The Buck Passes Flynn (14 page)

The major’s look was wary.

“You know you’re authorized to tell me.”

In fact, earlier in the afternoon Flynn had been thoroughly filled in by the Pentagon team investigating this matter.

“Our responsibility was constant surveillance, assimilation, and interpretation of all air units both sides of the Sino-Soviet border.”

“An important job,” said Flynn. “But not one you’d expect to come up in conversation too often, I think. In this job, Major, was anything peculiarly important going on at the time that—?”

“Of course.”

“I mean, anything unusual? Was anything coming to a head, do you think?”

“I don’t think I understand you.”

“Was anything unusual happening on the Sino-Soviet border, as you perceived things?”

“Troops both sides of the Sino-Soviet border are in constant movement. It’s a big sparring match—the biggest in the world. One side moves a battalion twelve hundred kilometers north; the other side moves two battalions one thousand kilometers south; the first side moves a full wing two thousand kilometers south.”

“And what does that all mean?”

“It’s a war of nerves. A training ground for both troops and strategists.”

“How do you understand it?”

“Easily. The Russians are playing chess and the Chinese are playing Mah-Jongg.”

“Expensive games.”

“It’s been going on for years.”

“And you say nothing unusual was happening?”

“Why do you ask, Mister Flynn?”

“Obviously, Major, if a department like yours was blinded, the sensible question is: what was it someone didn’t want you to see?”

“Oh.” The major compared his feet on the tile floor. “No. There was nothing unusual going on. As far as I know. In fact,” he looked rather brightly at Flynn, “both sides were repeating a pattern of maneuvers they had gone through, exactly, eighteen months before. We wondered if they knew it.”

Flynn grinned. “Maybe you should have phoned them up and told them. Save them the bother.”

“Yeah.”

Flynn toweled the sweat off his back. “So one fine day, a Saturday morning, you leave your house, whistling a merry tune, golf bag in tow, and there on the front seat of your car is a big manila envelope with one hundred thousand of the good ones in it.”

“Right.”

“You had not locked your car overnight?”

“No. Betty and I had been out late at a party the night before. I guess I forgot.”

“Were there other cars parked in the immediate vicinity? I mean, was the car in a parking lot?”

“No. It was in the carport of our house. In Alexandria.”

“What was the first thing you did?”

“I went back in the house and called Major Williger.”

“Who’s Major Williger?”

“The guy I was going to play golf with. I told him I had to cancel. I gave him some bull. I think I told him Betty was sick, and I had to stay home and take care of the kids.”

“Not true?”

“Not true.”

“Did the major believe you?”

“I suppose so.”

“Major, you mean you didn’t go racing back into the house, dropping golf clubs as you ran, shouting at your wife you’d just found a young fortune in your carport?”

“No. I never mentioned it to my wife.”

“Good heavens, why not, man?”

“I guess I immediately assumed it had something to do with my capacity as an Intelligence officer.”

“That was your immediate reaction?”

“I never thought otherwise. We’re trained, Mister Flynn, to consider anything unusual as potentially threatening to our Intelligence function. Anything. And, you agree, this was unusual.”

“Indeed it was. What did you do then?”

“I went into the den and closed the door and tried to get General Seiler on the phone.”

“Your commanding officer?”

“Yes.”

“You were going to report the incident?”

“Yes. His wife answered the phone. She sounded funny. She said the general was unavailable and would remain unavailable. So I called Colonel Perham. His wife said he’d gone hunting for the weekend. On Monday morning I discovered they had both spent the weekend filing for early retirement.”

“Apparently they hadn’t been as well trained as you,” Flynn said, “to consider anything unusual as potentially threatening to their Intelligence capacity.”

“Or they didn’t care.”

“What did you do then?”

“I called Colonel Seely. His wife said Bob was out buying a boat. Bob had never mentioned an interest in sailing to me. He’s a skeet-shooting nut.”

“You didn’t tell your wife about it all weekend?”

“I never told her. I still haven’t told her.”

“What reason did you give her for canceling your golf date?”

“I said I had a hangover. From the party the night before. Couldn’t stand the sun.”

“I see And then, Monday morning…?”

“General Setter and Colonel Perham were running around with retirement papers in their hands. Colonel Seely was unresponsive.”

“You mean, you mentioned the matter to him?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, “Well, Bill, it’s a short life and we shouldn’t miss out on it through an unwarranted sense of self-importance.’ ”

“I see. He had been a particular friend of yours?”

“We had worked pretty closely together.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I blew the whistle. I called Section 1. Air Force Intelligence Command.”

Gently, Flynn asked, “And what has happened since then?”

Sadly, slowly, Major William Calder said, “We all got reassigned. One way or the other.”

Earlier that afternoon, Flynn had been briefed by the investigating team on what had happened to the individuals of U.S.A.F.I.S. 11B.

GENERAL JOHN SEILER
. Retired. Pension withheld until completion of investigation. The general and his wife of twenty-six years separated. She remained in Washington. He was currently living in Ponce, Puerto Rico.

COLONEL JOHN PERHAM
. Retired. Pension withheld until completion of investigation. The colonel had gained forty-five pounds in weight.

COLONEL ROBERT SEELY
. Currently in Walter Reed Hospital Psychiatric Diagnostic Center, having suffered a nervous breakdown.

MAJOR SAMUEL ROSENSTONE
. Transferred to United States Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia,
as an instructor in Air Base Perimeter Security.

On and on, through the sixty-seven members of that department. The chief secretary, Adele Hughes, had come to suffer chronic high blood pressure. Hulett Weed, the technician clerk who eloped on that weekend, left his honeymoon bed the next Friday morning before dawn, without his bride, and was currently on the
Whereabouts Unknown
list.

Major Calder said, “I’ve been reassigned to Supply.” He shook his head. “Do anything unusual in the military, anything unusual happens to you, your career gets sidetracked
permanently
.”

“Lieutenant DuPont also was quick to report finding a bundle of money in his mailbox. What happened to him?”

“He’s left the service,” Calder said. “He saw what was happening to him. He was reassigned to work with an Air Force wrestling team as an assistant coach.”

“Sometimes being honest is a mistake?”

“Oh, it’s no mistake,” answered Calder. “But sometimes it just hurts like hell.”

“It does that,” said Flynn. “It does that. My God, this place is as hot as Texas without the wind.”

Calder smiled. “Shall I open a window?”

“I think I’ve had enough sauna,” said Flynn, gathering up his towels. “I’d hate to leave too much of myself here at the Pentagon. Just one more question, Major. You’re trained in Intelligence work. Why did this happen? Why was everyone in your department given a large amount of money anonymously?”

The major shrugged. “Someone wanted to blow up that department.”

“But why?”

The major just shrugged.

“You said there was nothing, as far as you know, going on in the world at that moment for anyone to want to render that department ineffective.”

“That’s what I said, Mister Flynn.” The major
shook sweat out of his curly hair. “Maybe someone just wanted to prove you could buy off a Pentagon Intelligence section with a corned beef sandwich and a glass of beer.”

Standing, Flynn said, “Now, who would want to do that, I wonder?”

Under heavy, wet eyebrows Major Calder looked up at him. “Three possibilities: the Russians; the Chinese; or … some other American Intelligence section.”

“I see,” said Flynn. “I see. You mean, someone might spend as much as three and a half million dollars on internecine Pentagon squabbling?”

Major Calder said: “More has been spent on less, Mister Flynn. More has been spent on less.”

Just after seven o’clock that night, Flynn approached the reception desk at the Hotel Dorland.

“Ah, Mister Flynn!” the desk clerk said. “Checking in again?”

“I’ve never checked out, you blithering—”

“That’s never made a difference before,” the desk clerk said.

“Delighted I am to find you in good humor,” Flynn said.

“Ah, well, we all have our little aberrations, haven’t we?”

“I’m here to ask if there are any messages for me.”

“There is.” The desk clerk reached into a room box behind him. “Just one.”

Flynn took the folded piece of paper. Then he said to the desk clerk, with full seriousness, “I wonder if you’d have a Saint Bernard sent to my room?”

The desk clerk blinked. “A Saint Bernard?”

“That’s what I said.”

“You mean, a large dog?”

“Yes,” said Flynn. “A Saint Bernard is a large dog.”

The desk clerk’s right hand shook. “Of course, Mister Flynn. I’ll have one sent right up.”

“Thank you.”

Crossing the lobby to the elevator, Flynn read the message:

“THINK me a dull fellow if you want,” Paul Sankey said, “but I’m still chewing over that statement you snuck into the ambassador’s speech eighteen years ago: The European Common Market will never attain an economic force equal to that of the United States of America. It is in full cognizance of this that the United States of America assures European Common Market nations of the full support of the United States of America.”

“You’ve got it down pat.”

“Flynn, do you realize what has happened since?”

Flynn only realized he was about to be lectured.

He had arrived at Paul Sankey’s house by taxi at nine-thirty at night They had agreed to meet at nine o’clock, but it had taken the taxi driver a long time to find the address.

Paul Sankey lived in the middle of an obscure alley in the Georgetown section of Washington. It was the smallest house Flynn had ever seen in any city. It was too small even to have served as a coach house or garage.

When Sankey opened the door to him, Flynn found himself in what appeared to be the only room on that
floor. It was not a living room, in the usual sense. There was one comfortable chair and footstool. Stacks of books were everywhere on the floor. The walls were lined with drafting tables. On each there was what appeared to be a graph-in-progress. On the walls above hung huge graphs, each with its own color scheme, red, blue, green, brown. Flynn guessed all the graphs had to do with economic analysis. Fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling. In the fireplace, stacked one on the other, were two small filing cases.

Flynn had been shown to the one comfortable chair. He was not offered food or drink.

Sankey, in shirt-sleeves and tie, remained standing. He immediately began speaking in the most earnest terms.

“That statement,” Sankey said, “uttered by that person, the ambassador, at that time, eighteen years ago, at that place, The Hague, destroyed the world as you and I knew it.”

Flynn suspected it had destroyed the world as Paul Sankey knew it—Paul Sankey’s world.

“You don’t know much about economics, do you, Flynn. Despite your unholy interference in it.”

“It hasn’t been proved I interfered,” Flynn said mildly.

“Oh, you did, all right. You or whoever you were working for. You changed the world.”

Flynn shrugged blamelessly. Sankey was a bitter man. Flynn might as well give him his moment to yowl.

“All right.” Stepping around the small room, Sankey punctuated his remarks with jabs of his index finger at various charts on the walls.

“Post-World War II economic recovery plans were designed to result in a group of more or less equal economic entities—the United States, the European Common Market, a Latin American Common Market, the British Commonwealth Nations. Now, many things
went wrong with this plan, but one thing in particular—traceable to that statement you fed into the ambassador’s speech eighteen years ago at The Hague.

“According to that statement, no matter how many ‘equals’ were set up, no matter how powerful they were individually or together, the United States would dominate the world’s economy. Do you see how unfair this was?”

Flynn shrugged. “It would seem to have been a candid statement,” Flynn said, “for the time.”

“All right.” Sankey was running his index finger over a specific graph on the wall that made no sense whatsoever to Flynn. “To be very simple. First, under this new economic scheme, the world goes off the gold standard. Instead, what will be used is a currency established and backed by the International Monetary Fund, called S.D.R.’s or Special Drawing Rights. All this is news to you?”

“Not precisely,” said Flynn.

“Only that’s not what happened. Because the United States dominated the world’s economy, the rest of the world went off the gold standard and onto the dollar standard.”

Sankey moved on to another chart.

“Only that’s not what happened, either. The dollar was backed by American resources—which were not as infinite as American arrogance. The United States began running out of resources, particularly that resource which is ‘liquid gold’ to every industrial nation on earth—oil.”

Sankey flicked his fingernails against his chart. “Therefore, the world went from the gold standard to a dollar standard to an oil standard—an oil-paid-for-in-dollars standard.