Stained Glass (14 page)

Blackford tasted the first course before answering, waited for Karl to leave, and said, cautiously: “Well, I don't know what they're saying in Washington. But I can guess. They're probably saying: What in the hell are
we
supposed to do if Wintergrin's elected, gives Stalin his Frankfurt ultimatum, Stalin says screw you, and oils up his legions to overrun West Germany? Washington is not prepared for that, I'd guess. What
could
it do? NATO isn't strong enough. The Bomb means a third world war, and that probably means the last war. I assume the Russians wouldn't give you time to develop your own strength to resist the Russian Army …”

“The Russians”—Wintergrin edged his chair closer to the table, and gripped his glass of wine—“the Russians,” he said in a strident whisper, “
are scared to death
. Don't ask me how I know. But I do. They are
counting on
threats and bluff to dispose of the Wintergrin problem.” He took from his pocket an envelope on which he had made notes. “This is very confidential. We have someone in Ulbricht's entourage. He reports that Ulbricht sent on dutifully to Moscow an intelligence report taken by his own people predicting that any move by the Russian military across East Germany would mobilize the whole country in opposition, which would rip right across Eastern Europe, endangering the whole Soviet postwar position. I wonder if the CIA knows, or guesses, this? With these problems in the countries they presently occupy, can you
imagine
the Russian situation if they moved and tried to take over
West
Germany? Let alone our NATO neighbors?”

“Well, yes. I imagine that, among other things, previously ill-fed Russian military officials would be eating the crayfish here tonight.”

“Blackford, there is a limit even to what the Russians can ingest. The prime minister Count Witte warned Nicholas II on the eve of the First World War on that point, trying to dissuade him from declaring war against the Germans. Stalin is everything evil and avaricious you want to say about him. But he has practically
never
—in his career—shown a disregard for strategic prudence. His only lapse caused him to be taken by surprise by the Nazis. He very nearly lost Russia, never mind the world revolution. Do you want to know what
I
think would happen—what I think
will
happen? The Russians will reply to my ultimatum with a series of face-saving qualifications. I am telling
you
, swearing you to silence, that
I will let them get away with it
. I would even extend the deadline. I would sign a nonaggression treaty. I would go to Moscow.
I would even push NATO out of Germany …
But when the final moment comes, they will give us back Germany. I'm telling you, Blackford, they will give us back Germany without war. Of this I am confident. More confident than I am that the West—that
you
”—he looked up directly at Blackford, as though Axel were addressing the President of the United States—“will take the historical opportunity my movement presents you. The temptation to prudence is
so
great. And the means of effecting prudence can be ugly—I know; I was involved, once, in effecting prudence (we were right, in the circumstances) in Norway, in 1944: there was a dead Norwegian left over. He might—conceivably—have escaped us, with tighter security. I could never escape the West, if the fatal decision were made. I can only hope that the West will see: through my eyes if necessary; through their own eyes, if only they will widen them. Don't you see, Blackford, I have got hold of the key to the eventual liberation of Eastern Europe?”

Blackford studied his face. In Axel's words there was assurance, but not a trace of that triumphalism that marks the fanatic, or the politician-on-the-stump. He was struck by Wintergrin's conviction, and its gnawing plausibility. Question: Was there more that Blackford should pursue? Out of professional concern? Or should he feign now only the dilettante's interest in the subject? What, he thought bitterly, would Rufus want him to say? He sensed he knew the answer to that question, and out of a sense of professional obligation he pursued the point.

“Surely those scientists you spoke about at Frankfurt must be known to the Russians? I can't see any
way
the Soviets would sit around and let you develop an atom bomb.”

Wintergrin looked at him, and hesitated. He replied with manifest caution. “The scientists have already done their work.”

Blackford chose to sacrifice his vanity and appear obtuse: “Done their work? What do you mean?”

Again, Wintergrin paused. And then said, “The defense we would under extraordinary circumstances deploy against the Soviet Union is ours to deploy.”

Again Blackford affected to misunderstand the electric reply, taking cover behind a handy cliché: “Of course, of course. Scientific knowledge is universal. You can't take E=mc
²
and send it to Siberia. Good point, Axel.”

Wintergrin accepted the evasion, and changed the subject. Over the next course he recounted to Blackford the special problems involved in producing the crayfish. Blackford, tasting it, pronounced the problems well solved. Wintergrin said—the Cold War was well behind them—“This doesn't quite remind one of our old school, Greyburn, does it?”

Blackford said, “I haven't been reminded of Greyburn since visiting Sing Sing.”

Wintergrin laughed. “Come now, it wasn't that bad, though your hyperbole is in the Greyburn tradition.”

Blackford said, in diligent pursuit of irrelevance, “I doubt the poor English can find food like this
anywhere
. And to think,
they
won the war!”

Wintergrin agreed. “Not even at Buckingham Palace” and stopped, as if to undo the clear suggestion that he was familiar with the fare at Buckingham Palace. Blackford who had drunk more than usual and more than he should have, began to feel giddy. “Ah, yes. But of course, Axel, you are a second cousin of the Queen, a relationship frequently remarked in the press. Now let me tell you something
you
don't know: I have tasted the food both at Buckingham Palace
and
at Windsor Castle.”

“Oh?” said Wintergrin, taking the last of the red wine.

“Oh, yes. I said to the Queen, I said, ‘Ma'am? The grub here is okay, but I can tell you where in Atlantic City you can get better.'”

Wintergrin smiled. Blackford hated himself, but could not stop. He hoped, hoped, he could stop in time, but meanwhile, under the impulse of champagne, Mosel, claret, and Rufus, he barreled on. “Oh yes, Axel, that's what I, er, said to the Queen. Then I went to Windsor Castle. Spent a couple of days there. Went riding with her, right around Windsor Park. Then, we went back to the castle and had dinner, just the two of us. Then”—Blackford felt like weeping, for the first time since, at fifteen, he learned at summer camp about his parents' divorce. Was it seriously proposed—surely the most macabre coincidence in history that he execute
another
second cousin of the Queen? And this one, moreover—unlike the other—the most convincing relic, in the world of jaded human resolution, of a will to resist the bad guys? The liars, cheats, murderers, torturers, slavemasters? Was he—Blackford Oakes—conscripted to serve the West to
that
end? He sensed the nervous immobility at the other end of the table, the awful fear of hearing, an indiscretion …” And after dinner, I said to her: ‘Ma'am, it's been a wonderful day.'” Blackford had pulled out of his nosedive seconds before hitting the treetops. “You see, I was there to look over the archives, to file an engineering report—and she was swell; she invited me, as a favor to the ambassador; talked about everything, including your common cousin Peregrine Kirk, who had taught her to ride horseback. When I went down to my room, I have to confess, Axel, I used some Windsor Castle stationery to write a letter to my girl in Washington.”

Wintergrin was relaxed again, “Here is the money to pay the bill”—he slipped one hundred marks to Blackford. “Remember, it's my party, though you're the host as far as Walter is concerned. Give him ten marks. Now, if you want to go upstairs, talk to Karl. He will make the whole thing very easy for you, no fuss. I shall be gone until”—he looked at his watch—“it is now ten-thirty. At twelve-thirty I'll be here, with a glass of brandy for you. We will now go our separate ways. Tell Washington that.” Blackford looked up, though the focus was a little unclear, rather like the night he ended his three-year ordeal of abstinence for the greater good of the swimming team at Yale.

Blackford said: “No, Axel, thanks. I'm not in the mood. Let's go home, unless you want me to sit here and, wait for you.

Axel rose silently. Blackford rang for Karl, settled the account, and walked out. Axel was sitting in the car, and they drove home. Axel talked about the days at Greyburn. They had been happy days, even though he was the resident Hun, and the martial winds were blowing. Blackford asked whether these were also happy days, even though the martial winds were blowing yet again, and Axel said he was happy for many blessings, among them that he had such a friend as Blackford; that the future was for Providence to worry about, and that Providence, with so much weight on its shoulders, cannot be supposed to be happy except in the special sense that Sisyphus, rolling the stone up the mountainside again and again, could be thought to be happy. Both men had read Camus.

CHAPTER 11

On the following day Blackford informed Overstreet he would be bringing in two electricians to lay out the wiring. This was two months ahead of schedule; but, he said, he had been told while in Bonn that two expert electricians had finished their work on the reconstruction of Monte Cassino in Italy, and Washington had decided to send them directly to St. Anselm's rather than back to the States, and back again to Europe in February, as the St. Anselm's reconstruction schedule called for. Overstreet grumbled that the chapel was hardly ready to rewire, and Blackford consoled him by saying he had said exactly that at Bonn, but that Colonel Morley had replied: “What the hell, you want me to argue with Washington? Let 'em go to St. Anselm's. If there's nothing for 'em to do, ship their asses back to Washington.” Blackford's imitation of the cigar-chomping colonel pacified Overstreet, who shrugged his shoulders and said, Well, he supposed they could work on the schematics even if they couldn't do any installations, and Blacky said sure, they could work on the schematics, and the next morning, having got two passes fur them from Jürgen Wagner, he introduced Overstreet and Conditti to Hallam Spring and Bruce Pulling. Spring, in his early forties, was the senior. He was paunchy, direct in manner, had worked as an electrical engineer during the war, never married, and moved around the world now doing special jobs for the government. Usually—it depended on the assignment—he traveled with Bruce Pulling, a diminutive man in his thirties who wore thick glasses and seemed forever to be making squiggly notes on a pad, bending over, which in his case was never very far, to look at something—a circuit plug, a light socket; but, sometimes, seemingly at nothing at all—a bit of wall, a piece of carpet. He spoke hardly a word. Hallam Spring, a Californian who wore Levi's, an open shirt and, on formal occasions, a string tie, didn't say much either, though he was pleasant enough. He maneuvered with Blackford around the chapel, Bruce Pulling made a few notes, and Spring said they'd be back in the morning after settling down at the inn and resting from the long drive. Blackford led them around the courtyard to give them a tourist's-eye view of St. Anselm's before escorting them back to his car and driving them to the gasthof. In the car, past the sentry, Blackford said: “Did you come with any ideas, or are you going to work out some ideas here?”

Spring exhaled his cigarette smoke. “Don't know what Singer has in mind for us yet. He'll be letting us know in a few days. Meanwhile, we can keep busy, don't worry. There's a lot in and around that chapel we can be doing. We've got a little sweeping to do.” Hallam Spring was one of the Agency's finest communications technicians and electrical experts. Bruce Pulling, early in the war, had been assigned as a demolitions instructor but he proved impossible as a teacher, so was sent to the field. Soon he was given the assignment of passing on unusual and complicated demolition problems. Occasionally he would venture out himself and take on an assignment: always when Rufus asked him to. Singer had said of him to Blackford: “Pulling plays explosives like Pablo Casals plays the cello.”

Blackford was correct with his new associates, but not quite his old-boy self. Face it, he told himself ruefully: It wasn't all high principle that was churning him up. It was also the debauch of the night before. What
would
he have done without that last bottle of champagne at three in the morning? he wondered. Died of thirst maybe? He lunched briefly with his electricians, answered their questions, and returned to the chapel to work during the afternoon, and to think.

As he drove into the courtyard, Count Wintergrin's caravan was preparing to move out. That night the speech would be at Bremen. In front there was a police motorcycle, courtesy of the federal government. Then a passenger car, a middle-sized Mercedes, with two men in front, one in the rear—members of the Freiwillige Schutzwehr, the voluntary security corps organized by Jürgen Wagner to protect Wintergrin during the campaign. Then the candidate's own car, a 1941 Opel Admiral belonging to the countess. The windows had been bulletproofed; the bullet-resistant tires were reputed to weigh 175 pounds apiece. The chauffeur was a trained bodyguard like the grim Wolfgang who sat next to him. Behind, but not easily visible—though he could open the car's roof and stand up through the opening was Count Wintergrin, and the ever-present Roland Himmelfarb. Following the car, a bus—a traveling office, really, with three well-appointed desks, two mimeograph machines, six typewriters, two radio-telephones, and another half-dozen phones that could be quickly connected to a circuit when the bus drove up alongside either a hotel where the candidate was staying, or a theater or gymnasium where he would speak. In the bus were Wintergrin's communications chief Heinrich Stiller, his press chief Kurt Grossmann, his chief translator Erika Chadinoff, and their staffs, plus two security men, heavily armed. Behind that the press bus would attach itself, completing the caravan. Wintergrin, talking with an aide, a leather portfolio in the crook of his arm, approached his car and waved a greeting to Blackford, who waved back but did not approach him. Instead he walked toward Erika, who was looking over a clipboard held up to her by an elderly woman. In a language Blackford was unfamiliar with, they were obviously wrangling, presumably about the proper translation of a passage from the evening's text. Erika smiled at Blackford. “Why don't you come along? We should all be back by one or two at the latest.”