The Company

by Robert Littell

  “Even Max, Bernice. Especially Max.”

  Tears of joy streamed from Bernice’s shut eyes. “Even Max, baby,” she whispered breathlessly. “Oh my God, I love you to death, Eugene. I love what you are, I love you the way a woman loves a soldier. This secret will be an engagement ring between us. I swear it to you.”

  She rambled on about the permanent revolution that would bring Marxism to the world and the dictatorship of the proletariat that would follow. She kept talking but gradually her words became garbled and he had difficulty understanding them.

  Eugene had met SASHA the previous night at the rendezvous marked as

  in the tic-tac-toe code: the McClellan statue on California Avenue. A face-to-face meeting between an agent and his handler was a rare event; when the matter was more or less routine, Eugene usually retrieved films and enciphered messages from dead drops. Both SASHA and Eugene had taken the usual precautions to make sure they weren’t being followed; doubling back on their tracks, going the wrong way on one-way streets, ducking into stores through a main entrance and leaving through a side door. Despite the chilly weather, two old men were playing chess under a streetlight on a nearby park bench. SASHA nodded toward them but Eugene shook his head no. He’d reconnoitered the site before leaving the coded tic-tac-toe chalk marks on the mailbox near SASHA’s home; the same two old men, bundled in overcoats and scarves, had been playing chess then, too.

  “Know anything about General McClellan?” Eugene asked, looking up at the statue.

  “He won a battle during the Civil War but I don’t remember which one,” SASHA said.

  “It was what the North called Antietam, after a creek, and the South called Sharpsburg, after the town. McClellan whipped Lee’s ass but he was too cautious for Lincoln when it came to exploiting the victory. Lincoln grumbled that ‘McClellan’s got the slows’ and fired him.”

  “Khrushchev’s got the slows, if you ask me,” SASHA said moodily. “If he doesn’t go into Hungary and put down the goddamn insurrection, all of Eastern Europe will break away. And there will be no buffer zone left between the Soviet Union and NATO forces in the west.”

  “If Khrushchev’s dragging his feet, it’s because he’s worried about starting a world war,” Eugene guessed.

  “There won’t be a world war,” SASHA said flatly, “at least not over Hungary. That’s why I phoned in the order to the girl at the liquor store. That’s why I asked for this meeting.” He held out a small brown paper bag filled with peanuts. “Under the peanuts you’ll find two rolls of microfilms that will change history. There are contingency papers, there are minutes of a high-level telephone discussion, there are messages from Vienna Station, there’s even a copy of a CIA briefing to President Eisenhower on American military preparedness in Europe in the event of war. I sat in on the briefing. When it was finished Eisenhower shook his head and said, ‘I wish to God I could help them, but I can’t.’ Remember those words, Eugene. They’re not on any of the microfilms but they’re straight from the horse’s mouth.”

  “‘I wish to God I could help them, but I can’t.’”

  “Starik’s been peppering me with interrogatives since this business in Budapest exploded. Here’s his answer: The Americans won’t move a tank or a unit to assist the Hungarians if Khrushchev takes the leash off Zhukov.”

  Eugene plucked a peanut from the bag, cracked it and popped the nuts into his mouth. Then he accepted the bag. “I’ll have the remark from Eisenhower in Starik’s hands in two hours.”

  “How will I know it’s been delivered?” SASHA asked.

  “Watch the headlines in the Washington Post,” Eugene suggested.

  Philip Swett had a hard time rounding up the usual movers and shakers for his regular Saturday night Georgetown bash. Sundry stars of the Washington press corps, senior White House aides, Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, members of the Joint Chiefs, State Department topsiders and Pickle Factory mavens had asked for rain checks; they were all too busy following the breaking news to socialize. Joe Alsop, who had popularized the domino theory in one of his columns, dropped by but fled in mid-cocktail when he received an urgent phone call from his office (it seemed that Moscow had just threatened to use rockets if the Israelis didn’t agree to a Middle East ceasefire and the British and French continued to menace Egypt). Which left Swett presiding over a motley crew of under-secretaries and legislative assistants and the stray guest, his daughter Adelle and his sonin-law Leo Kritzky among them. Putting the best face on the situation, he waved everyone into the dining room. “Looks like Stevenson is going down in flames next Tuesday,” he announced, motioning for the waiters to uncork the Champagne and fill the glasses. “Latest polls give Ike fifty-seven percent of the popular vote. Electoral college won’t even be close.”

  “Adlai never had a chance,” a State Department desk officer observed. “No way a cerebral governor from Illinois is going to whip General Eisenhower, what with a full-fledged revolution raging in Hungary and the Middle East in flames.”

  “People are terrified we’ll drift into world war,” remarked a Republican speechwriter. “They want someone at the helm who’s been tested under fire.”

  “It’s one thing to be terrified of war,” maintained a Navy captain attached to the Joint Chiefs. “It’s another to sit on the sidelines when our allies—the British and French and Israelis—attack Egypt to get back the Suez Canal. If we don’t help out our friends, chances are they won’t be there for us when we need them.”

  “Ike is just being prudent,” explained the State Department desk officer. “The Russians are already jittery over the Hungarian uprising. The Israeli invasion of Sinai, the British and French raids on Egyptian airfields, could lead Moscow to miscalculate.”

  “In the atomic age it would only take one teeny miscalculation to destroy the world,” declared Adelle. “Speaking as the mother of two small girls, I don’t fault an American president for being cautious.”

  Leo said, “Still and all, there’s such a thing as being too cautious.”

  “Explain yourself,” Swett challenged from the head of the table.

  Leo glanced at Adelle, who raised her eyebrows as if to say: For goodness sake, don’t let him browbeat you. Smiling self-consciously, Leo turned back to his father-in-law. “The data I’ve seen suggests that Khrushchev and the others on the Politburo have lost their taste for confrontation.” he said. “It’s true they rattle their sabers from time to time, like this threat to intervene in the Suez matter. But we need to look at their actions, as opposed to their words—for starters, they pulled two divisions out of Budapest when the Hungarians took to the streets. If we play our cards right, Hungary could be pried out of the Soviet sphere and wind up in the Western camp.”

  “Russians believe in the domino theory as much as we do,” said a much-published think tank professor who made a small fortune consulting for the State Department. “If they let one satellite break away others are bound to follow. They can’t afford to run that risk.”

  “Is that what you’re telling the State Department—that you think the Red Army will invade Hungary?” Swett asked.

  “Count on it, the Red Army will be back, and in force,” the professor predicted.

  “If the Russians do invade Hungary,” Leo said, “America and NATO will be hard put to sit on their hands. After all these years of talking about rolling back Communism, we’ll have to put up or shut up if we want to remain credible.”

  Adelle, who worked as a legislative assistant for Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, looked surprised. “Are you saying we ought to go to war to keep our credibility?” she asked.

  Before Leo could answer, the State Department desk officer said, “Mark my words, nobody’s going to war over Hungary. Knowing Ike, knowing John Foster Dulles, if push comes to shove my guess is we’ll back down.”

  “I hope you’re wrong,” Leo persisted earnestly. “I hope, at the very least, they have the nerve to bluff the Russians. Look, if the
Russians can’t be sure how America will react, then the doves on the Politburo, Khrushchev among them, might be able to keep the hawks in line.”

  The grandfather clock was closing in on midnight by the time the last of the guests had departed. With only family remaining—since the birth of his twin granddaughters, two years before, Philip Swett grudgingly included Leo under ‘family’—the host broke out a bottle of very aged and very expensive Napoleon cognac and filled three snifters. “To us,” he said, raising his glass. A grunt of pure pleasure escaped his lips after he swallowed the first sip of cognac. Turning the snifter in his fingers, he gazed sideways at his sonin-law. “Knew you were an ardent anti-Communist, Leo—suppose you wouldn’t be in the Company if you weren’t—but never thought you were madcap about it. This Hungary business brings out the gung-ho in you.”

  “There is something exhilarating about a slave nation breaking free,” Leo admitted.

  “I’ve got nothing against a slave nation breaking free long as it doesn’t bring the world down around our ears.”

  “Each of us has his own idea of where American national interest lies—” Leo started to say.

  “By golly, it’s not in America’s national interest to bring on a nuclear war which could reduce America to volcanic ashes!” Swett squinted at Leo. “You appear to be pretty damn sure of yourself when you say Khrushchev and Company went and lost their taste for confrontation. What do you know that’s not in the newspapers? Has that Pickle Factory of yours got a spy in the Politburo?”

  Leo smiled uncomfortably. “It’s just an educated guess.”

  Swett snorted. “Ask me, sounds more like an uneducated guess.”

  “I don’t agree with what he’s saying any more than you do, Daddy,” Adelle said, “but Leo’s entitled to his opinion.”

  “Not saying he isn’t. Just saying he’s full of crap.”

  Swett was grinning as he spoke, which made it impossible for Leo to take offense. “On that note,” he said, setting the snifter on a table, pushing himself to his feet, “we ought to be heading home to relieve the baby-sitter.” He nodded at his father-in-law. “Phil.”

  Swett nodded back. “Leo.”

  Adelle sighed. “Well, at least the two of you know each other’s name.”

  Leaning over the small table in the inner sanctum off the library of the Abakumov mansion outside of Moscow, matching the numbers on the message to the letters on the grid of the one-time pad, Starik meticulously deciphered the bulletin from his agent in Rome; he didn’t want messages dealing with KHOLSTOMER passing through the hands of code clerks. The several sums of US dollars, transferred over the past six months to a Swiss bank from SovGaz and the Soviet Import-Export Cooperative, then discreetly paid out to various shell companies in Luxembourg that channeled the money on to the Banco Ambrosiano, Italy’s largest private bank, and finally to the Vatican Bank itself, were accounted for.

  Starik burned the enciphered message and the one-time pad in a coal bucket, then inserted the deciphered message in the old-fashioned file box with an iron hasp. The words Soversheno Sekretno (“Top Secret”) and KHOLSTOMER were written in beautiful Cyrillic script across the oak cover. He placed the box on the shelf of the large safe that was cemented into the wall behind the portrait of Lenin, enabled the destruction mechanism, closed the heavy door and carefully double-locked it at the top and at the bottom with the only existing key, which he kept attached to the wrought silver chain hanging around his neck.

  Then he turned his attention to the next message, which the code clerks working in the top floor room-within-a-room had just broken out of its cipher. It had come in marked “Urgent Immediate” fourteen minutes earlier. The clerk who had delivered the deciphered version to Starik mentioned that the Washington rezidentura, using emergency contact procedures, had come on the air outside its regularly scheduled transmissions, which underscored the importance of the matter.

  As Starik read through SASHA’s brief message—“I wish to God I could help them, but I can’t.” —his eyes brightened. He reached for the phone and dialed the gatehouse. “Bring my car around to the front door immediately,” he ordered.

  Starik extracted the last of the hollow-tipped Bulgarian cigarettes from the packet and thrust it between his lips. He crumpled the empty packet and tossed it into the corrugated burn bin on his next turn around the anteroom. One of the half-dozen KGB heavies sitting around on wooden benches reading photo magazines noticed Starik patting his pockets and offered a light. Bending over the flame, Pasha Semyonovich Zhilov sucked the cigarette into life.

  “How long have they been at it?” he called across the room to the secretary, a dreary-faced young man wearing goggle-like eyeglasses, who was sitting behind the desk next to the door.

  “Since nine this morning,” he answered.

  “Seven hours,” one of the bodyguards grunted.

  From behind the shut door of the Politburo conference room came the muffled sound of riotous argument. Every now and then someone would raise his voice and a phrase would be audible: “Simply not possible to give you a written guarantee.” “No choice but to support us.” “Matter of days at the most.” “Weigh the consequences.” “If you refuse the responsibility will be on your head.”

  Starik stopped in front of the male secretary. “Are you certain he knows I am here?”

  “I placed your note in front of him. What more can I do?”

  “It is vital that I speak to him before a decision is taken,” Starik said. “Ring through to him on the phone.”

  “I am under strict instructions not to interrupt—“

  “And I am instructing you to interrupt. It will go badly for you if you refuse.”

  The young man was caught in an agony of indecision. “If you give me another written message, Comrade Colonel General, I can attempt to delivered it in such a way as to ensure that he has read it.”

  Starik scribbled a second note on a pad and ripped it off. The secretary filled his lungs with air and plunged into the room, leaving the door partly open behind him. “Run unacceptable risks if we do not intervene.” “Still recovering from the last war.” “Only thing counterrevolutionists understand is force.”

  The door opened wider and the secretary returned. The round figure of Nikita Sergeyovich Khrushchev materialized behind him. The six heavies lounging around the room sprang to their feet. Starik dropped his cigarette on the floor and stubbed it out with the toe of one of his soft boots.

  Khrushchev was in a foul mood. “What the devil is so important that it cannot wait until—“

  Starik produced a plain brown envelope from the inside pocket of his long peasant’s jacket, pulled several sheets of paper from it and held them out to Khrushchev. “These speak for themselves.”

  The First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party fitted on a pair of steel-rimmed reading glasses and started to skim the documents. As he finished the first sheet, his thick lips parted. From time to time he would glance up and pose a question.

  “How sure are you of the source of these reports?”

  “I would stake my life on him.”

  “These appear to be minutes of a meeting—“

  “There was a three-way conversation on a secure telephone line between CIA Director Dulles; his brother, John Foster Dulles, who is recuperating in a Washington hospital; and Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson. A stenographer in the office of CIA Director Dulles recorded the conversation.”

  Khrushchev chuckled. “I will not ask you how these records came into your possession.”

  Starik did not smile. “I would not tell you if you did.”

  Khrushchev bristled. “If I instruct you to tell me, you will tell me.”

  Starik stood his ground. “I would quit first.”

  Nikolai Bulganin, the one-time mayor of Moscow who, on Khrushchev’s insistence, had been named premier the previous year, appeared at the door behind the First Secretary.

  “Nikita Sergeyevich, Marshal Zhukov is
pressing for an answer—“

  Khrushchev passed the pages he’d already read to Bulganin. “Look through these, Nikolai Aleksandrovich,” he ordered crisply. He read through the remaining pages, reread two of them, then looked up. His small eyes danced excitedly in his round face. “The parenthetical observation at the top,” he said, lowering his voice, “suggests that these words were spoken in the White House.”

  Starik permitted himself a faint smile.

  Khrushchev showed the last document to Bulganin, then returned the papers to Starik. “My thanks to you, Pasha Semyonovich. Of course, this permits us to assess the situation in a different light.” With that, both the First Secretary and the Soviet premier returned to the conference room, closing the door behind them.

  The KGB heavies settled back onto the benches. The young secretary breathed a sigh of relief. Behind the thick wooden door the storm seemed to have abated, replaced by the droning of unruffled men moving briskly in the direction of a rational decision.

  9

  BUDAPEST, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1956

  ON THE STAGE OF THE CORVIN CINEMA, AMID A CLUTTER OF orange peels and empty sardine tins and broken ammunition crates and discarded clothing and heaps of mimeographed tracts and assorted weaponry, the players in the drama waited for the curtain to rise on the third act. Half a dozen teenage girls fitted machine gun bullets, smuggled in from a Hungarian Army base the previous night, into cartridge belts as they giggled over boys who had caught their eye. Several older women, sitting in a semicircle under the stage, filled empty beer bottles with petrol and then stuffed cloth wicks into them. In a corner, Zoltan, Ebby’s gypsy radioman, sharpened the long curved blade of his father’s father’s knife on a snakestone, testing it every now and then against the ball of his thumb. A young squad leader, just back from patrolling the Pest bank of the Danube, stripped off his bandolier, leather jacket and knitted sweater and crawled onto a pallet alongside his sleeping girlfriend, a freckle-faced teenager with blonde pigtails; she stirred and turned and buried her head in the boy’s neck, and the two whispered for several minutes before falling asleep in each other’s arms. In the back of the auditorium Ebby dozed on one of the folding wooden seats, his head propped against a window curtain rolled into a makeshift pillow. Elizabet lay stretched across three seats in the row behind him, a Hungarian Army greatcoat covering her body, a sailor’s watch cap pulled over her eyes and ears shutting out the light and sound, but not the tension.