Mr. Moto Omnibus

by John P. Marquand

  “Mind?” said Mr. Moto. “I am delighted. You are free, as free—what is the English expression? I am ashamed I do not know. Oh, yes, as free as the air!”

  I wonder if Mr. Moto ever thought again of that phrase he used—“as free as the air.”

  “You will not think too hardly of us?” Mr. Moto said.

  “Good night, Casey,” said Sonya. “I’ll call to see how you are in the morning.”

  “Moto,” I said, “if I’ve killed anyone tonight, I am very, very sorry.”

  “Please,” said Mr. Moto, “you must not bother. It was duty for our Emperor, Mr. Lee, and we are all very pleased to die for him. Good night and rest comfortably, will you, please?”

  “Good night,” I said, and then Mr. Moto and Sonya were gone.

  I stood for a moment listening, and then I looked at my watch. A year had passed, for all I could estimate, since I had thought of time, and the shortness of the actual lapse was incredible. The hands of my watch indicated only five minutes to twelve. In less than two and a half hours I had been through events which might have filled ten years of an ordinary span. I was living fast. Sonya was right. I did not need a drink. I found the card which Sam Bloom had given me and asked for his number over the telephone. I knew what Sam Bloom had said was true, that he would stand by me for anything I wanted.

  “Come up here, Sam,” I said. “As soon as you can, please.”

  “Okay,” said Sam. “I’m coming.”

  He was there in a quarter of an hour, with his hat tilted on the back of his head, asking, “What’s the matter, Casey?”

  “I want a two-seater plane,” I said, “first thing tomorrow morning. I’m flying to a village six miles outside of Chinchow.”

  “Chinchow,” said Sam Bloom. His intonation proved that he had the map of China on his fingertips, as any good aviator must know the country where he flies. “That’s between six-fifty and seven hundred miles and the Japanese will spot you when you get across the line. They’ll probably shoot at you. We’d better talk about this, Casey. Why do you want to see Chinchow? It’s a walled town on a plain. I can show you plenty of ’em.”

  I knew that I must tell him the truth, but I did not mind, because I knew that Sam Bloom would stand by me if he could. “Sam,” I said, “you’re an American and I’m an American. Listen to this, Sam.” As Bloom listened, I remember thinking how calmly he took it, as though he understood a part already.

  “Well,” was his only comment. “Why don’t you tell Jim Driscoll? He’s in the Intelligence.”

  “I’ve told him,” I explained. “I’ve quarreled with Jim Driscoll; and now I’m going to do the rest of this myself. If anyone is going to get these figures, or whatever they are, I think I’m in the position to do it. All I want is a two-seater plane, Sam. Are you going to come across or not? That’s all I want to know.”

  Bloom moved his felt hat restlessly between his fingers. “You’re asking more than you think,” he said.

  “Probably,” I answered. “I want a plane and maps.”

  “You’ll have to refuel,” he objected, “before you get back home. How are you going to do that, Casey?”

  “I don’t care,” I answered, “as long as I get there.”

  Bloom rubbed his hand along the back of his head. “There’s an observation plane up at the airport,” he said, “that has been assigned to me. You can have it, Casey.”

  “What time?” I asked.

  “Eight o’clock tomorrow morning.” Bloom pulled a map from his pocket and handed it to me. “It may be that I’ll lose my job, but you can have it, Casey. I’ll see you in the morning. There’s the mark where you’re going. I’ll tell you more tomorrow. And now you’d better get some sleep. Good night!”

  12

  EXCELLENT AS his suggestion may have been, like so many of one’s friends’ suggestions, it was hard to follow. It took me a long time to get to sleep. I was under no illusions about the next morning. From the things Sam Bloom had left unsaid, together with the gossip to which anyone in the Orient must listen, I was certainly off on a harebrained errand. Nevertheless, I had gained a composure which arises from a definite knowledge of a mission, combined with a certain faith in one’s ability. I could get a plane from one point on the map to another, even an unknown map, as successfully as any other pilot. I knew that Sam Bloom would secure me a plane, because he said he would. What reasons he might give to his superiors were up to his own invention, not to mine, but my reputation as a flyer would probably be a help. In my time I had been given the courtesy of plenty of airports.

  For a while I pored over the small-scale pocket map of China which Sam Bloom had left me. It is strange how casual one’s knowledge of a country is until one is actually in it. I had never been personally cognizant before of the immense area of China. A map could speak to me more eloquently than the pages of a book, as it will to any experienced air pilot. The point which I proposed to reach, fortunately for me, lay close to the seacoast, along the line of the Mukden-Tientsin Railroad, where level land dwindles to a narrow strip between the sea and a rough mountainous country. Not so far from my proposed destination was the symbol of the Great Wall of China, winding down a mountain range to Shan-hai-kwan, the frontier town between China and the new Manchukuo State. Given the proper air conditions, the flying problem would be principally a matter of following the seacoast, then across the promontory of Shantung, then over the Po-Hai Gulf, keeping land on the left, then bearing easterly along the gulf of Liao-Tung. The political implications were what bothered me most. At the time there were Japanese forces in Shan-hai-kwan, and beyond the Great Wall there were further concentrations of Japanese troops. I was fully aware that a Chinese plane would not be well received, that it might create an incident which would involve the occupants of such a plane in very real danger, if they were taken. It was my hope to keep sufficiently high and out to sea, so that we could not be observed until the last possible moment. In the end, the whole matter would come down to the question perhaps of minutes. If we could get what we wanted quickly enough, there was a chance that we could return to the plane and take off before troops should intervene; but this was a matter which lay in the future. I believed that there would be petrol enough, if we could get back to the plane, to take us to Tientsin. If I could once arrive at the airport there—and I knew there was an airport in the line of the Peiping-Shanghai air route—my intention was to leave the plane and to go fast as I could to the American Consulate. Aside from such rough conjectures, there was obviously nothing more that I could do about the matter. It was not even worthwhile to weigh my chances, but there was one thing in my favor. I was definitely convinced that Mr. Moto was off the track and that I could reach the airport without interference and perhaps without suspicion. As far as everything else went, there was nothing to do except to dismiss the matter temporarily, and this was not so difficult for me as it may sound, because the life of a flyer is made up of a series of shifting crises.

  I did dismiss the matter from my mind, only to have something take its place which was of greater significance—the story which Sonya had told me. I had a smattering of engineering such as anyone may gather from a study of airplane engines. I had read about the breaking down of the atom, and understood that only a fraction of the energy of fuel was expended in either a steam or internal-combustion engine; that, in spite of all engineers could do, their contrivances for propelling us on water or in air were wretchedly inefficient. If it was true that this man Karaloff had perfected, let us say, some catalytic agent which might be added to fuel oil, it was quite easily within the realm of possibility that its efficiency as an energy-producing force might be doubled. Granting this accomplishment, even a tyro like myself could gather the immensity of its implication. On the water or in the air everyone was struggling to increase the cruising radius of vessels or of planes. Given an oil fuel of double its present power, a Japanese cruiser division could raid the Pacific Coast in the event of war and return without
refueling. Nor was that all. If such a discovery should be known to all the world, it was incredible what might happen. Spheres of influence might be doubled and there would be any number of possible clashes before new spheres of influence could be established. The possibilities and complexities were too many to be grasped. There was only one thing I was sure of: with Japan the sole possessor of this secret, the influence of my country in the Pacific would be gone, and my country itself might be in danger. The idea was so apparent that I was tempted to go to the telephone and call up Driscoll, yet on second thought this seemed to me to be of no great use. If anyone could get this paper composed by this scientist who was Sonya’s father, I stood as good a chance as any of my countrymen, particularly as I knew that we did not have a very closely knit Secret Service in the Orient. I may have been mistaken, but at any rate I made the decision to keep the matter to myself, and lay on my bed fully dressed.

  In spite of the throbbing of my arm and the pain of my head, I went into a deep sleep and that was something I can be grateful for; if anyone needed sleep, I did that night. I was better when I was awakened in the morning at seven o’clock by the hotel porter who brought me my bags from the Japanese ship, exactly as Mr. Moto had promised. I was glad to get into my own clothes again. Although my arm and head were aching, I felt better. I put on a good heavy winter suit and a sweater. I looked over my maps also, which I had purchased for that Pacific flight—it seemed a thousand years ago—and found a larger-scale one among them of the China Coast. Then I took Sam Bloom’s automatic and put it back in the shoulder holster.

  At a quarter before eight the telephone rang and Sonya’s voice answered to say that she was waiting downstairs. Five minutes later, just as I finished my last preparations (I had taken out a leather coat and my own goggles and helmet from my baggage), Sam Bloom called up to say that he was waiting too. Everything was going very smoothly, but I was not surprised, for life is much like that, like a gambler’s run of luck—first a number of ill chances and then everything’s smooth.

  Bloom was waiting at the hotel desk and Sonya was seated near him, but he did not see Sonya’s connection with the business until I told her to come ahead.

  “Say,” said Sam, “that’s the girl on the boat.”

  “Never mind,” I told him. “Sonya’s coming with me. She’ll want some leather clothes. Hers don’t look very warm.” Sonya looked more ready for a walk along the Bund than for a seven-hundred-mile trip in a plane. There was an automobile waiting for us, and again everything went easily. Once the surprise of seeing Sonya was over, Bloom began talking to me, giving me technical directions.

  “She’s an observation plane,” Sam said. “A Davis M type; you’ll like her, Casey. Any fool can handle her. She has extra fuel tanks installed. She’s good for seven hundred miles. And maybe two hundred more. I’m not asking a single question because I don’t want to know what you’re doing. They’re glad to let you use her to try her out, because you’re a well-known flyer. I don’t know where you’re going. It isn’t my fault what may happen.”

  “Thanks, Sam,” I said.

  “You’ll find maps,” Sam went on, “and thermos bottles and sandwiches. Keep her up around eight thousand feet, and when you get to the gulf get twelve thousand altitude and keep as far from land as you can. Don’t swing over the railroad until you have to. There are troops at every station, but I don’t have to tell you about flying, Casey.”

  “Thanks, Sam,” I said.

  “That’s all right,” said Sam. “She’s warmed up now. You can go as soon as we get there.”

  We were getting clear of the traffic by then. “Sam,” I said, “is anybody following us?”

  Bloom looked out the back window of the car. The corners of his eyes wrinkled and he shook his head.

  “No,” he answered, “I don’t think so, and if they are, believe me you’re going just the same.”

  There is a similarity about all airports and this one at Shanghai was no exception to the general rule. Our car drove into a dusty open space. A single-motor plane was being warmed up in front of a hangar and the motor sounded well. I was pleased to see that the ship was a model which I had flown before. She should be good for a hundred and fifty miles an hour, cruising speed, once I got her in the air. Sam Bloom was bringing out a coat and helmet for Sonya. The noise of the engine was deafening. I took Sonya by the arm and shouted in her ear.

  “Are you all right?”

  She smiled at me and nodded, as though we were not going anywhere.

  “All right,” I said, “let’s go!” She climbed into the cockpit behind me and I turned around and spoke to her again. “If you want anything, write me a note,” I shouted. “You think we can get what we want in twenty minutes after we land?” She nodded, smiled and patted my shoulder; then I sat down at the controls. Sam Bloom and I shook hands.

  “Good luck!” he shouted. “I’ll take care of things this end. Take her back into Tientsin.”

  “Tell Driscoll if I don’t get back,” I called back.

  I had turned back to the controls by then, but just as I did so, I saw a man running toward us across the field—a Chinese in a long gray gown which was flapping in the wind, and I knew who he was. He was the man who had taken me to Mr. Wu’s after I had been picked up from the river. I did not care to speak to him. I gave my engine gas and pointed my ship into the wind. When we were off the ground, I circled for altitude up and up, until the tall buildings of Shanghai and the canals and rice fields of the Yangtse delta all came into a curious order, as events in a life do when one is far enough away from life. Then China was like a map such as I had seen the night before. We were circling up into a fine clear morning sky. When my altimeter read eight thousand feet, I flattened out and took my bearings; then we were going seemingly slowly, though the speed was a hundred and fifty miles an hour.

  Sonya tapped my shoulder and handed me a note. “Casey,” it read, “you’re very nice.”

  There is no need to describe that flight. I have not the literary gift to convey the sensations of flying. The visibility was good and the air was clear, and there is nothing like the air at such altitudes as that. All the trappings of the world are out and one is close to the infinite in such air. The throb of the motor has always seemed to me like the drumming in one’s ears when one takes ether. A flight is a sort of oblivion. I am happier in a plane than I ever am on land, I suppose because I was born for it. I am capable in the air and more alive than I am on earth. When we die, I hope our souls go to the air out of the world, up above the cloudbanks where the sun streaks down on oceans of pink and gold. There is a beauty in it which is greater than the beauty of the sea, but I am not here to write an esthetic essay. I am here to stick to facts. Sam Bloom’s maps were excellent. With my mapboard and my instruments, I should have been incompetent, if I had not reached my destination, particularly given good weather. The clock on the instrument board pointed somewhere before the hour of two when I knew we were getting near.

  We were swinging in toward the land over curious muddy water—water that held the silt of eroded Chinese hills and fields. We were down to five thousand feet by then and out ahead I could see the ribbon of the railroad track and the orderly outlines of a great walled town near it. Beyond, inland, at the base of bare brown hills, there was a smaller village which appeared to be built entirely out of earth, so that it looked like something from the insect kingdom. I saw the glint of running water near it. I turned and looked at Sonya and pointed.

  She nodded but I did not need any confirmation. My map told the story, and my instinct backed it up. There was the village we wanted.

  I wrote another note. “We’re coming down. Soldiers will see us by the railroad. We must hurry, Sonya.” Then we were coming down fast, in a sideslip. The wind had tossed up clouds of dust which gave me its direction. The earth was coming up to meet us, growing clearer, clearer. We were coming down to realities again. We were coming to a land that was brown, still untouched by
the softness of spring, down toward bare flat fields where men were moving like pygmies, down to that town of earth. It was a fine place for a landing. I had shut off the motor as the land was coming up. The wind was singing through the struts wildly in the most beautiful tune I know. The land was coming up with the speed of an express train. We landed well, almost without a bump. We were taxiing across a plowed field straight toward the wall of mud surrounding low mud houses, with willow trees jutting up above their roofs, and with a rising tier of bare hills beyond them. A lonely place, a cold country that reminded me of parts of our own West. I had done what I set out to do. We had come to the town where the brother of Sonya’s father’s man Ma had his dwelling place.

  The strange thing was how easily the matter went, although I have observed that an anticipation of difficulty sometimes makes difficulty vanish. Again, perhaps the actuality seemed simple because of my interest in everything I saw, for it was the first time I had ever seen a Chinese village with habits, architecture and customs that might easily have dated to the Stone Age. I crawled out of the cockpit and helped Sonya down to the yellowish-brown earth. We both of us were tired and stiff and deafened by the drumming of the motors and by the change of altitude. The sight of both of us appearing so suddenly from the sky had drawn the village out, gaping, large-boned men and women in coarse blue clothing that was stained from their labors. They were the servants of the soil, the peasantry whose prototype exists in every country in the world where man gains his sustenance from the earth.

  “Sonya,” I asked her, and I steadied her for a moment until she was used to the solidness of the ground, “can you talk to them? We’ll have to hurry, Sonya.”

  “Yes,” she answered. She smiled at the crowd reassuringly and used her gift of tongue. Whatever she said appeared to please them, because they smiled a little stupidly, still half comprehending perhaps, and pointed to the wall. An old man moved toward me deferentially and felt timidly of my leather jacket. The children were staring at my goggles; when I pulled them up from my eyes to my forehead they gave a sigh of wonder.