Pat Frank - Forbidden Area

From the kitchen doorway a sergeant called, “Hey, Smith. Time we started on the flight lunches.”

The airman, Smith, filled Jesse’s cup and departed. Jesse and Clint were finishing their second coffee when Colonel Lundstrom, the Chief, Special Investigations, whose command post was in the Pentagon, came into the mess hall. He recognized Jesse and walked towards their table and Jesse rose and introduced Katy, and her brother, and then said, “Colonel, do you mind identifying me so I can get the guns out of my back?”

Lundstrom turned to the Air Police. “I know this officer personally,” he said. “You men can go back to your post.”

“They’re real careful on this base, sir,” Jesse said.

“Apparently not careful enough,” said Lundstrom. The colonel’s eyes were sunken, and he looked as if he had lost ten pounds since Jesse had seen him in the Pentagon a few days before. 2

Airman Smith walked into the kitchen, cleared a wide, wooden, knife-scarred worktable, and began to make sandwiches and pack the flight lunches, his hands sure and adept as those of an assembly line workman who can do his job blind, drunk, or with his thoughts in another continent. Now, at last, he was beginning to comprehend the full implications and importance of his assignment. Snatches of conversation—like that between the two majors—had been informative, and a pattern was forming, subtly taking a new shape, like an optical illusion if you stare at it long enough. The American officers were beginning to grumble and complain, openly. They confessed fear, without shame. He had even heard one say, “Nobody is going to make me go up in one of those streamlined flying coffins.” Yet Smith’s conclusions were not precisely accurate. The Soviet espionage schools could turn out facsimiles of Americans, just as the Zim factory produced a car that looked exactly like a Buick, but the convictions of childhood, imbedded deep in the subconscious, remained Russian. In Russia overt dissatisfaction, rarely if ever voiced, could only be a prelude to revolt. He had no way of knowing that Americans would gripe and growl and shout defiance of authority, and then go ahead and perform their duty. It was Smith’s conclusion that SAC was on the verge of mutiny. He understood that such a mutiny, like that of the Czar’s sailors in the Baltic Fleet in 1917, could be decisive. He resolved to keep on destroying aircraft until SAC cracked. In the catalogue of Soviet heroes, when all was over, his name would be printed bold as Zhukov’s. Greater, even. Zhukov had only succeeded in conquering the Germans. His goal was the acquisition of the world.

Sergeant Ciocci said, “Stan, how many you got finished?”

Smith counted them. “Eighteen.”

“Okay. Make up two more. Five missions today.”

Smith packed two more cartons and Ciocci examined, sealed, and stamped them, and in a few minutes the security detachment from the flight line came in to pick them up. The flight-line lieutenant, looking at his list, said, “Three coffees today.”

Ciocci turned to Smith and said, “Which ones you got filled, Stan?”

“Those on the end,” Smith said, pointing. Ciocci took three thermos bottles from the rack and handed them to the lieutenant’s men. The lieutenant counted the cartons, paid Ciocci with chits, and the lunches were stacked and carried away.

Just before he left the mess hall at eight Smith asked a favor of Ciocci, for now it was necessary to plan ahead. “Sergeant, is it okay if Cusack works for me tonight? I’ll take Cusack’s duty Saturday.” Smith’s roommate was a swing man. He worked three days a week, and two nights, Fridays and Saturdays.

“It’s okay with me if it’s okay with Cusack,” Ciocci said. “You crazy, giving up your long weekend? Oh, I get it. You got another girl?”

Smith winked and said, “Man wasn’t made to be monogamous.”

Ciocci wasn’t exactly sure what the word monogamous meant, but he was sure that Stan did have another girl. For a food handler, that Stan was a smart apple, a smooth character, all right. Stan was no square. 3

At nine, that Thursday morning, Felix Fromburg was received by Albert Osborne, Deputy Chief, Counter-espionage Division, Subversives Branch, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Osborne’s office, on the fifth floor of the Justice Department, overlooked Pennsylvania Avenue. He was standing at the window, looking down at the massed traffic, crawling like two thick, lethargic, mottled snakes, when Felix entered. Osborne pretended not to hear him, and when he turned to his desk he said, curtly, “Be with you in a minute, Fromburg.” He sat down and displayed preoccupation with his mail, while Fromburg stood. In the FBI, as elsewhere, there are feuds and jealousies, and petty men.

Felix Fromburg had been given the job that Osborne wanted.

Contrary to popular belief, counter-espionage is not a glamorous profession. Even for the active operatives, it is tedious and frustrating, for it is more rewarding to keep an enemy agent under surveillance, thereby unravelling the net of which he is but a single strand, than to make a spectacular grab and get your name in the papers. Surveillance means riding the subways and busses, not the trans-Atlantic airliners and Orient Express. It means fidgeting, all day every day for months, in a darkened room, with an Eyemo camera and parabolic mike aimed at a door across the street. It means wasting weeks of waiting for a phone to ring—on a tapped line. And administrative jobs, in CE, are worse. Osborne had been through it all, and when the FBI was asked to furnish an experienced CE man for an interdepartmental conference group to sit in the Pentagon, Osborne badly wanted the post.

Instead, Osborne was elevated to deputy chief of division, which meant more money but was a dead end. Fromburg soared around in the stratosphere of government, privy to high level military plans and policy, while he, Osborne, still grubbed in the cellar of administration. He knew that he was certainly more personable than Fromburg, and probably more efficient as well. Fromburg was somewhat undersized and taciturn and not very aggressive. Osborne doubted that Fromburg’s presence in the Pentagon would enhance the FBI’s prestige.

So Osborne could not help being secretly pleased when he learned that Fromburg’s Intentions Group was in trouble. The story, in somewhat garbled form, had been relayed to him by Ginter, his assistant. Osborne scrawled his initials on the last of the morning’s incoming memos, sighed as if he knew the coming interview would be distasteful, looked up, and said, “I was really very much distressed, Fromburg, to hear about your hassle with the Pentagon.”

“It’s your hassle as well as mine,” Felix said, quietly.

“I don’t think we want any part of it.”

“Now, look,” Felix said, “we’ve had hassles before, but this one is different. That forecast—the one Ginter must have told you about—it’s really vital. It was drawn up partly on the basis of information supplied by your division, and I think you, speaking for the Bureau that is, have a right to blast it out of Clumb’s desk.”

“The right, perhaps, but neither the position nor the inclination. In the first place, as you know, Fromburg, liaison between the Bureau and the Pentagon isn’t on my level. It would be up to the Director, or even the Attorney General.”

“Well, will you take it up with the Director?”

“I will not! Certainly the Pentagon has the utmost faith in General Clumb’s judgment, or he wouldn’t be in the job he holds. I can’t very well recommend to the Director that he challenge the judgment of a very senior officer attached to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now can I?”

“This isn’t a matter of protocol,” Felix said. “I believe this country is going to be attacked Monday.”