The Union Club Mysteries (4 page)
Read The Union Club Mysteries Online
Authors: Isaac Asimov
"It always puzzled me," said Baranov one night at the Union Club "why, in war, one doesn't strike for the top. Why fight the armies, instead of the man who inspires and leads them. If Napoleon had died early in the game, or Lenin, or Hitler, or, for that matter, Washington—"
Jennings said, "I suppose it's partly a matter of tight security and partly the freemasonry of command. If the leader of government A orders a strike at the leader of government B, he's asking for it himself, isn't he?"
I said, "I think that's over romantic. My feeling is that if a leader dies, someone takes his place who may be even more effective. Philip of Macedon was knocked off before he could invade Persia, but who took his place? His son, who turned out to be Alexander the Great."
Griswold, as usual, was drowsing with his scotch and soda in his hand and, also as usual, managed to hear us just the same. He opened one eye and said, "Sometimes you don't know who the leaders are. Then what do you do?" He opened the other eye and stared at us from under his shaggy eyebrows.
George Plumb [said Griswold] was a penologist who had an interesting theory on the subject of prison management. The problem, he said, was that American prisons fell between two extremes, and uncomfortably so.
Many elements of American society feel prisoners should be treated humanely, with an eye to rehabilitation rather than torture, Many other elements in society feel that prisoners are behind bars in order to be punished and that imprisonment is not, in itself, punishment enough.
The result is an uneasy compromise in that prisoners are generally not treated well enough to keep them from feeling a rising resentment, and, on the other hand, are not treated so badly as to be starved and beaten into helpless compliance. The result is occasional prison riots—as we all know.
Given all this, my friend, Plumb pointed out that riots do not occur predictably. If you follow the misery or cruelty inflicted upon prisoners, you do
not
find that at a certain level, a riot breaks out. In one prison, quite abysmal conditions are endured with nothing more than growls, mutters and an occasional clash of aluminum mugs against iron bars. In other prisons, where conditions are substantially less intolerable, a fierce insurrection will break out.
Plumb insisted it was a matter of leadership. If, in a particular prison there were a prisoner skilled enough or charismatic enough, he could direct the strategy and tactics of a revolt and might even deliberately stir one up where none would otherwise take place.
One must, therefore, Plumb would say, learn to recognize the leader, the man who is clearly respected, or admired, or feared by the prisoners generally and, while matters are as yet quiet, transfer him to another prison. The prison which he has left then remains quiet because the prisoners are without a head and it will take time for another to arise. The prison which he enters does not know him and it will take time for him to rise to a position of leadership.
Plumb's advice was taken on a number of occasions and, if the transfer were followed by at least some improvement in prisoner treatment, riots were invariably aborted.
Some years ago, at one particular prison—it wouldn't be wise to mention its name—conditions for a riot seemed to be mounting. The prison guards reported a dangerous restlessness among the inmates, a clear spirit of rebellion.
Plumb was called in and, of course, his first question was for the name of the prisoners' leader. He was astonished when the prison officials, from the warden down, professed complete ignorance on the subject. There was no one prisoner who was clearly at the head.
"There must be one," said Plumb. "A mob doesn't move by general consent. Someone has to shout, 'What are we waiting for? Let's go!'"
There was a collective shaking of heads. If there was a leader, he had cannily kept such a low profile he was unrecognized.
Plumb, deeply worried, came to me. He knew me well enough to know that no one could help him, if I couldn't.
He said, "Griswold, I have a master criminal here, the kind who is so skilled that his machinations are invisible. How do I identify him out of three thousand or so inmates?"
I said, "The prison authorities may not know who he is, but at least some of the prisoners must. Question the prisoners."
He favored me with a look of contempt. "That won't be any help at all. Prisoners are men who wouldn't talk, and you know that. We all have a code against snitching, and criminals, in particular, are strong on that. It is their one sure homage to virtue. They may kill, steal or rape; but they are not so lost to shame and decency as to be tattletales.
"Besides," he went on, "each prisoner has to live with the rest of them. Anyone known to have cooperated with the authorities, anyone
suspected
of having cooperated with the authorities, can expect nothing less than constant sadistic mistreatment from the prisoners generally—possibly he may be killed by them."
I said, "You've got to choose the right one, Plumb. There's such a thing as a leader, and there's also such a thing as a nonfollower: someone who stands out against the crowd even when it's dangerous to do so."
Plumb said, "Not that much danger. The oddball will be the first one suspected. Even if we promise to transfer him, he'll be sure that the grapevine will carry the news to the new prison. And if we promise to get him out of prison altogether, he might well be afraid he wouldn't be safe from revenge even then."
I could see that there was something to that, but I said, "Just the same, consult the warden and find out if there's someone in the prison who is an intellectual, is afraid of violence, has a horror of the other prisoners, and who expects to get out soon. If he works in the library and therefore feels superior to the other prisoners, so much the better."
Plumb said, "Even if I found such a man, I couldn't use him. If I questioned him in privacy, the prisoners might not know what he said, but they will suspect he lacks the guts to resist. They will haze him afterward and if we should get our man, even if it were for reasons that had nothing to do with your intellectual, they would still kill him."
I said, "You don't call him alone. Call a hundred men, a thousand, as many as you can handle. Call him somewhere in the middle. Let him know you're asking every person in the prison and he just might work up the courage to give you your lead."
Plumb came to see me again about ten days later. He looked as though he could use some sleep badly.
He said, and his voice was a little hoarse, "We went through about half the prisoners, concentrating on the long-termers and the tough guys, but we deliberately called in some of the older men and the cream puffs. No one would talk. You never saw such a mass of concentrated ignorance in your life, but of course it was only what I expected—and meanwhile conditions are growing more tense. The guards are on the alert, but I have a feeling that this mysterious leader, whoever he may be, who is shrewd enough to remain unknown, is also shrewd enough to counter and beat any defense the warden may put up. And we can't just lock everyone in the cells, remove all clothing, throw fifty men we like the least into solitary, and do it all just on suspicion. The cries of 'prison brutality' that would arise—" He shuddered.
I said, "Did you find a prisoner of the type I suggested?"
"Yes, I did," he said.
"Exactly.
He'll be out in six months; he's a stranger to violence and is in for business fraud. He shouldn't even be in this particular prison. He speaks well, and is well educated. He works in the library, and he is clearly embarrassed and humiliated at being in prison and, even more, at having to associate with the prisoners."
"And what did he say, Plumb?"
"Say? Nothing! I don't even think it was a case of being scared. I think he really didn't know. Why should he? He stays away from the prisoners as much as he can. Personally, I think he has built a little world of his own in which he pretends he's alone."
I said, "Is he intelligent?"
"Oh, yes," said Plumb. "I should say very intelligent. He spends most of his time in the library, reading."
"Then it seems to me he's got to know."
"What am I supposed to do? Beat it out of him? These days we can't touch them."
"He must know that the last thing he wants is a prison riot with all its dangers. Surely, he would want to do anything to stop it. He must have tried to get something across. Tell me, Plumb, do you remember exactly what he said to you?"
"Griswold," said Plumb wearily, "we've carefully recorded all the proceedings. As it happens, however, it is very easy to tell you what he said to us. He told us nothing—blank—zero.''
I said, "Do you mean that he told you he didn't know anything? Or did he say nothing at all and just sit there in silence?"
Plumb said, "For the most part he just sat there in silence. He was a little fellow, thin, a small prissy mouth, narrow chin, pale eyes, and he just looked at me with his knees together and his hands clasped in his lap and a faraway look in his eyes. Not a word, till just at the end."
"Ah, what did he say at the end?"
"I was exasperated. I asked him if he heard me at all, if he understood what I was saying. Then his eyes flickered in my direction. There was a ghost of a smile on his face and he said, 'No, I haven't. It—was—Greek— to—me.' He spaced the words as though in deliberate insolence and I just ached to punch him in the nose. But I let him go. What else could I do?"
I said, "You recorded all the interviews. Do you suppose the recordings, or their contents, could leak out to the prisoners?"
"They shouldn't, but—" Plumb shrugged.
"They probably will. And our man was very clever. If the rest got the records and found out what he had said, they would consider him a regular guy and a hero. They would have no way of knowing that he gave us the answer."
Plumb looked astonished. "He
did!"
"I think so. I can't be sure at the moment, but I think so. Do you have a roster of the prisoners?"
I was given one the next day and picked out the one I thought it might be in less than five minutes. He was transferred and there was no riot. Our friend the prison librarian was released six months later and was then quietly pardoned and his prison record erased.
Griswold freshened his scotch and then allowed his eyes to close.
Baranov leaned over and quietly removed the glass of scotch from Griswold's hand. His eyes opened at once, and he said, "Hey, put that drink back."
"First," said Baranov, "how did you find out who the riot leader was?"
Griswold said, "Oh, you didn't get it? You surprise me! The librarian said, 'It was Greek to me' with emphasis. He was a reader, and it so happens the expression is a quotation. It is
not
an age-old common saying whose origins are lost in mystery. The phrase is Shakespeare's, no less, and is to be found in the play
Julius Caesar.
One of the conspirators describes a political rally at which Cicero spoke in Greek. When asked what Cicero had said, the character said he didn't know, adding, 'those that understood him smil'd at one another and shook their heads; but for mine own part, it was Greek to me.'"
"So?" asked Jennings.
"So, the conspirator who made that statement in the play was Casca, and it occurred to me that if I looked through the roster of prisoners' names, I might find one that resembled Casca, or, possibly, Cicero. On the roster was one Benny W. Kasker who, I was told upon inquiry, was intelligent, unscrupulous and in for life. I felt that he might very well be the one—and he was."
I suppose everyone talks about terrorism these days, even in the august and untouchable interior of the Union Club. It was not really a surprise, then, that Jennings went on for some five emotional minutes about the dangers we all ran because there was no rational pattern to terrorist attacks.
Baranov said, finally, when Jennings ran down, "Come, come, old man. Lightning does not strike the valleys. Not one of us is important enough to make a fair target."
"Sometimes they're chosen at random," I said. "That's Jennings's point."
Baranov snorted. "Automobile accidents can strike at anyone, too, but I don't notice people going into blue funks over it. You just do your best."
It was at this moment that Griswold stirred. The first sign was the clinking of the ice in his scotch and soda, and then he opened one eye and puffed out his magnificent white mustache.
"It may be," he said, "that lightning doesn't strike the valleys" (It always amazed us that he heard every word we said even when he was sound asleep, or appeared to be.) "and you three may be safe, but I was the subject of a terrorist threat at one time. It was back in 1969—"
I quickly said, "I believe they're featuring poached salmon for dinner tonight—" but both of Griswold's eyes were open now and they pinned us to the wall like blue icicles.
*
*
*
It was back in 1969 [said Griswold], and that was a bad year for prominent Americans. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. had been gunned down not long before, and I rather suspected I might be next. I had been engaged in matters I am still not at liberty to discuss, but, of course, secrets are never absolute, and I had made enemies.
Add to that the unrest on American campuses and anyone could clearly see that matters were rising to a scream. In May of that year, I was up for an honorary degree at a college in Connecticut—I forget the name, for all that nonsense seems to melt together in my mind, but I believe the degree that time was a doctorate in Humane Letters.
Two days before the ceremony, however, the president of the college received an anonymous communication to the effect that my honorary degree must be canceled forthwith because of my nefarious activities in Vietnam. If it were not canceled and if I appeared at the commencement, I would be killed. The letter said, for I remember the exact words, "If the commencement features this monster, nothing will prevent me from getting him in my sights and getting off a clear shot."
Still, the person making the threat claimed to be as humane as the Letters with which I was to be honored, for he assured the president that no one else would be harmed, which was, of course, little consolation for me.
The president had showed me the letter at once, in strictest privacy, and asked if I wished to avoid the confrontation. I could plead illness and the degree would be granted to me in absentia. The diploma could then be mailed to me.
It was clear to me that it was the president who wished to avoid the confrontation, and that encouraged all that was quixotic in me. If he was going to play the coward, I was not.
Besides, why should I be deprived of my moment of glory, microscopic though it was? In the first place, I had done nothing in Vietnam to warrant indignation. My mission there had been a cover for the actual work I was doing in the Middle East in the wake of the Six-Day War.
Besides, I did not think the letter had to be taken seriously. I said so. I told the president rather huffily that I would not give in to bluff.
"Bluff?" he said nervously. "How can you be sure it's bluff?"
"Because he announced it, sir," I thundered. "You don't suppose Lee Harvey Oswald or Sirhan Sirhan sent little billets-doux warning their victims, do you? The writer of this note merely wants to disrupt the commencement and humiliate me—and I have no intention of cooperating."
The president shook his head. "But we can't simply assume it's a hoax of some sort. Suppose we ignored this, took no precautions—and you were then shot. And suppose the existence of this note were then to become known. My position—"
"—would not be as uncomfortable as mine," I said with heavy irony. "If I'm willing to chance it, why not you?"
"Because my responsibility is to the college and not to myself, my dear sir. This letter may have been sent on impulse, but if we ignore it, his pride may be as great as yours and he may be forced to make the attempt even if he doesn't really want to."
For a moment I considered the situation and thought I understood it. But then—I might be wrong. "Very well," I said. "Take the necessary precautions."
"But my dear Mr. Griswold," he said, "that would scarcely do. Surely, it would be just as disruptive of the commencement if I were to litter the place with guards and search all the students, parents and friends for concealed weapons—something that would in any case slow the proceedings intolerably. It would be the better part of valor to—"
"Nonsense," I said. "Half the college commencements this year are being disrupted one way or another. The presence of guards would seem a natural precaution and would probably titillate the audience. If you really think someone intends to smuggle a high-powered rifle with a telescopic lens into the stands, your task is simple. Such a weapon is not easily masked. Just have the guards watch for long boxes, suspicious canes, crutches, fishing rods, or anything long and narrow. It would have to be in plain view, for Sunday is forecast as a hot day and anyone wearing an outer garment will be at once suspicious."
The president said, "The graduating class will wear flowing academic robes—"
"But they will walk in procession and anyone with a rifle under his robes will surely walk stiffly. That goes for the faculty, including you and me. And if you're going to mention the band, you can easily check out their instrument cases and make sure they contain only instruments."
In short, I overbore him. I didn't for a moment think a rifle could be smuggled into the field, or aimed if it were, and I thought I knew what ought to be done. But let the president go through the motions, I thought. It would be a useful diversion perhaps and then, as I said before—I might be wrong.
I walked out onto the field at the tail of the procession with the president on my right side, two days later. It was a hot and beautiful day, as had been forecast, and the students in their black caps and gowns were standing at their seats. The stands were full of happy people, making a complex patchwork of color. Hundreds of amateur cameramen hovered at the fringes, hoping to catch the young hopefuls at the moment of diploma presentation or snapping the academic procession. A few even took photos of me, lured, I suppose, by the majesty of my countenance.
The president, I couldn't help but notice, left an unusually large gap between us. He was thinking, I know, of someone with a rifle and he didn't want to become the well-known innocent bystander.
From the platform, I looked over the audience. I was more than ever confident that no one would shoot from the stands, or succeed in getting 'a clear shot,' as he called it, if he tried. If someone tried to aim a rifle, it would have to be from some secluded spot where the aiming could be in leisurely and uninterrupted tranquility—as in Oswald's case.
I looked for windows that overlooked the platform, but there were none. The platform was blocked off behind and above and, to some extent, on the sides. Before us were the people out to the wall of the stadium and beyond that nothing but blue sky.
In the foreground there were marshals and photographers and newspapermen introducing a note of scurry and incoherence. That was all right, for one of the photographers was really one of my men who knew what to watch for, and whom I didn't want noticed. And somewhere around the stands were the guards whom the president had set up and whom / had not noticed.
The president spoke; a minister invoked the blessing of the deity; one of the students gave a short speech in an embarrassed tone; then I rose while the president read an encomium that was supposed to justify my honorary degree. With the adjectives done, a hood was placed over my head and all retreated from me, leaving me alone at the podium to give my twenty-minute address.
This was it. If the prospective assassin were really serious about killing me, and if he were also serious about doing no harm to anyone else, this was the time. I was alone—or at least more alone than anyone else would be at any time during the ceremonies. There were twenty others on the platform, but they were well behind me and were sitting down. A bullet that was fired at my head, for instance, would strike nothing if it missed me.
And I would have to count on the miss now or, better yet, on stopping the act before it could be performed.
The manuscript with my speech was in front of me, but I was going to have to improvise, for I was going to have to watch what went on before me. I couldn't help but sweep the stands as I began my address, but that was foolish. I was not likely to make out anything important at that distance and by the time I heard the crack of the rifle across the field the bullet would be in me.
Leave that part to the guards! I would concentrate on what went on immediately before me. I trusted my friend, whom I noticed at one side, but two sets of eyes are better than one.
"Let us welcome the fact," I was saying with studied eloquence, "that it is not to a life of ignoble ease that the world of today is calling us; that the strife and controversy we now find ourselves surrounded by asks of us that we—"
It was just as I spoke of strife and controversy that I spotted the assassin and my assistant did the same. He did not need my signal but had already moved in.
The assassin was blocked so neatly and led off the field so quietly, that I doubt if even the president noticed. I finished my speech with coolness and aplomb, and I had the satisfaction of knowing that the president marveled at my self-possession in the face of danger. It was only afterward that he was told that the danger had been taken care of.
But meanwhile I had to sit there and endure the interminable handing out of degrees that followed. It was all very dull—very—
Griswold's glass was empty by then so we had no compunction in shaking him awake.
"How did you see the rifleman?" I demanded irritably. "Where was he? How did he smuggle the rifle onto the field and what gave him away?"
Griswold seemed to gather his wits with difficulty. Then he said,
"What
rifle? I told you over and over that a rifle was out of the question. I expected no rifle. The would-be assassin in his letter spoke of getting me 'in his sights' and of 'getting off a clear shot.' The English language is such that this could refer to a camera as well as a rifle and there are a thousand cameras at every commencement. Anyone could carry a camera onto the field. So I kept watching the people in front of me. When someone lifted a camera in my direction—someone who had taken no pictures at all earlier—my man saw him at once and nabbed him."
Jennings said, "You mean he just intended to take a picture of you?" "Not quite," said Griswold. "If he had had the chance to push the button, a poisoned dart would have shot from the camera. It would probably have missed me, but if not, it might have poisoned me. The man was held for observation and is still in a mental hospital, I believe."