Sam said, “Look, I’m working, Larry. Was there anything else?”
Larry said, “You wouldn’t know where I could get hold of Voss, would you?”
“At his home, I imagine. If I recalled, he lives somewhere over in Baltimore. Not the swank apartment area around Druid Hill, but the older section near Paterson Park. Or, you could probably contact him at the University.”
“He’s disappeared. We’re looking for him.”
Sam laughed. “Gone underground, eh? The old boy is getting romantic.”
“Does he have any particular friends who might be putting him up?”
Sam thought that over for a moment. “There’s Frank Nostrand. You know, that rocket expert who was fired when he got into the big hassle with Senator McCord.”
When Sam Sokolski had flicked off, Larry stared at the vacant phone screen for a long moment, assimilating what the other had told him. He was astonished that an organization such as the Movement would have spread to the extent it evidently had through the country’s intellectual circles, through the scientifically and technically trained, without his department being keenly aware of it.
One result, he decided glumly, of labeling everything contrary to the status quo as weird and dismissing it with contempt. Admittedly, that would have been his own reaction only a week ago. For that matter he still thought that Professor Peter Voss and his group were on the weird side. It wasn’t as simple as all that, this being opposed to the status label. He’d worked hard for his own status labels, he told himself virtuously.
But suppose that he’d been at a cocktail party, and had drifted up to a group who were arguing about social labels judgements and the need to develop a movement to change society’s use of them. The discussion would have gone in one ear and out the other and he would have muttered inwardly, “Weirds,” and drifted away to get himself another vodka martini.
Larry snorted the subject away and dialed the Department of Records. He’d never heard of Frank Nostrand before, nor of his run-in with Senator McCord, the current top witch-hunter when it came to subversives, which was interesting in itself. Was Nostrand considered a subversive? He got information.
The bright young thing who answered seemed to have a harried expression untypical of Records employees. Larry said to her, “I’d like the brief dossier of a Mr. Frank Nostrand who is evidently an expert on rocketry. The only other thing I know about him is that he recently got in the news as a result of a controversy with Senator McCord.”
“Just a moment, sir,” the bright young thing said.
She touched buttons and reached into a delivery chute. When her eyes came up to meet his again, they were more than ever harried. They were absolutely confused.
“Mr. Franklin Howard Nostrand,” she said. “Currently employed by Madison Air as a rocket research technician.”
“That must be him,” Larry said. “I’m in a hurry, Miss. What is his background?”
Her eyes rounded. “It says… it says he’s an Archbishop of the Anglican Church.”
Larry Woolford looked at her.
She looked back, pleadingly.
Larry scowled and said, “His university degrees, please.”
Her eyes darted to the report and she swallowed. “A bachelor in Home Economics, sir.”
“Look here, Miss,” Larry snarled. “How could a Home Economics degree result in his becoming either an Archbishop or a rocket technician?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, confused. “But that’s what his dossier says.”
Larry was fuming but there was not point in taking it out on this junior employee of the Department of Records. He snapped, “Just give me his address, please.”
She said agonizingly, “Sir, it says, Lhasa, Tibet.”
A red light flicked at the side of his phone and he said to her, “I’ll call you back. I’m getting a priority call.”
He flicked her off, and flicked the incoming call in. It was LaVerne Polk. She seemed to be on the harried side, too.
“Larry,” she said. “You’d better get over here soonest. Hellz-a-poppin’.”
“What’s up. LaVerne?”
“This Movement,” she said. “It seems to have started moving! The Boss says to get over here right away.”
XIV
The top of his car was retracted. Larry Woolford slammed down the walk of his auto-bungalow and vaulted over the side and into the seat. He banged the start button, dropped the lift lever, depressed the thrust peddle and took off at maximum acceleration.
He took the police level for maximum speed and was in downtown Greater Washington in flat minutes.
So the Movement had started moving. That could mean almost anything. It was just enough to keep him stewing until he got to the Boss and found out what was going on. He turned his car over to a parker and made his way to the entrance utilized by the second-grade department officials. In another year, or at most two, he told himself all over again, he’d be using that other door. He had an intuitive feeling that if he licked this current assignment it’d be the opening wedge he needed and he’d wind up in a status bracket unique for his age. Yes, if he could just bring this Movement to bay, he’d have it made.
LaVerne looked up when he hurried into her anteroom. She seemingly had two or three calls going on at once, taking orders from one phone, giving them in another. Something was obviously erupting. She didn’t speak to him, merely nodding her head at the inner office. He had never seen the efficient LaVerne Polk in this much of a dither. She was invariably cool and collected, no matter what the crisis. And this was a department of crises. The shit must have really hit the fan, he decided.
In the Boss’ office were six or eight others besides Larry’s ultimate superior. Their expressions and attitudes ran from bewilderment to shock. They weren’t the men you’d expect to have such reactions. At least not those that Larry recognized. Three of them, Ben Ruthenberg, Bill Fraina and Dave Moskowitz were F.B.I, men, of high echelon, and with whom Larry had worked on occasion. One of the others he recognized as being a supervisor with the C.I.A. Walt Foster, Larry’s rival for the affections of the Boss, was also present, his disgustingly fawning face—given Larry’s viewpoint—continually on the superior.
The Boss growled at Larry, “Where in the name of heavens have you been, Lawrence?”
Larry tried to rise to the occasion manfully. “Following out leads on this so-called Movement, sir,” he said. “Thin results, so far. What’s going on?”
Ruthenberg, the Department of Justice man, grunted sour amusement at that. “So-called Movement isn’t exactly the term, not the correct phrase. It’s a Movement, all right, all right. I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch.”
The Boss said, “Please dial Records and get your brief dossier, Lawrence. That will be the quickest manner in which to bring you up on developments.” His voice was grim.
Mystified, but with a growing premonition already, Larry dialed the Department of Records. Knowing his own classification code, he had no need of Information this time. He got the hundred odd word brief and stared at it as it filled the screen. The only items really correct were his name and present occupation. Otherwise, his education was listed as grammar school only, an initial cruel cut. His military career had him ending the Asian War as a General of the Armies and his criminal career record included four years on Alcatraz for molesting small children. Alcatraz! Hadn’t it been closed down for years?
Blankly, he faded the brief and dialed his full dossier. It failed to duplicate the brief, but that was no great advantage. This time he had a M.D. degree from Johns Hopkins, but his military career listed him as a dishonorable discharge from the Navy where he had served in the steward department. His criminal career consisted of being a pusher of heroin and his religion was listed as Holy Roller. Political affiliations had him down as a member of the British Tory party.
The others were looking at him, most of them blankly, although there were grins on the faces of Moskowitz
