The Spy in the Ointment

by Donald E. Westlake

  Uh huh. The second paper was Saturday’s Daily News—it figured the News would give this sort of story the biggest play—and now the story had graduated to page 3, and the accompanying photos were much larger and clearer than before. Yes, photos; one each of Angela and me. DEB DISAPPEARS; SUBVERSIVE SOUGHT ran the headline, and it was followed by essentially the same story as yesterday’s, but with additional exclamation points. A few foul lies about my part in the blowing up of customs shacks had also been inserted.

  The Sunday News was next. Still page 3, the same two photos and essentially the same story—this time pegged with the headline ANGELA AND THE BOMBER STILL OUT OF SIGHT—plus a picture in the center fold of the mimeograph machine in my bedroom. “Deserted hideaway of J. Eugene Raxford [they were getting it right by now] reveals no clues to where-abouts of missing society beauty,” etc., etc.

  Monday, yesterday, the story had begun to lose steam. Page 5, smaller item, no photos at all, headline POLICE STYMIED IN DEB DISAPPEARANCE. Ah, but this morning, Tuesday, quelle différence! Page 1, black headline covering half the page:

  ANGELA

  DEAD!

  story, page 2

  You bet the story was on page 2. A body, partially destroyed by an explosion of dynamite, had been found in a ravine in New Jersey the night before, and had been identified via dental history records as Angela Ten Eyck, missing heiress to—etc, etc. J. Eugene Raxford, bomber and terrorist being sought on other counts by the FBI, was wanted for questioning also in connection with the death—etc., etc. Anyone having any information on the whereabouts of Raxford—etc., etc.

  “Well,” I said.

  P took the papers back. “Realistic?”

  “It’s going to be quite a job later on,” I said. “Unraveling all that.”

  “It can be done,” he said calmly. “It’s been done before.”

  “What about Angela’s old man? He’s co-operating?”

  P’s smile turned to granite. “Reluctantly,” he said. “But fully. Take my word for it.”

  “I’m surprised,” I said. “I figured the old guy wouldn’t stand still for it, this kind of publicity in the trash press. And not even true.”

  “Mr. Ten Eyck,” P said carefully, “is in the munitions business, a business quite intimately connected with the federal government. The government itself is a prime consumer in that industry, and rigidly regulates the industry’s dealings with any and all other consumers. Believe me, Mr. Ten Eyck does not want the federal government to think of him as uncooperative.”

  I smiled, thinking about the old walrus blowing into his mustaches, clasping his hands behind his back, saying several unprintable things, and writing out some new contribution checks to the Republican Party. (Whenever the government infuriated Ten Eyck in some particularly personal way—which was often—he always mailed off a fresh contribution to the Republican Party. He did this even if the Republicans themselves were in power—which was seldom.)

  Karp, the administrative head of the site, came along then, saying, “What’s this? Not eating, Q? Best finish your breakfast, you’ve got quite a full day ahead of you.” To P he said, “Perhaps it would be best if we left him alone, sir.”

  “Right,” said P. He got to his feet, tucked his bale of newspapers under his arm, and said to me, “I’ll see you later on. We won’t be leaving here till after dark.”

  They left me alone. I looked at the food, which I knew I was too nervous to eat, and ate every mouthful of it. When you’ve been running around a lake for an hour before breakfast, it takes more than bad news, alarums, and intimations of mortality to keep you from packing the chow away.

  11

  Late that afternoon Duff wired me for sound. I walked into his hobby shop and he handed me a glass of water and a black medicinal-looking capsule, and said, “Take this.”

  I said, “Why?”

  “Bottoms up,” he said. “We’ve still got lots to do.”

  So I put the capsule in my mouth, downed it with water, gave him the glass back, and said, “Is it all right if I know what that was?”

  “Certainly,” he said. “A microphone.”

  “A who?”

  “You will excrete it,” he said, “in approximately three days. In the interim, you will be able to record and broadcast all conversations held in your presence.”

  I said, “You mean I’m bugged? I’ve got a microphone inside me?”

  “That’s right,” he said, calm and unperturbed. That was because he didn’t have any microphones inside him. “There are no special instructions in regard to it,” he said, “except that we would prefer you not to eat gassy foods. Now, try this pair of shoes on.”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “You’re going too fast. Gassy foods? What do you mean, gassy foods?”

  “Beer,” he said. “Baked beans. You know the sort of thing.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “Noise.” He made vague motions. “We have trouble picking up external conversations,” he explained, “unless the body itself remains quiet.” And he extended toward me a pair of black shoes with plain squarish toes, the sort of thing Navy men wear all the time, shoes that look mostly like bad drawings of shoes in cartoon strips.

  Moving gingerly, because the idea of a microphone in my stomach was still a trifle exotic to me, I sat down, removed my own shoes, and put these Navy clogs on in their place. They fit perfectly. In fact, they had the soft and comfortable fit that new shoes never have, and I looked at them on my feet and wondered how that particular miracle had been managed.

  Duff said, “How are they?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Are they new?”

  “No, they’re not. Now, in the—”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “They’re used shoes?”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “Why am I wearing somebody else’s shoes?” I asked.

  “The previous wearer,” he said, “has no further use for them.”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t want to know about that. That sounds ungood, I don’t want to hear any more about it. But what I do want to know about, I want to know why I’m wearing them.”

  “They contain,” he explained patiently, “your transmitter and receiver.”

  “My transmitter,” I said, “and receiver.”

  “Certainly. Information picked up by your microphone is carried via your skeletal frame to your right heel, and thus into your right shoe, which contains your transmitter. The transmitter has a range of not quite two miles, so there will always be at least one recording team within pickup distance.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. “And what about my receiver? That’s in my left shoe?”

  “Correct,” he said, avoiding an Abbott and Costello routine. “Come on over here.”

  I went on over there, where Duff motioned at a table littered with objects. “Choose which one you want to carry,” he said.

  I looked at the objects on the table: a pair of hornrimmed glasses, a watch with expansion band, an ostentatious ring with a green jade stone, a set of comedy-tragedy mask cuff links, an identification bracelet, an engineer’s pocket watch with a gold chain, a plain gold wedding band, a money clip shaped like a dollar sign, and a shiny Zippo lighter. I said, “What are these things?”

  “Speakers,” he said.

  “Oh ho,” I said, beginning to catch on. “In comes news to my left shoe, then up through my bones to one of these things.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “I’ll take the watch,” I said. “I don’t have a watch.”

  “Good. Try it on.”

  I tried it on, and the expansion band pulled all the hair off my wrist, one blade at a time. “That hurts,” I said.

  “It’ll stop. Now, whenever your control wishes to communicate with you, you’ll feel a slight tingling sensation in your wrist. At such time, put the watch to your ear. The sound will be low, but perfectly audible.”

  “It will, will it?”

  “No
w come this way,” he said, and led me past a lot more Flash Gordon stuff to another table littered with apparent innocents, among them a shiny new quarter, which he picked up and handed me, saying, “Keep track of this coin. When placed in water, it signals a strong directional beam, and should only be used if you are in serious difficulty and require rescue.”

  I looked closely at the coin and said, “Well, it’s probably the only shiny 1950 quarter I’m liable to have for a while, so I guess I won’t mix it up.” I put it in my pocket.

  “Fine,” he said. “Next, this credit card,” and handed me a laminated Diner’s Club card. “Please don’t use it for restaurant bills,” he said, “unless it’s absolute necessary. It isn’t a normal Diner’s Club account.”

  “I’ll say,” I said. “It’s got my name on it.”

  “It is,” he said, “an explosive, capable of doing approximately as much damage as a World War II hand grenade. If it becomes necessary to use it, use one of your shoelaces as a fuse, they’re specially treated. Wrap the lace once around the card, ignite the further end, and you’ll have approximately twenty seconds to take cover.”

  I said, “This thing blows up?”

  “As I just said,” he said.

  “You expect me,” I said, “to put this card in my wallet, put my wallet in my hip pocket, and sit down someplace. That’s called being hoist by one’s own petard, you know. It isn’t commonly known, by the way, but a petard is a kind of bomb. Not this kind,” I said, holding the credit card carefully but gingerly but carefully. “Some other kind,” I said.

  “Fire is required to ignite the bomb,” Duff assured me casually. “You can hit it with a hammer if you like, and nothing will happen.”

  “Can I have that in writing?”

  Duff smiled, as though I’d made a joke and not a very good one, and returned to his Mr. Wizard table. “Now, this,” he said, picking up an ordinary-looking black leather belt with a silver buckle, “is an antenna, in case you are in an area where transmission and/or reception is difficult. Tie this end to a handy radiator, pipe, some such thing, hold the buckle end in either hand, and your communications system will be augmented sufficiently to overcome most poor reception areas.”

  I put the belt on in place of my own, and Duff next handed me a ballpoint pen which would take pictures; a mechanical pencil which would fire a red signal flare; a necktie which, when set fire to, would create a smokescreen; and a handkerchief which, when immersed in water, released a noxious gas into the air that would induce nausea.

  I said, “For the record, I’d like to point out one last time that I am an avowed pacifist. I do not perform violent, warlike, or aggressive acts upon others, not even in self-defense. Passive resistance is my only weapon.”

  Duff, looking somewhat cynical, nodded and said, “Uh huh. My job is to arm you, Q. Whether you use any of this material or not isn’t my concern. I give you the stuff, I teach you its operation, and then I’m done with you.”

  “Are you done with me now?”

  “Yes. Good luck to you. I think Karp wants you now, in the front office.”

  “Thanks.” Then I felt a little sheepish at having sounded ungrateful for what he’d been trying to do, and I added, “I do want to thank you, Duff, uhh …”

  “It’s my job,” he said.

  “Well. Thanks, anyway.”

  I left there and went walking down the corridor, and very shortly noticed an odd tingling sensation on my left wrist. I looked at it, looked at the new watch sitting there, and wondered if the damn thing was getting set to electrocute me. Then I remembered that Duff had told me the tingling sensation meant somebody wanted to talk to me, and I should put the watch to my ear. I stopped, therefore, in the middle of a long and blank and empty corridor, and raised my left arm to put my watch to my ear.

  Whereupon I heard a tiny tinny voice repeating, over and over, “Say something. Say something. Say something.”

  “Me?” I said. All alone, in the corridor.

  “There you are,” said the tiny tinny voice, which I barely recognized as belonging to Duff. “Took you long enough.”

  “Can you really hear me?” I asked. I was alone, in a featureless corridor with green walls and gray carpeting. I was standing there all by myself, holding my left wrist pressed against my ear and talking out loud. I felt like an idiot.

  “One, two, three,” said Duff. “One, two, three.”

  “What?” I said.

  Duff said, “How am I coming through? Can you hear me all right?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “All right, fine. End of test.”

  Then there was silence. I continued to stand there, holding my wrist to my ear, hearing nothing but the faint ticking of the watch, and after a minute I said, “What do I do now?” And got no answer. Now I really was alone.

  Feeling very embarrassed, I put my arm down at my side and walked electronically away.

  12

  Karp was waiting for me in his office, as Duff had promised, and was not alone. P was with him, as were three other tough-looking men of P’s generation. As they didn’t identify themselves, and as I was already Q, they had to be R and S and T.

  Karp invited me to sit down, which I did, and then, as the others studied me critically, he said to the room at large, “Frankly, we’re rather pleased with our accomplishments in this case. Given an individual with no training or apparent aptitude in this line, without even military experience or training behind him, and with the psychological block of a belief in some sort of religious pacifism—”

  “Ethical pacifism,” I said. “Sorry to interrupt, but that’s a different group. You see, the difference—”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Perhaps some other time we’ll have an opportunity to discuss the differences. Gentlemen, I think Q himself has just given an ample demonstration of the difficulties we encountered in his case.”

  R, a basso profundo, grumbled, “We know it was a tough job, Karp. The question is, did you do it?”

  “To an extent,” Karp told him carefully. “To, I believe, a greater extent than anyone could have predicted.” He picked up and ruffled a bunch of papers, saying, “I have here our instructors’ reports, and may I say to begin with that they are unanimous in praising Q’s intelligence, adaptibility, and willingness to co-operate.” He gave me a tiny bow, and the least wintry smile he’d yet bestowed on me, and I felt myself go warm all over. It was like getting that CCNY sheepskin after all, and my pleasure at Karp’s compliment was marred only by the knowledge that I had to be some sort of buffoon to be taking pleasure from such a compliment in such circumstances.

  Karp went on, “The instructors, by the way, are also all agreed that they can hardly wait to get back to their normal duties with regular professional volunteer trainees. So much for that. Specifically, our code instructor gives Q highest marks in all areas of cryptography and cryptology, and expresses his belief that Q, unaided, could break any code up to Class Three within one day, and that, with sufficient incentive and training, he could become a full expert in the field. Since philosophy and cryptology are closely related arts, and since Q would appear to have some bent or interest in philosophical theorems, this aptitude is not necessarily to be considered surprising.”

  There were about twelve things in those last few sentences I wanted to dispute, and loudly, but I was rather keenly aware that this was neither the time nor the place for it. Instead of speaking out, therefore, I settled more deeply into my chair, set my mouth in grim lines, and began to compose in my head the most vitriolic pamphlet I had written since The Sissy and the Arms Race back in 1957.

  While I prepared this polemic, Karp continued unknowingly onward. “Our physical education instructor,” he said, “rates Q fairly above median in physical condition and stamina, and estimates Q’s survival quotient in a crisis situation at approximately seven hours. This, while far below the thirty-eight-hour minimum required for our normal graduates, is well above the thirty-seven-m
inute average of the man on the street or the slightly under two-hour SQ that Q arrived here with. On a related subject, our judo instructor tells me Q could overcome almost any sort of unarmed attack from up to five ordinary civilians, but of course would be rapidly defeated by any well-trained professional. A five-day miracle is beyond us.”

  R, the rumbler, rumbled, “We know that. We don’t ask you people to do the impossible.”

  Karp’s rewinterized smile suggested without words his disagreement, while he said, “Our electronics man has staged Q for transmission, reception, and various simple kinds of self-defense, and declares himself satisfied with Q’s understanding of the use and manipulation of the material given him. Our swimming instructor is equally satisfied with Q’s abilities to survive in the water. Q’s only total failure was in fencing, at which he showed so little aptitude that no real attempt was made to train him, but his progress in general gymnastics was, according to his instructor, encouraging.” Karp aligned his papers by rapping them edgewise on the desk top. “And that,” he said, “is just about that. Now, I expect you gentlemen wish to be alone for a while.”

  “Thank you,” rumbled R.

  Karp got to his feet, nodded efficiently to all of us, and left. R, immediately establishing who was now in command, moved over and sat behind Karp’s desk. He looked broodingly at me and said, “Raxford, I’ve been reading your dossier.”

  “I’d like to some time,” I said.

  “Frankly,” he rumbled, ignoring my insert, “I’m surprised that a man with your record and tendencies would agree to co-operate on any matter of national security or national defense. But I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. You’re here, you’ve demonstrated your willingness to co-operate over the past five days, and I here and now guarantee you every bit of assistance and co-operation this department can give.”

  I said, “Excuse me, but I feel I have to make a speech.”