Who's on First (21 page)

“Are we going alone?” Tamara asked Viksne.

“Yes, I must accompany the delegation. But you are expected; do not concern yourself.” He waved goodbye, while, with the same motion, he directed the KGB driver to proceed.

In the car they did not talk. They might have done so in German, or English, but dared not risk it. He turned to her as they drove down that stygian ramp into the huge building that sheltered the aorta of Soviet terror, and whispered to her: “Do not contradict me. Do not say anything. Understand?” He gripped her hand.

Standing at the landing area of the underground ramp between the two seated armed guards was a youngish man, balding, blond, corpulent, in civilian garb.

“I am Captain Uglich.”

Viktor acknowledged the unsmiling bow, and recalled that there was a labor camp of the same name.

“Kindly follow me.”

This required stamina. The elevator was not working, and it was a full ten minutes of stairways and corridors before Viktor found himself in a room of modest dimensions, with a screen at the far end, on which no image projected.

“Sit down, Professor,” Captain Uglich said, and left the room. Viktor and Tamara sat down on two of the several hard-backed chairs in the dimly lit room. Suddenly they heard a voice coming in through an amplifier in the corner. It was the voice of Viksne.

“
So that, just to repeat, Viktor Andreyevich, from the moment you and Tamara were picked up by the taxi-cab driver, you exchanged not a word with your captors?
”

He heard his own voice replying. “
Not a word. Well, hardly. At first we had to ask such routine questions as where were the toilet facilities
.”

“
And you overheard no conversations during that period?
”

“
That's correct. The French exchanged between the fellow who took us in, the bodyguard, and the cook, we could not make out
.”

“
Was it a deep, guttural French?
”

“
My French is not that good, but such was my impression, and my wife's
.”

“
The man in the taxicab who drove you off, did you attempt to speak to him at all?
”

“
Yes, at first, especially when it became clear we were being abducted. But he wouldn't answer. As I say, we only heard him talk on a few occasions and always in rapid French to his fellow conspirators
.”

At that moment a picture flashed on the screen. It was a huge enlargement of Viktor and Tamara Kapitsa being addressed by a young man wearing a beret, sitting in the driver's seat of a French taxicab.

At the bottom of the screen the words slid across, as in a ticker tape: “
OAKES, BLACKFORD. DEEP-COVER AGENT OF CIA. BORN AKRON OHIO, DECEMBER 7, 1925. EDUCATED SCARSDALE NEW YORK HIGH SCHOOL, GREYBURN ACADEMY ENGLAND, YALE UNIVERSITY CLASS OF 1951. FOUGHT AS FIGHTER PILOT 37TH AIR FORCE SQUADRON FRANCE 1944–45. RECRUITED SUMMER 1951. EXPERT IN GERMAN, WORKING KNOWLEDGE FRENCH. KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN ACTIVE IN OPERATION DOCKET #472-A GREAT BRITAIN 1951, OPERATION DOCKET #4977-C GERMANY 1952. SPOTTED PARIS AT HOTEL FRANCE ET CHOISEUL ON JULY 2, 1957.
”

The door opened to the august presence of the director himself. General Gleb Mamulov, ramrod-stiff, dressed in simple but perfectly tailored gray gabardine with an undefined military cut, and a tieless Stalin collar. Viktor and Tamara rose.

“You are under arrest, Professors Viktor and Tamara Kapitsa. Charged with high treason, under Article 58-1a and 1b, as agents of the international bourgeoisie under Article 58-4; spies (58-6); subversives (58-7); noninformers (58-12); and abettors of the enemy (58-3). Do you have anything to say?”

“Yes,” Kapitsa said. “My wife is entirely innocent.”

Mamulov gave a snort which alone must substantially have contributed to his ascendancy in the KGB. It was the quintessence of disbelief, contempt, impatience, and outrage. “She was in the room when you answered the questions of Viksne. She did not contradict your lies.”

“I told her my life was threatened if she did so. The fact remains she was privy to no conversations between me and the Americans.”

Mamulov did not answer. He nodded to Uglich. “Take them away.”

Thirty-six hours later, at dawn, three cars drove out of the bowels of the Lubyanka and threaded their way to the Yaroslavski station. There the Trans-Siberian train lay preparing its 8
A.M.
departure. One car, at the end, was completely closed off, the windows barred and sealed. At one end of the car was a substantial clinic in which two military doctors sat, smoking, at opposite ends of a card table.

“It's all very well to expect us to revive these fellows. But I'd rather take on Lazarus than this one coming up.” He reviewed the medical report he had been given at midnight, when summoned. “It's easy to say ‘Revival matter of state security.' They should have said that to the people who”—his eyes traveled down the page—“broke his jaw … blinded him in one eye … perforated his pancreas … broke six ribs. Hmm,” he took a deep drag from his cigarette, “the other damage appears to be minor. Perhaps the personnel at the Lubyanka are engaging in a slowdown for higher wages.”

“What about the girl?”

“Haven't touched her, just heavy sedation. She's been out for almost two days. But they want her too, up the line. We're to see that she stays weak, but revivable.”

“How long have we got?”

“As usual, they don't give the destination. We're to do ‘everything we can' in thirty hours. Did you check the supplies?”

“Yeah.” The young doctor looked about him. “We got enough stuff here to treat a graduate of the Lubyanka Summa Cum Laude.”

They went back to their smoking, and the younger man yawned. “Never did a pierced retina before.”

“You'll learn,” said his colleague consolingly.

25

Blackford met with Rufus for breakfast, and told him about Frieda and Bolgin, and the impending rendezvous on the telephone. Rufus listened, got up, and, from between two books in the library, pulled a large manila envelope.

Twenty minutes later, from a public telephone booth, Blackford spoke with Frieda.

At ten exactly, again from a public telephone, Frieda rang the number of Colonel Bolgin, who picked up the telephone himself, having arranged to record the conversation on magnetic tape.

“You are the same gentleman as yesterday?” she spoke in French.

“Yes. They call me Valerian.”

“They call me Olga.”

“I am very anxious to see you, Olga.”

“I am a friend of József, and he has told me to follow his instructions.”

“Where is József?”

“His instructions include not to tell you or anyone else where he is. Something has happened that has made some of his friends suspicious. He is going to America, but he is willing to do work over there for your friends if he is convinced he is safe. Meanwhile, I have a negative and a print for you.”

Bolgin's heart began to pump excitedly. It had worked!
The very day after the kidnapping of Kapitsa, the kidnapper had been punished!
Moscow would like that. And there would be no end to the ramifications. It could even be suggested—why not?—that KGB justice was involved and was summary—if Moscow decided to go public, i.e., within the international intelligence fraternity, in the matter of the CIA's kidnapping of Kapitsa.

To be sure, it would have been useful at this point to get hold of Oakes alive, and question him. But they had retrieved Kapitsa as of yesterday afternoon, after all; and in due course, Bolgin meditated with satisfaction, Kapitsa would be most … thoroughly … questioned about his cock-and-bull Algerian story. Meanwhile: the picture!

His bargaining instinct asserted itself. He would feign only moderate interest in it. “Oh yes, the picture. Is it your plan to mail it to me?”

“Please, Valerian: I am busy. And I am about to cut off this conversation. I will call you from another telephone at exactly ten-thirty. The price is ten million francs. But József wants it in dollars. Twenty thousand dollars.” Frieda hung up.

At ten-thirty, when the telephone rang, Bolgin picked it up. “Ten thousand dollars, and that is the top price.”

“József instructed me not to bargain. The picture can, alternatively, be turned over to the Sûreté Nationale with an explanation as to how it happened, where the body is buried, and who gave the instructions.”

Bolgin had a reliable instinct on the matter of when bargaining would work, and when it wouldn't. “
Eh bien. D'accord. Vingt milles
.”

Before he could begin to stipulate arrangements, Frieda proceeded: “József says you are to send a woman from your department to the ladies' room on the second floor of the Galeries Lafayette. She is to arrive at exactly noon: in ninety minutes, approximately. There are six stalls. I'll be occupying the end toilet. The toilet next to it will have a sign on it—
OUT OF ORDER
—I'll tip the attendant to put it on, to make certain it will be unoccupied. Your woman is to open that stall. I will slide the envelope under the partition as soon as she has slid the package of bills under the partition. She can examine the photograph. When she raps on the partition, I will pick up the package and count the bills.
She is to stay in the toilet stall fifteen minutes
. Do you need me to repeat this? Oh. One more thing. József says you may include in the package the name of any contact in Washington or in New York if you wish József to have further dealings with you.”

“I have the details,” Bolgin snapped, and put down the telephone.

At ten minutes to one, Sverdlov's secretary, two years out of a KGB academy, returned perspiring from her mission in the large downtown department store. She handed the envelope to Sverdlov, who, as instructed, took it directly up one flight of stairs to the office of the military attaché, dropping it on Bolgin's desk. Bolgin's fingers shook as he reached for it. He opened it and slid out the 8 by 10 print. The background was appropriately grisly. The helter-skelter wine casks on the floor, the fixed end of the rope disappearing at an angle into the dark void, beyond the reach of the flashbulb. The dull blue shirt and inert, long slim legs; the arms bound behind; the face, cocked over by the noose, disfigured. Bolgin, his heart once again pounding, reached for his magnifying glass.

He stared at the face of the dead man. The blondish hair, loosely cut. The regular features, the swollen cheek. He felt a jet of ice run up his spine. He sat motionless, his mind racing. Sverdlov wondered that so professional a man as Colonel Bolgin should be taking such voluptuary satisfaction, even in such a work of counterintelligent art. Sverdlov was fascinated by the fixity of Bolgin's attention to the photograph.

Finally Bolgin slid the print back into the envelope and looked up. His voice was preternaturally steady.

“Well done. I shall meditate the uses to which we shall put the photograph—after consulting with Moscow.”

Sverdlov, though disappointed that he had not been offered a view of the expensive photo, snapped his heels together and left. Bolgin, alone, dug his nails into the sides of his face—until he felt moisture at his right index finger. Alarmed, he walked over to the mirror. He had actually drawn blood on his right cheek. Calmly he went into the bathroom's medicine closet and applied the styptic pencil. As he looked into the mirror he said to himself, out loud, in exaggeratedly emphasized English, “Only you, Rufus, would think of it. Sell me, for ten million francs, a picture of József Nady on the perfect, the beautiful gallows prepared for Blackford Oakes. You knowing—goddam you, Rufus—that probably only
I
, Boris Bolgin, could tell the difference.”

26

“I'll have,” the moustache seemed to aim its skepticism directly at the menu, “—is the pompano really fresh?”

“Yes, Mr. Secretary.” They still called him that. At least, the waiters did. Mostly, he reflected, they called him other names, though it had been a while since anybody had referred to him as “The Red Dean.” He had been secrectly amused when that had happened. Senator McCarthy at his press conference had professed to be confused over whether the questioner had been referring to the Secretary of State or to the notorious fellow-traveling Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, who during the period was touring centers of native culture lecturing on the private virtues and public accomplishments of Joseph Stalin. McCarthy! Dead three months now. That death had given the former Secretary the opportunity, progressively rare, to knock off a Latin motto. “How do you spell ‘mortuis,' Mr. Secretary?” one reporter—obviously not from the New York
Times
—had asked. “
De m-o-r-t-u-i-s nil nisi bonum,
” he had repeated, reflecting that to translate the phrase would appear patronizing, though as a matter of fact he was through caring whether the press thought him patronizing. It did occur to him, with that instinct which, after all, had kept him in public life for so many years, that he should arrange to see to it that word got out to Independence as to the meaning of it, so that when the old man called, which he was sure to do on getting the news, they could chuckle together. “I thought it a diplomatic way out, Mr. President,” he could hear himself saying, and that would sound mellifluous, counter-pointing what he was certain to hear over the telephone from the former President about the late senator. Great heavens—he arrested his musing.

“Fresh, you say, very well. Bring me some chilled Chablis—
Villages,
1953—with it, and also iced tea.”

“I'll have the same.” It was a strange habit for a man as decisive as the Director. He
always
ordered the same as his guest. Indeed, so ingrained was the habit that when he had more than one guest, he would order the same as the guest who had given the immediately preceding order. The former Secretary was forever pledging to himself one day to order something revoltingly exotic—say, fried rattlesnake—and see whether the Director would say, “I'll have the same.” The trouble was, they never ate together at restaurants that made much of fried rattlesnake.