High Jinx (2 page)

Henry was in charge of forty men, each of whom would know exactly what was expected of him. The objective was plain. Within three hours of their landing they would control the communications ganglia of Tirana, ‘execute' (would ‘assassinate' have been the more correct word, Blackford wondered? Nice distinction, he thought, good for a post-cold war seminar someday) a half-dozen top officials of the government, most importantly Enver Hoxha, the bloody Stalinist dictator, declaring Hysni Shtylla, the exiled leader of the patriotic, liberal National Front, prime minister. All of this to be followed in rapid succession by recognition of the new government by the allied powers and, a month or two later, a genuinely democratic election. (Hoxha had a year earlier staged elections at which the vote in his favour had come in at a reassuring 99 per cent.) A bold and unorthadox stroke in that, using predominantly Western commandos, trained not in a foreign country but in the heart of Great Britain, it violated orthodox arrangements aimed at coups d'état. But Secretary Dulles had campaigned for the liberation of Eastern Europe. The relative independence of adjacent Yugoslavia and the relative geographical isolation from Bulgaria, the next-closest unswerving Soviet satellite, argued the military plausibility and the geopolitical excitement of a genuine Western salient in the cold war, instead of the tiresome, enervating, stultifying countersalients to which the West had become accustomed in Berlin, in China, in Korea—wherever. Don't push the Soviets, wait till they push, then counter-push. The liberation of Albania would be the dramatic turn in the cold war, the initiative, finally, returned to the West.

Henry and Blackford permitted themselves to fondle the subject, on which they were receiving briefings every day on Operation Tirana. Neither needed to be indiscreet, after all; certain aspects of the operation weren't discussed, for obvious reasons. Blackford was surprised when Henry asked him, ‘Do you know when in fact we are due to take off?' Blackford could answer truthfully, ‘Hell, no. I've never seen tighter security than on this one. I doubt Eisenhower has been told.'

That night he woke. He looked at the luminous dial of his watch. It was just after four. Blackford tended to sleep soundly, but when he did wake he made it a practice to let his mind wander wherever it chose—an amusement that had been the advice of his mother when he was a teenager. ‘That way, darling, you will find out what it was that woke you up, then you can deal with it in your mind, and then you can go back to sleep.' A kind of one-man Ouija board—Blackford remembered the hours he and his mother, when he was a boy, would sit over the Ouija board and encourage a psychic something or other to move their talisman this way or that, the idea being that the psychic presence would propel the hand toward the correct answer to the questions crowding your mind. He was very much alarmed, on arriving at Greyburn College, to which his stepfather, Sir Alec Sharkey, had dispatched him at age fifteen, to hear the headmaster announce that the boys were forbidden to play Ouija. (Greyburn was affiliated with the Church of England.) A theologian who served as a trustee of Greyburn had declared at a meeting of the board of trustees that the surrender of one's mind to an impersonal force was immoral, arguably an invitation to the devil to take charge of the dispossessed mind. In the years since then Blackford had allowed himself to wonder whether that was the last dogmatic pronouncement ever made by the Church of England, which he had heard described, by one of Sir Alec's cynical old friends, as ‘the last bastion of not very much.'

So he lay in bed and thought … and soon his mind turned, naturally, to Sally. Sally Partridge, Yale (almost) Ph.D., specialty, nineteenth-century English Literature with emphasis on Jane Austen. My gal Sal, he had referred to her a few letters back, intending only to be affectionate. She had replied, ‘“My gal Sal” is entirely too proprietary for my taste, Blacky my boy (and how do you like “Blacky my boy”?). Are you aware that Jane Austen's principals referred to each other as, e.g., “Mr. Knightley” and “Miss Woodhouse” even after they were about to be engaged?' Blackford had replied that Miss Partridge certainly would not, he had to assume from their three-year, uh, friendship, wish to be bound by all the protocols that bound the characters in
Emma
—he was showing off here, as he wished her to know that he knew where Mr. Knightley and Miss Woodhouse had figured in Miss Austen's oeuvre. Thus they corresponded, she desiring above all things to complete her dissertation and receive her doctorate—but not, really (and why should it be necessary?), at the expense of losing the affection of her ‘beautiful Blacky,' as she used to call him at Yale until he laid down a flat, uncompromising prohibition: ‘You call me that one more time, Sally dear, and you will be the ex-girlfriend of your beautiful Blacky.' She had laughed; but she knew when to retreat, though sometimes in her correspondence even now she would tease him about his striking features and sculpted physique confident that by doing so she would irritate him. They were well matched to fence in their correspondence and they both enjoyed the sport, even though sometimes they hit below the belt. More often, they were satisfied merely with a caress to reach below it.

So now, in the predawn, he got up and batted out on his portable typewriter a quick note to her, with the usual evasions about what he was up to and, in particular, where he was writing from (she thought him still in Germany), and no evasions about his longing for her.

What now?

Well, Mother, I have a) let my mind wander, b) decided it was Sally who woke me up, and c) coped with that problem by writing to her. But I still can't go back to sleep.

So he put on shoes, trousers, and an overcoat and stepped across the hall of the Bachelor Officers' Quarters to the door, and walked out into the cold. It had been stipulated that not even the administrative staff would leave the ten-acre compound save on business, and only when accompanied by another member of the staff, so he would confine his stroll to the area. He walked absentmindedly in the general direction of the officers' mess, muffling himself against the cold.

He noticed, in the radio shed directly across from BOQ, a sliver of light from the window and wondered who else would be up that early. Should he go in and tell whoever it was who was suffering from insomnia about his mother's let-your-mind-loose nostrum?

He approached the window and attempted to look in, but the little tear in the screen, though letting a shaft of light escape, was too narrow to see through. In the stillness he could hear, faintly but distinctly, the telltale
di-di-dah-dah-dah
of the telegrapher, and he wondered what on earth Sergeant Esperanto, the radio specialist charged with the responsibility of instructing the five radiomen attached to the five squads, was doing at that hour. He even permitted himself to wonder whether his curiosity should be official, as well as personal and transient.

He would think about that; and so he resumed his walk, wandering distractedly past the commandos' barracks, past the playing field and the mess, past the armoury. Having come to the boundary of the compound he could go no further aimlessly, and so he followed the large barbed-wire fence in a lazy counterclockwise direction back towards his own quarters, for one final attempt at what would now be time for a mere catnap before reveille.

It was windy, and the grey British cold fingered his neck, and so he fastened the top button of his coat and thrust his hands in his pockets and asked himself—for the first time, oddly—whether he was glad or sorry that he had not been asked to participate in Operation Tirana itself.

If it worked, Tirana would be a most emancipating spiritual event, with infinite strategic implications for the Cold War: a fitting celebration of the first anniversary of Stalin's death, if indeed it should happen that the commandos would set out on March 5. And those who participated in it? Why, they would qualify for King Henry's most celebrated gallery of the gallants (‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers …'). If it didn't work, they would perhaps qualify as the century's Charge of the Light Brigade—except for the important distinction that the overseers of this operation were not lunatics, like the Earl of Cardigan. Moreover, when he arrived at Camp Cromwell three weeks ago his spirits had been low, after those long months in Germany. Would he have been revived by joining this expedition?

Would he, if asked, have volunteered? He could not give himself an answer that seemed absolutely reliable.

He was back now by the radio shed, and looked over at the window. The light he had seen was off. He approached the window. No sound. The telegrapher's roll had stopped. Well. Probably something Sergeant Esperanto had forgotten to do the night before and was catching up on.

Like what?

Something. Who knows.

But the question remained on his mind when, back in bed, he finally drifted off to sleep.

The following day, at breakfast, Henry and his squad leaders were informed by Colonel Mac: ‘Today is D-Day.'

2

It was just after dark when the three buses arrived for the forty-one men and their equipment. They were ready, in camouflage gear, their faces and wrists blackened. ‘You won't need this'—Joe Louis took the charcoal from Isaac Abraham and tossed it under the barracks. He put his huge arm around the younger man's shoulder and, their heads tilted slightly toward each other as if they were off to the ballroom to dance cheek to cheek, the brothers walked to the waiting bus, the young gladiator and his older trainer escorting him to the arena.

They had all mounted the buses except for Henry, who stood for a few moments alongside the lead vehicle talking with Colonel Mac and Joe Louis. Henry signalled to Blackford to join them. Henry was at once calm and discernibly excited: Blackford knew the feeling. It had come to him on all three of his missions in France ten years ago, before mounting his fighter plane on the way to what could always prove the terminal engagement.

The colonel and the major now extended their hands and Henry took them, his cigarette between his lips, his beret tilted over his abundant black hair. He reached out then for Blackford's hand and gripped it tightly, his brown squinty eyes alive with excitement. He turned and got into the bus. The convoy moved out of the gate slowly, as to a funeral, and headed the thirty miles to the military airfield where the C-54 transport was waiting for them.

It had previously been disclosed to the eighteen-man training staff at Cromwell that no one would be permitted to leave the compound until the all-clear signal was given. Of the cadre, all but the two cooks and four orderlies knew the nature of the mission for which they had been training the Special Platoon. Knew, then, that if Operation Tirana succeeded, word would come quickly of its success: there could hardly be anything enduringly secret about a coup d'état in a communist country effected by democratic forces. If word did not come, then the mission had failed. In that event it would be a matter of days, perhaps weeks, before they would learn what had happened, the extent of the failure. Knew, concretely, how many of the commandos had escaped, how many had died.

‘Figure twenty-four hours if the news is overwhelmingly good. No news in forty-eight hours, the mission has failed. It's that simple,' Colonel Mac had said as the buses pulled out.

It had been difficult to sleep that night. The officers, in their section of the bar, speculated endlessly on the variables that might affect the exact time of the commandos' landings. If the planes took off
exactly
at 2300 as planned, and if the March winds were at the prevailing force and from the prevailing direction—and this the meteorologist had predicted for that night—
then
they would begin to land at 0322—about five-thirty in the morning, Albanian local time.

‘But hell, Colonel, they're not going to leave at 2300. It will be maybe 2315, who the hell knows?' the adjutant said.

‘Who the hell knows?' Colonel Mac repeated. And then, forcing a change in his portentous manner, he turned to his second in command. ‘Joe Louis. You got any voodoo ancestors? Any witch doctors back there? If so,
ask
them.'

The major closed his eyes and with exaggerated introspection bowed his large head slightly. Then lifted it and, with a voice of great gravity, said, ‘The first commando will reach the ground outside Tirana at
exactly 0329
.

‘Now my voodoo ancestor wants to be paid for that piece of information. That will cost you a rum, Colonel Mac.'

‘Make that a double rum,' the colonel grinned.

And so it had gone until, tacitly acknowledging their helpless remoteness from the scene—there was nothing left to do, save to pray—they gradually disbanded. And went to bed, if not to sleep.

If the plan had worked from the first with optimal success, the triumphant radio declaration would have flashed out of Tirana at 1200 local time, 1100 British time.

Sergeant Esperanto stood by the shortwave set in the radio shed. But at the officers' club there was also a good strong radio. ‘If they beam out of Tirana, the BBC will pick it up in ten seconds,' Colonel Mac had said, twiddling with the dial to get the best signal. ‘We'll get it right here.'

And that had been the longest afternoon.

At five Blackford could stand it no longer and went out for a solitary walk, again passing the radio shed where, through the glass panel door at the entrance, he could see into the room where the light had come from two nights earlier. Sergeant Esperanto was sitting at his desk, the shortwave receiver on; Blackford could hear muffled voices and even the sound of static. He resumed his walk.

That night at the officers' mess, and later at their club, conversation was forced, and mostly the men were silent, playing cards and drinking beer. At one point Joe Louis spoke.

‘Remember, they
could
be regrouping; any number of things could, actually, have just slowed them down.' No one commented. If Colonel Mac had been correct in his projections then the mission had—failed.