Sir Alec had a friend, Lord Brougham, who was beloved by all until the third drink of the evening, at which point His Lordship would begin to talk about his most recent pheasant shoot—usually that morning—as if all the world hungered to hear the details and savor every step of the chronology. (The Day Lord Brougham Shot the Pheasant, by Jim Bishop, one survivor of an evening had suggested as an appropriate title and author for a book.) Mostly his friends coped with him by the simple expedient of avoiding his company after 7 p.m. or the second drink, whichever came first. On the occasions when they found themselves trapped in his company at a dinner party, they would sweatily engage other members of the party—any other member of the party—in concentrated, often nonsensical, discussions, for so long as they hovered as possible targets of Lord Brougham’s narrative compulsion. It happened to Blackford early on during his stay in London, and he was unprepared as Lord Brougham, scotch and soda in hand, began to tell Blackford what had been the situation in the field that morning at nine-fifteen. When, fifteen minutes later, Lord Brougham was describing the situation in the field that morning at nine-thirty, Blackford summoned his training as a scientist to project that at such a rate Lord Brougham, having spent all day hunting, would be done with the account of his hunt at approximately 2 a.m. He thought fleetingly of interrupting His Lordship to tell him about the review of Parsifal, which his father delivered on the lone occasion when he had been dragged by Blackford’s mother to the Metropolitan, so far from his chosen world of airplane work, airplane talk, airplane testing, airplane jokes. “Parsifal is the opera that begins at five-thirty and when you look at your watch three hours later, it is only five forty-five.” But Oakes’s sense of occasion stopped him. Instead, he put his arm firmly on Brougham’s shoulder and, winning the admiration of all experienced martyrs in the room, said to him in mock earnestness: “Lord Brougham, I’m too young to stand the suspense. Unless you shoot that bird in the next”—Blackford looked at his wristwatch—“sixty seconds, I’m going to have to ask the butler for some saltpeter.” This was said with such high good humor that Lord Brougham, who didn’t really understand exactly what it was Blacky said, actually stopped talking and laughed—which sound, Blacky later told his mother, would certainly have scared away the birds.
On the plane home he opened the letter from Sally, scooped up in the valedictory probe of his mailbox on his way out to the taxi, lugging bags and briefcases. He had waited deliberately until he was in the Constellation before opening it.
“Dear Blacky:
“Has it ever occurred to you that I am a professional student of English and that I ought to be paid for writing you letters, which take me away from the pleasures of pursuing my inquiry into Geof. Chaucer? It isn’t as though my letters were responses to your own, since I have written you six times since the first of January. That was the day you made The Resolution. I’ll quote it to you. I am in the mood to quote Blackford Oakes, my darling, to Blackford Oakes, that crud. ‘Dearest Sally: It is New Year’s Day, and though distracted in London (I am going to Buckingham Palace to a party for Margaret Truman), you are as always first in my thoughts, on the first of January. I am a very methodical feller, Sally, as you probably never realized, since you concern yourself with odes to Westminster Bridge, while I concern myself with building Westminster Bridge. Anyway, my vow tonight, for my darling, is to write you twice a week, come rain or come shine, even if at Buckingham Palace I find myself having to say to the Chief American-Watcher: “Where is the nearest desk?” ‘I’ve really got to go.’ Very funny, Oakes. That was twelve weeks and three letters ago. I’m glad people don’t have to drive their cars over bridges built on your promises.
“So, how do I retaliate? It would serve you right if I wrote to you about what we have recently learned about Chaucer’s Middle English. Or in Middle English. But just to show I’m a Christian prepared to turn the other cheek, and knowing your vulgar concern with politics, here are a few of this season’s leads, as I get them in the graduate school from such as Professors Cecil Driver and Willmoore Kendall (who hate each other, needless to say, both being terribly bright).
“The smart money is on Eisenhower. He’ll probably take Taft in New Hampshire, and erode his base. He’s got to be pretty truculently anti-Communist, and he’s already let it be known that J. F. Dulles will be his Secretary of State if elected. Since we’re supposed to have a bipartisan foreign policy, it doesn’t hurt that Foster’s brother Allen is head of the CIA. Do you know anybody in the CIA? The only one I know is Cord Meyer. I met him—remember?—when I was a World Federalist at Smith, and he was top dog and debated at Yale with Arnold Wolfers. You said after it was over that Cord would need to retire, and sure enough he did. The pros are saying Ike’s charisma (the word comes in from Max Weber, and it’s sweeping the country, along with ‘expertise’) will bring him in, on the assumption that he will be able to end the Korean War. Meanwhile the Democrats are taking an awful beating. Joe McCarthy’s attacks on the ‘Red Dean’ (poor old Dean Acheson, the original Establishmentarian, son of a preacher, trustee of Yale!) have convinced a lot of people he’s a subversive, and even though he’s Secretary of State, he’s pretty much ignored by his fellow Democrats, though most people are finally agreed at least that Stalin is subversive, though only J. F. Dulles ever says anything about liberating the liberated territories, but he says that mincingly.
“Suddenly I’m bored writing to you, Oakes. If you come back to the States, ring my secretary and make an appointment. I divide my time about equally between New Haven, Washington, Athens, and Caracas. How are you, darling?—Sally”
Blackford leaned his seat back all the way and closed his eyes, and worked out how many hours, minutes, and demisemiquavers separated him from Sally.
If Singer Callaway in London had no idea what Blackford would be assigned to do, in Washington his superior, “Mr. Lamb,” was not at all vague: Oakes was to penetrate the new movement in Germany headed by this Axel Wintergrin. He should count on staying in America at least three months, as many as six, depending on his progress in learning German. He would be briefed extensively the next day by a specialist who would know Oakes only by his code name of Geoffrey Truax. That specialist—“Mr. Munch”—would direct Oakes up until his departure for Germany, at which point the name of his superior there would be disclosed, together with instructions on how to effect contact. Meanwhile, immediate thought must be given to his cover while in America. Any creative ideas Oakes had should be discussed with Mr. Munch the next morning (the meeting would take place at 10:03 a.m. in room 708, Wardman Park Hotel). Oakes should give some thought to the requirements: 1) he must reserve five hours a day for the study of German; 2) he must live in either Washington, Boston, or Palo Alto, where the agency had suitable arrangements for him to study German at the maximum speed; 3) he must study those aspects of engineering and architecture that would qualify him to deal expertly with the reconstruction of a thirteenth-century church.
Blackford had had only one earlier experience with “Mr. Lamb”—who had told him eight months earlier that he must go to England. When Mr. Lamb was done, Black remembered, he simply stopped talking. He did not supply a coda of any sort, from which one might deduce that the interview had terminated. At their last meeting, this resulted in Blackford’s staying in his chair while Mr. Lamb stayed in his, neither of them uttering a word; accordingly, after waiting a full three minutes, Black rose, shook hands, and left.
He had taken the precaution not to advise Sally when he would arrive. She would want to know his plans, and these were unformulated. By the same token he did not feel free to call any of his friends in Washington, who would also be curious. He indulged himself the fantasy of convening “Tom,” “Harry,” “Alan,” “Rudolph,” and “Alistair,” the pseudonymous instructors during his training period in Washington, and having a dinner party for the purpose of telling the boys what he had done in London since last seeing them. He smiled at the sheer impiety of the thought, and com
forted himself that The Firm protected itself against any such mad compulsions by the simple expedient of making it impossible to find one’s old associates. He reflected. If at this very moment he desired to be in touch with everyone he knew in the Central Intelligence Agency, he would be good for: 1) one telephone number in London, attached to one employee; 2) Anthony Trust, who had recruited him—a man Oakes had known since he was a schoolboy; and 3) the telephone number of Mr. Lamb. Amazing, he thought, that only two months earlier the resources of the Agency had worked to concert, through him, an extensive operation; extensive intromission, he smiled, lecherously, thinking of one bedroom in particular. But if his life had depended on it, he would not know how to be directly in touch with Singer Callaway, for instance, let alone the august Rufus—not a single one of his instructors, let alone the whole platoon.
Without having any very clear idea how he would spend the balmy spring evening, he walked out of the Hay-Adams Hotel in the late afternoon and crossed Lafayette Park toward the White House. He wondered idly which of the park benches Bernard Baruch occupied when coaching American Presidents. Presumably the one closest to the big House. So he walked south toward the bench, passing the bureaucrats coming out of the Executive Office Building, fanning out to cars and buses. Two children were playing in the park, and their dog, held in leash by their mother, was howling in empathic excitement at their game. Blackford sat and stared at the White House, recalling the giddy evening he had spent there dancing with Sally after going through the receiving line for the Shah of Sinrah. It would have a fresh occupant this time next year, Blackford reflected, turning his head abruptly as if to express his ignorance of who it would be. A man was reading a paper, seated two benches down: middle-sized, hirsute, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, dressed in a heavy, etiolated, brown, winter suit. The suit seemed out of place in the spring heat of Washington. Then he remembered. That morning. Coming in from the airport in the airline limousine, waiting with his briefcase in the choked aisle to step down into the street: the man who stayed seated. The man in the winter suit. THAT MAN IS FOLLOWING ME. Blackford was suddenly as certain of this as that the building across the street was the White House. A pang of stomach chill seized him. What’s going on? He sought to calm himself.
In the first place, there is no reason to believe this superstitious conviction of mine that that man is following me. In the second place, if he is, conceivably it is someone from the Agency, checking on me. In the third place, if it is one of theirs, what kind of danger am I in? A hundred yards from the White House! A half mile from the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation!—He let his mind run on: One mile from the Smithsonian Institution, which has Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis which I could certainly, as a qualified jet navy pilot, fly away in, if somebody could be got to gas it up. Twenty miles from the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, where they could give me a blowgun with mysterious poisons that would make the man in the winter suit drop quite dead.
He derailed the runaway train of thought, and forced himself to analyze exactly the causes of his apprehension. No one of theirs was supposed to have any cause to follow Blackford Oakes around—his cover discipline had been very scrupulously adhered to. So didn’t it have to be one of ours who, knowing Oakes’s affiliation, was checking on his off-duty activity?
First things first: I must establish whether my suspicion is well founded.
So he kept his eyes trained on the White House, away from the man with the winter suit. Summoning his instructors’ teachings of the previous summer, he laid out his plan. He would in due course rise, walk across the street and over to the guard at the west gate of the White House, and ask him a routine question: “Where does the line form for visitors to the White House?” In asking that question he would have reason to face east, reacting to the direction in which he knew the guard would point. If the man in the winter suit had left his bench but was still visible, Blackford would prolong the conversation with the guard while tracking the man’s movements. If the man stayed seated on the bench, Blackford would thank the guard and walk west along Pennsylvania Avenue, cross the street, and duck in at number 1750 to pick up a hot dog at the little stand inside the perimeter of the big entranceway to the massive office building. He would soon know if he was being followed.
He rose and crossed the street. The guards that season were not talkative. Not long ago, Puerto Rican terrorists had assaulted Blair House, attempting to kill President Truman. The guard pointed impatiently to the east, and advised Blackford in hortatory accents that loitering was not permitted outside the White House. Notwithstanding the abbreviation of his encounter, Blackford had time to notice that the man in the winter suit remained seated, his newspaper raised to cover his face. Blackford walked in a casual gait toward number 1750, in one of whose upper rooms he had studied a year ago under “Rudolph.” He ducked in and stood by the quick-food counter, cutting the angle of vision from the street to twenty yards. In thirty-six seconds the man in the winter suit emerged. He too turned abruptly into the building, but walked to the newsstand opposite, bought a newspaper and a magazine, turned back toward the street, never looking to his left at the food counter, hailed a taxi and went off. Blackford, hot dog in hand, stared at the disappearing cab. What goes on?
Blackford meditated now whether to report so inconclusive an experience to Mr. Lamb. He would think about it, and meanwhile be especially attentive. What if it had been a CIA agent, doing a routine check? Would they own up? What were they looking out for?
Blackford looked haphazardly at the movie page of the Times Herald left open on the counter and decided impetuously to go to the late-afternoon showing of The Caine Mutiny, thereby avoiding the long lines he had read about. He walked to Seventeenth and E streets, bought a ticket and some popcorn, walked into the theater, spotted an empty seat near the aisle, and slithered by the knees of the man squatted on the end seat. Eyes adjusted to the light, he focused on the movie and the deeply interesting question of whether Van Johnson really was entitled to take over Humphrey Bogart’s ship. It wasn’t open and shut, no more than the hanging of Billy Budd or—come to think of it—the conviction of Galileo. The presumption in favor of stipulated authority’s right to exercise his authority is very heavy in an orderly society. Blackford knew that, in part because by temperament he was anti-authority. So he had tried for years since analyzing his natural inclinations to compensate for them—by collecting intellectual arguments in favor of the presumptions.
He finished, regretfully, his popcorn. In the sequence on the screen where the younger officer imitates Queeg, the man next to him on the aisle, like everyone else in the movie house, laughed. It was a vaguely familiar laugh, and Blackford glanced briefly over to his right, to discern the unmistakable profile of Senator Joseph McCarthy, also with popcorn in hand, happily whiling away two hours during which probably every reporter in the world was trying to find him, he being the major pursuit of the press in the spring of 1952. Blackford reached into his jacket and pulled out a small notepad. In the dark he scratched out four words, and folded the piece of paper. The movie over except for the final music and the credits, Blackford slid back toward the aisle, and as he did so inserted the paper silently into the senator’s comatose right hand, and walked gleefully out into the street. He had written: “SENATOR: INVESTIGATE ALLEN DULLES!”
Late the following afternoon he found himself reaching for his suitcase almost immediately after the train had left Bridgeport, though he knew from one hundred experiences that another fifteen minutes would pass before the New Haven stop. It was good in any case to remove himself from the car, so thick with fetid tobacco smoke. So he stood in the rattling, twisting, noise-making connecting chamber, leaning his head out of doors where the conductor had neglected to secure the panel. The spring air, even with all the grit from the industrial activity in the area, was bracing after the five-hour ride from Washington, and he found himself not merely excited, but truly happy at the prospect of seeing Sally: who wa
s there, peering anxiously at each of the exiting vestibules of the forward cars as they slid by her, until she spotted him. He hoped she had not changed her simple hair style, and indeed had devoted one of his three most recent letters to the theme. She hadn’t; it was straight, curling out at her neck, and her eyes were alight, as transparent as her mouth with the thin, lightly touched-up lips, stretched now with pleasure as he jumped down and hugged her. They walked together to her little Volkswagen, saying only the utterly conventional things to each other, as if he had come in from a neighboring college on a blind date.
They reached her Volkswagen, and Blackford drew up abruptly.
“I don’t believe it.”
“You don’t believe what?”
“I mean, how do you see out the back window?”
“I don’t. I’ve given up seeing out of the back window for the duration of the campaign. Besides, that’s how Republicans do things—looking backward,”
“How does sealing the entire back window of the car with Stevenson posters help Adlai Stevenson become President?”
“It demonstrates the total devotion of the younger generation to Adlai Stevenson.”
“In the first place, since they can’t see through the window, how will anyone ever know that the driver of the car is a member of the younger generation?”
“I’ll drive so slowly, everyone will have to pass me.” He laughed, wedging his suitcase in the back. “Shall I drive?”
“Sure,” Sally said, handing him the keys. “Only remember, sir, over here we drive on the right-hand side.”
He felt he was home again, and they drove to the apartment she shared with another graduate student, her dear friend Sheila, obligingly absent for the weekend.
He went to wash up and returned to find Sally with an apron over her skirt.
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