Oskar Fried must be on his way. The blue sky through Jack’s window, the row of hats, the smell of wood polish and pencil shavings peculiar to schools and government offices, all are warmed to mingling by the afternoon sun, and he basks in an unlooked-for sense of well-being. He is in no hurry to return Simon’s phone call. If “Captain Fleming” calls, it means the matter is of ordinary importance. If “Major Newbolt” calls, it means drop what you’re doing. Jack was amused when Simon picked the code names. While the Fleming reference is obvious if not ludicrous, he must remember to ask Simon where Newbolt comes from. He reaches for his pencil and resumes tapping as he listens—“… Ad Pracs, Accounting, Statistical Analysis….”
Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Geography, History, Art. The felt animals have begun their migration across the bulletin board. Madeleine is unsurprised to see that she is indeed a hare in reading. She has, however, in spite of being an excellent speller, been designated a tortoise in writing. She is being penalized for penmanship. Apart from the fact that her writing still looks too much like printing, no matter how hard she tries, she always runs out of room at the end of each line and winds up with words scrunched in the verbal equivalent of a pileup on the highway.
It is five to three and Mr. March has chosen the best botanical drawings and prepared them with Scotch Tape: buttercups by Marjorie Nolan, tulips by Cathy Baxter and dandelions by Joyce Nutt. Madeleine drew excellent daisies with faces and long eyelashes — one is smoking a pipe, one is winking, a third has a moustache and glasses. Her disappointment at not being chosen is tempered by the realization that she is lucky to have earned a dolphin in Art for such unrealistic flowers, as it’s apparent, now that she glances around, that the purpose was real-life. She casually folds her arms over her daisies.
Mr. March says, “Diane Vogel, proceed to the front of the class please.” He lifts her up by the armpits and she sticks the three pictures over the window of the inside door — the one that opens onto the corridor. He sets her back down and says, “Thank you, little girl. You may return to your desk.” Then he gestures to the door, like a lady on a Duncan Hines cake commerciaclass="underline" “Thus we turn our best face to the rest of the school.”
Madeleine looks at the papered-over window. The art is facing out. At least we don’t have to stare at Margarine Nolan’s buttercups.
“You’re getting company,” says Simon.
“Oskar Fried is here.”
“Not yet, this is something else, bit of a wrinkle.”
Jack is in the phone booth next to the grocery store. He felt a little odd answering it; what if someone were to see him? No one did, but if someone had, how would he have justified answering a pay phone and proceeding to have a conversation? He was startled by the only answer that came to mind: adultery.
“They’re sending a second man,” says Simon. “Another officer will be joining the mission as your counterpart.”
“My counterpart?”
“Your opposite number, as it were. A USAF type.”
“Why are they involved?”
He realizes as soon as he asks that Simon is not about to answer, and indeed Simon replies, “Cooperation under the terms of NATO, dear boy, your tax dollars at work.”
Jack recognizes annoyance beneath the casual tone, and senses that, if he asks now, Simon may actually tell him something. “Why do we need another man?”
“Because nature and the United States Air Force abhor a vacuum. They also abhor relying on anyone but themselves.”
“Isn’t this a joint effort?”
“Oh yes. As Abbott says to Costello, ‘You follow in front.’”
“I didn’t know MI6 worked so closely with the American military.”
“Keep pumping me and I’ll blow up.”
Jack chuckles. “So what’s our second man supposed to do?”
“For the most part, he’s simply to be there on the ground, in case.”
“In case what?”
Simon sighs. “They don’t want to entrust Fried solely to a Canadian.”
“We work with the Yanks all the time, what’s the problem?”
“Well, Canada is leaky, for one thing.”
Jack again sees Igor Gouzenko, hood over his head, naming names in Ottawa. But that was years ago. Along with the atomic spies at Chalk River…. “It is?”
“It’s a bloody sieve.”
“Look who’s talking.”
Simon groans. “Point taken, Messrs Burgess and Maclean have rather tarred our good English name of late. But I went to Oxford, mate, not Cambridge.”
“So where do I meet up with this USAF type?”
“There’s an exchange position at your station, yes?”
“That’s right. It alternates between Americans and Brits”—Jack is a little taken aback. It hadn’t occurred to him that the American would actually be posted to Centralia. Group Captain Woodley must be in the loop after all. “It’s supposed to be a Yank this time but the fella’s late.”
“That’s because they pulled the original man and posted another at the eleventh hour.”
“An intelligence type?”
“No no, some fresh-faced kid. A little younger, a little quicker, perhaps, than the bloke they’d planned to put out to pasture up your way.”
Jack is stung. “Si, it’s still a training base, and a not too shabby one at that.”
“No offence, mate, but we’re talking bugsmashers and Chipmunks, are we not, and this pilot comes to you straight from USAFE.”
United States Air Force Europe. “Wiesbaden?” Jack gets the picture. The American has just come off a tour of duty flying Sabres and F-104 Starfighters — widow-makers. “So what’s the drill?”
“Well, it doesn’t change much for you really, because the American chap hasn’t been given the straight gen.” Gen—general information. Intelligence.
“Why not?”
“I suggested to them that he didn’t need to know yet and, in the end, they concurred.”
Jack doesn’t ask who “they” are. “They” are a committee; it will have sprouted from a branch of American military intelligence, it will have an acronym like countless other committees that proliferate and cross-pollinate in a big bureaucracy, and it might not officially exist. Somewhere there are human beings behind the letters, but they are as transitory as the initials themselves. If it’s indeed possible to deduce the aims of an organization by analyzing its actions, Jack reflects, the aim of most bureaucracies is to confuse.
“So your American friend knows very little,” says Simon. The chain of command will run from Simon, through Jack, to the American. “They suggest you brief him upon arrival.”
“No problem,” says Jack
“I suggest you may see fit to put that off until the last moment.”
Jack smiles. “Whose suggestion would you suggest I follow?”
“No worries if you choose mine, I’ll take any kicks that are coming.” Simon goes on to explain that the American captain will arrive in Centralia knowing only that, during his year as an exchange officer, he will at some point be called upon to perform a special task.
“What task?”
“Well, naturally the Americans will have one of their own escort Fried south of the border when the time comes.”
“So Fried is going to the States.”
“And thanks to the Americans, you now know more than you need to.” He sighs. “I don’t know why I bother sometimes.”