Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (27 page)

 
          
 
"Timothy Burnham."

 
          
 
"Spell it."

 
          
 
Burnham spelled it.

 
          
 
"Hang up."

 
          
 
"What?"

 
          
 
"Hang up!"

 
          
 
Before Burnham could hang up, the line went
dead.

 
          
 
Thirty seconds later, one of the lights on his
phone console flashed, then his buzzer buzzed. He picked up the phone and
punched the intercom button.

 
          
 
"It's the CIA!" Dyanna said breathlessly.

 
          
 
"Who in the CIA?"

 
          
 
"He didn't say."

 
          
 
Burnham punched the flashing button.
"Burnham."

 
          
 
"What can I do for you, Mr. Burnham?"

 
          
 
"Who is this?"

 
          
 
"You called us."

 
          
 
"Is this the Director?"

 
          
 
The voice stifled a laugh. "Hardly."

 
          
 
"How come you made me hang up?" Burnham
wasn't peeved, merely curious.

 
          
 
"An elementary precaution. I could call
back through the White House switchboard and verify who you were."

 
          
 
"Oh." Burnham's impulse was to tell
this man that he had been assigned to write the President's toast to the pasha
of Banda and that he needed background material on the pasha. But before the
first word could escape his lips, he sensed that that gambit would sound too
routine. The upper echelon of the Central Intelligence Agency would take
umbrage at being treated like a Stop 'n' Shop for White House writers. Instead,
he said, "The President is meeting today with the pasha of Banda. The NSC
briefed him on Banda. He found the briefing inadequate."

 
          
 
"What did he expect?" The voice chuckled,
and Burnham knew he had chosen the right tack.

 
          
 
"He feels there are things he hasn't been
told."

 
          
 
"He's right."

 
          
 
"He told me to call and ... get your
input." Whoever you are, Burnham thought.

 
          
 
"He told you to?"

 
          
 
There was only the slightest emphasis on the
word "he," just enough to make Burnham swallow and wonder whether
this disembodied voice would insist on verifying that, too. "Absolutely.
He's not without instincts, you know. He didn't get to be President by being .
. . gullible."

 
          
 
"No, no," the voice said quickly.
"Of course not."

 
          
 
Good, Burnham thought. He's on the defensive.
Now flatter him. "He said to me, 'Check with them. If anybody knows this
fella, they do. They're well wired.' "

 
          
 
"He's right. Okay. You got it."

 
          
 
"Thanks. It's E.O.B. one-o-two." He
was about to hang up, when a question occurred to him. "By the way, how
come you didn't have any input into the original briefing?"

 
          
 
The voice paused. "The President knows
where we are. He has our number. If he wants help from us, all he has to do is
ask. If he wants to rely on . . . amateurs . . . that's his business."

 
          
 
Offended vanity. Burnham couldn't believe it.
The CIA was like a teenager who hadn't been asked to the prom till the last
minute. Suppose this pasha was a Libyan thug bent on putting a bullet in the
President between the coq au vin and the cherries jubilee?

 
          
 
The voice must have read signals in Burnham's
silence, for it said, "If this guy was dangerous, we'd ring a bell. But he
isn't. He's a punk."

 
          
 
"Right. If I have any questions, who do I
ask for?"

 
          
 
'' Four-four-nine-one.''

 
          
 
"Okay, four-four-nine-one. Over and
out." Burnham hung up, unfolded and smoothed the papers Cobb had given
him, and began to read the NSC draft of the toast.

 
          
 
It was a predictable four hundred words of
vapid bushwa: a welcoming paragraph that included a light reference to the
similarities in the climates of summertime Washington and year-round Banda; a
paragraph detailing the history of the fruitful relationship of mutual respect
and cooperation between the Republic of Banda and the United States (the word
"history" being almost hyperbole in itself, since the Republic had
been carved out of the jungle barely thirty months ago); a paragraph predicting
an even more fruitful relationship in the future (but never mentioning oil); a
paragraph praising the pasha's contributions to the community of nations, and,
finally, a paragraph praising the pasha personally and ending with the
obligatory toast.

 
          
 
Nothing here to get excited about, Burnham
decided. He wondered what the President had objected to.

 
          
 
The door opened. Dyanna spoke softly, as if
she were entering a temple and didn't want to disturb the priests. "Mr.
Burnham, your mail is here. Your . . . special mail." She crossed the office
and handed him a large manila envelope on which the Department of Energy's
return address was prominent in the top left comer.

 
          
 
"How did it come? An armored car? A state
trooper?"

 
          
 
"No, sir. Regular interoffice mail, with
the other junk."

 
          
 
' 'They send James Bond over here to threaten
my life if I ever open my yap about what's in it, and then they put it in the
mail?"

 
          
 
"Yes, sir."

 
          
 
"Look at this!" Burnham pointed to a
printed notice on the bottom of the envelope: " 'If found, return
immediately to the Department of Energy. Do not open or read.' Why don't they
for crissakes slug it 'Please forward to the Russian Embassy'?"

 
          
 
"Yes, sir." Dyanna backed out of the
room and closed the door, to leave Burnham to read his Q Clearance mail.

 
          
 
Though the envelope had been slugged with no
classification, each document within was marked top secret—q clearance ONLY in
bold black letters.

 
          
 
Burnham didn't understand any of the
documents. One was an interminable paper—in technical language pocked with the misuse
of the word "parameters"—that seemed to have something to do with the
properties of fission. One was a succession of mathematical formulae, none of
which was remotely familiar to Burnham, whose math education had stopped with
basic trigonometry. Two were speeches by DOE officials that had been delivered
to scientific gatherings and were therefore (or so it seemed to Burnham)
matters of public record and should not have been classified at all. And one
spelled out the specific benefits offered by his medical plan for reimbursement
for purchases of prescription drugs.

           
 
Burnham turned on his shredder. It hummed
hungrily. He fed it first the technical paper, page by page, enjoying his
alchemical power to change secrets into strands of trash, then the two public
speeches and the medical-plan advisory. He paused, as if to let the machine
digest its main course before he fed it its dessert of mathematical formulae.

 
          
 
There was a shy knock on the door, and Dyanna
poked her head into the room and said, "Would you like some coffee?"

 
          
 
Burnham smiled. It was against Dyanna's nature
to offer to perform domestic services for him. He imagined her sitting at her
desk refereeing a battle between her self-respect and her curiosity. Clearly,
curiosity had won in the early rounds. Well, what the hell . . . Secrets were
only fun if they could be shared. "Sure," he said.
"Thanks."

 
          
 
The coffee was already in her hand, already
sweetened. She crossed to his desk and handed it to him, trying dramatically
not to let her eyes stray to the shredder or to the paper still in his hand.

 
          
 
"What do you make of this?" Burnham
handed her the sheet of formulae.

 
          
 
"I shouldn't ..." Dyanna made a show
of demurring.

 
          
 
"If you can understand it, you deserve to
see it. Anyone who can read this garbage should be Q Cleared
automatically."

 
          
 
Dyanna plucked the paper from his hand and ran
her eyes down the page. Burnham could see a mist of bewilderment cloud her eyes
like cataracts.

 
          
 
"Golly," was all she said.

 
          
 
"My sentiments exactly." He took the
paper from her and held it above the shredder, to which he spoke as if it was a
performing seal. "Ready, Smiley?"

 
          
 
"It has a name?"

 
          
 
"I think 'Smiley' fits, don't you? He
eats the secrets so the bad guys can't get them. And we give him the secrets,
so we're Smiley's people."

 
          
 
Burnham enjoyed his little joke. Dyanna, who
thought he was speaking Dutch, nodded politely and said, "Why, yes."

 
          
 
"Don't forget to buy Smiley his begonias.
We'll put top-soil in his mouth there, and plant the begonias, and all the
doo-doo will go right down into the basket."

 
          
 
The outer door to the office swung open, and
Dyanna looked grateful for the distraction.

 
          
 
A short young man with a crew cut and a set of
pectoral muscles that threatened to pop the buttons on his drip-dry shirt was
holding an envelope. Dyanna reached for the envelope, but the man shook his
head—no—and gestured at Burnham. Dyanna ushered him into the office.

 
          
 
"Mr. Burnham?"

 
          
 
"Yes."

 
          
 
"I'm from
Langley
. May I see your identification?"

 
          
 
Burnham showed him his White House pass.

 
          
 
The man proffered a slip of paper for Burnham
to sign, acknowledging receipt, then surrendered the envelope.

 
          
 
Burnham said, "Since when do you
characters pack heat on your home turf?"

 
          
 
"Beg pardon?"