by Paul Gallico
Julian said, “Gee thanks, that’s swell.”
The further he went, the easier it seemed to be. Julian walked past two guards who never even questioned him and a third who seemed satisfied with his credential. He finally encountered two together who formed what appeared to be an impenetrable bulwark, for they wore side-arms and looked grim and impassable. But it turned out they were army and quite the easiest, for one of them said, “Hey, you got yourself in the wrong corridor, sonny. C’mere, follow me. I’ll show you where his office is.” He led the way and in this manner Julian West arrived at the secretary’s desk in the outer office of Colonel John G. Sisson, Weapons Department, United States Army Ordnance, and from thence was ushered into the presence of the senior sergeant guarding the portals of Major-General Thomas Horgan.
The arguments and the row around the conference table in the general’s office were not only still raging but had increased in scope and taken on a larger aspect for the photograph of Nixon on the wall had cautioned Horgan, who was something of a safety-firster. He had called in a member of the President’s Advisory Committee and acquainted him with such facts in the case as were available should it blow up into something calling for diplomatic intervention and attention. In addition the State Department had contributed a pair of experts on Russian matters.
The newcomers, each seeing the affair from their own angles and bureaucratic fears had not only solved nothing but had only managed to raise General Horgan’s temperature beyond the boiling point where he blew off at them collectively and individually.
“. . . and all you can think about are your own goddamn jobs. Don’t you ever give a thought to your country? I’m surrounded by a lot of horses’ asses and stupid sons of bitches starting off with you, Sisson, and next whoever picked you for this job.” He aimed a forefinger point blank at the unhappy colonel and said, “You’re gonna find yourself on the retired list so goddamn fast . . .”
At this point the general’s sergeant, an old-timer whose length of service in the outer office entitled him to take liberties, entered, saluted, said, “I beg your pardon, General,” and then going to Sisson, handed him a card.
He said, “Colonel, excuse me for busting in like this but there’s a kid outside who knows you and says he has to see you on something important. I figured I better tell you because he got right through to your office without a pass. You know, we’re supposed to have a lot of security around here and I thought maybe . . .”
Sisson took the card, mechanically turned it over and glanced at it. He saw his initials in his own handwriting and a cold chill took a long slide down his back as it brought up a memory of a bus ride, a boy and a diagram. Hardly daring to ask, he said, “He wouldn’t be a four-eyed kid with red hair, a lot of freckles and a stammer, would he?”
The sergeant said, “He didn’t have no stammer I could see.”
In icy fury General Horgan addressed himself to the pair. “If you two are all through discussing what seems to be a family matter, will you oblige me, sergeant, by getting your ass out of here?”
The chill climbed back up Sisson’s spine and raised the hackles on his neck. He thought No, no, that’s impossible. I can’t believe it. It’s only in the movies that the marines arrive in the nick of time. Nevertheless aloud he said, “But, sir, may I . . .”
General Horgan blew again. To Sisson he shouted, “Shut up!” and to the sergeant he roared, “Get out!”
The sergeant did, but Julian entered as though on cue.
The room was still echoing to the General’s bellows and Julian looked about him anxiously at the panoply of be-ribboned officers and grim-looking civilians gathered gloomily around the long conference table until he located Colonel Sisson. He went directly to him and said, “Excuse me, sir . . . I didn’t mean . . . I guess I shouldn’t have come in . . . I thought this was your office and you said, sir, that if I . . .”
Before he had finished Sisson had leaped up out of his chair and seized him by both shoulders. “Julian!”
All the roar had gone out of General Horgan and he was now so uptight that his voice had been reduced to a falsetto squeal as he inquired, “What the hell is going on here? I think I’m going to go out of my mind.”
For all Sisson cared at that moment the general’s mind could go where it liked. He said, “Julian, have you still got that diagram?”
Julian replied, “Is it all right, sir? I mean, you said if I was in any trouble I should . . .”
The words came tumbling from Sisson, “Yes, yes, that’s right. I did. That’s exactly what I said and you were perfectly right to come. But your invention. You see, they’d all like to have a look at it.”
It was considerably bewildering to Julian but still clear what the colonel wanted and so he reached into his pocket and took out the grubby drawing of the Bubble Gun which Sisson unfolded and placed dramatically on the centre of the conference table.
General Horgan had been just about to let out another yell and now had to swallow the air he had drawn in for that purpose, causing his eyes to pop. He pointed a finger at the sheet of paper and managed to get out, “What’s that thing?”
Sisson announced, “You said, sir, to produce the kid and his diagram, or else. Well, this is the kid, and that’s the diagram,” and then said to Julian, “Have you got the gun too?”
Julian reached into his pocket and produced it. Sisson laid it on the table. “And that’s the gun,” he added.
The two articles lay there hypnotizing the gaze of an entire section of the Intelligence and Diplomatic Service of the United States of America. Nobody seemed to be able to move.
An unidentified voice inquired in the stillness, “What time is it in Moscow?”
One of the Russian experts glanced at his watch. It was a quarter past eleven. He said, “Quarter past eight.”
Another voice said, “Jesus,” and then there was silence again.
General Tom Horgan now arose. He was, as a general should be, a huge, massive, ex-football playing figure, so powerful and bulky in his uniform as to give the impression of being undamageable by any existing type of military hardware. He leaned on his knuckles on the table, bent forward and scrutinized the diagram. The assemblage waited. Nobody said anything any more. Julian stood by Colonel Sisson and for a moment stared anxiously into his face. The colonel did not know why but he was moved to put a protective arm about the boy’s shoulder.
The general then reached forward and picked up the Bubble Gun. Like every ordnance man who ever lived, upon handling a pistol, he weighed it first in his palm and fitted it to his grip. He held it up to his eyes and examined it closely. He held it to his ear and shook it. Then, holding it at arm’s length, he squeezed the trigger.
Before the horrified eyes of the experts, a soap bubble began to form at the muzzle. It expanded, inflated and grew until it was the size of a grapefruit, at which point it detached itself and, caught by the indirect lighting from the ceiling of the conference room, became exquisitely iridescent. It floated, changing colours. Ascending, it entered the strata of the air-conditioning and on that current, before the fascinated eyes of the assemblage, it drifted straight for the watching portrait of Richard Milhous Nixon where it burst silently, leaving one tiny damp stain on the plateglass in the frame.
“HA!” burst from the lungs of General Horgan, and for a petrified moment, none of them knew whether this was the beginning of another bellow, a cry of anguish, or a sneeze, until it was followed by similar explosions, “HA HA HA HA HA!”
The general was laughing!
“HA HA HA HA HA HA!”
The table, the chairs and the whole room seemed to shake as he squeezed the trigger again and a whole stream of bubbles emerged.
And now the awful hypnotic spell was broken. The general was laughing; then laughter was permitted. They had all been bursting to let go and now they did and raised the roof with their shouts and screams, their yelps and yaks and bellows of merriment as the general pounded the tabl
e with his fist in hysteric guffaws and began to find words.
“Oh Jesus, Jesus, wait until the sons of bitches see this. This is the funniest goddamn thing that ever happened. Wait ’til they try to figure this one out. This is better than anything we could have sent them. John, you’re a goddamn hero even though you’re a stupid bastard as well. I’ll get you a gong for this if it’s the last thing I do. Oh, brother, brother, I’d give my retirement pay if I could be over there now, when they get a load of this.”
The conference disintegrated, the friendly general was slapping Sisson on the back. It wasn’t only in the movies. The marines sometimes did arrive in the nick of time.
Julian thought they were all crazy.
In Moscow it was not a quarter past eight. It was a quarter past seven, the Pentagon Russian expert having been wrong in his calculations. He usually was. In a conference room hidden away in a secret place on the edge of the city, General Barzovsky, his staff and a collection of experts from the KGB, and allied intelligence, espionage and counter-espionage units were there.
The conference room was extraordinarily like the one in the Pentagon Building, the same long polished table, the same framed photograph looking down from the wall except that there were two photographs instead of one, Lenin, of course, and then the dour visage of Brezhnev. The other difference was that the frame holding the photograph of Brezhnev was so constructed that the top could be removed and another photograph substituted in a matter of seconds. But General Barzovsky appeared just as huge and bullet-proof, square-headed and formidable as General Horgan. The light glinted from polished black boots instead of brown. Huge, blue-uniformed chests were covered with medals and ribbons. The civilians wore ill-fitting sack suits.
There was tension, high tension, in the room as the assemblage awaited the fruition of years of planning and preparation to lay their hands on what had been hinted at as America’s newest and most secret weapon. The spy planted in the United States twelve years before to be available for that one moment, had succeeded in photographing it, a brilliant technician of the Soviet State had succeeded in making a model. It was to be revealed.
General Barzovsky looked at his watch and rumbled, “Well?”
A flustered aide also examined his watch and said nervously, “Any moment now, comrade general. We have had word that Comrade Uvanov is on his way here.”
There was a stir at the door, murmurs, heel clicks, the sound of passwords being demanded and given. The entrance was impressive. A major in his greatcoat and epaulettes; Comrade Uvanov, still in his laboratory overalls; and behind him Comrade Allon. Comrad Allon was not entirely happy or comfortable for he was flanked by two members of the counter-espionage group. The major saluted and said, “Comrade general, here is Comrade Uvanov of the Special Engineering Branch, Comrade Allon of whom you have been told, and Comrades Vishky and Rumov you know.”
“Well?” rumbled General Barzovsky.
“Proceed,” ordered the major.
Comrade Uvanov threw a scrutable look at the major for he was not entirely happy either but the officer was implacable and so the ordnance engineer produced an enlarged photocopy of a diagram of the interior construction of a pistol, and likewise, made up from the diagram in black gunmetal and about the size of a .38 automatic, a model of the gun itself. This he laid upon the diagram in the centre of the conference table. In the same deathly silence that had reigned only ten minutes before in the far-off Pentagon, those gathered around the table were semi-hypnotized.
General Barzovsky arose, likewise placed his knuckles upon the table, leaned forward and examined both articles.
“And what may I ask is that?” he said, indicating the diagram.
The major clicked off the reply as though by rote, “It is a photograph of the diagram of the latest secret weapon of the Department of Ordnance of the United States Army obtained by Comrade Allon.”
“And that?” inquired the general.
“That,” replied the major, “is a working model of the secret weapon itself achieved by the skill of Comrade Uvanov and with the aid of the obviously coded instructions to be found on the photograph. And here, Comrade General, may I put in a word for the genius of Comrade Maranovsky of our decoding department who broke the code by discovering that it was not a code at all, but actual instructions for manufacture of the weapon, thus bringing to naught the brilliance of the American scheme to confuse us.”
General Barzovsky once more regarded the diagram and then he looked over Comrades Uvanov, Allon and the major and all those sitting about the table in silence and the expression upon his face was of one looking at the insane.
He reached over now and took the diagram in his left hand and the gun in his right. He went through the ritual of examination, then dropped the diagram back on to the table and holding the pistol at arm’s length, squeezed the trigger. A grapefruit sized bubble formed faithfully at the nozzle, detached itself and floated away and then another and another and a fourth and fifth as the general kept squeezing. They were all of the same size for the comrade engineer had constructed the model from the pencilled corrections made by Colonel Sisson rather than from Julian’s original. This Bubble Gun was working perfectly. The bubbles that filled the air of the conference room were even more beautiful than those that had entertained the Pentagon group, for in place of indirect lighting there was a huge central crystal chandelier. The building formerly had belonged to the chief of staff of the army of His Most Holy Majesty, the Czar of All the Russias. The crystals of the chandelier broke the light into all the colours of the rainbow and the bubbles caught them up magnificently and floated away with them to burst here and there wherever they alighted before the horrified gaze of the onlookers.
In a way it was as though the general himself was hypnotized for he did not seem to be able to stop squeezing the trigger and producing more bubbles. Not all of them exploded, Russian soap apparently was tougher than the American brand. Some settled upon heads or shoulders, others came to rest on the backs of chairs or on the table. One rose briefly into the air and then returned and settled comfortably upon the hand of General Barzovsky where it reflected him expanded fivefold in the manner of one of the mirrors in a fun fair before it blew up quietly and in doing so broke the spell, for the general who put the gun back on the table, sat down, raised one ham of a fist and thundered it down upon the wood while from his massive chest there burst the most tremendous, “HO!”
Comrade Allon quietly slid to the floor in a dead faint, for there was nothing for him but the firing squad and thus he missed the second and third “HO’S!” which burst from the general to startle and surprise the trembling gathering as “HO!” after “HO!” flowed and tears streamed from the general’s eyes. He was laughing his head off.
He was laughing. General Barzovsky was laughing. He was not angry, infuriated, maddened with rage, he was pleased to be amused. Then it was permitted for everyone to laugh and so shouts and screams and yells and bellows went up to join the hilarity of a Russian general with a sense of humour until the last of the bubbles exploded into nothingness and the crystal pendants of the great chandelier tinkled against one another, stirred by the waves of laughter.
C H A P T E R
1 5
Julian asked, “What happened?”
They were in Sisson’s office, the sergeant sitting at his table was still grinning to himself. The story had circulated. The colonel rocked back in his swivel chair. On his desk before him was Julian’s diagram and the Bubble Gun. He likewise indulged in a reflective smile before he replied.
“It’s too complicated, Julian.” And then feeling that this was unfair and on the short side, he said, “Often when men get into a panic over some things and become nervous and fearful, and fear that all is getting out of control, they react to the situation by doing something silly in the hope that what it is that is worrying them will get distracted and go away.”
Julian, in his straight-backed chair, the soles of his sneak
ers barely meeting the carpet, stared. The explanation was not being all that explanatory.
“Well,” the colonel continued, “due to an accident of circumstances and thanks to you as well, something sillier than usual happened and everybody is very pleased with me, and I shall be eternally grateful to you.”
“Me?” Julian cried. “What did I do?”
The colonel did not reply immediately. Then, he said gravely, “As I told you before, Julian, it’s a little too difficult to explain, but I want you to make me a promise, will you?”
Behind their lenses, Julian’s eyes grew larger.
The colonel then said, “About anything you saw or heard in that room you keep your lip buttoned.”
Julian was momentarily rendered speechless by the tremendous import of the colonel’s warning, but even better was to come.
“Here,” added the colonel and opening a drawer of his desk, he extracted a rubber stamp and ink pad and applied the former to the latter. Then, he reached over and carefully pressed the stamp first upon Julian’s diagram and then upon the back of the boy’s hand. In glorious purple ink it read TOP SECRET.
“Get it?” the colonel asked.
Julian looked upon the mark on his hand as though he had been awarded the Congressional Medal and, without realizing it, raised it and held it momentarily to his cheek where it made a faint purple smudge. Then he whispered, “Yes, sir. I wouldn’t say anything to anyone, ever.”
The marvel of what Colonel Sisson had done all but totally stifled his curiosity, but once again he felt the sweet inner thrill of having participated, of having in a mysterious way come close to something important, exciting and even dangerous in the world of grown-ups. The words TOP SECRET confirmed this. For the moment it was sufficient to have been told in this manner that he and his Bubble Gun had again played a part that this time was too tremendous even to be talked about. That was the way things were between men.
