Гарри Гаррисон - Montezuma’s Revenge

“I’m concealing nothing,” he said in a sort of strangling gasp, forcing the words around his enlarged coronary pump, unconvincing even to himself and a ludicrous prospect to the silent watcher. The water carafe gave a moment’s respite, but only a moment, for when he poured, the glass rattled, and his upper lip was already damp with sweat before the water reached it. You can’t threaten me was what he wanted to say but did not, for he had already been threatened, so instead took refuge in dissimulation.

“Don’t misunderstand, I do respect this signal honor. But I am really not qualified, you see. I am an art historian by choice and a radar repairman by necessity and know nothing about law enforcement. A fish out of water, you wouldn’t want that. So for our mutual benefit ...”

“If He says you can hack it you can hack it.”

“I can hack it, I can hack it,” Tony muttered, cracking his knuckles on the desk before him in quiet despair. It had been so pleasant here in the National Gallery. The George Graham bracket clock on his bookshelf gently chimed the hour and at the very same instant his telephone rang. Before he could take it up Davidson had reached out and removed the receiver and held it to his own ear.

“Yes, sir!” The words were spoken with a warmth of feeling Tony had thought this crag of a man impossible of displaying, and then he had passed the handpiece across the desk. Smiling.

“You can talk now. You are speaking with Him?

Hawkin sighed with resignation and reached for the phone.

“But isn’t it exciting, I mean really exciting?”

Sophie had a way of asking questions in a breathless voice as though she just couldn’t wait for the answer, and then of clarifying her question almost at once. She was Tony’s assistant, the only other employee until the store opened, and he suspected her of being a plant, set to spy on him and report to someone upstairs. Sophie Feinberg, and he also suspected that she wasn’t even Jewish, a fake minority informer to gain his confidence as a co-minorityist. Her Yiddish expressions sounded good but they could have been taught. What he needed was a real Jewish friend who could sound her out. Or was he going mad, drinking in the security-laden atmosphere that daily bathed him?

“Exciting? I suppose it is exciting,” he mumbled into the stale bread of his tuna fish sandwich.

“You really are the cool one, boychik, you really are. I do envy your cool, I really do.”

The sandwich was Dead Sea dust in his mouth and he tried to wash it farther down his throat with some of the ammoniacal and bitter coffee. Sophie was winning this battle too. He wasn’t quite sure how she had begun joining him for lunch, a misunderstood invitation perhaps that turned into a steady companionship, and he had started eating here in The Rumbling Turn in the hopes of driving her away. It was perhaps the worst luncheonette in the city of Washington, which was saying a lot in this city scarcely world famous for the quality of its eateries, but the gambit had failed miserably and produced only a continual smoldering fire in his midriff. Sophie, exulting in the strength of her duty, ate a far heartier meal than he did and held the entire thing down with a sort of rubberized jello and a wedge of desiccated pie.

“Did any shipments come in this morning?” He groped for a neutral topic that did not involve overriding enthusiasm regarding his position.

“Oh, yes indeed. The G-man badges came in from Hong Kong Novelties. The children will really love them, Fm sure, even adults. And I’ve finished framing the tinted photographs of the Director. The gold frames on the rush order.”

“Tinted? I thought they were black and white?”

“They were, but there was a special directive and the first hundred have been hand tinted and come back. They really are lovely.”

“Fm very sure they are. You don’t find that gold frames and hand tinting aren’t, well, a little too much?”

“What on earth do you mean?” The smile was there but it had a certain fixed quality that went with a hint of eagerness to her words. Had he transgressed? Tony was almost too depressed to care.

“Nothing, I guess, nothing. Not feeling so well today, maybe a little schlect” Her eyebrows lifted slightly and she did not answer. Let her look that up in her Yiddish dictionary! Happy in this minor victory of the greater engagement he took a deep swallow of the coffee and felt the acid bite deep into his insides and was instantly back in the depression that possessed him most of the time. He was scarcely aware of the man who passed their table and stopped a moment to strike a match to light his cigarette who, as he sucked in the smoke, produced a whisper that only Tony could hear.

“At once. Report to room 213$. This is cm emergency”

After this communication the man was silent, nor did he move on but instead stood rocklike at Tony’s shoulder, staring straight ahead, dark-suited and thick-booted. When Tony rose and paid his bill the man was close behind him and even Sophie was silent for a change, perhaps aware of something happening, not questioning him when he went to the elevator instead of the office.

Room 2135, unmarked and apparently no different from the others along the corridor, was locked when he tried the handle, although it unlocked swiftly enough when the messenger leaned over his shoulder and rapped a swift coded signal on the wood. Tony stepped through and felt the silent closing of the door behind him and was alone, facing the man who sat behind the expanse of polished government steel desk, the top of which was unmarred and empty save for a single yellow wooden pencil. As though even this were too much clutter the man seized it up and tapped it against his teeth as he waved Tony to the chair opposite him.

“You are Antonio Hawkin, aren’t you?” Tap, tap, tap of yellow wood on white teeth in punctuation. Tony nodded. Almost too white, probably artificial, like the overly sincere smile that framed them. A hairline mustache above, the kind race track touts used to wear thirty years ago, a thin nose with a very prying look to it like a fleshy crowbar, eyes lurking unseen behind heavily tinted frameless pince-nez glasses, white skin even whiter than the plastic teeth, a high forehead so high in fact that it rode up over the top of his skull and slipped down the back of his neck while across the summit of this interesting area of bare skin a few long hairs had been stretched and glued into place. “My name is Ross Sones,” tap, tap, tap. “Would you mind showing me your ID card?”

“Would you mind telling me why, and what this is all about?”

“In a moment, Tony, let us just get the routine out of the way first. Why, thanks. Not a very good likeness, but they never are, are they, no indeed. Now you wouldn’t mind inking your thumb on this pad and pressing it down on this piece of paper. Checks fine against the one on the card, wasn’t that easy? Here you can wipe your thumb on the back of the same piece of paper, no waste, save our forests.”

“The reason ...”

“Just a moment.” He looked at his watch. “We have just nine minutes left so let us get the details out of the way first.”

He slipped the pencil behind one ear and took a bulky file from a desk drawer and leafed through it. “Here we go ... I had it a minute ago, right. Your security rating. I see you have been cleared for confidential material, very good, been issued texts on a unit called the Mark IX-37G. But, my goodness, there is no record here of the texts ever being returned.” He looked steadily at Tony and was no longer smiling.

“No one ever asked for them back, they were given to me in tech school, in the Army.”