Barbary Shore (27 page)

Hollingsworth looked up. “Shall I go on?”

“If it serves your purpose.”

Hollingsworth ceased to read and looked at McLeod with a small air of triumph. “Do you admit the authorship of this?”

“No.”

He coughed into his folded handkerchief. “It may interest you to know that we uncovered your whereabouts exactly because of this article. Took us months. But the mimeograph machine, the paper, the tie-up with other articles written by the same man, his knowledge of the operation of our organization and the one across the sea, it all fitted together.” He took a folder from his brief case and extended it to McLeod. “Look through this. All the proof is present.” And while McLeod subjected it to his scrutiny, Hollingsworth sat back and in unconscious satisfaction patted the clasp of the brief case as though it were Pandoras box and all of his needs could be furnished there.

“All right,” McLeod said, “I wrote that article.”

“And the others?”

I leaned forward to hear his answer, my heart beating with surprising rapidity. “Wrote all of them,” McLeod said, and elation I could hardly repress leaped up in me. Forgetting myself I turned to Lannie. “You see?” I said aloud.

But she was on her feet with quite another reaction. “He never wrote that. He lies.”

“Sit down,” Hollingsworth said quietly.

“No, he can’t have written that. He tricks you all.” She froze into silence, eyes transfixed before her, muscles tensed.
Hollingsworth got up, offered her a cigarette, and lit it very carefully. “I told you there would be twists and turns,” he said evenly.

“I know, I know,” she murmured.

Hollingsworth took up his position behind the desk. “These interruptions must cease,” he said severely. “I will continue only if Mr. Lovett remains silent.” When I made no response, he smiled politely as though to blunt the adjuration, and went on in a matter-of-fact voice. “You claim then that the last few years have been spent in writing such articles?”

“In writing and in study.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing.”

“In anticipation of just such an argument a fellow like you might give, I have had a report compiled of historical figures. There is not a single case of that expression I’ve heard you use, a bureaucrat, ever turning to writing and study about Bolshevist theory …”

“Marxist theory.”

“… after many years spent in that country,” Hollingsworth was almost apologetic. “Therefore one gets to thinking that maybe what you’re doing now is camouflage, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t follow.”

“That you are conducting revolutionary theory only to mask the fact that you still belong to the organization you pretended to leave when you came to us. Because, a fellow asks himself, why didn’t they dispose of you?”

“They never found me.”

Hollingsworth sniffed his fingers. “Unlikely.”

“Leroy, you claim I have the little object. If I have it, how could I still belong to the …

“Bolshevists,” Hollingsworth finished.

“If I belonged, I would have given it to them long ago.”

Hollingsworth closed the trap. “But you claim you don’t have the little object.”

McLeod burst into laughter. “That was well-managed, friend,” he said.

“I do think we have made some progress,” Hollingsworth sighed. “Let me sum it up. Either you have what we are looking for and belong to no organization, or you do not have it and you have never left off allegiance to the enemy flag. You are just making believe you are a fine fellow and sorry for your past. These are the only two possibilities a fellow can accept. Can we work on this understanding?”

“It’s a waste of time.”

Hollingsworth took a penknife from his pocket and began to sharpen a pencil. He did this slowly and thoroughly, McLeod’s eye upon him, and when he was finished he gathered the shavings in the palm of his hand and dumped them on the floor. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” Hollingsworth finished, and scattered the waste with his foot. McLeod nodded, his mouth drawn.

“If a fellow had decided to leave us and go in for theory,” Hollingsworth speculated, “why should he want to take the little object?”

“You want a hypothetical answer?”

“Oh, yes, present company excepted.”

“Again, it’s a problem in context, Leroy. On the surface, it’s a foolish gesture, and will merely add to the urgency with which our imaginary friend will be hunted. But what is his situation? He is going to reform himself, he must overturn the habits of the last ten years, and he cannot retreat. Moreover, he is barred from joining any group with whose program he might be sympathetic. Therefore he will be all alone, and the theft will stiffen him. Action always gives ballast to theory. But there is another consideration even more important. If possession of
the little object by neither power is a disadvantage to both, to deprive them is a moral act.”

“This all sounds farfetched to me,” Hollingsworth said.

“Believe what you wish.”

“Do you have the little object?”

“No.”

“Then I can’t believe you.” Hollingsworth extracted a file from the brief case. “Let’s see if you’re the kind of fellow who’s capable of being unselfish. I want to return to our Balkan friend whom I introduced in the last session. Do you still deny all knowledge of him?”

McLeod took his time to answer. “I’ve been thinking it over, and I believe that I met him once or twice.”

“That’s all?”

“All I remember in any case.”

“Let’s take a look at the facts,” Hollingsworth said with an obvious love for the sentence. “This Balkan gentleman appears in a Mediterranean country in, shall we say, 1936? Said country is in the middle of a civil conflict, and the power he represents is giving aid to one of the two factions, the faction of the legally constituted government. Our friend takes over a high function which is related to a particular brigade of soldiers who are international in character, and he is in charge of the counterespionage. In going through our papers on him, we find that he has previously made speeches which may account for his position. If you wait, I will read you an excerpt.”

Hollingsworth plucked still another paper neatly from the file, and spread it before him on the desk. “Here is what he says:

Hollingsworth nodded. “The potentate of that very country spoke with praise of the author.”

“He would not today,” McLeod said.

“One never knows.” Hollingsworth coughed. “This is a fellow who says he wants to test himself, and conditions being what they are in said civil conflict, he has plenty of opportunity. The first case which comes to my attention is a minor one. Elements in this brigade are ranged on the battle front next to other political elements with which they are not sympathetic. I have to admit I never get it clear in my head because all the parties and groups are so complicated, but the said other elements are made up of workers who claim to be revolutionary—if I remember they are called something like the Pow-wow—and they don’t get along politically with the brigade. One time ammunition comes through under the aegis of the great power which supports the brigade, and the arms are so distributed that the elements of the Pow-wow receive nothing. When the enemy attacks, the Pow-wow is routed, and the result is disaster for the flank is turned and much ground is lost. Afterward there is dissension in the brigade. Why, they ask, was our flank given no arms, and this dissension reaches the point where a delegation goes in protest to our Balkan friend. He argues with them, he attempts to dissuade them, but his efforts unavailing; he is obliged to order imprisonment, and word is sent back that they have been discovered
to be enemy agents. Moreover, the rumors that the Pow-wow was not provided with arms proved to be false, our friend announced. They were provided with arms but sold them to the enemy, and retreated from cowardice and not from lack of munitions. This story is distributed by all the best propaganda agents. The Balkan gent in question confided to one of his subordinates that a terrible blunder had actually been made in not supplying arms to the Pow-wow, even though they were some kind of anarchists. But, and I quote directly, ‘It is better to carry through a blunder with all one’s energy, than attempt to halt midway and retrace one’s steps.’ Now, what do you think of this fellow?”

“He was the product of a system,” McLeod muttered. Perspiration had begun to form on his forehead.

Hollingsworth offered a cigarette and was refused. “Our information is extremely detailed on these points, for several subordinates sent continual reports on the fellow to the mother country, and through certain special contacts we were able to obtain copies. So another case comes to mind. Of a prominent Pow-wow leader, or maybe he’s an anarchist or whatever, who refuses to collaborate and is attempting to incite the workers to a revolution before the war is ended. This is against the policy of the great power who supplies arms. One fiery evening the leader makes a speech to some kind of Pow-wow council.” Hollingsworth sighed. “The speech is to the effect that they will lose the war unless the workers know that they are fighting for their own revolution and not for the promise of one. There is activity in the air, and who knows what is possible? The Balkan fellow apprised of the situation moves fast on orders from above. A couple of paid killers murder the particular leader and several of his companions two nights later, and forged documents are distributed showing that he too was an enemy agent.”

“Workers bled,” Lannie said suddenly. Her voice was hollow
and resounded in the room. McLeod supported his elbow upon his hand and lit a cigarette.

“I’ve made a study,” Hollingsworth went on, “of this Balkan gentleman, and one has to admire his efficiency. Let me cite another case …”

But another was hardly to exhaust it. While my mind whirled and my reason grew leaden, incident tumbled upon incident, and forgery upon weapon, until arrests and murders, betrayals and slander, jumbled into an olio of secret inks, Magyar knives, and the swollen spider mesh of the Balkan gent. Hollingsworth ticked it off in a mild flat voice, a clerk reciting from his ledger, fingers extended one by one as Case Three, Item Four, and Subject Five were elaborated and folded back into the brief case again, until the first hand enumerated, he must employ the second, and Project Seven, Case Eight continued the list. With the expansion of the dossier, McLeod fought a rear-guard action, listening in silence to story after story while the perspiration gathered on his forehead and wet the front of his shirt, listening with such apparent patience that I was on the point of protesting myself, only to attack with all his resource on a detail I might have considered trivial. Lannie listened, her lips parted, her eyes bright, shaking her head and clucking her tongue, an audience animated beyond the expectation of any actor, attention given wholly to whoever was speaking.

“I come now,” Hollingsworth said, “to a special incident which attracted my attention when going through these files. It’s a minor problem I should say, but I found it of unusual interest. There is a young fellow who works in the field organization of the gentleman we have been talking about, a nice young fellow from all reports, but a little impractical. And after a year or so in which he’s up at the front and back again all the time, he begins to act in a manner which is very unusual. Our reports say that he goes around to everyone telling them things like this, ‘We are losing the war and it is all our fault. We are murdering innocent
men. The anarchists and the Pow-wow are genuine revolutionaries, but are we? That is what I ask.’ And it is amazing how little discretion the fellow has. Reports bombard his Balkan boss about what he is saying, and indeed he even says it to that very fellow himself.” Hollingsworth looked at each of us in turn, his pause manufacturing drama. “Orders come through. The young man is counterrevolutionary and must be eliminated. A simple enough case up to this point.” Gently Hollingsworth was rubbing the end of his nose with the eraser tip of the pencil. “What does the boss do? Something one might say is unforeseen, judging him on his past actions. He doesn’t kill the young man. He hides him away in a secret place, and sends in a false report. A very unusual action. So unusual that he almost gets away with it. But somehow he’s found out, and then he’s told in no mistakable terms that if the young man isn’t disposed of, he himself will be.”