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THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE |
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Chapter 6 In February, 1953, just a little more than two months after his discharge from the Army, Raymond got a job as a researcher-legman-confidant for, and as janitor of the ivory tower of, Holborn Gaines, the distinguished international political columnist of The Daily Press, in New York; this on the strength of (1) a telephone call from the managing editor of the Journal to Joe Downey, managing editor of The Daily Press) (2) his relationship to Mrs. John Yerkes Iselin, whom Mr. Gaines admired and loathed as one of the best political minds in the country, and (3) the Medal of Honor. Mr. Gaines was a man of sixty-eight or seventy years who wore a silk handkerchief inside his shirt collar whenever he was indoors, no matter what the season of the year, and drank steady quantities of Holland beer but never seemed to grow either plump or drowsy from it, and found very nearly everything that had ever happened in politics from Caesar's ascension to Sherman Adams' downfall to be among the most amusing manifestations of his civilization. Mr. Gaines would pore over those detailed never-to-be-published-in-that-form reports from one or another of the paper's bureau chiefs around the world, which provided the intimate background data of all real or imagined political maneuvering, and sip at the lip of a beer bottle, chuckling as though the entire profile of that day's world disaster had been written by Mark Twain. He was a kind man who took the trouble to explain to Raymond on the first day of his employment that he did not much enjoy talking and fulsomely underscored how happy they would be, both of them, if they could train each other into one another's jobs so that conversation would become unnecessary. This suited Raymond so well that he could not believe his own luck, and when he had worked even faster and better than usual and needed to sit and wait until Mr. Gaines would indicate, with a grunt and a push at a pile of papers, what the next job would be, he would sit turned halfway in upon himself, wishing he could turn all the way in and shut everything out and away from himself, but he was afraid Mr. Gaines would decide to talk and he would have to climb and pull himself out of the pit, so he waited and watched and at last came to see that he and Mr. Gaines could not have been more ecstatically suited to one another had one worked days and the other worked nights. The promotion manager of The Daily Press was a young man named O'Neil. He arranged that the members of the editorial staff give Raymond a testimonial dinner (from which Mr. Gaines was automatically excused for, after all, he had actually met Raymond), welcoming a hero to their ranks. When O'Neil first told Raymond about the dinner plan they were standing, just the two of them, in Mr. Gaines's office, one of the many glass-enclosed cubicles that lined the back wall of the city room, and Raymond hit O'Neil, knocking him across the desk and, as he lay there for an instant, spat on him. O'Neil didn't ask for an explanation. He got up, a tiny thread of blood hanging from the left corner of his mouth, and beat Raymond systematically and quietly. They were both about the same age and weight, but O'Neil had interest, which is the key to life, on his side. The beating was done well and quickly but it must be seen that Raymond had, if even in the most negative way, made his point. No one else ever knew what had happened and because the dinner was only a week away and O'Neil knew he would need pictures of Raymond posed beside various executives of the paper, he was careful not to hit Raymond in the face where subsequent discolorations might show. When it was over, Raymond agreed that he would not concede the dinner, at any time, to be a good idea, holding it to be "a commonness which merchandised the flag," but he did agree to attend. O'Neil, in his turn, inquired that if there was anything more a part of our folklore than hustling the flag for an edge, that he would appreciate it if Raymond would point it out to him, and agreed to limit the occasion to one speech which he would make himself and keep it short, and that Raymond would need only to rise in acknowledgment, bow slightly, and speak not at all. In December, 1953, Raymond was guest of honor at a dinner given by the Overseas Press Club at which an iron-lunged general of the Armies was the principal speaker, and Raymond could not fight his way out of this invitation to attend and to speak because his boss, Mr. Gaines, was chairman of the dinner committee. What Raymond did say when he spoke was "Thank you, one and all." The way the matter had been handled differed sharply from the O'Neil incident. Mr. Gaines had come in one morning, had handed Raymond a printed invitation with his name on it, had patted him understandingly on the back, had opened a bottle of beer, sat down at his desk, and that was that. The war was over in Korea. That camera which caught every movement of everyone's life was adjusted to run backward so that they were all returned to the point from which they had started out to war. Not all. Some, like Mavole and Lembeck, remained where they had been dropped. The other members of Marco's I&R patrol whose minds believed in so many things that had never happened, although in that instance they were hardly unique, returned to their homes, left them, found jobs and left them until, at last, they achieved an understanding of their essential desperation and made peace with it, to settle down into making and acknowledging the need for the automatic motions that were called living. Marco didn't get back to the States until the spring of 1954, on the very first day of that spring. His temporary orders placed him with the First Army on Governor's Island in the New York harbor, so he blandly took it for granted that he would be more than welcome to spend his stateside leave as Raymond's guest in Raymond's apartment. As far as Raymond was concerned, and this feeling mystified Raymond, Marco was more than welcome. Raymond lived in a large building on Riverside Drive, facing the commercially broad Hudson at a point approximately opposite an electric spectacular on the New Jersey shore which said SPRY (some experiment in suggestive geriatrics, Raymond thought) to the demode side of Manhattan Island. The apartment was on the sixteenth floor. It was old-fashioned, which meant that the rooms were large and light-filled, the ceilings high enough to permit a constant circulation of air, and the walls thick enough for a man and his loving wife to have a stimulating argument at the top of their lungs without invading the nervous systems of surrounding neighbors. Raymond had rented the apartment furnished and nothing in the place beyond the books, the records, and the phonograph was his. The bank issued rent checks for the apartment's use, as they paid all the bills for food, pressing, laundry, and liquor. These the local merchants sent directly to Raymond's very own bank officer, a Mr. Jack Rothenberg, a formidably bankerish sort of a man excepting for the somewhat disturbing habit of wearing leather tassels on his shoes. Raymond believed that the exchange of money was one of the few surviving methods people had for communicating with each other, and he wanted no part of it. The act of loving, not so much of the people themselves but of the cherishment contained in the warm money passed from hand to hand was, to Raymond, intimate to the point of being obscene so that as much as possible he insisted that the bank take over that function, for which he paid them well. Each Monday morning at fifteen minutes past ten, a bank messenger came to Raymond's office with a sealed Manila envelope containing four twenty-dollar bills, four ten-dollar bills, five five-dollar bills and thirty singles -- a total of one hundred and seventy-five dollars -- for which Raymond would sign. This was his walking-around money. He spent it, if he spent it, on books and off-beat restaurants for he was a gourmet -- as much as a man can be who eats behind a newspaper. His salary from The Daily Press of one hundred and thirty-five dollars and eighty-one cents, after deductions, he mailed personally to the bank each Friday and considered himself to be both lucky and shrewd to be living in the biggest city on the Western continent for what he regarded as a net of forty dollars per week, cash. The living expenses, rent, and such, were the bank's problem. As much as possible, he ate every meal alone, excepting perhaps once a month when he would be forced into accepting an invitation from O'Neil, with some girls. All the men Raymond ever knew seemed to be able to summon up girls the way he might summon up a tomato juice from a waiter. Raymond was a theatrically handsome man, a well-informed man and an intelligent one. He had never had a girl inside his large, comfortable apartment. He bought the sex he needed for twenty-five dollars an hour and he had never found it necessary to exceed that time period, although he filled it amply every time. Out of distaste, because she had suggested it herself the first time he had been there, and most certainly not out of any unconscious desire to be liked, he would give the maid who ran the towels a dollar-and-a-quarter tip, because she had asked for a dollar, then would stare her down coldly when she thanked him. Raymond had found the retail outlet with efficiency. He had told the Broadway columnist on the paper that he would appreciate it greatly if one of the press agents with whom the columnist did business would secure him maximum-for-minimum accommodations atop some well-disposed, handsome professional woman. Had he known that this ritual and the attendant expense were the direct result of the release conferred on him by Yen Lo in Tunghwa, he would have resented it, because although the money meant little to him and although he enjoyed the well-disposed, handsome professional woman very much, he would just as well have preferred to have remained in the psychological position of ignoring it, because it meant getting to bed on the evenings he was with her much later than he preferred to retire and it most certainly had cut into his reading. Marco gave him no warning. He called Raymond at the paper and told him he would be in town for a while, that he would move in with Raymond, and they met at Hungarian Charlie's fifteen minutes later, and that had been that. When Marco moved in, every one of Raymond's time-and-motion study habits was tossed high in the air to land on their heads. For ten days or so everything was turned upside down. Marco didn't believe in buying sex because he said it was so much more expensive the other way, and he was loaded with loot. Drunk or sober, Marco found matched sets of pretty girls, bright and entertaining girls, rich girls, poor girls, and even one very religious set of sisters who insisted on getting up for church in the mornings, whether it was Sunday or not, then raced back to Marco's bed again. Marco had girls stashed in most of the rooms of Raymond's apartment whenever he thought it was a good idea (day and night, night and day), severely disturbing the natural rhythm of Raymond's life. There were too many cans of beer in the icebox and too few cans of V-8. Men kept ringing the back door bell, bringing boxes or paper bags filled with liquor or heavy paper sacks of ice cubes. Everybody seemed to be an expert on cooking spaghetti and there was a film of red sauce on every white surface in the kitchen. In the foyer, in the living room, in the dining room (which Raymond had converted into an office), brassieres were strewn, and slips, and amazingly small units of transparent panties. Marco made everyone wear shoes as a precaution against athlete's foot. He did not believe in hanging up his clothes when he was not in Army service because he said the agonizing reappraisal of the piles of clothing every morning in each room made him appreciate the neatness of Army life all the more. The positive thing to be said for Marco was that although he crowded the apartment with girls and loud music and spaghetti and booze, he never invited any other guys, so what was there was fifty per cent Raymond's. The women were all sizes and colors, sharing with each other only Marco's requisite of a good disposition, and he rarely hesitated to hand out a black eye if this rule were violated. Raymond found it enjoyable. He could not have stood it as a constant diet (and he believed that there were people who could stand it as a constant diet) and it was all extremely confusing to him at first, from his doctrinaire perspective, because the properly dressed, immaculately spoken women seemed to him to be the wantons, and the naked or near-naked babes who talked like long-shoremen seemed to be there as professional comics or entertainers on the piano or on the long-distance telephone. They were talking, talking, always talking, but never with the unpleasant garrulity of Johnny Iselin. At first when Raymond allowed himself to get around to feeling like having a little action for himself he would grow flustered, be at a loss as to how to proceed, and he would close the door behind him in the converted dining room he called an office and try to forget about the whole thing, but that simply was not satisfactory. He did that the very first night Marco had guests and he sat there, nearly huddled up with misery, fearing that no one would ever come in to make him come out, but finally the door was flung open and a small but strapping redheaded girl with a figure that made him moan to himself, stood in the doorway and stared at him accusingly. "What the hell is the matter with you, honey?" she asked solicitously. "Are you queer?" "Queer? Me?" Strapping was definitely the word for this girl. Everything she had was big in miniature and in aching proportion. "There are four broads out there, honey," she said, "and one man. Marco took me aside and told me that there was one more in here and although I ran right in here I've been worrying all the way because what the hell are you doing in here with very very ready broads out there?" "Well -- you see --" Raymond got up and took a slight step forward. "I'd like to introduce myself." The excitement was rising and he forgot to think about himself. He was aware vaguely that this was the first time he had ever been courted and if she could keep the thing within bounds everything was going to be all right. ''I'm Raymond Shaw." "So? I'm Winona Meighan. What has names got to do with what Marco promised I would be doing if I came here, but now I find out I may have to stand in line like at Radio City on a Sunday night?" "I -- I guess I simply didn't know what else to say. I'm just as avidly interested as you are," Raymond said, "but, I guess -- well, I suppose you could say I am shy. Or new at all this. Shy, anyway." She waved her hand reassuringly. "All the men are shy today. Everything is changing right in front of our eyes. It's become such a wonderful thing to find a man who actually is willing to go to bed with a woman that the women get all charged up and they press too much. I know it but I can't change it." As she talked she closed the door behind her. She couldn't find any way to lock it so she pulled a heavy chair in front of it. "So if you're shy we'll put out the lights, sweetheart. Winona understands, baby. Just get out of those bulgy pants and come over here." She unzipped the side of her dress and began to struggle out of it impatiently. "I have to get back downtown for an eleven o'clock show tonight, lover, so don't let's waste any more time." By the third night Raymond felt that he was fully adjusted to the new way of life. Winona had been extremely grateful for the extreme care he had put into his work with her and that squealing, activated gratitude, which had been coupled with an absolute insistence that he take her name and permanent address and that she write down his name and permanent address because her company was leaving in the morning for eight weeks in Las Vegas, had given him considerable confidence. After she had had to leave, both of them feeling exhausted but triste after the parting, he had moved quietly and weightlessly into the living room where Marco was playing at seance, explaining to the four girls that he understood, academically, exactly how a seance should operate because he had researched every necessary move and that if they would all cooperate by believing perhaps he could make something interesting happen the way things had happened in a fascinating textbook he had pored over all the way from San Francisco. It hadn't worked, but everybody enjoyed themselves and when bedtime came two of the girls joined up with Raymond as though they had all been assigned to each other by a lewd housemother and, after loads of fun, they had all dropped off to sleep and had slept like lambs. Raymond awoke twice during the night for a few languorous moments of trying to puzzle out how come he did not feel invaded by all these bodies that were hurling themselves at him or dotting the landscape of his privacy, but he could not reach the answer before he fell asleep and, in the morning, with the girls getting ready to go off to offices or studios or dress houses or stores, no one had much more time than to wait patiently for a turn to put on lipstick hurriedly in the bathroom and rush out without any breakfast. The extraordinary thing to Raymond was that none of them ever returned. Marco would spend all of his day in the reading room of the Forty-second Street library, then, in the late afternoon, devote two hours to fruitful bird-dogging that was, mysteriously to Raymond, always successful, and when Raymond got back to the apartment at six twenty-two every day there would never be less than three interested and interesting girls there, making spaghetti or using the telephone. Marco explained, on the first Saturday morning, that women were much more like men, in many almost invisible ways, than men were. Particularly in the noninvolvement area in which they were many, many more times like men simply because their natural instinct to capture and hold could be suspended. Marco said that there was not a healthy woman alive who would not gladly agree to rush into bed if that action displaced only the present and did not connect with the past nor had any possibility of any shape in the future. Good health could be served in this way, he said. No fears of reputation-tarnish could threaten. It meant sex without sin, in the sense that, in the middle of the twentieth century, when sexual activity is credited to a woman by several men, creating what was termed a past could also penalize her for any sexual activity in the future. Since good health demands good sex, he assured Raymond that very nearly the entire female population of the city of New York would happily cooperate with them if approached in the proper, understanding manner. "But how?" Raymond asked him in awe and bewilderment. "How what?" "How do you approach them?" "Well, I do have the edge on others by being patently an officer and a gentleman by act of Congress, and I am graced with a certain courtliness of manner." "Yes. I agree. But so am I." "I approach them smiling. I tell them I am an officer passing through New York, leaving in the morning for my new station in Hawaii, and that merely by looking at them I find them enormously attractive sexually." "But -- what do they say?" "First, of course, they thank me. They are with it, Raymond. Believe me, they are even away ahead of me and depending on whether they need to be at home that evening to greet a loyal breadwinner, or under the clock at the Biltmore to persuade a courtier, or are committed to one or another irrevocable obligations which mar metropolitan life, they are keenly aware that one night is such a short, short burst of time in such a packed and crowded concealing city as New York." "But when do they say --" "Actually," Marco told him pedantically, "I don't actually know until I get back here, and the door bell begins to ring, who will arrive and who won't. I always invite six. Every afternoon. So far we have not had to make do with less than three and --" "But how do you --" "How do I get them here?" "Yes." "I explain I am using a friend's apartment. I write down the address, tear out the slip and press it into their hands, always smiling in a pleasant, lustful way, and I murmur about cold champagne and some great records. Then I pat them on the rear and walk on. I assure you, Raymond, that is all there is to it and everyone is richer all around." "Yes. I see. But --" "But what?" "Don't you ever have any permanent alliances?" Raymond asked earnestly. "Of course," Marco said stoutly. "What do you think I am -- a zombie? In London, before this last post where I met you, I was head over heels in love with my colonel's wife and she with me. And we stayed that way for almost two years." One night Marco took two young things by the wrists and headed off for rest. One was a Miss Ernestine Dover who worked at an exceptionally fine department store on Fifth Avenue and the other a Mrs. Diamentez who was married to one of the best professional third basemen in the nation. After a while they all fell asleep. Raymond was enjoying tremendous pleasure on a large bed in an adjoining room with a recording and variety artist, then unemployed, who was of Hawaiian, Negro, and Irish extraction and whom Marco had met that afternoon in the vestibule of a church, where he had gone to light a cigar out of the wind. They all sat bolt upright, as one person -- Raymond and June, Miss Dover and Mrs. Diamentez -- because Marco was yelling "Stop him! Stop him!" in a wild, hoarse voice and trying to get out of the bed at something, his legs hopelessly entangled in the bedclothes. Mrs. Diamentez recovered first -- after all, she was married -- and she took Marco by the shoulders and threw him over backward on the bed, pinning his torso down with her own body while Miss Dover held down his thrashing legs with hers. "Ben! Ben!" Mrs. Diamentez yelled. "It's O.K., lover, it's O.K. You ain't over there, you're over here," Miss Dover shrilled. Raymond and June stood naked in the doorway. "Whassamatter?" Raymond said. Ben was rolling and pitching, his eyes wide open, as feral as a trapped animal who is willing to leave a paw behind if it can only get away from the teeth. June swooped an old highball up from the bureau and, rushing across the room, poured it on Marco. It brought him out. The girls climbed off him. He didn't speak to anyone but he stared at Raymond apprehensively. He shuffled dazedly out of the room and into the bathroom. He shook his head slowly from side to side as he walked, in tiny arcs, like a punch-drunk fighter, and his left cheek flinched with a tic. He closed the bathroom door behind him and they heard the lock snap and the light go on. Miss Dover went to the bathroom door and listened and suddenly the tub taps were turned on with full force. "Are you all right, honey?" Miss Dover said, but there was no answer. After a while, although Marco wouldn't get out of the bathtub or speak, they all went back to sleep and Mrs. Diamentez went in with Raymond and June. *** Marco's ninth day was a Sunday. Without any warning, they were suddenly alone. All the chicks had gone to other roosts. Marco brooded over such a hang-over as had not happened to him in fourteen years, since he had mixed Beaujolais wine with something called Wilkins' Family Rye Whisky. They ate steak for breakfast. Raymond opened the French windows and sat idly watching the river traffic and the multicolored metal band that never stopped moving along the West Side Highway. After a while, with Marco sunk into the silence of his perfect hang-over, Raymond began to talk about Jocie. She had gotten married two months before. She was living in the Argentine. Her husband was an agronomist. It had run on the society page of his own newspaper and he said it as though if they had not run the item the marriage would not have been solemnized and she would be free to go to him. Marco was ordered to Washington the following Thursday and he left without ever having seen the inside of a building at Governor's Island. He was ordered to the Pentagon, where he was assigned to active duty in Army Intelligence and promoted to major. Of the nine men left from the patrol that had won Raymond the Medal of Honor only two had nightmares with the same awful context. They were separated by many thousands of miles and neither knew the other was suffering through the same nightmares, scene for scene, face for face, and shock for shock. The details of the nightmares and the rhythm of their recurrence were harrowing. Each man dreamed he was seated in a long line with the other men of the patrol on a stage behind Sergeant Shaw and an old Chinese, facing an audience of Soviet and Chinese officials and officers, and that they smiled and enjoyed themselves in a composed and gentling way, while Shaw strangled Ed Mavole then shot Bobby Lembeck through the head. A variation of that dream was the drill-session dream where they faced a blackboard while drillmasters took them through an imaginary battle action until they had memorized all details assigned to them. The incomprehensible part of the nightmare was that the details of the battle action they were taught exactly matched the battle action that had won Shaw the Medal of Honor. There was more. One of these men had no course but to try to forget the nightmares as soon as they happened. The other man had no course but to try to remember the dreams while he was awake, because that was the kind of work he did, no other reason. Marco had been trained into wasteless usage of his highly developed memory. The first nightmare had come to him in bed with Miss Dover and Mrs. Diamentez. It had frightened him as he had never been frightened before. He had sat in that bathtub filled with cold water until daybreak and if the humorous, noisy women had not been there he would not have been able to face Raymond that morning. The dreams started again with regularity after he got to Washington. When he dreamed the same terrifying dream every night for nine nights, and began to develop hand tremors at his work, it grew into an obsession with him which he could not share with anyone else. The Soviet uniforms haunted him. Watching his friend kill two of his men in front of all of them every night, causing himself to become part of the Technicolor print of the action, complete and edited, was like an attack upon his sanity. He could not tell anyone else about it until he felt he might understand any part of it, so that people would have some reason to listen to him. Marco began to live with the incubus, inside of it when he was awake; it appeared inside of him when he was asleep. He would fight his way out, knowing he would be returned to it later because he could not stay out of sleep; and he made detailed written records of the section of the nightmare he had just left behind, and which waited to threaten him again. He gave up women because what happened to him while he slept frightened them, and he was fearful that he would talk or shout and that the word would go out that he was slightly shock simple. He must have been getting a little strange to give up women. Women were food to Marco, and drink and exciting music. The written notes grew voluminous and after a while he transferred them all to a large loose-leaf notebook. They said things such as: Where did the interpreter, Chunjin, get a cigar? Why was he allowed to sit as an equal in a chair beside a Soviet general? Marco began to keep careful score as to how many times such things appeared in the dreams. What is that blackboard? he would note. Three different colors of chalk. Why do the Chinese know in advance and in such detail about an action which will wipe· out one full Chinese infantry company? Why are the men of the patrol being worked so hard to remember so many details and different sets of details? His conflict between the love and admiration and respect for Raymond, which Yen Lo had planted in his mind, and his detailed, precise notes on exactly how Raymond had strangled Mavole and shot Lembeck had him beginning to live in dread and horror that everything which he still believed was happening in his imagination might somehow, someday, be proved to have happened in life. Marco had no thought that these things had ever happened. The notes were to keep him from unhinging, to provide the tools of his daily work to hold down his sanity. The dreams settled down to an occurrence of about three times a week in 1955, then began to step up inexorably in their appearances in 1956 until Marco was stumbling through his days on just about three hours' sleep each night. He never knew, all during that time, that he had remained sane. *** In July, 1956, at about nine-twenty on a hot night for most New Yorkers, Raymond was reasonably cool as he sat before his opened French windows just inside the small balcony that was cleared by a strong breeze which had bowled down the Hudson River Valley. He was reading Le Compte and Sundeen's Unified French Course, because he had decided he would like to work directly from the notes of Brillat-Savarin and Escoffier during his recreational cooking periods, a new interest that had come to him since the many pleasant evenings when he had assisted so many expert young women in making so many different kinds of spaghetti sauce. The telephone, on the desk beside his chair, rang. He picked it up. "Raymond Shaw, please." It was a pleasant male voice with an indefinite accent. "This is he." "Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?" "Yes, sir." Raymond disconnected. He burrowed through the desk drawers until he found playing cards. He shuffled the cards carefully and began to play. The queen of diamonds did not show up until the third layout. The telephone rang again forty minutes later as Raymond was smoking and watching the queen on top of the squared deck. "Raymond?" "Yes, sir?" "Can you see the red queen?" "Yes, sir." "Do you carry an accident insurance policy?" "No, sir." "Then tomorrow you will apply through the insurance department of your newspaper. Take all the standard benefits on a replacement income of two hundred dollars per week for total disability for as long as you have to be away from your job. Also take hospital insurance." "The paper carries that for me, sir." "Good. One week from next Saturday, on the fourteenth of July, you will report at eleven-ten A.M. to the Timothy Swardon Sanitarium at 84 East Sixty-first Street. We want you here for a check-up. Is it clear?" "Yes, sir." "Very good. Good night, Raymond." "Good night, sir." The connection was discontinued. Raymond went back to Le Compte and Sundeen. He drank a bottle of Coca-Cola. He went to bed at eleven o'clock after a sensible shower, and slept dreamlessly. He breakfasted on figs and coffee, arrived at his desk at nine-forty-five, and called the personnel department immediately and made the arrangements for the insurance, naming in the life clause, his only friend, Ben Marco, as beneficiary of fifty thousand dollars if his death occurred by accident or by violence. *** Senator Iselin's office forwarded a personal letter addressed to Raymond, care of the senator, to the newspaper office in New York. It was postmarked Wainwright, Alaska. Raymond opened it warily and read:
Raymond had himself reread one part of the letter and he stared at that with distaste and disbelief. It offended him so that he read it and read it again: "you was my best friend in the army." He tore the letter across, then in quarters, then again. When he could no longer tear it smaller, he dropped the pieces into the wastebasket beside his desk. For three years after taking the oath of office as United States Senator in March, 1953, Johnny had been moved slowly by Raymond's mother to insure acceptance within the Senate and in official Washington, to learn to know all of the press gentlemen well, to arrange the effective timing for the start of his run for re-election; in short, to master the terrain. It seems almost impossible now to credit the fact that, halfway through his first time in office, Johnny Iselin was still one of the least-known members of the Senate. It was not until April, 1956, that Raymond's mother decided to try out the first substantial issue. On the morning of April 9, Johnny showed up at the press briefing room at the Pentagon to attend a regularly scheduled press conference of the Secretary of Defense. He walked into the conference with two friends who represented Chicago and Atlanta papers respectively. They had had coffee first. Johnny had asked them elaborately what they were up to that morning. They told him they were due at the Secretary's regular weekly press conference at eleven o'clock. Johnny said wistfully that he had never seen a really big press conference in action. He was such an obscure, diffident, pleasant, whisky-tinted little senator that one of them good-naturedly invited him to come along and thereby unwittingly won himself a $250 prize bonus, three weeks later, from his newspaper. Johnny was so lightly regarded at that time, although extremely well known to all the regulars covering the Washington beat, that if he was noticed at all, no one seemed to think it a bit unusual that he should be there. However, immediately after the press conference writers who had not been within five hundred miles of Washington that morning claimed to have been standing beside Johnny when he made his famous accusation. Editorialists, quarterly-magazine contributors, correspondents for foreign dailies, and all other trend tenders used up a lot of time and wood pulp and, collectively, earned a lot of money writing about that extraordinary morning when a senator chose to cry out his anguish and protest at a press conference held by the Secretary of Defense. The meeting, held in an intimate amphitheater that had strong lights for the newsreel and television cameras, and many seats for correspondents, opened in the expected manner as the Secretary, a white-haired, florid, terrible-tempered man, strode on stage to the lectern flanked by his press secretaries and read his prepared statement concerned with that week's official view of integration of the nation's military and naval and air forces into one loyal unit. When he had finished he inquired into the microphones with sullen suspicion whether there were any questions. There were the usual number of responses from those outlets instructed to bait the Secretary, as was done in solemn rotation, to see if he could be goaded into one of his outrageous quotes that were so contemptuous of the people as to not only sell many more newspapers but to give all of the arid columnists of think pieces something significant to write about. The Secretary did not rise to the bait. As the questions came in more slowly he began to shuffle his feet and shift his weight. He coughed and was making ready to escape when a loud voice, tremulous with moral indignation but brave with its recognition of duty, rang out from the center of the briefing room. "I have a question, Mr. Secretary." The Secretary peered forward with some irritation at this stranger who had seen fit to take his own slow time about getting to his stupid question. "Who are you, sir?" he said sharply, for he had been trained into politeness to the press by a patient team of wild horses and by many past dislocations, which had been extremely painful, resulting from getting his foot caught in his mouth. "I am United States Senator John Yerkes Iselin, sir!" the voice rang out, "and I have a question so serious that the safety of our nation may depend upon your answer." Johnny made sure to shout very slowly so that, before he had finished, every newspaperman in the room had located him and was staring at him with that expectant lust for sensation which was their common emotion. "Who?" the Secretary asked incredulously, his voice electronically amplified, making it sound like the mating call of a giant owl. "No evasions, Mr. Secretary," Johnny yelled. "No evasions, if you please." The Secretary owned a tyrant's temper and he had been one of the most royal of big business dynasts before he had become a statesman. "Evasions?" he roared. "What the hell are you talking about? What kind of foolishness is this?" That sentence alone, those few words all by themselves, served to alienate the establishment called the United States Senate from sympathy with his cause for the rest of his tenure in office for, no matter what the provocation, it is the first unwritten law of the United States of America that one must never, never, never speak to a senator, regardless of his committee status, in such a manner before the press. The members of the press present, who now recognized Johnny in his official status, grew lightheaded over the implications of this head-on encounter of two potentially great sellers of newspapers, magazines, and radio and television time. It was one of those pulsing moments auguring an enormous upward surge in profits, when one-half of the jaded-turned-thrilled stamped out their cigarettes and the other half lighted up theirs; all staring greedily. "I said I am United States Senator John Yerkes Iselin and I hold here in my hand a list of two hundred and seven persons who are known to the Secretary of Defense as being members of the Communist party and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping the policy of the Defense Department." "Whaaaaat?" The Secretary had to shout out his astonishment into the microphones to be heard over the excited keening and rumbling of the voices in the room. "I demand an answer, Mr. Secretary!" Johnny cried, waving a clutch of papers high over his head, his voice a silver trumpet of righteousness. The Secretary had turned from beet-red to magenta. He was breathing with difficulty. He gripped the lectern before him as though he might decide to throw it at Johnny. "If you have such a list, Senator, goddamit," he bellowed, "bring it up here. Give me that list!" "There will be no covering up, Mr. Secretary. You will not put your hands on this list. I regret deeply to say in front of all of these men and women that you no longer have my confidence." "Whaaaaat?" "This is no longer a matter for investigation by the Department of Defense. I am afraid you have had your chance, sir. It has become the responsibility of the United States Senate." Johnny turned and strode from the room, leaving chaos behind him. On the following day, consistent with a booking made weeks previously and involving a token "expenses" payment of $250, Johnny was to appear on Defenders of Our Liberty, a television program that was a showcase for the more conservative members of the government; an interview show on which questions of a nonstraightforward nature were asked before a national audience representing one of the lowest ratings of any program in the history of the medium, the program remaining on the air only because the sponsoring company found it generally useful and, of course, pleasant to be able to dine with the important weekly guests, following each show, when a special vice-president would make firm friends with them to continue the discussions of government problems and problems with government of a more or less specific nature over the years to come. Johnny had been invited to appear on the show because he was one of the two senators remaining in office whom the company's special vice-president had never had to dinner, and the special vice-president was not one to underestimate. However, on the day of his scheduled appearance, Johnny was the hottest statesman in the country as a result of thirty hours of continuous coverage and he had become an object of great importance to the television show and to its network. Wherever they could, in the extremely short time they had in which to turn around, they bought half-page advertisements in big city newspapers to herald Johnny's live appearance on the show. Raymond's mother let everything develop in a normal manner, up to a point. Johnny was due to go on the air at seven-thirty P.M. At one P.M. she told them regretfully that he would not be available, that he was too busy preparing what would be the most important investigation the Senate had ever held. The network reeled at this news. The sponsor reeled. The press prepared to reel. After only the least perceptible stagger the special vice-president asked that a meeting between Raymond's mother and himself be quickly and quietly arranged. Raymond's mother preferred to hold this kind of a meeting in a moving car, far away from recording devices. She drove herself, and the two of them rode around the city of Washington and hammered out an agreement that guaranteed Johnny "not less than six nor more than twelve" appearances on Defenders of Our Liberty each year for two years at the rate of $7500 worth of common stock of the sponsoring company per appearance, and for which Johnny would supply the additional consideration of "staying in the news" in such a manner as could be reviewed after every three shows by the special vice-president and Raymond's mother jointly, to the point where the contract could be canceled or extended, by mutual consent. Therefore, Johnny was most certainly on hand to face the fearless panel of five newspapermen before the television cameras at seven-thirty that evening. The developments and charges of the previous day were laid on all over again, with one substantial difference concerning the actual number of Communists in the Defense Department. What follows is an excerpt from the record of the telecast: SEN. ISELIN: Yesterday morning I -- uh -- discussed the -- uh -- Communists high up in the -- uh -- Defense Department. I stated that I had names of -- uh -- fifty-eight card-carrying members of the Communist party. Now -- uh -- I say this. They must be driven out! They must be dragged out into the open from under the protection of the Defense Department! JAMES F. RYAN (Stamford Bee): But you do have the names of fifty-eight actual card-carrying members -- absolute Communists -- who direct the policy of the Department of Defense -- actual card-carrying Communists? SEN. ISELIN: I do-uh- Jim. Yes. JAMES F. RYAN: Well, I am just a common man who's got a family and daughters and a job. You mean to say there are fifty-eight actual card-carrying Communists in our Defense Department that direct or control our Department of Defense policy or help direct it? SEN. ISELIN: Well -- uh -- Jim, I don't want to give you or -- uh -- the rest of the American people the reassurance that there are only fifty-eight Communists high -- uh -- in the Defense Department. I say I have the names of only fifty-eight. JAMES F. RYAN: It is my duty to ask this question and face the consequences of asking it later. Is the Secretary of Defense one of the names on that list? SEN. ISELIN: I refuse to answer that question at this time -- uh -- Jim. And I am sure you know what I mean. The program was interrupted for the closing commercial right at that point, and it was an enormous success. As Raymond's mother told Johnny from the very beginning, it wasn't the issue itself so much as the way he could sell it. "Lover, you are marvelous, that's all. Just absolutely goddam marvelous," she told him after the television show. "The way you punched up that stale old material, why, I swear to God, I was beginning to feel real deep indignation myself." She did not bother him with the confusion that had immediately arisen over the differences in figures she had given him on the two days. She was more than satisfied that the ruse had had people arguing all over the country about how many Communists there were in the Defense Department rather than whether there were any there at all, and it didn't interest Johnny anyway whether the true figure was two hundred and seven or fifty-eight, until the day she handed him the speech he was to read on the floor of the Senate on April 18. In that speech Johnny said there were eighty-two employees of the Defense Department who ranged from "persons whom I consider to be Communists" down to individuals who were "bad risks." On April 25, Raymond's mother reduced this figure at a press conference that had been called by the press of the nation itself, and not by Johnny's team, at which Johnny announced that he would "stand or fall" on his ability to prove that there was not just one Communist in the Department of Defense but one who was "the top espionage agent of an inimical foreign power within the borders of the United States of America." Johnny had taken a riding in the Senate cloak room after he had changed the figures for the second time, in the Senate speech, and he was as sore as a pup at having been made to look silly in front of his pals. When Raymond's mother told him he was to drop the figure to one Communist, to one Communist from two hundred and seven in less than a month, he rebelled bitterly. "What the hell do you keep changing the Communist figures for, all the time?" he asked hotly just before the press conference was to open. "It makes me look like a goddam fool." "You'll be a goddam fool if you don't go in there and do as you're told. Who the hell are they writing about all over this goddam country, for crissake?" Raymond's mother asked. "Are you going to come on like a goddam expert, all of a sudden, like you knew what the hell you were talking about, all of a sudden?" "Now, come on, hon. I was only --" "Shuddup! You hear? Now get the hell out there!" she snapped at him -- so Senator Iselin had to face a battery of microphones, cameras, and questions, as big as ever had been assembled for any President of the United States, to say: "I am willing to stand or fall on this one. If I am wrong on this one I think the subcommittee would be justified in not taking any other cases I ever brought up too seriously." If the scorecard of working Communists in the Defense Department seems either tricky or confusing, it is because Raymond's mother chose to make the numbers difficult to follow from day to day, week to week, and month to month, during that launching period when his sensational allegations were winning Johnny headlines throughout the world for two reasons. First, it was consistent with one of Raymond's mother's basic verities, that thinking made Americans' heads hurt and therefore was to be avoided. Second, the figures were based upon a document that a Secretary of Defense had written some six years before to the Chairman of a House committee, pointing out that, at the end of World War II, 12,798 government employees who had worked for emergency war agencies had been temporarily transferred to the Defense Department, then that group had been reduced to 4,000 and "a recommendation against permanent employment had been made in 286 cases. Of these, 79 had actually been removed from the service." Raymond's mother's subtraction of 79 cases from 286 cases left 207 cases, the number with which she had had Johnny kick off. She had made one other small change. The Secretary's actual language had been "recommendation against permanent employment," which she had changed to read: "members of the Communist party," which Johnny had adjusted to read: "card-carrying Communists." Sometimes it tended to get a little too confusing until Johnny came at last to refer to it as "the numbers game." On one edgy day when Johnny had been drinking a little before he went on the Senate floor to speak, things got rather out of hand when he began to switch the figures around within the one speech, reported in the Congressional Record for April 10, in which he spoke of such varying estimates as: "a very sizable group of active Communists in the Defense Department," then referred to "vast numbers of Communists in the Defense Department." He recalled the figure of two hundred and seven, then went on to say, almost immediately following: "I do not believe I mentioned the figure two hundred and seven at the Secretary's press conference; I believe I announced it was over two hundred." He thereupon hastened to claim that "I have in my possession the names of fifty-seven Communists who are in the Defense Department at present," then changed that count at once by saying, "I know absolutely of one group of approximately three hundred Communists certified to the Secretary of Defense in a private communication who have since been discharged because of communism," and then at last, sweating like a badly conditioned wrestler, he sat down, having thoroughly confused himself. He knew he was going to catch hell when he got home that night, and he did. She turned on him so savagely that in an effort to defend himself and to keep her from striking him with a blunt object he demanded that they agree to stay with one goddam figure he could remember. Raymond's mother realized then that she had been taxing him and making his head hurt so she settled on fifty-seven, not only because Johnny would be able to remember it but because all of the jerks could remember it, too, as it could be linked so easily with the fifty-seven varieties of canned food that had been advertised so well and so steadily for so many years. Within three months Johnny bought Raymond's mother a case of gin for making him the "most famous man in the United States," and he was doing just as well all over the world. The whole thing was so successful that within five months after his first charges a Senate committee undertook a special investigation of Johnny, a public investigation that produced over three million words of testimony, of which Johnny claimed, later on, to have produced a million of those words himself. Some important individuals refused to tolerate Johnny and said so publicly, and other bodies of elected public servants seemed to disagree with him, but when they came up to it, in the end, they equivocated because by that time Johnny had generated an extraordinary amount of fear, which he beamed directly into the eyes of all who came close to him. A short man with dark hair and skin, blue eyes, and blond eyebrows called for Raymond at his apartment at ten-seventeen the morning of July fourteenth, 1956, the day after the investigating committee had published their report on Johnny, and a hot Saturday morning it was. The man's name was Zilkov. He was Director of the KGB, or Committee of State Security, for the region of the United States of America east of the Mississippi River. The MVD, or Ministry of Internal Affairs, is much larger. The MVD had very wide powers and functions but they hold to a jurisdiction of a somewhat more public nature inside the Soviet Union. The KGB, however, is the secret police. Its director has ministerial rank today and is a much more feared personality than Gomel, the present MVD head. Zilkov was proud of the power he represented. Raymond opened in response to the door bell, and stared coldly at the strange man. They disliked each other instantly, which was nothing against Zilkov because Raymond disliked almost everyone instantly. "Yes?" Raymond drawled obnoxiously. "My name is Zilkov, Mr. Shaw. As you were advised by telephone this morning, I have come to drive you to the Swardon Sanitarium." "You are late," Raymond told him and turned his back to walk toward his baggage, leaving the man to decide whether he would enter or wait in the corridor. "I am exactly two minutes late," the short man snapped. "That is late, isn't it? An appointment is an oral contract. If we should happen to have any other business in the future, try to remember that." "Why do you have three bags? How many bags do you think you will need in the hospital?" "Have I asked you to help me with the bags?" "That is not the point. An accident case is not admitted to a hospital with three pieces of baggage. At the most you may bring some necessaries in an attache case." "An attache case?" "You do know what that is?" "Of course I know what that is." "Do you have one?" "One? I have three'" "Please to place your necessaries into one of your three attache cases and we will go." "No." "No?" "I will get there myself. I was told absolutely nothing about having to pack only the bare necessities into a leather envelope. I was told absolutely nothing about having to have to cope with a minor functionary of an obscure little hospital. That will be all. Return to your work. I will handle this myself." Raymond began to close the door in Zilkov's face. "Wait!" "Wait nothing. Get your foot out of the door, you boor. Out! Out!" "You cannot'" The short man threw his weight against the door, but Raymond's greater weight and superior strength gradually slid the security chieftain backward. "Stop! Stop!" Zilkov cried. "Out!" said Raymond inexorably. "No! Please! Shaw, listen to me! Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?" Raymond stopped pushing. Zilkov slipped into the apartment and shut the door behind him. *** The Timothy Swardon Sanitarium had been a monument to personal philanthropy. Mr. Swardon, dead for eleven years, had been a wealthy alcoholic whose two daughters had been caught up in the narcotics habit. He had founded the superb private hospital mostly for himself and his family, but also for the benefit of other drunks and junkies who were friends of the family, or friends of friends. Through the spontaneity of this ever widening circle, the establishment had come to the attention of Giorgi Berezovo's organization men who protected Soviet security on the eastern seaboard of the United States, and eventually two full floors of the seven-floor hospital were taken over entirely for security use; the entire establishment having been bought at a real bargain from the youngest daughter who had still not been able to kick the cocaine habit, regardless of the advantages her father had showered on her medically. Under the new management, the little haven was in its second successful year of operation as one of the few money-making operations maintained by the Soviets, thanks to the many patients still loyal to the Swardon family. Raymond had not actually been hit by a hit-and-run driver, but the many hospital and insurance and police forms served to legitimatize his stay, or the visits of others who, from time to time, found it necessary to go to Swardon for check-ups. Raymond had taken a taxi to the hospital and had checked in as he would have into a hotel, and within a half-hour two Soviet nurses had him in bed on the sealed fifth floor. His right leg was put into a plaster cast, then in traction, and his head was bandaged. He had been put into unconsciousness by voice signal while this was being done and the memory of the morning's events was erased. The office staff at the hospital had notified the police and a squad car came by immediately to interview the cab driver who had brought Raymond in after seeing him hit by a green station wagon with Connecticut plates. Fortunately, three other witnesses corroborated the account: two women who lived in the neighborhood and a young lawyer from Bayshore, Long Island. The personnel manager at The Daily Press was notified to activate both the hospital and accident policies indicated by the identification cards found in Raymond's wallet. The technicians assembled the X-rays which proved Raymond to have suffered a brain concussion and ripped calf muscles. The Daily Press published a short account of the accident on its back page. This was how Major Marco learned about it, and how Raymond's mother and Johnny got the news. Raymond's boss, Holborn Gaines, dropped everything (a beer bottle and a report from the Manila office) and rushed to the hospital to see if there was anything he could do to help. The desk attendant, a Soviet Army lieutenant, upon studying his credentials and checking them against a list of Raymond's probable and therefore accredited visitors, sent him to the fifth floor just as though it were not a sealed floor. He was met at the elevator by a rugged army nurse who was wearing the traditional cap worn by graduates of the Mother Cabrini Hospital of Winsted, Connecticut, where she had never studied but which gave the establishment a certain amount of professional verisimilitude. Mr. Gaines was permitted to look in on Raymond, unconscious though he was, in traction and in presumed travail, and was told the running wheeze of the profession everywhere, that Raymond was doing as well as could be expected. Gaines left a bottle of Scotch for Raymond with the pretty young nurse (five feet tall, 173 pounds, mustache, warts). He also passed the word along that Raymond was to take it easy and not worry about anything, which the nurse was careful not to tell Raymond, in the event of possible prearranged code use. Technicians who worked directly under Yen Lo, albeit also possessing a political rating or classification, were flown in on embassy quota from the Pavlov Institute in the Ukraine. They went to work on Raymond between visiting hours, checking his conditioned apparatus from top to bottom. Five years had elapsed from the time the controls had first been installed at Tunghwa. All linkages were found perfect. A courier took the detailed lab reports to the embassy in Washington; from there they were transmitted by diplomatic pouch to the project supervisors, who were ostensibly Gomel, Berezovo, and Yen Lo, but Berezovo had been deemed insufficiently worthy, following the disappointment that Lavrenti Beria had been to the Kremlin, and he was dead, and Yen La refused to look at the reports, saying with a mild smile that they could not do otherwise than certify the excellence of Raymond's conditioned reflexive mechanism, so only Gomel pored over the reports. He was mightily pleased. Following the transmittal of the reports overseas, Raymond met his American operator who was to become his sole manager from that moment on, and whom he would never remember as having seen and whom he would never be able to recognize as his operator no matter where or when they met, because it had been designed that way. They were introduced, as it were, then the American asked to be alone in the room with Raymond. They conferred together for nearly two hours before Zilkov interrupted them. The two visitors in Raymond's room got into a heated argument, with Raymond watching them like a tennis spectator. Zilkov was a militant, bright young man. He maintained emphatically that Raymond must carry out a test assassination in order to complete the reflex check-out in a conclusive manner. The American operator opposed the suggestion violently and pointed out that it was both surprising and shocking that a security officer, with responsibility such as he held, would seek to risk a mechanism as valuable as Raymond. Raymond listened gravely, then turned his eyes to hear Zilkov's rebuttal, which, of course, pointed out that the mechanism had been designed for assassination, that it had been five years since it had been tested, that conditions offering minimum risk for police reprisal could be designed, and that as far as he was concerned the test must be made before he would sign any certification that the mechanism was in perfect working order. The American operator said, very well, if that was how Zilkov felt about it then Raymond should be instructed to kill an employee of the hospital on one of the sealed floors. Zilkov said he would order nothing of the sort, that the table of organization in the area was under acceptable strength as it was, as far as he was concerned, and that Raymond could damned well kill some nonproductive woman or child on the outside. The American operator said there was no reason for Raymond to kill anyone unproductive -- that there might as well be some feeling of gain out of this since Zilkov was insisting on the risk -- and recommended that Raymond's position at the newspaper and therefore his general value to the party might be considerably strengthened if he were to kill his immediate superior, Holborn Gaines, as it was possible that, after five years as Gaines's assistant, Raymond would be given his job, which, in turn, would bring him wider influence within the inner chambers of the American government. Zilkov said he had no interest in whom Raymond assassinated so long as he worked efficiently and obediently. It was decided that Mr. Gaines should die two nights hence. Subsequently, the American operator complained bitterly through channels that Zilkov had been reckless and foolhardy with one of the Party's most valuable pieces of apparatus in the United States, and most entirely needlessly because Raymond had been checked out by Pavlov technicians. Unfortunately the complaint was not made in time to save Mr. Gaines, but within two weeks Zilkov was recalled and severely reprimanded. On his return to the United States, he could not have been more careful, both with Raymond and Raymond's operator, than if they had been his own department heads. *** On the morning of the ninth day at Swardon, less than two days before he murdered Mr. Gaines, Raymond awoke as from a deep sleep, surprised to find himself in a strange bed and in traction, but even more shocked to find himself staring directly into, and on a level with, the grief-ravaged face of his mother. Raymond had never seen his mother's face as being anything but smoothly held, enforced, carefully supported, arranged, and used to help her get what she wanted as a Cadillac was used to get her where she wanted to go. The skin on his mother's face had always been flawless; the eyes were exquisitely placed and entirely clear, the whites unflecked by tiny blood vessels, merely suggesting malevolence and insane impatience. Her mouth had always been held well in, as the mouths of city saddle horses, and the perfect blond hair had always framed all of this and had always softened it. To open his eyes and find himself looking into a wracked caricature of that other vision made Raymond cry out, and made his mother aware that he was conscious. Her hair was ragged and awry. Her eyes were rabbit-red from weeping. Her cheeks shone with wet, washing away the cosmetic that always masked the wrinkles. Her mouth was twisted in ugly self-pity, while she sobbed noisily and blew her nose into too small a handkerchief. She drew back instantly at his sound and attempted to compose her face, but it could not be done convincingly on such short order, and unconsciously she wanted to gain a credit for the feat she knew would be unbelievable to him: her tears because of him. "Raymond, oh, my Raymond." "Whassa matter?" "Oh --" "Is Johnny dead?" "What?" "What the hell is the matter with you?" "I came here as soon as I could. I flew here the instant I was able to leave." "Where? Pardon the cliche, but where am I?" "The Swardon Sanitarium." "The Swardon Sanitarium where?" "New York. You were hit by a hit-and-run driver. Oh, I was so frightened. I came as soon as I could." "When? How long have I been here?" "Eight days. Nine days. I don't know." "And you just got here?" "Do you hate me, Raymond?" "No, Mother." "Do you love me?" "Yes, Mother." He looked at her with genuine anxiety. Had she run out of arm sauce? Had she broken the arm-banging machine? Or was she just a very clever impersonator sent over to play the mother while my true mummy tries to sober up the Great Statesman? "My little boy. My darling, little boy." She went into a paroxysm of silent weeping, working her shoulders up and down in a horrible manner and shaking the chair she sat in. There was nothing faked about this, he knew. She must have hit some real trouble along the line. It simply could not possibly be that she was weeping over him being stretched out in a hospital. Mucus slid from the tiny handkerchief and rested on her left cheekbone. Raymond closed his eyes for a moment, but he would not tell her what had happened and felt a deep satisfaction that ultimately she would look in some mirror after she had left him and see this mess on her face. "You are such a fraud, Mother. My God, I feel as well as I have ever felt and I know that you have been all over this with whatever doctors there are out there on the telephone days ago, and now you're at the hospital because there is probably a sale at Bloomingdale's or you're having a few radio actors blacklisted and you make a production out of it like I was involved somehow in your life." His voice was bitter. His eyes were hard and dry. "I have to be a fraud," she said, straightening her back and slipping several lengths of steel into her voice like whalebone into a corset. "And I have to be the truth, too. And a shield and the courage for all the men I have ever known, yourself included, excepting my father. There is so much fraud in this world and it needs to be turned away with fraud, the way steel is turned with steel and the way a soft answer does not turneth away wrath." She had emerged, dripping with acid, from her grief. Her face was a mass of ravaged colors and textures, her hair was like an old lamp shade fringe and that glob of mucus still rested on her left cheekbone disgustingly, but she was herself again, and Raymond felt greatly relieved. "How's Johnny?" "Fine. He'd be here, but that committee just finished working him over -- ah, wait until that one is up for re-election." She sniffed noisily. "So I told him he must stay there and stare them down. You have no use for him anyway so I don't know why you bother to ask for him unless you feel guilt about something." "I do feel guilt about something." "About what?" She leaned forward slightly because information is the prime increment of power. "About Jocie." "Who's Jocie?" "Jocie Jordan. The senator's daughter." "Oh. Yes. Why do you feel guilt?" his mother asked. "Why? Because she thinks I deserted her." "Raymond! Why do you dramatize everything so? You were babies!" "I thought that since we're having our first meeting since I got the medal, since I got back from Korea, and I was in Korea for two years, I thought since you've been pretending to be two other people -- you know, honest and maternal and wistfully remorseful about how we had let our lives go along -- coldly and separately -- and I thought that before we got any more honest and hated ourselves in the morning, that we might just pay Jocie the respect of asking for her -- you know, mentioning her name in passing they way they do about the dead?" His voice was choked. His eyes were not dry. As though he had reminded her of what had triggered her in the first place, she began unexpectedly to weep. The lemon sunlight was reflected from the bright white blank wall outside the window at her back and it lingered like St. Elmo's fire around the ridiculously small green hat she was wearing, a suspicion of a hat that had been assembled for seventy dollars by an aesthetic leader for whom millinery signified the foundation stone of culture. "What is the matter with you, Mother?" She sobbed. "You aren't crying about me?" She sobbed and nodded. "But, I'm all right. I don't have a pain or an ache. I am absolutely fine." "Oh, Raymond, what can I say to you? There has been so much to get done. We have so far to go. Johnny is going to lead the people of our country to the heights of their history. But I have to lead Johnny, Raymond. You know that. I know you know that. I have given my life and many, many significant things for all of this. My life. Simply that and I can see that if I were to ransack my strength -- remembered strength or future strength -- I could not give more to this holy crusade than I have given. Now I have come face to face with my life where it has failed to cross your own. I can't tell you how a mother feels about that, because you wouldn't understand. It made me weep for a little bit. That's all. What's that? Anybody and everybody recovers from tears, but I'm not sad and I don't have regrets because I know that what I did and what I do is for the greatest possible good for all of us." Raymond watched her, then made the small despising gesture with his right hand, brushing her world out of his way as it came too close to him. "I don't understand one word of what you are saying," he told her. "I am saying this. Some terrible, terrible changes are going to come to this country." He flicked at the air with his hand violently, unaware of the movement, and he closed his eyes. "This country is going to go through a fire like it has never seen," she said in a low and earnest voice. "And I know what I am saying because the signs are there to read and I understand politics, which is the art of reading them. Time is going to roar and flash lightning in the streets, Raymond. Blood will gush behind the noise and stones will fall and fools and mockers will be brought down. The smugness and complacency of this country will be dragged through the blood and the noise in the streets until it becomes a country purged and purified back to original purity, which it once possessed so long ago when the founding fathers of this republic -- the blessed, blessed fathers -- brought it into life. And when that day comes-and we have been cleansed of the slime of oblivion and saved from the wasteful, wrong, sinful, criminal, selfish, rottenness which Johnny, and only Johnny is going to save us from, you will kneel beside me and thank me and kiss my hands and my skirt and give only me your love as will the rest of the great people of this confused and blinded land." He put his hand over hers on the bed, then lifted it to his lips. Suddenly, he felt himself being made soft with pity for both of them. He could not comprehend that his mother had any feelings, and it shocked him deeply. *** Two days later, immediately after Raymond ate dinner in the room at Swardon with his leg still in a cast, Zilkov and the American operator came to the room with a package of playing cards and subsequently gave him detailed instructions as to how he was to kill Holborn Gaines. The time they set was three forty-five the following morning. Gaines lived in an apartment house, alone. The house maintained a self-service elevator after one A.M. when the night man went off duty. There was no doorman. Zilkov had had a key made to fit the front door of the building and to Mr. Gaines's apartment, which was one of four on the ninth floor. The security man went over the pencil-sketched, then photos tatted floor plan of Gaines's small unit of three rooms and a bath, indicating where the bedroom was and suggesting that Raymond strangle him, as it was the quietest and least complicated method and, considering the close quarters in which he would have to work, the neatest. He added that Raymond must accept it as a rule, then and forever, that in the event that anyone, repeat anyone, ever discovered him on the scene of the assignment, this other person or persons must be killed. Was that clear? Zilkov may have reconsidered the risk he had decided to have Raymond run, for, to make sure this condition was understood, he asked the American operator to repeat the admonition. As it worked out, Mr. Gaines was alone but he was not asleep as he should have been to save Raymond considerable embarrassment. He was reading in bed, a four-poster feather bed, with nine soft pillows all around behind him and a shocking-pink maribou bed jacket around his shoulders; chuckling over a few pounds of confidential reports from bureau chiefs in Washington, Rome, London, Madrid, and Moscow. The windows were closed tight and, as in the office at all times, an electric heater was beaming up at him from the floor nearby: in July. As Raymond opened the door to the apartment he knocked over the tall paper screen that Mr. Gaines kept in front of the opened door in the summer time. As it fell it dislodged a picture hanging on the wall; it hit the floor with a crash. There could be no doubt that someone had come to call, and Raymond cursed himself as a blunderer because he knew well that Mr. Gaines would be tart about the visit, in any event. "What the hell is that?" Mr. Gaines yelled shrilly. Raymond flushed with embarrassment. It was an entirely new feeling for him and Mr. Gaines was the only living person who could have made him feel that way, because Mr. Gaines made him feel helpless, gawky, and grateful all at the same time. "It's me, Mr. Gaines," he said. "Raymond." "Raymond? Raymond?" Mr. Gaines was bewildered. "My assistant? Raymond Shaw?" Raymond appeared in the bedroom doorway at that moment. He was wearing a neat black suit, a dark gray shirt, a black tie, and black gloves. "Yes, sir," he said. "I -- I'm sorry to disturb you, Mr. Gaines." Mr. Gaines fingered the maribou bed jacket. "Don't get any ideas about this silly-looking bed jacket," he said irritably. "It was my wife's. It's the warmest thing I have. Perfect for reading in bed at night." "I didn't know you were married, Mr. Gaines." "She died nearly six years ago," Mr. Gaines said gruffly, then he remembered. "But -- but, what the hell are you doing here at --" Mr. Gaines looked over at the alarm clock on the night table. "At ten minutes to four in the morning." "Well -- I -- uh --" "My God, Raymond, don't tell me you've come here to talk something over? I mean, surely you aren't going to pour out your heart with the details of some sordid love affair or anything like that?" "No, sir, you see --" "Raymond, if you feel you must resign for any reason -- a circumstance which I would regret, of course -- surely you could leave a little note on my desk in the morning. I hate chattering like this! I thought I had explained to you that I loathe having to talk to people, Raymond." "Yes, sir. I'm sorry, Mr. Gaines." Mr. Gaines suddenly seemed to remember something significant. He lifted his left hand and pointed vaguely toward the door, looking, because of the fluffy feathers all around his white hair, something like the ancient Mrs. Santa R. Claus. "How did you get in here? When I close that door, it locks." "They gave me a key." "Who did?" "The people at the hospital." "What hospital? But -- why? Why did they give you a key?" Raymond had been moving slowly around the bed. At last he stood at Mr. Gaines's side, looking down at him sunk into the feather bed. He felt sheepish. "Raymond! Answer me, my boy! Why are you here?" It was a relatively effortless job because Mr. Gaines, being such an old man, did not have much strength and Raymond, because of feelings of affection and gratitude for Mr. Gaines did everything he could, with his great strength, to terminate his friend's life as quickly as possible. He thought of extinguishing the bed light as he left, but turned it on again, remembering that he wouldn't be able to find his way out to the front door if he left the room in darkness. He walked four blocks west before taking a cab north on Lexington Avenue; he left it three blocks away from Swardon. He entered the sanitarium through the basement door, off the back areaway, showing his pass to the Soviet Army corporal in overalls who had taken him under the throat with the left forearm without speaking and held until Raymond tapped his third finger twice, then showed the pass. When Raymond got to his room the American operator was waiting for him. "Still up?" Raymond said conversationally. "It's almost four-thirty." "I wanted to make sure you were all right," the operator said. "Good night, Raymond. I'll send the nurses in to rig you up again." "Do I have to have those casts put on again?" "Those casts must stay on until you are discharged. How do you know who'll show up here as a visitor now that Mr. Gaines is dead?" The operator left the room. The nurses had Raymond undressed and bandaged in no time at all. *** Raymond, as it turned out, did have two more visitors before he left the hospital. Joe Downey, the managing editor of The Daily Press, stopped by after Mr. Gaines's funeral and offered Raymond the job of writing the column, which meant a two-hundred-dollar-a-week raise in pay and a net saving of three hundred dollars a week to the paper because, naturally, they didn't figure to start Raymond at the figure Mr. Gaines had finished at, and Mr. Gaines had been political columnist for the paper for twenty-six years. They also offered Raymond fifty per cent of the syndication money, a net increase of one hundred per cent to the paper because under the prior arrangement Mr. Gaines had kept it all, excepting the sales and distribution and promotion percentage. To the paper's owners, Mr. Downey allowed that Raymond was new and had such an unpleasant personality that it was better than five to one that no one would ever get around to telling him that he rated all the syndication money. It was fair. The reports from the bureau chiefs made up most of the columns and the paper, not Raymond, had to pay the bureau chiefs. Besides, one half of the syndication money came to five hundred and six dollars per week, which lifted Raymond's take-home pay by seven hundred and six dollars per week; Mr. Downey estimated this as being a bargain because the paper would have the only Medal of Honor columnist in the business, which certainly should open the doors to information at the Pentagon, and he had that crazy stepfather who could scare people into talking to Raymond, and that mother who could get him in anywhere, even to share a double bed with the President if he felt like it, and he had had five solid years of learning his job from Holborn Gaines. Seven hundred and six dollars a week is a nice raise for a young fellow, particularly if he likes money. Actually, the increased income took the edge off the promotion for Raymond but, the way he would handle it, he figured the money would be the bank's problem, not his. Raymond was distraught over the murder. He had had great regard for the old man and a fondness that was unusual inasmuch as he felt fondness for only two other people in the world, Marco and Jocie, and Jocie should not be included in the category because the feeling for her was vastly different again. He just could not get it through his head that anyone would want to murder Mr. Gaines. He had been a kind and gentle and helpless old man, and how could anyone do such a thing? Mr. Downey expressed the police opinion that it must have been some mentally unstable political crank. "Holly was one of the oldest friends I had left," Mr. Downey said sadly, mourning for himself. "Is the paper going to post a reward?" Mr. Downey rubbed his chin. "Hm. I guess we should, at that. We certainly should. Can charge it to promotion if we ever have to pay it." "I want to pledge five thousand dollars of that reward," Raymond said hotly. "You don't need to do that, Raymond." "Well, I want to, goddamit." "Well, O.K. You pledge five and we'll pledge ten, although the board'll have to O.K. it of course, and I'll call Centre Street soon as I get back to the office so they can send out paper on it. By God, we'll pay for a general alarm, too. The dirty bastard." Downey was doubly upset because he hated to spend the paper's money and he knew damned well that Holly Gaines, wherever he was, wouldn't approve of a goddam, boy-scout, grandstand play like that, but, what the hell, there were certain things you pretended you had to do. *** Marco came in to see Raymond the same afternoon. "Jesus, you look like hell," Raymond said from under his head bandage and traction equipment. "What happened?" Marco looked worse than that. The old sayings are the best, and Marco looked like death warmed over. "What do you mean, what happened?" he said. ''I'm not in a hospital bed, am I?" "I just mean I never saw you look so lousy." "Well, thanks." "What happened?" Marco ran his hand across his face. "I can't sleep." "Can't you get some pills?" Raymond said tentatively -- having a narcotics addict for a mother, he had developed an aversion to drugs. Also, it was difficult for him to understand any kind of a sleeping problem, since he himself could have fallen asleep hanging by one ankle in a high wind. "It's not so much that I can't sleep. It's more that I'd rather not sleep. I'm walking around punchy because I'm scared. I keep having the same nightmare." Raymond, lying flat on his back, made the flicking gesture with his right hand. "Is it a nightmare about a Soviet general and a lot of Chinese and me and the guys who were on the patrol?" Marco came out of the chair like a tiger. He stood over Raymond, gripping the cloth of his pajama jacket in both fists, staring down at him with wild eyes. "How did you know that? How did you know that?" His voice went up and up like eccentric stairs in front of a hilltop summer beach house. "Take -- your -- hands -- off -- me." With that sentence Raymond's voice fell back into his horrid drawling manner; into his repulsive, inciting, objectionable voice that he used to keep the rest of the world on the other side of the moat surrounding the castle where he had always lain under the spell of the wicked witch. It was curdingly unfriendly, and so actively repellent that it drove Marco backward into the chair, which was a good thing because Marco had gone into a sick yellow-ivory color, his breathing was shallow, and his eyes shone with an ever so slight sheen of insanity as he had reached out to take the shape of his oppression into the muscles of his fingers and hands and punish it for what it had been doing to his dignity, which is man's own inner image of himself. ''I'm sorry, Raymond." Raymond became Marco's friend again instantly, as though there had been no lapse. "Please tell me how you knew about my nightmare, Raymond." "Well, you see, I didn't really. I mean, it's just that Melvin -- you know: Al Melvin, the corporal on the patrol -- he wrote me a long letter about a week ago. I was naturally surprised to hear from him because -- well -- as you know, I was never much one for fraternizing, but he said in the letter that I was the only one he knew how to reach -- he sent the letter to Johnny because everybody certainly knows how to reach him -- because he had to tell somebody in the patrol about this nightmare or he was afraid he would lose his mind and --" "Please tell me about the nightmare, Raymond." "Well, he dreams that the patrol is all sitting together. He says he dreams about a lot of Soviet officers and some Chinese brass and us being on the patrol. What is such a nightmare about that?" "Where's the letter? Do you have the letter?" "Well, no. I mean, I never keep letters." "Is that all he wrote? Is that all about the nightmare?" "Yeah." "It just stops right there?" "I guess so." "Man!" "Is it like your nightmare?" "Yeah. As a matter of fact, mine is a lot like that." "You guys ought to get together." "Right away. You don't know what this means to me. I just can't explain to you what this means to me, Raymond." "Well, you can't see him right away, though, Ben. He lives in Wainwright, Alaska." "Alaska? Alaska?" "Yes," "Jesus. Wainwright, Alaska. You have to be kidding!" "No. I wish I was, Ben. I'm not. But, so what? What's the difference?" "What's the difference? I told you I can't sleep. You told me I look like hell. Well, I feel like hell and I'm shaking all to pieces and I think sometimes I should kill myself because I'm afraid of going insane, and then you tell me like you were talking about the weather that another man who was on the patrol is having the same delusions that I was afraid were driving me crazy, and you tell me he lives in some place called Wainwright, Alaska, where I can't sit down and talk to him and find out if he's cracking up like I am and how we can help each other, and you say what's the difference." Marco began to laugh hysterically, then he put his face forward into his large hands and wept into them, squeezing tightly at his cheekbones, his heavy shoulders moving grotesquely and causing the four rows of his decorations to jump up and down. He made such tearing sounds that the two Soviet Army nurses on the floor came running in. After six or seven minutes of Marco's reckless, unrelieved, and shocking sobbing, at which Raymond stared helplessly, they hit him with a hypo to calm him down and get him the hell out of there. All in all, Raymond had had a most ironic hospital stay, what with a visit from the wife of America's most gallant and noisy anti-Communist to a hospital operated by the Soviet secret police, what with a U.S. Army Intelligence officer breaking down and embarrassing the staff of the same place, what with contributing five thousand dollars to a reward for his own capture, and what with learning that two grown men were capable of behaving like children over a perfectly harmless, if repetitious, dream.
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