“I refuse to have my—”
I interrupted Orcutt. “You know how he works it, don’t you?”
“Who?”
“Senator Simple.”
“Mr. Dye, I want you to know that I consider the Senator a personal friend of mine.”
“So much the better. You should be interested in his personal welfare. He’s chairman of the subcommittee that deals with external security. It was created about three or four years ago—”
“I know when it was created, Mr. Dye,” Orcutt said.
“After all the ruckus about the CIA’s subsidies to labor unions, student organizations, and what have you, including one that never made the papers.”
“What one was that?” Necessary said.
“An international garden club.”
“Crap,” Necessary said.
“But still true,” I said. “Well, the Senator became the darling of the Old and the New Left as well as all the ragtag liberals who see something sinister in wiretapping, J. Edgar Hoover, the Bay of Pigs, Guatemala, and whatever it was I was doing when they threw me in jail.”
Orcutt squirmed in his chair. Necessary was grinning happily. Carol Thackerty seemed bored by the view through the window.
“Mr. Dye,” Orcutt said, “if you’re going to sit there and slander Senator Simple like some... some carbon copy William Buckley—”
“I like Buckley,” I said. “I think he’s funny. I also think he’s right about one percent of the time, although that may be just a little high. But what I think isn’t important. I was talking about the Senator.”
“It was just getting good,” Necessary said.
“Well, Simple the Wise—”
“I wish you wouldn’t use that name,” Orcutt said.
“All right. Senator Simple’s subcommittee has contracted with three of the firms that you dealt with to provide him with intelligence reports that mostly concern what’s going on in China. If I remember the figures, the contracts are for one million to von Krapp in Manila, two million to Tubio in Singapore, and two and a half million to Elmelder’s outfit in Tokyo. They’re probably worth it. All of them are good, but they’re also profit conscious, which is a polite word for greedy. All of them have branched out into industrial intelligence — or espionage, if you like — and they’ve made a good thing out of it, especially in Japan. But still, those millions authorized by the subcommittee help meet the payroll. So they got together and decided to put the Senator on their payroll. I suppose you could call it a kind of intelligence cartel and the Senator gets X number of dollars deposited in Panama, Zurich, and some other place that I’ll think of in a moment. Lichtenstein. The last estimate that I heard had the Senator dragging down about a quarter of a million a year, tax free, of course. If he were to ever balk on renewing their contracts, they’d expose him. So you see, the liberals are right after all. It is a little sinister.”
I could see that Orcutt believed me, probably because it was his own kind of a deal. “Your organization knows this?”
“Sure,” I said. “But it’s my ex-organization.”
“Why don’t they—”
“Expose him?”
“Yes.”
“Why should they? They get the information from the Senator — even before the CIA — as soon as he’s milked it for whatever publicity value it has, if any. If it’s too hot, he turns it over to them — free. It’s usually top-grade stuff, or nearly so. The Senator’s content with his quarter of a million a year. The cartel, if you want to call it that, has got a multimillion dollar annuity as long as Simple stays in office. Of course when he comes up for election next year, they’ll see to it that some legitimate funds are dumped into his campaign.”
“It’s all real cozy, isn’t it?” Necessary said to me. “I like it. I like it a hell of a lot.” He turned to Orcutt. “Couldn’t we sort of drop a hint to the Senator and—”
“Shut up, Homer,” Orcutt said. “Mr. Dye, you must have had some reason for telling me this. I wouldn’t quite classify you as the town gossip.”
I nodded. “I had a reason and the reason is Gerald Vicker. If the Senator recommended him to you then I have to assume that Vicker’s got his hooks in the Senator. I don’t much mind the others. Their information’s as good as anybody’s and sometimes a hell of a lot better. At least that’s what my organization — sorry — ex-organization thought. But Vicker’s something else. Vicker and I go back a long way. When did you first get in touch with him?”
Orcutt looked at Carol Thackerty. “August third,” she said.
“How much did you pay him?”
“Twelve thousand dollars,” she said, turning her head from the window.
“When did you get his first report?”
“August tenth,” Orcutt said.
“What was it?”
“A six-page, single-spaced precis of you,” he said.
“Detailed?”
“Extremely.”
“Did it say where I was at the time?”
“In jail.”
“Did it say when I would get out?”
“To the day. It also said that you would be brought back to San Francisco, that you would be debriefed for from ten to twelve days in Letterman General, and that you would then be at liberty — I think that was the term he used. In fact, Vicker was most complimentary — even effusive — except for one thing.”
“What?”
“Well, he said that you might be a little nervous.”
“He didn’t say nervous. Not Vicker.”
“He said chicken,” Necessary said and grinned at me. “Are you chicken, Dye?”
I looked at him, studying his brown and blue eyes. The right one was brown; the left one blue. “I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose we’ll just have to find out, won’t we?”
Orcutt had been admiring the toes of his shoes again. He looked up quickly. “Does that mean that you’ve decided to accept my proposition, Mr. Dye?”
“You mean to corrupt you a city?”
Orcutt smiled the only way he knew how. “That was a little rich, wasn’t it?”
“A little.”
“Corn,” Carol Thackerty said. “Pure corn. You can never resist it, can you, Victor?”
“Shut up, Carol,” he said. It seemed that Victor Orcutt spent a lot of time telling people to shut up.
“Well, Mr. Dye?” he said.
“If you’ll answer a question or two.”
“All right.”
“What qualifications did you specify other than a certain degree of anonymity?”
“You mean to the four firms that I dealt with?”
“Yes.”
Orcutt nodded slowly. “Yes, I can see that you’d be interested in that. I was really quite specific. The candidate should be unattached, not too old, possessed of some social graces, presentable, and willing to undergo a slight risk. Availability was another consideration, of course, because our lead time is just slipping away. He should also have a certain amount of experience in clandestine activities, either for government or for private industry. Preferably he should belong to some minority group, but I had to give up on that one. He should have rather deep insight into human nature, be slightly skeptical but not so much that it clouds his judgment, and above all he must be intelligent. Not book smart, mind you, but quickish, cleverish, sharpish—”
“Shrewdish?” I offered.
“You’re teasing again. I do like that. But to continue. He should also be articulate. Not a salesman, mind you, but sincere and well spoken.”
“And you think I’m all that?”
“No one is, Mr. Dye. But you possess a majority of the qualifications. Ones that Homer, Miss Thackerty, and even I lack. You will, shall I say, round out our team. Now that you’re virtually one of us, I can tell you about our project.”