Harlot's Ghost

by Norman Mailer

  I nodded. Before I could offer my contribution, he stated, “The simplest explanation that covers a set of separate facts is bound to be the correct explanation. Check?” he asked.

  “That’s about it.” Actually, Ockham’s Razor, as I remembered it, went: Pluralites non est ponenda sine necessitate—excess cannot exist without necessity—but I wasn’t about to substitute my erudition for his.

  He burped ruminatively. “Our simplest scenario does not, however, manage to tell us why so much effort has been put into protecting CLOAKROOM. So I reject it. Too small. Something else is going on. Is CLOAKROOM part of a team? If so, what kind of rig are they rolling? First subhypothesis: They are the Let’s-Give-the-Shaft-to-Bill-Harvey gang. Larger subhypothesis: One of our kingfish in D.C. is working a Berlin caper and it involves Wolfgang. I’m excluded. That makes me nervous. Wolfgang is one loose end, and I may be the other. Let’s say it’s time for a drink.”

  He got up, went to the icebox, took out the makings, and mixed a batch of martinis: He filled his shaker with ice, poured in a quarter inch of Scotch, poured it out, then loaded the pitcher with gin. “The best Chicago hotels make it this way,” he informed me. “The bar at the Ambassador, and the one at the Palmer House. You have to use good gin. The Scotch adds that no-see-um flannel taste you’re looking for. Slips the job down your gullet.” He drank off his first fill, gave his glass another, and passed me one. It did slide down. Smooth fire, sweet ice. I had the disconnected thought that if I ever wrote a novel I would call it Smooth Fire, Sweet Ice.

  “To resume. You enter my mental life this afternoon with Mr. Crane’s hypothesis. SM/ONION may be in MI6. Ingenious. That certainly explains why we can’t locate him at London Station. But it slings me off into my worst vice: premature intellectual ejaculation. I get too excited by hot hypotheses. If I ever went to a psychiatrist, he’d discover that I want to fuck an elephant. I have fucked, parenthetically speaking, everything else. Female, that is. But these martinis will have me writing my memoirs before long. It’s the passing blaze when the gin hits your system. I am not off the track, Mr. Hubbard, merely taking on steam. Those Heinies were awful at the opera, psss, psss.”

  He lay back for a moment and closed his eyes. I did not dare to hope. I knew if I put all my mental efforts into concentrating upon his need to fall asleep, and failed to hypnotize his spirit, I would be good for not much more once he opened his eyes.

  “Very well,” he said, “I reject the idea of a demolition expert on loan to MI6. For all I know, the British are now planting bombs under Nasser’s balls, but, as I say, they would not use one of our men for that, and, in addition, it takes us further away from Base Berlin. So, all through Lohengrin I was marching myself in the other direction. Since I can’t explain what kind of CIA man could be inserted so far up into MI6 that he’s untraceable by us, I employ an old Hegelian trick I acquired back in law school: Turn the premise upside down. What if this slippery slime-ball Señor Cloakroom-Ropes-Fragment-Onion is a young undercover operator for the English who has managed to bore his way into the CIA?”

  “A mole? A mole working for the English?”

  “Well, they just about managed that once with Burgess and Maclean. I don’t even want to get into Mr. Philby. It’ll ruin these martinis.”

  “But those men weren’t working for the English. They were KGB.”

  “All Europeans, if you scratch them, are Communist. Amend that. Potentially Communist. There is no emotion on earth more powerful than anti-Americanism. To the rest of the world, America is the Garden of Eden. Unmitigated envy, the ugliest emotion of them all.”

  “Yessir.”

  He took another refill from the martini pitcher. “Let us suppose a group in MI6 was able to insert a small self-contained network into our ranks.” He burped tenderly, reflectively, as if his stomach might be entering a regime of peace. “Go ahead,” he said, “play devil’s advocate.”

  “Why would the English go to such lengths?” I asked. “Don’t we continue to pool some information with them? I think they have more to lose if such a venture were ever exposed than they could possibly gain from infiltrating us.”

  “They’re still in pretty bad odor with Washington. We can’t forgive them for building a royal pavilion to cover Philby’s ass. Why, it was their way of saying, ‘Our worst Englishman means more to us than your best detectives.’ At present, we have stuff they need to know that we won’t trust them with. We can’t. Not so long as they are fatally inept at spotting KGB penetrations into their highest places. If I hadn’t been there to sniff out Philby, he could have climbed all the way to the top. He was penultimate level already. The Russians have demonstrated this ability time and again to recruit young Englishmen for lifetime jobs. The best young men. It’s as if you, Hubbard, had been made by the KGB back in college, and joined the Agency precisely to work for the Russians. Ugly to conceive, isn’t it? For all we know, it’s going on right now. This much, I do postulate. The tricky Brits have the motivation to get into our fanciest plumbing. It would give them a way of expressing themselves. Creative bastards. Even if such an English mole is only loyal to Britain and never to the Soviets, we’re still hanging by our fingernails. Because let there be one KGB agent working near the top of MI6, and he will get wind sooner or later that they have a mole in our midst. He will find a way to obtain the product and pass it on to the Sovs.”

  I was appalled how my inspired suggestion to Mr. Crane that SM/ ONION might be attached to MI6 had now been transmuted into a threat to the West.

  “Fearsome,” repeated Harvey. “Awesome. But I’ll find out. There are a couple of Brits in this town who owe me beaucoup favors.”

  “I don’t see it,” I said. “If the British have placed a mole in the Company, why would they call him back to MI6?”

  “Oh, they can slip him out again. Keep one step ahead of us—as they have already. I expect they panicked. Once I got on the trail, they decided to tuck him back into MI6 for safekeeping.”

  “As of now,” I said, “this is your leading hypothesis?”

  “As of now.” He stopped in the middle of sipping his martini. “But what do we do next?” he asked.

  “That’s what I don’t know.”

  “Why, we return to the old hypotheses. We plod through them again. One by one. From the simplest to the most elaborate. Only an empty hypothesis fails to improve on second look.”

  “Check.”

  “So I, Hubbard, am going back to the smallest. Do you recall it?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Expatiate.”

  “Whole thing a fiasco from day one.”

  “And?” he asked.

  “Involves some poor kid who has a rabbi on high.”

  Now he looked me in the eye. Over the last few weeks, I had been waiting for this. He was renowned for his ability to look at you as if he were already dead and you would soon be. His gaze offered no light, no compassion, no humor—just the dull weight of evenhanded suspicion.

  I bore up under this examination, but by the time he looked away, my hangover had returned. The gin so recently added to my blood had gone bad. Nonetheless, I took another drink. “Yes,” I said, “that was your first hypothesis.”

  “Right. I asked you to separate out any juniors you knew who went from the Farm to the Snake Pit. Then, I told you to acquire their cryps through the Bypass.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Have you done that?”

  “I may have been remiss.”

  “All right. I know how busy you’ve been. We’re all remiss. Tomorrow, however, you get on the talk-box to Washington, and bring me back names.”

  “Check.”

  “Did you ever set foot in the Snake Pit?”

  Was this the crux? Some instinct told me to say “Yessir.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I’ve heard you were seen on those precincts.”

  “Well, I barely set foot there,” I said. “I guess we can start, however, with me.”

 
; “What was your cryptonym on the days you went into the Snake Pit?”

  “Don’t you remember, sir? I told you that I can’t reveal that saddlebag. It’s from Technical Services.”

  “Nonetheless, you walked into the Snake Pit with your cryptonym.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Would they have a record of that?”

  “I have no idea. I did sign an entrance book.”

  “I could probably triangulate your cryptonym from that. But let’s save time. Unreel your last set of remarks, will you?” His eyes were now as calm and open as window glass.

  “Well, sir, all the while I was waiting for clearance at Technical Services, I was instructed to use the Snake Pit for job cover. My roommates in Washington were under the impression that I went there to work every day. In fact, to implement such cover, I was given a pass to enter Snake Pit premises, and for a couple of mornings I did try to look busy. I’d take out a file, walk it down the corridor, take it back. I guess it was analogous, you could say, to my so-called job here at the Department of Defense.”

  “Which of your fellow trainees did you happen to run into on these excursions?”

  “That’s what I can’t remember. I’ve been racking my brain. I don’t recall a soul.” That, at least, was true. I was the only one from my training platoon to be sent there.

  “But you yourself did no real work in the place?”

  “No, sir. None.”

  “All right. Let’s call it a night.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Make those calls to Washington in the morning.”

  “Done.”

  I started to leave. He held up a hand. “Hubbard, at present, I subscribe to the MI6 hypothesis. But I still am going to take a hard look at you. Because this is the first occasion on which you’ve told me that you expended a little shoe leather in the Snake Pit.”

  “I’m sorry about that, sir. Will you believe me. It was so minor, I never thought about it.”

  “Well, don’t stand there looking like Judas Iscariot. You’ve worked at your job for me. I don’t turn on people for too little. Only when they flunk a lie-detector test.”

  “Yessir.”

  I got out of the room without rattling the knob. My inclination to look for Ingrid had disappeared. It was Harlot I needed. There was no choice now but to get myself over to the Department of Defense, and use the secure phone. For the first time since taking a course at the Farm, I employed evasive tactics, riding a taxicab from GIBLETS up to Charlottenburg where I got out and walked for half a mile before doubling back on my route in another taxi, which took me within a few blocks of Defense. It was, I discovered, impossible to be certain that one was not being followed. An empty street took on shadows, a taxi ride at night was dazzled by the reappearance of certain cars. I made the determination that I was 80 percent certain I had not been followed, even if my emotional state was ready to put it at even money.

  Harlot, whom I had the luck to reach with no delay, was home for dinner. He listened to my account, paying particular attention to the episode with Butler and Wolfgang, then to my conversation with Crane, and my distorted confession to Bill Harvey about the Snake Pit. I considered telling him about Ingrid as well since it was unlikely she would not occasionally have information to sell, but I chose not to. First things first.

  “All right,” he said when I was done, “Harvey is obviously paying attention to the largest and smallest scenarios, MI6 and you, dear boy.”

  The “dear boy” brought its own metallic hum to the secure phone.

  “Yes,” I said, “I’ve come to that conclusion, too.” My voice must have been croaking its way through the Scrambler-Descrambler like a squall of gulls.

  “I’m going,” said Harlot, “to tip the scales in favor of MI6. I have a friend there. He’ll come through for me. Harvey will be pointed toward our British compeers for the next couple of days.”

  “What will happen when he can’t find out who it is?”

  “He’ll come back to you.”

  “Yessir.”

  “I’ll tap into Bridge-Archive, meanwhile,” said Harlot, “and obtain a few cryptonyms you can claim to have picked up from the Bypass. Just a few harmless Snake Pit drones. We’ll choose types who are more or less your contemporaries, so as to keep Harvey convinced you’re taking care of his assignment. Do you, by the way, happen to know anyone’s cryptonym?”

  “I do,” I said, “but is that fair? A friend’s career could be injured.”

  “It’s never going to get to that. I have just made a decision. You are in this bouillabaisse because of me. Since I have legitimate Company business in Berlin, with Mr. Harvey no less, I’m coming over.”

  I did not know whether to take this news as a promise of succor or the guarantee that my fortune had just slipped a little further into peril.

  “For the nonce,” he said, “do get Mrs. Harvey to talk about her husband’s decision to move from FBI to CIA.”

  “She wasn’t married to him then,” I said.

  “I certainly know that. I just want to obtain a notion of the story Bill Harvey told her. Try to keep the lady close to the details. Install a sneaky on your person.”

  “I don’t know if I could feel right about that,” I said. “She’s treated me well.”

  “You sound like the little sister I never had,” said Harlot.

  “Hugh, with all due respect, and I respect you . . .”

  “Harry, you’re in a hard game. As of this moment, I would hope you cease whimpering. Your conscience led you to this profession. Now you are discovering that your profession will oblige your conscience to see itself all too often as deplorably used, contemptible, atrocious, mephitic.”

  “Mephitic?”

  “Pestilential. I would not be in the least surprised if iron, assuming iron has sentiments, feels much the same way when it is obliged to consign its sulphur to the furnace in the course of being annealed.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said. I did not know if it was a matter of steeling my conscience, or whether I was privately pleased by the assignment. Something new seemed to be stirring.

  “Get the details,” said Harlot. “The more details, the better.”

  “She’s a closemouthed woman.”

  “Yes, but she does love her husband. Or so, at least, you tell me. Every injustice visited on him, therefore, must be packed into her memory. Once the closemouthed start to speak, you can find yourself on the face end of a cataract. Since J. Edgar Buddha seems to have been his usual gracious self in the manner he told Bill Harvey to get lost, do work on her sense of outrage.”

  “Please give my best to Kittredge,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  “Hugh?”

  “Yes?”

  “What if I were to locate Wolfgang? Assuming that the cellar-bar fellow was Wolfgang.”

  “Good point, Harry. Prepare the ground. I may want to look him over myself.”

  “When will you be here?”

  “Figure on a week at the outside.”

  As we hung up, it occurred to me that the situation could come to issue in much less time.

  No matter. I was too excited to sleep. Instead, I went in search of Ingrid, but it was her night off, and Die Hintertür was empty. I sat at the bar and flirted with Maria who, in turn, teased me about Ingrid. She had obviously received her report.

  “That’s all right,” I said, “I’d rather be with you.”

  Maria returned her mysterious smile. I do not know what amused her, but two days later, along with everything else, I came down with a dose of gonorrhea.

  10

  AT THE MILITARY INFIRMARY WHERE I WENT FOR TREATMENT, I SAW DIX Butler. It was the first time I had encountered him since our night on the town, and he offered a quick guide to sexual etiquette: No reference was made to the episode in the safe house. For social purposes, it did not exist. Instead, he offered a joke about our mutual ailment, and I was relieved that he took it lightly. I didn’t. I had h
esitated to come to an American infirmary because my name would be recorded. On the other hand, our regulations carried serious demerits for failure to report a venereal disease. Ostensibly, no notation of this visit would go into my 201, but I was dubious.

  If I did choose the official route, it was due to the medical orientation given Junior Officers on reaching Berlin. We were told it was inadvisable to seek out a West Berlin doctor since one never knew when such a person might not also be an East German agent. The SSD kept an up-to-date list of State Department and Agency personnel. Since local doctors had to report all venereal diseases to West Berlin health authorities, and since such files might as well be regarded as open to the East German police, your case could end in the hands of the SSD. They could blackmail you because of the failure to report your infection to the Agency facility in the first place. That proved to be one convincing argument.

  All the same, it violated a sense of privacy to introduce CIA to my infected member. I wanted to be alone in all my shame and pride (it was, despite all, a manly disease!) and I did not wish to offer the particulars of my night. At the infirmary, moreover, I was asked to name the woman who had passed it on to me. “I don’t know,” I replied. “There’ve been a few.”

  “List them.”

  I delivered a few names—an imaginary Elli, Käthe, Carmen, Regina, Marlene—and located them in different bars.

  “Better slow down with your sex life,” said the medic.

  “You’re only young once.”

  “You come back venereal again, and it goes on your 201. Second time puts the tag in the file.”

  “Check.”

  I was tired of saying “Check.” Dix Butler’s presence reassured me. He had come to the infirmary, too, and knew presumably how to act in this sort of matter.

  “Did you ever mention to Bill Harvey that I was at the Snake Pit?” I asked as we were sitting in the waiting room.

  “I did.”

  “When?”

  “Three, four days ago. Uncle Bill phoned to ask me.”