As Jeff walked out of the living room he turned his head. Keller had both hands on the fireplace mantel, and was staring into the mirror, and his lips moved as if he called on someone for help.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1
JEFF HAD A BAD three days. It would be much better if he himself went to the Admiral, he believed, but he could not violate the unwritten protocol governing affairs of this kind within the Department. He couldn’t go over the head of his immediate superior. He couldn’t speak of the matter to the Admiral, or the Consul General, until he was summoned. There was ingrained in him a respect for this protocol, and its reasons were apparent, like going through channels and following the chain-of-command in the Army.
The first day, nobody called him, or visited. This in itself was a bad sign. It indicated he was leprous with trouble. He spent the day typing a letter to Horace Locke. The letter was a careful summary of everything Leonides had told him of what Leonides had called the Second Russian Revolution. He could not, of course, mention Atlantis Project, but he did think it was safe to say:
“I have had trouble over my job, and I have a premonition that I may not long be in a position to convey this information officially. Therefore I am passing it along to you. I am sure that with your long experience in the Department you will know what to do.”
He had no idea how he was going to get the letter to Locke. He knew that any letter he dropped into the pouch, from now on, would be suspect. And he had the same premonition Susan had. Time was running out. The letter to Horace Locke was three pages long. He folded it and put it in his inside coat pocket. That night when he undressed he took it out of the pocket and lodged it under his pillow. He woke up several times in the night and felt under the pillow to be sure it was still there.
The second day Major L’Engle came to see him, looking harassed. “The Admiral ate me out,” he said. “He’s wild. What happened?”
“You mean in your dispensary?”
“Sure, in my dispensary.”
Jeff told him what happened, and the Major nodded and said, “That’s what I thought, but nobody is going to believe me, or you.”
“What do you mean, won’t believe you?” Jeff asked.
“Well, you taking that Blue Eighty-Eight is only part of it.” The Major twisted his hands together as if what he was saying were difficult. “Baker, that thwarted, lard-faced harridan in white reported other drugs missing. I knew they were missing before she did. You see, I took them.”
Jeff said, “I suppose they blame that on me too.”
“Oh, no, the Admiral lets me have all that. You see, I told him. I told him the truth, but he thinks I sold the stuff on the Bourse, and I’m under charges.”
Jeff took out the bottle of cognac he kept locked in his dispatch case and gave the Major a drink, because obviously the Major needed a drink. Then he took one himself. “I’m confused,” Jeff said.
The Major drank the cognac in a gulp. “If I had just been smart enough to lie! If I had just told the Admiral that some of the G.I.s in the M.A.’s office had gonorrhea, or some of the staff had been sick, or even that I was sick myself, nothing would have happened. But I told the truth. You know the Hunyadi Home?”
“I’ve heard of it. The home for boys.”
“Yes. It’s near my place, and every once in a while I drop in there. I don’t have any sons myself. But I like boys. Their infirmary is deplorable. No equipment at all.”
“So?”
“So for the last six or eight months I’ve been helping them out. I’ve saved three pneumonias, and one meningitis, and some others. I told the Admiral the truth about it. In the first place, he doesn’t believe me, and in the second place he ate me out anyway because I’m not supposed to use the Mission’s drugs for indigenous personnel. He’s right, of course. No getting away from it. He’s right, officially.”
“I’m sorry,” Jeff said. “I’m sorry that I started this.”
“Oh, I told him about you too. I told him it was perfectly okay if you took a Blue Eighty-Eight because there wasn’t anybody there to give it to you. I explained the stuff wasn’t habit-forming unless you took it for a considerable period. Did it do any good? No. Every time I mentioned your name he just sputtered. I don’t know what else you’ve done, Baker, but whatever it is, you’ve got him wild.”
“You know what I think?” Jeff said. “I think you did just right.”
“Well, thanks, I really think so, too. But it’s not going to do any good.”
“I hope he’ll cool down.”
“He won’t. I’m on tomorrow’s plane, going home under charges.”
“Jesus, that’s too bad.” He tried to think of something cheerful, because he liked L’Engle. “You’ll be all right,” was the best he could do.
“No, I won’t. There’ll be an I.G. investigation, and anyway a reprimand, and they’ll look on their maps and find either the hottest place in the world or the coldest place in the world and they’ll say, ‘We’ve got a new post for you, L’Engle, where there are no black markets. Goodbye, bub.’”
Jeff poured another drink, and when he handed the glass to L’Engle he looked deep into his face. L’Engle’s face was like rock, but rock weathered and mellowed by his years and his profession. “So you’re going on tomorrow’s plane,” Jeff said. “And you’re a decent guy. I know you’re a decent guy.”
“You don’t have to feel so damn sorry for me.”
“I wasn’t feeling sorry. I was just thinking. Will you deliver a letter for me, Major?”
“Depends where it’s going. I’m going to Washington.”
“That’s where the letter’s going, Major.”
“So long as it doesn’t contain classified material, sure.”
Jeff said, “This hasn’t been classified, yet. There isn’t any classification for it.”
“Now that sounds interesting,” the Major said. “That sounds mysterious. It won’t get me in trouble? I’m in enough trouble now, Baker.”
Jeff finished his drink. He wished he had time to think it all over, weighing and measuring the chances as he had been taught to do. But there wasn’t time. Almost all the time was gone. Well, there was such a thing as a calculated risk. Once in a while, a man had to take a calculated risk. Eisenhower had taken a calculated risk when he spread his green divisions thinly through the Ardennes. Marshall had called ERP a calculated risk. Now he would take his. “This letter might get you into trouble, Major,” Jeff said. “I want you to read it, and make your own decision.”
He handed the letter to L’Engle.
The Major started reading it, and then he took a pair of glasses from the inside pocket of his blouse, and put them on, and started again. When he finished he handed it back to Jeff. “I’ll deliver it,” he said. “You got an envelope?”
“Yes.” Jeff sat down at the desk and wrote, “Horace Locke. Old State. 17th and Pennsylvania Avenues, N.W., Washington, D.C.” He said, “Here you are.”
Major L’Engle dropped the envelope into his doctor’s bag. “You don’t have to worry about it,” he said, “because this bag always goes with me, and I never forget it.”
“I’m not worried,” Jeff said.
“Yes, you are,” said L’Engle. “You’re worried that I might talk. You don’t have to worry about that, either.” He took the bag in his hand. “I guess I’ll be going now.”
“So long.”
“So long. Look me up—if you ever get to Alaska.”
And he was gone.
2
The morning of the third day Quincy Todd phoned and said, “Hey, where you been?”
“You know damn well where I’ve been.”
“You don’t have to act like an untouchable. You’re not, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“Well meet me at our place at noon and I’ll tell you.”
So at noon Jeff walked to the Café Molnar. He was strong again now. The weakness that comes with confinement
to bed had gone, and his nerves were good.
Quincy Todd was sitting at the table which by custom was theirs. But Marina wasn’t there to serve them. Another girl was there, and Jeff said, “Where’s your girl friend?”
“I don’t know,” Quincy said, “and she’s not my girl friend any more. That Russky beat my time.”
“You mean my Russky—the Major?”
“Yes, your Russky.”
“I thought she didn’t like Russians?”
“She likes that one. Every night that I’ve been here for the last two weeks, there she is with the Russky. So what can I do? Can I go over and try to ease him out of the picture? No. I just sit here and it comes closing time and he takes her home—or somewhere. What’s he got that I haven’t got?”
“Nothing. He just gets here first. If you got here first, he’d be the one who’d have to sit alone.”
“I’ve got to work. I don’t think that Russky ever works.”
“Don’t worry, he works.”
Quincy dumped his cognac into his coffee. “First today,” he said. “Do you know what we call the second floor of the Legation now? The Whispering Gallery. And do you know what they’re all talking about? About you, Jeff.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Now, Jeff, I don’t want you to tell me anything about this. I know you’re in a jam, and I know the whole thing is extra secret. I just want to tell you what’s been going on, and I want to pass along a little advice.”
“Okay.”
“In the first place they’ve been having conferences about you every day—I mean the big boys—the Admiral, and Morgan Collingwood, and Fred Keller, and Quigley. That means they can’t agree. So you can figure you’ve got a friend or two, or there wouldn’t be any argument.”
“Maybe,” Jeff said. “Maybe they’ve already decided what to do, but they haven’t agreed on how to do it.”
“No, I don’t think they’ve decided, because they haven’t sent any cables about you. I know, because I’ve had a couple of dates with Marge Collins. She’d never tell me what was in a cable, but she’d say if one went.”
“That doesn’t mean much,” Jeff said. He knew that Atlantis Project could not be mentioned in a cable. It was absurd to be optimistic.
“And another thing, they’re going to call you in tomorrow. I don’t know what you’ve done, but whatever you’ve done they’ll probably give you a chance to explain.”
“I’ve already explained.”
Quincy Todd stared out of the window with his blue eyes that couldn’t seem to blink. On this day it was snowing, but there was no cheerfulness in the snow. There was no longer beauty in a snowfall in Budapest. It was only added misery. “I don’t want them to boot you out of here, Jeff,” he said. “You’re human.”
“I’ve got a girl back in Washington,” Jeff said.
“Don’t we all?”
“I suppose.”
“I’ve got a hunch, Jeff, that if you go into this thing tomorrow and say, ‘Okay, I’ve been a bad boy and I won’t do it again,’ why nothing will happen.”
“I’ll think it over,” Jeff promised.
3
On the afternoon of that third day Jeff’s phone rang again. At first he thought it was somebody at the Legation, because when he used only simple phrases Leonides’ voice was without accent, and almost American.
“I’ve got to see you right away,” Leonides said.
“Who is this?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I’m not sure.”
“The night you had four fives, I had four tens.”
“Oh. Okay. Where?”
“The same place as last time. In about thirty minutes. But you start right now.”
“Sure. In thirty minutes.”
It was a sensible precaution that he enter the church quite a time before Leonides. He rang for the elevator, waited until it was on the way up, and then raced down the stairs. He didn’t want Sandor to see in which direction he went.
On this dark day St. Stephen’s was darker, even, than it had been before. On this day there was no choir, nor music from the organ. In the gloom he could see small groups of women silent on the benches. They had come in from the cold, or rested here a while, their baskets beside them, before trudging through the snow to their homes and their stoves.
There were some women on the bench he and Leonides had occupied before, so he found a vacant bench two rows closer to the altar. He genuflected, and made his mouth move, so as not to be different and attract attention, and then he sat down, his head bowed. He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes.
Exactly on the minute he heard the scrape of boots on the stone corridor, and felt someone brush against the bench. He did not raise his head until Leonides sat down close to him. Then he saw that the trousers were not Russian uniform trousers, but worn, shabby flannels.
But the face was that of Leonides. He was wearing a civilian suit much too small for him. The trousers climbed up the heavily muscled legs, and the thick wrists extended six inches out of the cuffs as he bent his elbows. He looked like a boy in the year of his greatest growth, whose family cannot afford a new suit. “What happened to you?” Jeff whispered. “Where did you get that outfit?”
Leonides didn’t raise his cropped head an inch, and when he spoke Jeff could detect no movement of his lips. “I am a fugitive. I don’t speak of how I got these clothes.”
“Your plan?”
“Is known.”
“How?”
“They questioned Yassovsky. They questioned him for one month before they killed him.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Run the border. Run the border across the Raab into the British Zone. Then to the Hochschwab and our transmitter. We do not quit. We fight.”
Jeff tried to analyze the risks, the possibilities, the terrible dangers. “Those clothes won’t do. I’ll get one of my suits. They’ll fit better.”
“No. It is better to be badly dressed. To be well dressed is fatal.”
Jeff said, “I don’t think much of your chances, Leonides. You know how they watch the border. You know how they watch for deserters. And they’ll be after you. You know they’ll be after you.”
“There is no chance here. Here my face is too well known. I must go quickly.”
“Do you need anything?”
“Perhaps some American money. It is wanted everywhere. If you have it, Jeff?”
Jeff reached in his pocket and took out his wallet. He had five twenty-dollar bills in an inner pouch. He handed them under his knees to Leonides. “I still think it’s terribly dangerous. You haven’t papers, or anything, have you?”
“Papers are no good for me,” Leonides said. “Today nobody can safely cross a boundary even with an endorsement from God. Only the gypsies travel today. Only the gypsies laugh at passports. Only the gypsies know the safe ways, for they have been doing it for two thousand years.”
“I see,” Jeff said. “I see.”
A woman with a shawl over her head moved in beside them. She set down a market basket, and in the basket was a single loaf of black bread with snow on it. She was very tired. Leonides looked at her, and whispered, “She is okay. She has too many worries to be curious of others. Now I called you for a reason you must have guessed. We will not see each other again for a long time, Jeff. So I give you the name of another, with whom you can have liaison. Zatsikeffsky, the Civil Air Attaché.”
“How do you spell it?”
“You’d better write it down. Have you a pencil?”
Jeff moved very slowly, raising his hand to his chest. He found a pencil in his vest pocket. Leonides gave him a brown paper envelope, and spelled out Zatsikeffsky, slowly and in whispers.
“And in case something happens to him, too?” Jeff asked.
“He is the last of us here in Budapest.”
“Elsewhere?”
Leonides was silent.
“Can’t you tell me, Leonid
es?”
“It is forbidden. I am pledged never to mention the name. Yet on occasion one must take a chance, and I must now take it. I know the names of few important ones in other places. We do not wish to know. It is not good to know, for it could happen to any of us what happened to Yassovsky, and there is no man who will not talk. Only when a man is dead is he truly silent. I know one in Moscow who is above me.” He mentioned a three-syllable name, and Jeff wrote it down. “You spell it,” Leonides observed.
“I’ve heard it before.”
“He is a great man.”
“He must be. And a brave one.” Jeff thought of his own troubles, and wondered whether he should tell Leonides, and decided he wouldn’t do it, because Leonides had enough worries now. He did say, “I’ve sent a report to Washington, Leonides, to the man I completely trust.”
“That’s good. It’s not so important that you be secret now, except with the names. As to the plan itself, it is known because of Yassovsky. Now I will go, Jeff. The quicker we start, the better.”
“So long, Leonides.”
“Goodbye.”
Leonides rose and moved away, his hands in his pockets, and his head lowered.
Jeff remained in the church for another half-hour. The first time he had come to St. Stephen’s to pray, and had forgotten to pray. But this time he prayed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1
THAT WAS THURSDAY. At ten o’clock Friday morning Lieutenant Commander Phelan, of the Naval Attaché’s office, came to Jeff’s room. He was dressed in his best uniform, and wore his ribbons. Jeff guessed that what he had to say would be formal. Jeff was prepared for him. Jeff had dressed in his best blue suit.
“Mr. Baker,” Phelan said, “the Admiral sent me to inform you that you are wanted in his office.”
“At what time?”
“Immediately, if you don’t mind, Mr. Baker.”
“I don’t mind, Commander. Do you have transportation?”
“I do.”
On the way to the Mission they talked about the weather.