The Spy in the Ointment

by Donald E. Westlake

  And would he have succeeded, guarded as I would have been by Murray Kesselberg and Angela Ten Eyck and a dozen non-dues-paying pacifists?

  I shudder to think.

  I also shuddered when Lobo thudded by me, pounding phlegmatically back from the cloakroom, returning to his place on the platform. He gave one heavy side-glance to Mulligan, still yapping away about the English, who abruptly shut his mouth and popped down out of sight, as though attached to his chair by a spring.

  “Thank you, Mr. Mulligan,” Eustaly purred, “for both your brevity and your vote of confidence. And now, last but surely not least, we have Mr. Jack Armstrong of the National Fascist Reclamation Commission, NFRC. Mr. Armstrong.”

  Jack Armstrong was, at the most, twenty-three years of age. He was about six foot four, built like a champion swimmer or a running halfback, with the close-cropped blond hair, bull neck and retarded child’s face of the recruits in Marine Corps posters. “We,” he began, in a piping, effeminate, ridiculous voice, “who believe that history will show just how important a contribution to civilization was made by the late great Adolf Hitler, we who believe that the truth of this great man’s crusade has been distorted and maligned by the hired mercenaries of International Jewry, we who believe—”

  “Now really! Enough is enough!” shouted a voice, and I saw bobbing up front again the well-known head of hair that was all I’d ever seen of Eli Zlott. “After all the indignity,” he shouted, “all the atrocities we’ve suffered at the hands of—”

  “Lobo,” said Eustaly quietly.

  It was enough. The voice of Eli Zlott switched immediately off, and the mass of hair submerged.

  Eustaly smiled upon Jack Armstrong, who was standing there with his feet spread and his hands on his hips, ready to burst into the Horst Wessel Song as soon as his comrades came back from skiing, and Eustaly said, “Thank you very much, Mr. Armstrong. I believe we all have an adequate picture of your organization now.”

  “Heill” shouted Armstrong, snapped out a Nazi salute that bounced off the walls, and sat down as though he’d been shot.

  Even Eustaly seemed a bit taken aback, but he recovered almost immediately, and said, “Thank you all, ladies and gentlemen, for having chosen to join us this evening. I think you can see that you all do have much in common, and that you will be able most productively to work together for the better efficiency of all.” He smiled upon us like a proud father, and went on, “And now I would like to present to you a friend of mine, a brilliant tactician, one of the most versatile and knowledgeable experts in the area of civil disturbance the world has ever known, a man who will explain to you just what we hope to accomplish as a group, and how we intend to make this hope a reality. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Leon Eyck.” And he gestured dramatically toward a door off to the right of the platform.

  There was a second of expectancy, and then that door opened and Mr. Leon Eyck stepped out.

  All at once, Eustaly himself seemed small and insignificant, and all the rest of us were so many children. Leon Eyck—what an unlikely name for him, and not, of course, his name at all—was tall as an eagle is tall, lean as a wolf is lean, quick as a cheetah is quick. Lupine, saturnine, sure of himself and contemptuous of everything around him, he was dressed, inevitably, in flowing black, as black as his hair, as black as his eyes. His face, sallow and cruel and sardonically handsome, glinted like an evil thought. He strode with the grace of a dancer and the silence of an assassin, and when he stood on the platform and surveyed us, his eyes glittered with knowledge, black humor, and contempt.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, in a voice like torn silk. “Good evening.”

  Suddenly Angela was clutching my arm. I turned and frowned at her and saw her, wide-eyed and ashen-faced, cowering low in the seat. I leaned close to her, and when I asked her what was wrong, she whispered, shrill with terror, “It’s Tyrone! It’s my brother, it’s him, it’s Tyrone!”

  8

  Tyrone ten eyck! Angela’s black-sheep brother, the one who had disappeared behind the Bamboo Curtain into Communist China over a decade ago, who had been given up for dead or worse, whom no one had ever expected to see again anywhere in the Western world. And yet here he was, standing tall in a long low room at Broadway and 88th Street, New York City, United States of America, while his sister cowered in the audience in front of him, hidden behind an unreconstructed Stalinist named Hyman Meyerberg.

  I picked Angela’s rigid fingers off my arm one by one, leaned next to her ear, and whispered, “He can’t see you, he won’t notice you, relax. Put your coat on, put your hood up. And take down what he says. Whatever you do, take down what he says.”

  “Oh, Gene,” she whispered back, while up front her brother was thanking us for having attended tonight’s meeting, “you don’t know him, you just don’t know! He used to stick pins in me, and set fire to cats, and try to knock the servants downstairs.”

  “He won’t notice you,” I whispered, beginning to get a little shrill myself. “Just put your coat on, will you? And write down what he says.”

  “Oh, Gene!”

  Up front, Tyrone Ten Eyck had finished his introductory remarks and had now turned to Lobo, saying, “Get the charts, please.”

  Lobo lumbered away into the room from which Tyrone Ten Eyck had just emerged, while I somewhat frantically helped Angela into her coat and she kept dropping her pad, her pen, her pad, her pen, and each time insisting on bending down and picking it up again. While everyone else in the room was still and silent and attentive, we two were carrying on like a couple in a roller coaster, but so far neither Tyrone Ten Eyck nor anyone else seemed to have noticed.

  Lobo re-emerged, carrying a large easel, which he set up on the platform, and an armful of big poster cards, which he set up on the easel.

  Tyrone Ten Eyck stepped back next to the easel, saying, “Thank you, Lobo. And now, I think it would be best if you were to return to your post at the door. To be sure we won’t be disturbed.”

  Lobo rumbled away, and Tyrone Ten Eyck smiled at us. Where Eustaly’s smile had been butter, Tyrone Ten Eyck’s smile was fire. Where Eustaly’s smile had been distant, Tyrone Ten Eyck’s smile was ice. “Your attention, please,” he said, and, assured of our attention—all except Angela, who was trying to get her head inside the hood while picking up her pen while picking up her pad while cowering behind Hyman Meyerberg while writing shorthand while having a nervous breakdown—he turned to the easel, removed the first card, and said:

  “This is the structure of American government. As you can see, a snarl of bureaucracy at the bottom is all directed from only three centers at the top: the administrative, the legislative, the judicial. Those who would destroy this government quite often make the mistake of contenting themselves with the assassination of the administrative head, the President, which leaves the other two centers still functioning and intact. These are, as you can see, the Congress and the Supreme Court.” He turned his glinting face to us, and said, “We shall consider this thought a little later. For the moment, we move on.”

  He removed the card—it was simply one of those box-and-line affairs, such as high school civics textbooks are full of, and he was right in that it showed all the boxes dependent upon the three major boxes at the top, but so far so what—and said, “Now, let us consider another aspect. Where will we find the pool of talent for the future? Where are the cream of the national crops, the bright young statesmen, economists, sociologists, political scientists of tomorrow?”

  He patted the new card—which simply showed a list of country names, with some numbers after each name, none of it quite large enough to read from where we sat—and said, “Here. At the United Nations. Special assistants, under secretaries, aides, the bright young men from practically all the nations in the world, all gathered together in one glass cereal box on the East River. Another thought for us to consider a little later.”

  He turned and flashed a smile at us, then removed the UN card, and beneath it w
as a large photograph of a demolished building. “Ten pounds of a recently developed plastic explosive,” he said, gazing with some brooding pleasure on the photo, “did this much damage. This new explosive is malleable, almost like the toy substance called Silly Putty, and can therefore be hidden in unexpected ways. An electric charge is the detonating force.”

  Beneath that card was another line-and-box chart. “Only one nation of any great size, population, or importance is not represented at the United Nations, and that of course is China. China’s bright young men of the future, cut off from their counterparts in other nations, are inevitably developing as chauvinistic, provincial, uncultured, suspicious, and essentially incapable of true conceptualization.”

  Tyrone Ten Eyck faced us again, put his hands behind his back, studied us with some amusement, and said, “I see you are all watching me with a good deal of attention and very little comprehension. I do appreciate your forbearance in asking any questions, and I promise that eventually I will connect all of these elements together in an overall plan which will, I assure you, gladden the hearts of each and every one of you.” He turned back to the easel, reached for the card. “And now—”

  All this time, you understand, Angela had still been struggling into her coat. The left sleeve was on by now, the hood was more or less on, some of it did appear to be buttoned, but the right sleeve still flapped empty behind her. In a sudden paroxysm of panic and haste, lashing about in a frenzied attempt to get the right arm into the right sleeve, Angela now crashed her right elbow into the empty folding chair next to her, which promptly fell over backward and clattered—as only wooden folding chairs can clatter—to the floor.

  Ah, but that was nothing. That was only the beginning. In tipping over, this chair had unbalanced the chair next to it, and the chair next to that, and the chair next to that, and now, by the ripples, the whole damn row went clattering over, with a sound like a troop of cavalry on a tin roof.

  By now, everyone was looking at us. At us. And it wasn’t done yet, not by a long shot.

  As Angela and I stared at one another, horrified, paralyzed, the toppling row of chairs collided with the row of chain behind us, and that row went down. And the next row. And the next row. And the next row. Like dominoes, every chair on our side of the aisle between us and the rear wall went crashing and clattering and banging and toppling and shattering to the floor.

  The silence, after all that, was one of the loudest noises I’ve ever heard.

  In that loud silence, one voice spoke. It was Tyrone Ten Eyck’s voice, and it said, “Angela?”

  I looked at him. He was looking at her. He had taken a step forward, and he was staring with great intensity at his sister.

  Beside me, Angela half-whispered and half-moaned, “Ohhh, Geeene!”

  With sudden conviction, Tyrone Ten Eyck roared, “Angela! You little pacifist bitch!”

  “Run,” I suggested, took Angela’s hand, knocked over several more chairs, and headed for the exit.

  Lobo came through the drapes down there, looming between us and freedom, us and safety. And behind us Tyrone Ten Eyck shouted, above the rising hubbub of the baby terrorists, “Stop them! Lobo! Stop them!”

  It was probably the pronoun that saved us. If he’d shouted stop him, Lobo would have scooped me up like a ground ball. If the shout had been stop her, it was Angela who would not have made it to the door. But having been given the order to stop them, with no clear directive as to how to do it or which of us to stop first, Lobo was immobilized.

  “Bread and butter!” I called to Angela, hoping she would understand me, and gave her a push to the left at the same time as I angled away to the right. And so we flanked Lobo on both sides, as he held his arms out and looked baffled, and we ran through the drapes, out to the staircase, and down the stairs.

  The street was still windy, cold, and rainy, and now was deserted as well. This part of Broadway was strong on movie houses, but by now—about twenty to one—all of them were closed for the night. So were the delis, the liquor stores, the shoe stores, drug stores, clothing stores, candy stores that lined the street on both sides for block after block. A few cabs went by, their vacancy lights lit, but other than that we were alone.

  But probably not for long. Still holding Angela’s hand, I headed full tilt around the corner to where we’d left the convertible. If the top had been down, I think I just would have dived over the side, but the top was up and I had to do it the slower way, opening the curb-side door, shoving Angela in ahead of me, and sliding in after her, saying, “Get it started! Get it started!”

  I slammed the door, Angela stuck the key in the ignition, and a voice from behind us said, “So here you are.”

  We turned our heads, and there were two guys sitting in the back seat.

  Angela shrieked, and tried to get out of the car again by climbing over me, or around me, or if necessary through me. I fought her off, saying, “Cut it out, cut it out, they’re FBI men!” Until finally she subsided, took another quick squint at the two guys back there, and whispered, “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” I said, and motioned at them (I and J). “See how lean they are. See the gray suits, the lack of Adam’s apple, the out-of-date hats, the firm jawline.”

  “Very funny,” said I, and J snorted.

  I said to him, “She hasn’t been at this business as long as I have.”

  “The question,” I said to me (is this getting confusing?), “is where have you two been the last hour?”

  “The answer to that,” I told him, “will fascinate you. Guaranteed.” I said to Angela, “Drive downtown, honey, while I tell these two the story.”

  “It better be good,” I told me.

  9

  Apparently it was good, so good they had me tell it three times. First, I told I and J on the way downtown. Then, when we got to my apartment and found K going through my dresser drawers, I had to tell it again to him. And finally, after several phone calls by K, Angela and I were taken to an office building on Fifth Avenue near the library, where, in a small office described on its hall door as International Literature Affiliates, I ran through it yet once more, to L, M, N, O, and P. P was the boss, sitting at the desk, while L and M and N and O sat around on various window sills and pieces of furniture.

  A very unlikely office, this, for the people in it. Two huge dusty old windows half-covered by ramshackle venetian blinds looked out on one of the oldest airshafts in New York. Within, one wall was lined with olive-green metal shelving on which were stacked rows of forlorn-looking books—mostly fiction, it seemed like—in various languages. Opposite, an ancient cracked leather sofa in a really terrible rust-orange color was flanked by mismatched elderly floor lamps, one with a fringed shade. P’s desk was old, wood, scarred, phlegmatic. An old wooden filing cabinet looked as though it had spent most of its life being thrown on bonfires. The gray carpeting was so old it had trails in it, and the jiggly captain’s chairs in which Angela and I were sitting seemed to be of about the same vintage. All in all, the office looked to have been furnished from the Salvation Army during a clearance sale, and was illuminated mainly by a fluorescent desk lamp reminiscent of a dentist’s drill.

  In this setting I once again told my story—rather well by now—with interpolations from Angela, and when I was done I said, “I sure hope somebody took all that down. That’s the third time I’ve told that story, and I really don’t think I could go through it again.” It was by now nearly three-thirty in the morning, and exhaustion was beginning to make itself felt around the edges of my brain.

  “Don’t worry,” P told me. “It’s all down on tape.” He was somewhat older than the rest, stockier, shorter; the product of an earlier mold. He chain-smoked cigarettes, and had to pause now while he lit a fresh one from the butt of the old, then said, “Frankly, Raxford, it’s a wild story, and with your reputation my initial tendency would be to ignore you.” He stubbed the old cigarette in an ashtray, while beside me Angela looked indig
nant, and then went on, “But in this case there are a few factors which do tend to increase your credibility.”

  “Thanks,” I said. (Sarcasm is one of the few weapons of which pacifists approve.)

  It was also, apparently, a weapon that bothered P not at all. He went on, unruffled, “The names you mentioned, Mrs. Elly Baba and P. J. Mulligan and Eli Zlott and Jack Armstrong and Mrs. Selma Bodkin, all are the names of leaders of actual subversive organizations. Frankly, I’ve never heard of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. They sound right-wing to me, and our files have always been a little more extensive on the left. You can’t quote me on that.”

  He leaned back in his swivel chair, and swiveled to and fro while pursing his lips and brooding at his desk top. Ultimately, he said, “Also the business of Miss Ten Eyck’s brother. Information had already come to us from other sources that Tyrone Ten Eyck, under a variety of names, had entered the country for subversive and sabotage activities. His appearance here at this time, with the sort of people you describe, makes an unfortunate kind of sense.”

  Once again he fell into a brooding reverie, tapping cigarette ash on his trousers and glooming at his desk, apparently overcome by the thought of Tyrone Ten Eyck with the sort of people I had described. Finally he shook his head, roused himself once more, and said, “As for this man Eustaly, of course he does not deal in mimeograph supplies and equipment, we’ve checked that out very thoroughly. As, if you ask me, the FBI should have done in the first place. If they had, we wouldn’t have these problems facing us now.”

  I said, “Aren’t you FBI?”

  He gave me a world-weary smile and said, “No, we’re not. Quite another organization entirely.”

  I said, “CIA?”