by James Grady
Malcolm parked his dark green Jeep Wagoneer between two pickups at the truck ' stop on the edge of town. He climbed out, locked the doors and looked around. It was two minutes until seven. He didn't want to arrive early and sit nervously waiting in the restaurant. Malcolm regarded the pickups. Both had gun racks in the rear window, one with a shotgun, the other with a deer rifle. Malcolm shook his head. The sun climbed higher in the sky and the morning grew brighter. The light reflecting from the restaurant's white walls made Malcolm squint. He checked his shirt pocket for the fifth time -that day, reassuring himself that he had brought his sunglasses. Highway 2 ran parallel and a few yards to the north of the restaurant's front. Beyond the highway were railroad tracks filled with empty boxcars. Malcolm saw a few hills poking over the tops of the trains into the sky, its deep blueness slowly being covered by approaching gray clouds. The town lay to the east and south, buildings and streets scattered haphazardly in a prairie valley. Malcolm heard cars starting, dogs barking and an occasional parental yell above the clatter of dishes coming from inside the restaurant. Three diesel trucks, their engines idling while the drivers ate inside, partially blocked Malcolm's westerly view. The fumes from the trucks, the gas pumps, pancakes, bacon, coffee, freshly turned earth and newly regenerated grasses combined in an aroma invigorating Malcolm. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad after all, he thought. He went inside.
The four customers were all men. The only woman was a young waitress who Malcolm guessed worked while going to high school. Two of the men, both dressed in work clothes, sat at one of the tables drinking coffee and talking softly. A third, dressed in coveralls and wearing a baseball cap at an incredible angle, sat at the counter, his back to Malcolm. The fourth man sat alone at a table by the windows facing the highway. He was a big man, not fat or tall, big. His battered, stained, shapeless Stetson once had probably been light tan, but now was an unnamed cross between gray and brown. He wore a green shirt, faded blue jeans and mud-covered slip-on work boots. The man's face and bands were stained permanently brown by the sun. His weathered face was full, heavy jowled in a muscular way, broad-mouthed. broad-nosed. thick-lipped.' The man's features fit him naturally, and for some 'reason he had a "pleasant" appearance, although he looked as though be should have been ugly. Malcolm guessed the man's age at about forty.
The man's two bright blue eyes stared back at Malcolm. "Hey," he boomed across the room, "you Ronald Malcolm?"
Malcolm nodded. The voice boomed again. "Well, I'm Jerry Stuart, the extension agent. Come on over and let's eat."
A huge paw shook Malcolm's hand as he sat down. "I don't like Ronald for a name," continued Stuart in only a slightly softer tone. "Mind if I call you Malcolm?"
Malcolm returned the man's smile. "I don't like Ronald much myself either, and most people do call me Malcolm."
"Good. I figured you'd be hungry and on time, so I had them bring us both the same thing. You like pancakes, eggs, bacon, toast, orange juice and coffee, don't you?"
"Can I have milk too?" Malcolm asked.
"Sure, hell, anything you want, you're paying for it. Tell the gal when she comes with the juice and other stuff. That your rig that's been parked in front of the tavern?" Stuart didn't wait for an answer. "Thought so. Not bad, ought to come in handy if, cross your fingers, it rains on those old gravel roads. So you're takin' a survey for the government, huh? What for?"
"Well," Malcolm said, putting down his water glass and launching into his cover story, "the Defense Mapping Agency wants to survey the people living around the missile sites to see what kind of impact the missiles have had on their lives, what they notice about the missiles being there, record attitudinal changes, develop a sociological record of how they spend their days and what they notice, see how that compares with people in other areas where there aren't missiles, that kind of thing."
Stuart looked at Malcolm. The county extension agent had merely stared at him during the explanation, breaking into speech only to greet the waitress as she brought the first platter piled with steaming food. He kept his silence for several seconds after she left. Malcolm grew nervous. He was just about to speak when Stuart said, "So that's what you're going to be spending the next couple weeks or so doing, huh? You want to know what I think? About what they've got you doing?"
Malcolm slowly nodded.
"I think it's a crock of shit," Stuart said. Then he grinned.
Malcolm stared at his companion for several seconds, then he laughed. "Stuart," he said honestly, "I agree with you. One hundred percent. I agree with you."
"I mean, hell," said Stuart through bites of pancake, "I can tell you what they'll find now. Bunch of people who are living next to enough atom bombs to wipe out the world and they don't even think much about it. Doesn't do them any good and just makes them nervous, so why think about it?
"You know," he continued after a swallow of coffee, "sometimes this goddamn government of our does some goddamn stupid things. Stupid. And I can say that because I work for the government and pay the goddamn taxes to keep it moving."
"I agree with you," said Malcolm, "I work for them too.P1
During breakfast Jerry Stuart told Malcolm about Emma and the three kids, the dog he just bought that turned out to have worms after all, growing up on a farm thirty miles south of Shelby, the stupid forms he had to fill out, old man Murray's sick cow that really was just too damn old, the way the city council members tried to get the city crew to fix their driveways while they paved the streets, the prospects for the winter wheat crop, and more. Jerry was an endless string of stories, which, told by anyone else, would have been unbearably dull, but when told by Jerry kept Malcolm fascinated.
Over a second cup of coffee Jerry, helped Malcolm plan his survey,- laying out the area in a series of grids. Jerry raised his eyebrows when Malcolm said the government had chosen a certain missile as the center of the study area instead of the more logical center five miles away, but the county extension agent accepted it as another example of unavoidable, regrettable government stupidity. Malcolm planned to check south and west of the missile first, -then move to the north and west, then the north and east, and finish with the south and east. Parkins had tripped the alarm on the north fence, so it was logical to assume he had come in from the north. By starting in another area, Malcolm hoped to avoid too much suspicion if he should stumble onto anything north of the missile site.
Jerry insisted on accompanying Malcolm during the first day. Malcolm, despite his protestations, was actually glad Jerry came along. The confusing maze of country gravel and dirt roads was not fully explained on the maps. Several times he would have been lost if Jerry had not been with him. Jerry talked almost the whole time. When they came to a farmhouse, Jerry would bound from the jeep yelling for the owner to "get your ass out of bed." More often than not, none of the male members of the family were home. The children were usually in school. Jerry stayed respectfully silent when Malcolm "worked." Malcolm bombarded the farm families with his inane questions, then gently probed what they had seen and done on the day Parkins was shot: "We picked that day at random. Now tell me, did anything unusual happen? Why don't you just go over your day and night for me, if you would?"
The people answered politely if puzzledly. They seemed .to accept what they all recognized as government stupidity, all except for one old farmer who refused to tell the government anything: "You think I want them surveying and condemning more of my land? You can keep your goddamn dollars and your goddamn missiles. I love this land, you can't go taking it away from me!" Jerry soothed the old man, but Malcolm got no answers to his questions.
Malcolm carefully filled out the meaningless forms on each person he interviewed. At the end of the day, as far as Malcolm could tell, he knew absolutely nothing which connected in any way with Parkins' death.
Jerry insisted Malcolm have dinner with "me and Emma." The Stuarts' house was on a hill at the south edge of town. It was a mixed neighborhood with very old, middle-aged and very new homes
. Malcolm considered the Stuarts' house middle-aged. Dinner was a loud, hectic, delicious, entertaining --,and satisfying affair. Afterward Malcolm, Jerry and Emma, a small, plain woman who shared her husband's sparkling blue eyes, sat and talked until ten. Malcolm regretfully drove home after repeatedly refusing Jerry's offer to accompany him the next day, "just in case."
No mail awaited Malcolm at the motel. His routine call to Washington elicited a perfunctory response and orders to "continue as planned." Malcolm looked around the motel room. He thought of the Stuarts' chaotic, happy life. He looked at the briefcase containing his gun and thought of Parkins. .
Sweet Jesus, Malcolm said to himself, what am I doing here?
6
"We must support you, you know," the White Queen whispered, as Alice got up to do it, very obediently, but a little frightened.
"Thank you very much," she whispered in reply, "but I can do quite well without."
Nurich passed his first day in London as any delegate to a trade exposition should. He m4t with his fellow countrymen, attending exhibitions, spent an appropriate amount of time as an iron-curtain tourist gawking at the sights and sounds of capitalist London, ate large amounts of new and strange foreign foods and went to the theater with two fellow delegates; one a Hungarian, the other an Argentine. The two communist-country representatives spent most of the evening trying to work out an exchange of finished products-for Argentine beef. Nurich finished the evening with a brandy in the hotel's bar before retiring to his room Once in his room, the electronic surveillance devices, d6vices all such trade delegates automatically expect and which would cause the quarry no undue alarm if discovered, showed Nurich taking an average amount of time to prepare for bed. By midnight the microphones were picking up only Comrade Ivan Markowitz's snores.
"And you're sure he saw no one out of the ordinary yesterday?" Kevin asked Cassil the next morning over breakfast.
"Positive," replied Cassil as be sipped his tea and wondered how the Americans could stand coffee first thing in the morning. He and the American agent were breakfasting in a safe house M15 maintains for visiting guests. As far as the British and Americans knew, the house's identity had not been learned by any hostile group.
"Comrade Markowitz acted just as he should, right down to checking in with his delegation's security and intelligence control officer, a lovely man whose cover is an aide to the delegation director. Markowitz made no drops as far as any of our teams can tell. The SB, Six and our boys at Five can't find anything on him or any word of a mission running through here. Our Polish operatives are having some trouble tracking down his past, but they won't say he's bogus, yet. I understand your people are having the same luck."
Kevin said nothing, so Cassil continued. "We've eliminated the Polish professor, Ristov. He teaches history at the University of Warsaw, specializing in the English Tudor period., He's known at the British Museum, and the people there vouch for him. He checks out on the Polish end too, and on top of all that he has a record of arrested TB, which, combined with his age, makes it unlikely he's an agent.
"Our Irish friend, Sean O'Flaherty, is another matter. The Special Branch is particularly interested in him. His passport is a fake, a good one, but still a fake. Military authorities in Belfast think he might be mixed up in IRA gun running, dealing mainly in American and Central European arms. He's contacted a few disreputable people since he hit London, but no known Russian agents. He's dirty, but I don't think he's your man.
"That leaves us with a problem. If Markowitz turns out to be clean or at least not your agent, we probably missed the boat or your source is wrong. We've run down all the other passengers, and they're clean, very clean.
"If I were the Russian running this show and I had shipped Markowitz over here en route to the States, I would have shuttled him off by now. If he stays much longer, he'll develop an identity and a cover which would normally preclude him from heading off again, even covertly. Of course, I might be able to help you more if I knew what the working hypothesis was or," he added hastily after seeing Kevin start to smile, "just a little more. Don't mean to crowd in on you, of course, old boy."
Kevin deliberately ignored Cassil's fishing. "Well," the American said as he rose from the table and put on his suit coat, "we'll just have to hope something turns up on Markowitz, won't we? Let's go to the Center."
"Sure you don't want to pop over and squat outside his hotel. get a good orientation to him and all that?"
"No," replied Kevin, "if he is our boy, he'll be going stateside. I'll be on him there, and the less time we give him to make me, the better chance I'll have. Besides, your boys are doing an adequate, comprehensive job, aren't they?"
"Oh, of course, old boy, of course," Cassil hastened to reply as he stood. The two men were just about to leave the house when the phone rang.
"Yes," Cassil answered. "Right. When? Are you sure? Amy sign of our boy? . . . How? ... All right, make sure all. the airfields are locked. up, and the same for the docks. Understand? I mean locked upt This better not happen again. We'll be right over."
Cassil frowned slightly, taking his time as he hung up the phone. After a few seconds he turned to face his apprehensive colleague.
"I'm afraid we have a s1iJht problem," Cassil. said apologetically, "our boy has gone to ground and he's given us the slip."
"He's what!" Kevin’s voice was cold.
"Gone to ground," continued Cassil nervously, "and in a damn fine way. Twenty minutes ago Comrade Markowitz received a call from the delegation's director. A cable had come in and a family emergency required him at home. No details. Our boy was packed and out of his room in ten minutes. My men decided to hold off on calling us until they had him covered en route.
"Markowitz took the lift. None of our men thought it safe enough to make the ride down with him. The lift stopped on three floors. During one of those stops our boy got off and a decoy who resembles him got on. Our boys, watching for the real Markowitz, paid no attention to the decoy when he got off the lift. The decoy checked out of the hotel under Markowitzs name. The desk clerk not one of our people, had never seen Markowitz. While our people were trying to find out why Markowitz wasn't on the elevator, the decoy caught a cab. The surveillance group barely found out that 'Mr. Markowitz' had checked out in time to follow the cab. It's en route to Heathrow now. The trade delegation called the airport and squeezed out a reservation for Mr. Markowitz on the morning flight to Warsaw. The decoy will just make the connection."
"And the real Markowitz?"
"No trace," replied Cassil grimly, "at least so far, although I have men tearing the town apart. I assume he'll leave London as soon as he can. Men with pictures are other -accouterments the KGB had sent to London a week ahead of him and stored in a Victoria railway-station locker, would have kept him safe from suspicion on any normal run. Nurich himself was pleased with the way his mission had gone so far. Neither Cassil nor Kevin would have disagreed with-their quarry.
"Slick," Cassil kept repeating as he and Kevin drove to the airport, "very, very slick. I don't know what you're chasing with this bird, but if he's this good, its probably nothing little. Watch your step with him, old chap, watch your step. And sorry about almost losing him for you."
The car stopped in front of the TWA departure gate. Kevin would fly to Toronto on another flight arriving fifteen minutes after his quarry. The Air Canada flight already carried an abundance of American agents. Royal Canadian Mounted Police security operatives and more American agents would meet both planes.
Kevin looked back inside the car at Cassil. "At least we didn't lose him altogether," the American said, "so the ultimate harm didn't happen. Thanks for your help. Uncle would appreciate it if you can keep this under your hat as much as possible, even to the extent of holding up reports. You never know where there might be a leak. I would appreciate it if you make sure our back is clean too, and keep your eyes open. Tell the boys at Six to do the same, and pass on our thanks. Good-bye."
&
nbsp; Kevin slammed the door and walked quickly into the terminal. Cassil stared at the building for several seconds after the American had gone. Finally he sighed, started the car and looked back to the terminal door one more time before driving away. "Good-bye old chap," he said, "good-bye."
Kevin pushed his hands deeper into his overcoat pockets in a futile effort to find extra warmth. He cursed his oversight in neglecting to bring the zip-in liner, he cursed the erratic whims of weather, he cursed (slightly and he knew half-heartedly) whatever made him decide to enter his line of work and most of all he cursed the man he followed.
Kevin's quarry had arrived in Toronto the preceding evening, spent the night in a cheap boardinghouse, then taken a bus to New York. Kevin and a team of CIA agents had followed him to the border. Because of the peculiar, tense and legally delicate relationship between the CIA with its foreign intelligence mission and the FBI with its domestic security mission, special agents of the FBI had nominally taken control of the case when the Russian agent crossed into the States. The control, however, was just that:-nominal. The agents had been specially chosen by the old man, who funneled his request through the Forty Committee, which in turn had made the request slightly less than an order to the FBI director.
Although the director guarded his professional prerogatives and power as closely as the next government official, he was not altogether reluctant to let the old man and the Forty Committee take responsibility for a case which had already proved an embarrassment for Air Force Intelligence. The director, after making token objections and observations strictly for the record (as everyone knew),, acquiesced and promised the old man total cooperation. He assigned the FBI agents to the Liaison Group on detached duty. The FBI agents officially acted for the bureau, thus technically clearing up any question of whether the CIA or any of the other intelligence groups were running a statewide mission. The 'FBI agents acted through L Group, under the immediate control of CIA agent Kevin Powell and under directory control of the old man. The FBI director even cooperated so far as to let Kevin and a select number of CIA, NSA and Air Force Intelligence operatives join Malcolm as "extraordinary select special agents" in his bureau, serving "'on detached duty" with parallel security agencies."
