Glen Cook - A matter of time

"Tea. If I may. Plain."

Miss Groloch flashed across Cash's mind.

"What we have," Strangefellow said, after making small talk till Annie, composed once more, brought coffee and tea, "is a family of four. A major of police from Saigon, Tran Van Tran, is interested in your offer. Our backgrounding suggests you'd be compatible."

"Uh?…"

"Mr. Cash?"

"Well, to be honest, I'd be a little worried about his record. You know, the Fonda people were always talking about the police over there. If they were on our side, they were concentration-camp guard types."

"I see. Understandable. Some probably were. You needn't worry, though. This guy's as straight as Jack Armstrong. Educated here and in France. He was liaison between the Saigon police and our MPs for two years. He had no connection with the secret police. Oriental politics operating the way they do, though, he probably did have some political responsibility on paper."

"No, that wouldn't bother me. Even here we've got trouble keeping City Hall from using us. I just didn't want any SS-types."

"None of that. Tran's a genuine Audie Murphy, Vietnamese-style. Squeaky clean war hero. Remember the Tet Offensive in sixty-eight? He won their equivalent of the Medal of Honor during that one."

"Oh?" Cash was beginning to grow distracted. Strangefellow was so thoroughly educated and bureaucratized that he seemed like a white man in blackface. His failure to conform to any racial stereotype was flatly disconcerting.

"Seems that, even with a bullet through his liver, he single-handedly stopped a Viet Cong suicide squad from reaching a packed ARVN hospital with their satchel charges. And later, when the end came, he stuck it out till the last minute. He was one of the last people they brought out."

"Have you met him?" Annie asked.

"No. I'm sorry. Not yet. Except through the paperwork. The book on him is this: he's thirty-eight, his wife, Le Quyen, is thirty-four, his sons, That Dinh and Don Quang, are fifteen and twelve. There aren't any extended family complications. This is Tran's second time on the run. Just after he got married, he and five brothers had to scoot out of North Vietnam. They were Catholic, and Ho had just given the French the boot. Their parents and most of their relatives still live in the Haiphong region, they think."

"It sounds good to me," said Cash. "Annie?"

She nodded. "Go ahead."

"We can handle our part, then. Might have some trouble finding him a job, though. Things are tight here. But we're ready to go to the next step."

Annie nodded again. She did not trust her mouth much tonight.

"No hurry on decisions," said Strangefellow. "This is just a preliminary interview. We won't get started on the details till the Board reviews my field report."

"I see." The whole thing hung on the impression they had made tonight.

"There're some personal questions I'm supposed to ask. If you think the answers aren't any of my business, just say so."

Yeah, Cash thought. And Annie can kiss her pet project good-bye. "Go ahead."

"You lost a son in Vietnam?"

"Missing in Action," Annie replied. For her, and thousands like her, the distinction between KIA and MIA was critical.

"I see. Thank you." Strangefellow smiled thinly. "I'm trying to determine if there's any resentment of the Vietnamese because of your loss.”

"No sir," Annie said.

Damned right there is, Cash thought. "Maybe a little," he confessed. "You can't help thinking some strange things sometimes. Especially what if this or that had happened differently. You don't have to worry about us taking it out on Tran, though. We're not that petty."

"And your daughter-in-law?"

"I can't speak for her. I think she's mostly mad at the government, though. Kissinger especially."

"Friends of the family?"

"We don't move in a large circle. There'd be more curiosity than anything."

"Mrs. Cash?"

"I guess they're mostly the sort who'd try to make them feel wanted."

"Good enough. I think that's all for this time." He began assembling the few papers he had brought.

"That's all there is to it?" Annie demanded.

"For tonight. There'll be paperwork if the Board gives us the go-ahead. I don't foresee any difficulties there, though."

"Oh. I see." Annie always felt more secure when bulwarked by paperwork.

"Thanks for the tea. And I'm sorry I took up your evening."

Norm glanced at the clock. The man had been there less than a half hour. Amazing. He walked Strangefellow to the door, said good night.

"I should've expected it," Annie grumbled when he returned.

"What's that?"

"That they'd send a black man. Or someone different."

"Well, it don't matter now. I think we got through all right. It kept me from worrying about O'Brien and Miss Groloch for awhile, anyway."

He switched on the TV, but mostly thought the thoughts he wanted to avoid till the ten o'clock news came on.

That was the same old noise. Two more of the people he was supposed to protect had gotten themselves killed. It seemed like the department was always too busy picking up the bodies to indulge in any prevention.

Next day, long before his evening escape rolled round, he began wondering if he should not just spend the rest of his life locked in his bathroom.

VIII. On the X Axis;

Prague, 26 August 2058;

Agency for State Security,

Que Costodi Custodes?

"Thought you should know, sir." Sergeant Helfrich's voice sounded tinny, crackled. His picture kept twisting away into a dark, slanting line.

"We'll be right up." Colonel Neulist severed the connection, glared down at the page for his stamp album that he had been hand-lettering. He had smeared the black ink in a little feather that obscured several letters. "Damned phones. Even the agency can't get ones that work."

"Yes sir," his aide, Lieutenant Dunajcik, responded, thinking the quality of service at home was far worse. At least here in the agency building one had reliable sound.

"That was Helfrich. Good man. He's been with me since the Uprising." Neulist's fingers showed none of his rage as he used a white-out solution to conceal the smear.

"Yes sir." The lieutenant had been twelve the summer rebellion had swept through Central Europe like the fury of an avenging god. Like the fury of a god betrayed, Dunajcik thought. The People, the Party intoned reverently in every statement. Who were these People being deified? Certainly not those who had thought their last hope was to take up arms against Party and State.

Neulist held up a stamp with a pair of tongs. He peered at it this way and that, with the wonder of a child examining a butterfly. "Look at it, Anton. A work of art. The engraving… As fine as any banknote."

The lieutenant could not begin to understand his boss's love affair with the little bits of paper. There were as many stamp albums and medical journals on the disorganized shelves as there were accepted agency materials. Albums and catalogs always lay open on the colonel's desk. "Yes sir."

Dunajcik had been with the agency three years, mostly in Neulist's cluttered office. The man often made him wish the rebels had succeeded.

As he often did, the colonel skipped tracks without warning, shifting emotions as he did. "Let's get moving. The Zumstegs are up to something. They brought the girl with them. Today."

This was a crisis point in the agency's history. Perhaps the State's. This was the unexplained limit date of the Tachyon Displacement Data Transfer System on which the agency had built its remarkable record. Everyone in the building knew Time Zero was approaching, that the Central Committee was watching closely.

"Yes sir." Dunajcik eased the colonel's wheelchair into the corridor and started toward the elevators. His heart fluttered as they passed the emergency stairs. Dump the bastard down there someday, he thought. ISD could requisition a power chair for its director.