Free (1976) The R Document by Irving Wallace Page B

starring Colonel Rudolf Abel; the indoor shooting range where every nine minutes a Special Agent gave a demonstration of deadly marksmanship using a .38-caliber service revolver and then a Thompson .45-caliber submachine gun to riddle a life-sized paper target.
    Above all - and here he had been taken backstage, off limits for tourists - Ishmael Young had been enamored of the FBI files. In this clearinghouse for criminal apprehension, there had been fingerprint sets, over 250,000,000 of them. If God had hands, Young had decided, the FBI would have his fingerprints. Among the other 8,700 gray file cabinets, there had been the Typewriter Standards file, a record of the typeface and make of every typewriter, regular or toy,
    ever manufactured (he would never again fantasize the typewriting of an anonymous letter). There had been the Watermark file, the Bank Robbery Note file, the National Fraudulent Note file. There had been so much else - the Serology section, where body fluids and blood were tested; the Chemistry department, where human organs were boiled; the Spectrograph room, where particles of paint were examined. He had found it hard to tear himself away from the Hairs and Fibers Unit. ‘When people get into a fight,’ Adcock had explained, ‘the fibers of their garments may adhere to each other. We shave all fibers off the garments, separate them, and test them to learn which belonged to the assailant and which to the victim.’ Then Adcock had gone on, ‘Our lab is our silent secret weapon. It is invincible. J. Edgar Hoover established it in 1932. As he once said, “The minute stain of blood, the altered document, the match folder found at the scene of the burglary, the heelprint or fleck of dust often provide the essential link of evidence needed to link the criminal to his crime or clear the innocent person.”’
    When he left, Young’s mind had been bursting with a hundred ideas. It had been a writer’s heaven. He had wondered, but had not asked Adcock, how any criminal could ever hope to escape the FBI. He had not asked because the nation was teeming with crime, and most of the criminals did get away with it.
    And then he had been brought to his first official book-writing session with Director Vernon T. Tynan.
    He had somehow expected that some of his love for the Bureau would rub off on its Director. It hadn’t, and then he was not surprised. He had hated Tynan from the start, before ever setting eyes on him. Tynan had wanted an autobiography, and Young had been recommended. Tynan had read two of Young’s ghosted books and approved. Young had resisted. From hearsay, he had known Tynan’s reputation, his egomania, and had rejected the offer to collaborate. But only briefly. Tynan had, in effect, blackmailed him and forced hrm to do the book.
    He had never forgotten his first meeting with Tynan in his office. There was the Director - a cat’s eyes set in a
    bulldog’s skull - saying, ‘At last, Mr Young. Glad to meet you, Mr Young.’ He had replied, jocularly, ‘Call me Ishmael.’ The Director had looked blank. Then, Young had known that was how he was, and that was the way it was going to be. Incidentally, Tynan had never called him Ishmael, either. The Director had probably thought it a foreigner’s name. Thereafter, the Director compromised by calling him ‘Young’ or simply ‘You’.
    Now six months of weeks had passed, and once more they were seated across from each other, Ishmael Young drinking his Diet Pepsi and Vernon T. Tynan gulping down the last of his beer. As Tynan put the beer mug aside and reached for his soup, Young knew it was the signal to begin. He leaned over, simultaneously pressed the Record and Play buttons on his portable tape recorder, nibbled at his egg-salad sandwich, and reviewed the notes in his lap. A week ago, the Director had announced the subject of this session, and Young had done his homework and had come prepared. It was not going to be easy. He reminded himself