Nokkel’s expression wavered through various shades of doubt and hope, but, as Horsip confidently approached the conclusion, Nokkel heaved a great sigh of relief.
“That’s true,” he said. “I’ve been so close to the details I’ve missed those points.” His brow furrowed. “But now—on—this business with this ‘cell’—what do we—”
“Clean them out,” said Horsip firmly. “Arrest them, and put them to the question.”
“But we’ll lose the only link to their superior!”
“True, but every moment we leave them where they are, they do damage. And we can’t move them without warning them, which would be worse. So, if we wait for them to give some lead to their superior, we may have a considerable wait, and the damage they do will offset what gain we make by capturing their superior, if we capture him.”
“Truth,” said Nokkel. He was silent a moment, his expression distracted and his lips working. Then he nodded again, and beamed. “Truth,” he said briskly. “I will take them in at once.”
He came to his feet, saluted, and went out. Horsip, watching him leave, saw one of his men study Nokkel alertly, then pick up a telephone. Horsip glanced over his staff. No less than three were speaking into phones while watching Nokkel.
Horsip noted their names on a slip of paper.
Moffis watched Nokkel go out.
“I just wonder if we have the man for this job.”
“He seemed all right when we were setting up the job.”
“I’m talking about now.”
“Who would you suggest?”
After a lengthy silence, Moffis nodded. “That’s so. At least Nokkel does do the job somehow.” Moffis picked up a slim report, and tossed it over to Horsip.
“Someone is doing his job right.”
Horsip glanced at the title of the report: “The Planetary Mob, and Its Control,” by John Towers. Scowling, Horsip opened up the report, to read of a planet populated by huge numbers of humanoids that could digest practically everything that grew on the planet, and hence created population problems such as he, Horsip, had never conceived. Towers had gotten the Centran expedition on the planet out of a very tight spot, and yet the report was straightforward and free of poses of superiority.
Moffis said, “Just as I give up hope, another report from Towers comes in.”
“Well, let’s hope Nokkel cleans out that ‘cell.’ Maybe then things will come back to normal—whatever that may be.”
* * *
Several hours later, Nokkel came in, to tell Horsip the members of the “cell” had been caught, along with enough evidence to shoot the lot. Better yet, one of them had folded up under questioning, and revealed the name of their highly placed superior, who had also been seized.
“So, sir,” said Nokkel, his face glowing, “this foreign influence is wiped out, and everything is now in good order.”
“That’s good,” said Horsip. “Now, Nokkel, there is just one thing that bothers me. This . . . ah . . . informant who uncovered the ‘cell’ . . . ?”
“Yes, sir. He will be rewarded, sir. We will take him into our organization, and give him staff rank.”
“H’m . . . yes, but—how did he uncover this ‘cell’?”
“By informing us, sir. He came right to us with the information. That broke the whole thing.”
“Yes, but how did he find out about it?”
“He . . . ah . . .” Nokkel looked blank. “Let’s see, now. He . . . h’m . . . it seems to me that what happened was that he came to us without anything specific, he just was worried and . . . these people acted suspicious to him, and he . . . well, he thought it was his patriotic duty, even though they were colleagues of his, and . . . well . . . it turned out he was right.”
“I see,” said Horsip, with no great air of conviction.
“Often these things depend on intuition,” said Nokkel, looking wise. “It isn’t the kind of thing you can lay your hand on, but there’s just something that your . . . ah . . . clinical sense,” he tapped his head and smiled expansively—”fastens on and says to you, ‘Nokkel, my boy, there’s something about this fellow that isn’t right.’ And then there’s nothing to do but keep an eye on him, and often as not it’s the dull unspectacular routine that gets him in the end.”
Moffis cleared his throat coldly.
Horsip squinted at Nokkel, who was looking yet more expansive, and seemed about to let loose a new flood of wisdom. Gently, Horsip said, “Well, now, Nokkel, what does your intuition tell you about someone who comes to you and gives you a hint to watch someone else, and manages to get away without giving you any information at all as to how he knows what he knows?”
Nokkel, leaning back and twirling a little chain with some kind of watch charm that wound up on his finger, suddenly straightened up and looked awake. A hint of intelligence showed in his eyes.
“If you look at it that way . . .” He frowned, then shoved his chair back. “I’ll check on it, sir.” He saluted, and went out in a hurry.
Horsip, looking out over his staff, saw three of his men pick up their phones as Nokkel went out.
Moffis said, “Nokkel’s clinical sense must have got chloroformed sometime.”
“Either that,” said Horsip, “or it’s getting so many signals it can’t handle them all. Don’t look too interested, but in the Correlation Section there are two people on the phone, and in the Abstracting Section there’s another.”
“I see them,” murmured Moffis. “That bird in Abstracting was looking at Nokkel’s back as he went by.”
“It doesn’t seem to make much sense,” said Horsip, “but the same three did the same thing the last time Nokkel went out.”
Moffis scowled. “It must mean something.”
“Someone,” said Horsip, “must want to know as soon as Nokkel is on his way back to his office.”
“But why three of them?”
“I have an idea,” said Horsip, “but it’s going to have to wait until Nokkel takes care of this informant of his.”
* * *
It didn’t take long for that to happen.
Nokkel, looking haunted, settled into the chair opposite Horsip.
“You were right, sir. I sprang a surprise on him, told him I’d known all along, and he’d better come absolutely clean if he expected to get his sentence lightened. The shock jarred everything right out of him. He was working for MI-5.”
Horsip felt queasy. ” ‘MI-5.’ Let’s see, that’s—”
Nokkel said exasperatedly, “There’s this island down there on Earth, it’s just a little place, but we’ve got so much information on it no one actually knows anything about it. . . . Anyway, MI-5 operates out of there.”
Moffis frowned. “If you’ve got so much information, how is it you don’t know anything about it?”
“Because, sir, we can’t digest it all. For one thing, we don’t know what’s fact and what’s imagination. If we only had a tenth of the information, we’d be better off.” He thought a moment. “A hundredth would be better yet. We could handle that.”
Horsip said, “At least you’ve discovered that this fellow who gave you the information about that ‘cell’ was an agent for MI-5? . . . That’s settled, at least?”
Nokkel looked jarred. “Did I say that? No, that one was the agent for the CIA.”
Moffis swore.
Horsip said, “I understood you to say you questioned him, and he was an agent for MI-5,”
“Yes, sir . . . ah . . . I see what happened. There are so many of them, it’s hard to keep track. He—the CIA agent—was the one that told me about the ‘cell.’ I got at him through this other fellow on our staff that I was suspicious of. He was working for MI-5.”
Horsip squinted, started to ask a question, and thought better of it.
“Anyway,” he said, “you got both of them?”
Nokkel said doggedly, “There were three of them by the time we got it all taken care of.”
Moffis massaged his temples.
“At any rate,” said Horsip, “they’re all taken care of now?”
“It’s like a weed with a taproot,” said Nokkel. “I got the part I could get a grip on. But it looks to me like maybe it broke off further down.”
“Just get all you can,” said Horsip stubbornly. He had the impression that he was walking forward fast and nevertheless going slowly backward. “Now, while you’re in here, Nokkel, is it possible that something could be taking place behind your back—something that would have to end when you leave—so someone would want to be warned when you leave?”
Nokkel said uneasily, “Well . . . there are only three possibilities. But I’m sure each of them is well guarded against.” He glanced from Horsip to Moffis. “Why, what . . .”