The Paper Pistol Contract, page 3
I balked, however, at the Bay of Pigs. Possibly because I had grown tired of flouting logic, or possibly because we always acted so aggrieved when we found the few rare patriots who accepted our backing, and then still wanted to remain patriots. I was in the Oriente hills with Fidel, and he looked good there. He knocked over, with our help, one of the rottenest dictatorships in history, and then when he refused to turn over his country to our commercial interests, we said sorrowfully that he must go. He did—straight into Chairman K’s arms.
Five days before the Bay of Pigs invasion, I said that it could not succeed. Unfortunately, you can think these things, even have proof of them, but you must not say them out loud—or as loud as I did to a very august inner conclave of high policymakers. But what the hell, in for a penny, in for a pound, so I decided to tell the grave gentlemen exactly how the cow ate the cabbage.
I reported to them that the Castro forces were waiting; they knew our timing, and the constitution of our assault forces. Also, they knew about the inadequacy of our supply, our refusal to allow proper air support, and the divisive quality in the invading force itself, which was sprinkled with pro-Batista leaders. And that, because of these things, every person on Cuba, including mothers and newsboys, would oppose us.
They shut me up and led me out finally, and I could understand how it might embarrass my superiors. All those publishers, manufacturers, and Wall Street men present wanted to talk about the Monroe Doctrine and the necessity of showing the flag to this upstart, bearded Cuban jackanapes, who had double-crossed the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. Nobody had anything to say about Cuban rights or aspirations, and my few ill-chosen phrases were quite out of order. I was like a man who had the temerity to let a loud fart while the refrigerator door was open.
So I got frogmarched out in disgrace, and all my jockey strap medals were stripped off. Howard Shale fended my enemies off as long as he could, but I went inexorably from half-pay status to inactive to flat nothing. Then, when he had been brought down in his chopper in South Vietnam, I forgot the agency and bought myself an ancient Ozarks hardwood castle on a high hill covered by a fine stand of pines. And there I applied myself to the simple life, reading and redecorating my clapboard mansion with the stained-glass windows.
Carl Wiley, acting head of the action division, pulled me back into the “Great Game” on a contract basis. I was given the weird Asmodeus assignment, managed, if not solved, it, and went on a Canary Islands job that involved Don Juan Lacerda and his interesting plans to send visitors sauntering through all large American cities spreading bacterial death. Because of his tragic personal involvement in this case, Wiley had finally gone high-diving to his death from the psycho ward at Bethesda.
In the past two years France had moved nearly four thousand people into the Society Islands: scientists, engineers, and technicians. They were preparing for that country’s most ambitious nuclear bomb test, in the Tuamotus, and the United States had some interesting things to consider. Charles Le Grand, the latter-day Joan of Arc, had turned out to be considerably more than the jest Churchill and FDR had tried to make of him. With contemptuous lack of protocol, de Gaulle had recognized the Peking Government, and was about to take another step forward in the creation of his force de frappe.
News of the present assignment had reached me on the edge of a remote lake in Arkansas where I was indulging in a sport the natives call “noodling,” Do not be misinformed; noodling is not something done in the back of parked cars. It is a precarious pastime attempted by a certain elite—the leathery, chill-eyed natives of those Ozark hills who do not smile back at strangers. As in time immemorial, they still make their own whiskey from newly sprouted corn, triple-run, and if by misadventure you come across their stills, they will step into view and wave you on. With the admonition that if you tell the “policemans” (singular) what you have seen, they will kill you. They will, too.
Crater Lake, in which we were noodling on that late afternoon, is a desolate swamp area created by the New Madrid earthquake fault of 1911. For a year, rivers ran backward, hills buckled into steaming fissures, and one of the results was this lake. Its waters are dark and forbidding, and its length is studded by half-submerged cypress trees. It is from these trees that the polished “knees” are made to sell to tourists, who take them home and put them on their television sets.
When noodling, you drop into the water from your boat, go as deep as you feel inclined, and with your bare hands, grope into the holes, crevices, and ledges under the dark water. During the day, huge yellow flatheaded catfish lurk in these hidden places, and you slide your hands along them, under the belly preferably, toward the head. No matter how big they get (and that can be up to eighty pounds), the big cats will not thrash away. Instead, there seems to be some mesmerism in the touch if it is applied gently at the head. Being careful to avoid the wickedly pointed fins, you must thrust your hand into the mouth of the fish, clutch him from the inside by the gills, and hoist him to the surface.
It is an interesting sport because when the fish realizes you are being thus cavalier with his freedom, he comes alive, and cases are recorded where the noodler got his duke firmly fixed and found that he could neither get it free, nor tug the fish out of the hole. In that case, you drown, and get no score.
There are other hazards. On nearly all the hummocks that are formed by the arching root systems of the cypress trees at water level, cotton-mouth moccasins proliferate. They can also be found, in lengths up to ten feet, inside the underwater holes, and their jaws can open vertically in a creamy-white, poisonous trap. When engaged, they should be discarded as soon as possible, since they cannot be eaten and have considerable venom.
As in all sports, there are variations and debasements in noodling. Some of its modern participants sink into the water so encumbered by rubber suits, oxygen tanks, snorkels, and weapons (including C02 pressure guns) that they would be impervious to an attack by a giant squid. But the hillmen still go down in their drawers and low-quarter tennis shoes. No face plates, no dynamite, and the philosophy is if something too big “gits” you, well by God and by Jesus, git shut of it.
Not being an entire purist, I wore only swimming trunks and fins, but my right arm was greased to the elbow and covered by an armored glove. At first this timidity drew scorn from my neighbors, but I explained that I had already nearly been separated from a foot, and that I wanted running room if I locked my fingers into some gills that belonged to Moby Dick. They accepted this explanation, but many of them had scarred forearms from being scraped loose by main force under water, and it was obvious that I would never be a real Masai of the Ozark noodlers.
We had been at it for nearly three hours, and I had taken two small cats and a thirty-pounder when Hank Roach, the sheriff, gestured for me. I pulled myself out over the cypress roots, took a belt of the clear moonshine he offered me, and leaned into my Rover custom coupe to unhook the mike.
“This is JR5 6789,” I said, and released the button.
“Joe, this is JR5 2231,” came a harsh drawl. “Feller waiting here to see you. At your house.”
“Feller,” I said impatiently, “world’s full of fellers. What does this one look like?”
“He’s driving a Cadillac, and he looks like you better come home,” answered the laconic voice. “This is JR5 2231, over and out.”
“On my way. JR5 6789 out.” I hung the mike up and reached into the back of the car for a towel. As I sat on the edge of the leather upholstery, digging the mud from between my toes, Roach looked at me over the half-lifted bottle.
“Reckon you’re gone again?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” I answered as I reached into the car for my pants.
Hank had the drink. His Adam’s apple was prominent enough to run for Governor, if Faubus ever quit, and it rippled quite a while. Lowering the bottle, he corked it again. “These places you go, got any snakes in ’em?”
“According to where. Some of them got snakes thirty feet long.”
“Oh, shit,” said Sheriff Roach, but without heat. “Kin I have that biggest catfish of yours?”
In two hours I was turning up through the mountain village toward my gingerbread castle. A youngish man in an Ivy League suit was sitting on one fender of the Cadillac smoking a cigarette, and I shook hands with him. His name was Throckmorton, Charles, and that seemed fair, but his attaché case, so gracefully held, was chained to his wrist, and that seemed better. He stood aside while I carried the ten-pounders to the door, and followed me into the echoing hall.
I fixed him a drink of Cutty Sark on the rocks, as he requested, and in full view of his obvious surprise, I put the bottle and the ice bucket beside his elbow. He drank half the drink, leaned back in the big leather chair, and fished a tiny key out of his scarlet waistcoat pocket. When he handed me the papers enclosed in a blue binding, I thanked him and leaned toward the burning logs in the fireplace to read them. Proceed to San Francisco, catch Pacific South-Pacific Flight 871, with party to meet me, direct to Tahiti, there contact …
“My God,” said the courier, “how high are these ceilings?”
“Eighteen feet,” I answered without looking up. “Used to be a pipe organ at the other end of the room.” He turned to look, and I went on through the dossiers attached. One of the men I already knew; the others were strangers, but the purpose of the trip was clear. When I had read the papers again, I put them on the logs, and we both watched them catch fire, curl, and burn to ashes. While I was pouring a drink, Courier Throckmorton got up and raked the ashes. I signed an acknowledgment for him, and we got up.
“Got far to drive?” I asked, and he started to answer, then looked uncertain.
“I’m not supposed … to say. Even to you.”
I sighed. Most of the crap involved in the security business comes from who has the key to the executive toilet. “Man,” I said wearily, “you’re driving a big car that was rented in St. Louis. Here.” And I handed him the bottle of Cutty Sark. He stammered, but I pressed it on him. As we were going to the front door he stumbled and looked down.
“Floor’s nearly a hundred years old,” I explained. “No nails in it, none in the whole house. Everything hand-mortised, and some of the boards spring. I’m a lousy housekeeper.”
“Oh?” He looked around the gloomy hall, as if I had introduced a whole new concept into his life. When his six ruby taillights were vanishing down the steep drive, I went back into the house and had another drink. Went downstairs and turned off the air-conditioning over the mushroom beds and in the little greenhouse below the terrace. The imperial yellow peony bushes would be nothing before I got back. Then I walked out through the kitchen, across the Japanese rock garden—its colors were wrong now under the hidden floodlights—and stood for a minute on the arching bridge I had carefully coated with seventeen layers of lacquer.
My head and shoulders were misted with spray from the waterfall above the bridge, and I shivered. That reaction might have been a reflex against pneumonia, or it might have been a knowledge that I was committed to the South Pacific again, after a long time. I walked under the waterfall into the cave under it, lighted the gas jets in the sauna hut, and when the heated stones had steamed up, I lay motionless on the redwood planks. For an hour.
When this ritual act of purification was done, and I imagined that most of the whiskey, envy, Coca-Cola, and other corruptions were boiled out of me, I shut the gas jets off and opened the door. Wondering when I would be back again. Wondering how low, after all these years, I had cut the percentages down. But there was no answer to that one, so I unhitched the rope and swung out naked through the icy waterfall.
The drop into the pool was about thirty feet, and I plummeted into it exhaling. When I surfaced and dragged myself out, I felt fine and glowing; the reaction to the intense cold would come later. So I pulled a towel from the base of the faintly glowing stone lantern and toweled myself briskly.
Upstairs, in my bedroom-cum-study, I wrote the usual messages. Six short letters, quickly sealed and stamped. To my lawyer, my bankers (several, because I had to close old accounts and open new ones every time I moved on an assignment), my aunt Frieda, and my real estate man. All rote by now. When these were done, I had little to pack because I would be furnished with an entirely new wardrobe in San Francisco, one suitable to a millionaire motel builder. Then I walked out of the house, turning off lights on my way, and got in my car.
In two hours I was at the nearest airport. In four more I was in San Francisco, and nineteen days later I was frantically jerking an amorous lady named Odile across a damp lawn while somebody tried to kill us at close range. Now, with my shoulder wound dressed and sprinkled with sulfa powder, I sat waiting in the sultry Tahitian darkness. Planning, figuring my chances, and occasionally checking the rented boy.
Chapter 4
I was in bed reading half an hour later when I saw the beam of light probing along the blinds. Rain was still falling, but not so heavily, and the fringe of light was liquid; it flashed along and around the front window of my bedroom. I snapped off the bed light, thrust my feet into slippers, and went through the darkened house carrying the paper pistol. From the living room corner nearest the drive, I could see the hood of a car gleaming, a seeming earnest of friendliness.
“May we come up?” shouted a French-accented voice through the rain.
“Right!” I snapped on the floodlight that covered that corner of the terrace, but remained standing in the darkness. Two men mounted the stairway, both wearing transparent rain capes, and when they were under the terrace roof, they pulled the capes off. One of them wore the dark flat-brimmed police kepi, so I shoved the pistol down beside the cushion in the big chair and invited them inside.
The smaller man in front wore dark shorts, dark ribbed socks that came almost up to the knees, and a white sport shirt, open at the throat. His face was narrow, and the thinning hair was almost en brosse. He was a lean man, and a lot of history had been honed into his face and the way he moved. When you are in my line of work, you learn to catalog faces, movements, and the wearing of clothes in one glance. And this was a man I didn’t want to go against, at any time, for any reason.
His English was nearly perfect. He smiled and half-bowed. “Monsieur, a thousand pardons, but we are forced to disturb you.”
“Then you must disturb me,” I said. “I am Millard Durden, an American, here on business. You wish to see my passport?”
He held up both hands in deprecation. “Please, it is a neighborhood affair. I am Georges Waksand, of the local Sûrété.” He flourished his wallet, extracted a card, and handed it to me. I took the card with my left hand because I wanted to see what the uniformed officer three feet behind him would do. The civilian would not have shaken hands if I had not forced it on him, and his associate took the necessary step to the left and kept me in an unblocked line.
When the civilian said his name, it sounded like Vak-san, but the card read, in the upper left-hand corner:
GEORGES WAKSAND
Chef de La Sûrété
Papeete, (Ile Tahiti)
“Please sit down,” I said as I motioned them to chairs. Monsieur Waksand shook his head and said he had a few questions, that only. I nodded, and he smoothed at his thinning hair.
“Do you know Madame Odile Gebhardt, m’sieur?”
“Yes. I met her tonight—rather last night. My son ran into her boy down at the beach, brought him home and asked if he—the Gebhardt boy, that is—could have dinner with us. I sent them down to ask his mother, and she stopped by here on her way to town. She was going to a party at Les Tropiques, but said that if I was still up when she drove back by, we might have a nightcap together.”
“Ah, yes.” Waksand was cordially inattentive. “Anyone on the island would be glad to have dinner with you, m’sieur. Maeva cooks like an angel.” He put his head to one side, seemingly lost in silent admiration of Maeva’s culinary skill. I waited because he was about to force me to tell a lie, and I wanted to drop it in at exactly the right place. “And did Madame stop for this drink on her way home?”
“Yes. It was after one o’clock, I believe, because I had finished checking some blueprints and was about to tuck it in when she arrived.”
“She had her drink and departed?” Waksand was not looking at me; his tone was idly interrogative, and he was casing what he could see of the house.
“No, sir. The lady was restless, wanted to take a drive, so she drove me past Point Venus and showed me the ruins of Orohena House.”
“And why not?” asked the wiry little man, with a Gallic shrug. “These islands are filled with restless women. And Orohena House was once a notable place.”
“I could see that, even in its present condition.” I was tightening up and trying not to show it because the lie had to come soon, and I had to decide where to drop it in. I offered him a small cigar, which he refused graciously, lighting a Gallois. His efficient policeman always stayed far enough away and in a free line of fire.
“Is it true, you think, about the lung cancer?” Waksand asked.
I looked at him startled. “Who knows? Perhaps the little cigars take longer, and give only stomach cancer.” “So?” His nod was a noncommittal marvel. “And after Orohena House?”
“She dropped me off here and drove to her home. Or at least I suppose that’s where she went.”
“Of course.” He nodded. “Could you estimate the time when she let you off here?”
I pondered, remembering we must have been seen passing through Papeete both ways, so I couldn’t shade it much. The drive, the walk down, the conversation, and washing her feet with rum. Swimming and to the rendezvous on the plateau. “An hour and twenty minutes, in that neighborhood. Not more.”
