Read Online Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 by Q Clearance (v2.0) - Free Book Online Page B

an American but one who had spent his
entire life in an institution, and others accepted him as a person recently
arrived from Pluto), sufficiently reliable ideologically to keep the Communist
faith indefinitely anywhere in the world (which turned out to be true
generally, though with modifications that would have given Lenin apoplexy) and
sufficiently skilled in the arcana of spycraft (which turned out to be a matter
of opinion: He thought he was doing a bang-up job, but others in the trade were
less appreciative), they revealed to Pinsky his destiny: The Kremlin assumed
that as soon as the war in Europe ended, the United States and the Soviet Union
would fall to squabbling. And since the squabble had all the ingredients of a
conflict long-lived, bellicose and perhaps apocalyptic, it was important for
the Soviet Union to have moles working underground in America, establishing
themselves as Americans, perhaps acquiring bits and pieces of intelligence
data, perhaps an agent here and there, perhaps just standing by until such time
as they would be called upon to serve the homeland. Pinsky would go to America as one of the hundreds of thousands of
young men returning from the European Theater of Operations, would assume an
identity, find work and settle down. He would be an American. He would never
again see his family and friends, for he would never again return to the Soviet
Union unless he was apprehended by the American authorities and uncovered
before he could kill himself, in which case, even if the Americans did send him
home, his homecoming wouldn't be joyous since he would be shot as soon as he
disembarked.
                   He was infiltrated aboard a hospital ship as a
"John Doe," a soldier with amnesia resulting from shellshock. After
an uneventful crossing, during which he stole several hundred dollars from non
compos fellow patients, he jumped ship in what he assumed was New York but was
in fact Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the ship had stopped to unload Canadian
wounded.
                   Like a Canada goose with the coming of fall,
Pinsky moved gradually southward. Everywhere he stopped, be it for a few days
or a few weeks, the doors that opened quickest for him had to do with food. In Philadelphia , he worked as a busboy at Bookbinder's. In Annapolis , he was introduced to—and initially
terrified by—softshell crabs, which he had never heard of and which looked to
him like giant spiders.
                   By the time Pinsky's migration landed him in
the District
of Columbia , he was far more versed in the techniques of selecting, preparing and
serving food than ninety-eight percent of the American people. He determined to
construct a career in the general field of victuals.
                   He had also settled, at last, on a credible
but vague background that he would keep ready for the day when he would have to
explain himself. That day might never come; so far, he had found Americans to
be astonishingly credulous. In the Soviet Union, there were papers to attest to
everything—birth, education, employment, armed service, address, marital
status, party affiliation—and they were demanded by every petty official one
encountered. In America , it seemed, no one ever challenged anything anyone said about himself.
                   He molded, fired and glazed into permanence a
biographical core that began with birth in a Nebraska farm town (no one outside Nebraska knew what a Nebraska accent sounded like, so he was safe). His parents
had both died in the terrible winter of 1939.
                   The young Foster Pym had moved around the Midwest , living with this cousin and that
great-aunt, spending a term or two at the public high school wherever he was.
He had tried to enlist in the Army on December 8, 1941 , but was turned down because of ''bad
lungs."
                   Afflicted by conscience at not being able to
serve his country,