The Buck Passes Flynn

by Gregory Mcdonald

  Sankey said, “I never figured out what it was you were doing there. I was never sure. I’m still not sure.”

  “I was a guileless babe in arms,” Flynn said.

  “Guileless? That I’ve never thought. One thing I’ve always been sure of: somehow or other you used me.”

  “Used you?”

  “I was manipulated somehow or other.”

  “Now how could that be?”

  “A charming, handsome, witty young man who somehow or other got himself in and out of rooms—meetings, receptions, dinners—without ever appearing to be there, delaying someone’s arrival, hastening someone’s departure, putting a word in an ear here and disrupting a conversation there. You were something to watch.”

  “And why would you be watching me so closely?”

  “Because you were young and everyone was sure you represented something significant. But no one knew what I still don’t know who or what you represented.”

  “Ach, sure,” said Flynn. “I’m just a flatfoot at heart.”

  “A what?”

  “A flatfoot.”

  Sankey’s eyes swelled before looking away.

  “Rightly or wrongly,” Sankey said, slowly, “I have always attributed two sentences of our ambassador’s speech to you. Two key sentences. Two sentences that were not written by either him or his staff. Two sentences that he didn’t know were in the speech, even as he read them. Two sentences that I have always believed you inserted in that speech somehow, the first of which was particularly significant to the world.”

  “Sure, now—”

  “The two sentences were: The European Common Market will never attain an economic force equal to that of the United States of America. It is in full cognizance of this that the United States of America asures European Common Market nations of the full support of the United States of America.’ ”

  Sankey looked accusingly at Flynn.

  “Ach, well,” said Flynn.

  “Flynn, that statement, at that time, did more to put the whole world on the dollar standard than any other single event or statement.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “It’s ruined the economy of the world.”

  “I assure you I’m innocent,” Flynn said, “of all the best and the worst you think of me.”

  “You’re trying to convince me you don’t understand?”

  “If you can’t believe in my innocence,” said Flynn, “then believe in my ignorance. I have no idea what you’re blatherin’ about, man.”

  Sankey stared at him, shook his head. “You’re very convincing, Flynn. You always were.”

  “I should be—especially when I’m tellin’ the truth.”

  Finally Sankey smiled. “Why are you here now, Flynn?”

  “A simple matter. I doubt I need the attentions of such an august personage as yourself.”

  “I wanted to see you anyway … when I heard you made a request to come in…. I wanted to …” Sankey looked off into a corner of the room, as if unable to remember what he was saying, “to see you again.”

  “Now that you’ve had the rare privilege of seem’ me,” said Flynn, “may I ask what the Special Section of the Federal Reserve does? I’m always eager to expand my befuddlement.”

  Sankey glanced at him quickly and then answered as if by rote. “We’ve been setting up new systems to conduct the flow of money.”

  “Oh,” said Flynn. “Well, that befuddles me.”

  To Flynn it did not seem like that much of a job for a man who had been trusted by his government at a major money conference at The Hague eighteen years before, at the age of thirty-three.

  Then Flynn remembered that he himself was now mainly employed as a Boston policeman, and he had been at that same conference at the age of twenty-two.

  Flynn said, “Isn’t current social mobility a wonder to behold?”

  He took three bills from his pocket—a twenty-, a fifty-, and a hundred-dollar bill—and handed them to Paul Sankey.

  “I would like to have the highest authority in the land assure me of the authenticity of these little darlings. There’s a wee suspicion abroad they’re not the legitimate children of Mama Treasury and Papa Justice.”

  Holding the bills in his hand, Sankey looked disappointed. “You mean, are they counterfeit?”

  “That’s the question.”

  Sankey sniffed them, and looked at them again, closely. “They look all right to me, but I’ll have them tested.” Finally, he smiled. “I just remembered you and I having a dinner together at The Hague. Whatever it was we ordered, all we got was heaps of sauerkraut.” He put the bills in his shirt pocket. “What’s this about, Flynn?”

  “What’s what about?”

  “You didn’t need to come directly to Special Section to have a few bills tested for authenticity.”

  “Ach, well,” Flynn said. “That. I had to come to Washington anyway. There are some people I need to see at the Pentagon this afternoon.”

  “No,” Sankey said. “I learned my lesson with you eighteen years ago. You’re not worrying about one hundred and seventy dollars in counterfeit money.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Flynn rose. Neither of them had touched his coffee or roll. “It’s a mysterious matter.”

  Sankey said, “I expect so.”

  “Great sums of money have been turning up in odd places.”

  “ ‘Great sums’?”

  “Over four hundred million dollars.”

  Sankey stood up. He headed tiredly toward the door. “I’ll have these bills checked out for you, Flynn. Where can I reach you?”

  “Hotel Dorland. I hope to be there only until tomorrow morning.”

  “All right.”

  “Please leave the message for me at the desk. There seems to be some confusion as to which room I’m in.”

  “Oh? How can there be?”

  “Exactly.”

  Sankey opened the door for Flynn. “One day I wouldn’t mind understanding you, Flynn. Or having you understand me.”

  “Sure,” Flynn said. “Frequently I feel the same way myself.”

  20

  “I HAVE been over this ground a dozen times, Mister Flynn.”

  There was no fat on the body of Major William Calder.

  Flynn had found the major finishing a heavy workout in a gymnasium of the Pentagon, and accepted his invitation to join him in the sauna.

  They were alone.

  Flynn smiled. “Surely a military man like yourself is used to doing things in triplicate.”

  Calder’s look could be read as that of the usual military sentry: no one is permitted to get under the skin of the military, except military personnel.

  “I’ve been ordered to answer your questions, Mister Flynn. I’ll answer them. I’m just saying I’m sick and angry over this whole ball of wax.”

  “Why is that?”

  The major looked as if he had just been ordered to eat a bowl of live garden snakes for national security reasons.

  “We were a good outfit. A good team. Blown all to hell and back.”

  “You mean United States Air Force Intelligence Section 11B.”

  Flynn’s specific identification of the department caused the major to wince before he admitted, “Yeah.”

  Flynn had observed that all American military departments—especially the Intelligence sections—thought it was they and only they who had the world on a string. None did.

  “We were doing good work,” added the major.

  “What specifically were you doing at that point in time?”

  The major’s look was wary.

  “You know you’re authorized to tell me.”

  In fact, earlier in the afternoon Flynn had been thoroughly filled in by the Pentagon team investigating this matter.

  “Our responsibility was constant surveillance, assimilation, and interpretation of all air units both sides of the Sino-Soviet border.”

  “An
important job,” said Flynn. “But not one you’d expect to come up in conversation too often, I think. In this job, Major, was anything peculiarly important going on at the time that—?”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean, anything unusual? Was anything coming to a head, do you think?”

  “I don’t think I understand you.”

  “Was anything unusual happening on the Sino-Soviet border, as you perceived things?”

  “Troops both sides of the Sino-Soviet border are in constant movement. It’s a big sparring match—the biggest in the world. One side moves a battalion twelve hundred kilometers north; the other side moves two battalions one thousand kilometers south; the first side moves a full wing two thousand kilometers south.”

  “And what does that all mean?”

  “It’s a war of nerves. A training ground for both troops and strategists.”

  “How do you understand it?”

  “Easily. The Russians are playing chess and the Chinese are playing Mah-Jongg.”

  “Expensive games.”

  “It’s been going on for years.”

  “And you say nothing unusual was happening?”

  “Why do you ask, Mister Flynn?”

  “Obviously, Major, if a department like yours was blinded, the sensible question is: what was it someone didn’t want you to see?”

  “Oh.” The major compared his feet on the tile floor. “No. There was nothing unusual going on. As far as I know. In fact,” he looked rather brightly at Flynn, “both sides were repeating a pattern of maneuvers they had gone through, exactly, eighteen months before. We wondered if they knew it.”

  Flynn grinned. “Maybe you should have phoned them up and told them. Save them the bother.”

  “Yeah.”

  Flynn toweled the sweat off his back. “So one fine day, a Saturday morning, you leave your house, whistling a merry tune, golf bag in tow, and there on the front seat of your car is a big manila envelope with one hundred thousand of the good ones in it.”

  “Right.”

  “You had not locked your car overnight?”

  “No. Betty and I had been out late at a party the night before. I guess I forgot.”

  “Were there other cars parked in the immediate vicinity? I mean, was the car in a parking lot?”

  “No. It was in the carport of our house. In Alexandria.”

  “What was the first thing you did?”

  “I went back in the house and called Major Williger.”

  “Who’s Major Williger?”

  “The guy I was going to play golf with. I told him I had to cancel. I gave him some bull. I think I told him Betty was sick, and I had to stay home and take care of the kids.”

  “Not true?”

  “Not true.”

  “Did the major believe you?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Major, you mean you didn’t go racing back into the house, dropping golf clubs as you ran, shouting at your wife you’d just found a young fortune in your carport?”

  “No. I never mentioned it to my wife.”

  “Good heavens, why not, man?”

  “I guess I immediately assumed it had something to do with my capacity as an Intelligence officer.”

  “That was your immediate reaction?”

  “I never thought otherwise. We’re trained, Mister Flynn, to consider anything unusual as potentially threatening to our Intelligence function. Anything. And, you agree, this was unusual.”

  “Indeed it was. What did you do then?”

  “I went into the den and closed the door and tried to get General Seiler on the phone.”

  “Your commanding officer?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were going to report the incident?”

  “Yes. His wife answered the phone. She sounded funny. She said the general was unavailable and would remain unavailable. So I called Colonel Perham. His wife said he’d gone hunting for the weekend. On Monday morning I discovered they had both spent the weekend filing for early retirement.”

  “Apparently they hadn’t been as well trained as you,” Flynn said, “to consider anything unusual as potentially threatening to their Intelligence capacity.”

  “Or they didn’t care.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I called Colonel Seely. His wife said Bob was out buying a boat. Bob had never mentioned an interest in sailing to me. He’s a skeet-shooting nut.”

  “You didn’t tell your wife about it all weekend?”

  “I never told her. I still haven’t told her.”

  “What reason did you give her for canceling your golf date?”

  “I said I had a hangover. From the party the night before. Couldn’t stand the sun.”

  “I see And then, Monday morning…?”

  “General Setter and Colonel Perham were running around with retirement papers in their hands. Colonel Seely was unresponsive.”

  “You mean, you mentioned the matter to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, “Well, Bill, it’s a short life and we shouldn’t miss out on it through an unwarranted sense of self-importance.’ ”

  “I see. He had been a particular friend of yours?”

  “We had worked pretty closely together.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I blew the whistle. I called Section 1. Air Force Intelligence Command.”

  Gently, Flynn asked, “And what has happened since then?”

  Sadly, slowly, Major William Calder said, “We all got reassigned. One way or the other.”

  Earlier that afternoon, Flynn had been briefed by the investigating team on what had happened to the individuals of U.S.A.F.I.S. 11B.

  GENERAL JOHN SEILER. Retired. Pension withheld until completion of investigation. The general and his wife of twenty-six years separated. She remained in Washington. He was currently living in Ponce, Puerto Rico.

  COLONEL JOHN PERHAM. Retired. Pension withheld until completion of investigation. The colonel had gained forty-five pounds in weight.

  COLONEL ROBERT SEELY. Currently in Walter Reed Hospital Psychiatric Diagnostic Center, having suffered a nervous breakdown.

  MAJOR SAMUEL ROSENSTONE. Transferred to United States Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, as an instructor in Air Base Perimeter Security.

  On and on, through the sixty-seven members of that department. The chief secretary, Adele Hughes, had come to suffer chronic high blood pressure. Hulett Weed, the technician clerk who eloped on that weekend, left his honeymoon bed the next Friday morning before dawn, without his bride, and was currently on the Whereabouts Unknown list.

  Major Calder said, “I’ve been reassigned to Supply.” He shook his head. “Do anything unusual in the military, anything unusual happens to you, your career gets sidetracked permanently.”

  “Lieutenant DuPont also was quick to report finding a bundle of money in his mailbox. What happened to him?”

  “He’s left the service,” Calder said. “He saw what was happening to him. He was reassigned to work with an Air Force wrestling team as an assistant coach.”

  “Sometimes being honest is a mistake?”

  “Oh, it’s no mistake,” answered Calder. “But sometimes it just hurts like hell.”

  “It does that,” said Flynn. “It does that. My God, this place is as hot as Texas without the wind.”

  Calder smiled. “Shall I open a window?”

  “I think I’ve had enough sauna,” said Flynn, gathering up his towels. “I’d hate to leave too much of myself here at the Pentagon. Just one more question, Major. You’re trained in Intelligence work. Why did this happen? Why was everyone in your department given a large amount of money anonymously?”

  The major shrugged. “Someone wanted to blow up that department.”

  “But why?”

  The major just shrugged.

  “You said there was nothing, as far as you know, going on
in the world at that moment for anyone to want to render that department ineffective.”

  “That’s what I said, Mister Flynn.” The major shook sweat out of his curly hair. “Maybe someone just wanted to prove you could buy off a Pentagon Intelligence section with a corned beef sandwich and a glass of beer.”

  Standing, Flynn said, “Now, who would want to do that, I wonder?”

  Under heavy, wet eyebrows Major Calder looked up at him. “Three possibilities: the Russians; the Chinese; or … some other American Intelligence section.”

  “I see,” said Flynn. “I see. You mean, someone might spend as much as three and a half million dollars on internecine Pentagon squabbling?”

  Major Calder said: “More has been spent on less, Mister Flynn. More has been spent on less.”

  Just after seven o’clock that night, Flynn approached the reception desk at the Hotel Dorland.

  “Ah, Mister Flynn!” the desk clerk said. “Checking in again?”

  “I’ve never checked out, you blithering—”

  “That’s never made a difference before,” the desk clerk said.

  “Delighted I am to find you in good humor,” Flynn said.

  “Ah, well, we all have our little aberrations, haven’t we?”

  “I’m here to ask if there are any messages for me.”

  “There is.” The desk clerk reached into a room box behind him. “Just one.”

  Flynn took the folded piece of paper. Then he said to the desk clerk, with full seriousness, “I wonder if you’d have a Saint Bernard sent to my room?”

  The desk clerk blinked. “A Saint Bernard?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You mean, a large dog?”

  “Yes,” said Flynn. “A Saint Bernard is a large dog.”

  The desk clerk’s right hand shook. “Of course, Mister Flynn. I’ll have one sent right up.”

  “Thank you.”

  Crossing the lobby to the elevator, Flynn read the message:

  Please call me at my home as soon as you get in. 555-8708. I want private discussion with you.

  —Paul Sankey.

  21

  “THINK me a dull fellow if you want,” Paul Sankey said, “but I’m still chewing over that statement you snuck into the ambassador’s speech eighteen years ago: The European Common Market will never attain an economic force equal to that of the United States of America. It is in full cognizance of this that the United States of America assures European Common Market nations of the full support of the United States of America.”