Part 5 (2/2)
”You're powerful fussy. You're-”
”Enough,” Deitel said. ”I am aware of my appearance.”
”What I mean is you seem bookwise and range blind. Which, you being a doctor, isn't surprising. You may not even know if you're being made a patsy. Or, alternatewise, you have the perfect cover. Lysander can't know until he runs you through the wringer. You savvy?”
What Rucker was saying, however clumsily, was plausible and prudent. But it was simply the case that he had a perfect cover. Still, he understood that his own a.s.sertion wouldn't carry any weight.
”Ja. I understand.”
”Lysander will take your story to the society. They'll mull it over and check your bona fides to make sure they're, um, bona and fide.”
Deitel did a double take.
”I'm sorry, 'society'?”
” 'Course, if you are a patsy, you're pretty well and proper boned. The Gestapo knows you're willing to betray the New Order. Soon as you get back to the Fatherland,” Rucker mimed a throat being cut, ”kaput.”
”I'm sorry, Herr Rucker, 'society'?” Deitel asked again.
”Also, if that Gestapo stoolie tailing you wasn't just a cutout to make your cover story seem plausible and you really are a Canaris man, then the Gestapo may already know you're willing to betray the New Order, and soon as you get back, kaput.”
”Herr Rucker!” Deitel said. ” 'Society'?”
Rucker did a double take and furrowed his brow. Then the light came on.
”Oh, that's right. See, here's the thing, we don't have much in the way of an intelligence service like y'all do. It's . . . how do I explain this? Sure, folks at our emba.s.sies gather information, and President Coolidge does have an agency that gathers all the newspapers and radio news from around the world so that Austin isn't completely blind to the world. But there are some mighty strong prohibitions on Austin actively doing much else. It tends to lead to meddling.”
”You're saying there is no national espionage and intelligence gathering agency?”
”Well, I mean . . . not like you're saying. The world's got monsters and we got to protect our own, they say. Knowing is half the fight. But it seems too important to most folks to turn something like that over to the government to handle on its own. And how do you keep government accountable when they start keeping secrets?”
They paused while Rucker fished out a cigar to chew on.
”But Austin does get information. It's a long tradition that started with some of our more respectable academic societies and explorer clubs. One group would bring home maps or finds or news, and the other type of group would figure out what it all meant. It grew over the years with more and more companies going overseas to do business and more people traveling and exploring,” Rucker said. ”Don't look at me like that. That's how the British still do it, I read.
”Anyway, there are probably five formal societies in the Freehold that keep an eye out on the world and provide information to Congress and the president on an informal, unofficial basis. That man you talked with, Lysander, he works for one of the oldest ones, the Prometheus Society. It grew out of the old Dallas Safari Club and the Freehold Geographic Society,” Rucker said, pausing on the sidewalk.
The look on Deitel's face suggested his cognitive facilities had seized up like a radial engine pulling too many gees.
”I'm sorry, it's the queerest thing, Herr Rucker, but I could have sworn I heard you just tell me that your people trust your nation's security to hunt clubs and traveling salesmen, all of whom have competing agendas?”
Rucker smiled and nodded.
”Everyone's got an agenda, Doctor. Fair to say if anyone of 'em peddled baloney, they wouldn't be making any more sales, if you get my meaning. You live and die by reputation and repeat business in this part of the world. Plus they all keep an eye on one another.”
Deitel could scarcely fathom any of this, and what he could fathom appalled him. It had to be a ruse-a cover. He tried another approach as they turned down a side street.
”I'm sorry, but even if these a.s.sociations and societies say they have the interest of your nation first, one's definition of best interest may be radically different than another's, nicht wahr?” he asked.
Rucker, to Deitel's dismay, spit something on the ground. Mein Gott. He was a walking Western moving picture stereotype.
”Doc, aren't you here on a mission from one of your state intelligence agencies? A mission that the other state intelligence agencies-especially the Gestapo-would put you against a wall and ventilate you for?”
Verd.a.m.ndt!
”Let me see if this makes sense, Doctor. I once told this Russian I met before the war that there are no state bread stores in Texas. He asked me how I could count on getting bread without one.”
Another point.
”a.s.suming it's all true,” Deitel continued, sounding more perturbed, ”how does your government act on a threat that one of these societies discovers?”
”They don't usually. They can't unless it's real dire and direct. In those other cases-well, Austin also ain't got the power to tell a private citizen-or even a group of them meeting someplace with fancy leather chairs and books on the walls-that they can't go do something outside our borders. You need to read between the lines there.”
”I'm sorry, but this doesn't strike you as hypocritical?”
”Okay, look, I know you're as nervous as a cat in a rocking chair factory being out here in what you were told is the Wild West and all, but you can't keep starting every sentence with an apology.”
”I'm sor . . . Jawohl.”
”But to answer, I suppose that if, hypothetically, someone or some 'social organization' were to do something in Austin's interest but without its sanction, then those people doing the acting would still be accountable for what they do. If they break some law in a foreign land, they're not acting in the name of the Freehold and they have to take the consequences. And if they break Freehold laws, they're held to account for it like anyone else. You can't say that of Hoover's FBI up north in the Union, or your own state police, them that operate above and beyond the law. Hypocritical? Maybe.”
It worried Deitel that there was some merit-hypocritical though it was-in what he was hearing.
”Not that it bothers me,” Rucker said. ”I'm strictly nonpolitical.”
Deitel noticed there was something in Ricker's voice that sounded at once haunted and resolute.
He also noticed there were fewer and fewer bars and the streets had grown darker. Foot traffic was almost nonexistent now.
”So what is this 'big bad' you're bringing to our doorstep?” Rucker asked.
”I'm not certain I should . . .”
Rucker rolled his eyes. ”Doc, you think it's some grand coincidence it was my bird you chartered from Colombia? You think I'm here with you instead of out carousing because I like talking politics with shavetail Hun doctors? No offense, Hans.”
He's doing that on purpose, Deitel thought.
”Kurt.”
”Right. So make with the story.”
Deitel considered: this man had been entrusted by Herr Benjamin and, by proxy, Commodore Canaris. He'd heard half the story, anyway.
”What do you know of the d.a.m.ned Lands in our eastern provinces?”
”I've been back to Europe plenty since the war. Heard tell how most everything in eastern Poland most of the way to Moscow is a dead zone, like that forest that's on your western border in the Rhineland, only worse. Everyone and everything wiped out, the land poisoned, like something out of the Old Testament. That the size of it?”
<script>