Checkpoint Charlie

He said, “Iwan Stenback publishes a weekly rag called Sydney Exposed. Part soft-core porn, part yellow gossip and cheap scandal, part health food recipes and diagrams for Yoga positions, part radical-left editorializing. Until recently it didn’t have much of a circulation — mostly just freaks. Very youth-oriented. Always just skirting the libel and obscenity laws. Then a couple of months ago Stenback hired a hot new reporter by the name of Myra Hilley. Since then the circulation’s shot up like a Titan missile because the rag a

Ross said, “It’s happened before, of course. In Greece that time, and —”

I cut him off. “Have they made good on the threat?”

Jaeger said in his dry way, “So far they’ve named seven of our people.”

“Accurately?”

“Yes.”

I decided I liked him. He didn’t make apologies; he didn’t waffle. He looked like a cowboy and talked with a prairie twang but I suspected there was nothing wrong with his brain.

I said, “Where’s they get the names?”

“We think one or two of our people may have been indiscreet. They aren’t all paragons, the people we buy information from. And in a country like this they’re not scared into secrecy — they don’t need to worry about jackboots in the hall at midnight, do they. In some ways it’s harder to run a secure intelligence network in a free country that it is in a dictatorship.”

“You’ve made efforts to plug the leaks?”

“Yes, sure. I think I know how it may have happened. I’m told Myra Hilley’s attractive — seductive as hell.”

“You’ve never seen her?”

“No. Not many people have, evidently. I’m sure she goes under a variety of cover identities. After all, if her face were known people wouldn’t talk to her.”

“Is ‘Myra Hilley’ a pen name?”

“No.” Jaeger deferred to Ross.

“Born in Australia but schooled in England and Switzerland .” Ross was reading from his notebook. “Myra Elizabeth Hilley’s her real name. She’s twenty-seven. The Berne file suggests she may have had contact with members of the Baader-Meinhof gang. In any case she returned to Australia a year ago with a head full of radical revolutionary anti-capitalist theory.”

Jaeger said, “Typical immature anti-establishment anti-American notions. Australia already has a socialist government but that doesn’t seem to satisfy these idiots. They want blood. Preferably blue. It doesn’t seem to penetrate their thick heads that this capitalist free enterprise system they hate so much has graduated more people out of poverty than any other system in history.”

“Still,” I said, wanting to get him off his political stump, “for an idiot she seems to have done a capable professional espionage job against us.”

“Every week,” Ross said, “the name of another of our agents appears in Sydney Exposed. They promise to keep doing it until they’ve named every last American spy in Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea.”

“Can they make good on the threat?”

Jaeger smiled. “We don’t know. But they’ve done it so far.”

Ross said, “We’re working with the Australians on this — they don’t like it any better than we do. It embarrasses them as much as it does us. After all, the Australian government knows we’re here. But they can’t be seen to infringe the freedom of the press, and obviously Washington can’t be seen to bully the press of an independent nation. It’s got to be handled in such a way that it doesn’t look like official repression. That’s why you’re here, Charlie. To think of something clever.”

“At least Myerson hasn’t lost faith in my ability to work miracles,” I remarked. I brooded at Ross, then at Jaeger. They seemed to be waiting for me to provide an instantaneous solution to their difficulty. “My problem,” I confessed, “is a deep-down fanaticism in behalf of absolute freedom of the press. Wherever censorship begins, that’s where tyra

“I agree,” said Jaeger, “but the Australian press tends to be a bit lurid anyway, and this particular rag goes far beyond the limits of responsible journalism.”

That was putting it diplomatically. The real issue was the fact that Sydney Exposed was blowing the covers off our agents. When you expose an agent you render him inoperable. The newspaper was systematically closing down our network. Given the premise that the survival of nations depends on the accuracy of their intelligence, we had no choice but to stop publication of these revelations. Yet I could not bring myself to think in terms of strong-arm methods. There has to be a difference between the good guys and the bad guys.

I said, “Has anyone tried to reason with them?”

Jaeger said, “I had a talk with Stenback. He listened politely and laughed in my face.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Sort of a guru type. Brown scraggly beard shot with grey. Wears his hair in a ponytail. Ross has the official details.”

Ross turned a page in his notebook. “Thirty-four years old. Born in Sweden. Was a lieutenant in the Swedish army — a crack shot, by the way. Immigrated here five years ago. Naturalized Australian citizen. Background reports indicate he used to hang out with American Vietnam draft-dodgers in Sweden. Earlier, his father was a quisling in Norway during the War, which may explain why Stenback grew up with a chip on his shoulder. Before he came down here he worked a while as a leg man on a few of the cheap London tabloids, publishing cheap filthy i

Ross closed the notebook. “Myerson would prefer it if you arranged a fatal accident for them, Charlie.”

“I don’t much care what he prefers. I don’t kill people, Ross, it’s not my style. Any fool can kill people.”

“Maybe this time you haven’t got a choice. How else can you stop them publishing this stuff?”

*   *   *

WE SAT in a four-door Humber across the street from the shopfront office of Sydney Exposed. It was a shabby old part of the city — cheap flats, a boarded-up cinema, rubbish in the gutters. In the newspaper’s windows the lights burned late — tomorrow was this week’s publication day and Stenback was in there with his staff composing the late pages. “She never comes to the office personally?”

“Apparently not,” Ross said. “We’ve had it staked out for ten days. If she’s set foot in the place we’re not aware of it. Of course we’re not sure what she looks like. The last available photograph is from nine years ago when she was eighteen. Blonde hair, gorgeous face and figure — the beach beauty type. You know these athletic Australian girls. But who knows. Maybe she’s gained weight, changed her hair, whatever. She could be any one of a dozen women who’ve wandered in and out of there.”

I said, “Assuming she doesn’t report in person to the office, it follows she must send her copy in. Not by the post; I think she’d be too paranoid to entrust her copy to government mails. Her articles would be hand delivered.”

“Ross began to smile. “Then —”

“It’ll take man-hours and leg work but let’s try to put surveillance on anyone who brings an envelope into this office.”

*   *   *

THROUGH THE wraparound corner windows the sky was cheerful but Jaeger was glum. “Our security’s all right — I’m pretty sure we’ve plugged all possible leaks. But it’s a case of locking the barn door after the horse thieves have made their getaway. Probably they’ve got all the names already — they’re publishing one or two a week, holding back to keep the circulation up. It’s like a week-to-week cliffhanger serial. Every week the public clamor grows — they’re starting to call for blood in Adelaide and Melbourne. Our blood. If it keeps up we’ll all find ourselves deported. It’ll be done with man-to-man shrugs and smiles and abject apologies but they’ll do it all the same — they’ll have no option if the public pressure grows bad enough. You’ll have to move fast, Charlie.”