“I know that my colleague, Professor Chandler,” Prosser began, signaling the room to silence by the quality of his voice, “who by the way, will be back among us come Monday—” He raised a pink palm to quiet the audience: “No cheering, no demonstrations, I beg you. I know that he has been treating many of you to his well-known and rather remunerative theories concerning the espionage aspects of the American revolutionary period.
“But since I’ve gotten the floor away from him for today, I thought I’d subject you to some quavery, old man’s thoughts. And I know quite a lot about espionage and heroism. But if I were to live up to the legends which persist about me around this place, I would fall somewhere among J. Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles, and the Scarlet Pimpernel, who is not a man in a Cadillac cruising Boston’s combat zone … but, of course, the truth is somewhere else altogether and I intend only to touch on it today …” He paused, clicking the stem of the pipe against his front teeth.
“Like Professor Chandler, I believe in great men,” he went on, coolly surveying his audience, “and if you don’t, it is because you are foolish and cynical, if not actually wicked, children. The Revolution produced several undeniably great men on our side—not simply because they were on the winner’s side, but because they made huge commitments, risked everything … You may make the comparisons which leap so readily to your minds—Ho Chi Minh, of course, and Mao, of course, no sin in that, though I must say that our revolution was an even prettier example of great men and great principles.
“I’m sure that Professor Chandler has already told you that great men set our revolutionary period apart, full as it was of what one side or the other called treachery and treason …
“Now, what can I possibly add to Professor Chandler’s thesis about these great men he’s always going on about?
“Believe him!”
As Prosser droned on Chandler’s mind wandered, but to no great effect. Prosser was wending his way through his often expressed contentions that we were living in an age overrun by moral pygmies … moral clones. The fate of the planet had been pretty well left to the technologists and their various contraptions, thereby robbing modern man of an even nodding acquaintance with greatness as it was known in the past. “A machine,” Prosser said, “whether a computer or a tiny eavesdropping microphone or a heat-seeking missile, a machine cannot exceed its specific limits … and exceeding limits is at the heart of any kind of greatness … Greatness is behind us, I’m afraid …
“Adlai Stevenson said something to me once, summed it all up … ‘Our Victorian ancestors felt embarrassed,’ he said, ‘in the presence of the base. We feel embarrassed in the presence of the noble.’” Prosser sighed and began unhooking his microphone. “I don’t expect you to understand what I’m talking about … why should you? What could you know of greatness? We are faced with a peculiar proposition which is part of your life … them and us, don’t you see, there’s no longer any difference that matters …” Without saying another word, he walked slowly off the stage.
Polly tugged her scarf tight, looked up at Chandler. The sun’s brilliance bathed the Yard in a kind of life-giving light but the warmth had gone. She brushed her hair back against the nippy wind, her tight brown gloves against her cheek.
“These are the same steps,” he said. “We came out and you stuck your damned microphone in my face and before I knew it I was in it up to my ears …” He looked out across the Yard at the scurrying students. “Ah, I’m an older but wiser man today.”
“Colin, what the hell was Prosser doing up there? What kind of a lecture was that?”
“Rambling off the top of his head … it’s his style. Famous man, chatting with the boys and girls. He was just filling in …”
“It had the sound of a valedictory of some sort,” she said.
“He was in a mood.”
“Pretty damned strange—here he is, Colin.”
Bert Prosser came through the door, puffing his pipe. He stopped on the top step and smiled down at them. He tamped the bowl of his pipe with Mr. Pickwick. “You two,” he said. “I am so glad to see you.” He came down the stairs, dapper and pencil-thin in his velvet-collared chesterfield. “My dear,” he said to Polly, acknowledging her. “I must say, you’ve given me a good deal of concern these past few days—”
Polly laughed harshly, shook her head: “I think we’re due an explanation, Professor. It’s only by damned fool luck we’re alive and here at all.”
“Aha,” Prosser nodded. “She has a point, hasn’t she, Colin?”
“Offhand, I’d say she does have a point.”
“Where are the Glendower documents?” Polly said. Colin felt her energy and anger.
Prosser glanced at his watch. “Are you free for a late lunch at the Harvard Club? All will be revealed, I promise you. But I do have an appointment first—”
“There’s a very involved cover-up going on here,” Polly said.
“Patience, my dear,” Prosser said. He puffed on the pipe, produced a wintry smile.
“What about Hugh Brennan?” Chandler said.
Prosser smiled enigmatically: “Lunch, say one-thirty?” He nodded to them and went on past, out of the Yard, leaving the cold sunshine behind.
Beyond the window of the Harvard Club, on the grassy strip dividing Tremont Street which was just beginning to show a niggling but of green, a man and a woman knelt beside a black briefcase of the old-fashioned kind and withdrew a tiny black cat. The woman stood then, hand on hip, and smiled as the man placed the kitten on the ground. It took a few gingerly steps and looked up for comments. Chandler turned away from the window and the scene which reminded him of something that had happened a long time ago and watched Prosser. Though the pinkness had returned to the old man’s face there was still the sunken, less-than-healthy look about him that Chandler had noticed that night in Maine. Chandler watched him sip post-prandial sherry which was brown and translucent in the glass: the small brass Pickwick stood by the ashtray where a freshly packed Dunhill reposed, gleaming. A leather tobacco pouch completed the still life. A cold draught played across the windowsill.
“Well,” Prosser said quietly, “I call that a civilized luncheon. And, Miss Bishop, I appreciated your patience as to my explanations. You’ve told me of your excursion to Cape Breton and you both seem to be taking all these little inconveniences with exceptionally good grace …”
“Not for much longer,” Polly said. “Don’t forget that I’m a reporter. All my professional instincts are giving me a run for my money—I’ve been through the kind of stuff that gets you on the Today show—”
“Don’t underestimate me,” Prosser said, smiling faintly. “Your occupation and instincts have been much in my mind lately. Let me anticipate some of your questions, if you don’t mind. Is that all right with you, Colin? In the matter of the Glendower documents, arrangements have been made for them to go to Harvard where they will be buried for another two hundred years with several thousand other documents, collecting dust … the portrait will go to you, Colin, since it is a Chandler … Good. Perhaps first we should deal with your most recent hairbreadth escape, the affair at Stronghold. Oh, yes, I know all about it, the number of dead, the works … you were caught between CIA and KGB raiding parties—no wonder you survived! What a bunch of muttonheads!”
“But what makes you so sure?” Chandler blurted. “How could—”
“Please, Colin. It will be easier if I just tell you what’s been happening. No matter how queer you think this all has been, you can’t even imagine how queer the truth actually is. You wouldn’t ask the right questions, you see. Go back to the night at my place in Maine. Before that imbecile put on his show—my plan was to salt you two away at Stronghold, give you a couple days of rest while I checked on the Glendower documents, then have Kendrick drop back in on you and bring you back. Simple, a logical plan, though I regret my little falsehood about the oilskin package of newspapers. But you wouldn’t have understood my keeping them while my ho
me was under siege from a band of homicidal maniacs—”
“I still don’t,” Chandler said. “You were under siege and you could have been killed and the documents could have been taken.”
“So it would seem, Colin, but appearances are not always quite what they seem. You see, I knew who was laying siege to the house and I had no reason to fear him … quite the contrary, in fact. He had every reason in the world to be afraid of me. I was his boss.” Prosser, enjoying the moment, lit his pipe with a wooden match, watching his two guests past the billowing smoke.
“But I thought he was one of the men following us,” Polly said, “one of the bad guys—”
“Quite so, my dear. He was just that, one of the bad guys, the one so often seen in the checkered porkpie hat. A professional killer by trade—”
“How the hell were you his boss, then?” Chandler said. He gave his head a violent shake.
“He was employed on this matter by a KGB agent, me … I have been for many years.” He puffed calmly in the stillness. The wind sighed outside. “That sounds a good deal more sinister than it actually is, but I’ll come to that. I was running those two cretins, the two who visited you at your home and really set this thing in motion. They overstepped the boundaries of their assignment from the beginning, by killing the Davis boy and Nat Underbill. There’s an appalling decline in the quality of these fellows. Then they went after you in that uncouth manner and you gave them a good what-for … and they were having no luck retrieving the elusive documents, which made it all the more ridiculous. And they had completely lost you, remember. So there we were, no documents and no Professor Chandler, and you were the only lead we had.” Prosser leaned forward and patted Chandler’s arm: “Buck up, old fellow. You’re alive and well and you’d never have found your lovely new friend if it hadn’t been for Oz and Thorny, the two ruffians. Best to look on the bright side, take my word. You, too, miss. Bright side takes you further every time.
“Then these two oafs interview Professor Brennan and he slaughters one of them outright … and I say more power to him. Send up a cheer for Brennan—”
“You’re totally crazy,” Polly said matter-of-factly.
“Oh, there’s much more to come,” Prosser said, the soul of gentle amiability. “You see, at the same time the two KGB hirelings are looking for you and the document, as well as killing everybody they come across … the CIA has gotten into it. That’s right, the CIA. But, as is customary, The Company hasn’t the least notion what they’re doing—all they know is there’s some KGB action in the Boston sector. So they send a couple of their men up from Washington—”
“And they are Fennerty and McGonigle!” Polly said.
“Very good, Fennerty and McGonigle, a couple of men who should never be sent into the field at all, perhaps, but good men. And, after all, this Boston thing is small … just a maybe. They know nothing about any documents, no names, all they have is the identity of the two KGB men. So they begin to follow them, and they discover that for some reason the KGB men are killing people and are also taking long hungry looks at Professor Colin Chandler. So they become interested in Colin Chandler, too. You know how that went—”
“But how do you know so much?” Chandler’s brain was working, slowly. He heard Prosser’s story but he wasn’t at all sure he was making sense of it. “How do you know all this CIA stuff?”
“Because I was running Fennerty and McGonigle, too. I am a company man, as well. I thought I’d made that obvious. That’s why this entire thing got started—because I could see both sides of the table.” He tamped the ash, got another flurry of good smoke going. “I am paid by special arrangement dating back a long time with both parties. A double agent, you see, paid by the case, as it were, CANTAB to the KGB, CRUSTACEAN to the CIA … And by reporting to the CIA that there was a certain amount of KGB action here I could double my income for the duration—simple greed, I am afraid. But how else could I have the Rolls, the house, the servants?
“Obviously I had no idea how complex and violent things would become, that goes without saying. My sin is greed, not sadism. I saw it as a very limited action, relieve the college boy of his little package, run the rats around the cage in a fruitless pursuit for a few days, take my money … that’s why I asked for Fennerty and McGonigle, hardly gung-ho types, ready to get out of the business altogether … but then it got so much more difficult! The boy didn’t have the package, Underhill didn’t have the package, and your name got into it, Colin. It was all out of control before I knew what was happening. I even grew confused, myself knowing so much … too much, trying to keep it all straight. Which brings us back to that night in Maine …”
“What happened after we left?” Polly asked.
“I killed the man in the porkpie hat. Executed him. I told Moscow it was coming and it simply had to be done. The man had come all unhinged …”
“All right,” Chandler said, tightening his grip on the facts. “This may all be as you say. But if you were stashing us away at Stronghold for safekeeping, why did we get invaded by everybody and his brother that night?”
“The problem was—is—that I am quite plainly past it, Colin. Ready to pack it in, go die in a warm clime, don’t you see? I’ve become so predictable, it pains me to acknowledge the fact but there it is, sitting in the corner staring at me … Two gentlemen, one at the top of the CIA, the other his opposite number in Moscow, took one look at the situation and reached the same conclusion—namely, Stronghold. An old dog keeps going back to the old tricks, the things he knows best. And they were right … thus, rehearsal for World War III goes off on my little island …” His face was sagging in on itself, growing plaintive, morose. “And all those young men, muttonheads though they were, had to die … It’s been badly fouled up from the start. I take the blame, I could have kept it from happening, from going so far …” He pulled on the dead pipe, looked at it with an air of mournful distaste.
The couple on the grass snatched up the kitten, dropped it into the briefcase. Polly said: “That means they live in an apartment that doesn’t allow animals. They have to sneak the kitten in and out. I used to live in such a place and that’s what I did. Do you mean to say that you’ve been working both sides of the street for, what, thirty years? That’s a long, long time not to get caught, Professor.”
“My only advantage has been the size of my employers, so huge that they think very slowly … they have no idea we’re having this discussion—they don’t know what the hell’s going on … but time,” Prosser mused, “time is running out … what is it they say? The Swiss measure it, the French hoard it, the Italians squander it, the Americans say it’s money, the Indians say it doesn’t exist … I say Time is a crook. I knew a man who used to say that. He died … Sure, it’s a long time, Miss Bishop, but I don’t flatter myself on being a superspy, not by any means. I’ve become one of the cowardly technicians I spoke about in my lecture this morning, a greedy functionary with no eye for morality, or causes, or ideals. I’ve done all this for the money because I saw right after the war how it was going, one side becoming so much like the other … it made no difference which master you served, don’t you see?
“And, of course, they may have been onto me for a long time, it’s possible that they know I’m a double agent and don’t really care. Maybe they look at it as my pension … Damnation, we know that the other side knows, we’re just like button salesmen and ribbon clerks, all in the same line of work … we know our business, that’s it. It is now and always has been, at least in my day, nothing but a game.” He paused, sighed under the weight of memory. “No, I take that back, it was no game when they parachuted me into Greece and Yugoslavia during the war, there seemed to be principles involved then … nothing to do with democracy, of course, but I was anti-Nazi and so were the partisans, communists to a man. But that was a long time ago and didn’t quite turn out as we’d planned, anyway. But since then, all the same, business as usual … And what would be the point of putting me i
n prison? Or killing me? Absolutely none … I’ve been a very useful conduit, at times. Almost a diplomatic adjunct. And if any harm befell me, well then, there would be a rash of reprisals. Pointless. So I’ve gone about my business, useful to both sides. That’s why I am absolutely safe, always have been. Either they don’t know what I am or don’t care. I’m a convenience they can afford.”
“But you’re telling me,” Polly said. “What’s to keep people from listening to me tell the story …”
“Now, now, your heart isn’t in that, my dear. You are a worldly woman. You know the kind of pursuers, discreet and not so discreet, your government can bring to bear when they are well and truly angered or humiliated. Or both. And what would you have accomplished? Frankly, I can’t think of a thing … Detente may be given a momentary hiccup, the public would shrug because they assume anything since Watergate, young Davis and Underhill would still be dead and in any case the men who killed them are also dead.” He smiled sympathetically: “It’s a case of no story, Miss Bishop. No one would care, even if they believed you, and I could issue a very believable statement about my service to my country and some rather important people in the government would leap in to back me up …”
“But how the hell do you live with yourself?”
“Colin, you haven’t been listening. I’m just a man, not one of your Great Men, and so are the men I’ve worked with and served. You’re trying to make us fit your classical standard and, sadly, ours is not a classical age. Give it up, Colin. Stick to history, where you belong, where you are at home.”
“I have a question,” Polly said: she had grown good-humored, as if accepting what he’d said about the realities of the situation. “Once you had the Glendower documents, why didn’t you avoid the whole fracas by giving them to the KGB men? That wouldn’t have compromised you in the least—you’d still have been paid by both sides, your first commitment in this case was to the KGB … Why did you make it so difficult for yourself and everyone else?”
The Glendower Legacy Page 30