Cue for Quiet Part 13

Column after column of stuff like that. When the reporter got through burbling, he did have a few facts that were accurate. He did say it was my doing that set off the last atomic bomb test; he did say that I was apparently invulnerable to violence powered by electrical or internal combustion engines; he did say what I could do, and what I had done, and how often. He didn't say who I was, or what I looked like, or where I'd come from, or what I did or didn't know.

Sprinkled through the story--and I followed it back to Page 32 and the pictures rehashed of the traffic jam in Detroit--were references to T.

Sylvester Colquhoun, the boy who dumped the original plate of beans.

He attested this and swore to that. Whoever he was, wherever he got his information, he--there was his picture on Page 32, big as life and twice as obnoxious; Mr. Whom and the van d.y.k.e.

Guiltily I handed the paper over to Stein, who turned back to the front page and started again from the beginning. I tried to carry things off in the nonchalant manner, but I couldn't. I had to watch the Old Man light a cigarette with fumbling fingers, take a few snorting puffs, and crush it viciously under his heel. Miller and his temper.

Whom--or T. Sylvester Colquhoun--had, quite obviously, a grudge against the short left that had given him his concussion. According to the _Sentinel_, he had babbled a bit when he was released from the hospital, and an alert newshawk had trailed him to his home and bluffed him into spilling the whole story. He had sense enough, at that late stage of the game, to keep my name out of it, if he ever knew it. The reporter had gone to his editor with the story, who had laughed incredulously at first, and then checked Kellner at the laboratory. Kellner had clammed up, and when the now suspicious editor had tried to check Colquhoun's tale personally, Colquhoun had vanished. A snooping neighbor had noted the license of the car that had taken him away. The Highway Department--the editor must have moved fast and decisively--showed the license plate as issued to a man the editor knew personally as a special agent of the Kansas City Branch of the FBI.

Then h.e.l.l began to pop. Repeated long-distance calls to Was.h.i.+ngton ran him up against a stone wall. The answers he got convinced him that there was something to Colquhoun's wild tale, something weird and yet something that had a germ of truth. (Half of this, understand, was in the _Sentinel_. The other half I picked up later on, adding two and two.) As he was sitting mulling things over it was his turn to get a call from Was.h.i.+ngton. The State Department was on the line; Morgan, the Under Secretary.

Morgan fairly yelled at him. "Where did you get that information?

What's the idea?" and so on. That clinched it for the editor. Then it was he knew.

Morgan made his mistake there. He began to threaten, and the editor hit the ceiling. Hit it hard, because he stretched things a little. He stretched it more than just a little.

He said, "Furthermore, that's on the street right now--this is a newspaper, not a morgue!"

It wasn't on the street, the editor knew. Perhaps he wanted to throw a scare into Morgan, perhaps--But Morgan!

Morgan gasped, "Oh, my G.o.d!" and hung up with a bang.

The editor flipped a mental coin. His circulation was not what it should be, the boss had been riding him lately, his job might be where a beat would tilt the balance up or down. The national safety that Morgan had shouted about--well, if we had the perfect weapon and the perfect defense, what was there to fear? And this _was_ a newspaper, not a morgue! They replated, and the first extras. .h.i.t the street to wake up half the city. The wire services had the story and extras were rolling throughout the country, or the world, about the time I was watching the sun over Lake Ste. Clair.

Neither the State Department nor the FBI were on their toes that day.

Instead of denying everything, or instead of laughing heartily at the pipedream of an editor trying to sell an extra edition or two, whoever was pulling the strings behind the scenes demanded flatly that all wire services kill and disregard all references to Colquhoun. No one ever made a newspaperman do what he really didn't want to do. The very fact that the government was so eager to kill the story made every newsman worthy of his salt all the more eager to break the paper-thin sh.e.l.l around the meaty yolk. By noon, the time we landed for fuel, every Was.h.i.+ngton correspondent for every news service had a little different story for his boss, the White House was practically besieged at the mere rumor that the President was to issue a statement, and the State Department was going quietly mad.

"Not so quietly, at that," the Old Man said sourly. "One hour straight I stayed on that telephone. One hour straight I talked to one bunch of raving maniacs, and all the common sense I heard would go into your left eye."

By that time his temper had cooled below melting, and we were again on reasonably good terms. I was curious to know just who the Old Man had talked to.

He grunted. "Just about everyone in Was.h.i.+ngton with any authority at all. No one with any intelligence."

I could appreciate that. I have a very low opinion of anyone who stays in Was.h.i.+ngton any longer than necessary.

I asked him, "We're apparently heading back there. Why? Where were we going when they stopped us?"

He wasn't sure. "I wanted to keep on going," he said, "and get you out of the country. I still think that would have been best. There was to be a cruiser waiting at Bremerton for a shakedown cruise. But whoever is running all this--and I don't think that the President has thought too much about it--wants us to get back to Was.h.i.+ngton for another conference."

"Another meeting?" I was disgusted. Was.h.i.+ngton political rashes manifest themselves most often by the consistent eruption of conferences in which nothing is said, nothing decided, nothing done.

"What does who think what?"

He blinked, and then smiled. "I couldn't say. I've been in this game only twenty years. At any rate, you can see who's worried."

I didn't see, exactly.

"No?" He was amused. "Don't you remember the discussion we had about who was going to watch the watchers? Now that there's been a leak, the Army is going to blame the Navy, the Navy is going to blame the FBI, and I take punishment from all three." He sighed. "My department seems, invariably, to be in the middle."

I let it go at that. I didn't have the heart to remind him that a good portion of the trouble and friction this country has had in its history has been because the State Department has been sitting on the water bucket when it should have been playing deep centerfield. No use worrying about things until the fuse is burnt half its length, I thought. That might be, for me and all of us, a good policy to adopt, for the time being. Let the boys at the top fret and worry; let them wrack their brains and beat their heads against the wall. I'd do what they told me, if I could. The man that pays the salary worries about the unemployment tax.

"Stein," I said, "are there any more of those sandwiches?"

The Old Man settled back in his seat and began to read the Kansas City _Sentinel_ all over again. He was still worried when we landed in Was.h.i.+ngton.

He left in a waiting black sedan, and Stein and I stayed in the s.h.i.+p until it was yanked into a dark hangar by a tiny tractor with great rubber tires. We slid out the back of the hangar when the wary Stein thought it was safe, and a taxi rolled us to the Mayflower. There we registered, I was told, as James Robertson and William Wakefield, Wisconsin Dells.

"Milwaukee," I suggested, "has better beer."

He took the hint, and when the waiter brought our late dinner, the ice bucket had eight frosty bottles. They practically sizzled when they went down. Bob Stein, at times, had some earmarks of genius, even if you had to lay them bare with an axe.

The first day wasn't bad; we sat around, drank beer and ate huge thick sirloins on the swindle sheet, and told all the stories we knew. The radio was blurting either soap operas, hill-billy music, or lentil-mouthed commentators. The story broken in the _Sentinel_ was gathering momentum, by what we read and heard, and that was too close to home. So we made a pact to turn off the radio and keep it that way.

We never missed it.

The second day the beer tasted as good as ever. The steaks were just as thick and just as tender, the hotel service just as un.o.btrusive.

Stein was just as cheerful and as pleasant company. But I spent a lot of time looking out the window.

"You know, Bob," I said thoughtfully, "how would you like a big plate of spaghetti? Or ravioli? Maybe some pizza?"

He came out of the bathroom wiping his face with a towel, his hair wet and frizzled.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Am I going to have trouble with you?" He was pessimistic. "Aren't you ever satisfied?"

I turned away from the window and let the curtain flap in the breeze.

"Who wants to be satisfied? How about some sub-gum war mein, or chicken cacciatora?"

He tossed the towel back through the open door. "Now, look here," he protested.

I laughed at him. "Okay, but you get the point."

He did, but he didn't know what he could do about it. "We were supposed to wait here until--"

That one I'd heard before. "Until the hotel freezes over, sure. But I don't want to freeze. Do you?"

No, nor to rust. You could see that he liked his job of body-guard and factotum, and yet....

I pushed him over the edge. "Tell you what to do," I said. "You call up and say that I'm getting restless. Say that you're afraid I'll ease out of here when your back is turned. Say anything you like, as long as you lay it on thick, and I'll back you up. Okay?"

He weighed it awhile. He liked inaction, no matter how sybaritic as much as I. Then, "Okay," and he reached for the telephone.

The number he gave answered the first ring.

"I'm calling for Mr. Robertson," he said. "This is Mr. William Wakefield. W. W. Wakefield." He paused. Then, "Ordinarily, I wouldn't, but Mr. Robertson felt that I should get in touch with you at once."

The other end squawked, nervously, I thought.