I threw away the Camel, realizing as I did each time I lit one why I gave up smoking cigarettes. "Okay. I'm prime bait for them. What makes you think I'd be useful to you?"
"The qualifications I spelled out before fit equally well if you look at it from our side. We haven't unlimited resources, you know. The FBI has more men on this than I do, and they have a limit to what they can do, and I have the problem of hiding any trace of my office's involvement in domestic affairs. My people have to be just as careful to avoid our side as enemy agents do."
"Then what was the FBI doing at my house?"
"Louis is an old friend, and unlike most of his agency he isn't jealous of who does a job as long as it gets done. They got a routine report on this whole operation weeks ago, and we decided to approach you then. I take it Mr. Ackerman didn't mention anything to you."
"Danny? Good God, was he in on this?" Shearing nodded. "It begins to fit together. Hell, he knew about something going on at Richmond Landing too, that's why he went balls out when he got the signal."
"Of course. We learned that the stuff would be brought in several days ago, and alerted our people. Ackerman was one of our best, and he was assigned the job of getting on the Lathrop police force because it seemed he might be useful there. Being a policeman in a cornball town isn't as silly a cover for a counterespionage agent as you might think. Ackerman had a reputation for being rather lenient on politics and getting concerned only with violence and criminal disorders, and thus was able to be friendly with at least some of the student group here."
"How did you find out about the stuff?"
"As it happens, that's none of your business. A contact told us about it coming in at Victoria. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police saw it go aboard a small motorboat registered to a Mr. Lawrence Blevins. Mr. Blevins kept his boat at Richmond Landing and had made several trips to Canada, which made it reasonable to let him get here with it and see who met him. I sent one of my men and two deputy sheriffs down, because we couldn't get permission to let them bring that much heroin into the country. My man had instructions to use his judgment about whether to apprehend everyone or let someone get away to see what would happen. Evidently they were better than he thought they were."
"I take it Mr. Blevins was one of the bodies."
"Yes. The short one. The one who had his throat cut."
"Can I think about this for a while, or do I have to give you an answer now?"
"No. With the loss of Dan Ackerman I don't have enough coverage of that university group, and I need some now." Shearing took out another Camel, and I lit my pipe.
I thought about this for a minute. I didn't see I had much choice, much more than somebody who had been roped in by the ChiComs the way Shearing described it. Hell, I was roped in too. Then I asked, "That's twice you've mentioned the university. Why?"
"Does it occur to you that there are not many groups that keep weird hours, have no visible means of support, have contact with people who work at Boeing, have some smattering of education, and openly sympathize with China in the argument with Russia?"
"Yeah. It also occurs to me that that is about the unlikeliest group of losers anybody in his right mind would employ for spies. Hell, most of them wanted to be Communists a long time ago, and the Party wouldn't have them."
"Their new friends can't be so choosy. I grant you they aren't what the Chinese would pick if they had a choice, and that most are harmless, but it's a start. Somebody in that gang is the logical contact with you if they want you; and before we're through they'll want you."
I watched a big ship floated up the locks while I digested this. "First you've got me in a bind," I told him. "And the way you say it, they'll soon have me in one. Thanks, but right now I'm just suspected of cutting throats. I think I'd rather have that than treason."
"It won't last that long. These are amateurs, Paul. They can't have many trained men. They're vulnerable. They can't have a competent cell system or anything like one, and they can't have enough men they trust to manage the money. As near as we can figure it, they've got close to a million dollars out of this operation and they're ready to start spending it, but they really haven't much of an organization yet. Their whole operation is tied up in one or two top men, who will also have the money. I want those men and I want that money. All you have to do is find me one name. You or somebody like you; you aren't completely alone on this, but as I told you I don't have unlimited resources and can't recruit all the people I'd like to. Just find me that name."
"They may be amateurs but they aren't going to give me the name of the top dog in any short time."
"I never thought they would. But they might let you identify somebody who does know. You tell me who knows and I'll have the whole thing wrapped up in two days."
Shearing had a chilled look in his eyes, and it scared me. His whole face showed dedication. Hell, he reminded me of one of the student activists popping off about the war. "How?"
"You know as well as I do. This is war."
"I thought there was something called a Constitution in this country."
"There is. It protects rights. If it's gone there won't be any rights. It's my job to see that we keep it. Look at these again." He pulled the pictures out of his pocket.
I didn't want to look at them. Anyway, he even made sense in a funny kind of way.
"I sure have a choice, don't I. You'll ruin me, if they don't."
"If you like to think of it that way. I'd rather think you wanted to help your country."
"Yeah. That's all very well, Mr. Shearing, but I don't know what to do. Barring that funny business with Carole yesterday, I haven't had much to do with that crowd lately. It would look pretty suspicious if I suddenly sprouted leftist convictions and went around being friendly, wouldn't it?"
"By the time we're finished you are going to be so unsuspiciously attractive to that crowd that they'll stand in line to recruit you. Describe the funny business yesterday." Shearing got up and walked toward the locks, and I strolled along with him. He stopped at a coffee machine, we got some, and went to another bench. I told him about Carole's attentiveness as we walked, and also told him what Danny had said.
"You don't know that wasn't a recruiting attempt," he said. "Whether it was or not, it might help. Your connection with that group isn't going to be motivated because of political reasons anyway. Your story is that you're tired of square company and getting lonesome, so you go to a few parties with your old friends. While there you are going to offer them services, but they won't think you're offering. This Halleck business works right in. Make a play for her. If she's after you, let her catch you. We'll look her up, but if she's talking to John Murray, she gets word to everyone we need to reach. You see, I think Murray may be the man we want to talk to. I think he's up here to help set up the net for them."
"Yeah. I'd thought of that myself. He's had more training than most of them, he's smart, and he has some standing in the left wing. Now what service am I going to offer them?"
"I haven't been trying to be mysterious, Paul. I've been trying to make up my mind about something, and I've decided to do it. You're going to help them bring in a shipment of dope. They'll have enough in reserve to take care of their customers for a little while, but last night hurt their expansion program and they'll be getting desperate. I'm going to tighten up the border, particularly for them, so they'll be looking for a new courier. You. But they wouldn't trust you with that, so they'll have to have a way of getting you to do it without your knowing what you're doing."
"Even I can see what you're driving at now. I'm going to take a trip to Canada, and somebody is going to volunteer to come along with me."
"Right."
"But I still don't get it," I told him. "That border's wide open. You drive through and there's a joke of an inspection, and that's that."
"It won't be a joke anymore. As of this afternoon, we'll run every license that crosses through the computer. Anybody who has any connection with this o
utfit will get a thorough search. We'll also have a random search of other cars. The customs people won't like this too much, but they'll keep it up for a couple of weeks, and by then our friends will be getting worried. They won't use a car to bring it down with that going on." Shearing seemed to be enjoying himself now. I could see he had put a lot of thought into his plan, but it still didn't make sense.
"Then how," I asked him, "am I supposed to get there and back with the stuff?"
"By boat. Tomorrow you are going out and buy yourself a sailboat. You used to have one, didn't you?"
"Sure. Had to sell it to raise cash for the divorce settlement with my wife. This job begins to sound interesting."
"We'll give you money as a fee from a perfectly legitimate corporation. You'll buy a boat that you can sail to Victoria with at least four people aboard. Finance it at the Union Bank in the District. The girl in the Loans Department, Janie Youngs, will be your contact from now on. She knows about as much about this as you do, but not more. You will make your reports to her, and take instructions from her. Remember the name, Janie Youngs. She's a rather pretty blonde, so you won't have much trouble noticing her in the bank. There's not much more I can tell you about this anyway, except that if they do use you, you'll be carrying something pretty dangerous, so don't get curious. They probably won't let whoever they send know what's in the package, but once it's in the U.S. it has to get to the top pretty soon. We'll arrange to follow it."
I whistled. A long, corny whistle. This thing was getting bigger, and I wasn't used to it. It scared me. I tried to sound matter-of-fact like Shearing, but I wasn't very good at it. "You're going to let heroin into the country? Help them get it in?"
"Yes. It isn't that hard to get in nowadays, anyway.
We'll clean up the whole organization if this works, and we won't have helped them as much as you think if it doesn't. Not that I want that stuff here any more than you do, but this is the only way I see that has a chance of breaking them before they get organized. At the moment they won't have many people, and they won't trust most of those they have. There's a very good possibility that the stuff will go to the top with only one link between your escort and the head. We just might be able to get it out of that link."
"You're the boss." We talked for another half hour about details, and he drove me to the District. I left him a few blocks from the house and walked back. It was quiet, and I got a beer and sat down in my office.
Nothing looked different from yesterday except I didn't have blueprints on the drafting table. Tiger came in and I scratched his ears and thought about it all. It was scary. It was also coming to me that I had killed a man the night before. That may not be a very big deal for some people, but it was the first time for me, and it bothered me. I haven't had much religion for years now, but the idea that you don't kill people was pretty deep.
I drank a couple more beers and went out. On my way to the District I stopped at a phone booth and called the number listed for the CIA in the book. A girl answered, and I asked for Mr. Shearing. He came on in a minute, as he'd said he would, and we exchanged some pleasantries I'd learned back at the locks. I didn't give my name, and he didn't ask. After I hung up I knew it wasn't an elaborate joke, but of course I'd known that before. The ID cards might have come out of cereal boxes, but they had my name and knew I was with Dan last night, which made them more than jokesters. Paul Crane was a real live junior counterspy.
Chapter Four
About ten that night I went to the Eagle Tavern. The Blue Moon used to be the big hangout for the rope-soled shoe set, and back when mostly they went there it was a fun place. At least I'd thought so when I was younger. But the owner threw some of them out for fighting, and others followed, and after a while the whole crowd shifted to the Eagle. They were nearly all there when I went in. I joined a table of younger guys I didn't know very well, and I hadn't been there long enough to drink a schooner when Carole came over and sat next to me.
"Hello, Carole. How's Jim?"
"How in hell should I know? I haven't seen him for a week," she told me. She was pretty huffy about it.
"I thought you made it with him."
"Used to be, maybe. No more."
I ordered a pitcher of beer and some glasses. This got the kids at the table interested, and pretty soon I found out one was an amateur military historian or something. He described in detail every battle fought before 100 B.C., and I got in an argument with him over the weapons used in the Trojan War. This may sound like a weird thing to argue about, but at least it was non-political and I figured to know as much about it as anybody else did. This is also the way the modern student spends his time. Drinking beer and having intellectual conversations.
Carole stayed right with me, which was a tell right there. No pretty young girl could possibly be that interested in old battles and Trojan armor. Not even for free beer. Of course it might be my handsome face, but if so, it's strange nobody else ever noticed it. Except my wife, and I wish she hadn't. Then Carole and the kid got in some kind of heated discussion over European literature. As the senior intellectual present, I didn't have to do anything but nod sagely and agree with one or the other once in a while, which is just as well, because I hate European literature. At least I think I would hate it if I knew anything about it. Oh, I read a book once in a while, but this existentialist nonsense, where all the characters in a book make speeches at each other while nothing happens, bores me. The conversation would have bored me except living with my wife had trained me to take this sort of thing. She did it by the hour. Anyway, I was a good listener.
Taverns close at twelve on Saturdays in Washington State, and as nobody is ready at that hour to stop enlightening himself, there are always one or more parties to go on to. The trick is to find one, as they're all at private houses. I asked Carole just before closing.
"There's an YPSAL party at Ron's houseboat, but it costs to get in. It's a fund-raising party. There's supposed to be a keg."
"I wondered where everybody was," I told her. "Why didn't you tell me? That keg's all gone by now."
"I didn't think you'd want to go. Want to?"
"Sure. And I've got a case of beer in the trunk of my car. We'll have to walk to my house, I walked here. Unless you'd rather I got the car and came back for you."
"No, let's walk. I've never been to your house."
"It's a good half mile up to my place from the Eagle, but she kept right up with me. My Barracuda was parked outside, and we got in. While I was warming it up she made the usual noises about it being a nice car.
"It's a compromise," I told her. "I sometimes have to take clients out to a site, so I can't have a sports car, but with the disc brakes and four-speed stick I can pretend this is one. It's a peppy little beast." I wound the car up and drove us to the Lake Union houseboat colony.
Houseboats are one of the nice things about Seattle. They're all pretty old and decayed, because the city is out to eliminate them if they can, so nobody puts money in them. The city wants to do away with them because it claims they pollute the lakes; their toilets aren't connected to anything. I'll be impressed with that argument when they stop the dozen or so bedroom communities on the other side of Lake Washington from dumping raw sewage into the system. Until then, a few hundred houseboats can't hurt much in a lake that big.
Ron Tawling's was one of the larger ones, but it wasn't big enough for the party. You could see they had strung some boards across to connect his back porch with the one next to him, and people moved back and forth. Ron was taking money at the door. There was a sign proclaiming this a fund-raising party, all donations to the Young People's Socialist Alliance, YPSAL for short. Ron is one of those brilliant failures who discourage me completely. He's been studying economics or something and doing very well, but somehow he's never finished. He's always going back, but dropping out before the quarter ends. For six or eight years now he's been making a living in old book stores, driving a cab, washing dishes, or just talking to p
eople so they buy him drinks. He also blows his head off every night, and sometimes gets so drunk he forgets it's Saturday and won't be able to buy anything on Sunday. Those Sundays are the only time he ever sobers up. Yet he reads a lot and is pretty sharp. As I said, it's discouraging.
They wanted two bucks to get in. I handed Ron a five and walked past. I was pretty sure the extra dollar would end up in his pocket, and I didn't mind. Ron is one of the old crowd I can stand, as long as I don't think of his moral relationship with women, that is. Not that I give a damn about free love; Ron's problem is that he must not believe in it, because he keeps getting married, having a kid, and getting rid of the girl. It's happened four times now. The girls are invariably young students.
I once stopped four fraternity guys from beating Ron's head in for kicks, so in spite of what he calls my infantile politics, he likes me. I didn't stop to talk to him, though.
The sight of my case prevented comments about me. As I had figured, the keg had run out, and they were getting low on cans, so anybody bringing beer was welcome. I salvaged a six-pack for myself and threw the rest to the wolves.
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