The Mouse That Saved The West: ebook Edition (The Grand Fenwick Series 4)

by Leonard Wibberley

  The conference ended with nothing new proposed and on a note of pessimism. When they had all left the President reflected gloomily that he had lived to see the day when the United States was spending millions of dollars on the erection of windmills as a source of power, putting the nation on a level with the Dutch in the sixteenth century. The consensus of the meeting had been that the country should go back to burning coal and handle the pollution problem as it arose.

  "Backward," the President said to himself. "We're going backward. We're exploring the satellites of Jupiter and looking to power sources four and five hundred years old. This nation has lost more than sources of fuel. It's lost its self-confidence and imagination. We go around apologizing for everything we do. A hundred years ago we were laying down railroads from coast to coast and fighting the hell out of the Indians. Now we're apologizing for laying down the railroads and the Indians are fighting the hell out of us.

  "Unless we get a grip on ourselves we're lost. Our greatest national output will be abject apologies to anyone who says we've trodden on their toes."

  He picked up an advance copy of Time magazine and leafed through it nervously, and his eye fell on an advertisement for Franklin woodburning stoves. He dropped the magazine into the wastepaper basket and somehow felt a lot better.

  CHAPTER V

  Mountjoy's second letter to the President of the United States was a simple one and in view of the Count's irritation it was almost good-natured. It read:

  "Dear Mr. President:

  "As you are aware, there is in existence a treaty of peace and mutual aid between the United States of America and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick containing various general provisions under which each country will help the other in time of need, if called upon, and specific provisions aimed at perpetuating the peace between your nation and mine.

  "One specific provision of this treaty has unfortunately been broken without, I am sure, your knowledge or that of the Senate of the United States. I refer to Article XXXII, paragraph 12, subparagraph 3a, which reads, 'The Government of the United States further under takes to ensure that there shall at all times be an efficient method of heating the castle of Grand Fenwick and of supplying the occupants of said castle with an ample amount of hot running water.

  "'If the United States should fail in this regard, then the matter shall be drawn directly to the attention of the President of the United States, who will issue the instructions needed to remedy the situation.'

  "I respectfully wish, Mr. President, to call your attention to the fact that four weeks ago I addressed a letter to you on this subject but received in reply a communication from your Mr. Hannigan referring to various tensions in the Near East (of which this government is quite aware) and a pamphlet issued by your Department of the Interior on methods of insulating houses to reduce fuel costs.

  "I cannot, even with the greatest goodwill, regard this as a sufficient fulfillment of the obligations of the United States under the article already referred to. I must therefore ask that instructions be issued for the immediate and continuous supply of sufficient fuel oil to carry out the provisions of this particular article.

  "May I, at the same time, Mr. President, assure you that I have the fullest sympathy with your administration in the crisis which must arise when the full impact of the energy shortage becomes known to the public. In this respect, a mild winter in your northern States would be of the greatest benefit. I am aware that it is not uncommon for governments to be rudely shaken by the weather.

  "The picture, however, is larger than any one nation, and with this in mind I have instructed Dr. Kokintz to concentrate his research on the whole problem of energy and, with the agreement of my own advisers, have set aside a substantial sum to be devoted to this research."

  The substantial sum to which the Count of Mountjoy referred was an amount of two hundred Grand Fenwick pounds, totaling a little over four hundred dollars in American currency. Even for Grand Fenwick that could hardly be called a substantial sum, but Mountjoy excused the term on the grounds of diplomatic need. He had in mind applying for a loan at a later date to forward the research as soon as Kokintz reported any kind of progress.

  As with the previous correspondence, this letter was fielded by Hannigan, who sent it over to the Central European Desk of the State Department with the notation "Please advise." Peter Wormsley, who was the official in charge of that section of the State Department, puzzled over the letter for half an hour trying to decide on its real meaning. That the real meaning was plainly set out in the letter itself did not occur to him at all, for his many years in the State Department had taught him that this was rarely the case. The phrase "the crisis which must arise when the full impact of the energy shortage becomes known to the public" bothered him, followed as it was by the reference to the atomic physicist Kokintz. The only crisis he could think of was the embarrassment of the President in seeking reelection in November with the greater part of the nation shivering in their homes and lining up for gasoline at service stations. But that was too obvious and therefore could not possibly be the crisis to which the Count of Mountjoy was referring.

  He picked up the telephone and pressed a series of buttons which played a tune which sounded remarkably like "Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be?" He wondered, not for the first time, who the joker was who had arranged that combination of numbers for Central Filing.

  "Johnson here," said a voice at the other end.

  "Wormsley, Central Europe. Please send me the situation file on Grand Fenwick."

  "Grand who?"

  "Grand Fenwick. The Duchy of Grand Fenwick." There was a slight pause while Johnson considered whether someone was pulling his leg. He was new in the department, an earnest and humorless young man who had once spent two hours looking for the file on the Electorate of Brandenburg before discovering (in the Britannica) that the Electorate had been merged into the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701.

  "The Duchy of Grand Fenwick," he said at length. "Okay. It may take a little time. They've misplaced Saudi Arabia. It's somewhere between here and the White House."

  "Hang Saudi Arabia," said Wormsley. "I want that file on my desk in five minutes." He hung up and pressed some more buttons, being rewarded with a slightly off-key rendition of "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean."

  "Schilotz," he said. "Wormsley speaking. Would you be kind enough to drop by Central Filing, pick up the situation file on Grand Fenwick and bring it to me. We've got a problem."

  "Okay," said Schilotz. He put the phone down and stared at it meditatively for a while. He was a fattish man who although in his mid-fifties retained a look of boyishness, perhaps because his thinning hair was still blond and silken and his face and hands plump and unwrinkled.

  His clothes had a boyish look, the jacket a little too tight and the pants uncreased and always slightly rumpled. He liked neutral colors and exuded a general air of timidity. He was an Aries and never failed to read his horoscope in the daily paper before reporting for work. His forecast for the day had read, "Pay attention to details. Small events may prove of the greatest importance. Be imaginative. Express yourself."

  " 'Be imaginative. Express yourself,' " he repeated, went to Central Filing, picked up the Grand Fenwick folder and took it to Wormsley's office.

  "What do you think of that?" Wormsley asked, throwing him Mountjoy's letter as soon as he was seated. Schilotz read it through, passed a plump hand over his fair, boyish hair and said, "Sounds serious." It was a safe thing to say because he knew that Wormsley never asked him to his office unless he was worried about something.

  "What I don't like about it is that phrase about the crisis that must arise when the full impact of the energy shortage is known to the public, followed by the reference to Kokintz," Wormsley said. "What crisis? You don't suppose that that idiot Mountjoy is referring to the Q-bomb, do you?"

  " 'Impact,' " Schilotz said. "That isn't the kind of word Mountjoy uses often. I'm pretty familiar with his style and I'd expect him t
o say 'effect' or 'outcome' or 'result-something smooth. Impact is—explosive."

  "Yes," Wormsley said, "and so's that damned Q-bomb. You know of course that Kokintz is the man who put that piece of damnation together. He was the first to identify and then produce quadium, a form of hydrogen which has not existed in the known universe for billions of years. The mass difference of the nucleus is greater than any other known element. That means that, size for size, it's more effective than anything else. But surely he's not threatening us. I mean Grand Fenwick threatening the United States?"

  "Oh no," said Schilotz. "That would be over-reacting outrageously."

  "Well, they went to war with us over a bottle of wine," Wormsley said. "They might do the same thing over a tub of hot water."

  "Be imaginative," Schilotz said to himself, recalling his horoscope. Still, the concept of Grand Fenwick threatening the United States was surely being overimaginative. And yet in his letter Mountjoy made abundant and detailed reference to the terms of the treaty of peace between the United States and Grand Fenwick.

  "There's the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks," he said tentatively. "Grand Fenwick is custodian of the Q-bomb and as far as we know they haven't revealed its composition, if that is the correct word, to anyone.

  "If the treaty is broken, there's nothing to stop them from sharing it with the Russians. I don't say they would do that. Their whole sympathy lies with the United States. But the possibility exists—a remote possibility, but it is still there.

  "In any case all that needs to be done, surely, is restore their supply of heating oil and gasoline. It doesn't amount to much. I can't understand why it was cut off or reduced in the first instance."

  "Some bureaucratic foul-up," said Wormsley. "What are the details of supply, anyway?" Schilotz skimmed through the papers in the file and produced several slips of blue paper. "It seems that the Compagnie Internationale des Produits Mazout Français delivers the heating oil and gas to Grand Fenwick. Grand Fenwick pays the bill and then sends it, receipted, to us. They are reimbursed by the General Accounting Office. The French company, by the way, is a subsidiary of Pentex Oil."

  "Pentex Oil," said Wormsley. "Pentex Oil." Something stirred in his memory, something about Pentex Oil he had overheard or been told at one of Washington's innumerable cocktail parties. He reached for the telephone, pressed a series of buttons ("Two Lovely Black Eyes"), reached the Commerce Department, asked for their Corporation Holding Section, identified himself and said, "Pentex Oil. I think they're part of a conglomerate. Can you check for me, please?"

  "One moment."

  Several minutes elapsed before the voice came back on the line again and said, "Yes. Pentex Oil is one of the holdings of Transcontinental Enterprises. Alfonso Birelli is chairman of the board."

  "Son of a bitch," said Wormsley and put down the phone. He stared at Schilotz and said, "There's a real big fish involved in this thing. Pentex belongs to Transcontinental Enterprises and Transcontinental Enterprises belong to Alfonso Birelli."

  "Alfonso Birelli?" echoed Schilotz. He was on far too low a rung of the State Department ladder to have even heard of the name, but he pretended otherwise since Wormsley had referred to a "big fish" being involved.

  "Yes," said Wormsley. "We're going to have to handle this as if it were dynamite." He paused and Schilotz wondered why people referred to dynamite in the age of nuclear fission. He had that kind of mind. It flitted, birdlike, from twig to twig on even the most pressing occasions.

  Wormsley rested his elbows on his desk and clasped his hands so close to his face that he was talking through his thumbs. "There must be some reason why Birelli cut the fuel supply to Grand Fenwick," he said. "There's no question but that it was done on his instruction. Nothing happens in the whole Birelli empire that he doesn't know about. Nothing. The amount of fuel involved is insignificant. It wouldn't have the slightest effect on the world supply. But by cutting it he has managed to provoke a crisis not in a town or a city or a state but in a nation—because Grand Fenwick is a nation—and a most extraordinarily unpredictable nation.

  "He has a reason then, and that reason, in some way I don't see at this moment, may involve the United States in serious difficulties."

  He stopped, pulled open the top right-hand drawer of his desk and checked to ensure that the tape recorder was not running. Ever since Watergate, which had occurred during his junior year at Columbia, he had been very careful about what was recorded. He wouldn't want a word on any tape that referred to so powerful a figure as Alfonso Birelli.

  He looked sharply over at Schilotz and said, "What's your reaction?"

  Schilotz remembered that part of his horoscope which had advised him to express himself. He cleared his throat and said boldly, "I still think that all we have to do is see that Grand Fenwick gets the fuel it needs. The amount, as I said, is so small the government can supply it from its own stocks if there are some difficulties with the French company."

  "That would be to lock horns with Birelli," said Wormsley. "You don't lock horns with Birelli, particularly not in an election year. You don't seem to be getting the point."

  "If Birelli is behind this as you think," said Schilotz, "I don't see what he can achieve. What effect can it have on the world at large if someone puts the squeeze on Lilliput?"

  "Well for starters," Wormsley explained, "you have the announcement over the media that the world fuel crisis is so acute—though played down for the time being—that a huge oil company had to cut the little Duchy of Grand Fenwick to twenty gallons of gasoline a month or whatever.

  "Then people start thinking that the squeeze will affect the little guys first but they're going to feel it themselves. Then the public gets restless on the fuel issue and you have a few congressional committees investigating the whole thing with the usual charges of profiteering by importers, producers, shippers, refiners and distributors.

  "Then you get panic buying and the price of oil soars. That's just for starters. And remember that guy Birelli wrote the book on how to pull the strings in full view of the public. I haven't even touched on the impact on the election."

  Schilotz was impressed. All that from a few gallons of oil? Imagination. It was something he didn't have and it was the reason that Wormsley, and not he, headed up the Central European Division.

  "You may be right," he said slowly. "But if it's that big, don't you think we ought to talk to the Secretary about it?" He paused and passed his plumpish hand over his fair boyish hair again. He'd been bold. He'd expressed himself. Now he began to feel nervous. "On the other hand," he added, "if it's just a bureaucratic mix-up and we bring it to the attention of the Secretary, it will reflect badly on the department."

  "Where Birelli is concerned, there are no bureaucratic mix-ups," Wormsley said.

  "We could suggest that the Secretary mention the matter casually to Birelli," Schilotz explained. It was plain to him now that Birelli was a big enough man to be on speaking terms with the Secretary. "The Secretary might smoke something out of him."

  Wormsley looked again at the letter with "Please advise" written on it in Hannigan's firm italic script.

  "Thanks for your input," Wormsley said, dismissing Schilotz with scarcely a glance. He then pressed a button which would summon his secretary, Miss Rita Molino, to his desk. He had an important memo to dictate.

  CHAPTER VI

  The kite which Dr. Kokintz had made for Katherine de Mountjoy, great-granddaughter of the Count, didn't work very well. He had made several models for her, each an improvement on the other. The first was of the sort he had flown himself as a boy, a pair of light, crossed sticks forming an axis, firmly bound at the center, and one longer than the other. The four ends of the sticks were united by string, and the whole structure enveloped in a sheet of newspaper glued to the string with a paste made of flour. Provided with a tail of twisted pieces of paper, the kite worked well enough for Kokintz but Katherine had trouble flying it. It got caught in a tree and was wrecked and Ka
therine was in tears until Kokintz told her he would make her another.

  He made several, each an improved model, but some got caught in a tree and others suddenly nosedived and were smashed on the ground.

  "It's quite a problem," said Kokintz to the little girl. "Come help me feed the birds and we'll design a kite together that will not be afraid of trees or the ground. What do you have in your pockets?"

  He noticed that her pockets were bulging.

  Katherine took out a grubby handkerchief, a mechanical mouse, two pencil stubs, a piece of string with a lot of knots in it, a piece of funny putty and half a bar of candy.

  The candy bar was pretty firmly united with the putty, but she pulled them apart. It was chocolate-coated, the center being of toffee.

  "Want a bite?" she said, holding it out when she had cleaned the greater part of the funny putty off.

  "Yes," said Kokintz and bit off a piece. It tasted just as it had more than sixty years ago when he was a boy. He wondered why it had been so long since he had bought himself a candy bar. He had been busy; busy with the nature and significance of matter. But in all that business he should have left time for a candy bar. "Thank you," he said.

  "I like toffee best," said Katherine taking a bite herself. "But sometimes they only have that mushy raspberry stuff in the middle."

  "It's all sugar," said Kokintz, and his mind started to toy with the structure of the carbohydrate called sugar. "C six, H 12, O six," he said aloud, which he often did when he was talking to himself. "C six H 12 O six."

  "Is that something to do with the kite?" asked Katherine. "It's icky."