A Very Private Plot

by William F. Buckley

  He called Kathy at nine. He had driven the forty-five miles in the hour since her return call, had reached the little town of Westminster and driven onto the private driveway. In front of him now, at the end of the drive, was the modest white country house, beyond it the rose garden where, Blackford assumed, he would find Rufus, even at age eighty-five bent over his beloved, demanding flowers.

  Indeed he was there. He stood up, not without difficulty. Blackford stooped down, picked up Rufus’s cane and handed it to him. Rufus beckoned Blackford to walk with him into the house. One hand on Blackford’s shoulder, Rufus walked slowly. They sat down in the screened veranda. Rufus called out for Micaela. She would bring them iced tea.

  “You will have a sandwich with me in an hour or so?” Blackford said yes.

  “It has been a while, Blackford. And I am ever so happy to see you again. Can I safely assume that you have a problem to discuss with me?”

  “Yes, Rufus. A problem I swore to the principal I would not discuss with any living human being except the President of the United Sates. I am breaking my oath. But I think it would be worse—for all of us—to fail to take counsel with you.” Blackford looked down for a moment. “Maybe you won’t mind my telling you, Rufus, this one has really got me down.”

  Rufus took his glass from the tray, Blackford reached for his, and Micaela left them.

  Rufus’s voice conveyed a tenderness of feeling. “Black, let’s start from the beginning, shall we?”

  After the smoked salmon sandwich, the glass of white wine, and the lemon sherbet, Rufus was ready:

  “Do you know, Blackford, Mr. Reagan is a very shrewd man. And he shows that shrewdness sometimes by simply refusing to think through the implications of a dilemma he’s uncomfortable with. He does not want you in his office to tell him what is likely to happen to Cyclops and then to your young Narodniki—your Cyclops did let it slip that they are young … How pleasant, by the way, to come upon that sacred designation, after all these years. I was in my teens when the original Narodniki were in battle dress.

  “So? So he says, in his uncomplicated way, that he will not see you until you have consummated his instructions.”

  “That’s not the word Kathy used. What she said exactly was, ‘The President says, Mr. Oakes, that he doesn’t really think there’s anything to talk about until you’ve carried out his instructions. If you already have, I’m authorized to give you an appointment. If not—not.’ But I see your point. And as I’ve just finished telling you, I left Serge Windels in Moscow to try to track the Narodniki. I expect to return tomorrow. Maybe he’ll have done that, though the odds are against it, which means—”

  “Yes. Bolgin. —Cyclops, as you properly refer to him.” Rufus engaged now in one of his characteristic, legendary pauses. All who knew him knew not to interrupt him. Finally:

  “Blackford, you have no alternative.

  “You must first establish whether Serge has established who the leader of the Narodniki is and where he is, and can take you to him. If so, you plead with him, then threaten him. But if Serge cannot, you must go through Cyclops. And tell him that he has forty-eight hours in which to give you proof that the assassination is called off—or you will report him to the KGB.”

  Report Boris Bolgin to the KGB!

  It was on the order of turning in Solzhenitsyn to the KGB. Blackford found himself needing to climb this ladder one rung at a time. So he asked specifically:

  “What kind of proof would you settle for, Rufus, if it were you talking with Bolgin?”

  “Only one thing would serve. The names, occupations, and addresses of the members of the Narodniki band. Otherwise he could deceive you.”

  Blackford stood up. He felt an impulse he hadn’t felt since that day in Berlin when Michael was shot while protecting Blackford from bullets intended for him. It was the impulse to be sick. Sick at the prospect of betraying—he would not permit himself to use a kinder word—a man of the same age as Rufus who had risked his life every day for six years for the same cause Rufus and he had fought for. And being prepared to do as much to the three or four or thirteen young men and women brave enough to risk their lives to advance the same cause.

  But he reminded himself why he was here. It was because Rufus always knew to draw down the relevant perspectives. In 1952, Rufus had given serious thought to causing Blackford’s fighter plane to explode in the air with Blackford at the controls, after the mission was done. His decision not to do so wasn’t a manipulation of perspectives under the impulse of sentiment. Rufus’s decision had been made only after he fully collated all considerations, one of them that Blackford, age twenty-six and marvelously endowed, would likely be a valuable asset to his country over a long period of time. Blackford came to know in the thirty years after that mission, during which he so often worked hand in hand with him, that Rufus suffered personal pain as much as anyone when pain was visited on friends of the West, and although he struggled for the most part successfully to shield himself from any appearance of a personal involvement with any of his colleagues, Blackford knew with the power of his senses that this wasn’t so. Rufus cared. Cared, among others, about Blackford. But he would not allow the structure of his thought to be hostage to such priorities as Blackford himself would have constructed, if the priorities had been his to arrange.

  Blackford felt a sudden release.

  Rufus was right. And Blackford’s treatment by the commander in chief was right. It was not an act of discipline, a gesture designed to humiliate. It was a structural affirmation, and his thought now was no longer disheveled. Blackford’s head was heavy—but now clear.

  CHAPTER 33

  OCTOBER 1986

  Blackford swallowed one of Sally’s Mexican killer sleeping pills five minutes after the Pan Am flight took off nonstop to Moscow. He had a premonition that tomorrow would be a long day.

  Indeed it was, beginning with his signing in at the receptionist’s desk at his Moscow hotel. He had wired “Jerry” that his arrival time would be in midmorning, instructing him to wait at the hotel until he showed up. When he stretched out his hand to receive the key to the suite he saw an envelope in his box. He asked for it.

  It was his telegram to Jerry Singleton, unopened.

  He didn’t know what to expect upstairs in their suite. The living room appeared to be untouched. He went into Serge’s room. His suits were in the closet, underwear and socks in the drawers. Blackford gave the bathroom a professional inspection, of the kind he had been trained to perform thirty years earlier as an apprentice agent. Look carefully at every item. Serge’s toilet articles were, so to speak, comprehensively there. Missing were a razor, a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, a comb. Serge—or someone else—had withdrawn exactly the articles Serge would need in order to spend one (or even more) nights sleeping elsewhere. Presumably an appropriate supply of shorts, shirts, socks, and T-shirts were gone. The lot could easily fit in one paper bag, or even in the pockets of a raincoat. Either Serge had voluntarily decided to spend one or two nights somewhere else, or else someone had been let into the room to collect Serge’s bare essentials.

  He telephoned to the receptionist at the desk. He spoke slowly, deliberately, attempting to surmount the language problem. “My son, Jerry Singleton, did not spend last night here. He is perhaps traveling. Do you have a record of when he checked out? Or if he did not check out, do you know if he spent Sunday night in the hotel, or Saturday night?”

  The woman muttered something in perilously insecure English, which he interpreted as instructions to stand by the telephone. She reported back what seemed like a full ten minutes later that there was no record of Jerry Singleton’s having checked out. Blackford despaired of explaining that he was curious whether there were records that showed that the bed had been used on Saturday or Sunday.

  He had no alternative than to go to the embassy.

  There he had no trouble with the rites of passage. He breezed by the guards outdoors, spoke the right language to
the receptionist, who led him promptly upstairs to a private waiting room, where in a matter of moments the right man from the embassy materialized.

  “Mr. Singleton? I’m Fred Home, cultural attaché. Would you come into my office?”

  Blackford transacted the special rituals through which CIA officers establish each other’s authenticity. Fred Home, a man in his early forties with graying hair and heavy glasses, was awed to find himself talking not to Harry Singleton, but to Blackford Oakes, the Deputy Director for Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. What could he do for Mr. Oakes?

  “I came to Moscow on a presidential mission. I came with an agent. He is posing as my son, Jerry Singleton. He speaks fluent Russian. I am just back from a two-day trip to Washington, and he is missing. Do you have any reports on him?”

  “We sure do, Mr. Oakes.”

  Fred Home left his office and came back in a minute or two with a folder. “Ambassador Hartman is on top of the situation and we expect to hear from Langley within an hour or so after the office there opens up, which would be 5 p.m. our time, as you know. Your friend was picked up by the KGB. He is being held incommunicado. The ambassador plans to make a major fuss on that point sometime this morning, but of course now he’ll consult you on it.”

  “What are the charges against him?”

  “That’s something else that’s bothering us. They’re not specified—beyond this, that he entered the country using false papers—”

  Blackford interrupted him. “Listen, Fred, hold up on everything for now. Get somebody on your staff up here instantly. I’ll give him the key to our suite at the Rossiya Hotel. He should go into both bedrooms—you’d better send two people—pack everything in Jerry’s room—he has bags there—and then take everything from my room—most of my stuff is still packed, but bring the dirty laundry bag and pack the toilet articles. Pay the bill, tell reception we’ve been called out of town. Take the clothes and put them in whatever safehouse you plan to put me in. It may be too late, but there’s a chance.”

  Horne got on the telephone.

  Ambassador Arthur Hartman was an old hand. No crisis would rattle him. He had met Blackford several times and addressed him by his first name. “I would guess this isn’t something you want to give me any details about, am I right?”

  Blackford managed a smile. He was right. “And meanwhile, I need all the details I can get.”

  “Well, Blackford, I can give you the general picture. Your friend Jerry was keeping company with one of our USIA librarians. Her name is Gloria Huddleston. Seems they were at college together. They were, Miss Huddleston reports, chatting in her living room, drinking a glass of wine, when these three or four armed heavies moved in, said they were investigating a drug charge, put handcuffs on them, led them out into separate cars. She never saw Mr. ‘Singleton’ again. She was left overnight in a single cell, questioned the next morning, and then turned loose.”

  “I suppose she was asked who it was she was … chatting with late at night?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that blew his cover in a hurry. Any charges filed against Huddleston?”

  “No. At least, not that we know of.”

  “Now, listen, Arthur,” Blackford spoke gravely. “You must go to the Foreign Ministry and demand to see Jerry. I assume you’ll take legal counsel with you. But here is an item of enormous importance. Whatever we wind up doing about Jerry, we have to get one thing from him, something he can whisper to you if he has to.”

  “What is it?”

  “Ask him simply: Did you get an address? I have to have that information.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He’s a bright guy, except for that bloody-minded business of moving in with the girl, which I told him not to do. We don’t know what line he’s taken. It’s most likely that he has simply refused to talk, insisting on legal counsel. It’s also conceivable he has hidden from them his knowledge of Russian, in which case he can tell you a great deal they may not want us to have. Seems to me the most they have is a deportation case. The critical situation that brings me here, Jerry knows nothing about. The absolutely necessary link I have to have is that address. If he doesn’t have it, I’m going to have to revert to a procedure that won’t work for another twenty-four hours, and every hour may count heavily. I’d need help with that, but let’s see if meanwhile you can get the address.”

  Ambassador Hartman knew how to make a truly fearful, first-class diplomatic fuss, and he proceeded to do so. Within two hours, he was told that he and legal counsel of the embassy could interview “the defendant, Windels,” at four that afternoon, at the Lubyanka.

  At 5:30, at the safehouse on Seslavinskaya Street, a garage apartment where Blackford had been placed, the doorbell rang.

  “Who is it?” Blackford asked without opening the door.

  “Jeff Bell, legal counsel, embassy. I have what you want.”

  The door was opened. Bell, who had spent ten years teaching Soviet law at Columbia University Law School, extended his hand. And then said quietly, “The address you want is 1005 Dimitrova Street, apartment 1012.”

  Blackford closed his eyes. The address was now on his hard disk.

  “Tell me quick, because I’ve got to get going. Is Serge okay?”

  “Yeah. They haven’t sorted out whether he’s just the college boyfriend of the girl he was screwing when they moved in, or the CIA agent they photographed in Berlin three years ago paying off an informer, or probably both. We’re taking the line that the Berlin picture is another guy. Hell, they know he’s here on assignment, but they also know they’re not going to find out what that assignment is. So, along about, oh, Friday, Saturday, we’ll agree that they can put him on a plane and send him home, even though to do that is a grave injustice against an innocent person.”

  “What about ‘Jerry’s’ father?”

  “Your name hasn’t come up, and Serge has declined to tell them what hotel he sleeps in when he’s not sleeping with Gloria Huddleston.”

  “Okay, thanks. Now, depending on how it goes with me tonight, I may need help tomorrow. I’ll check in with Fred Home the way I did this morning.”

  “Good luck,” Bell said.

  They walked out together. Bell asked if he could drop him at “the address.”

  “Sure. Thanks. To a corner nearby.”

  Boris Bolgin was apoplectic when he saw who was standing at the door. Blackford let the old man curse uninterruptedly for a full minute, which Bolgin did while simultaneously gesturing Blackford to come in to his cramped living room stuffed with books. Eventually he stopped swearing. His normal color returned to his face, he went out into his kitchen and returned with the Oakes-Bolgin staples: vodka, wine, and zakuski. Boris Bolgin could be feverishly angry, but he could not be inhospitable.

  Blackford spoke for the first time. “I did cheat on you there, Boris. Followed you the other night to discover this address. And I hope you will forgive me. But your security has in no way been jeopardized. Only I,” he lied, “know your address. But this is an emergency.”

  “You are here to talk about my friends, Blackford?”

  “Yes. And I am here with fresh instructions. Boris, you must remember this, that I am not at liberty in situations when my instructions are absolutely explicit from the commander in chief. I am here to tell you one thing: We are no longer in a position to permit you to weigh whether to bring about the disbanding of the Narodniki. My instructions are to take any means required to put an end to the assassination plot.”

  “Blackford,” Boris took a good draft of vodka, pushing the bottle of wine in the direction of his guest, “you explain clearly, as always. But you are not in a position to abort the operation.”

  Blackford drank down one half of his glass of warm sweet white wine. “No, Boris, I am not. But you are.”

  Boris stared at his old antagonist, for five years now his closest professional confidant, to whom he had entrusted not only his life, but the integrity of wha
t was left, at eighty-five, of his body. At eighty-five he could not survive what he had endured in his twenties. But at eighty-five he was as sensible to pain as he had ever been, perhaps more so. Boris knew the exact meaning of Blackford’s words.

  “You would do that?”

  “I have no alternative. I want you to act within twenty-four hours.”

  Boris paused. Then he raised his hand. “There is no way, Blackford, in which I can be in touch with the leader of the Narodniki until the day after tomorrow. On my word.”

  Blackford chose to believe him. More accurately, he felt that an extension of a mere twenty-four hours could not be thought unreasonable. But this was the moment to express the harshest terms of the ultimatum. “All right, Boris. But then let me tell you what I will ask of you Thursday at”—he looked at his watch—“7 p.m. I will need to have this security from you: The names, professions, and addresses of all the players. All the players.”

  Boris looked up at Blackford, his expression pained. If I were a younger man, he was saying to himself. But then Boris too was a professional. And he understood the excruciating logic of what Blackford had said, and had to deliver.

  “Very well. But now I no longer choose to eat and drink with you.”

  Blackford rose, sadly.

  “I understand, Boris.” He hesitated in extending his hand, pausing to ascertain whether Boris would accept a handclasp. Boris’s arm remained stiff at his side.

  “I will see you in forty-eight hours,” Blackford said.

  Bolgin nodded, and as he closed the door and walked back to the table he said to himself, “In forty-eight hours Mikhail Gorbachev will be dead.”

  CHAPTER 34

  OCTOBER 1986

  Pavel and Nikolai waited, beginning at 2:45, outside the office of the General Secretary. Nikolai was not dressed as an electrician—he was, after all, an electrical engineer and such differences in station were respected, even in a classless society. He had been introduced as such on Saturday to security, and to Maritsa.