(1976) The R Document

by Irving Wallace

  ‘Please go ahead,’ said Collins.

  ‘I was bullied into writing his damn book,’ said Young. ‘I didn’t want to, but Tynan made me do it. What happened was - I’d been living in Paris for some time, researching a book I intended to write not as a ghost but on my own - a book on the Paris Commune. Among the people I interviewed two years ago were an exiled British professor and his wife. Professor Henderson - he was an expert on the Commune - had been deported from the United States long ago for involvement in anarchist activities. The Hendersons had a daughter, Emmy, with whom I fell deeply in love. The first and only time in my life. And she fell in love with me. We agreed to get married. The only trouble was - I was married. Separated for some time, but married. The plan was that I’d return home to New York, get a divorce, then send for Emmy and marry her. Well, that divorce took some doing -‘

  ‘I know about those things,’ said Collins, taking Karen’s hand.

  ‘Finally, I lucked out. Had a moderate best seller - a political biography. By turning all the earnings over to my wife, I got my divorce. I prepared to send for Emmy. Meanwhile, Vernon T. Tynan had discovered me and decided I was the only person to write his autobiography. I refused. Tynan doesn’t like being turned down. He investigated me. He learned about Emmy and her parents. He learned that

  Emmy, like her parents, had been a confirmed anarchist. Unlike her parents, she had been a passive one, an intellectual one. She’s a gentle, sweet person and a political theorist, no more. Well, there Tynan had the goods. He confronted me with it. If I refused to cooperate with him on his book, he’d block Emmy’s entrance into the United States on the ground that she was an undesirable alien. On the other hand, if I collaborated with him on the book, he’d forget it and allow her to enter the United States the moment the book was done. That was the carrot he dangled in front of me. What could I do? I had to bite. That’s why I agreed to write his book.’

  ‘Awful, making you do it that way,’ said Karen.

  ‘Then what’s your problem?’ Collins wanted to know.

  ‘My problem is - Tynan double-crossed me. Two weeks ago, I got my hands on a whole new cache of material, of additional research for the book - papers, tapes, whatnot. Tynan gave it to me to copy. Lots of it was from the late Attorney General’s papers, lots was new material of Tynan’s. I’ve been copying this research so I can return the originals to Tynan. Well, yesterday, going through some of these papers, I came across a memorandum Tynan had written to Baxter - apparently he’d forgotten he’d sent it - advising him that Emmy Henderson, among others, was to be banned from entry into the United States since she was an undesirable alien. The memorandum had been written after his promise to me that she would be admitted. He still intends to punish me for turning him down in the beginning. You can imagine how I felt. I wanted to confront him with this blatant double cross, but I was afraid to. I didn’t know what to do. Then I realized that a carbon of the memorandum was surely in the files of the Immigration and Naturalization Service as well, and that the Service falls under your control. So that’s the other reason why I wanted to see you tonight. To ask if you could help me.’

  Collins did not hesitate. ‘Yes, Immigration is one of my departments. I can rule on the admissibility of aliens. I’ll be only too glad to look up your Emmy’s file. For your part, you send me what papers you have on her application. I’ll review the case. If she is what you say she is -‘

  ‘I guarantee she’s clean.’

  ‘ - then I’ll overrule Tynan’s recommendation and see that she’s admitted.’

  ‘Mr Collins, I can’t tell you how happy you’ve just made me. You don’t know how I appreciate this, what it means. You don’t know what I owe you.’

  Collins smiled. ‘I know what I owe you. But that’s not the consideration. It’s a matter of justice.’

  Karen was the only one at the table who was still disturbed. ‘I want you to do this, Chris. But I’m worried about Tynan. He won’t like it. He could be vindictive.’

  ‘Just don’t worry,’ Collins told his wife. ‘I know how to handle the matter.’ He looked at Young. ‘You go right on doing his book as if you don’t know a thing. I’ll take care of this quietly. He’ll never know it happened.’

  Karen seemed relieved, yet still concerned about Tynan. ‘Does he do this sort of thing often? Director Tynan, I mean. Interfering in people’s fives? Behaving this way? It’s incredible.’

  Ishmael Young shook his head, before returning to his food. ‘There’s nobody like him. With his investigative apparatus, he’s Big Brother incarnate. Hell, I’m sure there is nothing in your life, Mrs Collins, or your life, Mr Collins, or my own life that Vernon T. Tynan doesn’t know about. I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s the most powerful man in the country. If he isn’t, he will be, once the 35th Amendment is passed.’

  ‘It won’t be passed,’ said Collins quietly. “The day after tomorrow it’ll be dead, and we’ll all be alive again. So don’t worry about Tynan. Just eat up, finish your drinks, and be merry. Tonight we celebrate.’

  *

  When Karen Collins, wearing her sheer pale blue nightgown, emerged from the dressing room into their bedroom, the lights were out except for the lamp beside her bed. The electric clock beneath the lamp told her it was ten minutes before one o’clock in the morning. On the far side of the bed, already tucked in, her husband lay with his head deep

  in the pillow, his back to her.

  She lifted the blanket and slid into her side of the king-size bed. Lifting herself, she leaned over him. His eyes were closed.

  ‘Thanks for a lovely evening, darling,’ she whispered.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he murmured wearily.

  She lowered her head and put her lips to his cheek. ‘Good night, dearest. You’re so tired. Sleep well.’

  She thought she heard him say good night.

  She looked down at him for a brief interval, finally lifted herself again, shifted over to her side of the bed, and settled on her back, not having turned off the lamp as yet. She stared thoughtfully up at the ceiling.

  Her mind went back to the evening, to The Jockey Club, to that pudgy little writer named Ishmael Young.

  He had said early on: ‘The Director knows everything.’

  He had said later on: ‘Hell, I’m sure there is nothing in your life, Mrs Collins, or your life, Mr Collins, or my own life that Vernon T. Tynan doesn’t know about.’

  She thought about it, as she stared up at the ceiling, and she thought about the time in Fort Worth, Texas.

  She could feel agitation grow within her, and she was suddenly scared.

  Turning her head toward him on the pillow, she fixed on the back of his head, and licked her dry lips. There was still time to talk. Maybe not pillow talk, maybe not a good thing to do at a time when he was so tired - but it was time to talk.

  ‘Chris,’ she called out. ‘Chris, darling, there’s something I’ve got to tell you - something I’ve never had a chance to tell you before. I feel I have to now. I should have before, but anyway, it’s something you have to know. It has to do with not long before we met. Just listen, darling. Just let me talk. Will you, darling?’

  She waited for his response, and then she heard it. He was snoring softly. Too late.

  With a troubled sigh, she turned away, raised her hand to turn off the lamp, then fell back deeper into the pillow, eyes open in the darkness.

  She shivered - remembering the past, wondering about the future.

  She closed her eyes, living behind them awhile, until sleep began to draw darkness inside her.

  Maybe, she thought - her last comforting thought - I’m being childish and silly and scared by the night. There are no monsters out there. Only people. People like thee and me. Good night, Chris. Together we’re safe, aren’t we?

  With that, she felt herself sink down, down, down to the place where dreams begin.

  *

  In the J. Edgar Hoover Building, Harry Adcock, having finished his
light lunch, left his seventh-floor office and made his way to the elevator. His destination on this Sunday afternoon, as it had been every day since the chief had given him the high-priority assignment, was the FBI’s computer complex in the rear of the first floor.

  Descending in the elevator, Adcock recalled the exact wording of Tynan’s assignment.

  Start with our Attorney General Collins. I want the Bureau to run a quiet check on him … I want Collins checked ten times more thoroughly than the first time… . Go after everyone ever connected with him at any time in his life.

  Adcock had wasted no time in assembling two top-notch Strike Forces. The larger one, carefully handpicked from over 10,000 Special Agents on the outside, was to work in the field. These agents had been selected not only for their experience and skill, but for their personal loyalty to the chief. The smaller Force had been gathered from the most trustworthy, tight-lipped personnel inside the headquarters here, and they were to concentrate on the so-called paperwork.

  The two Forces had plunged into the Collins investigation immediately. They had gone about their business silently and unobtrusively - insofar as this was possible - and in the work-filled days since they had begun, they had produced reams of material. Collins’ life had been turned inside out,

  as had been the lives of his relatives, associates, friends.

  To date, at least as of yesterday, the results had been miserably disappointing to Adcock. Everything found out about Collins and those close to him had been legitimate, lawful, upright, honest, decent, confirming the Bureau’s original investigation. Almost every closet door had been opened. Not one had contained a skeleton. It was sickeningly unnatural, and Adcock did not believe it. He had been around too long, seen too much of the worst in human beings, to believe in purity. If you dug deep enough, long enough, hard enough, you would hit pay dirt - sooner or later, dirty pay dirt.

  Of course, he had kept Tynan apprised in a general way about the progress of the investigation. Since Tynan was never interested in details, only in end results, Adcock had not told the chief of the daily failures to unearth anything of practical value. He had told him only that things were moving along; clues and leads were being followed up from Albany to Oakland.

  Hopefully, today would be a better day, and there would be something satisfying and useful to report to the chief.

  Reaching the first floor, Adcock emerged from the elevator and proceeded past the ornamental fountain to the FBI’s computer complex.

  Inside, he glanced at the wall sign that read FBI National Crime Information Center. At once, he felt reassured. Then his eyes passed over the electronic gimmickry in the vast room - the control typewriter, the control console, the magnetic tape units, the 1,100-lines-per-minute printer - and he felt even more reassured. No human impurity could escape detection by these machines, just as no human frailty could avoid detection by the persistent bloodhounds in the field.

  Wandering through the complex, Adcock searched for Mary Lampert. She was a senior communications officer, and his major contact down here. Unable to spot her, he stopped to ask an operator where she was. He learned that she had just stepped out and would be back in a few minutes. Adcock found a chair and sat down to wait. Surveying the computer network again, remembering the

  Identification Division upstairs, thinking of the agents in the field, Adcock knew that he would have good news for the chief sooner or later. It was merely a matter of time.

  The language in Adcock’s head was the language of relentless statistics. To make himself feel better, he reviewed them.

  Computer network. From 40,000 Federal, state, community agencies in fifty states, data came in to feed the system. Data were collected and stored not only on people with arrest records, not only on potential criminals or troublemakers, but on dissenters in general, on Congressmen, on Government officials, on critics of the United States - hell, on practically everyone over ten years old. Take the arrest records alone. About 49 per cent of the population would be arrested once in their lifetimes, counting certain traffic violations. During their lifetimes, 90 per cent of black urban males would be arrested at least once, and 60 per cent of white urban males would be arrested at least once. All of these arrests were in the data banks. With the crime rate the way it was, even skipping traffic violations, about 9 million people would be arrested this year. About half would not be prosecuted, or would have the charges against them dropped, or would be tried and acquitted, but all of them would also land in the data banks. Besides data from 275 million police records, there were also data stored from 350 million medical case histories, from 290 million psychiatric accounts, from 125 million business credit files.

  Identification Division. Every day, every single day, 34,000 new sets of fingerprints came into the FBI - about 15,000 of these from police agencies, and about 19,000 from Government agencies, banks, insurance companies, license bureaus, and other sources. Every damn day, mind you. Back in 1975, the FBI had 200 million sets of fingerprints on file. Today, maybe 250 million. One-third of the cards were in the criminal files, and two-thirds in civil files.

  FBI agents in the field. There were over 10,000 out there, including the Strike Force working on this investigation. The Strike Force had been interviewing the subject’s relatives, friends, acquaintances, business associates, as well as visiting schools, clubs, shopkeepers, bankers, doctors,

  lawyers. They were out there, yeah, wiretapping and bugging, shadowing and tailing, planting informers, taking photographs. They were out there entering unoccupied apartments and houses, examining the contents of garbage cans, opening and inspecting and resealing mail.

  Marvelous. Who could escape Tynan’s army? If there were impurities, they would be found, they certainly would be found.

  Harry Adcock was glad he had taken his mental inventory. He was feeling better and better.

  His reverie was interrupted by a feminine face bent close to his own. He could smell the perfume, and he heard her whisper, ‘Hello, Harry.’

  He raised his head. Mary Lampert had returned. ‘Did I keep you waiting long?’ she asked. ‘No, no. What do we have today?’ ‘Come into the office.’

  In her austere cubbyhole, he settled down across from her desk. He watched her go to the fireproof file cabinet and unlock it. He liked to watch her, and again admired the chief’s taste. She didn’t look like a senior communications officer, but she didn’t have to because that was only one of her jobs, Adcock reminded himself. He continued to observe her as she opened the file drawer. Mary Lampert was thirty-two years old and five feet seven. She wore a fluffy hairdo, had cool green eyes, a broad-bridged short nose, moist and sensuous full lips. Her dress was molded to her breasts, which were high and firm, and to her generous thighs, revealing the line of her panties. Adcock’s acned face relaxed in pleasure. She was coming toward him. ‘Here it is,’ she said, handing him the manila folder. ‘There’s the latest data covering the last twenty hours.’

  He opened the folder and scanned and thumbed the pages. When he finished, pleasure had left his countenance to be replaced by disgust. ‘God damn,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’

  Mary nodded. ‘That’s what I thought, too. Looks like a surveillance report on the Cub Scouts and Brownies of America.’

  ‘We’ve got to keep trying, Mary. The chief expects -‘

  The telephone jangled, and he broke off bis speech while Mary answered the phone.

  ‘Oh, really?’ she said into the phone. ‘I’ll be right up.’

  Adcock looked at her questioningly.

  ‘Identification Division,’ she said. ‘You wait here. I’ll be back in a jiffy. It has to do with our case. I don’t know what.’

  She started for the door. Again he watched her as she left, the pantie line across the buttocks beneath her dress. He must remember to tell her to wear that dress the next time she saw the chief.

  This brought his mind entirely to Vernon T. Tynan - to his responsibility to Tynan, how he had always done ever
ything possible to please Tynan and make him happy, how he could not let him down in their pursuit of that traitorous Collins.

  He had never let the chief down before, and he did not intend to do so now, especially not now, when there was so much at stake. Tynan had always taken care of him, and hell, he’d give up his life for Tynan, if necessary.

  He knew, all right, about how people in this crappy town talked about their relationship, meaning himself and Tynan. He’d always suspected the talk, but he knew for sure that night they’d bugged a high-level Washington society party -Congressional types, State Department people, the like-and he’d made out on the tape a group gossiping and laughing. He’d heard them gossiping and laughing about Vernon T. Tynan and Harry Adcock, those two aging homosexuals. He’d always known that the talk went on, but here it was: Tynan and himself as fags.

  He’d never been more furious.

  Not that it mattered, but it was just so smart-ass wrong and unjust.

  True, Adcock loved Tynan, but as a man can love a man without being a homosexual. Hell, he loved Tynan and worshipped him. As for the rest, Adcock had had a real woman once - too long ago to define her features now - but she had died before he could marry her, in a time before he’d joined the FBI. Tynan was not a substitute for her, but rather for the father he had never known, having known only an orphanage in his youth. In fact, there had been a few

  other women during his early years in the FBI, just bed partners, but once he really rose in the FBI, once Tynan took over, there were no others. He had dedicated himself to the Bureau - to Tynan and the Bureau - and to no one and nothing else. He had taken an unsworn pledge of celibacy, with the FBI as his lifetime religious order.

  As for Vernon T. Tynan, my God. Those smart-asses out there didn’t realize Tynan was normal about women, only careful and discreet, considering his critical position. Once a week, as long as Adcock could remember, Tynan had been visited by some young woman sent to him by a grateful madam in Baltimore. Because Tynan did not like to get too involved, dared not, he kept these women at arm’s length. He permitted them to go down on him, and no more.