* * *
ROTHMANN, MOISHE
RELATIONSHIP EQUALS FRIEND... WHITE CARD...
PHILOSOPHER, POET... DEAD, 1958 sub NATURAL CAUSES...
* * *
KAUFMANN, S. I.
RELATIONSHIP EQUALS FRIEND... RED CARD...
POLITICAL ACTIVIST... RETIRED...
* * *
HEL, NICHOLAI ALEXANDROVITCH
RELATIONSHIP EQUALS FRIEND...
"Stop!" Diamond ordered. "Freeze that!" The First Assistant scanned the next fragments of information. "Oh, my goodness!"
Diamond leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. When CIA screws up, they certainly do it in style! "Nicholai Hel," Diamond pronounced, his voice a monotone.
"Sir?" the First Assistant said softly, recalling the ancient practice of executing the messenger who brings bad news. "This Nicholai Hel is identified with a mauve card."
"I know... I know."
"Ah... I suppose you'll want a complete pull and printout on Hel, Nicholai Alexandrovitch?" the First Assistant asked, almost apologetically.
"Yes." Diamond rose and walked to the big window beyond which the illuminated Washington Monument stood out against the night sky, while double rows of automobile headlights crawled down the long avenue toward the Center—the same automobiles that were always at the same place at this time every evening.
"You'll find the pull surprisingly thin."
"Thin, sir? On a mauve card?"
"On this mauve card, yes."
Within the color-coding system, mauve punch cards indicated the most elusive and dangerous of men, from the Mother Company's point of view: Those who operated without reference to nationalistic or ideological prejudices, free-lance agents and assassins who could not be controlled through pressure upon governments; those who killed for either side.
Originally, color-coding of punch cards was introduced into Fat Boy for the purpose of making immediately evident certain bold characteristics of a subject's life and work. But from the very first. Fat Boy's systemic inability to deal with abstractions and shadings reduced the value of the system. The problem lay in the fact that Fat Boy was permitted to color-code himself, in terms of certain input principles.
The first of these principles was that only such people as constituted real or potential threats to the Mother Company and the governments She controlled would be represented by color-coded cards, all others being identified by standard white cards. Another principle was that there be a symbolic relationship between the color of the card and the nature of the subject's affiliations. This worked well enough in its simplest forms: Leftist agitators and terrorists were represented by red cards; Rightist politicians and activists received blue cards; sympathizers of the Left had pink cards; abettors of ultra-conservatives had powder blue. (For a brief time, devoted Liberals were assigned yellow cards, in concurrence with British political symbolism, but when the potential for effective action by Liberals was assessed by Fat Boy, they were reassigned white cards indicating political impotence.)
The value of color-coding came under criticism when the system was applied to more intricate problems. For instance, active supporters of the Provisional IRA and of the various Ulster defense organizations were randomly assigned green or orange cards, because Fat Boy's review of the tactics, philosophy, and effectiveness of the two groups made them indistinguishable from one another.
Another major problem arose from Fat Boy's mindless pursuit of logic in assigning colors. To differentiate between Chinese and European communist agents, the Chinese were assigned yellow cards; and the Europeans under their domination received a mixture of red and yellow, which produced for them orange cards, identical with those of the North Irish. Such random practices led to some troublesome errors, not the least of which was Fat Boy's longstanding assumption that Tan Paisley was an Albanian.
The most dramatic error concerned African nationalists and American Black Power actives. With a certain racial logic, these subjects were assigned black cards. For several months these men were able to operate without observation or interference from the Mother Company and her governmental subsidiaries, for the simple reason that black print on black cards is rather difficult to read.
With considerable regret, it was decided to end the color-code method, despite the millions of dollars of American taxpayers' money that had been devoted to the project.
But it is easier to introduce a system into Fat Boy than to cleanse it out, since His memory is eternal and His insistence on linear logic implacable. Therefore, color-coding remained in its vestigial form. Agents of the left were still identified with red and pink; while crypto-fascists, such as KKK members, were identified with blue, and American Legionnaires with powder blue. Logically enough, subjects who worked indifferently for both sides were identified with purple, but Fat Boy remembered His problem with Black Power actives, and so he grayed the purple down to mauve.
Further, Fat Boy reserved the mauve card for men who dealt specifically in assassination.
The First Assistant looked up quizzically from his console. "Ah... I don't know what's wrong, sir. Fat Boy is running statement/correction/statement/correction patterns. On even the most basic information, his various input sources disagree. We have ages for this Nicholai Hel ranging from forty-seven to fifty-two. And look at this! Under nationality we have a choice among Russian, German, Chinese, Japanese, French, and Costa Rican. Costa Rican, sir?"
"Those last two have to do with his passports; he holds passports from France and Costa Rica. Right now he lives in France—or he did recently. The other nationalities have to do with his genetic background, his place of birth, and his major cultural inputs."
"So what is his real nationality?"
Mr. Diamond continued to look out the window, staring at nothing. "None."
"You seem to know something about this person, sir." The First Assistant's tone was interrogative but tentative. He was curious, but he knew better than to be inquisitive.
For several moments, Diamond did not answer. Then: "Yes. I know something about him." He fumed away from the window and sat heavily at his desk. "Get on with the search. Turn up everything you can. Most of it will be contradictory, vague, or inaccurate, but we need to know everything we can discover."
"Then you feel that this Nicholai Hel is involved in this business?"
"With our luck? Probably."
"In what way, sir?"
"I don't know! Just get on with the search!"
"Yes, sir." The First Assistant scanned the next fragments of data. "Ah... sir? We have three possible birthplaces for him."
"Shanghai."
"You're sure of that, sir?"
"Yes!" Then, after a moment's pause, "Reasonably sure, that is."
Shanghai: 193?
As always at this season, cool evening breezes are drawn over the city from the sea, toward the warm land mass of China; and the draperies billow out from the glass doors to the veranda of the large house on Avenue Joffre in the French Concession.
General Kishikawa Takashi withdraws a stone from his lacquered Gô ke and holds it lightly between the tip of his middle finger and the nail of his index. Some minutes pass in silence, but his concentration is not on the game, which is in its 176th gesture and has begun to concrete toward the inevitable. The General's eyes rest on his opponent who, for his part, is completely absorbed in the patterns of black and white stones on the pale yellow board. Kishikawa-san has decided that the young boy must be sent away to Japan, and tonight he would have to be told. But not just now. It would spoil the flavor of the game; and that would be unkind because, for the first time, the young man is winning.