Who's on First (12 page)

“Correct. One cannot exaggerate the importance of going up first with a satellite. It will affect our diplomacy, the way we are regarded, in every chancellery in the world. Are you agreed?”

“I am agreed. It would take a long time to overcome a technological setback of that kind. It might, incidentally, very easily decide the next presidential election.”

“You mean, the ‘stupid' party could be voted out?”

“I didn't say that, Allen.” He smiled. “Besides, Democrats often wage stupid campaigns. What can I do for you, my friend?”

“I speak now on behalf of my brother and the President. Will you, early in the fall, take a trip? London, Paris, Bonn, Rome. The purpose: to advise our friends that the Soviet Union is going to go big for rocketry. That the United States is doing solid work on rocketry and confidently expects to launch a satellite ahead of the Soviet Union. That a Soviet satellite will not, however, be delayed for very long, but that our massive technological resources will in any case cause us to forge ahead and extend that lead over the next two or three years, and that as a leading Democrat you are quite confident that the Democrats in Congress will vote the necessary funds.”

His guest pulled a leather book out of his pocket and leafed through a few pages.

“I will be in Europe in November. Is that soon enough?”

“That may be stretching it. Could you possibly move it forward? October?”

He studied the book. “Hmm. Judge Lorenzo, before whom I am scheduled to litigate in October, is, I believe, a Republican appointee. He has—up until now?”—one tip of the famous moustache cocked up quizzically—“adamantly declined any further postponements.”

The Director took out his pencil.

“What court?”

“District Court, D.C.”

“Consider it done.”

The visitor stood up, shook hands, and walked toward the door. “It's bad news they are making such progress. But you appear to have done a good job of intelligence. Well done.”

“Thank you.”

“Someday your spy network may discover poverty in America, and do something about it.”

“There can't be that many poor people, Dean. They all voted for your party—and look how many votes you got.”

The former Secretary smiled, and they shook hands.

14

The idea was to leave them alone. There were contingency arrangements. “The Worst Case situation,” Rufus had lectured Blackford, Anthony Trust, and Vadim, “is if Kapitsa raises unshirted hell, refuses to speak to his old friend, clams up, demands the police, the ambassador, the whole works. If that happens, then we cover our losses. Vadim will apologize, tell him he, Vadim, felt he had to make an effort to give Viktor and Tamara a choice, that to that end he got a couple of friends with anti-Communist backgrounds to help him out, that he hadn't tipped off any U.S.A. officials because no one from America would cooperate in any such enterprise especially on foreign soil; that Vadim will arrange to get him back to Paris, and he can tell the Russians he persuaded the Algerian kidnappers they would be much better off letting him argue the case for aid to Algeria in person than as a prisoner. End—we hope—of an unsuccessful episode.

“Going to the
other
extreme, there's the possibility that Kapitsa will welcome the opportunity to defect—don't interrupt me, Vadim—we're talking
hypothetical
possibilities. In
that
event we are ready to move with great speed to get him out of the country. At this end we can tie up the Russians by stretching out the Algerians' demands for a few days and then telling them that Dr. Kapitsa has escaped. They will guess either that he defected or that he was killed. Let them guess.”

Rufus stood up, and there began one of his renowned pauses, during which his three auditors maintained a disciplined silence. Finally he resumed.

“A third possibility strikes me as the likeliest, on the basis of what Vadim has told us about Kapitsa. It is that on the one hand he won't turn against his old friend here resentfully—particularly when Vadim tells him that he arranged the elaborate cover story assigning responsibility to the Algerians. But that he will want to go back to Russia. We just don't know. But Vadim is in a position to tell him, gently but with some firmness, that Kapitsa
must
agree to stay in the chateau and think it over for at least forty-eight hours, that for one thing the cover story would stand up better if there was a delay of at least that long. During those forty-eight hours, Vadim must labor as best he can to get the most information out of him. Will he tell us what they are up to in Tyura Tam? When do they expect to go with the satellite? What's holding them up? What can he tell us about the fuel mix they're going to use? Have they had any success in purifying ozone?
Everything
we can get out of him. There is, further, the remote possibility that he would be willing to return to Russia—and feed us information on a regular basis. This, for us, is obviously the ideal result, better than a defection. To make that arrangement raises the question of Tamara. And my guess is, Vadim, that you shouldn't even raise it as a possibility until you and Viktor are entirely alone. You should try to be alone with him as long as you can when you first meet. Then bring in the girl, have dinner, make them feel at home. You'll be excellently fed. They will see only the French maid, and the cook, if they wander into the kitchen. Trust will be in the east wing and will stay there to take any communications from Vadim. Blackford, you will supervise the delivery of the ransom message to the Soviet Embassy, come back to me, and report on the success of the initial proceedings. Then return to the hotel until I tell you to go back out to Chantilly. You will check with me, using a pay phone, the next morning and we'll discuss what we find in
Le Monde
. I'll give you any information I've gotten from Trust.”

And Blackford had done just that, and then repaired to a public telephone booth. Rufus was pleased that the operation had in its first phase gone smoothly. He informed Blackford that Trust had already called in from Chantilly to say that his “guest” was acting very “reasonably”—which meant he was not resisting his sequestration. “By the way, Blackford,” Rufus went on, “your old friend Bolgin is in town. Left London two days ago, we've learned. So he'll be managing the case here on the spot. There's nothing to do now until tomorrow morning. You may as well go out and taste the smells and sights of Paris.”

“Rufus!”

Rufus ignored this, saying merely, “Call me in the morning. Let us say … between nine-thirty and ten. I'll have a report from Trust.” He hung up.

Trust! Ah, Anthony. Blackford remembered his own report.… Last night, at the chateau, after Vadim had gone to bed, they had chatted. Toward the end of the evening Anthony had said, “Do you remember Doucette?”

“My dear Anthony, I dimly remember Doucette. I am quite certain that she remembers me.”

“Well, Doucette has a younger sister. I … ‘met' her sister over the weekend.”

“At Madame Pensaud's?”

“Madame Pensaud has gone to her reward.”

“Ouch!”

“But as you know in France tradition is everything. Madame Pensaud's niece is the current entrepreneur, and her quarters and facilities are unchanged, including the picture of Queen Caroline, and the diatribe against the Fourth Republic. But Doucette's sister, she confided to me—”

“Is that all she did to you?”

“Quiet, Oakes: I am about to share a treasure with you.”

“Anthony, before you share any treasures with me, may I ask when you last had a checkup?”

“This's hardly the way to treat your old benefactor, Blackford. Anyway, Doucette's sister, Alouette, slipped me her telephone number, telling me that it was ‘more convenient' all the way around that way.”

“In other words, she doesn't have to share the boodle with Madame.”

“Oakes, you should be in Intelligence.”

“I would prefer to be in Alouette.”

“Moreover, you have not lost your distinctive vulgarity.”

“I'll discuss my distinctions with Alouette.”

They had been interrupted—the maid came in to ask if there would be anything else before she retired—but Blackford had in fact absentmindedly pocketed the card with the telephone number.

As he walked out of the telephone booth he reflected that this had been a full day. Should he simply order a meal—perhaps even in his room in the hotel?—read a book, and go to bed? Tomorrow might be busy. On the other hand as, crossing the river, the evening breeze braced him, he reconsidered: It was more probable that tomorrow would be
un
eventful; that he would be spending the whole of the day or most of it in his room, waiting for instructions. Why not, then, wander about Paris a little bit? Should he call Alouette? Or simply go to the bar at the George V, perhaps run into someone, male or female. Male? “Blacky Oakes! For Pete's sake? Haven't seen you since New Haven. What're you doing?” How many times had that happened to him. One hundred? One thousand? He tried to come up with interesting variations on the theme that he was an international consultant in engineering, in which he was known by all his old classmates to be highly qualified. But, inevitably, there had been rumors. Only once or twice, usually when his friends got drunk—or, more often, when their wives did—the question would be pressed.
Was it true that he was actually in the
… By definition, Blackford Oakes was no longer a deep-cover agent. The KGB now knew his identity. But the rules of the Agency were not relaxed. The Agency took the position that even if the Soviet Union discovers the identity of an agent his usefulness in clandestine operations by no means entirely lapses. By staying clear of embassies and U.S. officials in whatever capacity, covert agents retain a measure of mobility. They must constantly be on guard against being followed, because very often they are, and the KGB seems to develop a fascination for the movements of particular agents, for no rational reason. Blackford had been pestered while in Washington, but had eluded the KGB entirely, he was certain, during the months in Budapest, and there was no evidence the KGB were on to him in France. Still, in the middle of a drastically secret operation, he was best off not frequenting a bar, or a restaurant, where he stood a higher chance of running into somebody he knew; so, passing by Au Petit Riche on Rue Le Peletier, he decided impulsively to enter it, and eat alone, and read a little—he carried a pocketbook always, and was enjoying Jane Austen, whom he had once vowed to Sally not to read. “It would embarrass you most awfully, wouldn't it, Dr. Partridge, if after reading Jane Austen it should transpire in conversations in academic salons that I, a mere vulgar engineer, know more about Jane Austen than you do?” She had answered with characteristic vitality that any academic salon which thought that he would ever know more than she about Jane Austen would likely be in Equatorial Guinea. But at the airport he had impetuously picked up
Pride and Prejudice
and, to his amazement, discovered that Jane Austen was most awfully …
funny
. So, when the waiter came, he ordered a kir, and a half-dozen snails and a
crêpe de volaille
and a half bottle of Montrachet and later a little cheese and a half bottle of burgundy and then, he decided, Alouette. He rose to the telephone, and she answered immediately.

“Hello, do you speak English?”

“Yes. Who ees thees?”

“Thees ees a friend of Tony's. Do you remember Tony?” He half hoped she would say no.

“Off korss, how ees dear Tonee?”

“He's fine, sends his best. I was wondering whether you would like to go out for a drink?”

“Mmmm. But wy go out? I haf neize champagne right here?”

“Okay. Nine o'clock?”

“It weel be oh so charming to meet a friend of Tonee's.”

He went back to the table and, for a minute, felt bad about the forthcoming tryst. But then he reminded himself that Sally had rejected him. All right, more precisely, rejected marriage. What was he to do? There were, of course, austere answers to that question, but he found that with a little discipline, he could drive them from his mind. He returned to his coffee and to Jane Austen, but suddenly he was not focusing. How well he knew the encroaching sensation. Once it began, it directed him, and, worse, he knew it: It was as though he were sitting at the next table, looking at himself. He paid the bill, congratulated the maître d'hôtel, and casually asked for the nearest pharmacy. It was nearby, it happened, and there the transaction—done necessarily through a saleswoman behind the counter, there being no man around—was handled as nonchalantly as if he had asked for a tube of toothpaste. Noting the time, he reasoned he could walk—back across the river, up the Quai Voltaire, past the little hotel where Oscar Wilde had died so wretchedly (but not of venereal disease), and up the Rue du Bac to the indicated number. At worst he would arrive ten minutes late. He set out, the demon now in complete control. He found already that his throat was becoming dry, and he forced himself to look appreciatively at the lights of Paris, which concatenated—was this the special genius of the romantic city?—to shape themselves for him in erotic designs. When he rang the doorbell, he was very nearly hoarse with desire.

15

At five minutes to ten Blackford Oakes dropped a coin in the pay phone at the end of the hotel's arcade and dialed Rufus.

“Nothing in
Le Monde,
” Rufus began. “I'm not surprised, really. They just haven't decided what to do. A tough question even under serene circumstances. There's a considerable confusion in the Kremlin these days. I see. Perhaps tomorrow. Almost certainly tomorrow. Meanwhile I have some … information I want you to take to our friends.”

“I should come then by car?”

“Yes, park it nearby.”