“This man should go to the hospital,” the doctor told him when he was finished.
“Not unless it’s absolutely necessary,” Putnam said. “He’s needed here.”
I looked at him in surprise, but I kept my mouth shut until after the doctor had left. Then I asked the question I’d been biting my tongue to hold back. “Why am I needed here?” I asked. “You’ve got Cromwell. The case is closed.”
“Mr. Victor — Steve,” he said, his tone becoming suspiciously friendly, “you are in an espionage position that offers the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“What do you mean?”
“All you have to do is stay dead. On the way over here I received word over my car telephone that even now your ‘widow’ is making arrangements for your funeral. It’s perfect. We even have a corpse. A corpse with your face. We won’t even have to close the casket. We can bury Stevkovsky in your place, and you can take his place. What an opportunity. We can crack the entire Soviet espionage network with you in a position like that. What do you say?”
What could I say? I was hooked again. but I did insist on one privilege. “I want to go to the funeral,” I told Putnam.
“What! But why?”
“It’s the chance of a lifetime. How’ many men get to go to their own funerals? I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“But you’re liable to be recognized.”
“You can have your experts disguise me. And I’ll stay at the back.”
In the end, I got my way. But I was almost a little sorry I did. The crowd at the funeral chapel was disappointingly small. Still, Hortense looked so appealing in her widow’s weeds, and she sobbed so loudly, that she almost made up for it.
Halfway through the ceremony Putnam nudged me and pointed to a bouquet of flowers. “I sent those,” he whispered.
“That’s a pretty small bunch,” I griped.
“Well, you wouldn’t have wanted me to be ostentatious, would you?”
“Cheapskate!”
After the chapel ceremony, we rode out to the graveyard. As the casket was lowered, Hortense tried to throw herself into the grave. She was saved by a United States senator who made a quick grab and latched onto her left breast.
“You must try to be brave, my dear,” he said, showing no sign of relinquishing his hold.
“But I’m too young to be a widow.” Hortense wailed.
“Oh, my poor, darling Steve! It was bad enough for the wedding. but do you know I couldn’t even find a Zoroastrian minister to preside at the funeral! Do you think he’d mind?”
I was all choked up. I wanted to tell her I didn’t mind. But of course I couldn’t. All I could do was watch myself being buried. After everybody else had left the side of the grave, I went up there all by myself, I wanted a moment alone with my grief. I dropped a handful of dirt onto the coffin.
“Good night, Sweet prince,” I murmured softly to myself. “Rest in peace, Steve Victor. Now, Man from O. R. G. Y., you belong to the ages.”
I turned away from the grave and went back to Put-nam. What’s the inscription on the headstone going to be?” I asked.
“How about ‘My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country’,” he suggested,
“How wrong you are! ” I told him. “How very wrong!”
And I proved it the next morning by starting out on my second double—-double life, that is!
Notes
[←1 ]
Sir Charles Aubrey Smith, CBE (21 July 1863 – 20 December 1948) was an England Test cricketer who became a stage and film actor, acquiring a niche as the officer-and-gentleman type, as in the first sound version of The Prisoner of Zenda (1937).
[←2 ]
The Student Prince is an operetta in four acts with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Dorothy Donnelly. It is based on Wilhelm Meyer-Förster's play Old Heidelberg. It was made into a musical Cinemascope movie in 1954, The Student Prince directed by Richard Thorpe.
[←3 ]
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961. A counter-revolutionary military group (made up of mostly Cuban exiles who traveled to the United States after Castro's takeover, but also some US military personnel), trained and funded by the CIA, Brigade 2506 fronted the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF) and intended to overthrow the increasingly communist government of Fidel Castro. Launched from Guatemala and Nicaragua, the invading force was defeated within three days by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, under the direct command of Castro.
[←4 ]
The 1960 U-2 incident occurred during the Cold War on 1 May 1960, during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down while in Soviet airspace. The aircraft, flown by pilot Francis Gary Powers, was performing photographic aerial reconnaissance when it was hit by a surface-to-air missile and crashed near Sverdlovsk. Powers parachuted safely and was captured.
[←5 ]
See “My Son, the Double Agent”.
[←6 ]
Robert Gene Baker (November 12, 1928 – November 12, 2017) was an American political adviser to president Lyndon B. Johnson, and an organizer for the Democratic Party. In 1962, he and a friend, Fred Black, established the Serv-U Corporation which was designed to provide vending machines for companies working for programs established under federal grants. During the following year, an investigation was begun by the Democratic-controlled Senate into Baker's business and political activities. The investigation included allegations of bribery and arranging sexual favors in exchange for Congressional votes and government contracts. Baker resigned from his position in October 1963. The investigation of Lyndon Johnson as part of the Baker investigation was later dropped.
[←7 ]
That would be almost 800 $ in 2018.
[←8 ]
Approximately 240.000 $ in 2018
[←9 ]
320000 to 360000 $ in 2018
[←10 ]
Author of the aforementioned God and Man at Yale and Up from Liberalism.
[←11 ]
References to several swashbuckling movies and actors. Douglas Fairbanks sr. (May 23, 1883 – December 12, 1939) was an American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films. -- Douglas Elton Fairbanks Jr. (December 9, 1909 – May 7, 2000) was an American actor, son of Douglas Fairbanks sr. -- Louis Charles Hayward (19 March 1909 – 21 February 1985) was a Johannesburg-born, British-American actor. Producer Edward Small started building Hayward into a star, casting him in a dual role in The Man in the Iron Mask (1939, very loosely adapted from the novel Le Vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas père) under the direction of James Whale. -- Ronald Charles Colman (9 February 1891 – 19 May 1958) was an English-born actor, starting his career in theatre and silent film in his native country, before emigrating to the USA, and having a successful Hollywood film career. Colman starred in several classic films, including A Tale of Two Cities (1935), Lost Horizon (1937) and The Prisoner of Zenda (1937). -- Archer Winsten was a leading American film critic from the late 1930s through the early 1980s. He was a graduate of Princeton University and a judge for many years of the International Ski Film Festival when it was held annually in New York City. He wrote for the New York Post.