The Buttondown Boys in the Frozen North

Have You Ever Seen an Eskimo wearing a pink oxford-cloth shirt? Well, shield your eyes going through Greenland, friend -- pink buttondowns are hotter than mulled glögg up there right now.

It began last January. On one of those rare days when being Fowler & Hawkes' television producer seemed better than life on the sheriff's Honor Farm, after all. That morning I'd screened our latest film for 4-T-Fy, the Toothpaste That Strengthens Your Teeth Four Ways. Then I had lunch at Pipp's, including three deep-dish martinis, with a smashing 38-24-37 just back from Hollywood (Miss Scotch Tape of 1955 but her voice was wrong for pictures). As I strolled back downtown, Madison Avenue never looked better.

Three days later I was up to my Countess Mara in snow and over my head in trouble.

The oatmeal hit the fan the minute I got back from Pipp's. The U.S. Air Force had just commissioned the agency to do a training film on survival on polar ice. I was to have a production crew ready to leave Saturday morning for Norstadhoven Air Base on Greenland.

Survival on polar ice. Me, who can't crack out ice cubes without getting frostbite. Not only that, Old Man Fowler wanted the finished film by the 15th of next month! A whole day to build Rome.

"Ah, but remember what February 15th is, MacClure!" he said, smiling the smile that can split a client's budget at a thousand yards. I remembered, all right: on the 15th we were making our pitch for the Federal Auto account, up for grabs for the first time in 10 years. "This film could do it for us. The F.A. boys are nuts for realism. You won't have to fake a thing. Real ice, real snow -- real realism!"

"But four weeks ... !"

The Old Man upped the voltage of his smile. "Mac, Federal Auto bills almost 30 million. With an account like that in the shop, we'll need a vice-president for TV. I've been watching your work lately and, frankly, I've been impressed ..."

He purred on. Visions of Jaguars danced in my head. I made one last feeble effort: "There's snow in Central Park now. We could ----"

His smile snapped off. He made a noise in his throat. The same noise he makes at Plans Board meetings. It means, All those opposed signify by handing in their resignations.

So it was buckety-buckety, off to Greenland.

I picked my crew fast. Naturally I started with Ted Pennoyer. Not only have we been doing the Damon-and-Pythias bit since college, but as a director he's the greatest. And he needed the extra money -- bad. His wife has a brother who's 100% job-resistant and for years Ted has been pouring dough into the guy's get-rich-quick deals. The brother-in-law's latest -- instant champagne mix in a plastic bag -- produced more troubles than bubbles, so now Ted had to raise a few quick thou to keep the whole family out of jail.

For a cameraman, I tapped Mikur Zabukover, a wild Viennese with a waxed mustache. Mike had a weakness for hard liquor and soft women, but he worked fast and turned out sensational pictures. Liaison between Air Force and agency was Bert Timmer. From black horn-rims to attaché case, Bert is Central Casting's dream of an account executive, complete with Charm Kit and a head full of pressed lint.

All told, we had a crew of 25 at Idle-wild Saturday morning. Everybody was hungover, looking putty-colored in the early light. The uniform of the day was half misfit cold-weather gear, half un-pressed Madison Avenue. Cameras, generators, cables -- painted bright red for better visibility in the snow -- were strewn all over the field. Bert kept running around with his clip-board, calling out names and checking people in. It began to snow just as we took off.

Ted and I watched New York pivot under the banking wing. He looked pretty grim. "Cheer up, Junior," I said, "there'll be bags of money for all if we get this moom-pitcha in the can on time."

"Thank you, Norman Vincent Peale. Only I happen to need my money now." His voice sounded strained.

Bert stopped at our seats. "Papers all in order? We don't want any foul-ups administration-wise at Norstadhoven."

"Life is too much papers!" Mikur snorted, behind him. He clicked his heels and drained off a paper cup of un-iced Scotch. "To life!" he breathed soulfully, then went weaving up the aisle.

"Didn't take him long," Bert muttered. "Got a breath on him like tractor exhaust."

"It's better than dramamine," Ted said, tossing down his magazine and going forward to join Mikur's party.

Bert slipped into the empty seat. "What's with him? He's being un-Tedlike."

"He's got worries."

"He'll have more if he tries to out-drink Mike."

The plane droned north. There was nothing to see outside. I watched the frolic up front. Ted didn't miss his turn with the firewater once. Money, I decided, was a hell of a thing.

Especially when you didn't have it.

• • •

Ever been in Greenland?

Nothing.

It isn't green and it isn't land. Just ice and snow. And wind. The kind with teeth. It cut right through us as we stepped off the plane. I could see out four weeks shrinking like a dollar shirt.

A crowd of Eskimos gathered to watch our gear being unloaded. One of them, a blocky, stocky character with a fire hydrant neck and a forehead that sloped back like a Volkswagen hood, stepped up to me with a big grin. "Hi, Joe," he said, holding out his hand. I shook hands with him. It was like reaching into a stone crusher. With his other hand he fingered the collar of my shirt. It was one of the pink oxfords I'd packed as a gag. "Nice," he said.

"Great. Glad you like it. Any chance of getting my fingers back?"

He dropped my hand, grinned again, then picked up my bag.

"Looks like Uk Luk's appointed himself your valet," a voice said. I turned to find a white man in an Air Force parka. "I'm Colonel Nesbitt, the C.O. You MacClure?"

"Right. From Fowler & Hawkes."

"Good. Let's go around to my place. Uk Luk'll take your bag to your room." Uk Luk widened his grin, stroked my shirt once more, then took off for the officers' quarters assigned to our crew. "I'd keep that shirt locked up while you're here, if I were you," the Colonel advised.

In his quarters, he poured me three fingers from Johnny Walker's Do-It-Yourself Warming Kit and Greenland began to look a little greener. He filled a pipe for himself and got right to the point. "You may have trouble while you're here, MacClure, with a man named Pesdorff. I just want to tip you off."

"Pesdorff?"

He nodded. "Russian agent in Nor-stadhoven. So far, we haven't been able to pin anything on him. We keep him off the base, of course, but he gets the natives to do his dirty work for him. Slips them a few bucks to pick up items of interest every so often."

"So? What item of interest have we got?"

"A-67-R," the Colonel said. I looked blank. "New U.S. secret for arctic survival. Combined food and vitamin capsule that maintains body temperature and supplies nutrition. They'll be used in your film. Pesdorff would love to get his hands on a few."

I tossed back a stiff one. Four weeks with obstacles, yet.

"One purpose of the film is to field test these capsules, so they've got to be the real thing. Besides, I understand you people don't want any fake stuff."

"Perish forbid," I said, thinking that phony pills would be just the kind of thing the fly-speckers from Fed Auto would raise hell about. I assured the Colonel we'd use the real thing, thanked him for the Scotch, and left, feeling a lot worse than when I arrived.

Ted was stretched out on the bed in my room. "Who's your friend?" he asked. It was Uk Luk, sitting on my suitcase. He stood up with that big grin of his. "Hi. Joe."

"Hi, Uk Luk." I took the bag and started to unpack. "He's the deep-freeze Jeeves," I explained to Ted. "Great kid, only don't shake hands with him."

"Nice," Uk Luk said suddenly, his face lighting up like a pinball machine. I had taken out another pink shirt.

"Oh. and another thing -- he's queer for pink shirts." I smiled at Uk Luk. "Thanks, Champ, that's all for now." With a last wistful look at the shirt, he left.

"A winner," Ted said. "A real winner."

After I unpacked, I told the gang Colonel Nesbitt's story.

"Ah," Bert said wisely, "so that's the way the puck slides."

"Russian swine!" Mikur snarled, then hiccoughed loudly. "They murdered their own czars!"

" 'The Cloak-and-Dagger Boys in the Arctic!' " Mike's assistant said, "Oh, boy, what keen adventure!"

"This isn't adventure," Ted said, "it's business -- for cold, hard cash." I saw Bert glance at him strangely.

"Ok," I said, "the Air Force does the spy-chasing. We're here to make pictures. Let's concentrate on getting that answer print back in New York by the 15th."

"Trumpet fanfare and out," Bert said and the meeting broke up.

When they'd gone, Ted lay staring at the ceiling. He looked like a man thinking hard. After a long time, he swung himself to his feet. "Come on, let's go down and check out the town."

(continued overleaf)Buttondown Boys(continued from page 30) Norstadhoven was Squareville times 10. A line of dirty shacks, bleeding with neon, every third one a bar. If you left Main Street, you had it. We fought the wind a while, then ducked into the nearest groggery. "Where the hell do they get the name Green land?" I complained, shivering.

From the bar behind me a voice answered, "Blame it on the weather-cycle, friend."

He was a great big guy with a cigar. He grinned. "Just in from the States?"

I nodded. "This afternoon. What's this weather-cycle bit?"

"Every 900 years it gets warmer," the big guy said, laughing. I didn't get the gag, but I laughed. So did Ted. The guy had the kind of laugh that takes you right along with it. "This place was probably like Central Park when the Norsemen named it."

"You live here?" Ted asked.

"Yeah, if you can call it living," he said and this time we roared. He filled us in on Greenland and we stuck around, laughing and drinking and generally enjoying ourselves, for the rest of the evening. He was quite a boy.

The next morning when we were all at breakfast, Colonel Nesbitt told us we'd been boozing with Pesdorff. That rocked us. "But he looked like an American," I said.

"And talked like one," Ted added.

Nesbitt nodded. "Some Russians do. Besides, this guy lived in the States for a while."

"Well," I said weakly, "we didn't actually tell him anything."

"A guy like that's clever, though," Bert said uneasily. "He'll toss the corn down just to see which hens peck at it."

I felt like Benedict Arnold. Ted looked like he was thinking hard again.

After breakfast, he and I got hold of Mikur before Mikur got hold of a jug and the three of us set out in a jeep to find a shooting location. It took us all day but we finally found a good spot about four miles from the base. Next morning we took a dozen A-67-R capsules -- the damn things were classified and we had to sign out for them -- and moved the crew and the equipment out there to start filming. Naturally, everything went wrong. It always does, the first day. Only in Greenland your chances are better. For one thing, the camera kept freezing up. The Air Force's special lubricants were about as much help as bubble gum. Then the cold shorted one of our mobile generators. And every few minutes the dolly wheels had to be thawed out. Result: we logged less than 800 feet by lunchtime. February 15th began to look like tomorrow afternoon.

Bert came out during lunch, in a Weasel with an Army driver. I told him our woes. He clucked sympathetically, then gripped my shoulder hard. "Stick with the ship, Skipper, I know you can bring her in." The Weasel spun around and headed for the base.

"Neck-wise, he gives me a pain," Ted said.

"What ship he means?" Mike asked through his frozen mustache.

"Never mind," I sighed. "Let's make movies."

The cold continued to cream us. Only Uk Luk, and a couple of other Eskimos we'd recruited to help out the crew, were really functioning. In fact, Uk Luk was having himself a ball. He was fascinated by the camera. He couldn't leave it alone. Mike had to kick him off the carriage every 15 minutes.

"If he ever touches that lens, we'll have the first Austro-Eskimo War in two seconds flat," Ted said.

Right on cue, Uk Luk twisted the Mitchell's focusing ring. You could hear Mike scream over in Iceland. Uk Luk jumped as though he'd stepped on a branding iron. He backed away from the camera while the other Eskimos giggled and scuffed the snow. Mike examined the lens like a nearsighted jeweler. "Crazy foreigners!" he grumbled.

At which point, the wind blew over our reflector tower. That did it. We called it a day. And you know what kind we called it.

I returned the unused A-67-R to the security officer. He noted down the exact number of capsules the men had taken, then locked away the leftovers I gave him as though they were solid uranium.

Back in my room, I was just mixing myself a drink when Bert came in. He wore one of those I-hate-to-tell-you-this-But looks. "Just saw Ted downtown," he said very confidentially, "having a drink again with that guy, Pesdorff."

"Relax. Everybody drinks with Pesdorff. Martini?"

"No, thanks. Just thought I'd throw this on the floor and let you walk around it. See you at dinner."

I didn't do any walking around it. Ted knew what he was doing, I told myself. Bert worried too much. I just drank my martini.

Our shooting schedule didn't improve in the days that followed. Mike got stoned any time the dailies went over 2000 feet. Blizzards, frostbite -- we had 'em all. Once the A-67-R capsules spilled -- on location we kept them in an empty film tin -- and we lost a whole afternoon digging in the snow for them. I kept seeing this calendar with the pages fluttering off, faster and faster ...

And I kept seeing Ted with Pesdorff. For real. Finally I had to ask him, "What's the big attraction?" he looked at me oddly. I felt myself blushing. "Well, some of the guys are talking ..."

"Aw, come on, Mac. Pesdorff's just good company. He knows this country better than the polar bears. I like to hear him talk."

"Oh, sure, I know. It's just that ----"

"Besides," he whispered, grabbing my arm and looking furtively around the room, "I've got a special on Pentagon blueprints. If he buys the Giant Economy Size he gets ----"

"OK, Boy Spy, hit the sack. Tomorrow's another day in the wind tunnel." That goddamn Bert, I thought. The pressure was getting him.

Late the second week a miracle happened: the wind stopped. We got out there and filmed like crazy. Scene by scene, we began catching up. Finally, the night of the 10th, I called a skull session. There were only three scenes left. "If we can knock 'em all off tomorrow," I said, "we'll make it under the wire."

"By the skins of our teeth," Mikur said.

"We finally got the cards, weather-wise," Bert said.

Ted had been scanning the shot list. "This looks easy. Tomorrow ought to be a breeze." He should have known better.

We were going great until the last setup. It was simple: two men in a rubber raft coming ashore on the ice pack. Long shot for the approach, cut to medium for the beaching, move in tight for close-ups. Mike's assistant clacked the sticks. "We're going for a take!" The camera hummed. Ted signaled the men in the raft.

Then it happened. As they dug in with their paddles, there was a heavy Boom! across the bay and a huge wave suddenly came sweeping toward us. A giant iceberg had calved. The displaced wall of water moved with incredible speed. Someone shouted to the men in the raft and I saw one white face turn to look just as the wave caught them. It shot them up on the beach like a surfboard. The crew on shore scrambled madly for higher ground. The gray water curled over on top, hung there for an instant, then smashed down on the beach with a crunch you could feel in your chest. Large pieces of our equipment went tumbling back to sea with it.

We all ran after it, trying to save what we could. It was pretty hopeless. What we finally got together looked like the Norstadhoven city dump. We (continued on page 8O)Buttondown Boys(continued from page 32) were through. The scene would have to be edited out. Luckily, the men in the raft weren't badly hurt. "Strike it!" I called wearily and the Weasels came bumping down through the drifted snow to be loaded. That's all there was, there wasn't any more.

At the base, I gave the order to pack up for the flight back to the States. Operations promised us a plane first thing in the morning.

Mike had his farewell party started before he got his mittens off. He invited everybody and it was just shaping up into a real wing-ding when there was a knock on the door. It was Colonel Nesbitt. The security major was with him and you could smell trouble like garbage burning in their pockets. As they came in, I saw a couple of M.P.s standing in the hall.

The Colonel laid it right out: "Dozen A-67-R capsules missing."

"Missing?" Bert gasped.

The major read from his records: "February 11th -- 40 out. 20 returned, 8 used, 12 unaccounted for."

"All military personnel and native civilian workers have been restricted to the base, MacClure," the Colonel said. "Nobody has left since your gang got back. Whoever took those capsules is still here. The M.P.s are going to search everybody."

"Have a drink, everybody," Mikur muttered thickly.

Mentally, I was on my third Miltown. "OK, Colonel," I said, my voice sounding far away, "start searching."

Those M.P.s made the old fine-tooth comb look like a garden rake. They cased every room, closet by closet, drawer by drawer. They didn't miss a corner or a cranny. And they found the capsules. Eight of them anyway. In the neckband of one of Ted's shirts.

The room was deathly silent. The capsules lay in the M.P.'s open hand like drops of guilt. Nobody moved. Ted's face was like suet. I could hear somebody's watch ticking.

Finally the Colonel asked, "Where are the rest of them?"

Ted shook his head woodenly. "I don't know. I don't know anything about any of them. I didn't ..." His voice trailed off.

"I'm afraid you're under arrest, Pennoyer. I'll radio the States to expect you. You'll go under guard."

When they'd gone, Ted turned to me. "Is this for real?" he asked in a dazed voice. His eyes were wide and there was a little dry coating in each corner of his mouth. "Believe me, Mac, I didn't take those damn things. You have my word."

I tried to smile. "That's good enough for me."

It wasn't for the Colonel, though. With Bert, he was waiting for me in the hall when I came out. "He's dead, MacClure," he said. "Timmer here tells me he needed money. Two, we all know he spent a lot of time with Pesdorff. Three, he had access to the stuff. And four -- hell, they found it on him."

"Not all of it," I began but he cut me off:

"Enough," he said flatly and walked away.

"Well," Bert said, "I guess it just proves all the bad guys don't wear black sombreros." I could have clobbered him.

I got damn little sleep that night. As soon as I hit the pad, everything crowded into my head. I woke up next morning still tired.

And one look out the window and I just wanted to quietly open my veins. A real arctic gale was blowing. I phoned Operations. "We're socked in," the sergeant said. "Nothing's coming or going."

"For how long?"

"Who knows? The last one lasted five days."

I saw the Federal Auto account buried in a snowdrift.

When I broke the news to the others, Mikur flipped. "In fife days I am dead!" he screamed, brandishing a bottle of Scotch.

Bert frowned at the can of film. "What about this stuff we shot yesterday? It still needs some lapidary work and Monday's the target date, y'know."

"Die with that, will you?" I growled. "I know."

"Just trying to keep our lens clear, that's all."

"We could pull a neg on it while we're waiting," Mike's assistant said. "The Air Force has a lab here for the aerial photo guys."

It was a chance, anyway. I phoned Operations again. The weather report was unchanged. "OK, let's go," I said, grabbing the film.

The lab was small and cold but when our stuff began to come out it looked great. Contrast, composition -- everything. And it was lousy with realism. Mikur was an artist.

Near the end of the reel I came on some sloppy out-of-focus stuff like nothing he ever shot in his life. The sky, part of the rubber raft, a distant iceberg. In the dark, Mike's assistant chuckled. "That fur-lined DeMille got his licks in, after all."

"Uk Luk?"

"Yeah. He must have shot this when we were all down on the beach chasing the flotsam and jetsam. Mike'll kill him."

There was another shot of the sky. A blurred hand. Somebody opening a can of film. The raft again. Then a ----

"Hey, wait a minute," I said. I felt the cameraman tense forward at my shoulder. Slowly I reversed the reel. There was the figure opening the can again. "Who the hell would be opening raw film ... ?"

The cameraman's voice tightened: "That's not film!"

We knocked heads crowding over the reel. I spun it at action speed. The figure -- an Eskimo -- bent over the can, took the capsules from it, started away -- and there was the goddamn raft again.

"Red-handed!" I shouted, pounding the cameraman on the back. "That wonderful Uk Luk! I'll hug him till his blubber bubbles!"

Colonel Nesbitt almost bit through his pipestem when we showed him the film. Even in the negative he recognized the Eskimo Uk Luk had photographed. "Pakoona. Bad actor, been in trouble before. Never should have been assigned to you people in the first place."

"He must have planted that stuff in Ted's shirt as soon as we came back from location," I said. "What was that all about?"

"Red herring. Old Pesdorff picked himself a good finger-man this time." He grabbed up the phone and machine-gunned questions into it. He was grinning when he hung up. "Pakoona's still on the base. With the restrictions and the storm he hasn't had a chance to get into town."

"Going to grab him?"

The Colonel shook his head. "He's our bait now. Soon as the weather lifts, he'll turn the rest of the capsules over to Pesdorff. When Pesdorff tries to take them off the island, then we nail him." He had the look of a man who's been waiting a long time.

But we weren't there when he snapped the trap. The storm blew itself out by midafternoon and within an hour we were ready to take off. Two M.P.s, all jazzed up with .45s hustled Ted aboard the plane. He looked very arrested. The Colonel came down with the security major to see us off. Uk Luk was there, too. Out of gratitude, I let him crush a few bones in my hand as we said good-bye. "So long, Joe," he grunted, with that big grin. He was still standing there waving when we roared down the runway.

The minute we got in the air, I broke the news. The place came apart. Even the M.P.s cheered. Everybody crowded around to shake Ted's hand. Mikur kissed him on both cheeks. The script girl began to cry. Bert tapped Ted's chin with his fist. "That's the way to field the hot ones, fellow," he said somberly.

• • •

The clothing salesman choked on his Madison Avenue accent. "A dozen pink shirts, 19 neck, 32 sleeve?" he repeated as if he didn't believe it. "Are these for a -- person, sir?"

"Yes," I said. "Send them to Uk Luk, Norstadhoven, Greenland. And I want them charged to the account of Mr. C. P. Fowler." What the hell, now that he had the Federal Auto account, the Old Man could afford a few shirts for a worthy cause.

I strolled up the avenue to Pipp's. Somehow the familiar faces at the bar looked pale, the familiar New York talk sounded empty and meaningless. I guess after a man has been up in the wilds of the frozen north, the city palls. I guess ...

Wait a minute, now, I jumped gears. That's the way my TV script will go when you see it on the Federal Auto Playhouse next month. As for me, personally -- dad, there never was anybody happier to see New York again. That dirty concrete island looked like paradise. The people were great, the talk was supercharged and when I saw Miss Scotch Tape coming chest first through that door at Pipp's, I knew the long, cold Greenland nights were over. It was great to be back.

"Don't touch that lens!" screamed Zabukover.