and brought a knee up into the base of the man’s spine. The man’s torso snapped upward, almost knocking Graham over. But it was almost a reflex action, as the Australian had not let up the pressure on the belt.

  Thirty seconds later, he felt the Skull go limp as a rag doll. Graham gripped tighter and tighter, until he could feel sweat on his brow and pain in his forearms. He let the body slump to the floor. Contorted and grotesque, it twitched as if reluctant to expire. Graham fell back on the left bunk, his breathing shallow and quick. His whole body was shaking. It must have been five minutes before he began to open and close his hands to flex the strained arm muscles. He got to his feet and caught the smell of the body. He dry-retched as he shut the door, drew the couchette blinds and switched on the light.

  “Oh, Christ!” he breathed, as he looked down at the KGB agent. His only movement now was a large red and frothing tongue that gave a few involuntary flicks.

  Graham switched off the light. He tried to think calmly. His first rational thought was the storm outside. At least it was unlikely that anyone had heard their struggle. But what should he do no
w? He switched on the light once more and looked around the couchette. He had to clean it up. The train began to rumble on its way again. Graham pulled the belt away from the man’s neck. He started with shock as a trickle of blood bubbled beneath the Adam’s apple.

  Looking around, he grabbed a towel from his suitcase and applied a crude tourniquet around the neck to stop the flow of blood which had begun to move in little rivulets down to the chest. He struggled to lift the body. With some effort, he propped it on the ladder to the top bunk, and then maneuvered it up so that the torso lay on the bunk and the legs dangled over the side.

  He tried the window. Rain swept in as he opened it a maximum of two feet. He pushed the legs so that the feet stuck out. Keeping his shoulders under the man’s body, he gradually slid it out of the window. It fell like a sack of potatoes. Graham threw the gun and the towel after it, then took his gear to the washroom three doors away. He washed himself and cleaned his belt, on which tiny spots of blood had congealed.

  Graham returned to his couchette exhausted and still sweating. He resumed his uncomfortable vigil from the luggage rack.

  Outside the storm had subsided. The steady beat of the wheels could be heard for the first time on the journey as the train sped on its way.

  Just before dawn Graham was disturbed again, but this time it was the porter returning passports for the coming routine inspection at the German—Belgian border.

  “Did your friend see you?” the porter asked as he handed the Australian his passport. Graham was shocked.

  “No,” he said, almost too quickly, as he tried to act surprised. The porter shrugged and left.

  At the border an old Belgian couple joined his couchette for the journey to France. Graham sat quietly on a top bunk as daylight broke and worried through every possibility. How long before the body on the track was discovered? The porter must have been asked where Graham’s couchette was…. Would that Russian still be after him?

  At Paris’s Gare du Nord he taxied straight to Charles de Gaulle airport and waited two hours for a standby flight to London, arriving at Heathrow midafternoon.

  Although fatigued, the Australian decided to waste no time in going underground. He rented a furnished apartment with a lock-up garage he knew at Strand-on-the-Green overlooking the Thames, and loaded his Alfa with files, clothes and other effects he would need for an indefinite stay. After informing his kindly old Cockney porter that he would be gone for some time, he drove to the apartment, which was in a quiet suburban area.

  It would be a strange new life. For how long, Graham had no idea. But for the moment he was on the run.

  3

  Brogan Senior punched a button on the control panel in the war room at Lasercomp’s Black Flats New York HQ. Seated at a semicircular conference table, he, Brogan Junior, Huntsman and Strasburg watched as Graham’s article on computer smuggling appeared on the screen at the back of the room—a clinically functional miniature of the U.S. Defense Department’s auditorium for waging war.

  “Soviets smuggle in Western Computers. By a special correspondent.” The 1,200-word article said the Soviet Union was smuggling in advanced strategic computers in violation of strict American and NATO regulations. Without drawing a direct link, it discussed the activities of IOSWOP and made reference to the preponderance of Soviet scientists at the palace. The article went on to discuss the kind of computers the Soviets might require from the West, without direct reference to any manufacturer. However, it did mention the major computer corporations selling nonstrategic machines to the Soviet Union.

  “As you can see,” Huntsman said, “we are listed along with six others.”

  Brogan punched another button.

  Next up on the screen appeared a head-and-shoulders shot of Graham.

  Huntsman gave a scant synopsis on him gained in the last few hours from Australia, England and Austria.

  As the lights went up, Strasburg frowned. “You say this guy was once a computer industry writer,” he said. “Is that how he has gotten so much information?”

  “Partly,” Huntsman said. “We believe he is following up the investigation of another journalist who was apparently very interested in our Soviet operations. She tried to contact Donald Gordon in Paris.”

  “Let’s call Cheznoir in on this,” Brogan Senior said. “He’s standing by.”

  He pressed a button on a television channel selector and the head and shoulders of Jean Marie Cheznoir, Lasercomp’s director for Europe and Asia, came on a large set below the screen. He was Lasercomp’s senior executive in Soviet marketing.

  “Jean,” Brogan said, turning to the set, “I thought you’d like to be in on our discussion about this article from Vienna.”

  Cheznoir’s large gray-green eyes, which had that bloodshot, continually-dipped-in-whisky look, flashed concern. “Merci. The situation is serious from our point of view. My information is that our Soviet clients have decided to act alone on this.”

  “You gave them the go-ahead?” Brogan asked angrily.

  “No. I ‘ad no choice in the matter!” Cheznoir said, gesticulating freely. “They consider it very serious.”

  “It could have been even worse! If they go around … doing crazy things without asking us if it’s okay. What’s the current status?”

  “They are trying to contact the journalist. He may have left Vienna.” The discussion had honed an edge of tension around the table. Everyone sensed the Old Man was just managing to control his temper. “Okay, Jean. Just get this message to our Soviet buyers,” he said, pointing aggressively at the screen; “they don’t make any moves—none at all—without consulting us. Otherwise, no computers. None! We call the shots, and they better believe it!”

  Cheznoir blanched noticeably at this outburst. “I’ll tell them … but, er, if Graham manages to avoid them … and he has more bombs for us … what do we do?”

  “We shall contact him,” the Old Man said less vehemently, “and if he does not cooperate … then …” He hesitated. Everything said in the room was recorded for later minutes dictation by secretaries. They were speaking about murder. There could be no direct reference to it. “Uh, we would look a little further on down the road, as we’ve done before. Just don’t worry about it. No one will be allowed to obstruct our plans.”

  “And Dr. Gordon?” Cheznoir asked.

  “Gordon is a slightly different problem. He had an agreement with us not to mention anything about our plans. It has stood since the day he left Lasercomp. He seems to be violating that agreement. We shall speak to him soon.”

  “Jean, how is your press reacting to the article?” Brogan Junior asked, deflecting the topic slightly.

  “Ah!” The Frenchman gesticulated. “We are under great pressure. We would like to put out a statement on our official position on selling to the Soviet Union.”

  “Okay.” Brogan Junior nodded approvingly. “Go ahead, but say nothing except that we have no immediate plans for expansion of markets in the Soviet Union or any other communist country. Get in something about us complying with COCOM,* the American National Security Council and the American State Department.”

  “Thank you,” Cheznoir said. “I’ll do it today.”

  “Right,” the Old Man said. “And get back to us soon.” Cheznoir’s image faded, and Brogan Junior tapped out a numerical code on the keyboard of his control panel. It called up the latest report on the PPP.

  PPP: PROGRAM FOR A POTENTIAL PRESIDENT. 1009, FACTOR 31, DEFEAT OF INCUMBENT. SUGGESTION 1.

  INCREASE DEFAMATION ACTIVITIES BY AUGUST 11. MAIN REASON: POPULARITY AT YEAR HIGH. METHOD: INFORMATION TO ALL MEDIA, AND SOVIET GOVERNMENT. MAIN AREA OF INCUMBENT’S VULNERABILITY: SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY.

  “What do you think, Alan?” Brogan Junior asked.

  Huntsman took a deep breath. “We have a good chance coming up soon. All the networks want to hold a debate between MacGregor and Mineva on one team, and Rickard and the Vice President on the other. We may be able to get some embarrassing
questions thrown at Rickard.”

  “Fine,” the Old Man said. “I want a list of similar suggestions between now and the eleventh. We must really turn the screws on Rickard from now on.”

  Huntsman first decided to carry out Brogan Senior’s instructions where it would have the best effect, and that happened to be with the Federal Broadcasting System’s Douglas Philpott, America’s top-rated television commentator.

  Huntsman had once been his mentor at FBS and had been influential in boosting Philpott’s career ever since he had moved from a Texas radio station to the big time as a news reporter at FBS. Huntsman was then the network’s top producer/director and a friend of a Texas oil magnate who had been a patron of Philpott’s since his days as a star football player at Texas University. Hillier had employed the young Philpott at one of his radio stations.

  Because of his debt of gratitude to Huntsman, Philpott never hesitated in giving Lasercomp publicity. Lasercomp’s computers could always be used for political telecasts or sporting events. Occasionally there would be a TV commercial where his male-model looks and smooth commentary would be used to extol the “many fine virtues” of the corporation and its machines in research into cancer, education or pollution. All seemingly harmless, worthwhile stuff which never interfered with his political commentaries, but for which he received substantial payments. In the last two years they became fatter and more frequent. Philpott had become very much under the corporation’s thumb.

  Huntsman knew exactly where he would find him any morning—in the basement gymnasium of FBS’s Washington studios. The blond Philpott, with his straight-arrow, all-American-boy good looks, spent a lot of his leisure hours pounding away at the weights, chasing away the devils of paunchy middle age from his six-foot-two-inch frame. Apart from the vanity, he firmly believed that his ratings were dependent on his looking as trim as possible.

  Huntsman wanted to speak to him about the big Rickard versus MacGregor TV debate. For the first fifteen minutes they chatted about the good old days when they had worked together, until Huntsman broached the subject of the debate.