Q Clearance

by Peter Benchley

  As he drew abreast of the car, a voice called out from the darkness of the back seat, "Hey, man, you got the time?"

  Before he had time to recognize something familiar in the voice, Pym had taken a step toward the car and had tilted his watch to catch the glow from the streetlight and had said, "It's—"

  He didn't see the back door fly open, or the crouched figure dart out of the car at him. He felt something grab his belt, saw a blur of car and street and lamplight, heard his skull strike steel and felt a terrible pain in his head as he was flung to the carpeted floor of the car.

  Then something was happening to his trousers, and the pain in his head was gone, replaced by a piercing agony in his testicles.

  He tried to thrash away, but whatever had his testicles gripped them even tighter, and a foot stepped on his forehead. Bile rose in his throat.

  The voice spoke again, and this time he recognized it instantly.

  "Vice grips," said Teal. "Got 'em from Brookstone. Nice, eh? Got this little wheel here, I can tighten 'em right down. See?"

  Pym would have thought it impossible, but the pain got worse. He tried to scream, but the foot on his forehead pressed harder, driving his face into the footrest.

  "Or, if you're a good boy, I can loosen 'em, too. See?"

  The pain eased some. The car pulled away from the curb. It stopped—a red light, probably—then started again.

  Pym felt sick. He thought he might faint. Then Teal must have backed the screw wheel down some more, for the pain eased again. The foot slid off his forehead onto the floor of the car.

  Slowly, Pym turned his head and looked up at the owner of the foot. He could see nothing but a short, lumpy, dark figure sitting back in the seat, wearing a dark hat that covered his face in shadow.

  Then he turned his head farther and saw Teal kneeling over him, holding the vice grips, grinning.

  Pym thought before he spoke, desperate not to say anything that would cause his balls to be broken. His impulse was to say. What do you want? Instead, he said, "What have I done?"

  "It's what you didn't do. You didn't do what I told you."

  "It's only been—"

  "They know."

  "What? Who?"

  "The Americans know about B-twelve."

  "How do you know?"

  "We know. Look. Believe it: We can tap their typewriters in their embassy, we know what they know. And they know what we know. These days, the world has got a bug up its ass. Everybody knows everything."

  "Do they know what you know? Do they know you know that the information he was passing along is bad?"

  "We don't know if they know we know. But we know they know about him."

  Pym flicked his eyes at the dark figure. "Who is he?"

  "Don't ask." Teal rotated the vice grips, and Pym gasped. "Okay?"

  Pym's fingernails scraped at the floor of the car. He grunted and nodded and wished he would faint.

  "Okay," Teal said, relaxing his grip. "They haven't caught him yet. You gotta blow it wide open before they catch him, 'cause if they catch him first, he'll disappear. And if that happens"—Teal glanced at the dark figure—"you disappear. The only person who'll know where you are is you, and take my word, you'll wish you didn't."

  "All right. First thing tomo—" The word dissolved into a

  Strangled scream, for Teal had torqued the vice grips hard. Pym had a second's hope that his testicles would tear away.

  "Tonight, chummy, tonight."

  The car stopped.

  The pressure on Pym's balls vanished as Teal removed the vice grips. What remained was a gnawing, nauseating ache.

  Teal grabbed Pym's lapels and pulled him upright, reached behind him and opened the door, stepped backward out of the car and dragged Pym after him.

  "You have till Good Morning, America," Teal said. He turned Pym around and pushed him toward the sidewalk, then stepped back into the car and slammed the door.

  Pym found himself gazing up at a glass office building over the entrance to which, enclosed in a smart white circle, were the letters ABC.

  He didn't have to look, he knew that the car hadn't departed. Teal and the dark lump were waiting to make sure he went into the building, where a security guard was visible behind a desk, reading a comic book.

  He tucked his shirt in, made sure his fly was zipped, and carelessly jangled his abused balls, which retaliated with a spasm of pain that made him stagger.

  What was he going to say? Peter Jennings!

  He must look like a wino out for a night's prowl. At best, they'd pitch him back onto the street; at worst, they'd call the police.

  An accent. Maybe he could put on a Russian accent. Americans were suckers for accents. Something about the inferiority feelings inherent in a young culture. A wino with no accent was just a wino, but a wino with an accent might be a prince or a count or a duke: You had to listen to him, at least hear him out.

  He didn't know if he could do it. He had spent so long eradicating all traces of his Slavic heritage that he wasn't sure what Russian sounded like.

  But the odds were, he knew more than the security guard.

  He pulled open the glass door and walked across the marble floor.

  The guard, a young white man with a Zapata mustache and a bad complexion, looked up from his G.I. Joe comic and said, "Yeah?"

  "I am a Russian person, Pinsky by name. I would like please to see Mister Peter Jennings."

  "Right," the guard said, and his little eyes scanned Pym's torso, searching for the telltale bulge of a concealed weapon. "Write him a letter." He returned to the adventures of G.I. Joe.

  "But you see, I am having a story that will be interesting him very much."

  "Sure."

  "It is involving espionage spies."

  "Yeah?" The guard eyed Pym again. "Whyn't you tell it to me?"

  "No. What I am having to say is for Mister Peter Jennings's ears only."

  "Tough, then. Write him a letter."

  "I am pleased your union has gained for you such fine job security. You can perhaps direct me to the offices of CBS?"

  The guard closed his comic book. He licked his lips and looked at Pym, who smiled affably down at him. The guard picked up his phone and dialed four digits and said something into the mouthpiece that Pym could not hear because he cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and whispered.

  Pym looked behind him, out through the glass doors. The car still sat at the curb.

  An elevator door opened behind the guard, and a young woman approached the desk. The guard tipped his head at Pym.

  The young woman was pretty but hard as nails. Pym decided she was a case officer assigned to handle kooks.

  "I'm Paula Strong," she said. "May I help you?"

  Pym repeated what he had told the guard.

  "First of all," said Miss Strong, "Peter Jennings works in New York."

  "Of course," Pym said uneasily, for he had forgotten that all three network news shows originated in New York. "I was not demanding a personal confrontation."

  "Second, I'm afraid you'll have to be a lot more specific before we can put you in touch with any of our senior people."

  "Pretty lady"—Pym flashed what he hoped was an ingratiating smile—"you have heard perhaps of Colonel Penkovsky?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you should be being grateful I am not demanding to see the senior person he insisted on seeing."

  "Refresh my memory. Who was that?"

  "John F. Kennedy."

  "Well, Mister . . . Pinsky, is it? ... I think it's safe to say that Penkovsky had a lot to offer."

  "So, dear lady, I assure you, do I."

  Pym smiled again—a sincere, ingenuous smile—and allowed Miss Strong a long moment to appraise him.

  "Follow me," she said, and she turned toward the elevator.

  The last image Pym saw before the elevator doors slid closed was of the car idling at the curb.

  "There is a back way out of this building?" he asked.


  "Sure. Why?"

  "People who tell you things like I am telling you must always know if there is a back way out."

  '^There's nothing the Russians like more than seeing us chase after the little brushfires they start all over the world. Spend money, send supplies, finance counterrevolutionaries, maybe even send troops—Christ!—flush the resources of this nation down the John, spend ourselves into bankruptcy, trying to do the impossible."

  Burnham was on a roll. Ideas that he had never known he had, notions that had never coalesced into ideas, snippets that had never been articulated into notions—were racing around in his head and leaping out of his mouth, like passengers abandoning a sinking ship.

  The President let him run. He sat back on the couch and sipped his bourbon and listened.

  "What we don't realize is, it doesn't work! Ever! We're like Pavlov's goddamn dogs: We hear the buzzwords like 'Marx' and 'socialism' and 'people's republic of any dippy thing,' and right away the bells ring and we holler 'Russia!' and threaten to send in the Marines. What happens? The peasants say to themselves, 'Who needs this?' and they turn to the guy who isn't hollering at them, and who's that? Bingo. Russia.

  "Suppose we let them alone, even help them, maybe we retain some influence over them, maybe we can tug the leash once in a while to keep them from doing something stupid to their neighbors. But once we've driven them into the arms of the big bear, we can't say squat about what they do, so all that's left is to try to overthrow them."

  Burnham's mouth was dry. Without thinking to ask, he walked to the cabinet bar and reached into the refrigerator for a can of Coke. He seemed not to realize where he was, until he saw the presidential seal on the glass into which he poured the Coke. "Oh!" he said, embarrassed. "Sorry. I'm—"

  "Go on, go on," said the President. "I think you're about to have an opinion. You're saying we should let Honduras go and be damned?"

  "No, sir, I'm not. I'm saying we should stop pouring money into trying to overthrow everybody. I think we should sit down and talk to the Hondurans and the Nicaraguans. And the Russians. I think we should say, 'Do what you want, but here are the limits.' And just like in Cuba, the limits are things that could threaten us or their neighbors, like long-range aircraft and missiles. Then I think you, sir, just like Jack Kennedy, should go on television and tell the world what those limits are, nice and reasonable. We'll give them aid, we'll help them feed their people, we won't interfere with the way they run their lives. If they want to go socialist, they can go socialist—they can become the people's republic of ding-dong, that's great—and if the Russians want to pump a lot more of their own GNP into the effort, so much the better, BUT—if they start invading people, or if they start importing missiles—and with satellite technology what it is today we can tell if one of those two-bit colonels has a boil on his nose—then the world has to know we'll go in there and crush them like a bug.

  "That, Mr. President, is my opinion." Burnham smiled. "I think."

  The President chuckled. He heaved himself off the couch and went to the bar and poured himself some more bourbon. He came back and sat down and rolled the ice cubes around the glass with his finger. "I agree," he said at last.

  A wave of pride surged through Burnham. It felt wonderful.

  "We're gonna get our butt kicked." The President sipped his drink. "Some people gonna say we're running scared. You know: abdicating the American leadership role, allowing the citadel of democracy to crumble. All that crap."

  "Let them. Right is right, and we're right." The righteousness of his words tasted bad in Burnham's mouth, so he added, "Which is easy for me to say since my ass isn't on the line."

  "It will be," the President said with a smile. "If you're wrong, I'll have you crucify yourself in my memoirs. You think history'11 bear us out?"

  "Who knows? As they say, history is a fickle strumpet. You play to her, and she gives you a chancre on your posterity. Look at Truman: One generation thinks he's a disaster, the next crowns him a folk hero. Coolidge: A nobody until Ronald Reagan fell in love with him. Every President should have Polonius' advice engraved on his desk." Burnham stopped, again appalled at himself. "Good God, listen to who's lecturing! I'm sorry, sir."

  "Don't apologize for speaking your mind."

  "No, sir. It's just ... I have trouble believing I have anything worth saying, let alone defending."

  "Let me be the judge. I'll tell you when it's time to apologize. Can you put together some notes for tomorrow morning? I'll get the leadership in here around ten."

  "Of course."

  "I'm not gonna let them off the hook. They're coming on the line, with me or against me." The President yawned and looked at his watch. "Sack time," he said, and he stood up. He put a hand on Burnham's shoulder and walked him toward the door. "Tim, for a person who thinks he's worthless as a cup of warm spit, you did good. Can you be proud of yourself?"

  "I think so. I intend to try."

  "Do, 'cause if you can't be proud of yourself for this, for helping your President and your country and"—he waved at the window—"I believe this, all those unborn, well then, you might's well drop back and punt."

  "Thank you, sir." Burnham reached to open the door.

  "Who's Polonius?" the President asked.

  "In Hamlet. You know: 'To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.' "

  "That's good. Save it. We're gonna need all the ammunition we can get. You mentioned Truman. You remember what he said: 'If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen'?"

  "Sure."

  "Think you can stand the heat?"

  "So far."

  "So far!" the President laughed. "It hasn't even started to get warm yet. But I hope you can, Tim, 'cause I've got more'n a year to go, and you're gonna be my chief cook."

  Before Burnham could reply, the President had opened the door, ushered him into the hallway and closed the door again.

  Burnham stared at the door for a second and then felt someone watching him. He looked up into the eyes of a gargantuan Secret Service man who appeared to have had all his motors for facial expression surgically removed.

  Burnham didn't want the Secret Service man to think he had been expelled from the Oval Office like an Avon Lady or a Jehovah's Witness, so he said with authority, "He's going to turn in now. Back to the Mansion."

  The agent nodded and reached under his jacket for a walkie-talkie.

  Burnham walked down the hall, past Epstein's offices, where the night shift of secretaries labored on the banks of humming copiers, word processors and typewriters. He waved at the secretaries as he passed, and one of them did a double take when she saw him—surprised, Burnham assumed, to see that anyone else was working round the clock in the service of the nation.

  He turned at the end of the hall and walked toward the West Lobby. The building no longer felt forbidding to him. It was warm and welcoming, a safe haven, a second home. He belonged here.

  Maybe Sarah was right about commitment, he thought. He had found something to believe in, he had done well, had had his worth affirmed by none other than the President of the United States, and had been rewarded by a promise of even greater commitment.

  He felt alive, involved, important—altogether better than he had ever felt in his life.

  Outside, he started along the path toward the West Gate.

  He heard behind him a car accelerating up West Executive Avenue, then the squeal of tires as the car braked and turned toward the West Basement.

  Idly curious, he left the path and walked to the edge of the grass to see who was so frantic to get to work at ten-thirty at

  night. It was a black sedan, with a red light flashing from within each side of its grill work.

  Mario Epstein.

  No peace for the wicked, Burnham thought, and he passed through the West Gate and hailed a taxi cruising Pennsylvania Avenue.

  The intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street was packed
with taxis, buses, double-parked private cars, motorcycles, bicycles, skateboarders, pedestrians, drunks, dancers, panhandlers and junkies, so Burnham paid the driver and left the taxi and walked the four blocks to the apartment.

  Wisconsin Avenue was a continuous party, and Burnham wanted to join in, to share his own elation, to have people clap him on the back and congratulate him and buy him drinks. Solitary triumphs were no fun at all. But Eva was waiting for him, and she would celebrate with him and would love him and, as important right now as love—appreciate him.

  The thought of her made him quicken his pace.

  A blue sedan was parked fifteen or twenty yards this side of the entrance to Burnham's building. Burnham would never have noticed it if it hadn't been cozied up so brazenly to a fire hydrant. The Georgetown police were notoriously gleeful towers, and Burnham enjoyed a fleeting fantasy of the car's owner, well oiled, returning from an evening of revelry to discover that his GM mid-size had been removed to some remote burial ground where only a fool would go at night.

  Suddenly there was movement inside the sedan, and before Burnham could obey his instinct and look away (never stare at anything surprising, was the rule, for many surprising things will take offense and put a bullet in you) he saw a cascade of wonderfully red hair belonging to a woman who had locked her face onto that of an unseen man and was trying either to suck his brains out or administer a novel form of CPR.

  Burnham smiled benignly and walked on to the gate that led down to the entrance to his garden apartment.

  Where can we reach you?" asked Paula Strong, as she pushed the button for the service elevator. "No where," said Pym. "I am no where." "We'll have to. You only gave us half a loaf. I mean, it's a dynamite half a loaf, don't get me wrong, but it's still half a loaf. Like, we'll need some names before we can go with anything."

  "I will reach you. As soon as I am getting names, you are getting names." The elevator arrived; it was padded with movers' quilts, and two big trash barrels stood against the far wall. Pym stepped inside.

  “Push 'B,' " said Paula Strong. "When you get to the basement, turn right, then right again, and the exit door's straight ahead at the end of the corridor.''