Harlot's Ghost

by Norman Mailer

  “You know, I was only over at the Snake Pit to establish cover.”

  “Is that a fact? What were you covering?”

  “You won’t repeat it?” I said.

  “Not unless there’s another inquiry. I’ll tell you, boy, I take my lead from Uncle Bill. He picked me for this slot over a bagful of other trainees.”

  “Well, I was over at Technical Services.”

  “With Rosen?”

  “I never saw Rosen.”

  “I keep getting letters from Rosen. Long as manuscripts. He goes on about his work. It’s certifiably insane. He spent time watching a whore in San Francisco through a one-way mirror. She had to slip different drugs into johns’ drinks to see which drops would get the dupe to blab the most.”

  “Would you let me look at Rosen’s letters?”

  “If he’s fool enough to put it in writing, why can’t I show it to you?”

  And, presumably, since I was fool enough to tell Dix about my job at Technical Services, he would see no reason not to repeat it to Harvey. I felt as if I had brought off a nice pocket-sized maneuver.

  I was encountering a few changes in myself. If I had fallen from favor with King Bill, I did not feel weak so much as the possessor of a peculiar kind of strength. I do not know if the annealing of my conscience from iron to steel was already well begun, but I felt not unlike a soldier who has trained with considerable trepidation for a year, is now in combat, and finds it, to his surprise, a superior life. One could be dead in a day, or in an hour, but one’s worries, at least, were gone. One’s senses were alive. Small relationships took on meaning. I might never see Ingrid again, but the urge to protect her was instinctive. Combat, I was discovering, left me close to laughter, and full of sorrow for the brevity of my life (in this case, my career) but I was feeling cool.

  Harvey had established my new status on the morning after my last nocturnal telephone conversation with Hugh Montague. “Kid,” he told me, “I’m putting a crimp in your access.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Can’t say how long this will ride. I hope it’s resolved soon. There is one piece of luck for you, anyway.”

  “Sir?”

  “Crane was on the line at eight this morning. He spent the last two days arguing with MI6. At first they gave no return. Then they assured him there was not one drop of onion juice on the floorboards. Six hours later, 6:00 A.M., London time, they woke him up with a phone call to his home. ‘Hold off,’ they told him, ‘it’s complicated. Can’t say more.’”

  “So SM/ONION is in MI6,” I said. At a minimum, Harlot had made one crucial phone call.

  “Looks like it, don’t it?” Harvey said.

  “Well, sir, I’ll hang out in chancery as long as you want me to, but I can’t see—”

  “Kid, hold your water.”

  “Mr. Harvey, if there’s nothing more forthcoming from MI6, and there probably won’t be, I could be out on a limb for keeps. You might as well saw it off now.”

  “Don’t estimate what I can and cannot determine.”

  I had an inspiration. “May I advance a guess?”

  “You probably won’t get an answer.”

  “You’re going to put MI5 onto MI6.” Of course. He would know any number of people in MI5 from his days in the FBI.

  “I may take a reading or two,” he confessed. I was amazed, given his new suspicions, that he would tell me this much, and yet I felt as if I understood him. He liked me. I had been a good pupil. If he was forever asking me to expatiate, the truth was that he did a good deal of it himself.

  By late afternoon, Harlot moved again. A cable came to me from Washington listing the names of three people who worked in the Snake Pit. Their cryptonyms accompanied them. It decoded as QUALITY EQUALS SMITH, RUNDOWN EQUALS ROWNTREE, EASTER EQUALS O’NEILL. KU/ CHOIR.

  KU/CHOIR was one of my old Washington roommates, Ed Gordon. I was appalled at the open nature of Harlot’s message and the effectiveness of the move. Ed Gordon, if queried, would of course deny that he had sent the cable, but, indeed, who would believe him? Supposing he had satisfied my request for a few Bypass cryptonyms, could he admit it? Poor Ed Gordon. I had never liked him much. He was half-bald at twenty-eight, had a deep blue shadow from a heavy beard, shaved twice a day, and had spent a lot of time at Villanova debating whether to apply to CIA or FBI. He was also pedantic and refused to lose an argument. Poor Ed Gordon. His testicles could be lost in this argument. Yes, I felt as hard-nosed as a combat veteran. And good. I had food to feed King Bill before concluding work for the day. He looked over the three cryptonyms, and grunted. “How did this stuff reach you?” he asked.

  “Sir, you don’t want to know.”

  “Maybe I don’t.” He handed them back. “Can you get any more?” he asked.

  “Not from my primary source.”

  “Try for a secondary. My Washington people can eyeball a couple of these boys after we vet their files. But since the real actor looks to be over at MI6, it will have to wait. I’m taking off tonight to see a man in southern Germany.”

  I had the notion that Bill Harvey was going to Pullach, just below Munich, where General Gehlen kept the BND Headquarters.

  “You won’t be airborne for long,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I’m driving. It can be done at night under five hours, checkpoints and all, but you have to keep to 150, 160 kilometers most of the way. The martinis don’t hurt. A little sleep, and I’ll be ready for my man in the dawn.”

  “I wish I could go with you,” I blurted out.

  “Kid, let’s not get delirious.”

  “Who do you have for my replacement?”

  “There’s one backup I always count on.”

  “C.G.?”

  “She’s coming along.” He made a point of shaking hands with me. “See you in a couple of days. Have some product for me.”

  “Mr. Harvey?”

  “Yessir?”

  “Please don’t tell C.G. that I’m persona non grata.”

  “Kid, you’re a fucking prize,” he said.

  I left him at his desk under the thermite bombs. They were now as familiar to me as the expressions of lugubrious relatives.

  I had not, however, been back at my apartment for more than a few minutes when the phone rang. It was Harvey. “Pack a bag,” he said. “You’re coming.”

  I started to thank him, but he cut me down. “Hell, no,” he said, “it’s not me. It’s the fellow I’m going to visit. He requested that I bring you along. Says he met you in Washington.”

  “He did?” Now I couldn’t conceive of who it was. Might it be Harlot? Had he arrived and gone directly to BND Headquarters? Was he, in effect, declaring our liaison? Harvey’s next speech, however, took this supposition away.

  “How you met him is more than I can figure out,” he said. “The Kraut don’t get to Washington that often.

  11

  WE DIDN’T LEAVE UNTIL MIDNIGHT. There LOOKED TO BE DIFFICULTIES IN refueling. Harvey did not wish to use any of the U.S. Military gas stations on the route since some—particularly at night—were manned by civilian Germans, nor did he take to the idea of an impromptu stop at some army base where we’d have to wake up one or another Supply Sergeant to get the key to the storage tank. “Last time, I lost an hour that way,” he grumbled. “The goddamn key was in the Sergeant’s pants, hanging on a hook in a whorehouse.”

  “Bill, must you make a history out of everything?” asked C.G.

  The problem was that we couldn’t fit enough five-gallon jerricans into the trunk of the Cadillac, and Harvey wouldn’t strap any to the outside of the car. “A sniper could hit us with an explosive bullet.”

  “Bill, why don’t we go by airplane?” she asked.

  “We have a couple of German mechanics at the air base. It’s too easy to sabotage a plane. I ought to know.”

  Maintenance welded a bulletproof auxiliary tank into the trunk, and with two hours lost to that, and an hour waiting out some last-minute pa
pers, we took off with Mr. Harvey riding shotgun, while C.G. and I were in the rear.

  It was, as he had promised, a fast-moving trip. The checkpoint on the Brandenburg Autobahn offered no trouble to our entering East Germany, nor did the second checkpoint an hour later when our southern route took us back into West Germany. We drove through flat black fields while he drank his martinis and told a tale of a captured Soviet agent who had a microdot message installed beneath a gold inlay filling. “I was the one to spot the son of a bitch,” he informed us. “‘X-ray the lying bastard,’ I said, and sure enough there was the faintest line between the inlay and the bottom of the cavity. ‘Either the dentist is no good,’ I told my gang, ‘or the microdot is there.’ So we unplugged the fellow’s filling. Eureka: the microdot. The Russians never stop working at this job. Ever hear of their prussic-acid pistol? Shoots a spray. Nifty. The operator comes up to you on the street, fires it in your face, and blap! You’re dead. Delay the autopsy even a few hours, and there are no signs of poison. That’s why I won’t walk the streets of Berlin. I want my friends to know I was terminated by the Sovs, rather than have them wondering if I popped a blood vessel from too much booze.” He refilled his martini glass. “The antidote for this kind of attack, Hubbard,” he said, “assuming, that is, that you are expecting some such take-out maneuver on your person, is to swallow a little sodium thiosulphate before going out. Look up the dose in the Medical Shelf at GIBLETS, Classified Manual 273-AQ, or, which is more likely, because you do have ten or fifteen seconds at your disposal before nepenthe welcomes you, is keep some amyl nitrate capsules handy in your jacket pocket. Pop them fast as you can after an attack. I always keep a few handy,” he said, punching the glove compartment open, pulling out a bottle and pouring a handful. “Here,” he said, passing back a dozen capsules to C.G. and to me, “keep these around. Hey, watch for those wagons, Sam!” he added to the driver without missing a beat, “give a wide berth to any wagon you see,” and Sam swerved to the left at one hundred miles an hour to keep a good distance between us and a horse and wagon trundling along, step by step, on the shoulder. “I don’t trust any farmer out on these roads at 2:00 A.M. with a cart,” he stated, and went back to the poison pistol. “I saw a demonstration of it once down at Pullach, which is where we’re going, Hubbard, in case you didn’t guess.”

  “I guessed.”

  “The Heinies killed a dog for our benefit. The BND man performing the stunt just walked up, fired, and out the door. The dog did a four-legged split. Dead inside a minute. All behind glass.”

  “I’d like to get to the people who killed the dog,” said C.G.

  “One poor dog less, okay,” said Harvey, “but one image seared on our retina forever. No length the Sovs are not prepared to go.”

  “The BND enjoys that sort of thing too,” C.G. insisted.

  “Now wait a minute,” said Bill Harvey, “you’re maligning Mr. Herrick Hubbard’s friends who invite him down to Pullach for the weekend.”

  “Chief, I swear to you, I don’t know what it’s all about,” I said.

  “Here, take a look at this,” he said, passing over a five-by-seven index card covered front and back with single-spaced typing. “This is the way I want my research presented in case I ever drop a comparable assignment on you. Skip the heavy history. Just the nuggets. Quick things. Like a box in Time magazine.”

  By the illumination of the rear seat light in the Cadillac, I read:

  REINHARD GEHLEN

  Now President of BND formerly known as the Org. Headquarters in Pullach, on the banks of the Isar, six miles south of Munich. Originally a small compound of houses, huts, and bunkers. Built in 1936 to house Rudolf Hess and staff. Later the residence of Martin Bormann. After WWII U.S. Military Intelligence appropriated it for Gehlen. General established his combined office and abode in “The White House,” a large two-story edifice at the center of the original estate. In the ground-floor dining room of the White House, wall murals are unchanged from Bormann-Hess era. Big-bosomed German ladies braiding ears of corn into garlands. Sculptures of young men in gymnastic stances surround the fountain in the garden.

  At present, Pullach has added many modern buildings. 3,000 officers and personnel work there at present.

  Gehlen is 5'7", nearly bald. Appears slim in earlier photographs. Now putting on weight. Often wears dark glasses. Has very large ears. Wears noiseless rubber-sole shoes. Is highly family-oriented.

  Cryptonyms: The only one available to us is Dr. Schneider. No first name available. Gehlen is reputed to wear various wigs when traveling as Dr. Schneider.

  Could this be the man I had met at the canal house? Dr. Schneider? The little man with the large ears who had crooned over Harlot’s every move on the chessboard? My mind was agog. Now, I knew the meaning of agog.

  “Gehlen’s boys used to have a swan,” said Harvey, “who was trained to swim toward an ultrasonic signal. Under its wings, the Org sewed a couple of waterproof plastic pouches. The swan would glide across Glienicker Lake from Potsdam to West Berlin, carrying papers in the pouch, take on new instructions, and sail back under an East German bridge where the Russian sentries used to toss it pieces of bread. That’s what I call a courier.”

  “Love the story,” said C.G.

  “On the other hand,” said her husband, “in the old days when Gehlen’s Org was expanding every month, the Krauts suffered from chronic lack of funds. Gehlen used to cry big tears to us. He’d claim he’d given up all that U.S. Military lucre to sign a contract with CIA, and now we weren’t forking over the gold fast enough to suit him. Well, in fact, we were paying out a fortune, but it wasn’t enough. Greedy bastard. Not to enrich himself, you understand, but to build up the Org. So, Gehlen got word out to his General Agencies.”

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “About the equivalent of our Stations, only situated in every major German city. ‘Enrich yourselves,’ Gehlen told the General Agencies, and then he would get on the phone with some of his old friends in the U.S. Army. When it comes to a study of American corruption, go back to the chicken and the egg. Which came first? The U.S. Army or the U.S. Mafia? Anyway, Gehlen and our boys cook up this fiduciary maneuver. The General Agencies hand over a couple of petty SSD agents to the American Military Police who otherwise wouldn’t know an enemy spy if he was confessing. Now, in return for feeding our boys with a few doormen on the Soviet payroll, the MPs pay back the local General Agency with truckloads of American cigarettes. The Org promptly sells these cigarettes on the black market to get the funds to meet their Friday payroll. Then, as soon as the Org has walked off with the cash, the MPs confiscate the truckload and return the cigarettes to the Org, who promptly sell them again to other black marketeers. The same ten thousand cartons of Camels get resold five or six times. That, my friend, was in the late forties, before I got here. The good old days.”

  “Tell the story about General Gehlen and Mr. Dulles,” said C.G.

  “Yeah.” He grunted and was silent. I could feel him resisting the impulse to tell me one more tale. Had he just remembered that I was in disfavor?

  “Tell it,” repeated C.G.

  “All right,” he said. “Did you ever hear of Major General Arthur Trudeau?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Trudeau was the head of U.S. Army Intelligence a couple of years ago. When Chancellor Adenauer visited Washington in 1954, Trudeau managed to get a word with him. He unloaded on Gehlen. Trudeau had the moxie to tell Adenauer that the CIA should not be supporting a West German organization run by an ex-Nazi. Should it hit the world press, that could be very bad for all concerned. Ja, says Adenauer. He’s no lover of Nazis, he tells Trudeau, but in German politics, you can’t make a three-egg omelette without one being rotten. One of Adenauer’s people now passes this conversation on to Gehlen who thereupon complains to Allen Dulles. Our Director takes it over to the White House and informs President Eisenhower that General Trudeau is kicking American interests in the chops.

&nbs
p; “‘I hear,’ Eisenhower tells Dulles, ‘that this Gehlen of yours is a nasty job.’

  “‘Mr. President, there are no archbishops in espionage,’ says Allen. ‘Gehlen may be a rascal, but I don’t have to invite him to my club.’

  “Well, a battle royal ensued. The Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were on Trudeau’s side. Yet, Allen won. John Foster Dulles always gets the last word into the President’s ear. Trudeau was sent out to some fly-boy command in the Far East. I think it put a scare into Gehlen, however. He must have concluded that German money was safer than American. A year later, he convinced the Adenauer people to put the Org into German service. Now we have the BND. End of tale. Enough of enriching your mind. Tell me, kid, what do you know about our pal?”

  I had been waiting for the question through each of these anecdotes. He had a habit of telling a good story with all the contained force of a lion sitting on his paws. Then—swipe!—you were part of the meal.

  “I don’t know much about the man at all,” I said, but through the ensuing silence was obliged to add, “I’ll give you any details I have.”

  “Yes,” said Harvey. “Details.”

  “I met him at the house of a friend of my father’s. He was called Dr. Schneider. I hardly talked to him. He played chess with the host. I’m amazed that he remembered me.”

  “Who was the host?”

  “Hugh Montague.”

  “Is Montague a good friend of your father’s?”

  “I don’t know how friendly they really are.”

  “But friendly enough to invite you to dinner?”

  “Yessir.”

  “What did Montague talk to Schneider about?”

  “Not much. Schneider presented himself as a concert pianist. He played one recital, he claimed, for Wilhelm Pieck, the East German President. He said Pieck was a barbarian with low tastes. He liked to leave his official residence in the castle—I don’t recall the name.”

  “Schloss Niederschön-something?”

  “Yes.”