Q Clearance

by Peter Benchley

  A man carrying a video camera hopped out of the truck and climbed the nearest stoop and began to take pictures of the dancers.

  Another man, younger, with a coat and tie and one of those sculpted haircuts, stood right behind Ivy and, while he waited for the cameraman to finish his shot, practiced what he wanted to say into his microphone.

  Ivy waited for him to finish muttering. Then she said, "What's this all about?"

  The man didn't welcome the interruption, but he said, "They caught Mengele this morning. In Paraguay."

  "Oh," Ivy said. "Good."

  "You know who Mengele is: Josef Mengele?"

  "Well . . . not exactly."

  "Auschwitz. The Angel of Death. He experimented on all those Jews. Killed thousands of them."

  "Oh. Right. I remember. On the news." Ivy peered through the crowd of dancers. "Nice. I'm glad they got him."

  "Just in time, apparently. He had new people with him, ready to carry on for him."

  Ivy nodded. "Put out the fire before it spreads. What'11 they do to him?"

  "Put him on trial. Then hang him, I guess."

  Ivy sucked on her teeth. "They ought to skin him."

  The young man started. Then he said, "That's interesting. How about I interview you on camera?"

  "Me? I'm nobody."

  "Sure you are. You're smart, I can tell. And you're not afraid to speak your piece."

  "I don't know . . ."

  "Wait'll your friends say they saw you on TV."

  "I look a wreck."

  "You look fine. Dignified. Honest."

  "Well . . ."

  Foster Pym was in a mortal struggle with a hollandaise sauce. First he dropped an egg white in with the yolks, which confused the brew so that it wouldn't come together. Then the maverick electric stove decided to heat the left-front burner to incineration, which burned and separated the butter and left little clots of curd clinging like doughballs to the sides of the bowl.

  His problem, he knew, was that he wasn't concentrating, and the destruction of his concentration was due to his concern about Eva, who stood beside him slicing lemons with a taut-jawed determination, as if she were decapitating mice.

  They didn't speak. The only human sounds in the kitchen wafted in from the living room, where a frenetic TV pitchman was making a last-gasp attempt to hawk storm windows to viewers waiting for the evening news.

  It wasn't that Pym and Eva weren't speaking, rather that they seemed tacitly to have agreed that there was nothing new to say. They had discussed and argued their dilemma to a state of stasis. Eva continued to photograph Burnham's DOE documents but declined to relate any details of her private conversations with him. Teal continued to press for more. Pym, caught in the middle, continued to mediate, stalling Teal and cajoling Eva.

  She was frightened; he was frightened. And they had no choice but to continue.

  Pym looked at the mottled yellow muck in the bowl before him, and gave up. He scraped the mess into the garbage can and started fresh. He broke an egg and held its two halves over the sink, separating white from yolk.

  Someone he knew must have come into the apartment, for suddenly a familiar voice was speaking in the living room. He looked at Eva, who looked at him. They both frowned. He dropped the egg and walked into the living room. No one there. Then he looked at the television screen.

  "Look!" he said, pointing.

  "What?" Eva wiped her hands and followed him.

  The round black face filled the screen. A legend on the bottom identified it as belonging to "Ivy Peniston, Neighborhood Resident."

  For a split second, Pym yielded to the egocentrism that afflicts all those who dwell in the house of fear: She had to be talking about him. Why else would a reporter want to speak to her? Surely the only noteworthy thing she had ever done was steal documents for him.

  Then he heard her say: "He tortured all those people, why give him such an easy out? I say skin him. That'll give him a lot of reflecting time."

  Ivy vanished and the reporter was talking.

  "Skin who?" Eva said.

  "Sssshhh!"

  "... search for Mengele ended at exactly twelve twenty-four, eastern time, this afternoon, on a back road outside a suburb of Asuncion ..."

  "Mengele," was all Pym said.

  "Hey, terrific!" said Eva.

  "... advance notice from the Israelis, American television was permitted to send a pool crew to film the capture. ABC's Brock Wilcox reports from Asuncion."

  The reporter was replaced by a jerky, hand-held image of a speeding jeep approaching through dense underbrush. The breathless ABC man described the ambush in a whisper. When the jeep was ten or fifteen yards from the camera lens, the underbrush erupted with Israeli commandos firing machine guns at the tires and the engine compartment of the jeep. The jeep swerved, rose on two wheels, then settled back and stopped.

  For several seconds, all that was visible was a swarm of commandos over the jeep. Then the swarm dispersed, and two senior Israelis carefully, solicitously, helped Josef Mengele from the jeep and marched him, hands manacled behind his back, toward the camera.

  Eva said, "He doesn't look eighty."

  Pym shook his head. "Plastic surgery."

  Mengele was lean and seemed fit. He walked with his shoulders back, his jaw set and his steely, droop-lidded eyes fixed on some distant point in the future or the past. He did not glance at the camera.

  The camera followed Mengele until he was loaded into a truck full of commandos, then snapped back to the jeep, where some new commotion was going on.

  Three commandos were trying to wrestle a woman out of the jeep. She was shouting, in German and English, "I am an American! I demand to see my consul! Long live the Fourth Reich!"

  The ABC man said, "Mengele's companion refused to give her real name, insisting that she was Eva Braun, an American citizen."

  Pym felt a wave of nausea overtake him. He closed his eyes, then forced himself to open them, saying, "It isn't true; it can't be true."

  The commandos dragged the woman toward the camera. She kicked and spat and snarled like a trussed wolverine. When she saw the camera, she lunged at it and would have struck it with her jutting chin if the cameraman hadn't stumbled backward.

  The image on Pym's television set was blurred and shaky, but the face that filled the frame was unmistakable. Despite the sunken eyes rimmed with purple cups of drawn flesh, despite the silver hair gathered in a severe chignon, despite the spittle-flecked lips, the face with its high cheekbones and flat forehead and potato nose belonged to no one but Louise.

  The woman screamed into the cameras, "Ich bien eine Amerikaner!" and was gone.

  "Mother of God ..." Pym felt as if all his viscera had suddenly been flushed from him. He was dizzy and cold, and his fingertips tingled.

  "What is it?" Eva grabbed his arm, for she saw that he was beginning to totter.

  Pym let Eva help him down into a soft chair. "That," he said, pointing feebly toward the television set, "that woman is . . ." The words seemed reluctant to be spoken. "... your mother!"

  Eva's head snapped around toward the television set, but by now a sunny young housewife was extolling the anodyne properties of hemorrhoidal suppositories.

  The network news came on at seven, and of course the capture of Mengele was the lead story. Eva drew a chair close to the television and sat riveted to the screen, absorbing Louise's every move and utterance, as if hoping in a few seconds to assimilate a lifetime of knowledge of the mother she had never known.

  Pym slumped in his chair, unblinking, and the images from the television screen were reflected by his glassy eyes. He wanted to think, to assess risks and devise alternatives, but his brain refused to entertain the thoughts that crowded his skull: It was still protesting that the two-dimensional image on the screen could not, must not, be a horrid reality.

  When the story was done, Eva turned off the television set and swung her chair around. The sight of her father diluted her excitement w
ith apprehension, so instead of asking the daughterly questions that arose naturally within her, she said only, "What does it mean?"

  Pym sighed and opened and closed his eyes a couple of times and, with a wry smile at Eva, said, "In a word, trouble."

  "Why? They've got him, they're not interested in her. Besides, you said she's crazy. They won't give her the time of day."

  "She is crazy, and if they had found her picketing a synagogue in Alexandria they'd dismiss her as crazy and good riddance. But this"—he waved at the TV—"changes everything. She's not crazy any more. She's evil."

  "Why?"

  "Because madness on this scale isn't excusable. You think if they found Adolf Hitler they'd lock him up as a cuckoo? You think they'll acquit Mengele because he's insane? No. They have captured the devil, and the devil can't be nuts. People need to believe in pure evil, just as they must believe in the existence of pure goodness. And your mother—poor, unhappy Louise, and I don't know why I say that because she liked being a Nazi, it gave her something to do—will find that she has become a devil-by-association." Pym shook his head. "It would have to be the Israelis."

  "What difference does that make?"

  "If the Americans had caught them, there'd be a huge legal tangle, and all manner of unpleasant little truths might fall between the cracks. They'd be prevented from speaking to anyone until they had been advised of their rights and provided with lawyers. The Civil Liberties Union would make sure they were protected against self-incrimination. Some magazine would pay them millions of dollars for the exclusive rights to their stories. Your mother would be a celebrity. The whole thing would become a gloriously bewildering circus. But the Israelis don't observe such niceties." Pym paused. "I wonder if Louise has ever been tortured?"

  "You think she'll lead them to you? To us?"

  "Not intentionally, perhaps. But yes. For sure. The Israelis will put her under a microscope. They'll study her like a new virus, learn everything there is to know about her. When they have what they need—mostly the stuff about her and Mengele— they'll give the excess to the Americans." He tried to smile. "We're the excess."

  "You said they can't find out anything about us."

  "No, I didn't. I said the Americans wouldn't bother to dig deep enough if they thought she was just some neo-Nazi nut. But now she's not a neo-Nazi; she's a real Nazi. And it's not the Americans, it's the Israelis, who don't have any liberal qualms about squeezing a stone till it bleeds. Her marriage is bound to surface. So is the fact that she had a child. A child she named after Hitler's mistress."

  Eva froze. "I didn't know," she said.

  "No. I didn't want you to."

  "What do we do?" Eva looked around the room as if, afraid, she was trying to locate precious things to gather for her escape. "Do we run?"

  "I don't know. I have to have time to think. I—"

  The phone rang.

  Pym let it ring three times, urging his mind to scan all possible callers and to prepare responses. Then he picked up the phone.

  "Teal." The voice sounded tight. Upset.

  "Mallard." Pym hoped the two syllables sounded easy, casual.

  "We've got a problem."

  My God! Pym thought. Already? How could they possibly know this soon? Did they have a mole planted in the Israeli commandos? Had they already interrogated Louise and made the connection? Impossible! But they had. Don't waste your time wondering how. Do something. Do what? Acknowledge? Deny? Don't be surprised. Seem to be in control.

  He said, "I know. But I wouldn't—"

  "You do?" Teal was audibly shocked. "How? Who contacted you?"

  "Ah . . ." Don't say you saw it on television, Pym commanded himself. Not privileged enough. "Peter Jennings."

  "Peter Jennings? Peter Je— the TV guy? Holy mothering jesus! How did he find out? Why did he call you?"

  "It's not exactly a secret any more," Pym said. "I mean, they had a pool crew down there."

  Silence. Pym wondered if Teal had hung up. Then, "What's going down here, man? You been into the bourbon?"

  "What? Don't be—" Suddenly Pym realized that Teal wasn't talking about the Mengele story, he knew nothing about Louise. He had another problem, a new problem about which Pym knew nothing. Pym didn't know whether to be

  alarmed or relieved. "I think our wires are crossed," he said. "Please start again. Tell me what the problem is."

  Teal's voice dropped several decibels as he said, "It looks like B-twelve's gone bad."

  Once again, Pym's mind rebelled. It had received Teal's message, but it would not process it. Access denied. Will not compute. "What do you mean?" he asked.

  "The goods the hostess has been receiving over the past week or so have been . . . tainted."

  "Tainted how? How can they . . . how can she tell?"

  "She can tell, take my word. The stuff stinks, man."

  "But ... it can't be ... I don't ..." Pym didn't know what to say, what to do, what to feel, except that he felt he would like to cry—not from sorrow or regret but from overload, as if to shed tears would be somehow to ease his burdens. "What can I do?"

  Teal said, "We have to find out a couple things. Has he really gone sour, or was he just caught in a routine sweep?"

  "Sweep? What kind of sweep?"

  "Once in a while, when a supplier thinks his goods are being . . . diverted, shall we say ... by unauthorized persons, he'll send out a batch coded with little marks for each of his conduits. When the diverted goods surface, he sees which mark shows up on them, and bingo! He's got the bad guy. Maybe this is what happened to B-twelve, he just got unlucky. But maybe he's been sending tainted goods all along. Maybe he was working for the competition from day one."

  "No," Pym said definitely. "Not a chance."

  "It doesn't matter, for him. Either way, his ass is grass."

  "It is?"

  "Sure, man. The hostess'11 never use him again. I mean, you don't hire a man who's poisoned your well. And you can bet on it, his wholesalers will know about him in a day or two, if they don't already."

  "Why? Will the . . . hostess . . . tell?"

  "No way. Those marked goods are in circulation. They'll be coming home pretty soon." Teal paused, then continued in a tone of congenial menace. "But I tell you what, man, you better hope that that's what did happen, 'cause that's the good news. The bad news is if the hostess decides that B-twelve has been a rotten apple all along, that he's been working for the competition. She's gonna be mighty unhappy with the caterer that sent her bad goods, and for all I know she might just decide that that caterer's been working for the competition, too, and has been out to screw her from the opening gun."

  "That's absurd!"

  "Hey, man . . . I'm just the messenger."

  Pym looked at Eva and saw her looking at him, and in her expression he saw reflected his own feelings of panic and impending doom.

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "Find out the truth."

  "But I know the truth! He's completely innocent. He doesn't know he's working for anybody."

  "I'm afraid your word won't wash, man."

  "What will?"

  "Make them catch him. Make sure they have to expose him publicly."

  "How do I do that? They can cover up anything they want."

  "Not if you feed somebody first, like your friend Peter Jennings, feed him enough so he can ask a lot of embarrassing questions and back them up with a few hard facts. That's the great thing about America: We can keep the pricks honest.''

  "Then what happens?"

  "They expose him, they look like a bunch of assholes, and the hostess knows you were telling the truth."

  "To us, I mean. We're exposed, too."

  "You don't think the hostess would abandon you, do you? Once the machinery's in place, she'll have you out and on your way home, safe and sound."

  "Home," Pym said.

  "You know."

  "Yes, I know."

  "Okay, man? You know what you got to do?"


  "I know," said Pym, who knew nothing of the sort but who wanted to end the conversation before the numbness that was creeping through his limbs rendered him stuporous.

  "Good. And take my advice: Don't dick around, get on it right away, 'cause when this sucker goes down, it'll go down fast and heavy."

  Teal hung up.

  Pym replaced the receiver. He felt eviscerated.

  Eva watched him for a moment, then said, "I have to warn Timothy."

  "No!" Pym clutched at the dregs of his fleeting spirit and said, "I forbid it."

  "You forbid it," she sneered. "Feel free. Forbid anything you want." She glanced at her watch and looked around the room for her purse.

  "You can't help him," Pym said. "He can't help himself."

  "I owe him the chance to try."

  "Be smart, Eva, don't be noble. You may think he's in love with you, but when it comes to saving his own life, believe me, he'll throw you to the wolves."

  "Maybe. If he does, I won't blame him."

  When Eva had left, Pym poured himself a glass of sherry and sat on the couch. He should sort his options, locate some avenue of escape. But instead of thinking, he gazed around the room and found himself noticing things he hadn't paid attention to in years: an Andrew Wyeth print he had bought at a suburban flea market; a chipped Boehm porcelain bird; a copy of an Fames chair he had found in a secondhand store, whose leather seat had been squashed into a perfect contour of Pym's reclining posterior—^the catalogue of the life Pym had fashioned for himself in America, all taken for granted till now. He regarded them with new affection, for they represented everything he had—and everything he would soon surely lose.

  BuRNHAM said, "Thanks, Emilio," and hung up the phone.

  Eva would appear at Cantina Romana in a few minutes, and Emilio would give her the simple, terse message (never entrust a complicated message to a man for whom English was not his mother tongue): Burnham had been delayed by a sudden case of the B.T.W.s. No matter where they had agreed to eat, she always stopped first at the Cantina, for Emilio was a reliable romantic who delighted in playing broker for their liaisons.