The Spy Who Spoke Porpoise

by Philip Wylie

  “Duck the lights and don’t let anybody turn on more.”

  “What in the—”

  “Get Roy!”

  “Right here,” Roy called from the stairs and he added, as the lights went out, “Hey! What the hell—”

  Tack wasn’t very lucid in response. He gave orders as Roy came down the dark stairs. “Get the kids in bed again! Fran and Sapphire, you do that! Roy, if you have any weapons, break ’em out. If a car stops near this place, let me know, and keep it covered till you do—can you?”

  Roy said, “Yeah.”

  “Okay. No lights! I’m going to phone from Roy’s study. Let’s all get moving.”

  Tack fumbled across the office and found Roy’s phone. He dialed for the operator in a darkness that distant street lights only vaguely penetrated. He had already made up his mind on what to do.

  The operator’s voice came. “May I help you?”

  “Yes. This is Tack Abbott. Speaking from Roy Hedges’.”

  His hope was realized. “Oh! Yes, Mr. Abbott. I love the park! And I was terribly disappointed when you didn’t run for the state Senate again.”

  Fair enough. He asked her name and got it, sweetly. Marjorie Mahani. His speech impediment at first bothered him and soon vanished. “Marjorie, this is an emergency. I want you to ring the White House. Personal call to the President.”

  Her gasp was short. But her later words were only a little tremulous. “Right away!”

  He’d be—Tack thought—having breakfast in bed; with his array of morning newspapers, relaxing before he dressed fast and went to the Oval Room, or wherever, to take the world back upon his shoulders.

  The switchboard would be first; then the Secret Service, Tack guessed, and a male secretary, cutting over. He had met the President a few times as a state senator but Tack wouldn’t indicate, as the President had, to Grove, that he knew the man.

  “Tack Abbott here. Calling from Hawaii. I want to speak to the President—” He talked his way to a secretary. A male.

  “Not now, Mr. Abbott. He’s not officially awake yet.”

  “Look.” Tack had dredged for it on the way over. “Can you see him?”

  “If there’s a crisis. Like a condition red, sure.”

  “Okay. There is. Tell him a friend of his named Tree, or Bush—is missing.”

  “Hey! What the hell—I never heard—”

  “First initial, R. And if there’s a line not monitored, to use that one.”

  The secretary muttered a protest and then said, “Very cryptic! I just say, ‘Chief, a Tack Abbott is on the line from Hawaii with news about your old friend R. Shrub?’ Well, I will. And you’ll see the President isn’t up, officially.”

  “I’ll take that chance.”

  In another minute it came. “Yes, Tack?”

  The man in the dark told the man at breakfast in bed something of what he knew of the local situation, guardedly.

  Gradually, until the man with the green-topaz eyes, long stride and the calm, deep voice broke in. “Okay! I begin to get you. Look! We can talk freely on this line. I made sure, lately. You mean, if I’m right, that Ring Grove learned something so important out there, he had to run before he could send the word out?”

  “I think so.”

  “I do too.” There was a pause. “Glad you got me first.” The voice from the White House became quieter. “Next thing.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Grove is—my man.”

  “I was told so. Jerry Gong, my park watchman, gave me this, half an hour ago.”

  “Nobody else knows that, except Ring, your Gong fellow, our man here—and now you. Don’t let it spread.”

  Tack gulped. “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m going to start some action when we cut off. But Grove’s cover must be kept—missing—and dead or alive. That clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now.” The voice was worried. “Your situation is safe? Wife? Kids?”

  Tack explained.

  “Right. People will be around soon to take care of you. Stay put!”

  “I’d planned to—see if I could help Gong—”

  “Stay with the two families! That’s an order. You sure Ring got his information out with your wife, yesterday afternoon?”

  “No. But it seems that way.” Tack added details.

  “The CIA thinks the uproar on Oahu was a diversion. Ring did not. It’s called Project Neptune and what it is God knoweth, only—unless Ring does. But it fits: lava tube, and so on. Big thing? Tunnel? Under the sea, you said?”

  Tack repeated Sapphire’s information and told about his own heavy building and its round-the-clock schedules. He heard the President’s low whistle. “God! Keep that to yourselves. Tell Sapphire to hold it. If she’s talked to anybody else—”

  “Right, sir. It will stop there.”

  “Now. Stand clear of any action. Keep silence on Grove, on the big tube. That’ll have to be a special operation. Those are also orders—Abbott. I’ll call you later.”

  Tack hung up dazedly. In the dark, he leaned on his elbows, chin cupped, shaking slightly. Suppose he’d not called the White House? But he sure got the right man!

  He heard Sapphire come in, whirled in the dark. He put down a gun when he made out her form.

  “All right?” She asked it expectantly.

  “A-okay.” He smiled.

  He told her, after they had kissed.

  Jerry had waited. The helicopter came back at last—stick-on-picket din, lights cutting out when it was near. Below radar reach, Jerry thought. Bob and he were behind a dozer near the former landing place. The chopper descended like a giant praying mantis, bouncing after it thudded. The big rotor decelerated as the motor died. The hidden men closed. There was only one occupant; his silhouette was plain. He took his time, looking around on every side, in a way that seemed oversuspicious. Then sitting—not even releasing his safety belt.

  Scared, Jerry thought; and not because of Grove. He gave Bob the agreed three nudges. The door opened finally and the pilot came down, looking over his shoulder fearfully.

  Whatever or whoever worried him plainly wasn’t around. He did not, however, expect ambush, which meant he was afraid of his own people. And perhaps meant also that his mission had failed: that Grove had gotten away.

  Bob, who was the nearer, as the man began to walk, hit out—revenge in the blow.

  “Jesus! You could of killed him!” Jerry felt for a pulse.

  “Did I?” Bob sounded hopeful.

  “No. Get him in your car.”

  “And call the cops, yes?”

  “Call the cops, no!”

  “No?”

  “We’re gonna talk to this bastard before we call anybody.”

  “Hey!”

  “Take his legs.”

  Jerry’s car was brown, a sedan, old and rusted, but there was no sound of age or decay in its engine.

  Jerry made his call from the booth Bob had used. There was a smudge of blood on the dial—Bob’s. Jerry grinned at that. In his case, no such smudge would have remained. He’d have wiped the place, automatically. Then he thought, Would I? And replied, Yes. Under this much—and this kind—of pressure, he’d have wiped his prints and the blood smear.

  He made the unanswered call, smiling. Tack and the family had left. Thank God! The brown sedan departed. Five minutes later it would have been spotted.

  Four men, one huge and toad-shaped, passed the bright rectangular phone station and moved on, in the occasional traffic, to the turnoff. With headlights cut, they went slowly across the flats. Their eyes became used to the darkness and the driver said, not in English, “It’s come back, sir.”

  When they found that the man who’d claimed to be Bob was missing they began to curse.

  The rhino-shaped man stopped that. “Varnik,” he said, “is listed now. The finder will get the usual reward: rubles, dollars, pounds, gold. I want to see his body. Clearly, he failed, because why else would he run from here? C
heck the plane.”

  They checked. “Chute missing. His pistol.”

  Solentor nodded. “Quite so; almost expected. Grove jumped and left Varnik in the aircraft.”

  Somebody muttered, “How?”

  There was dangerous anger in the response. “How? you ask. Pig! Idiot! Moron! How?”

  A thin oriental in the party tried to assist his companion: “Varnik was armed. He has a good record. Speaks English in the American way. We had warned him the man was clever—”

  Solentor’s rage abated; it became thought. “That might be part of an answer. Varnik’s wonderful Americanese. It was, the little I heard, a trifle obsolete. The slang.”

  “He learned it long ago, from old Ching.”

  Solentor apparently nodded: his neckless head moved, at least. “So. And for the past twenty or thirty years Ching has not been in the United States. Exactly. Which could have been Mr. Grove’s first warning. Unless he had seen Barker, which isn’t probable; he would not, then, have gone into the craft. My fault. Two faults.”

  Voices tried to assuage that self-blame, obsequious voices.“Stop kissing my———!” The Russian equivalent is lewd. “Mistake one: to rip out the radio. It should have been deactivated, only. Perhaps noted. Then, when G. got out by chute, Varnik could have informed us—and would have, if the pig-camel had not panicked. Mistake two: Varnik and his wonderful, antediluvian Americanese! So.”

  “We sabotage the craft? Fire?”

  “Fool! Why? Leave it! You want to signal for more attention?”

  “Sir.”

  “Now.” Solentor moved his jelliness toward the car that had brought him. “I will think. I need some time. We shall therefore return. As usual—indirectly—to the hotel.”

  An hour afterward Ben Pakali, the night doorman of the Oriental Jade Hotel, went briskly to a limousine which had pulled up under the marquee: a Rolls, driven by a uniformed black. The doorman, who had learned much in his time, said to the emerging personage, “Salaam, sahib, salaam.”

  The prince was about fifty and big as two heavyweights but fatter. He wore a violent blue turban with a crimson stone in front. If it was a ruby, it must be the world’s biggest, the doorman thought. From the gem three peacock feathers sprouted elegantly. The man’s robe was a light blue and his shoes, soft leather, were also blue. The tints made his face look like a cadaver’s. He stood on the pavement, finally, breathing heavily, and spoke to the chauffeur in English: the toplofty kind that the doorman usually heard from guests of the Oriental Jade.

  “Thank you, Amherst. Won’t need you any more tonight.”

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  That annoyed the doorman. The chauffeur was, after all, a citizen. And the way he said that “Majesty” was un-American, the night man felt. Too much kowtow. He wasn’t so damn meek—colored, too—Hawaiian-color. But why the hell should color make a man crawl?

  The prince was fumbling in the folds of his robe.

  With that, the doorman put on his special look, a servile countenance. The purse was coming out, this time. Prince Ben Pak-Something-or-Other tipped only now and then, but when he did—he did. A hotel guest for the last couple of years, off and on, he got a big play from the management. He had the penthouse—and his staff was large, and largely male. Ben smiled and waited.

  The cloth-of-gold purse was located, produced, and unsnapped. The doorman swung the big portal open. As the prince went toward it he held out a languid hand.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” the Hawaiian said with a flourish and a salute.

  He bit his tongue as he felt the tip, a coin. Half a buck? Old Fatso went in, trailing across the deep carpet in the lobby toward the elevators like a sailboat tacking.

  The doorman looked at the coin. It was gold, solid gold, a double eagle—a term he learned only the next day.

  And he was not entirely mollified, even so.

  We lease their goddamn desert, he mused as he stood outside in the brilliant night beneath the marquee. We drill the wells, install the pipelines and the pumps. Then we pay ’em billions for the oil.

  Lousy Arabs!

  It did not occur to him, or to the management and the regulars at the Oriental Jade Hotel, that their frequent guest from Oman-El-Brazaan was not an Arab, not Moslem, not a man with any religion. Nobody ever searched a map for the kingdom called Oman-El-Brazaan; if they had done so, they’d doubtless have found an “Oman”—and thought themselves privileged to know its full name.

  The prince had carried letters from the British Foreign Office on his first visit. He had deposited a fortune in the Bank of Hawaii upon that arrival. He paid for his suite even in his many and sometimes protracted absences. Finally, he talked—in Arabic—to the Arabians in his entourage. The house detectives had checked that out. The British papers were said by the Honolulu consul to be in order, furthermore. Only the signatures, in fact, were forgeries.

  16

  Run!

  The chopper came deep into Grove’s hidden valley and hung on its rotor. From the sea grape canopy Grove could make out a pilot, but not clearly. The craft executed a slow circle; binoculars momentarily glittered. It moved up the cleft as far as the narrowing cliffs allowed and came back rather swiftly—to Grove’s relief. The pilot was plainly satisfied the search of this canyon was futile because he went whacking out to sea, around the dividing mountain and into the next slot.

  If it had landed, Grove thought, he could have taken care of the pilot: there wasn’t anybody else aboard, so far as he could make out. He was on the verge of leaving cover when the sound changed.

  The machine returned and hovered. Grove saw why: his banked fire was smoking. As the chopper settled, the pilot could be seen clearly—and Grove ran out.

  Jerry was smiling—tightly. “Get aboard! Hook up the gear. Great idea, the smoke signal.”

  “Signal!” Grove snorted, climbing in.

  “Where to, boss?” The chopper rose. They put on the intercom mikes and headphones.

  Soon the machine clattered through large clouds and emerged with the largest part of the island coming into repeated view.

  Grove mentioned the Navy field on the island. “There’s a man who can send some information I have, to the right person. The President. I didn’t tell you that—couldn’t. What in hell have you done?”

  The big Chinese-Hawaiian shrugged. “I didn’t do much, Ring.” He described his actions beginning with the time Grove had driven past the park. He explained how he’d heard from the real Bob and left the park to wait, the return of the machine, the capture and his later chopper-search.

  He was interrupted shortly. “Do you think Tack sent the word?”

  “Can’t say. Didn’t have much dope at the time. I only knew you were on the run, then. Told him you’d been working for the President and to call him. And to scram. Which he did. Tried early this afternoon to get Tack but nobody knows where he or his family can be reached. So he did get away. Being Tack, though, I suppose he’d be trying to find out more about the situation before bothering the President.”

  Grove looked distressed. “That could mean sudden death. If he—no. He wouldn’t connect Sapphire’s and my junket with what I found.”

  “Hardly. Who could, without our facts?”

  Grove turned slowly and stared at the watchman. “You just said you got added dope, later. What? And how?”

  “Need some minutes to explain, exactly.”

  “So, find us a cloud and take the time.” Grove started and then said angrily, “You and Bob snatched the fake pilot? And exactly how much pressure—”

  The watchman-now-pilot found a cloud and turned in surprise. “Would you have minded how much—in your OSS days?”

  Grove faintly smiled. “Old, soft. Shoot.”

  “We didn’t have to use hot cigarettes on that Ivan boy. Soon as we got him to Bob’s and the gag came out he began begging us to hide him. It wasn’t us, but the fear we might turn him loose that had his guts churning. So—we just threatene
d to do exactly that. The guy was ready to spill all, in exchange for protection from Solentor. Must be a lovely character!” Grove’s eyes turned a hue new to his friend, pale and vacant. Jerry went on.

  “He knew a lot more about Neptune than people at his level are supposed to know. A thing that happens in every outfit I’ve belonged to.”

  Grove nodded agreement. “Like what?”

  “There’s some sort of underwater cave the Reds learned about years back. Off the Makai Range. Subs can get in and out. The rock opening is on rails and moves back and around. In the cave. A steel lock, next. Then, the main quarters. What you figured?”

  “About.”

  “We were in a hurry, I thought—”

  Grove answered thoughtfully. “We are. But I need all you’ve got before we make contact with our Kauai man. The admiral I spoke of. Once the word gets to Steve—the President—people will move. And the more they know about what they’re up against, the more likely—”

  “—the residents—will blow it up?”

  “Or use it.”

  “Thought about that. Ivan is no nuclear whiz. His picture wasn’t totally plain. But he said this. They’ve towed subs from a Chinese or Soviet port and the subs are now stashed in the cave. They’re nuclear things—enormous h-devices with special packing, he thought. The idea is—and I guess they’re about set to do the job, now—to move them to our West Coast and sink them deep. With nobody looking and where nobody can find ’em. When that’s finished—and it won’t be long if Ivan had the dope—they’ll be able to tell the USA that, any time they want, they can touch off a series of these super-mines and if they do, he claims, it’ll be good-by America. It could throw the whole Pacific ashore to the mountains and wipe off the West Coast population. The rest, though, I thought was phony.”

  He looked at Grove.

  An answer came after a moment. “It’s not. In fact, a friend of mine explained how just that might work. You reminded me of it.” He pondered. “Remember, years back, Khrushchev’s people detonated a pair of monstrous h-gadgets in Siberia? Hundred megaton things, tamped with lead so they yielded about half that? At the time, Kennedy was President. He said the tests were purely for scare purposes and the things had no military use.”