Montezuma’s Revenge
Harry Harrison
1972
To ANTHONY BURGESS,
Gratitudinously
He weren’t no saint—but at jedgment
I’d run my chance with Jim,
‘Longside of some pious gentlemen
That wouldn’t shook hands with him.
He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing,—
And went for it thar and then;
And Christ ain’t a-going to be too hard
On a man that died for men.
John Hay, Jim Bludso
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists
One
From a pigeon’s eye view, and there are pigeons enough in our nation’s capital, fed and fat from tourist popcorn and sandwich crusts, the National Gallery looked just as it always has done. White marble, domed and impressive, a suitable repository for the finest art from all over the world displayed for the pleasure of the American citizenry. Here the sweat-soaked sons of Kansas and California, Texas and Maine sought welcome relief from the steam-bath heat and shattering glare of a Washington summer, wallowing in wide-eyed wonder before the fleshy expanses of the Rubens matrons, shuffling glazed-eyed past the exuberances of the impressionists, while all of this time they were unaware of the human drama being played out in their midst.
If their attention had not been elsewhere they might have noticed him standing to one side in the book and art shop, a man with a decidedly worried expression that kept slipping back to his face no matter how he tried to dispel it with a professional smile. He was thin, of medium height, tanned and jet haired, his nose slightly too large for his face although he was not unhandsome for all of it, his smoothly pressed suit was beige and unassuming, his neatly knotted tie of an austere tone; he stood erect yet at ease with his hands clasped behind him, master of all he surveyed—which was indeed the case.
“Mr. Hawkin,” a rounded, pink sort of girl said, trotting up to him with a thick book extended before her. “A gentleman wants this but there’s no price in it …”
“Master Drawings of Degas, second edition, eight ninety-five plus tax.”
She thanked him breathlessly, impressed by this feat of total recall, eyes swimming moistly like fish behind their thick lenses, and hurried back to her customer. All appeared to be as it should be, postcards, books, prints, colored slides selling briskly, a run on Ingres items, which was to be expected with the loan exhibition upstairs of the artist’s Roman sketches, but said run craftily countered by preordering of Ingres items so that the racks stayed full and the profits mounted. Yet, despite all this, all was definitely not as it should be as Hawkin’s quick glance at the heavy-set man in the black suit proved. While ostensibly displaying an intense interest in the file of Fragonard prints he was in reality staring intently at Hawkin who caught a quick glint of those deep-set eyes and turned hurriedly away, the smile slipping from his face yet one more time, pushed from position by memory of those same eyes and even colder voice earlier that morning.
“Be available at noon,” he had said, nothing more, then moved silently away among the racks.
Hawkin’s first reaction had been anger; who was this stranger to come here and speak to him in this manner? The security office was close by and Legree, the chief, was luxuriating there in his rolls of fat and keeping them firm with coffee and cake to tamp his ample breakfast down.
“Just be available,” he ordered in his calorie-rich voice. “If the man says be there, then be there. I know him. He’s government.”
Government. They were all federal employees, but government piped in this respectful tone of voice meant something above them, another agency, the weight of authority visited. So Hawkin had waited and it had done his temper no good at all. Normally a peaceful man, a relatively happy individual secure in his position and getting pleasure from his work, he had now been rudely shocked from his complacency and he did not like it. All morning the man from government had been in sight and, more often than not, showing a greater interest in the manager than in the goods displayed, with those eyes of his, not unlike spotting scopes half hidden under the jungled ledge of his brow, radiating a
peculiar piercing power that was continually disturbing and eventually caused Hawkin to brood uneasily and to wonder what crimes he might secretly be guilty of. As noon approached the tension grew and he welcomed the minor relief of correcting an overring on one of the registers. But as he turned away from the machine he started visibly when he discovered the thickset man now standing no more than a foot away from him.
“Your office,” was all that was said and Hawkin led the way in silence, almost eagerly now that the moment had arrived.
“Cigarette?” Hawkin asked, sliding the box across the desk, then withdrawing it and lighting one himself at the solemn shake of the other’s head. “Now what is it I can do to help you?”
“My identification.” With grim precision he extended his hand and flipped open the leather case to disclose the glittering badge inside, a gesture quite familiar to anyone who has so much as ever glanced at a television, then snapped it shut again almost instantly. “Davidson, Federal Bureau of Investigation. I am here on a matter of great importance.”
Behind his calm expression Hawkin’s subconscious hauled up a number of criminal possibilities, visions of all traffic violations, stop lights passed, unthinking expectorations on sidewalks. No, this was foolish, the agent could not be here for minor items like these. Didn’t the FBI handle only major offenses? This thought simply changed the internal display to kidnapped babies, bombed airplanes, stolen cars streaking across state lines, a ghastly parade speeding through his mind. What could he possibly be guilty of?
“Do you mind if I see that badge again?” he asked. Closer examination of the shield, heavy golden metal, deeply embossed, federal bureau of investigation, number 32786, helped not in the slightest and he watched it disappear from sight a second time still no wiser. “Might I ask you what your business is, Mr. Davidson? Something about the staff perhaps?” Hopefully.
The FBI man ignored this weak gambit and removed a sheaf of papers from an inside pocket which he held to the light and proceeded to read from in a cold and courtroom witnessish manner.
Souvenir Shop to be opened in the lobby of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Building.”
“Thank you. I appreciate the offer but I am afraid I must decline.”
“That is unacceptable. Transfer papers are being drawn up—”
“What do you mean unacceptable? I am an adult American and cannot be coerced against my will. I may have been born an Indian but my father left the reservation and saw to it that I received a good education and was drafted early like any other American boy. I’ve done my service. And I like it here.” Volubility drove him to recldessness. “I appreciate the offer but tell J.E.H., thanks a lot, but no thanks.”
Davidson leaned forward slowly, his mouth a tight-clamped slash, his eyes arctic and devastatingly penetrating. “Have you ever been investigated?” The words dropped crackling from his lips, frigid as glacial ice. “That is what you are requesting. A man who rejects an opportunity like this must have something to hide and, I can assure you, we are specialists in uncovering what men have hidden. Everything. Are you concealing something, Mr. Hawkin?”
Tony’s heart gave a great leap in his chest, plunging up against the base of his throat so he could not swallow, had trouble breathing, while at the same instant a speeded-up film of the transgressions of his life rushed by the eye of memory. A seedy hotel in Nome with his captain’s wife, torn-up parking tickets, certain exaggerations and interesting omissions on his income t
ax returns, unpaid and long forgotten utility bills, a gap in the barbed-wire fence around Camp Upton much used after hours because of its proximity to a nearby tavern; these and others of their kind raced by, minor, perhaps, and were he a Catholic they would be worth no more than a Hail Mary or two or a bit of fasting, but looming large to his lapsed Protestant conscience, growing even larger still in the presence of the dark figure of possible disinterment and retribution.
“I’m concealing nothing,” he said in a sort of strangling gasp,
forcing the words around his enlarged coronary pump, unconvincing even to himself and a ludicrous prospect to the silent
watcher. The water carafe gave a moment’s respite, but only a moment, for when he poured, the glass rattled, and his upper lip was already damp with sweat before the water reached it. You can’t threaten me was what he wanted to say but did not, for he had already been threatened, so instead took refuge in dissimulation.
“Don’t misunderstand, I do respect this signal honor. But I am really not qualified, you see. I am an art historian by choice and a radar repairman by necessity and know nothing about law enforcement. A fish out of water, you wouldn’t want that. So for our mutual benefit …”
“If He says you can hack it you can hack it.”
“I can hack it, I can hack it,” Tony muttered, cracking his knuckles on the desk before him in quiet despair. It had been so pleasant here in the National Gallery. The George Graham bracket clock on his bookshelf gently chimed the hour and at the very same instant his telephone rang. Before he could take it up Davidson had reached out and removed the receiver and held it to his own ear.
“Yes, sir!” The words were spoken with a warmth of feeling Tony had thought this crag of a man impossible of displaying, and then he had passed the handpiece across the desk. Smiling.
“You can talk now. You are speaking with Him?
Hawkin sighed with resignation and reached for the phone.
Two
“But isn’t it exciting, I mean really exciting?”
Sophie had a way of asking questions in a breathless voice as though she just couldn’t wait for the answer, and then of clarifying her question almost at once. She was Tony’s assistant, the only other employee until the store opened, and he suspected her of being a plant, set to spy on him and report to someone upstairs. Sophie Feinberg, and he also suspected that she wasn’t even Jewish, a fake minority informer to gain his confidence as a co-minorityist. Her Yiddish expressions sounded good but they could have been taught. What he needed was a real Jewish friend who could sound her out. Or was he going mad, drinking in the security-laden atmosphere that daily bathed him?
“Exciting? I suppose it is exciting,” he mumbled into the stale bread of his tuna fish sandwich.
“You really are the cool one, boychik, you really are. I do envy your cool, I really do.”
The sandwich was Dead Sea dust in his mouth and he tried to wash it farther down his throat with some of the ammoniacal and bitter coffee. Sophie was winning this battle too. He wasn’t quite sure how she had begun joining him for lunch, a misunderstood invitation perhaps that turned into a steady companionship, and he had started eating here in The Rumbling Turn in the hopes of driving her away. It was perhaps the worst luncheonette in the city of Washington, which was saying a lot in this city scarcely world famous for the quality of its eateries, but the gambit had failed miserably and produced only a continual
smoldering fire in his midriff. Sophie, exulting in the strength of her duty, ate a far heartier meal than he did and held the entire thing down with a sort of rubberized jello and a wedge of desiccated pie.
“Did any shipments come in this morning?” He groped for a neutral topic that did not involve overriding enthusiasm regarding his position.
“Oh, yes indeed. The G-man badges came in from Hong Kong Novelties. The children will really love them, Fm sure, even adults. And I’ve finished framing the tinted photographs of the Director. The gold frames on the rush order.”
“Tinted? I thought they were black and white?”
“They were, but there was a special directive and the first hundred have been hand tinted and come back. They really are lovely.”
“Fm very sure they are. You don’t find that gold frames and hand tinting aren’t, well, a little too much?”
“What on earth do you mean?” The smile was there but it had a certain fixed quality that went with a hint of eagerness to her words. Had he transgressed? Tony was almost too depressed to care.
“Nothing, I guess, nothing. Not feeling so well today, maybe a little schlect” Her eyebrows lifted slightly and she did not answer. Let her look that up in her Yiddish dictionary! Happy in this minor victory of the greater engagement he took a deep swallow of the coffee and felt the acid bite deep into his insides and was instantly back in the depression that possessed him most of the time. He was scarcely aware of the man who passed their table and stopped a moment to strike a match to light his cigarette who, as he sucked in the smoke, produced a whisper that only Tony could hear.
“At once. Report to room 213$. This is cm emergency”
After this communication the man was silent, nor did he move on but instead stood rocklike at Tony’s shoulder, staring straight ahead, dark-suited and thick-booted. When Tony rose and paid his bill the man was close behind him and even Sophie was silent for
a change, perhaps aware of something happening, not questioning him when he went to the elevator instead of the office.
Room 2135, unmarked and apparently no different from the others along the corridor, was locked when he tried the handle, although it unlocked swiftly enough when the messenger leaned over his shoulder and rapped a swift coded signal on the wood. Tony stepped through and felt the silent closing of the door behind him and was alone, facing the man who sat behind the expanse of polished government steel desk, the top of which was unmarred and empty save for a single yellow wooden pencil. As though even this were too much clutter the man seized it up and tapped it against his teeth as he waved Tony to the chair opposite him.
“You are Antonio Hawkin, aren’t you?” Tap, tap, tap of yellow wood on white teeth in punctuation. Tony nodded. Almost too white, probably artificial, like the overly sincere smile that framed them. A hairline mustache above, the kind race track touts used to wear thirty years ago, a thin nose with a very prying look to it like a fleshy crowbar, eyes lurking unseen behind heavily tinted frameless pince-nez glasses, white skin even whiter than the plastic teeth, a high forehead so high in fact that it rode up over the top of his skull and slipped down the back of his neck while across the summit of this interesting area of bare skin a few long hairs had been stretched and glued into place. “My name is Ross Sones,” tap, tap, tap. “Would you mind showing me your ID card?”
“Would you mind telling me why, and what this is all about?”
“In a moment, Tony, let us just get the routine out of the way first. Why, thanks. Not a very good likeness, but they never are, are they, no indeed. Now you wouldn’t mind inking your thumb on this pad and pressing it down on this piece of paper. Checks fine against the one on the card, wasn’t that easy? Here you can wipe your thumb on the back of the same piece of paper, no waste, save our forests.”
“The reason …”
“Just a moment.” He looked at his watch. “We have just nine minutes left so let us get the details out of the way first.”
He slipped the pencil behind one ear and took a bulky file from a desk drawer and leafed through it. “Here we go … I had it a minute ago, right. Your security rating. I see you have been cleared for confidential material, very good, been issued texts on a unit called the Mark IX-37G. But, my goodness, there is no record here of the texts ever being returned.” He looked steadily at Tony and was no longer smiling.
“No one ever asked for them back, they were given to me in tech school, in the Army.”
“This is quite a serious matter, I am sure.”
“Serio
us! The Mark IX radar has been outdated for ten years now. You can buy them at the war surplus stores if you happen to want an old radar set weighing a thousand pounds. So of what importance are the textbooks?”
Sones considered this in silence for a moment, tapping his teeth again, then making a check mark in the dossier with the pencil.
“I will have to look into this, keep the record open on this point. But still you do have a security rating and that is what counts. I am sure that with the data here we can have it upgraded and updated.”
The file of papers was an inch thick. “Is that all about me?” Tony asked.
“Of course. Classified, so I’m afraid you can’t look at it. But thorough, very thorough. Well, everything seems to be clarified. We have, ahh, three more minutes so if there are any questions … ?”
“The same one. What is this all about?”
“Classified information, I’m afraid.” Tap, tap. “But they will tell you downstairs, and we had better get going.”
With precise movements Sones slipped the dossier into a brief case he produced from the desk, locked it, then snapped the handcuff about his wrist that was attached to it by a chain. Only after this had been safely secured and tested did he touch the button that unlocked the door. They went side by side down the corridor and past the bank of elevators to an unmarked door that Sones unlocked, which opened unexpectedly into a small lobby no bigger than a closet. The far wall was made of gray
ii
steel and labeled in bold red letters security elevator—do not use without proper clearance. Sones appeared to have the proper clearance for at the turn of another key the wall slid back to reveal the elevator itself, and once inside he pressed the bottom button in the row, all of them labeled with cryptic code groups. Security was obviously very good and Tony was very impressed, although he still wondered what it was all about. The elevator dropped and when the door next opened a hard-eyed man stood before them pointing a large and menacing automatic pistol at their chests.
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