They spent the next hour together going over the photographs that the admiral had assembled. They revealed every detail, even to the distances between certain of the buildings and the protective concrete-filled steel posts that had been installed to safeguard their corners where roadways passed by. After satisfying himself that it was still feasible, Wagner unveiled his plan; shoulder to shoulder with the admiral he went over certain of the photographs once more and sketched out an overlay.
“I think that it might work,” the admiral said when they were through. For him that was a strong endorsement.
“Then in that case,” Wagner said, “I have a small request to make of you.”
“You want to handle it.”
“That’s right, and I want to go into the field because I’ll have to be on the spot to pull it off. Ted Pappas will hate me for this, but I have the necessary experience and he doesn’t — not in this area. And he can be too easily identified.”
The admiral noted again the remarkable physique of the man beside him. “You aren’t exactly invisible yourself,” he commented.
“I’ve dealt with that before,” Wagner answered dryly. “I’m your best bet and you know it.”
The admiral could not deny that. “All right, Walt, it’s yours. Frame up the whole thing, then let me see it. By the way, can you handle the screw problem? That’s the real stinker, you know.”
“I think so,” Wagner said.
10
“I wish a report,” Zalinsky said, “on your speaking with Senator Fitzhugh. You were successful?”
“I was successful,” Hewlitt answered.
“He now has the understanding which was wished?”
“He does.” He did not elaborate.
Zalinsky leaned back a little and surveyed Hewlitt with slightly closed eyes. “In what style did he behave?” he asked.
“On the whole, the senator took it very well; he knows how to control himself. It was a blow, of course, because he apparently had thought very highly of your premier.”
“Aha, so now we are becoming clever.” Zalinsky came up in his chair and leaned forward once more. “You are making the propaganda to me.”
Hewlitt shook his head. “I stated a fact,” he said, “and I answered your question. The senator was disillusioned.”
“I do not know this word.”
“It means that his eyes were opened, like waking up from a dream. Something he had believed in was shown to be no longer true.”
Zalinsky worked his lips. “This I can accept,” he said. “Is it now that you think he will go home?”
“I doubt it,” Hewlitt answered him. “As far as he is concerned he is still a United States senator and on the job.”
“Why not you told him also that is not true?”
“I didn’t tell him that for two reasons. First, it was none of my business. Secondly, I don’t believe it myself.”
“You still think that you have a government, then?”
“Of course. And if you admit it, Mr. Zalinsky, so do you.”
Zalinsky tightened and Hewlitt saw it, but he was unafraid. He knew the man better now; to cross him directly would be an invitation to disaster, but he liked to talk and discuss so long as things remained on that plane.
“Explain to me,” Zalinsky said.
"All right. This is a very big and complicated country, very different from your own and run under a different system. Our people are different, our ways of doing things, even our recreations. You and your people would take years to learn the mechanism. It is like a vast machine that you have not built and have not been taught to operate. We have machines in this country that take months just to learn to run. You can’t do it without the United States government; the whole thing would fall down around your ears.”
Zalinsky fitted the tips of his fingers together. “You do not think that I have enough smartness, then.”
“You would have to be at least a hundred thousand men to try it alone,” Hewlitt said. “You don’t have enough trained people to run your government and ours too. You have simply taken much more food on your plate than you are able to eat.”
“You have given me to think,” Zalinsky said. “Because it is the food that I must eat.” He paused and glanced down at himself. “And already I am too fat.”
“What did you do before you came here, Mr. Zalinsky?” Hewlitt asked. “I have read a great deal of your political material for many years and I never saw your name.”
Zalinsky seemed to welcome the opportunity to reminisce for a moment. “I was first a factory manager,” he said. “At a small factory where they made for women sweaters. It was not working well, there were not enough sweaters and they were of worse quality. So I was sent to see if I could fix.”
“Did you?”
“First I investigated to find what was wrong — the equipment, the workers, or the materials. Also the designs, the planning, and the management. I found that something was wrong with the workers.”
“Let me guess,” Hewlitt interjected. “They were being given too much political indoctrination along with their jobs. It interfered with their production.”
Zalinsky stared hard at him, not in animosity, but in frank curiosity. “Where you learn this?” he asked.
Hewlitt denied it with a shake of his head. “I didn’t, I just guessed. I know quite a bit about your country even though I’ve never been there.”
“You have accuracy,” Zalinsky admitted. “I stopped the lectures and made a closer watch of the machine operations. In a few weeks we had more and much better sweaters. I was told to start the lectures once more. To this I said that I would obey if they wished this more than sweaters. After that it was not furthermore a problem.”
“Go on,” Hewlitt invited.
“After a few months I am sent to one of our biggest steel mills. It will not work properly. This time I find that the machines are all mistaken — they are not in the right places. So I stop production and we move the machines with much work. For this I have terrible criticism, but in time the plant begins once more to work and we make steel. Before four months we have make more steel than if we had not made a stop.”
“Mr. Zalinsky,” Hewlitt said, “politics aside, the next time that you take over a plant, let me know. I’ll buy some stock in it.”
“So, you wish to exploit the workers!”
Hewlitt refused to take the bait. “When you buy stock, Mr. Zalinsky, you’re not exploiting the workers, you’re betting on them.”
Zalinsky’s mood changed, he leaned forward and unconsciously dropped his voice to a lower tone. “I become aware that in politics you have talent,” he said. “I give you warning — listen! Talk not out of this office, anywhere. Colonel Rostovitch, he is tougher than the steel I made. He is the planner that we are here. He listens, he knows. Himself he is now here and each day come more of his people. If he shoot you, I have no one to speak my own language.”
“I’ll be careful,” Hewlitt promised. “Thank you for the warning.”
He was thinking of Bob Landers as he walked out of the office; he was far from trusting Zalinsky, who was his immediate concern. The formidable Colonel Rostovitch could wait.
Marc Orberg leaned far back on the sybaritic davenport in his penthouse apartment, propped on his elbows, and ground his teeth in a combination of harsh frustration and mounting rage. His life, with which he had been so richly satisfied, was falling to pieces and he was unable to endure the humiliation.
He was not getting any publicity at all, and that was more essential to him than sex itself. The wild days of the Orberg decision against the draft were long past, so were the riots he had led against the police, the campus disorders, the bombings he had helped plan. He had accomplished all this, and now he was being ignored!