Johnson told him to pipe down for a while and let him think. Mike and I didn’t like this one bit. But what could we do—tell the truth and end up in a strait-jacket?
“Can we do it this way?” he finally asked. “Marrs: these boys have an in with the Soviet Government. They work in some place in Siberia, maybe. Nobody gets within miles of there. No one ever knows what the Russians are doing—”
“Nope!” Marrs was definite. “Any hint that these came from Russia and we’d all be a bunch of Reds. Cut the gross in half.”
Johnson began to pick up speed. “All right, not from Russia. From one of these little republics fringed around Siberia or Armenia or one of those places. They’re not Russian-made films at all. In fact, they’ve been made by some of these Germans and Austrians the Russians took over and moved after the War. The war fever had died down enough for people to realize that the Germans knew their stuff occasionally. The old sympathy racket for these refugees struggling with faulty equipment, lousy climate, making-superspectacles and smuggling them out under the nose of the Gestapo or whatever they call it—That’s it!”
Doubtfully, from Marrs: “And the Russians tell the world we’re nuts, that they haven’t got any loose Germans?”
That, Johnson overrode. “Who reads the back pages? Who pays any attention to what the Russians say? Who cares? They might even think we’re telling the truth and start looking around their own backyard for something that isn’t there! All right with you?” to Mike and myself.
I looked at Mike and he looked at me.
“O.K. with us.”
“O.K. with the rest of you? Kessler? Bernstein?”
They weren’t too agreeable, and certainly not happy, but they agreed to play games until we gave the word.