Penetration

I looked at him. “Unless they...I can’t believe this, unless they somehow have told you to stay away, and somehow shown you they mean it!”
This time Axel was neither smiling nor not smiling. I got out of my chair and started pacing the length of the table.
I started laughing. “Goddamn it! They’ve somehow got you by the balls, haven’t they. That’s why you are resorting to psychic perceptions! Ja-eesus Kahariiiist!? They are NOT friendly, are they? ARE THEY, Axel!”
Axel kept his cool. “There are two major reasons why I’ve asked you to help. You are approximately correct about the first one, but not completely so. The second reason is more simple.
“Your information might provide a kind of check point in what you surely now realize must be a mess of interpretations of the photographic and other evidence.
“It was my idea to find a psychic who did not know anything about the Moon and see what might be seen there. Sort of an independent source of information, which would lean our interpretations one way or another.”
“Have you used other psychics, then?” I demanded, very intent on getting an answer.
“Please don’t require me to say yes or no.”
I felt my patience thinning out. “Why not?”
“There are several reasons, but mainly there is a confidence factor involved.”
“Confidence about what, about the abilities of other psychics?”
“Yes, that is one of them.”
I sat back in my chair and trying to keep my hands from shaking too obviously, lit another cigar. My brain was whirling.
“So,” I began, “the only major way now to spy on those guys is to resort to psychic abilities, which the mainstream of our great nation makes a special effort to discredit. What a gas! What a complete gas!”

He was forthright about his unusual interests, and he dared to swim against the surface currents of that mighty river called “prevailing opinion” which could damage even very high reputations in the Washington maze.
But in his telephone call to me, my friend was somewhat less than forthright, as the following conversation drawn from memory indicates.
“A Mr. Axelrod is going to telephone you,” he said. “If you can manage to do so, would you try to do whatever he asks, and ask no questions yourself.”
After a pause, I asked: “Well, who is Mr. Axelrod?”
Now there was a pause at his end of the telephone. Then: “I can’t tell you because I don’t know myself. But it’s important, VERY important, very URGENT that you agree to do what he asks.
“I can tell you nothing more, so please do NOT ask. Just do what he wants. And, whether you do or do not, we will never refer to this conversation again. I must ask you in friendship never to refer to me about this in any way.”