Glen Cook - A matter of time

VI. On the Y Axis;

Through 8 August 1964;

The Chinese Puzzle

A man named Huang Hua, whose true name was something else entirely, spent the years 1956-1973 in virtual self-imprisonment in a two-room office in a basement in Peking. He was a veteran of the Long March and the engineer of the POW defections during the Korean War.

One room was living quarters. It contained his bed and toilet. The other contained cooking facilities and a small desk with a single telephone. Along one wall stood a bookcase containing numerous looseleaf notebooks of western manufacture, each filled with the tiny, precise characters of his pen, plus several hundred books, mostly in English. Along the base of another wall were cartons of office supplies, more than Huang could use in two lifetimes. He was a hoarder.

Only four men knew why Huang had gone into hibernation: himself; the chairman; Lin Piao; Chou En-lai.

In 1971 Lin would feel compelled to let the Muscovite revisionists in on the secret. Air Force fighters caught his aircraft over Mongolia on September 12.

Huang's telephone linked directly with a small underground establishment in Sinkiang. It was the only regular connection. Security was more strict than at the Lop Nor facility.

Huang's life and project reflected the Chinese character. He had failed in Korea. Certain that other chances would arise, he had kept his project going and growing. Not once did the policy-makers ask him to justify the expense or necessity. Tibetans, Indians, recalcitrant regionalists, old Nationalists, even a few Russians from the 1969 clashes on the Ussuri River, and Burmese from the border skirmishes there, came to his facility. He learned. He polished. He refined. He persevered.

August 8, 1964, provided one of the great moments in his life. That was the day the Chairman himself phoned to give him the news about the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

All things came to the man who was patient.

VII. On the Y Axis;

Cash and Harald were in the station parking lot when John said, "We can't prove a thing even if we do find prints that might've been O'Brien's."

"Why?"

"How do we prove they're his? How do we date them? If they match the John Doe, all we prove is that he was in the house. Not when."

"Yeah. Well, shit. At least we'd have a reason to ask Miss Groloch some questions."

"If she cooperates. We haven't got a warrant, you know."

"Whose side are you on, John?" Cash slammed the car door. "Can you see what the court would say if we applied?"

But they went on in hopes she would cooperate. Carstairs had noted her willingness to do so several times. That had fed his suspicions.

On the way Cash told Harald what Sister Mary Joseph had had to say about Miss Groloch. With a sigh, Harald replied, "I'll dig through the records. This's getting to be a lot of work for no return, Norm."

Miss Groloch, of course, was in, and remembered them. "Sergeant Cash. Detective Harald. Just in time you are. I just put some cookies out to cool. Tom!" she shouted toward the rear of the house. "You get down!" Cash could not see the cat. She explained, "On the table he will be getting now. We know each other well. Sit. Sit. The tea I will start." She bustled toward the kitchen.

Miss Groloch's parlor had not changed since their previous visit. Cash began wondering about the economics of her life. Annie had said no one could remember her having left the house since the O'Brien incident. He and John had caught the mailman on the way in. The man claimed that all she ever got was junk mail. No personal letters, no Social Security checks.

"What about tax forms?" Cash had asked.

The man had not been on the route that long. But then he did remember that she sometimes received packages from a health food firm in New Jersey. He had seen nothing that might have been a tax refund or rebate check.

At Lambert's, the little market a block north, the manager had told Cash that his boy delivered twice a week, in small amounts. She always paid in cash, and always gave the boy a list for next time. Her tastes seemed a bit old-fashioned, but not as much as might be expected of a refugee still steeped in the last century.

Cash wanted a look at her kitchen, to see if she had a refrigerator.

A thousand questions piled up every time he thought about Miss Groloch. And he had barely scratched the surface. The questions came like those little metal puzzles you take apart, then can't get back together, only in a chain a hundred puzzles long.

"Now," said Miss Groloch, the amenities performed, "What can I do for you this time?"

Sometimes Harald had the tact of an alligator. He did it on purpose. "We've got a positive identification of our corpse: Jack O'Brien."

When you look into a kaleidoscope and turn the barrel, patterns shift. Sometimes, after the flicker, the change seems undetectable.

That happened with Miss Groloch. She was pallid for an instant. Her teacup rattled against her saucer. Terror lightninged across her face. Then, so quickly her reaction seemed imaginary, she was the cool old lady again. "No. Seventy-five Jack O'Brien would be. The photograph you showed me, it was that of a boy." Her pronunciation altered subtly, moving toward the European.

"His sister identified him. She was so sure she claimed the body."

The woman seemed to wander off inside. The tomcat came and crouched nervously against her ankles. Finally, "The Leutnant Carstairs, he said you would never stop…"

Cash tried to get a handle on the accent. German? Somehow, that didn't seem quite right. His duties in 1945-46, as a sergeant attached to Major Wheeler of the Allied Military Government, had kept him hopping through the Anglo-American Zone. The accent, he was positive, wasn't North German. Too soft. Nor did Bavarian or even Austrian seem quite right.

John was playing it too heavy. It was time he stepped in. "You'll have to excuse John. This case is frustrating. We're sure the man's not Jack O'Brien, too. We came because we hoped you could help us prove it. It's indelicate to mention it, I know, but you knew him best."

"It is that. But if I can help, I must." She was in such rigid control that her accent and structural stumbling all but disappeared. "There is so little to tell. He was like a-what do you call those spring storms?-like a tornado. Here, there, gone before he left a deep hurt. I know what people thought. But love him I never did… Does that surprise you, Sergeant?"

"No." But it did. He had fixed notions about his elders and their times. Casual affairs then? No, not till later, once Prohibition had reached its absolute nadir.

John horned in. "Would you be willing to look at the body?"

"For what?"

"To tell us how it can't be O'Brien. So we have something to go on."

That flustered her. It meant a trip downtown. "I… I don't know. To going out I'm not accustomed." Her accent thickened again. She slowed her speech as she groped for words.

Cash groped too, for the high school German that had been the army's excuse for sticking him into the AMG operation. Maybe he could catch her off-guard.

But no useful phrases would come.

What about maintenance? he thought. A big house like hers, so old, had to have paint, tuckpointing, and repairs all the time. The plumbing had to be crankier than a '47 Ford. How did she manage upkeep without going out? And, if they did find someone who had made repairs, would they learn anything?

Harald softened his approach. "I know. I don't think you'd have to if we could find some other way. Say, fingerprints."

She frowned, turned to Cash for an explanation. He tried, showing her the difference between their thumbs. "The natural oils leave marks," he told her. "I'm sure you've noticed, housekeeping. No two people's are alike. We hoped you'd have something around…" Her housekeeping habits did not appear the sort that would leave fingerprints lying around for fifty years.