EDDIE
BY FRANK RILEY
It's no surprise that the top brass was
in a complete swivet; Eddie knew answers to
questions that weren't even asked. What's
more, nothing was a secret with him around!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Philip Duncan, the St. Louis attorney and former FBI agent, who wrotethe definitive "History of Espionage", observes that in all the recordsdealing with spies and counterspies there is no more significant casethan that of Dr. John O'Hara Smith, an electronics research engineer.Duncan maintains that Dr. Smith, whose rather quixotic name is realand not assumed, contributed more to the advancement of espionage andcounter-espionage methods than any one person in history.
For a period of more than a year, the case of Dr. John O'Hara Smithwas known to only a few security and defense officials. The firstpublic reference to it came on November 22, 1956, when an assistantto Secretary of Defense Wilson obliquely commented on it in testimonybefore the House Military Affairs Committee. Subsequently, more detailswere leaked to several Washington correspondents, and then vigorouslydenied. A brief account of the matter appeared on an inside page of theNew York Times, but aroused no general interest.
As a matter of fact, so little is known about the entire case thatseveral of the people who were in on its early phases are still notsure whether Dr. John O'Hara Smith is alive or dead, or whether he wasa spy or counterspy.
However, on the basis of information now declassified, plus two highlytechnical papers presented to the Institute of Research Engineers,anyone sufficiently interested can reconstruct most of the case.
It began at approximately 7:15 P.M., August 11, 1955, when Dr. JohnO'Hara Smith returned with a bag of groceries to his house trailer inthe Mira Mar Trailer Park, overlooking a long blue reach of the PacificOcean, some twelve miles south of Los Angeles. He put the groceries onthe drainboard beside his spotless two-burner butane stove, carefullyflicked away a speck of dust and then stepped eagerly toward the rearof his trailer, where an intricate assembly of tubes and wires occupiedwhat normally would have been the dining area.
Dr. Smith flipped on a switch, and then received what he later called,in his precise, pedantic way, a split-second premonition of danger.
The Go-NoGo panel light flashed and went out; the transistor lookedgrey instead of red; the wires to the binary-coded digitizer werecrossed; the extra module in the basic assembly had not been there thatmorning....
Dr. Smith methodically catalogued these details, and he steppedbackward, just a breath of a moment before the low hum sharpened to awhine. He tripped, and in falling his left shoulder knocked open thedoor to the small toilet closet. Instinctively, he writhed the upperpart of his body through the narrow doorway. His thick-lensed glassesfell underneath him, leaving him practically blind.
His elbows and knees were still making frenzied, primordial crawlingmovements when the detonation brought a wave of oblivion that almost,but not quite, prec