Harold W. Smith had no idea.
He felt for the switch beside the door. Certain that the lights were off, he left the office.
No one at the gates of Folcroft questioned Holz's assistant.
His cab attracted no attention. It wasn't unusual for a family member to take a taxi to visit a loved one in the sanitarium. No one ever stopped a taxi.
He was surprised to see the white van with the ornately stenciled PlattDeutsche America insignia on the door, parked in the lot beside the building. They had made no attempt to hide it. It was parked right out in the open, clearly visible to the main entrance.
He paid the fare and let the cab go.
Walking as if he belonged there, he crossed over from the main driveway to the parking area.
The broadcast coupling was damaged. He didn't know that was what it was, only that a bare piece of metal hung down from some wires over the cab. Otherwise, everything seemed fine.
He checked the back. The door had been broken off and repaired.
Hastily, it seemed. It was a sloppy welding job.
There were furrows that almost looked like finger marks all up and down the sides of the large rear door.
The back handle was bent. He rattled it experimentally. The door was solid. So solid, in fact, it wouldn't open. The fool who had repaired it had welded it to the side panels. At least it wouldn't fall off in traffic.
He shouldn't dawdle. Leaving the rear of the truck, he climbed up into the spacious cab.
He checked the door between the cab and the rear of the van.
That didn't budge, either. It wasn't fused like the other door, but only appeared to be stuck. No matter.
Let Holz worry about that in Edison.
The keys weren't in the ignition, but that didn't matter. He had driven the van several times himself.
He pulled a spare set of keys from his pocket and stuck them in the ignition.
The engine turned over on the first try.
The security guard gave him a polite wave as he drove out onto the street. It was the same little half salute the guard gave all the service trucks as they passed through the gates of Folcroft.
Holz's assistant did not wave back.
19
Sir Geoffrey Hyde-Black was out of air freshener.
To the sorts of people who used air freshener, this would seldom be viewed as more than a minor in- convenience. To Sir Geoffrey, it was a disaster far greater than using the Magna Carta for a doily and accidentally flushing the crown jewels down the loo.
Because without his little can of aerosol spray, he would have to smell 'them' in all their malodorous glory.
The odors Sir Geoffrey wished to mask were those of the wogs.
This was a disparaging term invented during the British colonial period to refer to Orientals specifically. Through the years, the original meaning had dissipated to the point where it referred to any race or nation deemed primitive. In Sir Geoffrey's case, when he used the term wog he was referring to the other members of the United Nations General assem-bly. They all, quite frankly, smelled to him like a blood sausage that had gone off. Every last bloody wog.
He longed for the day that he wouldn't have to deal with any of them, but as Her Majesty's chosen ambassador to the United Nations, he hadn't much of a choice.
He only wished the wogs didn't smell so fright-fully bad.
It wasn't that Sir Geoffrey was a racist, mind you.
Oh my, no.
If he had only thought ill of Third World nations, that would have been racist. They all smelled, of course. That much was certain. And they were most assuredly wogs. If it wasn't the funk of unwashed clothing and bodies, it was the stench of a thousand native spices pouring from endlessly prattling mouths. Mostly chutney.
In the opinion of Ambassador Hyde-Black, the Second World countries didn't fare much better.
'Wogs in bad suits,' he would say.
And let's face it, the only real Second World country was Russia and the whole population stank as if they'd spent half their lives marinating in the bottom of a vodka bottle.
As far as First World countries were concerned, the only ones that mattered were the United Kingdom and the Americans. And Sir Geoffrey had never quite forgiven the colonists for their 1776 decision. They were, in his humble opinion, wogs to a man. And wogs always smelled.
In the case of the Americans, the collective national odor was one of undercooked beef and over-priced perfume.
So that left Great Britain, alone in the world without an odor.
Of course, that didn't include the East End of London. He refused to go near there without nose plugs and a portable fan. These people, though protected by Her Royal Majesty and equal in the eyes of the Crown, were nonetheless, wogs. As were the British citizens of Liverpool, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
In fact, you could work in the City, bank on Fleet Street, frequent the haberdasheries on Savile Row and still, in the opinion of Sir Geoffrey Hyde-Black, be a wog.
And a wog, to Ambassador Sir Geoffrey Hyde-Black, always, always, unfailingly and without exception, smelled. It was an immutable fact.
And so when the General Assembly was meeting, Sir Geoffrey always armed himself with as many cans of air freshener as he could carry. He liked to keep an even ratio of cans to wogs. But he invariably exhausted his supply on those long special-censure sessions when one of those bloody mad Arab countries was acting up.
Lobynia was up to some new nonsense, and the world community was meeting at the UN Building to discuss possible sanctions. It should have been an easy matter to resolve, but the Americans had brought back the insufferable Helena Eckert to ne-gotiate. She had been the U.S. ambassador to the UN
until her appointment as Secretary of State more than a year ago. As acting ambassador, Eckart had seen fit to offer resistance to a compromise hammered out by the French ambassador. When Eckert had expressed her disapproval, the Arab contingent had become quite agitated, and the stage was set for an afternoon of heated debate.
Sir Geoffrey had just surreptitiously spritzed his last spurt of pine-forest mint onto the sweat-stained caftan of the angry Hamidian delegate and had returned to his briefcase for a fresh supply. He was horrified to find he had no more cans of aerosol freshener left. Sir Geoffrey was faced with the dreadful prospect of having to inhale the unsweetened smells of unshowered, impassioned wogs. As the thought registered in his upper-class mind, the ambassador swooned.
Fortunately for Sir Geoffrey, he needn't have been concerned. The Secretary-General adjourned the meeting for the afternoon.
Delighted at his stroke of luck, Sir Geoffrey hurried from the General Assembly chamber, his monogrammed handkerchief held firmly over his mouth and nose. In the British offices, he ordered up his limousine and took the elevators down nearly thirty stories to the street below.
His man, Parkinson, was waiting near the entrance.
Sir Geoffrey fell into the back of the limo, and the car sped off into Manhattan.
'Problem, sir?' his driver asked. His enunciation had the stodgy, labored cadences of an aristocrat. Sir Geoffrey liked the boy, even if he was a touch wog-gish.
'It's these people and their ghastly odors, Parkinson.' When Sir Geoffrey spoke, it seemed as if his lower lip had been stapled to his uvula. 'Remember this always, Parkinson,' he said self-importantly, 'it is one thing to talk about helping the unwashed masses of the world. It is another thing entirely to have to smell them.'
He instructed the chauffeur to drive around the city for a while.
Eventually he had to find a place where he could replenish his supply of air freshener, but first he wanted to
