“The only alternative is the Colonels,” said my father. “I don’t know that they’re honest dinner guests.”
Such talk went on. I certainly couldn’t swear to what they were contesting, but I thought it wonderfully interesting. Before too many years went by, perhaps I, too, would carry on such conversations.
Of course, I was not enjoying the evening altogether. I was still in dread of tomorrow’s search for Wolfgang, and my stomach was raw. Harlot and Cal had taken, after the smallest acknowledgment, no further recognition of my last six months of training, and my graduation from the Farm. Nor had they given me room to talk about my present condition. After three martinis, I had begun to pack veal roulade into my gorge with a red burgundy whose nature seemed more complex than my own. Add Hennessey, and the attempt to smoke a Churchill with panache, and what I had hoped would be a party of celebration (and possible explanation for why I had been marooned in the Bunker) was now becoming a long march of gastrointestinal fortitude. I lost interest in Sukarno and how they would hold his feet to the fire.
Beneath it all, I was feeling the same sure resentment my father always stirred. Sad cry: He had no desire to see me for myself alone. I was his adjunct to business, pleasure, or duty. So, despite my physical discomforts, heavy as thunderclouds, I felt the same rush of love my father could also stir in me when he said at last, “I’m really waiting to hear about you, boy.”
“There’s not much to tell.”
“He’s in the Snake Pit,” said Harlot.
By my father’s pause, I could tell this came as unexpected information. “Well, that’s a hell of a place to have him.”
“No. It’s advisable.”
“You put him there?”
“I didn’t keep it from happening.”
“Why? Did he do that badly at the Farm?”
“No. He landed in the top quarter of his class.”
“Good.”
“Not good, adequate.”
All this, of course, was being said in front of me.
“Then why do you have him in Files?”
“Because it’s a holding tank, and I plan to send him to Berlin. That’s an interesting place right now.”
“I know all about Berlin. I agree. But why isn’t he working at West German Desk?”
“Because it can be fatal to young fortunes. Four promising kids have come and gone from that slot in the last three months. Harvey chews them up before they have time to learn.”
My father nodded. He puffed on his cigar. He sipped his brandy. He took this much time to say in effect that he was a Far Eastern hand and did not know all that much about what was closer to home.
“I want,” said Hugh, “for you to write a letter to Harvey. A puff for Harry. Tell him what a great son you’ve got. Harvey respects you, Cal.”
This Bill Harvey, I could recognize, was the same Chief of Base, West Berlin, who had called me a file-rat. Why did Harlot think I should work for him? I was, despite the last full lecture imparted at the canal house, not without suspicions.
Perhaps my unhappy stomach could not hold its own bad news much longer. I told them of Harvey’s cable.
“I’m no longer,” I said, “exactly anonymous. He knows there’s a guy named KU/CLOAKROOM who didn’t produce what he wanted on VQ/WILDBOAR.”
They laughed. They could have been brothers for the way they laughed together.
“Well,” said Cal, “Maybe KU/CLOAKROOM ought to disappear.”
“Exactly,” said Harlot. “We can drink to the new fellow. Got a preference in the christening?”
“KU/RENDEZVOUS?” I proposed.
“Much too salient. Get over into the gray. Let’s start with KU/ ROPES.”
I didn’t like ROPES any more than CLOAKROOM, but I discovered it didn’t matter. It was explained to me that just as laundered money grew cleaner with each new bank, so did each change of cryptonym remove you farther from the scene of a fiasco. My new cryptonym would soon be altered from KU/ROPES to DN/FRAGMENT, then, over to SM/ONION. Last stop: KU/STAIRS. Harlot jotted down these names with little self-congratulatory clicks of the tongue, while my father chuckled in approval. They were cooking a dish.
“I don’t know how it works,” I protested.
“Worry not. Once I get this through, odds against discovery will go up to something like ten thousand to one,” said Harlot.
It still seemed to me that all it would take for Mr. William Harvey, Chief of Base in West Berlin, to find out who KU/CLOAKROOM was, would be to ask the West German Desk in Washington to get my real name over to him in a hurry.
No, my father assured me, it couldn’t happen that way.
Why?
“Because,” said Harlot, “we are dealing with bureaucrats.”
“Harvey?” I asked.
“Oh, no. The people between Harvey and you. They won’t see any reason to violate their rules of procedure. If West German Desk here at Headquarters is asked to furnish the identity of KU/CLOAKROOM to Chief of Base, West Berlin, they must apply first to Bridge-Archive, who, in turn, will reply that KU/CLOAKROOM has just been given a shift to KU/ROPES. Well, that means delay for West German Desk. Any alteration of cryptonym invokes a seventy-two-hour elapse before translation can occur. This protective regulation is a perfectly good one, by the way. Such a change took place, presumably, for some valid purpose. At this point, West German Desk probably decides to wait the required three days. It’s a minor search, after all. They’re just accommodating Harvey. He’s over in Berlin, and West German Desk is working for West German Station in Bonn.”
“Doesn’t Base in West Berlin have priority over West German Station in Bonn?” I asked my father.
“Don’t know about that. Bonn does have the Soviet Russia Division.” He frowned. “Of course, Berlin, on balance, could be more important. Only we’re not talking about real clout. We’re dealing with bureaucracy, and that’s a whole other kingdom.”
“Count on it,” said Harlot. “If Bill Harvey insists on immediate processing of his request, which is highly unlikely, because he’s bound to be mad at somebody else by tomorrow—it’s another day, after all—West German Desk still won’t be able to satisfy him directly. They will have to go a step higher to Bridge-Archive:Control. Right there, they will meet a STOP. I will have put it in. STOP will say: ‘Wait your seventy-two hours.’ If they don’t want to, they have to take it up even higher, to Bridge-Archive:Control—Senior. Now, that is a committee. Bridge-Archive:Control—Senior meets only for emergencies. I happen to be on the committee. One never presumes on Bridge-Archive:Control—Senior unless one can prove extraordinary need to know.”
He puffed with complete happiness on his Churchill. “Obviously, you’re safe enough for seventy-two hours. In the interim, we will switch your cryptonym from KU/ROPES to DN/FRAGMENT. That means West German Desk, far from discovering who KU/CLOAKROOM is, will have to recommence the process to learn the identity of DN/FRAGMENT. They’re still not near anything, you see.”
“DN,” said my father, “is the digraph for South Korea.”
“Yes,” said Harlot. “KU/ROPES has gone to South Korea and become DN/FRAGMENT. On paper, at least. Of course, an overseas cryptonym puts a two-week hold on Bridge-Archive. By then, Harvey, we can predict, will be well on to other things. Nonetheless, as a matter of pride, I believe in carrying these matters out properly. If Harvey, for any reason, becomes obsessed with finding out who you are, which is always a possibility, and waits out the two weeks, I promise that at the end of such interval, you will be shifted over to London as SM/ONION. Still on paper, of course. A fortnight further down the road, we will bring you figuratively back from London to the U.S., which, dear boy, you have not left in the first place. But we’ll have you back working as KU/STAIRS. Total write-off for Harvey at that point. He will see that a signature is on this business. It will tell him to lay off. He’s obviously tampering with something. No ordinary file-clerk gets three cryptonyms in one month including junkets to S
outh Korea and London with protective STOPS from Bridge-Archive:Control. So it’s our way of saying to Bill Harvey: Bug off. Big guns are in place.”
It seemed clear enough to me. I would be safe. But why go to such pains?
My father must have been enough of a parent to read my cerebrations. “We’re doing it because we like you,” he said.
“And because we like doing it,” said Harlot. He nudged the ash from his cigar onto a clean plate as carefully as he might roll an egg with his forefinger. “I’ll also have to get,” he remarked, “KU/CLOAKROOM expunged from your 201. Then there’ll be no record at all.”
“I appreciate the troubles you’re taking on,” I said, “but, after all, I committed no crime. It’s not my fault if the Document Room is buried in backlog.”
“Well,” said Harlot, “the first rule in this place, if you value the size of the future contribution you want to make, is to protect yourself when young. If some mogul sends a request for information, supply it.”
“How? Do you tunnel through ten thousand cubic feet of uncarded documents?”
“Wolfgang was a student in a street gang, and he moved around a lot. You could have made up a report that kept him moving a little more. Send him to Frankfurt, or over to Essen.”
“Maybe,” said my father, “Rick should still do that.”
“No,” said Harlot. “Too late. It won’t work now. Too much attention will be paid to the false information. But the point for my godson to recognize is that in the beginning Harvey was not asking for a serious inquiry.”
“How can you be certain of that?” I asked.
“If Chief of Base in West Berlin is not aware of the frightful condition of the Snake Pit, he is incompetent. William King Harvey is not incompetent. He knew, given the chaos, there would be nothing up to date on VQ/WILDBOAR. I would say he sent the cable, and put his name to it, mind you, to scorch some of his people in Berlin. They probably lost contact with Wolfgang. It’s a slap in the face for them if our file system here has to do the job when they are in place over there. If you had provided some fiction for Wolfgang’s travels, Harvey could have used it to stir up his principals and their agents. ‘See,’ he would tell them, ‘Wolfgang has gone back to Frankfurt.’ ‘Impossible,’ they might answer. ‘He’s too recognizable in Frankfurt.’ ‘All right,’ Harvey could have answered, ‘get cracking and find him.’”
I could not keep myself from saying, “What if it was urgent to find Wolfgang? What if he”—I showed, I fear, a wholly callow spirit—“what if he was about to pass some nuclear secrets on to the Russians?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Harlot. “We’ve lost it at that point. We’re lumbered. The world ends because the Document Room is an impacted mass.”
My father took a long look at Hugh Montague and something was exchanged between them. Harlot sighed. “In fact,” he said, “there is one larger-than-life secret in West Berlin, and I may have to let you in on it before you go over. If you don’t have any idea of what it is, you could get in Harvey’s way.” He sighed again. “It’s a thousand to one that Wolfgang has nothing to do with larger-than-life, but if he does, we’ll know about it soon enough.”
“How?”
Hugh sniffed another measure of that air of the judicious and the corrupt which is common to courtroom corridors and cigars, and said, “We’ll get you out of the Snake Pit tomorrow, and on to intensive training in German.” That was all the answer provided.
13
AFTER DINNER, MY FATHER PROPOSED THAT I STAY WITH HIM FOR THE night. He was living, he told me, at a friend’s apartment off K Street and 16th, “an old hand in an old apartment,” my father said in passing, and when we went up, I was struck with how shabby were the furnishings. It spoke of small income for an old hand without private funds; it also reminded me of how pinch-fisted we Hubbards could be. My father was certainly able to afford a decent hotel, yet chose to bunk here instead—I hardly knew if he was saving expense money for the CIA or himself. On second look, however, I realized his story was not true. The spartan lack of amenities—one gray sofa, two gray chairs, one old carpet, one pitted metal ashtray on its own stand, no drapes, and a bureau with cigarette burns, a refrigerator, as I soon discovered, with three beers, a tin of sardines, a box of crackers, and half-empty old jars of mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise—was enough to tell me that no one was living here. There was no personal clutter. Not one picture or photograph. This couldn’t be a friend’s apartment. We were in a safe house. I was visiting my first safe house. Naturally my father would choose to stay in one. It fit the loneliness he liked to wrap around himself whenever he was not back in his Tokyo home with warm reliable Mary Bolland Baird Hubbard.
My father now waved me into one of the two dusty armchairs, and brought forth from a kitchen cupboard a half bottle of cheap Scotch which we drank with water, no cubes. He had turned on the refrigerator, however, and it was humming loudly enough to discourage any microphone hidden anywhere about. I was, at this point, highly sensitive to the possible presence of sneakies, inasmuch as one of the courses back at the Reflecting Pool had been in electronic surveillance, and I wondered if my father’s quick tapping of his fingernails against the end table by the side of his chair came from nervousness, fatigue, or his long-trained habit to send out sufficient noise to discourage any but the most advanced listening devices. Of course, I had even less idea whether I was being too paranoid or insufficiently so.
“I want to talk to you about Hugh and Bill Harvey,” said my father. “Hugh means a good deal to me, but I have to tell you—he’s not perfect. It’s damnable, because he’s almost perfect, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t.”
“Well, when people get up to 98 percent, it hurts out of proportion if they can’t reach those last two points. Hugh may be the best man we have in the Company. He’s the most brilliant, and certainly one of the more scholarly, and he has guts. He’s a real cross between a panther and a mountain goat. Don’t get him angry, and don’t dare him to leap.”
“Yessir,” I said, “I have a very high opinion of him.”
“I don’t mind if he takes his own leaps, but I’m not sure he isn’t asking you to go along with him on this one.” My father threw up his hands as if to apologize for not being able to tell me more.
“Does any of this concern the larger-than-life secret?” I asked.
He coughed heavily with an unhappy subterranean sound. A considerable mucus must have been ravaging his powerful chest. My father was still in his late forties, but the sound of this cough, filled with the gravel of booze and nicotine, seemed to have come from a much older man concealed within that powerful body. “Yes,” he said. “Hugh should not have brought the matter up. I know I won’t tell you, and I wouldn’t even if I could because I don’t want you to bear the responsibility of holding such a weighty secret, a true secret of state. Tell me, then, why Hugh figures he can feed it to you as part of your orientation?”
There was obviously no answer to that.
“He will certainly tell you,” my father went on. “Don’t repeat this to a soul, but he lets more secrets out than anyone in his position ever should. It’s as if he’s making a bet on his own judgment. I suppose it gives him the grandest feeling.”
I think my father may finally have had his fill of drink, for I could feel him meandering away from me in his mind. Then he sat up with a jerk. “The point is, Hugh has no right to trust anyone. Not after Philby. You’ve heard about Kim Philby?”
“A little,” I said. I was trying to recall Lord Robert’s comments on the subject.
“Philby came very near to being Hugh’s nemesis. Philby was so thick with Burgess and Maclean. Ever hear of them?”
“Wasn’t it a newspaper story? They were British Foreign Office stationed over here, weren’t they?”
“Damn right,” said Cal. “When Burgess and Maclean pulled their disappearance back in 1951 and ended up in Moscow, everybody here divided into camps. Did
Philby tell Burgess and Maclean to decamp, or did he not? Old friends weren’t speaking, not if one thought Philby was guilty and the other didn’t.”
“Which camp were you in?”
“Pro-Philby. Same as Hugh. Kim Philby was a friend of Hugh’s, and he was a friend of mine. We used to drink together in London during the war. You’d swear Philby was the peachiest Englishman you ever met. Had a stammer. But very funny when he could get the words out. Which he could, when drunk.” After which my father suddenly went silent.
I waited, but he said no more. Then, he yawned. “I’m ready to turn in,” he said. “I caught this bug in Djakarta—a hellzapopper of a bug. I wonder what it looks like under the microscope.” He smiled in superiority to his own physical defects, and added, “Let’s not get into Kim Philby now. It’s too depressing. The point is, Hugh ended up looking pretty bad when it was over. The anti-Philby people clearly won out. That was Bill Harvey’s doing. When Hugh tells the story, and I think he will if you ask him, he’ll pretend to be half-fond of Harvey. He has to. By now, we’re just about certain that Philby was working for the KGB. So Hugh has to say half-decent things about Harvey. Don’t believe him. He hates Bill Harvey.”
Then why am I being sent to Berlin? I wanted to ask.
“All the same,” said my father, as if I had in fact spoken aloud, “Berlin’s a good idea. I will write that letter. You could use some roughing up. Bill Harvey’s the man to give it to you.”
With that, I was left to turn in for the night. There were two single beds in the next room and sheets and blankets of a sort. I lay there listening to my father cry out from time to time in his slumber, a short barking sound, and I finally slept in a half-coma which commenced with visions of Bill Harvey through Kittredge’s eyes. She had certainly described him once. “We know a man in the Company, awful person, who carries a handgun in a shoulder holster even when he comes to dinner. Isn’t that so, Hugh?”
“Yes.”
“Harry, he’s built like a pear, narrow shoulders and a relatively thick middle. His head’s the same way. Pear-shaped. He has goggle eyes. An absolute frog, this man, but I couldn’t help noticing—he has the prettiest little mouth. Small and nicely curved. Very well shaped. A glamour-girl’s mouth in a toad’s face. That sort of thing gives even more clues to Alpha and Omega than the right and left side of the face.”
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