“Jack,” she whispered, “you’re not being fair. Why aren’t you telling me the truth?”
“You ought to know why,” he answered. “Because from now on it’s safer to keep you in the dark.”
“I don’t care whether it’s safe or not,” she said. “I want to stay in this with you.”
It was bad soap opera, but although he was intellectually aware of it, he was moved by her wish. That was the trouble with being emotionally involved.
“Thanks,” he answered, “but the thing’s moved far enough so that you’re not necessary on the job here anymore. I want you to be back in Washington ready to meet me at the airport when I get there. It would be common sense even if I had not lost my head about you, Ruth.”
Yet he could not be sure that he was right. If he had not cared about her, it was possible that he might have still thought of her as useful. Anyone as attractive as she, and as good an operator, always did have uses.
“This shouldn’t have happened with you and me,” he said. “It was all a great mistake—professionally speaking, Ruth.”
“I don’t know,” she said, “and I don’t care. Anyway, I’m not going back. You’re going to want me around when you know what I know.”
“It’s got to be awfully good,” he said.
“It is,” she answered. “I know how to get Big Ben, and it’s got to be me, and nobody else. You were right. He’s fallen for me, flat on his face. Now what do you think of that?”
In the realm of Intelligence the first rule was never to underestimate any individual, but as events developed, another rule crept in—never to overestimate him, either. Everyone had his weaknesses. The Red Mill was a weakness, and in Intelligence a woman always—or almost always—made her appearance eventually. That was the reason for the Mata Haris. They were always there for some useful, though seldom proper, purpose. They were the ones who finally caught the best ones out. At any time any man might become a fool about a woman.
“You mean you’ve seen our boy again?” he asked.
It was dark, and they were whispering, but still she was able to giggle in that annoying way that she used so well as cover.
“Am I going home on the first plane out?” she asked.
“Go ahead,” he answered, “and tell me about our boy.”
“My boy,” she answered. “And he’s pretty cute in some ways, too—wistful. You’re not mad at me, are you? It was all done in a business way, and you’ve been pretty businesslike yourself.”
“I’ve had to be,” he said. “I’m not able to move from one thing to another indefinitely.”
She giggled noiselessly again.
“That’s why you need a girl along,” she said. “You must be awful in a man’s world, Jack, thinking clearly and cutting down everybody by the numbers.”
“Go ahead and tell me about our boy—I mean your boy,” he said.
“Well, he was kind of sweet,” she answered. “You see it was this way. After you left with those people I didn’t know exactly what to do. I know you told me to stay right here, but I couldn’t help being upset, considering. We shouldn’t let our emotions get involved, should we?”
“No,” he said, “we shouldn’t.”
“Anyway,” she said, “I felt I had to do something, and so I went downstairs, and outdoors and out to the driveway, and who do you think I saw?”
“All right,” he said. “You got out on the driveway and you saw Big Ben. What was he doing?”
“He had come out of the hotel with one of those big army Valpaks,” she said. “He was putting it in the back of a car.”
“It was a dark green Chevrolet coupé with a dented fender, wasn’t it?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Naturally.”
“They haven’t got much of a car pool, have they?” he said. “But then, they didn’t know that we’d spotted it. Was he in a hurry?”
“No, he was perfectly natural,” she said. “That’s one thing you can say about him. He’s always natural. I didn’t think we ought to let him go away like that, so I walked out into the driveway and said hello.”
“Was he surprised? How did he act?” he asked.
“Natural,” she said. “He didn’t seem surprised at all. He said, ‘Why, hi, there. Are you out looking for the boy friend?’ And I said, ‘Yes. A sort of funny thing happened. A Japanese knocked on the door awhile ago and asked him to step out for a minute, and he hasn’t come back, and I’m wondering where he is.’”
If he had planned it he couldn’t have given her better lines. She had said all the right things, and she knew her business.
“He laughed,” she went on. “He said, ‘It was only a little joke I played, honey, and I’m hell on jokes. He’ll be coming back all right. Why, I was just coming up to knock on your door myself, as soon as I’d stowed this bag.’”
Putting oneself inside Big Ben’s mind, it was barely possible that he had been amused by the collegiate quality of the episode. Big men were more apt to be practical jokers than smaller ones. It was just as serious to overestimate as to underestimate.
“I asked him if he honestly meant that he had got you out of the way on purpose,” she said, “and he said, ‘It was just a kind of gag. But I’m crazy about you, honey, and what you need is a real man, honey, and not one of these do-gooders who talks like a greeting-card salesman.’ How do you like that one, darling?”
“I don’t like it,” he answered, “but it was the way I’ve tried to talk. What did you tell him then?”
“What did you expect?” she asked. “I said I was beginning to like him too, and I said that you were always so prim and proper, and that I liked people with a real sense of humor. I said I wished he wasn’t checking out and leaving so soon. I had to say something, didn’t I, Jack? That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said, “I guess you’re right about that one, Ruth.”
“You see,” she said, “he liked me. In fact, he liked me so much that he forgot one or two things. It was important to play up to him, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said. “How did you play up?”
“Oh, not so very much,” she said. “But never mind it, Jack. Only, when he held me in his arms I kept thinking of Bill Gibson, and wondering where you were. It was damned unpleasant, Jack. And if you want to know, I’m tired of sex tonight.”
It helped him only a little to tell himself that of course she had to do what she had done, and that he had to view the whole business as objectively useful.
“For just a second I thought he was going to take his bag out of that Chevrolet and stay,” she said. “But he didn’t.”
“Not even when you asked him?” he asked her.
“Right,” she said, “not even when I asked him. And if I may say so, I sounded awfully good. He honestly did want to stay, but there was something that made him know he had to go in a hurry. He kept saying, ‘Gosh, I wish it wasn’t fixed so that I had to leave here.’” She gave a perfect imitation of his accent.
“Yes,” Jack Rhyce said, “but anyway, he went.”
“But not immediately,” she said. “He kept saying, ‘Gee, I’m crazy about you, honey.’ He seemed to be trying to make up his mind about something.”
“All right,” Jack Rhyce said. “And then he made up his mind?”
“Yes,” she said, “he made it up. He said, ‘Honey, this mustn’t be good-by. Call me as soon as you get to the city.’ Then he wrote down a telephone number and gave it to me. If he wasn’t there I was to leave my name and he’d call me back.”
After all, when you were in the business you had to give it everything you had.
“Good going,” he said. “I can use that number.”
“Oh, no, you can’t,” she said, “because I’ve torn it up already. Besides, he’ll know my voice. When you want him, I’m the only one who can talk to him, Jack—and I guess you want him, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, “I’m going to want him all right.
”
“Then you’ve got to keep me around,” she said, “and now let’s stop being so businesslike, Jack. God, I wish we were both on the outside.”
They were a long way from the outside, but the desire for escape and humdrum security formed a tantalizing vision that had an unattainable quality.
“I’m going to talk to you about being on the outside when we get home,” he said.
“Let’s talk about it now,” she said. “We could have a cabin by a lake like the people in that book who took to the woods. I’m a pretty good cook, and you could fish or make snowshoes or whatever they do in the woods.”
“Yes,” he said, “but we’d better talk about it sometime later, not now.”
As a matter of fact, you wouldn’t have to do much of anything,” she said. “I have a pretty good income. You’d be surprised. We could travel and see the pyramids or the Taj, or we could go into the Mau Mau region.”
“No,” he said, “I’d rather buy a farm.”
“A dairy farm,” she said. “You could put on white overalls and a jumper every time you milked a cow.”
“I can milk a cow, as a matter of fact,” he said.
“I wish I could talk you into traveling,” she said. “Only think what it would be like if you and I went to London, and if we didn’t have to check in anywhere, and didn’t have to be startled when we saw one of those damned familiar faces—if we could just be ourselves, having a quiet breakfast and reading the papers, without having to watch for anything, without a single damned compulsion.”
“Without having to talk to anyone,” he said. “Without having to find out anything, even the time of day.”
“Without having to look over our shoulders once,” she said.
“Without a switch-blade in your handbag, dear,” he said; “without a pill, or anything.”
“That reminds me, what happened to my handbag, Jack?”
Her question broke the illusion. They never should have indulged themselves with talk about the outside, or with the immature wishes that such talk engendered.
“Moto has it,” he said. “He’ll bring it in the morning. Look. It’s getting light already. We’re going to pull out of here first thing after breakfast.”
“Going where?” she said.
“Back to Tokyo,” he said.
“Doing what?”
“Doing just what we did before,” he said. “The Friendship League. Mr. Harry Pender, all that sort of thing.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me anything?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.”
“You’ve found out something, haven’t you?” she asked.
“Never mind,” he said. “What you don’t know won’t hurt you, Ruth.”
“Is it as tough as all that?”
“Never mind,” he said.
“I don’t,” she said, “as long as it means you like me.”
“That’s the trouble,” he said. “I like you.”
“I won’t be any trouble, Jack,” she said. “I’ll promise you I won’t.”
“I know you won’t,” he said.
“Then let’s talk about the outside some more,” she said. “There are all sorts of things I’d like to tell you—about when I was a girl at school, about parties, about all sorts of things. Jack, it’s time we got to know each other in an outside way.”
“I know,” he said. “Later—there isn’t time right now.”
There was never time to think about yourself when you were in the business. Externals kept crowding in, each offering its own insistent problem. He wished to heaven he could keep her out of it, but it was too late now, after what she had told him. You had to move forward. You never could move back, and outside it was daylight, and the first birds were singing. Bill Gibson was dead in Chrysanthemum Rest—an overdose of sleeping pills—but still the show had to go on. He would have known better what to do if he had only known what Bill Gibson had been prepared to tell him. Yet even without the knowledge the picture was growing clearer. Time was all that was needed. He wished that he did not have the feeling that time was running out.
17
JACK RHYCE knew a great many stories about the business; and all of them, when one delved beneath their surfaces, had one thing in common—a universal element of simplicity. After all, the framework of an apparatus could not be complex, if only because too many links and convolutions threatened confusion, and Communist techniques ordinarily left their own dreary signatures. Consequently, later, whenever Jack Rhyce reviewed his procedures in Japan he was not surprised to find how little there was about them that was bizarre or even interesting. A series of coincidence^ had given him a lucky break, although the break had been complicated by the killing. There was also the mistake in identity that had arisen between himself and the Japanese element in the picture, which fortunately had been rectified. Aside from these complexities, the picture was like any one of dozens of others that kept repeating themselves in various parts of the world. Any trained agent, Jack Rhyce knew well, could have achieved the final results that he did. As soon as he had made contact with the Japanese, the lines all began to untangle. It was only the old story of infiltration and cover. As soon as he had spotted Mr. Pender and the Pen Pal room in the Asia Friendship office, most of the rest began to be routine. There was only one unknown element that made him apprehensive, and this lay in Mr. Moto’s remarks about political assassination. The balance of everything in the Orient was precarious. It was his duty to learn more, especially if it would have anti-American repercussions. The Japanese had their own network of agents and, as Mr. Moto had said, they doubtless would turn up facts. However, there was every reason for him to do some thinking of his own.
After they returned to the Imperial Hotel on Sunday afternoon, he left Ruth Bogart in her room. The less she knew, the better off she was. He told her to sit quietly and to read a good book, but not to leave the room in case he telephoned. He and Mr. Moto left the hotel together in the Buick. He was the foreigner again who needed a guide, and if anyone was listening, they had only heard him ask to be taken to the Mei-ji Museum. They talked while Mr. Moto drove expertly through the traffic. Although the ride was a short one, they were able to say a good deal by the time they had parked the car in front of the conventional European building that housed the pictures illustrating the reign of Japan’s greatest Emperor. The hour was late enough so that the place was closed, but under the circumstances, it was all the better.
“I know the guardians,” Mr. Moto said. “They will put on the lights, and while I telephone you may enjoy the pictures. I think I can do everything from here very safely.”
It was only a question of Moto’s getting the latest news, which was the province of the Japanese, not that of Rhyce, and so Jack walked alone up the great marble staircase to the two great galleries. Granted that the pictures themselves had little individual artistic merit, together they made a panorama that illustrated one of the most dramatic life spans in history. The Emperor Mei-ji had been born and had spent his childhood and youth in a feudal Japan, insulated from the world. The Emperor had been a figurehead in those days, under the rule of the great Tokugawa lords. The early scenes of his birth and coronation showed the rituals of a country which had hardly changed since its cultural contacts with the Tang dynasty in China. It was the appearance of the American Navy in the early 1850’s that had finally awakened the nation’s latent instinct for survival. There were the pictures of the Emperor arriving in Tokyo to establish his rule in the Tokugawa fortress, scenes of war and incipient rebellion, and the strangely touching painting of the Emperor’s mission departing on foreign ships to study the civilization and customs of the West. There was the Emperor drilling his troops in the European manner; there was the war with China, the war with Russia, the European costumes and uniforms, the Europeanized Japanese Navy, the annexation of Korea; and finally the crowd at the moat by the black wall of the Tokyo fortress lamenting the E
mperor’s death in 1912. If the current of time had run more swiftly since that year, nothing, not even the atom bomb at Hiroshima, had presented a greater succession of contrast; for in the Emperor’s lifetime, a nation with smaller resources, more backward and seemingly less adaptable than China, had become a modern state and a world power, and its future was still implicit in the pictures. He must have examined these for more than half an hour before Mr. Moto joined him.
“You understand them, do you not?” Mr. Moto said. “They are our Bayeaux tapestry. Poor Japan.”
He had not thought of comparing the pictures with the tapestry of the Norman ships embarking their horses and their chain-mailed soldiers, with their steel helmets and nose protectors, for the battle of Britain, but it was not a bad comparison. Under the rule of the Emperor, Japan had gone through many crises as great as Hastings, and the story was not over yet.
“Skirov is believed to be here, but cannot be traced,” Mr. Moto said. “There is much activity. Large quantities of banners have been made already saying ‘Down with American Imperialism’ and ‘Avenge the People’s Martyr.’ Communists are always so well organized for demonstrations.”
In view of what he had seen in other parts of the world, the news was normal and not surprising. The Rosenbergs not so long ago had been the people’s martyrs.
“We will have more definite news by tomorrow, I hope,” Mr. Moto said. “Some of our best people are working tonight. I shall be out myself. I should also tell you that they have found the lodging of your Mr. Ben, but he has not returned.”
“Miss Bogart can get him if necessary,” Jack Rhyce said.
Mr. Moto shook his head slowly. “It will not be necessary,” he said, “if he is not hiding.”
“You can reach me at the hotel tonight,” Jack Rhyce said, “and tomorrow at ten-thirty I will be there at the Friendship League, talking to Mr. Pender.”
They did not speak as they walked down the marble staircase. After all, the business was routine, and the only question to be answered concerned the reason for the meeting of Skirov and Big Ben.
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