The Monkey Handlers Read online

  Stone decided that he could deal at that moment with a bomb or Sara Rosen, but not with a bomb and Sara Rosen. He got out of the car and pretended she wasn’t there, waving to Aunt May as he disappeared behind the house. He emerged a moment later carrying a garden spade in one hand and a garbage-can lid in the other, then walked swiftly to the front door. Aunt May let him in, then held up her hand as Sara attempted to follow.

  “When they get like that,” Aunt May said to Sara, “it’s best to just let them finish whatever they’ve got their mind set on. It’s some ‘man’ thing. No matter how silly it may seem to us, there’s no point in even trying to discuss it with them. They won’t listen. Not to do whatever it is would strike directly at their masculine identity and self-esteem. Just let it go.”

  Sara looked hard at Aunt May but made no further attempt to follow Stone.

  “That’s pretty perceptive stuff,” Sara said, her voice respectful. “Did you major in psych?”

  Aunt May smiled. “I lived with one of those creatures for forty-seven years. I suppose you could say so!”

  Before Aunt May could continue, Stone’s voice came from behind the door.

  “Mazie! Open the door please. Then you two get back away from it.”

  Aunt May did as he asked, shepherding Sara back with her behind the Mustang. A moment later, Michael Stone emerged, holding the spade at arm’s length in front of him with his right hand, his left holding the garbage-can lid in front of him like a shield. Most of his face was covered by a skin diver’s face mask. Lying on the end of the spade was an eight-by-ten-inch manila envelope bearing a postage-meter stamp and hand-printed address. Sara stared at it, then at Stone, then put her left hand over her mouth and pressed her right hand tightly into her midriff. Aunt May watched her with concern as her body began to shake, then bend forward from the waist. Tears streamed from Sara’s eyes. She gasped for breath, then slumped against the Mustang and started to slap the cloth roof.

  Alarmed, Aunt May was at her side in a moment. The movement caught the attention of Stone. He saw the look of concern on his aunt’s face. Quickly, he walked into the backyard, lay the spade and its contents down on the grass, dropped the garbage-can lid, and removed the face mask as he ran back to where Aunt May was now holding a gasping and protesting Sara Rosen.

  As Michael Stone reached the two women, the look of concern on his face turned to chagrin, then anger. Sara was still holding her midriff, but now her left hand was stretched out before her, pointing directly at Stone. She was trying to speak, but couldn’t. She was laughing too hard. Seeing the dark look on Stone’s face, Sara tried to control herself. It was a losing battle. She’d just about stop, then start to giggle again, convulsively.

  “What,” Stone demanded, “is so goddamn funny!”

  Sara looked at him, then turned away to laugh again.

  “Listen,” said Stone, “I’ve got what may well be a bomb over there, okay? And I suppose ‘better laugh than cry’ and all that, but this is no time for hysterics. So control yourself, all right?” Stone switched his attention to Aunt May. His voice exasperated, he asked, “How do you get the water supply to that old horse trough out back to work, Mazie?”

  Sara gulped air, then shook her head and said, “No.”

  “What?” said Stone.

  “It’s not…” Sara struggled to keep control. “It’s not … a … bomb.”

  “Look,” said Stone, “your apartment’s trashed in a professional search. Now you get a large letter addressed to you here, where no one could know you are unless we’ve been followed. So what do you think it is, the Welcome Wagon?”

  Sara Rosen composed herself. “I sent that package. It’s the photographs I took at Riegar. Remember, I told you with any luck I’d be able to show them to you? Well, thanks to Riegar and the post office, I can!”

  “You mean you—”

  “Right!” Sara interrupted. “When I was hiding in that steno area, it was easy to just use their stuff. I looked up your address in the Yellow Pages, put the pictures in between some of their stationery to keep them from rattling around in their envelope—look at the return address—”

  “I did,” said Stone. “It made me even more suspicious.”

  Sara ignored the interruption and kept on speaking. “—and counted on the universal spirit of bureaucracy to carry on. I just threw it in their Outgoing.”

  Aunt May walked to the door, saying, “Well, I think I’ll go back inside.” She opened the door, paused, and said, “Michael, please don’t forget to put back my spade and garbage-can lid.” Then she closed the door behind her. The door was no sooner closed than Sara lost control again.

  “Do … you … have … any … idea what you I … looked like in that m … mask holding that shovel out in fr … front of you and … and … with that garbage-can lid!”

  “Shit,” said Michael Stone.

  * * *

  Helmar Metz ushered out the door of Kramer’s office the last of the contingent of men he had assigned to assist Dr. Letzger, then glanced at his watch as he crossed the room to resume his seat behind the desk. The portable secure phone’s transmit-mode switch was still in the Encrypt position. He switched it to Clear. Then, consulting a small notebook he retrieved from his inside jacket pocket, Metz dialed direct to the home of Walter Hoess. A male servant answered in a clipped East Prussian-accented German that annoyed Metz, whose family name was derived from the city his ancestors had helped take from France in 1870. As a result of World War II, Metz was once again in France and East Prussia now in Poland. Where did this flunky get off trying to high-hat people with that accent?

  Metz’s reverie was interrupted by Walter Hoess. “Yes, Metz?”

  “Would it be convenient for you to take this call from your library and use the machine, sir?”

  “I am in the library. Switching modes.” There was a pause, then Hoess’s voice took on a metallic note: “What news?”

  “It’s worse than I had imagined, sir. Security utterly lax when one considers the consequences of discovery. In my entire conversation with Kramer, he concentrated upon what the woman who penetrated may have seen and photographed, yet it never occurred to him that his own guard, the one who captured the woman and is nothing more than an outside contract employee, saw everything she did! My men with Letzger tell me that when the experiments are going on, all doors are locked and no unauthorized personnel could ever view any actual activities, but—”

  Hoess cut him off. “You are taking the necessary measures to correct the situation?”

  “Yes, sir. The obvious is being done. Guards no longer have access to any sensitive areas, either in experimentation or production. I am following the penetration business closely. Have I your permission to make Kramer aware of the situation with your son?”

  Hoess’s voice took on a tone of anxiety. “No! I was to tell no one, remember? Why? Are you having trouble with Kramer?”

  “No, no. He is loyal. But, of course, the sudden crash program for the new product and the danger involved I am sure have him curious. He is certainly nervous. I just thought perhaps if he understood the true stakes—”

  “No, and … you’re sure this device is secure?”

  “I’ve bet my life on it a number of times.”

  “You’re betting my son’s life on it now.”

  “We have to be able to communicate, sir. There are always risks. In this instance, I believe the risk is minimal.”

  There was a long pause, then Hoess said, “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything new about ‘The Man.’”

  “Who has your son? No. Only what I told you before I left. ‘Al Rajul’ translates from Arabic as ‘The Man.’ All my intelligence-community sources tell me it’s part of a longer descriptive name, such as ‘the man faithful to the prophet,’ or something or other. The point is, it’s not a proper name, like Mohammad Abbas. No one knows his true name. There are no photographs of him. Nothing. All that is known is that he is more clever than C
arlos and more deadly than Abu Nidal. I got that from the French. They think the Israelis may know a bit more, but not much. Whatever the Israelis know is closely held. They want to kill him and don’t want some idealistic Americans messing it up trying to capture him for a trial.”

  “I don’t suppose,” said Hoess, “that you have any Israeli sources?”

  “My father was Gauleiter of Metz after we took back Alsace-Lorraine.”

  “Yes. Well, carry on. The sooner I can meet the demands of this ‘Rajul,’ the sooner I get back my son.”

  “You have heard further?”

  “Just another videotape. He appears well.”

  “When this is over, sir, I shall take pleasure in killing the swine personally.”

  Hoess sighed in resignation. “If the Jews can’t kill him, it isn’t likely you will.”

  “He’s not dealing with the Jews. He’s dealing with us. All I need is the slightest slip—”

  “And all I need is my son, alive and unharmed. You will do nothing to jeopardize that. Nothing! Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hoess’s voice was controlled again. “Very well. Keep me informed.”

  * * *

  Michael Stone stood before the closet in his bedroom and eyed his wardrobe. As a result of his years in the navy, he was long on uniforms and short on civilian clothes. He owned exactly two suits. One of them he had on, a brown sharkskin he had worn to court that morning. He retrieved the other from the closet. It was a dark blue wool, a uniform in its own right, what lawyers call their ‘Court of Appeals suit.’ He slipped it into a garment bag, then added four shirts, two white and two blue, and some conservative ties. That left a gray Harris tweed sport coat and two pair of slacks, both gray, one a light shade and the other dark. He packed the light ones, figuring he could always wear the trousers from the blue suit with the sport coat. Stone wasn’t sure just how long he’d be at the hotel, but there wasn’t any point in dragging over everything he owned.

  Stone took a supply of socks and briefs, then noted with a barely audible grunt that he was short of undershirts. He looked through some of his athletic clothes, found a couple of white navy T-shirts that had some service emblems on them, and packed them on the theory that they’d do double duty; he could wear them to work out or, in a pinch, as underwear—no one could see the emblems through a blue dress shirt, anyway.

  As Michael Stone came down the stairs, his aunt May was at the bottom of them, calling up to him. “Michael, we’re having something to eat.” Stone smiled at her. “You’re saving my life, Mazie. What’ve you got?”

  Aunt May turned and led the way into the kitchen, saying, “Tuna-salad sandwiches, potato salad, and lettuce and tomato. Fruit for dessert.”

  As promised, it was all laid out on the kitchen table. So were eight Polaroid color photographs. Sara Rosen, in her new jeans, was leaning over them. Her face was triumphant. “I got them! Ziegler chairs, Blaylock press, Collison cannulas, Noble-Collip drum, even a Horsley-Clarke stereo-taxic device. I’ll wait till you’ve finished eating before I tell you what they’re used for.”

  Stone took a large portion of potato salad and offered some to Sara Rosen. She wrinkled up her nose at it, reached for the lettuce and tomatoes, and said, “Sandwiches and potato salad? Keep that up and you won’t fit in that little car of yours.”

  The reference to his brutish Mustang as a ‘little car’ did not sit well with Michael Stone. His displeasure took the form of a lecture on the virtues of potato salad. “The trouble with you people who subsist on a diet of rabbit food is that you tend to be moody.” Stone waved his salad fork up and down in the air describing an invisible graph with large swings. “Your blood sugar goes up and down, up and down, and so does your strength and your mood. This stuff,” he said, indicating the potato salad, “is a starch—a complex carbohydrate. It breaks down slowly, over a period of time, and you keep a level blood-sugar rate. That gives you continuing stamina and a calm, level personality.”

  “Hah!” exclaimed Aunt May. “Your uncle Harry loved my potato salad, and he had a temper like I’ve seen in someone else around here!”

  “Mazie,” said Stone, “how can you say that about Sara? You’ve hardly met her.”

  “You dreadful creature,” said Aunt May as she cleared away Stone’s dishes.

  Sara Rosen thought it a good time to change the subject. “Okay,” she said, indicating the photographs, “let’s look at the evidence.” She picked up the first print. “Blaylock press. Know what it’s used for?”

  Stone looked at the device shown in the photograph. It looked like an old-fashioned printing press. The top and bottom plates, which looked as if they were made of heavy steel, had ridges running the length of their opposing surfaces. “Haven’t any idea,” said Stone.

  Sara pointed to what looked like an automobile spring compressible by tightening four nuts. “That spring can force those ridged plates together with a pressure of five thousand pounds per square inch. They use it to crush the muscles in an animal’s legs without crushing the bone. Nice, huh?”

  Stone concealed his discomfort with a question. “Why is it called a Blaylock press?”

  “All these things are named after the bastards who invented them. They insist upon it. They’re proud of the efficiency of their torture devices. They write them up in the medical journals!” Sara glanced at Aunt May. “Excuse the language please, ma’am.”

  Aunt May was bent over from putting the last of the dishes into the dishwasher. She straightened up, then said, “Judging from your description of what they do with those awful things, I’d say your choice of words was appropriate.” So saying, Aunt May pushed herself through the swinging door to the hall, leaving Stone and Sara alone in the kitchen.

  Sara handed Stone another photograph. In it was what appeared to be a small, completely enclosed Ferris wheel. “Noble-Collip Drum,” said Sara. “Works like a big exercise wheel. You know, like they have in squirrel cages. Only all over the surface of the raceway are knobs and bumps. They put an animal in there—anything from a dog to an ape, say—and turn the damn thing on. The drum revolves and the poor thing inside it has to run at whatever speed the operator sets it. The only thing is, it’s hard to do because the projections keep banging into the victim. They try to jump over them at first, but after a while they’re exhausted and the machine does its work—produces traumatic shock without hemorrhage.”

  Stone looked grim. “What’s the excuse for a thing like that?”

  “There isn’t any.”

  “Yeah. But what do they say it’s for?”

  “I told you. Produces traumatic shock without hemorrhage—so they can ‘study’ it. They’ve been ‘studying’ it since 1942.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the government and foundations keep giving them grants to do it. Good as that thing is at producing trauma, it’s even better at producing money!”

  Sara handed Stone another Polaroid print. “Ziegler Chair. You can fasten a monkey or an ape into that steel seat so that it absolutely can’t move any part of its body—but large parts of the body are still exposed for you to do anything you want to them, no matter how much pain they feel or how much they scream and try to escape. They’re completely helpless. Except maybe for the head. They can wriggle their heads a little. So”—Sara produced another photograph and handed it to Stone—“we have the Horsley-Clarke stereo-taxic device.”

  Stone examined the collection of connected rods adjustable by thumbscrews. Their chromium finish shone brightly, and the device gave the impression of being a precision instrument.

  “I can’t figure it out,” said Stone.

  “Say you’ve got an ape, or a monkey—or even a cat, like my Romeo,” Sara said, her eyes misting and her breath starting to be irregular. Michael Stone caught the signal of Sara’s emotion and quickly moved to get her mind off her lost cat. “What,” he asked, “is the difference between an ape and a monkey?”

  Sa
ra snapped out of it. “Not to bore you with a lot of biology, monkeys have tails and apes don’t. Gibbons are little things, so people call them monkeys. But they have no tails, so they’re apes. People are always calling chimps monkeys. But they have no tails, either, so they’re apes. You’re an ape, unless you’ve got something in your pants I don’t know about.”

  Stone smiled. “Want to check?”

  “No, thank you,” Sara replied. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “So, how does this thing work?” Stone asked, handing the photograph back to Sara.

  Sara looked straight into Stone’s eyes and spoke slowly, for effect. “First comes blinding, ‘enucleation,’ they call it. Removal of the eyeballs. Then two steel rods attached to a steel frame are stuck into the empty sockets. Two more are inserted into the mouth and attached to the same frame. The whole head is then clamped into the rigid frame, eye sockets, mouth, and skull all held tightly in the grip of those finely adjusted steel rods. Any movement is impossible.”

  “But what is it for?” asked Stone, the revulsion clear in his voice.

  “Well,” said Sara, “for one thing, for these.” She produced another photograph. Stone studied it. The objects depicted in it were small and round in appearance. Stone shook his head.

  “I know,” said Sara, “it isn’t very clear. They’re Collison cannulas. With the head clamped in the stereo-taxic device, they put a hole in the skull, insert the cannula, and then they can repeatedly pass anything they want through it directly into the brain—electric stimulation, hypodermic needles, stuff like that.”

  “The other three photos?” Stone inquired.

  “Just a couple of other views of the same things.”

  Michael Stone stared out the kitchen window for several moments, digesting what Sara Rosen had told him. Finally, he said, “Those are very sick people. Very sick.”

  “And all to no good purpose!” Sara exclaimed. “It’s not just that animal experimentation doesn’t achieve anything for the benefit of man; it’s actually counterproductive! In the first place, after a new product has been tested out on animals, they have to test it on humans before it can be used. That’s the law. Human testing is required for FDA approval. And the animal testing is useless. I know the FDA requires that, too, before human testing, but it’s stupid, unscientific. There are too many fundamental differences between humans and other animals. The date gathered are just not validly transferable from animals to humans. Or vice versa, for that matter. Ask a vet. It’s stupid. Now do you see why I want to show those pictures at a press conference?”