Arch Patton

by James Strauss

  To her credit, she merely assented. I informed Günter in German. His eyes grew large and round. He looked at Marlys. She met his look with a deep liquid glare of her own.

  “Ja,” he said, his breath coming all the way out of his lungs. “Ja,” he repeated, once he could get air back in.

  “Why did you do that?” Marlys solicited as I turned the latch to re-enter Don’s cabin.

  “So Günter would be certain to be on our side,” I answered.

  “But, why would—” she started, but I cut her off.

  “You don’t have to know. You don’t have to keep the date. He just can’t know that yet.”

  I opened the door. Behind me I thought I heard Marlys whisper “You bastard.” The comment did not bother me. By birth, I was, indeed, a bastard. I ignored the slur as I re-entered the cabin.

  “I’m done with you until the meeting later. Back to the bar,” I said to the Basque and then realized I had spoken too harshly to her.

  The last look I got from her was not of hatred or anger. It was pure hate. I had been brusque, I knew, but I didn’t think I had been that short. I looked at the Basque.

  “Your step-father, Captain Kessler, lectured me. He doesn’t want to see the flag again. Don’t display it. I don’t care about him, but we don’t need trouble, or any more headaches, not now. He also threatened me, which means I might have to neutralize him. Do you have a problem with that?”

  The Basque turned her gaze to Don, her expression one of question.

  “He means it might come to violence being done to your step-father…” Don let the words trail away.

  The Basque was amused. Don and I exchanged glances.

  “Oh, that’s good. I like that. Neutralize. Yes, ‘neutralize’ him.” She laughed some more. “And I won’t put the flag up, unless you kill him, or we are out of Russia. I promise. Yes, you may neutralize him. You have my permission.”

  I looked back at her with some surprise.

  “Come with me to my cabin,” I said to Don.

  In the corridor I spoke again. “There are some issues there, I presume, between the two of them?”

  “Ya think?” he said.

  In my cabin, I withdrew the radios from the drawer. I showed him how they functioned. Push one small red button to talk. There was no listen button. The system could receive through the small earphone whether you were transmitting or not. Like a telephone, but independent of cell towers. It was good for five to ten miles in range, depending upon elevation or interfering structures or topography.

  “You gonna carry the gun in?” he asked, putting two of the Secret Service radios into his pocket.

  I shook my head. “I hear there’s really no customs at all, but I’m not chancing it. Dutch will carry the gold and the automatic. If he gets caught, what the hell, the mission is not compromised, just changed.”

  Don jerked his head, and then smiled grimly.

  “You’d abandon Dutch, just like that?”

  I glared at him. “Listen, Don, and listen good. The mission comes first. Always. But we don’t abandon anyone. I don’t leave anyone behind. Not even the dead. I was a Marine. I’m still a Marine.”

  Don’s expression became more somber.

  “I believe you,” he confessed. “But there is one thing.”

  I inhaled deeply. “Okay, what is it?” I requested, exasperated. The detail of mission work was everything, but it was so very tiresome.

  “After this is over. All of this. There may be the gold thing, there may not. Probably not. But what about the immigration thing? If you’re not with the government, as you indicated, then how are you going to get the permanent visas for Dutch, my girlfriend, and even Marlys and her mother?”

  I wondered how Marlys’ mother had gotten thrown into the bargain, but what the hell I thought.

  “How many guys have you met in your life who said they were CIA?” I asked the question, expectantly, rubbing my hair. The sea air made my hair itch if I didn’t have a shower three times a day, I noted absently, while I waited.

  “Three or so?” he said, his voice a study in questions.

  “So, if I tell you I’m Agency, will you believe me … to the extent you need to?”

  Don shifted from one foot to the other before my bunk. He tilted his head.

  “So what do you want for proof?” I asked him, spreading my hands.

  Don breathed in like he was steeling himself before going on. “You have to convince me. Some way. I don’t know how.”

  I thought to myself in silence. I reviewed Don’s file in my head. It took minutes, even though something had sprung to the front right away. I had not expected Don’s appeal, but I’d briefed myself, in a cursory manner, on some of the people who I knew might be important once I was aboard the Lindy.

  “Do you remember a phone call you made five years ago? The one about the video you saw on the news about a car bomb in the Sudan?

  Don looked away, his eyes growing distant, no expression on his face. I went on.

  “You thought you recognized the man filmed driving away from the scene?”

  Don cleared his throat several times. He looked at me directly. “I didn’t call U.S. authorities for Christ’s sake. I called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police about that. The RCMPs gave you that? I don’t believe you. They wouldn’t do that.”

  “The guy you tried to identify was driving a Red Citroën. You repeated that information during the call.”

  I held my hands before me, palms up, in a gesture meant to indicate the impersonal transmission of almost all data in the new electronic age.

  “Was I right? Was it the guy I told them it was?” Don breathed, emotionally.

  “That isn’t important anymore. What’s important is that you help me here and now.”

  Don stood up, and then paced back and forth across the cabin a few times.

  “Alright, I don’t think it’s right that you people do whatever you did to get that call, but I believe you.”

  “Look, before you go,” I emptied the sack on my bunk. “The morphine’s for whoever needs it if things go wrong. If things go right, then it’s only for Hathoot. The bandages are for any need we might have. The sutures, well, we hope we don’t need those at all. You carry this.”

  I put the things back in the bag and tossed it to him.

  “Hathoot?” he said, in puzzlement.

  I nodded. “Of course, you’ve got to help me get him ashore, then we’ll take care of him. He’s a problem, as you know. Think ‘collateral damage.’ It happens all the time in this business. Before you go, don’t you want to play another of the mystery songs on the CD player?” I asked, trying to get him to relax.

  But there was no slack left in Don. His taut expression was one of sadness. He departed without saying goodbye. He closed the door as silently as I had closed Kessler’s.

  I walked over to the dresser, my own head hanging. Real mission work was so far from what people thought. It was the real pirates, as opposed to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland.

  I hit the switch on the player, and the next song came on.

  “… Never again to be all alone … You light up my life, you give me hope...”

  I reclined on the bunk, listening to the song play all the way through.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE:

  The Mission

  When the last lyrics in “You Light Up My Life” faded away, I got up to click the CD player off. Erect, I decided on impulse to replay the songs I had received from my secret admirer. I pushed the counter button to “1” then laid back down with my eyes closed. After all, I had a few hours to prepare for the afternoon lecture and then the Mouseketeer meeting. A good night’s sleep would be a rational asset to whatever the morrow might bring, I thought lazily, as the music washed over me.

  I was not sleepy
, just yet. My mind strayed to Joseph Campbell and how much his teachings about mythology had helped me understand my fellow man and also allowed me to forgive. Society needed lots of forgiving, as did I. I sensed the arrogance of my reflections.

  Then I sat up quickly, my body going rigid. Mythology. What was it about myth? Something occurred to me, which left me on full alert. I stared at the CD player, its digital readout blinking the number “1” at me.

  The myth of the Trojan horse had ever so briefly streaked across my mind, like a very tiny, but very bright, shooting star. I moved the machine to my bunk, noting that, although there was a two-prong plug socket on its back, there was no cord. I roughly examined its outside, which seemed normal enough. “AIWA” was printed on the front, in large silver letters. On the bottom there was more printing: “Stereo Radio/CD Player” with “Made in China” in much smaller letters underneath. I breathed inward more easily.

  The player was a common commercial machine. Perhaps pre-mission paranoia was overcoming me. Maybe it was just my own inability to figure out who had put the thing in my room and who had burned songs onto the disk with such poignant intent. After all, the Trojan horse was a myth created and passed through time with scant foundation of fact to back it up.

  The recorder must run on batteries, I calculated. I checked the back closely. Two small levers near the top could be pushed down. I pushed down. A plastic panel, hinged at its bottom, cracked open. I could see many small batteries inside the box, which the panel covered. And something else.

  Small wires ran along each side of the something else. Having suspected something, but not being ready for the something to materialize, I stared between the wires which completed electrical contact with the other batteries, and saw a black rectangular object. It was almost the exact same size as the accompanying C batteries.

  “A transmitter,” I announced to my empty room.

  On the outside of the object’s shiny black exterior were inscribed the words “TinyTek.” The bug was a commercial piece from some faux “spy shop,” not a custom engineered design, which another intelligence agency would surely use.

  Carefully, I pulled the object out and set it aside. I reassembled the machine, folding a nearby envelope into a sufficiently rectangular enough shape to provide the distancing the object had had. I turned the player on. The CD came to life. I turned it back off.

  I examined the small object I’d removed. It had small buttons on its side that had been faced down while it was in the machine. I breathed another sigh of relief.

  It was a recorder, not a transmitter.

  A recorder could only gather and hold information for a period of time and then it had to be downloaded. Something as small as the one I was holding could not have a disk drive; it had to be solid state. To get information, the recorder had to be removed, downloaded, and then returned, or another substituted in its place. I sat, thinking deeply. At what point had the recorder begun recording, I wondered. There was a small red light, which shone dimly, just beneath the buttons. There was also an earpiece jack.

  “Please God,” I prayed, as I reached into my small bunk-table drawer. I drew out the earpiece and wire from the Secret Service radio, which was anything but a commercially manufactured device. I prayed that the people who had built that had used a standard-sized jack. I plugged the earphone wire into the hole. It fit.

  I looked at the four buttons above the hole. I presumed the top one to be fast-forward, the middle one to be stop, and the third one to be rewind. That left play for the fourth one.

  I pushed the third button. The small red light turned to green and then blinked madly. There was no tape in the recorder’s design, but there was a functional access feature to older data. The green light went out. I pushed play.

  Thin, scratchy, and distant was a female voice, talking about gold. I wished for a volume button, but there was none. I concentrated. It was Gloria, Filipe’s woman, talking. I remembered the conversation. She had told me of her interest, all of the Filipinos’ interest, in being part of the gold’s recovery.

  I pulled out my earpiece, took it from the recorder, and then put it back in my table drawer. I had heard enough. Whoever had put the small spy recorder in my CD player had nothing from the time Gloria entered my cabin until the present. Unless I gave it back to them.

  I re-examined the device, marveling over its small size, and how it had been able to pick up conversations inside the cabin even though it was packaged into the back of the big player’s battery box. I had no way to erase the data, not that I could think of anyway, so I could not replace it. I went to my porthole, undogged the four screw levers, opened the glass, and dumped the little device into the sea. I re-dogged the porthole, and then lay back down on my bunk to consider.

  I had thought the mystery of the CD player to be a thing of fun. Playful emotion expressed. Which it still might be, but the recorder added a sinister element I could not ignore. I went through every relationship I had aboard the Lindy. Every contact I had had or made. I kept coming up with only one good suspect.

  Kessler.

  “Go for the money,” I had learned long ago. Who had what to gain? Who had the greatest need for intelligence? Who was technically capable of such an act? Who had the power to control other people to get them to plant and monitor the equipment? Who had all the access in the world to keys and locks everywhere on the ship?

  I cringed at the thought of the other conversations I had had in the small cabin. At least he had not gotten my confession to Don about the Agency. That would have been ruinous. Or my comments about the potential for his own or Hathoot’s demise.

  God, I had been careless. Did I really think I was the only spy in the world? I shuddered at my own gullibility. And good luck. Someone had once said that if you had to pick between high intellect and good fortune, always pick good fortune. “Yes,” I seconded the adage. I jumped from the bunk and spent the next hour scouring the cabin for other listening devices.

  I locked the cabin behind me, checking my pockets, once again, for my small radio, the Kel-Tec automatic, and the folded up documents, which covered our mission target. I’d need data for our Mouseketeer meeting, and I wanted to take no chances of having anything go missing before we hit port the following morning. My cabin was not safe. It was anyone’s guess, at that point, as to what was known about what I carried or stored there. I would have to take my chances, and hope that not enough was known. At least not enough to interdict the mission.

  I knocked on Dutch’s door, entering without waiting for any welcome. Dutch was getting cleaned up for our lecture presentation. I was astonished that he looked clean and fresh. There was no sign of his heavy drinking at all. Maybe the permanent visa meant enough to him to control his demons. I didn’t know. Alcoholics were hard to figure. They could have the strongest motivations in the world not to drink, then — poof — deep into the bottle they dove. Many people, who spent entire lives in prison, spent them there because out here, in the real world, they were alcoholics and drug addicts. Period.

  I took out the small Kel-Tec and put it on the bunk. Dutch walked in, buttoning his shirt. He stopped when he saw the gun. I spoke, my voice unmodulated and serious.

  “Tomorrow, the possibility of violence is high. Commander Hathoot, even Captain Kessler himself, could become targets. And then there is the Commissar and the possibility of collateral damage.”

  I assessed the man-child. He thought for a moment, still staring at the piece, before speaking.

  “Do you have any real guns?” he said.

  I couldn’t help blinking rapidly in surprise at the exhibition of his humor. The gun went into my coat pocket.

  “No, if we need ‘real’ guns then we’ll accommodate ourselves to what we find at hand.”

  Dutch would do, I thought to myself. Possibly, the kid was a natural “knuckle-dragger,” as the Agency referred to “wet-workers
,” or those who worked in blood. I was a team-leader, even though I lacked a team. The violent stuff was supposed to be left to the lower class, of which I did not have any aboard, so Dutch would have to pinch-hit.

  “I’ll meet you in the lido, then we’ll head to the Mouse meeting.”

  Dutch grunted, which I took to be his version of a yes. I let myself out.

  My place was available at the bar. Marlys was behind the counter. She wore some blue sheath. Her figure was spectacular to behold, especially when she turned, and the dress spun with just the right movement around her. I doubted I would have my reserved seat after our encounter with Günter in the corridor. I had suspected Marlys of being the person who gave me the CD player, but the recorder had changed all bets. I now realized it simply was not something she would do. The Filipinos had always been my second choice.

  “Follow the money,” I reminded myself while drinking from my coffee bowl. They had plenty of motivation. I hoped it was they. To be spied on by allies was quite acceptable in the business, even if it was never discussed in such terms.

  Dutch showed up at my elbow. I wanted to ask Marlys if she liked me, cared at all, or even recognized me as a man. I wanted to know if she thought I was too old for her. I wanted to reach out so badly I felt it on the ends of my fingertips. I longed physically to reach out across the bar. But I could not. And God had blessedly sent Dutch to help me stay the course, without even so much as an act of contrition.

  I would not take, or have, Günter ashore. He had to be kept in a state of completely paralyzed romantic tension. I would also have to keep Dutch busy. He was best when he was in action. Moving. In pursuit of a goal.

  Don was different, I reflected wryly. He was my thinking operations agent. I needed him at my side, all the way. “Up the hill,” I murmured, then turned and got ready to make my presentation.

  Benito did not grab me. She actually beamed, when it was my turn to speak. Her warmth made me uncomfortable in a different way. I felt, as I began to discuss the practices of the Russian Orthodox Church, that she was carefully positioning me so that I’d miss her when I left.