Paul Kavanagh - Such Men Are Dangerous

The desk men at the Agency run to type. They are all an inch or two over average. They wear dark suits, white shirts, striped ties. They drink scotch and water or bourbon and water or, in the summer, vodka Collinses. They work out once a week at a gym, usually handball or squash. They smile a lot, but not quite enough to get on your nerves. You wouldn’t mistake them for sales managers or purchasing agents, but might think they were personnel men, which, come to think of it, is close. If you’d been around them much, you’d place them right off. This isn’t the liability it might seem; they don’t operate under cover, hardly ever leave Washington, and so it doesn’t matter a hell of a lot who knows what they are.

This particular one was no more than a couple of percentage points off the standard. He was a little bonier than most, and I’d guess his weekly exercise was cross-country running. He shook hands firmly, looked me right in the eyes when he talked, and had a voice that was resonant with sincerity and definition of purpose. None of this means anything, ever.

He said, “Sorry we’ve taken so long processing you, Mr. Kavanagh. You know how it is, the mills of God and the wheels of bureaucracy.”

“No problem.” Nor had it been. They had me staying at the Doulton and they were covering the tab, and three weeks of good food and plush surroundings had not been hard to take. Waiting did not bother me; patience is as much a part of the life as action.

“I hope you’ve enjoyed Washington?”

“Sure.”

“And they’ve made you comfortable here?”

“No complaints.”

“Good.”

I waited for him to say something, and it took me a minute to realize that he wasn’t going to. I thought of out-staring him. Pointless; it was my hotel room, but it was his town, so we would play it by his rules. He was waiting for me, which meant he had an answer for me, which meant there was a question I was supposed to ask

I smiled with as much warmth as he deserved and asked three. “Well,” I said, “where do I go and who do I see and when do I start?”

His face clouded on cue. “Good question,” he said. “The thing is, Paul, that I’m afraid there’s nothing open right now, nothing that’s your sort of thing, not at the moment. The way things stand at the present time—”

“Wait a minute.”

He stopped, looked at me.

“Let’s start over,” I said. “I didn’t trot on down to Washington with a question mark on my forehead. You people called me, remember? You asked me if I’d like to join the team. I said I didn’t have anything better to do, and it sounded good, and I came here and went through the interview routine and took the tests, and didn’t make any waves, and three weeks disappeared, and now—”

“You’ll be paid for your time.”

“Oh, the hell with that. If my time’s not worth anything I don’t care whether or not I’m paid for it.” I got out of the comfy chair and walked across the deep carpet toward the window with the overpowering view of our nation’s Capitol. I got halfway there and turned around. “Look, you don’t mean that there’s no job open. There’s always a job open. What you mean is that somebody who wanted Paul Kavanagh changed his mind during the past three weeks. What I’d like to know is why.”

“Paul—”

“I want to know, and I want you to tell me. Maybe you want to go someplace else because your people bugged the room. That’s fine, but—”

“Don’t be silly. We didn’t bug the room.”

“Then we’re all in trouble, because there’s been a pebble mike in the light socket since I checked in, and—”

He got to his feet. “It’s ours.”

“Of course it is. Look, Dattner—”

“George.”

“George. George, I know the game. I honestly do. I’ve played it and I know how it goes. Understood?”

“All right.”

“So I’m not asking you to reconsider, because in the first place you didn’t make the decision and in the second place these decisions aren’t reconsidered. I know all this. Okay?” He nodded. “All I want is an explanation. Somewhere in the past three weeks somebody’s mind changed. I want to know why. I know my record over the past ten years. Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia — I got good marks right down the line, and I know it, and there’s nothing that could have turned up recently that wasn’t on my sheet all along. Right?”

“Go on.”

“Well, what else is there? My civilian record? I don’t have one. Family? They were all lifelong Republicans except for a maverick uncle who voted for Truman in ’48. They’re all dead now anyway. College? I never signed a petition or joined a political group. I played football and kept up a B-minus average. Somebody wanted me to run for student council once but I didn’t have the time. Or the inclination. After graduation I had a tryout for the Steelers. I was too light for pro ball. In August my father died, and in September I enlisted in the Army. I made squad leader in basic and I went Airborne because I was scared of heights and didn’t want to admit it. Half the guys I knew were there for the same reason. The rest wanted to get killed, and some of them made it. Then I was over there for ten years, and you know about that. I could have stayed ten more years, but everybody gets tired of jungles sooner or later. I did, and I came home, and I’m here, and—”

I turned away from him, chopped it off in the middle of a sentence and walked over to the window. I was annoyed with myself. The occasion didn’t warrant that sort of speech. I was letting myself get angry. There are times when it’s worthwhile to do this, times when a self-induced emotional buildup helps you function better, but this wasn’t that sort of time.

I looked at Washington until the tension went away, then turned to Dattner. George. He asked if there was anything around to drink. I had a bottle of reasonably good Scotch in the bureau. I told him no, but I could call Room Service if he wanted. He told me not to bother.

I went over and sat down again. He was still standing. “Your turn,” I said.

“Pardon me?”

“Your turn. I talked, and now you can talk. I’ve been out of uniform for four months and it’s inconceivable that I could have done anything suspicious in that time. I haven’t consorted with any communists or foreign agents. I haven’t consorted with anybody, I— The hell with it. It’s your turn, friend. I’m either a security risk or an incompetent. You’re going to tell me which I am, and how you people found me out”

He gave me a long searching glance, and then his eyes moved momentarily to the overhead light fixture where they had planted their little toy. I think he did this on purpose.

“I’ve already told you all I’m authorized to,” he said.

“I realize that.”

“So...”

It took a second, but I picked up my cue. “I won’t let it lie,” I said, cooperatively. “If you go out of here now I’ll make waves until I find out what it’s all about. Ask enough people and you get an answer. I can ask my congressman, I can ask some reporters—”

A quick grin showed on his face but not in his voice. “That’s not good,” he said. “I don’t... Paul, if I tell you what I know, will you let it ride?”

“If it makes sense.”

“I don’t know if it will or not. It makes sense, but it might not make sense to you.”

“Try me. Incompetent? Security risk? What am I?”

“A little of both.”

The anger came, an instantaneous tightening of the muscles in my legs and abdomen. I was ready for it, I knew it was coming, I was prepped in advance to keep a lid on it, but even so I suspect some of it showed. But I didn’t reveal it to the little bug on the ceiling. When I spoke, I made the words offhand, casual.