Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

“That’s on the surface. Now beneath the surface we have the following interesting documentation.” He was using his fingers to count on again. “One, we have a tape recording of the conversation that took place last night in the hotel between you and your two colleagues, even that part where one of them was reassuring Li Teh that the lie detector wouldn’t hurt a bit. That’s one. I’ll play it for you, if you like.”

“No need,” I said and swore silently at Shoftstall for not checking the hotel room for bugs.

“Two, we have Peking’s file on you, Mr. Dye. Li Teh graciously provided us with a copy. Three, we have your tape recorder and the polygraph machine as exhibits D and E. You and your two colleagues, of course, are exhibits A, B, and C. The Peking dossier on you is, I suppose, exhibit F, which possibly could stand for failure. You did fail, didn’t you?”

“I don’t think I should count on a Christmas bonus this year.”

“Tell me something, Mr. Dye, does your organization, which I’ll call Minneapolis Mutual, if you insist, really put that much faith in the efficacy of the polygraph?”

“It would seem so, wouldn’t it?”

“And yourself, Mr. Dye?”

I shrugged. “It’s company policy.”

“A rather strange company and a rather strange policy.”

“It’s the new management,” I said.

Tung rose, tugged at his earlobe, and said, “I really have no more questions. I think I know as much about you as I need to, and even if I did have some questions, I’m sure that your answers would be totally unresponsive unless we used tactics which are far more primitive than the lie detector, but also more — oh, I suppose fruitful is as good a word as any.”

I got up, too, and helped myself to another cigarette. “Take the tin,” he said. “And here’re some matches.”

“Thanks,” I said. “How about a call to my embassy?”

“You don’t really expect me to say yes?”

“No, but I thought I’d ask.”

“We’ll be in touch with your embassy and also your ‘company.’” I could almost see the quotation marks around company.

“When?”

“Soon.”

The guards came and took me back to my cell. Four days later, despite what I considered to be strict self-rationing, I ran out of cigarettes and didn’t smoke until eighty-five days later when Carmingler bummed a pack for me from the pilot of the C-130 that flew us to San Francisco.

The only visitors that I had during those three months were the guards who brought me my bowls of soggy rice and doubtful fish each day. Once a photographer came to take my picture with an old 4 by 5 Speed Graphic. But that was all. I had nothing to read, nothing to look at, and no one to talk to other than myself.

Since the forty-watt light never went out I didn’t know whether it was day or night. They seemed to feed me at erratic times, but I wasn’t even sure of that. I came to realize that time indeed is relative and what I thought was an entire day could have been an hour and what I was sure was three hours could have been fifteen minutes. None of the time that I spent in that cell went quickly. Some of it just dragged by more slowly than the rest.

So I talked to myself and tried to remember stories and novels that I’d read. I rewrote them aloud. I exercised a lot, mostly push-ups and toe-touching and knee-bends and sit-ups and running in place. I wasn’t trying to keep in shape. I was trying to grow tired enough to sleep. I slept as much as possible and hoped that I would have nightmares. They gave me something new to think about.

When I wasn’t talking aloud or exercising or just sitting there staring at the wall, I searched for lice. My record kill was 126. I counted the dead ones carefully every day and then dumped them into the pail that served as a toilet. The guards emptied it daily, but I was never sure whether they did it in the morning or the evening. For all I knew, they emptied it promptly at midnight.

I didn’t shave or bathe for ninety days. I stunk. I couldn’t smell it myself, but I could tell that I did from the way that the guards wrinkled their noses when they brought me the food. They seldom looked at me and they never spoke. I tried to remember the Count of Monte Cristo and Koestler’s Darkness at Noon , whose title I had never fully appreciated until now. I tried to remember what they did to keep themselves busy and entertained and even amused. Apparently, I wasn’t as resourceful as they. The only thing that really amused me was killing lice.

On the ninetieth day the guards took me back up to Tung’s office. He wore tan slacks this time with another white shirt and a black and brown striped tie. He was down to three ball-point pens. He didn’t offer me a cigarette and he didn’t ask me to sit.

“Except for your beard you look well enough, Mr. Dye. A little ripe perhaps, but fit.”

“Thanks.”

“You’ll be released at midnight.”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight.”

“What time is it now?”

Tung glanced at his watch. “Four thirty-five, P.M., in case you’re wondering. They do sometimes, you know.”

“I know.”

“Everything has worked out most satisfactorily since I last spoke with you in June.”

“What month is it now?”

“August. August twenty-fourth to be precise.”

“I’ve been here almost three months.”

“Three months exactly. Ninety days.”

“You run a rotten jail.”

“It’s something we picked up from our Colonial friends. You may be interested to learn that it went much the way I predicted it would when we had our first chat. It went better than I predicted, in fact.”

“They paid up.”

“They did indeed, Mr. Dye. Ten cents on the dollar, just as I said they would. Three million dollars in all. The ramifications are even better than that though — far better. But I think I won’t gloat. It’s not at all becoming and I’m sure that your people are most anxious to tell you about it themselves.”

“They probably can’t wait.”

“Well, I suppose that’s all,” Tung said. “A Mr. Carmingler will meet you just outside the prison at midnight. Do you know him?”

“I know him. What about the other two?”

“Oh, you mean Mr. Shoftstall and Mr. Bourland? They were released about an hour ago. I regret that they somehow injured themselves, but photographs of their injuries helped convince your people that they should — uh — cooperate. Mr. Shoftstall and Mr. Bourland are now both in hospital, I understand. Would you like to know which one?”

“Not especially.”

Tung nodded as if he understood that perfectly. Perhaps he did. “Well, I’ve enjoyed our two chats, Mr. Dye; I’m only sorry that we didn’t have more of them.”

“I’m surprised that we didn’t.”

“Yes. However, Mr. Shoftstall and Mr. Bourland became most cooperative so we saw no need to disturb you, especially since poor Li Teh had provided us with such extensive documentation on your activities as, shall we say, a China watcher. A felicitous phrase, if ever I heard one. Incidentally, Mr. Dye, while you were our — uh — guest the People’s Republic removed the hyphen from Mao Tsetung’s name in all their official dispatches. It’s now one word. Some seem to place an extraordinary amount of significance on this. Do you?”

“Tremendous. Anything else?”

“No. Nothing I can think of. Is there something that you’d care to mention?”

“I’d like my watch back and I still think you run a rotten jail.”

Tung smiled broadly and his teeth were just as nice as they were before. “Yes,” he said, “we do manage that quite well, don’t we?” He didn’t say anything about the watch.

First of all they deloused me. Then I showered for twenty minutes. Following that, I put on a red hospital bathrobe and was shaved, barbered, and stuffed with a four-egg breakfast. After all that I got to sit across the desk from Carmingler, wearing one of my new suits, and watch him use three matches to get his pipe going. He used the wooden kitchen kind that come in cardboard boxes and used to sell for a nickel. They’re probably a dime now. Everything else has gone up.