by Philip Wylie
But Grove had been OSS himself at that time and was relatively nearby. He had looked over the scene and found the panel; so they knew: not who; but how. And who, they thought, related to Reds in the supposedly dissolved French Resistance. The Commies were trying to take over France, then, as usual.
So Grove was one of maybe six men still living who would remember the incident in detail and, consequently, would note that what flowed out of (and back into) this man’s open mouth was saffron-colored and contained bits like onions in bouillabaisse. Besides, and even before noting that, Grove had observed the man’s costume (it was a costume, now) precisely resembled what many American agents wore in the late forties.
He had to know more. It might even be the long-deceased agent’s clothing. He moved out onto the broad wooden bridge that led to the park’s entrance plaza, keeping in the shadows to see if Jerry had stuck to the expected routine. He had. Jerry was cycling, now, toward the Makai Range area, beyond the institute, where Martian edifices awaited further and overdue activities of titan machinery.
He dropped down the side of the plaza embankment, knowing he had at most a half hour. He entered the men’s toilet and ripped masses of toilet paper from their rolls. With that, he re-entered the Reef Tank at its base and stripped. Naked, he ran up the ramp to the surface where, after a glance to be sure of an unencumbered bottom, he slipped in and waded, then swam over to the carefully stranded, nicely arranged corpse.
It took a little more than ten minutes to complete his examination. He was careful not to make a splash, since he wanted no sign of his effort to show and, especially, wished to keep his hair dry: Jerry would notice even one wet strand.
The clothes on the body, he felt, were probably those of the long-departed hero, Art Aliening; not the garments he’d died in, but others, taken from his supposedly secret hide-out prior to its inspection by the OSS minion, a day later—by him, in sum. He briefly wondered if this charade was addressed to him and decided not: his visible park visits weren’t predictable.
He found exactly what one would expect in the pockets and on the person of an OSS agent active in the era that followed the Second World War: a gun in the period-piece shoulder holster, a few thousand francs in bank notes and some coins, a hundred dollars in American money—forbidden but usually stashed away by an agent at that time as insurance against adversity—several brass tokens of the sort cafés supplied to girls who persuaded their customers to buy drinks prior to further exchanges, a snapshot of somebody female who signed herself, “Your adoring Bébé,” three telephone numbers, all in the Marseilles area, with names: Francette, Marie-Chantelle, Yvette-La-Vrai-Rêve, a partly used packet of jaunes, French cigarettes unsmokable even when fresh, and, in the expected outside tuck, a z-pill. This was provided against any extreme instant—which, in Allening’s case, had occurred; but, Grove reasoned, a man couldn’t reach it, even if he was conscious, while held in hot soup, face down.
He returned these items exactly as they had been, swam back across the tank with his head out of water and dried himself enough to prevent lingering tracks. He finished the paper toweling near the bottom entry and went outdoors in deep shadow to hide the soggy bundle behind a sea lavender clump so he could dispose of it later. Re-entering the dim, circular structure, he dressed rapidly, checked his face and arms in a tank window—an adequate mirror at the right angle—making sure no telltale bit of paper adhered to his face and arms. Twenty-two minutes had been consumed.
Jerry would by now be on his return trip, somewhere in the institute area. He might wonder how Grove had managed to ascend the ramp for what would ordinarily be two thirds of a normal tour, without himself noticing the alien silhouette on the surface. It was, however, not very prominent and could well have been deemed some addition, or piece of gear, that a fascinated spectator on the way up would not see, or, seeing, would not have reason to suspect as what it proved to be.
In a very deep sense, the discovery was gratifying to this pleasant-looking but not imposing visitor. It proved the time and the money he’d invested in a chancey enterprise were well spent. Nothing more than that was sure; but at least something had given authenticity to a long and private (not to say complex and covert) endeavor.
As he stepped from the sloping spiral to the level, walled walk around the summit, he grinned. For the man who was dead and the nature of these odd arrangements were intended as a joke.
The violent reaction of certain persons, of one of them in particular, would be that sort; the costumed cadaver would seem like the “sick” humor in recent vogue, and, Grove thought, meant for that and also for an added reaction, a wrong one.
The Man in Moscow, he told himself, or in Peking, or wherever he was at this moment, had taken the measure of his opposite number in USA.
Probably, Grove added, still to himself.
Compliments of—Moscow? Or a Chinese puzzle?
The cops would be there first, he knew—the CIA much later, and never sure, in consequence, of what the cops might have missed. Or sure of anything else, if, as was quite possible, Washington didn’t get wind of this event till after a few thousand people had tramped through Sea Life Park on the next morning.
Grove chuckled a little. Then he went out to yell for Jerry.
2
White House
The careful man smiled as he responded to the President’s question.
“That, sir, is information I cannot give you.”
“What?” The President said “What?” as if he meant “What?” He did.
His sole visitor in the just completed Gold Room, repeated the statement: obviously, the new Chief was a little slow.
There was a pause. Then the President spoke again, calmly but with a sort of anti-calm effect. “Mr. Cagg. You mean that there is information in a federal bureau which cannot—or will not—be given to the President of the United States?”
“Exactly so,” Cagg replied.
When he offered no more, the President simply stared at the assistant director of the CIA for a sufficient interval to cause that man soaring discomfort. Cagg thought to amplify. “It—what you just asked of me—is material classified as Zed.”
“Zed?”
“Zed.” Rollo Cagg realized the new President hadn’t been briefed, yet, on “Zed.” He undertook the deed. “Prior incumbents of the White House have gladly assented to Zed. That is to say, they’ve been only too happy, after one of your predecessors set it up, to be able not to know about certain—acts—of our outfit. Duties execu—uk—carried out.”
“Why?”
Mr. Cagg was finding this very difficult and he did not like any difficulty—at the top, especially. To be sure, the recently inaugurated President was noted for fairness and candor, for his detestation of secrecy in politics, his moral courage, integrity, and blah-blah-blah. But Cagg had presumed that noble reputation was only his “image”—the product of campaign rhetoric. Now, he realized with alarm, there might be truth in it.
He put on a look of strong and patient amiability, one of his best expressions for certain ends. “Why, you ask, Mr. President? Simply so the head of the government of this nation can remain peacefully unaware of certain acts necessary for national security—that we at CIA must be ready to perform—acts that, well, multitudes of our more naive citizens regard with—say—zero approval. After all, ours is a rather deadly enterprise. Sometimes. And that is why certain minor things need not be known to the White House. Not knowing, the nation’s Chief Executive cannot be badgered into embarrassing cover-up efforts by, well, the press, say. Radio and TV. Snooping liberals.”
“And my predecessors, as you call them, assented?”
“So far as I know, they were glad to. Certain sorts of information would tend to make them seem—say—as if culpable. Even make them feel culpable, if they were dubious about covert policy. And so, ever since the Zed Classification was designed, they all have concurred.”
“Which,” the President replied in a gentle t
one, or one sounding gentle, “explains why Kennedy got caught in the Bay of Pigs sack? And Eisenhower was given the lie on that U2 thing? And why Stevenson, maybe, was double-crossed at UN? Because the CIA got between him and Kennedy? And which may partly indicate why LBJ had his ‘credibility gap’ trouble?”
Mr. Cagg listened with a scowl. “No, Mr. President. The Zed files relate to matters of far lesser scope. Eliminations of enemy agents—to invent a sample—when they have valuable data and cannot be prevented from carrying it to the enemy by other means. Well, as you say—to ‘antagonistic’ nations. Operations of that nature, sir.” The invented example was unfortunate.
“Murder.” The President looked off beyond his visitor into the deeps of his mind, infinite space or merely at the bare treetops outdoors. It was a compellingly effective attitude and completely unconscious. Anyone above the level of cretin would, could and did interpret that faraway look of those greenish-brownish eyes as a sign of immense intellect and also the very visage of justice, patience, boundless courage. Actually, such interpretations were correct.
At last he spoke, almost idly. “There was a car crash last week, I recall, involving people attached to the embassy of a Red-controlled power. Poland? Hungary. On the National Highway, below Alexandria. All four passengers killed. And—if I read an early account accurately—a brief and rather annoyed complaint was made by the Virginia State Police about evidence that somebody—aside from the motorist who first saw the wreck in the woods—and aside, too, from those necrophiles who came up after that—somebody else, the police thought, had been at the wreck even before such persons arrived. Somebody who’d rifled pockets and stolen brief cases the embassy said the passengers carried. Somebody who’d gone through all the luggage and, perhaps, finished off one not quite dead victim. That, as I further recall, was later denied by the same State Police. Called, the Post reported, a ‘fantasy of overworked, inexperienced new troopers.’ An item, perhaps, now having a Zed Classification?”
“To answer,” Cagg murmured, “would be to violate my oath, sir. But if what you have described were a CIA bit, and it was not, it might then be Zed. The category exists simply to save the Chief Executive from himself. Nerves. Upsets. Nightmares. The very essence of our own occupational hazards. Not knowing certain—counterespionage necessities, say, is one less weight for the man who carries the greatest burden of any man in all time.”
“Thanks. My problem, however. Not CIA’s.”
Mr. Cagg took that as dismissal and stood. He shook hands with his new Chief and went, which left that Chief alone for some minutes.
Finally, he rose. A tall man and lean: a strider. At a door he paused and then swung it open. Outside were secretaries, Secret Service men and George Doanne. Doanne was usually outside when needed and George was the man the President trusted most of any. He beckoned and, when Doanne was inside, closed the door, staring at his friend for a time before he spoke. Fat, bald, lazy in seeming, Doanne was a brain and a steel arm, a passionate reverer of the new President and a man whose veins ran not with ice water but with lox.
“I just learned the ferrets at CIA have a classified division called Zed. All information in Zed is kept from the President.”
George gasped, a rare thing. “You’ve got to be fooling!”
“Find out about it. Snoop. Talk to the FBI in confidence if that’s feasible. And if you don’t make progress, speak to Jim Tate, at Justice. Obliquely. For, by Jesus, there are not going to be any secrets the White House, meaning me, isn’t allowed to know!”
When, after ten days, George reported no progress, the President was more angry than he remembered being in his entire life. George had established the existence of the category. He’d even had a promise from Cagg’s boss, Eaper, to “send over the recent stuff.” It was a promise glibly proffered when George said the President had heard of the special files and ordered samples. But nothing came. The CIA stalled. Their computer couldn’t locate the storage number, it was claimed. After some further and subtler effort, all to no avail, the President decided to put that problem in his own, very secret file—his mind—for study and hopeful solution. Of course, he could order the Zed files brought to him. But he surmised that if he did so there might be a warehouse fire—or the like.
He arrived at a solution owing to the fact that, some weeks after his talk with Cagg, his plane, White House Alpha, ran into bad weather en route from Boston to Chicago, where the President was due to make a speech for a national convention of communications executives. Chicago was socked in suddenly. Airports nearby were closed too. The smog and snow began to appear in a wall which soon enveloped such vast areas east of Chicago that the pilot, after consulting his most august passenger, sat Alpha down at Buffalo International Airport. Almost immediately it, too, was shut down.
The President had some phoning done. His Chicago speech could be put off to the convention’s closing day. It seemed to the President a good idea to use the interval in a way he rarely could: go, that is, to a good hotel and loaf for an afternoon, sleep for a night, breakfast at leisure and, while doing that, skip all but the essential people, guards, gadgets and so forth. He was booked in at the new Cosmos-Plaza and soon got comfortable in his suite—robe, pajamas and everybody else outside, red and gold phones at hand, the Box, too, and a highball even closer. The Secret Service stayed clear of the rooms and even George went off on his own in the cold, the wind and the snow—girl-hunting, the Chief supposed.
He chose a divan and fixed cushions to suit his favorite posture, feet up, head up, a shambling but comfortable way to read which he hardly dared use in the White House as it looked unpresidential and, even, slightly loutish. Thus set, he began to read the Buffalo Evening News, but not its national or international reports—the mere headlines gave a measure of the paper’s prejudices, there. He read the local stuff—for fun. And that was how he learned about the thirty-four-hour locking of the main or downtown Buffalo Public Library.
The closing had been ordered by federal authorities, something done a week earlier, or nearly, since the strange event was reflected only in the “Letters” column. And every one of five printed missives on the subject was enraged. Three women and two men were enraged. “Why,” a lady asked, “was the library shut, if, as is the official excuse, federal agents were merely looking for a document that might be hidden in some book?” The search for it needn’t have interfered with regular users of the library, she went on. And why, at the start, she asked, was force used? “I, for one, refused to leave and was carried bodily from the Main Reading Room to the outside staircase by a man in no uniform whose credentials I asked for but never saw. It’s getting to be like a dictatorship, our once free land.”
By the time the President came to the last and longest letter he was both fascinated and indignant himself. For it was clear that this was a CIA thing—clear because so unclear—highhanded and comic, as well, evidently, as a failure, since, as he had seen, “scores of document-hunters quite abruptly left the large and handsome building in a defeated manner.”
The last letter was read by the President three times. It was signed by “R. W. Grove” with an address in the hotel where the President now lounged. It began with a vigorous protest against the library closure. It went on to note that if the searchers were, indeed, hunting for a document they would have to hunt through every book in the building. Their numbers, though large to start, and added to hourly, were never great enough even to shake out a third of the volumes on hand, as a simple test and some easy arithmetic made clear. They emerged—Mr. Grove was on Seneca when that happened—“obviously downcast.”
It followed that their unfinished search had been called off although incomplete because their mysterious chiefs had found that the so-called document could not have been hidden in the Buffalo Library. It had reached whatever was its intended destination, probably.
Grove continued on the note that, as a man with wide experience in intelligence work, and also as a citizen, patriot a
nd lover of liberty, he was sore. The fumble, he said, had the look of a CIA operation—the miserable look characteristic of that bungle-bureau. It was fascistic and un-American. He had lately become more and more outraged by the secrecy in government and the lack of needed facts which the public suffered. If there had to be a CIA, he went on, it ought to be an organization that was more effective, better understood and more effectively operated by an improved breed of people—not a closed zoo that surfaced only when it flubbed, which was too often and too gruesomely.
All more or less true, the President thought, and sometimes truer than Mr. R. W. Grove knew. He had a warm feeling for the man; and, with a long afternoon ahead, in which he had arranged to loaf, it occurred to him that it might be pleasant to see what this furious gentleman (with “wide” intelligence experience, too) was like. So he picked up the house phone—one he was not supposed to use and that should have been disconnected but had not been.
He asked for Grove and a phone began to ring. Then a very pleasant, deep and easy answer came. “Hello? Grove, here.”
The President said he was that and had read Grove’s letter. And what was Grove doing, now? Busy?
Mr. Grove proved rather amazing. He said he’d heard the President was in the building. He added that he’d been in Buffalo for two weeks on business and was about to go back to Warsaw, New York, where he lived, when the blizzard began. He seemed unawed by the event—which was puzzling, since few private citizens take a sudden, surprise call from Presidents with instant aplomb. Could Grove come up to 2255? the President asked. For a chat? And would he, perhaps, when he came through the outside guards, try to keep from being a memorable person?
