Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) (16 page)

“I’ve been having a lot of exercise,” Paul said, keeping his voice in the same low conversational tone as Brownlee’s.

“Oh?”

“Just having a look at everything.”

“Plenty of parties, too? Some nights on the town?”

Paul laughed. “Not exactly. Things didn’t turn out the way I planned, somehow.”

“What have you been doing besides walking around?”

“Reading. Catching up on all the opinions. Listening to voices, looking at faces. Just catching up...”

“Formed any opinions of your own?”

“Yes.”

Brownlee’s thin face relaxed. “I was glad to hear from you.”

“I’d like your opinion on something.”

“Oh?” Brownlee hid his disappointment. Was that all? Then, looking at Haydn’s face, he decided there was more to come. “Don’t look so worried,” he advised. “We’re enjoying ourselves at the zoo, aren’t we? Always liked this place.” He looked round the masses of children, the preoccupied parents. “Cheers me up. Makes me feel human beings can be normal. Well, what’s your question?”

“When you spoke to me before—”

“Yes, I remember,” Brownlee said quickly. No need for any mention of Berlin.

“—you were pretty vague about a lot of things.”

“I thought I was clear enough.”

“Yes, in a general kind of way. But you didn’t give me any specific examples of what you were talking about. I see now why you didn’t. You wanted me to see them for myself. How were you so sure that I would see them?”

“New York’s a strange place. It’s like a collection of small towns. You have all kinds of circles and groups, you have all kinds of opinions.”

“And as someone whose friends were mostly in the writing or publishing field, I’d—?”

“Exactly. You were bound to see something of their problems. Besides, you had all the training for seeing them quickly. Your last few years made sure of that.”

“I’ve been to visit Weidler, the editor of
Trend.
He has offered me my old job with plenty of future attached.”

“I was wondering how long Blackworth would last as assistant editor.”

Paul glanced quickly at Brownlee. “I think Weidler should meet you. He has handled the situation well, but I don’t think he knows what is the next step. He’s keeping everything quiet. As if that’s the way to ward off future trouble...”

“Are you taking the job? Is that your problem?”

“Half of it.”

“The other half?” Brownlee asked.

“It’s all connected. There’s a girl I used to know pretty well. Her name’s Rona Metford. She’s in trouble, I think. She doesn’t know it, but there seems to be a storm cloud moving up over her. She’s engaged to Scott Ettley. Do you know him?”

“Only through his father’s name. I’ve heard he’s a pleasant young man. But I doubt if he will ever be the man his father is.”

Paul Haydn said, “Better not let him hear you say that.” He was silent for a few moments. “The truth is that I just don’t like young Ettley. But then, he’s engaged to Rona, and that makes me critical.”

This time, there was a long pause, while Brownlee seemed only to concentrate on sugaring his coffee. “I don’t quite see your problem,” Brownlee said at last. “It’s nothing I can solve, is it?” He smiled, shaking his head.

“Well, what do you know about a man called Nicholas Orpen?”

That ended Brownlee’s amusement. “Does he come into the picture?” he asked very quietly. Then, in a normal voice, “Let’s finish our coffee and take a short walk to settle our lunch.”

Paul Haydn relaxed. Brownlee knows something about Orpen, he was thinking. If only I get the whole picture filled in, I’ll know where Rona stands.

“When I was a kid,” Brownlee said, looking at the next table, “I used to come to Central Park every Saturday, hauling my brother along by the hand. We used to walk fifteen blocks to get here.”

“And then fifteen back?”

“Sure. Fifteen blocks back with our feet trailing.” Brownlee was watching the children at the next table with a smile. They were leaving now. The oldest boy clamped his young brother’s cow-boy hat more firmly on the back of his head, wiped his sister’s hand clean of mustard before he took a firm grip, and told the other two to stop horsing around.

“Good officer material,” Roger Brownlee said, watching them drift off the terrace. “He’s the kind of kid who’ll always get the jobs to do. He’s too damned efficient to be passed over. If anyone wants a nice quiet life, all he has to do is close his eyes and ears and let someone else wipe the dishes.”

They rose. Paul led the way toward the steps, scattering the pigeons and the sparrows who were lunching on the terrace too. “Where shall we walk? Past the bears, up towards the Mall?” Paul asked.

“We are doing all right as we are,” Brownlee said, as they reached the cages on the north side of the zoo. Men and women as well as children were standing in a group to watch the lions and leopards. Others were watching the tiglon as he paced in his bad-tempered way; his stump of tail drew the usual comments.

“Here are some interesting object lessons for today,” Brownlee said, stopping for a moment at the tiglon’s cage. “Half lion, half tiger, so unhappy that they say he chewed off his own tail. Clearly a schizophrenic. Warning to all to keep ourselves as undivided as possible. A Dr. Klaus Fuchs personality, if ever there was one.”

They walked. “And here,” said Brownlee, watching the three gorillas, “is a practical case to disprove the theory that equal environment produces the same results. The nasty-looking one has had to be separated from the other two, who manage to tolerate each other in the same cage.”

“Better be careful what you say about him. He’s got his eyes on you.”

“He gives me the creeps,” a woman’s voice said at their elbow. “Look at his five fingers! And what do you call
them
—the yellows of his eyes?”

“He gets more like your brother Joe every week,” her husband said. “Boy, he knows when he is being insulted, doesn’t he?” For the gorilla’s large mud-black eyes swung round to fix themselves on the speaker.

Brownlee and Paul left the crowd. “I’m always sorry for the animals behind the bars,” Brownlee said. “They are kept clean and well fed, which is more than you can say for the victims in concentration camp countries, but...” He shrugged his shoulders.

They left the zoo, following the path through the underpass which led them northward in the Park toward the children’s playground at Sixty-seventh Street. There, Brownlee bought a couple of bags of peanuts from the man with the candy stall, and tossed one to Paul. “Let’s go feed the squirrels,” he suggested with a smile.

They left the path and its crowded benches, its baby carriages and chess games and roller skates and tricycles, and climbed up through the grass and trees toward a ridge of rocks and scattered bushes. Paul Haydn was warning himself,
Don’t be the first to start talking about Orpen.
But his impatience grew. He tore the cellophane bag open, and some peanuts scattered on the grass.

“Take it easy,” Brownlee said, “that bag has got to last you for another hour.”

Paul, trying to smile said, “What about this rock? It looks like a good place to sit.”

Brownlee looked round. At some distance boys were playing a game of baseball. A young couple sat under a lime tree in bright green flower. A nurse helped a baby to walk on the grass, watched glumly by a leashed Scotty. The paths behind the fringes of trees seemed far away and they were becoming still more crowded with walkers. The benches were now full. It was Saturday afternoon with the sun making its bow after all, coats were coming off, faces were being turned to the first warm rays. “This will do,” Brownlee said, sitting down. “Find yourself a soft corner. It’s dry, at least.” He looked over again at the boy and girl under the tree. The boy was now stretched on his back, his head in the girl’s lap. “Well, I suppose when you are twenty you can’t get rheumatics,” Brownlee added, opening his bag carefully and holding out a nut to an inquisitive but hesitant squirrel. It advanced and retreated and then advanced some more.

“You asked about Orpen,” Brownlee went on quietly. “I’ve quite a file on that little lad. What do you want to know?”

“Anything you can tell me.”

Brownlee’s story of Nicholas Orpen followed the same pattern as Jon’s account, last night. Only, Brownlee could carry it farther along. When Orpen’s role of martyr flopped so badly, he had kept a tactful silence until Pearl Harbour. But after that, he went into freelance writing. He got published frequently, for he wrote well and Communists were enjoying much reflected glory from the Red Army. His theme was always the same—an impassioned plea for a “second front” at a time when there weren’t enough landing-craft to get adequate supplies or reinforcements across the English Channel. He didn’t sound too repetitive, though, for he took the precaution of using a variety of pen names. Responsible men who knew the capabilities of the Western allies at that time began to wonder if Orpen didn’t want a second front then so that it could fail, and the Red Army would seem all the more glorious by contrast.

“In fact,” Brownlee said with a smile, “some of us used to call him the Voice of Moscow. That’s how important Orpen was. He was confident, too. He even tried for a job in OSS. But he didn’t get it. The next we heard of him was in a good-will project subsidised by a philanthropist who wanted close international co-operation. By the end of the war, Orpen was over in Europe as one of the chief men of that outfit. He was helping quote anti-Fascist refugees unquote. He travelled around, and when he came back here he had a lot of articles all ready to be printed. He wrote well, as I said. He was a most persuasive character. His angle? ‘I was there, I saw it all, I speak for humanity.’ He was published widely. He proved the Communists in Greece were not Communists at all, just Greek agrarian reformers or something. He proved the Poles were all just waiting to welcome the government that had come from Moscow
via
Lublin; the other Poles, the ones who had fought on all through the Battle of France and the Battle of Britain, were mere fascists. He showed that elections in Rumania and Bulgaria were all free and honest; that business prospects would be far better for the United States once real democracies were set up in Eastern Europe; that the Czechs had never been happier than when the Communists seized power. It was all good spadework. And plenty of people over here believed him, and repeated what he said. Helpful bunch of little sweethearts, they were.”

Brownlee paused and watched the squirrels now surrounding the rock; their small grey bodies erect, their front paws folded across their smooth bellies as if begging for more food and still more.

“After Masaryk’s mysterious death, Orpen’s popularity dropped. In fact, for a few months he was very quiet. Now, he has begun writing again, always under assumed names, but he is leaving foreign politics strangely alone. I don’t like it, Paul, I don’t like it one bit. He is still doing good spadework, but it is against the United States now. And you can see by his past record that he’s an expert tunneller.”

“What’s his line, nowadays?”

“Still the Voice of Moscow. In particular, he has been attacking the corruption of the American Press, the menace of the FBI to our freedom, the hysteria of spy-hunting, the warmongering of our draft laws. In general, if there is anything bad he can magnify, he certainly does. If there is anything good about the United States, he never mentions it. If there are two interpretations to be put on any American problem, only the worse interpretation is made. He says he’s fighting for the oppressed and the exploited; but he never mentions slave labour in Russia. He talks of witch-hunting; but he never mentions purges in Eastern Europe. He talks bitterly of intolerance; but he never mentions the Believe-and-Obey rules of Communism. He speaks of peace most glowingly; but he never mentions that Russia has more soldiers and more equipment than any of the Western countries. Yes, he talks of peace, while he is fighting a war in secret. He and a few hundred men like him.”

Roger Brownlee looked gloomily over the broad stretch of grass falling away to the crowded paths. “He is fighting a war against
them
, he said, pointing to the people sitting on the crowded benches or strolling slowly in the sunshine. “Comrade Orpen doesn’t trust the way they vote. He has no respect for their opinions. He and some seventy thousand comrades are quite sure that almost a hundred and fifty million people are fools—only the Orpens are right.”

“Yes,” Paul said slowly, “he is pretty contemptuous of the rest of us, isn’t he? If I were to join your counter-attack against Orpen and his friends, that would be a good enough reason.”

Brownlee fed some more squirrels, favouring the smaller or more timid ones that had been forced into the background by the self-assertive. “If?” he asked, at last. Then, “What’s holding you back, Paul?”

“I want to know what I’m getting into, frankly.”

Brownlee looked up at him suddenly, shrewdly. “We aren’t amateur spies, if that’s what you mean. We are only tackling a job that needs doing, a job that no agency in this country can deal with. We are simply a group of volunteers—men and women who make our living by newspapers, magazines, books, radio, movies. All we are doing is to fight ideas with ideas. Counter-propaganda in other words.”

“I don’t want to get into any organisation,” Paul said, “that could lead to thought control. In the end, there wouldn’t be any difference between Orpen and ourselves.”

“I’d agree. But there are a lot of us working together as volunteers. We’re from different parts of the country. Politically, we’re a mixture—Democrats, Republicans, Liberals and Norman Thomas Socialists. As far as religion goes, you’ll find Catholics and Jews and Mormons, Christian Scientists and Protestants like you and me. We’ve some agnostics, too. It would be pretty hard to produce thought control with that variety. The only thing we have in common is a real loyalty to our own country. We happen to like it a good deal.” Roger Brownlee stared at the grey rock beneath his feet. “It seems that quite a number of us have been worrying about Orpen and his friends for the last few years. All we needed was a little organisation—it wasn’t easy for a man worried by suspicions to do very much entirely alone.”