Dulles was now aroused. He lit his pipe with jagged movements of his hands.
“I believe you are right. I believe Wintergrin was right. The Russians—I believe—would not in fact have moved. But do you want to know something I don’t believe, Oakes?” His voice was strained.
Blackford was silent.
“I don’t believe the lesson to draw is that we must not act because, in acting, we may prove to be wrong. And I know”—his eyes turned to meet Blackford’s—“that you know that Axel Wintergrin thought so too.”
For ten years Blackford had wondered if Adjunct Professor of Russian Erika Chadinoff of the University of Geneva had confided to anyone the contents of Axel’s note, and, if so, to whom. Dulles hadn’t told him in so many words. But Blackford knew now whom Erika had finally turned to, whom she was talking to. That much, at least, had been accomplished by their awful experience.
There was nothing more to say. Impulsively, Blackford extended his hand, and Dulles took it.
Notes and Acknowledgments
I am indebted to many friends who read the manuscript and gave me valuable suggestions. I desist from giving their names lest they should be thought responsible for any surviving unperfections, assuming there are any. But I must mention gratefully the laborious reading given to the book, and the splendid advice, of my old friend Sophie Wilkins, and my brother F. Reid Buckley. Mr. Alfred Aya of San Francisco is the gifted—and clearly dangerous—electrical architect, to whom I owe my thanks. Mr. Samuel S. Vaughan, president of Doubleday Publishing Company, has got to be the best editor in the world, as well as—running away—the most amiable. Joseph Isola, as usual, read the galleys with patience and precision. And my very special thanks to Countess Nona von Oeynhausen, who not only read the manuscript but took me to Westphalia, over hill and dale, poking in and out of castles and eateries and antique chapels, providing me with whatever insight into the German question is here.
W.F.B.
Stamford, Connecticut
January 1978
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Copyright © 1978 by William F. Buckley, Jr.
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Cover illustration by Karl Kotas
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1850-0
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