Frederik Pohl - The Cool War

She glanced up. “You look all right to have your picture taken,” she observed.

“Are you going to tell me why?”

“Of course I am, Horny, only now hold still a minute. No, not there. Move away from your diploma. I don’t v/ant to have to bleach out anything on the wall—there.” Jessie’s little camera clicked, and in a moment she spun out half a dozen passport-sized photographs. “Bruises show,” she said critically. “Can’t be helped. Now you do me.” She looked around for a different bare wall, found one and handed him the camera. “I fooled you, didn’t I?” she said.

Hake got her in the viewfinder and waited till her expression was at its smuggest before pushing the lever. “Well,” he said, “if I’d used my head I would have figured out you were the one who recruited me. I knew you used to work for the government.”

She retrieved the camera and sighed, studying the pictures. “What a youth-oriented culture we live in, Horny. They retired me six years ago—of course, you never really get out of the Team; you’ll find that out. But they put me on inactive status, except for odd jobs now and then. Like checking you out.” While she talked she was trimming the edges of the pictures. “We’ve been promised an age of enlightenment, you know, when we show we’re worthy— but it seems a long time coming.” Mournfully she rummaged around in envelopes of printed forms. Then she brightened. Nothing could permanently dampen her mood. “Anyway, I’ve got one good mission left in me! And we’re going to do it.”

“‘We?’”

“You and me, Horny— and others. This is a big one. I got my orders by pouch, six o’clock this morning.”

She was so very pleased with herself. As she trimmed and pasted and stamped, every movement as sure and easy as turning the church mimeograph, from time to time she broke into an uncharacteristic grin. “Get a haircut, Horny,” she advised, “All these pictures look too much like you, it’s not convincing.” She chuckled reminiscently. “First covert operation I went on,” she said, “they gave me a picture of the wrong woman! Curmudgeon was my case officer then, new on the job, and he screwed it up. Big mission, too. Actually,” she said, peering at him over her glasses, “it was a little like yours in Germany, you know? I was targeted against this fellow in South America. We wanted to get him in trouble with his wife, so my job was to give him a little something to take home to her that she wouldn’t like…” She bit off a piece of magnetic tape and rubbed the end smooth, smiling to herself.

“Did you have trouble?”

“Oh, you bet I did! Six months taking the cure myself when I got back.”

“I mean for having the wrong picture.”

“Oh, no. Tell the truth, I don’t think he even looked at my face. Of course,” she added seriously, “it’s not all fun and games, Horny. The sooner you learn that the better off you’ll be. This new one could tilt the whole balance of payments back where it belongs! But it’s good to be alive again!”

And that was something they shared, Hake thought; he had been as dead as old Jessie in his wheelchair, and this new life, with all its adolescent agonies, was an unearned rebirth.

She looked up with a sudden frown, back in character. “But you watch yourself, Horny! The Team is a little worried about you, you know. Can’t blame them. Getting yourself involved with that woman, getting your car blown up by terrorists— Oh, you better get out of here while you can, Horny. Let things settle down. You’ll thank me in the long run. You were dying on the vine in this dump. Sign here,” she added, handing him an Illinois driver’s license made out to “William E. Penn.” She said, “That’s you, for the purposes of this mission. Practice signing a couple of times first so you’ll get it the same on all of them.”

“All of what?”

“All your ID, dummy! Passport. Social Security card. Credit cards. Visas for Egypt and Ai Halwani. Then go eat. By the time you’ve had your breakfast I’ll have all your documents ready, and mine too. So open the church safe before you go. I can’t take this stuff back to my room— and you don’t want me to leave it out here for anyone to see, do you?” Picking up a new set of forms she said, “And get rid of that girl right away.”

He was thinking about Al Halwani—wasn’t that the place Gertrude Mengel had mentioned in the hospital?— but he flared up. She stopped him. “It has nothing to do with your sex life—badly though you handle it That’s orders.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“So you can flush your toilet in private. There should be instructions for you on the tape by now.”

He didn’t have to get rid of Alys. She was nowhere in sight.

He made sure of it by looking in every closet and behind every door, but she was gone. No doubt she had left by the back way. It wasn’t a permanent solution; her bags were still present.

Alys intended to return, and it was evident that she had no doubt he would let her in. She had had no doubt the night before, either, and she had been right; why, Hake demanded fiercely of himself, why is it that everybody else in the world knows exactly what they want of you and knows you will give it to them?

He had no answer. So he did what Jessie had wanted of him, and had known he would do. He retired into his bathroom, placed his thumb on the lever and flushed the toilet.

“Well, Hake,” said Curmudgeon’s curmudgeonly tones from the hidden speaker under the flush tank, “must be getting a little hot for you in Long Branch, eh? All right. You’re leaving in three days. We’ve arranged your substitute, same guy as last time, and Jessica Tunman will provide you with documents. Take this down. Friday, fly to Egypt with Tunman. Reconnoiter the installation marked on the map in A1 Halwani. Then proceed surface transport to A1 Halwani City. Once there you will apply for a job at A1 Halwani Hydro Fuels at 1500 hours on the 23d. When hired, start work; your language skills will give you priority. You will be contacted with further instructions…” There was a long pause. “I’m waiting,” said the recorded voice.

Hake said quickly, “I understand and will comply.” The tape shut itself off, and there was silence in the bathroom.

It was still a dangerously silly way to conduct the business of a spy agency. But his orders were clear.

A1 Halwani.

And Leota would be no more than a thousand or so miles away.

The day dragged past. His mind was on the other side of the ocean, but he managed to get through the round: the two-mile run, the barbells, attending to correspondence with Jessie (her eyes glittering with joy, her pencil dawdling as she took his dictation, but insisting nevertheless that they had to continue with their regular duties until it was time to leave). She went home early. “Woke up before my time this morning, Horny. I need to catch up some sleep.”

He changed quickly into the sweatsuit and jogged his remaining mile on the beach in the dwindling daylight. A1 Halwani Hydro Fuels. The balance of payments. What payments ever went to A1 Halwani? For hydrogen, just a trickle. That’s all hydrogen amounted to.

Oh, sure there was a time when there was a constant torrent of gold flowing into the Near East, A1 Halwani included. But that was when oil flowed out. When the Israelis blew out the oil domes and set fires raging out of craters a half-mile across, oil stopped. Not all of it. But only a trickle survived. So the oil sheiks had gone to where their Swiss bank accounts were, and the fraction that survived, unburned and undamaged by radioactivity, was now operated by whoever remained on the scene to operate it—sometimes quite strange people. It was not enough to affect anyone’s balance of payments.