"Why that smirk?"
"You'll see, sir."
They sat in fidgety silence for another minute, and then a buzzer
sounded, twice.
"Ah, that's Jenkins," said the Secretary, and pressed the button once
more.
Jenkins came in, followed by a tall gray-haired man who carried a large
black suitcase. The President arose, and, as Jenkins left the room
again, shook hands with the man. "Agent X-45?" he asked.
"Professor Charles Blake," the man corrected him calmly. "Agent X-45 is
in here."
The President stared. "In the _suitcase_? What are we sending? A
_dwarf_?"
"Hardly," said the Secretary, snapping up the hasps on the suitcase
and opening it upon the table. "This," he said, lifting something from
under tissue-paper padding, "is Agent X-45."
The President's gaze was returned by two shiny black eyes, set on
either side of a little brown muzzle with a gentle, stitched-on smile.
Agent X-45 was clad in flight helmet, miniature jacket and tiny boots,
with a baggy pair of brown canvas trousers belted at the waist with
a bandolier holding a dozen small wooden bullets, and dangling a
patent-leather holster containing a plastic water pistol. And he wore a
small parachute and harness.
"But that's a teddy bear!" cried the President.
"Precisely," Professor Blake said.
<tb>
"I think I'll sit down," said the President, and did so, visibly
looking like a man who believes he is surrounded by lunatics.
"And look here!" said the Secretary, slipping his hand within Teddy's
jacket and withdrawing a small oilskin pouch. "It's rather rudimentary,
but the Cyrillic lettering is genuine, and our ambassador assures us
the layout is correct."
The President took the pouch, unfolded it and drew out a small sheet
of paper, covered with the inscrutable letterings, and numerous
rectangles and curving red lines.
"I give up," he said. "What is it?"
"A map of the Kremlin," said the Secretary, his eyes dancing. "That big
red 'X' is the location of the Politburo Council Chamber."
"Perhaps," the President said weakly, "you could explain...?"
"Mister President," said Professor Blake, "I am the new Chief of
Propaganda for the government."
The President nodded, poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher
and drained it. "Yes, yes?" he said.
"Naturally, I have spent my career studying the psychology of a Certain
Power...."
The President groaned. "Please, gentlemen, let's name names! It need
never go outside this room. _My_ lips are sealed!"
The professor and the Secretary exchanged a look, a raising of
eyebrows, then a shrug of surrender.
"Very well," said Blake. "Russia--"
"There," said the President. "That's more like it."
Blake cleared his throat and went on.
"We know the weak spot in the Russian armor is the mentality of the
average Communist official," he explained, while the Secretary, who
had heard this all before, fiddled with the straps of Teddy's parachute
and hummed softly to himself. "They have a distrust complex. Everything
and everybody is under 24-hour-a-day suspicion."
"Yes, so I hear," said the President.
"What do you suppose would happen to an agent that was caught by the
Russians?" asked Blake.
"I'd rather not even think about that."
"Not the sadistic details, sir. I mean the general train of events,
from the time of capture onward."
The President pondered this. "After his capture," he said thoughtfully,
"he would be questioned. Through various methods--hopelessly at
variance with the regulations of the Geneva Convention--they would
discover his mission, and then he would be shot, I guess, or
imprisoned."
Blake nodded grimly. "And what if an agent landed there that could
_not_ divulge his mission?"
<tb>
The Secretary stopped fiddling with the harness and watched the
President's face. On the worn features he read first puzzlement, then
incredulity, then a flash of sheer amazement.
"Good heavens!" said the President. "They'd--they'd have to admit a
defeat, I suppose...."
"But can they?" Blake leaned forward and slammed his fist upon the
tabletop. "Can the Communist mentality ever admit that it's been
bested?"
"I--I guess not. At least, they never do," said the President. "But
this--" he wagged a forefinger at the stuffed thing on the table--"this
certainly won't upset them. I mean, after all...." He looked from
one to the other for agreement and found none. "But, gentlemen, it's
nothing but a stuffed bear!"
"It won't upset them?" queried Blake slowly. "Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. They'll find the bear, wherever it lands, and
they'll--well, they'll _know_ it's a gag and just laugh at us."
"_How_ will they know?" Blake persisted.
"Well, they'll be _pretty_ well certain!" the President said
scathingly: "I mean a stuffed toy--"
"Would they give up on something of which they were 'pretty well'
certain?"
"They'd have to. Teddy, here, certainly couldn't tell them anything.
They'd say it was a joke and forget it...." His voice barely sounded
the last few words. He no longer believed them. A smile flickered upon
his face. "Gentlemen, you don't think they'd--"
"The Russians," said Blake, without emotion, "would go off their
rockers, sir. To be unable to explain a thing like this would devastate
their morale. The Communist is a man who must hold all the aces. He'll
shuffle and reshuffle until he gets them, too. Well, we're giving him a
cold deck, sir. There are no aces for him to find."
"Hmmm," said the President. "As long as there's any doubt in their
minds, they'll have to keep plugging at it, won't they! And since
there's no solution--" His smile grew calculating. "Yes, yes I begin
to see. It's a small thing, to be sure, but I find I must leap at the
opportunity to stick a few ants in _their_ pants for a change."
"It won't wipe them out," began the Secretary.
"But it'll wear them down a little," Blake finished.
"Done!" said the President. "How soon can we get Operation Frustration
under way?"
"The plane is ready to leave right now," said the Secretary, with a
small blush. "I--I rather thought you'd see this thing our way."
The President frowned at this, then shrugged. "Good enough. Let's get
this bear into the air."
<tb>
"You sure this plane will work?" asked the President, averting his face
from the spray of leaves caught up in the shrieking jet stream of the
waiting plane.
"It's too simple not to," said Blake, clutching the suitcase--on whose
side a large red "Top Secret" had been stenciled--to his chest, and
shouting over the scream of the plane. "The radar-resistant device is
nothing more than a radio-receiver that blankets the structure, making
the entire plane a receiver. If it receives the radar impulses, they
can't bounce back and make a blip on the enemy radar screens."
The President sighed. "You make it sound almost too easy. Very well."
He shook the man's hand. "Good luck."
"Thank you, sir," said Blake, patting the suitcase. "I'll take good
care of Teddy."
The President nodded and moved away. Blake boarded the jet, and,
minutes later, the President was watching a last fading streamer of the
twin exhausts dwindling upon the eastern horizon.
"I shan't sleep till he's back," said the Secretary.
"Nor I," said the President. "I have the weirdest damned
apprehension...."
"About what, sir?" asked the Secretary, as they made their way from the
field.
"About the--" the President looked around, then lowered his voice to a
whisper--"the Russians. There's something in their makeup we may have
overlooked."
"Impossible, sir," said the Secretary of Defense. "Blake is our top
psychologist."
"I hope you're right. If this fails, I'd hate for it to be traced to
us."
"It can't be. The jacket was made in Japan, the boots in Mexico, the
parachute in--"
"I know, I know," said the President. "But if they _should_ trace it to
us, we'll be a laughing-stock."
"They won't," the Secretary assured him.
<tb>
Two days later, Blake was back, his manner jovial when he met in secret
session once more with the two executives.
"Couldn't have gone more perfectly, gentlemen," he said, rubbing his
hands together and bouncing on his toes. "We passed directly over
Moscow, at a height of ten miles, on the stroke of midnight. The night
was overcast and starless. Teddy was dropped through the bomb bay. I
saw his parachute open myself. He's down there now, and we're sure to
see signs any day now of the little cracks in the Iron Curtain."
"You had no trouble with the enemy?" the President asked, though the
answer--since Blake was back alive--was obvious.
"None," Blake said. "The radar shield performed exactly as specified,
sir. Not a blink of a searchlight nor a single ground-to-air rocket did
we see. Perhaps, on hearing us pass by, they sent up an investigating
plane or two, but we were long gone by then. That's the advantage of
moving faster than the sound you make," he added pontifically.
"I still feel we've overlooked something," said the President. "In the
back of my mind, a small voice keeps trying to remind me of something
about the Russians, something that should have made me veto this whole
scheme at the start."
Blake looked puzzled. "What about them, sir? If it's in regard to their
psychology, I can assure you--"
"I don't mean their psychology at _all_," said the President. "No,
wait--yes, I do, in a minor way. They must pursue this thing, no matter
what, but--"
A light glimmered, then burned brightly in the President's eyes, and he
stood up and smacked his fist into his open palm. "Of course!" he said.
"Their methods!"
"Methods?" asked Blake, a little nervously.
The President's reply was interrupted by a knock at the door. The
three men exchanged a look; then the Secretary jabbed the button, and
Jenkins came in.
"This just came for you, sir," he said, handing the Secretary a small
envelope, and making his exit silently.
The President waited impatiently as the envelope was torn open and its
contents read. Then the Secretary's hands opened limply and the message
fell upon the table.
"Diplomatic note--Russian--Teddy," he whispered.
"What!" yelped the President. He snatched the paper from the table and
read it, then sank into his chair once more, his face grim and eyes
suspiciously moist. "The dirty, lowdown, rotten...."
Blake, hovering at tableside, hesitated a moment, then asked, "What
about Teddy? What's happened?"
"What we might have expected," said the Secretary dolefully.
"You don't mean--" Blake mumbled, horrified. He couldn't continue, just
waited for the worst.
The President nodded miserably.
"He's confessed."