Cockpit

by Jerzy Kosiński

  “It does,” he said curtly.

  “It’s most impressive. It must be the only one of its kind in the city.”

  “Possibly.”

  “By the strangest coincidence, I have become familiar with the unusual terms by which Your Excellency acquired it. I also learned that when recently your government sold one of its consulate town houses here, the actual price was substantially higher than the figure recorded in the bill of sale. I believe the local realtor paid the difference to Your Excellency in cash …”

  Ignoring my remark, the ambassador asked me to sit down. I obeyed. He asked coolly, “What is your connection with this arrested nomad?”

  “My connection is his imprisonment,” I answered.

  The ambassador grew impatient. “Come now, we’re practical men. Who sent you?”

  “No one,” I replied. “I came on my own.”

  “I don’t believe you. Still and all, what do you want?” he asked.

  “I would like you to suggest to your government that the man be freed and returned to his family within two weeks. I would also like you to assure me that he will be compensated for his time and treatment in prison. You can blame his abduction on a bureaucratic slip-up.”

  The ambassador picked up a paperweight and passed it from his right hand to his left, then put it back on the desk. “Nonsense. There was no slip-up. According to the penal code of my country …”

  “Your country’s penal code does not apply in the free transit lounge of an international airport,” I interrupted. “The man was kidnaped.”

  “Rubbish,” he interjected. “Rubbish. Your own government not only refused to grant political asylum to a foreign sailor, but returned him to his own country for trial. And you talk about ‘free’ transit lounges. Are you mad?”

  I did not reply. He looked at me intently, then said in a firm but friendly voice, “Tell me who paid you to investigate my private life, and I promise to have that man released.”

  “I could tell you that it was one of our newspapers looking to discredit your government and you would believe that. I could tell you that I am employed by a personal enemy of yours at the Foreign Ministry of your country. You would believe that, too. But you will not believe me when I tell you I am alone. Why?”

  The ambassador smiled, took my arm and led me politely to the door. “I don’t believe you because no man acts alone,” he said, “and it’s precisely because I don’t believe you that I’ll give my word that your man will be home in two weeks. You know, I could have you charged with extortion,” he added lightly, his hand resting on the gleaming doorknob. He opened the door for me.

  I called the abducted man’s home two weeks later. When his wife answered, I told her I was the housing official calling to inquire if my relative had been of any help in solving her problems. She told me ecstatically that her husband had returned home, and had been with his family for almost a week. She was more grateful for my help than she could ever show. She said that, just as her husband was being brought to trial, the charges against him were abruptly dropped and his arrest proclaimed a bureaucratic mistake. He was even paid damages for his time in jail and provided with free transportation back to the States. He was resting now, she told me, but she would be glad to wake him if I wanted to speak with him. I told her not to disturb him, joking that I wake up only those who do not deserve their rest.

  Whether I am looking for a new acquaintance or merely trying to get to know an old one better, I like to familiarize myself with his or her professional life. In one instance, my search for a new adventure took me to the offices of a large publishing house. When I began my explorations, I didn’t know anyone who worked there, but the books and authors the company published intrigued me. For the first few days, I got out of the elevator on a floor without a receptionist, then took the interdepartmental stairs to an editorial floor.

  Behaving as if I were a new employee trying to learn his way around, I would take off my jacket and hang it either behind the door of an unused office or in a hall closet among umbrellas, sweaters, a shabby raincoat and a few old jackets that must have been forgotten long before. I would roll up my shirt sleeves and loosen my tie, pick up a sheaf of papers, talk with the secretaries and sit in empty cubicles, where I leafed through papers and stationery in desk drawers. Or I simply stood in a passageway as if waiting for someone, occasionally taking a catalogue or a book off a shelf and appearing to browse through it. I would enter a reference room, take a seat at a table and peruse various dictionaries and directories, chatting with the editorial assistants who frequented the room.

  After I had become familiar to the staff, I would leave a floor at lunch time through the main entrance, making sure to attract the attention of the receptionist. I always joked about my arriving at the office earlier than she did and complimented her on a new dress or hairdo. Soon, we even began to gossip about other employees. I usually returned for an afternoon tour, again chatting with the receptionist as I passed through the entrance area. Then, I headed for the stairs and proceeded to other floors. I would leave the office only after most of the editorial staff had gone home. On my way out, I used to stop on the ground floor to say a few words to the night guard. I never failed to mention to him that, once again, I had worked longer hours than anyone else in the building.

  After a few days of reconnoitering, I knew the location of every office in which high-level decisions were made, as well as the names and functions of those in charge. I also came to know in whose files the most interesting information was kept and if anyone had ever stopped me to ask what I was doing there, I could have provided him with a detailed explanation.

  Now that I had laid the groundwork, I began to leave the office early in the afternoon, still making sure to say goodbye to the receptionist. I would return just before the end of the day, carrying an attaché case, and wait in a vacant office until most of the staff had gone home. Once the halls were empty, I opened the case and took out a pair of overalls like the ones worn by the cleaning crew. They fitted over my suit, zipped up the front and could be slipped on in seconds. When I had changed, I pushed the attaché case under a desk and began to move freely through the building. Because a number of editors were accustomed to working late, I could turn on office lights without attracting attention.

  I made a daily check of the materials that the editors left on top of their desks, noting the pertinent points of unsigned letters, project proposals, manuscripts and correspondence files. In order to follow up some of them, I occasionally had to pick the lock of a drawer, file or cabinet. Only a few were locked. In addition to the business correspondence of the editors, I came across their personal mail, bank statements and address books, and photographs of families and friends.

  One night, after turning on the lights in an office I had recently been investigating, I saw a man asleep on the sofa. It was too late to turn off the switch. The light had already awakened him. Jumping up from the sofa, he began screaming for me to go away. I decided to challenge him and explained that I had come to clean the floors and was paid to do my work just as he was to do his. He told me brusquely to get out of his office; I refused to budge, insisting that the floor had to be done that night and that he would have to move to another office until I was finished.

  Growing taut with anger, he swore he would report me to the building management first thing in the morning unless I left immediately. I stood my ground. His eyes darted back and forth across his desk, searching for an instrument with which he could force me away. Suddenly, in desperation, he picked up a paper coffee cup and dashed the contents in my face. For a moment, I stood absolutely still; then, as I began to wipe the coffee off my face, I asked, “You’re Richard Lasker, aren’t you? Didn’t you write Great Naval Battles?”

  He looked at me, unsure how to respond. “Well, I collected the essays. Yes. How did you know?”

  I pointed to the copy on his desk. “Last time I cleaned your room, I saw your picture on the back of thi
s book.”

  “So what?” he asked.

  “So you would know if a ship’s gun can fire when it’s turned on the ship itself.”

  “It can’t. It would be blocked by the firing cut-out cam.”

  “The what?” I said. “Cut-out cam,” he repeated. Then he went on, “What is this? A test? Get the hell out of my office.” He began to move toward me belligerently.

  “My friend,” I said, motioning him to stop where he was, “you may have proved yourself wrong. You may have broken the cut-out cam and turned the gun on yourself.” I flashed him a smile and turned off the lights on my way out.

  I returned to his office the next night to search for information about him. Trying to think where to begin, I recalled that Lasker’s latest best-selling author was Anthony Duncan. Duncan was an espionage writer who had become world-famous several weeks earlier when he had been arrested and held incommunicado after legally entering East Germany.

  According to news reports, Jessica Whitehead, Duncan’s constant companion, had accompanied him to the train station in Copenhagen and taken his photograph as he boarded the train for Peenemunde, East Germany, where he was going to do research on his next novel. Originally, Jessica had planned to accompany him, but, at the last minute, Duncan hinted there might be trouble with the East German police and insisted that she stay in Copenhagen. He had promised to call her in three days, but when a week passed with no word from him, she became worried and contacted government authorities.

  Since Lasker was the editor of all Duncan’s novels, he was quoted frequently in the press, voicing his concern for Duncan’s welfare because he was both his business associate and a personal friend. He promoted the theory that the East Germans had detained Duncan because of the novelist’s extraordinary ability to find top-level security leaks, of which he made liberal use in his fiction. Yet East Germany staunchly denied that Duncan had crossed the border and all U.S. attempts at locating him had failed.

  I pulled out Duncan’s file, sat down and began to work. I leafed through all the major news articles written about Duncan’s disappearance, many illustrated by Jessica Whitehead’s last photo of him. Duncan was around forty and handsome in a blond, beefy way. Smiling broadly, he posed on the steps of the railroad car wearing a tweed jacket and an open trenchcoat, dark glasses in one hand, typewriter case in the other.

  As I read on, I learned that of Duncan’s four novels only his first had become a big best seller in both hardcover and paperback. It had also been made into an enormously successful film. His second novel had been a best seller, but not nearly as successful as the first. The third sold rather poorly. Now Duncan’s disappearance was generating new interest in both the man and his fiction. In the weeks after I began my investigation, I saw Jessica Whitehead and Lasker on television many times. Duncan’s latest book jumped to the top of the best-seller lists, and hefty paperback rights were negotiated for the new best seller as well as the previous failure. Film and television rights to the new book had been bought outright by a major studio, which also took a six-figure option on the still uncompleted Peenemunde novel.

  I returned to Lasker’s office many times, always careful to check it before entering. On three or four occasions, I observed Lasker sitting at his desk in the middle of the night.

  Once, as I was rifling through a desk drawer, I saw a photocopied statement of long-distance calls billed to Lasker’s extensions. As I scanned it, I noted that, in the week following Duncan’s disappearance, the editor had placed several calls to Copenhagen. I traced the calls and found out that they were made to Jessica Whitehead and to the U.S. Embassy. The calls lasted from ten to twenty-five minutes apiece. I also noticed three collect calls from Denmark, all after Jessica Whitehead’s return to New York. Each call had been placed on a different day and had lasted only three to five minutes. I copied down the number of the telephone statement, put the bills back where I had found them and went home.

  Early the next morning, I called the international operator. Pretending that I worked for the publishing company and had been assigned to verify a few overseas charges that someone was questioning, I asked her if she could identify the number from which the collect calls had been made and the times at which they were received. She said it would take a few hours and I told her I would call her back. When I phoned her, she reported that the calls had been made from an inn in a Danish town near Cape Skagen and had been received after midnight, New York time. I had never heard of the Danish town and went to check it in an atlas. It was an obscure fishing village on the northernmost coast. I then placed a call to the inn. When a man answered, I introduced myself as the editor of an American travel magazine.

  He told me in broken English that he was the owner of the inn and suggested I speak to his daughter, whose English was good. She understood perfectly when I told her that my magazine was doing a feature story on cold-water fishing in Scandinavia. A colleague had highly recommended both the town and the inn, and I was considering sending a reporter and photographer there. She was delighted.

  I also mentioned that a friend of my colleague had been planning to visit the town about now and asked if any English or American guests were registered in her inn. She told me there was a Mr. Arthur Duffy, an engineer from Dublin. I said that was not the name I was after, but thanked her anyway and told her she would be hearing from me soon.

  I called the inn again when it was midnight there. The phone rang six or seven times; the man answered. Imitating Lasker’s voice, I asked for Mr. Arthur Duffy of Dublin. The man muttered that I would have to wait because Duffy was asleep.

  Finally, another voice, thick with sleep, came on the line with a guarded “Hello.”

  “Tony,” I began, stopped abruptly, then began again. “Hello, Duffy!”

  He paused for a second and then exclaimed, “Dick! For Christ’s sake, what are you doing?” His voice had lost its sleepiness and had lowered to a nervous whisper. “Jesus Christ!” he muttered. Then, in a milder voice, he apologized, “I’m sorry, Dick. I wasn’t expecting you to call. Well, never mind. What’s up?”

  “Our firing cut-out cam is broken,” I said.

  “What the … ? Dick, are you tanked? Is this your idea of a joke? What do you mean, ‘the cut-out cam is broken’?”

  “I’m sorry, Duffy,” I said in my own voice. “This isn’t Dick.”

  There was a dead silence on the other end of the line. Then, in a voice drained of all expression, he asked, “Who are you?”

  “Let’s say I’m a protagonist from someone else’s novel.”

  “A what? Look, I don’t know you. There’s been some kind of mix-up on the line. Call the operator and get it straightened out. I’m going back to bed.”

  I paused for a second before saying, “Duncan, I have an urgent message for you from Lasker. Now be quiet and pay attention. Under no circumstances must you call, write or cable Dick or anyone else. Get on the earliest available train and go directly to one of the villages near Krusaa on the German border. Once you arrive, register as Arthur Duffy in any of the following inns and wait for our message.”

  “Just a second,” he said. “Let me get a pencil. Okay, fire away!”

  I dictated a list of border towns and their hotels, and he repeated them back to me.

  “That’s it,” I said. “Stay well, Tony, and let us do the worrying.”

  “Us?”

  “Dick and me.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Not if you do as advised. All right?”

  “All right. One more thing …” he continued haltingly.

  “Yes?”

  “How is Dick?”

  “Oh, he’s fine.”

  “And the others?”

  “Fine. Jessica looked great on television.

  You should have seen her.”

  “Did the reprint contract go through?”

  “Yes. Without a hitch.”

  “What about the movie sales?”

  “Conclud
ed yesterday. You’re a rich man, Tony,” I said and hung up.

  Next day, I called the inn again and asked for Arthur Duffy. I was told he had departed without leaving a forwarding address.

  I called Lasker’s secretary and asked for an appointment. I said I was sent by Mr. Lasker’s friend and gave her the name of a writer residing in Rome whose file I had come across in Lasker’s office. She asked me to hold and then put Lasker on the line. His manner was genial and relaxed and he asked me to come and see him after lunch, around four in the afternoon.

  I was escorted into his office. He rose to greet me, closed the office door behind him and made sure I was comfortably seated before sitting down himself. I watched him stare at me from across the desk.

  “You’re wondering where we’ve met before,” I said.

  “Well, yes, I am,” he admitted.

  “We met right here,” I said. He was puzzled but not convinced. “One night I came to clean your floors. We talked about Great Naval Battles, remember?” I smiled.

  “What … ?” He sat forward.

  “That night you were waiting in your office for a phone call from a certain Arthur Duffy.”

  “I don’t know anyone named Arthur Duffy.”

  “You’re Anthony Duncan’s editor, aren’t you?”

  “What has Anthony Duncan got to do with Arthur Duffy?” He betrayed a hint of anxiety.

  “Arthur Duffy is an Anthony Duncan invention,” I announced, “as you ought to know from your recent conversations with him.”

  “Recent conversations? Duncan has been incommunicado for weeks.”

  “I talked to him the day before yesterday,” I said. “He wasn’t in East Germany at all. He was in Asaa, a Danish fishing village near Cape Skagen. If you are not interested, I’ll be glad to take my story elsewhere.” I started to rise but he motioned me to stay seated. “All right,” he said wearily. “What do you want to know?”