An Affair of State by Pat Frank
“That’s right!” the Admiral congratulated him, appearing pleased and surprised. “These models are exact and scaled. I get them from Schwarz’s—you know, the toy store on Fifth Avenue. Now put down the Midway, and I’ll outline the problem.”
The Admiral’s voice and manner changed. He was no longer sitting on the floor in a Budapest suburb. He was in a great War Room in Washington hung with wonderful maps of many seas, and he was briefing the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Gentlemen,” he said, “the situation is as follows. Fighting has broken out in Berlin, and it appears inevitable that within forty-eight hours our land forces will be swept from the continent of Europe. But the Navy has used foresight. The Navy has mobilized all available ships in the Atlantic, and dispatched them to The Straits, for we know that the enemy’s first thrust will be at Turkey. We have three battleships, six carriers, six cruisers, and suitable escort destroyers in The Straits. In the Black Sea the Reds have six battleships, ten carriers, fifteen cruisers, and an estimated forty submarines. Now the problem is—”
“Where did the Russians get all those battleships and carriers?” Jeff interrupted. “I thought they only had one or two.”
“Oh, they’ve taken over the British fleet. The British are Socialists, aren’t they?”
“Yes, but—”
“Quiet! Now the problem is, shall we go into the Black Sea and attack the transports which must now be loading at Burgas, Varna, and Odessa—risking annihilation if the Red fleet is operating as a single force—or shall we retreat to the Mediterranean and accept battle only when we have land-based air cover from North Africa?”
The Admiral stopped speaking and looked inquiringly at Jeff. “Well,” he said finally, “what’s your decision?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“I don’t know.”
“God damn it,” said the Admiral. “The alternatives are clear, aren’t they? You can take a calculated risk, and try to smash the enemy before he gets started, or you can play it safe. Now, what are you going to do?”
Jeff rested his elbows on his knees, and propped his chin in his hands, and examined the fleets. “I’m the American admiral, right, sir?” he inquired.
“Correct.”
“Well, I’m going to get my fleet out from between these books—out of the Bosporus, I mean—right now, and send them west as fast as they can go, and then I’m going to load about ten atom bombs on B-two-nines and B-three-sixes at our field in North Africa, and then I’m going to blow hell out of the Russian fleet, Burgas, Varna, Odessa, and maybe Belgrade and Moscow too.”
“That’s not fair!” the Admiral protested.
“Why not? If you can have the British fleet, I guess I can use my atom bombs!”
The Admiral struggled to untwist his legs, found it difficult, and then subsided. “I never use atom bombs in these problems!”
“They’re available, aren’t they?”
“It spoils the fun,” said the Admiral.
He frowned, as if the subject burdened and troubled him. “Don’t misunderstand me,” he went on. “Atom bombs won’t replace navies. Anybody who thinks the atom bomb will replace the Navy is a defeatist. As a matter of fact the atom bomb can only help the Navy. It’s not enough to just make atom bombs, you’ve got to deliver them, and the best way to deliver them is by aircraft carrier. So we’re going to have bigger and better and faster carriers, and they’re going to be protected by bigger and better battleships, armed with rockets and guided missiles. The Navy always looks ahead. No atom bomb can stop the Navy. But we don’t use atom bombs in these little problems.”
So Jeff played according to the Admiral’s rules. He sent his fleet into the Black Sea, where it was ambushed by submarines. He got his fleet wiped out. The Admiral did not seem displeased. He said Jeff should come around another evening and try again. The next time Jeff could have the Russian fleet, and he himself would take the American fleet, and they’d see what happened.
5
They had drydocked the warships in a bookcase, and the Admiral was putting on his coat, and remarking that it was about time for dinner, when Fred Keller arrived with another guest. Keller greeted Jeff warmly, and said he had been looking forward to his coming to Budapest, and that they had a big job cut out for them. He introduced Jeff to William Quigley, who said, “We met this morning.”
“I’m sorry,” Jeff apologized. “I met so many people this morning I didn’t place you.”
“Perfectly all right. I like people to forget me.”
Jeff thought this a queer statement. As they made their way into the dining room he watched Quigley, and decided that if Quigley’s ambition was to have people forget him, he’d be successful. Quigley was neither short nor tall, thin nor stout, young nor old. He might have chosen his clothes for protective coloration, for he blended into the background inconspicuous as a quail in autumn leaves.
“Quig is in the Department’s Security and Investigation Division,” Keller explained, “especially assigned to our project.”
“Now, now,” the Admiral said. “No talk of the project until after dinner. I never trust a woman or a servant—not even my own. I’ve had the same Filipino mess boy for twenty years. Never talk in front of him. Never talk in front of anybody.”
The dining room table had been designed to seat forty at diplomatic dinners, but a fence of flowers cleverly set aside one end of it. The Admiral and Keller sat at the table’s head. Jeff was on the Admiral’s right, opposite Quigley. The Admiral asked Jeff whether he’d seen the big heavyweight fight, and Jeff said yes, on television. The Admiral said television was wonderful, and he wished they had it in Budapest.
Jeff remembered something that the bartender at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris had once told him—that when Americans met on foreign soil for the first time, their opening gambit of conversation was invariably prizefighters or women. It was the bartender’s conviction that no bar was completely equipped without a copy of the World Almanac, to settle disputes about prizefights. It was something that had always stuck in Jeff’s head, and generally he found it to be true.
So he talked about the fight.
The Admiral said he thought too many Negroes were winning fight championships.
Jeff felt pretty strongly about this. He said the prize ring was one of the few places where a Negro had an absolutely equal chance. “You never hear of Negro tennis or golf champions,” he said, “because they’re not allowed to join country clubs.”
Keller said, “It’s good propaganda to have colored champions. It counteracts the Russian line. When they start talking about our racial frictions, that’s one fact the Reds can’t get around.”
“Well, Fred, there may be something in what you say,” the Admiral admitted. “It may be an international asset, but it doesn’t do any good at home. Ever since Louis won the title, the niggers have been pushing. Why, they’re even giving them commissions in the Navy.”
The white-jacketed Filipino brought in an enormous silver platter, with a hill of black caviar rising in its center. This was more caviar than Jeff had ever seen at one time before, and he said so. “It was a present,” the Admiral said, “from the Russian Naval Attaché. Genuine Black Sea sturgeon.”
“Really!”
“His name is Yassovsky,” said the Admiral. “Met him in Washington in forty-four. Very decent fellow. Has a reputation as a brilliant tactician. That is, with submarines and destroyers. Not really a battleship man. Just sent me the caviar. For no good reason.”
“Do you see him often?” Jeff asked.
“See him! Certainly not! I couldn’t have him here, any more than he could invite me over to his place. Why, that’d be fraternization, wouldn’t it? But he did send me this caviar, and I sent him cigarettes.” The Admiral glanced at Quigley, who was listening without expression. “Anyway, I hear he’s left the city.”
“That’s the report,” Quigley said.
They ate curry, and a salad, and tiny pancakes
6
“I think the time has come,” the Admiral began, “to go from the planning to the operational stage of Atlantis Project. So a general review is in order, not only to brief our young newcomer, but as a recap for ourselves. Right?”
“Right, Admiral,” Keller agreed.
“Now as you know, I’m simply in charge of policy. With a war coming on I’d rather be on active service, naturally, but the powers that be have decided that I can be useful in this post. I’ll admit that this is the most interesting shore assignment a man could want, and what makes it especially interesting is Atlantis Project. Do you know—” the Admiral drummed his forefinger on the table for emphasis—“that this is the first time we have ever really prepared intelligently for a war? We’re doing things now that we don’t usually do until the shooting has started. Usually, we get caught with our pants down.”
The Admiral’s voice became round and oratorical, exactly as it had been when he outlined the battle problem on the library floor. “Europe will be overrun. No doubt about it, and we might as well accept it. Some of our people in Germany and Austria may fight their way to the coast, but at best we can assume an American Dunkirk. Ordinarily I’d say that we ourselves would be captured and interned. Have to accept the fortunes of war, you know. But I have reason to believe—nothing definite, you understand—that key personnel in the Atlantis Project will be flown out when war becomes inevitable. I’m sure that Washington would consider you gentlemen—I won’t speak of myself because I’m just an old war horse, and expendable—but you gentlemen will be too important to the war effort to let the Reds get their hands on you. Now our principal objective is the establishment of an organized underground in Europe to work for us after we’re gone. Is that correct, Fred?”
“That’s perfectly put, Admiral,” Keller said.
“Suppose you carry on from there.”
“Right.” Keller began to talk, quietly as an actor underplaying his part, using his tanned, expressive hands in the most reserved of gestures. Hungary would be vital to the Russians. It would be a staging area and zone of communications for the Red armies moving to the West. He felt sure that the Reds would bivouac the bulk of their armies in the cities of Western Europe, in the hope that we would not drop atom bombs on these cities.
“They know we’re soft-hearted,” the Admiral interrupted. “They know we don’t like to destroy friendly civilian populations.”
Keller went on talking, and Jeff realized that he must have been the architect of the project, for he spoke with a salesman’s glibness, answering all the objections before they could be presented. “Now I think the Hungarians are generally friendly to us. At this time a Communist government has been imposed upon them, but I think it is fair to say that generally the Hungarians are anti-Communist. They have fought for their freedom for a thousand years, and they will fight again.
“Our aims are fairly obvious. First and most important, we need a constant flow of intelligence and information. We need it on the strategic level for the efficient conduct of political warfare, and we need it on the tactical level for our military planners. Secondly, our people will lead passive resistance, and be in charge of simple sabotage conducted for morale purposes. They will operate an underground press, and clandestine radio stations. They will keep alive the flame of freedom. Third, when American forces once again invade the Continent, our people will become the nucleus of a resistance army that will attack the Reds in the rear. To achieve our objective we must work with caution and yet with imagination, among those groups which we know will be friendly and receptive to us, and hostile to the Soviet Union.”
He turned to Jeff. “What do you think of it?” he asked.
“It’s thrilling,” Jeff said truthfully. “I feel that I’m watching history being made.”
“More than that,” Keller said. “You’ll make history. You’ll become a part of it.”
“It frightens me a little.”
“Because it is audacious? The Admiral will tell you that no political or military plan—and the two are as one now—can succeed without risk and daring.”
“It isn’t that,” Jeff said, and found he was without words to explain his disquiet. “It is—perhaps that I’m afraid of making a mistake.”
“He means the security angles,” the Admiral suggested. “And he’s quite right. Frightened all of us, at first. Frightened the Secretary himself.”
Keller nodded, and now it seemed his words were directed at Quigley. “We are all aware, and must continue to be aware, of the dangers of penetration. The Secretary, as the Admiral says, was worried. If the Russians or the Hungarian Communists knew, or even guessed at, our plans, the results could be catastrophic. They’d slit the throats of our Hungarian friends, and smash our organization before it was born. They’d be alerted on the rest of the Continent. And there’s no way of estimating the repercussions at home. It might make the Department look silly. And I don’t know what might happen to us.”
“I do,” said Quigley.
They all looked at him questioningly. It was the first time he had spoken, except to reply to questions. There was a moment of odd, embarrassing silence, while they waited for Quigley to say something more. He looked up at the chandeliers, as if fascinated by the crystal winking in the candlelight, and as if there was nothing more to say.
“I wish you’d quit worrying, Quig,” Keller said. “There aren’t going to be any leaks, because nobody is going to talk, nothing is to be committed to writing, and our contacts with the Hungarians will be careful, careful, careful. Let’s take Baker’s assignment, as a model.”
“Yes, Fred, let’s get on with the job,” the Admiral said. “Do you think the Russians worry when they flood our country with spies, and corrupt our labor unions, and spread their poison in our schools and radio and newspapers?”
“Right. We have divided the Hungarians into groups and occupations which per se we can set down as sympathetic and potentially useful. We can assume that what is left of the nobility wants no part of Communism. We can also assume that we will find friends among manufacturers, merchants, bankers, exporters and importers, most of the intellectuals and professional people, and the agrarian landowners. Eventually we will have a man assigned to each of these groups.
“We’re going to give the world of the theater to Baker here. The theater is an important part of the life of Budapest, and one through which naturally flows a great deal of information about the Russians. It is an influential medium of propaganda. Furthermore, the Budapest theater is closely linked to the American theater. Hungarian motion picture theaters for many years have been dependent upon the United States for sixty per cent of their films. Many Hungarian actors and actresses have been successful in America. American plays have been popular here. It will be quite natural that an American Third Secretary be seen with the theatrical crowd, either for reasons of business—or pleasure.” Keller allowed himself a smile. “Especially a young, unmarried Third Secretary who knows how to handle himself with the ladies.”
“Haw!” the Admiral laughed. “So that’s why you picked him!”
Jeff felt uncomfortable, started to deny that he was attractive or a lady-killer, and then saw he would only appear foolish. Instead he said, “It sounds wonderful. But where do I get the money?”
“Atlantis Project has a reasonable amount of unvouchered funds,” said Keller. “Now as to your procedure. You will approach what Quig here would call your ‘targets’ with the view of choosing those best qualified to carry out the aims and objectives I have outlined. You will sound them out most cautiously. You will gradually let them know what they can do to help us—and themselves—when war comes. You will
“It’s going to be a tight little operation,” said the Admiral. “A nice, tight little operation. And I want to tell you, Baker, that if we’re successful—well, I’m not the kind of a commander who keeps all the glory for himself. There’ll be plenty for all of us.”
They talked until midnight, and Jeff could not help admiring Keller’s capacity for detail. He understood why it was not necessary to risk the project’s security by committing any part of it to paper. It was all in Keller’s head, always secret, and yet marvelously available.
7
When he left the stars shone cold and blue-white like a handful of diamonds flung against the sky, and the wind blew steadily from the east and cut through his topcoat, hinting of the gales that would blow out of the steppes in the winter to come. He got into the car, and the driver slid the sedan down the Andrássy Utca. The street lamps were dim, and there were great pools of black between them. There was no other traffic.
They were halfway through the city when a man’s scream of terror filled the street. The sedan jerked forward, but Jeff turned in time for one quick look down the side street. He saw two dark figures running, and in the instant that the side street was in his vision, one man leaped upon the other, and brought him to the pavement, precisely as a wild animal drags down his prey.
The car spurted for three blocks and then slowed again. “What the hell was that?” Jeff asked. The driver, his shoulders and neck bent and tense, said something in Hungarian. Jeff tried German.