Cockpit (14 page)

The husband commented that his wife’s art collection was also stored in bank vaults. During the three years of their marriage, he had seen it only piecemeal, when he went with her to have the objects cleaned. I asked the woman if it had been difficult for her to get together so much cash on such short notice, and she assured me it was not; her bank was used to dealing with her whims. She obviously thought nothing of carrying around so much money, but her husband complained that it made him queasy.

Women who seek great risks don’t bother me, perhaps
because I’ve had so much experience with them. In my final Service years, I was one of a specially trained group of agents called “the hummingbirds.” The men and women of this group are so valuable that to protect their covers no central file is kept on them and their identities are seldom divulged to fellow agents.

Most hummingbirds remain on assignment as long as they lead active cover lives, usually as high-ranking government, military or cultural officials based in foreign countries. Others serve as businessmen, scientists, editors, writers and artists. I recall a newscaster and a film director who, unknown to their millions of devoted fans, were among our most valuable operatives.

If a hummingbird runs into trouble, he counts on the Service to get him out, never knowing when, how or in what form the help will come. He also must expect to be called on by the Service at any time, but, again, he never knows when, how or by whom.

I have been called upon several times to eliminate agents who had defected years before. But I always used to wonder what would happen if a hummingbird vanished, leaving no proof whether he had defected, died or been captured. To date, I know of only one man who has never been tracked down: myself. I owe my survival solely to common sense. I seldom carry a gun. I consider guns crude, because their use involves an irreversible process. Instead, I rely on more recent inventions, ones that merely incapacitate temporarily: drug concentrates concealed in a tie-clip syringe or in a ring, button-sized gas pellets, aerosol cartridges and the like. Above all, I trust my intuition.

In a Los Angeles bar once, I struck up a conversation with a German industrialist who was visiting the States on business. We had an enjoyable dinner together that night and began to see each other often while he was on the Coast. About a month after he went back to Germany, he telephoned to invite me to join him and his family at their country home.

I accepted and a week later flew to Munich, where he met me at the airport. As we passed a newspaper kiosk on the way to his car, I decided to buy some postcards for a girl friend who collected them. I picked out a dozen or so, took them over to the counter and started to pay, but the salesman refused to change my hundred-mark note. My host impatiently withdrew a handful of coins from his pocket, stared at them for a moment, then paid for the cards.

As he drove, I looked at the scenery and thought back to the incident at the airport stand. My host had hesitated almost imperceptibly before paying, but his slight delay made me question whether or not the currency he held was native to him.

My suspicions were shortly confirmed. We turned onto a highway, which, he said, led straight to the village nearest his house. But at the first crossroads, he hesitated, and I saw his eyes shoot to a highway sign before he continued along the main road. Had he driven the road often, he would have known it better.

I decided it was not worth finding out if he was who he claimed to be. I asked him how long it would be before we arrived at his home. Approximately another hour, he said, and I told him I would appreciate it if he would stop at the next gas station so that I could use the toilet. In the large, American-style station, he said he would wait in the restaurant. As soon as I saw him sitting down at a table, I went to the men’s room and stood near the door until I spotted four young men about to leave the restaurant together. I left with them, as if I were one of their group, crossed to the other side of the highway and hitchhiked back to Munich. I have not encountered the industrialist again.

For emergencies away from home, I always carry money and chemical self-protective devices in secret pockets in my trousers, jackets and coats, but there are some times when I cannot rely on hidden money, weapons or intuition.

Late one night, walking down Fifth Avenue, I heard a cab driver quarreling with a passenger on the corner, and
paused to see what was happening. Just as I was about to walk on, a slim, neatly dressed young man passed close by me, then turned back as if to comment on the argument. I felt the tip of a switchblade pricking my skin just above my belt, but could not reach any of my weapons. A few people strolled by us, but no one noticed.

The man pushed me against a wall. I watched the perspiration glistening on his forehead as he mumbled something about money and a hotel room. But when I told him that he was welcome to the three thousand dollars I had on me, he did not react.

I repeated that in the back pocket of my pants he would find a wallet containing thirty one-hundred-dollar bills. He mumbled incoherently. I mentioned the money a third time.

When he still failed to respond, I assumed he was insane or drugged. There I was, a former hummingbird, armed with the most advanced defense weapons yet unable to get away from an addict with a switchblade. I continued to talk to him, aware that I might die in midsentence. The man tried to focus his eyes on me. Suddenly, retracting the blade, he stepped back and stumbled off.

I recalled this incident years later when I again found myself at the mercy of strangers. I had developed a serious throat infection, which lingered on in spite of all the drugs I took to cure it. I went to see a doctor whose credentials I first checked out in a medical directory.

The physician examined my throat and prescribed an antibiotic, which I was to take three times a day for several days. On my way home, I took the pills. Almost immediately, I felt an unbearable pressure in my chest. I checked my watch: it had been exactly five minutes since I took the medicine. The abrupt change in the mechanical functioning of my body took my breath away. An excruciating pain radiated down my left arm to my fingers and back up into my shoulder, neck and chin. My heart seemed to explode,
stand still, and then explode again. As the pressure in my eardrums increased, the more desperate for air I became. My eyes began to blur, my legs began to tremble, and I knew that in seconds I would collapse. I knew no passersby would offer to help me to a taxi for fear that I was a drunk or an addict or that they would be sued later for unauthorized intervention. A traffic cop might eventually notice that I was ill and summon an ambulance, but it would barely be able to plow its way through the rush-hour traffic. By the time it reached me, I would probably be dead.

I staggered into the nearest store. The people inside drew away from me. I stumbled toward the counter and fell against it.

“Call the motorcycle police,” I gasped, as I pulled some money out of my pocket and handed it to the clerk. “I have something important to tell them. Hurry.”

The man nodded and went to the rear of the shop, while a woman helped me to a chair. When the owner returned, he said the police were on their way.

In less than five minutes, I heard motorcycles stop in front of the store. Two policemen entered and the manager brought them over to me. I pulled myself up until I was standing. I said, “I’m ill, I need medical assistance at once. I can’t wait for an ambulance, so I want you to notify the hospital to have an emergency team ready to treat a toxic reaction to an antibiotic. Then take me there by motorcycle.” I gave them both several large bills.

They looked at each other and then accepted the money. “You’ve got yourself a ride, mister,” one of them said. They helped me out the door and onto the back seat of one of the motorcycles. To protect me in case I should faint during the ride, they strapped my thighs to the seat and instructed me to keep my arms around the chest of the driver. The other policeman radioed the hospital and took off, clearing a path through the cars and buses.

We speeded against the oncoming traffic on a one-way
avenue, disregarding the lights, zigzagging between cars and trucks, cutting sharp corners and leaning hard on the curves. I clung to the driver, the wind drying my sweat.

Within seconds of our arrival at the hospital, three men in white overalls unstrapped me, lifted me gently off the motorcycle and helped me to an emergency receiving room, where a doctor and two nurses were waiting.

I took a folded sheet of paper from my inside pocket and gave it to the doctor. “This contains all the data and diagnostic summaries required for emergency admission as well as for your records,” I said. The doctor took the paper and the nurses began to undress me. I checked my watch and realized that eighteen minutes had passed since I had first felt the pain and weakness.

Having been in uncertain health for many years, I have learned to turn my physical liabilities to my own advantage. Since I cannot survive unless I can order every aspect of my existence, my mind exploits my body. My choice of a life of adventure may well be a result of the fact that action raises my blood pressure, giving me enough energy to live.

A doctor of mine once stopped abruptly in the middle of a physical examination and called in his colleagues. He displayed me as proof that it is possible to function normally with radically low blood pressure, to structure an existence around the body’s physiological demands.

Because of my blood pressure, I fall asleep easily. All I have to do is think about sleeping, rest my head on my shoulder and I am out in two to three minutes. I have been told that I do not shift in my sleep, barely breathe and maintain an extremely low body temperature.

During my days in the Service, I would often take five-minute cat naps, even while waiting to be questioned by police or counterintelligence agents in other countries. One night, prior to questioning, I was kept under close surveillance, and on the following day the police told me how
surprised they were to see me sleep soundly before an interrogation that could decide my future.

Before going to bed with a new lover, I sometimes tell her I suffer from a serious heart condition that may kill me in my sleep after having sex. If she has been able to fall asleep at all, she wakes up to find my body cold. When she cannot detect my breathing, she believes I am dead.

Some first-night lovers have failed my test and run out, desperate to disassociate themselves from my death. Others less afraid have rifled through my personal belongings. One woman, terrified by my corpse, called her boy friend for advice, without even realizing that she was admitting she’d been sleeping with another man.

My sensitivity to the slightest change in my environment, and my craving for unusual psychological pressure have made me aware how little other people are aware of their surroundings, how little they know of themselves and how little they notice me.

Once, I attended a party given by a wealthy businessman who had rented paintings from a small, private museum to impress his guests. When the guests arrived, they were greeted with an array of works by major artists, which was passed off by the businessman as his private collection. While the other guests were engaged in conversation, I strolled over to examine the paintings. Pretending to admire a medium-sized portrait, I casually slipped it off its hook, quietly lowered it to the floor and rested it against the wall.

I made a quick tour of the room, chatting with the other guests and complimenting the host on his impressive art collection. Then I ambled back to the portrait. Under the pretext of studying the other paintings that lined the wall, I edged it along the baseboard toward a hallway. As I reached the door, I bent down, picked up the portrait and walked casually into the bedroom where the guests had left their coats. Since the room was empty, I had all the time I
needed to shove the painting under the bed and return to the party. Half an hour later, I went back to the bedroom, shut the door and took the framed portrait from its hiding place. Since I was sitting on the far edge of the bed with my back to the door, anyone entering the room would have assumed I was simply not feeling well. Before the person could cross to the bed, I would have slid the painting back under it, where it would remain hidden. No one appeared, and in minutes I had taken the portrait out of the frame, pried off the staples that secured the canvas to its stretcher, pushed the frame under the bed, rolled up the canvas and stuck it up the sleeve of my raincoat. I left the party in a group of six people, with my coat slung casually over my arm. A few days later, I shipped the painting back to my host in a package with no return address.

The party was only one of many situations which have confirmed my belief that people notice only what they want to. One of my Service cover occupations required me to speak occasionally at large banquets. After delivering my speech, I would always sit down on the dais facing the audience and pretend to pay attention to other speakers or to a discussion from the floor. There was no way I could leave the dais before the speeches were concluded. Whenever the wait became unbearable, I would reach for a half-full glass of white wine, sip it, put it down and cup my chin in my hand as if I were listening intently. With my free hand, I would pick up the glass again from the table and, in one continuous movement, down the rest of the wine, lower the glass until it was hidden from the audience and other speakers by the tablecloth and position it between my thighs. Then I would unzip my pants and fill the glass. A few moments later, I would put it back on the table. Apparently engrossed in the conversation around me, I would absent-mindedly push the full glass away from me. It would remain there until the waiters cleared it away with the other glasses.

Yet the isolation I feel and resent in public is nothing like the kind I find and cherish—out of doors when the ski season is nearly over. In early spring I often visit a resort where I can easily take a cable car to the glaciers and ski slowly down the slopes. At that time of the year, I am usually one of three or four people on the entire mountain. Surrounded by snow, rock and ice, I gaze at the peaks shining in the spring sun and listen to the sound of distant avalanches. Elsewhere, countless millions of people fight for every inch of living space; here, I and a few select others enjoy a splendid private world, a wilderness broken only by occasional cable cars, mountain top restaurants and alpine shelters.