Harlot's Ghost

by Norman Mailer

  “My God,” I said.

  “Yes. GHOUL. I think there is a furry little creature loose in the Soviet Russia Division. They, in turn, agree that the Agency is suffering a penetration, but place the mole in GHOUL. Dear boy, you were instinctively bright. Since you and I, for better or worse, are seen by now as umbilically attached, even Allen would have had to give some credence to SR’s claim that the mole is in my cellar, if you had, that is, reported correctly. I expect Masarov chose you precisely for that reason. No question, you see—they’re after me. The Russkys do appreciate my value more than the Agency. And I appreciate your new drinking pal even more than the KGB does. He’s a hell of a fellow. Stay away from him. Competitively speaking, he’s nearly as competent as myself.”

  “Good Lord,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t care to trade wits with me yet, would you?”

  “No, sir. Not yet.”

  “Ho. Good for you. Not yet. Well, by the same logic, stay away from your new friend.”

  “If I will be permitted to.”

  “You will.” Pause. “Now, about the lie detector test. You won’t have to take it.”

  “May I query you further?”

  “Lord, no. You’ve got all you need. This call is costing a lot, and I can hardly put it on my expense account.”

  “Well, good-bye, then.”

  “Yes. Remember that I’m pleased with you.” He hung up.

  22

  February 22, 1958

  Dearest Harry,

  There will be no flutter test. If my husband is Byzantine on matters so minor as a dinner party, I assure you that he is Bach’s harpsichordist when it comes to tweaking Company strings. So, to pull you out of the clutches of Soviet Russia Division, Hugh chose the Right Gobsloptious Baron of your Western Hemisphere Division, J. C. King. J.C. is not the sort of fellow to welcome Soviet Russia Division’s poachers onto his preserve. You are saved. Isn’t it a fact that my husband can take care of everyone’s career but his wife’s?

  Actually, Hugh and I have been getting along far better than ever, and since my illness he has been sharing a good deal more of his work with me. You don’t know what a great step that is for him. Hugh, for all emotional purposes, was scourged in childhood when his mother killed his father. Since he cannot know whether the death was accidental or purposeful, his Alpha and Omega, built, of necessity, on rival propositions, are like two hill kingdoms facing each other across an abyss. Conceive, then, how difficult it is for him to trust me with any details of his work. (Which, collaterally, is why it would be a disaster for him to know that we are corresponding.) You may ask how I can encourage our letters, then, and I say that Hugh and I belong to a typical bond-and-bombs marriage, which is to say, we are half-wed. Alpha-Hugh and Alpha-Kitt are as joined as our sacraments, but his Omega cannot allow him to put faith in any woman, and my Omega, eager to be free and alone and full of taste for life, is obliged to suffer in the iron parameters of our marriage.

  After my illness we did talk about such matters for the first time. I was able to point out that some of our sense of mutual oppression might be relieved by allowing me to live with a few of his adventures, if only in spirit.

  “They are not adventures,” he told me. “They are webs, and quite as sticky as spiderwebs.”

  All the same, Hugh proved to be man enough, and husband enough to enter my horrors last summer. When he finally came to understand, despite all his cautions and incalculable filigree of paranoia, that by closing me out of his professional life he was helping to unbalance my mind, he began to reveal to me a bit here and there about the pieces on his playing board. So I may know more now about your situation than you. I wish to give you a warning. The KGB, according to Hugh, has taken great strides in these last few years since Stalin’s death. The all-out reign of terror is over, and they have begun to get fearfully skillful again. You might try worrying about them in serious respectful fashion. Hugh’s estimate of the Masarov picnic is as follows: The KGB has succeeded in placing a mole in the Soviet Russia Division. The best way to protect said mole is to insinuate a notion into the upper reaches of the Agency that the fellow is to be found in GHOUL. By Hugh’s estimate, the KGB set up the picnic in order to hand you a note that would point directly to Soviet Russia Division. This was done on the firm premise that Allen Dulles would then conclude the furry creature was to be located anywhere but in SR Div. Since you were the recipient of the note, but could not produce it, inasmuch as Boris had taken it back, a shadow would fall on GHOUL. The antipathy between GHOUL and SR Division is, after all, no secret. So we would have one more bad mark against Hugh. A provocation set up by the KGB in Uruguay would have been manipulated to great effect by the mole in SR Div back at Headquarters.

  The purpose of the picnic, therefore, was not merely to injure GHOUL, but to crimp Hugh’s influence in the Agency. That would be a disaster. Hugh is not the man to make such a claim aloud, but I know he feels the KGB are going to be able to penetrate to the very top of the Agency if he is not there to stop them. And it won’t take all that many years.

  Harry, I know you hate the idea of backing off from Masarov, so I’m going to offer the sum of my modest wisdom. I believe that people like you and me go into intelligence work in the first place because to a much greater degree than we realize, we’ve been intellectually seduced. And often by nothing more impressive than good spy novels and movies. We want, secretly, to act as protagonists in such ventures. Then we go to work for the Company, and discover that, whatever we are, we are never protagonists. We pop into the spy novel at chapter six, but rarely find out what was going on in chapter five, let alone earlier times. Just as seldom are we privy to what happens in the rest of the book. I offered this once to Hugh, and he said, “If you must feel sorry for yourself, read a book on the calculus of partial derivatives. That will give you paradigmatic solace, darling.” The key to our lives, Harry, is in the drear word patience. We are incompetent without it.

  As a test of your patience, I now inform you that I have news, but it is not for this letter. To whet your appetite to a slather, I will only say that I have changed my slot in TSS. I am now behind one of the doors that Arnie Rosen used to call “Dracula’s Lair.” Yes, I am being trained for what we might as well term heavier work. I’ve decided it’s time to stop being a nice Radcliffe girl and step onto the dance floor with the barbarian in me who, breathing in great secret, does get somewhat short of wind over Lavinia’s stumps.

  You had better tell me what you are up to, or you simply won’t get the next letter.

  Love,

  Kittredge

  23

  March 10, 1958

  Dear Kittredge,

  I have let two weeks go by since receiving your extraordinary letter of February 22, but you gave me such a jolt with talk of Dracula’s Lair. I hope you know what you are getting into—whatever it is. I confess to being consumed with curiosity, and am exercised that you tell me no more. Yet, given the long hiatus last year in our letters, I feel, paradoxically, a pressure to bring you up to date on my affairs. I am going through my own kind of heavy moral duty.

  I suppose I am thinking of my work with Chevi Fuertes. With the exception of a vacation in Buenos Aires that he took with his wife at Christmas, I have seen him at least once a week for the last fourteen months. The Groogs have developed a great taste for Chevi’s output, and they monitor my reports carefully. He is far and away our most significant penetration into the Communist Party of Uruguay, and a measure of his importance can be seen in how my war with the Sour-balls was brought to its formal close. A cable came from the Right Gobsloptious Baron—where did you ever get that word? (Was it at the age of eleven playing jacks on Brattle Street, your pigtails flying? Gobsloptious—my God!) J. C. King sent the following to Hunt: COMMENDATION CONFIRMED RE AV/AILABLE’S DEVELOPMENT OF AV/OCADO.

  Hugh’s virtuosity is unparalleled. The Commendation did the job. Soviet Russia Division was obliged to recognize that a flutter test at
this point would poke a very rude finger into the grand eye of J. C. King. So they withdrew. Hunt, concomitantly, has been cordial as hell ever since, and promises to take me along on a visit to an estancia one of these weekends. To certify this intention, he is teaching me to play polo on a practice field out in Carrasco. Do you know, human perversity being a bottomless pit, I like him more for liking me more!

  In fact, I’m a little taken with myself. King’s praise may have been stimulated by Hugh, but the language did enable me to reflect back on these fourteen months, and yes, I think I have brought in enough good work on Chevi to, yes, rate the Commendation.

  You may then inquire why I have written so little about my top agent. I suppose I have kept away because the job consists of adding up small pieces of information gleaned from Chevi’s tasks at the PCU (Partido Comunista de Uruguay), and I did not wish to bore you.

  All the same, in these fourteen months, Chevi has moved up the rungs of that organization. His wife may be the leading woman in the Uruguayan Party, but Chevi has become her effective equal. He may even be ranked, overall, in the top twenty of Uruguayan Communists, and could one day become titular head of the whole shebang. Already, we have access to the thinking of the leadership.

  Of course, the reason he has risen so quickly is that the Station made it possible. You may recall that nearly a year ago we had Chevi plant a transmitter in the PCU’s inner office. It was a five-minute job consisting of no more than the replacement of a porcelain wall outlet with our bugged duplicate—an enterprise calling for no more than a screwdriver. Still, it was squeaky work and had to be done under combat conditions, that is, in the ten minutes that Chevi’s associate was down the hall using the john.

  At the time, we debated whether it was worth endangering AV/OCADO, but decided that the prospective take balanced out nicely with the relative security of the caper. Chevi showed neither emotion nor enthusiasm. He merely insisted that his weekly stipend be raised from fifty dollars to sixty. (We settled for a bonus of fifty bucks and a five dollar a week raise.) Then he brought the chore off without incident, and we have been receiving the product ever since, although the transmission is often garbled. Since Chevi, however, does not know how spotty our equipment has proved, he assumes we get it all and that motivates him to be scrupulous in what he tells us about the deliberations of upper-echelon PCU.

  Moreover, the dispatch with which he carried off the wall-outlet job helped to convince us that he had turned a corner. This often happens with agents. Their early hysteria is replaced by effective calm. In consequence, Hunt decided to advance his career in the Partido Comunista de Uruguay. Marvelous, isn’t it? Easier to get Eusebio Fuertes promoted than myself.

  Kittredge, this exercise in applied intelligence isn’t altogether pretty. We don’t go in for wet jobs—at least, not down here, although I won’t speak for Dracula’s Lair, whew!—but our route did get dirty enough to stop in Pedro Peones’ office. Reunited with Libertad La Lengua, Pedro was cordially inclined to entrap a couple of PCU officials for us. They were stationed higher than Chevi and very much in his way. So, a kilo package of heroin happened to be found in the car trunk of the selected PCU official (the drug on loan from Peones’ narcotics squad). The other Communist was arrested for driving under the influence and then being so rash as to attack the pursuing officers. (After being splashed down with a bottle of liquor, he was then smashed repeatedly, I fear, in the face. That was to show evidence of the battle he started with Peones’ cops.) While the PCU knew their people were being framed, there was little they could do about it. The first accused was held without bail for allegedly dealing in a large quantity of drugs, and the second was beaten badly enough to be severely demoralized. Replacements had to be found for their jobs.

  Now, these victims (if it is any consolation to them) happened to be chosen with considerable care. You might even say the operation was designed by Sherman Porringer. I am beginning to see some relation between Oatsie’s carefully painted eggshells and the delicacy he brought to this project. Hunt provided the go-ahead—“See what you can do about getting Chevi promoted”—but Porringer put it all into place. Elegant selection of target was what Sherman was hunting for. As he saw it, the key mistake would be to knock out the man directly above Chevi. We had to allow that the PCU would be bright enough to assume Pedro Peones was doing our muscle work, and so their suspicion was bound to fall on the man who was in line to fill the gap. All right, then, reasoned Porringer, look not only for a good man to knock out, but get one whose immediate inferior is not well respected, thereby disposing of two obstacles for the price of one. This double disruption, even though located several rungs up the ladder, would have to benefit Fuertes before too long.

  On the drug bust, Peones’ victim was a PCU leader of unassailable integrity, but his assistant had a gambling problem, and so was brought to trial by his Party peers on an accusation of collaboration with Peones. Before it was over, the man resigned his office.

  Some months later, the second arrest produced comparable results. Chevi had advanced four rungs through our efforts.

  Crucial to Porringer’s design was that we maintained immaculate hygiene in relation to Peones. Pedro was never given a reason for either arrest, and we even discussed with him attacks on several other Communist officials including Fuertes. Our assumption was that Peones’ police office had already been penetrated by the PCU. The best way to obtain Chevi a clean bill from his own Communists, therefore, would be to add his name to Peones’ list of intended PCU victims. Indeed, Chevi was soon warned by the Party hierarchy that Peones was looking to entrap him.

  Fuertes began to talk, therefore, of the threat to his safety. “I would hate,” he told me, “to be beaten up by Peones’ duros for being a Communist when, in fact, I am a betrayer of Communists. The punishment would fit too closely to the crime.”

  “You possess a sense of irony.”

  “I would hope it is loyalty, not irony, that I will discover in you. Can you tell Peones to stay off this body?” He tapped his chest.

  “We only have limited influence with the man,” I said.

  “Verdad? That is not what I hear.”

  “We have tried to set up a relationship, but have had no success.”

  “Unbelievable. Who can pay Peones more than you?”

  “For whatever reason, Peones pursues his own course.”

  “You are saying, then, that you will not protect me from police goons?”

  “I think we can exercise some influence.” When he laughed at this, I added, “We are more law-abiding than you would ever believe.”

  More recently, Chevi has become suspicious of his rapid Party advancement. A few months ago he said to me, “It is one thing to betray my coworkers, but another to shoot them in the back.”

  Still, Chevi has changed considerably. I think. For one thing, he is now high enough on the slope to sniff the air of the summit, and that has been tonic to his ambition. For another, his identity has altered.

  Kittredge, either his Alpha or Omega has taken over from the other. He has put on more than thirty pounds, and has grown a prodigious handlebar mustache which, in company with the plump pouches beneath his eyes, has given him a jolly piratical South American look. He makes you think of an overweight gaucho riding a skinny horse. With Roger Clarkson, he was always on the run for women; now, he is a glutton for food. AV/OCADO is taking on the shape of his name. The largest disagreement we face these days is where to meet. He hates the safe house. May heaven help me if I forget to stock the icebox! He wants tapas and beer, steak and bourbon, and—speak of peculiarities—raw onions with good Scotch! Plus desserts. Dulces. Even the sound calls to mind a stream of half-frozen delights sweetening the parched canyon of the throat. He talks while eating. His pieces of intelligence come forth best as food passes in the opposite direction. He punctuates tidbits of information by sucking in small jets of air to clean the spaces between his teeth. At times he acts as gross as Peones. And he keeps
coming back to one theme: that we meet more often in restaurants. I have increasing difficulty in refusing him. For one thing, the denizens of our high-rise apartment house muster an astonishing number of rich widows and well-to-do retired tarts, and they study everyone who comes up to their floor. Each time the elevator stops, doors open a crack all up and down the hall. Eyes peek at one voraciously. These ladies must have expected a comfortable old age where they could pull back wooden shutters and set their accumulated bosoms on a worm-eaten second-story windowsill while they observed life in the common street below. Instead, they are now marooned on the twelfth floor and can only keep an eye on who goes in and out of each apartment. Needless to say, Fuertes is also aware of this, and claims it is dangerous. The word could be out among the neighbors that our apartment is kept by El Coloso del Norte, and, besides, he might be recognized. He has lived almost all of his life in Montevideo.

  I take up the problem with Hunt and he is furious. “Tell the son of a bitch to shove his reports in a dead drop. We’ll pick them up with a cut-out.”

  “Howard,” I protest gently, “we’ll lose a lot if I can’t talk to him.” I pause. “What about moving to a more secluded safe house?”

  “All safe houses present problems. His real bitch is the ambiente. That goddamn furniture! I can’t get requisitions for decent stuff. Economies in the wrong place. I hate tacky government mentalities. A posh safe house is a good investment if you can only convince the powers that be.” He stopped. “Wigs,” said Howard. “Tell him to put on a different disguise each time.”

  “Won’t work,” I said, “with his mustache.”

  “Just tell the cocksucker to shape up. Treat him like a servant. That’s the only language agents really respect.”

  Exiting from this interview, it occurs to me that I may now have put in more hours in the field than Howard. In any event, I certainly know better than to follow his advice. As a practical matter, never treat an agent like Chevi any worse than a younger brother. And most of the time I cater to him. Part of that derives, I know, from my incomplete ability, as Hugh would put it, to toughen up. Damn it, I feel for my agent. Chevi does manage to penetrate into all those close places in oneself where you chart the rise and fall of your ego. (Query: We’ve never talked about Alpha Ego and Omega Ego and their inner relations. That’s a whole study, I know.) Chevi, I suspect, is treating me like a younger brother all the while I am trying to treat him like one. As one example of how he attempts to keep me in place, he loves to speak of his two years in New York when he lived with that Negress in Harlem. She turned tricks, and was on drugs, and encouraged him to be her pimp. After a time, he changes his story and confesses that he actually took on the job. He tells me hair-raising tales about knife fights with other pimps. I don’t know how much of it is true—I suspect he is exaggerating—indeed, I would guess he avoided knife fights, but I just can’t swear to any of this. He does have a few facial scars. Be assured, however, his tales serve their purpose: I feel inferior to his sophistication. On the other hand, we are always in one or another spiritual contest to see who will end up brother superior.