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The Problem Solver
and the Defector




The wail of the siren died away as the police car pulled onto the shoulder of the superhighway and slammed to a stop. Hodge, the C.I.A. man, slid out of the car and held open the door.

Just ahead, the traffic police, outlined by the late afternoon sun, waved on the interminable stream of motorists. By the roadside was a ripped guard rail where twin streaks through the dirt and grass swerved off toward the granite face of a steep bank. Near the bank an ambulance was parked, and men were working purposefully at the wreck of a smashed automobile.

Hodge glanced around as his companion, a tall well-built man with intent gray eyes, followed him out of the police car. Hodge’s glance was worried, since on this man, Richard Verner, rested his hopes of retrieving a disastrous day. Verner was a heuristician—his business was to take the facts of the most baffling problem, put them together, and find the only possible solution. And Hodge, like the men working around the wrecked car, was thoroughly baffled.

“Several hours ago,” Hodge had explained to Verner, “an official of an East European embassy, a man I’d met at a New Year’s party, called me from a roadside phone booth. He said he wanted political asylum, and to prove his earnestness he was bringing along a key diagram of ‘Shower,’ a foreign missile we’re anxious to learn about. He said he had hidden this vital piece of paper in his car.

“While he was talking to us on the phone, he got nervous about a black sedan he saw cruising past, said something about a ‘death squad,’ hung up, and left the booth. He’d already described his own car, and we’d suggested the best road, so we thought we could get to him. Incidentally, we’d also notified the State Police, the State Department, and the F.B.I. But before any of us could reach him, he was run off the road and killed.”

Verner shook his head. “And the vital diagram?”

“That’s the problem. On the phone he’d said, ‘I am a good amateur mechanic. I have this paper well hidden.’ We’re sure no one else had time to search that car for it. But we can’t find the piece of paper. The worst of it is, we’ve learned that high officials of the man’s embassy are burning up the roads to get here. We can’t prove he’d already changed sides. They’ll impound his property—they have the legal right to do it. So we’ve simply got to find that piece of paper.”

The two men watched the mechanics work feverishly on the wrecked car. Sections of trim were unscrewed, hollow knobs and the underside of chrome strips were examined, and the fabric was carefully cut away. Large canvas sheets had been staked down, and parts of the car were spread over the sheets in orderly rows.

But the hiding place still eluded them.

Verner glanced at the canvas sheets and thoughtfully considered the spread-out contents of the trunk compartment—jack, tire iron, suitcase, brief case, several paperback novels, a worn car-repair manual, a red two-gallon gas can, and a large gray-enameled metal chest open to show shiny tools of all kinds.

“What are those things?” Verner asked.

Hodge shrugged. “They’ve all been searched. The suitcase lining has been pulled out, the handle slit, the clothes examined. The books have all been carefully leafed through and the covers cut open. The tool kit has been checked for a false bottom or double layers. The tool handles have been drilled through, to be sure there’s no hollow where a tightly rolled piece of paper could have been hidden. We didn’t find anything—not a sign or trace of the blasted thing.”

“And the man’s body?”

“The doctors say the paper isn’t there, either.”

Verner nodded, and watched the mechanics, who had the rear end of the car hoisted up and were now draining the gas tank. Soon they had the tank out and cut open. One mechanic crawled under the car to look at the differential. Around the car there was unceasing activity—but the diagram remained hidden.

Hodge shook his head, and glanced uneasily at his watch. The minutes were slipping past quickly—too quickly.

Soon the rear end of the car was up on blocks, while at the front the engine was being lifted out.

Hodge said exasperatedly, “We’ve already looked in every conceivable hiding place. Now we’re looking in places that are inconceivable.”

Verner nodded sympathetically.

Hodge said, “Aren’t you going to carry out an investigation?”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

Hodge frowned, but said nothing.

The minutes ticked steadily by.

At last the car was spread out like a child’s mechanical toy, and the men who’d been working at it stood around helplessly.

Verner suddenly seemed to relax. “Hodge, what’s harder than finding a needle in a haystack?”

Hodge looked blank. “What’s that?”

“It’s even harder,” said Verner, “to find a particular piece of hay hidden in a haystack.”

Hodge said shortly, “Riddles won’t help us.” He looked ready to say more, but just then a mechanic walked over, frowning.

“That paper isn’t there—not a sign of it,” the mechanic reported.

“It’s got to be there,” Hodge exclaimed.

“It isn’t. You can reduce that car to powder and you won’t find any piece of paper.”

Hodge stood still for a long moment, then drew a deep breath and glanced at Verner. “Your job is to solve problems. All right, let’s see you solve this one.”

Without hesitation Verner walked past the car to the canvas sheets where the contents of the trunk compartment were spread out. He picked up the worn, grease-smeared repair manual. He leafed past pages of text, past photographs and diagrams of engines, transmissions, power-steering units, the connections of vacuum lines in power brakes, and then he paused to study a worn-looking diagram.

He handed the book to the mechanic. “What part of a car is this?”

The mechanic frowned at the grease-smeared page, turned the book around, looked at it closely, then shook his head. “No part I ever saw before.”

Verner handed the book to Hodge, who examined it in astonishment, then pressed back the pages. “Evidently he cut out the original page, trimmed the diagram to fit the size of the manual, glued it in so close to the binding that it’s hard to see the glued edge, then made it look like one more worn, grease-smeared page.”

Hodge carefully worked the diagram out and slipped it into an inside pocket. He motioned the mechanics to look busy, and glanced at Verner.

“How did you know?”

“Once we were sure it wasn’t in the car itself, I asked myself: Where would a diagram be least noticeable? And the answer is: Obviously among other diagrams.”

Hodge nodded slowly. “And the only place where there were other diagrams was in the car-repair manual. We must have looked right at it, but we were so sure it was just another car diagram that we didn’t recognize it.”

The two men turned as, from the road, they heard a screech of brakes, and a burly well-dressed man, his face pale with mingled fear and anger, loudly claimed diplomatic immunity and thrust past the police.

Hodge smiled and said quietly, “His problem is a little harder than finding a particular piece of hay hidden in a haystack.”

Verner watched the East European diplomat and his staff shove their way toward the wrecked car.

“Yes,” said Verner. “It’s even more difficult to hunt through a haystack for something that isn’t there.”









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