The Buck Passes Flynn (18 page)

“Four.”

“Four now, is it?”

“Ten days ago, many, if not all, brokers on the Chicago Stock Exchange received little packages with you-guess-what inside.”

“One hundred thousand American dollars cash money.”

“Right on. And guess what happened as a result?”

“All the issues traded on the Chicago Stock Exchange acted erratically.”

“You win the grand prize. The brokers threw this money into the exchange as only they know how, on margin, on options, every kind of crazy scheme. The whole exchange went wild. Shares of some companies hit the roof; others collapsed. Needless to say, the Chicago Exchange is now closed.”

“It still sounds to me like someone is experimenting.”

“Your conclusions, Francis, frighten us far more than have your solutions, to date.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Flynn coughed. “I expect I’ll find a frightening solution for you too, if you accept my best consolation.”

“Why are you coughing so much?”

“Too much smoke.”

“I’ve told you to give up that pipe.”

“Right you are, sir, I’m sure.”

“Are you making any sense out of this at all, Frank?”

“No, sir. Not one damned particle of sense. When I discovered Ada, Texas, had produced a billionaire who had also been to East Frampton Harbor, Massachusetts, my hopes fairly soared. But they ended in ashes, you might say.”

“How do you feel? I mean, how do you really feel, besides the cough?”

“Oh, fine. As saintly as a lawyer who hasn’t skewered a client in hours.”

“Really, I’d rather send someone else into Russia, Frank.”

“Ducey Webb?”

“Who’s Ducey Webb?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

“Let’s get together and think this thing through again. Money gets dumped on people, we can’t find the source of the money; the people, the places have nothing in common; we can’t find a common result—”

“I want to leave for Russia immediately, sir.”

“Why?”

“People have been speaking to me about their ideas, things they believe in, everything from the devil walking the earth to the idea that you’ll win at the crap tables if your son was just killed in an automobile accident, to the idea that the world is unraveling because of two sentences someone snuck into an ambassador’s speech eighteen years ago. Religious ideas,
psychological ideas, political ideas, economic ideas. I’d like to find the right idea behind this. Somebody believes something…”

“Frank, I have about as much hope of ever understanding you as I have of becoming a basketball player. Mind running that by me again?”

“Communism is just an idea, isn’t it? An economic idea?”

John Roy Priddy breathed in and out and in again. “Yeah. That’s where I thought you’d end up.”

“I haven’t ended up there yet, sir. Fact, I hold out about as much hope for this Russia trip as I do for the hope you’ll be a basketball player. It’s something I have to check out.”

“Call back in two hours. We’ll have your marching instructions for you.”

“Thank you. Will I get to talk to Ginger the Robot again?”

“No,” said N.N. Zero. “He’s out for repairs.”

His twelve-year-old daughter Jenny answered the phone.

“Who is this?” she inquired politely at the sound of his cough.

“Francis Xavier Flynn,” coughed her father.

“Who?”

“The man who comes by on the odd occasion to tune the instruments.”

“Are you calling about the roof again?”

“Roof? What’s wrong with the roof?”

“How many times do we have to tell you we will not, absolutely not, hire your company to fix our roof, no matter how badly it needs it, no matter how many times you call. My mother has told you, my brother has told you—”

“Jenny, darling, I’m calling long distance.”

“Guess what?”

“If I have to guess anything again today,” Flynn coughed, “my eyes will pop onto the floor.”

“Randy gets to play the solo piece with the school orchestra, Saturday night. Todd’s being very nice about it.”

“A victory for each of them,” Flynn said. “And what’s your news, wee collection of fluff?”

“I got a seventy-eight in English.”

“Is that percent?”

“Yes.”

“Is that good?”

“I wouldn’t say so, would you?”

“I’d be reserved in my praise.”

“You should see all the horrible gook they make us read.”

“I’m sure I have. Listen.” Flynn coughed. “The other day I met a man who started out with nothin’ at all in the world, a deprived youth, he was, more deprived you never heard, and he took to readin’ and he read everything he could lay hands on, he said.”

“And he turned out well?”

“No. He turned out to be a complete rat. One of the worst villains I’ve met to date, outside my own house.”

“Just goes to show you.”

“It does indeed. As Martin D’Arcy once said: It’s not what’s read that counts, it’s who does the readin’. Well, that’s not precisely what he said, mind you, but I don’t think the man would mind my improvin’ his line for him.”

“Next English test I’ll strive for eighty percent.”

“Listen, be informed I’ll be out of town a few days longer, and so inform your mother, and please ask her to inform the Boston Police Department I’m not recoverin’ at all well from whatever ails me.”

“Will you be home Saturday night for the concert?”

“I doubt it. But I’ll be hummin’ the Handel right along with you, wherever I am, and probably at a better pace than if I were at home.”

“Well, I told you we don’t want the roof fixed. One
just can’t afford to hire labor, these days, what with inflation and all.”

Flynn coughed. “You’ve got the lines just right Hold the importuners at bay.”

“Da, you’re smoking too much.”

“Ach,” Flynn said. “I hardly smoke at all.”

“TAAAOOO!” Flynn yelled. “ERK! YOW! UGH!”

He fell forward in the dark and struck his chin on the ground. Line was falling on him. His knees and back felt broken.

On the two-hour ride in the back of the helicopter from the British aircraft carrier Flynn had sat cross-legged on the floor, hands over his ears, glad he had eaten nothing. The noise caused searing pain in his ears. The vibration was sickening.

When the pilot waved at him, Flynn had stood up and clicked his parachute line to the overhead. The door opened. It was just before dawn.

The pilot gestured with his thumb.

Flynn closed his eyes and jumped out into the dark. Not his life, but his wife and five children passed before his eyes.

Now, from the ground, he looked up at the pilot.

The helicopter was only three meters from the ground!

“Ta,” said Flynn.

The pilot slid open his window.

“Sorry, guvnor. Guess I brought you in a little lower than you was expectin’.”

“Yow,” said Flynn, on his back, knees up, wind from the rotor blades shooting sand into his eyes. He wondered how he could disengage himself from the parachute line without the force of G.

“Jumped with your eyes closed, did you?” the pilot shouted. “Bad habit, that.”

The pilot waved cheerily. “See you tomorrow.”

Suddenly Flynn’s line began to move with the speed of a snake.

The pilot was taking off and Flynn was still connected to the helicopter.

“Hey!” yelled Flynn, as he was stood up by the line pulling taut. “Hey, up there!” he yelled as his feet came off the ground. “Hey, you!” he yelled as he found himself rising back into the sky.

Gravity or some kind hand broke his connection with the helicopter and again Flynn fell to the ground. The opening parachute fluttered down to cover him.

“Oof,” said Flynn. “Ohhh.”

Again he rolled onto his back.

He flailed the parachute away from his face.

A man in an overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat was standing over him.

“13?” the man asked quietly.

Flynn said, “How did you ever find me?”

“I heard you.” The man pointed to some trees. “From over there.”

“Not,” Flynn said, “my most surreptitious penetration into a nation not precisely expectin’ me.”

“I’m N.N. 2842.”

“Proud to know you,” Flynn said from the ground. “Would you mind helpin’ me remove my shroud?”

N.N. 2842 had expressed great uncertainty regarding the wisdom of Flynn’s order that he park the three-wheeled car on the main street of Solensk so
they could then set off on foot in search of breakfast and general information.

Solensk is a town, its buildings and its streets built of round gray stones. It is a small town, on a hillside on an island west of mainland U.S.S.R. in the Sea of Okhotsk. It is a small town, far from the capital, but it is still Russian.

N.N. 13 outranked N.N. 2842 by precisely 2,829 other N.N. male and female operatives at large in the world, plus, Flynn guessed, probably the robot Ginger as well, as soon as it was returned from the fixit shop.

So 2842, his eye sockets walled with concern, parked the little car facing downward on the hillside, its one front wheel against the curb.

“Sure,” said Flynn, extricating himself from the car, “if we have to start somewhere we might as well start with something warm for breakfast. That’s always the wise thing.”

All the way into Solensk snow had been blowing across their path, from west to east. None had accumulated on the ground.

“Tell me.” Flynn stood on the sidewalk, watching the horizontal snowstorm. “Doesn’t even the snow settle here?”

A middle-aged woman passing Flynn on the cobblestoned sidewalk looked sharply at him.

2842, face horrified, dashed from his side of the car to Flynn.

“You’re speaking English,” he whispered in the wind. “Loudly.”

“What’s that? Well, of course I am. I don’t speak Russian, you see. And I’m sure a dose of the old A-E-I-O-U will do them no harm at all. Now, where did you say breakfast is?”

“I don’t know. I’m not from Solensk. I’ve never been here before in my life.”

“Hell of a tour guide you are.” Flynn started down the street. “Don’t even know where breakfast is.”

“Well, sure, isn’t it a lovely day for doin’ nothin’ at all?” Flynn stretched his feet toward the potbellied stove.

They had found a restaurant down a few stone steps in the basement of a stone building with stone walls and a stone floor. The place was as warm as a sleeping puppy’s belly. Flynn had removed his coat.

“There’s something undemocratic about wearing a coat,” he commented to the pale 2842, expecting to be chided for appearing in Solensk in clothes that may have been European or American but certainly not Russian. 2842 said nothing. He grew more pale.

Flynn had breakfasted on warm potato soup, black bread, sausage, potato patties, and five cups of steaming tea. Several times he tried to make conversation, in English, with 2842, but each attempt was greeted with silence and a nervous glance at a big bear of a man in a blue uniform sitting against one wall with
Pravda
and a cup of tea. The man had no insignia on his uniform but Flynn supposed he was the town cop. He did have a full walrus mustache.

“Blustery day like this, it’s grand havin’ a good cup of tea or five.” (2842 had had only one cup of tea.) “Never been in Solensk before, eh?” 2842 said nothing. By now the cop had looked at Flynn several times. “Haven’t missed much, I think. Good soup and bread and tea you can get almost anywhere in Russia. My, I’ve been in some dismal places lately, haven’t I just? And it seems to me the wind’s been blowin’ in every one of them.”

The cop stood up. He folded his newspaper under his arm. He came over to Flynn’s table, and said something.

“Didn’t quite catch that,” Flynn answered the large man.

The man repeated himself.

Beads of perspiration were on 2842’s upper lip.

“What’s he sayin’?” Flynn asked.

2842 blurted in English, “He wants to see your papers.”

“Ach, that. Tell him I haven’t any.”

2842 said, “You haven’t any papers?”

“Well, sure,” said Flynn. “My Massachusetts driver’s license. My United States Social Security card. You can show him my wee badge as an inspector in the Boston Police Department.” Flynn reached in his pocket. “That might impress him some.”

He handed his badge to the cop, who looked at it right side up, upside down, and sideways.

2842 said, “You haven’t even got a passport? A Russian visa?”

“In my other trousers,” said Flynn. “I came away in rather a hurry.”

The cop handed Flynn’s badge back to him and said something.

2842 said, “He wants to know what you’re doing here.”

“Ach,” said Flynn. “Tell him I’m a spy.”

2842 stared at Flynn a long moment before speaking in Russian with the cop.

2842 looked down at the tabletop. “He says you can’t be a spy,” he said. “You don’t speak Russian.”

Flynn smiled. “Tell him I’m not a Russian spy.”

Apparently 2842 did so.

The cop laughed and shook hands with Flynn.

“He sees,” Flynn said, “I’m perfectly harmless. That I am. Invite him to take a cup of tea with us.”

The cop dragged a third chair to the table.

“Tell him,” Flynn said, “that as a spy I couldn’t help noticin’ that he didn’t pay the proprietor for his mornin’ tea break. Assure him that that universally is the policeman’s custom.”