Harlot's Ghost

by Norman Mailer

  “You better get to understand Howard and the Agency. They’re both old ladies. Grand old ladies.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you.”

  “Ever been in a room with a grand old lady when somebody toots? To tell the truth, I never have, but they say the grand old lady doesn’t miss a stitch. The fart, señor, he do not exist.”

  “Come on, Porringer, Howard’s no fool.”

  “I did not suggest he was dumb—I was saying he knows when to breathe. So long as Peones is the fullback who will always get us the three yards we need, Howard will choose not to be witting.” Porringer burped. “Looks like we’re coming around to you again, joven. Concerning AV/OCADO, I would say that I am worried, but not frantic. Analyze the options. I would assume Chevi is still reliable. Could you say there is any possibility that he is a double agent?”

  “It doesn’t add up,” I said. “Why would the PCU wreck its own ranks just to build a double agent who does not lead us, but merely feeds us?”

  “He led you to Libertad.”

  “True.”

  “All the same, I kind of agree. It doesn’t add out. All that finesse to set up a double agent in Montevideo? Not worth it. I think we have to take first things first.” He reflected, and then he repeated somberly, “First things first.”

  Kittredge, I’ve noticed the odd remarks that people do repeat on occasion. I wonder if it’s not the double, if separate, assent of Alpha and Omega, a way of saying, yes, all of me is behind this, first Alpha, now Omega, both parties accounted for. “Yes,” Porringer decided, “let’s keep the lid on. You and me can live with this. We don’t want to get Howard upset. He’ll have to call in people from Western Division to look it over. On the other hand, if and when AV/OCADO blows up, you will catch most of it. Well, you certainly get it now if you tell, and, if you wait, it may not blow. Chevi, meanwhile, has to keep away from Libertad. He will, once you make it triple crystal clear that if he don’t, his ass is in Peones’ iron hands.”

  We shook our iron hands on that, and quit Café Trouville. I would fill you in on what has happened since, but it has all been quiet. Nothing new has occurred. Kittredge, we’re caught up to date.

  Let me conclude, then, with one odd remark of Sherman Porringer’s. On the way back to the office, he said, “Satisfy one mystery for me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why doesn’t my wife have a single decent word to say about you?”

  “She told me once that she didn’t like my accent.”

  “Oh, that could bear improvement, but I still don’t get it. You may be nothing remarkable, but I guess you’re half-ass okay with me. Even if you can’t hold an eggshell.”

  Can a noble society be founded on the judgment of one’s peers?

  Love to you, dear Kittredge, Herrick

  31

  April 30, 1958

  Harry, dear Harry,

  Bizarre as your days have been, they seem normal next to my chores. I know I am being outrageously secretive, but I still can’t tell you anything. I’m girded about with vows of absolute silence concerning The Project and hesitate to disturb any webs. I don’t believe I’m thinking of Agency retribution. It’s more a question of roiling the gods.

  Angel man, I have this uneasy fear I may never be able to tell you. Then, on other days, I think I’m going to burst if I don’t pass it on. You must, however, not stop sending your letters. I love them. I particularly enjoy the way you describe certain situations as if we are sitting side by side. I know my correspondence has been one-sided lately, and it’s going to get worse, I fear, because soon I won’t be able to pick anything up at my letter-box—I will be far away from Washington.

  Love, dear man, Kittredge

  P.S. More I think of it, more I come to the conclusion that you must only write to me on the first of each month, although keep being as generous with your pages, please. I’ve arranged with Polly to pick up your letters at the Georgetown post office box so long as I’m away. There is, incidentally, no need to be concerned about her discretion for I’ve guaranteed, artfully, I believe, that she remain ignorant about thee and me. Since she has to see the name you put on the return address, don’t use your own dear moniker. Put Frederick Ainsley Gardiner on the envelope instead. You see, I’ve gulled her with a tale. Otherwise, she’d suspect I was having an affair with you, and would feel bound to gossip about it. To forestall that, I’ve already confessed to her that Frederick Ainsley Gardiner is my secret half brother, natural son from a hole-in-the-wall affair my father had eighteen years ago. Dear young Freddy is now living in Uruguay, where Daddy supports the old morganatic wife and his unseen but beloved bastard and allows them to use his last name. It’s an awful thing to do to dear Daddy (although I suspect he’s created such fantasies for himself often enough) but in any event, this is the sort of story Polly will believe. You met her at dinner once with her husband. He’s State Department—remember him?—very tall and solemn as an owl, but sterling family stuff (if only he weren’t so dull!). She’s my old college roommate and, for a Radcliffe girl, absolutely ditsy about sex. Has affairs with conspiratorial panache, but does get loose-mouthed when she is impressed with the name of her lover. (Is that a common human failing? queries your innocent Kittredge who has only Montague’s half-bald scalp on her belt!) Polly is having loads of hanky-panky now with Jack Kennedy, who, all the papers say, is going to make a serious run for the Democratic nomination in 1960. I can’t believe it, not Jack Kennedy! From what I hear, that beau hasn’t done a day’s work in the Senate since he’s been there, but one can’t blame him—he’s such a boon to the ladies. Polly does go on about her oh-so-clandestine rendezvous with Jack. She’s obviously not trustworthy at keeping her own secrets whole, but if she does blab about Frederick Ainsley, it’ll lack interest. Who here in these ordinative D.C. swamps would care about my father’s supposed peccadillos?

  Anyway, dear Freddy A., I adore you, and we will have better days. Just remember to send your letter once a month. Start on June 1. Don’t even know where I’ll be on May 1.

  Love again,

  K.

  P.P.S. To repeat: I won’t write anything for a while. Trust me.

  I might have been trying like never before to charm her with my letters, but now she was not going to write at all, and I was rationed to once a month. To avoid a plunge into the pits of depression, I spent my night hours in the office catching up with a myriad of Station tasks. Work became my diversion. For want of another, work became my best friend, and indeed there was an interesting couple of weeks revolving around our old nemesis in the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry, the enterprising Plutarco Roballo Gómez, saved from arrest almost a year and a half ago by the clamor of Police Chief Capablanca’s sirens in the park. Gómez remained a high official in the Foreign Ministry, and no doubt, was still smuggling Uruguayan files over to the Russian Embassy. Although Hunt only arrived after the old operation was botched, he nonetheless did not let a week go by without reminding us of Plutarco Roballo Gómez, still free out there, still feathering nests for the Reds. Hunt’s vein of venom about Communists was as immaculately personal as if he were speaking of his mother-in-law. I, no matter how much I wished to feel somewhat more combative, looked upon the Russians and ourselves, at least in Uruguay, as rival portfolios of stocks, but Hunt was as immediate in his reactions as one of those long-nosed basketball coaches whose team is doing poorly on the floor. In compensation, when a good operation got going, Howard gave off that special warmth only the sour-faced can bestow with a smile.

  He started to smile about the time Gatsby got lucky. If intelligence officers tended to measure their respective importance at the Station by the penetrative powers of their agents, in much the manner that a serious hostess will calculate the desirability of her guests, I had, while running AV/OCADO, been holding the social honors, and Porringer and Hunt could certainly lay claim to cultivating Peones, a prize heavyweight. Until now, however, Gatsby had been relatively unproductive, for he had onl
y developed two medium-rank agents; the rest of his contacts were what Gordy Morewood called “rubbish collectors.”

  Now, one of Gatsby’s middling sources, AV/LEADPIPE, a gold smuggler who operated through a border crossing between Uruguay and Brazil, informed Gatsby that he was on close terms with an official in the Foreign Ministry who could obtain Uruguayan passports. Did the Station wish to buy a few? We did. Acquiring foreign passports was always a standing Station objective. Yes, Hunt told Gatsby, buy five, and get LEADPIPE to give you the name of the official putting them up for sale. The name came back and it was Plutarco Roballo Gómez. Our office came alive.

  LEADPIPE’s car was enriched with a bug. In the next meeting, following Gatsby’s instructions, LEADPIPE asked Gómez to repeat the serial number of each passport.

  “Uriarte, you are young, successful, and enterprising,” said Gómez. “Why do you take up our time with these clerical procedures?”

  “Tarco,” said LEADPIPE, “it is so much more agreeable if you aid me. My mind reverses numbers when I have to do it alone.”

  “You are mentally unstable,” said Gómez.

  “Inclined to madness,” muttered Uriarte.

  They bargained over the price. It was all there on the tape recorder. Hunt mailed a duplicate of this wholly incriminating tape to the editor of El Diario de Montevideo together with a package that included the five numbered passports; El Diario had a front-page story, and Gómez had to resign his post. Word spread through local government circles that the fall of Plutarco Roballo Gómez was due entirely to the efforts of the CIA.

  “Secrecy,” Hunt told us, “sometimes has to take a backseat to propaganda. Because of Gómez, we used to be the laughingstock of Montevideo. Now the locals perceive us as dangerous to our enemies, devoted to our principles, and just too damn tricky to keep up with. Let’s maintain that image.”

  My good luck came next. Over at the Russian Embassy, we learned by way of GOGOL that Varkhov had been acting untypically. Five times in three days he had left the Embassy for an hour, only to return with an annoyed expression. I decided to look into this. At the nearby grocery where many of the Soviet Embassy personnel purchased their food, we had a rubbish collector, no less than the son of the shopkeeper. He had, at the urging of his father, been studying Russian for several years. When Hyman Bosqueverde informed me that the father could no longer afford the lessons, I had arranged to pay for the boy’s instruction out of petty cash. The opportunity to have somebody in place to chat with the Soviets was too good to pass up. I even gave the boy a cryptonym since Hunt was all for carrying a full complement of saddlebags. It could only make us look more impressive back at Headquarters. The grocery store clerk became AV/GROUNDHOG. It became one more of the Station jokes. GROUNDHOG was sixteen years old.

  On the heels of Varkhov’s new activities, however, I met GROUNDHOG at a café to give him specific instructions. While his Russian probably had a long way to go, I told him to do his best to get Varkhov’s chauffeur (who was always purchasing Pepsi-Cola at the grocery store) into some kind of conversation about his boss’s traveling habits of late. The chauffeur brought the subject up himself. Did the boy know of any deluxe apartments for rent in the area? Varkhov’s mysterious trips out of the Embassy were explained. He had been going to see real estate agents.

  Hunt loved this piece of news. He checked out his lists, and handed me a sheet of paper with twenty names. “These are wealthy individuals, sympathetic to us, who might have just the kind of place Varkhov is looking for. We can probably work with one of the realtors Varkhov has gone to already, get him together with a landlord on this list.”

  On discussion, we decided to pass it over to Gordy Morewood. He knew every realtor in Montevideo.

  Gordy, as usual, gave good results. We selected a charming ground-floor apartment in a small villa on Calle Feliciano Rodríguez, owned by an old gentleman named Don Bosco Teótimo Blandenques. Varkhov was introduced to him by Gordy’s real estate man, and Varkhov, a fierce negotiator, ended up paying considerably less rent than his share of the villa was worth. Don Bosco knew, of course, that we would make up the difference, and add a dividend.

  We also had to obtain Señor Blandenques’ permission to install a few sneakies. No ordinary installation would do; Hunt wanted “a high-efficiency audio op.”

  Don Bosco did not mind the risk, he informed us. He had no fear of Varkhov should the Soviet discover his cooperation with us. “I would invite him to a duel,” said Don Bosco. “I have not engaged in such a confrontation for twenty-eight years, but that is only because I have faced each minute of each day of all the days in these last twenty-eight years with the knowledge that I have taken an oath to demand satisfaction from any person who presumes to speak improperly to me. This vow, señores, provides me with equanimity.” Teótimo Blandenques’ sentiments were certainly fortified by the curve of his sweeping white mustache. “My difficulty,” added Don Bosco soon after, “is, however, with the technical equipment. You would have to drill many holes. I do not believe in sullying venerable walls.”

  Don Bosco’s villa had been subdivided into two apartments twenty years ago, and that must have sullied a few venerable walls, but Don Bosco’s eyes suggested that it was not advisable to throw such facts into the pot. Instead, we waited, and over cocktails, noble Don Bosco gave way to Blandenques, the rentier. Howard obtained permission to put in the equipment. We would have to pay an overcharge of 30 percent, and make reparations afterward to all walls, woodwork, stone foundations, or molding disturbed by the audio installation.

  “The old thief,” said Howard, “will probably ask Gordy Morewood to represent him on the reparations committee.”

  I was frightfully depressed that night. While there was nothing to keep me from writing to Kittredge whenever I wanted, then hoarding my pages until June 1, I realized that a letter which could not be sent off so soon as it was completed did not seem to serve quite as much purpose. Besides, I was missing Kittredge physically. On successive nights, I awakened from the midst of a dream in which I was making love to her. That had not happened before, and I was shocked at the carnality we expressed. It was more than worthy of a brothel. I began to wonder if I was being fueled by some rich mixture of anxiety in relation to Libertad, Peones, and Chevi. All was quiet there, and I could hope that nothing would stir from that quarter, but it did amount to one more large uncertainty to carry through days of work and nights of uneasy sleep.

  32

  June 1, 1958

  Dear Kittredge,

  I wish I could say a multitude of events have whisked me right up to June 1, but that, I fear, is hardly so. You are the witch-goddess who keeps our Station humming so long as I send letters to you. When I cease, it all seems to stop.

  Of course, a few things did pass our way this month. Vice President Nixon stopped in Montevideo on his South American junket, and Hunt took him on a tour through our Embassy quarters, savaging Station cover pretty completely, I expect, by offering outrageous thumbnail sketches of each of us to Mr. Nixon and Mrs. Nixon as, viz, “This is Sherman Porringer, who can tell you anything you might want to know, Mr. Vice President, about Uruguayan labor unions and how we aid them in getting rid of their leftists.”

  Porringer, bless him, was so embarrassed that he hee-hawed like an Oklahoma mule.

  “Good democratic spirit in some of these unions?” asked Nixon. “I wouldn’t say no to that,” said Porringer. Thrice weekly we had to listen to his harangue on local labor leaders: “Stupid sons of bitches, Uruguayan meatballs.” Now Hunt tells him right in front of Vice President Nixon, “Well, if you wouldn’t say no to that, would you say yes?”

  “There’s some real democratic spirit around,” Porringer manages to mutter.

  Hunt now chooses to deliver his piece in front of all of us rather than take Mr. and Mrs. Nixon back to his office. I don’t know if it’s nervousness, bravura, or the calculation that he might as well impress us too, but, in any event, as Chief of Station,
he’s entitled to his two-minute aria before returning our guests to the Ambassador. “Mr. Vice President,” says Hunt, “I am going to presume on this occasion to restore for you a wholly minor incident in your busy life, but I do recollect an evening when my wife, Dorothy, and I, repairing to Harvey’s Restaurant for a bit of after-theater supper, had the great good luck to be seated near to you and Mrs. Nixon. May I say that on impulse, I walked over to your table and introduced myself. You were kind enough to invite Dorothy and me to join you.”

  “Howard Hunt, I can recall that occasion very well,” said the Vice President.

  Kittredge, to me, it did not look as if he did. Nixon has a deep voice that makes you think of some valuable driller’s-bit packed in oil; the lubrication slides him through many an embarrassing episode. A politician’s life has to be filled with half-recollections, wouldn’t you think? So many people. At any rate, his voice may have come out as smarmy as a British radio announcer stating, “And now Her Majesty is passing the expectant throng,” but his eyes sent one quick signal to wife, Pat, and she, lean as whipcord, said, “Yes, Dick, it was on that night four years ago when you addressed the Society of Former FBI Agents.”

  “Indeed,” said Dick, “a sterling group, SFFA, and not so slow on the draw when it came to the question period.”

  “Ho, ho,” said Hunt.

  “The Hiss case came up,” said Pat Nixon.

  “I remember,” said the Vice President, “that you, Howard, congratulated me on what you called ‘my indefatigable pursuit’ of Alger Hiss, and I had to thank you. In those days, there was still, concerning that matter, a lot of división de opiniones, if I’m employing acceptable Spanish.”

  “You certainly are,” said Hunt. He looked in danger of bouncing on his toes, he was thus excited. “I remember,” he said, “it turned out to be a particularly pleasant half-hour discussion of the foreign and domestic scene. Your memory is superb, sir.”