Once Departed

right. He had decided that only a One World Government could solve the problem of peace, and had done his little best to start the ball rolling.

Quint chuckled, sourly. The trouble was that the first Citizen of the World was also the last. Nobody else, so far as Quint had heard, bothered to follow along the path he’d blazed. Nobody else had got around to renouncing their citizenship in an individual country and becoming the second Citizen of the World.

With his jabbing at the typewriter keys, Quint had fouled up the sheet of paper in the machine. He absently cranked it out, and reached for a clean sheet.

Let’s see, he could make the first column about the argument at the party, and the second column about Gary, what’s-his-name. And for the third column he might do a summing up of the whole question, making it as dryly witty as he could squeeze out.

That’s what realty sold his stuff. Mature, satirical, even cynical humor directed at the world’s current problems.

He licked his lip absently. He needed a good, sharp title.

The bell rang and he looked up, for a moment as though he hadn’t heard it. It rang again.

“Oh, for crissake,” he snarled.

Theoretically, all his friends knew he worked in the mornings. That he wasn’t to be bothered unless the emergency was extreme. He kicked the chair back and shuffled toward the door, muttering.

It was Mike Woolman, Madrid correspondent for World Wide Press. Lean, dark, nervous, he habitually toted a rolled up newspaper which he banged against his leg. And he was Quint’s favorite drinking companion.

“Working?” he said.

“What do you think?” Quint snarled. “How can I be working when I’m standing here beating my gums with some twitch who doesn’t know enough to…”

Mike brushed past him and into the living room. He looked at the typewriter, sitting on the table, and grunted. “Why the hell don’t you set up one of your spare bedrooms as an office?” he demanded.

“None of your damn business. Why don’t you go away? Listen, remember that guy up in Paris a few years ago who renounced his U.S. Citizenship and said he was the first citizen of the world?”

“Uh huh. What about him?”

“What was his name?”

“Gary something or other.” Mike slumped down on the couch and banged his knee fretfully with his newspaper.

Quint said, “You’re a great help. Why don’t you beat it? I’m trying to get into my column. Listen, what do you know about the movement toward World Government?” He sat back down in the chair before his typewriter.

“Nothing,” Mike Woolman said.

“You’re a great help. I thought newspapermen were supposed to know everything.”

“We do know everything. There isn’t anything to know about World Government. It’s just a couple of words. There’s no movement, no organization. It’s not even in its infancy, unless you’re thinking the United Nations is a step in that direction—which it isn’t.”

Quint grunted. “I’ve got news for you. Now there’s a beginning. A first step. Its name is Nicolas Ferencsik.”

“So you were at that party last night. I thought maybe you were. That’s why I came up.”

Quint scowled at him. “What about it?”

“Ronald Brett-Home was supposed to be there.”

“So Marty said. He didn’t make it. Probably drunk.”

“Dead,” Mike said.

“I beg your pardon?”

Mike repeated it. “Dead. Not drunk. Murdered.”

Quint stared at him.

Mike said, “Uh huh.”

Quint said, “Who’d want to kill that easy going playboy? Somebody’s husband?”

Mike Woolman banged his newspaper against his knee in irritation. He said, “I was hoping I’d get some information out of you, instead of giving it. Didn’t you know Brett-Home was Great Britain’s top MI6 field man?”

Wheels were beginning to turn, but Quint said, “MI6?”

“The British equivalent of our C.I.A. International espionage, counter-espionage.”

Some of the things Marty Dempsey had said last night came back to Quint Jones. He hadn’t believed her at the time. He said, frowning, “What’s that got to do with it?”

Mike squirmed, uncomfortably, “Damned if I know. You didn’t meet a guy named Bartholomew Digby there, did you?”

“You mean Bart Digby? Come to think of it, he told me that Brett-Home was to have brought him up. What about Bart?”

“How’d he impress you?”

Quint was becoming irritated by the other’s grasshoppering conversation. “He impressed me as some bright crewcut college man, in Europe representing I.B.M. or RCA or one of the other big business outfits currently trying to suck up to the Common Market.”

“That’s what he’s supposed to look like. Digby was kicked out of the C.I.A. a month or so ago—or so he says.”

Quint looked at him.

Mike Woolman dropped his banged up newspaper long enough to start counting off his fingers, one by one. “Brett-Home was connected with MI6. Albrecht Stroehlein was formerly of the Gestapo. One of the other guests at that party was Vladimir Nuriyev, who defected from the KGB, the Komissarait Gosudarstvennoi Bezopastnotsi, or so he says.”

Quint murmured, “Joe Garcia told me Nuriyev had been a hatchetman for the Chrezvychainaya Komissiya.”

Woolman cocked his head to one side, and rubbed the bottom of his chin nervously. “He did, eh? How would he know? I sometimes have a sneaky suspicion that our Senor Garcia does chores for the Spanish secret police.”

“At any rate, what are you getting at? You’ve got spies running up and down the walls.”

Mike picked up his newspaper again and gave himself an absent minded bang on the leg. “I don’t know. I thought you might have something you noticed at the party. Something funny is going on here in Madrid. Not just this Brett-Home killing. That, at least, will come out into the open. The local cops can hardly suppress the news of the death of a foreigner. But I’ve been getting a distinct feeling…”

“Feminine intuition, like?” Quint twisted his mouth.

“Shut up. Something screwy is going on. The police and other authorities are holding the lid down on something.”

Quint stood up and an expression of mock concern spread over his face. He said, “Mike, you need a long rest. Now why don’t you get the hell out of here and let me work? Go chase some spies, or something. I didn’t see anything mysterious, or even sinister going on at the Dempsey’s last night. If you ask me, some thief knocked Ronald Brett-Home over the head and…”

“He wasn’t robbed,” Mike said disgustedly, coming to his own feet. “You’re lucky you’re a damned columnist instead of a reporter. You wouldn’t see a story if you stubbed your toe on it. Not only wasn’t he robbed, but he was all torn up as though he’d been finished off by a Bengal tiger.” He gave his leg a double bang with his paper club.

Quint scowled. “Well… some kind of a nut got to him. A psycho…”

Mike grunted his disgust at the other’s lack of perception. “I should’ve known better than to talk to you while you’re working. You obviously turn off your thinking machine when you work. Didn’t it get through to you? Ronald Brett-Home was a top MI6 man. Where was it you first met him?”

“At Hideka’s karate classes over on Calle San Bernardo,” Quint said thoughtfully. “We used to work out together, from time to time.”

“And was he any good?”