Agent in Place (4 page)

So too the village of Appleton, five miles away from Shandon—it had been there for almost three hundred years and considered everyone arriving later than 1900 as foreigners, acceptable if they provided jobs and much-needed cash (cider and hand-turned table-legs had been floundering long before the present inflation started growing). On that point, the Brains were found wanting. They had their own staff of maintenance men and guards to look after Shandon House. Even the kitchen had special help. Four acres around the place had been walled off—oh, it didn’t look too bad, there were small shrubs to soften it up—but the main entrance now had high iron gates kept locked, and big dogs, and all the rest of that nonsense. And those Brains who lived outside the walls in renovated barns, or farmhouses turned into cottages, might be pleasant and polite when they visited Appleton’s general store: but they didn’t need much household help and they never gave large parties, not even for the government big shots who came visiting from Washington.

The village agreed with the landed gentry that old Simon Shandon had really lost his mind (and it must have been good at one time: a $300,000,000 fortune testified to that) when he willed his New Jersey estate, complete with enormous endowment, to house this collection of mystery men and women. Institute for Analysis and Evaluation of Strategic Studies: that’s what Simon Shandon had got for all that money. And even if the outside of the house had been preserved—a rambling mansion with over forty rooms, some of them vast—the interior had been chopped up. Rumour also said there was a computer installed in the ballroom. The villagers tried some computing themselves on the costs, shook their heads in defeat, and found it all as meaningless as the Institute’s title. Strategic Studies—what did that mean? Well, who cared? After twelve years of speculation, their curiosity gave way to acceptance. So when Charles Kelso, taking the quickest route back to the city, drove through the village on a bright Saturday afternoon when sensible folks were out hunting in the woods or riding across their meadows, no one gave his red Mustang more than a cursory glance. Those fellows up there at Shandon House came and went at all times: elastic hours and no trade unions. And here was this one, as usual forsaking good country air for smog and sirens.

But it was not the usual Saturday afternoon for Kelso. True, he had some work to catch up with; true, he sometimes did spend part of the week-end finishing an urgent job, so that the guard at the gatehouse hadn’t seen anything strange when he had checked in that morning. And he was not alone. The computer boys were on to some new assignment, and there were five other research fellows scattered around, including Farkus and Thibault from his own department. But they didn’t spend much time on one another, not even bothering to meet in the dining-hall for lunch, too busy in their own offices for anything except a sandwich at their desks. They hadn’t even coincided in the filing-room at the end of the day’s stint. It was empty when Kelso arrived to leave a folder in the cabinet where work-in-progress was filed if it was considered important enough.

Maclehose, on duty as security officer of the day, let him into the room through its heavy steel door—he always felt he was walking into a giant safe, a bank vault with cabinets instead of safe-deposit boxes around its walls. Maclehose gave him the right key for Cabinet D and stood chatting about his family—he hoped he’d get away from here by four o’clock, his son’s seventh birthday; pity he hadn’t been able to take today off the chain instead of Sunday.

“Then who’s on duty tomorrow?”

“Barney, if he gets over the grippe.” Maclehose wasn’t optimistic. “He’s running a temperature of a hundred and two, so I may have to sub for him. Thank God no one—so far—is talking about working here this Sunday.”

“I may have to come in and finish this job.”

“Pity you didn’t keep it in your drawer upstairs.” Maclehose could see his Sunday being ruined, all on account of one over-dutiful guy. That was the trouble with the young ones: they thought every doodle on their think-pads was worthy of being guarded in Fort Knox. “Then we could have locked up tight. Is that stuff so important?” He gestured to the folder in Kelso’s hand.

Kelso laughed and began to unlock Cabinet D. He was slow, hesitating. Once its door was open, he would find two vertical tiers of drawers, three to each side. Five had the names of each member of his department, all working on particular problems connected with defence. The sixth drawer, on the bottom row of the right-hand tier, was simply marked
Pending
. And there the NATO Memorandum had come to rest. For the past three weeks it had been dissected, computerised, studied, analysed. Now, in an ordinary folder, once more a recognisable document, it waited for the analyses to be evaluated, the total assessment made, and the last judgment rendered in the shape of a Shandon Report which would accompany it back to Washington.

“Having trouble with that lock?” Maclehose asked, about to come forward and help.

“No. Just turned the key the wrong way.”

And at that moment the telephone rang on Maclehose’s desk in the outer office.

It was almost as though the moment had been presented to him. As Maclehose vanished, Kelso swung the cabinet door wide open. He pulled out the
Pending
drawer, exchanged the NATO folder for his own, closed the drawer, shut the door. He was about to slip the memorandum inside his jacket when Maclehose ended the brief call and came hurrying back.

He stared at the folder in Kelso’s hand. “Taking your time? Come on, let’s hurry this up. Everyone is packing it in—just got the signal—no more visitors today.”

“How about Farkus and Thibault? They were working on some pretty important stuff.”

“They were down here half an hour ago. Come on, get this damned cabinet open and—”

Kelso locked it, handed the keys over with a grin. “You changed my mind for me.”

“Look—I wasn’t trying to—”

Sure you were, thought Kelso, but he only tucked the folder under his arm. “It isn’t really so important as all that. I’ll lock it up in my desk. Baxter will see no one gets into my office.” Baxter was the guard who would be on corridor patrol tomorrow. “Have a good birthday party—how many kids are coming?”

“Fifteen of them,” said Maclehose gloomily. The door to the filing-room clanged, was locked securely. Its key, along with the one for filing-cabinet Defence, was dropped into the desk drawer beside those for the other departments—Oceanic Development, Political Economy, Space Exploration, Population, International Law, Food, Energy (Fusion), Energy (Solar), Ecology, Social Studies.

“Quite an invasion.” Kelso watched Maclehose close the drawer, set its combination lock, and turned away before Maclehose noted his interest. “All seven-year-olds?”

“Good God,” Maclehose said suddenly, “I almost forgot!” He frowned down at a memo sheet lying among the clutter on his desk. “There would have been hell to pay.”

What’s wrong now? Kelso wondered in dismay, halting at the door. His hand tightened on the folder, his throat went dry. Some new security regulation?

Maclehose read from the memo. “Don’t forget to pick up four quarts of chocolate ice-cream on your way home.”

“See you Monday if you survive,” said Kelso cheerfully, and left.

* * *

Kelso drove through Appleton, hands tight on the wheel, face tense. His briefcase, picked up in his office, lay beside him with the NATO folder disguised inside it by this morning’s
Times
. He had opened the briefcase for the obligatory halt at Shandon’s gates, but the guard had contented himself with his usual cursory glance through the car’s opened window. After four years of being checked in and out, inspection of Kelso had become routine. Routine made everything simple.

All too damned simple, Kelso thought now, turning the anger he felt for himself against Shandon’s security. I should never have got away with it. But I did.

He had no sense of triumph. He was still incredulous. The moment had been presented to him, and he had taken it. From then on there had been no turning back. How could he have done it? he wondered again, anger turning to disgust. All those lies in word and action, the kind of behaviour he had always condemned. And yet it had all come so naturally to him. That was what really scared him.

No turning back? He slowed up, drew the car to the side of the narrow road, sat there staring at his briefcase. Now was the time, if ever. He could say he had forgotten something in his office: he could slip downstairs to the filing-room—Maclehose would have left by now. He had the combination of the key drawer—127 forward, back 35—and the rest would be simple. Simple: that damned word again.

And yet, he thought, I had to do it. There was an obligation, a need. I’ve felt it for the last three weeks, ever since I worked over the first section of the Memorandum along with Farkus and Thibault. Yes, we all agreed that the first section should have been published for everyone to read. Now. Not in ten, twenty, even fifty years, lost in the Highly Classified files until some bureaucrat got round to releasing it.

The other two sections—or parts—of the NATO Memorandum were in a different category. From what he had heard they
were
top secret. Definitely unpublishable. Unhappily, he glanced again at the briefcase. He wished to God they were back again in the
Pending
drawer. But he had had only a few moments, less than a full minute, not time enough to separate them from Part I of the Memorandum and leave them in safety. All or nothing: that had been the choice. So he had taken the complete Memorandum. The public had the need to know—wasn’t that the current phrase, highly acceptable after the secrecies of Watergate? Yes, he agreed. There was a need to know, there was a moral obligation to publish and jolt the American people into the realities of today.

He drove on, still fretting about means and ends. His conduct had been wrong, his purpose right. If he weren’t so sure about that...but he was. After three miserable weeks of debating and arguing with himself, he was sure about that. He was sure.

* * *

He was late. First, there was a delay on the New Jersey Turnpike, dusk turning to night as he waited in a line of cars. A truck had jack-knifed earlier that afternoon, spilling its oranges across the road, and it was slow going, bumper to bumper, over the mess of marmalade. Next, there was a bottle-neck in Saturday traffic on the Upper East Side of Manhattan—huge caterpillars, two cranes, bulldozers, debris trucks, even a powerhouse, were all left edging a new giant excavation until Monday morning. If there was a depression just around the turn, these hard-hats didn’t know it. And then, last nuisance of all, with night already here, he found all the parking spaces on his own street tightly occupied. He had to leave his car three blocks away and walk to Sixty-sixth Street, gripping his briefcase as though it contained the treasure of Sierra Madre. Yes, he was late. Rick had probably called him at five exactly; Rick seemed to have a clock planted like a pacemaker in his chest. It was now ten minutes of six.

“One hell of a day,” he said aloud to his empty apartment. Switching on some lights, he placed the briefcase on his desk near the window and looked for any messages that Mattie, his part-time help, might have taken for him this morning. There was one. From his brother’s wife, Dorothea. He stared at it aghast. Mattie had written out the message carefully, although the hotel’s name had baffled her. “Staying this week-end at the Algonekin. Can you make dinner tonight at seven thiry?” God, he thought angrily, of all the nights for Tom and Thea to be in town! And then he began to remember: Tom was on his way to Paris on one of his assignments, and Thea was here for a day or two in New York. But surely they hadn’t told him it was
this
week-end? Or had he forgotten all about it? His sense of guilt deepened.

He left the desk, with the typewriter-table angled to one side of it, navigated around a sectional couch and two armless chairs in the central area of the room, skirted a dining section, reached the small pantry where he stored his liquor, and poured himself a generous Scotch. Of all the nights for Tom to be here, he kept thinking. He dropped into a chair, propped feet on an ottoman, began trying several excuses for size. None seemed to fit. Best call Tom and say that he just couldn’t make it. Not this time, old buddy. Sorry, really sorry. See you on your way back to Washington. No, no...that was too damned cold.

He sighed and finished his drink, but he didn’t move over to the telephone. He went into the bathroom and washed up. He went into the bedroom and got rid of his jacket and tie. He put on some discs on his record-player. And when he did at last go to the desk, it was to open the briefcase. Plenty of time to get in touch with Tom—it was barely six-fifteen. Yes, plenty of time to find some explanation that would skirt the truth (“Sorry, Tom. I forgot all about it.”) and yet not raise one of Dorothea’s beautiful eyebrows.

The doorbell rang. Rick?

It was Rick. “Sorry I couldn’t ’phone. Spent the last hour getting here from La Guardia. Traffic was all fouled up. He was at ease as he always was, a handsome man of thirty-three, blond and grey-eyed (he had that colouring from his German mother); but at this moment his face looked drawn.

It’s the harsh light in this hall: I’ll have to change the bulb, thought Kelso. He caught sight of himself in the mirror, and he looked worse than Rick—everything intensified. His dark hair and brown eyes were too black, his skin too pale, the cheekbones and nose and chin had become prominent, his face haggard. “What we both need is a drink,” he said, dropped Rick’s coat on a chair and led the way into the room.

“Nothing, thanks.” Rick’s glance roved around, settling briefly on the desk and the open briefcase. He restrained himself in time, didn’t make one move towards it. Instead, he watched Chuck pour himself a drink. “You look wrung-out. A bad day?”

“Hard on the nerves.”

“What happened?”

“I took the damned thing.” Chuck lowered the volume of
Daphnis and Chloe
.

“You’ve got it?”