R had been listening to this with the disgruntled face of a Lee J. Cobb, and when I was done, he said, “In other words, you’ll be sensible for a little while.”
“No. I’m always sensible, that’s the part you people won’t understand. My friends and I think it’s more sensible to talk with people than shoot them, which means we don’t think war is sensible. You do think war is sensible. That, in essence, is our only difference of opinion.”
R said, “One thing I’ll say for you, you can talk it too. You sound just like one of your pamphlets.”
“You’ve read my pamphlets?”
“Every one.”
“And they’ve had no effect on you?”
R chuckled, a sound like forest thunder. “I’m not ready to join up,” he said, “if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s very depressing,” I said.
P said, gently, “It’s getting a little late.”
“Right,” said R, suddenly firming up, putting his palms flat on the desk, being very businesslike. “All right, Raxford,” he said, “here’s the situation. We’ve been aware for some time that Tyrone Ten Eyck was on the move again, that he was probably on his way to this country. We want to know what his plans are, who his confederates are, which country he’s working for. The little you heard from him last week, China and Congress and the Supreme Court and the UN, doesn’t really help us much. What we want to know are his specific plans, and how all these elements work together.” He looked at the others. “Gentlemen?”
S said, “And the timetable, Chief.”
Well, well. P had been the Chief the last time, and if R was P’s Chief, as seemed likely, I was well up among the muckamucks here.
R said, “Right. We not only need to know what they plan to do, but when. Also, if possible, the locations of any arms caches, information on Ten Eyck’s method of entering the country, and so on. You getting this, Raxford?”
“You want to know what he’s doing,” I said.
“In essence,” he admitted. “What we’re trying to get across is that we want it in as much detail as possible.”
I nodded. This, I assumed, was what was normally called a briefing, and so far it could have been a hell of a lot briefer, if you ask me. R hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know.
But now, at R’s instruction, T took over, saying, “In order to operate at optimum efficiency, Raxford, you should know as much as possible about the people with whom you will be dealing. Tyrone Ten Eyck, I believe you already know something about.”
“He’s my girl’s brother,” I said. “According to her, he was something of a sadist when they were kids. Also, he’s about eight years older than her, and ten years ago he deserted from the Army in Korea and went over to the Communist Chinese.”
T nodded, saying, “So much is fairly common knowledge, or at least obtainable from newspaper files. Also the fact that Ten Eyck has a genius IQ, was with the Psychological Warfare section of the Army, and has changed his national allegiance several times in the last decade.”
“I didn’t know about that,” I said. “About his switching allegiances.”
“I consulted a notebook, said, “In 1957 he first left China, lived for several months in Tibet, joined and eventually took charge of a small bandit force operating along the China-Tibet border, and finally betrayed this group into the hands of the Red Chinese for a cash payment. He then entered India, associated himself with the construction of a dam being built with Russian assistance, and in 1959 moved to Russia. Later the same year the Russians ousted him as a Chinese spy, though of course both he and the Chinese denied everything. He then went to Egypt, opened a training school for terrorists who were to be smuggled into Israel, and shortly thereafter blew up both the school and its largest graduating class, possibly as a result of an Israeli bribe. Denials all around once again. After a short stop in Jordan, another brief stay in India, an even briefer stay in Cambodia, and six months running arms to Indonesia from a base in New Zealand, Ten Eyck returned to China, stayed there two years, disappeared entirely from view for a while, and popped up in Algeria in 1963, where he organized and commanded a white terrorist anti-Arab group, much more virulent than the OAS, somewhat similar to our own Ku Klux Klan. Various betrayals within the organization — apparently not from Ten Eyck this time — decimated the group, and Ten Eyck barely got out with a whole skin. In fact, there was widespread belief for some time that he was dead. But now he’s turned up again, in New York City.”
“And that’s the guy you want me to spy on,” I said, remembering Tyrone Ten Eyck’s looks, his air of evil and assurance and power back there in the Odd Fellows’ Hall.
T said, calmly, “That’s one of them. As for Mortimer Eustaly, we believe he is the same man we have in our files under the name of Dimitrios Rembla, a general smuggler and gun-runner with no particular political ties. A businessman type, for sale to anyone, and not normally a killer, though he will kill when cornered.”
“I’m not sure,” I said, “I ought to know all this.”
R said, “One of the most vital parts of any defense is a full knowledge of the enemy.”
“If you say so,” I said.
“The man called Lobo,” T went on, “would appear to be one Soldo Campione, for seventeen years the personal bodyguard of a Latin American dictator who was successfully assassinated in 1961. The dictator’s family, blaming Campione — or Lobo, as you know him — kidnaped him, spirited him away, and tortured him for five months. By the time he was rescued, there had been permanent brain damage, both physical and psychological. For the last few years he has been a general muscleman-for-hire in the Caribbean area and Central America. He obeys orders implicitly, has the intelligence of a three-year-old child, and should under no circumstances be challenged to physical combat.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” I said.
“You have already been briefed on the backgrounds of the others present,” T said, “with the exception of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp. Would you prefer the other backgrounds to be repeated, to refresh your memory?”
“Thanks,” I said, “but no thanks.”
“Very well.” Flip, flip: the notebook pages. “Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp. Until you mentioned them, they were virtually unknown to us. It is entirely possible that several boxes of poisoned candy mailed to the Governor’s Mansion in Albany came from the Whelps; at least, we don’t know who else might have done it. Recent investigation discloses that Mr. Whelp worked for twenty-seven years in a factory on Long Island which has recently gone almost completely over to automation. In accordance with labor-management agreements, Mr. Whelp was laid off three years ago, has been receiving eighty percent pay ever since, and will continue to receive eighty percent pay until the age of sixty, at which time he will switch to the company retirement pension plan, which is sixty percent pay. Mr. Whelp is fifty-one, healthy, with all his faculties and all his limbs, and appears to have absolutely nothing to do with himself, which leads us to believe he is probably capable of doing almost anything.”
T flipped his notebook shut and said to R, “That’s it.”