Once Departed Read online

  “… man has gone beyond the days when he could afford to be split up into different camps, each at swords point with the others. State lines, national lines, countries, flags, kings and presidents are as antiquated as armies and navies. The modern world demands unity. We either unite or we die as a race. There can be no more countries. World Government cries to be born.”

  Quint sipped his whisky. A little on the flowery side, he thought, but well stated.

  The Hungarian was answered hesitantly by the heavy-set German Jose Garcia had pointed out earlier. What was the man’s name? Albrecht Stroehlein, or something like that. Quint had never heard of him. He couldn’t have been a very prominent Nazi party member.

  Stroehlein said weakly, “But Herr Ferencsik, you seem to ignore the wave of nationalism that sweeps the world, eh? The African nations, the former Asian colonies. Each wants, most of all, independence as countries. They want no world government. They would distrust world government dominated by we whites, eh? They want no more domination by whites. No more colonialism.” The German blinked moist eyes as though apologetic for having a difference of opinion.

  The Hungarian glared at him. “Do not call me Herr Ferencsik,” he snapped. “And do not speak to me of domination of the World Government by whites. I am no believer in Herrenvolk, sir. If the One World is ever to be established it must be a world in which race is meaningless.”

  Vladimir Nuriyev, the Russian defector, who reminded Quint of no one so much as Basil Rathbone at his most sinister, said smoothly, “And what would the socio-economic system of this One World of yours be, Mr. Ferencsik? The feudalism of Saudi-Arabia, the ultra-capitalism of the United States, the pseudo-socialism of Sweden, the…”

  Ferencsik snapped, “Certainly not Russia’s so-called communism, my friend. It would have to be, could only be, an economic system under which a man was rewarded according to his contributions.”

  Somebody else who Quint didn’t make out, said, “Free Enterprise.”

  The Hungarian, really getting into stride now, spun at that and sneered open contempt. “Do you labor under the illusion that under that gobblydygook term—gobblydygook, is that the word?”

  “That’s the word,” Quint said wryly.

  “Under that term, that there is truly reward according to a man’s contributions? In the United States…” the sneer was all but a snarl now “… did Thomas Edison die a wealthy man? Did Albert Einstein? And just what do your Barbara Huttons and Doris Dukes contribute that resulted in their being awarded so greatly?”

  “Hey,” somebody in the rear protested in a slurring voice. “I thought you were a refugee from Budapest, or wherever. You still sound like a damn red to me.”

  Bart Digby had drifted up while the discussion was in swing. Quint hadn’t seen him since they had left the elevator together. Now Digby said, “What I’d like to know is how you’re going to get around to starting this World Government bit. How’re you going to get such countries as France and Switzerland, Egypt and Israel, not to talk about the United States and Russia, to give up their national governments and all submit to this One World state of yours?”

  “Hear, hear!” Quint said under his breath.

  The controversial Hungarian scientist turned to the American. “I don’t deny that’s a most important question. But I would wager that already a majority of the world’s population wishes there was such a government and an end to all this international conflict. I am not a leader of men, myself. I realize my shortcomings in that regard. However, the new world cries to be born and somewhere, somehow, the spark will be struck which will start men to seek their salvation in World Government. Perhaps a new, great leader will come to the surface to point out the way.”

  Quint said with a twist of mouth, “I’m afraid I don’t exactly trust these great leaders who come along. They’re too apt to turn out to be misleaders. We’ve had our bellyful, this last half-century of Hitlers, Stalins, Mussolinis, Maos, Titos and the rest of the great leader types.”

  Ferencsik’s eyes gleamed but he nodded his head in abrupt jerks. “Your point is well taken, my friend. However, there are not only the Hitlers and Stalins. There have also been such leaders as Jesus, the Buddha, your own Jefferson, Gandhi, Solon of Greece, and Confucius of China. Our times call for a man as far above ordinary levels as these were above the norm of their days.”

  “Superman!” the drunken voice that had earlier accused the Hungarian of being a communist, slurred from the audience that had gathered.

  Nuriyev, his hands easily in his trouser pockets, said suavely, “And supermen are hard to come by in any age, are they not?”

  “Wasn’t it Marx who said, the times produce the men?” the Hungarian snapped back at him. For some reason, Quint decided, the scientist was more irritated by the former communist agent than anyone else whose opinions differed from his own. “Very well, I will accept the term. The world needs a superman to lead it to the goal of World Government. I am of the opinion that such a superman will be found.”

  “I still think the whole thing sounds like a red plot,” somebody growled.

  “Oh, shut up,” a feminine voice rasped.

  Quint decided the second tone indicated a wife had entered the fray. He also decided that he might as well take off. The argument from this point on was undoubtedly going to disintegrate into alcohol-inspired opinions.

  He began to drift toward the bar, although his glass was still half filled. Bart Digby fell in step beside him.

  Digby said, scowling, “What’d you think, uh, Quint? Is this Hungarian still a commie?”

  Quint looked at him. “I didn’t know he ever was one. Just being a Hungarian doesn’t make you a communis. From the way he was talking, I’d say he was as anti-communist as I am. And that’s rather anti—though admittedly, not for the usual reasons.”

  The other didn’t seem to get that. “How do you mean?”

  Quint was inwardly amused. He said, “As a student, I decided to read Marx and Engels just because I was always hearing about them, but nobody seemed to have actually read what they had written. I had a hard time getting their books. Oh, you can get criticism of Marx, and criticism of criticism. But getting the original can be difficult. But I did. And I became anti-Soviet as a result. Poor old Marx must be spinning around in his grave like a whirling dervish at what’s going on in Russia, supposedly in his name.”

  Bart Digby looked at him blankly, that I-don’t-know-if-you’re-kidding-or-not look on his face. Bart Digby wasn’t the type who took to joking on a political level, Quint decided.

  Digby said, “But what are the unusual reasons you’re anti-communist?”

  “They’re not radical enough for me,” Quint told him. And then, so he wouldn’t have to top his own gag, said, “Pardon me, I see a girl I wanted to talk to.”

  Laughing inwardly as the other stared after him, Quint followed Marylyn Worth out onto the terrace.

  When she saw him she smiled brightly and said, “What’s so funny?”

  He told her, chuckling.

  Marylyn finished her glass of champagne cocktail and put it down on the stone barrier that surrounded the terrace. She said, frowning, “You’ll get a reputation as a bolshevik yourself, if you talk like that, Quentin. And that certainly wouldn’t do your career any good.”

  Quint grinned down at her. “I haven’t heard that term, bolshevik, for a long time. You’re old fashioned, Marylyn, but I’ll tell you something about the articles that I do. Already the type person who believes that anybody who doesn’t belong to the Birch Society is a communist, has branded me one. Contrarywise, the type person for whom I really write knows that not only am I not a communist stooge but could never become one. It’s an intellectual impossibility for me.”

  “Well,” she said, smiling up at him, “That’s a relief.”

  He grunted at that, and said sourly, “However, I am not prejudiced. Some of my worst friends are communists.”

  “Oh, you fool.”

>   How it happened, he didn’t later have the vaguest idea, but suddenly she was in his arms. Her breasts pressed against him, her eyes blinking her own amazement.

  “Why… Quentin…” she said inanely. The way a spinster science teacher, somewhere in her late twenties, or early thirties, would react to suddenly being caught up in a man’s arms. Far back in his consciousness he was amused by the scene.

  However, he bent and kissed her squarely and thoroughly. Her mouth, he decided, hadn’t known a great many kisses. She reacted to the stimulus of his own mouth upon hers as an unpracticed girl would react, or an older woman, past the years of romance.

  “Why… Quentin…”

  “Why, Marylyn,” he mocked her. “How long have you wanted me to kiss you?”

  “Why, what a thing to say.” She looked up at him, blinking.

  “See here,” Quint said, keeping his voice serious. “What was the name of that town in Nebraska you said you came from?”

  “Why, Border.”

  “Stop saying why,” he told her. “Don’t they have men there? Didn’t they have boys when you went to high school?”

  “I… I didn’t have much time for boys when I was going to school,” she said lowly. “And, besides, my parents were very strict.” She made no effort to extricate herself from his embrace.

  He said, “Are you telling me, pet, that at your age and with your looks and figure, I’m the first man…”

  “Quentin Jones, I said no such thing. And don’t be so condescending with me. Why I’ve had loads of beaux…”

  “Beaux!” he laughed. “Where did you get this terminology?” He smiled down at her. Gave her another peck of a kiss. “And where do you get that faint trace of accent? I thought you were two hundred and two percent Mid-Western American.”

  “You’re joshing me. Do I have an accent? My grandmother was German. She raised me. You could cut her German accent with a butterknife.” She took a breath and added, wistfully, he decided, “I’m sorry if I’m old-fashioned.”

  He said, and was sorry the minute it was past his teeth, “Next you’ll be telling me you’re a virgin.”

  She held the silence for a moment, then said, “I… I guess I’d better be getting along, Quentin. You were right, earlier. School does start in a few days and I’ve got things to do.”

  Chapter Two

  Quint Jones groaned in excruciating anguish. He picked up his coffee cup. It was empty. For a moment his face brightened. He could get up, go out into his efficiency kitchen and get himself another cup. If the pot was empty, better still, he could take all the time involved in making another. Anything to get away from…

  But then he realized he was already drowning internally in coffee. There was no escape in that direction.

  He reached for one of his pipes. A shell briar he’d bought a few months ago in Gibraltar. But then he realized that he had a pipe lit, that he’d just put into the ash tray a moment ago. His tongue was already raw from smoking. He put the shell briar down, and groaned again.

  He stared at the sheet of glowing white paper. What was the old gag about the writer who went snow blind from staring at a sheet of white paper in his typewriter? He was trying to get into the swing of his morning stint. He had to turn out three columns a week, running between five hundred and a thousand words per column. It didn’t sound like much. It was.

  For one thing, he’d got beyond the point where he could just dash off any old crud with a twist of humor in it. A gag article. When he’d started this column deal, up in Paris, on one of the American papers with a special European edition, he could get by with a few cute bits of business about the tourists, about some newly opened nightclub, or some visiting celebrity. But the thing had mushroomed, and now he was being carried in hundreds of papers throughout the world. With several hundred fishy eyed editors—he could see them clearly, just by staring up into the corner of the room—to please, each column had to be a veritable masterpiece of wit and wisdom, the so-called Quentin Jones touch, the Mort Sahl-cum-Jules Fiffer of the newspaper columnists.

  He groaned again, got up from his chair and stared dismally out of the window. His apartment was on the eighth floor of a building one block off Avenida del Gen-eralisimo Franco, about a mile south of Paza de Castilla and in a section considered on the absolute outskirts of town by most of the expatriate set. He’d chosen the place deliberately. Traffic moved fast enough on Generalisimo that he could have his little Renault down to Avenida Jose Antonio smack in the middle of the city, in ten minutes. On the other hand, drunken friends weren’t inclined to think of his apartment as an oasis for a final drink after being thrown out of the last bar, two or three o’clock in the morning. Too far to go. They dropped in on somebody nearer.

  Down below was Paco’s bodega. At this time of the morning, espresso coffee, now all the thing in Madrid as it was in Italy, was the rush item, but if there was anything Quint didn’t need, it was more coffee. Come to think of it, though, maybe the thing to do would be to go on down to Paco’s and have an anis, or possibly a cana, the Spanish word meaning short beer. He had already turned to reach for his beret, before getting hold of himself. That way lay disaster. One beer, and the morning’s work was over before it even got under way. They’d turn up some excuse to have another. There was always an excuse in Madrid to have another.

  He went back to the table where’d he’d set up his portable and groaned as he sat down before it.

  How about knocking out a few pieces on One World Government? He’d never dealt with the subject to any extent. He could use some of the things Nicolas Ferencsik had said the night before.

  He jabbed absently at a couple of the typewriter keys. In fact, he could make a column out of the argument between Ferencsik, that Russian defector and the ex-Nazi, Stroehlein. Report it more or less verbatim, and try to get in a few bits of business and possibly some snide remarks.

  Why snide? What was wrong with the idea of a world-wide government? The United Nations taken to the extreme. Surely, if man lasted long enough, and failed to blow himself up, sooner or later the human race would get around to a World Government. Probably not in Quint Jones’ lifetime… but someday.

  He jabbed at a couple of more keys, unthinking. He might make it a short series of columns on the subject.

  Whatever had happened to that guy up in Paris who had renounced his American citizenship and proclaimed himself the first Citizen of the World? What was his name? Gary something or other. For a while he got a lot of publicity. Made up a passport of his own, which nobody would recognize, of course. His instincts had possibly been right. He had decided that only a One World Government could solve the problem of peace, and had done his little best to start the ball rolling.

  Quint chuckled, sourly. The trouble was that the first Citizen of the World was also the last. Nobody else, so far as Quint had heard, bothered to follow along the path he’d blazed. Nobody else had got around to renouncing their citizenship in an individual country and becoming the second Citizen of the World.

  With his jabbing at the typewriter keys, Quint had fouled up the sheet of paper in the machine. He absently cranked it out, and reached for a clean sheet.

  Let’s see, he could make the first column about the argument at the party, and the second column about Gary, what’s-his-name. And for the third column he might do a summing up of the whole question, making it as dryly witty as he could squeeze out.

  That’s what realty sold his stuff. Mature, satirical, even cynical humor directed at the world’s current problems.

  He licked his lip absently. He needed a good, sharp title.

  The bell rang and he looked up, for a moment as though he hadn’t heard it. It rang again.

  “Oh, for crissake,” he snarled.

  Theoretically, all his friends knew he worked in the mornings. That he wasn’t to be bothered unless the emergency was extreme. He kicked the chair back and shuffled toward the door, muttering.

  It was Mike Woolman, Madrid cor
respondent for World Wide Press. Lean, dark, nervous, he habitually toted a rolled up newspaper which he banged against his leg. And he was Quint’s favorite drinking companion.

  “Working?” he said.

  “What do you think?” Quint snarled. “How can I be working when I’m standing here beating my gums with some twitch who doesn’t know enough to…”

  Mike brushed past him and into the living room. He looked at the typewriter, sitting on the table, and grunted. “Why the hell don’t you set up one of your spare bedrooms as an office?” he demanded.

  “None of your damn business. Why don’t you go away? Listen, remember that guy up in Paris a few years ago who renounced his U.S. Citizenship and said he was the first citizen of the world?”

  “Uh huh. What about him?”

  “What was his name?”

  “Gary something or other.” Mike slumped down on the couch and banged his knee fretfully with his newspaper.

  Quint said, “You’re a great help. Why don’t you beat it? I’m trying to get into my column. Listen, what do you know about the movement toward World Government?” He sat back down in the chair before his typewriter.

  “Nothing,” Mike Woolman said.

  “You’re a great help. I thought newspapermen were supposed to know everything.”

  “We do know everything. There isn’t anything to know about World Government. It’s just a couple of words. There’s no movement, no organization. It’s not even in its infancy, unless you’re thinking the United Nations is a step in that direction—which it isn’t.”

  Quint grunted. “I’ve got news for you. Now there’s a beginning. A first step. Its name is Nicolas Ferencsik.”

  “So you were at that party last night. I thought maybe you were. That’s why I came up.”

  Quint scowled at him. “What about it?”

  “Ronald Brett-Home was supposed to be there.”

  “So Marty said. He didn’t make it. Probably drunk.”